The fact that scientific knowledge, in the form of scientific articles, is locked behind exorbitant journal paywalls is what is preventing amateur science the most, not to mention would be professional science in places that can't afford the outlandish subscription fees.

It's a crime against humanity preventing what is often publicly funded scientific knowledge from being shared far and wide, as it could be with virtually no cost on the Internet.

This is a shameful state of affairs that needs to be fixed one way or the other. Long live Aaron!

It's crystal claro that we have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions rapidly and getting the coal plants off the grid is one of the most efficient ways to do that. Technologies have been designed for large-scale grid storage to balance intermittent renewables. There is underground hydroelectric, underground compressed air, underwater compressed air bags, molten salt heat storage, electric trains on slopes, sodium-sulfur batteries.

Oh, and much more use could be made of high-voltage DC long distance transmission (e.g. of what's possible now: 2300km at 800kV) to shunt power from where it's being produced to where it is needed, and to, for example, time-shift PV across longitudes, and flatten out wind intermittency (it's always windy somewhere).
And that doesn't even scratch the surface (pun intended) of new superconducting transmission lines technologies that could boost long distance transmission efficiency even further.

We are at the baby steps (no, the crawling) phase of this transition now. Governments should simply across the board legislate that utilities MUST accommodate ALL new zero-carbon electricity generation with no additional fees. Period. Full stop. Any other policy is suicidally backwards.

Ok, so some projects, as has been pointed out, are doomed from the very first bad architectural decision (or lack of architectural decision.)

But regardless of that factor, the most common thing I've seen is management/corporate promising a particular release date, in a contract, say, and eventually getting around to telling development/engineering, who say, if they're brave, um, that's not possible. If they are less brave, they smile and get on with faking it, all the while knowing it's impossible in the time given. If they're highly skilled and properly whipped, they'll get something that looks superficially ok out the door on schedule, but don't ever, ever, try to use it.

You've got to ask yourself, who's building and deploying reliable, performant, extremely scaled apps these days? Who has been doing that successfully for over a decade? Why don't we ask them to build our big app? Or if they're busy, ask them who they would recommend.

is "G0 FVCK VRSEF!"

No, really.

So let me guess, you're one of those "IT bridge trolls" who build and hide in indecipherable structures and hoard troves of secret passwords, holding their organization for ransom, and mumbling and grumbling to themselves.
While thinking they're pretty damn good at their job, they are actually a worst nightmare scenario waiting to happen.

The solution to data longevity is such things as:

-Redundant storage

-Globally distributed storage

-Fragmentation and reassembly of data (so no host is responsible for content, since it is all just fragments)

-A protocol whereby the network monitors how many copies of a datum there are and creates more copies if it can't find enough.

-A protocol that automatically migrates data fragements to both newer host storage and more reliable host storage gradually over time.

-Re-wrappable encryption protocol

-Onion routing for access

-An economic model such as quid pro quo storage sharing (you store some of anonymous others' fragments, they store some of yours, no money exchanged.

-Storage of metadata and programming language execution environments and programs (with instructions) along with data

The term "atheist" is embedded in a language framework that considers theism normative and thus "a"theism as aberrant. (Theism: noun: belief in the existence of a god or gods, esp. belief in one god as creator of the universe, intervening in it and sustaining a personal relation to his creatures.)

I reject this entire language framework, and its framing of theism (belief in god) as normative.

I would prefer to think of myself as someone aspiring to be a rational, appropriately skeptical realist.
While I agree with a right to freedom of thought, I take a dim view of the prevailing "irrational supernaturalist" (theist) mindset.

Followers in organized "irrational supernaturalist" religions should wake up and realize that the top leaders in their hierarchies don't actually believe in god. They believe that maintaining the pretense is a great way to maintain inordinate amounts of social and economic power. These leaders, if intelligent, are clearly manipulative cynics of the highest order.

"so it can use anonymized IDs"

kind of like, say, bitcoin addresses:

"A Bitcoin address, or simply address, is an identifier of 27-34 alphanumeric characters, beginning with the number 1 or 3, that represents a possible destination for a Bitcoin payment. Addresses can be generated at no cost by any user of Bitcoin. For example, using Bitcoin-Qt, one can click "New Address" and be assigned an address. It is also possible to get a Bitcoin address using an account at an exchange or online wallet service."

> "Now, the interesting question is why, specifically, we would consider that the GMO is riskier than a wild conventional crop"

We are coming to a point in genetic engineering technology where entirely custom organism genomes will be able to be created with four bottles of chemicals: (A)denine, (C)ytosine, (T)hymine and (G)uanine, a computer code specifying the desired sequence, and a computerized melecular assembly machine. Limited examples of this have already been carried out, and its general application is not far off.

The appropriate term then becomes "synthetic biology" not the more limited "genetic modification".

We already see genes from distant species spliced in to other species (fish genes into tomatoes etc).

The answer to the "why more risk" question is that the combinatoric possibilities for novelty of genome and novelty of effect are much greater in genetic engineering than in evolutionarily selected natural mutation.

Ordinary mutation has characteristics like that it is usually only an incremental change (genetic-informationally) from the pre-mutated genome. It is true that even incremental informational change in the genome can lead to large effects in the phenotype (the organism), but with current day and near future genetic engineering, there is no longer a restriction to incremental informational change to the genome.

Most variations will, as usual, not be viable, but if one is by chance or design, it could easily be very different than anything seen in earth life so far, because its synthetic genome can be arbitrarily different.

Direct health effects of GMO foods are IMHO only the third most important potential concern with GMOs.

The first concern is that whatever you have engineered, it is self-reproducing and could potentially take over a niche in a whole ecosystem, displacing other species or naturually adapted varieties, and you in general could not stop this if it happened. So eco-systems then become fully the responsibility of human biology tweakers.
This seems generally unwise. The consequences of such ecosystem shifts is too complex to be predicted.

A second concern is that each genetic engineering modification needs to be fully assessed separately from all others, due to the complexity of the systems into which they are being inserted. Or at least, very narrow equivalence classes of modifications need each to be individually, and in combination, re-tested for long term effects, viability, viability and effects of likely mutations of the tweak etc, each time they are tweaked.
The cost of such repeated and long term safety testing is well beyond the capability of the companies producing the products, so we can be sure that such rigorous, long term, and repeated (when product is varied) testing is not being done.
Instead, smaller numbers of specific tests on a subset of engineered varieties are generalized in alleged applicability and conclusion, to save money.

So there is still a lot of know unknown and unknown unknown out there, and it is the kind of product that in general, self-reproduces and also expands in range.

Best movie I've ever seen!

Hey, what the hell?

If you think that way, rather than: The purpose of conversation is to tell people what I'm thinking, then you will be a better communicator.
Listen, process what the other person's motives and needs are, and take the opportunity to learn something from them or their perspective.

It you think you know it all already, you are already done, in any business or endeavour.
If you think you know it all and can only pass on information, you are not really that valuable a contributor, because you are probably working hard and cleverly on the wrong problem altogether.

There is always something to learn by active listening. You get more out of conversation that way; appreciation, and knowledge, cumulatively.

I wasn't referring to any particular party, although the genious mods who modded my post flamebait must have a pretty clear idea which party fits my description.

Touchy much?

use the Internet again.