SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Researchers from multiple institutions have come together to publish Earth's most complete family tree to date, illustrating the evolutionary relationships between about 2.3 million named species of lifeforms over the course of roughly 3.5 billion years on the planet.
...
While exhaustive, scientists still have a long way to go. That's because it's believed there are currently about 8.7 million species on the planet today and countless others from Earth's past that are yet to be catalogued.In an effort to expand the tree even further over time, the researchers, who collaborated from 11 institutions, have put their work online at Open Tree of Life -- a massive and open-access digital depository where anyone can download, view and edit the tree -- a kind of "Wikipedia" for evolutionary trees.
It's an impressive feat to accomplish in 25 years, considering it took 90 years to complete the Chicago Assyrian Dictionary, another large cataloguing project. The graphic is worth looking at, too.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @06:32PM
What's the over/under on days before the tree gets its base trimmed back to about 6000 years ago?
(Score: 2) by miljo on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:29PM
I wish you weren't an AC, AC. I would give you points for this.
One should strive to achieve, not sit in bitter regret.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 24 2015, @07:38PM
It's ok to show us ACs love.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:44AM
Moderation is not for the comment author. Moderation is for the readers. You moderate the post so that the readers more easily find the good ones, and can more easily ignore the bad ones. Moderating up is actually more important for AC posts because they start at a lower score, so it needs more upmods until users with a high threshold can see a good AC post.
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:36AM
True and not only that: it is often far more important to mod up good than to mod down bad.
With the exception of spam (which carries a penalty for moderation abuse) modding an AC down is almost always a waste of mod points just like modding down new (Score: 1) or established (Score: 2) users is also almost always a waste and particularly if it's only because something is perceived as offensive (no matter what it is).
When something irks someone the correct thing to do is to either ignore it (people are allowed to have their own opinions, they usually have a reason even when one disagrees) or reply/debate/explain the wrongness.
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @08:00PM
Forget pruning. We're chopping the damned thing down for firewood. Gotta get that global warming engine running!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Thursday September 24 2015, @09:44PM
Is that why clicking the link leads me to a blank page?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 24 2015, @10:20PM
You probably run addons, such as NoScript? I got tired of trying to make it work, and loaded the page in SRWare Iron. I don't have any blockers running in that browser, so it worked. It takes a while to load on my snail like 2 Mb connection. There's a lot of data there!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday September 25 2015, @12:40AM
It could be worse. I just run AdBlock and Ghostery. The thing is like one of those autorunners that were common on CDs during the 90s.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @08:01AM
This is the complete page:
I think that explains everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @10:53AM
Hate hate hate stupid JavaScipt required pages like that... well I wasn't so interested in their stuff anyways.
(Score: 2) by joshuajon on Friday September 25 2015, @02:21PM
Why does every single comments thread on this site need to include a vitriolic diatribe about NoScript, adblocking, etc. complete with needless hyperbole?! Yes, the web is a mess, and yes many of this sites users are smart enough to work around that fact. Let's drop the meta-threads of this nature pretty please?
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Sunday September 27 2015, @12:51AM
In this case; a scientific page that stubbornly remains blank unless you use the Microsoft Edge browser with an Adobe plugin? Or am I getting that wrong? Allowing the script doesn't do anything for me who doesn't use Microsoft.
That's not even a hoop to jump through, it's a burning ring of fire with a portal into hell.
25 years of work, purportedly “open”, and they stuffed it so far up into one of Satan's asses you have to French kiss him with an oversized tongue to get a taste of it, what a complete waste (and shame) :(
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 2) by turgid on Friday September 25 2015, @08:19PM
Yes, that way Jesus comes back quicker. I saw it on TV.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by caffeine on Thursday September 24 2015, @11:10PM
That is easy to solve. We just add a branch for unicorns and talking snakes and they will be so busy saying "I told you so, even the evolutionists agree they exist" that won't have time to make edits.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 25 2015, @07:46AM
But make sure the unicorns and talking snakes died out more than 6000 years ago. That will confuse them! :-)