Anti-aging stem cell treatment proves successful in early human trials - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/aging-frailty-stem-cell-treatment-human-trials/51867/ <comment><USER4> This comment on reddit (and all the subchildren) shines a different light on that study: [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/78f3wg/antiaging_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/78f3wg/antiaging_stem_cell_treatment_proves_successful/dotd0ep/)

<comment><USER5> Let's hope he's right. Life is a cycle and without death the world will be a very boring place.

<comment><USER6> you're welcome to die whenever you want, just don't speak for the rest of us.

<comment><USER7> Imagine a world in which Xi, Kim Jong *, and a host of other wealthy dictators were immortal, and the rest of us pee-ons were not. I believe that is the future of high tech immortality.

<comment><USER8> I've been thinking about this lately too, it almost feels like we're here already.

I often read stories about innocent younger people dying from something tragic; However, why do I almost never wake up to, "<evil tyrannical dictator> has unexpectedly and peacefully passed away in their sleep?"

Brave new world I guess?

<comment><USER9> Lots of innocent young people, not many dictators

<comment><USER10> The dictators started out innocent and young too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The phase 2 study primarily looked at safety. There was no correction for multiple hypothesis testing on the efficacy endpoints. So it seems that the only conclusion that is warranted is that the study shows no adverse health effects and that "larger clinical trials are warranted to establish the efficacy of hMSCs in this multisystem disorder." as they state in the conclusion.

It is interesting if it works, but lets wait for the next phase before assuming it does.

<comment><USER12> "In the first trial 15 frail patients received a single MSC infusion collected from bone marrow donors aged between 20 and 45 years old. Six months later all patients demonstrated improved fitness outcomes, tumor necrosis factor levels and overall quality of life.

The second trial was a randomized, double blind study with placebo group. Again no adverse affects were reported and physical improvements were noted by the researchers as "remarkable".

"There are always caveats associated with interpreting efficacy in small numbers of subjects, yet it is remarkable that a single treatment seems to have generated improvement in key features of frailty that are sustained for many months," writes David G. Le Couter and colleagues in a guest editorial in The Journals of Gerontology praising the research."

<comment><USER11> I am not criticizing the study. I am highlighting that the conclusion that the paper arrives at i the correct one: That it warrants large scale studies.

This work is a prime candidate for being misrepresented as showing that this stem cell treatment is effective for age related health issues.

There are 30 participants in the phase 2 trial. There are two treatment groups (100M and 200M) with different dose and one placebo group. Each group has 10 participants.

None of the treatment groups showed adverse effects.

There is a difference between asking "Are there any adverse effects?" and "are there positive effects for parameter 1 to n"? If you ask the second kind of question and do not correct for multiple hypothesis testing, you will make many errors.

The small dose treatment group (100M) showed improvement in many parameters vs placebo, whereas the other (200M) showed improvement in fewer parameters vs placebo. Since no corrections where made for testing, this only tell us that there where no statistically significant adverse effects.

As I noted initially, I think it is interesting. Once we have seen the results of a couple of large studies, we can talk about the effects of this treatment.

<comment><USER12> Thank you for your reply, in particular for the specific issue with the results. I quoted the article to show that the researchers seem to believe that the trial results are more promising than a formal analysis would suggest. I agree that further studies are required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As others pointed out this study may not be scientifically conclusive and I am not in a position to comment on that.

What strikes me is our lack of preparedness for advances is anti-aging treatments that will inevitably come. Even adding as little as 20 years to the average lifespan will have enormous (devastating?) implications for the economy and society. Especially if the treatment will be expensive and not available universally.

I keep hearing about the urgency to focus on research in the safety of AI, but I have not noticed any urgency regarding the consequences of anti-aging medicine.

<comment><USER14> > I have not noticed any urgency regarding the consequences of anti-aging > medicine.

Because that medicine is usually a hoax of some sort. Saying that, people are living longer and longer, and changes are being made to prepare for that. More people = more houses and jobs. In the UK having a pension is mandatory now etc

<comment><USER15> More interested in no pensions but 3 day work weeks and 2 months vacation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I flagged this. "Successful" suggests it actually prevented aging. From the comments here, and on Reddit, it looks like that's sensationalism.

</comment><comment><USER17> If you google stem cells + <disease name> you can find <promising> research for almost any disease, can anyone explain in simple terms, what is so magical in stem cells therapy?

<comment><USER18> My layman's understanding is that stem cells have not yet 'differentiated' into a specialised cell type which makes them useful for many different types of treatments.

Edit: so you can use them to create "healthy" versions of whatever you need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is going to sound slightly tin-foilish, but the question needs to be asked:

Are there rich/powerful people who are benefiting from anti-aging technology already? I'm thinking of Robert Mugabe (age 93) who regularly goes to East Asia, as an example, for medical treatment, but there seem to be others.

<comment><USER20> Heads of state tend to have staffs watching them all day, so they don't fall and break their hips, and drivers so they don't get into car accidents, and they get immediately rushed to the hospital every time they have even so much as a cold. That's why (US) ex-presidents are now routinely living into their 90's (and longer?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting. Kudos to the researchers, who really went for improvement in condition- and not just reported stabilizing conditions and the placebo effect of exercise as a false positive.

</comment><comment><USER22> Anti-aging is, in my mind, the most important area of research. I'm shocked billionaires are not throwing billions of dollars at it. Everything else can literally wait.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there a credible source for this?

<comment> King-Aaron Phase 1 trial article:

[https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/150...](https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/1505/3746183/Allogeneic- Human-Mesenchymal-Stem-Cell-Infusions)

Phase 2 trial article:

[https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/151...](https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/article/72/11/1513/3977809/Allogeneic- Mesenchymal-Stem-Cells-Ameliorate-Aging)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The question is this: Will those bone marrow donors have adverse side effects (faster aging)?

</comment><comment><USER25> Oh great, if this works Crazy Head Transplant Guy is out of a job. Thanks a lot. =(

(I _might_ have been an early investor.)

<comment><USER26> Technically, it's a full body transplant, _not_ a head transplant.

<comment><USER27> Technically, it's an almost full body transplant (full body minus head).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Early human trials are a bit late ...I am already turning 40 soon. Nevertheless, a great achievement

</comment><comment><USER29> This should probably be considered an anti-inflammatory therapy rather than an anti-aging therapy. Inflammation is a sufficiently sizable driver of frailty syndrome to make that beneficial, but this is not addressing root causes, just compensating a little for one of the secondary consequences.

The scope of the possible in the near term is to find way to incrementally improve the condition, not produce a sizable reversal, but that is an improvement over the current situation, given that there is no effective treatment. The closest thing to a standardized, proven, reliable class of stem cell therapies involves the use of mesenchymal stem cells, sourced from a patient, or from lines of cells grown and engineered for transplantation with minimal risk. The primary outcome of mesenchymal stem cell therapies, or at least the reliable outcome, is a reduction in the systemic, chronic inflammation that accompanies old age. While it is entirely possible that other mechanisms are at work, the cells typically don't last long following transplantation, and thus it is the brief signaling changes that must produce benefits that can last for months or longer.

Chronic inflammation is a major problem in aging. It drives progression of most of the age-related conditions, and high levels of inflammation are certainly considered to be a major component of frailty syndrome in the old. In the context of a general treatment for frailty based on reductions in inflammation, the focus is less on the acceleration of specific age-related conditions over time, however, and more on the immediate consequences of constant high levels of inflammation for cell biochemistry, pain, cognitive function, joint function, regeneration, and tissue maintenance. Many aspects of age-related dysfunction are to some degree being actively maintained in their current impacted state by the presence of inflammation - take away that inflammation, and the problems subside a little, back to the lower level of harm and loss expected due to accumulated cell and tissue damage.

In recent years, it has become clear that chronic inflammation, as opposed to the normal short-term inflammation resulting from injury or infection, disrupts the finely tuned dance carried out between tissue and immune system needed for regeneration. This is an emerging theme in the investigation of how senescent cells cause aging, for example, as these unwanted cells are potent sources of inflammatory signaling. So if we see unreliable or marginal benefits from stem cell therapies that look like enhanced regeneration, it might well be that this is at root a short-term reduction in the age-related disruption of tissue maintenance - perhaps enough to allow a little reconstruction to take place in some patients. This is speculation, of course, and the cellular biochemistry is challenging to investigate; we should probably expect a first generation of moderately reliable therapies in advance of complete understanding of their mechanisms. Here is another point to consider on this topic: if the inflammation model of benefits is correct, then clearance of senescent cells should be at least as good a treatment for frailty as mesenchymal stem cell transplant, and probably better and more lasting.

</comment><comment><USER30> Can anyone think of an endogenous way us to do this?

</comment><comment><USER31> Honestly when it comes to longevity and anti-aging, look to CRISPR not to these treatments.

</comment><comment><USER32> Let's start harvesting bone marrow from young people to help old rich people. It has no downsides, I hear.

<comment><USER15> Silicon Valley already has blood boys.

<comment><USER33> The show or the city?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I want anti-aging, but I believe that our modern society will most likely self-destruct in fire and death sometime in the next 100 years the most likely outcome, which would limit the usefulness of such treatments.

<comment><USER35> Sure yes, scores of people are going to die of much sadder causes - <USER2> and manmade disasters, epidemics, crime

But a decent number will surive and since they'll have the arduous task of rebuilding civilization (in a much more thoughtful way this time) - <USER3> treatments would prove all the more useful</comment></comment>


From Idea to App Store: My Adventure in App Development (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.yeahus.net/from-idea-to-app-store-my-adventure-in-app-development/ <comment><USER2> Didn't expect to see this pop up again! I'm Adam, the guy that wrote that. Happy to answer any questions anyone has.

Since writing that I've gone full time making games and I'm just finishing up the follow-up game, 'Pumped BMX 2'. You can see some clips on my instagram account: [http://instagram.com/pumpedbmx](http://instagram.com/pumpedbmx)

<comment><USER3> Interesting read.

Question : I see that you just created your account. What notification service do you use that tells you that your app/game is being discussed on HN or any other forum? Genuinely curious !

<comment><USER4> I use HN Watcher for HN ([http://HNwatcher.com](http://HNwatcher.com)).

<comment><USER3> Bookmarked. Though I wish there was one that covered every forum that matters for an entrepreneur.

<comment><USER5> Google Alerts should get you most of the way there.

[http://www.google.co.uk/alerts](http://www.google.co.uk/alerts)

Seems like it supports RSS, so you could write a script to filter as needed

<comment><USER3> I've found it unreliable at times

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > _That technique – splitting the desired result up into tiny, tiny pieces – > gave me a lot of confidence, and was how I worked for the entirety of the > project. If I was stuck on something it was normally because I was trying to > solve one problem that was actually several smaller problems._

I'm regularly surprised† that many people have such a revelation by themselves when it's one of the most basic ways of forming knowledge and progressing towards understanding and solving problems:

> _Le second [précepte], de diviser chacune des difficultés que j > 'examinerais, en autant de parcelles qu'il se pourrait, et qu'il serait > requis pour les mieux résoudre._

> _The second principle, to divide each problem I examine, in as much > fragments as possible, and as required to best solve them._

— Descartes, _Discours de la méthode_ , 1637

† "Aghast" would be a better term. My surprise is not so much aimed at people as at an education system that fails both at making people stand on the shoulders of giants and at making them able to reason on their own.

<comment><USER7> That's a fairly ungenerous interpretation. It's very much possible to know, on an intellectual level, that it's useful to split up a problem into its component parts so as to get a grip on it, but that doesn't mean you're actually going to do it or have formed a habit to do it. And perhaps education can help there, but actually being faced with a big problem and finding out that without approaching it step by step you're going to get nowhere, seems like a pretty good way to internalize that lesson too.

<comment><USER6> > actually being faced with a big problem and finding out that without > approaching it step by step you're going to get nowhere, seems like a pretty > good way to internalize that lesson too.

This is what I mean by "education", not just being made to learn by rote a seemingly random quote, but being effectively trained into leveraging its core principles.</comment></comment></comment>


Scott Adams: The Heady Thrill of Having Nothing to Do - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903454504576486412642177904.html?mod=googlenews_wsj <comment><USER3> We have not won the war on boredom. At best we have won the war on idleness, which is only a lite version of it. If anything, these kill-time gadgets exacerbate the deep boredom problem, what Pessoa calls tedium:

 _Tedium is not the disease of being bored because there's nothing to do, but the more serious disease of feeling that there's nothing worth doing. This means that the more there is to do, the more tedium one will feel._

I can totally relate to this quote and attest to the ineffectiveness or even negative effect most tech toys have in alleviating my chronic diminished motivation and under-functioning reward system.

<comment><USER4> That's well put. The internet provides us with a vast pool of borderline- interesting activities, and almost nothing of actual interest.

This comment was borderline-interesting for me to write. I hope it was borderline-interesting for you to read as well.

<comment><USER5> "and almost nothing of actual interest."

I disagree strongly. More and more AAA content in accessible form is coming online every month. People are just apathetic because they don't value things they can obtain for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a comment on the site about this article being a "rip off" of Huxley (once again, wikipedia delivers in spades): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_wit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World#Comparisons_with_George_Orwell.27s_Nineteen_Eighty- Four)

"Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism."

<comment><USER7> Also, Neil Postman's _Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Showbusiness_.

Postman references Huxley/Orwell in the introduction.

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

<comment><USER8> Postman's book is fantastic. I read the book > 10 years ago and still talk about it. One of his points that stuck with me was that if television were actually entertaining we would never be able to leave it.

Also, have a look at some of his more famous quotes: <http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/41963.Neil_Postman>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's boredom, then there's freedom from distraction.

I'm free from distraction when walking the dog in the woods by myself. I'm bored when stuck in line at Meijer's behind the guy whose credit card expired yesterday. The latter is _excruciating_ and exhausting.

But aside from that: Scott Adams has a weird way of mixing some decent insight, like his thesis here, with some really inane stuff that sounds like late-night college freshman bullshitting. I mean really: "You might see the best-seller lists dominated by fiction "factories" in which ghostwriters churn out familiar-feeling work under the brands of famous authors. Got it." Has he never heard of Charles Dickens? Probably not, actually. But those fiction factories have existed since books got cheap enough for the mass market.

Not saying he's wrong - I guess I'm saying he's got nobody in his life willing to shoot down his pretty arguments before they hit the Wall Street freaking Journal, and that's a little sad.

<comment><USER10> What? Dickens wrote every word of his own stuff. And walked something like 20 miles a day, too -- often all the way out of London and all the way back. There was no "fiction factory" about him, just prodigious genius, and a whole lot of the best English ever written.

Adams is talking about stuff like this (chosen at random): [http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Tom- Clancy/dp/0399...](http://www.amazon.com/Against-All-Enemies-Tom- Clancy/dp/0399157301). Note the critical little "with" on the cover.

Dickens' success as a bestseller proves Adams' point, not yours. If you want an example of yours, pick Stratemeyer.

<comment><USER9> My God, you're right! I hate it when my memory doesn't match reality. Pretend I said "Alexandre Dumas", then.

<comment><USER10> Well, now I've learned something. I had no idea that Dumas wasn't the sole author of his novels. (I'm not sure how he did it qualifies as a "factory", but perhaps it does.) Not only that, I had no idea that Dumas was the grandson of a Haitian slave. Or that Chirac had his body exhumed in 2002 and moved to the Pantheon. Best Wikipedia learnage I've had in some time!

Edit: there's one interesting point about how Dumas worked. He relied on collaborators to come up with the basic plots and characters. Then _he_ did the detailed writing and stylistic fluorish. That's exactly the opposite of how most ghostwriting works, or so I imagine.

<comment><USER11> By definition, he was a _famous ghostwriter_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In Larry Niven's _A World Out of Time (1976)_ , a human mind is uploaded to a computer, and finds himself running an interstellar spacecraft. Since he has to be awake for centuries, he comes up with a trick. He writes a virus to erase all of his memories of boredom, so the next time he becomes bored and realizes he's experiencing a heretofore "new" emotion, he feels novelty. Then somehow, he learns of the trick and does it to himself again.

I guess that once we're uploaded, we could use something like this to "solve" the reddit and HN repost issue.

<comment><USER13> Once we're uploaded, we're no longer us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> <http://so12.edublogs.org/files/2011/03/bill1-2ecvk9b.gif>

</comment><comment><USER15> I went to see Ira Glass speak about creativity and storytelling. I was a beautifully crafted speech, and one rhetorical nugget I remember clearly was this:

" _Ideas come from other ideas._ "

He argued that we cannot be creative in isolation, but that if we surround ourselves with high-quality ideas and stories, we are more likely to produce them ourselves. That is what he sees (and strives to create) in public radio.

</comment><comment><USER16> There is some degree of truth to this, but it is balanced out by the fact that Internet gives you so many more ideas to combine. Creativity is essentially combining different ideas, and technology puts at your dispisal a constant stream of new ideas. You can follow in great depth the ones that tickle you.

The majority of people will always passively consume. That's nothing new; it's possibly a lot more visible now with a lot of content-free blogs/twitter/etc.

But for those so inclined, technology helps a lot. For one example, look at how many free programming languages are available for use now -- things that you can build billion dollar businesses on. It wasn't like that in 1985. And a pretty promiscuous combination of ideas that was required for this to come into being. Or just consider open source in general.

</comment><comment><USER17> I think this is applicable:

"when you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than ability. your tastes only narrow exclude people. so create." -Why The Lucky Stiff

</comment><comment><USER18> "My period of greatest creative output was during my corporate years, when every meeting felt like a play date with coma patients."

Love that line.

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with this. Creative bursts usually come at midnight when I force myself to switch everything off and go sleep or when I'm stuck on an aeroplane with nothing to do at all than sit and stare out of the window.

I however, won't miss staring at people while in line at chipotle. I also disagree with the sentiment that innovation itself is dead because of readily available distraction.

</comment><comment><USER20> My experience with my kids is that boredom definitely breeds creativity. We don't allow unlimited TV or computer time and when they are forced to be "bored" a short burst of complaint is usually followed by creative play. When they complain they are bored they hear Grandma's maxim: "Only the boring get bored."

However, I think it's slightly different for adults. Creative play is not something we're good at. I often find myself picking up some menial chore around the house when I feel I have nothing to do instead of doing something creative.

My best inspirations of creativity usually come when I'm thrown into some new, unanticipated situation by some outside force. Let's say I go to the DMV and wait in line and strike up a conversation with the next unlucky customer - <USER2> of a sudden I learn something totally new and unexpected that causes me to try or do something I have never done before.

In that sense our electronic gadgets are awful because they allow us to get immersed in completely self-selected entertainment, reinforcing existing feedback channels. Maybe it would be better to be receive only one channel on your TV and be forced to sit through a rerun of a Lawrence Welk episode (preferably with a lot of Polka.)

</comment><comment><USER21> It's very interesting to analyze the greek word for employment, working which is απασχόληση (apasholisi).

It comes from two words απα - σχόληση (apa-sholisi). The first part of the word απα (apa) is used when we want to give the opposite meaning so απασχόληση (apasxolisi) is the opposite or the lack of σχόληση (sholisi).

So that does this word means? It comes from the verb σχολάζω, sholazo which means study. For the greeks working was inferior to cultivating your mind, going to the gym or the theater. Studying for them was whatever had to do with the culture of the mind or the body. So employment or working prevented you from studying.

Aristotle has said: \- "Ασχολούμεθα ίνα σχολάζομεν" (asholoumetha ina sholazomen) which means that we are working in order to be able to study. More or less he said that we work in order to have the means to improve our body, soul and mind and not just work to live.

That's what the Greek said. (not the modern ones of course :) )

</comment><comment><USER22> I think a big aspect of creativity is finding new connections between things, applying a technique to a different domain, and combining ideas.

I think you need alternation, between stimulation and boredom. And the stimulation needs to have interesting ideas in it. Though, depending on the type of person you are, you won't find it novel (and therefore not stimulating) unless it does have new and interesting ideas in it.

But to be fair, I find my mind does tend to wander to creative problem solving if it's not occupied. i.e. boredom does help me. I think it might be that working out new ideas is hard work, and it's easier to be distracted.

<comment> j-kidd This is where coffee comes in. It kicks your brain up a notch, such that when you are busy reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, and chatting with your pals, you still have some spare brain cells left to feel bored.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I guess there is some truth to this. I usually have my best ideas while I'm jogging / walking. See, I've been jogging the same route (with minor variations) for almost 4 years now. Around 20 minutes after I started walking I can feel ideas pop up in my head. I've had some of my best ideas of the past years while jogging.

So that even helps combining two useful things for me: I process the happenings of the day, and I stay in form.

</comment><comment><USER24> "To be fair, economics is to blame for some of the decrease in creativity. A movie studio can make more money with a sequel than a gamble on something creative."

More specifically people want to know that they will enjoy something so they buy a brand that they're familiar with, even if it is repetitive.

</comment><comment><USER25> When there are so many people in this world in need of a friendly visit, or assistance in some way, shape or form, doing nothing is irresponsible.

Bottom line. HN pretty much qualifies for doing nothing. We should all abandon HN immediately and forever and get on with our lives.

I dare you.

</comment><comment><USER26> My best hack around this is commuting instead of driving a car and doing something mindless like cleaning the house or laundry after being stumped by a problem. Its in these times that ideas & solutions get formed or destroyed.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's a startup in this, somewhere.

Has anyone tried the YC startup <http://www.rescuetime.com/>? (I've been meaning to try it myself, but they want my credit card to begin.)

<comment><USER28> Yep, I didn't find Rescuetime very helpful. I tend to think employee monitoring is evil and if I am personally not engaged in the work I am doing I would rather find engaging work than look at the time I waste on other things (HN, for example).

A proposed startup: web interface that would block all devices totally (or simply from the internet) for certain period of time. For instance, you could click a button when you get home from work that says, "I'm done for the evening" that removes all electronic distractions until some set time in the morning.

Possibilities exist on different devices for this, but nothing that ties them all together. Of course, it may not be that popular since not all that many people that are addicted to their devices treat it as a serious problem to be remedied (HN addicts included).

<comment><USER27> Yup, if you (or someone) built that, I'd use it.

 _Of course, it may not be that popular since not all that many people that are addicted to their devices_

It's a growing problem. Every other day I see a mainstream news article about device/app addiction.

<comment><USER29> The big question is: would you pay for it?

<comment><USER27> Good question.

Depends obviously on the implementation. If it was seemless, didn't need to be configured, and actually worked, I'd pay something like, I dunno, $3.99 a month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm not too sure I agree with the specific notion that availability of distraction destroys creativity. Here's my (off the top of my head) take on creativity:

Problems 1: You come up with an idea, and tell yourself, "that's a good idea, I should remember that!" and then you _don't_ remember, or you tell yourself that you need to focus on fixing these bugs at work, or on whatever other task is at hand.

Problem 2: Your mental energy is sapped by whatever you're currently doing. It's like the classic Stephen King quote about how working simple manual labor (laundry) was fantastic for creativity and writing.

The solution to problem one is to always have a means of taking notes, one which you will _definitely_ revisit. This frees you from wanting to focus off- task when you need to be on-task, and it allows you to revisit and refine your thoughts. Problem two is tougher. Find a job doing exactly what stimulates your creativity. Let's face it, though, that's not as easy as blogs and Dice make it out to be. The only advice I can give is to quit your job and do _exactly_ what you feel like doing until you've found a problem you want to solve, but that's not a very constructive path.

I've found that by simply doing whatever I want each day, I'm exposed to way more interesting problems that I _want_ to solve. I listen to things like podcast while performing tedious, manual labor (cycling, weight lifting, cleaning, wrenching, etc), and I feel like it's both easier to get the tasks done, and I'm left with a feeling of better variety of mental exposure. I'm currently experiencing a much more creative/inventive period in my life than I have in years.

<comment><USER31> _The solution to problem one is to always have a means of taking notes, one which you will definitely revisit. This frees you from wanting to focus off- task when you need to be on-task, and it allows you to revisit and refine your thoughts_

This is exactly David Allen's GTD mantra. But a number of creativity books I've looked at talk about the importance of "giving yourself permission" to have ideas, part of which means having the means to record them wherever they happen. I found the number of ideas I have started to increase once I got into this.

<comment><USER30> Interesting, and that's probably where I heard of it, through second-hand sources. I think it's very similar to (what I understand to be) a fundamental concept of meditation: that when a thought pops into your head, you acknowledge it, and put it aside. The notebook thing seems to be the same concept on a different level.

<comment><USER31> Yeah, Allen also co-opts the phrase "mind like water" from Karate to mean what you refer to as meditation here.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Asm.js - <AUTHOR> http://asmjs.org/faq.html <comment><USER2> This was posted here a few days ago.</comment>


Ask HN: Easy introduction to Bayesian Statistics? - <AUTHOR> Looking for an easy and quick introduction to Bayesian statistics.
It needs to be brief and very easy to understand. Kruschke's book is just far too big, as is Gelman's.
Also any similarly brief and easy-to-understand resources on Bayesian Optimization would be very helpful as well. <comment><USER2> What other subject has a problem so simple, that an elementary school student could easily understand it?

Yet, the problem received 10,000 wrong answers, many from PhDs, even some mathematicians, including one who refused to believe the answer even after seeing proofs.

To be able to teach counterintuitive concepts is an impressive skill. Wish I had a recommendation but let us know if you find one.

So does any other problem meet the above criteria?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem)</comment>


The centuries-old struggle to play in tune - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2250793/pagenum/all <comment><USER2> As a non-musician, it's interesting to read about the frustrations and tensions involved in tuning. So similar to the trade-offs we have to make in writing software, and equally obscure and surprising to non-participants.</comment>


Facebook Community Substandards – A weak stance on hate speech - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/facebook-community-substandards-fdbfc7b700e2 <comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, I'm the original author of the article.

The article is based on my recent experience with Facebook's review policies.</comment>


A Conversation about Artificial General Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://soundcloud.com/doexplain/11-a-window-on-intelligence-with-dennis-hackethal <comment><AUTHOR> Full disclosure: I'm the interviewee. I'm interested in critically discussing the interview.</comment>


Animated GIF photography - <AUTHOR> http://fromme-toyou.tumblr.com/tagged/gif <comment><USER2> A similar concept that one might like: <http://iwdrm.tumblr.com></comment>


How to turn a biased coin into a Fair Coin - <AUTHOR> http://carlos.bueno.org/2011/10/fair-coin.html <comment><USER2> What I particularly like here is that the title of the article, and thus the title of the HN post, fully conveyed the puzzle, so I was able to think about it for a moment before reading the article, solve it, and then confirm that I had the correct answer. Always a happy moment. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> This works and is very intuitive, but loses quite a bit of the coin flip's entropy in the process. There are more efficient algorithms, such as <http://www.eecs.umich.edu/~qstout/abs/AnnProb84.html> , which better use the entropy generated by the coin flip.

<comment><USER4> One solution I heard has a basic idea that's quick to explain, although the details are messy. It might be interesting to get some intution:

Flip the coin N times and count the number of heads, K. You got one of the C = {N \choose K} = N!/((N-K)!K!) ways of getting K heads, all of which have the same probability, no matter what the bias of the coin is. If you consider an ordering of the C choices, then you have an integer from 0 to C-1 drawn uniformly at random. You could represent that integer using binary and extract about log_2(C) random bits.

For large N, the number of bits extracted is nearly the optimal NH bits, where H is the binary entropy of the coin. To count how far through a list of combinations I am for large N, I might construct a lattice and, I'm guessing, start reproducing works referenced by the paper that the parent linked to. Whereas the paper itself seems to have, from my quick skim, the definitive answer. Nice.

As tucked away in another comment, related is: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If anyone is wondering, the interactive calculator is done using Tangle (<http://worrydream.com/Tangle/>) made by Bret Victor (most recently of <http://worrydream.com/#!/LadderOfAbstraction> fame).

Good to see more examples of it in the wild.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, the Euro, when introduced back in the early 2000s was considered biased and even led to a statistician testing it out.

<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1748>

<comment><USER4> The statement about spinning is too weak. You _have_ to spin rather than flip to try to reveal bias: [http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/dice...](http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/diceRev2.pdf)

As for the statistical significance, here's another view of how to do it: [http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/euro.htm...](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/euro.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a pretty well known problem. (First problem the professor in my undergrad algorithms class ever gave to us)

 __ __ __ _SPOILER_ __ __ __ __

p = probability of heads

1 - p = probability of tails.

flip the coin twice:

head head = p^2

head tail/tail head = 2p(1-p)

tail tail = (1 - p)^2

Notice the two in the middle there. We can just say head tail = Heads and Tail Heads = Tails. If we get HH or PP, just do it again.

Ok, now call the above procedure, our "randomization algorithm"

we can calculate the expected running time -- our algorithm succeeds with probability 2p(1-p). The number of trials we need to run our algorithm for is a geometric random variable. Thus, the expected running time is 1/(2p(1-p)).

<comment><USER8> thanks for writing this. the formula used in the webpage, (HH+TT+HT)/TH, appears to be off by one. i calculated it myself from the series, i.e. sum(n=0 to inf, 2(n+1)2pq(p^2+q^2)^n), and through the algebra i work it out to the same as yours (doubled).

i'm not sure how the author's formula was derived, but i get the same result calculating the series for a slightly different (but wrong) algorithm: just keep flipping until HT or TH appears (not flipping by pairs). this series is sum(n=1 to inf, (n+1)(qp^n + pq^n)), i.e. sum(n=0 to inf, (n+1)(qp^n + pq^n)) - (p+q). the series works out to 1/(p(1-p)), but that last term would account for the one-off difference.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I am going off of the original algo by von Neumann, which throws away both flips if you get HH or TT. There are many others, and I don't see any reason against your optimization, if the flips are truly independent.

<http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~libcs124/CS/coinflip3.pdf>

<comment><USER8> yeah, indeed -- but i think the optimization is actually broken. if you are just waiting for an HT or a TH in a sequence of flips, then you will just wind up with H..HT or T..TH, so that the very first flip decides the outcome. this is how i first (much too hastily) read the algorithm, but, somewhat surprisingly, found that the expectation matched exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool article, I got asked this question during my FB interviews and had luckily seen something exactly like this before.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you did, then it was very likely me interviewing you, and you should have said that you had seen it before. #busted :D

<comment><USER10> Well, this is why you shouldn't be using semi-well-known problems as interview questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> A fair cop. :) I used to ask it as a follow-up to a much harder, less "ah-ha" question, to see how candidates approach probability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If I set the slider to 50% then it still wants me to flip 3 times. At 50% one flip would do. There should be at least an exception for that situation, I can't imagine I'm being alone in testing the edge cases first.

<comment><AUTHOR> 50/50 is a special case. You don't need to use the von Neumann extractor. This algo is for sources of randomness that you suspect have a bias.

But if you did use this algo on a 50/50 coin, half the time you'll get an HH or TT and have to start over. The other half of the time you'll get an HT or TH and return. So, on average, you'll need to do 3 flips for each execution of the algo.

<comment><USER11> Sure, I get that.

But that's why the bias can never be a (discrete) input, it is an emergent property of some unknown piece of matter, not something you set with a slider in steps of 1%.

As the coin gets more biased you'll need to flip more often to get a HT or TH pair with the amount of bias showing up as the frequency of the heads and tails over a longer run.

But the interesting bits are right around the middle where you can take a coin that is nearly perfect and use it in a perfect way, even when you can't even find out in finite time if the coin is perfect or not (and I would expect no real life coin to be perfect, but I would expect them to be so good as to be undetectable in a reasonable amount of time, 50/50 to me is 'perfection', I can't tell the left 50 from the one on the right).

The 'edge case', a perfect coin does not need three flips, it just needs one. If that's not the intended outcome you could either remove that 50/50 point or handle it correctly.

One of the more elegant ways of doing that would be to go from 49.9 to 50.1 or so, or an even smaller difference from the true center.

<comment><USER12> I think you are missing the trick here. Since HT and TH are equally likely, regardless the bias of the coin, as soon as you get one or the other, you can count it as a fair flip. All other combinations (HH and TT) are just ignored. The number of flips shown by the form is just about how patient you'll have to be to get a fair flip (HT or TH).

It doesn't matter how often you get TH and HT, only that they have the same frequency. Given then the probability of TH and HT are the same, if you only consider flips resulting in TH or HT, you automatically have a fair coin, no matter how bad (or good) the coin is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you like these types of puzzles, the biggest online collection I've found is at:

<http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/riddles/hard.shtml>

</comment><comment><USER14> This article claims this algorithm is very likely happening inside my computer right now, but it doesn't elaborate. Why would my computer be performing this algorithm?

<comment><USER15> From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomness_extractor>:

Randomness extractors are used widely in cryptographic applications, whereby a cryptographic hash function is applied to a high-entropy, but non-uniform source, such as disk drive timing information or keyboard delays, to yield a uniformly random result.

Is that what he is talking about?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Maybe I'm crazy and it's the end of the day and my reading comprehension is shot, but I honestly can't even understand what the question is. Can somebody explain?

<comment><USER17> A fair coin would be one that is equally likely to land on either heads or tails when tossed - on any given toss, you have exactly a 50% chance of getting either heads or tails.

A biased coin, on the other hand, has a bias towards one side or another - e.g. you could have a coin that lands on heads 75% of the time.

The question is - if you've got a biased coin, how do you get it to behave like the fair coin?

It's probably easier to imagine a 10 sided die. You've got one with 7 sides painted red and 3 painted blue, so you've got a 70% chance of rolling red on any given roll. But you and your friend want to be able to use this die to decide who's round it is next - guess the right colour and it's the other guy's round. If you were to base this on a single role, you'd obviously both want to pick red. So what you want is to be able to use this die to create two outcomes which are both equally likely to happen.

Does that help?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would say both parties flip the coin. The one that throws heads wins. If they both throw the same, they need to throw again. Easy and effective :)

</comment><comment><USER19> This sounds simpler - if it works (can anyone confirm it?)

* We maintain a fair coin abstraction that contains an unfair coin. * Along with the unfair coin, we also maintain a counter 'C'. * 'C' starts from 0, counting up 1 every time the coin is flipped. * If C % 2 == 0 then we report the value of the unfair coin's toss. Otherwise, we reverse the value of the unfair coin's toss and report it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Related: I vaguely recall hearing of a p2p game client where dice rolls were needed and to secure against cheating they polled each client and took the modulo of the sum of responses (iirc). You get unbiased outcomes as long as one player doesn't cheat.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the few sites, where I don't need to use my iReader chrome extension to read the text. I love the font and the hyphenation using the sweet-justice JS script seems to work out great.

<comment><USER22> The hyphenation seems a bit off. The word mathematical is split as "mat- hematical" which I'm quite sure is incorrect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> i'm not sure if i understand the problem. couldn't you just take the inverted result of every other flip?

<comment><USER24> No. With a large bias you'd have hundreds of one result for one of the other.</comment></comment>


50 startups TechCrunch was too busy to cover (while talking about themselves) - <AUTHOR> http://www.launch.is/blog/the-50-startups-techcrunch-didnt-cover-but-we-did.html

<comment><USER2> I love that you're working on the TC competitor. Strangely I've found that I just don't read the LAUNCH stories very often.

I know it may sound trivial, but I suspect it's partly because of the grey on grey text and inline formatting of the topic headers.

The format of "WHEN/WHERE", etc also seems pretty boring. It's like I'm reading a LAUNCH application for a company. The reason people _used_ to love TechCrunch was because Arrington would take all that detail then condense it down, add perspective, and make it interesting to read.

It also doesn't seem like you're really keeping up to your mission of quality over quantity. Tons of the stuff on LAUNCH is news-of-the-day linkbait. It looks like there are 10+ articles per day now, most of which are covering the same kind of crap that TechCruch does.

And the company profiles don't seem particularly great all the time. Look how sparse this one is: [http://www.launch.is/blog/hottest-techstars-company- debuting...](http://www.launch.is/blog/hottest-techstars-company-debuting- tomorrow-inboxfever.html)

Just some feedback. I think you're on to something pretty cool with LAUNCH. I just don't feel it's up to snuff quite yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would suspect www.CrunchFund.com to be on that list.. Since it's not TechCrunch or related to Michael Arrington at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> we actually are trying to stay away from reporting on angel investors/VCs/funds....

... we want to cover creators of actual product and founders.

<comment><USER4> congrats on getting it "launched". It's great you are giving exposure to the startups that Techcrunch started off giving, bu then stopped.

<comment><AUTHOR> exactly... we're trying to re-establish the covering of innovation, features and products.

not fighting with our corporate parent. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Paypal Updates Terms of Service - <AUTHOR> https://www.paypal.com/us/webapps/mpp/ua/upcoming-policies-full?locale.x=en <comment><AUTHOR> The thing that sticks out to me is:

We are adding a non-discouragement clause for sellers that provides:

In representations to your customers or in public communications, you agree not to mischaracterize PayPal as a payment method. At all of your points of sale (in whatever form), you agree not to try to dissuade or inhibit your customers from using PayPal; and, if you enable your customers to pay you with PayPal, you agree to treat PayPal's payment mark at least at par with other payment methods offered.

Seems like it will have widespread implications. I'm seen a lot of places that accept donations which eg. accept PayPal but encourage bitcoin.</comment>