deftnerd

Already ahead of you. Moved my children (all under 10) from Austin, TX to Ithaca, NY (above 42 latitude) based on long-term climate change forecast models and detailed regional models that I ran based on what data I could gather, as well as taking feedback loops into account.

I took regional agricultural production and soil quality, active regional environmentalism, presence of higher education (Cornell), water sources, historical wildfires, and more into account. I'm hopeful that I picked a place that will give my children a less frightening future than the rest of the country, at least for a while longer.

I'm working on buying some land now to start working on some basic agricultural production and building a home designed around "edge case" risks being less edge than normal such as extreme weather, temperature, vermin, and unreliable utilities.

Can you give us more information on the "Rubbish Beam", pictures, tech details, and why it's so expensive? You say on a request form that you're hoping to make it cheaper, but what's the biggest block to making that happen?

Is it just a standard grabber but with a cellphone holder and some kind of bluetooth trigger embedded in the "grabbing handle" that triggers the phone to take a picture?

The IPCC has historically released "worst case scenarios" that line up with the worst case that all of the people in the room can agree with. Because of this, "worst case" often ends up being "likely outcome" while worst case is exponentially worse.

We've been seeing events happen more and more with quotes from scientists saying "This wasn't expected to happen for another 50 years" [according to the IPCC reports].

Additionally, the IPCC notoriously makes their predictions algorithmically based purely on existing observations and doesn't take feedback loops into account. Those feedback loops are nearly guaranteed, but since they haven't been triggered yet, the extent of the feedback is hard to predict and thus is ignored.

It's because of these things that I tend to think that the IPCC reports are milquetoast. Even though they shock the public, they're actually doing a disservice by making people think they have more time than they actually have.

Plus, even if it was correct, most people will see this headline and think that we have 80 years to fix the problem and not realize that the bulk of the melting will take place before the 80 years is up.

My non-scientific rule-of-thumb with IPCC reports is to take the time and divide it by 10 as the lower boundary and by 5 as the upper boundary. This is to take into account the "1 in a 1000 year events" that seem to occur every few years now.

I personally expect the Kush-Himalaya ice sheet melt to be complete between 8 and 16 years from now because of a drastic and "unforeseen" weather event that accelerates it one year, like a stalled heat "blob" that camps over it for a season or a season of above-freezing rain that carves up the ice and carries it as melt-water downriver.

At the end of the page, there is a list of exhibits. The only exhibit marked as not being previously included is Exhibit 23.1 - Consent of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm [1]

It's just a few lines from KPMG saying "We consent to the use of our report included herein and to the reference to our firm under the heading “Experts” in the prospectus"

I think someone just forgot to include that attachment, hence the amendment.

[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1477333/000119312519...

Many areas around the world have storm shelters or bomb shelters.

Perhaps laws requiring community centers also function as temperature extreme shelters could be instated.

The laws would have to also provide funding to install and maintain AC and Heating systems suitable for the population around that area.

Additionally, if a business doesn't have AC or heating during extreme temperature alerts, it should close for the safety of the workers.

With Facebook's embracing of machine learning and their very deep dataset of personal information about users, this could be quite an amazing user experience and quite a terrifying prospect for privacy.

Facebook has a wealth of information on social relationship interactions and also on personal interests. Adding in information on romantic relationship interactions will allow them to (eventually, when the ML models are well-trained) provide amazing matches for users. The downside is that they'll now have a deep understanding of yet another aspect of your persona.

What are the dangers? How can they monetize this new relationship knowledge?

* Life insurance companies might want to know if someone is prone to date adrenaline junkies and be easily coerced into participating. * Insurance might want to know if someone "hooks up" frequently, which could indicate that the person is at risk of medical problems OR has issues with impulse control. * Dating profiles often match people by self-reported social activities like doing drugs, drinking, etc. That might be of interest to lots of companies. * Relationship going well? Expect to see a lot of ads related to co-habitation (joint checking accounts, moving services, etc) * If the dating service has a "feedback" component to allow people who go on dates to give information on aspects of the other persons personality, facebook might get information about a person that they don't even realize themselves and thus don't self-report. Such as the other person dresses badly, smells funny, needs dental work, tips well, etc. * If facebook determines that you tend to fall for a certain types of physical traits, ads featuring models with those traits will become a thing. * People don't give facebook every bit of information about themselves, but they do give it to dating services.

Think of all those questionnaires that ask about your opinions on abortion, if you want to have kids, if dating someone with different political beliefs is a hard pass, etc. Dating services use it to match people up who might be compatible, but Facebook will use it help advertisers get even more granular controls over their targeted users.

Even worse, if Facebook wants a certain political party to win, they could match up people who are firmly established in the political party they choose with people who are on the fence in order to let the dominant personality win.

* See what you look like in a certain outfit being put through its paces. A stock video of a bride walking down the aisle or dancing in a dress could have the real bride's face put in place so the bride can visualize how she'll look in different situations.

* A demo video of what life in a new house would be like. Pre-recorded video featuring actors waking up, eating breakfast, and living life in a home could have the actors replaced with the potential home buyers.

* Security tests... for facilities that have to look for "banned" people, occasionally a face could be replaced on the video to see if the security guard notices. This is similar to the TSA sometimes testing workers by putting in fake images of guns or bombs into the X-Ray display to make sure their workers are actually paying attention.

* Retroactively correcting visual media that is no longer appropriate. I would love a version of "The Cosby Show" where Bill Cosby was replaced by another famous black actor just because it would trigger my liberal guilt less. This could allow studios to craft contracts where if a star committed a grievous act or if they die, their likeness could be replaced throughout the series and they would stop receiving royalties for their visual appearance. Dialog could be re-dubbed as well to complete the retroactive continuity.

* Updating low-res video... If there is a very poor and grainy interview with someone, the image might be able to be enhanced more completely by replacing the subjects face with a higher resolution copy of their own face!

* Smart therapy mirrors... people who have had disfigurements or have body image problems could have a smart mirror that displays a modified image for either self-esteem purposes or to help them psychologically.

* Same applies for funhouse/haunted house mirrors... seeing a mirror image of yourself with a zombie-ified head would be a great illusion.

* Real-world facial masking... You know how people can 3d map the exterior of a building and then project an image onto it using that 3d map taken into account to pull off some spectacular illusions? [1]

Something similar, sans holographic technology, could be done to make someone appear like someone else. A camera and 3d scanner environment to track the facial contours and location, with a projector projecting the image of another face onto the real face. Similar to the scene in Bladerunner 2049 where the AI girlfriend rents a real-world avatar for a personal encounter with her boyfriend. [2]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSR0Xady02o

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuV2c-6js8w

I agree, but I think this highlights a structural problem with our economic system, specifically when it comes to population growth.

There are plausible reasons to decrease populations in regions or entire countries. With climate change getting more serious, we'll soon start having to move populations away from flood prone areas or areas with increasing desertification. Many of those towns and cities started their own infrastructure projects paid with bonds that assume a certain population, and thus tax base, growth.

Younger generations, for several reasons from despair about ecological future to high costs of living to stagnant wages, are opting to not have children. Other countries, like Japan, have struggled economically because of declining birth rates.

If we (the US) had a more open borders policy with an easier path to citizenship, we could use immigrants to boulster our population and tax base.

With migrating and shrinking populations, I can't think of other economic instruments to pay for local infrastructure projects that have routinely been paid with long-term municipal bonds.

Even if your expertise in your fields results in you making 30% more than your peers, collective bargaining raises the base level.

It sets a regional wage for a category of work that makes up the baseline pay for all other workers in that category in that region, you included.

Without it, wages become a race to the bottom with companies all attempting to compete with each other on hiring workers for the lowest cost rather than the highest dependability.

Not only recognition, but also video quality adjustments. A bank surveillance system often has to archive months of video so police can go back to try to find out if the robbers had been there before to plan their crime.

A smart AI surveillance system might have 4k cameras, but not save the video in 4k format.

Instead, everytime a new face appears, it can use the maximum resolution to take a profile photo of the face for archival purposes and to calculate facial recognition.

If integrated into the banks software, it could match the faces to associated accounts by noting what account was looked up while the new face was at a tellers window.

If a robbery is detected through behavioral analysis or gun recognition, then the recording system would switch from 720p @ 15 fps (for example) to 4k @ 60 fps. It could also not just alert the police automatically, but could quickly pull up the associated account information, clips of previous visits discovered through the facial recognition, and send that to the police or have it ready for their viewing.

I would go one step further. Nationalize the company.

There is always talk about "if companies are people, how do we punish them when they break the law?". Well, what about nationalizing them for the public good for a certain number of years that matches what a person would get in prison for a similar crime?

Purdue Pharmaceuticals could be put under the umbrella of Medicaid and ordered to manufacture generic drugs for the next 30 to 50 years (or forever if contributing to tens of thousands of deaths would be equivalent to a life sentence)

I think you have those reversed. Meat is incredibly packed with proteins and the calorie density is very high.

There were a lot of very interesting comments on a previous link "What if Consciousness Came First" [1] that I think shoehorn into this discussion pretty well.

Someone brought up the question of if there was a formal "programming language" for philosophy. [2]

One of the difficulties with discussing AI is that we don't know what intelligence is because we don't know what consciousness is. These are problems that are heavily steeped in philosophy, and if we ever want to work with philosophical concepts digitally, we need a proper programming language to do it with.

Ideally, it would be nice to be able to write out philosophical concepts and social behaviors and moral stances in a form that could be used as a ML training set to try to integrate with AI/ML decision making.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20516482

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20518867

The global disaster in that movie was a plausible plot concept. Humanity is already talking about geo-engineering concepts based on aerosols to reflect sunlight. The Snowpiercer universe just kinda took the 'Ice 9' from Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle" book and used it for geo-engineering.

If we had that kind of technology, we would probably consider it with similar disasterous results.

Technology that impacts the entire planet, wielded by a desperate species, can have disasterous consequences if things go wrong.

Lucky for us, a form of ice that is stable and has a higher melting point isn't a thing in our world...

Us genetically engineering hardy organisms to terraform our way out of the climate crisis is the more plausible 'oops' scenario. All it takes is one project underestimating the results of their work for things to go wildly wrong.

Oh, we've certainly lost as a society, but we'll likely survive as a species for a few hundred or thousand years, albeit at vastly reduced population levels. We're scrappy as a species.

We kicked in a climate shift that's triggering an unstoppable mass-extinction event that'll wipe out 99.9% of all species. Historically, recovery from mass extinction events like these take 50 million years for a new ecosystem to develop. We might survive through that, but it's longer than we've even existed as a species so we'll be nothing like what we are now.

I was a Gen X'r. My 9-year-old has started saying that he's Generation Omega - something he picked up from youtube - He believes that he's a member of the last generation (and I think I concur... things will get bad enough that by 2030 or 2040, people won't want to have kids because the death of the ecosystem and civilization will be a lot more obvious and something that impacts their daily life)

In anticipation of this, I moved to a region of Upstate New York that prediction models indicate will handle the climate impacts a little more gracefully. The goal is to build a self-sufficient homestead with longevity and extremes in mind.

Humanity cannot survive as a species like that though. We really need to start thinking of how to build town-sized or city-sized "arcology" habitats while we still have the resources and energy to do so.

Arcologies should be viewed as a backup plan to trying to save the planet. A sort of civilization time-capsule. If we fail to save our ecosystem and climate, then arcologies could provide a shelter for a few million people for a few thousand years while we figure out what to do next (engineering our biology to handle the environmental changes? terraforming? going off planet? expanding underground? engineering a new ecosystem?).

Sadly, arcologies are too expensive and would take so long to build that they're politically untenable with governments that either don't believe in climate change, or change every 4 years. Norway could probably do it with 25% of their Sovereign Wealth Fund.

I know it's fatalistic, but I honestly only see our chance of survival at this point is if someone cracks inexpensive and easy fusion power. With that, we could power a lot of carbon sequestration concepts that are just currently impractical. That, or a benevolent AI that takes over and forces a lot of uncomfortable changes to our society "for our own good"

I've actually been slightly interested in buying some cheap land outside of town and slowly planting trees to forest it over the next decade. The goal would be to plant enough trees to cover the carbon footprint of me and my entire family.

What I don't know is where I can find out which trees are particularly suited for carbon capture. From what I've read, fast growing trees will capture carbon quickly, but only if you harvest them, prevent rotting of the wood, and replanting a new crop.

Slow growth trees will store more carbon, but it takes a longer time for it to accomplish it.

I suppose it's like one of those "Good, Fast, Cheap - Pick two" situations. Is it better to capture a lot of carbon quickly to help the planet ASAP, or to kick-off the planting of trees that will capture carbon for the next 300 years?

Even when that's decided, how do I pick which trees aren't just suited for my area (relatively easily with native tree guides), but also well-suited for carbon capture and survival in an increasingly chaotic climate and ecosystem?

I've also been wondering if there is something similar to Content Aware Fill that can help process old 4:3 cartoons to 16:9.

A lot of the really old cartoons would use a background art image and would pan over it with the characters dong stuff to create a sense of motion. Sometimes the characters would move over a still background image but the 'camera's would zoom in.

Something that could extract the full size background image to apply it to the frames to enlarge the aspect ratio could go a long way toward revitalizing a lot of older cartoons. Especially fit could fill in any gaps using the opensource equivilent of Content Aware Fill (is there an FOSS equal?)

I've been trying to get my kids into Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Home Movies, Sealab 2021, the Simpsons, etc. If the video is wide screen they try it and enjoy it. If it's 4:3 they barely give it a chance because it's "too old"

Bollards and concrete planters are excellent for stopping a lot of mass going very fast, this is true.

One thing to keep in mind about the threat of "flying car attacks" is that weight requirements of staying in the air generally remove the "mass" part of the equation.

Someone could pack a flying vehicle full of explosives, but explosives that pack a big punch and that are compact & light weight are pretty regulated. Explosives that are easy to acquire tend to have more weight (fuel oil & fertilizer, for example). You could only pack so much in a vehicle before it couldn't take off anymore.

In general, I don't think flying cars would be any more of a risk than light aircraft, which have been around for decades without very many incidents of successful terrorism.

As an example, about a decade ago, and anti-tax nut flew a light aircraft into an office building that housed local IRS offices in Austin. It caused a lot of damage, but not serious structural damage and there were no fatalities other than the pilot.

I know this might seem controversial, but I feel that dictatorships and monarchies give the possibility of multi-decade or even multi-generation projects that would otherwise be impossible.

Modern government gets replaced every few years, and each seems to suffer from 'not legislated here' behavior that makes them cancel slow-growth projects created by their predecessors (especially in times of financial crisis)

There are huge downsides to monarchies and dictatorships, but that's one of the few upsides that I haven't been able to see in Democratic systems.

With huge problems facing our civilization regarding our ecosystem and climate, the solutions might require multi-generational solutions.

Also, does anyone else think that a democracy might not work on a multi-generational interstellar ship?

I'm in agreement. I moved my kids, all under 10, to a part of upstate New York that's slightly more "buffered" against climate change. It'll come here, but my best modeling shows that it'll be a bit more stable for about a decade longer.

I don't think we can fix this problem.

The best possible solution, at this point, is to try to build "habitats" for humans to survive in for as long as it takes for the ecosystem to reboot.

That obviously won't work for long term since historically, after a mass extinction, it takes about 50 million years for a new diverse ecosystem to get established.

We'll have to evolve as a species, both biologically and socially, in order to survive the extremes and lack of resources.

The question is if we can accomplish that evolution, even with the benefits of science, within time. Do we have 100 years? 200 years? 500 years? Even if we can survive in a mad-max style dystopia for 200 years, would we even have the ability to manufacture multi-generation shelters at that point? If we manufacture them now, would people stay in them even when the ecosystem hasn't yet collapsed?

How long can we live in an underground bubble before it falls apart and we're thrown into a world that's not hospitable for regular human life anymore? Can we survive as a species with a population collapse from almost 8 billion to a few dozen million?

The only "magic bullet" I can see saving us is if someone figures out cheap and accessible fusion energy. Nearly unlimited cheap energy could power a lot of otherwise impossible "moon shot" projects to try to save our species.

Personally, I do just clear cookies, but I've found a good Firefox extension that does it well for me.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/remove-cookie...

It has a convenient button that clears all the storage for the page in the current window. It remove the cookies, local storage and session storage. Then I just reload the pay-walled page and it thinks I'm a new visitor.

Consider using low quality images initially, buy then using JavaScript to replace those placeholders with higher quality images after the page has loaded.

It's a common technique that seems to satisfy both the crowd wanting near instant page loads, and the crowd wanting high resolution experience.

It's a valid critism. They decided to use Google Captcha and it often blocks 'advanced' users. ReCAPTCHA often has problems with Linux, non-chrome, VPN users, and users that use ad or javascript blockers.

That's the kind of advanced user that appreciates and uses an internet provider like Sonic.net.

It would be like a mobile phone service provider requiring people to pass a turing test if they call into the sales line from a mobile phone.

Gold star for Firefox! That's an excellent feature.

Ideally, it would be nice to enable phishing links to be identified before they are clicked. This could prevent the remote server from logging any metadata about the browser accessing the link (date/time, browser type, ip address, etc). It also prevents any possibility of browser vulnerabilities being taken advantage of.

What might be an interesting solution is to standardize an addition in the SMTP standard to require the ability to verify message ID's and also return some kind of Content Security Policy equivilent.

Every mail message gets assigned an ID. When you receive a message from support@paypal.com, it would be nice if your mail client could connect to paypal.com and ask if the message ID was legitimate and it would reply that it was, and that the only URL's whitelisted in the email would be example.com, anotherexample.com, etc.

Some downsides that would need to be addressed is that this would mean email clients would inadvertently expose their IP address to the sending server, and some thought would have to be used to prevent fraudulent emails from just replaying existing message ID's.

I just feel like there is a possible solution that the industry isn't seeing or implementing.

I wish that there was some movement on that feature as well, but with time new possible implementations have become available on desktop environments that I would like see extended to mobile.

Application Streaming [1] is getting pretty solid, and I would love to see an integrated mobile solution for that.

It would be a good way to have the easy access to applications, but keep the code, manage the security, and keep the data on the server.

It wouldn't allow access to data when offline, but I think that's actually a benefit when it comes to security. It could also be used by corporations to quickly secure lost devices since there would be no cached data, as well as lock down access at certain places such as when crossing the US border or when employees are on vacation (in other countries, especially). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_streaming

Are you allergic to mosquito bites? I have an allergy to their anti-coagulant or their local anesthetic. When a mosquito latches on, it starts burning, and afterwards, the swelling is as big as a US quarter coin.

I have similar reactions to ticks. The moment they latch on and start working, it starts a painful burning sensation.

Google requires all apps that are on Google Play to use Firebase, which is baked into the OS, for notifications. Developers might make apps available on F-Droid or through individual download, but most of the time, those are just the same versions available on Google Play and configured to use Firebase.

The problem is that while Android is OS, most apps use functions and OS-level API's available that are only available through the Google Play Services application. This is a good thing for people who have phones from manufacturers who don't update the OS's, but it's a bad thing if you don't want Google Play Services to run.

You don't want Google Play Services (or Google Mobile Services) to run because if it's running, it's talking to Google (even if you never configured an account) in order to use their hosted API's like location detection based on nearby Wifi AP's, push notifications, malware scanning, etc. Whenever it connects to those hosted API's, it POST's a unique device ID.

This is harder than it sounds. The current versions of the stock keyboard, clock, calendar, contacts manager, and even phone dialer all have Google Play Services as a dependency.

This is a good basic overview of the basic headers, but I suggest spending some time on Scott Helme's blog. He runs securityheaders.io, a free service that scans your site, and assigns it a letter grade based on what headers and configurations you've applied.

For instance, his explanation of Content Security Policy headers is much more detailed than in the OP's link.

https://scotthelme.co.uk/content-security-policy-an-introduc...

All the comments discussing the moral implications of harming insects are focusing on the wrong part of how useful this information is.

As the link says, this research indicates that we can use insects to do basic research on Neuropathic pain. Insects, being easy and fast to breed, and easy to manage in large quantities, makes this especially useful for research.

Now they can try all sorts of methods of tackling the problem, from drugs to gene therapy.

It's not, of course, proof that successes will translate to mammal or human models, but it's an excellent way to do some initial concept filtering.