Not at all, I've gone to great lengths not to say it's impossible, but I am emphasising that the scenario you're pushing for involves the probability that a virus of previously unseen sequence is collected by the lab multiplied by the probability that said virus then escapes unmodified from a level three containment facility multiplied by the probability that said escape leaves no traceable footprint to link back to the lab. On the other hand we have the probability that the virus was seeded into Wuhan via the same bat/animal transmission event that has occurred literally tens of thousands of times before - SARS 1 being just one example.

On the other hand we have the the human propensity to look for patterns and causes in events and find them even where none exists,

Plug these data points into even the most cursory of rational (baynsian) analysis and we're going to need a lot more solid evidence on the lab escape side before the probability reaches anything worth considering likely.

Jumping up and down and shouting 'false dichotomy' really doesn't bring anything to the table. Indeed we've already incorporated your 'false dichotomy' into the equation. To emphasise I am not saying a lab escape is impossible, simply that with current priors I see no reason to believe that the probability of it lies with the range of anything that was likely to be the cause.

No one is saying that's not 'possible', but if you consider your priors properly it's obvious that exceptionally strong evidence is required to support the lab escape theory, and that's just not forthcoming. The genome shows no sign of genetic manipulation, there's no other signs of unusual adaption, and there's no convincing epidemiological pattern - in short nothing that shifts the probabilities anywhere near to the degree required to overturn the assumption that what we've seen is *exactly* the same species jumping event we're seen thousands of times in recorded history.

The more mundane explanation, that some peasant within a few hundred miles radius picked up the virus somewhere either from a bat or via some intermediate species infected by a bat from where it made its way to the nearest crowded city where it then seeded a cluster in *exactly the same way that has happened thousands of times before throughout human history* has an overwhelmingly higher probability of being true.

Viruses have been jumping from other species into humans for as long as there has been humans, taking a notch up with agriculture a few millennia ago and again more recently with increased populations encroaching on habitats. It's happened millions of times in the lifespan of our species - many, many thousands of times in recorded history - and will continue to happen.

It is of course theoretically possible that this was a lab escape, but an extraordinary level of proof is required overturn an assumption that this is just another natural transmission event in a very, very, long line of natural transmission events in a area of the world where many such events have occurred before. I see absolutely nothing in the least that indicates that this is anything otherwise - indeed the genetics indicate the reverse. The origin of SARS-1 has still not been tied down to an exact transmission chain, but no-one is suggesting that has a lab origin, indeed the only real difference between SARS-1 and SARS-2 is that the lower transmission efficiency of SARS-1 gave a greater opportunity to trace the animal source. We know, because we've seen it many times now, that a SARS-2 positive individual can carry the virus a great distance and for considerable time before seeding a cluster.

I do however see an awful lot of evidence that points to the irrationalist human tendency to look for a cause and something to blame. The probability that the lab theory of origin is derives from human psychology over the true sequence of events is simply overwhelming to the point of being vanishingly different from 1.0

That's purely your opinion, or rather the opnion the Western media has told you to have because they're covering up their incompetence. Actual evidence?

I really don't see the difference here, the argument that China is being substantially different to the west seems to me a rather odd combination of Special Pleading ('because we wouldn't do that and they would') and Circular Reasoning.

Do I think the Chinese numbers have uncertainties? Sure. Do I think they are dramatically off and China lied substantially? No. And that's because the epidemiology of the virus in China as reported by them largely matches up with the epidemiology in Korea and Taiwan, neither of which have any great love for China.

The plain fact is the West has largely screwed their response up and they're now casting around for scapegoats - and China and the WHO are the obvious ones to call. There's a really rather nasty streak of Orientalism coming to the fore here

here in the UK we've only been counting deaths outside hospitals over the past few days when Journalists raised questions, before that it was swept under the carpet. Similarly numerous other western countries, including the USA

So it's more than a tad hypocritical to make out this is some great Chinese cover-up.

I swapped my search engine to Bing after the James Damore affair on all my devices and actually I now quite strongly prefer it because..
1. There's far less advertising. It's not uncommon for a Google search result for something sellable to have over half a page of placed ads at the top. There's far less on Bing
2. The image search results are just plain better
3. Bing results for anything political/social are just far less weird
4. And actual search results are at least as good as Google
5. And Microsoft rewards are nice, sure the $30 a year I get back in gift vouches aren't going to change the world, but it's a nice wee bonus.

Now sure Google and Microsoft are both big digital, but Microsoft seem far less evil nowadays.

Not a lot of great reasons to log into Slashdot these days but honoring Roblimo is unquestionably one of them. The man and his editing calculations will be forever missed ...

He posted a blog post yesterday and it's currently cached but essentially he promises to move BTC from early blocks to do the final verification. This was up yesterday before his stupid wah wah redirect went up. I'm reposting it here in case it's ever removed from google cache (I hate scammers):

If only we had a website the covered this sort of stuff ... oh right, we do! New VPN IP addresses probably take a while for them to identify the traffic on and block. But there are plenty of services like HMA that constantly roll out new ip addresses. So as long as you're a mouse willing to play whackamole with your cat overlords ... Annoying, yes, but that's the definition of the internet in China.

In response to the second part, that is always true regardless of the answer to the first part. Not only are members of the government are treated differently but also their families. The "party" class enjoys many many perks. Unmonitored VPN connections would be laughable compared to their insider trading, disregard for the law and instant attack dogs they routinely utilize.

While you're accepting suggestions, why isn't my aforementioned article linked in the "You may like to read:" section of this page? Those stories seem to have nothing to do with China's firewall yet a simple google search shows a whole slew of those stories on Slashdot. I think you could get timothy's family to help you track that stuff if you would return his body to them. They only want closure, it doesn't matter if it has to be a closed casket funeral!

As a software developer here that likes to fiddle with all languages, the second paragraph from Wikipedia seems to answer your question nicely: "It is a statically typed language with syntax loosely derived from that of C, adding garbage collection, type safety, some structural typing capabilities,[2] additional built-in types such as variable-length arrays and key-value maps, and a large standard library."

So from the first few words someone might know C and desire garbage collection to be handled for them? Golang might be a better selection for them than Java.

Personally for me, the built-in primitives for concurrency make it a great language for tinkering in realms of software design that were once onerous to me. But that's only one of a few of the language's goals.

Maybe a better set of questions would be for an elevator pitch on why someone should use golang? Or perhaps if they have dropped some goals of golang for others as development went forward?

In conversation, I refer to it as golang. You are right on your point about potential for confusion but I don't think your example is apt anymore. Googling for programming go appears to yield only results about golang. Also, it is not without tangential benefits like being able to call Go developers "gophers."

I think when I first started programming Groovy long ago I stumbled upon a website promising that software development was groovy ... that's no longer the case when I google for groovy programming resources.

In short the success of your language is a big enough concern than the name of your language is negligible (with the exception of negative words). The search results will follow.

I am neither a leftist nor a corporate shill. I believe in beating the shit out of private companies that deserve to have the "shit beat out" of them. You need only look at the lengthy history of consumer protection in the United States to find instances where this was and is necessary. Take, for example, Debt Collection Practices. Please, please, please "beat the shit out" of unscrupulous collection agencies. Please "beat the shit" out of the companies that call my grandmother to deliver unsolicited advertisements about a "warranty extension" on her car. There are plenty of private companies that should have this done to them. The issue I take with China's implementation is 1) that it will never target a state owned business and 2) the guidelines are by no means clearly laid out and can be ambiguously interpreted. Who will interpret them? When will they interpret them? Why just in time and by the same state body that made them. Please tell me, how can I prove that my product's advertising does not "Cause detriment to national dignity"?

It's not that binary. The United States has its own truth in advertising laws that, in my personal opinion, are beneficial at both the federal and state level. Slashdot readers are free to go the Libertarian route and claim the free market would alleviate these issues on its own or perhaps point out how downright pedantic it can be at times. But the truth of the matter is that, as a consumer, we only have so many hours in a day to decide which of the thousands of products we consume in a year we should spend our money on. So it does come down to federal guidelines for what is "Grade A" or "Organic" or "Green" when there is a label espousing these properties and there are consumers paying a premium for this notion. Without those guidelines those words will mean absolutely nothing and there will be no way to tell where your product was made, how much cadmium it has in it or whether it is the end result of spewing carbon into the atmosphere. Without similar laws, you wouldn't be able to trust the nutritional information at the grocery store. Is it free speech to claim that my potato chips cure cancer and lead to weight loss no matter how many of them you eat? People will know that I'm lying? Cigarettes used to sooth sore throats. Trans fats used to taste awesome.

Speech used by an individual to express ideas is free speech. Advertisements -- especially advertisements representing a very large organization -- are not. Corporations should not have the same rights individuals have and I feel that free speech is one of those clear cut distinctions. There is a long history of consumer protection everywhere in the world -- learn about your own country's struggles with it. It's not a simple issue and advertisement should not be regarded as free speech.

Here is the full text of the newly amended law. Here is the WIPO listing the deltas with the older 1994 version of the law (click expand notes). It appears that this is the first change in this law since 1994. Also the WIPO provides a PDF of their English version which seems to be slightly different. I also found a definition of the extent of what is regulated advertising by the PRC. Here's the WIPO's full list of defined restrictions:

Merely sounds like another tool for the Party to deal with companies that are not state owned. Most companies will be found guilty of some section of this but they won't be prosecuted until they run afoul of the Party. In China (and increasingly in the US) everyone is guilty of something but only those that the state wants to be prosecuted will be prosecuted.

So looking at the story, we have a new law enacted a month ago and whose head is on the chopping block today? Xiaomi? Well from wikipedia:

Aaaaaand there's your problem. Wake me up when a state owned company is prosecuted under these new laws. Xiaomi's true crime was probably doing better than Huawei.