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Larry Sanger, who co-founded Wikipedia, provides many examples of how Wikipedia articles are heavily biased towards mainstream viewpoints. https://larrysanger.org/2021/06/wikipedia-is-more-one-sided-...

> with only relatively minor changes

Relatively minor changes have huge effect on the content of articles. The linked article also addresses how Wikipedia has banned conservative sources from Wikipedia including Fox News, the Daily Mail, and the New York Post. "In short, and with few exceptions, only globalist, progressive mainstream sources—and sources friendly to globalist progressivism—are permitted."

Every claim in a Wikipedia article must be accompanied with a source. Claims that are only covered by conservative media and not covered at all by mainstream (liberal) media, cannot be referenced as a source in a Wikipedia article. This leads to conservative viewpoints being removed from articles. Which directly causes articles to become biased towards mainstream viewpoints.


In other words, facts that can only be cited to unreliable sources are not allowed in Wikipedia.

That checks out.


That is not at all what I, nor the author, is claiming, and instead of retorting with a shallow dismissal I recommend you review the HN guidelines.


Looks like it triggered the flamewar detector. This usually happens if a post has more comments than votes, and the post did not reach the minimum threshold (40 points).


Thanks, I never realized that existed.


The effect size is quite large. From the paper,

The differences were substantial: in some cases, such as total brain volume, more than a standard deviation. The effect size of d = −1.41 for total brain volume (Table 1) translates to 92.1% of males being above the female mean, and an 84.1% chance that a randomly-chosen male will have a larger total brain volume than a randomly-chosen female.


http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1...

On a geologic timescale, CO2 levels were many times higher than they are today.

>In very general terms, long-term reconstructions of atmospheric CO2 levels going back in time show that 500 million years ago atmospheric CO2 was some 20 times higher than present values. It dropped, then rose again some 200 million years ago to 4-5 times present levels--a period that saw the rise of giant fern forests--and then continued a slow decline until recent pre-industrial time.

CO2 levels over the past ~5 million years are at the lowest point in over 200 million years. On a geological timescale, CO2 levels are returning to normal, not going away from it.


Okay, this comes up sometimes in climate-related topics, usually because of a combination of misunderstanding and a need to be the clever contrarian that's thought of something nobody else has.

The question isn't whether Earth will survive these CO2 levels. Earth will (probably) be just fine. It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life.

The question isn't necessarily even whether humans will survive much higher CO2 levels. We're resourceful, we have the ability to shape our environment. Some people will survive.

The question is how much we're going to enjoy all of the adverse effects of this global climate change. It is going to cause or contribute to a lot of natural disasters: hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme storms, droughts, flooding, massive wildfires. There are going to be migrations. Wars. There are some solid arguments that climate change contributed to the Syrian civil war [1]. Many species are going to disappear as they fail to adapt quickly enough to the changing environment; it will take much longer for new species to take their place. We will see, for example, an environment with fewer butterflies and more mosquitoes -- many more.

Nobody is going to get out of this unscathed. It's going to cause widespread political and economic instability and unrest. Even if you manage to find yourself a nice little spot untouched by the most direct effects of climate change, it's going to cause enough suffering in enough other parts of our globally interconnected human society that you'll see the costs somewhere. The US spent a record $306 billion on disaster response last year. Where do you think that money comes from?

[1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-ha...


I think your framing of the question is very fair and absolutely how the topic should be considered. But at the same time, I think you're assuming much more from the average person than is realistic when you state that whether Earth (and implicitly humanity) will survive or not, is not the question. People are becoming radicalized in everything. And radicalism tends to be intrinsically connected with ignorance.

See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again. Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria. Sure, it's a sample of one - but I'm sure a survey of the views in this thread will show the question is indeed far more elementary than the nuanced and accurate view you're discussing!


People are becoming radicalized in large part, maybe even entirely, because of forums like this one. A really good article along these lines was submitted to HN, but unfortunately didn't get much traction: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/all-american-nazi...

I think people can handle nuance just fine. Since everyone's gotten it into their heads that policing online discussions is exactly the same as censorship and limiting free speech, it's up to us, the participants, to restrain ourselves from the radicalizing shouting matches that usually happen on so many topics.

> See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again.

I'm not seeing that anywhere in the comments on this article. Can you link to it?

> Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria.

Well, no. I disagree that it's relevant, and hope at least some of the downvotes are for that reason alone. "Stating facts" doesn't automatically make something relevant; good statements of relevant facts would have been, "the researchers didn't take ____ into account during the 800,000 period they're talking about", or, "there's another paper by respected researchers that disagrees with this one", or, "I know a lot about this field and I think I see an error in their methodology", or, "this is all correct but there's no cause for alarm because [body of evidence that global warming is somehow beneficial]" (it's not).

It's also not mitigating hysteria. There are good reasons to be extremely alarmed for our future generations. That's not a hysterical position. Some people may be couching it in alarmist statements, but given the opposing number of people who still believe that all of this data is an outright lie anyway [+], that's sort of unavoidable for political topics.

[+]: Including HN, during the CRU email breach a few years ago, where the popular opinion was that climate researchers were fabricating data so that they could get more money for further research.


I'm not seeing that anywhere in the comments on this article. Can you link to it?

This [0] seems pretty close to that description.

There are good reasons to be extremely alarmed for our future generations. That's not a hysterical position.

Very few people "believe" strongly enough to invest based on that belief. Why hasn't Bezos or Soros or whoever started buying lots of land in northern Saskatchewan, or shorting land on the coasts?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17008013


Ah, thanks. Yeah, not sure I'd agree totally with that particular comment.

> Why hasn't Bezos or Soros or whoever started buying lots of land in northern Saskatchewan, or shorting land on the coasts?

Because (a) it's complicated (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-05-02/the-u-s-c...) and (b) investors are famously short-term thinkers and as is evident in some of the discussion here, the effects of global warming are just slow and opaque enough to fool a lot of people into thinking they don't exist.

...and this is granting that investor interest is a good way to evaluate how sound the science is on some subject, and I don't think that's a position I'd agree with.


>It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life.

This isn't common knowledge at all among non-scientists. Most people have no clue that CO2 levels were many times higher than today, and that earth and the ecosystem in general were just fine. Scientists may be aware of this fact, but why don't they inform the general public of this? Take the submitted article for example. Instead of publishing an article stating, "CO2 levels are higher than 800,000 years ago; but are likely lower than they were at any point from 20-200 million years ago" they only leave in the scary, doomsaying first part and neglect to inform the second part. It is the equivalent of looking at a 24 hour geological clock and only telling people about the past minute while neglecting datapoints from minutes or hours ago. Why aren't scientists informing the public of the historical data?

I understand why the climate change community may not want to bring up this point (it detracts from other issues) but people should be aware of this fact. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels.

>The question isn't whether [X], it's whether [Y].

I am paraphrasing, but that's largely what your comment is saying. The article premise and its title, is about [X], where [X] is CO2 levels. It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic.

Edit: I don't want to reply to several comments, so I'll respond here.

Why do I believe the discussion should inform people about historical CO2 levels? Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040. The incentives to cut emissions are just not there. Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource. The current projections I have seen predict 500ppm by 2050, and likely 600ppm by 2100. Given those numbers, I ask myself the question, how likely is it that humanity will face extinction in the next century? How should I interpret these numbers?

Given the geological data, I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity.


>. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels.

In the few past instances when temperatures increased this fast there were mass extinction events.

Yes, life can exist on a warmer earth just fine. But rapid change kills a lot of things.

Scientists don't focus on informing people that the earth used to be much warmer and it was fine, because they are focusing on the fact that rapid change is dangerous.


The sun is also measurably brighter and hotter than it was when CO2 levels were significantly higher, meaning we should expect greenhouse effects to be more severe. CO2 levels aren't the only thing that contribute to climate. Additionally, while in the past the levels have been much higher, the rate of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift in the geological record--it's the sudden change that has many people worried.


I did not bring global temperatures into the discussion as I don't believe they pose as serious a threat as increased CO2 levels. Wikipedia has a nice graph showing estimated global average temperatures over time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.svg . Please note the log-time scale.

The graph shows that between 10-250 million years ago, global temperatures were 1-12° C higher than they are today. Given that current projections, which include the 2% relative gain in solar irradiance, expect 3-4°C warming by 2100, the geologic temperature record suggests such increases are not detrimental to life on earth. Let us recall that life was thriving during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when temperatures were 5-10°C higher and CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. Global temperatures today are actually lower than than average, on a geological timescale.

>the rate of change in CO2 levels was never nearly this swift

No, you can't conclude this. You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less than 200 years. The geologic record is not detailed enough to make such a claim. It is unknowable if there was a series of major volcanic eruptions that caused CO2 levels to rise rapidly.

And sudden change has always been a part of climate and evolution. Rapid change can occur in just a few decades. For example, the Sahara wasn't even a desert 10,000 years ago. Also see punctuated equilibrium.


> You cannot show there was no other a period in Earth's geologic history where CO2 levels rose by 150ppm (or 150%, whichever is not relevant) in less than 200 years

That assumes the CO2 is also gone just as quickly. But I doubt that would happen unless you can show a natural process that could not only increase the CO2 level by 150ppm but also decrease it by 150ppm just as quickly.


Your argument seems to be that everything is OK because things always change and conditions have been much more extreme in the distant past. And other people are arguing that these sorts of extreme changes may have very real consequences that can dramatically effect human civilization and stability and we're doing very little to prepare or blunt the blows.


People are concerned mainly about how CO2 will affect humans + our current ecosystem. On that measure, 800,000 years is a relevant timeframe: it covers when our civilizatiom arose, when humans left africa, etc

I do think it would be good if people knew that CO2 was even higher in the past. But, that doesn't make this article wrong. An article can't cover every single topic, and earlier CO2 in the non-human era is just tangentially related.


Alright, I want to point-by-point rebut your comment, but I'm going to take a step back instead.

What is your goal here?

Every argument has some kind of goal, some position or point of view that it wants to express. Yours appears to be, "CO2 accumulation is no big deal as long as at least a few people survive". (Contextualizing your own statement that, "Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels".)

But I don't want to assume that that's your argument, because it would be a wildly irrational one to make. So let's bring your actual position out into the light.

--

edit in response to your edit:

> Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040.

Maybe. But they could, except for all of the politics and arguments around this that is still preventing large-scale efforts to reduce global emissions.

> Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource.

It has been useful. Humanity likely could not have reached its current state of technological development without easy access to vast amounts of energy in the form of coal and oil.

But its usefulness is waning. Countries and organizations are more often using it to influence the economies of other countries. A lot of suffering is happening in Venezuela right now, and oil is a major contributor to that; a lot of damage was done to Gulf Coast not long ago, and even if you place no value at all on natural ecosystems, it also impacted a lot of livelihoods that depended on fishing and tourism in the area. Depending on your point of view, the most recent Iraq war killed, maimed, or displaced a lot of people for the sake of controlling oil. Tensions between Europe, US, and Russia right now can also trace their causes back to the distribution of natural gas.

And none of this is taking into account the predicted effects of a warming global climate. Many -- many! -- more people are going to suffer and die.

> I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity.

There are a lot of different conditions that satisfy "survival", and many of them are pretty awful.

--

Since global warming / climate change is such a politically charged topic, let's try reframing it.

Let's say there is a hypothetical global disease for which nobody has a natural immunity. We'll use some variant of the Black Plague for this gedankenexperiment. Right now it is responsible for killing an estimated few hundred thousand people a year worldwide [1], and costs several hundreds of billions of dollars each year worldwide [2]. We could be committing more resources towards reducing the impacts of this disease, but right now, this is a level of suffering and expense which enough people are totally okay with.

This disease is expected to gradually worsen though, and in the not very distant future, begin killing millions and harming millions more. We may still be able to mitigate a lot of the effects of the disease in the future, but we'll still have the same costs for developing new technology to fight it, plus we'll have much higher costs for dealing with the effects of it.

The Black Plague killed 30% to 60% of Europe's population in the mid-1300s [3], and now it's coming back, just more slowly.

Would your position then be, "it's no big deal, we survived it once before"?

[1]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/climate-change-kills-400000-a-...

[2]: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/climate-change-c... -- this doesn't include worldwide numbers; I'm using a conservative extrapolation here.

[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death


> Humanity [...] will survive increased CO2 levels.

I don't know that we can take this as a given. It would have been easier two or three hundred years ago; now we have industrial civilization and 7.3 billion people, the combination giving us an unprecedented ability to do damage to the ecosphere. I can imagine a scenario in which climate change leads to political unrest which leads to wars — we may already be seeing some of this, and it could get a lot worse — that eventually spirals out of control into thermonuclear war. Unlikely? I sure hope so! But I don't think we can rule it out completely.

Sure, the cockroaches will survive. But that's not much consolation.

I think we need to figure out a way for all of humanity to work together on this problem. If we fail to do that pretty soon, I don't think it will bode well for our doing it in the future either. Continued denial and fractiousness will make the nightmare scenario more likely.


Humanity may survive, but our civilization likely won't. It relies on cheap energy and a stable climate, both are under threat. Good luck manufacturing a MRI machine when you're struggling to grow enough food for next year.


> It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic.

How does a detailed discussion about CO2 levels 100m years ago help push us toward drastically cutting emissions now?


The article talks about this being the highest point in the last 800K years, but you're right that geologically speaking the levels are quite low for our planet.

The problem is life takes a long time to adapt, including us silly humans who build our cities on the coast. Just because CO2 levels have been higher before does mean the process will be a pleasant one.

It may well involve the extinction of large numbers of species, and large numbers of humans (never all humans as some people seem to be fond of saying.) It could even possibly trigger collapse of civilization in extreme enough scenarios where methane from the oceans and tundras is released in a feedback loop.

So yeah, you're factually correct, but missing the point.


No, the article says the CO2 levels are at their highest in the last 800,000 years. Its literally right there in the title of the post.


Yeah but Pilfer's point is the levels in the last 800,000 years are abnormally low in the last 200 million year period.


If I’m interested in the survival of human civilization, which has been around for less than 10,000 years, how is it useful to consider that CO2 levels were much higher 200 million years ago?


Yes, the Cambrian explosion indeed was an even wilder change in environment and ecosystem than what we're going through now. A hypothetical human time traveler, however, wouldn't survive a hypothetical time travel back to that.


>A hypothetical human time traveler, however, wouldn't survive a hypothetical time travel back to [the Cambrian explosion].

I assume you are referencing about CO2 levels. Yes, around ~500 million years ago, CO2 levels reached 10,000ppm, which would be hazardous (but not fatal) to a human traveler. However if you pick a point between 300 million years ago and today, when CO2 levels were at 1000-2000ppm, a human traveler would have no problem surviving in that environment. Heck, it is even possible to hit those CO2 levels in a modern day warehouse or office that is poorly ventilated.

Increased CO2 levels are very survivable and do not mean the end of the human race.


The question isn't whether some humans will survive or not, but where they will survive, and how expensive it is to adjust to that change.


Which is moving the goalposts and changing the question. He's asking if a "hypothetical human time traveler" could survive hundreds of millions of years ago, and based off historical CO2 data, it could be possible.


You are picking pedantic arguments instead of focusing on the actually important themes, which isn't productive or useful

Let's get everything on the table. Are you actually okay with dozens of millions to hundreds of millions of people dying -- and many others suffering immense drops in quality of life -- as a result of human-caused climate change? Despite the fact that we have the capacity to heavily mitigate such risks?


obtuse levels are high here. goal posts moved on a goal post already moved. goal post was being moved back


I think that's true although it's also true that rapidly increasing CO2 now seems a dangerous experiment with our only planet.

As an aside noting the downvotes on the above comment I sometimes question if that stuff is a good idea. I can see the point that mentioning high CO2 levels may not be a problem could be dangerous as the masses will keep burning CO2 but trying to drum up panic isn't working that great as illustrated by the "highest point in 800,000 years" thing. From an engineering kind of view point I feel you should look at things as neutrally as possible though I guess from a political view point maybe not.


From the same site:

> All we can say is that, over the last 400,000 years, there seems to have been a positive feedback at work: whenever the climate became warmer, carbon dioxide and methane rose and helped make the climate even warmer.


Fair, but that doesn't detract from the point that CO2 levels maintained 1000-2000ppm for over 100 million years. This was during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when life was thriving on earth.

Present CO2 levels are low on a geological timescale.


Due to stellar evolution, the solar constant is at its highest on a geological timescale.

https://archive.org/details/nasa_techdoc_19820009158

Back in the Mesozoic Era, the Sun was about 2% cooler than it is today. The extra CO2 back then added a helpful (for most life) greenhouse effect. Now, both the relatively high CO2 level and the rapid rate of increase are unhelpful.


That link performs a calculation based on some fairly back-of-the-envelope physics assumptions. Its conclusion:

Roughly one-half of the solar luminosity increase occurs during the last 2 billion years but there is no evidence for a parallel increase in the Earth's mean surface temperature. Indeed, isotopic studies of the Precambrian samples by Knauth and Epstein (ref. 12) indicate that the mean surface temperature has been decreasing during this time. Clearly, there is a need for further studies of the effects of crustal movements and volcanism, biological activity, etc. on the long-term evolution of the Earth's climate. At present, it appears that the effects of solar evolution are still buried in the "noise" due to other uncertainties in paleoclimatic models.

Is there anything since 1981 with more definitive conclusions? Is there any study that has attempted to measure sun output directly or indirectly, rather than simply calculating output based on the sun's age?


Thank you. Nothing annoys me more than people who bring up the fact that CO2 used to be much higher without mentioning that the sun was cooler. It leads to a very misleading picture.


How well would that work for humans? 2000 ppm is well above the threshold when we start to find negative cognitive effects. And I imagine CO2 in buildings would be more like 3000-4000 ppm.

This is leaving aside sea level rise hurting infrastructure, crop failures due to shifting weather, and areas becoming regularly above 35 degrees wet bulb.


That doesn't change the fact that there are adverse effects we are noticing, which CO2 is a contributor to.

Its also worth noting that a lot of what has scientists concerned is the rate at which we are seeing these changes.


That is a true statement. Another true statement is that Earth's greenhouse gases are basically a trace compared with Venus's. Another true statement is that the current human causal rate of CO2 emissions will rapidly change our environment to one unsuitable for human life.


Source on that last one? Even the worst climate change predictions don't create an earth unsuitable to human life. Hostile changes, sure. Unsuitable? No.


You're right, I shouldn't have said that. Unsuitable for human civilization is what I should have said.


That would only be in the worst case scenarios, and even then only a transitory condition. You can't keep humans down forever, sooner or later we'd rise again. It's debatable what it would take for civilization to collapse, and how long it would take to recover. But I think there's little doubt that recover it would.


The sad truth is nobody actually knows what's going to happen. We can only read the signs.


But it's just talking about the past 800,000 years.


Can you expand on that?


Coffeeshops only need to print a piece of paper and tape it to the wall.

The cost of compliance is less than $0.20

I think there are better arguments for your PoV than this one.


Do not fall into the trap of assuming that because cost of complying with the letter of an incremental regulation seems like it would low to you, that means that it does not impose a burden on business owners.

Regulations are cumulative. This is yet another thing to add to the list of notices that have to be up and yet another thing that an unaccountable city inspector in a bad mood might decide it not quite displayed prominently for their liking and fine you.

That is what businesses complain about, not the cost of each regulation, the cost of complying with all the regulations, all the time, with no way to defend yourself and no one to tell you if its enough (and defend you if someone disagrees later).


What's the cost of non compliance for not putting up a $0.20 sign


I think the point the poster is trying to make is that if the pedestrian was looking while crossing the street, they would have ample time to react to the oncoming car.

Car headlights can be seen from over 1000 feet away, and at the speed the Uber car was traveling, the pedestrian had 20 seconds to see & and react to the vehicle coming at her.

From the video, it's clear they were not looking for oncoming vehicles while crossing the road.


>A human driver could have seen the person and/or bike from a long way off.

Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was in the shadows. Humans have problems detecting objects in the shadows, especially at night.

3M made a video illustrating how difficult it is to see people at night. In this video, people wearing bright-colored clothing don't even show up until 250 feet away. According to the national safety council, a human driver traveling at 30mph at night, may take up 500 feet to react to and stop when there is an object in the road.

I reccomend watching this video as it strongly changed my views about night driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMvM7-9lgeg


>Not true at all, the person was not standing under lit streetlights and was in the shadows...

The 'shadow' is appearing completely dark due to the poor dynamic range of the camera. It won't appear so to a normal human eye..Also, people use high beams in this situations which enables seeing stuff really far away, which would also should have saved the day in this case..


The pedestrian is 1) wearing black 2) not wearing any sort of safety reflectors 3) crossing in darkness not under street lights. In the safety video I linked, it's clear that such a pedestrian in the road would be very tough spot and react to. The safety video says there is a very real possibly that a human driver would hit such a pedestrian.

Citing the camera's poor dynamic range, does not imply a human in the same situation would have enough dynamic range to spot a pedestrian in the same circumstance.

High beams would have saved a life here, however in many situations they are illegal to use.


Perhaps it would be cleared if OP had written "A human driver _might_ have seen the person"


>In this video

Well that's kinda my point, isn't it?


I have read the lawsuit, and it accuses Facebook of making false and misleading statements in their data privacy policy. It takes issue with this section of Facebook's privacy policy:

While you are allowing us to use the information we receive about you, you always own all of your information. Your trust is important to us, which is why we don't share information we receive about you with others unless we have:

• received your permission;

• given you notice, such as by telling you about it in this policy; or

• removed your name and any other personally identifying information from it.

The lawsuit claims Facebook violated bullet points 1 and 2, citing the CA news. The lawsuit uses this point to argue Facebook lied to their investors, did not provide more information on this in their SEC filings, and that investors suffering financial loss when the stock price fell after CA news.


Is that policy dated? Its possible a different privacy policy was in effect when all this went down.


What material fact did Facebook lie to their investors about?


Yea I'm still baffled why this is 'news'. Facebook and Mark Z have been very upfront with investors and the public about the lack of privacy that users should expect when using their platform.


They haven't been upfront. That's the whole point. They violated their own policies, allowed others to do it, and failed to disclose it.



From the article,

> “defendants made false or misleading statements and failed to disclose that Facebook violated its own data privacy policies by allowing third parties access to personal data of millions of Facebook users without their consent,” according to the complaint.


Users did consent when they approved CA's app. The only argument that can be made is that they didn't fully know what they were consenting to.


I'm not sure it's that straightforward -- from the Guardian's coverage:

"The data was collected through an app called thisisyourdigitallife, built by academic Aleksandr Kogan, separately from his work at Cambridge University. Through his company Global Science Research (GSR), in collaboration with Cambridge Analytica, hundreds of thousands of users were paid to take a personality test and agreed to have their data collected for academic use."

It's not clear to me whether the transfer of data from GSR to CA was legal, or covered in the ToS for the app.

I'd guess that end users agreed to blanket sharing of data in the FB ToS, but again I don't think we can be certain that their ToS covers exactly this situation -- according to FB, CA / GSR were in breach of their ToS agreements, which might mean they transitively caused FB to breach their agreements with their users. I'd be interested to hear theories from anyone with legal expertise, but I imagine we'll hear more before too long.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/cambridge-analy...


Users that used the ‘CA’ mydigitallife app did consent, but the millions of other profiles that they were able to scrape in definitely didn’t consent.


This gets to the debate around if you can consent when giving up information about your friends. For example, is it OK for someone to give a company access to their phone's address book when the people in it haven't consented themselves?


Reminds me of Facebook and LinkedIn shadow profiles.


(which have been deemed illegal in some countries)


The real takeaway is that Cogent over-promises and under-delivers. If you want reliable transit, switch providers.


The people downvoting you don't have experience with transit or Cogent - they are literally the worst peer. Their company motto is to undercut everyone else on price and oversaturate their peers as much as possible. They are a horrible provider. They have been de-peered by large providers like Layer3 many times due to flagrant abuse.

That said the price is great and I had a large presence at Cogent's Herndon location for the better part of a decade. Terrible service but price was so great, couldn't resist.


I think you mean level3,, not layer3. And where did that get them?

http://news.level3.com/2017-11-01-CenturyLink-completes-acqu...

Ahh, right. After being literally the best backbone provider in the world, they were destroyed by last-mile ISPs in the US who choked them out of the game. Speaking of a shining example of why we need stronger anti-monopoly laws in the US...


Eh, I was never impressed with Level3. Their network was huge, and they generally had zero clue what was happening on it. Big networks aren't always better. Level3 got to be huge by running up massive amounts of debt and pricing services uncompetitively. People buying Level3 transit were those in the "you never get fired for buying IBM" mindset.


I'm not sure that's something that you can take away from the article, Cogent was performing well on other ISPs, Comcast was not providing enough bandwidth for Cogent due to a disput external to Panic.

While we can't know I'd be willing to be the "unspecified" traffic re-engineering was to prioritize Cogent's Panic traffic specifically. Comcast is still the bad guy.


Working in the field of networking I can say it's highly unlikely that Cogent is performing traffic shaping specific to Panic traffic. That's a ton of changes to a ton of hardware with a risk for screwing things up that just isn't worth it. Cogent isn't going to go to those lengths for a client that has a single connection and hosts a small / moderate site. Beyond that: the connection that Panic has to Cogent is most likely through the data center they're colocating with, not a direct connection to Panic equipment. That's not for certain, it's entirely possible that Panic paid for a drop from Cogent; however I'm guessing that's not the case.

What I find odd is that they would colocate their hardware in a DC with only a single provider. The company I work for has four transit providers so as to ensure uptime / reliability (don't get me started on how often we experience unplanned maintenances from our upstream providers). Seems like Panic may want to consider a different host for their colocation or examine (provided they're dealing with Cogent directly) a secondary ISP.


>What I find odd is that they would colocate their hardware in a DC with only a single provider.

I think it's extremely unlikely the provider only has cogent. More likely is the fact that the link between the provider and comcast preferred cogent - which panic would have no way to change.


That's not true. panic.com has an A record (and www is a CNAME to @) that points to an IP address that's not PI and advertised only as part of 38.0.0.0/8, obviously, only from Cogent.


It is. In my experience, Cogent has more peering problems than other transit providers do (e.g. L3). The submitted article is a clear example of this. I don't find these peering problems surprising, given Cogent is much cheaper vs the competition.

>prioritize Cogent's Panic traffic specifically. Comcast is still the bad guy.

No, from the article it really sounds like Comcast added more capacity to their Cogent-Comcast peering links, at their expense. Comcast was not obligated to do this for Panic in any way. How does that make Comcast 'the bad guy'? Cogent should have worked with Comcast to fix this issue in the first place. Panic is paying Cogent for transit, Cogent should be the one getting Comcast to increase their peering bandwidth. If Panic has to go around the company they're are paying to get their problem fixed, that's terrible service.


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