We now have an effective vaccine for Malaria - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/18/us-malaria-vaccine-scientist-idUSTRE79H59220111018 <comment><USER2> This was a Phase 3 clinical trial published today in the New England Journal of Medicine: <http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1102287>

Not home yet or I'd likely have more to say.

 _Home now. Reading the article. First thoughts:_

* This is a vaccine for P. falciparum, which is the nasty form that you really don't want. Good.

* Funding comes from GSK and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

* These are interim results, looking at the older kids (5mo and up) in a 2-prong study (the younger kids haven't all hit the 12mo-duration milestone needed per protocol so this largely ignores them so far with more to come later). Caution. (Because there was no clear rationale given for why this is being reported now, in pieces.)

* Treated kids had higher incidence of meningitis. Caution.

* Treated kids had higher risk of febrile seizures. Caution.

* Generally, few deaths, so these kids seem to be well looked-after in this trial. Appropriate.

So far, so good. Interested to see the final Phase 3 results and to see how this holds up in Phase 4/postmarketing.

<comment><USER3> From my reading of the results, efficacy is only 35-55%. Does that seem low? Or is that good at this stage of a trial?

<comment><USER2> Phase 3 is basically the definitive clinical trial. Phase 4 is essentially keeping track of what happens after your drug comes onto market. Once all of the results are in, that paper will likely become the definitive paper on this particular drug (again, it's a bit weird that they did this prelim analysis without a clearly stated reason). So Phase 3 is the real deal in terms of winning approval to market the drug.

Regarding efficacy, it is definitely low compared to many modern vaccines which are in the 90+ range. But my understanding is that this is much higher than previous malaria vaccines. If the numbers are really true, then they could possibly save hundreds of thousands of lives per year despite the relatively low efficacy. And it should be a first foothold in terms of making immunologic progress against Plasmodium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As someone who worked in the development world for a year, I can honestly say that if this vaccine pans out, it would be the biggest development in recent history and would change the livelihoods of so many individuals and families.

If this doesn't deserve a Nobel I'm not sure what does. Bravo Joe Cohen.

<comment><USER5> The real trick is that the existing cultures themselves will have to quickly reconfigure so that this doesn't simply shift the problem laterally.

For example, initiatives to dig wells in various African countries have turned out to result in _other_ problems. Some nomadic cultures began staying put, and then they started overusing all the _other_ resources. The scarcity of water was a control in itself, limiting how long groups stayed in a given area. Removal of that control has led to desertification of areas surrounding the wells. And it also brought disparate groups into contact with each other for longer periods of time, which led to more disease outbreaks. Nomadic groups had fewer and briefer encounters with others before, limiting the spread of disease from one group to another.

Another example is the grave humanitarian crisis in Somalia. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to starve to death in the next few months. Due to raging conflicts, humanitarian aid cannot be effectively distributed.

However, even if the crisis could temporarily be averted, the problem with food aid is it undermines any possibility of local production. Farmers can't compete with free food dumped on the market, so they stop farming. Not being self-sufficient, now you're looking at not only providing aid, but _ever- increasing_ aid as the population grows, which means if you stop for any reason -- including civil war flaring up again -- now even _more_ people die: the ones you saved, and the children they have had in the interim.

See [http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,363663,00.html)

Cultures with high child mortality compensate by having high numbers of children. Once you get rid of the main causes of child mortality, you have to either stop having so many kids, or dramatically increase food production. Otherwise curing Malaria can result later in all the problems that accompany a lack of resources: _bigger_ famines, _increased_ civil strife and warfare.

<comment><USER6> > Once you get rid of the main causes of child mortality, you have to either > stop having so many kids, or dramatically increase food production. > Otherwise curing Malaria can result later in all the problems that accompany > a lack of resources: bigger famines, increased civil strife and warfare.

Much as what happened in Europe, this tends to self-regulate over a few generations: high natality is a requirement in high-death and low-income situations, where you need many children to have some survive (and help you in old age), and children are hands that can work and provide wealth.

As mortality decreases you need less children as they'll pretty much all survive, and as wealth increases you _want_ less children because raising them to your society's standards gets more expensive and there's a much bigger investment in each child.

Of course there will be 2-3 generations with high natality and low mortality, and an explosion of younger generations (likely leading to a few revolutions). But there's little you can do about that in the short term.

<comment><USER7> Yes - see Germany, Italy, Singapore and Japan for high life expectancy and low birth rate. Interestingly, children also become less affordable, as opposed to just less financially necessary.

<comment><USER6> Yep, noted that at the end of the second paragraph (might not have been clear enough)

<comment><USER7> Oh, no, you were really clear. I just did not read that paragraph. Oops...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So can anyone explain just why malaria was so hard to vaccinate against by existing methods in the first place?

<comment><USER9> There's a lot of complexity here I'm going to attempt to simplify. Apologies in advance if I glossed over any important details.

It all starts with what Malaria has evolved to do. The lifecycle of malaria requires both a mosquito and a human. It gets into a female mosquito, hangs out in her gut until she bites a human, jumps into the human and hangs out there for a while mucking about, and then jumps back to a different mosquito.

If malaria straight-up killed its host, it wouldn't transmit itself on to the next one. This means malaria must be really good at two things: keeping its host walking around and going undetected for as long as possible. It has lots of tricks it uses to stay under the radar. This all makes sense because the longer it can stay in the host, the more likely it'll get picked up by something else. Think of malaria like a spy that's infiltrated your population. You know one of your civilians is killing the others, but you can't figure out who.

It's also important to know HOW vaccinations work. There are four golden strategies used today:

\- Put a dead bugger in the body.

\- Put a neutered bugger in the body.

\- Put the bugger's coat (a virus-like particle) in the body.

\- Put the bugger's perfume (a protein marker) in the body.

All four of these strategies work the same way. Your body recognizes an intruder and teaches itself how to eliminate the threat.

We've established that malaria is good at going undetected. This renders the first two strategies ineffective. Even if we did introduce dead/neutered malaria into the body, the body will still have a hard time finding it when real Malaria enters the system.

We can't use the third strategy because Malaria isn't a virus. That leaves us with only one option: a perfume (subunit) vaccine.

A subunit vaccine is a vaccine where you take the perfume of a bugger and give it to the body saying "Anything that smells like this, you should probably deal with". These are difficult vaccines to put together. Proteins, like perfume, are a carefully constructed thing and are hard to perfectly replicate. Plus, given their complex nature, the body can get confused and build ineffective defenses since it's only given a protein to work with.

On top of all this, the malaria bugger goes through three different stages of its life while in the human body. If you target it late stage, you'll prevent further transmission but the human could still die. You want to target it early stage, preventing transmission AND protecting the human from symptoms. Unfortunately, your body only has 5 minutes from being bitten to to find the bugger and kick its ass before he effectively vanishes from sight.

So where does that leave us? We have a spy entering our country. We are already doing everything we can to destroy his transit before he enters our borders (spraying with DEET to kill mosquitos). We need to catch him before he masquerades as a citizen, otherwise we will never find him. So our only option is to look for signs of a spy and ruthlessly eliminate anything that fits the bill.

That's what RTS,S/AS01 does. In the 80s we were able to produce a protein from the malaria sporozoite (the first stage inside the human body) to get a small level of immunity in humans. The problem since then has been ramping up the immune response. The body needs to act fast (within 5 minutes of being infected) and with extreme prejudice (wiping out the sporozoites) off of very little training (a single sporozoite protein). Vetting this vaccination is also tricky, since it requires human field testing in Africa.

In other words, this vaccine is the culmination of 50 years of dedication, research, and hard work. It's also a miracle of modern science. Most importantly, it will save a LOT of human lives.

<comment><USER10> Many thanks for the explanation. You sound like a teacher; I feel like I've really learned something this morning.

Quick question: is there an issue with resistance when it comes to vaccinations? I understand the problem with creating better combative medicines is working out how to attack the critters before they produce resistance. Either way, it sounds like a profound breakthrough for affected countries.

<comment><USER11> Most diseases on the same scale as malaria were effectively wiped out by vaccination, because social pressure to get rid of them was tremendously high. The same would probably apply with malaria: vaccination programs would be so immediate and massive to give it very little chance of mutating quick enough to maintain the current (massive) level of infection. Even a reduction of 70 or 80% would make an incredible difference.

The only real problem will be price. GSK will want a lot of money, and most malaria-affected countries are poor. Chances are that the "developed world" will have to step in and sponsor vaccination programs to the tune of billions, making (mostly African and South-Asian) countries even more dependent on them that they are now. Some of them had just managed to get rid of old debts, and now they'll have to make new ones. I expect the debate on pharmaceutical patents will flare up again.

But it'll all be worth it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to recommend (without endorsing the opinions therein) this contrarian article I read about malaria, poverty, and Western attitudes towards Africa:

<http://www.guernicamag.com/features/2273/pogue_1_15_11>

I found it fascinating, as someone with the intent of (eventually) studying disease ecology, in particular, that of malaria in West Africa. It's a thoughtful and well argued essay, but not in the end entirely convincing to me. But it deserves to be more widely distributed, I think.

PS: Thanks to Instapaper, which made retrieving this article a matter of seconds. Interesting how one's expectations of the rate of information retrieval have evolved, speaking as a 40-yr old who well remembers waiting around weeks at times for books or journals to be delivered to the Reg.

<comment><USER13> I think there's something very patronizing and morally inconsistent about the kind of argument that is described in that article. Underlying its argument is a belief that the lives of all the people who die aren't important, that these deaths are somehow the proper and natural balance. In some ways it may echo the cultures themselves; when life is precarious and lost for no outward reason (such as by a disease like malaria) then individual life loses some of its meaning, people value not only each other but even themselves less.

Medically there's a tone of what-doesn't-kill-you-makes-you-stronger, which is kind of bullshit. Malaria might not kill native adults very often, but it is not harmless.

And economically, the argument is similarly patronizing. After going on about the native immunity many people have, it then talks about how economic disruption is causing migrations, leading to people (not just whites) who don't have the immunity to be exposed. The response: people should stay in their place. That the prerequisite for solving any problem is to revert to traditional structures and strengthen those structures (the same basic argument is made about poverty and many other African problems). The idea that Africans may in fact wish to have control of their own personal destiny is disregarded -- that if conditions were better, if economic forces were less manipulative, people might _still_ want to migrate, because the drive to better one's life persists even when life is okay.

<comment><USER12> I don't disagree. But I think the correlation between urbanization and malaria is one that would be very interesting to analyze, particularly where rural people are primarily cattle herders (and as such have beef for the _Anopheles_ to feed on).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Amazing dedication to work on something for 24 years.

<comment><USER15> Plenty of people working on projects far less interesting and far, far, far less worthwhile than this for 24 years.

<comment><USER16> Repetitive mundane task surely can be called "dedication"...

But in medical research have to try new things, adquire new knowledge, evaluate that new knowledge with all your previous researchs and don't quit your objective despite of failing for years... so yeah, i think the parent comment was talking about _that_ kind of dedication.

EDIT: missing word

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As somebody who lives in Africa (Ghana), I cannot overstate how important this could be. I hate malaria on so many levels.

Poor people die from it all the time. Wealthier people mistake it for a cold and die. It is also about as common as a cold here, so a lot of productivity is lost. Not to mention the huge amounts of money being spent on health care.

It is not a coincidence that the worst hit countries are the poorest, people can't afford treatment and the costs for the societies might actually keep many African countries in poverty.

Not to mention how inconvenient it is to not be able to sit outdoors at night, making sure your house is sealed off and spraying with poisonous insect repellants all the time.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is fantastic news. However, the vaccine won't be in production and available till 2015. Nearly 1 million people die every year from it; which means, about 1.5 million lives could be saved if the vaccine were in production today. I know it can't happen overnight, but still: 4 years?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not as much profit in this as in little blue pills, so it simply won't be a priority for big pharma, unfortunately.

<comment><USER19> Really? I'm bet it has to do with further testing. You could give a little bit of credit to GlaxoSmithKline for working on this for 24 years. This isn't exactly a good example of "big pharma" greed.

<comment><USER20> If it was indeed made by GlaxoSmithKline, then this is a good example of "big pharma" greed. Only, in this case, "big pharma" greed might end up saving millions of lives.

<comment><USER21> That all depends on the price. If the price is reasonable then fine. But typically big pharma that gets a lock-in on 'life' is anything but reasonable in their pricing, after all, what's the value of a human life.

The 5% profits over costs is promising, even if it leaves some wiggle room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was actually surprised to see no mention of Bill Gates or his foundation.

<comment><USER23> They have supported the PATH MVI, but I am not sure how much money they invested on this compared to what GSK did in the past 24 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> As I get older, I think more and more about my work being impactful on the lives of others. Not higher performance, better UI, greater convenience or less cost; rather, something that positively improves the lives of others.

That is really cool for Joe Cohen. Way to go.

</comment><comment><USER25> While this vaccine is an important development, there's still a _lot_ of work to be done. If you'd like to develop free, publicly available tools that help researchers improve treatments for malaria and other parasites, send a resume to jobs AT apidb DOT org. We need not only people with bioinformatics backgrounds but also web developers to help us improve resources like the malaria genome database, <http://plasmodb.org/>

<comment><USER12> I'm a programmer with an extreme interest in disease ecology (in particular, that of malaria). Please email me at my profile address and let me know if there's anything I can do to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> No, in 2015 they'll have a vaccine.

And they are only taking 5% profit over "costs" which sounds promising.

</comment><comment><USER27> This could have adverse effects, similar to medication agains HIV/AIDS. People will get a vaccine and reduce their efforts of protection against Malaria by mosquito nets and other means. I hope that will not happen.

<comment><USER28> I doubt people will back off of malaria at this point in the past it seems like once it starts getting under control in a region it keeps going down. There is a lot of anti-malaria momentum building up with awareness and malaria education only increasing.

The last few years have been success after success with the Global Fund and the Gates Foundation pouring in money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I hope that the discovery of vaccines like this increase in frequency over time. I'm not sure if that IS the case, but I'd really like it to be so that one day soon AIDS and Cancer are as benign as Polio.

<comment><USER30> Small note: cancer is not a disease, so it cannot be _vaccinated_ against

<comment><USER31> I think you need to clarify that sentence.

Do you mean cancer isn't caused by a pathogen? Because that isn't true for some cancers, and there are suggestions that all cancers are caused by viruses.

And cancer vaccines do exist, but they need to be individually created for each case.

<comment><USER15> Are there any examples of cancers caused by viruses apart from HPV?

Certainly it can't be true that _all_ cancers are caused by viruses, can it? For instance, some cancers are caused by radiation.

<comment><USER31> There are plenty of examples: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oncovirus> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HHV-8>

I guess not all are caused, but perhaps I can rephrase as all can be caused? It's only suggestions that this is the case, but it's not actually known yet. I certainly don't know.

This: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_Virus#Viral> says that 12% of cancers are caused by viruses. The true number may be a lot higher since more viruses are being discovered all the time. But even 12% is a lot if someone were able to make a vaccine for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> It sounds like this vaccine should be combined with some of the mosquito eradication methods highlighted in a recent HN link [1]. One commenter there ("Ox12") pointed to an article in Nature which argues the reduction in mosquito population would likely not be problematic.

1: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3043065> 2: <http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html>

</comment><comment><USER33> Hard to believe, but hope this turns out to be true. Would represent meaningful progress for the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. Clinical trials look very promising!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> effective at reducing malaria incidence by 50%...

Is that what we are calling 'effective vaccine'?

It's a major achievement, but if this is 'effective vaccine' then we already have an 'effective cure' to a number of cancers as well. A bit link baity.

<comment><USER35> The thing to remember about malaria is that is an infectious disease.

In order to have a malaria epidemic, Alice needs to be bitten by a malaria carrying mosquito. Alice needs to become ill and have a large number of juvenile parasites in her blood. She then needs to be bitten by another mosquito. This parasites becomes adults in the mosquito's gut and the mosquito then needs to bite Bob and infect him.

A vaccine that reduces the chances of an infected individual becoming ill effectively reduces the reproduction rate of malaria.

In a vaccinated area, one would expect to see reductions in the number of infected people during the high season by potentially an order of magnitude.

<comment><USER36> Malaria can survive in cattle, not just humans. Mosquitoes bite infected cows (which don't necessarily have symptoms), then bite humans. It's not like most infections diseases, which can be entirely eradicated just by vaccinating a critical number of people.

<comment><USER12> This is one of the reasons that malaria incidence goes down as the number of cattle being raised goes up. _Anopheles_ is happy to take a blood meal from a beef rather than a human.

<comment><USER37> Do you have a source for this? I find this weird. Wouldn't more food for Anopheles increase their population and hence the risk for humans to get bitten?

<comment><USER38> It's been observed that the anophele does prefer cattle. I just dug this though <http://www.malariajournal.com/content/6/1/100>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> made me happy.

</comment><comment><USER40> It sounds great but I don't think Africa needs an autism epidemic right now.

<comment><USER40> Attention Humor-Impaired Downvoters:

This is a sarcastic reference to anti-measles vaccine activists.

That is all.

<comment><USER41> We got it. It's just not funny.

<comment><USER40> There's no arguing about taste.

But I seriously don't want anyone imagining I think vaccines cause autism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Now we just need there to be a vaccine scare in africa so that malaria mutates and the vaccine is ineffective again

</comment><comment><USER43> Vaccine have dangers (not just risks), I can't welcome this news, I only see a new "product". I would be much happier if a cure was found.

<http://vran.org> <http://educate-yourself.org>

</comment><comment><USER44> I saw this article and I thought: less people who die = more people on the planet.

Isn't overpopulation the biggest challenge we are facing right now?

Who is working on this problem?

(if someone I care about was ill from Malaria, I would be happy to be able to cure that person, but my belief about overpopulation remains)

<comment><USER45> Overpopulation is a hard problem. There are complex socioeconomic reasons for why some countries have higher fertility rates than others. This is a heavily studied topic in health economics, but I am unwell right now and do not feel like digging through research papers. Instead, I will point you to a wikipedia article that talks about one (popular with economists) take on overpopulation:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition>

Sorry for the wikipedia link, but it is not a half bad article on the subject and it was easy to find. Basically, this theory suggests that increased income per capita is correlated with a decrease in a country's fertility rate.

There are arguments on both sides regarding the flow of causality, but if you wanted to know what was being done to address the challenge of overpopulation then that article above is a good starting point for your own inquiries.

(Also, just as a side note, it is probably the case that you were down-voted for being off-topic and not due to some overwhelming sentimentality. Maybe if you want to talk about overpopulation you should have written a blog post and posted it up, I bet that would have probably got a much better reception.)

<comment><USER36> You can subtract death rate from birth rate, and the world looks screwed. For China, this is (13.1 - 7.1) per 1000. For India, it's (21.76 - 6.23) per 1000. So for the world's middle class, that's about 2% population growth per year. Yikes.

But the you realize, that China and India have very few really old people. Now that they have decent medical treatment, the older Chinese and Indians live longer, pushing the population up. But they aren't having any babies, so in the long term we might not be growing like lemmings.

So you look at the fertility rate:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territori...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_territories_by_fertility_rate)

For China, it's 1.54, and it's 2.6 for India. Anything under 2 (plus a bit for the ones who don't reach fertility) means a declining population, in the long term.

<comment><USER46> And then you leap from the frying pan into the fire: Too many old people relative to the number of young people.

As far as I can tell, "health" isn't keeping up with "life", so we _are_ screwed, just the other way around.

But now we also have to divine the state of robotics and AI, say 100 years out, and my brain begins to strangle itself.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Japan's nuclear technology faces extinction - <AUTHOR> http://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Trends/Japan-s-nuclear-technology-faces-extinction?page=1 <comment><USER2> Although not the best comparison, oil industry has had some bad spills and other negative incidents. But oil is treated as too crucial of a resource to put too much restriction while nuclear power doesn't get much love.

This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with short attention span. I am all for higher safety standards on nuclear power. But when population loses interest, even critical technology will lack funding and research.

I wouldn't mind seeing some molten salt reactors[0] though.

On the other hand, China seems to think nuclear power is unavoidable.

"While the construction of new nuclear power plants has mostly stalled in industrial nations, China is pushing ahead to expand its nuclear power generation capacity.

China accounted for six of the eight new reactors where construction began in 2016 and the first three months of 2017."

\</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---

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

<comment><USER3> > This is part of the problem of having to rely on hype of general public with > short attention span

The nuke industry could hire some of the big tobacco lobbists to educate (as oppssed to misleading) the public. Compared to oil and coal, nuclear power is orders of magnitude cleaner. Closing nuclear power stations means burning coal most of the time, because the coal power stations are already there. The only renewable resources capable of providing base load that can replace _some_ of the nuclear power are geothermal, but to use that you need a suitable site and solar thermal with molten salt storage. Aging coal power stations could be probably converted to biomass as well. But none of these are going to fully replace nuclear power.

<comment><USER4> Solar, wind & batteries will power the future. It is a question of when not if. All others will fade into oblivion. So long, and thanks for all the Joules.

<comment><USER5> This comment adds nothing and presents no argument. And I find this sentiment really hard to understand. Why bet everything on solar? Nuclear technology already exists now. In fact it's existed for quite awhile. We could have gotten rid of coal decades ago, if not for irrational fear. It may already be too late to stop climate change. Why wait another decade or two (or three...) until the kinks in solar are worked out (if they ever are...)?

It's also a bit ridiculous to point out the improvement in solar technology, and ignore everything else. Sure solar technology is improving over time. So is nuclear. And it could probably be improving a lot faster if it got the same level of interest. The major accidents everyone thinks of were all by decades old reactors. We know of much safer ways to do things, and we've learned a lot from those events.

Even coal will improve over time. All that discussion of the coming robot revolution surely applies to coal mining.

<comment><USER4> Ok, let's find some common ground: we agree current nuclear reactors "could be a lot better". With very finite uranium, coal, and oil deposits on earth these forms of energy generation are only a short-term solution. As an aside, it would also be great to save those energy supplies for a dark and rainy day.

My prediction is based on Econ 101: the cheapest solution will win.

Nuclear reactors (and coal plants) are long-term investment projects with payback over decades. If you're close to the equator, it doesn't even make sense today. And the increasing cost differential between solar and nuclear/coal will mean that zone is expanding towards the poles.

I'm sorry if you're financially or intellectually invested in nuclear, but that's what i think will happen.

<comment><USER6> Even if you look U-235 alone, we have at least a couple centuries of it using conventional reactor tech, based on the known (explored) deposits, and very conservative estimates of how many more we will discover once existing stock starts to dwindle and prices start going up. Less conservative estimates give it closer to 5-6 centuries.

Now, if we use the tech to its fullest extent - meaning U-238 breeder reactors, rather than conventional U-235 ones - then fuel supply is infinite for all practical purposes. It also by and large solves the nuclear waste problem.

The main problem with nuclear isn't price per watt, it's the upfront cost. It requires a massive initial investment before you start getting anything useful out of it, and it requires an even more massive investment to start deriving benefits from scaling up. Solar, on the other hand, can start with a very small investment, and gradually ramp up, with a smooth curve of decreasing cost as scale increases. That makes it more attractive to private sector.

Nuclear is something that pretty much requires very long term planning and subsidies of the kind that only governments are really capable of, and in the era of democratic governments and nuclear scare among the general public, it's just not happening.

Well, except for countries that don't have to care about public opinion. China, for example, is building a lot of new nuclear plants. They aren't ignoring solar, either, and they're making massive investments there as well - but they're not putting all their eggs in one basket.

<comment><USER4> I'm happy to hear uranium will last for a long time, gives us a good alternative if the sun ever stopped shining (e.g. massive volcano or asteroid). But it doesn't really change the economics.

China's newly installed solar capacity in 2016 was 34 GW and growing fast, they currently have 20 nuclear reactors under construction with a capacity of 20GW. So solar is quickly outpacing nuclear even in China, and the trend is in solar's favor.

The only saving grace that nuclear has at the moment is the lack of massive battery capacity. Electric cars are quickly changing that, and then it will be game over for nuclear.

I think that potential investors of nuclear reactors see this trend now as well, which is why interest in building new nuclear reactors in market-based economies is quickly fading (of course it depends on latitude at which point in time solar/wind dominance is reached). Quite substantial cost overruns are also typical for nuclear power plants, but rare for solar/wind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uranium/Plutonium reactors are a dead technology. Toshiba lost vast sums of money when Westinghouse Electric went bankrupt recently, mostly for not being able to compete with more economical sources of energy.

That is not to rule out better (safer, simpler) forms of nuclear power, such as Thorium reactors, which is what India is promoting.

Imho, anyone starting a major new nuclear power project today, with the existing Uranium technology, has not done their sums right.

<comment><USER3> Natural Uranium is also okay if used in a reactor with a good track record like the CANDU. The problem is enriched uranium because:

\- you are basically burning a metal as scarce as platinum (U235)

\- nuclear proliferation risks

India doesn't have much Uranium, has mostly lost access to it because they developed nukes and has abundant Thorium resources. Their Thorium reactor design is based on the Candu PHWR which can run on natural uranium.

I wish the Indians the best of luck with their Thorium design, because then they could re-license it to other countries like Japan who's nuclear sectors went bust or are about to.

<comment><USER8> Commercial reactors are enriched to about 3% plus or minus a bit. Military (naval) reactors are very highly enriched to minimize the size needed. The cost and availability of the uranium has never been the problem. The Carter administration stopped the recovery of the unused uranium in spent fuel thus making the waste problem much worse for the industry. We have decades worth of perfectly good uranium sitting in spent fuel pools all over the country but are unable, by law, to recover it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> New Japanese reactor projects face formidable headwinds:

\- Increasing efficiency and shrinking population (long term shrinking electricity demand)

\- Intense public resistance in the wake of Fukushima

\- Should public resistance wane, there are dozens of functional but presently idled reactors that could restart faster than you can build and pay off a new reactor

</comment><comment><USER10> It would be quite ironic if irreversible climate change will come about because of ignorance of "green" anti-nuclear activists.</comment>


Waymo will provide insurance to passengers in its self-driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/12/19/waymo-teams-with-trov-on-passenger-insurance-for-self-driving-service/ <comment><USER2> They don't have a choice.

<comment> m-p-3 Which is a good thing.

<comment><USER2> Yes, absolutely. Interesting how it can be newsworthy though, huh? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Literally anyone who drives me in their vehicle is required to have this by law.

I think this announcement is about Trov, not Waymo.</comment>


It's Game Time for the Web – A Comparison Between Web Performance and Games - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/ben-and-dion/its-game-time-for-the-web-ca8a1ab753e0 <comment><USER2> He "sciences the shit".

Really?</comment>


NASA concludes first Open Source Summit, aims to make openness the default - <AUTHOR> http://opensource.com/life/11/3/nasa-concludes-first-open-source-summit-aims-make-openness-default

<comment><USER2> NASA is doing some strange things...

I've been using CLIPS as a library in expert systems for years. So, when NASA announced that they were set to auction off some patents related to expert systems, I started to wonder... What would happen if a government entity released innovative code under a BSD/MIT style license, but at some point decided to patent some key potential use cases? If the patents then found their way into a corporation, early adopters might be left in an awkward position. That is somewhat obliquely worded, but you get the gist.

So, I'd say that if NASA wants 'to make openness the default' they need to start with their IP policies.

<comment><USER3> They would likely go for the Apache license, which, while much longer, provides precise rules for Patents.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why no Amazon S3 like repositories? - <AUTHOR> There are many companies offering repositories. Are there companies with S3 like billing? Basically, where we are billed based on storage/bandwidth/requests? <comment><USER2> Most major services offer different package deals, though you seem to want an on-demand service. Amazon offers exactly what you want: [https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/set-up-ci- cd...](https://aws.amazon.com/getting-started/projects/set-up-ci-cd- pipeline/services-costs/)

looking around at other services: Gitlab won't add it to gitlab.com hosted repositories, nor does bitbucket seem to offer auto-magically rescaling + on- demand. [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ee/issues/3314](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/3314) [https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=host-in-the- cloud](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing?tab=host-in-the-cloud)

However you could run gitlab in an automatically scaling AWS package (or google cloud, azure, any other service that offers elastic packages).

</comment><comment><USER3> Usage-based and metered billing? Yep, that's what we do at Cheddar. [https://gtchdr.com/2sEFDAf](https://gtchdr.com/2sEFDAf)

</comment><comment><USER4> To some extent you'd be penalizing people for success.

"Your project blew up, pay us thousands of dollars" is a non-starter for a lot of places, and optimizing around small consumers isn't generally to a business's interest here.</comment>


A fully featured, easy to use Python wrapper for the Walmart Open API - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/caroso1222/wapy <comment><USER2> Seems like Walmart is focusing on SDKs to handle visual objects like buttons in HTML and JS and for Mobile. Good to see the community provide other SDKs but why the interest in a Python SDK?</comment>


Naloxone: 'Heroin antidote saved my life' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37519302 <comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting to compare this public health message with the extreme prejudice from the public: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36211792/meet-the- vigi...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/36211792/meet-the-vigilantes- who-are-attacking-heroin-addicts-in-manchester)</comment>


Should Rivers Have Same Legal Rights as Humans? Growing Number of Voices Say Yes - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2019/08/03/740604142/should-rivers-have-same-legal-rights-as-humans-a-growing-number-of-voices-say-ye <comment><USER2> Honestly, this sounds like a reasonable hack.

The dominant notion of property rights, wherein a given individual can do absolutely anything to something as long as they can get a government to say it's theirs, ends up being pretty flawed. E.g., the massive negative externalities that caused us to eventually adopt things like the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act.

I'd rather see a more thoughtful and nuanced system that carefully weighs competing interests. But people being what they are, giving legal personhood to rivers seems less ridiculous than giving it to corporations.

<comment><USER3> Corporations are groups of people that behave at least somewhat similar to people, nothing about rivers allows analogy to a person.

E.g. do i harm a river when throw a bottle into it, or do i give her a toy to happily play with? It surely looks happy carrying trash, after all she often takes trees and boulders by herself.

<comment><USER4> The word "corporation", even in the legal sense includes things like towns. In a slightly broader sense, it includes things like provinces and countries. So why could it not include something like the community of people who live by and or use water from the river?

Now I can see all sorts of _detailed_ problems with this (for example people upstream might have opposite interests from downstream, so the collective is not a coherent person-like entity). But I don't see a _fundamental_ difference between this kind of corporation and that of the existing kinds.

<comment><USER5> Your suggestion is not problematic per se, but it's not the one advanced in the article. There are some very significant differences.

First, if it's the _people_ who have the rights and not the river, than they can waive their rights as well. It's quite possible to imagine people who prefer development to a pristine river - this was the choice of every developing country after all.

Second, would the people have standing if the developments in question do not affect them or affect them positively? (e.g. diverting the river downstream, or drying up some swamps to halt some malaria-like disease).

The result is the giving communities those legal rights won't do for the purposes of those advancing this doctrine - many communities' political representatives will just waive the rights immediately, perhaps in exchange for some investment or another.

The purpose of this legal doctrine seems to be to stop developments even if the elected authorities agree to them, so they have to give the rights to something which can't waive them or trade them for something else.

Even if you could get one lawyer/rights group to agree a certain development is worth it, there would always be some other group ready to advance a claim in the "river's" name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Clearly a river cannot have legal rights. If the river bursts its banks and floods my house, can I sue the river? Clearly I cannot because how do I sue the river, who represents the river and how does the river have money to pay me? The river cannot appointment executives to represent its interests.

In reality the local government acts for the protection of the environment, so why pretend the river has rights? If you want cleaner rivers then pass legislation with appropriate level of punishment such as fines/prison.

<comment><USER7> River could do all of these. River can become a corporation which provides water as its main source of revenue in return for money which is held in a trust and used to pay people employed by the river to carry out its business. There are many implications to this idea, but it seems pretty sound alternative to having a river owned by shareholder for instance who pursue a profit motive.

The point of such an environmental corporation would be to ensure its survival over the long run, rather than shareholder profit. Could you sue a river, maybe, though the lawyers for the river would argue that the blame is not the river's but an act of god out of the control of the river and those who manage it.

<comment><USER6> The river does not have a mind, so any decisions on what actions to take in the name of the river are actually conducted by a person/organisation. In that case it is the person/organisation that becomes responsible. So the river is just a pointer deference to another entity. Just like a corporation is a pointer deference to the shareholders.

<comment><USER7> As I said the point of the river, is longevity and therefore just as a corporation optimizes for corporate profit a corporation representing the river optimizes for the river's longevity. I don't see how much difference there is between any corporation representing the profit motive of shareholders vs. a corporation representing the environmental motive of a natural resource. They are both simply ideas personified.

Currently people simply plunder natural resources where their longevity is an after thought and not really incorporated into the profiteering of their consumption. This has to change.

<comment><USER8> Why is the point of a river longevity? Left to their own devices, rivers change course and dry up. The key characteristic of a river is a flow of water not longevity

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> On the surface, it seems like a good idea especially in the face of upcoming "water wars" if some transformational technology involving cheap clean water isn't trotted out by mid-century.

If Capital wants billions of new consumer and their resultant markets, Capital better steward the natural resources that enable those billions to thrive.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ohio just banned this. [http://www.norwalkreflector.com/Government/2019/07/18/Ohio-l...](http://www.norwalkreflector.com/Government/2019/07/18/Ohio- legislature-bans-rights-of-nature-enforcement) (self paying video)

</comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of the discussion of the tragedy of the commons from yesterday.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20602217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20602217)

</comment><comment><USER12> A river receiving the same treatment as a corporation looks a smart idea that will solve a lot of problems. Can Columbia be purchased and merged in Amazon yet?

</comment><comment><USER13> Could Chicago exist if this were the law of the land from the beginning?

<comment><USER14> Who cares? Whether the answer were yes or no, it wouldn't have any bearing on the current discussion.

"This policy would've been bad in the past" not an argument against that policy now, especially ~180 yrs later.

Also, why is an alternate reality without Chicago a nightmare scenario?

<comment><USER13> If a policy would have prevented something we now enjoy from emerging in the past, we should at least be concerned about what it might suppress tomorrow.

Total environmental damage would be a lot worse if the populations of skyscraper cities were instead scattered across a broader, less intense sprawl. Environmental regulation can sometime be counterproductive that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The framers of the constitutuon recognized that land has rights too and made sure that geography, not just population, was part of the democracy via institutions such as the electoral college. Very forward thinking

<comment><USER14> I think this is stretching the stated intent of the Electoral College to the point of being disingenuous. The framers did want "land" to affect presidential election, but not because they wanted the land itself to be a separate legal entity.

Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

<comment><USER8> I never said they wanted land to be a separate entity but rather they sought to take into account geographic interests and not just individual ones when writing the constitution

<comment><USER14> Agreed, but "geographic interests" was an economic distinction. I don't see how it has any relationship to the original article, which is about giving rights to literal pieces of the Earth.

<comment><USER8> Because the first step in the law recognizing something has rights is first realizing they have interests to be protected.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Headless Chrome is coming soon - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/samccone/status/739166801427210240 <comment><USER2> That would be so awesome. The current alternatives:

1\. Use PhantomJS: It easy to script, but it lags over real browser by few years and development is stagnant. Many real website doesn't work in PhantomJS.

2\. Use Chrome/Firefox xvfb. You have real browser, but scripting is hard. E.g. even hello world examples like make a thumbnail of a website takes a lot of time to get right.

According to some rumors, headless Chrome existed before even Chrome was released to the public. Google use it to do web scraping. However, though headless browsers are great for developers, they are also great for spammers and ad fraud. So the main developer likely has conflict of interests whether to invest resources into making headless Chrome public.

<comment><USER3> Another downside to the selenium API is that there is no way to get any upstream HTTP status or network error. That includes redirects unfortunately.

I'm using a Chrome plugin for that purpose, which complicates the whole setup even further.

<comment><USER4> You could use a proxy like browsermob, which you can connect via the selenium API.

<comment><USER3> That's yet another moving part with its own error modes.

And I'm not quite sure (without having it thought through) how I would do something like get the URL of the last permanent redirect and correlate it with the original request. I'm sure it's possible somehow, but it doesn't seem exactly straightforward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If this would benefit you - please star this issue: [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=546953](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=546953)

</comment><comment><USER6> From the bug comments:

      headless: Implement screenshot capturing

      (based on patch from skyostil@, also sets default window
      size to 800x600 to enable basic snapshot support)

      With the --screenshot option, headless shell will save a
      PNG screenshot of the loaded page.

<comment><USER7> Just out of curiosity - when does Chrome consider a page "loaded"? Is it the classic window.onload or something fancier?

<comment><USER8> There are a few events that get fired during a page load. DOMCotentLoaded is fired when the page and all its assets are loaded, so that's usually considered the point at which it's finished loading. With modern JS based pages that sometimes isn't enough though, so new browsers have documentRequestIdleCallback which fires a callback when the browser isn't busy, which is quite useful.

<comment><USER9> Are you not confusing DOMContentLoaded with window.load? DCL doesn't wait for assets last time I checked, it only waits until the page is parsed and a tree has been created. .load waits for assets [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Events/DOMConte...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/Events/DOMContentLoaded)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just use XVFB.

      xvfb-run --server-args='-screen 0 1024x768x24 -ac' chromium-browser --user-data-dir <url>

<comment><USER11> I do to, but not for testing (we don't actually do any scripted UI tests, we should, but they are time consuming to write). We have a Python service that uses Firefox, Selenium and XVFB (through the awesome PyVirtualDisplay library, check it out) to log into a website that uses an annoying Java applet + scripting for authentication. This ended up cutting off a huge headache where previously we were doing this in a Windows scheduled task that needed an active console session to do anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could this be used for Selenium tests too? And with visual diff testing tools?

<comment><USER13> I don't see why not. You can do it today with headless options like PhantomJS (headless WebKit), and this seems to be intended for similar uses.

<comment><USER14> You can also do it with my project which is based only on Java, [https://github.com/machinepublishers/jbrowserdriver](https://github.com/machinepublishers/jbrowserdriver)

<comment><USER15> I haven't started using it but it looks like a great project (learned about it from ghostdriver homepage). There is a dearth of actively maintained projects that is compatible with selenium. While headless is not a requirement for us, having the node start and connect to selenium hub instead of selenium hub starting it on demand was extremely important. Phantomjs was the only other project which did that but it has not been very stable. Thank you for your work on this :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great news. In general I'm hoping this makes it easier to do browser testing in more CI services, rather than isolating this type of testing to services that have to specialize in it just to get it to to work.

One (minor?) benefit over Phantom is having working file uploads, though it would be awesome to have that in Phantom too.

<comment><USER17> We upload files in our integration tests using PhantomJS. At least, I'm pretty sure we do (we use Capybara to drive PhantomJS). Am I missing something?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another way to solve this problem is to have Chrome in a docker container that you can start up: [https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/docker- selenium](https://github.com/SeleniumHQ/docker-selenium)

<comment><USER18> I use the Chrome and Firefox docker-selenium containers in Testcontainers [1][2], my project for running containers to support JUnit tests.

I created this after numerous issues with PhantomJS compatibility and debuggability; Testcontainers instead uses the real browsers, and also offers automatic video recording of test sessions and VNC access for debugging.

Headless chrome support sounds like a good step forward, but if visibility into what's going on is limited then I feel there's going to be some way to go. Perhaps chrome remote debugging support?

[1]: [http://testcontainers.viewdocs.io/testcontainers- java/](http://testcontainers.viewdocs.io/testcontainers-java/) [2]: [https://rnorth.org/26/better-junit-selenium-testing-with- doc...](https://rnorth.org/26/better-junit-selenium-testing-with-docker-and- testcontainers)

<comment><USER19> Thanks for noticing, I upgraded the "Alternatives" section at [https://github.com/elgalu/docker- selenium#alternatives](https://github.com/elgalu/docker-selenium#alternatives)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome. I've been using Electron for browser tests which has been a big improvement over Phantom, but setting up xvfb can be a pain.

</comment><comment><USER21> Please link the source and not twitter next time.

</comment><comment><USER22> Great news! I hope this will allow to change the hard-coded limit of the maximum number of connection per server in Chrome [1].

[1] [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=85323](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=85323)

</comment><comment><USER23> Isn't chromium already bundled with chromedriver? Or at least it is on arch linux. (fyi, chromedriver conflicts chromium in aur because of this)

<comment><USER24> I believe the difference is that chromedriver still spins up all the normal chrome interface, which wouldn't be needed for the headless chrome. I think the stated deliverables help discern the intention:

1\. A library which headless applications can link to to. 2\. A sample application which demonstrates the use of headless APIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wanted this 10 years ago. It is fascinating that it took so long already.

<comment><USER26> There was no Chrome browser 10 years ago.

<comment><USER25> It does not matter which browser. All of them please.

<comment><USER27> Even IE and Edge _sarcastic voice_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm most excited about integration testing on sites with http/2 deployed.</comment>


The Man Who Made the UK Say "I'm Sorry for What We Did to Turing." - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/the-man-who-made-the-uk-say-im-sorry-for-what-we-did-to-turing-8fc468dcea6b? <comment><USER2> (Disclaimer: I'm an openly gay man working in technology).

A part of me dislikes how Alan Turing was given a pardon and apology. It's like they said it was wrong to persecute a gay man for being gay, but only if you help invent the computer and help defeat the Nazis.

What about all the other gay men persecuted under the same law? Why do they not get a pardon/apology? Do we have to help stop evil genocidal dictators before we get the same respect?

<comment><USER3> Initially I agreed with what you say here.

After some thought, one aspect came up that I'd be interested in your views about:

 _It 's like they said it was wrong to persecute a gay man for being gay, but only if you help invent the computer and help defeat the Nazis. What about all the other gay men persecuted under the same law?_

What you say here is so obviously _right_ that is is difficult to argue with. Maybe pardoning Turing is a necessary first step to see that everyone deserves similar treatment?

(Non-gay, white male. Not sure it matters in this response.)

<comment><USER2> > _Maybe pardoning Turing is a necessary first step to see that everyone > deserves similar treatment?_

Perhaps. But I haven't seen any moves to pardon all the other people as well. And the cynic in me things it won't happen.

<comment><USER3> My suspicion is that pardons don't miraculously happen. I suspect it happens because of the hard work and passion of people who want to make a difference.

<comment><USER4> The group of people who would campaign for pardons largely overlaps with the group of people campaigning for equal treatment under today's laws. (Same age of consent was law in England & Wales in 2001; 2009! for Northern Ireland; protections for discrimination - partial since 2003, full since 2010; gay marriage since 2014, civil partnership since 2005).

There's only so much you can campaign on.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingd...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "I'm sorry for what we did to Turing". On the other hand, if you don't happen to be a genius, tough! The countless, ordinary blokes in the street who happened to be homosexuals and were prosecuted in the 1950s and earlier can go hang as with the millions of others who with hindsight suffered unfairly at the hands of various laws of the land in past centuries.

However it seems to me that for people alive today to apologize for laws made by people now dead is a cheap, meaningless (reform laws on gay sex were passed long ago - that's an 'apology' that means something) gesture. I'm all for memorials and public honourings of people like Turing (I read the Hodges biography a long time ago and was greatly moved) but I wish people would stop cheapening the word 'apology'.

<comment><USER6> Of course it is and it assumes that we are also superior to those that came before us and had different morals.

<comment><USER7> Well, that's only because non-bigots _are_ superior to bigots, all other things being equal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember following your campaign when it happened on HN. I was impressed that someone took a stand for Turing.

Congratulations jgrahamc and thank you!

</comment><comment><USER9> I always liked the speculation that the original Apple logo (the rainbow one) was a reference to Turing. He (allegedly) killed himself by taking a single bite out of a cyanide-laced apple, and the rainbow stripes are a reference to his homosexuality.

As far as I can tell, the idea is almost entirely without merit - but it's a nice idea.

<comment><USER10> The real story of the design is pretty interesting though [http://creativebits.org/interview/interview_rob_janoff_desig...](http://creativebits.org/interview/interview_rob_janoff_designer_apple_logo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I knew virtually nothing about Turing until reading Neal Stephenson's 'Cryptonomicon' around 15 years ago. I wonder how many people actually learned about him (and some aspects of his life, despite the novel being alternate/historical fiction) for the first time in this way.

<comment><USER12> No, Hodges biography for me. But now perhaps all the younger people will be introduced via the new film.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What's really nice to consider is the fact that Graham-Cumming is an avid Hacker News user. :P [0] Can't even imagine how awesome it would have been if Turing was able to be so as well(although he would have died long before Hacker News ever existed).

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jgrahamc)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm sure may of you are aware of Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde's prosecution for gross indecency (and if you're not you most definitely should!), but you should all also learn about the similar prosecution against Roger Casement. He was the father of human-rights investigations and made a huge impact with his investigations of human-rights abuses in Peru and the Congo. Mario Vargas Llosa (Nobel prize-winner for Literature) wrote a book detailing his life called The Dream of the Celts. Highly recommended.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are rather different cases.

Casement was tried and convicted of treason for trying, during World War I, to get Germany to support an uprising in Ireland against Great Britain. It's true that his alleged homosexuality didn't help his case.

<comment><USER14> Oh of course, there's little doubt he committed treason, but the fact that his homosexuality was used to ensure that a fair trial was impossible is what I was trying to get at.

Are there any other similar cases to Turing/Wilde/Casement that I don't know about?

<comment><USER6> The treason part of it was pretty cut and tried. The blackening of his character was necessary for political reasons, not to ensure a guilty verdict.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm not sure that a government can meaningfully apologize for anything when all the actual participants are dead, including (but especially) the victim.

It's the half-assed, social justice warrior version of a government agreeing that things done in the past are awful. Why stop with Turing? 30,000 years ago one of your ancestors murdered a woman's children, held her captive, and raped her repeatedly. Why not apologize for that? Or for some Babylonian genocide that's 5000 years old?

It's fucking pointless.

</comment><comment><USER16> _"... After 55 years of shameful silence, this gentle geek made Britain apologize for Turing's death ..."_

That he did, here's an image of the PM's apology, broadcast on twitter ~ [https://twitter.com/peterrenshaw/status/533509433414795265](https://twitter.com/peterrenshaw/status/533509433414795265)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a great post putting some human interest onto a story about how slowly Britain is coming to terms with it's place in the world. I am glad jgrahmnc put his effort into this and that so many supported him.

But really the responses here are appalling - this was a small victory in a war for a better world - and unless we take our victories and celebrate them the defeats will cripple us.

Well done jgrahmnc, well done even Gordon Brown (this being I think the only thing he did right as premier) - now we have all got work to do to make a better world. And we can't afford to keep killing off the geniuses.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is absolutely not an apology. Anyone can apologize when their culture tells them some action was wrong. Whether it's persecuting homosexuals, jews, blacks, or whatever. But the fact is British law still persecutes minorities, for example incest is still illegal and people are in prison today for committing that offense. Of course most people agree that it's "wrong" or "immoral" or "sick" \- just like they did with homosexuality 50 years ago. So until those other similar persecutions are stopped, this isn't an apology.

<comment><USER7> I assume we're talking about incest between consenting adults here. I still think it's pretty fucked up, generally speaking (I really don't think you can have an equal power relationship between a parent and a child, even if the child is an adult), but I have to grudgingly admit that it probably shouldn't be criminal.

(I'm going to regret saying anything here, aren't I?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Congratulations jgrahamc ! Thank you for your persistence! Truly horrible what happened to somebody who did a lot for Britain, computer science and the world.

</comment><comment><USER20> A job well done. Thank you jgrahamc for your hard work on this issue. I know it's not a general apology to everybody who suffered under such a world, but it's a big step towards everybody learning how to treat each other decently.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've read his name before, but I don't know where.

Edit: ah, he's a gopher

<comment><USER22> More than that, he is one of the more prolific commenters/submitters here :).

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bravo!

</comment><comment><USER24> Great work! Loved you talk at dotGo too.</comment>


Quora's Notification Settings  - <AUTHOR> http://oothenigerian.com/quoras-notification-settings?ref=nf <comment><USER2> Facebook has exactly the same interface (<http://i.imgur.com/EwrHR.png>) only much longer (~60 checkboxes not including one for each external app).

Horrible.

If that's not a middle finger to all users (is is that hard to implement a simple "Select All/Deselect All"?) I don't know what is.

<comment><USER3> Here is a bookmarklet I made to uncheck all those boxes automatically :)

[http://cantuse.it/2010/09/how-to-disable-all-emails-from- fac...](http://cantuse.it/2010/09/how-to-disable-all-emails-from-facebook- bookmarklet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> People have been suggesting this design is some sort of mistake. I don't think so:

1\. Email notifications have a very high value for Quora - they drive users back to the site. 2\. A fair number of users unsubscribe by clicking the "unsubscribe" link at the footer of emails 3\. This design ensures users clicking this link will only ever unsubscribe from a subset of email notifications.

This way, users end up with an inbox that looks like this:

<http://www.contrast.ie/blog/getting-your-users-on-board/>

If a user wants to unsubscribe from everything, they have to have the presence of mind to visit this page, and then untick every single checkbox. This is effortful. Geni.com were criticised for using this exact dark pattern and ended up adding a single-click "Unsubscribe me from all Geni emails" feature:

<http://wiki.darkpatterns.org/Roach_Motel#Example:_geni.com>

The real question is whether Quora should be criticised for using this design pattern, or is it an acceptable practice?

<comment><USER2> I don't want to be coerced into vising a site just because it's hitting my inbox, I have enough incoming mail as it is.

If a site respects me by allowing me to _easily_ remove all email notifications, I'll be much more inclined to respect it back by giving it my business.

<comment><USER5> > _If a site respects me by allowing me to easily remove all email > notifications, I'll be much more inclined to respect it back by giving it my > business._

In the unlikely case that this is actually true for you, not just the way that you like to imagine yourself to behave, it certainly is not true for most users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Groups/Which-has-more-e- mail-s...](http://www.quora.com/Facebook-Groups/Which-has-more-e-mail- settings-Quora-or-Facebook)

</comment><comment><USER7> As long as they have sensible default settings (which I think they do), having detailed control of the types of notifications you want to receive is perfectly fine. If they decide to change default settings to something less desirable, then I think this would be more of a problem.

<comment><USER8> Detail isn't the problem, it's that it's needlessly complex to just say "stop sending me email". I shouldn't have to click 20 checkboxes so I can stop being spammed--just make me choose one.

<comment><USER7> At the bottom of each email, Quora provides a link that lets you stop receiving all notifications from them. It's a two-click process.

<comment><USER8> Why not add the same link to the email settings page?

<comment><USER7> My guess is that they didn't think of it and no one has requested this feature. Here's a link to a list of feature suggestions submitted by active Quora users:

[http://www.quora.com/Quora-User-Feedback/What-features- would...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-User-Feedback/What-features-would-make- Quora-better)

Of all the suggestions, Khalid's suggestion seems most relevant to yours:

"I just signed up, and was a bit horrified to see 40 odd possible e-mail notifications I could receive. But I was disappointed not to see a link to an RSS feed of those notifications." ([http://www.quora.com/Quora-User- Feedback/What-features-would...](http://www.quora.com/Quora-User- Feedback/What-features-would-make-Quora-better/answer/Khalid-J-Hosein))

Note that his main suggestion is to have Quora provide RSS feeds in place of email notification as opposed to adding a button that lets users disable all email notifications.

Like I said earlier, their sensible default settings make this feature somewhat unnecessary.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There isn't much point criticising possibly the least used part of an otherwise well designed site. Quora are certainly aware of the page but have probably prioritised their efforts elsewhere.

Instead, let's be constructive. What things do you like about Quora's design or how would you redesign things that you don't?

<comment><AUTHOR> If I were Quora, I would include a 'daily/weekly summary' option. That way, people will get one notification with all details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> What happens if you do this and a lot of users click the "report spam" button?</comment>


Why Uber Engineering Switched from Postgres to MySQL (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://eng.uber.com/mysql-migration/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm.. well, that same guy also wrote about how and why Uber migrated from MySQL to Postgres back in 2013 [https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/53683323/migrating- ub...](https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/53683323/migrating-uber-from- mysql-to-postgresql)

Guess they learned from their past mistakes.</comment>


Desperation forces Nokia to cut Lumia price in half - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2012/07/16/desperation-forces-nokia-to-cut-lumia-price-in-half/

<comment><USER2> That's nothing, Apple UK are so desperate for people to use the iPhone 4S that they're giving them away free _. Brits must really hate Apple products.

_ With a 2 year contract. So not free at all, in the same way that the Lumina isn't $50

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not cutting price in half. Non-subsidized price was 400 USD. Now it's 350 USD. Why would you ever mention subsidized price? It depends on carrier and contract details.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "Non-subsidized price was 400 USD. Now it's 350 USD."

Citation needed.

AFAIK, the price-per-unit AT&T is paying to Nokia is a trade secret.

<comment><USER3> Look on ebay.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is circular logic at its finest. eBay didn't cut any price by $50.

<comment><USER3> If original price is cut by $50, then phones on eBay will become cheaper too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Maybe they would have sold more if it were available on more than one carrier. My service with Verizon is too good for me to switch carriers over a phone.

</comment><comment><USER5> Only the advance payment is cut in half. I assume the remaining instalments are the same.

</comment><comment><USER6> with its WP8 incompatibility announced, i doubt this would help much.. i guess they are just trying to minimize the loss.

<comment><USER7> I'd be pretty surprised if Nokia's marketing team haven't already some some price sensitivity analysis (maybe based on past promotions or variations in pricing across carriers or territories) to determine the expected change in revenue from this line. I would _guess_ that you're right, and this level of price change as presented to the end consumer isn't going to drive sales to any meaningful degree. It's possible though that the promotional effect will have a bigger impact (i.e. some percentage people who haven't heard of or noticed the device before will purchase based on other factors).

Either this, OR some marketing director somewhere needs to be seen to be doing something.</comment></comment>


Making a Numeric Type in Swift - <AUTHOR> http://www.fabiancanas.com/blog/2015/5/21/making-a-numeric-type-in-swift

<comment><USER2> Improvement: add multiplications "double times T" and "T times double" and division "T divided by double", all returning T.

That allows you Tom for example, compute how far a return journey to a city at Distance d is.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are many ways to continue to extend the `Distance` type, and many other types that can be constructed in the same fashion. Each extension should be considered in the context of the code base it's going to operate in. For example, it's not difficult to create a new protocol, some generic functions with type constraints, and end up with an `Area` type with a fully correct relationship to `Distance`. I may write about such extensions as I continue to explore this space.</comment></comment>


Building a universal REST API for Arduino - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/marcoschwartz/aREST

<comment><USER2> If it is an API, then it should be exposed as functions to be called remotely. Learn fsckin' RPC principles instead of running into the overhyped and underspecified REST.</comment>


The Lost History of Helmand (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/kabul_city_number_one_part_3

<comment><USER2> I also spent a few months deployed in Helmand and Farah provinces in 2008. My platoon didn't go to Kajaki Dam in particular.. we saw a few little signs of what this article talks about everywhere. The guys in the line company that served in Lashkar Gah and Kajaki remarked about how bizarre the history was. I'm blown away.

The whole concept of "Technocracy" interests me to no end. Eisenhower warned not just of the Military Industrial Complex in his famous speech at the end of his presidency - he also warned of the repercussions of state-sponsored research and of those who were conducting it, and for what purposes (check out page 10): [http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents...](http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/farewell_address/Reading_Copy.pdf)

"..there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties."

Eisenhower knew that we were learning so, so much about the world. Our ability to reason was, and is, unlocking so many secrets to the nature of nature itself, that there was a never-ending pressure for top-down, ambitious projects - especially just following the dropping of the bomb and the ending of WWII.

<comment><USER3> Its interesting how the Apollo Program, starting just a few short years after that speech, has become a driving force for the technocrats to push such projects. How many times has the something like the phrase, "we put a man on the moon, we can do this" been uttered in relation to some omnibus R&D project?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's also about this time that the awareness started to develop that there were problems with no technical solution. This was a key point of many of Garrett Hardin's writings. Nuclear weapons and supersonic transport were two of these. Another concept of his was that "just because we've got the technological capability to do something doesn't mean that we should do it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's bizarre to watch that video. I spent a year there in Helmand. I recognize Kajaki dam and the streets of Lashkar Gah. I must've driven those roads hundreds of times.

One of our interpreters actually grew up there in Lashkar Gah and told us stories of the Taliban and how they would rape boys. He said things had become much better, but we still saw some pretty miserable stuff, even outside of the typical violence, particularly the treatment of women.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are some fascinating pictures of Afghanistan in the fifties and sixties at [1]. While I'm sure not all of the country was like that, they do seem show people trying to participate in the modern world. Modern buildings, women working, education, industrial activities, etc.

More pictures at [2] and [3].

[1] [http://www.retronaut.co/2010/10/once-upon-a-time-in- afghanis...](http://www.retronaut.co/2010/10/once-upon-a-time-in-afghanistan/)

[2] [http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/07/afghanistan-in- th...](http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/07/afghanistan-in- the-1950s-and-60s/100544/)

[3] [http://englishrussia.com/2011/07/21/the-afghanistan-of- the-5...](http://englishrussia.com/2011/07/21/the-afghanistan-of-the-50s-60s/)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> NB: This is a resubmission of the original link rather than the blogspam I happened to have been forwarded myself earlier.

Thanks to teh_klev and dmix for pointing me straight: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7209366](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7209366)</comment>


Posting a job for a freelancer .net framework dev? - <AUTHOR>

how do i post a job for a freelancer developer? it's my first time. thanks for the help! <comment><USER2> Wait for the monthly hiring post. The next one's on 1st April. See past ones here - [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

Edit: Out of interest, what type of work do you have to offer?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. About your question - We're looking for a full-stack developer with proficiency using the .NET framework (C# MVC, ASP.NET) and MS- SQL. We're building a SaaS web app that we indent to scale, and currently trying to complete beta version.</comment></comment>


Are Programmers Engineers? - <AUTHOR> http://slashdot.org/story/03/03/30/1914239/are-programmers-engineers <comment><USER2> I've been called an engineer when I've been programming, and I've been called a programmer when I've been engineering.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about software engineers? Where do they fall?</comment>


A web assembly Lisp programming language - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wasplang/wasp <comment><AUTHOR> I originally thought this was going to be the Wasp Lisp that worked with MOSREF for pentesting [1]. I am interested in Lisps, and perhaps this can replace some JavaScript use cases.

[1] [https://github.com/swdunlop/WaspVM](https://github.com/swdunlop/WaspVM)</comment>


Announcing Nitrous Desktop for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nitrous.io/2014/01/21/announcing-nitrous-desktop-for-mac.html

<comment><USER2> nitrous.io provides an interesting service. I have experimented with the free tier and I am considering going on a paid plan. One big plus is the live collaboration support (I have not tried it, just read about it).

One thing that I am not sure about (some clarification would be good): the higher level paid plans are advertised to (soon) have custom domain support. So, in addition to being a development platform, is it also meant for deploying web apps that don't need to scale to large numbers of users?</comment>


Evaluating Splatoon's Ranking System - <AUTHOR> http://www.evanmiller.org/evaluating-splatoons-ranking-system.html

<comment><USER2> If memory serves, Nintendo hasn't been very enthusiastic about traditional multiplayer mostly due to negative player interactions (I recall seeing people being autobanned from Smash Bros because of repeatedly attacking the same person). They just want their players to have fun, and I think that it's possible (likely?) that Nintendo wants the ranks to be inflated. I'm sure there's some correlation to the fun factor and improving your own rank, and the server does not need to use that letter grade to make matches.

I think there may be an inflated letter grade for the players to show off, but the server ranks players against each other by another metric that is only loosely tied to that grade.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't believe the reward system works as described, because I have personally seen rewards of anywhere from 8 to 12 points for victories in B and A ranked games. My guess is that rewards are based on the difference between your rank and the average rank of the enemy team; being lower rank confers a bonus, and vice versa.

The more important missing factor, however, is that the game penalizes players for disconnecting, making you eat the 10 point loss regardless of your team's performance. This makes sense, as otherwise, cheaters would disconnect or turn off their console as soon as they started losing. However, because the game is riddled with connection errors and network bugs, it is extremely common (and frustrating) for a match to go well for you, only to be kicked out near the end due to network errors and count a loss anyway.

If only one player disconnects, then their team will almost always lose, and the model remains unchanged. However, it's usually the case that a significant portion of _both_ teams will disconnect. This results in a point deficit that this model does not account for. Example: normal games are 4v4, resulting in (ignoring my previous comment about rank-relative rewards) an even exchange of +40 points (to the victors) and -40 points (to the losers). However, if two players disconnect from each team, then only 20 points total will be rewarded to the remaining victors, while both the losers and the two "winning" disconnectors will lose 10 points a piece, resulting in a loss of 60 points, and a deficit of 40 points.

I would estimate that I have lost several ranks worth of points due to disconnects alone; just yesterday I lost around 50-70 points after a series of infuriating network errors. So my guess is that in the long run, disconnects more than compensate for the occasional +10 point bonus this blog post exposes.

Splatoon is an innovative take on the team-based shooter genre, and probably the most fun I've had with such a game since Team Fortress 2. But problems like frequent network errors and lag (probably exacerbated by the fact that matchmaking is cross-region and a significant portion of the active playerbase, especially in higher ranked games, is Japanese), flaws in the ranking system (sharing ranks between wildly different game modes, making players suffer the full loss penalty when their teammates disconnect) and matchmaking system (frequently pairing players up on imbalanced teams of e.g. 4 snipers, with no opportunity to change your weapon after the fact) do put a damper on my enjoyment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know if this is what you're referring to, but the article does say:

> (The reward or penalty is sometimes adjusted when lopsided battles occur, > for example, rewarding an extra 2 points to an underdog team. For purposes > of this analysis, we'll ignore those adjustments.)

The disconnection penalty does sound interesting, though. You could even argue that the network errors are a kind of balancing away from the trend that this article describes, by forcing ranks downward - although I doubt that was deliberate on the part of the developers :-)

<comment><USER3> Ah, I did miss that.

Also, lest I scare people off from Splatoon, I should note that I spent $300 on the Splatoon Wii U bundle just to play it, and would do so again in a heartbeat. The core game design is very fun and innovative, especially in the way that it makes (through the art style and the deliberate lack of text or voice chat) a very competitive/"scary" genre palatable to people that don't consider themselves to be "hardcore gamers." And believe it or not, the (optional) gyroscope-based aiming controls (tilting the gamepad in your lap to make minute adjustments to aim, not uncomfortably pointing it directly at the screen like a wiimote) are (IMHO) significantly more precise than that of any other twin-stick-based console shooter (though nothing can hold a candle to the ol' keyboard and mouse, for sure).

My only complaints are due to flaws in the "meta-game," like the matchmaking system and map/mode rotation systems. And it's only because I like the core game so much that I can be annoyed by the meta-game.</comment></comment></comment>


Space changes how genes are expressed – NASA twin study - <AUTHOR> http://www.astronomy.com/news/2017/10/twins-study <comment><AUTHOR> tons more info available at the NASA site: [https://www.nasa.gov/twins- study/](https://www.nasa.gov/twins-study/)</comment>


Researchers Eliminated HIV from the Genomes of Living Animals for the First Time - <AUTHOR> https://time.com/5618644/hiv-gene-editing-cure/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original publication in Nature Communications: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10366-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10366-y)</comment>