HackerNews Summary (2023-05-11 07AM)

Source: Why longtermism is the world’s most dangerous secular credo

Summary
Experts warn that human civilization faces unprecedented existential threats including climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemic diseases, machine superintelligence, and geoengineering. The risk of humanity’s way of life ending within the next 100 years is rated at 50% or higher, and the Doomsday Clock is set at 100 seconds before midnight, the closest it has ever been.

Fact

🌍 Climate change threatens civilization

🐦 Biodiversity loss could cause catastrophic shifts in the global ecosystem

🌡️ Pandemic diseases pose existential risks

💻 Machine superintelligence and geoengineering present emerging threats

🕰️ The Doomsday Clock is set at the closest it has ever been to midnight

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Source: Pharo 11 Released!

Summary
Pharo version 11, a simple yet powerful pure object-oriented programming language, has been released. It features an immersive environment, amazing debugging experience, and is fully open-source with a community-driven development approach.

Fact

💻 Pharo is a pure object-oriented programming language with no constructors, types declaration, interfaces, or primitive types.

🚀 Immediate feedback is provided at any moment of development, including testing and debugging.

🐞 The Pharo environment includes a debugger that allows developers to quickly step through code and create methods on-the-fly.

🌎 Pharo is open-source with a large and global community constantly contributing to its development.

👨‍💻 Pharo version 11 has incorporated a number of usability and speed improvements, making it even more powerful and efficient.

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Source: NIH restarts bat virus grant suspended 3 years ago by Trump

Summary
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has resumed its grant of $576,000 per year to EcoHealth Alliance to study bat coronaviruses, three years after President Donald Trump suspended it, citing support for experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome. The grant was resumed in a stripped-down format, omitting those studies and with additional bookkeeping requirements.

Fact

🦠 The NIH has resumed a stripped-down version of a $576,000 per year grant for EcoHealth Alliance to research bat coronaviruses.

📝 The grant omits controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

🦠 In 2014, the original grant included funding for controversial experiments that mixed parts of different bat viruses related to SARS and included a subaward to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

📝 The grant imposes additional bookkeeping rules on EcoHealth, which drew criticism from government auditors for its bookkeeping practices.

🩺 Critics have argued that work qualified as risky “gain-of-function” (GOF) research that makes potential pandemic viruses more dangerous.

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Source: WWW Error Blocked Diagnostic

Summary
Access to NCBI website blocked due to possible misuse/abuse. It is not a security issue but could be a result of inefficient work affecting other researchers. Contact NCBI for restoring access and better site interaction.

Fact

🚫 Access temporarily blocked due to possible misuse/abuse

🤖 Not a security issue like a virus or attack

💻 Misuse/abuse could be due to inefficient work impacting other researchers

📧 Contact NCBI at info@ncbi.nlm.nih.gov for access restoration and better site interaction

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