Have Scientists Found Two Different Higgs Bosons? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/12/14/have-scientists-found-two-different-higgs-bosons/ <comment><USER2> The most important lesson I learned in graduate school came from a scientist at Los Alamos who told me "three sigma effects happen in physics much more often than they should"

<comment><USER3> You think that's bad?

How about in finance, where the CFO of Goldman Sachs bemoaned that they had "25-sigma events, several days in a row" during the financial crisis.

[http://lukenotricks.blogspot.com/2010/03/fabled-25-sigma- eve...](http://lukenotricks.blogspot.com/2010/03/fabled-25-sigma-event.html)

<comment><USER4> Surely at the claimed 25-sigma point, the problem is more with our ability to measure than the probability itself? Claims about the space shuttle's reliability come to mind.

Am I the only one who feels that a claim of probability on this level is basically religion on one level or another?

<comment> T-hawk The problem is that the model was fantastically far off from reality. (For whatever reason - incompetence, bad inputs, willful deception, religion - doesn't matter for this discussion.)

I could construct a prediction that the high air temperature in New York tomorrow will be 80 degrees Celsius with a standard deviation of 3 degrees. Then when the observed value is actually 5 degrees, that's 25 standard deviations off from my "prediction". But it doesn't mean that the observed event was actually a 1-in-billions occurrence, that New York experienced an astronomically unlikely cold snap. It means my prediction was unrealistic and wrong, that it didn't model reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Of course everyone is freshly aware of the neutrino fiasco, so this anomaly will probably be handled with extra skepticism and timidity. Without more data we can only make conjectures based on Occam's razor, etc.

<comment><USER6> The neutrino fiasco was very unfortunate since by all accounts the scientists involved went public with some seriously stressed skepticism. That heads rolled because outsiders ignored the skepticism is rather distressing.

<comment><USER7> Heads rolled?! I remember the neutrino story being handled with complete professionalism at the time. I wasn't aware there'd been any new developments. Do you have a link?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.nature.com/news/embattled-neutrino-project- leader...](http://www.nature.com/news/embattled-neutrino-project-leaders-step- down-1.10371)

<comment><USER7> Much appreciated, thanks. That's absolutely tragic, and a failure of the scientific community and media at large. The media for precipitating it, and the scientific community for letting it happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I (with minimal physics background, I admit) would bet on systematic error. We're seeing one mass from one decay path, and a _very slightly different_ mass from a different decay path. The best explanation seems to _me_ to be that, for one or both of the decay paths, there's a problem in how we're computing the Higgs mass.

<comment><USER10> Wikipedia says this is possible with a more complex theory. Are we going with the simplest theory due to Occam's razor?

 _The Minimal Standard Model as described above contains the simplest possible model for the Higgs mechanism with just one Higgs field. However, it also is possible to have an extended Higgs sector with additional doublets or triplets. The non-minimal Higgs sector favoured by theory are the two-Higgs- doublet models (2HDM), which predict the existence of a quintet of scalar particles: two CP-even neutral Higgs bosons h0 and H0, a CP-odd neutral Higgs boson A0, and two charged Higgs particles H±._

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson#Alternative_models>

<comment><USER11> The W and Z bosons are basically the same, except one is charged and the other neutral. And due to that they have different masses.

So it's certainly possible the same thing could be happening here.

<comment><USER12> The W and Z particles are a little more different. The W+- particles only interact with L-hilarity particles. The Z particle "prefers" the L particles, but also interacts with the R particles.

It's more complicated. There is a W^0 particle that is the neutral equivalent of the W^+ and W^- particles, all of them have the same mass. There is another particle called A, that is like a photon with mass (but it "sees" the hypercharge of the particles, not the charge)

Combining the W^0 and A particles, it's possible to get two new particles the Z^0 and the photon. In this combination the Z^0 has all the mass and the photon has no mass. It's more easy to understand some experiments using the Z^0 and the photon, so to make some explanations more clear it's better to use them instead of the W^0 and the A.

IIRC, for low energy experiments it'd better to use Z^0 and photons, and for high energy experiments it's better to use W^0 and A.

<comment><USER11> You are mixing conjectures from string theory and other theories with known physics.

I can found no info on the W^0 or the A, R and L are a type of conjectured parity, not actual particles, and hypercharge is an obsolete concept.

You should be more careful about where you learn physics, and very very careful to distinguish known physics, or theories with evidence from conjectures and ideas. Both are necessary - but don't mix them up.

<comment><USER12> What?! I'm taking only about particle physic (I don't know almost anything about string theory).

The W^+,W^0 and W^- are a weak-isospin triplet of bosons that are the carriers of the "real" weak force, assuming that the SU(2)_L symmetry holds for the weak-isospin doublets (electron_L-neutrilo_L), ...,(up_quark_L, down'_quark_L),... (Sometimes the weak-isospin triplet is written as W_0,W_1 and W_2, using another base.)

I rememberd incorrectly the name of of the particles "A". Sorry. The correct name is B^0. This is the of the field associated to the _weak_ hypercharge with the U(1) symmetry. I know hat the _old_ hypercharge is not more a very useful concept, but I was trying to simplify a little the notation and I dropped the _weak_ part.

All of this is the electroweak force theory (unification of the electromagnetic force and the weak force). <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electroweak_interaction>

In this theory each fermions can be classified as L or R chirality (it's a "property" of the particles, not an independent thing) (the mass of the particles makes this a little more complicated). The "real" weak" force only interacts with the L version of the particles.

This has many experimental results, for example the ratio between the mass of the Z^0 and the W^+- particle is indirectly related to the ratio between the coupling of the Z^0 and the L and R electrons.

All of this id proved beyond doubt, but it assumes that the particles doesn't have mass. They have an apparent mass created by the Higgs mechanisms (or something equivalent), so there must be Higgs bosons out there. So the only missing part is to prove the existence of the Higgs bosons, and it's almost done (5-sigmas next year?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Other than monotheistic bias, why should multiple species of god particles be surprising?

Perhaps the first should be called "Odin" and the second "Loki."

<comment><USER14> My joke sensors might be burnt out, but...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model>

Look at the 'periodic table' on the right. Everything has a place, and makes sense. The quarks and leptons have their pattens with increasing mass ect, and there is one Gauge boson for each basic force of nature. If there was a second Z boson... where would you put it?

<comment><USER13> Where does one put deuterium and tritium or carbon 14?

The model ain't the reality.

The standard model has six quarks, up from the three initially proposed.

In fairness, discarding data which does not fit the model has not been without it's practitioners. However, the method's history is somewhat less than distinguished.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark#History>

<comment><USER14> You put deuterium and carbon 14 'on top' of their respective elements on the periodic table. (or at least in my mental model)

> In fairness, discarding data which does not fit the model has not been > without it's practitioners.

I'm not trying to say we should discard data, I am pointing out that we would need to discard our model. (or at least a part of it) And discarding a model that has been around for so long is always surprising. (or at least to some people)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why stop at 2, for all we know others are created by the impact in another universe(s). We don't really know. But sure is fun and the whole higgs boson mystery is still very much alive.

I don't believe we will truely understand the higgs boson until we fully understand gravity and more so explain why it is weaker than it should be.

</comment><comment><USER16> Probably not: [http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/atlas_higg...](http://www.science20.com/quantum_diaries_survivor/atlas_higgs_results_one_or_two_higgs-99078)

</comment><comment><USER17> If anyone is wondering the answer is: No.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridges_law_of_headlines>

<comment><USER18> That's about TechCrunch articles that talk about Apple. It's not about real science and makes no sense in this context.

<comment><USER17> "Have scientists found the source of immortality?" "Have scientists invented flying shoes?" Just because it's a scientific article does not mean it's any less applicable.

The headline could easily have been "New data shows possibility of" or "New theory suggests" or countless others.

<comment><USER18> Your examples are ridiculous. The answer to the question is not "No". The question has no answer right now other than "maybe, we'll see". Not everything is so black and white.

Yes, there are other possibilities for the headline. No, the silly law about internet headlines does not extend to articles with real information about real science where real questions are posed and currently unanswered.

<comment><USER17> If the answer is "We don't know", then the article should not be posting headlines as questions they don't have an answer too. Unless they are just fishing for traffic.

<comment><USER18> The website linked here in a Scientific American blog. Their job description is probably two words: "ask questions". Questions are extremely important.

> If the answer is "We don't know", then the article should not be posting > headlines as questions they don't have an answer too.

Am I feeding a troll? This is silly. Publicly asking questions that you don't have an answer to is perhaps the single most important feat humanity has ever achieved.

Just calm down about the question, yeah? It's important, and it's not "fishing for traffic". It's a real, serious question.

<comment><USER19> > _Am I feeding a troll?_

You just disproved Betteridge's law

<comment><USER20> You can do that far better by applying it to itself ("Can any headline which ends in a question mark be answered by the word no?") or with a question requiring a non-yes/no answer ("How many Higgs bosons has ATLAS really found?").</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you relocated from the Bay Area to another tech hub? - <AUTHOR> To accompany the current discussion about SV's housing frustrations- have you relocated to another city that has a substantial amount of tech jobs?<p>Preferably stories besides Seattle, Austin, or New York would be interesting- wondering if any Bay Area hackers have actually moved to Raleigh RTP, or any other secondary / tertiary tech hubs that don't get as much coverage. <comment><USER5> Relocated from Bay area to NYC 7 years back - Back then, options were limited primarily to the financial sector. Right now, options are getting better , but still much lesser than the bay area

\- You can find dev centers for most of the big companies such as Google/FB/Twitter etc. but their sizes and requirements are much lesser than Bay area. They are mostly satellite offices, and operate as such.

\- You can find quite a few startups, but again they are not as many as Bay area and not as established as well.

\- Of course there is the financial sector, which has lots of jobs - <USER3> expect a big culture difference, its highly competitive and cutthroat.

Housing: </comment><comment>==

I am not aware of how expensive Bay area housing is - but you can find pretty good houses an hour from NYC at < 500-600K, which is pretty good. Same is true of rent - If you are willing to commute 45-75 minutes, you can find lots of good affordable options. Public transport is better than Bay area, that makes commute easier.

Last but not the least, NYC has a unique global feel which is unparalleled :)

<comment><USER6> > I am not aware of how expensive Bay area housing is - but you can find > pretty good houses an hour from NYC at < 500-600K

I'm not trying to get in an argument, but just want to add some perspective. The quality of house varies quite greatly at 500-600K in a 60 minute range of Manhattan. Property taxes in the areas outside NYC are among highest in the nation. This was one of the reasons I left the NYC area recently - we saw so many 600K+ houses that badly needed to be renovated. The property taxes didn't help make the case. Lots of people want to live close to public transportation with a 75 minute or less commute.

I know somebody's going to look on Zillow and say "Look, I just found a 500K house in NJ that's awesome" Unlike some other parts of the country, the quality of area/house varies a lot in the NYC area. I wouldn't recommend deciding any home is awesome unless you've actually seen it in real life!

<comment><USER5> Yes indeed, quality varies a lot - there are lots of options, need to search around. I believe this will be true of every area in US

<comment><USER6> Let me reframe.

If you want to leave the Bay Area because of the cost of living, the NYC area may not be the answer. The price of a home ($/sqfoot) may be cheaper in the suburbs of NYC than SF/SV, but property taxes are extremely high (e.g. > 2%) in areas that are commutable (unless you think 2+ hours each way is a good commute) to NYC. You may also end up in a situation where you need a car to commute to the train station, you pay for parking at the train station, and then you have one or more passes (e.g. Subway + Train Pass) to get to your job. So your total monthly living costs may be close to your costs of owning a home in the bay area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, I relocated to the Ann Arbor area. There is actually a fair amount of tech here both in Ann Arbor, in Detroit, and in Novi and similar surrounding suburbs of Detroit.

I work remote for a SF Bay Area startup though so I haven't explored local employment options too much. There is a big consulting company however the area they cover is large so you could end up on a project that has you doing a 1.5 hour commute (one way) for 6-18 months.

The research triangle area is attractive to me too. I just haven't had the time to make a trip there to get a feel for it. The housing is slightly more affordable than Ann Arbor although it's pretty close (light years better than Bay Area of course).

<comment><USER8> +1 for A2

We should have a meetup

<comment><USER9> I would 100% be down! I'm new to development but currently work in InfoSec. I'd love to have a meetup!

Currently living in Lansing area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Relocated from SOMA to West Seattle ~2 years ago. Went from paying 2300 for an 800sf 1br above a liquor store to 1750 for a 3br house with a 30 minute commute by bus. They have beat cops for transit here, which means they're not rolling mental institutions, and make for a decent commute. It's getting more expensive, what I have now would probably be 2300 in this market, but its' still an enormous quality increase over SF. I took a 10k paycut but it was negated by the friendlier taxes, and raises since mean i'm taking home more per month despite making less gross pay.

Austin was also on the list but offered woefully uncompetitive salaries.

I have family in VA and an alma mater in upstate NY, so the research triangle and tertiary hubs like Pittsburgh or Buffalo are always of interest, but the product design market in those cities is extremely anemic relative to the west coast.

<comment><USER11> can you explain "rolling mental institutions" ? Like crazies using public transportation ?

<comment><USER12> Not him/her, but certain King County Metro routes are/were known for having buses full of mentally troubled homeless people during certain times. My friends and I made the mistake of using one such route to get back to Bellevue after a night out in Pioneer Square back in 2014. Had a guy obviously whacked out on something try to sell us an obviously stolen watch. Another guy had a shopping cart full of trash on the bus as we crossed the 520 bridge (old bridge).

It's gotten significantly better since Metro stepped up security, though. Those cops are usually pretty chill themselves as well.

The real disturbing thing is that Seattle is probably some of the best transit in the area in terms of coverage (even in the above state of being). Everett, Tacoma, Kitsap, Olympia... None cover as much in-city territory as King County Metro. So when you hear people complain about how Metro sucks, just remember that you would need to walk much further in the other areas around Seattle to cover the last mile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Went to NYC first, then Chicago.

It's different here, but I feel like I have more personal freedom to experiment and not get totally crushed financially when I fail. My biggest problem with NYC and the Bay Area is that you can't really pull yourself away from a job long enough to figure out whether any of your ideas will work or get any traction because all your money is going to rent. It's as if the system is priced just enough to keep you just barely hanging onto the treadmill.

</comment><comment><USER14> I spent two terrible years in Mountain View for a work opportunity I couldn't turn down and it was horrible. Our rent went up 20% during that time. It felt completely unsustainable, ecologically and financially to live there.

We moved back to Boston and have been overjoyed with fleeing the peninsula. I'd still love to visit north of San Francisco of south of Monterrey on vacation but they literally couldn't pay me enough to live there.

</comment><comment><USER15> I moved to NYC from SF one year ago. On housing: I wouldn't say housing in central/downtown Manhattan/good parts of BK is cheaper than SF (probably still more expensive per sq ft), but if you are willing to live with a 30m-1hr commute by Subway (Queens, NJ, Upper Manhattan, less central parts of BK), then it can be decently cheaper than a similar commute into downtown SF. I live in downtown Manhattan, paying slightly more that I did in SF for half of a 2b/2ba that is definitely smaller than what you'd find on the market in SF but more renovated and in a much better location than what I could get for the same price in SF.

Agree that "good" opportunities outside of satellite offices are not as plentiful as Bay Area. If you are interested in "hard" tech (AI, ML, blockchain, self-driving, etc.) I would also say I've see much fewer of those types of opportunities here than on west coast.

</comment><comment><USER16> A large chunk of our company relocated to Raleigh, NC - so we also moved our HQ here.

They literally did a spreadsheet with different metrics they were looking for (business environment, they knew there were only some weather conditions they'd be willing to go for, looked into schools & safety for their young kids, taxes, house prices etc) graded and analyzed that data (we're an analytics consultancy so if you think about it, it makes sense :) ).

After narrowing down to 2 or 3 locations, they ended up with Raleigh. About 4 (including the first two co-founders) moved here initially, together with their families (wife & 4 kids each). Few months later others joined the team here as well, families included. We still have some collages working from Bay Area and we support them, but most of the team is here now.

<comment><USER17> What do you think so far? I grew up in Raleigh, NC nearly all my life - <USER3> recently moved to SF for work. Constantly debating about moving back and enjoying lower cost of living, but California weather is too good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just moved to Portland from the North SF Bay Area. I work as an independent contractor which means in theory I would work anywhere, but my experience has been it's usually in-person networking and locally-based online groups that help me get new contracts. I wanted to move to Portland because the cost of living—while increasing—is less than the Bay Area, yet the amenities and quality of life there is similar. (And in some ways, better!)

I haven't gotten a full sense yet of what the startup scene is like here, but there's a great cowork space downtown (NedSpace) that is pretty active. There's also an online calendar of tech events that seems quite full: [http://calagator.org](http://calagator.org)

Anyone else here on HN embraced the cliché and moved from CA to OR?

<comment><USER19> I too made the transition a little over a year ago and I have no regrets!

If you haven't already found it, check out the local startup Slack channel:

[https://pdx-startups-slack.herokuapp.com/](https://pdx-startups- slack.herokuapp.com/)

Let me know if you want to grab a cup of coffee sometime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What about CO? How is the market there now? I used to live there 4 years ago (then moved to the bay area). Curious how it is now.

I like the idea of a place like Portland for affordability/small city/ good public transport, but I also like the idea of sunshine...

<comment><USER21> Just moved there. Just outside of Denver. Housing in the really good school districts has doubled. Coming from the Bay area it all seems super cheap.

Salaries are almost competitive to the Bay area for some companies if you have a specialty.

So far its the best move my family has made.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was born in Mountain View - my dad was an engineer in the semiconductor biz starting in the late 60s. I've been coding since 5th grade, and after bailing out on college I worked at a couple of valley startups in the mid to late 90s (one of which changed the world) and then I jumped to Denver, CO.

Back then, Denver was just around 400K people and had a very laid back vibe. Its downtown was underwhelming, mostly parking lots and old skyscrapers - <USER4> Rockies park and the Pepsi Center were new with some sports bars around them. The food scene was a minefield - you really had to seek out decent places. Some of my worst meals were at places in Denver back then (the Mexican food was a huge letdown compared to CA). The Denver software scene was a lot of corporate IT work, DoD stuff to do south (multiple military/defense sites and there are huge downlinks in the area), and a tiny dose of startups. Housing was relatively cheap in the city center neighborhoods, which Californians were swooping in and buying much to the surprise of the natives ("Really? That area used to be full of drug dealers and rotting old houses!"). There was a ton of new housing being built out on the prairie. Now Denver feels pretty different - faster paced, a lot more people around, and awareness of things outside Colorado. To me, Denver's downtown and city center neighborhoods are shockingly different. The city developed a huge area behind its downtown train depot into a brand new neighborhood with tall buildings. And I think they've tying that into the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods pretty well. Close in neighborhoods like Highlands, Baker, Five Points, Ballpark, River North, etc. are all very hip and relatively expensive. The food, music, and art scene has gotten _way_ better. A buddy of mine in the new home construction biz says most of the housing demand is in the closer in developed areas, that brand new housing developments way out on the metro area limits has ok demand but not crushing. Homes in my neighborhood sell before hitting the MLS with multiple offers that usually go over asking...

My first Denver gig was a valley backed startup with the eng group in Denver and the marketing/biz dev/sales in Mountain View. It was an amazing team and we grew to a decent valuation, but didn't exit in time for the dot com crash. After the dot com crash, the tech scene in Denver was bleak. A lot of folks left town, left software, or jumped onto DoD stuff. There just wasn't much VC money or many established local software companies. I bounced around at a few places that kept going under and managed to hook on to a small software company in downtown. By 2005-ish things had picked up in the Denver tech scene - money was coming in, startups were growing and exiting pretty well. At one point I was at a startup that was just about to go public, S-1 filed and did the roadshow, but Lehman Brothers bit the big one and the US economy tanked. However, by that point, the Denver tech scene was strong enough that even with the economy in the toilet, finding good/fun/well paying software jobs was easy. And finding, much less hiring, good engineers was pretty tough.

Then Colorado made weed legal and holy shit did this place blow up. The number of people moving here is crazy. The amount of construction in the downtown area is nuts - cranes all over the place. Since I've been here, the Denver area has always been one of the fastest growing in the country and with lots of people moving in, so lots of things change quickly.

The current Denver tech scene seems pretty strong to me. There are a ton of fun/cool startups all over the place. The city has bet big on software - encouraging tech with partnerships, working to provide workspaces/housing, parks, public transportation, etc. There are lots of meet ups and I think a strong sense of a Denver tech community . Denver definitely has a competitive thing going on with Boulder (about 45 minutes from Denver) - Boulder has the marquee university and highly visible R&D centers for big names like Google, Twitter, etc. Denver is desperate for a big name like that and every once in a while a rumor flies around that a big name is going to start an eng facility in Denver. Last year it was Facebook looking at property in RiNo, now it's Apple looking along the 16th Street Mall. Boulder picked up a big name for itself in the startup world because of Tech Stars and Brad Feld, which Denver doesn't seem to have just yet. Personally, I prefer Denver over Boulder because Denver is a big old messy, ugly city with lots of crazy stuff that's good and bad, along with scars from its boom and bust history (some of the architecture and city planning from the 'bust' periods are painful) - but it has all that and is trying to work it to make things better. Boulder is stunningly beautiful and has quick access to unreal outdoor space, but to me feels too uniform of thought - too small and claustrophobic (I lived in Santa Cruz for a bit and hated it - pretty, but everyone's the same).

So, Denver's tech scene is great but it's nothing compared to the SF Bay Area. Folks don't move here to change the world or make millions - people are generally here to put in the time at their job and enjoy life. I had a buddy who pitched a16z, who laughed him out of the room because "they wouldn't fund those lazy ski bums in Denver - move to Palo Alto and we'll talk." It's kind of a true stereotype - I interviewed at a small Denver software company a few years ago whose CEO told me "Priorities here are: health, family, and then the job." It's generally very family friendly, employers are cool about schedule changes for kids stuff or taking care of sick kids, etc. Wintertime has a lot last minute "Ski Day" emails come in. But after growing up in the SF Bay Area, I didn't want to raise kids there (where $ wins over family), so we moved to Denver to start a family and it's been awesome - I wouldn't change a thing.</comment>


Scientist discovers new way to repair damaged nerves  - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/scientist-discovers-new-way-to-repair-damaged-nerves/article1396395/

<comment><USER2> Very interesting, but makes me wonder, why would the body naturally suppress this growth at a certain age and what possible side-effects could come about if this were altered?

<comment><USER3> At a guess, I'd say it suppresses the growth to conserve energy, but that's just speculation. Were that the case, it seems like side effects would be minimal.

<comment><USER4> I'd say quite different. It suppresses the growth in order to develop a mature brain. Adults with the brains of babies probably don't do well.

To use an analogy.

Think of a blank canvas. Now add tons of random colored paints everywhere. That's a baby. Over time remove the paint that is not part of the desired painting (painting in reverse if you will).

If you make a mistake - no problem, more paint is constantly being thrown on the canvas.

Over time less and less new paint is being thrown on, and your desired painting emerges. Eventually no more paint is thrown on, and you have the adult brain.

This is not a perfect analogy obviously, but it's the general idea.

<comment><USER3> I like this better than what I came up with, but there are parts of it I still don't understand. I'm reading it like this: the new paint represents the growing neurons, and when the neurons grow that's increasing your potential brainpower.

The article says that you learn by pruning connections. I get the idea that as a baby you think anything is possible, and as life goes on you learn that trees can only walk in fiction, and when you touch something hot you get burned. That would be like removing paint.

But what I don't get is this: say you read an article about something you didn't know before, doesn't your brain make new connections (synapses) between neurons? How are those and neuron growth different, and how does the synapse learning fit into the paint model? Or am I misunderstanding how synapses work?

<comment><USER4> > and when the neurons grow that's increasing your potential brainpower

No, not exactly.

> I get the idea that as a baby you think anything is possible

Also, no.

> But what I don't get is this: say you read an article about something you > didn't know before, doesn't your brain make new connections (synapses) > between neurons? How are those and neuron growth different, and how does the > synapse learning fit into the paint model? Or am I misunderstanding how > synapses work?

Exactly.

The thing that is growing by pruning is the _ability_ to learn. NOT the learning itself.

A babies brain is disorganized, and doesn't have thought like an adult brain. Over time it learns how to learn, it learns about cause and effect. It learns there is an external world, and that it can effect that world.

It learns that it can reason about that world - if I do this, this happens - and I thought of it.

It's like having raw hardware, without software. A baby creates the software on the fly.

Later in life it fills the memory of the program with information, but the program itself is learned early.

And by program, a better term might be firmware, since a person can learn new way to think later in life. It's the machinery of thinking itself that a baby creates.

That's why the environment during infancy and childhood has such a massive effect later in life. It's why babies in almost any situation will adapt and mange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The next step is to see if this is enough to restore the vision of the blind mice [..] Baby mice with the same injury to the optic nerve repair the damage without intervention."

The implications of the research are awesome, but the way they go about doing it...

</comment><comment><USER6> It is a know fact that very young babies can regrow the distal tips of fingers when cut off by accident. Human babies lose this ability after a few months into life.

Body parts regrow forever: the skin is redone every 30 days. The regrowth, though, is not a separate process from self-renewal from wear and tear. Bones, for instance, remake themselves to the last atom every 4 years, yet a broken bone won't regain its original shape in a human adult.

So the question is a matter of restoring a pattern. Why that doesn't happen is not understood. Some vertebrates can do it without much trouble--think salamanders being able to regrow part of their brain and eye, beyond the well- known limb and tail cases.

From an evolutionary perspective we can speculate that the formation of a scar is a big deal: it enhances short-term survival, which is a prerequisite for long-term survival (this is not something silly to say). Current medical research is showing (and already applying) that preventing scars allows some tissues to regrow normally, the nervous system included. Still a long way until medicine can regenerate a lost limb in a human, but there's supporting evidence towards its feasibility in the near future.</comment>


Steve Jobs Doesn't Want Shit In His App Store, And Neither Do I - <AUTHOR> http://flyosity.com/apple/steve-jobs-doesnt-want-shit-in-his-app-store-and-neither-do-i.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+Flyosity+(Flyosity)

<comment><USER2> I have collected screenshots of 39 apps from the App Store: <http://nativegui.posterous.com/> It's just a small fraction of what you can find there. I think they are all written in Objective-C. Now, what's the argument again?

<comment><USER3> FWIW, not all of those apps are using native UI components. Some have their own that are drawn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are we really still having this discussion?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1255858>

I'd like to think that both sides are clear -

Steve Jobs - "We've been there before, and intermediate layers between the platform and the developer ultimately produces sub-standard apps and hinders the progress of the platform."

My point of view said well by the author of the article I linked - "Crappy developers will make crappy apps regardless of how many layers there are, and it doesn't make sense to limit source-to-source conversion tools like Unity3D and others. They're all building apps through the iPhone developer tools in the end so the situation isn't even comparable to the Mac where applications can completely avoid using Apple's frameworks by replacing them with others."

At this point I think we've reached the point of "agree to disagree", where neither side is going to change the other's mind.

<comment><USER5> This is the first time I hear that Steve Jobs quote and I think I must add: Yes Steve you have been there before and when you were there before you had a practical monopoly on the PC market and you lost it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Since I'm not sure the Blog owner is going to clear my comment there, I'll repost here as well.

Your logic is flawed in that you assume that "meta-platforms" can only produce crappy non-Apple like applications. This is simply not true.

The world is going cross platform and it's time to get on the bus. The risk Apple runs now is whether the iPhone becomes 'not worth it' to develop for anymore. Any developer knows that having to maintain X code bases for X platforms only hamstrings your productivity to your end users because of the overhead. I personally like to target more than one user set for my products.

It's interesting how the crack down came well AFTER the platform was an established brand, not when it launched. Had Steve Jobs only cared about purity of the platform they would have established the rules up front. They didn't do this because that would have been a huge roadblock to platform adoption and iPhone app base would not have grown to anywhere near the size it is now. Instead they choose to implement new rules now that they have an attractive user base and a "locked in" developer base. This is not about purity, this is singularly about control.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, haven't approved any yet as I'm in an airport without wifi. I'd never not publish a comment just because someone puts me in my place :)

<comment><USER6> No worries at all! Saw your tweet after I posted here. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Truth is nobody knows shit about what Steve Jobs wants or about what the directions Apple has taken.

For all I care, this might be a maneuver to get rid of both the external competition (Android, WinMo, Symbian) and the internal one ... reducing developers on their platforms to mere contractors that are doing their bidding.

And you can't prove that I'm wrong because neither you nor I know shit about it.

So stop apologizing for them. If you believe their choices are for better quality, quality can speak by itself and nobody needs you rationalizations on the matter. It's as if you're defending your own choices and directions, which shows you have doubts.

On the other hand the bitching and moaning of mistreated customers (yeah, we are also customers) might do some good.

</comment><comment><USER9> We keep hearing this argument, but it simply cannot survive the facts of the App store.

After searching for 'fart', I stopped counting at 30 items. Are we supposed to believe that Objective C source code and Cocoa Touch style somehow turn this crapware into elegant masterpieces of 21st century design?

<comment><USER10> This is a valid argument, but you can find plenty of data to back the counter argument if you want to. Take a look at the "crapware" on the internet as a whole - all of it to a good approximation is made with Flash. Likewise, to a good approximation every AAA game and major software package (MS Office, operating systems etc.) released in the last 20 years was written with C or C++. I'm not saying this data is more appropriate (it isn't) but it is still worth noting that, at least historically, C/C++ was used for the best quality software and that rapid application development is almost directly responsible for the large amount of poor quality software available today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This guy uses jQuery on some of his sites. The language used in jQuery's selectors is a superset of CSS. That's right, it's not CSS. jQuery is translating/interpreting that new language for you. jQuery is more than just JavaScript it's an interpreter/compiler for a new language. (FYI, not allowed by Apple's rules).

For some reason when this guy target multiple browsers using jQuery it's OK. But when other developers target multiple platforms he calls the end result "shit" and tells them to get the hell out of his AppStore.

<comment><USER12>
      jQuery is translating/interpreting that new language
      for you. jQuery is more than just JavaScript it's an
      interpreter/compiler for a new language.

What? Care to explain what does jQuer "compile" your "new language" to? The fact that jQuery uses CSS syntax to target DOM elements does not turn it into compiler. Or are you saying that it somehow _runs_ the selector?

<comment><USER11> Because jQuery's selectors are a superset of CSS, there is no browser that supports them. So something must must be parsing them and interpreting their meaning.

That means jQuery has a built in interpreter. Now, if jQuery ever turns that selector text into a slightly more efficient internal representation before it gets executed, then it has compiled the selector language to some intermediate form.

Another example is regular expressions. For example, any time you use a regular expression, your expression gets compiled into a NFA or DFA. Your input text is then is "run" on that machine.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but you are talking nonsense. jQuery uses CSS3 syntax (most browsers understand this syntax just fine) plus some extra. Selector in jQuery is just a parameter. If I tic-tac-toe which has function t3(position, value) and pass call it t3("top left", "x") would you claim that "top left" somehow is compiled and executed? Really, how do you _execute_ CSS selector? jQuery uses sizzle (<http://sizzlejs.com>) as CSS selector library, it parses CSS and returns elements matched but it does not _run_ anything. Or do you think that Apple really did ban parsing of parameters passed to JavaScript functions? On the other hand I'd _love_ to see iPhone app written in CSS selectors.

<comment><USER11> If you look at the source code for Sizzle, and know something about compilers and virtual machines, you'll see that the Expr object is modeled as as set of VM instructions. chunker is a regular expression that "tokenizes" the selector into sets of instructions. The appropriate VM instruction is then run for each chunk inside a loop in the Sizzle function.

That's my explanation for how these selectors are, in fact, a language that is compiled and executed.

<comment><USER12> Sorry, but if you knew what you are talking about, you would not call a parser with callbacks a compiler with VM. Maybe SAX parsers are also compilers and run some VM? What does parsed CSS selector compile to? Where is that VM and what does it run? Bytecode?

Sizzle is just a parser what parses given selector into parts, gets matchin DOM elements, filters them and returns what matches. There is no compilation or virtual machines involved, just some string parsing, callbacks and DOM API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Saying the initial programming language has anything to do with creating an "iPhone-like" UI is laughable.

</comment><comment><USER14> Apple wants the conversation to be about Steve Jobs and not their shitty products. It's working.

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with this completely! I think that 3.3.1 will make it easier to find good apps, and that alone will help keep Apple on top.

If Apple's policies are incorrect, people will switch increasingly to competing platforms. But that's not going to happen, because Apple makes great stuff! Other companies could do it, too - _if_ they copied Apple's principles, and not just random features or random visual elements.</comment>


Hackers, corporate spies targeted by Obama sanctions order - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-01/u-s-economic-sanctions-to-target-cyber-attacks-cyberspying

<comment><USER2> So, are the U.S. going to sanction themselves?</comment>


1962 U.S. Military Ejects Bear from B-58 to Test Escape Capsule - <AUTHOR> http://airpigz.com/blog/2010/4/2/b-58-proves-supersonic-ejection-to-be-bear-able-in-1962.html <comment><USER2> The comments from different people who were allegedly involved in the project seem to contradict each other. So I did a bit of hunting to find out what injuries the bears suffered, if any, and what their fate was.

I've managed to find the "white paper" referenced by one of the commenters: Impact Acceleration Stress, 1961 [1]. There is also a feel-good propaganda movie that you can watch, detailing the program while missing out that they killed the bears [2], instead saying that they went under a "customary detailed examination".

One bear died while ejecting, as it was suffering from hydrocephalus (build up of spinal fluid in the brain) before flying, and with the added stress of the ejection must have caused terminal brain injuries. One bear suffered laceration to the liver, attributed to being over-sedated. At least one bear suffered whiplash and a fractured pelvis.

It doesn't specify exactly how many bears were used in testing, but I counted 7 from the tests they did (6 ejecting from the jet, one on a sled), plus one chimpanzee ejected form the jet. I highly doubt there were hundreds of bears, they cannot have been cheap to acquire or easy to keep.

All the animal test subjects were killed and autopsied afterwards.

Robert Sudderth, the Project Officer that commented, corroborates this paper, saying that the bears were not used a second time. John H Watson says that no bears were injured, but that could be just that he wasn't told.

[1] [https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq=b-58+bear&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fp_PUM3pNu-n0AHah4HwBA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

[2] [https://youtu.be/-KLnqorLgDM](https://youtu.be/-KLnqorLgDM)

<comment><USER3> > It doesn't specify exactly how many bears were used in testing, but I > counted 7 from the tests they did (6 ejecting from the jet, one on a sled), > plus one chimpanzee ejected form the jet. I highly doubt there were hundreds > of bears, they cannot have been cheap to acquire or easy to keep.

The number of seven bears fits the comment by Robert Sudderth but isn't a direct contradiction of the other comment by Lauren Anderson that says:

> 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were > destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun > shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.

 _' Several hundred'_ and _' in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'_ are obviously quotes from the mentioned whitepaper and both make sense. The part between them is in my opinion a misinterpretation by the commenter. Given that the bears had to fulfill some obvious requirements (size and weight) and a lot of not so obvious ones (healthy, no previous injuries, etc.), it wouldn't surprise me if they acquired and examined several hundred bears for the project but ended up using only a few.

I believe the paper you linked to is not the one from the comment above because I couldn't find the quotes. It's also probably not the one describing the experiments in the original post. The original post talks about "The first live, inflight supersonic test of the escape capsule [which] took place on March 21, 1962". The experiments in the paper you linked took place in 1961 or before. The data it contains regarding the bears are measurements of drop test from various heights (9'9" to 14') and not data from in flight tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Those were innovative ejection seats, but sadly, similar style 'capsule' ejection seats failed during the ultimate test during the prototype XB-70 Valkyrie accident. [0]

In that case, the centrifugal forces generated by the aircraft going into a spin meant that the second pilot, Carl Cross, waited just a few seconds too long to initiate the ejection sequence, and his seat was unable to be retracted into the capsule for ejection, so he ended up riding the aircraft all the way to ground impact.

[0] - [https://tacairnet.com/2014/10/27/crash-of-the- valkyrie/](https://tacairnet.com/2014/10/27/crash-of-the-valkyrie/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The "Wings Over The Rockies" museum in Denver, CO, has one of these escape capsules, plus a little display about development and testing. The display does mention that they used bears in testing of the capsules.

If you're at all interested in military or naval aviation, you should visit Wings Over the Rockies. It's like nothing else.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow, do yourself a favor and read the comments section since the Project Officer, tracking antenna designer, a co-worker of one of the engineers, and a trajectory dynamics engineer for General Dynamics. They all dispute the one comment saying the bears were hurt / destroyed although the chimpanzee was slightly injured.

<comment><USER7> It's bit controversial anyway cause another comment tells a different story altogether:

'''According to the government white paper on the subject all bears were destroyed shortly on return to base. All but the last three bears suffered serious internal injuries and multiple broken bones. 'Several hundred' bears were acquired for this purpose, all of which were destroyed 'in or after the testing process, by the testing process or by gun shot to the heart to preserve cranial damage from impacts'.'''

<comment><USER6> That's the comment I referenced, but notice the white paper is never linked or even titled.

<comment><USER2> I found the paper: Impact Acceleration Stress. 1962

[https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq...](https://books.google.com.au/books?id=WTQrAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA92&dq=b-58+bear&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Fp_PUM3pNu-n0AHah4HwBA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false)

None of the bears suffered serious injuries beyond broken bones and whiplash, but they were killed and autopsied afterwards. The paper doesn't explicitly state how many bears were used, and I think hundreds might be an exaggeration, but at least a couple of dozen bears were used based on the number of tests run.

<comment><USER8> Respectfully, what's your thinking for why hundreds seems like an exaggeration and is probably dozens instead?

<comment><USER2> There were only 7 tests done using bears, and one using a chimp.

It seems like it would be prohibitively difficult to source several hundred bears when you only plan on doing a few tests. You have to buy them and then you need to find somewhere to put them. Even if money wasn't an issue (and likely wouldn't be on those Cold War budgets), just the logistics of the problem would make it unlikely they'd source more bears than they needed.

<comment><USER8> Aha, yes that does make hundreds seem absurd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a historical reenactment of this at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkNvOOiZ_8&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkNvOOiZ_8&feature=youtu.be&t=1m56s)

</comment><comment><USER10> did this have anything to do with the bear in the ejector pod in spaceballs?

<comment><USER9> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkNvOOiZ_8&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfkNvOOiZ_8&feature=youtu.be&t=1m56s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Imagine being the guy trying to strap in a bear.

"Are you sure it's too drugged to move?"

"Yes"

"Its claw twitched... its humongous claw twitched."

"That's fine. Pick her up and strap her in."

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems like this could have been a grizzly endeavor.

</comment><comment><USER13> Humans need to have some fucking respect.

<comment><USER14> A bear ain't going to treat you nearly as well when the tables are turned.

<comment><USER15> ... that's really no excuse?

1\. How many animals have humans driven to extinction now? Perhaps they would not be extinct were people to treat them with greater respect.

2\. If you treat an animal with respect the tables will never have an opportunity to turn, because you won't be blatantly trespassing on it's turf.

<comment><USER16> Using animals as test subjects isn't really comparable in magnitude to the damage we do on a global scale to ecosystems, which is what is actually causing extinction

<comment><USER17> That we do even worse is really no excuse.

<comment><USER18> Who said an excuse is needed? That's what nature is. Species using other species for food, for starters...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Go bears! ;)

</comment><comment><USER20> They had cooler dreams about the future back then.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is horrible science. A bear surviving an ejection is nothing like a human surviving an ejection.

<comment><USER22> Early this on, the process of building physically accurate "fake humans" was not really possible.

Bear tests were probably more an early proof of viability than anything else. The bears survived, proving that humans wouldn't be completely annihilated.

Animal testing cruelty wasn't really being thought about heavily in post WWII military aerospace development. It's unfortunate but a historical footnote reminding us of the importance of proper testing.

<comment><USER18> > _Animal testing cruelty wasn 't really being thought about heavily in post > WWII military aerospace development_

Considering that the endpoint is machines killing actual people, it would be the height of hypocrisy in my books for them to care about "animal testing cruelty".

<comment><USER23> By "actual people" do you mean "who cares about animals dying in horrendous ways when people will be dying?"

<comment><USER18> More precisely, if a project is about making killing machines for people, that it might kill some animals to test them is the least of its moral problems.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Brainwave based authentication prototype from UC Berkeley - <AUTHOR> http://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/newsandevents/news/20130403brainwaveauthentication

<comment><USER2> In a similar vein, Usenix Security 2012 had a session called "The Brain" with these two papers: [https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/neuroscie...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/neuroscience- meets-cryptography-designing-crypto-primitives-secure) [https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/feasibili...](https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity12/feasibility- side-channel-attacks-brain-computer-interfaces)

The first is only slightly related to this article; it uses implicit learning to train users to authenticate with secrets that they cannot recall consciously (and therefore can't be coerced into revealing).

The second is about recovering secret information from brain-computer interfaces, and though this seems very relevant to the proposal of authenticating via "passthoughts", neither of these papers seem to cite each other.

(The Berkeley paper is at [http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~ethicj/USEC13/submissions/usec1...](http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~ethicj/USEC13/submissions/usec13_submission_06.pdf.))

<comment><USER3> Having been in that session, no one I met thought at all highly about the second paper.

First, it was unlikely you'd actually ever enter sensitive data while using one of those EEGs( as they are only used in games). Ironically, If you deployed this authentication method, you'd actually be providing an exploit vector since you could plausibly alter the authentication game to cause to measure something more sinister

This is important because the second complaint everyone had was the usenix paper didn't actually read information covertly. They asked you to think about your PIN number and flashed digits on screen to see if you recognized them(not covert at all). Effectively this was stuff that was known to be doable with medical grade EEGs years ago.

Of course, if you basically have an authentication mechanism that mimics there awful experiment, the results might actually apply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Summary of the actual paper: they take a single sensor EEG sample of your brain doing some simple task and compare it to both a set of samples of your brain doing the task (this comparison results is the selfsim value) and of a bunch of other people doing the task(resuliting in the crossSim score). "if the percent di erence between selfSim and crossSim is greater than or equal to T, we accept the authentication attempt. If not, we reject it."

Of course, this actually says nothing about the feasibility of emulating someone else's signal (which may get way easier if its a single sensor).

Im skeptical of this both that it will hold of to an adversarial attacker and that its actually right. Deciding that something is a unique identifier off a small sample size reminds me of some of the really bad forensic techniques people used (e.g. [0])

[0][http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/11...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp- dyn/content/article/2007/11/17/AR2007111701681.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how easy it is to use while drunk. Do they do usability testing trials for that?

</comment><comment><USER5> Has anyone used this MindSet in the article? I remember a similar technology coming out, but didn't see anything happening there. Has anyone used any of these for gaming or UI control?

<comment><USER6> MindSet is used in the game "Throw Trucks With Your Mind," which recently had a successful Kickstarter campaign. I've played with a prototype build of the game, the headset works great although I'm surprised that it's also precise enough for user authentication.

<comment><USER5> Ah, thank you. Is it worth buying to play around with? I don't even know how you'd control things with it...

<comment><USER6> I haven't looked into building anything(I've just played with demos when they're available) but my understanding is that what is offered in most of these neurointerface platforms is an API for simple things, and then low-level access to digital signals, with one channel for each area of the brain being sampled. So if you're doing things low-level expect to be applying some DSP knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how this would interact with duress—especially considering sometimes it's especially import to log on under duress, sometime's it's especially important to NOT log on.

</comment><comment><USER8> Something like this could make authentication (and potentially other tasks) with face-computing devices seamless and secure!

<comment><USER7> Woah, let's see if it still works when you're pissed at you're spouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So to steal things you must steal their brains? This is how the zombie apocalypse starts...

</comment><comment><USER10> that reminds me of my 5 year old little poem [http://information- man.com/googles-personal_healthcare_gmail...](http://information- man.com/googles-personal_healthcare_gmail_brainwave_id-generation_2b/)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is very interesting. Thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER12> one thing would be to look at the paper, and also the quality of the telemetry they are getting from this.

<comment><USER13> Don't have time to read through it (have other papers which I have to get through first!) but here's a draft of their paper that they submitted for the conference.

[http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~ethicj/USEC13/submissions/usec1...](http://www.kisc.meiji.ac.jp/~ethicj/USEC13/submissions/usec13_submission_06.pdf)</comment></comment>


A city-scale molecular profile of DNA collected from NYC's subway system [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/pb/assets/raw/journals/research/cell-systems/do-not-delete/CELS1_FINAL.pdf <comment><USER2> This is the result what one would expect. Scientists (until recently) have only been able to sequence species which can be cultured in the laboratory (you need massive amounts of DNA for sequencing). But in fact, more than 90 percent of all microbial species cannot be cultured in the lab and hence (until recently) could not be sequenced and stayed unknown. However, in the past few years, "Next next generation sequencing" (that's how I like to call it) techniques emerged and we are now able to sequence nearly everything. The umbrella terms "metagenomics" and "single-cell sequencing" are often used for such new methods and have huuuge potential in many, many fields. Basically, the new methods eliminate the culturing step and instead have novel techniques for amplifying DNA from only a single strand.

<comment><USER3> If not sequenced, would we not know many of them by traditional identification methods (e.g. staining) ? I'm guessing their sequencing process prevents the concurrent use of these methods, so we can't match up DNA to known bacteria.

As for unculturability, the recent antibiotic discovery that made the news came from learning how to culture soil bacteria. No, we didn't learn what it needs. We just grew it in it's natural environment: dirt. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8852487)

Revolutionary. (seriously).

<comment><USER4> > If not sequenced, would we not know many of them by traditional > identification methods (e.g. staining) ?

Yes, and no. Many "traditional" staining methods dont really offer up much information, like a gram-stain (common when learning microbiology, not so common in research) can only divide bacteria into two groups: gram-positive and gram-negative. More to the point, if these bacteria have no known methods of culturing (which was correctly noted at 90%+), you can not get them in a pure culture and can only stain them in mixed groups, which isnt that useful.

That being said, there are some staining-like methods you can use to identify what taxonomic group a given bacteria is from. You can use a fluorescent DNA probe that binds to a specific target region of DNA that is highly conserved in groups of bacteria (the 16S rRNA). It is not 100% accurate, and it requires reference data from known organisms, but it can be a good tool for initial surveys of mixed samples. You can also get some cool looking pictures from it.

>I'm guessing their sequencing process prevents the concurrent use of these methods, so we can't match up DNA to known bacteria.

Nope! The above method is actually used in some single-cell sequencing techniques. The cell is florescently tagged, then you can use a microfluidic device (or other methods) to isolate the cell, extract its DNA, and sequence. It is however difficult to assemble a complete genome from a single cell's DNA.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Abstract for no-PDFers:

The panoply of microorganisms and other species present in our environment influence human health and disease, especially in cities, but have not been profiled with metagenomics at a city-wide scale. We sequenced DNA from surfaces across the entire New York City (NYC) subway system, the Gowanus Canal, and public parks. Nearly half of the DNA (48%) does not match any known organism; identified organisms spanned 1,688 bacterial, viral, archaeal, and eukaryotic taxa, which were enriched for harmless genera associated with skin (e.g.,Acinetobacter). Predicted ancestry of human DNA left on subway surfaces can recapitulate U.S. Census demographic data, and bacterial signatures can reveal a station's history, such as marine-associated bacteria in a hurricane- flooded station. Some evidence of pathogens was found (Bacillus anthracis), but a lack of reported cases in NYC suggests that the pathogens represent a normal, urban microbiome. This baseline metagenomic map of NYC could help long-term disease surveillance, bioterrorism threat mitigation, and health management in the built environment of cities.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've heard similar things said for dirt, and even the human gut. The big story is that we have this incredible ability to isolate insanely tiny fragments of DNA, but there are a lot of organisms all around us we can't yet identify, because scientists have been able to isolate the organisms themselves, intact, and grow them.

Although there was an article on here not too long ago about how a guy discovered that autoclaving standard growth media was found to be producing tiny amounts of unwanted chemicals that had been inhibiting the growth of many types of bacteria thought to be unculturable.

<comment><USER7> Spot on. Sometimes switching from agar agar to a different hydrocolloidal grown medium like gellan gum can enable the culture of bacteria that would be otherwise difficult to culture. (And in food science, different guns are used for different purposes as well—gellan, agar, xanthan, guar, etc.)

<comment><USER8> And then you have the fun media like Blood Agar ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agar_plate#Blood_agar)).

But it's not just finding the right media, many microbes are obligate symbionts meaning that we'll _never_ be able to culture them in isolation. I vaguely recall a spc. of Mycoplasma that would only grow in the presence of a peptidoglycan matrix containing _E. coli_ (though it's been a while, so I could be misremembering). For situations like this, having the ability to do raw analysis on environmental DNA is hugely beneficial.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reading the discussion (page 10 after the pretty graphs), it seems mostly fragments of DNA that they can't source

"Most importantly, none of these data indicate that these organisms are alive, and the fragments of bacterial DNA detected in these data may have arisen from sources other than humans (insects, rats, mice, or other mammals)."

How many creatures have we sequenced vs we know about? Not surprising a lot of unkonwns. Bateria are everywhere, including millions of them inside us.

" half of our high-quality sequence reads do not match any known organism, which is similar to the range reported in other studies (Yooseph et al., 2013) and demonstrates the large, unknown catalog of life directly beneath our fingertips that remains to be discovered and characterized."

Millions ride (and complain about) the NY subway daily.

They found some intersting stuff (anthrax, plague?!) Although they point out we evolved with some nasty bacteria and we don't get sick from it often (thankfully).

"Indeed, these data indicate that the subway, in general, is primarily a safesurface. Although evidence of B.anthracis,Y.pestis, MRSA, and other CDC infectious agents was found on the subway system in multiple stations, the results do not suggest that the plague or anthrax is prevalent, nor do they suggest that NYC residents are at risk.... Approximately seven hu- man plague cases are reported a year, and none recently in NYC or anywhere near NYC,..... This finding further supports the notion that humans have interacted (and potentially evolved) with their environment in such a way that even low levels of Yersinia pestis (plague) or Bacillus anthracis (anthrax) will not necessarily confer a risk of acquiring these pathogens.

<comment><USER10> That's the thing: We sequence a lot of microbials already. Some, it's actually hard NOT to sequence.

Say, for instance, that you are sequencing an insect. To do that, you need at least a part of the insect. When you sequence it, you won't just find that insect's DNA in there, but DNA from viruses and bacteria that live in that insect. The same thing will happen if you are sequencing from a plant, or a human.

Contamination from other sources is so common that after getting a bunch of reads from a large organism, it's pretty much mandatory to do comparisons with something with the same species and with a DNA database of microbials to remove the reads that hit a contaminant, so that the assembly that we produce represents the organism correctly.

Other times, we just look for said microbials specifically. Imagine I want to know the bacteria that grow in the roots of a wheat plant. I could try to culture them all in a lab, and if something doens't grow, I lose it. Or I could sequence the root, take out everything that actually looks like wheat, and try to assemble bacteria out of the rest of the DNA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Underground_mosquito)

</comment><comment><USER12> I attended a conference couple years ago where Oxford Nanopore gave a talk about their sequencing technology. Their sequencing machine is now available for select labs that applied for their early access program.

While there are still a lot of problems with the technology itself in terms of error rate and data handling, I am a bit wary of the potential impact on privacy. Imagine giant vacuums in public places that sucks up, samples the air, and sequence any DNA that is found. We can potentially track people this way.

But on the other hand, I can also see this technology collecting vital information in terms of spread of diseases or ecological data.

</comment><comment><USER13> NYT and WSJ articles on this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9007702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9007702)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9006315](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9006315)

</comment><comment><USER14> > Half the DNA on the NYC Subway, Gowanus Canal, and Nearby Public Parks > Matches No Known Organism

FTFY - It is less surprising to me to find unknown organisms when a water way and public parks are included.

</comment><comment><USER15> Could it be that our understanding of DNA variations is incomplete?

There was some article a few years back where a virus was observed mutating its RNA in what appeared to be some sort of algorithm, like running a virtual machine on proteins. What if DNA does the same, i.e. being not just data but also an interpreter with some changing memory?

<comment><USER16> Thats an interesting idea. Any help looking up that article would be appreciated.

<comment><USER15> It's difficult to find anything relevant on Google nowadays :-( If I manage to find it, I will post a link

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> no genetically sequenced organism.

</comment><comment><USER18> Could you change the title of the article? It's not the title of the paper, and isn't really the most significant finding. The paper itself is a wonderful initial survey of bacterial diversity which is much more important than the trivial observation that we can't identify all the organisms (although I believe that observation should be followed up with more intensive analysis).

<comment><USER19> Indeed, title needs to be changed to "Geospatial Resolution of Human and Bacterial Diversity with City-Scale Metagenomics".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8282204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8282204)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looking at the url, it seems they don't want someone to accidentely delete the article!

<comment><USER16> i was wondering about that my self. do not delete folder but ok to delete contents?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> That URL is fantastic. The article may be too, but I'm in love with the URL.

</comment><comment><USER22> NYC is full of mutants. Who knew?

</comment><comment><USER23> "Half the Rain Drops in NYC Have No Known Origin"

<comment><USER23> I'm assuming I'm being down-voted by folks that have not spent any appreciable amount of time walking around Manhattan and have no clue to what I was referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I saw MiB, it was a documentary.

do we realistically expect otherwise. Considering the amount of animal and insect life we don't have documented when you start getting down to the scale of bacteria and the like its bound to be uncharted. We spend all this time about finding life on another planet when we haven't found all ours has to offer

<comment><USER25> > _We spend all this time about finding life on another planet when we haven > 't found all ours has to offer_

What? How much time do you think we spend on the former? Why do you think it's too much? And why do you think the two goals are mutually exclusive?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I prevent programs actively detecting they're running in a VM? - <AUTHOR> Example: "Lockdown Browser" will not start because it detects it's running in a VM. It will not start if Windows is running compatibility mode for a different Windows version. <comment><USER2> This article discusses various ways of detecting if a program is running on a VM:

[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/498371/how-to-detect- if-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/498371/how-to-detect-if-my- application-is-running-in-a-virtual-machine)

Some of the methods used, like checking the manufacturer ID of the hardware, seem like they can't be easily circumvented.

<comment><USER3> At the end of the day, you pretty much need a kernel mode agent that hooks a couple dozen syscalls, but it's largely doable if you have a team of engineers at your disposal. Malware detonation shops like FireEye do it.

<comment><USER4> Generally - yes, but there's also (cpuid[1] & 0x80000000) test.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPUID#EAX.3D1:_Processor_Info_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CPUID#EAX.3D1:_Processor_Info_and_Feature_Bits)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My company developed many lockdown tools but, in general, there is no way to develop an infallible method since at the end your application can be reverse engineered and run in a modified way. The techniques are oriented to inexperienced people in the security field.

</comment><comment><USER6> Physicalization [1] - use a separate machine instead of a VM

\--

[1] Physicalization - the opposite of virtualization

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I was thinking about just partitioning my drive to use just for this shit that I'm required to run.

<comment><USER6> Dual boot is less secure than two separate machines. Back in the old days I was able to capture and pass data from one OS to another via non-volatile CMOS registers on diskless machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is there a good reason why it doesn't want to run inside a VM?</comment>


Codeweavers to overtake Microsoft by 2018 - <AUTHOR> http://www.codeweavers.com/about/general/press/20090724/

<comment><USER2> It's a great joke, and a great piece of PR.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome joke. Reminds me of my (actual) business plan projections which extrapolated will allow me to repay the entirety of US debt to china in 15 years time.

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://xkcd.com/605/>

<comment><USER5> Beat me to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hilarious. Especially the graph.

</comment><comment><USER7> LOL, these guys always crack me up.

</comment><comment><USER8> I calculate this differently. Instead of extrapolating the 17% decline year over year I extrapolate the negative growth in revenue in dollars. A straight line drops much quicker.

By this projection I can arrive at the conclusion that whatever I happen to be doing in 2012 my company will overtake Microsoft since their operating revenue will be negative.

</comment><comment><USER9> Okay, I get it, it's funny... but seriously?

You're a company whose business model depends almost entirely on Microsoft being around to write its software so _your_ software can run it on other OSes. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.

<comment><USER10> No, Microsoft has already written the software. Today we mostly depend on Microsoft not rewriting the software too badly (and we may not be in luck).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this a joke? Please tell me it's a joke.

<comment><USER12> Of course it is. Reading past the first paragraph or looking at the graph for 10 seconds will reveal that. "Projected Nonsense Data" ... come on :)</comment></comment>


Is It Time to Regulate Social Media? - <AUTHOR> https://quillette.com/2018/09/13/is-it-time-to-regulate-social-media/ <comment><USER2> "Free speech for me, but never for thee"</comment>


Ask HN: Things to keep in mind when building a database from scratch? - <AUTHOR> I would like to attempt to build a custom database application, and would like to know some common pitfalls, gotchas, and overall pro tips for building one of these from scratch (independent of they "type" of database) <comment><USER2> CMU has a course about building your own dbms and is what you're looking for [https://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2019/](https://15721.courses.cs.cmu.edu/spring2019/) note there is YouTube lectures, also check previous years offerings. It focuses on Peloton but numerous asides each lecture about pitfalls, what architecture decisions won't sell, what is bound to be a failed design strategy etc.This was all in the 2017 lectures I watched but I assume the most recent are similar.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you balance a serious relationship with starting a company? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> You try and do your best. I think living together helps so that you can try to time box time together more easily. I did it along with having a first child with my S/O and it was incredibly difficult all around. A year after ultimately closing up shop after two years of work we are still dealing with leftover stuff from the startup.

Make sure your S/O is onboard. If it is a serious relationship you owe it to them. If they are not you have some hard choices to make.

</comment><comment><USER3> Broad strokes - same as any other thing in a relationship - set expectations, set boundaries, over communicate, show appreciation, set daily / weekly / monthly catch-ups, set aside some non-flexible together time.

Specific to startups / starting a company, have a series of serious conversations about:

1\. how much money you are going to set aside to get it to work

2\. work life balance during the week, during the weekend, during "evening hours"

3\. go / no go decision points (funding decisions, customer road map, founder / employee relationships)

4\. social life

5\. how much they want to be part of the company (as you will be living it, they'll be there to listen, but do they really want to listen 24/7/365?)

6\. your goals, their goals, your goals together and how they match up with your goals for the company.

</comment><comment><USER4> You are probably accustomed to scheduling your time carefully. If you aren't, you should be.

Your relationship is just as important (probably more so) as everything else, so give it space on your calendar. You can afford to take an hour to make dinner for your partner. Plan the rest of your work around it, even if you have to do so days ahead of time. Once dinner is ready, leave your phone in the other room.

If Obama can make time for dinner then you can too[1].

Most importantly: remember to thank your partner for picking up the slack so resentment doesn't build.

[1] [https://hbr.org/2014/03/if-president-obama-can-get-home- for-...](https://hbr.org/2014/03/if-president-obama-can-get-home-for-dinner- why-cant-you)

</comment><comment><USER5> Clear communication and emotional intelligence. Both need your time and it may actually be good for you to get away from your business.</comment>


Claude Shannon used this 6-step process to solve any problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/engineer-claude-shannon-problem-solving-process-2017-7 <comment><USER2> You can find the referenced transcript of Shannon's lecture here:

[https://plus.google.com/+ShayanYassami/posts/cWJnsaN5nEc](https://plus.google.com/+ShayanYassami/posts/cWJnsaN5nEc)

<comment><USER3> Surprised there are not more comments after two days.

These recent articles about Shannon should be the most helpful relating to the very uncommon natural-born researcher.

Effectively implementing Shannon's guidelines as documented here can be really helpful, but still can not be expected to bring the majority of aspiring researchers within reach of such unlimited upside potential, even from adjoining labs having the same resources where valuable breakthroughs are being had by all.

Anyway, I'll put in my 2 cents about what I interpret for Shannon's missing text in the following paragraph:

>Then there's the idea of dissatisfaction. By this I don't mean a pessimistic dissatisfaction of the world - we don't like the way things are - I mean a constructive dissatisfaction. The idea could be expressed in the words, °∞ (missing?). This is OK, but I think things could be done better. I think there is a neater way to do this. I think things could be improved a little. In other words, there is continually a slight irritation when things don't look quite right; and I think that dissatisfaction in present days is a key driving force in good scientists.

I say the idea could be expressed in the words "continuous improvement"</comment></comment>


Had a coffee too late and still want to sleep well? Eat broccoli - <AUTHOR> http://worldofcaffeine.com/drug-and-food-interactions-with-caffeine/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for TLDR in the title</comment>


Ask HN: Would you be interested in a design sprint course? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking at putting together a 5-week hands-on design sprint course.
Focuses being: - Ideation - Prototyping (proto.io, invision, framerJS) - Usability studies
Is this something that would be useful for you? What concerns would you have? <comment><USER2> I would be interested in a quality practical design course. What I'd like to learn: how to build some simple but cool product from the ground up, with current best practices and tips. Not interested much in the ideation part.</comment>


Court Rules You Can Be Compelled to Hand Over Decryption Key - <AUTHOR> http://www.securitycurrent.com/en/writers/mark-rasch/court-rules-you-can-be-compelled-to-hand-over-decryption-key

<comment><USER2> Hey, but what if I've forgotten the passphrase? Get locked up for being forgetful?</comment>


As only developer in company, how to argue what you do and why it takes so long? - <AUTHOR>

I really made it to the first (and at the moment only) employee for a startup. So I'm kind of co-founder, CTO, product owner and the whole development team at one position. The company is profitable from day 1 (having the first 20 customer contracts signed up for a long term period), but we've not received any VC capital yet and we're not yet having any bugdet to hire more people.
I'm the only tech guy in the founders group and I don't know the other co-founders very long (maybe half a year now).
So, my daily work now consists of developing, meeting with the other co-founders and... let's call it "administrative work". I hope, people will know what I mean with that - answering questions from customers, explaining to co-founders why feature XYZ, what he just had as an idea will not work etc. And then there are a lot of ongoing changes in the initial requirements (I know - thats normal), that are taking some time to thing about, adapt the initial architecture to that and so on.
I made some cost estimation for the product development and there are so many things left to do that I estimated the whole product to be ready at the end of the year (so that's around 10 month left) and I now have to explain to the others why it takes so long, how to accelerate it (my answer "hire additional people" - their answer "no budget yet" ;-)). Not the big problem yet, because I already created a working prototype (or should I call it MVP?), but that was created by me in a few weeks as a side project, but now it's really hard to explain, why the complete rework with all the feature changes will affect in a longer development time.
So, what should I do with that problem - having much administrative and planning work to do on the one hand and having a bunch of things to get developed on the other hand? All the business guys are heavily focused on sales, sales, sales - but I always told them: The development team has to scale with the sales! <comment><USER2> For me it kind of sound you are more of an employee, less of a founder (or at least you described yourself as that).

Daily meetings are usually toxic; having more than 10-15 minutes for a meeting per day sounds like a lot of wasted time for me (and usually this kind of meetings are good in an agile workflow: the daily standups).

Also, hiring additional people may not always work; adding manpower to a late software project makes it later: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law)

</comment><comment><USER3> maybe you should look at a more agile release schedule. At the least show the progress every 2 weeks with a demo. but ideally you slowly rework the MVP with 2-4 weeks releases. You might also want to look at what you can scale back. Does the system really need re-architected? Will it hold for another 50-100 users? Will that sales level support a bigger development team? IMHO, your job is to do just enough development to support the current business plus a few months in the future. what 2-3 features can your users absolutely not live with out deliver those. if you have to spend a couple hours longer deliver something because of shitty architecture so be it. if you have to rent another server to support another 50 users because the code isn't optimized so what.

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with i0nutzb. If you're a "co-founder, CTO, product owner", the buck stops with you x3. It sounds like they see you as none of the above.</comment>


Can anyone suggest a good book or articles for hyperparameter optimization? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Hi, I'm Scott Clark, co-founder of SigOpt (YC W15). We provide hyperparameter optimization as a service.

We have some references to recent articles we've presented at NIPS, ICML, and AISTATS here [1]

We also have a higher level technical blog here [2] (we recently did a series of post on how uncertainty influences optimization in single and multi-metric cases). We've also done some hyperparameter tuning blog posts with our partners AWS [3] and NVIDIA [4].

All of these papers and blogs also contain references to other papers and blogs that can help start you down your literature review. Hopefully this is helpful!

[1]: [https://sigopt.com/research](https://sigopt.com/research)

[2]: [https://blog.sigopt.com/categories/in- depth](https://blog.sigopt.com/categories/in-depth)

[3]: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/fast-cnn- tunin...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/fast-cnn-tuning-with- aws-gpu-instances-and-sigopt/)

[4]: [https://devblogs.nvidia.com/sigopt-deep-learning- hyperparame...](https://devblogs.nvidia.com/sigopt-deep-learning- hyperparameter-optimization/)</comment>


Can AI be Conscious? - <AUTHOR> https://fpgaer.wordpress.com/2018/05/06/can-ai-be-conscious/ <comment><USER2> For AI to be conscious it needs to be self aware</comment>


Introduction to Fetch() API - <AUTHOR> http://tonyfreed.com/blog/introduction_to_fetch_api

<comment><USER2> Why do people pretend promisses is someting different than event based programming? The fact that you daisy-chain your event handlers doesn't make it something other than syntactic shugar...

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand how Fetch API is an improvement over XMLHTTPRequest. To me, this looks like a syntax _update_ but I don't see it being better or worse than the previous installment.

Now that I think about it, I couldn't find any API related to download/upload progress events with the Fetch API. If that's the case, it means it's an actual regression to XMLHTTPRequest.

<comment><USER4> You can access the stream as it's coming in using fetch - would that let you do progress? Seems like it would.

<comment><USER5> Only if fetch allows you to grab the http headers of the request, otherwise you have no way of identifying the size and at that point a simple circling gif is about the best you can do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Atleast XMLHttpRequest was google searchable.

<comment><USER7> So is "fetch api".</comment></comment>


Exploring the World on Foot - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/opinion/exploring-the-world-on-foot.html <comment><USER2> Beautiful story. Interesting that with boredom dopamine runs dry, since studies have shown that people who walk, they produce more dopamine than people sitting around all day.</comment>


Changing dynamics of the drug overdose epidemic in the US, 1979-2016 - <AUTHOR> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/361/6408/eaau1184 <comment><USER2> Interesting that there seems to be a consistent age cohort born before (I guess from the heat maps) 1950 that just aren't into this stuff.

<comment><USER3> Or addicts die before they're 70+ years old.

<comment><USER2> But that's not what the graphs show. There is a diagonal that clearly tracks a birth year cohort, not an age.

<comment><USER4> True, but the graph show lots of people dying in their 20s and 30s. So if I was born in 1940s and became a heroin addict there's a good chance I die before 1979. So those born before 1950's are unlikely to die of a drug overdose between 1979-2016 because to do so they would have needed to become in contact with heroin for the first time well into their 30s instead of their teens and 20s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anyone know wtf is going on with New Mexico? It's seriously disproportionately represented in every map.

[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/361/6408/eaau1184...](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/361/6408/eaau1184/F4.large.jpg?width=800&height=600&carousel=1)

<comment><USER6> There are probably a lot of factors: New Mexico is the second poorest state in terms of poverty rates. It's a drug smuggling gateway from Mexico. Very high Native American population, which itself, struggles disproportionately with addiction. Mostly rural isolated populations where drugs offer a means of escape and long wait times for an ambulance to arrive in the case of an overdose situation.

As an aside, looking at those charts, no wonder Breaking Bad was set there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I call this a betrayal of America by US politicians. The overdose _rate_ has apparently doubled over the past 10 years and congress did not even start talking about opioids until, what, 2017? No one jailed until 2019? 3 years beyond the charts in this report. 47,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in the last 12 months.

Is it coincidence that by far the biggest spender on congressional lobbying is Pharma/Healthcare? $284,000,000 in 2018 alone. That is $531,000 _per congressperson_ in one year, and only for Pharma/Healthcare. Or, another way to look at it, $5,985.25 per opioid death.

[0] [https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexTy...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?showYear=a&indexType=i)

</comment><comment><USER8> Not surprised that as prescription opioid supply is tightened up, users move to heroin.

</comment><comment><USER9> Chinese fentanyl is to heroin what vodka is to near beer.

</comment><comment><USER10> All drugs should be legalized in US.

You should be able to buy opioids/heroin/cannabis at the local pharmacy with no prescription or questions asked.

This war on drugs only kills people and makes the Purdue family rich.

<comment> cc-d Decriminalized yes, the question of legalization is more complicated.

When it comes to opioids, legalized alone opium would alleviate vast swathes of death and suffering. Many of the same arguments made for cannabis legalization also apply to opium. It's difficult to unintentionally overdose on, there are no serious long term health detriments aside from dependency and constipation (and testosterone decrease). The poppy has been cultivated by humans for as long as wheat has, it is only recently recently it became so demonized.

And most importantly, it would largely eliminate the demand for black market heroin/fentanyl. Opium is a combination of 3 alkaloids, morphine, codeine, thebaine. Heroin is just acetylated morphine which allows for more total morphine to cross the BBB, it's still morphine which produces most of the effect users desire.

And most importantly, it allows opioid users a strong, easy to access, cheap, legal alternative to being sick.

Even though there would still be some demand, black market suppliers could not compete price wise, so the black market would be eliminated very quickly. The DRAMATIC price reduction will also make the financial effects of opioid dependency much less devastating.

<comment><USER11> > When it comes to opioids, legalized alone opium would alleviate vast swathes > of death and suffering. Many of the same arguments made for cannabis > legalization also apply to opium. It's difficult to unintentionally overdose > on,

While I agree with the general thrust of your argument, this point is incorrect. It's not difficult to unintentionally overdose on Opium. Not at all.

<comment><USER6> That comment struck me too. Perhaps there is a difference between Opi _um_ overdose and Opi _oid_ overdose?

When I think consuming opium, I conjure images of old chinese artwork where they are smoking it in a hookah type instrument.

The Opioid overdoses are mostly Fentanyl and other extracts _from_ opium. I'm not an expert, but if I am understanding correctly, it seems easier access to Opium which may be, according to the GP, hard to OD on, would reduce the Opioid OD epidemic.

<comment><USER11> That may be what the OP was thinking, but it's not the case. You can very much OD on regular Opium. It is even easier to OD on its extracts (specifically morphine), and even easier still to OD on its synthetic analogues (fentanyl). However, you can absolutely OD and die on pure opium.

<comment><USER12> The dude said 'unintentionally' overdose on opium. This article covering Laudanum (opium + alcohol tincture) deaths in the 1800s sounds like the overdoses were largely intentional or one where an adult dose was given to a child. [https://www.apnews.com/910654effffe42f985ebe01f299407f5](https://www.apnews.com/910654effffe42f985ebe01f299407f5) As long as the strength is known most addicts will measure the dose or titrate up safely.

<comment><USER11> I'm aware, I repeated his 'unintentional'. Unintentional overdose deaths on Opium are certainly less common than fentanyl. But they are nowhere near as difficult to achieve as Marijuana, which is basically impossible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>