NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2017-03-nasa-magnetic-shield-mars-atmosphere.html <comment><USER3> This is incredibly exciting but a few important details are missing.

The first is how big does the structure need to be? I can buy a 1 Tesla magnet online right now but that's probably not what they're thinking of. Would we need a city-sized coil or something like that?

The second is the time scale. They say that the temperature could rise by 4 Celsius and trigger a greenhouse effect, but is that an immediate effect (10 years or so) or century-scale effect? I'm hoping the scientists put out a paper because I'd love to learn more about the specifics of their proposal.

<comment><USER4> For people asking about the amount of energy we're talking about, the energy density of a magnetic field is |B|^2 /(2mu_0). It appears that the described structure has something on the order of the cross section of Mars, and I'll assume that it's depth is in that ballpark as well. For a fictitious uniform field that would require on the order of 1.6e19 J, which is roughly 1.2 times the total electrical energy output of the US in 2001:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%2F3+pi+*+(radius+of+m...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=4%2F3+pi+*+\(radius+of+mars\)%5E3+*+\(500,000+nT\)%5E2+%2F+\(2*mu_0\))

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.617%C3%9710%5E19+joul...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1.617%C3%9710%5E19+joules&lk=1&rawformassumption=%22ClashPrefs%22+-%3E+%22ClashPrefs%22)

Assuming you had no losses, so say ideal superconducting coils, that's how much energy you have to dump into magnetic field. You can do this as slow as you like, so with 1/10 the US electrical energy production it would take 10 years to build up that magnetic field. Hypothetically, if you had thin-film plastic PV cells (like cellophane thin to be reasonable to build and get into space) with 100% efficiency covering the footprint of this system (Mars) you could generate enough power to charge up this field in 471 seconds:

[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1e19+J+%2F+((solar+powe...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1e19+J+%2F+\(\(solar+power+output*pi*\(radius+of+mars%5E2\)\)%2F\(4*pi*radius+of+mars+orbit%5E2\)))

Of course the big story here is that efficient thin film solar in space could generate obscene amounts of power.

I'm not sure on the depth of the field volume required, so that might make it easier, too.

<comment><USER5> I wonder if a very large array of solar panels would not also act like a solar sail that would would catch enough solar wind to escape the pull of the L1 Lagrange point.

<comment><USER6> Not a problem. The L1 point is where the gravitational pull of the Sun is balanced by the gravitational pull of the planet plus the centrifugal force; if you move slightly closer to the sun, its gravity will balance planetary gravity, centrifugal force, and the pressure on the sail.

<comment><USER5> I think this would happen if L1 was a stable lagrange point, like L4 and L5. That's not the case though, L1, L2 and L3 are unstable. To put it differently, ignoring the centrifugal force, at L1 the gravitational pull of Mars is equal to the gravitational pull of the Sun; when you move the sail towards Mars, the pull towards Mars increases, the one towards the Sun decreases, and the resultant points in the same direction as the pressure on the sail (i.e. towards Mars). Nothing is balanced, in the end the sail falls towards Mars.

<comment><USER7> No, the fact that it's not stable isn't what's being talked about. It's merely the fact that an additional force from the solar wind would act to shift the equilibrium point of L1 slightly towards the sun.

<comment><USER5> Makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "can generate a magnetic dipole field at a level of perhaps 1 or 2 Tesla (or 10,000 to 20,000 Gauss)"

I'm just amused by this conversion. Who is this for? Are there people who know one unit of magnetic flux and not the other?

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure, but everyone in atomic physics talks gauss for some reason.

<comment><USER10> Well think about it... 1 Tesla = 10,000 Gauss. When you're talking about magnetic fields in MRI coils, or planetary magnetosphere it helps to use a larger scale. When you're talking about EM forces on the scale on an atomic nucleus though, it's more helpful to speak in terms of Gauss.

<comment><USER11> But that is why we have metric prefixes, different scales call for the appropriate prefix. Magnetic field of a neutron star ~1MT, magnetic field of a human brain ~1pT

<comment><USER10> Sure, but when you actually have to do math with them, and use them every day in practical language, it starts to make a lot less sense. After all, the goal of terms of art isn't to make the language of a given pursuit less opaque to "outsiders", but to facilitate work within the pursuit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a good entry-level article or video explaining planetary magnetics? I'm an aerospace engineer and I struggle with the difference between magnetospheres, magnetotails, magnetosheaths, magnetopauses and Magneto's psychological struggles.

<comment><USER13> As another layman I find the Wikipedia article on the subject to be really good: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere#Structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetosphere#Structure)

There's nothing inherently different about a planet's magnetic field pushing the stellar/solar wind out of its way and e.g. a boat on water pushing water out of the way. Terms like magneto(sheath|pause|tail) are just labels for different parts of the "wake".

<comment><USER14> "There's nothing inherently different "

Yes there is. Magnetohydrodynamics are more complex than hydrodynamics because of the electromagnetic effects.

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

Yes, there is the fluid component, but in addition to that, there are the bits coming from electromagnetics. Arising from Maxwell's "a moving charge creates a magnetic field..." and "a force is induced on a charge moving through a magnetic field "etc.

<comment><USER13> Is that really inherently different, or just a more complex manifestation of the same basic principles?

I.e. Atoms repel each other because of their magnetic fields, and depending on their polarity and spin in the aggregate they can produce bigger and more complex magnetic fields, such as the ones analyzed by magnetohydrodynamics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article and paper lacks any indication of the amount of energy needed to run such a magnetic field. What amount would it take to run it, and what sources of energy would be viable for it?

<comment><USER16> Research NMR magnets the size of several refrigerators already exceed 8-10T; they are superconducting and could after initial run up likely run for years with no power at all. They drift down over time but it likely not be a show stopper, and the cold of space would help them minimize cryogen maintenance times - it would be an activity on the way to or from the planet maybe? Edit: though the magnet itself wouldn't require continuous power, others added there would be pressure from the sun and say it could be counteracted by orbit geometry or active force being added.

<comment><USER17> So you thave ouched on an important limitation of electromagnets; they need to be cooled. In space, the vacuum surrounding this power hungry object would be inferior to air for heat transfer; heat merely seeps out slowly radiatively.

So there would be a major improvement in keeping heat low/improving system efficiency or to transfer heat away without cooking the crew after the turn the thing on.

<comment><USER18> Is that true? A superconductor magnet needs to be cooled down to temperature (say 4K), but does it generate heat once operating? Seems like heat would come from resistance in the coil, but this resistance is zero when at operating temperature.

<comment><USER19> It would consume power by fighting against incoming particles. This would end up as heat inside it.

<comment><USER20> A permanent magnet also fights against incoming particles, and doesn't seem to consume any energy. Why would an electromagnet be any different?

Edit: the permanent magnet will feel a force applied against it in the opposite direction, of course. In space, that's have to be countered by rockets though, not electrically in the current running through the superconductor, right?

<comment><USER19> > Why would an electromagnet be any different?

Because the incoming electrically charged particle induces current in the coils of the electromagnet.

A permanent magnet does not have to deal with that - even if there is current it doesn't affect the magnetism in a permanent way.

Think about an electric solenoid: A stationary electromagnet does not consume power, a moving one does as it acts on the external magnets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does building a magnetosphere for the purposes of protection require an atmosphere, or is it all about capturing and shaping solar wind?

If it doesn't require an atmosphere, could this approach be used to build a magnetospher around the moon? It feels like colonizing the moon first is a much easier and more useful problem to tackle. Once we have a moon colony you can crack water to make fuel and then go "where ever" you'd like - <USER2> asteroids, or mars. The moon is much closer and easier to get to, though maybe people need the "excitement" that travel to Mars connotates.

<comment><USER22> Where does the water come from?

<comment><USER23> There's more than a trillion pounds of water ice on the moon.

<comment><USER22> Mixed in with rock at low concentrations. Are you proposing shipping massive mining machines to the Moon?

<comment><USER23> This is a thread about building a magnetic shield to protect an entire planet. Shipping some gear to the poles of the moon to melt ice doesn't seem that crazy in comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't know the specifics of solar radiation well enough to say how much power the deflection would require, but there is an easy order of magnitude calculation to figure out how much energy setting up a field that size would require. It's not the same as consumption but it's a start.

The energy in a uniform field is very simple to calculate: a sphere with a radius of 6371 km (radius of earth, diameter of mars) and 50,000 nT would store about a 10^18 joules, about 6.5% of US annual electricity consumption. At the extremal 500,000 nT that would be 10^20 joules, around 2x the global electricity consumption.

A dipole field would require ~10x more energy, a zetajoule. That's around 2x the global human annual energy consumption, including for heat/transport/industry/etc.

<comment><USER25> Could this be reduced, by putting the shield further out?

<comment><USER24> No, the Martian Lagrangian point L1 is the only stable point that can be used. If you tried to move the blocker closer to the sun, the device would have to orbit faster than Mars. L1 is the point where the gravity of the sun and Mars cancel out.

The only other place you could have it would be directly on mars, where it would have to be much larger.

<comment><USER26> Can you use the solar power collector as light sail to nudge the orbit closer to the sun-side of L1. I would assume every km would help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a thought: Could we put one of these at the L1 point of the Earth-Sun system to protect against solar storms? If something like the Carrington Event happened to our current society, it would be absolutely devastating.

Bonus: Could we make it big enough to encompass the moon?

<comment><USER28> Would doing this reduce or eliminate northern lights? That would be a little sad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Unfortunately this will not work. That isn't to say that the construction, placement, and powering of an artificial magnetosphere at Mars-Sun L1 is infeasible. It can totally be done with today's tech and modest meter scale superconducting rings. Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2): High Speed Propulsion Sailing the Solar Wind ([http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/M2P2/STAIF2000.PDF](http://earthweb.ess.washington.edu/space/M2P2/STAIF2000.PDF)) probably represents the core concept. Except instead of trying to go somewhere you stay where you are. The M2P2 paper says a 10cm diameter superconducting coil can divert solar wind in a bubble up to 20 km in diameter. It wouldn't take too much to scale that up.

Of course diverting that much solar wind would create a force on the object. In the paper above that force is used to accelerate a craft. It'd be some handful of newtons at 20 km and linearly more to do what this project wants. One way you might get around that is to "lean into" the wind by going down the sun-side of the L1 halo orbit and allowing the force from the diverted solar wind to counter the sun's gravity's acceleration.

But for the vast majority of the lost Mar's atmosphere the kinetic energy needed to achieve escape velocity is _not_ from impact with solar wind ions or other solar wind related/magnetic field means. All those hereafter referenced under the umbrella term "jeans escape".

Instead the majority of the kinetic energy needed comes from the ejected electrons from the sun's light ionizing the upper atmosphere. That ejected electron has quite a bit and it is distributed to the ions it later interacts with and as those ions interact with others. If there was no solar wind at all the rate of atmospheric loss at Mars would drop but not significantly if the sun still shone upon it.

That isn't to say that, having no magnetosphere, Mars (or Venus) does not lose an additional small amount of it's atmosphere to jeans escape mechanisms. But that amount is limited due to the currents created in the upper atmosphere by photoionization creating their own local magnetic field. That creates a bow shock about the ionopause which slows the incoming solar wind down such that it's constituent ions no longer have the energy needed to deliver the boost required for escape. And because of the induced magnetic field other solar wind magnetic field based mechanisms which would pick-up the ions ionized by the sun's light are mitigated.

I love the idea of this but it isn't going to make Mars have a decent atmospheric pressure in just some years.

On a (much) lighter note, I was thinking if you put these artificial magnetospheres all over the inner system and then coordinated turning them on and off you could "paint" the termination shock surface of the heliosphere with different scales of tubulence in charge density. It'd be a multi-hundred AU wide screen visible only from very far away with sensitive polarimeters (detecting the changes in lines of sight charge density through faraday rotation). Might be a decent way to METI since it'd not require much energy or high angular resolution at the other end.

 __tldr __: It 's technically and economically feasible. But it doesn't work like suggested for atmospheric protection because almost all the mass loss is from light caused photoionization, not the solar wind (and other Jeans escape mechanisms).

<comment><USER30> > Might be a decent way to METI since it'd not require much energy or high > angular resolution at the other end.

I really don't think this is a good idea, unless we want a massive object accelerated to a significant percentage of c to get lobbed our way. :)

Disregarding the effects on atmosphere loss, wouldn't a machine like this eventually be more or less essential if humans ever decide to move in long term? At least, if we want to hang out on the surface (in bubbles, of course).

<comment><USER31> The good news is "to get lobbed our way" doesn't mean much to a culture that can do distributed projects all over a solar system. A problem along the lines of whats the ideal cannonball size to genocide the common mosquito?

There is also a really nice MAD effect where the window where you can hit a solar system without getting hit back is extremely short, like a century perhaps. Longer than that and we send a probe to the cannonball and turn it into diffuse gray goo that the solar wind blows away when it enters the system, and we return fire 1000 times over, so any logical civilization would send in the asteroid weapons much earlier, like the first time they sniff RF transmissions or the first dark side of the planet electric lights.

<comment><USER32> Well, the attackers in _The Killing Star_ , by Charles R. Pellegrino and George Zebrowski, did more than just lob an object our way. And there's the issue: "One of the iron rules of relativistic bombardment was that if you could see something approaching at 92 percent of light speed, it was never where you saw it when you saw it, but was practically upon you...". So sending probes is rather unworkable.

In the _The Killing Star_ , our doom was already sealed by "Star Trek" :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It is unclear what kind of technology are they planning to use for this shield. If it is usual electromagnets, it's unclear where would they take energy from, if superconducting ones than it's unclear that it would be possible to keep them in superconducting state for long.

Wish someone more knowledgable about this kind of tech comment on this.

<comment><USER34> Definitely superconductors; that's the only viable way to generate a field that strong. Design the spacecraft properly and you may not need an active cooling system. The James Webb Space Telescope aims to keep the shaded side below 50K… while at the same time solar panels and all its solar-facing equipment will operate 250K hotter near room temperature. The trick is maintaining this temperature gradient.

Apparently the design of the JWST is sufficient to reach temperatures as low as 37K on the cold side passively — below the superconducting limit for some materials. They're additionally using a cryocooler to take the temp down to below 7K for one specific instrument.

[https://jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html](https://jwst.nasa.gov/cryocooler.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> > The current scientific consensus is that, like Earth, Mars once had a > magnetic field that protected its atmosphere. Roughly 4.2 billion years ago, > this planet's magnetic field suddenly disappeared, which caused Mars' > atmosphere to slowly be lost to space.

What kind of event could cause the loss of a planet's magnetic field?

<comment><USER36> It once had a liquid core (like Earth) which generated the magnetic field. Being a smaller planet, it cooled faster and now the core is solid, hence no more magnetic field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Curious why Mars and not the Earth's moon, seems to be the prime target for colonization?

<comment><USER38> Mars has atmosphere (not much, but enough to process into useful gases), water (in the form of ice), and a larger variety of surface materials than the moon.

Mars is substantially easier to establish a long-term operation on than the moon since you can create many of the materials you need onsite.

<comment><USER31> An interesting theme in KSR's mars trilogy was robot miner machines making a mohole pit and "a couple KM down" the martian atmosphere is either sea level earth air pressure or at a somewhat different depth the atmosphere is comfy warm. I don't remember the modeling of how deep or how far apart but it didn't seem terribly unrealistic compared to the grand scheme of teraforming mars. Obviously a thickened atmosphere would not require moholes quite as deep. Possibly to a useful level. True, increasing surface pressure on mars by a factor of ten means you'll still die on the surface, but to a first approximation you just made your mohole 1/10th as deep and 1/10th the construction time and cost.

The atmosphere on Mars is actually pretty nice at an altitude of negative a couple kilometers, which doesn't exist naturally but we're quite talented at building horizontal tunnels that long so pointing downward can't be that hard.

If you need raw material, robots that never leave the mine don't have scalability problems that human deep mines have and on mars liquid water would be a valuable commodity and robots don't mind water anyway, and solar powered robots can be left alone to generate iron ingots for construction, and for environmental reasons there's no reason to make 100 shallow pits when one deep mine produces just as much and is valuable real estate after digging is complete.

On the earth you can't point a large TBM downward because it'll flood or overheat in just a couple miles or less, but on mars it might be quite useful.

The problem with moholes is eventually you end up with the submarine problem where no matter how tough your metal hole liner is in an abstract sense, it will collapse under rock pressures. So you can't bore a hole clean thru a planet, however interesting that idea sounds.

(edited to add, I looked up data more recent than KSRs old book series, looks like bare rock mines are only possible on mars due to rock blowing out to a depth of 10 KM (better than earth, lower gravity), of course the sky's the limit with steel liners. And at a mere 5 deg/km temp increase on mars, the temp will be cold but more habitable than the surface)

<comment><USER39> Also, it's easier to build a circular roof than an entire dome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I think the science fiction movie "Spaceballs" was head of its time. Planet Druidia had an enclosure to protect its oxygen, but Lord Helmet tried to suck it out with MegaMaid.

NASA might have to think about how to counter such threats, possibly from a future and more hostile Earth civilization.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTSWdHY9Ny4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTSWdHY9Ny4)

</comment><comment><USER41> Best idea I've seen in years on space solutions, specially at colonization. No marketing bullshit, just plain science. And it may be the first practical step on terraform a planet before we try to colonize it.

"While it might seem like something out of science fiction, it doesn't hurt to crunch the numbers!"

Now we need those numbers.

</comment><comment><USER42> Would a distributed constellation of satellites at L1 work? A bunch of smaller magnetic dipole umbrellas working together.. Easier to repair and replace individual satellites without having the whole system go down.

</comment><comment><USER43> "As a result, Mars atmosphere would naturally thicken over time, which lead to many new possibilities for human exploration and colonization.." How long would it take though?

<comment><USER44> That depends on how involved humanity is in cultivating that atmosphere. There have been proposals to, for example, redirect comets/near-Mars objects that are icy/have oxygen or other desirable materials to burn up in the Martian atmosphere, adding to it. There are likely other ways we can affect the atmosphere.

From a terraforming standpoint, a viable, long-term magnetosphere is necessary in the medium and long term. In the short term, humans would be stuck in shielded suits and indoors, both to protect from radiation and to ensure a breathable atmosphere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> It's a nice idea, and it's one I proposed some years ago:

[http://arachnoid.com/restoring_mars](http://arachnoid.com/restoring_mars)

</comment><comment><USER46> I am curious why we don't focus more efforts on Titan, which already has a thick nitrogen atmosphere.

<comment><USER47> It's very far away from the Sun.

<comment><USER48> And us?

<comment><USER49> Jupiter is 5.2 times farther from the Sun than the Earth. Thanks to the inverse square law, it gets 3.7% of the sunlight that Earth does. You won't be growing any plants there, and solar electric is going to be terrible.

Saturn, which Titan orbits, is 9.6 times farther, and receives 1% of the sunlight that Earth receives.

Mars is much better at 1.5 times farther, and receiving 44% of the sunlight that Earth does.

Also, Titan averages -179C compared to Mars' range from -125C up to 20C.

<comment><USER50> Go other way to Mercury and one has virtually limitless energy. The polar craters contain ice and a thermal reservoir.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I believe this is the workshop referenced, and they do have a LiveStream that you can watch.

[http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/V2050/](http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/V2050/)

<comment><USER29> Skip to 1:36:00 for the start, 1:40:00 for the actual details.

<comment><USER3> The live stream I found only went up to 1:20:00 or so - is there a longer one?

<comment><USER29> [https://livestream.com/viewnow/vision2050/videos/150701155](https://livestream.com/viewnow/vision2050/videos/150701155)

There's also this very short pdf release which has no interesting detail. [http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/V2050/pdf/8250.pdf](http://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/V2050/pdf/8250.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Would something like this be viable as part of a geoengineering solution to climate change?

E.g. could we partially cancel out earth's magnetic field in order to control atmosphere loss and thereby control the greenhouse gas effect?

<comment><USER53> Maybe that's a viable solution but to me controlling green house gases by shedding our atmosphere sounds like a terrible idea. I'm pretty sure we would want to keep the oxygen around. Finding ways to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester the carbon should hopefully also be easier than controlling the magnetic field of the earth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> > NASA proposes a magnetic shield to protect Mars' atmosphere

That's officially called a "deflector", anyone who's seen Star Trek knows.

</comment><comment><USER55> Cool, let's build the Death Star there.

</comment><comment><USER56> Weaponization?

A variation put into the Earth-Sun L1 and used to direct focused steams of solar particles onto an earthward target....

<comment><USER57> That won't work without shutting down Earth's magnetic field.

<comment><USER31> which it does on a regular basis during natural field reversals. The geologists imply its a very sharp transition like a century or less from normal field, no field, reversed field. If you donate to the UN fund that pays for the solar shield, you get shielded when the time comes. If not, well... life does survive reversals, but its likely not fun.

<comment><USER58> > If you donate to the UN fund that pays for the solar shield

You jest, but look at the difficulty of countries agreeing on carbon pricing. Which is a similar prisoners dilemma

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Instead of terraforming, would it be possible to build a giant glass ceiling over most of the surface? Humans don't really need an entire atmosphere, just a few hundred feet of it.

This is still infeasible now, but it seems much easier than terraforming. With robotic labor and automation, it may not even be that expensive.

</comment><comment><USER60> And what about an artificial moon instead?

</comment><comment><USER40> This could lead to life elsewhere in the galaxy to protest climate change on Mars. We might get visitors if we try messing up a second planet.

</comment><comment><USER61> how about just moving there an polluting the atmosphere as a side-product of just being there?

<comment><USER62> Not enough trees, peat, coal, or oil to burn there.

<comment><USER61> maybe there's enough uranium

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Good luck they have that money.

</comment><comment><USER64> You hated Trump that much huh

<comment><USER65> Please don't do this here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Why not a shield for earth, when this atmosphere is clearly in need of help, and already much closer to liveable than Mars'?

<comment><USER67> Because Earth already has a magnetic field.

<comment><USER68> For now yes. We are overdue for a magnetic field reversal so this would be a very helpful tool in our planets arsenal

<comment><USER67> Yes, but is a reversal really a bad thing? Magnetic field reversals don't seem to be a serious threat–there's no evidence of mass extinctions caused by them.

<comment><USER61> only mid-reversal is a bad thing.

<comment><USER68> The reversal could take hundreds of years, where our planet has no electromagnetic shielding. All of our technology will be toast.

I call that bad.

<comment><USER61> I guess you're right. Bad for humans, maybe good enough to reverse some of the damage humans have done.

<comment><USER68> I could be mistaken, but I understand that bombarding the earth with radiation will do plenty of damage to other species as well. According to Wikipedia, a pole reversal could lead to vigorous convection leading to widespread volcanism, and that subsequent airborne ash could cause mass extinctions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> So let me get this straight - science can't currently beat flipping a coin in terms of predicting the weather more than 2 days in advance, but he can accurately simulate space weather for many years and how it will affect other planets?

<comment><USER70> There is weather, and there is climate. The latter we have very good models for, the former is notoriously difficult to predict.

[https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_we...](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/noaa-n/climate/climate_weather.html)

<comment><USER71> I'm not convinced that we have a good model for climate, either. I think we do not have any clue about large-scale cycles in the climate. Nobody predicted the long drought in California, but the Southwest has had a bunch of cyclical droughts over the past 1000 years. This year was supposed to be a La Nina year for California, but instead something else happened and there has been three years' worth of rain in northern California instead.</comment></comment></comment>


Get rid of all Top Level Domains - <AUTHOR> http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1320467&cid=28884865

<comment><USER2> Sounds good, but there are a few problems for flowerpot.tn.us to consider.

For example, under the current rules flowerpot.com can be a mom and pop shop with a national reach. flowerpot.tn.us? Not so much, especially if there is a flowerpot.ny.us. As people starting up, that would kill many of our businesses.

This issue gets even worse outside of national boundaries, especially for those of us who live in small markets but sell to larger ones as a matter of purpose. Take abebooks.com for instance. Abe started as a small, local used book store in Victoria, BC Canada. It is by all accounts a major niche player, having been acquired by amazon. I highly doubt abebooks.bc.ca gets half the American traffic that made it a success.

<comment><USER3> I understand what you are saying, but what's the best alternative? Should there be no country-specific domains then? Maybe instead of geographically- specific domains, we could have industry-specific domains, very much like what TLDs were intended for in the first place.

It doesn't seem like there's a straight and simple solution for TLDs, squatting and the whole domain regulation problem.

<comment><USER2> I think the alternative is the status quo. In other words, I don't think "squatting" is such a problem that we need to go redefining the internet.

Are all the good names taken? Of course, but apply a little creativity, and the problem goes away. We all know what delicious is and that name is a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is he seriously suggesting that governments control domain names? Because that's what it sounds like to me. If so, that's possibly the worst idea I've ever heard in my life. Seriously. I cannot think of a worse idea.

<comment><USER5> I'm republican and libertarian as the day is long, and I hate to see the expansion of government.

That said, domains need to be regulated by SOMEONE, and ICANN isn't doing a very good job (not that some government bureau would do any better).

What I got from the poster (and what would be cool) is if ICANN or some similar body were bound by some of the principles we've developed over the years from trademark law (required to be using a name to own it, can't just squat, etc.)

The other thing I don't like about ICANN is the appeals process. Can a (US state/federal) judge order a domain transfer, like in a trademark dispute case? At what level? What about international trademark disputes? Perhaps unfairly, I've always been skeptical of "arbitration" or things that look like a legal proceeding but really aren't. And the legal waters of domain disputes have always seemed rather murky to me (ianal).

<comment><USER6> I think a vast majority of the current problems would be fixed by auto- releasing squatted domains. There are no good domains left because they've all been squatted. They're hardly all taken up by actual sites.

<comment><USER5> How do you enforce that? (serious question) Is there some automated polling method to see if a site has any activity? Are there "squatting police" that somebody pays to investigate these things? Are the people who want to use the domain required to bring some sort of action (lawsuit or arbitration proceeding)?

<comment><USER6> I wish I had some ideas, I honestly do. All I know is that [I feel] the current system is woefully broken. How to fix it can be left up to smarter men than I.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ok, this is my second alternative to the current domain name registration system.

All domains are sold for 1 year at a time. At the end of each year, they are auctioned off to the highest bidder, with the exception of domains that are identical in name to a registered and established trademark, and is a .com (for for profit) or .org (for not-for-profit). The net proceeds from the auction go to the previous holder of the domain. If you hold a domain, and you win the bidding to keep it, that money goes to me in the form of walmart gift cards.

Ok, why do it like this? Domain squatting becomes impossible. Since the domains are re-sold every year in an auction, buying domains becomes like buying stock options. Maybe you can make money on them, but you might lose money too, since there is no assurance that the bidder who wins one of your domains will bid as much as you did the previous year to get it. Also, since domains are bid in an auction, you can't wait until there is interest in some domain and then squeeze someone for everything you can get. If someone wants some domain you own, they bid for it. Unless you or someone else is willing to pay more to keep it, they get it for what they bid for it.

If you have a trademark, you get to renew your domain that is identical in name to that trademark without bidding (you pay some fee, like is the current system). However, you have to acquire the domain somehow. If the car company wants nissan.com, they either have to convince the current owner to sell it to them, or they have to bid on it during it's yearly auction.

Ok, this makes it seem like the current owner of nissan.com is going to get screwed, since he can't pay as much as the car company is willing to bid. However, nissan is likely to be willing to pay lots of money for that domain. Other bidders also know the car company is willing to pay a lot for the domain, and would be willing to buy it and then hold it for a year or privately sell it to the car company. However, nobody will pay more than they think they can get for it later.

This system is purely awesome.

<comment><USER7> Downmodding this was highly inappropriate. This is purely a description of an on topic idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I fully agree with the first point, that the new top-level domains are generally useless and should go away.

But country domains aren't enough. It's like the difference between the yellow pages and white pages; it helps to organize businesses and groups by purpose, while having a more generic by-location classification system for everything else.

It is also useful for domains to be conspicuous so that they can be automatically recognized as domains (e.g. for linking). There is _no doubt_ what "foobar.com" is, but "foobar" is without context (and arguably, "foobar.cc" is more likely to seem like a source file than a country domain).

</comment><comment><USER9> This is all academic. Top-level non-country domains like .com aren't going to be eliminated.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a much better idea. Get rid of _all_ domain names. Just use some sort of IP-like code that is basically random. (You can't use IP because IP's change and you may have multiple ones, or use a content distribution system, same reasons as now).

Example: <http://ewaouacswkaoieljoewa90d>

Step 2: Browsers don't emphasize the domain name anymore. No more bar to type domains in directly, you would have to open a modal dialog to type or paste one in. Since the url's aren't memorable anyway, it doesn't matter that you don't see them. If you are concerned about people spoofing your domain, you're already using certs to prevent that anyway.. right?

3\. How do people find your site now!? The same way everybody does anyway, Bing. (Ok, I didn't want to say Google because this system of going without domain names shouldn't rely on a single company like google for it to work, although it does. This isn't so bad, since the internet de facto already does rely on google to function, we just have these short, memorable domain names that aren't necessary also.

Having domain names is _retarded_. What if you had to get a street address that was also the name of your business?? What is the point of it?

<comment><USER8> Well for one thing, web browsers aren't the only place domain names appear.

Network administrators are people, too. Suppose you had to administer a server; the task would be almost impossible without domain name patterns.

Take a proxy server, for instance. Right now, I can set it up by saying that domains "*.xyz.com" are local to my network, forcing everything else to go through the proxy. If every location were an incomprehensible name (as you suggest), the only way to configure the server would be to list every obfuscated name. It also wouldn't be future-proof; without a pattern, the server couldn't possibly determine how to handle a new machine name, so someone would have to go in and add more obfuscated names to the list.

<comment><USER7> I see what you are saying. why can't you say *.alsfjosajlksajdf, just the same as now? It's harder to remember, but encryption keys are literally impossible to remember and people maintain lists of those.

So to be clear, the idea is just to take away any choice when you buy a domain name. Since people don't use domain names much to navigate around, and tend to use google, this won't change much.

The domain is hidden and ugly, but otherwise works as per usual, perhaps I should have been explicit about that.

Something else I should have been more explicit about: The whole point is to make it impossible to have squatting and lawsuits about domain names. Let a search engine decide what is the best 'flower' site, not who happened to buy flower.com in 1994. The current system inherently favors existing sites over new sites, which is silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So I have to remember what state YCombinator is based in to find the site? I think I'll pass

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not my post, but thought the author makes a compelling argument for moving to a country code only domain name system.

<comment><USER11> compelling?

the problem the author wants to solve is people assigning value to names. not only will his idea not work for his specific goal, but he's not really taking into account a few other variables that also need to be optimized.</comment></comment>


RIM(Blackberry) CEO: "buggy smartphone software is the new reality" - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/rim-ceo-buggy-smartphone-software-is-the-new-reality/

<comment><USER2> It is, and it will be this way as long as consumers continue choose style and appearance over functionality.

Put yourself in Jim B's shoes for a second - RIM comes from a heavy enterprise background where things like stability and security were far more important than features (and you can see this by looking at older blackberries that always lagged in features like cameras, multimedia etc), but is trying to make a big impact in the consumer space. You've got a device (Storm) that basically has a beta firmware, but you know WILL sell quite well over the holidays? What do you do?

Well, you do what your competitors (Android and iPhone) do and sacrifice a lot to get to market sooner. The Android G1 is a pretty shitty piece of hardware with an incomplete OS (just look at the features in the 'cupcake' branch) and you can go back and look at the problems iPhone OS2.0 had this summer (regular browser crashes, major lagginess, epic MobileMe launch etc).

So yeah, it is the new reality, but despite a few complaints here and there, consumers won't really mind.

</comment><comment><USER3> The current reality: CEOs trying to lower market expectations, rather than meeting them, gets run-over by swift game-changing strategies.

Blink while Android and iPhone gets their acts together, and you're dead.

</comment><comment><USER4> Stability is a feature you can sell to me. I was a loyal BB user for several years until two hardware failures and one software failure made me think about just exactly how much stability I was actually getting for my ugly fonts and crummy browsing experience.

I purchased a Nokia E71 (which my wife has taken and loves) to replace the BBs, which is a step down on the stability scale but several steps up on the feature scale. I guess that means their CEO is right, at least in my case.

</comment><comment><USER5> In other sectors, buggy console games are the new reality.

Fallout 3 will randomly crash on the 360; do you remember that happening when playing NES, Genesis, SNES, or even Playstation games?

</comment><comment><USER6> yeah it is a nice system: getting people to pay to become beta testers; though being on the edge has its benefits looking at the success of things such as 'ifart'</comment>


Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes launches Jumo, social network for activism - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/11/facebook-co-founder-chris-hughes-officially-launches-jumo-social-network-for-social-activism.html

<comment><USER2> Sweet, now they are my internet service provider and my social network.

I kid I kid.</comment>


KhanApp - Mobile App for Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://khanapp.com

<comment><USER2> This is absolutely gorgeous. You've gotta come work more closely w/ the team so we can keep this tightly integrated w/ the direction of the whole site. Shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I will shoot you an email. I discovered while doing this that KA videos are not avail. as HTML5 videos using the iframe embed code. Maybe not all videos on YT are converted yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Install via OpenAppMkt, whose "Learn More" link describes it as:

> _OpenAppMkt is an app store for HTML5 mobile apps.

The easiest way to discover and install mobile webapps on the Open Web, where freedom reigns and dreams come true._

It's only missing an "... And unicorns!" finisher. Interesting site, however; I'll have to look through it more closely some time...

edit: wait, what am I saying? I can add my own! <http://www.cornify.com/>

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the UI, how I navigate to the subjects but the videos aren't playing on my iPad. Another suggestion would be to allow people to setup different students so I can share the iPad with my kids (or teachers can have one in a classroom and share with many students).

Great start, please let us know as you update it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the YouTube videos are behaving weird on the iPad. They work on iPhone and Android ok though.

If I understand your suggestion correctly, the app should allow for setting up of a customized curriculum?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, let me create users and when you open the app, pick a user to start watching videos with then record which videos they've watched so you can keep track of where you're at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks very nice. I take it you must be using jQuery Mobile or something along those lines?

(Minor problem I've encountered - for some reason, I can't land on your homepage from Safari Version 5.0.3 (6533.19.4) on OS X 10.6.5.)

<comment><USER6> Same problem here, OSX-Safari thinks it's a download of some sort. The page never opens. You should fix this ASAP.

Page loads on OSX-Chrome though.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. But it does loads on Chrome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've not seen that many apps that utilize jQuery Mobile so far, but your implementation is pretty wonderful - I only need 2 taps to get to the actual video.

</comment><comment><USER8>
      Content-Type: web; charset=utf-8

On desktop Safari that turns into a download of your HTML to my Downloads folder.

<comment><AUTHOR> fixed! thanks for the bug report!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Awesome work, now forced to go learn jquerymobile because of your app! A little better than the offline packs of videos released by Ximarc, which are still very nice for offline usage.

</comment><comment><USER10> It looks really nice from the screenshots, but I can't get it to run on my iPad (running 4.2.1), even after restarting. Scrolling/tapping on any table rows will cause it to crash.

</comment><comment><USER11> Wait, if it's a mobile webapp, why do I need to install openappmkt? Shouldn't my mobile browser be all that I need?

</comment><comment><USER12> Scrolling on iPhone 4.2 causes Safari crash.</comment>


Docker 17.06 with multi-stage builds released - <AUTHOR> https://blog.docker.com/2017/06/announcing-docker-17-06-community-edition-ce/ <comment><USER2> _very_ much looking forward to digging into multi-stage builds.

<comment><USER3> I've been using them the last few weeks, and it massively improves things for certain complicated build situations, provides better security in some situations, etc. I'm REALLY happy about this new feature. Having to hack around not having it was very, very confusing in some cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> And after 978 days, #8755 is finally resolved (from users' pov):

[https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/8755](https://github.com/moby/moby/issues/8755)

So happy. :-D

</comment><comment><USER5> How did Docker jump from 1.x to 17 so quickly? Anybody have a link to this and the reasoning? Is it similar to what Elastic did w/ their jump from 2.x to 5.x?

<comment><USER6> It's the year, like Ubuntu.

<comment><USER7> More specifically docker switched to semver versionning.

[https://github.com/moby/moby/releases/tag/v17.03.0-ce](https://github.com/moby/moby/releases/tag/v17.03.0-ce)</comment></comment></comment>


Character Animator's Animated Pitch for a job at Pixar - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-1yH8_tYiA

<comment><USER2> That was good--until he got to the end and went with white end titles over a sky full of white clouds, making them hard to read. Ending your pitch on an elementary mistake is probably not the best approach.</comment>


China's hypersonic aircraft would fly from Beijing to New York in two hours - <AUTHOR> https://www.popsci.com/china-hypersonic-double-wing-aircraft-i-plane <comment><USER2> Reminder that anytime hypersonic aircraft are proposed, it's absolute nonsense (based on where current research, particularly in materials science, is at) and just a bunch of a CAD animations.

Ronald Reagan already topped this anyway by proposing in his 1986 State of the Union a modern-day "Orient Express" that would go New York to Tokyo in 1.5 hours. That never happened either.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30)

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the worst websites I ever visited. The amount of traffic, cookies, ads and scripts needed to be loaded just to present few images and text is deplorable.</comment>


Ask HN: How to get started in the field of VR/AR? - <AUTHOR> Background: Full Stack Programmer, Hardware Engineer, a Designer, and a Physics and Math enthusiast.<p>Where do I start? <comment><USER2> not sure if oculus has something similar.

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/holographic/us...](https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/holographic/using_the_hololens_emulator)

Also, there are some cheap headsets for your phone.

[http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132945-best-vr-headsets- to-b...](http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/132945-best-vr-headsets-to-buy- in-2016-whatever-your-budget)

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you want to do?

Without the above info I'd say download Unity and Unreal Engine, see which one suits you the best and make what you want to make.

Get a cheap DK2 off Ebay if you do not have a HMD yet, or go the phone route like sharemywin suggested.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Appreciate the info.

I guess the possibilities are endless. Want to get started understanding the basics/foundational elements and any dev kits out there.

How do people build the AR/VR experiences? (which are akin to games in the gaming world, imo)

<comment><USER3> The most common ones are the Unity and Unreal Engine 4 game engines. If you exclude those you'll get into my-own-engine territory pretty quick.

With the two aforementioned engines it is just a matter of connecting the HMD to your computer, making sure it works, starting up an example scene in the engine and clicking "view in VR".

For a lot of things you can just use the 3D scene as projected on your monitor, you don't need to wear the HMD all the time.

On VR gatherings I see even more GearVR's than desktop PCs with HMDs since the GearVR is just so easy to carry around and demo something to people. The disadvantage is that it doesn't have positional tracking (which adds a lot to the immersion for most applications).

I'm not familiar with the GearVR workflow though. I guess mostly the same as the PC workflow except pushing the application to your phone has a longer iteration time.</comment></comment></comment>


Unicorn Feces - <AUTHOR> https://www.profgalloway.com/unicorn-feces <comment><USER2> Finally, somebody talks about the problems with OYO's business model. I personally think it's a WeWork in the making for sure. If I had Softbank shares, this article would be enough to make me sell.

Meanwhile, here in India, journalists just can't seem to write about anything except the OYO's greatest achievement, i.e. raising a few billion dollars.

It should've been common sense by now, that raising huge sums, is actually a liability. Sure, it's an achievement for a founder to convince investors to give them a huge sum for their experiment, but most people are just looking at it as an end in itself (as if the company has succeeded already).

P.S - Just to reiterate OYO's founder's tendency to overpay. A friend of mine leased a hotel to OYO in Mumbai at a 30% higher price than what they would get for it otherwise (~$30,000/mo). And they're still paying the mount, even though rents are down another ~25% due to a slowdown.

Update: OYO's been getting negative news, mostly because of retaliation from hotels in India. Not because of making silly acquisitions, etc.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, the most common narrative in most circles is how OYO is cheating its hotel partners left, right and centre. Basically, the OYO model is quite simple. Small hotels should upgrade their facilities and services to be in line with OYO standards (this upgradation is financed by the hotel owners).

With this new OYO branding, it provides new customers to hotels. Better services would mean more customers and a higher revenue, right? But this ends up killing the hotel's regular supply lines and traditional channels.

The real issue for hotel owners though is that while upfront OYO promises monthly payments higher than their current revenue, this seldom happens. Also apparently OYO is always late in paying dues and adding unsubstantiated penalties. Most news is littered with such examples.

[https://inc42.com/buzz/sikkim-hoteliers-protest-against- oyo-...](https://inc42.com/buzz/sikkim-hoteliers-protest-against-oyo-as- unpaid-dues-mount-employees-held-hostage/)

[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small- biz/startups/news...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/small- biz/startups/newsbuzz/as-softbanks-oyo-booms-some-indian-hotels-cry-foul-and- check-out/articleshow/71477016.cms)

<comment><USER2> You're right, that was/is a phase. The FHRAI (federation of hotels and restaurant association of India) complained against some of OYO's business practices in July this year and it made a lot of news (mostly changing policies with regards to commission and also delaying commission) to the Competition Commission of India.

Currently, OYO is making news for 4 reasons:

* Protests from hotels (so called OYOpreneurs)

* OYO founder's buyback funded by debt against shares and Sequoia, Lightspeed exit

* OYO growing a lot and acquiring companies worldwide

* Possibility of OYO being a WeWork in the making

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Opendoor also has pretty negative reviews from everything I can find online. Would guess tech is hardly a component to this business - likely just some basic pricing models. Seems like the basic playbook is to lowball desperate homeowners, make a few thousand dollars worth of renovations (if at all), and then turn it around and try to sell it for a lot more. Not exactly rocket science, and definitely riskier in a downturn in their core markets like Las Vegas and Phoenix with relatively high supply as is.</comment>


Screw It, Yelp Should Do Three Apps - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/01/mobile-last/

<comment><USER2> Its clear these companies can not continue to justify their valuations with their current performance. To a degree, Facebook is also doing this with Paper. If you can demonstrate you can _build monetizable user bases_ its more valuable than simply having a big user base to monetize. As we continue to map social networks these technology companies will have to move along with them lest they fall into dis-repair.</comment>


Symantec declares antivirus 'dead' as it focuses on damage control - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/06/symantec-declares-antivirus-dead/

<comment><USER2> Who still has antivirus software anyway?

I remember back in the days where I would run weekly scans of the system. Haven't needed to do that for a long time</comment>


Toshiba device tests cancer types from a drop of blood - <AUTHOR> https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/11/25/business/corporate-business/toshiba-test-cancer-blood/ <comment><USER2> Elsewhere it was mentioned it was 90% sensitivity and 95% selectivity which is not that good enough for something serious as cancer. Hopefully they can improve on it.

<comment><USER3> If it's very cheap, fast and convenient, then it's enough for at least screen the population regularly. Catching only part of the cancers is quite nice already.

<comment><USER4> No, not necessarily. Check out these numbers:

Sensitivity is what fraction of the affected people are actually found. Here: 90%, so 10% are missed.

Specificity is what fraction of the unaffected people are detected as such. Here: 95%, so 5% wrongly detected ("false positives").

In Europe, there are 60 cases of lung cancer per 100 000 people.

That makes 54 correctly detected per 100 000, missing 6 cases. That also means 5000 people _incorrectly_ suspected of lung cancer (5% of 100 000).

Update: using the accuracy from the article itself, we would still get a total of 1000 of false negatives (affected but not detected) and false positives (unaffected but suspected). Incidence is still 60/100 000.

<comment><USER5> Yup. And some of those follow on tests could be quite invasive and risky in their own right. With that kind of false positive rate, you'd be risking the life of a not insignificant number of people.

Either that or driving up healthcare costs significantly as those 5000 people are going to need an MRI or CAT scan or something else to rule out cancer.

<comment><USER6> What follow on test for suspected lung cancer would risk the life of a not insignificant number of people?

An MRI without contrast has no impact. An MRI with contrast has relatively little impact. A biopsy would only be done if the MRI with contrast lit up areas of concern. At the point a PET is ordered, you have narrowed the false positive pool substantially and probably want the scan no matter what.

<comment><USER7> Quite rare to jump straight to an MRI - a chest MRI is a half hour deal. More common to do a CT Chest which has a 1:500 risk of causing cancer

<comment><USER8> Does this mean that out of the 5000 false positives, 10 people will actually GET cancer by doing a follow-up CT exam?

<comment><USER9> We don't really know. Data that show X dose of radiation increases the probability of developing cancer by Y% is based on studies on survivors of atomic blasts. The number of people exposed to an amount of radiation equivalent to a handful of CT scans is pretty small relative to the effect size that's claimed, so there is reason to be skeptical.

See [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-ct- scans...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-ct-scans- increase-risk-cancer/) for a jumping off point into this type of research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here's one paper I've found by quoted researcher, which I think is kind of relevant to the device/what this article is about: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30734558](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30734558)

I think they are creating microfluidic chips that analyze miRNAs. So, I imagine it's an orchestra of pumps, valves, etc pushing very very small amounts of liquid around and using an array of techniques to detect things, all dictated by microcontrollers. It's as interdisciplinary as you can get!

It should be noted that these papers are actually in great abundance, when I get happy is when a big company (e.g. Toshiba or Olympus) takes over because it means a return is to be made, i.e. they're going to pay for the patents and finally bring academic papers to fruition, and putting their weight behind it, probably make it work to solve problems like "cancer" (by detecting it super- early, making it easier to take out).

<comment><USER11> That's the important point here. RNA analysis by chips or sequencing is nothing new. But there's always a long way from the lab to the clinic, and its capital intensive to fund a startup in this field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> They should name it Notheranos

<comment><USER13> Therayes

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not even in trials yet. GRAIL is running a 100K person trial, to read out next year. Also, not one paper showing this kind of prediction in the clinic, which GRAIL, freenome, Guardant etc all have.

No meaningful papers published + huge claims +single drop of blood = TheranosII

<comment><USER15> Don't confuse a US-centric view of medical technology development, western medical journals, US trials etc with something developed in Japan. This is Toshiba, working with the (Japanese) National Cancer Center Research Institute and you can be sure there's extensive research behind it, even if it's in Japanese.

<comment><USER16> Can you please post links to the research that you mention?

<comment><USER17> "Planned for details of the technology will be announced at the "42nd Japan Annual Meeting of the Molecular Biology Society[5]" to be held in Fukuoka on December 3 to 8 days."[0][1]

[0] [https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1220546.html](https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/1220546.html)

The overview can be read in the following links: (all in japanese):

Toshiba announcement[1], National Cancer Center Japan[2][3], Nedo[4]

[1] [https://www.toshiba.co.jp/rdc/detail/1911_06.htm](https://www.toshiba.co.jp/rdc/detail/1911_06.htm)

[2] [https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/in...](https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/index.html)

[3] [https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/pr...](https://www.ncc.go.jp/jp/information/pr_release/2014/0613/press_release_20140613.pdf)

[4] [https://www.nedo.go.jp/news/press/AA5_100275.html](https://www.nedo.go.jp/news/press/AA5_100275.html)

[5] [https://www2.aeplan.co.jp/mbsj2019/](https://www2.aeplan.co.jp/mbsj2019/)

Also, here's the information regarding the project's funding and about the objective: [https://research-er.jp/projects/view/920250](https://research- er.jp/projects/view/920250) and [https://www.nedo.go.jp/activities/ZZJP_100082.html](https://www.nedo.go.jp/activities/ZZJP_100082.html)

<comment><USER16> Thanks. None of these are peer-reviewed articles or scientific conference presentations (although it will be great to see what comes out of the meeting).

The original poster was pointing out that this is, so far, vaporware because Toshiba has not presented any actual scientific results, unlike Grail, Guardiant and others. Everything seen on this so far is just marketing (all of the scientific literature links on Toshiba's website are to cancer epidemiology surveys, not articles about this technology). The parent poster has yet to back up their assertion that there is "extensive research" behind it. I've been unable to find any publications or patent applications on this, so I'm very interested if someone has links.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A future iteration of this product should be a household item that you use it during your morning routine, even before brushing your teeth. Preventative measures like this should be more widely available and built into peoples everyday routines.

<comment><USER19> Ah, we are getting ahead of ourselves. This isn't a preventative measure. It is a diagnostic device. The distinction is important because what will become increasingly apparent is we don't have good tools to deal with cancer when it is detected very early. One of the major problems is working out which of these 'detection events' is going to progress into clinically meaningful disease. We can't just take out (or even biopsy) the prostate of everyone with a hit.

<comment><USER20> At early stages you can simply blast it with chemo/radiation before it manifests into something intreatable though.

<comment><USER21> If you are certain that it is malignant cancer and not one of the other billion tumor forms that may not even spread.

Otherwise, you are exposing people to side effects of radiation and chemotherapy without them needing it.

This is called overtreatment and sought to be avoided for a reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is very exciting. I worked on these kinds of technologies a bit in graduate school (before switching gears completely and getting a PhD in astrophysics). In the coming decades, we will be able to detect who is on the path to disease before they ever begin showing any symptoms at all. Granted, curing these diseases post-detection is a whole different matter.

</comment><comment><USER23> It's kind of what Theranos promised but didn't deliver?

<comment><USER24> I don't think so.

Theranos wanted to do any and all blood tests from a single drop of blood. Toshiba is limiting themselves to just a single kind of test, which I'm guessing the science agrees is possible with such a small blood sample.

<comment><USER25> That's a good start. If they'd be able to do 13 tests from a drop of blood from each of my fingers that'd be 130 tests!

<comment><USER26> Ouch. Give me a needle please.

<comment><USER27> The finger prick is an interesting non-sexual way to positively identify masochists. Everything about the finger prick takes away control while maximizing pain. A nurse can't/won't give you an arm jab until you relax your arm but they'll detonate a finger jabber randomly with an audible 'snap' while you're helplessly watching it all happen in front of you.

<comment><USER28> I haven't laughed at a post this hard in ages. thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This kind of device should join perpetual motion machines on the very short list in patent law where a working model is required as part of the patent application.

In its favor is the fact that no Toshiba executive will be able to distract VCs and senior statesmen the way the top Theranos executive could.

</comment><comment><USER30> A number of companies are working on cfDNA (cell free DNA) approaches to early cancer detection. GRAIL and Freenome are probably notable examples.

Far fewer seem to be looking at miRNA, as Toshiba are here. I know of one other in Japan with a novel approach. If any Bioinformatics people would be interested email me and I'll introduce them, they're hiring.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is great. I hope this kind of screening tech, like this, becomes commonplace and highly available. Early detection could save many lives and greatly reduce later stage treatment costs.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow maybe Toshiba is able to do what Theranos failed to do. And of course with their failure rate, they can bring up healthcare costs as well. Win win for everyone... _cough_

</comment><comment><USER33> No mention of "Theranos" even once in that article.

</comment><comment><USER34> Does this suggest Theranos could have been viable?

<comment><USER35> Not even remotely. These are testing for massively different things via entirely different processes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This sounds very familiar and fishy... [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Blood:_Secrets_and_Lies_in_a_Silicon_Valley_Startup)

</comment><comment><USER37> It bothers me that their control screen looks like Windows XP.

<comment><USER38> That's because it _is_ Windows XP.

<comment><USER39> Most likely some form of Windows CE, but close enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Sounds familiar...

</comment><comment><USER41> It looks like it's running Windows XP.

</comment><comment><USER42> Where is the photo of the founder wearing a black turtleneck? I won't believe the results until I see that.

</comment><comment><USER43> THERANOS IS BACK!

</comment><comment><USER44> Well this sounds familiar</comment>


Gov Tech Events – calendar of local civic events - <AUTHOR> http://govtechevents.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Got tired of trying to track down all the local civic group meetups and events.

iCal feeds FTW!

Use Categories to sort by state. Tags to sort by local organization.</comment>


Xkcd-inspired password generator - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/esnyder/xkcdpwgen

<comment><USER2> I wonder if it'd weaken the system appreciably by doing things to make the phrases easier to remember, e.g. making the phrase in iambic pentameter, or making the first and third or second and fourth words rhyme (even slant rhyme)</comment>


What's Eating OOP: throw out ideological purity, go  multi-paradigm - <AUTHOR> http://altdevblogaday.com/2011/08/15/whats-eating-oop/

<comment><USER2> It's well and good to tell people to "think!" instead of following dogma, but what if you are too inexperienced to think clearly about the issue? Ideological purity makes sense if you face something overwhelmingly complex and don't really know the best way to handle it. By following a set of strict rules, you gain an illusion of control that helps you move forward. It is cargo cult, it is the golden hammer, it is the silver bullet, but it keeps appearing for a reason.

I think we should recognize ideological purity for what it is: an aid to help inexperienced programmers keep their sanity.

The big problem is that this purity is too often labelled Best Practices, and people are given no incentives (or even permission) to break free from it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It struck me today that C++ templates really provide a kind of static duck typing. The syntax is hideous but I really like this approach in principle. It's a bit like Scala's structural types - almost all of the flexibility of dynamic typing but with the benefits of static typing.

<comment><USER2> > almost all of the flexibility of dynamic typing but with the benefits of > static typing.

Just wait until you try Haskell's type inference. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Glad we're seeing so much experimentation with mixing paradigms, then. Scala, Clojure --- mixing metaphors may turn out to be the winning strategy.

</comment><comment><USER5> Deestan, that's an awesome point. I've included it in the article. I've also made a few other edits based on feedback.

</comment><comment><USER6> ha I misread that as GOP (Grand Old Party = US Republicans) :o)</comment>


Why the CRTC was right on Usage-Based Billing - <AUTHOR> http://eaves.ca/2011/02/03/why-the-crtc-was-right-on-user-based-billing/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm in Australia, where we have usage based billing, and I agree with this analysis.

Here, the key to making it work has been competition at the ISP level. I think regulators are better off chasing anti-competitive practices than trying to outlaw business models.

For example, in Australia the incumbent telco has been forced to give access to its copper-based network, and to its exchanges. That has allowed ISPs to install their own equipment (which is how ADSL2 rolled out here), which brought speed & price competition.

(Yes, Australia has a lot of problems with domestic internet policy wrt Telstra. This policy had fairly good outcomes though - if a little slower than could have been ideal)

<comment><USER2> Agreed. Here in New Zealand, we've learned to deal with it. You can either pay around $1 per GB if you go over, or get throttled to 64k or similar.

It's like driving your car, you only have so much petrol, and if that runs out you need to put more in, so you use it wisely. (i.e. you drive when you need to)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Charging something per byte is reasonable. Charging 100 times cost is not.

<comment><USER4> Cost isn't cost to transfer the next GB though, it's the cost to build an infrastructure that can provide decent QoS to all the Netflix users. It's a much different equation.</comment></comment>


100M email accounts hacked? - <AUTHOR> http://tech.thaivisa.com/millions-of-gmail-yahoo-and-hotmail-usernames-and-passwords-hacked-change-your-password-now/15028/ <comment><AUTHOR> OP here - does anyone know if this is a true story?</comment>


Everyone's not getting older equally - <AUTHOR> http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/subtleties-of-life-expectancy-ctd/ Raising the retirement age will not effect everyone equally evidently! <comment><USER2> I would really like to see some of those countries that were compared to split out similarly. Its possible for example (although probably not the case) that in Japan the lowest 25% of income people are even far lower, but the top 75% is much higher.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be very interesting if this data were broken down both by more than just income, e.g. ethnicity [1] and immigration status. Unfortunately, the effect being described could easily be caused solely by composition changes.

A hypothesis I'd love to see tested: immigrants have shorter life expectancies [2] and are more likely to be in the bottom 50%. Therefore, an increased proportion of immigrants reduces the average life expectancy of the bottom 50%.

[1] Ethnic gaps in life expectancy are huge. Asians life 10 years more than blacks, for example.

[2] Might be tough to get data on this. My understanding is that immigrant life expectancy data is weak because many immigrants go back home to die (which skews the numbers).

<comment><USER4> By race here: [http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/subtleties-of- li...](http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/subtleties-of-life- expectancy/) .

<comment><USER3> To be more precise, what I wanted was a breakdown by (income, race, immigrant status) 3-tuples.

I.e., I'd like to know how much life expectancy has increased for top 25% white males vs bottom 50% white males, same for black males, same for hispanic non-immigrant males, hispanic immigrant males, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fortunately, the current policy of national insolvency will address the situation by making us all equally broke.

<comment><USER6> I think it will make the middle class and below broke, but the rich will, as they always do, come out OK. By all measures I've seen over the last few years, the top earners in this country are doing better, by far.

<comment><USER7> You're probably right, but it's not the kind of strategy that is sustainable long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One question I have regarding those results is this:

Say you determine which socio-economic quartile people lie in at the point they reach 65, and then target extra healthcare/benefits/resources at the bottom quartile (or fifth or whatever).

Can you increase their life expectancy to match that of the upper quartile, or have life choices (eg smoking, poor diet) before age 65 largely predetermined the life expectancy of the lower quartile group?

<comment><USER9> But why this jumping through hoops when for less money the US could have universal healthcare like every other civilized country?

Then everyone has an interest in generally reducing smoking and bettering diets.

<comment><USER10> For people over age 65, we do have a single-payer healthcare system: it is called Medicare.

<comment><USER11> There's also Medicaid, which is universal national coverage for all children and most adults near the poverty line.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why would we expect anything to be equal? People don't eat equally healthy. They don't exercise equally.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how the second chart would look if all countries were split into four economic groups, not just the US.

<comment><USER14> Agreed. I don't think there are any meaningful conclusions that can be drawn from that graph as it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Clearly we should lower the retirement age so poor people can benefit more equally with rich people.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are so many ways this could be lying with statistics: 1) Healthier people work more - does this include the disabled? Having morbidly obese or disabled who earn little and live shorter lives will skew the stats. 2) Poorer people eat less healthily and have higher obesity, so the implications for policy are not straightforward 3) Smarter more educated people both earn more AND make better life choices, such as taking fewer dangerous drugs. There is a correlation between having the capability to manage a working career and manage your own life. 4) Those who engage in many unhealthy activities, such as alcoholism, will diminish their earnings capacity.

There are more, but that should be sufficient to breed some skepticism.

Earning power and longevity are interdependent variables. They are so closely tied that any correlation needs to be carefully examined.

<comment><USER11> Agreed. The correlation between poverty, increased smoking rates, and longevity probably explains the entire difference.</comment></comment>


How To Form Good Habits - <AUTHOR> http://www.davetsao.com/blog/2013/03/16/how-to-form-good-habits/

<comment><USER2> Interesting idea. I'll give it a try.</comment>


First, let's fire all the managers - <AUTHOR> http://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/ar/1?cm_sp=most_widget-_-hbr_articles-_-First%2C%20Lets%20Fire%20All%20the%20Managers

<comment><USER2> Paywall _and_ Disqus? (Can't speak for anyone else but Disqus never loads on my browser, it just sits there spinning.)

</comment><comment><USER2> non-paywall version:

[http://tintanze.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-lets-fire-all- man...](http://tintanze.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-lets-fire-all-managers-by- gary.html)</comment>


Across the rich world, an extraordinary jobs boom is under way - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/briefing/2019/05/23/across-the-rich-world-an-extraordinary-jobs-boom-is-under-way <comment><USER2> This article can be summed up as: "Don't worry, nothing to see here. You're making a 6% higher minimum wage than a decade ago, so there is no problem, but be more productive anyways."</comment>


Ask HN: Best ad network to use to monetize site? - <AUTHOR>

I'd like to add advertisements to one of the sites I'm working on in order to monetize it. I know of google ad sense, but was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for other ad networks or programs I should be considering instead (or in addition to) Google Ad Sense. <comment><USER2> If you sign up for the google DPF (doubleclick for publishers) program, you get the option to tie in other ad networks. AFAIK, google's interface will manage your ad inventory for you. It says it even allows you to sell your own ads, and it will select the highest performing ones to display automatically (and adjust based on inventory).

In general, I figure that you should start with adsense (because it's the simplest to add in and get a lot of relevant ads). Then you want to look for more focused networks, as the general rule is you'll get better performance the more focused you are.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Travis. I actually just tried signing up for ad sense, and they rejected my app due to lack of content. Basically, the app provides a lot of charts and graphs based on user data, but doesn't have much in the way of text, and it appears Google Ad Sense won't work effectively in that case. I'll take a look at google DPF and see if I can use other ad networks as per your suggestion. Thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've seen the best results with Tribal Fusion and Casale Media. Unless you're in a high-premium field, don't expect more than $2 EPM for a 300x250 (or equivalent area) spot.

<comment><USER4> ValueClick Media and Burst Media are a couple of other top tier ad networks to look into. Google AdSense is obviously another option worth considering.

I did a short write up of using the major players over at <http://www.adbalance.com/ad-networks/>

Depending on your niche and traffic though you may be better either directly selling to advertisers (serving/tracking ads through OpenX, Google DFP, or OIO Publisher is pretty straight forward).

Again depending on your niche you might find a vertical ad network - there are these for food, health, religion, music, sport and pretty much any other popular vertical you can think of. They tend to get better ads at better rates - but obviously have higher entry requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should look at selling your own adspace using tools like OIOPublisher or OpenX OnRamp.

I'm not sure the amount of traffic that you have, but OpenX has served me greatly on a similar project.

It's important to note the market your app attracts. If it's highly sought after and lucrative, you may be able to find a small advertising network focused on your niche. Something to think about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Hadn't heard of those but will look into it. Appreciate the suggestions.</comment></comment>


Reading HN has been the kick in the butt I needed to release my own software. - <AUTHOR>

Every day I read articles on this site about how code optimization tricks, or how to make money selling apps, or to how to create the perfect landing page(http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2001501) and it all culminated in finally trying to put all the pieces together and actually build something.
So I finally built something and wanted to show you all. It's an application I built for the Mac app store called Space Gremlin(http://www.spacegremlinapp.com). It's a dirt simple utility for visualizing your hard drive to clean up disk space, and I'm currently waiting for Apple to approve it.
It's built for Mac 10.6 and if you want to give it a try here's a link to a review copy, it's fully unlocked but expires in 4 months. http://www.spacegremlinapp.com/external/Space%20Gremlin%20Review.zip
I'd love to know what you guys think and as a bonus maybe help me figure out a good price to charge for it in the app store. Thanks! <comment><USER2> Very nice site. The product looks like a really nice version of a similar (windows) product that I used a while ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good eye :) This app was an homage to one of my favorite windows utilities, space monger.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does your company/organization handle cloud account ownership? - ask-hn For example, with both AWS and GCP there exists a "root" account.
Do a single or multiple people retain control of this account?
Generally one should avoid using the root account, but there are situations when you must[1][2]
So if you limit access to this account to an individual and they take actions to secure the account (eg, random password, multi-factor authentication), what happens if they get hit by a bus[3]? get hacked? or lose/forget their credentials[4]?
To mitigate the bus and forgetfulness factors, you could provide ownership to another individual. But that increases your attack surface to hackers and to leaking credentials.
On a related note, system for permissions[5][6] are in place to delegate access to individual or groups of accounts to take actions on a project. But those projects/resources still need to be owned by some account.
Does your company/organization place ownership of company projects under a single account? Or a hierarchy of accounts? How is the latter managed?
[1] http://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/aws_tasks-that-require-root.html
[2] Or for GCP, creating a project that should be owned by the company
    https://cloud.google.com/docs/enterprise/best-practices-for-enterprise-organizations#use_projects_to_designate_ownership_of_resources
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
[4] Account recovery is a vector for attack especially by social engineering, who overseas recovery?
[5] https://aws.amazon.com/iam/
[6] https://cloud.google.com/iam/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm just a small one man operation but since I've been doing this, for about 20 years now, I have always put account ownership of 3rd party services in the client's name and informed them of any updates that needed to be made to that info while I managed those accounts.

The idea behind it is they can fire me anytime they want and not have to worry about me hijacking their data.

As part of this I direct the billing for all 3rd party services to them from the very start. When clients have decided to move on I give them everything they need and ask for, even if they owe me money.

I work with whomever they are using to make it easy for them and try to be as helpful as possible. I won't do their job for them but I will provide with what they need if I have it.

As far as code I write for them, that is owned by those who pay me to write it. Again, I make that clear from the start. Personally, I think it's highly unethical to do otherwise.

If you're offering your software as a service that's a different issue but when you're creating custom apps just for them you need to make it so they can continue on if you get hit by a bus and can't continue on.

I have changed how I create apps over the years to make it easier for clients to move away from me when they want. I have some that have been with me for over 15 years now. Some that have left and come back, and some that never looked back. But none will say I hindered them when they left. They will all say I helped them with whatever they needed and made it as easy as possible.

From a legal standpoint I want to be on solid ground from the beginning. I don't want any client to be able to say I hindered their ability to do business, and none ever has.</comment>


Unvalidated Redirect in Google (or How Google Sent Me To Bing) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tinfoilsecurity.com/its-the-little-things-that-matter-or-how-goog

<comment><USER2> One thing that's fun is that Google has a page detailing how to handle redirects on your own sites- [http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/01/open- redi...](http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/01/open-redirect- urls-is-your-site-being.html)

<comment><USER3> hypocrisy??

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also, if you want to hide the URL in the link better, just pad the end of the query string with garbage and they won't even notice it:

[http://www.google.com/finance/url?sa=D&q=http://goo.gl/j...](http://www.google.com/finance/url?sa=D&q=http://goo.gl/j10cW&sdf=189fdgjoidfg80dfgdfg)

<comment><USER5> Or embed it with the government redirect mentioned. "Here's what Obama had to say about Google on yesterday's visit to Vermont!" [http://labor.vermont.gov/LinkClick.aspx?link=http://www.goog...](http://labor.vermont.gov/LinkClick.aspx?link=http://www.google.com/finance/url?q=http://www.bing.com/?q=EVILWEBSITE)

<comment><AUTHOR> Linkception. You can take that link and throw it in Google, and so on... At some point, maybe you'll hit a limit? Sounds like a fun test to run... ;)

<comment><USER6> You'll start running into browser limits at somewhere from 2048 to 2083 characters: <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/208427>

<comment><USER7> Depends on the browser. Mobile browser URL limits used to be much shorter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if submitting the following link to HN would result in (google.com) being displayed next to the link instead of (tinfoilsecurity.com):

[http://www.google.com/finance/url?sa=D&q=http://blog.tin...](http://www.google.com/finance/url?sa=D&q=http://blog.tinfoilsecurity.com/its- the-little-things-that-matter-or-how-goog)

I'd try, but I don't want to risk upsetting HN's moderators ;-)

<comment><USER9> 1.) Yes, I think so. 2.) Don't worry, it has been done before:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1259695>

(That particular instance doesn't work anymore, though)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the flip side, when Google does find a malicious URL being used in their redirector they are able to disable the URL and make the link invalid.

They might not do this today, but Bitly now does, and so there's that.

<comment><USER11> Should be fun to see what happens when you get them to automatically blacklist their own sites... ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a good way to get around domain reputation ratings like SiteAdvisor. A domain like google isn't going to get hurt by a reputation service, but a small domain would get marked red after a few redirects to exploits or malware get crawled.

</comment><comment><USER13> We check for these types of vulnerabilities, and it's free to sign up: <https://armorhub.com>

<comment><USER14> On a blog post for Tinfoil Security, it would be better to phrase this as "We also check for these types of vulnerabilities." Tinfoil Security clearly found this specific vulnerability using their own product.

<comment><USER12> That would make sense if he left the comment on Tinfoil's actual blog post. Here in HN i don't think it matters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I couldn't get bit.ly to replicate the behavior that the article claimed: shortening .gov URLs using 1.usa.gov. Anyone else have any luck?

<comment><AUTHOR> Try shortening <http://whitehouse.gov> -> <http://1.usa.gov/15DR7>

<comment><USER15> Interesting. <http://labor.vermont.gov> was shortened with the bit.ly domain - perhaps they caught on to the redirect.

<comment><AUTHOR> They did catch on - [http://blog.howto.gov/2012/10/26/gsa-combats-malicious- use-o...](http://blog.howto.gov/2012/10/26/gsa-combats-malicious-use-of-1-usa- gov-short-urls/)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the link!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>