Men Take More Risks When Pretty Women Are Around - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/culture/attractive-women-risk-taking-100319.html

<comment><USER2> I'm a snowboarder, and, wanting to better understand the risks I assume when I go off-piste -- and how to avoid them -- I took an avalanche safety course a few years ago. At one point during the lecture portion, the instructor said something to the effect that the single most positively correlated statistic with avalanche fatalities is whether there's a girl in the party. I don't know how the data behind that claim was obtained, or even if it's simply an assertion offered to make us think twice before hitting a questionable slope, but it's worked so far: I'm still here, and I've remembered it every time I've strapped on my beacon since.

<comment><USER3> So every time you strap on your beacon, you say to yourself "Remember rosser: be safe, no girls!"

<comment><USER4> The text in your quotation marks reads to me like a religious pro-celibacy statement, while incidentally sounding like a pro-homosexuality statement. You may have just added another link to the long held belief of mine that the religious right are simply self-denying homosexuals.

<comment><USER5> > the religious right are simply self-denying homosexuals

You're quite the dick, aren't you? But that's OK, because you're so smart. It's OK to be a dick if you're smart.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In other news, it gets bright outside when sun appears in sky.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just because it seems obvious to all of us, doesn't necessarily mean doing research on it is a waste of time. It's interesting and useful even to see things like "dudes just want to impress chicks" put into the context of psychology, physiology and evolution.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm only as successful as I am because I wanted to prove to my girlfriend (now my wife) that I am worthy of her. Plus, she's hot.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious, did marrying her end up curbing your ambition or making you complacent?

<comment><USER10> I can't recall where I heard the expression: "Marriage turns of genius like a tap."

<comment><USER4> If you give the nerd sex, computers lose their interest.

I believe there could be an XKCD graph in this for frequency of sex correlated against infrequency of genius.

<comment><USER11> IIRC there was a graph along those lines in Cryptonomicon. While there may be some truth to that, I'm pretty sure the optimal frequency is not zero.

<comment><USER12> Correct. He'd start to get so horny that he couldn't focus, so he'd have to masturbate (which was a small relief) or have sex, which was a great relief, and gave him weeks of productive work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The article doesn't seem to have a link to the research.

The journal:

<http://spp.sagepub.com/current.dtl>

The abstract:

<http://spp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/1/1/57>

The paper (pdf):

<http://spp.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/1/1/57>

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://ftp.iza.org/dp4793.pdf>

Interesting similar findings that men take more risks when playing women in chess (when looking at ~1.4 million games):

 _For male players the probability of choosing a solid strategy is about 1.3 percent lower when facing a female opponent compared to a male opponent_

Additionally, women chess players appear to be more risk averse in general.

<comment><USER3> That is kind of obvious. B*tches love it when I bring out my queen early.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> They take more risks because _it works_. That won't change unless society makes massive changes, which is unlikely to happen (much less any time soon).

Though the article wasn't too specific, it seems to me that it works because the risky stuff makes people stand out. Success in higher risk endeavors is much more eye-catching than success in the mundane. You see _identical_ behavior in many other areas: startups that take a risk and succeed are more likely to get funding, anyone that does something unique (a risk itself) is rewarded heavily if they succeed.

I doubt it has _anything_ to do with testosterone, and much more to do with perceived reward. Sure, _that_ can cause an increase in testosterone, but it's definitely not required to do so to exhibit this behavior.

<comment><USER16> (Not read the article, apologies if I miss something.)

>They take more risks because _it works_.

Agreed.

>I doubt it has anything to do with testosterone, and much more to do with perceived reward

This makes it seem like a conscious decision, which I don't buy. "Pretty woman will like me" is just one more factor in the risk/reward calculation, which is made subconsciously.

I would say it's more likely that testosterone is one variable in the risk/reward calculation, and is released in the presence of pretty women (among other things) because that turns out to be what works.

<comment><USER15> Who says it's conscious? Perceived reward can be fully subconscious, just look at any minor addiction (and some major), or any habit. Typically, people don't know why they do things in those areas (among others), they just _do_ them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm sorry, but that seems rather obvious to me. Males have been trying to impress females since the dawn of time.

Was this research really required? They had a nice experiment setup, but didn't seem to bother with different age ranges, sexual orientation or any other parameters that might yield actually interesting results.

<comment><USER18> In order:

1) Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it shouldn't be researched. For instance, for a long time it was obvious that light things fall slower than heavy things.

2) I'm not sure what you mean by "really required". In the literal sense, _no_ research is "really required". In the non-literal sense, it's better to have data about something than to not have data about it.

3) I'm not entirely certain why whether you find the results interesting or not is something the researchers should take into account. What's more, adding more independent variables to the experiment would complicate things unnecessarily.

<comment><USER17> I agree that some data is better than no data, but I think these researchers' time and money could be put to a better use.

And sure common sense sometimes is wrong and it must be corrected, but I don't think this case was a priority.

<comment><USER19> On Richard Feynman and spinning plates, from <http://worldandi.misto.cz/_MAIL_/feynman.html> :

"He challenged himself to describe in equations the wobbling movement of a spinning plate being tossed in the air by a student in a Cornell cafeteria. After much effort, he was able to show that, consistent with his observations, for a small degree of wobble, a one-to-two ratio between the wobble and spin was indeed valid. When Feynman excitedly described his results to Bethe, the other scientist listened with interest but wanted to know their practical value. [...] Ironically, he found that the spinning-plate movement he had studied just for fun also had application to the electron-spin problem."

It's about creating an accurate model of the world and universe. I never saw the point of being caustic against any kind of research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I wonder if it works the other way around.

<comment><USER4> From what I've read on the subject, no. It's interesting that boys perform vastly better in single sex schools, while there is little difference in female performance between joint and single sex schools.

I've wondered if this trait in males is the historical cause of the Knight-in- Shining-Armour legends. If a man sees a woman in trouble, is he really more likely to save her?

There's already a strong correlation between near-death experiences and mistaken love (apparently extreme fear and lust have the same biological pathway, which is too Freudian for me to touch at 9pm), so Sir Knight saving the lady would almost undoubtedly get some action in the bed, which fulfils the reproduction criteria (pre-condom era) for gene spreading.</comment></comment>


Thoughts on Flash - <AUTHOR> http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/# <comment><USER2> To put it in context, this open letter was the month before Google's demo debacle at "Flash Camp" in May that year, when every attempt to demo Flash running on Android resulted in a browser crash.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7709473/Disastro...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/apple/7709473/Disastrous- Flash-demo-heaps-further-embarrassment-on-Adobe.html)

A lot of the comments in that thread would have been posted before that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Original discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1304310>

<comment><USER4> What's interesting is that much of the discussion focuses on Apple's insistence on C, C++, and Objective-C. Apple did backpedal on that issue. Using Flash for apps is now no more a problem.

Most commentators seem to have recognized even then where Jobs had a point and where he absolutely did not.

It sure doesn't look like it today but if you take the wider view it almost seems as if Apple and Adobe both moved away from their extreme positions to met somewhere in the middle: Flash for apps is ok, Flash on the web is not.

Most of Jobs' letter is about the web. Some, however, is about apps. In the end you could probably say that he was only two thirds correct.</comment></comment>


Open Web Tools Directory - <AUTHOR> http://tools.mozilla.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Launch info from the blog: <https://labs.mozilla.com/2009/07/open-web-tools- directory/></comment>


Prosecutors withdraw warrant for WikiLeaks founder Assange - <AUTHOR> http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9HNV1800&show_article=1 <comment><USER2> This has got to be explained. Issuing such a warrant should not be taken lightly. The fact that it was withdrawn so fast should put some pressure on the prosecutors to explain themselves. I don't know if they have an obligation but this just makes all the conspiracies more believable. As Colbert would say the truthiness of the conspiracies has increased.

<comment><USER3> I'd think this would make you less likely to believe in conspiracies.

If this were a conspiracy someone at a high level would have agreed to it and the whole point of it would be to get media coverage. What happened instead is just the opposite. As soon as the case started getting media coverage the high level people went into over drive to investigate the claim and determined it was unfounded.

Even if the conspiracy was just to get the claim out there briefly the Swedish government wouldn't have withdrawn it by saying the charge was unfounded. If it was a conspiracy they wouldn't give a reason or they'd say it's still under investigation. That way people who were inclined not to trust Assange could continue to believe it.

<comment><USER2> Tin foil hat on: I'm assuming that the high level person who looked into it and asked them to withdraw the warrant knew not of the other high level (could also not be swedish) person who asked for the warrant to be issued. Secret services have ways of gettings done. But they aren't always good at it.

EDIT: clearing up what I'm trying to say ;p

<comment><USER3> I supposed it's possible but the CIA would have to be pretty reckless. When I said high level people I was thinking their Secretary of State or higher.

Because if the CIA (or whoever in the US government) is trying to use another country's legal system to frame someone that would be considered the conducting operations on foreign soil. That's very much against International Law without getting the permission of the Swedish State Department.

So if they did that without the very highest levels of government being involved they'd be risking a very public international incident plus they'd be cutting themselves off from ever being able to impeach Assange's credibility in the future (because once you have a verified attempt to discredit him in such a manner no one's ever going to believe a claim against him again).

Again I'm sure it's possible but it just seems too reckless to be plausible to me.

<comment><USER4> There are 21 arrest warrants for suspected CIA operatives that kidnapped someone in Italy: <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4297966.stm>

<comment><USER5> There are 21 _convictions_ of CIA operatives in Italy. They were convicted for capturing Abu Omar and delivering him to Egypt in 2003.

This happened at the height of the US/Middle East conflict (before major combat started in Iraq). Abu Omar was a prominent member of Jamaat Islamiya, a peer organization of Egyption Islamic Jihad, a group publicly affiliated with "al Qaeda" (probably more for PR purposes, though) and a group led in part by Omar Abdel-Rahman, the guy who coordinated the first bombing of the WTC.

Julian Assange is not a leader of a violent Islamist movement. We are not at war with Julian Assange. No foreign policy objective is accomplished by kidnapping him off the streets of Sweden or Iceland or wherever he is now.

I don't want to sound (too much) like I'm advocating for the capture of alleged terrorists off western city streets. That's not my point. My point is this: do I believe that the CIA might try to kidnap or kill someone they believe to be a key figure in a bona fide "terrorist" (ie: organized, violent, competently armed, transnational militant Islamist) organization? Absolutely.

Does that mean kidnapping is S.O.P. for the CIA any time anybody antagonizes the US? Ralph Nader better watch his ass, then; third-party left-wing candidates pose a greater danger to the current administration.

<comment><USER6> _Julian Assange is not a leader of a violent Islamist movement_

Interestingly enough, it seems that neither is Abu Omar. After rendering him to Egypt where the secret police tortured him for a few years (electric shocks to the genitals, rape, beatings, the usual), an Egyptian court finally freed him declaring that there was no evidence against him. So, to recap: the CIA kidnapped a guy and delivered him to the Egyptian secret police for torture. But even in an insanely corrupt dictatorship like Egypt, where prosecutors have, um, very wide discretion let us say, they couldn't get any charges to stick. Including association with a terrorist organization, which is a serious crime under Egyptian law. So as far as we know, there's no reason to believe this guy has ever done anything wrong.

I mean, if a police state like Egypt can't manage to find (or concoct) _something_ , anything with which to convict him, how dangerous can he be? And if he's not actually dangerous, then sending 20-odd CIA agents to kidnap him and render him for torture seems kind of crazy....My point is: the CIA sometimes acts in ways that make very little sense on the outside.

Would it make sense for them to kill Assange? No, it would be insane. But this isn't an organization that has historically demonstrated an overabundance of sanity. I doubt they're trying to kill him, but arguments premised on CIA sanity seem...rather weak.

<comment><USER5> It was not _insane_ to kidnap Abu Omar. From what I can tell, it was coldly rational and warranted in a cost/benefit sense, based on the evidence available to the government at the time.

 _Should_ the CIA have kidnapped him? No. We can see one strong argument against extrajudicial detention and exfiltration right here: it puts us on a slippery slope, where we have to take pains to argue about why we might kidnap a "terrorist" ("ah, but what's a _terrorist_! it's whatever you say it is, righ!"... _sigh_ ), but wouldn't kidnap a free-speech activist.

You can present no evidence that the "CIA" or any other agency in the US government is plotting the kidnap, murder, or even the propaganda-based discrediting of Julian Assange. All you can do is posit that something like that _might_ happen, and sit back waiting for everyone else on the message board to try to prove the negative. Isn't that fun?

<comment><USER6> _It was not insane to kidnap Abu Omar. From what I can tell, it was coldly rational and warranted in a cost/benefit sense, based on the evidence available to the government at the time._

I do not see how it could be rational. Based on years of torture, we apparently have learned nothing that could justify a conviction in even a kangaroo court.

Look, I know that many people believe that everyone who any government anywhere ever declares to be a terrorist is automatically guilty. But really now: he hasn't been convicted of anything. Even though he was tortured for years. Even though was under the control of a police state that has a long reputation of convicting innocent people the state doesn't care for. And despite all that: no convictions. Which means he never should have been kidnapped and tortured. When you kidnap and torture innocent people, you are doing something wrong.

 _All you can do is posit that something like that might happen, and sit back waiting for everyone else on the message board to try to prove the negative. Isn't that fun?_

Again, you seem very confused. I'm not trying to disprove your larger assertion. I'm calling into question subsidiary arguments that you've made. Those subsidiary arguments are not proving a negative, so you need not weep any more on that score. Now, since you've made many many subsidiary arguments, I don't think that calling a handful of them into question seriously damages your larger claim, but if you believe otherwise....

<comment><USER5> Please stop trying to get me to justify the kidnapping of Abu Omar. I don't think it was the right thing to do, and the evidence suggests that it wasn't an effective course of action.

I'm doing my best to foresee all the various ways this discussion can turn into an HN referendum on the "war on terror", and I'm obviously failing, because I'm reading things about genital electrocution and discussing the 2003 kidnapping of a Jamaat Islamiya recruiter instead of what has _actually happened_ with Julian Assange, someone who's newsworthy exclusively for having posted files to the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My, my. This story just gets better and better.

So how do you have a rape allegation by two separate women (as I understand it?) that is baseless? I understand how the _charges_ could be baseless, but the prosecution's job should be to determine if the allegations have merit, not try the case. So why do the charges have merit one day and not the next?

Look, if there is a charge, investigate it. If not, don't. But charging him one day and withdrawing the next just leads to even more conspiracy theory madness.

What this _sounds_ like is "Well if he was just Joe Blow, we would have arrested him, but given the nature of his stature..."

I'm sure that's not the case, however. Would like to hear more on this. Must have been some information that we were not privy to.

<comment><USER8> As someone mentioned, I think this is a media test and a warning of the things to come.

They probably asked 2 women to cry "rape" to see 1) how media and people would react and 2) to discredit him. It doesn't matter if charges never stick -- it discredits him by creating doubt. It is the basic "OJ trial" situation -- "just because we couldn't convict doesn't mean he is not guilty" -- so just convicting someone and having all the media report it, is enough to tarnish Julian's morality image.

And it just so happens that Julian and Wikileaks is on a higher moral ground and that is what keeps them popular. They are the modern day information Robin-Hoods. If they can be made to look immoral their image and credibility will forever be destroyed. No matter if charges don't sick.

As for the warning. I think some operations that CIA engages are intentionally not kept too secret as to serve as a warning and intimidation without actually putting in a press release. It is basically the same tactics that FSB (ex KGB) used when they assassinated Litvinenko. They could have probably arranged an armed robbery or freak car accident, but by using radioactive polonium with traces all the way to the Sheremetovo, they issued a loud and clear threat to anyone willing to criticize or betray the FSB in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That didn't take very long now, did it. I hope we'll get to the bottom of this, either Assange is a jerk, but maybe not a criminal _or_ he deserves to be exonerated.

But I've never heard of a case that was filed on Friday evening, hits the news big time on Saturday morning and has the main charges dropped _after_ an arrest warrant has been issued on Saturday afternoon.

Either there was cause to issue a warrant or there wasn't.

Weirdest thing.

But tens of millions of people have seen the name of Julian Assange next to the word 'rape' in sensational headlines all over the world, so in that sense the damage has been done.

</comment><comment><USER10> A nice subtle smear. It'll go into the narrative as "Julian Assange who was once charged with rape in Sweden, and is the founder of anti-government site Wikileaks ..."

They're not trying to destroying him at this point, just ramp up the pressure.

They have to be a little bit careful because he does, apparently, have that encrypted and distributed information bomb.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.aklagare.se/In-English/>

> The status of the profession has gradually increased, and becoming a > prosecutor is today a very attractive proposition for young lawyers.

They are probably hinting to a noob mistake.

<comment><USER12> I'm guessing that they simply added the short Assange statement to the front page of the english site, and that the text below it has nothing to do with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anyone have ideas as to why they would even bother with making such a charge just to withdraw it so quickly? It looks especially bad in light of Wikileaks' recent activities.

<comment><USER14> According to the interview with one of the victims, it was a consensual situation that got out of hand (in two separate cases). That description is perfectly consistent with the behavior of the prosecutors here; under Swedish law, depending on the exact details, such behaviour might be interpreted as rape, molestation, or just someone being an asshat. After digging into the details, the prosecutors seem to have gone from the rape end of the scale to the asshat end, and that's not a valid cause for arrest.

<comment><USER15> Link?

<comment><USER12> Crappy Google translation:

[http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&i...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.expressen.se%2FNyheter%2F1.2105516%2Fkvinnan- anklagelserna-forstas-inte-iscensatta-av-pentagon-eller-nagon- annan&sl=sv&tl=en)

It's based on this article, but Google won't translate it:

<http://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/article7652935.ab>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here is my theory: Assange tours Sweden, meets loads of female journalists. Sleeps with some of them. Does something during the act which the women don't like (but don't really think too much about). The women come into contact a week later in their work. They share details and blow whatever happened out of proportion. They go to the police and then tip off the tabloid they both work for. Prosecutor realize whatever happened can't be charged as rape or molestation.

<comment><USER17> That is the precisely the type of "no smoke without fire" thinking that those who consider Wikileaks a gadfly will be delighted to see stick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> my guess is that they were following standard operating procedure with the warrant(i.e. no matter how vague...everything has to be investigated)...but then decided to use common sense for a change.

\+ the warrant was issued by an on duty prosecutor and dropped by the chief prosecutor. So could just be the case of someone trying to make a name for himself...only to get smacked down by his boss who had to deal with the controversy on their day off.

<comment><USER14> Both prosecutors are women. And it's the original arrest warrant that has been withdrawn; the investigation is still open.

<comment><USER19> Actually, if one is to believe the media over here, the rape charges have been dropped. The molestation ones still remain, though.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, you're right. Also see my other comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Occam's razor would point towards two young women looking for a bit of attention.

</comment><comment><USER21> After all of the caution around jumping to conclusions on whether we were just witnessing smear tactics...

They've now tarred his name with no evidence and generated a massive media buzz and FUD around the fictional rape charges.

It certainly seems like wikileaks have made enemies that are very happy to play dirty.

</comment><comment><USER22> Screw 24 - this thing is getting way more interesting!

I'm sure Julian is going nuts about all of this craziness, and my thoughts are with him - but seriously, he's now attained "International Man of Mystery" status.

</comment><comment><USER23> Wow. This is simply amazing.

</comment><comment><USER24> what if it was self-generated?

<comment><USER24> I should maybe elaborate. You claim for weeks that you fear being the target of a smear campaign.

How better to protect yourself from one, than to vaccinate the entire public? Find two accolytes to report the alleged rape and molestation on just barely credible terms, and then either have them withdraw them or bring to light certain facts that mean that the charges HAVE to be dropped (factual inconsistencies, for example, or a previous record of crying wolf; etc).

Do this quickly on a saturday morning when newsrooms are too understaffed to do much reporting and will probably not have much time between the issuing of the charges and the withdrawal to actually spread the uncorrected, daaging rumours; just the retraction.

Result? CNN runs a front page headline next to not-negative press about you (charges withdrawn) suggesting to all its viewers that you might well be the target of a smear campaign. Future journalists AND readers will be immunised and healthily sceptical the next time something like this is attempted.

If this was a wikileaks taskforce's test balloon, wouldn't they have done it in a normal newsday?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If the US government is going after Assange (and they clearly would like to talk with him on American soil), why? Isn't this akin to blaming the messenger. Fix your own dam leaks (pun intended).

</comment><comment><USER26> 10 bucks that there will be a movie on this guy coming out within a year.</comment>


A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution - <AUTHOR> https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/01/a-science-journal-funded-by-peter-thiel-is-running-articles-dismissing-climate-change-and-evolution/ <comment><USER2> As someone who has studied science extensively (geology, geochemistry, microbiology) there is nothing wrong with this and I find it refreshing.

There is no such thing as "settled science" and whenever you see that phrase you should become immediately skeptical. It's a dangerous term that is an imminent threat to scientific progress. Think about all of the "settled science" that has been upended across human history.

<comment><USER3> And if you click on the article about evolution that is being claimed as "dismissive", it does not seem dismissive. It posed a challenge from the 80's that apparently was popular at the time. This seems like a hit piece that people are upvoting because of the title.

<comment><USER4> > And if you click on the article about evolution that is being claimed as > "dismissive", it does not seem dismissive. It posed a challenge from the > 80's that apparently was popular at the time.

The absence of transitional fossils argument it makes is a standard—and long rebutted—anti-evolution argument that's older than the 1980s (it was actually noted as a problem _by Darwin_ , and dishonest anti-evolution folks like to pretend there has been no progress; _honest_ creationists are a different story [0].)

[0] [https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/honest- creation.htm...](https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/honest- creation.html)

<comment><USER5> You sound like you know more about this than I do. Are there any theories (not even with evidence) about how sex evolved? I can't find a way two unrelated species (that did not have a "mother and father" of some sort) came together to produce the first ever offspring with two progenitors. In otherwords some creature was conceived (using the term lossely) and born in a way vastly different from it's parent. All the "plumbing" (organs) needed for that first combination, which would have been an evolutionary anchor up to that point, is something I can't see my way around.

<comment><USER6> [https://sci-hub.se/10.1126/science.324_1254](https://sci- hub.se/10.1126/science.324_1254)

In short, sexual reproduction is very old (> 1 billion years ago) and first appeared in an ancestor of all eukaryotic cells and long predates multicellular life. So, all of multicellular life evolved with the haploid/diploid molecular machinery already available and different branches of life have built vastly different strategies to use it. You'd be better served IMHO to start at DNA replication and build up rather than starting at sex organs and working backward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sounds like a no-win situation. If Thiel doesn't influence the papers published in the journal you get headlines like this ("journal publishes insane article"), and if he does influence the articles then you would have the even worse headline, "billionaire censors academic publications in journal he funds." The apparent solution would be to appoint a board of censors that aren't you but agree with all of your beliefs, but let's be honest that's not any better.

<comment><USER8> The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously.

You can't just go around making assertions of truth and then deny any attempt to discuss their merits by claiming that it's just a belief or an opinion whose truth value is irrelevant. That's basically how we ended up in this godawful post-truth world we now live in, and there certainly shouldn't be any room for it in a scientific publication.

<comment><USER9> "The win would be a scientific publication that takes science seriously."

The articles in question are editorials, there are quite a number of them on Inference.

So this is not a situation of Journal passing of pseudoscientific research as science i.e. publishing crazy papers. It's really a fuss about some lengthy and interesting bits of logical diatribes that possibly only a few have read in the first place.

Thanks to the commenter below, here is the offending article: [1]

Have a quick gander.

And now you might wonder what all the fuss is about and that the 'real story' seems this might be some tawdry logic by motherjones trying to take a piece out of Thiel?

The author of the article seems to be making a genuinely thoughtful case, for god's sake man if this kind of discussion cannot be had the world will end. Most science comes from meandering and most of our meandering is wrong.

It doesn't seem to me there is any 'anti science' here really (I don't have enough background in this area to be fully certain), this whole thing could be ridiculous. Nobody is claiming 'flat earth' or pushing crazy propaganda. Frankly, it's enjoyable to read left-field ideas, so long as they are not passed of as 'truth', and I don't think they are in this case, it'll be fine.

[1] [https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory- in-c...](https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis- revisited-part-one)

<comment><USER8> Actually I don't wonder what all the fuss is about, and for a reason you seem not to have considered. The history of science with a non-scientific agenda is by no means limited to questionable methods and questionable inferences drawn improperly from otherwise "good science." At least as often (if not most of the time), the goal of junk and pseudo science is not actually to assert a truth but to act as if there some reasonable question regarding a thing about which there actually isn't. For example, tobacco companies benefitted from and were primarily interested in perpetuating the idea that there was some genuine debate about whether cigarettes cause lung cancer, in the same way that certain capitalists benefit from the idea that there's a real question about whether burning fossil fuels causes the earth to warm and creationists benefit from a "debate" about whether evolution is real. To say that they're merely asking a question or asserting a point would be disingenuous in light of the historical record.

In any event I read the article. It's an interesting history lesson but a number of the author's points suggest to me that he either doesn't totally understand what he's arguing against or is deliberately misrepresenting it. I say that as someone who's done hard science research in the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Lumping climate change skeptics in with creationists is a bit much. I know that the evidence for human-caused climate change is strong enough that the skeptics are very likely wrong, but people who refuse to accept the theory of evolution are on another level of willful ignorance.

<comment><USER11> Yes, the Theory of Evolution is a scientific theory. There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of -- just many/most scientists who think the evidence for climate change is significant.

<comment><USER4> > There is no scientific theory for climate change that I am aware of

The relevant analog of the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection would be the Greenhouse Theory of Climate Change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Some healthy skepticism is definitely required here, but I think the title of the MJ article was a little misleading. This publication looks more like NYRB or a similar high-brow literary magazine - far from what I think of when I see the phrase "science journal". Could still be nonsense and propaganda, but at least it's not pretending to be peer-reviewed original research.

</comment><comment><USER13> >A Science Journal Funded by Peter Thiel Dismisses Climate Change and Evolution

Look out the window, this planet is intelligent design.

So is mars and the rest of the solar system with signs of life, the rest is possibly empty.

Sure the actual article on evolution[1] is just plain wrong, but so are the idiots who worship evolution unquestionably.

Can we instead start talking about why specific alternatives to evolution are wrong, rather than the religious fundamentalism of believing evolution this title implies.

[1] [https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory- in-c...](https://inference-review.com/article/evolution-a-theory-in-crisis- revisited-part-one)

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallibilism)

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe if one wants to exploit a certain type of people, one has to build a corresponding infrastructure/outlet to be in control?

</comment><comment><USER16> He's right.</comment>


Goals and the GTD - <AUTHOR> http://blog.elmerthomas.com/2007/08/26/goals-and-the-gtd/ A technique on integrating the goal setting process into the GTD for daily execution. <comment><USER2> Write your projects as successful outcomes and make sure each has a physical next action. Review your entire system weekly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. Short and sweet.</comment></comment>


Pure4J: Compile-Time Functional Purity and Immutability for the Java Language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/robmoffat/pure4j <comment><USER2> Wasn't there an @Immutable assertion in JSR-305? Why not reuse that?

EDIT: actually predating that JSR, coming from here [http://jcip.net/annotations/doc/index.html](http://jcip.net/annotations/doc/index.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good question. Originally, there were two reasons why I didn't do this.

First, the contract is slightly different, as I am also asserting purity. This means that one @ImmutableValue knows that another @ImmutableValue (perhaps from a library package) is pure. Whereas, a class annotated with @Immutable might not be.

Second, I developed this with the bank I work in in mind. They are still on flavours of Java 6 + 7.

However, I am currently in mind to port this to Checker Framework, [http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker- framework/](http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker-framework/) which is fully supported by the JDK8 compiler.

I expect I'll still keep the separate annotation, but there are a lot of benefits from a tooling point of view to doing this (IDE support, gradle etc)

<comment><USER3> > I am currently in mind to port this to Checker Framework, > [http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker- > framework/](http://types.cs.washington.edu/checker-framework/) which is > fully supported by the JDK8 compiler.

Awesome! Checker is _very_ promising. Unfortunately, its developers have not yet (I think) turned their efforts into making it as easy to use as possible (it could be made very easy to use, but that would take some effort).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The examples seem like they would consume a lot of memory, since every update allocates a new object to the heap. Java's garbage collection solves this, but does anyone know of an annotation or method to use to mark the old object as unused so the runtime can deallocate the old object as soon as the new object is created, rather than waiting for a stop-the-world gc pause? I guess a better way to handle this would be to return a new object with most of the attribute references unchanged, besides the updated fields.

<comment><AUTHOR> So, rather than reinvent the wheel, I just ported the Clojure collections over, added generics and made them more Java-ery [1]

In the Clojure world, (and indeed in Haskell and other pure-fp languages) there is a lot more garbage collection. Rich Hickey makes a great case for this trade off here [2].

On the JVM now very little of it is stop-the-world GC, it mostly does incremental. It's been a while since I profiled a Java app in anger, but even back on JDK5 this was the case, and I know they changed it significantly in JDK7 to the G1 collector.. anyone have a clue about that?

[1] [https://github.com/robmoffat/pure4j/blob/master/docs/tutoria...](https://github.com/robmoffat/pure4j/blob/master/docs/tutorial_collections.md) [2] [http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value- Values](http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Value-Values) [3] [http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/ja...](http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/tutorials/obe/java/G1GettingStarted/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How conservative is your analysis? Is it whole program? Do you look at the class library? What's the largest size of program it handles in a reasonable amount of time?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great questions:

1\. Very conservative (I hope). As to exactly what this means, the specs are here: [http://robmoffat.github.io/pure4j/concordion/org/pure4j/test...](http://robmoffat.github.io/pure4j/concordion/org/pure4j/test/checker/spec/Index.html)

2\. Not the whole program, but "islands of purity". i.e. classes or hierarchies of classes which are annotated with @Pure/@ImmutableValue/@MutableUnshared (see above for what these mean, exactly).

3\. At compile time, it builds a model of your software by analysing the byte- code. It should run in linear time I guess but I haven't tried it on any huge codebases yet. At runtime, the performance will be heavily dependent on the performance of the Clojure collections that I've imported.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice! Immutability islands are the future.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! This was largely inspired by Frege ([https://github.com/Frege/frege](https://github.com/Frege/frege)) which has been on HN before, but is worth checking out.

<comment><USER7> And Frege was based on Haskell which takes the exact opposite approach: everything is pure/immutable by default, and extra effort is required to write impure code and mutable data. What if we had a plugin that worked this way? It would assume everything should be pure/immutable and require explicit annotations (@Impure, @Mutable) otherwise. There are a lot of complications, but it's food for thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> A couple of people have suggested this idea - pure by default, as opposed to impure by default. In Frege, as you point out, anything written in Haskell is pure by default. However, if you want to call methods from libraries or the JVM which are written in Java, then you have to tell Frege their level of purity. So effectively, your Haskell code is the "island of purity" inside the wider sea of impure Java runtime.

But yes, I think this is a workable idea - so long as there was some way of identifying 3rd-party code purity instead of the annotation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Erlang is now on Github (official repo) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/erlang/otp

<comment><AUTHOR> They wont be using this internally yet, but it will be updated daily I believe

<comment><USER2> There's no history that's been imported. Just one commit. It isn't even what I'd call an official mirror, let alone an official repo.

Much more interesting would be a mailing list thread where they say what they're planning to do with their version control.

<comment><USER3> It also looks like they still aren't releasing the test suite, which makes it very difficult for anyone outside Ericsson to contribute to the project.

<comment><AUTHOR> I asked kenneth at the euc about the test suite and he said there would be some tests initially and more to come

(crosses fingers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 404

<comment><USER5> I believe every repository is 404'd right now on Github.

<comment><USER5> <http://twitter.com/github/status/6058079866></comment></comment></comment>


Japanese knotweed, the invasive plant that just won't die - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/japanese-knotweed-invasive-plants.html?via=homepage_taps_top <comment><USER2> Knotweed is like the hydra of myth.

I've been trying to fight it in my landlord's backyard by cutting down every single shoot as soon as they come up. And they keep coming.

</comment><comment><USER3> The shoots are supposedly edible, but the farmers of japan use so much pesticides I never attempted it.</comment>


Ask HN: A statically typed alternative to Python with batteries included - <AUTHOR> I studied in an university that encouraged C and Java.  When I started work, I fell in love with Python's succinctness compared to the the verboseness of Java. It was a joy to code in. Python + vim was a great combination.
Fast forward 10 years and I still do most of my development work in Python. Now I am a single person working on multiple projects.  Python has been great as it has well maintained libraries for almost all my needs.
I work a lot in Django for a few web projects. I find the structuring of Django to be very clean and lends itself to writing modular code. But debugging it is sometimes a pain, especially if templates have multiple inheritance.
As context switching is hard for me, I want to write the code as modular as possible, as testable and error-free as possible.  I believe a statically typed language is better in this respect. I also feel it will result in better performance.
So I am looking for a statically typed language that has well supported libraries esp for web development, is readable and supports atleast some functional constructs like filter, map, list comprehensions etc, and works on linux.
What would you suggest I try? <comment><USER2> Why not try Python 3.5 and mypy? That way you could still use Django.... See [https://github.com/caulagi/django-mypy](https://github.com/caulagi/django- mypy) for an example.

You can also use [https://www.quantifiedcode.com/](https://www.quantifiedcode.com/) and [https://landscape.io/](https://landscape.io/) as well as what's built into PyCharm.

And for js, use TypeScript!

</comment><comment><USER3> Succinct, statically-typed, functional, web-friendly languages are not especially common.

Maybe C#, Scala, or TypeScript.

Note as well that Java 8 is a lot better for succinctness and functional programming than previous versions were.

</comment><comment><USER4> A lot of the batteries in Python, and Python itself, is written in C. Perhaps take that as a model/starting point: write the things that you want to be debuggable/whateverable in C (or C++ or Java or ...), and glue them together with Python.

It's good enough for Guido.</comment>


Upload DVDs To Flixster? That's Time Warner's 'Very Big Idea,' Exec Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.deadline.com/2011/05/upload-dvds-to-flixster-thats-time-warners-very-big-idea-exec-says/

<comment><USER2> They better execute this idea quickly. Within a few years, these media formats will most likely be gone.</comment>


The benefits and costs of writing a POSIX kernel in a high-level language - <AUTHOR> https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi18/presentation/cutler <comment><USER2> An unoptimized research kernel using GC (instead of ref-counting or Rust-style lifetimes) manages to get within 5-15% of a traditional kernel for the things they measured. That is impressive.

Lots of asterisks and caveats apply I'm sure, but it bolsters the argument that writing kernels and device drivers in a high-level safe language wouldn't impose the 2x or worse perf penalty detractors like to claim. I know I'd trade 10% perf for the elimination of whole classes of security vulnerabilities.

(For the same reason, I want the standards committee to produce a bounds- checked dialect of C where I can choose to pay some perf cost to get real dynamic and bounds-checked arrays)

<comment><USER3> For what it's worth:

 _The conventional wisdom shared by many of today 's software engineers calls for ignoring efficiency in the small; but I believe this is simply an overreaction to the abuses they see being practiced by penny-wise-and-pound- foolish programmers, who can't debug or maintain their "optimized" programs. In established engineering disciplines a 12% improvement, easily obtained, is never considered marginal; and I believe the same viewpoint should prevail in software engineering._

Donald Knuth. _Structured Programming with go to Statements_. (It's the same paper that the oft-misquoted "premature optimization" quote comes from.) [http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/CS185C/KnuthStructuredProgrammin...](http://www.cs.sjsu.edu/~mak/CS185C/KnuthStructuredProgrammingGoTo.pdf)

<comment><USER4> > In established engineering disciplines a 12% improvement, easily obtained, > is never considered marginal

That's right, but "improvement" doesn't necessarily mean performance. Adding a GC would yield more than 12% reduction in vulnerabilities and bug count, which are also "improvements".

<comment><USER5> > Adding a GC would yield more than 12% reduction in vulnerabilities and bug > count

Also when compared to Rust-style lifetimes? (Did Redox OS have any CVEs yet?)

<comment><USER6> Does anyone is using Redox OS ? I don't see how you can compare OS used in hundreds of millions servers to one that is used nowhere in case of CVE. No one is probably searching for CVEs in Redox OS compared to Linux Kernel.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would love to see a production ready kernel written in Rust adopted by the industry. I am exclusively using Go and Rust at home and at work, and I find myself equally productive in both. Go lacks a lot of 'high level' features for a GC language, so I don't find the GC to be that advantageous. Rust is safe, fast, and a joy to write. I'm not surprised by these numbers, I would be interested to see a breakdown of compile times for similarly sized kernels in Rust, Go, and C.

<comment><USER8> Production ready means different things to diff people, and I don't know how many people use it in Prod, but have you looked at redox:

[https://github.com/redox-os/redox](https://github.com/redox-os/redox)

<comment><USER9> It would be really interesting to see a Linux ABI layer implemented on top of redox, a la IllumOS, to allow software designed to run on linux to run.

Given that Bryan Cantrill is gung-ho about rust, and he's got quite a lot of knowledge in this area, maybe someone can woo him to help (even if in an advisory role).

<comment><USER10> The Redox leader did ask [https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1042261893367250944](https://twitter.com/jeremy_soller/status/1042261893367250944)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The paper contributes Biscuit, a kernel written in Go that implements enough of POSIX (virtual memory, mmap, TCP/IP sockets, a logging file system, poll, etc.) to execute significant applications. In experiments comparing nearly identical system call, page fault, and context switch code paths written in Go and C, the Go version was 5% to 15% slower.

<comment><USER11> I would expect that slowdown to be more a consequence of optimizer implementations than anything else, given the quality of C compilers code about 30 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well that was fast! I'm an author of this paper and would be happy to answer questions.

<comment><USER13> I'm not at OSDI or I would have asked there, but:

1\. Your skepticism for using Rust cites [26], the PLOS paper from the same people who did [27]. They've essentially recanted, in that their PLOS talk was right after Niko's keynote, and he then talked them through how interior mutability works in Rust. Other than [26], are there other lingering concerns? I could imagine so, but it would be great to take stock.

2\. You don't seem to page to disk, and do OOM shootdowns instead. If you did enable disk paging, how comically bad an idea does a tracing GC become? :D Naively, I could imagine RC-GC being less horrible, but perhaps that's my built-in (and absolutely for real) bias.

<comment><USER12> 1\. I wouldn't say we are skeptical of Rust, I'm sure it could be made to work well and we would love to see such a Rust kernel! I do wonder whether it would be harder to implement highly-concurrent data structures in Rust though, such as the directory cache.

2\. GC performance would be basically unaffected by paging, since kernels don't page their own heaps out to disk and thus a kernel heap access would never have to wait for a disk IO. Or maybe you had something else in mind?

<comment><USER13> 1\. Jon sits two desks away, right? ;)

Re 2., I assumed (incorrectly, it seems) that virtual memory mappings can eventually spill to disk. If you grab 1/32 of RAM For the kernel, then you could only virtually map 16x RAM if the page tables have 512 entries. Admittedly, I took my OS class in the previous millennium, so I might be out of date here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While not a full kernel, Google's gVisor is a userland Linux kernel emulator written in Go:

[https://github.com/google/gvisor](https://github.com/google/gvisor)

They use it in production for App Engine sandboxing.

<comment><USER15> "Production" \- they won't commit to actually supporting it for production for the rest of us (currently got app engine flex burning a hole in our pocket at work because the old runtime was too problematic and sans it being out of beta we can't move to the new one).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Considering all of the stuff that Go does for you this is hugely impressive. It is especially impressive that a research kernel is within 10% of Linux's performance.

<comment><USER17> It is missing a lot of stuff that is potentially time consuming, like access control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> GC can make high demand applications stutter. From a performance and security prespective I think rust makes a great candidate for a HLL kernal.

<comment><USER11> GC enabled system programming languages like D, Active Oberon or Modula-3, among others, allow for many ways to allocate memory, it is not GC all the way down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The misplaced hyphenations mid-paragraph in that abstract made me vocalise the text in my head as a reader with hiccups.

<comment><USER20> Thats the sad state of (i guess) automatic pdf text extraction, consequence of research papers being exclusively in pdf, consequence of (la)tex coming from another age. I love and praise tex for what it allows to do, but my opinion is that now is the time to get past it, learn everything it has done right and apply the new knowledge we have in language design to get a better surface language (lower friction syntax, higher-level semantics allowing to separate structured content from typography and extract other stuff than a visual document from a source file). Tex being so good means it has such a monopoly that this kind of project have to be tremendously good to have a chance (which is probably a good thing).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> POSIX itself an outdated standard. Some things we're designed without understanding of modern security and portability problems. Either new iteration of the standard required, or a new standard from scratch.

</comment><comment><USER22> But what did the memory footprint look like compared to C?

<comment><USER23> Last time I looked (which was a while back) both Go and Rust binaries for "Hello world" were over a megabyte with out-of-the-box settings, compared to just a few kilobytes for C and slightly more for C++. I should qualify that they were the simplest of Hello world programs, I didn't add any fancy options to try and reduce the size at all.

I'd be keen to see what the smallest binaries the reference implementations of these languages can produce are.

<comment><USER24> Rust's standard library is statically linked, C's is not. You have to compare the total size. Additionally, Rust includes jemalloc by default on many platforms.

If you really want to get extreme with this, [http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2015/01/151-byte-...](http://mainisusuallyafunction.blogspot.com/2015/01/151-byte- static-linux-binary-in-rust.html), while a bit old, talks about various things that are still true, though some stuff has changed a bit. There's also [https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html#why-do-rust- program...](https://www.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html#why-do-rust-programs- have-larger-binary-sizes-than-C-programs)

Additionally, some people have done more work since then; the smallest binary rustc has ever produced is now 145 bytes: [https://github.com/tormol/tiny- rust-executable](https://github.com/tormol/tiny-rust-executable)

<comment><USER23> Thanks - yes I meant to mention, that statically linked (and stripped of symbols) I get 745k for the C hello world with gcc 7.2, so the gap isn't as big as all that. I understand that shared libraries/dynamic linking is still a WIP for rust so it's not exactly a fair comparison yet. With a shared standard library you also get the benefit of having the RAM shared across multiple processes.

The 145 byte example also not being a fair comparison, since you've left out the standard library! Obviously C can do that too, but it's pretty neat to see the progress rust is making.

(anyway, I'm going off topic since we're discussing kernel programming here).

<comment><USER24> Don't forget that the stripping also isn't automatic on the Rust side either, so you have to do that if you do it for the C :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting. It's not that Go is a "high level" language, it's that it is garbage collected. What happens if it runs out of memory?

<comment><USER26> This is covered in the paper. They use static analysis to know the memory costbof a kernel function and rather than optimistically run the kernel function and then unwind it if they run out of memory, they delay it until memory is available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since when did C stop being a high level language O_o?

<comment> Const-me I think it's a moving target. 70 years ago, assembly was high-level.

<comment><USER28> Some would argue that it still is.

[https://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level- languag...](https://blog.erratasec.com/2015/03/x86-is-high-level- language.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Intriguing. Interesting that it implements fork(2), even though Go itself cannot really deal with that call.

<comment><USER30> Though implementing fork() in a kernel is entirely distinct from using fork() in user space. Implementing fork() is mostly "just" manipulating a bunch of data structures the right way. Copy the right bytes and set the right values.

It's like how you can implement Java, C++, python, Haskell and any other (practical) language in C, despite C having no support for e.g. classes or lambdas. Or how humans can design and build combustion engines, despite us not having the capability to ingest gasoline in order to rotate an axle at 6000rpm ourselves.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, I get the difference in levels of abstraction. Still interesting, at least to me. Among other things, it limits how "thin" the POSIX emulation can be. So, for example, if I had a POSIXy super-CPU, an implementation of fork() in C, running on that CPU, could be rather thin. An implementation of fork() in Go seems like it'd necessarily have to be considerably thicker, as fork() is more foreign to Go.

But yes, I understand that this noodling has little to do with what the authors were going for, nor really with current reality.

Definitely a cool--amazing even--project.

<comment><USER31> I fail to see how the implementation of fork in C would be any thinner than an implementation of fork in Go. I expect the implementations would look very similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> 5-15% seems like a bargain compared to the massive slowdown everyone noticed after the first meltdown patches (not that this would have fixed that problem, of course).

If this approach took off, maybe it would light a fire under the chip industry to put a little more thought into hardware-assisted garbage collection.</comment>


Answer Set Programming - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answer_set_programming

<comment><USER2> For a project in school I used clasp + gringo to make a labor scheduler for my 100+ person co-op (I'm in charge of that). It's amazing how fast it really is. I'm very interested in bringing facilities like this to other high-level languages.

<comment><USER3> I used clasp+gringo for scheduling candidate interviews for a technology company. It worked great.</comment></comment>


Dietary Supplements Lead to 20,000 E.R. Visits Yearly, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/14/dietary-supplements-lead-to-20000-e-r-visits-yearly-study-finds/ <comment><AUTHOR> New England Journal of Medicine abstract has % breakdown of observed events: [http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1504267](http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMsa1504267)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Dietary supplements marketed for weight loss and energy, however, do not have to carry such a label. Under a 1994 federal law that has been widely criticized by health authorities, supplements are considered safe until proved otherwise. Unlike prescription drugs, they do not have to be approved by the F.D.A. before they are sold to consumers, nor are they required to list major side effects._

This has always been a problem with supplements - there is no requirement to disclose content, nor verify effects. This is the first time the down-side risks have been quantified.</comment>


Link Deployment with AWS LambdaEdge - <AUTHOR> https://blog.plaid.com/link-deployment-with-aws-lambda-edge/ <comment><USER2> Why the viewer request latency? 50ms kind of defeats its purpose

<comment><USER3> I believe that lambda CPU goes hand in hand with memory. Your lambda@edge function will only deploy with 128mb of ram allocated and hence get very little CPU. 50ms is not low-latency in my book either. See [https://serverless.zone/my-accidental-3-5x-speed-increase- of...](https://serverless.zone/my-accidental-3-5x-speed-increase-of-aws- lambda-functions-6d95351197f3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "As an alternative to cookies, then, we opted to hash the user's IP address and their User-Agent string".

So if a user is on a mobile device and switches networks, 50/50 they will receive a consistent version?

Did you consider using Geo based filtering? Iirc Cloudfront has support for geo restrictions, so you could create multiple distributions and restrict one to a geo for rollout.

<comment><USER5> Yes, switching networks can indeed cause users to receive different versions within the 3 hour window. In general we ship small, incremental changes that rarely even are visible to the user, so a small likelihood of serving inconsistent version is acceptable.

Interesting idea with geo restrictions. Does this allow more granularity than country-level filtering? Most of our audience is based in the US, so country- level setting does not give us enough flexibility.

There is also value in knowing the percentage of users receiving the new version. It's just more predictable and easier to analyze the data if the ratio of new-to-old is known beforehand.</comment></comment>


What's the point of stealing $1.5 million in casino chips from the Bellagio? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2278380/ <comment><USER2> I know for a fact that professional poker players are willing to play privately with chips from well-known casinos, including the Bellagio. And the Bellagio doesn't discourage them by being too particular about which poker player returns which chips. I'm sure other kinds of gamblers do the same. This gives them real street value.

And if a random professional poker player shows up with a random stolen chip that was won in a private poker game, the Bellagio has a choice. They can refuse to accept the chip back, knowing full well that word will get around and poker players won't want to trust Bellagio chips, or they can stand by the official rules and not accept the chip.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I misunderstood your point, but the second paragraph doesn't seem quite right:

> They can refuse to accept the chip back, ..., or they can ... not accept the > chip.

So do they accept those chips or not?

<comment><USER4> They may or may not. The point is that they have an incentive to accept them back under some circumstances.

If they _do_ get one of these back in, perhaps the best thing for them to do is to interview the holder heavily about where he got it and then decide whether to honour it or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've seen this story get covered by every major news source but they all have the same take on it "he'll never be able to cash the big chips". Big fucking deal. He probably never even planned on taking those. No one has actually broken down the denominations of chips he took.

How much of what he stole is in $1,000 chips or less? That's the real story to what was stolen. Lazy reporters don't bother asking. No, they just defecate what the AP feeding tube shoved up their nose.

<comment><USER4> _I've seen this story get covered by every major news source but they all have the same take on it "he'll never be able to cash the big chips". Big fucking deal._

Well, this is probably the only part of the story that's actually actionable (gawd, did I just use that word?) from the viewer's point of view.

If somebody tries to sell you a $25,000 Bellagio chip for $20,000 then it's worthless and likely to get you into trouble.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couldn't he gamble with them? Put one or two chips down at a time, keep the winnings as "clean" chips and gamble with the dirty ones until they're all gone?

<comment><USER7> Sure, I'd imagine so. However, just waltzing in and not visiting the counter for exchanging cash for chips might seem odd. Easily taken care of by bank rolling your trips with some real money and "peppering" in your stolen chips.

<comment><USER4> Except that this plan involves having hundreds of thousands of dollars in "real money", and this dude probably isn't that rich (because if he were, he probably wouldn't be risking the whole armed robbery thing).

Also, I'm just guessing what he looks like under that helmet, but I'm guessing your typical armed-robber type wouldn't fit in well at the high roller table.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I would think it would be easy to figure out if a chip has RFID embedded, just run a scan. And why all the noise about a thief being stupid for stealing $1.5 million in chips with many of them unlikely to be cashable? This is Vegas where thieves will take the chance at robbing people / stores where they may get away with less than $100. I'm sure the guy would be happy to get away with even a few hundred. With that many chips he could probably make a few hundred by selling the 25K chips as souvenirs. ;)

<comment><USER9> I think they're overstating how many casinos use RFID. The last time I looked into it, only the Wynn did - and then only to track denomination, not as a unique identifier. (Perhaps someone can correct me if things have changed) The goal is to help security detect cheating by tracking bets at the table games electronically, not prevent counterfeiting or theft.

<comment> X-Istence Most RFID tags have a unique identifier in them. You can duplicate said identifiers, but if they are indeed globally unique and can not be reprogrammed then the thief is still out all that money and the chips are worthless.

<comment><USER10> I doubt they use global unique identifiers. RFID takes longer to read longer numbers, especially if there are many targets in the same field.

So 32bit global ID for all chips would take a long time to read, possibly minutes if it's a table with 1000 chips on it. A 4bit code that just ID'ed value and allowed you to spot if somebody had 'mistakenly' mixed up some low value chips in a stack would be much quicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Techno-thriller paranoid take on it- $25k chips can only plausibly be used in high stakes room , which is probably considerably less anonymous than the general floor. Assume everyone playing with high stakes chips are photographed and kept in a database, probably a relatively small db at that. Facial recognition software would be a given in such a case, and even if identities are not kept with faces, the face of someone using 25k chips could easily be checked against everyone who has ever bought or won 25k chips. Might not even need software for that, just manually check if the list is short enough.

Now you don't need rfid at all, just good records.

There's only one place to get 25k Bellagio chips, and only one place to cash them in. Those chips have to be considered worthless in all practical ways.

<comment><USER12> While we're being paranoid - why not use them to frame someone.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like it will work:

       Person A: Great work.  This week, you're being paid in casino chips.
       Person B: What the fuck?  OK, fine, $25,000 is $25,000, I guess.
       Person A: <pets kitten while laughing maniacally>

Later that day:

       Casino Employee:  OH HAI.  What can I do you for?
       Person B: I won this $25,000 chip and would like to cash it in.
       Employee: OK, no problem.  Let me just scan it with my scanomonizer over here.
       <Extremely loud alarm activates, police in cool sunglasses jump out from various hidden crevices.>
       B: Curses, Person A!

Later that day in the police interrogation room:

       Detective: Where'd you get that casino chip, B-boy?
       Person B: From Person A.

Even later that day:

       <At Person A's stolen casino chip storage room.>
       Person A: I love looking at my stolen casino chips.  Good thing there is nobody around to see me!
       Detective: SURPRISE!  You're under arrest!
       Person A: Curses, Person B!

In conclusion, this is a bad idea.

<comment><USER4> This one-act play is significantly more entertaining than either of the Ocean's Eleven sequels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The guy didn't plan to steal $25000 chips, he just walked away with what was there. I'll bet there are ways to fence the lower-denomination chips for somewhat less than face value. You could probably sell the $100 chips for $50 each to random suckers on the strip with a good story.

<comment><USER5> How does buying a $100 chip for $50 make you a sucker?

<comment><USER15> Well, if it turned out that you couldn't cash it in, you'd have spent $50 for a piece of plastic and the opportunity to tell a story for the rest of your life about how you got suckered.

<comment><USER5> $100 chips aren't a problem to cash in. It's the larger chips that are tracked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As engineer for the Casino Industry 99% of the casino RFID solutions on the market track all chips all denominations. The Casino RFID system is used in multiple ways

\- Tracking players bets \- Ensure the dealer is paying out or taking in the correct chips \- Accurate accounting \- Fraud Prevention

So next time you go to the casino remember they are tracking you even when you cannot see it.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article doesn't answer the question posed in the title. What _is_ the point?

<comment><USER18> As the article concludes that such an exercise is mostly pointless, the question serves as a rhetorical device and does not need a direct answer.

<comment><USER19> The question is rhetorical thusl the _article_ doesn't need to answer it directly. I'm still curious of the answer. I think we can assume someone capable of robbing a casino like this would have considered all this ahead of time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've always been impressed that Circus-Circus in Reno would cash $25 chips six years after I had originally won them. I wonder if the US Govt Tracks the money supply that is tied up in Poker Chips from casinos...

<comment><USER21> Imagine how much money is made by a Casino in interest on money that they are retaining for more then a few days at a time.

<comment><USER4> If I learned only one possibly-inaccurate thing from Ocean's Eleven it's that the casino is required to keep an amount of cash on hand equivalent to all their chips in circulation.

<comment><USER22> Definitely inaccurate, but how inaccurate is a bit cloudy. The NV gaming control board/gaming commission isn't exactly transparent when it comes to what the cash requirements are (on-site or in the bank) for non-restricted casinos.

[http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/06feb23_bankroll_instr.pd...](http://gaming.nv.gov/documents/pdf/06feb23_bankroll_instr.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Maybe to reverse-engineer the RFID system for some future purpose?

<comment><AUTHOR> you don't need to commit a crime to get one chip to experiment with

<comment><USER24> You would probably need a lot more than one to figure out their coding system though. Not that I think this is what he did, he probably just grabbed whatever was handy and left.

<comment><USER4> You'd only need one at a time (maybe a few), and you'd get your starting capital back in the end.

Also, an armed grab-and-run at a casino has an incredibly high chance of failure; it's a dumb first step to a supervillainous plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I seem to recall reading that at least in Atlantic City, casinos are required to have an entirely separate set (or maybe even 2 other sets) of high-value checks, that can be swapped in case of suspected counterfeiting. I would assume that the Bellagio has something similar in place, and that the casino is quietly getting all the high rollers to replace any checks that they had stored.

<comment><USER4> Is it really worth their while for a relatively small amount of money? A known quantity of missing chips is very different to a counterfeiting operation, and I assume if they switch to the new set then they have to go to the trouble of printing up a _new_ new set.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I remember hearing a story about something like this and they were able to launder the chips through strippers, who cashed in the chips they received "as tips"..

<comment><USER27> Thats in the movie "21" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21_(2008_film)>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Shouldn't be that hard to find a cashier at the Bellagio willing to turn a blind eye for 10 grand.

</comment><comment><USER29> Too bad Bob Stupak died last year.</comment>


Did Apple try to buy Tesla? Are they working on something together? - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/did-apple-try-buy-tesla-or-are-they-working-something-together.html

<comment><USER2> I like how the very last paragraph introduces the only sane idea in the article.

Apple likely won't buy a car company (Anyone remember apple printers, game consoles? so does apple). They will likely invest in Tesla's battery tech/battery production in order to secure their supply of 'next generation' batteries.</comment>


Climate change can fuel wars - La-ang https://www.economist.com/international/2019/05/23/how-climate-change-can-fuel-wars <comment><AUTHOR> I remember seeing a white paper (from some government agency or the RAND institute) back in the 90's (actually probably learned about in some NPR interview) that predicted wars over water starting around the point we are now (approaching 2020). I've seen some news reports that this is already happening. One example being tensions/conflict between Israel and Lebanon. News reports generally treat it as an ideological conflict but this argues looking at the material basis for the conflict.

Another lesser example being legal/political wrangling here in western US among states over Colorado River rights.

It'd be interesting to dig up some of those white papers / predictions and see how credible accurate their predictions like this were.

Not exactly the same thing as climate change but certainly connected.

<comment><USER2> The Colorado River rights problems are exactly why "it could happen in the US too" and it isn't just an "international problem" to US audiences. I wouldn't call it a "lesser example" because mini wars (especially if you count industrial sabotage) have been fought over it in the past, and sure California, Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are friends right now, but given a few more years of droughts in the US southwest and that is likely to change.

<comment><USER3> Somewhere I've read California would like to pipe Great Lakes water into the state... but the Great Lakes states entered into a compact with Canada to make it difficult...

The idea has been kicked around for decades, but now even some notable scientists have warmed up to the idea.

<comment><USER4> because piping water from a non-renewable lake to a desert is beyond stupid. no need to subsidize building megacities in arid regions

<comment><USER3> I don't think it'd be so much (the draught from the lakes) that the St Lawrence becomes a dry wash.

Even if parts of Calif are a desert, they become a fertile deserts with water.

I imagine some revenue sharing scheme could entice some of the states to send some water.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea)

People can't drink money.

<comment><USER3> I know that you're saying but the Great Lakes basin is not arid like the Aral Sea -whose tributaries were tapped for irrigation. The Great Lakes "overflow" into the st Lawrence which discharges about 7000 m3/sec. at the Ontario outflow.

<comment><USER4> If California gets great lakes water, every single southwestern state will also ask for it. The intelligent solution is "dont build megacities in the middle of the desert beyond their ability to sustain themselves" rather than "lets invest tons of money into piping fresh water several thousand miles and not address the initial root cause"

<comment><USER3> Whether people live in CA of the Midwest, water will be consumed. They might even consume less in the arid areas if water has rationing policies. The main obstacle would be infrastructure but it's not too complicated. It would need lots of pumps to get over the Rockies but it's doable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Actually the research experts say climate change is a small factor with regards to increased conflict.

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01830-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01830-2)

<comment><USER6> It's hardly a consensus. There is plenty of research suggesting climate change has been a factor in conflicts even now, such as in the Syrian civil war:

[https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-0005...](https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-00059.1)

The Pentagon also has reports on climate change as national security risk.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Climate action can fuel revolutions. [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/frances- proteste...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/frances-protesters- are-part-of-a-global-backlash-against-climate-change- taxes/2018/12/04/08365882-f723-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html)

<comment><USER8> France is good example of how governments use the concept of climate change to increase taxes and government control over the masses, and how the masses rebel against those attempts to usurp more and more money and control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was assessed by the Pentagon back in 2014 > [https://web.archive.org/web/20141013222428/https://www.acq.o...](https://web.archive.org/web/20141013222428/https://www.acq.osd.mil/ie/download/CCARprint.pdf)

And it's pretty straightforward: as water, arable land and other resources become scarcer, then groups facing severe shortages will fight over the leftover resources.

</comment><comment> d--b It's impossible to tell what the impact of climate change will be overall. Maybe more wars, but maybe less wars...

Maybe food will be less scarce... Maybe Congo will have more wars, but maybe by some random fashion, climate change will prevent some kind of world war iii.

Climate change is a disaster for the fauna and flora of the world. It will displace a lot of people. But anything more complex is impossible to say.

<comment><USER10> > Climate change is a disaster for the fauna and flora of the world.

It's a disaster for the _current_ flora and fauna, and social structures of the world. Something will follow, but on very different terms than what we have been used to.

To hazard a guess, the bias will be toward flora and fauna (including people) fighting to get in to, and defend shrinking habitable zones.

There is a theory that the desertification of the ancient Fertile Crescent, and subsequent dispersal of agricultural and pastoral societies and people, was the result of the their intense farming in a fragile environment.

Those people had a place to run to and carry on (the entire unknown-to-them world). No such escape hatch for us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Climate change as stated is not of course the main cause of wars, but its increasingly becoming one. Fighting for resources is inevitable, even between sages conflict would arise on who is entitled to what. Wait to see these lunatic world leaders shifting their starvation from oil to water. As mentioned it's already happening. To maximize the chaos politicians play this as a card for their agenda, as scarcity reigns, they will use it to scrap vote. There was an article mentioned earlier on HN about a city in India that has completely ran out of drinkable water. I'd say things look pretty grim, even for the optimist.

<comment> La-ang Chennai

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anybody have a link to the full article? The introduction paragraphs sound like the issues is more about Islamic extremism than climate change. How does the article attempt to link these two concepts?

</comment><comment><USER12> Regarding the photo in the article, it doesn't help when you force woman to wear full body coverings in sweltering heat.

<comment><USER13> Its possible that the protection from the sun outweighs the increased insulation.</comment></comment>


Dear Reddit, watching you is like seeing an old friend die slowly from cancer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@trentlapinski/dear-reddit-watching-you-is-like-seeing-an-old-friend-die-slowly-from-cancer-69785070e5f#.yqjknjokl <comment><USER2> Hmmm, turns out censorship on a web forum intended for mass appeal isn't the best strategy. Safe spaces are a myth and no one wants to spend their time in liberal fascist domains.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit has been dead for a long, long time now.</comment>


If not Scrum, then what? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ard_adam/the-nature-of-computer-programming-7526789b3af1 <comment><USER2> _" Make your product department be a service organization that provides feedback and information to programmers but that does not direct or manage their work. Let programmers make the final calls about what features to build."_

Unless your programmers spend a lot of time talking with your customers, I don't think it's practical to let them decide what features should be built. Certainly they should have the ability to voice their ideas (and have their ideas taken seriously), but if they don't know what the customer needs, they shouldn't have the final word. Having been a programmer and a manager of programmers, I've never met a programmer (including myself) who knows as much about how my customers use the product as product managers or marketing people do.

Also, I think your title meant to say "then what", not "than what".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing out my typo.

Also, how do you account for the many successful software companies that are started by just programmers, with no product direction?

<comment><USER2> I happen to work for a company that was started by programmers. In the early days, they had to spend a lot of time doing sales and support, so they were dealing with customers every day. But as companies grow, people who specialize in product management and sales get hired, and programmers no longer have much contact with customers.

But since your article discusses the relationship between programmers and a "product department", I'm assuming that the company has grown to a point where programmers have relatively little day to day contact with customers, and thus they shouldn't be the ones calling the shots when it comes to figuring out what the customers need.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hence, my suggestion that the product department be used to _inform_ the programmers so they make wise feature decisions. It is not appropriate, however, for product to be in a management position over engineering.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Operator Mono Ligatures - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kiliman/operator-mono-lig <comment><AUTHOR> I love the Operator Mono font, especially the italics. I also liked the ligatures in Fira Code. I know some editors allow you to have multiple fonts, but those hacks simply used Operator Mono for the italics.

Anyway, I ended up using FontForge to create custom ligatures for Operator Mono. I even created italic versions.

Since the font is not free, I created a project that will merge the ligatures into your copy of Operator Mono and create a new font Operator Mono Lig.

Check it out and let me know what you think.</comment>


The Mysterious Fiber Bomb Problem: A Debugging Story - <AUTHOR> https://sandstorm.io/news/2016-09-30-fiber-bomb-debugging-story <comment><USER2> Interesting story! Seems like yet another abject lesson in what happens when you build on top of tooling whose developers use the Web development mentality of "release then test".

One of the many reasons I stay away from javascript.</comment>


No More Contests - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpusage.com/blog/corp-comm/no-more-contests/

<comment><USER2> Frankly, I've always thought that these sorts of competitions are useless predictors of success. So many of the "winners" of these competitions are building unsustainable businesses capitalizing on current trends and not on prescience.

Good on you buddy :). Please do update us on what you do to promote your business instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, that "popularity contest" not only comes down to how big a company is. Its a good measure of how marketing savvy your company is. As a growth hacker, i use many different free channels and mediums to help the small guys reach more people. Perhaps you could take this experience as a reason to think about getting your team better instructed in these growth issues, or maybe consider hiring one who already has experience of the sort.

</comment><comment><USER4> > However, we asked you to do that for not.

naught.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks...I knew something was wrong with that sentence but couldn't figure it out!

</comment></comment><comment> mansoor-s As anyone who has been to high school could easily tell you, when you ask the general public to vote, it's a popularity contest. No surprise here.

</comment><comment><USER5> The Jumpstart he links <http://www.bluecollaragency.com/jumpstart#overview> doesn't make sense to me because the winning team is a design firm? They should participate in a homogeneous contest, where all the participants are offering related services, like web hosting, cloud services, etc. That helps attracting new customers.</comment>


Quora Backlash Slams Head First Into Quora Backlash Backlash - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/quora-quora-quora-quora-quora-quora-quora/

<comment><USER2> Great URL: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/quora-quora-quora-quora- quo...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/31/quora-quora-quora-quora-quora-quora- quora/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thought so too. Classic! Thanks for pointing that out.</comment></comment>


Automatic writing - <AUTHOR> http://education.guardian.co.uk/egweekly/story/0,,2252153,00.html

<comment><USER2> The book titles mentioned in the article seem to be really facts oriented. The act of listing facts is the easiest part of writing anything, in my opinion. I would like to see a machine that could put something together like an Isaacson's biography on Einstein. List the facts of his life but then also draw out the way in which they interplayed with the world politics to lead him down the path he took.

Or maybe, I'm completely mistaken and all we need is to somehow better model this in the machine's database.

<comment><USER3> Some Bloomberg stories are written this way. That's how they can have five paragraphs of analysis and a couple relevant quotes three seconds after new economic data are reported. Their profiles, and articles about stories rather than numbers, are done the usual way, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Um, this really seems like complete and utter bullshit. More so after seeing the youtube video.

<comment><USER5> The idea is genius, the act itself, when it isn't explained to the consumer, is completely immoral.

I'm reminded of the "Your Family's Geneaology Book", where "Your Family" is replaced with your last name. For instance, "The Smith's Geneaology Book". The books, which aren't cheap, are full of generic content about cultures and countries. Inserted in the middle is perhaps a page of surname-relevant scholarship. One of my uncles with a different last name has one, and his didn't come with any surname specific material at all: just a printout in the back of people in the US sharing his name.

They've been selling these since before the internet was around, and as a kid they were my first introduction to this type of content-free marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I read this I was laughing. But the Guardian is not The Onion so...

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a video of how Parker does it: <http://youtube.com/watch?v=SkS5PkHQphY>

The writing is mostly VB Word macros, but impressing still.</comment>


Yang breaks silence on Microsoft takeover - <AUTHOR> http://techland.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/02/25/yang-breaks-silence-on-microsoft-takeover/

<comment><USER2> He didn't exactly "break the silence". His answer was a long-winded version of "no comment".

</comment><comment><USER3> > Yang reiterated his plan to turn Yahoo into a starting point on the web, a > concept he promoted during a speech he gave at last month's Consumer > Electronic Show. Decker said that Yahoo would soon release a new feature > that highlights "the best content from the web"

So it will become netscape.com, circa 1994, complete with "What's New" and "What's Cool"! ;-D</comment>


Global warming is now slowing down the circulation of the oceans - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/03/23/global-warming-is-now-slowing-down-the-circulation-of-the-oceans-with-potentially-dire-consequences/?tid=rssfeed <comment><USER2> There's a good comment on this topic in the /r/science subreddit: [http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warmi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/3012yj/global_warming_is_now_slowing_down_the/cpoexfz)

<comment><USER3> > The results end up overhyped, overblown, and for soundbites like press > releases and Nature papers. This just misinforms people.

I understand the scientist's desire for rigour, but ...

Most people won't bother reading the article at all. If it's up-voted or liked enough, the title _is_ the truth. We all do it. We all accept a sentence as truth if we trust the source enough, without checking the facts. It's impossible to check _all_ the facts _all_ the time.

But the WaPo article isn't about the truth. It's about beliefs. The party line.

The belief that 'I, through my sinful actions am causing the ocean to slow down'. Ridiculous, but that is what most people will get from reading that headline. And maybe it's not that bad.

It doesn't matter what the truth is, it matters what you believe the truth to be.

<comment><USER4> _It doesn 't matter what the truth is, it matters what you believe the truth to be._

The truth doesn't matter, nor does what you believe. The only thing that actually matters is how you act. You could happily say that there's only a 0.0001% chance that humanity is affecting climate change, but if that's enough to get you to stop doing things that _might_ harm the planet _just in case_ then that's brilliant.

The most important thing to remember with climate change is that there's _no_ downside to being less wasteful.

<comment><USER5> Before banning something because it may have a 0.0001% chance of being _bad_ for the Earth's climate, you should be sure that it doesn't have a 0.0002% chance of being _good_ for the Earth's climate.

That's why you need science and proof to try to know the truth, or at least do the best effort. If you don't care about the truth you can use Tarot cards or Ouija tables, that are cheaper and least wasteful than a bunch of Ph.D. that just want to put buoys and launch satellites to measure everything.

<comment><USER6> > a bunch of Ph.D. that just want to put buoys and launch satellites to > measure everything.

I'm not really understanding here. "measuring everything" is how science is performed. Are you for or against "science?"

<comment><USER5> I'm for science. I thought that " _use Tarot cards or Ouija tables_ " was enough to mark the rest of the sentence as ironic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _According to the National Climatic Data Center, the world just saw its warmest winter ever…except for in one spot in the north Atlantic ocean (the deepest blue color above), which set a record for cold. Which is not good. (NCDC)_

 _These new NOAA data got me quite worried because they indicate that this partial recovery that we describe in the paper was only temporary, and the circulation is on the way down again_

Honest question: is such a small data point (a couple of months) for something relatively slow (climate change) really something to worry about? Suppose I call it an outlier (which I can't because I cannot look into the future), wouldn't that be equally wrong?

<comment><USER8> If am assuming Mr. Rahmstorf is qualified enough to understand the data. And with this part "So far, the study finds, we're looking at a circulation that's about 15 to 20 percent weaker. That may not sound like much, but the paper suggests a weakening this strong has not happened at any time since the year 900. Moreover, this is already more weakening than scientifically expected — and could be the beginning of a further slowdown that could have great consequences" I believe there is certainly a need to worry about.

<comment><USER9> It's Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Ocean Physics at the Potsdam Institute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What's interesting is that beyond that "record coldest" spot in the Northern Atlantic, there are still "record warmest" places in the Arctic Ocean, north of Europe. If the temperature in those places was supposed to be dependent on the warm current from Caribbean, how come they were warmer than usual after the current slowed down?

<comment><USER11> For some more detail about the dynamics, have a look at [http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats-...](http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/03/whats- going-on-in-the-north-atlantic/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've never been fully convinced of anthropomorphic climate change. There's just too much politics involved for me to be convinced of such relatively recent studies.

That said, I'll convert all of my energy sources to PV cells tomorrow if someone gives me a way to do it without mortgaging the next ten years of my life.

<comment><USER13> > There's just too much politics involved

When tobacco was under attack the companies paid for scientists and doctors to spread misleading information; they paid for FUD.

Those same scientists are now employed by oil and energy companies and they are using the same tactics.

The only reason there's "politics" involved is because one side is deliberately spreading lies about the entirety of the science, even the bits that we are sure about.

<comment><USER12> Climate change is a really big deal. When we've had scientific movements of this magnitude, the face of the movement has always been a scientist (think Copernicus, Darwin, or Einstein).

The face of climate change is jointly Al Gore and the IPCC, which was formed from the environmental portions of the UN.

If the face of climate change was a scientist, I'd be more apt to believe it, and so would millions of other people of a conservative political bent.

 _An Inconvenient Truth_ is the seminal work on climate change meant to inform the general population, and a substantial bit of the movie is spent on the 2000 presidential election controversy.

Why in the world would anyone think that Republicans and political conservatives would just readily accept the information put forth by liberal politicians, merited or not?

And if I'm actively looking for the truth, how can I find it? I can't spend my lifetime doing my own research, taking my own measurements, experimenting and publishing papers to find out on my own. It's hard to find any material for lay people that don't have some environmental activist telling me I'm an idiot for no believing all the science Al Gore has already presented me.

Honestly, if human beings end up going extinct because we destroyed our atmosphere with fossil fuels, it'll be as much the gross mismanagement of the politics by environmental liberals that's to blame as every American eating burgers and driving SUVs.

<comment><USER14> Richard Muller and John Baez? Or is more that one face too many?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like to think of these and other effects from global warming as the planet's system of healing. The warmer the climate gets, the more ways it tries to heals, and the more damage happens as a result.

If I were to apply that theory here, how is this "slow-down" part of that process?

<comment><USER6> The planet isn't an organism with an immune system reacting to infections. It's a ball of rock that "couldn't care less" if there are beings living on it. The systems that exist on the surface of the planet are just physical processes reacting to other physical processes. Nothing more. Ocean currents aren't changing as part of a process of "healing" they are changing because they are governed by the laws of physics.

<comment><USER16> That is not completely true, virtually all the oxygen on Earth came from bacteria. Life interacts with physics.

<comment><USER6> The bacteria weren't attempting to seed life or "heal" the Earth by producing oxygen. It was a by-product, that by coincidence other organisms were able to develop to use.

<comment><USER15> Enough with the "heal" already. I was being metaphorical.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Space industry pressed to hire enough software engineers - <AUTHOR> https://spacenews.com/space-industry-pressed-to-hire-enough-software-engineers/ <comment><USER2> People always say there's a shortage but let a 40+ year old with great skills try to apply for the job lol.</comment>