Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality - <AUTHOR> http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(15)00300-4/abstract <comment><USER2> Hm... judging by the cover, this looks like absolute crap.

> Some studies have shown a continuous decline in semen quality since the > beginning of the 20th century.

Studies also indicate a continuous decline in testosterone (in males) over 20th century. I'd welcome someone correct my biological knowledge, but I would guess that testosterone influences production of sperm, not the other way round. So they're probably studying the wrong thing.

> One postulated contributing factor is radio frequency electromagnetic > radiation emitted from _cell phones_.

So... how do you then explain the decline from 1900 until 1990?!?

> Questionnaires accessing demographic data and characteristics of cell phone > usage were completed by 106 men

Trying to do statistics on a small, ...

> referred for semen analysis

... biased sample, seriously?!

I'm too paranoidly afraid of the negative effects of radiation, but even I'm inclined to call bullshit on this study.

<comment><USER3> > Studies also indicate a continuous decline in testosterone (in males) over > 20th century. I'd welcome someone correct my biological knowledge, but I > would guess that testosterone influences production of sperm, not the other > way round. So they're probably studying the wrong thing.

Yup. And our society also happens to encourage activities which lower testosterone levels (various things like inactivity, weight gain, poor sleep and stress all sap testosterone levels).

<comment><USER4> >And our society also happens to encourage activities which lower testosterone levels

also important that natural selection in our society isn't for higher testosterone anymore. Peaceful interaction and coexistence lead to more success than open aggression ("success" here is in natural selection sense, i.e. producing next generation and bringing them into "successful" (in the same sense) adulthood)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't critique the article directly, since it's behind a paywall.

But I can take the purported results and do some Bayesian analysis with it. Take first a prior - due to my knowledge of physics, my prior on microwave/RF/visual radiation having any biological effect is 10^{-5}. Multiphoton ionization has simply never been observed to happen except under extremely intense (read: it'll melt you) fields and there are strong theoretical reasons to believe it won't happen.

I.e., if this effect is real, it'll require new physics to explain. Most likely 10^{-5} is a conservative prior on the likelihood that an experimental paper overturns quantum mechanics.

Now, lets take their strongest result (p = 0.02) and do a Bayes update with it, assuming a complete absense of selection bias/etc (i.e. imagining this was a perfect RCT).

P(effect false | experiment result) = P(experiment result | effect false) P(effect false) / P(experiment result)

= 0.02 x (1-10^{-5}) / P(experiment result)

We can compute the latter as P(experiment result | effect false) x (1 - 10^{-5}) + P(experiment result | effect real) x 10^{-5} \approx 0.02 x 1.0. Assuming optimistically that the statistical power - aka P(experiment result | effect real) - is 0.99, the bottom is 0.020009700000000002.

Plugging and chugging yields:

P(effect false | experiment result) = 0.9995052399586201

Or equivalently P(effect real | experiment result) = 0.000494760041379938.

As a result, assuming you believe strongly in quantum physics (I do), this experiment provides wildly insufficient data to overturn QM and believe the effect is real.

Note: I'm not explaining here why quantum mechanics says multiphoton ionization is a tiny effect, negligible in biological applications, I'm just going to argue by authority: [https://www.chrisstucchio.com/publications.html](https://www.chrisstucchio.com/publications.html)

<comment><USER6> Like many people, you're starting from assumption of the mechanism (ionization) and ignoring the fact that there are many other known physical mechanisms that are plausible.

Also, if people detect a reliable signal without a plausible physical mechanism, best thing to do is determine what the cause of the signal is- rather than just assuming it's impossible.

In grad school we were taught to do "back of the envelope" calculations to rule out improbably hypotheses, but I often found the physics people convinced (I think they used the term "proved impossible") themselves things wouldn't work, then after 5-7 years of grad school, managed to come up with actual physical data that showed they had made a false assumption.

<comment><USER5> What are the other plausible mechanisms? The effect of low intensity RF fields on chemistry is essentially negligible. For the most part, folks doing chemistry with non-ionizing radiation need intense lasers or microwave resonating cavities.

The main exceptions (which in reality also mostly require intense radiation) are highly engineered scenarios where you finely tune a radiation source to excite an electron to a specific level that's far from the continuous spectrum, but useful for some other chemical to interact with. To detect low frequency radiation, these usually require very specific materials with nearly continuous energy bands (think carefully doped semiconductors or possibly photoreceptor proteins).

These are also highly unlikely to occur - again, unless you've engineered it to happen, 10^{-5} is probably an extreme overestimate on the probability.

But if you know a plausible mechanism, I'd love to hear it. Feel free to provide references or go into physical detail.

<comment><USER6> Again, you're making a ton of assumptions about mechanisms. Saying low intensity RF has a negligible effect on chemistry belies the fact that cell receptors can be exquisitely sensitive and those receptors can cause large changes in cells via DNA transcription.

The current most plausible mechanism is localized cell heating. We already know that RF can cause cell heating. There are a number of physical responses to cell heating ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_shock_protein)) which can have large effects on cell morphology.

I am not claiming that _is_ the mechanism. But I've seen enough epidemilogical studies that have been conducted carefully enough to suggest there is _some_ mechanism by which negative health effects may be occurring, and I think that alone makes it worth being a bit more creative than trying to disprove the observed evidence by claiming one of the plausible mechanisms isn't.

(I have a PhD in Biophysics; I've worked up and down the molecular stack, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if the epidemiologists carry out a good study, and the meta-analysts confirm the effect, it's always a good idea to be open minded about the cause).

<comment><USER5> Of course I'm making assumptions - the biggest one is that quantum chemistry works.

If you are now retreating to thermal effects, they a) can be easily measured and b) are vastly smaller than effects like wearing tighty whities or walking past a radiator in winter. Is your sole claim that using a cell phone might have an effect 1/100th as large as blow drying one's balls after a shower?

Let me reason by analogy, to explain the probabilitistic intuition here. Study: we threw golf balls at aircraft carriers and cargo vessels, and concluded that they are an effective naval weapon. The probability of observing this result by random chance, assuming golf balls don't sink aircraft carriers, is 2%.

Would you draw the conclusion that golf balls are likely to sink aircraft carriers from such a study?

<comment><USER6> No, my sole claim is not that using a cell phone would have 1/100th the effect of blow drying ones testicles after a shower (why????)

After all, the phone stays around a lot longer (temporal effect) and I have certainly noticed that when the phone is using lots of bandwidth it stays warm for hours at a time. Many effects in biology can occur from extended exposure (cumulative dosage effects) when they don't have an effect from acute exposure. And vice versa, of course.

Anyway, reasoning from probabilistic intuition here is probably a mistake: the epi studies show stuff that doesn't agree with our intuition (this is common) and that leads theorists and experimentalists to go search for other causes. In the history of science, we have a long list of things that weren't intuitive but ultimately were figured out.

Finally falling back on "I assume QC works" isn't really informative in this case. I assume QC works to and I don't see why that negates the possibility that cell phones can have negative health effects caused by physical mechanisms.

<comment><USER5> QM rules out non-thermal effects. Once you retreat to thermal effects you have conceded that a cell phone is vastly less dangerous than turning the thermostat from 74 to 75 (if you want to think about extended exposure) or blow drying one's balls (if you want to think about acute exposure). Now those things probably do have some measurable effect - certainly temperature effects sperm count, which is why men are advised not to wear tighty whities.

Computing the size of cell phone effects, relative to things like moving from NY to slightly warmer DC is just a simple thermodynamic calculation. If the study is concerned about such tiny relative risks, they are both a) wildly underpowered to detect them and b) certainly aren't making that clear in the abstract.

Now, it's possible that our physics-based priors are wildly wrong. But as the calculation I did notes, this study is too underpowered to significantly change our views on that.

<comment><USER7> Outside temperature is less important than you might assume we can lower or pull back our boys to regulate temperature. Airflow and being physically pushed back into the body is a major factor so your boys can overheat when it's 55 or be fine when it's 95.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't even need to read the actual paper in order to debunk it. They admit a selection bias in their fucking abstract: "Questionnaires accessing demographic data and characteristics of cell phone usage were completed by 106 men __referred for semen analysis __. "

</comment><comment><USER9> I think you can pretty much reproduce their study from the percentages with the following table (they claim 26 of the 106 did not meet study eligibility criteria, but the total seems to be 79? but then the total isn't consistent between the two categories; I didn't read carefully enough to see if the discrepancy is explained)

       categories    abnormal semen (n=34)   normal semen (n=45)
        talk >1h          14                   9
            <=1h          20                   36

        while
        chging?
             yes          12                   6
             no           21                   38

It's interesting to note that they actually collected more data than < 1h and >1h (they more finely categorized it as 0-30, 30-60, 60-120 and 120+). The freedom to choose the boundary there should count against the p-value.

Of course, it would be nice if they treated hours talking on phone as a continuous variable instead of a discrete <1h and >1h. With the freedom to set that boundary (if they had that), it would reduce the associated p-value.

Either way, it's very unlikely that the cause is RF radiation and not some confounding variable. Radiation damage is pretty much excluded, and I don't think there can be any effect on the impulses of the nervous system, which I think operates in the kHz, very far away from the 800 MHz+ from cell phones.

Talking while charging seems very unlikely to be related to any radiation, but might be associated with talking while driving or a sedentary lifestyle or something like that.

<comment><USER10> I also noticed that discrepancy in the "talking while charging column"; 21 + 12 = 33 != 34. I briefly looked for an explanation in the text, but I could not find one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would need to see the full article to find out the size of their sample, but their confidence intervals are quite tight for a study of this nature, and they add in the caveat of further research being needed. This should be a least a warning correlation for cell phone users, and will make me rethink some of my usage habits.

<comment><USER12> Or the 5th sentence of the abstract:

> Questionnaires accessing demographic data and characteristics of cell phone > usage were completed by 106 men referred for semen analysis

And this article isn't recommending a change in behavior, only further study:

> Investigation using large-scale studies is thus needed.

<comment><USER13> "Investigation using large-scale studies is thus needed."

Which would be the conclusion of pretty much any result that they could have had. I could have given you that recommendation even without conducting a study at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Not an expert on critical analysis of research, but seems like there's a bit of selection bias given the population studied wanted to reproduce and was referred to the study based on being unable to do so.

<comment><USER15> There could be an over-represented subgroup of the general population who are more susceptible to the cell phone radiation, but selecting from that group would not necessarily obscure the relationship between the amount of cell phone use and any resulting biological impact.

They don't go very far out on the limb, they say that it probably justifies a bigger study, which is pretty mild.

<comment><USER8> > There could be an over-represented subgroup of the general population who > are more susceptible to the cell phone radiation, but selecting from that > group would not necessarily obscure the relationship between the amount of > cell phone use and any resulting biological impact.

That's not what he said. If you read the abstract, it says that the candidates were chosen using "questionnaires accessing demographic data and characteristics of cell phone usage were completed by 106 men __referred for semen analysis __. " The fact that they were referred for semen analysis (read: they were having trouble reproducing) indicates there'd be a selection bias in their study. And without a control group, it's all hand-waving anyway.

> They don't go very far out on the limb, they say that it probably justifies > a bigger study, which is pretty mild.

In order to do it properly, they'd need a much bigger study and a much better sample.

<comment><USER15> My point was that the selection bias proposed will not necessarily obscure a biological effect (or at least, correlation).

Setting aside the legitimacy of pursuing this research, looking for effects using statistical analyses of medical records is an interesting way to direct at least a small amount of research, saying that such questions can only be asked when there is solid control of every factor is probably not a win.

<comment><USER8> > My point was that the selection bias proposed will not necessarily obscure a > biological effect (or at least, correlation).

I'd argue that the sample was not representative of the general population, so "it will not necessarily obscure" isn't relevant IMO because the results aren't even remotely close to being applicable to any other group of men.

> looking for effects using statistical analyses of medical records is an > interesting way to direct at least a small amount of research

I agree that it's interesting. And since I can't read the paper at the moment (I'll download a copy through my university when I get a chance) I can't really comment on the statistical methods they used (I'm not even sure what they asked on the questionnaire). Statistical analysis is _only_ useful if you take into account all of the parameter space (or at least all of the significant parameter space) otherwise you'll get a biased result.

Even then, correlation does not imply causation, so a statistical analysis would only be useful as a survey of "what could be investigated to do actual science on". People put far too much faith into statistics, and it

> saying that such questions can only be asked when there is solid control of > every factor is probably not a win

Anyone can ask a question. I'm saying that the paper published should've actually been an email (or maybe just an article) sent around a faculty so they could do real research on the topic. "Asking a question" and "publishing a paper on a topic" are very different classes of activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If I interpret the abstract correctly, the change in sperm they observed was only correlated to talking on a cell phone whilst charging it (that is, holding it next to your head), where keeping it right next to the groin did not show any significant influence?

That doesn't sound like a plausible outcome of radiation having any influence.

</comment><comment><USER16> Please note that they were _not_ able to prove that having your cell phone near your groin correlated with abnormal sperm. Rather, they found a correlation with being _very chatty_ and being _chatty while charging_.

Correlations, of course, are also not causation. For example, there is no control in this study which rules out an effect like "some men have less testosterone, and this causes them to both be more glued to their phones (using while charging), more social on their phones (talking for over an hour a day), and to have a higher incidence of abnormal sperm." It's sort of like a headline: "If you're shorter, you may be a better parent: a study found an inverse correlation between height and how much time you spend with your kids." You'd be tempted to disbelieve me until I tell you that on average, women are shorter and also spend more time with their kids. If in this case we know the causes, how much more difficult is it when we don't to isolate the confounding variables?

</comment><comment><USER17> >> a non-significantly higher rate of abnormal sperm concentration was found (47.1% versus 11.1%).

As someone contemplating a vasectomy, that's not quite the result I was hoping for. Sure would be easier to just keep my phone in my front pocket. Though, I suppose I'm not really sure what "abnormal" sperm end up doing. It's kind of implied that means they just don't work when the abstract starts out "Male infertility constitutes 30–40% of all infertility cases." but what if those sperm cause birth defects instead? Seems like that's a far from ideal result as well. As always... "Investigation using large-scale studies is thus needed."

<comment><USER18> Maybe somebody could create an app for that, somehow optimize the radiation for killing sperms...

<comment><USER19> There is research on ultrasound devices which do what you're asking. Designed to work as short-medium term contraceptives[0]. That isn't how smartphones kill sperm however, just as an aside for getting the same-ish results.

[0] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-zap-sperm-counts- with...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/scientists-zap-sperm-counts-with- ultrasound-next-male-birth-control/)

<comment><USER20> Thanks for that link. Interesting. There's also the evidence... which needs more corroboration to be sure... that heat above a certain temperature kills them or weakens them. Small scale experiments and survey of blast-furnace workers provided evidence for it. With both, the fertility went back to normal I think a few months after they left the environment where they were overheated.

So, initial evidence for sperm-killing heat to be a safe and effective contraceptive. Doesn't feel as bad as you'd think, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> From the abstract: _Some studies have shown a continuous decline in semen quality since the beginning of the 20th century. One postulated contributing factor is radio frequency electromagnetic radiation emitted from cell phones._

If the decline is since the start of the 20th century (1901), cell phones are unlikely to be a primary cause. The first cell phone was in 1973 and they didn't become commonplace until the end of the 20th or start of the 21st century. Unclear if the premise is wrongly stated or if the authors are confusing the 20th and 21st century.

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't know the inner details of cell phone technology, but as I understand it, the phone throttles its radio output power based on the quality of the signal, to conserve battery. Thus, usage in hours isn't exactly a measure of RF dose.

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2015.104...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3109/15368378.2015.1043557)

</comment><comment><USER24> Don't play with your phone instead of your partner or penis.

</comment><comment><USER25> The problem is that we have a bad model to describe the effect of EM-waves on biological tissue. Currently the model defines biological bodies as containers of water. This is clearly wrong.

What I propose is standard antenna science. Something needs to resonate with the biological systems. In artificial antennas there are free electrons. In biological bodies there are ions and polar molecules. Most proteins are diamagnetic, except when they are in reaction. These are the things that we need to concentrate on.

There are also new discoveries that show that biology uses quantum super position states in some of the important proteins. This allows these proteins to be far more sensitive to electromagnetism. For example: the magnetic sense of birds depend on it. Another example is chlorophyll, which becomes more sensitive to light (which is an EM-wave) than usual. Other discoveries show that DNA might be a conductor. And in combination with EM-radiation the functioning of parts of the DNA can be reduced or enhanced. This is new science which clearly shows that we were wrong about the effect of electromagnetism and biology before.

Also interesting are processes in biology that have certain frequencies of themselves like the firing of neurons. And other repetitive processes like the transcoding of DNA to RNA and of RNA to proteins.

Note that all these antenna possibilities depend on certain frequencies. On some frequencies we might see no result at all, while on others it affects a certain process in a negative or even positive way. And looking a the actual research at [http://www.microwavenews.com](http://www.microwavenews.com) this seems to be the case. A lot of research show some kind of effect (negative and positive), while others don't.

Sadly many scientists do not know much about both biology and antennas. They usually talk about ionization and heat, which are not the problem at all. It is actually very stupid to see that as the problem.

I do not think that EM-radiation is totally bad. It is just something that is damaging on the long term due to stress and disturbance of the biological processes and systems (when they resonate with the specific frequencies of the signals).

<comment><USER25> Scientific evidence proving my point: [http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2016/2/3-31891_Study- Uncovers-H...](http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2016/2/3-31891_Study-Uncovers-How- Electromagnetic-Fields-Amplify-_story- wide.html?WT.mc_id=NewsHomePageCenterColumn)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good! There's too many of us already.

6.8 billion phones today means 6.8 billion pieces of high tech garbage a couple of years later, leaking all kinds of toxic shit into the water, plus 6.8 billion new devices manufactured while digging up all kinds of precious materials out of the ground and using oil to transport them all over the world, then burning coal, heating oil and natural gas to melt and glue shit together, and then burn more oil to transport the finished devices to customers all over the world.

That helps climate change, which leads to droughts in places like Brazil, determining people to use bathtubs to catch every drop of rain, were mosquitos breed and then fly around spreading Zika.

More phones and more porn, that's what's needed for a happy future.

/sarcasm

<comment><USER27> It really is disgusting how temporary cellphones are built. Where are the modular personal computers?

<comment><USER28> Europe [1]. I was very interested when I first saw some Fairphone 2 buzz online a couple months ago, but I'm a little apprehensive about water resistance and the price (525 EUR). Also, most people probably wouldn't have this problem, but I'd have to switch to a different cell provider to use an FP2.

[1] [https://www.fairphone.com/phone/](https://www.fairphone.com/phone/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Other studies show significantly decreased mobility and sperm quality as well (some in-vitro with microscope).

Anecdotally, I'm quite confident this was a factor with our 2nd child. With our 1st, I didn't own a cell phone and he was conceived literally the first try.

I bought a smart phone when he was 1, which I carried in my pocket. A few years later, we wanted another child - tried for 10 months with no results! Frustrating. I randomly found some studies covering this exact subject in mid July. I started putting my phone into my backpack. August, our 2nd was on his way.

For anyone who's having troubles, I would strongly advise to take the phone out of your pocket. It might even be best for everyone to do so - who knows the long term effects.

<comment><USER13> Fertility decreases with age, especially in women. That your second child took longer to conceive than the first is no evidence of anything and even less of the influence of cell phone ownership. You might just as well claim that having your first child decreased your fertility, or anything else that happened to you in between. (Bought a new car? A new TV? Different brand toothpaste?)

<comment><USER30> Crest is notorious for decreasing sperm motility. /s</comment></comment></comment>


There's no such thing as a 'pure' European–or anyone else - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/theres-no-such-thing-pure-european-or-anyone-else <comment><USER2> The whole concept of racial purity really only makes sense if you have a poor grasp of science or a nefarious intention.

</comment><comment><USER3> what about 'indigenous'?

<comment><USER4> Quote the article: "Basically, everybody's myth is wrong, even the indigenous groups'".

I never understood how one could try to argue one's "race superiority" by claiming one's blood to be pure.

Especially in Europe where you have lots of migration and mingling even in recorded history. The Roman Empire was an early melting pot and the following Völkerwanderung added only to this mix.</comment></comment>


Former TSA screener says the job does little to keep fliers safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/confessions_of_tsa_agent_we_re_bunch_OhxHeGd0RR9UVGzfypjnLO <comment><USER2> The TSA is a discussion proof issue. Their mission is to make all transportation safe -- which is prima facie insane.

When we have a political discussion about any other government agency, there are usually some kind of stats we can judge our expenditures against. Need more police? Maybe so. What's the crime rate look like. Need increased defense spending? I don't know. What's the defense spend of other countries. And so on. [Insert long discussion here about whether such metrics are useful or just BS, but the point is that there are numbers, sorta]

With the TSA, we're protecting them from something not happening that's only ever happened once in our history. If we spend 100 Billion over the next ten years and there are no attacks, was that money well spent? Who knows? Maybe we should spend twice that, or half that.

I'm not even going to go into the civil liberties problem. From a funding discussion alone, there's simply no way to know if we have "not enough", "just right", or "too much"

And so we end up with this kabuki theater, where we pay untrained people to go through the motions of looking like they might be doing something useful.

Politicians have a tendency to create issues that only have one side to them. So we have "Mothers Against Drunk Drivers" -- anybody know people in favor of drunk drivers? Or people in favor of "clean water" -- is there a political group actively lobbying for dirty water? We create these edge cases where the way the issues are framed, reasonable discussion becomes impossible. This is the case with the TSA.

The TSA needs to be abolished. Immediately.

<comment><USER3> "When we have a political discussion about any other government agency, there are usually some kind of stats we can judge our expenditures against"

Usually those stats are ignored. You brought up good examples:

"Need more police? Maybe so. What's the crime rate look like"

More like, "I can be tough on crime, so let me fund more cops!" The crime rate has been declining lately, but the police are more powerful than ever before. Paramilitary teams are routinely used to serve search-and-arrest warrants, the police can recycle the proceeds of seized property into their own budgets, and there are more and more ways for us to become criminals with each passing year.

"Need increased defense spending? I don't know. What's the defense spend of other countries"

Once upon a time, we only spent substantial money on the military when we were in a state of war. Then we began to panic over the USSR's military might, so we created a standing army. Now there is no USSR and we have the most powerful and well-funded military on Earth. Despite the changes in other countries' military sizes and budgets, our standing army faces more budget cuts from failures to compromise on the domestic budget than any sort of quantitative comparison with other countries.

The thing about the executive branch is that it is constantly trying to get more power, and the legislative branch is constantly giving more power to the executive. The old protections against executive abuses are being eroded, and new ways for the executive to act without democratic process are being created. Declare drugs to be illegal without consulting Congress? Sure. Shoot and kill American citizens hundreds of miles from any battlefield? Of course! Expanded the military presence in countries that never threatened or attacked us? Why wait for Congress on anything? The only politicians who are even trying to stop this are outsiders, libertarians and the far-left whose ideas are nowhere near the mainstream.

"With the TSA, we're protecting them from something not happening that's only ever happened once in our history."

The issue here is that there was never actually a problem for the TSA to address. America does not have an ongoing problem with terrorist attacks; every few years we see one very determined attacker manage to cause a lot of destruction, and otherwise we go on with our lives oblivious to the numerous ways we can be attacked. Other countries are not so fortunate: they have to deal with terrorists attacking garbage cans, buses, markets, etc. They can judge their policies by reductions in such attacks.

Bruce Schneier has a good point: instead of an agency meant to secure transportation against rare and unpredictable attacks, we should fund an agency meant to make transportation generally safer. We have lots of car accidents each year; once upon a time, we addressed that by mandating seatbelts as a standard feature. Why not continue to develop safer cars? If we are no longer creative enough to do that, why not spend the money on making alternative modes of transportation easier, cheaper, and more available? We can determine the success of such a policy by the reduction in vehicle-related injuries and deaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back."

"Airline Security a Waste of Cash," Schneier, 2005: <http://www.schneier.com/essay-096.html>

Schneier goes on to claim that everything else is security theater. I'm open to the idea that there's something else out there that's helpful (though I couldn't name it off the top of my head). But we should definitely apply steady pressure towards the demilitarization of the airports so this cruft doesn't stay entrenched forever.

<comment><USER5> Claiming the TSA agents at the airport are the first line of defense is idiotic thinking. If the bad guys get that far then everything else has failed. They are the last line, and not a very good one. (Bad guys can try multiple times, and use multiple people - they just need one to get through while the TSA needs to stop every single one.) The other thing/something else is good old fashioned police work and intelligence to discover/prevent the plots before they reach the stage of people at the airport.

The TSA could never be perfect - consider the example of prisons where there are essentially no rights, lots of searching, controlled access etc. Things still get through.

And even if they stopped everything getting on planes, they are still reacting to a tactic which has repeatedly been the problem. The bad guys can just blow up queues at the airport, or a mall, or a stadium, or a highway. There is no shortage of targets or methods that will instil fear. (Good old fashioned police work and intelligence should be tactic agnostic.) The reality is that not that many people actually want to be bad guys, and a US policy of not giving people reasons would be a good one.

<comment><USER6> Oh we have old fashioned police work too-- where the FBI finds am mentally retarded person, hands him a fake bomb, and then arrests him, and holds a self congratulatory press conference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My grandma used to work as a TSA screener in Southern California, both before 9/11 (when they were ran by a private organization IIRC) and after. She would regularly have to go take classes because she would miss the dummy guns and grenades they would send through in bags. From what she told me, she was far from the only one who couldn't quite cut it, but she felt bad enough about the repeated failures she requested a transfer into one of the offices instead. The thing that always seemed the most alarming is that they acted like TSA was this new, more secure way to handle security, yet, at least at the airport my grandma worked at, they just moved the same people over to TSA, gave them new uniforms, a raise and then let business continue as usual.

<comment><USER6> What is extra weird is that the threat objects are all computer vision analyzed and automatically color coded. It's not clear why we have people looking at the images anyway, except to review the positive IDs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Think of the TSA as kinder, gentler war profiteering vs the contractors of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Think of how much money they've completely sucked from the economy that can never be returned.

<comment><USER9> But look on the bright side - they're providing jobs to the otherwise- virtually-unemployable, if the competence and dedication to work I've seen is indicative of the TSA workforce as a whole.

<comment><USER10> Hooray for a trillion dollars spent getting thousands of people to do busywork 8 hours a day for years and years. :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't think this TSA screener understands that the TSA does not need perfection to be effective.

The purpose of the TSA is not to catch every piece of contraband; it is to reduce "aircraft attacks" [EDIT: by aircraft attacks, I maan "attacks against the airplane itself," that is, bombings capable of bringing down the plane. Hijackings are not really feasible anymore]. For that purpose, it does not have to be 100% effective, or even 95% effective, or even 90% effective; it just has to raise the apparent level of difficulty high enough such that:

a) An attack looks like it will take so much effort that the terrorist is no longer interested (terrorists are lazy, too) or capable. Attack frequency is inversely proportional to effort involved. If all a terrorist had to do to down a plane is click on a link in a web-browser, we would see catastrophes daily; if the sophistication of the attack is such that it takes months of training, the frequency drops by orders and orders of magnitude.

b) It forces a terrorist to get help from other terrorists; while a solo terrorist is hard to detect in advance, terrorist networks and their communications are routinely infiltrated by law enforcement and intelligence.

In this respect, pat-downs and body scanners force terrorists to up their game, which, in turn, discourages attacks from ever taking place. The Israelis also use this method [1] but they apply it more selectively based on the background of the passenger, which saves resources and, while politically difficult, is a much better approach.

[1] "At Ben-Gurion, some passengers have been searched so thoroughly that they have had to walk through the terminals, the gates and up to the doors of their planes with no handbags, wallets or even shoes." [http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/11/tsa_alterna...](http://www.cleveland.com/world/index.ssf/2010/11/tsa_alternatives_israeli_airpo.html)

<comment><USER3> "The purpose of the TSA is not to catch every piece of contraband; it is to reduce aircraft attacks."

Here I was, thinking that the security checkpoint was a measure to make everyone feel safer. Thanks for clearing that one up!

"An attack looks like it will take so much effort that the terrorist is no longer interested (terrorists are lazy, too) or capable"

Except that you can buy or obtain all the things needed to kill people on an airplane on the other side of the security check. You can buy glass, you can get knives from restaurants, etc. The fact that you get a security check long before you are anywhere near an airplane leaves a lot of room for an attacker, even a solo terrorist who is not particularly creative.

Note that the Israeli approach involves walking _up to the door of an airplane_ without any carry-ons or shoes. Profiling is needed to determine who is even worth the attention (if they did that to everyone, there would be riots). Meanwhile, the TSA will let you bring a pocket knife onto a plane, which is more than enough to kill people.

The real difference today is not that terrorists have a harder time bringing weapons onto planes, but that passengers and crew do not believe they will survive a hijacking. People will now fight back. The locked cockpit doors -- locked from the inside -- help a lot too. Any security beyond explosives detection is pointless, and you could have that sort of security right at the departure gates.

I personally doubt that the TSA checkpoints were ever meant to keep us secure. The Bush administration just needed to reassure people that we would have better security than we did beforehand, in a visible and easy-to-understand way. Now the agency is huge and no politician can afford to void against checkpoints, just in case a clever terrorist manages to hijack a plane (or perhaps shoot it down with a surface-to-air missile; people would probably blame lax airport security in that case too). It also helps that so many contracts are awarded for building the TSA's equipment, and that the TSA has substantially weakened Americans' ideas about civil rights (and what mainstream politician will complain about such things?).

<comment><USER11> I should clarify that I think the TSA wants to prevent airline _bombings_ (that is, loss of a plane) above all else. Hijackings are much more difficult than they were before 9/11, even if the terrorists were in a group and allowed some weapons. I don't think the TSA is, or should be, focusing on hijackings. AFAIK, since 9/11 there have been no more hijacking attempts, but several bombing attempts.

<comment><USER3> "I should clarify that I think the TSA wants to prevent airline bombings (that is, loss of a plane) above all else."

I have my doubts about that as well. I would think that the lack of K-9 teams near departure gates is a good sign that bombings are not the concern of the TSA when it comes to airport security. Bombings are probably a concern somewhere, but the security checkpoints do not seem to do much when it comes to stopping a bomb plot.

Keep in mind that private planes are exempt from the security checks. If a terrorist wanted to blow up a commercial plane, what would stop them from chartering a private jet, bringing bombs on board, and then ramming their explosive-laden plane into an airliner mid-flight? Why even bother doing it in flight? A terrorist might just roll their chartered jet into a fully-loaded passenger plane on the runway, and blow up a plane in front of a crowd of people.

Perhaps there is some other procedure in place to ensure that no bombs can make it past the numerous ways that people and vehicles can enter an airport without going through a security checkpoint. If that is the case, what is the purpose of the checkpoint? Why not just apply whatever techniques prevent terrorists from ramming private jets into airliners to the rest of the airport, and let us keep our rights intact?

It is also worth pointing out that there are lots of other bombing targets that are not being bombed, despite a _complete_ lack of security. Anyone can bring large packages onto the NYC subways without any harassment or scanning, yet those trains (which are packed with hundreds of people during the rush hour) have not been blown up. A truck full of explosives could easily drive onto a major bridge. Yet despite these clear vulnerabilities, and despite the fact that other countries see such attacks and more, we rarely have them here. Are airlines really more special targets for bombers than urban transit systems?

<comment><USER12> As has been pointed out before, an explosion in an airport would be bad but the damage would be pretty localized and everyone knows where the airport is, there are lots of emergency facilities in palace because they always have to be prepared for the possibility of crash landings or other accidental disaster.

An explosion in the air, or abuse of the plane as a missile as happened on 9-11, is a much bigger problem because the potential destructive radius is much larger and the area of incidence much less predictable. The costs of that happening in a city center in 2001 were staggering; likewise, consider the economic impact of an airliner plunging into or blowing up over a nuclear power station, which might result in less actual destruction but far more severe public panic and economic disruption.

<comment><USER3> I pointed this out elsewhere, but a rush hour subway train in New York City carries over two thousand people (and that is assuming that the train is not over capacity), nearly as many as were killed in the September 11th attack. One well-timed, powerful bomb could kill almost everyone on such a train, and if it were detonated while a second train was passing by even more people would be killed. These trains travel over major bridges and under important buildings; the damage of such an attack could be enormous.

It has not happened yet, and hopefully it never will happen. The bomb itself would probably be difficult to procure and transport to New York City without being detected by an intelligence agency. What we can say is this: body scanners, luggage X-rays, and shoe removal have done nothing to prevent such an attack, because no such measures are in place.

<comment><USER12> Such bombings as you describe have taken place in London, Madrid, and arguably Japan, to cite just a few. They certainly cause a lot of damage, but you can harden fixed infrastructure and to some extent this has already been done, since subway/rail operators already deal with the risk of switching failure and train collision. Train derailments and collisions are themselves powerful events, given the mass and momentum of a fast-moving train, and of course collisions involving freight trains carry additional risks because of chemical spills and so forth. I think it's unlikely that any sort of portable bomb would do the sort of damage you have in mind, because even commuter train carriages are engineered with the possibility of a collision in mind. Although terrorist incidents of this kind have been very destructive where they've occurred, the fact is that the damage is relatively contained, and because it's an elevated risk environment (due to the possibility of accidents) there are robust safety and rescue protocols already in place.

As an example of the difference, consider the Oklahoma city truck bomb had explosive force equivalent to 5 kilotons of TNT, involved 13 barrels of explosive, and other materials, requiring a small box truck to transport. It did horrendous damage, but in terms of pure destructive force it wrecked about 1/3 of a 9-story building. The two plane impacts on the WTC, by contrast, caused the total collapse of two 80-story skyscrapers. There was lots of ancillary damage in both cases, but I stand by my arguments that it's harder to predict where an attack from the air will occur and that the destructive potential is typically larger in the case of a successful attack, because of the extra mass, speed, and height inputs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What would you guess we pay per screening? Guess again - higher.

TSA Budget in 2011: $8.1 Billion [1] US air travelers in 2011: 730 million [2]

Cost per screening $11.09

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_Security_Adminis>

[2] [http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers- increase...](http://www.nbcnews.com/travel/number-air-passengers- increased-2011-523879)

<comment> brown9-2 Honestly I'm not sure if I should be surprised at how high the cost is, or how low it is. I can't tell if $11 per passenger is ridiculous or not.

How do we put this cost in context?

<comment><USER14> $11.09 sounds pretty reasonable to me, but like parent, I don't know what to compare it to.

It doesn't even seem like "cost per screening" is a useful metric. What does it mean? What's the problem with it? The issue with the TSA is that it's spending billions _at all_ to no apparent effect. No one cares about its efficiency at doing nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> xkcd gets it right: <http://xkcd.com/651/>

I never understood why do they ban water bottles but allow laptop batteries through, it's just plain ridiculous.

<comment><USER11> An iPad 2 battery contains about 90 kilojoules of energy. This is equivalent to about 20g of TNT, which is only 1/3 of the TNT used in a WWII-era "pineapple" hand grenade.

However, the real reason one can bring a laptop battery on a plane is because no terrorist has tried to use it yet. They would probably need multiple batteries: after the "shoe bomber" attack, the government determined that as little as 50g of PETN could bring down a plane, which is equivalent to 80+g of TNT, which is four iPad 2 batteries.

Even then, it would be necessary to deliver that energy in a very small amount of time, which may not be possible rapidly enough with lithium-ion; they can burn, but can they explode quickly enough, with all of their energy? The TSA aays they have studied the issue, and the answer is no [1], they "cannot be used as an explosive and are not a security threat in personal carry-on quantities."

[1] [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/travel/2010-08-16-airlinebatteries16_CV_N.htm)

<comment><USER15> > "Can they explode quickly enough...?"

Explosion? Starting a fire isn't enough?

<comment><USER11> Given that the TSA allows common lighters and matches to be taken on board, apparently not. I think aircraft cabins are designed to be "fire resistant" (for obvious reasons) though I'd be surprised if they were fireproof.

<comment><USER15> But then why don't they allow water bottles? Is a flammable liquid worse than a flammable solid like Lithium?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "I just caught a terrorist before he got on a plane", said no TSA agent ever. The times this has happened since 9/11 were all local police, FBI, or CIA

<comment><USER6> Has the FBI? I have only heard of entrapment cases where the threats were FBI agents themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I hate flying in large part to the security process. Imagine the boost to the economy if flying was easier. Think of all the people that would fly more often.

<comment><USER6> OTOH, air travel is an environmental nuisance. Still, In would rather have a pollution tax go to conservation and cleanup, instead of hassling passengers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Earlier this week the TSA announced a loosening of restrictions on carry-on items, which seems to have earned them absolutely no kudos at all with the people who are in the habit of calling for more sensible policies, but which _is_ garnering opposition from airlines, since the burden of elevated risk falls disproportionately on airline cabin crew. EDIT: here's a link that I forgot to include [http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/delta-joins-protest- ove...](http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/delta-joins-protest-over-tsa- knife-carrying-author/nWnPX/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The article wraps up with, "Anyone boarding an aircraft should feel maybe only a teeny tiny bit safer than if there were no TSA at all."

Well, yes. The TSA has not improved the security of airline passengers in the United States to any demonstrable degree. I remember a more innocent time almost three decades ago when my work involved frequent flying, such that I have been to most major airports in the United States repeatedly and have logged weeks above 30,000 feet of altitude. I have a photograph from those days showing me seated at the controls of a commercial airliner, which the crew of the airliner took after I boarded a flight early in the boarding process. In those days a business traveler could sit down to pose for a snapshot inside the aircraft cockpit, with the crew having no concerns about a person who was not an airline employee being there. That's the carefree ease of flying in the United States I remember from the beginning of my adulthood.

Years ago I wrote here on Hacker News, in response to one of the recurring complaints about airport security procedures, "Hear. Hear. I was just on flights out of town over the weekend, and it occurred to me that the terrorists have won by making air travel so inconvenient and annoying for every American who ever flies domestically. 'Maybe Secure Flight is a good use of our money; maybe it isn't. But let's have debates like that in the open, as part of the budget process, where it belongs.' This is the general answer for review of current security procedures: we should check whether they are worthwhile for the amount of improved security they promise to provide."

About one year ago another participant, who came to the United States from another country, wrote,

 _It's also the only place that made me take my shoes off before the metal detector, which I found quite humiliating_

This appears to have been one of the calculations of the terrorist group that put up the shoe bomber

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_shoe_bomb_plot>

to trying his failed attempt to blow up an airplane with a bomb hidden in his shoe. Some of the co-religionists of some of those terrorists consider it extremely degrading to be bare-footed in certain situations deemed to be "holy" situations (I know this from being told this by a friend who had newly converted to Islam when I was overseas in 1984), and thus they have probably been glad to humiliate Americans as Americans have reacted to the failed shoe bomb plot. My proposal is that United States airport security give up on requesting passengers to remove shoes. Yeah, maybe have chemical sensing devices at airports to screen for bombs on shoes, but let us all wear our shoes onto airplanes and throughout the insides of airports. The screening procedures at present appear to be an overreaction to the actual risk of a shoe bomb destroying a passenger airplane, especially in view of other countries not having the same screening procedure for airline passengers.

I've summed up my response to past incidents of terrorism directed at people from civilized countries overseas or civilians in civilized countries this way: it's important for all of us to remember the basic issue here. The basic issue is whether people in free countries, like most readers of Hacker News, are going to be able to enjoy the right of free speech throughout their country, on any subject, or whether any American or Danish Dutch person or other person accustomed to free speech who happens to be within reach of attack by a crazy foreign person has to prepare for war just to continue to exercise free speech. On my part, I'm going to continue to comment on public policy based on verifiable facts and reason and logic, even if that seems offensive. I am not going to shrink from saying that people in backward, poorly governed countries that could never have invented the Internet have no right to kill and destroy just because someone in a free country laughs or scorns at their delusions. The people who are destroying diplomatic buildings and killing diplomats or journalists or bombing public buildings visited by random civilians are declining to use thoughtful discussion to show that they are anything other than blights on humankind.

Allow me to reemphasize this point. The many participants on HN who criticize Transportation Security Agency "security theater" as a meaningless reduction in the freedom of people who travel to the United States are right on the basic point. If free citizens of free countries can't live in freedom because of fear of terrorists, the terrorists have already won. You and I should be able to speak our minds and express our opinions in the manner of all people in free countries--sometimes agreeing with one another, sometimes disagreeing, but always letting the other guy have his say. To engage in self-censorship because of fear of violent thugs is to be defeated by the thugs.

We should also be able to fly freely about the country with no more than strictly necessary security precautions. I want to be able to walk into an airport with my shoes on and walk calmly to an arrival gate to greet arriving passengers there. I used to do that. And I want to be able to carry a Swiss Army knife in an airline carry-on bag. Grandmothers and mothers and children should surely be able to board an airliner unmolested in a free country like the United States.

That said, I remember when conditions changed in the United States. I stood on top of the former World Trade Center in New York City twice while traveling with foreign visitors to the United States during my earlier frequent flyer days. Even today, the United States is still second only to France as a country destination for foreign tourists (and rather more of the tourists to France can drive cars or ride trains to France than can many visitors to the United States). So as obnoxious as current TSA security procedures are to me and to many, they are not so obnoxious that people have stopped visiting the United States for fun. Because I remember the peace and freedom I long enjoyed here to welcome visitors to the United States from around the world, I want the leaders and active participants in terrorist networks to identified through constant surveillance and intelligence, and I want terrorists to be attacked relentlessly where they live, so that they have to hide in caves while people all over the world who renounce their goals get to lead civilized, peaceful lives in the Twenty-First Century.

I think the United States has been chastened by some of the results of its well documented policies from the 1950s and 1960s of assassinating foreign leaders with which it disagreed. These days the democratic, developed countries agree to win influence in the world mostly through persuasion and demonstration of the benefits of freedom and rule of law and free trade. I think now the United States is much more interested in information openness as a means to make sure that countries all around the world trade peacefully rather than waging war one one another, and I think that is the only long-term way to defeat terrorist networks. The current armed warfare strategy of drone attacks on specific terrorist leaders rather than mass bombing attacks on cities (as in World War II) is a step forward in war-fighting effectiveness and an improvement in reducing civilian casualties.

The reactionary movements that use terrorism to stop progress must be destroyed. What really seems to work for this is active intelligence gathering aimed at the terrorist movements themselves. Comments in previous threads have said that Israel succeeds in doing that for the most part. Israel also led the world in making airliner cockpits were secure from hijackers entering them. Certainly we should make sure not to harass citizens or visitors who happen to have the wrong name or the wrong pattern of physical appearance, but identify threats on the basis of more relevant information. (My own children look very central Asian, and when my oldest son grows out his black beard he could readily pass for a terrorist by mere appearance.) Taliban delenda est. Al Qaeda delenda est.

<comment><USER19> Really good post - just a note from myself - I've had to remove my shoes for screening many times while flying out from my native country(Poland) and that wasn't even to the US,but to other EU countries. So this is not something that only TSA does.

<comment><USER20> I've flown to over 50 countries and the rules are the same everywhere.

The whole TSA uproar is actually more of a reflection of the anti-government, libertarian, personal rights above community rights attitude that uniquely exists within many Americans.

<comment><USER21> No, they are not. Plenty of airports in Asia do not require the removal of shoes.

Source: me. I fly a lot too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> <http://1.usa.gov/Yju9G6>

Please help shut this show down

<comment><USER20> You actually think it would be better to put it in the hands of private companies ?

Wow.

<comment><USER23> Many people still seriously believe that Medicare would be more efficient in the hands of private profit-seeking companies, so I'm not surprised at all about this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are 14,000 TSA screeners at Newark Airport alone. (It's in the text in the image of the patdown.)

</comment><comment><USER25> Its a perfect show, on could say. In its core, its like "hey, Americans are scared because of some idiot put a bomb in his shoe [1], lets take advantage and use their tax-dollar money to make them _feel_ safer. They won't refuse because they are scared and when you scare, most seem to submit. But its just a show. Twice on occasion I have seen TSA agents coming back from lunch and passing security just by flashing badge even if the scanner went off. Well, we have internal affair departments in cia, fbi, police for a good reason. If there is remotely a chance (there is) one of those good TSA guys turn bad, then we are all screwed.

[1] Let's not speculate whether he was CIA operative or at least drugged idiot who submitted.

<comment><USER26> It gets better. My summer employer used to do IT for the local airport. After passing background checks, most of the staff were issued badges/prox cards that let them pass through into a restricted area, walk under the checkpoint, and reemerge in the terminal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Another political article with no possible worthwhile discussion makes it to the front page.

Flagged, and I encourage other readers with appropriate karma to do the same.

</comment><comment><USER28> Makes me feel great as I read this about ready to take off from DCA!

</comment><comment><USER29> Posting tabloids on HN?!

</comment><comment><USER30> TSA is proposing new rules that allow small knives, ski poles, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks and pool cues aboard in carry-on luggage. They call this a risk-based approach...

But still they hound you to turn off your ipad on takeoff and landing. If the government is using a risk-based approach, this would be the most useful rule to change.

<comment><USER31> TSA != FAA

<comment><USER30> Yeah but they both regulate the flying public. They should talk!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I never believed official statements on 9/11. No body explained how a skyscraper fell on its footprint even though there was no attack on the building. I'm talking about WTC7. Then they said they had to take down that building. Correct me if I'm wrong but it takes weeks to prepare for such demolition. You can't decide in one day and plant explosive and all these happen while you are dealing with a major crisis like 2 commercial airliners hitting towers.

All this has been a farce. They wanted to paralyze people scaring with stories. TSA is just another tool to do that.

 __Edit after down votes: What this TSA guys says is correct, it is very difficult to stop any seriously thought security breach. The reason behind existence of TSA as we know it is not what we expect it to do. It is not designed in sprit to do that. That is the reason it renders itself ineffective.

<comment><USER32> Keep down voting. Truth hurts.

Reply to all down voters. Are you scared to write a reply to what I said? Clicking is easier, and following herd is easier than asking questions with an open mind. Just because you're reading HN does not make you smarter.

Watch this:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T2_nedORjw>

<comment><USER33> Independent of the potential truth of your comments, they're entirely off- topic, which is why there's downvoting. And complaining like that won't help you, I' afraid. Being wrong doesn't necessarily get downvotes. contentless or off-topic posts generally do! But then I'm fairly new here, so I stand correctable. My advice: Start a WTC thread with a good link if you think it's really important!

<comment><USER32> I think I did not make myself clear. Fair enough. What I am saying that TSA is not capable of doing the job it is expected to do (due to bad hires or whatever other sloppy execution) because there is not much need for that. This is known by their designers and originators (this is the point I am trying to make), and it is just functioning at the very basic level and most of the time in an irritating way (patting down toddlers, etc.). What happened on 9/11 is known by those circles that is why TSA is not taken seriously.

ps. I do not care about down votes. I care about people giving serious thought about what others might have to say. Down voting for me is kind of censorship act. I believe up voting weeds out (pushes bottom) bad comments anyway.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When to Stop Fuzzing - <AUTHOR> https://www.fuzzingbook.org/html/WhenToStopFuzzing.html <comment><USER2> I use fuzzing on top of a whole range of other test scenarios to expose tail risk (no matter how thin -> or especially for thin tails). It doesn't matter how long that fuzzer runs. What is more relevant is the quality of such a session which can by continuously improved by tweaking the fuzzer dictionary. This is what defines the limits of when it's no longer useful IMO. But because we aren't talking about minutes or hours but +/\- days (or weeks), the "how long" is more of an academic question.

</comment><comment><USER3> I believe you should never stop fuzzing.</comment>


Show HN: Captain's Table – Meet new people every month over dinner - <AUTHOR> http://www.captainstable.co/ <comment><USER2> Slightly reminiscent of early London coffeehouses

"...customers sat around long communal tables strewn with every type of media imaginable listening in to each other's conversations, interjecting whenever they pleased, and reflecting upon the newspapers. Talking to strangers, an alien concept in most coffee shops today, was actively encouraged. Dudley Ryder, a young law student from Hackney and shameless social climber, kept a diary in 1715-16, in which he routinely recalled marching into a coffeehouse, sitting down next to a stranger, and discussing the latest news. Private boxes and booths did begin to appear from the late 1740s but before that it was nigh-on impossible to hold a genuinely private conversation in a coffeehouse.

As each new customer went in, they'd be assailed by cries of "What news have you?" or more formally, "Your servant, sir, what news from Tripoli?" or, if you were in the Latin Coffeehouse, "Quid Novi!" That coffeehouses functioned as post-boxes for many customers reinforced this news-gathering function. Unexpectedly wide-ranging discussions could be twined from a single conversational thread as when, at John's coffeehouse in 1715, news about the execution of a rebel Jacobite Lord (as recorded by Dudley Ryder) transmogrified into a discourse on "the ease of death by beheading" with one participant telling of an experiment he'd conducted slicing a viper in two and watching in amazement as both ends slithered off in different directions. Was this, as some of the company conjectured, proof of the existence of two consciousnesses?"

[http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world- of-t...](http://publicdomainreview.org/2013/08/07/the-lost-world-of-the- london-coffeehouse/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be a great project - but it is intimidating being required to be _awesome_. Evokes pictures of myself stuck in a group of awesome people making it obvious to myself how not-awesome I am ... so I am not going ... :-(

<comment><USER4> Agreed. That word is an instant put off for me every time I see it used in contexts like this. Time for it to be retired.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, totally see where you're coming from. Looking over the copy again, I couldn't remember why we used awesome instead of interesting, like how it's expressed in the section below. We've changed it.

Thanks for being awesome ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why do you jump me to a signup form as soon as I go to the URL? Let me get a good look at you first. Tell me your story. Buy me a drink. Give me some good pillow talk.

When I read the copy on your site, it feels like it'll be cool and casual and mysterious, which is the right approach. This aggressive Typeform maneuver ruins that feel.

I would sign up for this if there was a way I could indicate that I don't want to talk about work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Kevin! Thanks for your feedback. That's odd, we haven't seen the behavior you're talking about yet, it shouldn't go directly to the form. Was that on desktop, tablet, or mobile?

We've now put the form behind a button which looks better anyway. For what it's worth, we also checked out Wufoo which looks better in-line but, unless we're missing something, you can't add a free form "Other" response to a Checkboxes question and the Multiple Choice question forces you to pick one response. That would have required us to add a new free form field after the location preference field if they picked Other.

Appreciate the feedback on the copy. Thanks for the idea for talking about work/not talking about work. Definitely could be a concern for a lot of people. We've added another question to the survey asking for work talk preferences.

<comment><USER5> Desktop. Safari. I think the problem might be that Typeform tries to auto move the cursor to the first field input so you can just start typing right away.

We used to do this on Wufoo forms, but when people embedded them, we saw this problem and turned it off if the form was embedded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. It would be nice if you did double dates for couples.

> We work with a variety of high-quality restaurants in different tier price > ranges to accommodate every budget.

It would be nice to see a list of restaurants. Some people eat out a lot, have strong opinions about where's good and where's not, and really care about where they spend their time and money.

> The best part of eating out is being able to order exactly what you want.

The best part of eating out is sharing a bunch of good food with other people. This is apparently not a US thing.

> If you want to share and don't hear back, don't worry, people fail to > respond to emails all the time.

This is a little confusing / weird.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love for this to penetrate smaller towns and cities where meeting people is particularly difficult. Promising morals in the Q&A.

Your hero image[1] is a major turnoff and leads me to understand that I'll be meeting with a culturally homogeneous group.

[1] [https://res.cloudinary.com/hrscywv4p/image/upload/c_limit,f_...](https://res.cloudinary.com/hrscywv4p/image/upload/c_limit,f_auto,fl_progressive,h_1500,q_90,w_2000/v1/275285/restaurant-690975_jdbssb.jpg)

<comment><USER8> That is absolutely ridiculous. Nowhere on the site is it implied that you have to be white to participate, and if someone flakes out at the last moment at the restaurant because it's not a "safe space" where they can talk about what special snowflakes they are, that's probably for the better for the three other participants.

On the contrary, I think diversity is strongly implied, how can someone be an interesting person if they just parrot the same opinions and beliefs back at you?

I guess it boils down to whether the organizers want to just score Silicon Valley brownie points or if they want to have fun and create something unique.

<comment><USER9> Nobody said "white" until you did.

<comment><USER8> That's the only thing I could see that they had in common in the picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This seems very similar to the now defunct grubwithus. I tried it in the early days and it was great but it suffered very noticeably from the Evaporative Cooling Effect [1]. It was very noticeable after about a year that the quality of people was much lower and I evaporatively cooled myself out as well. It's a huge challenge with models like this to avoid that problem.

1: [http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software- sundays-2-the-...](http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software- sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, so cool! This is actually a direct result from my experience with grubwithus (which I loved). The Evaporative Cooling Effect is definitely real and caused a lot of flaking from that service.

That experience is why we don't let you see/know in advance who's coming and why we handpick the groups.

<comment><USER10> Hand picking groups doesn't help if you can't compel people to go. People who have 2 or 3 bad experiences will just silently stop going and those people are most likely to be the ones who have the most to offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Very nice! Well, two things to mention:

1\. The title image is not entirely visible on tablets. See here: [http://s9.postimg.org/au2hwrc0e/Screenshot_2015_06_19_10_58_...](http://s9.postimg.org/au2hwrc0e/Screenshot_2015_06_19_10_58_37.jpg)

2\. The domain name is epic. I always read 'Captain Stable' instead of 'Captain's Table'!

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Bummer. I blame Strikingly though they're awesome in every other way. 2\. I agree. If you like, you can reimagine the service as Uber for Boat Captains (that's our back-up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Thoughts:

1\. Felt a little strange signing up without understanding anything about your process. How are you planning to match me with other people? You don't know much about me yet.

2\. I would definitely be interested to meet with a bunch of HN-type people over dinner and chat nerdy stuff.

3\. How are you planning to ensure a good turnout? I would hate to show up to find that most people had dropped out at the last minute.

<comment><AUTHOR> great questions.

1) we check you out. this is how we know you don't know the other people and what you're interested in (at least at a basic level). we found filling this kind of info out makes people even more weirded out, since it's more dating style and so we do what we can in the background instead. after the dinner, we make sure you had a good time, and if not, try to figure out how we can change your dinners so that you have a great time.

2) awesome, based on the responses we've gotten so far, you're not alone.

3) we always plan a full meal. that is, if somebody from the table we'd planned can't go, we fill it with someone else. if someone says they'll attend and cancels, we email them and let them know that we have a three strike cancellation policy. it's not fair to others when they cancel and we have a low tolerance for that.

<comment><USER13> > if someone says they'll attend and cancels, we email them and let them know > that we have a three strike cancellation policy. it's not fair to others > when they cancel and we have a low tolerance for that.

FWIW, this might be counter to your target audience. People who sign up for a service like this will be more likely to present with some form of social anxiety that has inhibited them from socializing normally in the first place. Certainly not everyone, but certainly not no one either. Trying to respond with a heavy hand to such people will only alienate them further; try responding with compassion and understanding and above all else respect. saying you have "low tolerance" for that basically means you have low tolerance for people's quirks and flaws. Attending might be a struggle for some people.

Also, you don't need to mention names or faces; but you could mention some interests that each person has that you would be going to dinner with.

<comment><USER14> I would like to present a counter point to your generalization. I am interested in this. I work from home on a own business. Do not suffer social anxiety, however my social outgoings are limited due to work from home alone. I would suggest that this type of random dinner would not be very appealing for people who suffer from social anxiety.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> $10 for 1 dinner a month with a few strangers at some restaurant? That's a bit much for so little return. I mean, I pay less for netflix and get way more out of that. But, it's not available in my area so it's not like I'd buy it anyway! Still, more frequency / less cost would be more attractive. Otherwise it just feels like a money scheme.

<comment><USER15> Sounds like their self-selection mechanism is working nicely.

In fact, they could probably offer $100/month and $1000/month subscription levels where the product was completely unchanged except that you were only matched with people from your own subscription level.

After all, there are certainly people who would welcome the idea of having dinner with three people for whom $1,000/month is no big deal. And those people might be less interested in hanging out with folks who thought of $10 as a lot of money.

Genius idea, when you stop to think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> For me the best way so far to meet a large group of people is to meet those who know a lot of people in the first place and get introduced by them to others. This service seems to connect those with small networks, I am not sure that works? I would think more in terms how to create incentives for big network individuals to connect with small network ones.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey kfk! thanks for the feedback! we take network size into consideration when we put together groups among other factors. making sure everyone who attends the dinner gets value out of it is our highest priority.

small networks can totally have fun too. (professional) networking is a side benefit of the service, we're putting together people purely because we think they'll have a fun dinner together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good product idea. The dinner aspect certainly is vital because it's much easier to connect with people over a good meal than in most other situations. However, I was thinking that connecting with people from different backgrounds and cultural contexts IMO is most rewarding in terms of experience and personal development. Apart from the large cultural hubs such as London, New York or (to some extent) Silicon Valley meeting a large number of diverse yet like-minded people might indeed prove a bit difficult.

One thing that came to mind for me in particular is that meeting interesting new people who share a general kind of mindset is one of the aspects that are great about Freemasonry: You get to meet people from almost every walk of life, background (cultural and otherwise) and age bracket.

</comment><comment><USER18> Your site appears to be broken in Chrome at least. The questions section is unstyled in full desktop width (its edge to edge which looks pretty bad compared to the rest of the site), and there is no form below the "fill out the simple form below" header.

edit: Oh wait, I have to click to show the form? Why do that when the instruction text suggests I should be seeing a form.

edit 2: That form is horrifyingly bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, you caught me.

I'm using Typeform for the submission and Strikingly for the website.

Good feedback, I'm eliminating the welcome screen as we speak.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice product. You are selling an experience for $10 that I could see myself buying. Your signup process is too long.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Appreciate the feedback. How could we make it shorter for you? What's the minimum amount of questions? (FWIW we started with only name and email)

<comment><USER19> If it was my site, I would start with just email and then try to get more from there. That outweighs any other data you can get by an order of magnitude.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've taken the liberty of putting your HN email in our database. We'll be following up shortly. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sounds a little bit like an idea I've had kicking about in my head for a while (feel free to steal). A 'dating' site for people who just want to meet up with new and interesting people, do something fun and then definitely not at all have it lead to anything physical or relationship related.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is a really cool idea, I think if you show off some of the interesting people and meetings in the home page it'd go a long way to show you won't (probably) be meeting weirdos.

It'd be nice to know if you can elaborate a little on how the matching happens and based on what criteria :)

<comment><AUTHOR> hey inglor! totally hear you. we'd love to showcase members and we might in the future but for right now we're focused on bringing in the right mindset (people who want to meet other cool people).

for matching, it's our secret sauce, but the first thing we do is manually check your social profiles just to make sure the group doesn't know each other.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I actually like best meeting people who are different from me and have different interests and views and I like learning from them. It is not clear to me how the selection is made but if this is the objective, then thumbs up from me.

</comment><comment><USER20> Slightly off topic, but did anyone else find that the form they used was in every way worse, both from a UX and just general design perspective, than just a nicely laid out 'normal' web form?

<comment><USER23> Personally I like typeforms but I think they work best in a modal rather than embedded.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great project. I'd sign up in a heartbeat if I lived in the US.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign up! Someone in Antarctica just signed up (as a joke).

All jokes aside, we'll plan something ad-hoc if there's a critical mass in a particular city. We've had a decent amount of sign-ups in cities outside the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are places to meet new people it is called Church, Temple, Mosque and bars/clubs.

If your not religious and/or don't drink or dance I see that you would need this service.

<comment><USER25> You forgot libraries and dogging sites.

<comment><USER24> Oh and walk around with a baby. That one is awesome. Second only to the new puppy walks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So, you didn't ask me anything about my interests are education. How do you guarantee "awesome people"?

<comment><USER27> They all have a Fedora collection

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is a great idea. Looking forward to it coming to Scotland and the rest of the UK!

</comment><comment><USER29> Also check out: mealsharing.com</comment>


This is what happens when you refuse to pay me - <AUTHOR> http://creativemixing.com/

<comment><USER2> Looks like it's just a parked page now. It was this: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&safe=active&biw=1680&bih=1050&source=hp&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcreativemixing.com%2F&pbx=1&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fcreativemixing.com%2F&aq=f&aqi=g5&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=5594l6809l0l7183l7l4l0l0l0l0l564l1281l0.1.2.5-1l4)

Is this the typical way to handle these types of things (besides in the courts)? Seems like this might scare off some potential clientele if they ever found out you'd done something like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know, I gave him ample notification. You can't have something you didn't pay for... I wasn't about to let him get away with that.

I sure hope that it scares off any potential clients that plan on not paying for work. I'm really not taking clients anymore though, I work full time doing this stuff for legitimate companies, instead of deadbeats that think stealing is fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Had this type of thing happen to me as well and I also contemplated doing what you did but saying a lot of curse words and beer has same effect.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wait, what happens?

</comment><comment><USER5> Yes, that is what happens.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd also like to know what happens. I'm bringing him to court, but don't have experience here. Has anyone else done this before?</comment></comment>


Mortgage rates are dropping – so why aren't more people buying homes? - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mortgage-rates-are-dropping-so-why-arent-more-people-buying-homes-2019-06-14 <comment><USER2> Mortgage rates might be dropping, but where I live, a 50's era bungalow goes for an easy million. It's hard to justify buying such a heap for that kind of money when you know you'll have to spend just as much on top of that just to maintain it for the long run.

Its much easier to rent a nice place than buy one here, unless you're willing to buy a condo surrounded by AirBnB units.

</comment><comment><USER3> Millennials (new home buyers) not jumping into the market?</comment>


Repl.it: Create your own programming language - <AUTHOR> https://repl.it/jam <comment><USER2> How do I enter the Jam once I have a team? Your blog post [1] mentions the CLUI, but I can't find a way to bring that up.

[1] [https://blog.repl.it/langjam_signup](https://blog.repl.it/langjam_signup)

<comment><USER2> For posterity, the CLUI is located at:

[https://repl.it/~/cli](https://repl.it/~/cli)</comment></comment>


Baidu team barred from AI competition after allegedly cheating - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/04/technology/computer-scientists-are-astir-after-baidu-team-is-barred-from-ai-competition.html?_r=0

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9657817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9657817)</comment>


Do you ever work alone? - <AUTHOR>

If so how do you avoid cabin fever? Not in the Jack Kerouac sense, but more being able to critically or subjectively analyse your own work?<p>I find myself more and more being unable to avoid negative thoughts about the work I do when working alone. <comment><USER2> Here's a project I've worked on completely solo over many years (it gradually turned from a school project, to a hobby, to a solid low-maintenance income): <http://www.eMusicTheory.com>

tl;dr: when I work on _just_ that, it doesn't go well; I'm most productive when I have some collaborative work to do otherwise, with bursts on the solo project. And I'm a huge introvert, but all work and no social interaction makes Jack a dull boy.

There was a chunk of time at the beginning where I got a grant to stay at my college over a summer time to work on it -- I lived in a dorm, had no close friends anywhere nearby, and those months were just plain weird. I'd end up sleeping from 9am to 3pm or so, getting up and eating some grapenuts, then going to work (alone, in a usually-empty building) again... but I also seemed to alternate between highly-focused work and highly-focused time wasting (like in drawn-out arguments on Slashdot; this was 1997). Sometimes I'd go a week without having a conversation with another human being at all.

All in all, it wasn't a happy time, or a very productive one (in spite of the fact that I had nothing else to do).

Fast-forward -- I got a job, married my college sweetheart, and worked on the site in spare time or on vacations. That worked pretty well. I could clear my head from problems I liked less on the real job by switching gears now & then.

About 3 years ago I tried making it into my only thing again -- and didn't succeed at all. Admittedly I also had my first child in there, but still it's pretty obvious I didn't get much done -- only incrementally more than when it was my spare-time project. I sunk hours into researching new hosts (when my current one was fine), configuring my own mail server (when I could have just gone with Google Apps hosting) -- my prioritization was horrible, and even _knowing_ that, I couldn't dredge up the motivation to fix how I spent my time.

So it's back to spare time (unfortunately, I'm super-busy now, so it's not getting much love...), but I'll be pretty wary about taking it up again full- time unless I can get someone else to work with me. The simple fact of discussing progress with other people, of explaining how I'm prioritizing my work, makes me do things much better.

There's another option -- if you have a mentor or friend who understands your work, and who can give you 5 minutes of time a day, or every few days... that might work wonders. Knowing they'll be asking "how's it going?" in 6 hours can motivate you to dig into something, just to have an answer. Knowing they'll be asking "why's this your top priority?" can make you stop & change course. Knowing they'll have had similar frustrations, similar roadblocks, and will offer a few good suggestions for how to proceed can ease your mind.

Working well has a rhythm to it, of course, so if they can help you find your pace, you may not even notice if they're unavailable for a few weeks.

HTH; good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> All the time. Negative thoughts are normal and increase as you learn more and can see where the flaws in your work are. The more you learn, the worse it gets, until at some point you'll be confident enough to look at your work and defend your choices (to you and to others).

This doesn't really have much to do with working alone, but it is harder to grow if you can't get feedback and aren't forced to explain your code to others.

If (like me) you are physically unable to get together with your peers IRL to discuss your work (for instance, because you're about 1000km away from the nearest person you can conceivable discuss things with), you should find other ways to do this. IRC is good, putting code up in github for feedback, blogging about it, these all help kickstart the next round of learning.

You may feel worse about your code once you get some external eyeballs on it, but it's likely you'll get positive feedback, which is always comforting.

There's no aboiding negative thoughts, it's a sign that you are striving to do better. Start worrying when you _don't_ think you can do better.

<comment><USER4> I'll add to that by saying being alone for long stretches of time is fertile ground for negativity. The mind craves narratives and drama, especially when grinding away on what can seem like monotonous work.

My advice: cut yourself some slack Andrew. Understand that your mind is just creating stories (again) and dismiss them. Sometimes I will even smile at how infantile my thoughts can be.

But yes, I get cabin fever bigtime (I work alone a lot) and sometimes I have to get out, even if there are a thousand excuses not to.

Take care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> By nature I'm in introvert so working alone is my preferred situation, but I think I can relate to some of what you are talking about.

Give yourself a break, every iteration gives you insight to the problem you are working on, there is no need to get it perfect on the first round. (perfect is the enemy of good).

Trick yourself, don't call your code 1.0, label it beta or a prototype for an extended period. Your longer term goal is to get to a release, but your immediate goal is to work on the next point update.

Trust yourself, if you think something has a bad code smell note it for later. If you think a UI isn't intuitive, live with it for a little while to figure out exactly what you need to change.

</comment><comment><USER6> Honestly, I love working alone. No interruptions, no unnecessary office chit- chat, just you and your thoughts....which can turn into a problem as you've mentioned.

I think the trick is to stop the work and talk to your friends/girlfriend about it, even if they do not have a clue about coding. I talk to my girlfriend every time I run into a problem or a negative thought pops in my head and won't go away. Even though she does not have any knowledge about programming, she tries to engage and guide me to the simple solution that saves the day most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Avoid meandering analysis through neurosis. Instead: (1) choose a framework of values with which to analyse your work and optimize towards; (2) create limits to your analysis; and (3) reflect on your application of/and the framework occasionally.

However, it could be that this isn't the ideal solution for you. Follow your nature! If you are getting 'cabin fever' then take that as an opportunity to take a break and speak to other people. Often people are more productive when they stay fresh and remove their burdens instead of trying to 'push through'.

</comment><comment><USER8> I do! All the time!</comment>


Apes reveal secrets to good sleep - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150415-apes-reveal-sleep-secrets

<comment><USER2> These people's reasoning strikes me as laughable (and sad too since it comes to us with elevated credibility):

* deep, relaxed sleep helps us develop.

* our relative apes also prefer deep, relaxed sleep.

* each prepares a sleeping surface.

* these sleeping platforms we [these researchers] have looked at must be what explains good sleep.

¶

How about what makes for a relaxed mind??.. Perhaps researching and writing stories about that would give better help for people to live well... and rest easy. ( Reminds me of a Harry Chapin quote from his grandfather, [http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Harry_Chapin&...](http://en.wikiquote.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Harry_Chapin&oldid=1657420) )

\---

While we focus on sleeping surfaces instead, two data points in my view seem to reflect well on exactly an opposite approach. I switched to sleeping primarily on my floor (cushioned with a blanket on expanded foam mats [hoping to upgrade to expanded silicone later]) and it feels wonderfully restorative. This biomechanics researcher has had similar results with her family and offers a rich theoretical frame, [http://www.katysays.com/](http://www.katysays.com/) & Joe Rogan Experience #601 - Katy Bowman [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ub5OLNnN-o](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ub5OLNnN-o) . Humans who sleep in hammocks might also have an interesting take.

_Sleep is sacred._

P.S. Given this meeting ground: As a human with access to modern-ish computing devices, I find that 'switching them off' makes a world of difference when "unwinding" (perhaps rewinding?). Keeping artificial lights out of my room where I sleep and letting my mind clear helps me relax. Alternatively, some nights I need some way to get notes out so I keep a comp with me, and I also can use a simple mp3 player with audio recording, easy button control, and and a near 1 sec resume recording delay.. I rarely transcode them... Onward to voice user interfaces!

<comment><USER3> Re your P.S.: There's a growing body of research[0] showing that the quality (color, etc.) in addition to quantity of light in your environment has profound effects on alertness and sleep.

It sounds like you're doing the right thing by keeping light out of your sleeping environment. For the lights you do need, consider their spectrum and color temperature.

[0] [https://justgetflux.com/research.html](https://justgetflux.com/research.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nowhere in this article are any secrets revealed. It's the second article from BBC with misleading title this week. I will avoid next time.

<comment><USER5> It says the secret is that they lie down, whereas monkeys do not, and - consequently - do not sleep as well.

<comment><USER6> What a cunningly well-hidden secret! I shall attempt it myself at my earliest opportunity!

But wait! Surely there are multiple possible orientations and degrees of freedom for a horizontal human body? Even collapsing left-right symmetries, there is still a half-circle of potential orientations between supine and prone. And even that ignores the multiple possible limb orientations.

Obviously, more research is required.

Also, if the monkeys sleep lightly for fear of predators, I wonder how thoroughly the researchers disguised the human presence for the monkeys held in captivity. Both chimpanzees and humans are, after all, known predators of monkeys.

<comment><USER7> I'd put dress clothes on monkeys and send them coach to the other coast where they are to give a presentation to other monkeys on how best to convince a third set of monkeys to buy brand x bananas. And if they do sleep, it will definitely be sitting upright.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The scientists at Duke University aren't the most sophisticated around, but calling them apes seems a bit harsh.

</comment><comment><USER9> great, they get "better" sleep, but what tests were done to measure the real world effects of this between the groups, other than "we think it was a factor in cognitive evolution"?</comment>


The Rise of the Fat Startup - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/technology/opendoor-start-up-home-sales.html <comment><USER2> Kind of a click bait title. Not a very good article criticizing OpenDoor's business model, which was fair, but with limited data on how this generalizes to the whole software start up scene. Basically because one risky start got funded they must all be bloated?</comment>


Twitter. Who Do You Think You Are? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/09/style/twitter-who-do-you-think-you-are.html <comment><USER2> Something inside me is deeply saddened by the fact that a 300M user social network that is novel enough to be undefinable is under constant attack from journalists and Wall Street to continue growing and to articulate clearly what it is.

Frankly, Twitter is something much more interesting than Facebook, and something which could be even more interesting if it went back to its roots and embraced the role of infrastructure and being many things to many people.

The problem is that anything less than being the biggest, most homogenized social network is now considered failure. The invention of the @-reply, the hashtag, and the first really viable way for celebrities to connect directly to their fanbase is worth nothing, it's just water under the bridge. Silicon Valley used to have a strong streak about creation of novel things for their own sake, but now it's dominated by the mass market thinking that is behind 100 years of sterilization of our first-world existence.

Frankly, I couldn't possibly care less what media click-whores, and Wall Street thieves think about anything.

<comment><USER3> The kind of paternalistic thinking in this article is wrong on so many levels. Basically it comes down to complaining about a "lack of leadership," meaning that Twitter should be doing more to tell people how to use it instead of letting them decide for themselves. I will never understand this idea that everything needs to be dumbed-down and spoon-fed to customers to be any good. There's even an extremely clear definition of what Twitter is laid out in the article and criticized. It allows a person to communicate with many people in real time regardless of what device they're using. That couldn't be clearer, and it's dismissed as nonsensical.

The world does not need more programs and platforms that tell people exactly how to use them. It needs tools to inspire creativity! This "Black Mirror" video-exercise-bike-cult thinking will never get us anywhere good. If anything, Twitter needs to open up its API again and welcome the third-party developers back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >It's utterly insane that you still need to put a period before a person's Twitter handle, such as ".@twitter," if you want everyone to see it.

Gee, I dunno. Maybe if someone wants to use the '@' character without it being parsed as a handle.

>Marjorie Scardino, the former chief of the publishing firm Pearson, and another board member, has tweeted only eight times, ever. That's like having someone on the board of Starbucks who doesn't drink coffee.

What utter bollocks. What next, should the CEO of Lockheed Martin fly every fighter jet his company manufactures?

This entire article is an inane smear.

</comment><comment><USER5> The reality: Twitter doesn't even know, and Twitter has frequent internal struggles to decide that.

So mostly it's an empty text box and people use it how they want.

</comment><comment><USER6> I didn't use my twitter for the first few years I had it but if you actually start using it, it seems to be at the center of everything! It's an amazing social network that makes everyone a part of the conversation, although its lack of direction is very apparent. However that's all Twitter is, the conversation, and it goes anywhere really.</comment>