BMW is accelerating electrification plans - <AUTHOR> https://www.electrive.com/2019/06/24/bmw-is-accelerating-electrification-plans/ <comment><USER2> For context, here's a visualization of electric car sales by company from 2012 on.

[https://twitter.com/masegoslin/status/1132389324140343297/vi...](https://twitter.com/masegoslin/status/1132389324140343297/video/1)

And here they are grouped by model:

[https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/24/visualization-2012-2019...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/05/24/visualization-2012-2019-us- electric-car-sales-this-is-a-must-see/)

BMW is in sixth place currently.

<comment><USER3> That's really informative but to me that's a little misleading since they are counting the Volt and other plug-in hybrids as electric cars when in reality they are burning gas.

Tesla has taken such a beating in the press about the Model 3 which is really misleading I guess when you look at these charts.. the Model 3 has stomped everything else on the market very quickly.

<comment><USER4> Have you had the chance to drive one yet, just out of curiosity? It's worth the effort if there is a store nearby you and you have any interest in manifestation of the product itself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Once big auto moves to EVs, what will happen to Tesla? Will they have a significant foothold/advantage, or will their position erode? Will they get acquired or remain independent?

<comment><USER6> \- Tesla currently has a huge efficiency advantage[1]

\- Tesla's Model 3 interior is highly polarizing; you either love it or hate it. That will help carve out a niche even if all else is equal

\- but most importantly, it's all about the batteries. Audi had to scale back e-tron production for 2019 due to battery supply issues; what's going to happen when the big carmakers need several orders of magnitude more batteries? Tesla has their own battery factory. OTOH, there are a _LOT_ of chinese battery factories being built right now, we may see battery prices fall through the floor if they are overbuilding. Anybody who's watched the DRAM market over the past few decades knows what happens when you need really expensive factories to build a commodity...

1: [https://electrek.co/2019/02/21/tesla-efficiency-range- test-a...](https://electrek.co/2019/02/21/tesla-efficiency-range-test-audi-e- tron-jaguar-i-pace/)

2: [https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises- production...](https://www.electrive.com/2019/04/23/audi-revises-production- numbers-of-the-e-tron-downwards/)

<comment><USER7> Also from your source:

> As for Audi, I think that they are intentionally giving up their efficiency > in order to protect the battery pack and get a higher charge rate.

<comment><USER8> That statement makes no sense. Efficiency is a measure of energy required to move the vehicle a certain distance, as in Wh/mi.

Range is battery capacity divided by efficiency. You can give up _range_ to protect the battery, by limiting the charging capacity or the discharge depth, but you cannot give up _efficiency_.

There are likely a multitude of factors from motors, to drivetrain, to drag, to gross weight which contribute to Audi's lower efficiency e-Tron. They have a fairly large battery, although smaller capacity than Tesla's largest, but only get ~200mi of range out of it. Their efficiency and range is lower than the 2012 Model S. This is one area where Tesla has an indisputable technical lead.

You could argue, for example, that Audi sacrifices efficiency to have lower interior noise levels, or that they had a body design with higher drag they weren't willing to compromise. But drag and weight alone don't fully account for the large efficiency difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To look at this from one perspective, I wonder if this is because BMW assumes accelerating climate change (most scientific models use very conservative figures, meaning they assume best scenarios, and now scientists are being shocked that things are happening much faster than those models, e.g. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/18/arctic- permafrost-canada-science-climate-crisis)) will mean either regulation or market interests will shift much more quickly to electric cars, so they're also moving their target, because otherwise it'll be like selling great looking, great performing steam engines when everyone are more interested in buying Model T's.

So businesses making good decisions because of climate change... a good thing? But maybe too late?

<comment><USER10> Two independent studies in Germany recently found that the expected reduction in CO2 due to electric cars will be very moderate over the next two decades even in the best case scenario. The electricity just needs to come from somewhere and that somewhere is not going to be 100% renewables. We need to end this narrative that driving a Tesla or similar car somehow is a heroic act and helping to save the planet.

<comment><USER11> About half of all crude oil is turned into gasoline (and that's only an indirect indicator of where the profits are). A world without ICE engines will still have an oil industry, but it will have an almost unrecognizably different one.

[0] [https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=327&t=9](https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=327&t=9)

<comment><USER12> > About half of all crude oil is turned into gasoline

That is honestly less than I expected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I do love the irony of a luxury car company trying to be more green. I'm all for electric cars. I think BMW will make some great electric cars and I will want to buy one. But the real green decision is to not buy the luxury car, to go with a less energy-intensive option such as a smaller/simpler car.

<comment><USER14> This is the "Reduce" philosophy. Not all agree with that philosophy - especially in the developing world who feel unfair if development and conveniences that the west got is denied to them. I personally moved from a energy non-intensive use country (India) to an energy intensive use country (Singapore) a few years ago and even though economic strata wise I've likely gone down a few notches, I wouldn't trade-in my current lifestyle & convenience for what I had back in India.

"Reduce" for the sake of reduction is just poor behavioral economics & hence hasn't actually demonstrably made much of a difference to this world.

Reduce as a side effect of a true benefit/efficiency (think how much lesser power is consumed per unit compute today vs. even 5 years ago) makes a lot of sense.

<comment><USER15> It's how you plan society as well. Singapore is dense and has great public transport.

America conciously builds sprawling suburbs that require private cars to get around.

We can choose to build a society that does not need as much car use.

<comment><USER14> True and Singapore's government has been very systematic about broadening public transport access - not just for energy reasons but also for economic participation & health reasons (people walk a lot more).

But Singapore also air conditions everything which is a fairly heavy energy use in tropical climate much like how heating is a massive energy use in northern climates and spends a lot of effort/energy on keeping sidewalks, grounds and pavements manicured, watered & in good repair.

As the founder of Singapore argued, the lifestyle gain - though at the cost of consuming more energy is a massive competitive advantage in productivity and in attracting, developing & retaining talent. [https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan- yew...](https://www.vox.com/2015/3/23/8278085/singapore-lee-kuan-yew-air- conditioning)

<comment><USER16> Is there anything that can be done to keep an office a reasonable temperature in a tropical climate like Singapore? I guess if we were all hanging out under open air roofs with our flip flops and swimsuits on, but other than AC I don't know how they could do "business people" office stuff.

<comment><USER15> You could build to passive principles - greater thermal mass and careful management of solar gain. Eg. [http://leepenghui.blogspot.com/2016/06/passivhaus-in- tropics...](http://leepenghui.blogspot.com/2016/06/passivhaus-in-tropics.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Maybe it's just the way this is written but it seems amusing to me. He has "called for sales of electric vehicles to increase by 30%". Not Actually done something that would increase them, just called for it.

Are any of BMWs existing or 25 new electric cars any good though? I tried out the i3 but its range is tiny.

Also, BMW and intel need to have a chat and sort out some differentiation in the i numbers they use.

<comment><USER18> I love - beyond love - my i3. The range is just not a problem. Even my older model can do 60-70 miles (depending on temp - plus 2x on the range extender should I need it). So it's easy for me to do my 30 miles commute plus the occasional chore. Overnight it charges about 50 miles on a 110V level 1 charger (the kind that comes free with the car) so even if I forget to plug it in one night I'm still good.

The market for this is as a second car for commutes of up to 30-40 miles each way. Double if your work place has a level 2 charger. Add 30-50% for the newer models. I'm willing to guess that covers, what, 75% of two car households? Range is just not a problem.

It's also a pretty cheap car for the quality level. Mine was $20K, more then 50% off the $56K on the sticker, off a 10K lease with 2 years left on the warranty. Hardly used. There was a whole line of these off lease cars at the dealer. He preferred to sell gas vehicles - no need to talk about range.

I didn't mention the quietness, acceleration, build quality, low maintenance, etc. As you can tell I've become a bit of a bore about them and got two friends to buy one. If I have to drive my wife's SUV now I feel dirty.

<comment><USER19> A used BMW i3 for under $20k is a great deal, but the original owner took quite a bath.

<comment><USER18> The lease paperwork was in the glove box, from memory I think their lease must have cost them near $2 a mile, but BMW ate a chunk too. Dealer explanation is limited market due to range anxiety. Which as I demonstrated above is a non issue for most people.

<comment><USER19> > their lease must have cost them near $2 a mile

Yikes, they didn't take a bath, they were drugged, bound up in a sack and thrown into the river.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The big story is the electric vehicle revolution is finally starting to really take off. Thanks to rapidly falling battery prices, EV's will be as cheap as ISE's for the largest cars starting around 2023, and for successively smaller ones in the following years. In addition governments all over the world are pushing EV adoption with many sorts of measures.

In the last year the big car companies have finally realized this, and that they are in danger of going bankrupt if they get left behind, and so they are seriously getting behind making EV's. To give one outstanding example VW has signed contracts for 48 billion dollars worth of batteries.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was in Europe recently. I have no idea where people are planning on charging these things. Massive new infrastructure will be required. EG, automakers externalizing their costs onto society again. For what it would cost to roll out and maintain this infrastructure, you might as well just have free transit everywhere, and just keep a state-maintained fleet of rental cars. Would be much cheaper and more efficient.

<comment><USER22> Yep - I for one wouldn't mind getting an EV, especially to drive around London. But I live in an apartment building, with underground parking, with no outlets. At least Tesla have their chargers, I saw an entire section dedicated to them at a motorway service station, that serve double purpose as chargers and brightly coloured adverts...

<comment><USER23> Your comment makes no sense, you can't charge at home Tesla or any other vehicle, so what is your plan buy a Tesla and go to the mall and charge it? What if you don't have energy to start the car? AFAIK the only reasonable option for people that can't charge at home is to charge the car at work, going to a mall and hoping you will find a free port is not something reasonable IMO.

<comment><USER24> Why is that unreasonable?

Its quite like going to get gas from a gas station. It just takes a while longer. You don't let the car run to empty before you fill it back up. Easy enough fix for your first issue. And for the second, you just wait for a port to come free. That's how supercharger stations are working all across the US.

<comment><USER23> Because at a gas station you spend around 5 minutes and you don't have to go as often as with an electric cars that will have less autonomy and you will have to spend more time charging. I imagine you would have to go more often to the mall (so consuming extra energy,spend time in traffic, and you may be taxed by the time you keep the charger occupied.

it may work for some people, but AFAIK the traffic at a mall is higher on certain days and hours so you may not find a charger, then what do you do if you are on low?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Very light tax on electric cars (PHEV included) steers customers to electrified cars as well. I guess European manufacturers are forced to step in. I'd like to have powerful traditional combustion engine on my car but electrified PHEV makes much more economical sense due taxation.

</comment><comment><USER26> And yet they won't invest a dime in charging infrastructure as Tesla has done. Which means the only electric car you'll be able to drive between cities remains Tesla. Until that changes Tesla will continue to sell 10x more electric cars than all other carmakers combined.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _And yet they won 't invest a dime in charging infrastructure_

BMW has a stake in the Ionity charging network, a joint venture of a few companies: [https://ionity.eu/en/about.html](https://ionity.eu/en/about.html)

BMW also sells home charging units: [https://charging.bmwgroup.com/web/360electric- international/...](https://charging.bmwgroup.com/web/360electric- international/home-charging)

Your claim is wrong.

<comment><USER27> The claim is dead-right.

I own a Tesla Model 3, my wife drives a BMW i3, my daughter has a leaf.

The ONLY car we can effectively travel outside of the greater Tampa area without major headache is the Tesla.

The ONLY car that I would try to drive to New York from Florida in is the Tesla. (Yes, we've done it.. but would only try it in the Tesla)

<comment><USER28> I have wanted to get into an EV and it is the long distance travel issue (for that 1% of the time) that has been keeping me (and I imagine a lot of people) from making the switch. Tesla is the only model to have come close to solving that issue.

One thing I have been waiting to see is a push to have gas stations adopt EV charging on a large scale. Gas stations, particularly ones along interstate routes, often double as rest stops and usually have large parking areas with small marts, and a couple of fast food options. If companies partnered with a major gas pump operator like chevron, shell or mobile to offer even a small number of charging stations with each gas station (even just 2 to 4 at each site in the 50-100kw range.. though the wiring would most likely need to be upgraded to support this) things would shift rapidly I think. I know charge times remain an issue, but if you are taking a rest stop anyway.. the 30-40 minutes of charge is not as big of an issue.

A government subsidy could also be introduced to help offset some of the cost of upgrading these gas stations. An increased tax on Gasoline could go towards paying for such a subsidy. Also I think we need to take another look at nuclear power to help charge those EVs, but that is another conversation.

<comment><USER29> Actually if you download the PlugShare app it has all kinds of charging stations, not just the Tesla Superchargers and I was honestly shocked at the number of chargers there are around the US, they are literally everywhere now. Many of the non-Tesla charging places only charge $1-$2/hour, so while it might take you longer your electric road trip is going to be a lot cheaper. I think you could easily do long distance trips in most electric cars in the US now with a little planning. Walgreens for example has level 2 J-1772 chargers at over 400 locations in the US, which are almost as fast as most Tesla superchargers:

[https://www.walgreens.com/topic/sr/sr_electric_vehicle_charg...](https://www.walgreens.com/topic/sr/sr_electric_vehicle_charging_stations.jsp)

Teslas come with a J-1772 adapter so you can charge them there as well. Many hotels, airports, malls and parking garages have chargers now as well. I really think we are at a tipping point, one of the annoying things now is when you get to a charger it's busy. Some of the busiest Tesla superchargers you have to wait 15-20 minutes sometimes for a spot to open up.

<comment><USER19> There is a big difference between Level 2 charging and the Tesla Superchargers. Level 2 J1772 charging tops out under 20 kW, but most cars can only handle 7kW. Most of the current DC fast charging points (ChargePoint etc) are 50 kW. Faster ones are coming, but most of the current cars (Bolt, Leaf, i3, Kia) can only accept less than 100 kW. Tesla Superchargers are currently 145 kW, but new installations are 250 kW.

<comment><AUTHOR> Electrify America and EVgo are installing 350 kW chargers:

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electrify- america-350-kw-...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/electrify- america-350-kw-ev-charger-california/)

[https://insideevs.com/news/341596/evgo-launches-350-kw- ultra...](https://insideevs.com/news/341596/evgo-launches-350-kw-ultra-fast- charging-station-between-la-vegas/)

And in Europe Fastned and Ionity are also installing 350 kW chargers:

[https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ionity-launches- first-350...](https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/ionity-launches-first-350-kw- ev-chargers-uk/)

[https://fastned.nl/en/blog/post/fastned-opens-its- first-350k...](https://fastned.nl/en/blog/post/fastned-opens-its-first-350k-w- ready-fast-charging-station-in-the-united-kingdom)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> i wonder if this will increase BMWs reliability. BMWs, like many of the German brands, don't age well at all and start to have a lot of problems after 10 years. But with electrification, there should be less that can go wrong, in theory at least.

</comment><comment><USER31> > all new electric vehicles would be marketed under the BMWi subsidiary brand.

Why a subsidiary brand? Is BMW itself too cool for an EV?

On a more serious note, this is not the kind of message that makes me convinced they are really serious about EVs.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Electrified" meaning at least hybrid, at least plug-in hybrid, or full EV?

<comment><USER32> If you click the first link to the IAA 2017 announcement with the original goals, it says "25 electrified new models until 2025 and 12 of them all- electric"

This announcement is just accelerating that schedule, so about half the models should be full EV and the others will be hybrid. I agree it would be nice to get more details regarding plug-in capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not a lot of detail here.

I wonder what the motivation for this is.

<comment><USER34> Tesla outselling them in Europe maybe?

[https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla- model-3-outsell...](https://europe.autonews.com/automakers/tesla- model-3-outsells-german-sedan-rivals-europe)

<comment><USER33> If its concern about the competition that's great, if its just a form of greenwashing or whatever, not so great.

I can't see BMW being worried about 1 month of sales by a competitor but its possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yes but what about petrol (elec) stations? When will we see a similar surge of charging points that make it practical? Can have all the cars in the world, but unless some serious investment is made in the infrastructure, its a bit premature I think.</comment>


Growing One's Consulting Business - <AUTHOR> https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1 <comment><USER2> Interesting yarn.

I'm probably missing the point of the style, as it certainly doesn't seem to have damaged the author's success, but it's kind of unusual to see such verbosity.</comment>


'Apple Should Be Worried If Anyone Else Has Any Success' School of Thought - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/2012/02/apple_should_be_worried

<comment><USER2> He's right.

People really need to stop wasting their time writing pointless articles. As Windows 8 approaches release, for example, we're going to see a bunch of stories like this:

"10 Reasons Windows 8 Will Fail"

"10 Reasons Windows 8 Will Succeed"

If you find yourself reading these, kick yourself in the butt and get back to work.</comment>


Computer model matches humans at predicting how objects move - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2016/csail-computer-model-matches-humans-predicting-how-objects-move-0104 <comment><USER2> Paper: [http://www.mit.edu/~ilkery/papers/phys_nips.pdf](http://www.mit.edu/~ilkery/papers/phys_nips.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Aka: "Another probabilistic programming paper." They hacked on a 3D physics engine to make it capable of Monte Carlo sampling and inference, and then stuck a deep neural net on the front to do some parameter inference more easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.csail.mit.edu/computer_model_matches_humans_predi...](http://www.csail.mit.edu/computer_model_matches_humans_predicting_how_objects_move)

</comment><comment><USER5> Video games could use something like that. Especially for collisions. Games often struggle to do them correctly and completely absurd results are not rare.

<comment><USER6> Game physics engines update their objects (acceleration, collision, constraints/joints etc) only so often at a certain tick rate to leave enough cpu time for other things. You can have very precise and realistic physics simulations already - they just don't run at realtime.

I don't think this is a solution for bad physics in games.

<comment><USER7> Whatever happened to dedicated physics processors? Can't we have a separate physical unit doing all those calculations in realtime?

<comment><USER8> >Whatever happened to dedicated physics processors?

Nvidia bought PhysX and stopped production of dedicated PPU. PhysX is just software now. And because it's proprietary (no AMD cards support/CPU implementation is slow) we don't really see games build around it.

<comment><USER9> GPUs or CPUs can be designated as PhysX devices within the NVIDIA drivers. Im not sure if that rules out using AMD devices but probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally! This is a big step forward in common sense reasoning. Robots need this.

</comment><comment><USER11> The thing is that I don't think what humans are good at is statically predicting the movement of objects from video.

Rather, I think the strong human skill is reacting appropriately and quickly to movements.

<comment><USER12> I don't think you could react quickly to something without having predicted the behavior of that thing in advance.

<comment><USER13> Depends on what you mean by "predict". Also, unfortunately I don't even remember where I saw or heard this in a lecture, but when studying neuroscience I remember to have seen _exactly_ this question and an example showing that you actually _don 't_ have to make predictions. I also forgot the explanation that showed how the (real, biological) neural network solves just such a problem without having to make a prediction. I only have the fuzziest memory of it being a process and at no point was there any prediction of the path of the object being tracked. It was just matching several sensory signal inputs and creating outputs, something clever, using an indirect approach. "Predicting" would be observing the object for x amount of time, doing a calculation where it will be some time later, using a model to come up with a way to intercept, then creating outputs, all of that in a loop, something like that. In any case, the way the neural network _actually_ solved it was completely different from how an engineer would do it. In a sense, the neural network was "cheating" and doing far less work than you would expect.

The one thing I do remember for sure was there was no "prediction" involved - none at all. Unless you argue backwards and say because it succeeded you declare the process a "prediction". Once explained the whole process was actually quite primitive. Again, that was research on an actual biological neural network.

Darn, now I wish I had paid more attention. Any actual neuroscientists here? Without the details even I myself can't see my own comment as a satisfactory reply, but only as a step to actually getting one from somewhere or someone else. But note that it depends on what you mean by "prediction" \- as I said, if you define it backwards from success than sure, prediction happened. My point is that the _process_ is very different from how a human-made algorithm would do it.

<comment><USER12> Think of trying to catch a fast moving object. Neutral process are relatively slow. Then they need to send nerve signals to muscles in the arm and hand. Then the muscles have to contact. All these things take time.

That means the brain processing had to be done in anticipation of where the ball will be. That means it has to predict where the ball will be.

I have a feeling that you're using an overly narrow meaning for "predict"

<comment><USER14> There are different ways of predicting. There is a series of research on catching fly-balls that claims there is no prediction in the sense of "estimate/predict end position, move to estimated position"; instead there is an ongoing process of "maintaining the visually perceived velocity of the ball". You end up catching the ball just the same.

[http://www.mindreadings.com/OpticalTrajRM.pdf](http://www.mindreadings.com/OpticalTrajRM.pdf)

[http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/CatchXY.html](http://www.mindreadings.com/ControlDemo/CatchXY.html)

<comment><USER12> I mean 'predicting' in the general sense of needing to arrange the details in advance, which is a necessary requirement on any real-time system.

.

EDIT: to all the responses objecting to what I'm saying

\- I'm aware of the details you are talking about, and I believe you are reading much more into what I'm saying than I have actually said.

\- do you deny that the brain has to set in motion the muscular activities in advance?

\- you seem to all be working on a very narrow notion of what predicting means - that it must be some explicit calculation of coordinates.

<comment><USER14> Then that is probably not the way human or animal brains do object or pray or something catching. First, you would need very accurate estimates of current velocity and direction of the object, but human sensory systems are fairly imprecise. Still, if the details are calculated in advance you would expect that, say, a baseball catcher would be able to predict exactly where the ball would fall after the initial visual estimate. This does not happen: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3816735/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3816735/)

> even skilled baseball players can't identify correct ball trajectories or > predict landing points

<comment><USER12> to take one simple example to illustrate the point:

light comes from a moving object

by the time the light has reached the perceiver the object has already moved (in most cases, very slightly) forwards.

by the time the brain has done some bit of processing to do with that object, the object has moved further. brain processing is not very fast.

say this processing generates nerve signals. by the time those signals have reached muscles, the object has moved even further.

by the time those muscles have contracted the object has moved further still.

what i am arguing against is the assumption that all these details are instantaneous. they are not. this is a fundamental constraint.

that means that whatever that brain processing is doing, and however the nerve signals are "telling" the muscles to do, while it is based upon where the object was at one point in time, _fundamentally must_ concern where it is some moments later on.

if you don't want to call this a form or predicting, then fine, though I would like to know why you think the term 'predicting' does not suit what is going on there, and I'd like to know what alternative term you would use to describe what the brain processes "concern".

<comment><USER14> At low levels, I think it is probably a very simple computational process, something like taking a derivative of the position (estimating the direction and magnitude of velocity of the object in some perceptual space). If we understand prediction in a loose sense, then taking the derivative would be predicting, just like the D part in a PID loop is considered predicting.

At higher levels of the nervous system where more abstract variables are hypothetically handled, there could be something like model-based prediction. For example, if we are trying to catch a ball we would predict its movement differently then if we are trying to catch a cat or mouse or a drop of water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Finally, we can build a robot that can play a game of peepo :)</comment>


The Mystery of Urban Psychosis - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/07/the-enigma-of-urban-psychosis/491141/?single_page=true <comment><USER3> "the same factors that increase your chance of getting diagnosed with schizophrenia also increase your chances of ending up in living in a deprived urban area"

I wonder how much of this mystery is based on spurious correlation -- people with mental problems fleeing rural areas and moving to cities, other (social) factors that are more common in cities and influence the probability of developing a mental illness.

<comment><USER4> The article talks about that.

> But none of this conclusively proves that cities cause schizophrenia and > some argue the causal arrow actually goes round the other way. People with > psychosis, the alternative explanation goes, are just more likely to end up > living in poor city neighborhoods—something first labeled the 'social drift' > hypothesis.

[...]

> . But we know this can't explain what we see in modern studies because time > spent in the city is also associated with your future chance of developing > these experiences. A recent study led by Joanne Newbury at King's College > London even found this effect in children, who have little say where they > live.

<comment><USER3> The hypothetic example of "people with mental problems" was only part of my statement. The citation above doesn't cover mental problems as result of concentrated social deprivation you only see in cities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This, and other recent events, remind me of the "muckers" from John Brunner's 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar:

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

</comment><comment><USER6> > The two big psychological negatives of city living, social isolation and > social threat, are already well studied in mental health.

I'm not familiar wit the the term _social threat_. Is anybody able to elaborate on the meaning on this term in the given context, or link to an explanation.

</comment><comment><USER7> Surprised this article, and the researchers interviewed, don't highlight contagious agents as a possibility.

There's a strong case that Toxoplasma gondii, a communicable parasite, can contribute to schizophrenia or other mental illnesses:

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma- gondii-l...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-parasite-toxoplasma-gondii- linked-to-mental-illness-schizophrenia/)

Other viruses have been posited as contributors to mental illness, and there's a relationship between schizophrenia and season-of-birth that may indicate prenatal/youthful infection with some otherwise mild seasonal illness (like flu) might increase the risk of schizophrenia later.

</comment><comment><USER8> So much more goes on in city life than rural life. More interactions more noise etc. etc. Perhaps with more things around that affect you, more odds of psychosis.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm a regular reader of HN and a sometimes commenter. My other account is over 1100 days old. I'm going to write this anonymously because the content is otherwise not well linked to my online profile.

I started writing this in response to @Gibbon1's comment: _Might be people suffering an episode of mania in a rural area pass unnoticed by the various authorities._

Which raises the question: which is better, to be noticed by the authorities, or to have your episode of mania / psychosis, and then return to your (slightly more?) centre way of being?

Presumably once you've had one episode that gets noticed by the authorities you then probably get 'treatment'. Yet do we even know what these conditions really are, and do the treatments work? If the definition of _the treatment worked_ is that the person is too dulled or numbed to function well enough to have another episode then, in my opinion, we aren't really treating the condition, we don't understand it well enough to heal it.

The troubling thing is when the episode results in harm, or risk of harm, to others. With reference @Hydraulix989 comment, perhaps the ominous house up the road is a better place to be an in a city crawling with cops and psychiatrists. There are, or tend to be?, fewer 'services' for mental in rural areas, but maybe that's a good thing because I'm not convinced who the services serve.

Urban mental health services are a form of institutionalisation of people with mental health issues. The overwhelming dogma of the medical field is that mental health needs treatment of some sort. More recently we're seeing that treatment can include things like dietary or gut flora therapy, relaxation meditation, that sort of thing.

I was adopted, I met my biological parents when I was 22. Biological father went to high security prison for a home invasion and drug dealing / growing pot, biological mother lost access to her children for a good deal of time due to her wayward lifestyle. I ended up being charged with drug trafficking myself, and only just avoided a sentence when the charges were dropped due to the police's illegal methods. I have a couple of assault charges up my sleeve. I've experienced several 6 month periods of injecting methamphetamine 4 days out of 7, and longer periods of lesser usage. This one time I stayed awake for 6 days, my housemate was awake for 7 days. I have seen my own child a handful of times since it was born.

I've always made it a point to be very careful who I talk to about my internal experience, you don't want to reveal that sort of thing to the wrong sort of people and end up on a court ordered medication program. Ordinarily I'm quite normal and well behaved.

Through a set of pretty terrible circumstances I've moved away from the city I lived in, stopped contact with almost everyone I knew, and now live in a smaller city where I've had a stable well paying job for nearly 3 years, have had pre-approval for finance to purchase a house, and just put in an offer to buy a place. I would hope that, rather than end up on medication, or in a cycle of treatment and poverty, I become that ominous house up the road - <USER2> think that would be a better outcome for me. But perhaps I can live a relatively normal life if I make the enough of the right choices enough of the time.

I'm lucky that, given regular sleep, good nutrition, and plenty of exercise, and having avoided all of the doctors medications, and never spent a day in psychiatric care or prison, nor suicided, I can maintain my composure fairly indefinitely, I hope.

I'm not very good at intimate relationships, they seem to be a trigger for, or lead to a set of circumstances where I become unhinged, and having written all of this down for the first time I think I'm going to make a commitment to stay out of them.

<comment><USER10> Amazing that you were able to get a stable, well paying job as a convicted felon. I would imagine that would be very difficult.

That's one of the worst things about the war on some drugs in my opinion, it creates a social underclass with a massively increased chance of reoffending.

Good luck with everything and thanks for telling your story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you live in a city, you should read this essay:

[http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and...](http://www.altruists.org/static/files/The%20Metropolis%20and%20Mental%20Life%20\(Georg%20Simmel\).htm)

>Our psychic activity still responds to almost every impression of somebody else with a somewhat distinct feeling. The unconscious, fluid and changing character of this impression seems to result in a state of indifference. Actually this indifference would be just as unnatural as the diffusion of indiscriminate mutual suggestion would be unbearable. From both these typical dangers of the metropolis, indifference and indiscriminate suggestibility, antipathy protects us. A latent antipathy and the preparatory stage of practical antagonism effect the distances and aversions without which this mode of life could not at all be led.

<comment><USER12> trivial observation packaged in flowery language to sound insightful ?

tl;dr: there is too much going on in the city to give a shit.

<comment><USER11> > The essence of the blasé attitude consists in the blunting of > discrimination. This does not mean that the objects are not perceived, as is > the case with the half-wit, but rather that the meaning and differing values > of things, and thereby the things themselves, are experienced as > insubstantial.

<comment><USER13> Sure, but here's the thing: The inter-subjective reflectivity of perceived para-circular linearity is subject to radial normality of the urbanoid race condition reflective of mostly pervasive stray projection, which, in 93 percent of all cases, prevails as the main subject of pre-relationary trajectory analysis, as proven by the late Phil Corytorov.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


12 Year Old Develops His Own Theory of Relativity - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1369595/Jacob-Barnett-12-higher-IQ-Einstein-develops-theory-relativity.html#ixzz1HerCUCXn

<comment><USER2> Dupe, flagged.

See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2369094>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, couldn't find it in searchyc.</comment></comment>


F# Basics An Introduction to Functional Programming for .NET Developers - <AUTHOR> http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ee336127.aspx

<comment><USER3> If you want to dig deeper into F#, have a look at _The F# Survival Guide_ , which is a free online guide that was posted here on HN some time ago: <http://www.ctocorner.com/fsharp/book/default.aspx>

Edit: Here's the link to the original post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1109754>

<comment><USER4> Or if you don't mind spending money, then buy Expert F#: <http://apress.com/book/view/1590598504>

<comment><USER5> The intro books by Smith ("programming F#", Oreilly) and Pickering (Beginning F#", Apress) are excellent, too. They were published last October and December, and cover what will be in VS 2010

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This seems like a bastardization of FP. I've been studying Clojure for the last few months and I'm amazed at the elegance of Lisp syntax. Maybe the perens have corrupted my brain, but F# just looks really ugly to me. It looks like Microsoft is trying to spoon feed it to C# developers, which is ok I suppose, but I don't think that people are really going to grasp the underlying concepts of FP without _letting go_ of a lot of what they've learned in the imperative world. A familiar syntax can actually be an impediment in this effort, as it creates the impression that two expressions are equivalent when they really aren't.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been coding in F# for the last few weeks at school, and I gotta say, F# takes everything good about SML/NJ, and rips it out. I mean it even makes the error messages more cryptic. The CLR is cool, but not worth destroying a language for it.

</comment><comment><USER8> Could anyone give some examples of instructions which are easily implemented in F# and would be really hard to implement in C#? From what I see here, F# seems nice and clean, but does not add a lot of value compared to LINQ-powered C#.

<comment><USER9> There are plenty of things. From real-world experience, F# code ends up taking a bit less than half the amount of lines as C# does. More interestingly, the number of type annotations can be as little as 1/20th as in C#.

The benefit comes from that many "small" things you do in C# become much nicer in F#:

C#:

      int target;
      int someValue;
      if (dict.TryGetValue("key", out someValue)) {
          target = someValue * 100;
      } else {
          target = 42; // default
      }

F#:

      let target = match dict.TryGetValue "key" with
                   | true, x -> x * 100
                   | _	   -> 42 // default

Not only is the code more concise in F#, we get another benefit too. The temporary value x, needed because of the use of out params in C#, no longer exists in the F# version. In C#, this temp val escapes its needed scope - <USER2> should only be needed in the branch where it's used, but instead it's now a normal local.

A more large scale win is any async code. In F#, you can use the async workflow (monad), and with 1 character (!), you make the compiler emit code that'd take at least 10 extra lines in C#. Inside an async workflow, a let! (example: let! foo = bar.AsyncGetResponse()) is like calling bar.BeginGetResponse, bar.EndGetResponse, while preserving the current exception handlers and all locals. It makes heavily async code trivial to write, where in C#, it's near impossible.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for this! Looks like a great language. Its a shame it targets the CLR and Mono is so crippled.

If it was on the JVM, looks like a serious competitor to Scala with some distinct advantages (! operator for sure) along with a little simpler syntax.

<comment><USER11> How exactly is the CLR crippled?

<comment><USER6> The statement was that Mono is crippled. Last I checked, Mono was lagging at least one major release behind Microsoft's CLR. So if you're using fancy new features, you'll probably have to refactor to gain cross platform support, and even then you may encounter bugs and memory leaks.

<comment><USER11> You're right, I misread it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: MNML – 1v1 turn-based strategy game built with Rust and HTML5 - ntr-- https://mnml.gg/ <comment><AUTHOR> I recommend making some changes to improve the new user experience:

Take a look at how .io and other multiplayer web games present their homepages:

[https://airmash.online/](https://airmash.online/)

[https://krunker.io/](https://krunker.io/)

[http://slither.io/](http://slither.io/)

[https://agar.io/](https://agar.io/)

There are some common patterns that gamers will be familiar with:

\- There's no registration form, only a name field.

\- The game is sometimes displayed in the background as live action so you can get a feel for the gameplay before you commit to playing.

\- After entering your name, you're presented with a "how to play" box that gives a quick overview. Your game is more complex than typical .io/multiplayer web games but has no such walkthrough.

I'd guess people will probably bounce when they see the registration form at present. (The form usability could also be improved — the "confirm agreement" text should be wrapped in a label so I can click that to enable the checkbox; I shouldn't have to click the checkbox itself.)

The game itself seems interesting but I struggled to quickly pick up the concepts without reading through a lot of text. Web and casual games are generally better when they don't require long manuals, so anything you can do to simplify the game or improve onboarding would help. Perhaps you could distill the game to a more simple concept without losing the essence of it?

<comment><USER2> FWIW - I watched the youtube video, was curious to try a little more, then saw the registration form and closed the tab.

<comment><USER3> Why? It doesn't ask for an email address or any information at all so what are you protecting?

<comment><USER2> It's an effort barrier. Similar to the logic behind 'if your checkout process is x% faster you'll convert y% more customers'.

I didn't think about it at the time, but post analysing: I was mildly interested. Was going to try a game, but registration is a (small) faff so wasn't worth the effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As other have mentioned, it's a massive blocker asking for people to sign up just to try it and see if they like the game.

You can uniquely identify users using their session/cookie, then if they want to sign up later you can create an account and associate this with them.

The home page is really quite confusing, you could do with splitting apart the login/signup area and the introduction text/images. The way it's combined now makes it looks like I can interact with some of the info images.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks interesting, but very difficult without a proper tutorial. Sidenote: forcing > 11 char passwords just seems arbitrary.

<comment> ntr-- thanks! small team & rapid changes lead to our existing tutorials becoming obsolete very quickly, it's definitely a pain point. after PAX AUS this year we implemented some better highlighting in the vbox which got us some of the way but we still have a lot to work on.

12 character minimum password length was burned into my circuits by this blast from the past: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/your-password-is-too-damn- shor...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/your-password-is-too-damn-short/)

<comment><USER6> It's a game account not a bank account. Gamers follow the path of least resistance, if signing up to your game takes too much effort they will leave before trying out the game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I come accross these .io games from time-to-time, and I've always wondered how they make their money. Does anyone have an insight on this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Slither.io uses ads on the web and mobile versions, with in-app purchases on the mobile versions to play without ads.

The games generally have short play loops where ads are shown every time you die, so the number of impressions per session can be fairly high. The game cycle is pretty addictive and simple to pick up, but has a little depth to it.

Slither.io is incredibly successful for a web game ($100k/day[1] has been frequently quoted in the press, but I don't know the source of that and haven't seen more recent stats).

There is definitely money in web games, but it's often down to luck like any game promotion. Slither.io got huge traffic from vloggers like PewDiePie playing the game multiple times[2][3]. You also need quite high unique visitor counts before you can use certain ad networks. (The last mobile web game ad service I looked at was asking for around a million impressions a month before you could sign up.)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slither.io#Popularity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slither.io#Popularity)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDnU7xhrYo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpDnU7xhrYo)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZR6wwF8kNQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZR6wwF8kNQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i have no idea what to do.

<comment> ntr-- [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPaDX69i2g&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyPaDX69i2g&feature=youtu.be)

Here's a tutorial playthrough video, sorry about that! our mechanics have changed a lot so our tutorials tend to go out of date very quickly

<comment><USER8> Very helpful, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ntr-- dev here, happy to answer any questions about the game!

please join our discord server to help grow the community, find opponents and receive updates.

[https://discord.gg/u8yYK9q](https://discord.gg/u8yYK9q)

glhf

</comment><comment><USER9> Look interesting... I signed up. Clicked on the tutorial video. No sound or text or anything to tell me what is going on.

Clicked 'Learn'. Played through part of a game by randomly clicking around. The computer smashed me 1st round, and I still have no clue what to do.

Really wish it was more clear on how to play. Even just a text based walk through, with screenshots, explaining how to use & combine the skill & specs.

<comment><USER10> Sorry to hear that, there's an updated video with text overlays [https://youtu.be/VtZLlkpJuS8](https://youtu.be/VtZLlkpJuS8)

The info section in the top right should give an idea of what's going on. The idea is to make a strong team of 3 units with best skills / specs possible to win each round.

<comment><USER9> Great thanks for the reply, I'll check out the video!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey, I visited your booth at PAX last month. I had no idea it was web-based. Congrats on the release!

<comment> ntr-- we were definitely an outlier at pax by not being unity or unreal based. thank you for coming by!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The tutorial isn't that great, it took me a few minutes to figure stuff out.

Create an account and click the learn/tutorial button. Then in your inventory/loadout screen, you can buy stuff from the 'VBOX' on the upper left, and they will appear in your inventory right next to the VBOX. You start with three Attacks in your inventory; click on them and then click on the slots to equip them onto your three ships. Then click ready in the lower right to begin battle.

In battle, you click 'Attack' and then click the enemy ship to use it on. When you aim all three ships, click ready to do a turn.

UI improvements could be used to make this more clear. When I click Attack in battle, it should prompt me for a target. On my first turn I clicked Attack and nothing happened in the UI, so I just clicked 'Attack' for all three ships, assuming they would target themselves, and thus I ended up wasting a turn.

In the inventory/loadout, there are a few paragraphs but you can use an overlay with hints to show the information. On older versions of Android when you set up the phone and went to the homescreen for the first time, it had a translucent overlay with arrows pointing to UI elements and snippets of text saying what they do. So put an overlay on the inventory with a dismiss button, and then keep the current paragraph of text around in case the user missed anything. An overlay can visually and very quickly tell me to 1) buy stuff from the VBOX 2) combine it in the inventory (if desired) and 3) move it to a ship. Drag-n-drop would be nice too if you could implement that - it's more natural and users are pre-trained to do it on mobile devices like tablets, and that training has crossed over to computers too.

It could also be nice for the VBOX and inventory and ships to be more separated with whitespace or outlines.

Also the 11 character password requirement is stupid. I tried using password as my password because I don't give a shit if this account gets hacked and I don't want to have to remember another password or clutter my password manager with entries that I used one day and never again. Please let me do that.

You could also be more forthcoming with what 'b's are. I start with 18bs, how do I get more? Will I have to pay real money, do I get them via battle, etc.

Almost 10% of males (= almost 10% of the people who will try this game) are red-green colorblind. You should add a setting for colorblind mode and have it swap to a safe palette (or redesign the base palette away from RGB). Make the setting visible when an account is created so colorblind people don't miss it. [http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colorblind/](http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colorblind/) [https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/](https://davidmathlogic.com/colorblind/)

Contrast is low IMO, the sidebar on the right could be more clearly separated and buttons could be more clearly separted from the background (the green- outline black-fill ready button on the inventory screen especially, though the dark gray buttons on the inventory were also hard for me to see well until I turned off night mode).

<comment> ntr-- Thanks for your feedback and taking the time to write our your experience.

`b`s (the ingame currency) only last for as long as each game. For more info about almost anything you can mouse over it and a description appears in the info pane.

Colourblindness is going to be a tough one! We would like to have specialised icons for each item but for the minute we just have programmer art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The entire page fails to render if the Strip third-party dependency is blocked. Does the function of the game itself really rely on Stripe that deeply?

<comment> ntr-- fixed, thank you for the report

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> looks, good but only had 2 mins and gave up.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hi! Tell more please about tech. U use websocket? WS-RS? Client side wasm bindgen? And more... please!</comment>


The Biggest Mistake Everyone Makes With Closures - <AUTHOR> http://moonbase.rydia.net/mental/blog/programming/the-biggest-mistake-everyone-makes-with-closures.html <comment><USER2> ??? Under PythonWin 2.6.1 k[0]() gives me 1.</comment>


Yahoo is already making infrastructure changes in Tumblr (screenshot) - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/Eu8GFZT

<comment><USER2> I think the custom domain migration started a month or two ago.</comment>