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You know how Trump's slogan is "America First"? Well, it's not a coincidence that America First is the actual name of an organization that thought Hitler didn't need to be stopped.

If you don't think there's any association between America First and Nazis or Hitler, check out this and this.

dom

On the other hand President Trump just lost all the senior state department officials.

See. Your opinions here are questionable because you base your beliefs on blind headlines from partisan sites. Then you spew it out as fact for the world to notice.
Here is the org chart.

The Undersecretary for Management and 3 others under him resigned.

At this point you can realize that what you just said and your thoughts from what you just believed are really, super wrong when faced with facts, or ....
You can pretend like it is no big deal and that all the rest of the information you get in that way is fine so there is no need to reevaluate any of your positions on things.

Sometimes Etch-A-Sketch is better, Photoshop has a multi GiB installation size, a growing hodgepodge of not very unified tools because they grew there and can't change cos user-base, requires a subscription service and insists on "managing" your media library and by extension you life... You yearn for the power and simplicity of Photoshop v1.0, but it's no longer available, enough is enough - you say fuck Photoshop and you settle for an Etch-A-Sketch, spend more time actually drawing things rather than being distracted by shit.

Of course sometimes you're still forced to use Photoshop because the Etch-A-Sketch doesn't have a fricking magic wand, although the overhead of going back and forth between AFF (Aluminium Fillings Format) and PSD is such a pain that sometimes you just grind through it manually with those primitive x y dials. I've considered at least patching multiaxis input device support (AKA a mouse) to make this easier... too far? what are we talking about?

San Fransisco has a population density of 2700 people / sq mile.

Where did you get your numbers?

San Francisco is about 47.9 square miles (124 km2)[17] in area, making it the smallest county within the state, and with a density of about 18,451 people per square mile (7,124 people per km2), it is the most densely settled large city (population greater than 200,000) in the state of California and the second-most densely populated major city in the United States after New York City Wikipedia

LA and NYC are around 4600.

What? No! LA is 8200 or so per square mile(less than half of San Francisco), and New York City is 28,052.5, which is higher, but the fact is, the geography in New York City is very different from that of San Francisco. The hills alone are quite challenging.

Really crowded areas like Mumbai are around 63k.

Mumbai is not my idea of a standard to aspire towards. They'd be better advised to disperse their population.

You could fit a lot more people in.

Not with your bad numbers, and not without a real plan. You can't just throw numbers around with no regard for reality.

Biden is probably like Palpatine from Star Wars- he can probably shoot lightening out of his fingers too.

You're thinking of Lieberman, vp candidate under Gore in 2000.

Picture of Lieberman

Picture of Palpatine

They are obviously the same person.

The patterns were a mishmash of unrelated structures that were as misleading as they were illuminating.

This pretty much describes the state of every branch of science after a major influx of new data. Just look at the maps of the world produced after Europe became aware of North America. Early maps sometimes show California as an island; and it's not because the cartographer is stupid; he just put the data at his disposal together into what was at the time a plausible conjecture. And in fact the problem might not even have been that he was ignorant. He may have misinterpreted some of the (at that stage) imprecise data he had to work with.

New information confounds. The detection and resolution of conflicts in data is arguably what science is.

I didn't make the graph and couldn't find one that was complete but here are 2 that you can combine if you think it'll be helpful - or change the trend

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... - Global Land Ocean Temp Index since 1880, annual & 5 yr running means

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... - El Nino Southern Oscillation Index 1876-2012

I didn't make the graph and couldn't find one that was complete but here are 2 that you can combine if you think it'll be helpful - or change the trend

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... - Global Land Ocean Temp Index since 1880, annual & 5 yr running means

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... - El Nino Southern Oscillation Index 1876-2012

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

Just be grateful these toilets have a physical interface (finite trial and error procedure gets you the result you want). Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?

Well hacking some json receiver into the squirty toilet seat so you can say "Alexa, wash my bottocks" is now going to have to be done.

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

Just be grateful these toilets have a physical interface (finite trial and error procedure gets you the result you want). Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?

Well hacking some json receiver into the squirty toilet seat so you can say "Alexa, wash my bottocks" is now going to have to be done.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w... Someone else posted a link to a toilet control panel. Seems pretty complicated, even with pictures.

I seriously doubt you'd be in the correct position to avoid this when you are flushing...

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

Just be grateful these toilets have a physical interface (finite trial and error procedure gets you the result you want). Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

Just be grateful these toilets have a physical interface (finite trial and error procedure gets you the result you want). Would you imagine the pain trying to talk to one of these things (if they had an AI), or using one through a touch interface ?

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

Jesus Christ, that thing's more complicated than the Moon Lander!

And if you get it wrong, it pisses right back at you!

How many do you think you'd have if you bombed the Tenno?

The solution is much easier. Take a look at this map, you might even see it yourself.

We'd first have to change a lot in our foreign politics, though. That's the part that isn't easy.

> How much more "off this rock" can we be?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Sagan_Viking.jpg

Save the investigation. Look here.

Instead of a grant, how about a federal investigation to determine where the money is actually going?

Or... you could read the audited financial statements which Wikimedia posts on its website. It's not that hard.

The financial statements paint a picture of a financially healthy organization. Very healthy. But having solid financials is not a crime. The thing that sticks out about these financials is that Wikimedia has a huge amount of cash on hand. Now it's normal for charities to keep more cash on hand than a for-profit business. If you're Proctor and Gamble, well, things would have to get pretty bad before people give up on buying soap. You can count on future cash inflows. If you're a charity those cash inflows are a lot more volatile, so you keep more on hand.

How much? Well, normally a well-run charity keeps enough current assets to run for six months; Wikimedia has about eighteen months. However you have to take into account that Wikimedia is growing rapidly. It was almost 25% larger in FY 2016 than it was in 2015. It's normal in this situation to have more cash reserves than one that is a stable size.

And note -- we're talking cash or cash equivalents held by the foundation, not Jimmy Wales personally. If you look at the foundation's IRS 990 form, Jimmy Wales gets $0 in compensation from the foundation either in salary, in-kind, or (important to check as this is a common dodge) compensation from related organizations. The highest compensated executive is Lisa Tretikov, at $308K. Fundraising expenses, overhead, and executive compensation are all quite low for a charity with $82 million in income, 70% of which is spent on program (also a very good metric).

Charity Navigator gives Wikimedia Foundation a 91/100 combined score for transparency, accountability, and financial management. This puts it in the top tier of charitable foundations, roughly on par with the American Heart Association. Kind of like the charity equivalent of a blue chip stock. Your local food bank is more like a growth stock; if things go as planned your donation will have a bigger impact, but if things go south your donation may just go to pay off the debts of the defunct organization.

So when Wikipedia asks you to chip in $5, should you? There's no simple answer. Wikipedia won't go away if you don't, but on the other hand it provides something you probably use every day. In general a healthy charity will manage without your donation, but it still can't manage without any donations.

Here's an early prototype...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

I don't see the newsworthiness in this; it's been done before, just manually. The only advancement here is automating the process.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/52/Flower_Power_by_Bernie_Boston.jpg

/s

1982 was the year of AMD hardware.

Oh, I looked at your "damning" links - and not one of them cited a relevant or useful study. What I saw instead was a lot of "here's a graph, here's another graph - they're different in a way I don't like - therefore, it must be deliberately faked". No attempt was made to find out why the data was adjusted, no evidence that the adjustments made readings less accurate instead of more, and no challenge to the peer-reviewed methodology of the corrections. Instead they leaped immediately to the conclusion that it was a hoax and a conspiracy - just as you are. No contrary evidence of your own, no studies, no science, just "I don't like the results so that science must have been faked". That's the very soul of denial.

Why just the 1970s? If they go further back, it disproves what they're trying to indoctrinate you with. They'd have you believe that bad storms never happened before. Hogg wash. In fact HOGG Island, NYC.

If you bothered to read the paper you'd see the data they present goes back to 1930, and only the recent increase in intensity starts in the 70s. And maybe you'd care to explain how a single storm from 1893 somehow disproves a peer-reviewed statistical analysis about storms getting stronger a hundred years later?

Likewise, please explain where the original "cold snap" study claims that Greenland before 1300 was "MUCH warmer" than today. Please explain how ice cores from two lakes in Greenland somehow mean that the average temperatures for the entire globe were warmer at that time, when no reconstruction places them anywhere close to modern levels. You think the Medieval Warm and Little Ice Age periods are unknown to climatologists? But you're already convinced it's all a scam, despite the evidence directly contradicting your claims.

As for the fuel companies, do you really think that? You think that they won't adapt?

You really think they'll happily wave goodbye to trillions of dollars without a care in the world? You're quite wrong. They'll adapt if they're forced to, but you can be certain they'll do whatever they can to exploit the reserves they have first - there's plenty of evidence of them spending hundreds of millions to confuse and delay the issue as long as they can - just like the tobacco companies did.

Instead, you're harping on about Al Gore - who's not even a scientist. Nobody cares what he says - we care what the climatologists say. They saw the problem long before Gore made a movie, and why would they care if he made money from it? Is Gore paying climatologists to falsify evidence? The ones doing that are the oil companies. Frankly, your efforts to claim that Gore somehow orchestrated the whole thing to make a buck are laughable in the face of the evidence - all the more so when you're so keen to ignore the FAR bigger amounts being made by those who benefit from ignoring it.

Capitol: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Capital: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Capitol: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Capital: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

The problem with LA is that mass transit can't work. As cars became more prevelant, there became more sprawl, and mass transit simply couldn't work.

If you take Manhattan as an example, it has under 60km^2 of land and, let's say, 240 subway stops, or 4 stops per km^2 of land. Plus it has major business districts (think "downtown") where millions of people work.

Los Angeles has over 1200km^2 of land, requiring about 5,000 subway stops to have the same density. It's hard to imagine how LA could have an equivalent quality of service to Manhattan while having to be 20x the size.

dom

Counterpoint: Melbourne in Australia has 9,990km^2 of land, and there's very few places you can't get to by public transport. Granted, this includes trains (a few stops are underground, most above ground), trams and buses.

See: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

This is a very Western view of the Internet (and the world in general). "I've heard of it in my country, so it must be something everyone knows about". I too once shared this view.

The foundation has done some work on discovering potential readership in non-Western countries.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/New_Readers

I'll cherry-pick a stat I found amazing. The foundation did research in India. "75% of respondents had never heard of Wikipedia." Only one out of every 4 even knew the name, much less that they could edit a local language version!

So, there's a little opportunity to improve things in the second most-populated country in the world. :)

via: https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/i...

Full disclosure: I work for the Wikimedia Foundation. These comments are my own and I do not speak for the Foundation.

About ten years ago, Jimmy Wales said about Wikipedia (time code 4:35):

“So, we’re doing around 1.4 billion page views monthly. So, it’s really gotten to be a huge thing. And everything is managed by the volunteers and the total monthly cost for our bandwidth is about 5,000 dollars, and that’s essentially our main cost. We could actually do without the employee ... We actually hired Brion [Vibber] because he was working part-time for two years and full-time at Wikipedia so we actually hired him so he could get a life and go to the movies sometimes.”

In 2008, when Wikipedia was already the world's number 8 website, the Wikimedia Foundation survived on $5 million (vs. $82 million last year). So, yes, you can have a top-ten website – written entirely by unpaid volunteers – for a fraction of the current cost.

Wikimedia have posted an update on the Wikimedia mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/pi...

"This year, we are happy to report we’ve reached our goal of US$25 million in record time. This is a testament to the importance of Wikimedia and how much support we have from people all over the world. Given this momentum, we believe that it would be wise and worthwhile to continue to fundraise more in the month of December, for the following reasons: [...]

Here is what we will do: We intend to continue with the banners for a few more days. We would then take them down over the Christmas holiday, before making an end-of-year push in the final couple days of the year. (Many people choose to give at the very end of the year, and they are expecting to hear from us as usual -- so it is an opportunity to give people who plan to give the easiest means to participate)."

(Follow link for full text of the WMF statement, including their spending rationale.)

Thanks for citing their marketing material. Every nonprofit-for-profit has "reasons" why they need all the money the solicit. But you need to peek behind the curtain to see if "reasons" are supported by actual data. It isn't hard.

We can look at the exploding spending at Wikimedia.

And there are very serious questions about all that money being rushed out the door, who it is going to and why. There is a high level of self-dealing in passing out grants, and creating and filling the ballooning list of paid positions. It is very lucrative to be a "friend-of-Jimmy".

A glance at the financials shows that "building an endowment" is NOT the reason for the incessant fund-raising. First, the endowment was only launched this year , and their stated plan is to use only 10-20% of their fundraising revenue for that endowment. Currently they seem to be at the low end of that number (or below it) but we will need to see a report on 2016 to see the actual break-out. The goal of the endowment is to reach $100 million, but in their last annual foundation report (a 28 page advertising pamphlet with only one page of actual information) they state having $78 million in net assets as of 18 months ago, which is an increase of $25 million from the previous year report (almost all of it unrestricted).

If we assume that the net assets are only accumulating at the same rate as from June 2014 to June 2015 (by all data it is probably higher, much higher), then right now they have about $115 million in assets, more than enough to fully fund their foundation with soliciting a penny (they received at least $6 million in designated donations to the foundation when they set it up, so they no more than $94 million to make up to reach their stated goal.

So no. The foundation has nothing to do with their aggressive, relentless fund-raising.

$78.5 million of the $92 million of net assets are cash and short-term financial investments.

2016 Donations & Revenue (gross inflows) $ 82 million

2016 Expenses (selected): $ 32 million - Salaries $ 11 million - Awards & Grants $ 6 million - Professional Services $ 4.8 million - Other Operating Expenses $ 3.6 million - Donation Processing Expenses $ 2.6 million - Travel, Conferences & Special Events $ 2.0 million - Internet Hosting

2016 "Net Income" (increase in unrestricted net assets) $ 15 million

See for yourself: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

So, their real annual expenses are $16.4M per year, once you take out Travel, Salaries, and Awards & Grants.
$32M in SALARIES? to who?

$78.5 million of the $92 million of net assets are cash and short-term financial investments.

2016 Donations & Revenue (gross inflows)
$ 82 million

2016 Expenses (selected):

$ 32 million - Salaries
$ 11 million - Awards & Grants
$ 6 million - Professional Services
$ 4.8 million - Other Operating Expenses
$ 3.6 million - Donation Processing Expenses
$ 2.6 million - Travel, Conferences & Special Events
$ 2.0 million - Internet Hosting

2016 "Net Income" (increase in unrestricted net assets)
$ 15 million

See for yourself: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

People commenting are just guessing.

They used to have ONE or two full-time engineers running the entire site till like... 2008 or so. Then they started hiring TONS of people running the "Foundation" including marketing, events, charity shit, "diversity consultant" hires. Basically, an army of losers who don't do anything productive and spend their time justifying their existence and partying.

Basically, Wikipedia has become the US college system. A few productive teachers, surrounded by an army of "administrators" and their assistants... and their assistants... and their assistants.

Hell, check out one of their own projections. Only 35% is engineering. That's pretty much the opposite of "lean" for a company that PRODUCES NO CONTENT.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

But don't take my word for it. Check the glass door:

https://www.glassdoor.com/Revi...

>This is an organization in crisis. It is highly dysfunctional, there is a strong culture of secrecy, which is surprising for an organization working in open knowledge. Teams are siloed and isolated, C-levels disagree on direction, ED has lost the support needed to do her job, BoT is in a freeze and too weak to drive change. It is a toxic and depressing place to work.

>Bureaucracy and secrecy creeps in unless regularly checked. Our Board sometimes wants us to be a venture-style tech company rather than a knowledge-empowerment nonprofit. Community consultation adds a layer of complexity to every new venture (but its worth it!).

>PHP. Low pay. Fear of changes. Top management has almost completely flipped since Lila took over in 2015. (including bosses who have come and gone since then) It's really tough to get work done when your boss keeps changing.

>Many mid-level managers are inexperienced and have trouble supporting their employees. Overall lack of strategy and lack of will to make positive change. The communication can be disrespectful. The foundation values diversity but fails to make it one of their own priorities.

>Politics! Politics! Politics! Performance review process outdated.

>Tolerance of non performers, Hostile behaviors by some staff threaten continued diversity/innovation.

During the year ended June 30, 2016, the Foundation entered into an agreement with the Tides Foundation to establish the Wikimedia Endowment as a Collective Action Fund to act as a permanent safekeeping fund to generate income to ensure a base level of support for the Wikimedia projects in perpetuity. The Endowment is independent from the Foundation. On June 29, 2016, the Foundation provided an irrevocable grant in the amount of $5 million to the Tides Foundation for the purpose of the Wikimedia Endowment. The amount is recorded in awards and grants expense.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Hosting is not Wikipedia's largest expense. Salaries are. They spent $32 million on salaries. Total expenses were $67 million.

Even considering all of the expenses, their net income was positive $16 million last year.

Damn straight! The 1959 Caddy was the last time America Was Great

Relative to the centre of the Earth, which can be considered stationary for this frame of reference.

A spot at sea level on the equator is moving about 1000 miles an hour in the same frame of reference.

17,500 mph is the same speed as the ISS. At the distance of 22,236 miles, where the telecommunications satellites are, that drops to 6876 mph.

Fusion never!

Fusion funding plot:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ab/U.S._historical_fusion_budget_vs._1976_ERDA_plan.png

Just try crying "FIRE" in a crowded theatre and then claiming freedom of speech.

Curious how this example is so popular since it was invoked to justify a court ruling that banned someone from distributing These pamphlets

Attempting to simplify the crises in Syria by pointing at climate change seriously under states all other factors. Hell, one of your own links (the usda one) clearly shows that Syria has been able to meet its needs IF allowed via imports

The USDA link shows no such thing; it shows Syria eating up its reserves as it fails to import enough wheat to make up the shortfall. Yes, Assad underwrote the price of bread, but there wasn't enough subsidized bread to meet demand, forcing people to buy non-subsidized bread which increased in price six-fold. The net bread expenditure went up by 20% in a country where many people spend half their income on food.

I'm not a reductionist; situations like this have multiple important factors. The Assad/Islamist thing had been simmering for decades -- generations really. Had that situation been different, the climate shock might not have destabilized the country. In point of fact bread prices were an issue throughout the Middle East and a major factor in the Arab Spring. Syria was arguably better positioned than most other Arab countries, but the stress of having 5% of your population displaced on top of the deep and old fault lines broke the country apart.

This is precisely how climate shock is going to work. It won't be like the proverbial frog in a pot of boiling water; it'll be formerly rare occurrences happening more frequently and stressing vulnerable populations. Take sea level rise; cities won't drown slpowly, but what was once a hundred year flood will become twenty year flood. That will stress coastal cities, and the results depend on how stable and wealthy a particular city is.

For example were sea level to rise almost a meter by 2100 (as is now within the scope of mainstream positions), the very wealthy coastal city I live in would go the Venice route and build a tidal barrier, which would conservatively cost at least ten billion dollars. Chittagong Bengladesh, however, will be screwed. My city has twice the GDP of Bengladesh as a whole even though it has 3% of the population.

Unemployment numbers are a bit worse off today than they were when Obama took office, regardless of which measure you look at.

In what world?

Want to use U-6 unemployment? Nope, not that one either.

Obama inherited the largest economic recession since the Great Depression. And the US is now out of it. Now you can argue over whether someone else could have done it faster or not. But let's not lie about the facts.

The ice age was 12,000 years ago, the temperature rose for about 4,000 years, and has been cooling slowly ever since. It didn't start rising again until just 150 years ago, when we started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. None of your other wild claims are remotely real either. Whether you're stupid or evil is hard to tell.

In 2015 China became the world's largest producer of photovoltaic power, at 43 GW installed capacity. China also led the world in the production and use of wind power and smart grid technologies...

While China is one of the largest producers of renewable power, due to their size, they are also the largest producer in many other things, including coal. Take a look at where their energy comes from. Most of it is still fossil fuels. In fact, fossil fuel use has been growing like there's no tomorrow.

It's good that their leaders are willing to talk about climate change (at least more than the incoming US president), but talk is cheap. Let's wait until we see some results.

It infuriates me to no end that people think it's hip or somehow cute to take a word, remove a vowel, and think it's somehow now some hip creative name for their stupid service or tool. Dataminr. I'd like to find who ever came up with that and let them meet the Analizr, I'll leave what that tool would do as an exercise for the reader.

Yeah, I can't wait for the first hip startup to name itself with an unpronounceable glyph.

It was the armistice agreement at the end of WW1 that triggered WW2.

It was, no surprise, fake right-wing news that led to the rise of the Nazi Party. A meme that Germany was about to win World War I until they were "stabbed in the back" by the Jews agreeing to Germany's surrender right when it was about to win. The Nazis painted the men who signed the 1918 armistice as the "November criminals," criminals who governed as the Weimer Republic of the 1920s, using that stab in the back as a way to seize power and lead the nation astray.

My question is that at ground level, the warming effect is not as great as at altitude. However, these greenhouse gases are considerably heavier than air. How do they rise up and stay in the upper atmosphere since they are so heavy? This is like rocks floating to the top of a lake. Shouldn't the heavier molecules sink?

The homosphere is the layer of the atmosphere that's somewhat evenly mixed due to turbulence. It extends from surface level to about 100 km altitude. (From what I can tell, ozone tends to be in a layer due to how it forms in the atmosphere and the wind patterns at that altitude, not due to molecular weight.)

In your lake example, it's like the water being entirely cloudy due to mud and silt, which is indeed an example of rocks (small rocks, albeit) floating to the top of a lake. Take a jar of cloudy lake water and let it sit without turbulence and stuff will start to separate out, just like Pluto's atmosphere exhibits layers in the absence of turbulence.

How many more years until Wikipedia supports MP3 ? They don't give a damn about everyone being able to use their website right now. Will it change?

They are working on it, but probably will wait until encoding is also patent free. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.... and https://phabricator.wikimedia....

How many more years until Wikipedia supports MP3 ? They don't give a damn about everyone being able to use their website right now. Will it change?

They are working on it, but probably will wait until encoding is also patent free. See https://phabricator.wikimedia.... and https://phabricator.wikimedia....

Yeah, they do.
ATM on the right, bank statement printer on the left

While not all bank statement printer look like the one of the left (example), pretty much all ATMs look like that one on the right. What's also common for statement printer is a rudimentary user interface as you do not need to put in any information, all you do is to insert your card and the device will start printing after a short while.