London's Tube Network to Switch on Wi-Fi Tracking by Default in July - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/22/mind-the-privacy-gap/ <comment><USER2> Is it just an impression or is UK indeed the most enthusiastic of all Western countries when it comes to performing mass surveillance on its citizens?

Seems like it runs way deeper and broader than in US

<comment><USER3> Opinion but I'm getting that impression, I was visiting Britain earlier this year and to gain entry to a sit down restaurant (Denny's type place), I was required to produce my passport or ID so that a copy could be scanned and saved before being granted entry (this was the norm for locals as well).

<comment><USER4> You've possibly been scammed in some way. Watch out for weird things happening in your name. This is not normal and most likely not legal.

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of nightclubs that do this, and police frequently mandate that they do so as a requirement of operating their alcohol license in the UK. It's completely legal.

It would be very unusual for a restaurant to do so, but I'm wondering if it might have been a restaurant with a nightclub attached (if we're talking central London here maybe Tiger Tiger?). That's quite plausible.

<comment><USER4> You have to show your ID for the alcohol venue sometimes - that's common. But I've never seen anyone actually scanning one to get a copy.

<comment><USER6> Some bars and nightclubs use ID scanners for verification purposes. A machine vision system is much better than a bouncer at spotting fake IDs or knowing what a Latvian driving license is supposed to look like. The scanner can also check names against a list of banned patrons, which may be shared between venues.

[https://www.patronscan.com/id-scanner-for- bars/](https://www.patronscan.com/id-scanner-for-bars/)

<comment><USER7> Surely a Latvian driving license looks just like any other European driving license? Driving licenses in Europe were standardised years ago.

But I do see your point.

<comment><USER8> As far as I can see, the content is standardized but the design and security features vary a lot [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence#Galle...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence#Gallery)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Note that iOS "grey" color for WiFi does NOT mean disabled - you can still be tracked. A diagonal line across the WiFi symbol = off.

Use "Settings" to turn WiFi completely off, or disable WiFi via Control Center _before_ turning off Airplane Mode.

This stateful & confusing button behavior was added in recent iOS releases. If Apple cares about privacy, they can enable the original iOS behavior via permanent opt-in setting and MDM policy.

<comment><USER10> Though iOS also randomizes and regularly rotates the MAC address used for WiFi probing and only uses your real MAC once you connect.

So in disconnected mode, or, if you've never actually connected to that wifi network, you'd think that wouldn't really work?

<comment><USER9> When WiFi is enabled, iOS devices broadcast a list of known SSIDs and possibly the MAC addresses of some known routers. Has that changed?

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/anatomy-of-an- iphone...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/03/anatomy-of-an-iphone-leak/)

[https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/2012-March...](https://lists.immunityinc.com/pipermail/dailydave/2012-March/000070.html)

<comment><USER10> I can't speak to that with accuracy (other than the fact that information is from 2012)

But it doesn't make sense to me it would be probing for known networks in it's disconnected state.

<comment><USER9> Infosec experts will comment in due course, since there are now a few million reasons to find out definitively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For someone living in Asia, it's crazy that people in Western countries have to always fiddle with their phone to search and connect to Wi-Fi, because their plans are expensive or the tunnels don't have coverage.

<comment><USER12> Coverage is an issue underground, but plans are cheap now, at least in the UK.

I think my phone plan costs me something like £12 per month and I get more data than I ever use from my phone (30GB), and unlimited minutes/texts.

<comment><USER13> Which network is it?

<comment><USER12> O2

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> As a curious data point, when I bought a new phone and then signed up for a new SIM-only plan with a UK provider not so long ago, they made a big deal about how I now had access to free WiFi on the Underground. This was not mentioned at all during the sign-up process and not something I requested or opted into.

TfL do say they won't identify individuals, but for the purposes of data protection law anything that _could_ be used to identify a specific individual is in scope, so these kinds of systems (and similar ones that have been used in places like shopping centres for a while) might be skating on thin ice if there are also, for example, sufficient CCTV cameras around and recording for an individual to be identified from those and then matched against their phone.

It looks like TfL have been cagey about exactly what precautions are being taken here, and they certainly have other mechanisms that could potentially be used to identify individuals such as CCTV and data from payments and entry/exit barriers, so given the scale of the Underground network and the number of people likely to be affected, it wouldn't surprise me if these kinds of stealthy phone-tracking systems started to come under greater regulatory scrutiny before long.

</comment><comment><USER15> I use the aptly named Wi-Fi Privacy Police, from F-Droid:

 _Prevents your smartphone or tablet from leaking privacy sensitive information via Wi-Fi networks. It does this in two ways:

It prevents your smartphone from sending out the names of Wi-Fi networks it wants to connect to over the air. This makes sure that other people in your surroundings can not see the networks you've connecte to, and the places you've visited.

If your smartphone encounters an unknown access point with a known name (for example, a malicious access point pretending to be your home network), it asks whether you trust this access point before connecting. This makes sure that other people are not able to steal your data._

Link: [https://f-droid.org/es/packages/be.uhasselt.privacypolice/](https://f-droid.org/es/packages/be.uhasselt.privacypolice/)

Does it work? Am I being naive?

edit: Formatting, grammar

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't believe its purely for advertising. Wifi tracking and IMSI catching are already done at airports, makes sense its expanding to other travel locations. It's sad that London is becoming a total surveillance state and everyone seems to be ok with it.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not just the UK. Prospect Council in Adelaide Australia have "Prospect Fast WiFi" [https://networkprospect.com.au/prospect-fast- wifi/](https://networkprospect.com.au/prospect-fast-wifi/). It costs a little to provide, but they get back actionable metrics for assessing how much foot traffic there is and then evaluate policy effectiveness for their main street. A much richer data source for next to nothing compared to other methods of tracking visitors to the area. Still I'm surprised that TfL wants that level of detail as they already log people in and out of the (transport) system, so can easily measure how well things work (or not).

<comment> frosted-flakes I remember reading about this when they were still piloting it a while back. Entry and exit info is valuable, but doesn't help when there are multiple routes between those stations that you want to compare. Also, it can identify seemingly rounadabout routes that people take for whatever reason (quieter, fewer transfers, more transfer but more likely to get a seat, want to avoid taking the same train as Mad Mary from the office, etc.), but I don't know what they do with that information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd like to know how any educated and rational person ever formed the belief that they were going to go about in public, on the tube, with a radio transmitter in their pants, and nobody is allowed to notice. It's a very public and very not private activity.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how this is legal. I work for a Danish municipality and we once used WiFi tracking to help us build a better inner city. The data were wiped of any identifying features, because we really didn't care who went were, we just wanted to track the flow of citizens in general.

It was still deemed illegal under the government adapted GDPR laws because we didn't have consent. So how on earth is London getting away with this, and I guess you could say the same about their CCTV footage?

</comment><comment><USER20> Wondering if these changes will finally make the data service more robust for users.

The main issue seems to be that it's so hit and miss about correctly recognising you, failing with messages about being logged in in too many other locations, so you get blocked from about half the stations as you travel across the network on a typical commute

</comment><comment><USER21> Having actual WiFi coverage in the tunnels would be a good start. Now it only works at the stations, maybe for 15 seconds at a time, on each stop. It's awful

</comment><comment><USER22> from what I remember of the pilot, they actually did a good job of anonymising the data.

Basically every mac address/SSID group was md5'd with a salt that was rotated daily. I _think_ that each station had a different salt too. But this was to track user movement though one station, not across the network.

There is of course, no guarantee that they will do this again

<comment><USER23> There's 2^48 MAC addresses. You can crack 2^48 MD5 hashes in 3 hours using a single Nvidia GTX 1080 Founders Edition

[https://gist.github.com/epixoip/a83d38f412b4737e99bbef804a27...](https://gist.github.com/epixoip/a83d38f412b4737e99bbef804a270c40)

[https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E48+hashes+%2F+25+b...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2%5E48+hashes+%2F+25+billion+hashes+per+second)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can they _please_ get on with switching on 3G?

4G has come out, and 5G is about to come out, all in the time they've spent delaying.

</comment><comment><USER25> Didn't Bostrom say the only way for us to survive was through massive surveillance, sounds about right.

</comment><comment><USER26> All part of the Snoopers Charter.

</comment><comment><USER27> So typical of the UK these days..

</comment><comment><USER28> > secure, privacy-protected data collection

This is frequently an oxymoron in practice…</comment>


De Blasio Postpones Work on Crucial Water Tunnel - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/nyregion/de-blasio-postpones-work-on-crucial-water-tunnel.html <comment><USER2> [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water- tunnel-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/nyregion/new-water-tunnel-can- provide-water-for-all-of-manhattan.html)

> _In one of the most significant milestones for the city's water supply in > nearly a century, the tunnel — authorized in 1954, begun in 1970 and > considered the largest capital construction project ever undertaken in the > five boroughs — will for the first time be equipped to provide water for all > of Manhattan. Since 1917, the borough has relied on Tunnel No. 1, which was > never inspected or significantly repaired after its opening._

> _"When I came into office," Mr. Bloomberg said, "I asked, 'What could > literally close down this city?' And a water tunnel failure would have > really done that."_

Manhattan is safe now, but eliminating the possibility of instantly plunging half of _the_ most important city into the third world is more important than any of his other projects. This needs to cost him the election.

<comment><USER3> This whole thing is a non-story. They moved around some money in the budget and it got mis-reported.

[http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php...](http://gothamist.com/2016/04/06/de_blasio_diggin_tunnels.php#photo-1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cities like SF and NYC should receive far more Federal money than they currently do for infrastructure projects. For decades, they've pumped billions of dollars out of their areas in Federal taxes that could dramatically improve quality of life. Invest in services for your most prosperous areas and magnify the impact of that investment -- Much of it will come back in the form of future taxes guaranteeing a decent multiplier on the spending.

<comment><USER5> I would argue that Cities like SF and NYC should get more money from State. The majority of the tax coffers for the state of New York are filled by taxes paid by the residents of NYC yet when it comes to receiving state funds NYC comes up short. We see this with MTA that runs the subway which is responsible for getting commuters to work so that they can provide a tax base for the state. The state doesn't want to contribute at all. It's similar with other infrastructure projects. Its a joke. If NYC were to somehow secede from the state, the state would be broke overnight.

<comment><USER6> Where exactly do you suppose all of that water comes from? Independent New York City needs to invest in desalination or pay through the nose for water.

<comment><USER5> That water comes from the Croton Watershed which comes from rain and snow. Nobody owns it.

<comment><USER7> Exactly. This finders keepers losers weepers shit is so f'n annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Per the story the Bloomberg administration paid for the work, a least in part, by significantly increasing water bills. It implies that's part of the reason De Blasio cut back on it.

It's a bit of tangent but that's a regressive tax: It puts a greater burden on the poor than on the wealthy: $10 from someone making $8/hour and risking having their water shut off is a much larger sacrifice for the public good than $10 from someone making six figures.

The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding up important development in the U.S. There is a cost to failing to invest; we could never invest in anything and we'd be much poorer.

<comment><USER9> > The trendy idea that taxes in general and progressive (not in the political > sense but in the technical sense) tax systems are somehow unfair is holding > up important development in the U.S.

I would disagree.

The opposing trendy idea is that the eventual _output_ of the tax systems are so filled with waste, fraud, and abuse that simply pouring more and more money, no matter the source, into politically-connected blackhole businesses contracted to perform some government sponsored task rarely if ever works and needs to much more carefully managed.

There are so many real-world examples of this (healthcare.gov comes instantly to mind, and the recent TSA app but there are many others) that I won't bother to list them.

A much greater level of transparency for all these deals would go a long way in helping fix these sensible concerns.

[edits]

<comment><USER10> This might be a trendy idea (and is not wrong, per se) but honestly the data simply does not back it up. The GAO estimates that waste, fraud and corruption amounted to approximately $126 billion in 2014.[1] Sure, that's a huge number, but realize that the entire government spend for 2014 was 3.77 trillion dollars.[2] This context is crucial - this "black hole" you are lending such argumentative weight to only amounts to a 3% loss. Even if we were to double the GAO's estimate to 6%, I'm not really convinced that really provides a rational basis for describing the output of tax systems as "so filled with waste, fraud and abuse".

No reasonable person objects to combating waste, fraud, and abuse. But it is certainly not as widespread as some people might believe.

[1] GAO-15-814, Federal Spending Accountability - [http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/672473.pdf](http://www.gao.gov/assets/680/672473.pdf)

[2] US Federal Budget 2014 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_federal_bud...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_United_States_federal_budget)

edit: a word, "it is _not_ wrong, per se"

<comment><USER9> I personally find it almost absurd to expect the very agencies that are nominally in control of Federal expenditures to reliably track and then expose their own waste, folly, and, yes, theft of taxpayer funds.

Why do you think their is such huge support behind political establishment outsiders such as Sanders and Trump?

Many people are simply exhausted by the lies and deceit that flows from elite Washington circles nowadays, and thinking that self-reported figures are going to placate them is wishful indeed.

<comment><USER10> I didn't downvote you, but I think you need to do some self-directed reading.

The GAO is widely credited from all sides for its standout analysis and data gathering, independent of partisan affiliation or regulatory capture. Its methods are quite rigorous and indeed, if you read the report that I linked in my previous comment, you would see how some of the GAO's investigatory successes have come from comparing agency self-reports against independent audits.

As I said before also, nobody disputes that waste and fraud are bad and should be stopped. But the problem is not nearly as widespread as generally believed - and _that_ is the problem, because it elevates an minor issue to an outsized status at the expense of other, larger issues.

<comment><USER9> > But the problem is not nearly as widespread as generally believed...

Yes well we agree to disagree because I firmly believe, and my 35 years of experience following the issue closely prove to _me_ at least, that not only is the problem widespread but is papered-over and much worse then will ever be reported.

There is a solid statistic that something like only 10% of crime is reported on and solved. I think this number matches nicely to the real damages, waste, and fraud caused by the issue.

<comment><USER8> > the problem ... is papered-over and much worse then will ever be reported

If it's not reported, how do you know about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So they're stopping construction in order to keep a lid on water and sewage prices?

I wonder what his constituents will say when they have no water to pay for.

<comment><USER12> You end up with the same crap many other big cities ended up with. Not paying for improvements when needed results in big expenses when you are offered no choice later on. Atlanta had to spend billions and raises rates a lot because the system started to fail, other cities are finally facing the truth about their lead issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The Works: Anatomy of a City" is an absolutely fascinating (and well- illustrated) book about urban infrastructure.

It focuses too much on NYC for my taste, but that also means it can be really concrete in its examples.

And the water supply, especially the tunnels, were one of the most captivating chapters in there.

</comment><comment><USER14> Stopping work on Water Tunnel #3? That's not good.

Does NYC have water meters yet?

<comment><USER15> The primary tunnel under Manhattan is completed (this is the one used in one of the Die Hard movies). This seems to be about access shafts for splinter tunnels in Brooklyn & Queens.

There's a lot of spin going on in the local press (ie, Mayoral flacks claim there were no cuts, while other reports claim that the money was shifted elsewhere).

Water meters are installed in all new buildings and buildings which have been renovated. Allegedly the entire city should have had water meters by now but I think a lot of smaller residential buildings still get billed by hypothetical use, not metered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> So in the case of an accident, Brooklyn and Queens are dead, but the South Bronx is awash in water? hmmmmmm. :-)

</comment><comment><USER17> I dont understand this. Athens city is basically broke, but streets are clean and they build new infrastructure even today.</comment>


Show HN: Wall of Text - <AUTHOR> http://walloftext.co <comment><USER2> My first reaction to this, and especially to the "hn" wall, was: this is very cool, we can all collaboratively write some weird/interesting/funny stuff and overall it's going to be artful and inspiring in some way.

Of course, that's not how it turned out.

I've been looking at the "hn" wall there periodically for a while now, and it's interesting because you can see what becomes of people when they're acting anonymously - even when they come from a relatively tightly selected non-anonymous group.

The vast majority of edits are what I would characterize as destructive, because they have one or more of these properties:

      - deleting or defacing stuff other people wrote
      - leaving boastful remarks on the size of their penis
      - posting hate speech, including misogynistic and racist comments
      - posting ASCII pornography
      - filling the page with kilobytes of garbage

What's surprising to me is we're not exactly a group of random 10 year olds, yet that's what we revert to when we think we're not accountable. Here's a piece of (relatively?) intact dialogue from that wall summing it up:

      "<- and somehow we wonder why there are so few women in programming "
      "No, that is due to innate sex differences. Read up."
      "Yeah right, it can't possibly have anything to do with crap like this"
      "It's both, but mostly innate. It's the same with race.
       Look up race and IQ studies. (OMG! Did I just say that?!?!)"
      "The more relevant question is would you say it with your HN
       username attached to that comment?"
      "Of course not. The Matriarchy would eat me alive. "

While this is all very depressing, I've also seen users who balance all of this out. There are (or have been at some point) a lot of entertaining posts and short exchanges on that wall, but to me the most amazing thing is there seem to be people who actually clean up the mess and try to preserve the good content. Of course they don't stand a chance, but it's good to know they exist.

<comment><USER3> One of my favorite parts from that wall:

      (THERE IS ONLY LISP)
                     and
                       GROW VAT MEAT!

               /\_/\
          ____/ o o \
        /~____  =ø= /
       (______)__m_m)
        I DEMAND
        VEGAN FOOD!

      rich hickey is frowning upon your shenanigans!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.yourworldoftext.com/](http://www.yourworldoftext.com/) has been doing something similar for about the last five years.

<comment><USER5> The more the merrier! See also [http://www.jotleaf.com/](http://www.jotleaf.com/), a multimedia take on the same concept.

Your World of Text, for what it's worth, is still going strong. It gets a lot of traffic for an art project.

<comment><USER6> This is amazing. Just thought about this idea a few days ago and boom! It exists! Would love to see support to embed any html (think youtube videos) every text area stored as a file on dropbox, support for right to left...

<comment><USER5> YouTube embeds are supported

<comment><USER7> How do I do that?

<comment><USER5> Just paste a YouTube URL.

<comment><USER7> This pastes the link there, but doesn't embed it (i.e. no preview pic, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat! I like how it appears to have an 'infinite' capacity for expansion in any direction, though I don't know if that's a good or a bad design choice. (Could a constraint be creatively beneficial in this case?) This also seems like a good use case for ASCII art. (If you need one: I've made an image->ASCII converter you can download at www.github.com/datamine/ASCII-IMG)

Edit:

I made a quick walloftext page. I foolishly shared the link here on HN. I regret not recording a video of the mayhem as people began to pour in and edit the wall. People started having little conversations on some parts of the wall. Other people defaced them. It was all-around chaotic, like a full IRC channel with no moderation. It's really an interesting form of communication, and it was very cool to see it unfold. (Sort of like watching Twitch plays Pokemon.)

<comment><USER9> Too bad, John. We had fun! Let's make some mayhem and test this a little together at [http://walloftext.co/robots.txt](http://walloftext.co/robots.txt)

Edit: Seems like we gave it the hugh of death. "the server responded with a status of 504 (Gateway Time-out)"

<comment><USER8> I got a 504 earlier. The server must be running at capacity. It's still up for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Oh this is too cool and I would love to hear more of how you did it. What is your backend? Firebase or something?

I made an iPad app (soonish to be universal) called Mindscope which has a similar "wall" idea but when you tap text, it opens up a sub-wall for that piece of text, which enables outliner-like navigation. [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindscope-mind-mapping- outli...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mindscope-mind-mapping- outliner/id901513028?mt=8)

I've been considering what I could do to make a web app version of it, but web development is not my strong suit (yet).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey. The backend is pretty simple, NodeJS + Socket.io for the real-timey and Redis for quick and simple storage.

I may write an article about it soon.

<comment><USER11> Will you open source the code? I'm learning socket io and it would be nice to look at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the help text on a black page (if you're visiting a busy page where the text has been overwritten):

Welcome to your wall of text. Click anywhere and start typing.

\- Click and drag white-space to pan the board.

\- Click and drag text to move the blob.

\- Shift + Click text to select the entire blob.

\- Click text to select a blob.

\- Click buttons on the left to style selected blob.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've noticed that most of these walls have an endstate of penises.

No matter how interesting or artful it was, there is always a human drive to defile and debase. Or we start out there because that's all we can do when faced with an empty wall. It's an interesting experiment though.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would like some simple OneNote like editor (place text and other elements on infinite canvas anywhere) that would run in the browser and produce clean html... sadly the OneNote web version is nowhere near that...

<comment><USER15> my friend has been working on something like this. he'll occasionally have it up on dev.normanreed.com

We've been investigating tools like hand.js and paper.js to get it done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I remember something like this. I wrote a bot to play the game of life on it by interacting with the undocumented javascript via chrome's console.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apologies if it's down or slow, it's currently running on a micro instance.

</comment><comment><USER16> Cool project! What were the best use cases you had in mind for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> General purpose note taking. It's basically a pastebin on an infinite canvas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I did this same thing back around 2006. I shut it down, since I figured there's no value to it.

One cool thing that I had on there that you might want to add is little flags next to the texts so you could see where everybody's coming from around the world.

<comment><USER17> Not sure why I got down voted. I wasn't trying to be mean. I just thought it was funny how similar the idea was and wanted to give a suggestion. I hate when people down vote and don't explain their reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> how is it possible that the canvas seems to be infinite area?

<comment><USER19> This needs an answer!

<comment><AUTHOR> There's nothing special about it really. Blobs of text have a grid position, then I set the CSS left/top properties to gridX * gridWidth etc and the scrolling is done by CSS translate on the parent container div. The browser handles it all for me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Cool idea but very buggy

</comment><comment><USER21> Ah, that's why I can never find the kind of app I'm looking for (this). I keep using the keyword "canvas" but I can see how "wall" makes more sense. I guess I'll be busy googling tonight.</comment>


VESA: Updated Spec Brings DisplayPort 2.0 Performance to USB4 - <AUTHOR> https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vesa-releases-updated-displayport-alt-mode-spec-to-bring-displayport-2-0-performance--to-usb4-and-new-usb-type-c-devices-301049114.html <comment><AUTHOR> > With DisplayPort Alt Mode, the USB-C connector can transmit up to 80 > Gigabits per second (Gbps) of DisplayPort video data utilizing all four > high-speed lanes in the cable, or up to 40 Gbps with simultaneous SuperSpeed > USB data delivery. VESA anticipates first products incorporating DisplayPort > Alt Mode 2.0 to appear on the market in 2021.</comment>


How to Keep America Competitive by Bill Gates (Current state of affairs with Computer Science and Education) - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/23/AR2007022301697.html <comment><AUTHOR> From the article:

"This issue has reached a crisis point. Computer science employment is growing by nearly 100,000 jobs annually. But at the same time studies show that there is a dramatic decline in the number of students graduating with computer science degrees.

The United States provides 65,000 temporary H-1B visas each year to make up this shortfall -- not nearly enough to fill open technical positions."

\---

As a student of computer science / engineering, I can attest to the fact that the numbers are indeed dwindling. This past academic year, the department let go a large number of CS lecturers. In light of topics such as 'outsourcing' and 'tech crash', there are many who are hesitant to pursue a career in software and technology.

I think the need has never been higher. Software Engineering recently topped CNN Money's list of growing careers. However it does seem that those are still involved in this industry are more passionate than ever and I see that everyday.

</comment><comment><USER2> Says the Harvard dropout... Do me a favor, if I ever get really rich and start to view other people only as tools to make me more money, shoot me. Gates had a few decent ideas that came out of the Aspen Institute conference a few years ago, but they're getting progressively more dumbed down and degrading over time.

</comment><comment><USER3> ... and if that doesn't work, try rebooting it? Sorry...:-)</comment>


Some Blue-Collar Workers Probably Shouldn't Do Pink Jobs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-01-06/some-blue-collar-workers-probably-shouldn-t-do-pink-jobs <comment><USER2> This may be sexist, but generally speaking, men are best in high- intensity/low-stamina situations while women are best in low-intensity/high- stamina situations. This applies to mental work as well as physical.

Generally speaking...

Think of it in evolutionary terms: Man hunts (high-intensity) and kills. Animal feeds the family a day or so while the man rests. Woman nurses and protects the kids. With kids, you don't get breaks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Smash this gender-binary reaffirming bullshit. It's disgusting that as a society we believe that roles of nurturing or softness are inappropriate for men and that hardness is inappropriate for women. These mentalities trickle upwards too. If you ever wonder why there is a gender gap in the talent pipeline in SV, look no further than people like this spouting off misogynistic views on what is and isn't acceptable work for men and women.

<comment> T-A > look no further than people like this spouting off misogynistic views

You do realize that the author is a woman, right?

<comment><USER3> That has no bearing on this. It is completely possible to be instrumental in your own oppression. Also, the issue extends beyond women. These attitudes effect everyone, they force men to mentally cut parts of themselves off too.

"The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem"

-Bell Hooks

<comment> T-A Does the patriarchy also force babies and male rhesus monkeys to mentally cut parts of themselves off?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Leaked Uber Numbers Point to Over $1B Gross, $213M Revenue - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/12/04/leaked-uber-numbers-which-weve-confirmed-point-to-over-1b-gross-revenue-213m-revenue/ <comment><USER2> > "The surprising part is that Valleywag knowingly outed their own source. > Valleywag actually knew the screenshot had identifying information of the > individual leaker prior to them publishing this story," Kalanick told > TechCrunch in a statement. "We told Nitasha Tiku from Valleywag that we > would protect her source from legal ramifications if they did not publish > the document. Nitasha and Valleywag decided to publish anyways.

I've said it here before, and I'll say it again: ValleyWag/Gawker Media are scum. This is just another entry in a long list of terrible things they do to get pageviews.

<comment><USER3> You cut it off a little early:

 _Editor John Cook told us that the screenshots did not, in fact, have any identifying information._

 _"We didn 't publish any identifying information about the source of the screengrab," Cook says. "We don't know who sent us that shot, and neither does Uber._

Now, I can't say which one of the two is telling the truth, but at least give both sides of the story. Looking at the shots, I'm not sure what is personally identifiable, though the bookmarks bar could give some clues.

And Travis's threat of legal action might just be hot air from him (which isn't exactly unprecedented). After all, these numbers look very good for Uber. I wouldn't want to be one of their competitors trying to raise a round of funding right now.

<comment><USER2> Look at the comment to the article:

> It's a shame when tech journalists don't understand tech. Of course, they > outed their source. With the time stamp Uber can check which employees > looked at that page at a particular time. They can then ask these employees > [likely just one] whose computer they were using at that time to figure out > who grabbed the screenshot and sold it to ValleyWag.

So it's either VW didn't realize this, or fully realized it and still outed their source because they don't give a shit. Given their history of outing their sources, even after specifically being asked not to, I think the latter is much more likely.

<comment><USER3> _With the time stamp Uber can check which employees looked at that page at a particular time._

I think it's a bit of a leap to assume that the Uber admin system logs every user pageview. It may well do, but many home-grown systems (and it certainly looks homegrown) don't bother with that level of detail. Certainly, if they were that security conscious you'd think they'd also avoid allowing any employee to see overall revenue figures.

<comment><USER4> Default web server set up would log all HTTP requests. It's trivial to see which (internal) IP addresses connecting around that timestamp.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't be an internal address. As the article states, an Uber employee logged on using their friend's laptop. I'd be surprised if they did that at an Uber office.

<comment><USER5> I don't know any company - even small ones - that keep internal stuff like that in the open. I'm willing to bet the Uber employee was on a VPN at the time, which narrows the search considerably.

I doubt Uber was secure/paranoid enough that the timestamp will immediately yield the leaker - but between webserver logs, VPN logs, etc etc, there's probably enough information there to deduce the culprit, especially if this occurred outside business hours.

<comment><USER3> Given that the Valleywag article (flagged off HN of course) said that they were able to load up the admin interface themselves (just not log in) I'm going to say that yes, its open.

<comment><USER6> I don't think it was flagged off, I think Valleywag is in the banned site list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This leak is frustrating and sad. Many of us here applaud companies that work to be transparent with their employees and would appreciate working for a company that helped us understand metrics like this. It makes everyone feel like they are a larger part of the company's success and learn more about how to become founders themselves.

So, having an employee leak this out doesn't just hurt the culture at Uber (which it undoubtably will at least shake), but lessens the likelihood that any company that hopes to IPO or get bought will want to share their performance metrics with employees.

</comment><comment><USER8> Using GAAP (Groupon Accepted Accounting Principles), Uber's Gross is $10B.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think they did this, but one smart way for Uber to protect screenshots like this would be to include unique hex value colors depending which employee is logged into the dashboard. i.e. a different shade of blue in one of the cells for each employee who logs in. Then when the screenshot is published, you just eyedrop the color and you know who leaked it.

<comment><USER10> Is it really worth the trouble? An employee could just copy-paste the data into excel next time.

<comment><USER11> i actually think its a really simple solution for the problem at hand... its also hard to detect. the leaker didn't bother this time, but why not have such a simple mechanism in place?

<comment><USER12> Because it's trivial to change colors in the browser if one wanted to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are Uber drivers employees of Uber? Or are they contracted out, or independent, etc? If they aren't considered employees, then the $1B gross would not really be gross revenues under GAAP.

<comment><USER14> What else would you call that number? It's basically sales. Revenue is how much they actually took in.

<comment><USER13> If they are a marketplace where the drivers are independent entities from Uber, then the money going to the drivers is not considered revenue under GAAP. Which is why I ask whether or not the drivers are Uber employees or not. I have no idea if they are or not. If they are Uber employees, then it is legitimate revenue, but if there is some agreement where they remain independent from Uber, then it would not, under GAAP.

Think about a site like Expedia, or Orbitz. They do not claim the entire price of the ticket as their revenue, since that money is going directly to the airlines. Their only revenue is the $10 they make from a ticket purchase.

This is the same issue that Groupon ran into pre-IPO where they were claiming the entire deal as their revenue.

<comment><USER15> You're correct. Which is why most reports of revenue for Uber, or even Airbnb, almost always use numbers in the hundreds of millions. However, both companies have gross sales in the billions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sheesh, if I were Uber, I'd actually _want_ those numbers to be distributed, far and wide.

A $3.5b valuation represents a downright paltry multiple by Silicon Valley standards.

<comment><USER17> Something is actually being bought and sold. This makes it easy to give a "real" valuation, rather than plucking figures out of the air based on buzz.

That is why unprofitable companies can raise so much money. You can sell the _hope_ that it will someday make some sort of money, somehow. How much? _Set your imagination_ (and your chequebook) _free!_

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hate to make a meta post. But I submitted the link to the ValleyWag article and it got killed.. Not sure why.

<comment><USER19> Valleywag is a banned domain like youtube and a hundred others.

<comment><USER20> BuzzFeed, too.

I believe the entire Gawker network is blocked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I am confused. Is $213M Uber's top line, or bottom line?

<comment><USER22> Uber collects the full amount of the fare, but keeps only 20% of it for itself -- 80% goes right back out the door to the driver. Typically this is called "Gross Revenue" vs. "Net Revenue"

So the $1B in gross revenue is the same as how a small car dealership books gross revenue for the total $ value of the cars it sells, even though most of that $ goes right back to the manufacturer ("cost of goods sold")

So $1B is their Gross Revenue (top top line), and $213M would be their Net Revenue (bottom top line) -- then all expenses, etc. come out from there...

<comment><USER21> Gotcha. I was not sure if they were going to book it as COGS or what exactly they were doing there. Makes sense now! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow. Giant numbers.

</comment><comment><USER24> What the hell happened two weeks ago when revenue was 33% of the other weeks...

<comment><USER25> It looks like that period is not reflecting a full week (hence the final "last 7 days" column).

<comment><USER26> Yeah, it's only covering two days according the "last updated" timestamp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why is this news? How does the volume of business affect Joe Uber User or even Sally Hacker in general? This doesn't seem even remotely interesting.

<comment><USER28> It's raw financial information about a well-known and much-discussed new business, a business about which we aren't often privy to any numbers.

It's okay that you don't find it interesting, but I -- and many others, thus the upvotes -- do.

(If your definition of newsworthiness stems solely from whether or not it effects you in general, then I'd imagine you'd have to eliminate 80% of Hacker News, as well as ~98% of all world news.)

<comment><USER27> No snark necessary, Justin. It was a genuine question. I just didn't understand why it was so highly upvoted and why this was so interesting to people.

<comment><USER28> I apologize if I came off as snarky with the middle bit, I didn't mean it as such. (For instance, I don't find the VC stuff on here, such as the Kima15 thing, interesting at all. But I recognize that a huge portion of readers here do.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Easter Island: a sustainable society has been falsely blamed for its own demise - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-easter-island-a-sustainable-society-has-been-falsely-blamed-for-its-own-demise-85563?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%2085557084&utm_content=The%20Weekend%20Conversation%20-%2085557084+CID_f6932313f594bf0e743904f2f6d25bb4&utm_source=campaign_monitor_uk&utm_term=The%20truth%20about%20Easter%20Island%20a%20sustainable%20society%20has%20been%20falsely%20blamed%20for%20its%20own%20demise <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I follow this.

1\. Diamond mentioned the rats as contributors to the deforestation; invasive species brought by humans (which the rats were) are a key example of ecological destruction.

2\. Going from 9000 (or possibly as many as 15,000) in the 1500s to 3000 (using the most generous pre-disease estimate) at the time of first European contact sure as hell sounds like a dramatic decline to me, and the author doesn't propose how it happened.

<comment><USER3> I'd also add 3. It seems dubious that colonization would lead to oral histories of civil war, somehow "transferring" brutality from a foreign invader to themselves.

The author doesn't seem to give a lot of credit to the locals and their own accounts of history. Those stories are often much more accurate than we think.

<comment><USER4> > It seems dubious that colonization would lead to oral histories of civil war

Look at Africa, and the civil wars that popped up after post-colonization.

Or, I mean, look at Iraq now. When an outside government overthrows the current power, sets up their own ideal of a government, and then leaves, it usually doesn't end up well, right? There's going to be hangers-on of the old ways, they are going to be a PITA for the new system, once it's set up.

<comment><USER5> The civil wars were there pre-colonization as well.

<comment><USER6> Pre-colonization they were just wars. After Europeans drew lines and made countries, many wars became civil wars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _The real answer is more sinister. Throughout the 19th century, South American slave raids took away as much as half of the native population. By 1877, the Rapanui numbered just 111. Introduced disease, destruction of property and enforced migration by European traders further decimated the natives and lead to increased conflict among those remaining._

<comment><USER8> This, however, provides no explanation for the decline in population prior to the first European contact, as the author is claiming that DNA evidence suggests this was not going on prior to the arrival of Europeans. The author also claims that there was no pre-European decline, yet presents before-and- then estimates that are only consistent with that at the extremes of their ranges. In general, the argument being presented here is rather incoherent.

<comment><USER4> Just a theory, but is it possible that there was previous contact that wasn't as well documented?

One theory posited by people like Charles C. Mann is that the native population of say, North America were drastically reduced before the likes of English colonizers came onto the scene by infectious diseases.

Maybe, maybe not (and maybe that happened well after)

<comment><USER8> It would think that is possible, but the author seems to be claiming otherwise in the third-from-last paragraph.

One consideration (not raised in the article) is that perhaps the people of South America (unlike the Polynesians) did not have the seagoing technology or know-how to make a round trip to the island, prior to the arrival of europeans.

The English were relative latecomers among the European colonists of the americas, and by then smallpox and other diseases had spread widely. Apparently, the Wampanoag had suffered from an epidemic, now suspected to have been smallpox, in the years prior to the arrival of the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wampanoag)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A fascinating talk on this subject was given in the Long Now series a little while back: [http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jan/17/statues-walked- what...](http://longnow.org/seminars/02013/jan/17/statues-walked-what-really- happened-easter-island/) . Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER4> A strange article for sure, but the first I had heard about the island's population being cut in half by slave raids. That would cause a pretty terrible blow to any culture.</comment>


Prescription painkiller deaths fall in medical marijuana states - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/25/us-medical-marijuana-deaths-idUSKBN0GP1UJ20140825 <comment><USER2> A lot of people on prescription opioids don't _want_ to be on them, but they may be the only _legal_ thing that helps with the pain. And then addiction and physical dependence become an issue.

Neuropathy is a case in point. Many people don't respond to SSRIs or SNRIs, or the side effects simply can't be tolerated. The next step is opioids.

I for one would much rather use a plant, rather than opioids that cause addiction, physical dependence, and potentially a life-ruining downward spiral of misery.

<comment><USER3> I agree for this particular scenario but saying you'd rather use a plant than an opioid when some plants (like opium!) produce the same effects is disingenuous.

Something being a plant doesn't make it automatically better or worse than something artificial, otherwise we'd all be taking some nice nightshade tea instead of aspirin.

<comment><USER2> _sigh_ , I knew someone would nitpick :)

Perhaps I should have been clearer; My point about it being simply 'a plant' is more that it can be grown at home by users - no need for heavy refinement, solvents, chemical processes or pharmaceutical companies.

<comment><USER4> As time goes on though, as we can already see, specific components that make up the plant will be taken out and used on their own. This is already happening with THC and CBD with the plant being made into oils and concentrates. If cannabis becomes legal, I'm sure pharmaceutical companies will continue this trend in an aim to find the purest and most effective way to administer the drug, just like opioids today.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's probably inevitable.

I can't find the link now, but I recently read a paper from Israel about how the effects of CBD acted in a bell curve when administered alone, but were much more linear when taken as part of a whole plant.

There are many cannabinoids, and they do often seem to work best when taken together.

<comment> nommm-nommm I'd still rather take an aspirin than eat willow bark though. Acetylsalicylic acid has less side effects than salicylic acid and made it safer!

Isolating salicylic acid from willow bark and then a century later synthesizing acetylsalicylic from salicylic acid were all major achievements in medicine. It wasn't some sort of evil scheme.

I'm also guessing synthesizing acetylsalicylic in a lab is better than growing willow trees in almost every way. Less resource intensive, more environmentally friendly, cheaper, easier to scale, and faster production.

The "natural is always better" (for varying definitions or "natural", of course!) argument is silly.

"heavy refinement, solvents, chemical processes" are all just scare words. They don't mean anything useful. I can use those words to accurately describe cooking my dinner.

<comment><USER5> The usage of "heavy refinement, solvents, and chemical processes" wasn't meant to scare, it was meant to inform -- those have costs associated to them, high costs.

The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product is not minimal, whereas taking cannabis and turning it into a consumable product is very minimal.

From a practicality standpoint, it is simply logical that medicine derived from cannabis is superior to willow bark.

<comment><USER6> > The process of taking willow bark and turning it into a consumable product > is not minimal

How did you get this idea? Scrape some bark off a tree and steep it in hot water. You now have a consumable product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This bizarre argument always seems to turn up: _" There may be a risk that legal medical marijuana will make the drug more accessible for kids and smoking may impair driving or carry other risks, she said."_

Completely ignoring the fact that millions of kids are using marijuana illegally right now, and that driving under the influence of drugs is illegal and wrong now, and will still be illegal and wrong when marijuana becomes legal.

<comment><USER8> I don't see what is bizarre about the argument at all. It doesn't discount that it's illegal and wrong now, it only speculates that the increase in availability will increase the incidence of these actions. Could you expand on how this is not so?

<comment><USER9> Legalization with regulation tends to make it harder to obtain the product illegally. It's easier for kids in most of the US to get cannabis than it is for them to get alcohol, for example, because the legal, regulated market for alcohol makes selling it illegally largely unprofitable and therefore a much less attractive practice to engage in. This despite the far greater general availability of alcohol.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any citations for this? My personal experience was totally the opposite. I could always get an over 21 friend to run to the liquor store and get me whatever I wanted. Scoring weed was texting a friend of a friend and hoping for the best.

<comment><USER10> I would argue it's _better_ if children had more access—under the condition they're using it as a substitute for alcohol.

Alcohol is a more damaging drug.

Making less harmful drugs illegal, and the more harmful drugs legal is backwards.

Ideally, no children would have access to _recreational_ drugs under any circumstances. However, we don't live in that world. We live in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> One point that hasn't been addressed so far is how misleading this study is. It's looking at death rates related to prescription painkiller deaths doing a time-series analysis 1999-2010 and then correlating results to states that made medical marijuana legal over that time period. It doesn't say how they eliminated any other number of causes during that period. This is merely showing correlation not causation.

As an example people who have more sex make the most money. While we would all like that to be true there's no science proving causation [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/sex- makes...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/roots-of-unity/sex-makes-you- rich-why-we-keep-saying-e2809ccorrelation-is-not-causatione2809d-even-though- ite28099s-annoying/)

Most of the examples given in the comments here are anecdotal. Not that I disagree with the overall tone, but this is not the study to hold up and say "This is why we should legalize"

<comment><USER12> No one implied causation. The study found that states who legalized medical marijuana found a decrease in opium mortality but roughly 20% after 2 years. Around the country, opium mortality rates are increasing. Thus it is quite reasonable to say 'the opium mortality rate is statistically significantly less in medical marijuana states than in others.' No one has claimed anything more than that, and it is in fact science.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Compare different lenses on different camera sensors - <AUTHOR> I've calculated for some time different focal lengths on different camera sensors, based on sensor size and pixel count by hand.
To make this easier for me, I've written a small JS tool to calculate the equivalent focal length for lenses on different sensors:
http://www.buyersguide.me/lens/
It might help you with your next camera and lens buying decision. Enjoy and happy GAS :-) <comment><USER2> Clickable: [http://www.buyersguide.me/lens/](http://www.buyersguide.me/lens/)</comment>


Disneyland with the Death Penalty (1993) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/1.04/gibson.html <comment><USER2> I think the most interesting aspect of Singapore's government is they pay government officials multimillion dollar salaries. This makes them very hard to bribe. If you think about the size of the budgets government officials have authority over compared to their salaries, the temptation to be bribed and thus be dominated by corporate interests is overwhelming. In Singapore the incentives are reversed. Any allegation of corruption risks a lost job. In other countries they would get fired and go to work at the companies that bribed them but in Singapore the private companies will have difficulty competing with their government salary, not to mention the prestige that comes with being a government official.

I would be in support of that being tried in the U.S, especially for senior level positions. It would probably save money in the long run.

<comment><USER3> Bribery/favor system isn't usually for personal gain, its to pay for re- election campaigns. That's why we have this incredibly complex and huge political lobbyist system in the US.

Even someone worth millions can't personally pay out their own election campaign or just may not want to waste their personal funds.

>I would be in support of that being tried in the U.S, especially for senior level positions

Roughly 50% of Congress are millionaires with a median of about $3m. In other words, they're all fairly well off as-is.

<comment><USER4> > _pay for re-election campaigns_

In other words, the fact that the foundations of the political process depend heavily on money is what spoils the whole thing. Nothing will get fixed as long as that remains true.

Get money out of politics.

<comment><USER5> So to preserve democracy, we must sacrifice freedom of speech?

<comment><USER4> The belief that money is 'speech' is a modern form of collective delusion - like the children's crusades back in the Dark Ages.

Later generations will look at it and will go "how was that even possible?"

<comment><USER6> You have freedom of the press. You just can't spend money on ink or paper.

If I didn't hear this so often in real life, I'd think it was a bad line in a cheesy dystopian movie.

<comment><USER7> I actually don't have a problem with newspapers printing whatever the hell they want. However I do have a problem with it, when it's broadcast television or radio which is explicitly (and necessarily) a government-mandated monopoly, and to a lesser extent cable television which is in most cases an effective monopoly due to various stupid policies at the federal, state, and municipal levels of government. Assuming we eventually shitcan net-neutrality, I will have the same reservations there, as well.

Basically, as long as there is no physical limit to the number of voices that can be heard (as with broadcast television), and the barriers to entry are reasonably low (unlike with cable television, and possibly internet in the near future), then absolute freedom of speech works very well. Otherwise, all you're left with is propaganda under cover of freedom of speech, and it fucking sucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Update: Disneyland With the Death Penalty, Revisited, 2012 [http://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-jeyaretnam- disneyland-d...](http://www.wired.com/2012/04/opinion-jeyaretnam-disneyland- death-penalty/all/)

<comment><USER9> "We are mostly law abiding because we are afraid and repressed and we have no choice, not because we are inherently well behaved or "good." We're not Disneyland by a long shot but it is probably true to say that if George Orwell and Philip Dick had an illegitimate child of a theme park, then this would be it.

"Gibson was a visionary in that he saw clear through the hype to the disturbing underbelly. It turns out our government doesn't have the secret to prosperity, and progress and they are clearing failing in technological innovation and creativity. But others still believe in the hype and if the PAP's model for pseudo democracy takes off then new democracies everywhere are in danger."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Having grown up in Singapore for 3 years (first through third grade) I for one was completely in love with the place. This was in the late 70s, however, and some of the "dirt" still existed at that time. In fact, our flat (a 20-story apartment building) was right next to a "kampung", which was a shanty tin-roof village with chickens running this way and that, inhabited by very poor native people. Their sole means of income, from what I remember, was by pulling magnets out of TVs and radios and selling the magnets... to whom I have no idea.

It's my understanding that none of those kampungs exist in Singapore any longer, and I've often wondered where all of the people were sent.

<comment><USER11> "selling the magnets... to whom I have no idea"

In those pre ceramic supermagnet days those were probably alnico magnets (aluminum, nickel, cobalt) and although you get $4/lb for scrap nickel you'll only get $1/lb or so for alnico magnets from a scrap metal dealer, today.

Where you'd get your feedstock from is a complete mystery as the scam of "recycling" by shipping used electronic to the 3rd world is pretty modern. If you could get an infinite supply of gear (rejects returned to manufacturer?), I don't think it would be a challenge to rip apart speakers of that time and generate a roughly minimum wage income.

Nickel is really quite valuable. Prices always vary but a tenth the cost of equal weight of silver is semi-stable-ish. Figure maybe a hundred times what you'll get for scrap steel. Or maybe two or three times what you'll get for copper. If there's precious metals, and semi-precious metals, I'd say nickel is just one step below the semi-precious, like wanna-be precious metal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There are a lot of valid concerns with regards to Singapore's excessive central planning, governmental and social disapproval of nonconformity, etc. But this piece really does sound like the perspective of a disappointed poverty tourist. There is a huge difference between visiting filth and slums and red-light districts and desperate people struggling to get by, and having to live there all your life.

Singapore did a lot of things wrong, but part of the reason it is so (unnervingly) clean and prosperous and ordered is because the government has made an effort (not completely successful, and again perhaps with not all the right methods) to provide the denizens of the country with places to live and ways to make a decent living.

<comment><USER13> All that is also possible because of stupidly cheap labor from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and India. Nearly every middle class household here has their own maid. They are not treated that well...

Driving around Singapore you see trucks carrying loads of migrant workers everywhere you go. When you first arrive its heartbreaking to see, but of course one gets "used" to it over time.

I suppose Singapore > Qatar.

<comment><USER14> This is similar to USA, but the slaves mostly stay in Asia and Latin Americs, and their work is imported to USA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you liked this, then you will probably like this one too (56 pages, so it'll take you a while):

[http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html)

It's about the laying of an undersea fibre optic cable.

<comment><USER16> '96 article by Neal Stephenson. This should be interesting after just reading Cryptonomicon which has a good bit on under-sea fiber.

<comment><USER17> If I recall correctly it was written as part of his research for Cryptonomicon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow. I remember reading this in print when it was first published. I had just gotten a dial up internet connection at home. 28.8 kb/s!!!! Now I'm typing this on my phone. All lot has changed in 22 years.

<comment><USER19> Hah. I almost wrote this exact same comment!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems that it won't be news for anybody here, but it was for me as I never heard of this article and didn't know who this Gibson guy is as well (I don't like science fiction), but the article appears to be so influential that there even is wikipedia article about that with quite interesting details: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneyland_with_the_Death_Penalty)

I wonder how relevant all that stuff is today.

<comment><USER15> Gah, I'm really jealous! Just to be able to read all those books all over again with a fresh eye.

Find a copy of Neuromancer if you can & enjoy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow this is from the fourth issue of Wired.

</comment><comment><USER22> The fun thing is how you can "date" this great essay to pre-2000 since it includes ";-)" instead of the more modern ";)", has anyone ever looked at the development of the use of emoticons over time?

<comment><USER23> I don't use the nose, but I have taken to adding a space between the eyes and the mouth so that skype or facebook - or whatever other horrible chat service I'm using - don't transform it from text to their godawful cutesy images.

$0.02

<comment><USER24> I hate when I type :P and it comes out as a _smiling_ face with the tongue out. The vertical line in the P is straight...

<comment><USER25> Skype is the worst offender I know of: It even jiggles the smileys.

Now you can turn this off locally but people receiving them will still think you are childish : )

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Re-reading this article makes me think of a scifi short story that I read a while back that I can't remember the name of.

I thought it was by Bruce Sterling but apparently not. About a guy who went to (Dubai?) to reprogram some "ancient" assembly-line robots, and had trouble because access to the "net" was highly controlled, and he needed to get documentation. He hacked into a payphone, only to find that there was a lively "underground" scene on the net, and some of the royalty he had encountered was active on it.

Surely someone can remember the name/author..

<comment><USER26> Ah, it WAS Sterling; "Green Days in Brunei" from the "Crystal Express" story collection.

[http://www.e-reading.link/chapter.php/71789/6/Sterling_- _Cry...](http://www.e-reading.link/chapter.php/71789/6/Sterling_- _Crystal_Express.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is an excellent read! It is also included in Gibson's collection of non fiction writing - Distrust That Particular Flavor, which I highly recommend.

</comment><comment><USER28> The death penalty is a longstanding tradition at both Disneyland (in California) and Disney World (Florida), so how is this title so shocking?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is so in line with French philosopher Baudrillard and his discourse on hyperreality. Baudrillard also mentions Disneyland in his work (can't recall in which one). Many of his ideas are tightly related to the Matrix saga and, to some extent, Neuromancer.

</comment><comment><USER30> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1845918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1845918)</comment>


Speedrunning Windows 95 - <AUTHOR> https://hackaday.com/2019/03/09/speedrunning-windows-95/ <comment><USER2> Anecdote: back in the early 2000s, I regularly installed Windows XP on the machines of school friends and family members and got pretty fast at it. After a few months, I realized that I had memorized the original Windows XP "default" CD key (the one starting with FCKGW...) by accident. I haven't done an installation of XP in 15 years, yet you could wake me up in the middle of the night and I could tell you this damn key.

<comment><USER3> This was me, but with the OG Starcraft: Brood War CD Key. I _think_ I still remember the key, but I'm not sure and I don't have the CD to verify.

<comment><USER4> I still know my Starcraft CD key to this day as well.

Bonus: The same key also works for Half-Life. They used the same algorithm.

<comment><USER5> I loved quake iii and similar properties that only checked the last digit, 3 or c

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's another speedrun category: time to bluescreen [https://mobile.twitter.com/Foone/status/1103384684812255233](https://mobile.twitter.com/Foone/status/1103384684812255233)

<comment><USER7> This joke also reminds me of the "Banned%" Club Penguin speedrun. It was short-lived but people came up with various tricks to speed up the email verification subsequent banning process.

[https://www.speedrun.com/cp#Banned](https://www.speedrun.com/cp#Banned)

[https://www.pcgamer.com/getting-banned-from-club-penguin- is-...](https://www.pcgamer.com/getting-banned-from-club-penguin-is-now-a- speedrunning-competition/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I got pretty good at this type of thing at one of my earliest jobs was as a network admin's assistant at a training place that was similar to today's webdev bootcamps, but for stuff like Oracle, VB, and Java.

Before every class began, I would go through the entire classroom of 15-20 workstations and do a clean install of WinNT4 and whatever software packages were necessary for the class.

Imaging was possible with software like Ghost, but it was still pretty clunky, and NT4 required extra work after imaging, so we just did it manually. Typically, by the time I was done a step with the last workstation, the first one was ready for me to click the next Next button.

Thanks for the memories!

<comment><USER9> Windows NT and newer supported unattended installs of both the OS and other software you wanted installed automatically. Not as fast as imaging, but equivalent of a manual install, just without any manual work.

That's how we handled 100s of machines with an IT dept of just 3-4 techies at the uni I worked for.

And we _loathed_ people who came with non-standard HW our custom boot disks didn't handle (remember that even being a thing?).

Things have certainly changed and IMO mostly for the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was recently amazed to find out that Windows 95 is still used in an industrial automation setting. The company uses the NetBEUI[0] protocol and Windows 95 is apparently the only version to support it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS_Frames_protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS_Frames_protocol)

<comment><USER11> In the last job I had, Win 95/98 was on a computer used to send programs to a 20-ton piece of metal working equipment. Of course, you had to drop into DOS to use the necessary software. Transfer rate was around 900 baud. The computer that actually ran the machine consisted of a white monochrome monitor and a desk-sized cabinet full of control boards. The cabinet had an air conditioner attached to it and had trouble running on hot days.

Trivia about this machine: on the corner of one control board there was a single, green indicator LED with a broken lead. It was bent over so the broken part would still contact the solder joint and light up. If at any point it stopped making contact with the circuit, the entire machine locked up or threw random error codes until you wiggled it back into place.

 _" We'll fix it later"_

<comment><USER12> The silver lining to jobs like that is after a year or two, you're the single, solitary person in the world that can keep the machine running as expected. Performance reviews become a breeze after that.

"We've been looking at your performance these last few months, and it seems you've stopped taking on new responsibilities..."

"The machine is running."

"Yes but..."

"I have other offers."

"Never mind, carry on. Here's your raise."

<comment><USER11> Oh, it's great when it works out like that, but this place wasn't worth staying with long term. I should clarify; I was a grease monkey/operator, not tech support. You would never break 15usd/hr even as a foreman.

The slogan was literally "Run it till it dies". The machine next to me was even older, and had a crash/down time of 1-2 hours every 9 hour day. Not kidding. The floor offices still used terminal computers in 2014-ish. The one in my depart finally crapped out (screen flicker due to the flyback cracking a solder joint). Easy fix, I didn't say anything hoping they'd buy a damn desktop like a normal company. Nope, they special ordered a new/refurb terminal for god knows how much money (I think it was a televideo 9xx or something).

I could go on, but you get the idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I had an assembly line for setting up Windows 95 with the 21 floppy disks (and later Windows 98 with 38) at a school lab. Start one, when it asks for disk 2 move on to the next PC, and the next thing you know, you have a clean install on every PC in the "lab."

<comment><USER14> If you have 21 disks and 21 machines, how much slower is this install method than if you had 21^2 disks for 21 machines?

Assuming all disks read in equal time and it takes no time to move the disks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those wondering what the part at 00:48 is, it is this patch which allows Win95 to run on fast CPUs:

[https://msfn.org/board/topic/141402-windows-95-21ghz-cpu- lim...](https://msfn.org/board/topic/141402-windows-95-21ghz-cpu-limit- broken/)

There's various timing loops for calibrating delays, which were written at a time when CPUs were much slower. Win98(SE?) didn't have this problem.

</comment><comment><USER16> Someone had a thread on Twitter trying to crash it ASAP and the key was the run dialogue box with "con\con" ... This even crashes the JavaScript Windows 95 emulators.

<comment><USER2> In case anyone was wondering (as I was):

> While any of these special filenames would have worked, the most common one > used to crash old Windows machines was con, a special filename that > represents the physical console: the keyboard (for input) and the screen > (for output). Windows correctly handled simple attempts to access the con > device, but a filename included two references to the special device—for > example, c:\con\con—then Windows would crash. If that file was referenced > from a webpage, for example, by trying to load an image from > file:///c:/con/con then the machine would crash whenever the malicious page > was accessed.

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/05/in-a-...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2017/05/in-a-throwback-to-the-90s-ntfs-bug-lets-anyone-hang-or- crash-windows-7-8-1/)

</comment></comment><comment> ah- Someone should enter this at one of the speedrunning conventions. I'd love to watch a stream of someone installing Win95 in front of a huge audience, complete with commentary.

<comment><USER17> "oh he forgot to uncheck <component>, that's going to cost him..."

<comment><USER18> "Over to IFuckedUrMom666, retired former Windows 95 installation champion, for some extra commentary."

"Thanks Jeff. Yeah, we'll have to see how this plays out, but I'm tentatively calling this one as maybe not a mistake. By leaving IPX support in, there's an extra 198 sectors to copy - but you save 39ms later from reduced install logging, as there's never any IPX check failures from the network infrastructure. He's been playing such a straight-up game here so far, so this is actually quite interesting - we might be seeing hints here of the bolder, gutsier play that he's going to have to bring to the table far more often to later stages. The Plus! installation round in particular is not for the faint- hearted."

"IFuckedUrMom666 - thanks. We'll be back for more analysis later."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can you speedrun something that is not locked to specific hardware like a console game would be? Feels like hardware is most of the "speed"

<comment><USER20> You can speedrun PC games. For video games, better hardware can speed up things like loading times (which also happens if you put an SSD in your PS4) and increase the framerate but the actual gameplay won't become faster beyond the threshold necessary to play the game smoothly.

This particular speedrun is much more tied to the hardware, but that's part of the fun for these people. It might make more sense if you compare it to something like car racing. Both the hardware and the person matter a lot to the outcome.

<comment><USER21> Speedrunners have built tools for some games (most Valve games if I'm recalling correctly) that monitor times, while excluding loading screens. Obviously this is a separate category, and both curiously exist for games with a built-in timer (GDQ ignores in-game timers, for example).

<comment><USER22> There's actually a whole scripting language for reading values from games' memory and extract events for timing and progress:

[https://github.com/LiveSplit/LiveSplit/blob/master/Documenta...](https://github.com/LiveSplit/LiveSplit/blob/master/Documentation/Auto- Splitters.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ok we need speedrun install Gentoo 2004. Speedrun install Slackware Linux 1.0 from floppies. Speedrun install perl 5 from Configure. Speedrun update all the GNU autotools and gcc from a non-root user with a non standard prefix.

<comment><USER24> As someone using Gentoo in 2004 (what was I thinking?) I would love to see how long this takes in a VM back by a CPU from 2019 and tons of RAM. I have some memory in the back of my head of compiling Gentoo on a Sun Sparc 20 (4xCPU ... I think) with max ram (32 or 128MB?!?) - because I owned one and could (it was old HW in 2004). It took a few days from stage 1. Today if I need to compile anything I ssh to a builder server with 48 cores and 256gb of RAM as the i7 laptop is to slow. Ah, memories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember doing a similar competition back in high school between area schools... except you had to put together a computer and then install windows.

<comment><USER26> Funnily enough you've just surfaced an old memory of mine, we did the same thing.

I vaguely recall having to build a 486 out of a bunch of parts, install windows and get to the desktop.

Fun times

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Not quite the same but once I had to install Windows 7 and NVIDIA graphics drivers without a functioning monitor.

If blind runs became more popular then maybe I could hone that skill.

</comment><comment><USER28> this is a waste of time, i just burned a custom cd with an autorun.inf and every morning before school, after installing linux the previous day, i would pop it in so my mom could use AOL.

still, 24 years after windows 95, i gotta say this is .. hilarious. ;d

<comment><USER29> you installed linux every night and installed windows every morning?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Two important URL:s from the Windows 9x era

1) [http://www.annoyances.org/](http://www.annoyances.org/)

2) [https://www.litepc.com/](https://www.litepc.com/)

Good times.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hah! I love that this is a thing.

In software development I think I could watch speedruns of folks building a login service/page or any component really.

</comment><comment><USER32> What are the rules ? Since this is a largely predictable instruction stream, you know all the branch outcomes before hand. You even know the value outcomes. You can create a close to perfect branch predictor, prefetcher, scheduler etc.

</comment><comment><USER33> I remember that it used to take an hour or 2.. including walking away and coming back

</comment><comment><USER34> Meanwhile, I can't manage to install 95 in a VirtualBox install :/

<comment><USER34> Ah, found the solution: [https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=82787](https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=82787)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> It seems it was made emulating an ancient processor using current processors and in fact creating a massively overclocked virtual processor + virtual disks. Very nice.

</comment><comment><USER36> Oh, hello there.

</comment><comment><USER37> OT: can someone explain this anime/waifu thing to me, in particular why does someone record a video like this one with careful window placement so that we can see the anime? I feel like I'm missing something.

<comment><USER38> I just want to know what window manager that it.

<comment><USER39> XFCE4 w/ Mofit (misspelled in the package) theme. I'll move back to a tiling WM one day..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Instructions unclear. I accidentally installed Arch instead.

<comment><USER36> I use Arch BTW</comment></comment>


Without heart disease, daily aspirin may be too risky - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-heart-aspirin/without-heart-disease-daily-aspirin-may-be-too-risky-idUSKCN1SJ275 <comment><USER2> It's strange that this article mentions the increased risk of internal bleeding but doesn't mention the _reduced_ risk of cancer.

Here's a study which suggests that if 1,000 people aged 60 took aspirin daily for 10 years then 3 more people would die from strokes, bleeding and ulcers, but 17 _fewer_ people would die from cancer and heart attacks. If that's true, then the benefits of daily aspirin clearly outweighs the costs.

[https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/08/06/aspirin-...](https://scienceblog.cancerresearchuk.org/2014/08/06/aspirin- and-cancer-not-quite-but-nearly/)

<comment><USER3> Aspirin may increase rates of some cancers.

[https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000696/aspirin...](https://discover.dc.nihr.ac.uk/content/signal-000696/aspirin- did-not-prevent-deaths-or-disability-in-healthy-older-adults)

> In the ASPREE trial, older adults with no apparent cardiovascular disease > who took daily aspirin saw no benefit in terms of reducing the chance of > dying or having dementia or disability. Instead, it slightly increased their > mortality and bleeding risk - aspirin was associated with an excess of 1.6 > deaths per 1,000 people per year. Half of these deaths were due to cancer.

(Although this is at odds with other research and so we need to be careful when interpreting it).

<comment><USER4> maybe this brings up a general question. If the effects of aspirin are so complex and interact with so many different forms of complications and benefits, is it even sensible to make a recommendation based on individual factors?

Is maybe some other methodology preferable, like aggregating all the negatives and positives and just make a sort of statistical recommendation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a meta-analysis of 13 studies. The rate change is certainly real, but remember this wasn't a study targeting that characteristic. I also didn't read the studies mentioned, so I don't know what time frame the change appears over (is it over a patients lifetime? a year? who knows?).

Also, all of the patients were Asian, which could also have some effect, and they were all lean. As far as I'm aware, these aren't characteristics of those who usually receive recommendations for regularly taking aspirin. Meanwhile, heart disease kills nearly a quarter of Americans.

> Results The search identified 13 randomized clinical trials of low-dose > aspirin use for primary prevention, enrolling 134 446 patients. Pooling the > results from the random-effects model showed that low-dose aspirin, compared > with control, was associated with an increased risk of any intracranial > bleeding (8 trials; relative risk, 1.37; 95% CI, 1.13-1.66; 2 additional > intracranial hemorrhages in 1000 people), with potentially the greatest > relative risk increase for subdural or extradural hemorrhage (4 trials; > relative risk, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.08-2.18) and less for intracerebral > hemorrhage and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Patient baseline features associated > with heightened risk of intracerebral hemorrhage with low-dose aspirin, > compared with control, were Asian race/ethnicity and low body mass index.

> Conclusions and Relevance Among people without symptomatic cardiovascular > disease, use of low-dose aspirin was associated with an overall increased > risk of intracranial hemorrhage, and heightened risk of intracerebral > hemorrhage for those of Asian race/ethnicity or people with a low body mass > index.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the tldr!

A meta-analysis that contains only Asians (Taiwanese) with low body mass... is not relevant to me, and frankly not particularly relevant to, "U.S. doctors have long advised adults who haven't had a heart attack or stroke but are at high risk for these events to take a daily aspirin pill", the lead in to the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My neighbor took a daily baby aspirin and finally got tired of it and quit (much to his wife's chagrin since it was her doing). He had a stroke 2 or 3 days later.

The doctors say the aspirin was helping keep things at bay but I wondered if it was more like his body adjusted for the thinner blood.

<comment><USER8> That raises a question: how do you safely stop a daily low dose aspirin regimen? Are we talking about cutting tiny pills in half, then quarters, etc. over a period of a month?

<comment><USER9> When taking baby Aspirin and having anticipated bleeding (e.g. planned surgery or dental work), hematologist's advice was to start preparing about two weeks in advance: take pill every other day for about a week, then stop for another week.

This paper tells The American College of Chest Physicians' recommendation is stopping 7-10 days in advance, in the clinical study they measured 96 hours (4 days) for "normalizetion of platelet reactivity":

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008770/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008770/)

But please speak with your own doctor(s), your medical situation may differ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Okay, I'm not a physician, but for me as a layman there does not seem to be anything new in the study described. Yes, not taking it without indication has always been the professional recommendation. Stopping Aspirin treatment can also increase the risk of a stroke, so the treatment shouldn't be stopped without medical supervision.

I'm wondering whether there is any example of a medicament or artificial supplement that is recommended to be taken without indication. I've never heard of something like that. Vitamin supplements should be replaced by more healthy nutrition and maybe more fresh air, more sun, and doing some sport. If there is no diagnosed deficiency, then supplements have no benefits at all. Most of the "daily supplements" you can buy in a pharmacy can be replaced by occasionally drinking a glass of orange juice, eating a banana, or eating something with honey. I once went to the pharmacy when I had a cold and didn't check what they were giving to me very carefully. At home, I realized that I just bought some pills that contained traces of honey... at a price of 16 EUR!

<comment><USER11> >more sun

Pls no. Skin cancer is no joke.

<comment><USER12> Sun exposure increases skin cancer risk, but skin cancer is in most cases easily treatable if caught early, and there's evidence that sun exposure reduces all cause mortality, e.g.:

[http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/38/2/1173.long](http://ar.iiarjournals.org/content/38/2/1173.long)

If this is a real causal link, the next important question is how much is attributable to vitamin D synthesis (which, assuming the localization of vitamin D in the skin isn't important, could theoretically be replaced by supplements), and how much is attributable to things that can't be supplemented, e.g. increased nitric oxide synthesis. See:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5593895/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5593895/)

<comment><USER13> Vitamin D supplements keep failing to show broad benefits in trials.

Here's a popular press writeup with citations to the relevant trials: [https://www.vox.com/2018/10/4/17933880/vitamin-d-health- sun-...](https://www.vox.com/2018/10/4/17933880/vitamin-d-health-sun-diet)

<comment><USER12> I live far enough from the equator, and get little enough sunlight exposure, that I believe I was deficient. After I started supplementing I noticed my fingernails growing stronger. I didn't anticipate this happening so I didn't save samples for objective measurement, but I clearly remember that my fingernails would easily buckle if I pressed the ends against each other, and now they do not. The cost and risk is very low, so I think it's worth it for the stronger fingernails (useful as prying tools).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Taking 50mg before going to bed, for periods, (3-6months a year, during massive crunch time project deliveries), it helps me sleep better and be less tired, also it makes my dreams extremely vivid and more complex, is there any study on this? It is a constant aspect that I can reproduce steadily...

<comment><USER15> There actually are studies showing pain killers work for mental pain and anxiety too, not just physical pain. E.g.: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130416085431.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130416085431.htm)

So I wouldn't be surprised if it helps you sleep, especially during stressful crunch time periods.

<comment><USER16> It's more significant than that, if you dig in on "acetaminophen emotional response" you'll find a lot of coverage of it muting response both good and bad.

Anecdatally, I know someone who takes a significant amount of Tylenol on a daily basis, and that person seems a lot more emotionally 'flat' than before that started.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> People should just finally understand that there is no free lunch: any substance has side effects. Even water, depending on dosage.

<comment><USER18> That would be great. At that point, we can all collectively decide that it's a better idea to spend more on medical research.

[https://futurism.com/the-byte/doctors-autonomous-surgery- rob...](https://futurism.com/the-byte/doctors-autonomous-surgery-robot-heart)

For example, deaths from cancer(s) and heart disease will drop dramatically in which decade?

       [ ] 2120
       [ ] 2070
       [ ] 2050
       [ ] 2030

Pick one. It's really just a matter of effort.

<comment><USER17> Far better idea is to remove as much cancerous bureaucratic institutions as possible. Starting from those which promote dangerous massive top-down health advices and policies, especially which add this or that pill for non-emergency "preconditions".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Without an __abnormal __[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transthoracic_echocardiogram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transthoracic_echocardiogram) diagnosis report we should not take Aspirin Otherwise [https://www.everydayhealth.com/congestive-heart- failure/guid...](https://www.everydayhealth.com/congestive-heart- failure/guide/treatment/)

</comment><comment><USER20> What about taking it with recovery periods e.g. not at the weekends, or on alternate months? What would that do to the risk/benefit?

</comment><comment><USER21> Is it a good idea to take extra vitamin K with aspirin when taken long-term, since it opposes the blood-thinning effect?

</comment><comment><USER22> Ugh, this is terrible news.

I have a family history of heart disease, so I've been taking a small aspirin daily as part of my doctor's recommendation. I've been trusting this to help increase my chances of avoiding a heart attack.

I'm going to keep taking it. I don't think I'll even talk to the doctor about it.

<comment><USER23> There new guidelines in the US that still recommend aspirin based on cardiovascular risk. That aspirin increases the risk of bleeding is old news. The difficulty has been in quantifying the risk/benefit. You should consult with your doctor about your specific circumstance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I personally find the taste of aspirin to be delicious! Not steak or candy delicious, but more like tangy taco sauce delicious.

So I chew them up and swish them around my mouth and rub them up against the inside of my lips with my tongue, to get the most effective rush and quickest headache relief.

Does anybody else do that, or am I a mutant?

<comment><USER25> It's just like citric, malic or tataric acid

<comment><USER24> Yes, that was what I was getting at: delicious like limes!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if there's any correlation between people who take daily/regular aspirin and vascular dementia in later life.

My Grandpa swore by daily dosing but then also battled vascular and alzheimers. Is the increased risk in bleeds only whilst taking aspirin or does it persist afterwards at all?

</comment><comment><USER27> Here's the entry at the NNT site for daily aspirin [1].

[1] [http://www.thennt.com/nnt/aspirin-to-prevent-a-first- heart-a...](http://www.thennt.com/nnt/aspirin-to-prevent-a-first-heart-attack- or-stroke-2/)

</comment><comment><USER28> What's the news? My friends and I have always been aware that daily ibuprofin/aspirin could cause serious blood clotting issues.

<comment><USER29> Ibuprofen overuse screws up your kidneys. Aspirin prevents clotting and causes bleeding

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> My internal medicine MD warned me away from daily low-dose aspirin a few years ago when we discussed it during my annual physical.

"Unless you have a matching diagnosis that calls for treatment it's not something you should take routinely," were his basic words.

Thee most obvious concern that a layman could wrap their head around were bleeding complications.

So I stopped.

</comment><comment><USER31> 325mg per day here. Great.

</comment><comment><USER32> Whoa! Is this an 81mg, 325mg, or other dose? Anyone out there know?

</comment><comment><USER33> I have two words: OH FUCK. I take 85 mg every night (and since I live in Iran, we don't have access to high quality drugs thanks to American Orange Guerilla: President Trump). Btw, the title is misleading, 0.2 percent is not too much, is it?

</comment><comment><USER34> Drugs are artificial modifications of the body with metabolization that has not ever been evolved. They cause problems people can't really fix it seems. It is really tragic. Antibiotics are seeming more and more dangerous by the year with new research.

</comment><comment><USER35> _"Keep your dietary cholesterol to less than 200 milligrams a day."_ [1]

Cholesterol in one egg: 373 mg [google]

Maybe, instead of taking a daily pill, a change in diet will do the trick?

[1] [https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/files/docs/public/heart/chol_tlc.p...](https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/files/docs/public/heart/chol_tlc.pdf)

 _High blood cholesterol can affect anyone. It's a serious condition that increases the risk for heart disease, the number one killer of Americans—women and men. The higher your blood cholesterol level, the greater your risk._

<comment><USER36> Dietary cholesterol has little impact on blood cholesterol.

Yes, it's confusing as the names are the same.

Yes, high blood cholesterol can lead to heart disease.

But here's the thing, the body synthesizes its own cholesterol. Mainly in the liver. Dietary cholesterol doesn't have much if anything to do with this process.

Statins work by reducing the liver's production of cholesterol leading to lower blood cholesterol levels and decreasing the risk of heart disease.

Now, a change in diet can "do the trick" and lead to lower blood cholesterol levels but for different reasons than the amount of cholesterol in the food.

The big caveat to all of this is for some people who are genetic outliers and people with diabetes.

Here are a few sources you can check out:

Dietary Cholesterol, Serum Lipids, and Heart Disease: Are Eggs Working for or Against You? [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29596318](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29596318)

Cholesterol Overview [https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what- should-you...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/what-should-you- eat/fats-and-cholesterol/cholesterol/)

Cholesterol in Food [https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-you-should-no- longer-...](https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-you-should-no-longer-worry- about-cholesterol-in-food/)

<comment><USER35> If you open the first study you are citing, it's says in the original PDF:

 _Conflicts of Interest: M.L.F. and C.N.B. have received prior funding from the Egg Nutrition Center. The funding sponsors had no role in the interpretation of data or the writing of the manuscript._

<comment><USER37> [https://examine.com/nutrition/will-eating-eggs-increase- my-c...](https://examine.com/nutrition/will-eating-eggs-increase-my- cholesterol/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Groupon loses millions on China venture - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/it-business/3313266/groupon-loses-millions-on-china-venture/?intcmp=chan_buttons;news;it%20business;article

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary:

> _Groupon's China venture posted a net loss of $46.4 million (£29 million) > for the past nine months, generating only $2.1 million in revenue as it > fights to gain dominance in the country's highly competitive group buying > market._

also

> _Groupon's global operations excluding GaoPeng recorded a net less of $214 > million for the first nine months of the year, according to the securities > filing. That happened despite its revenue reaching $1.1 billion, up from > just $140 million in the same period a year ago._</comment>


Mozilla lays off 70 as it waits for new products to generate revenue - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/15/mozilla-lays-off-70-as-it-waits-for-subscription-products-to-generate-revenue/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22057737)</comment>