All of those places except Florida have both of those. They are susceptible to drought, but some rather large rivers run through those states.

Nontrivial doesn't necessarily mean large. It just means significant enough that it needs to be accounted for. The actual cost will of course be dependent on the size and complexity of your codebase.

It can be extremely convenient to store application data in the cloud. I use budgeting software that syncs to dropbox, making it possible to switch seamlessly between using the software on my phone and desktop.

That being said, I think the total amount I store on dropbox is about 50MB so it's a very small percentage of my total data.

And this is why we're still decades away from having mortgages denominated in bitcoin. :P

Did our ancestors imagine they were giving the Federal government the right to ban speech?

OF COURSE THEY DID. That's why several of the prominent political ones went to extra lengths in an attempt protect us from it, with their early amendments to the Constitution.

Yeah, I don't think it's ridiculously unreasonable that a site meant to host software projects has a requirement that hosted projects actually be software projects.

But it doesn't. "Meet the projects that prove GitHub is a collaboration tool for all stripes". Well, all stripes except for collaborative satire against the wrong group of people.

Well. Github's Terms of Service clearly identifies that "We may, but have no obligation to, remove Content and Accounts containing Content that we determine in our sole discretion are unlawful, offensive, threatening, libelous, defamatory, pornographic, obscene or otherwise objectionable". I assume they used that discretion to find it either "offensive" or "otherwise objectionable". And clearly Github is well within their legal rights to take down this content.

But it does illustrate the limits of Github's commitment to freedom and openness: if it offends Github's staff, or if Github thinks it offends people who could get them in some level of trouble, they'll take down your content. So, you can still use Github as a platform to effect change in the world, but only insofar as Github&co agree with you.

It seems it was also too hot for Hacker News to discuss.

That's funny, I thought the remedy to unwanted speech is complaining a bunch and getting its hosting provider to shut it down.

Christian Scientists have been refusing vaccines since their founding in the 19th century. The guy who said stupidity is universal has it right.

Erm, if you're only exposed to "concensus" views and around the edges you get sympathetic nutcases like Lewandowsky claiming anyone who disagrees is a fantasist with a mental problem (oh, the sweet irony), aren't you in exactly the position you are concerned about?

The whole idea is that the chemical weapons are destroyed FIRST...they are being destroyed AT SEA, not "destroyed" by simply dumping them into the ocean.

The fact that the other blog entries hosted at the same site as TFA include:

- Rihanna Displays Illuminati Hand Gesture at Latest Music Award Performance

- SSDI Death Index: Sandy Hook 'Shooter' Adam Lanza Died One Day Before School Massacre?

- 15 Citizens Petition to Secede from the United States

- Will U.S. Troops Fire On American Citizens?

- Illuminati Figurehead Prince William Takes the Stage with Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift

- Has the Earth Shifted â" Or Is It Just Me?

- Mexican Government Releases Proof of E.T.'s and Ancient Space Travel ...should give you a hint as to the veracity of the content. (And yes, I realize it's simply a blog site with a variety of authors and content.)

As should the first comment, from "LibertyTreeBud", saying:

"Why not add it to some new vaccine? Or, perhaps add it to the drinking water and feed it to the live stock? These creatures will do anything for profits. Lowest bidder mentality rules."

What "creatures", exactly? The international organization explicitly charged with the prohibition and destruction of chemical weapons? What alternatives are people suggesting, exactly?

If you want a real article discussing this situation factually, not the tripe linked in the summary, see: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-25146980

Well the problem is that once you get past a certain time period, you start to run out of sources. Writing was incredibly rare before the 1st millenium BCE and only existed in certain civilizations. It's not a coincidence that we know more about Greece, Egypt, Persia, Babylon, etc. rather than other civilizations. They were the only ones keeping records! Other civilizations only have oral histories, which are certainly interesting but of highly questionable accuracy.

Also the reason why written sources are more numerous and accurate after around, say, the 6th century BC is because that's when people started writing everything down! Although writing existed before then, there was a massive increase in trade during that time period and that's when writing became commonplace. Scholars believe that was the time period in which the Greek legends as well as the first books of the Old Testament were all written. So there is a period ranging around the 6th century BC to the present where we have continuous (and thus accurate) written history being recorded, a written history of the oral traditions of those cultures (that goes back some time but is of questionable accuracy), and then a time of prehistory where we have no information other than what we can put together from archaeological data.

If you look at that wikipedia page you linked, almost all of those dates are based on archaeological data. The way that works is an archaeologist finds a site that looks promising and starts a dig. They find any artifacts in that area, analyze it, date it, compare it to other sites in the region, and extrapolate information based on that. Other scientific fields are also used to help out: chemistry, genetics, linguistics, anthropology, climate science, all of them are used in constructing history. But that's not very precise and extremely dependent on finding good archaeological data, so that's why you have the lack of precision.

Go back 2,000 years and there is quite a bit of archaeological data. Go back 5,000 years and it is is very hard to come by. Go back 10,000 years and it's practically nonexistent. That's why we know so little of prehistoric civilizations. There's literally no other information other than "There were people here, and they left these types of tools" and maybe some bones or cave paintings.

Well, yeah, you have to take that bias into account. You don't just read the Bible and take them at their word for what happened. But you can confirm much of the Bible's historicity via archaeology and referencing contemporary sources.

For example, the Old Testament might say King Johesephus ruled such and such kingdom at such and such time period and he was a terrible, wicked ruler who murdered children and was struck down by God. You can go back and confirm via other methods that there really was a King Johesephus that ruled that kingdom and during that time period. Was he actually as horrible and wicked as described in the Bible? Maybe not. Like you said, the accounts written down in the Bible were from people with a very biased viewpoint so you have to take that into account. But you can confirm or deny a lot of it.

That's what I mean when I say that things in the Bible seem to be fairly accurate after a certain point. Obviously the ancient Jews had their own biases and that has to be taken into account, but we can confirm that many events happened at the same times and places described in the Old Testament. But the further you go back the more inaccurate it gets. The Kingdom of Judah was certainly not the way described in the Old Testament and there is absolutely no evidence for the Jews being enslaved in Egypt, for example.

Compare it to Ancient Greek history. Just because the Illiad is obviously legend doesn't mean the Peloponnesian war didn't happen.