Lens: Desktop application for managing Kubernetes clusters - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kontena/lens <comment><USER2> There is a screenshot burired in the source. [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/lens/master/images...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lensapp/lens/master/images/screenshot.png)

A desktop app _really_ needs a screenshot in the readme.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, especially as it looks pretty slick!

<comment><USER4> Agreed!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Note that a ticket asking for the ability to turn off/remove/opt-out of data collection was closed as "wontfix".

The argument is that there will be an enterprise version to allow that, with "enterprise licensing".

[https://github.com/lensapp/lens/issues/93](https://github.com/lensapp/lens/issues/93)

<comment><USER6> From the wontfix issue:

> We collect data that you submit via kontena account registration. We collect > data about events that are happening in Lens app: application started, > application stopped, logged in, logged out, cluster settings page open, > cluster view open, cluster feature X installed, cluster feature X > uninstalled, cluster feature X upgraded, terminal opened and kubernetes > resource applied. There is no metadata related to these collected. We are > not collecting any kind of telemetry data from Lens app: for example we > don't know how many clusters you might have, how many nodes you have, what > is actually running in your cluster etc.

vs.

> It's the only way for the company behind the product to see how many users > are actively using it.

That's a lot of data for the simple task of seeing how many users are actively using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been playing with the beta of Infra, which serves a similar purpose. Also with checking out

[https://www.infra.app/](https://www.infra.app/)

<comment><USER8> I've been using Infra.app for over 3 weeks. Love it. Made by the founders of Kitematic and Docker for Mac and Windows. Their care shows in the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> k9s is an excellent CLI alternative.

[https://github.com/derailed/k9s](https://github.com/derailed/k9s)

<comment><USER10> I learned about this on HN a couple weeks ago. Game changer for me on the app dev side. Makes poking into the pods to look at logging way easier, especially since I'm not a specialized DevOps resource.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's nice to see work in this area. I was familiar with Kontena (the company that creates Lens) because they have a really nice k8s ruby client lib, but I haven't given Lens a try yet. I use k9s (mentioned elsewhere) primarily and VS Code has a nice porcelain for k8s, but it doesn't feel like anyone has really nailed a GUI yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> Despite no screenshots I gave it a try.

It actually works well, it automatically read the contexts from my local kubectl configuration and it's got a dark theme. I'll be properly test-driving this for the following days.

</comment><comment><USER12> This is like a shot-for-shot remake of the official kubernetes-dashboard. That isn't a bad thing, but I don't see why I'd use this over the web app -- it doesn't feel native and will probably always lag behind dashboard

It does feel snappy, and looks good.

One cute GUI utility I've found useful is [https://kube- forwarder.pixelpoint.io/](https://kube-forwarder.pixelpoint.io/).

</comment><comment><USER13> Missing screenshot or video. Found this on youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04v2ODsmtIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04v2ODsmtIs)

I've also found k9s nice to use: [https://github.com/derailed/k9s](https://github.com/derailed/k9s)

</comment><comment><USER4> No screenshots?

<comment><USER14> PR for fixing that here ... [https://github.com/lensapp/lens/pull/124](https://github.com/lensapp/lens/pull/124)

They had an image in the repo, but it wasn't referenced in the readme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Been using this for a while solely bc they show custom resources

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone else think this is insane? Kubernetes is there to manage Docker. Docker is there to run software you don't have to install, which is something operating systems should let you do anyway.

Are we going to have a kubernetes manager manager soon?

If Kubernetes management is a problem, fix Kubernetes. Ultimately, Docker should be fixed so that kubernetes is not needed. After that, operating systems should allow you to simply copy a binary over and run it, statically compiled. This type of distribution should be the norm and not the exception.

We keep piling things on top of other things, and no one seems to care. There are no adults overseeing us, and we soiled our diapers a while ago.

<comment><USER17> Tell me about it. It's laziness if you ask me (not that anyone is, and that might be a good thing.)

I would have rather we (as an industry) focused on the developing better languages and frameworks to write our software with. Look at Go for example...

With Go I can create a single binary, produce a DEB or RPM and deploy it using Ansible. If I need to update the software I make a change and push it through the CI/CD stack, resulting in another binary, then another DEB/RPM, then an updated set of servers. I then restart a service... so hard /s

If I need to run micro services, then, you know, just run them? They're all statically linked, singular binaries on disk. If I need to run 500 of them, then I just run them. Each gets whatever port it can find and registers its self with (something like) Consul and just like that, I'm DNS query or an API call away from knowing what services I have, where they are and what port to talk to them on.

I believe we should be focusing on making those processes better, not just adding more complex layers on top of simple solutions.

I know K8s has its benefits, but I believe the same benefits can be realised easily enough without the complexities that K8s brings. Obviously I can't outline them here in a comment on HN, but I am working on providing a POC in the near future.

EDIT: and to those down voting me: that's also lazy. Cognitive laziness. Prove me wrong. Also, I don't care about Internet Points, I care about the truth and finding what's true. I wish you the best of luck though.

<comment><USER18> "Kubernetes is too complex" // proceeds to macgyver half of kubernetes in her own opinionated way...

<comment><USER17> > proceeds to macgyver half of kubernetes in her own opinionated way...

What, by suggesting we run a process on its own instead of wrapping it something that isn't required?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vitamin D: the New Covid-19 Chloroquine? - <AUTHOR> https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/vitamin-d-the-new-covid-19-chloroquine/ <comment><USER3> Did my masters on Vitamin D - It is very difficult to extract CLINICALLY RELEVANT information from retrospective epidemiological studies.

However, there a a few things that are clear:

1\. Calcium absorption from the intestine increases with vitamin D supplementation dose up to around 8-10,000 IU D3 daily.

2\. 15 minutes of full body exposure in noon sun is equivalent to a dose of ~20,000 IU D3

3\. There are few cases of vitamin D overdose in the literature - doses in the 1,000,000 IU+ range within days is generally where symptoms are noted - <USER2> excludes people with kidney disorders.

Personally, I take 10k IU D3 a day. The D3 is important because D2 has 1/2 to 1/3 the effect per dose in raising calcium absorption levels.

I would recommend this level of supplementation to anyone who doesn't have a kidney disorder.

<comment><USER4> Re #2: the figure gets thrown around a lot. But who is outside, naked, at noon for fifteen minutes? It's really hard to translate that to anything meaningful or actionable.

Here's a tool that can help calculate useful exposure depending on your location/time of year. Doesn't take clothing into account however..

[https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD- ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html](https://fastrt.nilu.no/VitD- ez_quartMEDandMED_v2.html)

<comment><USER5> The point is that being outside naked at noon every day for 15 minutes wouldn't hurt you. Therefore, a daily dose of 20,000 IU / day won't hurt you. Therefore, a 5000 IU supplement every day won't hurt you either.

<comment><USER6> is this just an extrapolation or does my body actually constantly produce the same amount of vitamin D if i sit in the sun even if I don't have a deficit?

Because usually phisiological processes are in some kind of equilibrium and regulated, so it's not straightforward to compare it to supplements.

<comment><USER3> 7-dehydrocholesterol is photolyzed by UV to previtamin D. There is then spontaneous isomerization between this previtamin D, vitamin D and 2 inactive isomers. As vitamin D is used by the body, and the inactive isomers remain in the skin, there is an equilibrium - as vitamin D is used by the body it is drawn from the skin, leading to more conversion of inactive isomers to active vitamin D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since I was a child I've been a walking respiratory illness machine. Bronchitis, sinusitis, flu, pneumonia, common cold, etc.

During "flu" season I was usually sick for the entire season with a rotating assortment of viral respiratory issues, this lasted until about 7 years ago.

8 years ago in September I started taking 10,000 IU of vitamin D3 and 180mg of K2 daily.

I haven't had a deputies illness since. My children were getting sick at their normal clip, my wife the same, but not me. I went from being sick all the time to not getting sick ever. I made one change in my life, adding the D3 and K2.

After 2 years of not getting sick my wife and children started supplementing with D3 and K2, everyone stopped getting sick. My son went off to college and stopped taking the D3 and K2 and during the winter semester he got sick twice, he had me sent him the D3 and K2, he hasn't been sick since.

It's a small sample size, but even at 10,000 IU daily D3 is not dangerous or expensive, the only caveat seems to be that you need to supplement with K2 or you can cause gardening if the arteries due to calcification.

My doctor thinks it's a lot of nonsense, but then again he wants every patient on blood pressure and cholesterol medication "just in case".

<comment><USER8> I had anxiety attacks and back pain for years. Maybe it's just a weird and strong placebo effect, but after starting to take vitamin D these things were simply gone.

<comment><USER9> I found the same - I was starting to get anxiety first thing in the morning - started taking Vitamin D and it simply stopped. At the time I had no idea that Vitamin D could have that effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> All these articles about different individual nutrients start to feel like heath whack-a-mole.

How about this: to be in the best possible position to beat any serious infection, you need to be in generally good health.

That means having adequate levels of all essential nutrients - i.e., all the vitamins, minerals, amino acids, enzymes etc that you get from maintaining a good diet and healthy lifestyle over the long term.

To focus on just one nutrient as a pandemic looms just isn't the answer; it's not how health works.

That said, I've personally researched what nutrients (note the plural) are most important for beating an infection like this, and have adjusted my nutrient intake somewhat, and recommended to close relatives they do the same. But this is after I and they have spent many years researching and maintaining good health practices.

Update: if I was in not-so-good health (and not in medical treatment for a diagnosed condition, in which case, consult your doctor), my approach would be:

\- boost my amino acids, fatty acids and minerals with a few spoonfuls of hemp seeds every day

\- take extra supplements of vitamins A, B complex, C and D (and perhaps K?)

\- do plenty of walking in the fresh air and sun,

\- keep a generally healthy diet of good quality protein and veg.

Update 2: Others are mentioning Vitamin K, which seems like a good idea to supplement if you're generally nutrient deficient, but may not be necessary if you have a good diet. [1]

Disclaimer: not a health professional, but have had personal reasons to get very knowledgable about health and diet over many years.

[1] [https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in- vitamin-k](https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/foods-high-in-vitamin-k)

<comment><USER11> And, try to get those things from foods. It can't be said enough: Fruits and Vegetables have extremely high densities of all your minerals and vitamins. I've calculated all their densities here based on USDA nutritional info: [https://kale.world/c](https://kale.world/c) All the results are normalized to 200 calories for easy comparison.

When you get your vitamins/minerals from a pill, you run the risk of your body not absorbing it because that's not how our bodies adapted to absorb those things for millions of years.

If you're eating a healthy diet (90%+ plant based whole foods), you will get more than enough minerals/vitamins and amino acids.

Taking a few spoon fulls of hemp seeds is an excellent idea: it's super high in magnesium which is a mineral that most of us are greatly lacking. But, I would consider hemp seeds as just another food part of a plant based whole foods diet. personally, i add it to salads, smoothies, etc.

And you don't need Vitamin K supplements. Greens are extraordinarily high in Vitamin K. Even, just 20 calories of Spinach will provide over 400% of your daily Vitamin K intake!

People, be especially careful with supplements, they're very much unregulated and can put almost anything they want in those things.

Nature makes the best supplements: it's called food (plant based whole foods with a variety of grains and beans, lots of vegetables and fruits and some meat) and it has everything our body needs. Yes, for vitamin D, you'll need to go outside and get some exposure to the sun. Actually, doctor's tell us, Vitamin D isn't even a Vitamin, it's actually a hormone that your body makes all on it's own with enough exposure to sun. But, based on your skin pigmentation, you may need more or less exposure.

<comment><USER12> > Fruits and Vegetables have extremely high densities of all your minerals and > vitamins.

I don't think they have B12, you need to get that from animal sources or a pill.

<comment><USER11> There are mushrooms which contain B12. Or you could go with soymilk, almond milk, etc. Those typically are fortified with B12.

People used to get B12 from the bacteria in the soil and the plants we eat. Not, anymore.

So, yes, you could eat some meat. B12 is present in very high concentrations in a lot of sea food.

<comment><USER12> Last I checked none of those things are fruits or vegetables. Suggesting they were enough to get all necessary vitamins and minerals was simply inaccurate and bad health advice.

When I Google "mushroom B12" it seems to suggest mushrooms have almost none.

People used to get B12 by eating meat (which I use generally to also include seafood).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Adipose tissue ("belly fat") appears to absorb but not release vitamin D. If we want to do some armchair hypothesizing, perhaps people historically used to lose weight in winter, which definitely would release the stored vitamin D just when it was needed."

This is an interesting idea. It's believed our bodies get fat to ensure we have energy when food is scarce. It makes sense that we'd also want to have vitamins available too.

<comment><USER14> An addition to that: Over a decade ago (so unfortunately I have no reference, this just stuck with me for how against common sense it was) I remember reading that being overweight but not obese correlated with good health better than being "normal" weight did. Their theory was that if being sick made it so you were less hungry, you could still get an energy boost by using up fat reserves and be able to fight off illness faster.

This sounds like a much more specific and more testable version of that theory.

<comment> rvp-x I assume this is a related newspaper article: [https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families...](https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/health-news/overweight-septuagenarians-live-longer- study-5520318.html)

Important to note it refers to overweight (might be referred to as "a little chubby"), not obese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Sufficient levels of Vitamin D are good for your health in general, separate from this pandemic. Getting sufficient levels of it is something we all should've been doing before anyways, which is not true of Chloroquine.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm surprised the article barely mentions Vitamin K, which is needed along with Vitamin D - D to mobilize the calcium and K2 to put it into the right place.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613455/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5613455/)

<comment><USER17> There is another important pair, too: Vitamin D and Magnesium. But consult your doctor before taking extra amounts of anything.

There is a lot of misinformation on the web around Vitamin D, such as that even high amounts (>= 5000IU) are tolerable and safe. After a blood test showed me Vitamin D deficient, taking 5000IU (that size is readily available over the counter at my grocery store) daily gave me disturbing heart palpitations, which I didn't realize were related to Vitamin D until after thousands of dollars in tests showed my heart to be perfectly healthy. It wasn't until I had slacked off in taking the vitamins and then started taking them again that I discovered the connection. Apparently magnesium has something to do with it, but IANAD. (I was not taking magnesium supplements at the time.) I can tolerate 1000IU occasionally, but people need to be aware that not everyone tolerates supplements (especially high doses) the same.

I was happy to see the article you linked to above only claims Vitamin D is considered safe up to 4000IU. Although IMHO, after my experience, anything over 1000IU should require a prescription. Of course nothing would stop people from taking five 1000IU OTC doses to get 5000IU, but I think most people know better than to take five of the same type of vitamin daily without talking to their doctor first.

<comment><USER18> These units seem _incredibly_ low to me. Your skin can generate almost 3000 IU in just 15 minutes on the right day. Many doctors even recommend treatments of 150,000 IU or more, in one go to correct deficiencies (do not do attempt without a doctor's recommendation and supervision).

I do not doubt your experience, but it seems incredible to me that just a 5000 IU supplement gave you heart palpitations. Then again, I've also read many reports about incorrectly labeled products (e.g. milk, supplements, etc.) which contained far more D2 or D3 than what was written on the tin, causing toxicity.

<comment><USER17> I appreciate your respectful skepticism. It is entirely possible that the supplements contained significantly more than on the label. However, I'd like to point out that the generally recommended dose for supplements is only 800IU in adults, with up to 4000IU only in the case of Vitamin D deficiency. The "tolerable upper intake level" is 4000IU [1]. I am unable to track through Wikipedia's sources here at the moment, but that aligns with the parent of my original comment which I believe is in a peer reviewed journal. I would imagine that number was determined due to people like myself not tolerating amounts above 4000IU.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Dietary_intake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Dietary_intake)

<comment><USER19> The original RDA of 800 was designed to combat Rickets and has recently been thought to be significantly too low for folks in higher latitudes. Given the high number of variables perhaps simple RDA guidelines are not practical.

I take roughly 5k per day in the winter and it has helped a lot. See my other post for details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Welp. I don't think it's gonna make _the_ difference if I get COVID-19, but I did order some Vitamin D supplements. I live in a low-sunlight area, work indoors, and don't drink a lot of milk. 75% of people in my region are Vitamin D deficient. I can put two and two together.

<comment><AUTHOR> My guess: It might not make _the_ difference whether you _get_ it, but it's not at all unlikely (given all the evidence that has accumulated so far & extrapolation from experience w/ other viral respiratory infections) that it will influence disease severity significantly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are so many medical questions that can only be answered definitively with large-scale, years-long randomized experiments. Anything relating to supplements, where effect sizes are probably small, especially. These are expensive and difficult to perform and there's (to my knowledge) no institution dedicated to that goal.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like Vitamin D deficiency correlates with every disease. A large % of everyone has a vitamin D deficiency so there is always a high correlation.

<comment><USER23> The percentage of the population that is vitamin D deficient can't affect its correlation with disease. It's perfectly possible that after this, vitamin D is added to tap water such that very few people are deficient but the correlation with deficiency and disease would be unchanged.

<comment><USER24> > It's perfectly possible that after this, vitamin D is added to tap water

Vitamin D is fat soluble, not water soluble.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This requires a huge correlation != causation flag.

The article briefly mentions this, noting that it's possible vitamin D is just a sign of a healthy person, so of course they'll do better with COVID. Another correlation that doesn't get discussed whenever vitamin D comes up is that people with darker skin generally have less vitamin D, because our skin doesn't absorb sunlight as much. We also know that COVID is disproportionately hitting colored neighborhoods in the US. Is that just because of vitamin D differences? Who knows!

By the way, if you are a person of color, you probably need vitamin D supplements. The recommended doses are for white people, so adjust accordingly.

<comment><USER26> I felt like the article spent sufficient time on the idea that the explanation could be that healthier people simply have higher vitamin D levels, and that the vitamin D itself is not the cause. At no point did they choose a side on that part, the bias was only that they believe vitamin D is a promising avenue.

I really loved that the whole piece was informational, and not trying to convince the reader that Vitamin D is or isn't a cure or remedy for anything. It simply presented the available facts, the research, and the positives and negatives of that research. It even explained multiple aspects and positions of the debate on whether vitamin D supplementation is good or bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> With all this talk about Vitamin D and K deficiencies, which inevitable meanders onto Magnesium and fish oil supplements and whatnot; maybe it's time for a "vitamin subscription service"? Enter a bunch of information (location, lifestyle, diet, health issues) and get tailor made supplements sent to your home every month? The levels of some vitamins could vary depending on time of year (more D in winter) or circumstances (more Mg when more active in summer).

Ideally all packaged into one tablet or something. I take an unholy cocktail of supplements to help curb my migraines, that's 5 tablets/caps a day. Not much fun.

<comment><USER27> These guys create a supplement based off your DNA: [https://www.nutrahacker.com/](https://www.nutrahacker.com/) [https://ginihealth.com/](https://ginihealth.com/)

These let you create the vitamin/supplement mix you want: [https://getvitaminlab.com/](https://getvitaminlab.com/)

last time I tried, it ended up quite more expensive than my D vitamins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> FYI also, researchers are suggesting that the Lancet HCQ study everyone (and the WHO) references nowadays is fake: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/29/covid-19-surgi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/29/covid-19-surgisphere- hydroxychloroquine-study-lancet-coronavirus-who-questioned-by-researchers- medical-professionals). The authors could not have had the data they claimed they had. This is just one bit of news you will never find on CNN.

<comment><USER29> Yep. More: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305606](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23305606)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> The article "Is Sunscreen the new margarine" argues that _" what made the people with high vitamin D levels so healthy was not the vitamin itself. That was just a marker. Their vitamin D levels were high because they were getting plenty of exposure to the thing that was really responsible for their good health—that big orange ball shining down from above."_ [1]. If this is true, we have mistaken coincidence due to a common latent cause for causation.

The article "Limits of Vitamin D supplements" is a summary of the Lancet meta- analysis: "Vitamin D status and ill health: a systematic review", which is paywalled [2]. The review shows that Vitamin D supplementation has no clinically beneficial outcome on heart disease, stroke, or cancer.

FWIW, I have been supplementing with Vitamin D for over a decade. I would rather like Vitamin D to work because I have chronically low levels and it would be good to have such a good silver bullet of a nutrient. I have not stopped my supplementation but I do take more frequent walks in the Sun.

[1] [https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun- exposure...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure- skin-cancer-science)

[2] ([https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/limits-of- vitamin-...](https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/limits-of-vitamin-d- supplements/))

</comment><comment><USER19> My anecdote. I learned about the importance of D3 on Steve Gibson's podcast about a decade ago. At the time had a kid in preschool and spent almost the whole year sick, so was quite intrigued.

Started with 1,000 IU a day and getting sick stopped abruptly. For the last decade or so, haven't been sick more than one day, two at max, with one exception.

Yes, believe I had CV in March and "walked it off" in about 6 days or so with mild symptoms.

Last few years I've taken 5,000 IU several times a week (from Trader Joes, which has an excellent price of $4.99). As compared to Albertsons which disgustingly tries to get $15-20 for the same thing. Unfortunately this news has made both C and D unavailable at Trader Joe's for months. We'll run out soon and need to buy the gouging price somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER31> For me this is a perfect example of wishful thinking.

It's really hard for average person to accept reality: This virus, like all others, will last for a long time. We won't have, in a foreseeable future, a treatment neither a cure. Cancer, HIV or even seasonal flue are good examples examples of diseases that were discovered decades ago for which science still don't have a cure, there are a few treatments or easing medication, but none of them can be actually cured.

I expect that people will move from crazy solution to another on a regular basis until a final cure is found.. my expectation is this will last for years.

<comment><USER32> We have extremely good treatments for HIV. And that one is particularly difficult to cure because it infects your immune system.

Cancer isn't an infection and is a million different diseases lumped together.

We could prevent the flu much more reliably if it didn't mutate so much. Will this disease do the same? Maybe. It's very hard to know.

<comment><USER33> So far SARS-CoV-2 mutates much slower than the various influenza strains due to fundamental differences in the RNA transcription mechanism. That is unlikely to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> dminder is a great app to estimate Vitamin D "intake"/production through sun exposure (and also food, albeit this won't matter much for most people):

[http://dminder.ontometrics.com/](http://dminder.ontometrics.com/)

I only wish the algorithm used to derive the estimates was public/documented somewhere ...

[http://dminder.ontometrics.com/Estimation.html](http://dminder.ontometrics.com/Estimation.html)

</comment><comment><USER34> I definitely dug out my vit D pills as a result of the coverage. Worst case scenario it creates expensive pee. Maybe it'll have some upside though

<comment><USER35> > Worst case scenario it creates expensive pee.

Well, that's one thing you don't need to worry about. Vitamin D is fat- soluble, so any excess isn't excreted in urine (hence the arguments over effective vs. excessive dosage).

<comment><USER34> >Well, that's one thing you don't need to worry about. Vitamin D is fat- soluble

Good point. Thanks for pointing that out. I knew about the whole concept of water vs fat but didn't occur to me in this context

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> These studies need to keep up until we can fully account for the difference in fatality not only worldwide, but state to state.

Why has Japan, with an older population (median age 47), a tiny island, crowded indoor subways —- has only experienced 900 deaths and never locked down! while some zip codes in New York experiences 2x that amount.

Even state to state the difference is alarming.

<comment><USER37> Diabetes is likely a factor: [https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/931132](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/931132)

And obesity is strongly correlated with diabetes: [https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and- obesity.html](https://www.diabetes.co.uk/diabetes-and-obesity.html)

There is a distinction to be drawn between obesity rates in the US and Japan and that might be part of the answer to your question.

<comment><USER33> New York state has about 6× the obesity rate of Japan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> One difficulty in determining if vitamin D actually helps with COVID is determining if vitamin D levels are directly affecting outcomes or whether they are a proxy for something else. For example: are low levels a proxy for people who don't go outside much and therefore don't exercise?

That's a huge problem in medical studies generally.

<comment><USER39> There is strong evidence of this, summarized: [https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun- exposure...](https://www.outsideonline.com/2380751/sunscreen-sun-exposure- skin-cancer-science)

Huge inverse correlation between Vitamin D and all-cause mortality -- but almost complete failure of vitamin D supplementation vs. cancer, heart disease and stroke. What?

Turns out that sunlight produces vitamin D -- and a host of _other_ difficult to detect artifacts, which seem to be at the root of the reduction in all- cause mortality.

Seems interesting. Or, carry on -- I'm sure there's nothing to see here, and your pasty-white overweight doctor's advice to avoid sun exposure is right...

<comment><USER32> Doctors advising people to avoid sun exposure? Is that strawman based on anything?

I hope you don't mean the advice to use sunscreen when you're going to be outside so long you'd get sunburn without it.

<comment><USER40> How old are you?

I can assure you, whether it was the intent or not, that the message got out in the 1980s and 1990s that all sunlight exposure is uniformly bad and its only effect is to increase your likelihood of skin cancer, so everyone should avoid it and unconditionally use strong sunscreen for any exposure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Very good writeup

That being said, VitD has _much fewer_ potential side effects than CQ (in the recommended dosage)

On this epidemic we should be looking at potential preventative quick gains, especially as the most disrupting solutions are, well, disrupting.

</comment><comment><USER42> Covid or not, you should test for vitamin deficiency and supplement if necessary. I do it every 3 month via Thriva (UK) and can see the progress.

</comment><comment><USER43> How can you do science for long term effects?

where RCTs are not possible.

<comment><USER44> RCTs are not the only way to obtain evidence of causality.

In causal inference, limited causal claims can be made through observational studies (where no control is done), such as retrospective natural experiments [1]. These methods are of course limited by assumptions and by how closely they match reality.

Note: while a controlled experiment is the gold standard, it is not always feasible or necessary. We don't need to do RCTs on parachutes to prove their efficacy for instance. [2]

\--

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

[2] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volunteers- jumped...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/volunteers-jumped-with- or-without-a-parachute-to-gauge-its-effectiveness/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Having read this whole piece, I think my review is much more comprehensive in covering all relevant evidence: [http://agingbiotech.info/vitamindcovid19/](http://agingbiotech.info/vitamindcovid19/) Note that the title changed and many improvements made since it was first posted to HN 3 weeks ago here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23119949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23119949)

In the title of this piece, analogizing to chloroquine is irresponsible. A high % of readers will take the message to stay away from D and never read the rest.

I'm glad he has a similar top-level rec as me: Take all measures to avoid deficiency, probably by D3 of 2000-4000 IU/day (I'd prefer 4000). The piece unfortunately fails to make the other most important top-level comment: that all COVID-19 patients should have their D levels tested and more data on D & COVID-19 severity should be published urgently (possibly based on records that already exist). And all clinical trials for COVID-19 should be testing D levels as well.

Overall, this piece is not emphatic enough that vitamin D may significantly help during this COVID-19 crisis.

Several important responses to some of the top material in this piece:

The NYT article dismissing Holick is terrible and not worthy of being linked at the top of this piece. I won't go into the point-by-point criticisms of this article, but it's not worthy of a piece that is supposed to be weighing evidence.

The bullet point claiming the COVID-19 association could still be a fluke does not adequately acknowledge the causal aspects of the evidence: Many RCTs on D supplementation helping viral/respiratory infections (Martineau et al BMJ 2017), D causally affecting rate of aging in roundworms, causal inference model overwhelming supporting D's role as causal, studies on the correlation correcting for age, sex, comorbidities, and reverse causality, and causal mechanistic biological arguments. Some portion of the strength of the correlation seen in the 1000+ patient cases published in preprint studies so far may be due to other causal factors, but the causal evidence so far makes it very unlikely for the full extent of the large effect size seen to all be a fluke.

The piece wrote: "A healthy full body exposure to sunlight can generate 25000 IU of vitamin D in one sitting, without getting burned. 2000-4000 IU daily of D3 supplements will also work." No. People wrongly believing that some sun gives them enough is probably one of the causes of widespread deficiency. From my review, in the "Practical considerations for avoiding D levels that are too low" section: There are several studies showing that even a lot of sun exposure leaves many people with insufficient D levels. For one list of studies see Tsiaras & Weinstock, "Factors influencing vitamin D status" Acta dermato-venereologica, 2011: "Studies in Hawaii (97), South Florida (98), Southern Arizona (99), Brazil (100), rural India (101) and Queensland, Australia (102) found that significant proportions of the study populations had low vitamin D levels despite abundant sun exposure." For example, in the Hawaiian study, 51% of the 93 young, non-obese adults had D<30ng/ml despite 29hr/week (>4hr/day) in the sun at latitude 21 degrees. The variability in both seasonal sun intensity and daily hours of exposure for any given individual provide yet another reason that testing blood levels would be helpful. These studies show that even those who seem to get a lot of sun exposure should probably supplement if not testing to ensure adequacy.

Also, the bullet point summary in this piece fails to point out the history of the RDA being set too low by statistical mistake. (Which I've updated my review to include. The story is crazy---the original data used to set the RDA would have resulting in 8000 IU/day if it had been analyzed correctly.)</comment>


What's the worst mistake your startup has made? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> 1\. Focusing too much on the wrong target market.

2\. Getting into a industry that is unfamiliar.

3\. And the last most important thing(the very reason why we failed) is making something users don't want in the first place. It's very difficult to create demand. You gotta look for it!</comment>


Educating the Next Steve Jobs: How Schools Can Teach Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304444604577337790086673050.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_RIGHTTopCarousel_1 <comment><USER2> I don't think Steve Jobs learnt from school to be a successful entrepreneur. He instead probably learnt from life, and from the experiences and mistakes he did. Steve Jobs was unique and try to emulate him, and more simply be like him is a big mistake in my opinion. I really think we do not need another Steve Jobs...we, instead, need someone even better than him :)</comment>


Two-Year-Old Flash Bug Still Allows Webcam Spying On Chrome Users - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/14/two-year-old-flash-bug-still-allows-webcam-spying-on-chrome-users/?partner=yahootix <comment><USER2> oof, this by passes the confirmation to allow access to your webcam...</comment>


Why NULL references are a bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://dev.to/0x13a/why-null-references-are-a-bad-idea <comment><USER2> NULL is arguably the biggest mistake in the history of programming, in the sense of practical pain stemming from a small detail.

Its inventor Tony Hoare, calls it "my billion-dollar mistake."

I wrote about it (and the alternative Maybe pattern) a couple years ago: [https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst- mis...](https://www.lucidchart.com/techblog/2015/08/31/the-worst-mistake-of- computer-science/)</comment>


Is college worth the cost? Many recent graduates don't think so - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2015/09/30/is-college-worth-the-cost-many-recent-graduates-dont-think-so/ <comment><USER2> I'm frustrated by articles like these that lump all of "college" into one bucket, as if the variety of degrees that one can earn at any four year institution can be combined into a single undifferentiated mass. Is college worth the cost? The answer, as with so many things in life is, "It depends." If you go to college with a clear idea of what sorts of careers your degree is going to open up, and what the earnings potential of those careers are then college can definitely be worth it. Is an engineering degree worth the money? Given the numbers I've seen fly around whenever Hacker News talks about engineering and programmer salaries, I'd have hard time arguing no. Is a degree in, say, Art History worth it? I don't know. I don't know anything about the sorts of careers Art History majors get, and what the costs of an Art History degree are.

<comment><USER3> But that's exactly the point.

All growing up my generation was told, "Just get a degree! It doesn't matter what it's in, it doesn't matter what it costs, just get a degree!" There was no other acceptable route, so all the "good" kids went to college to get degrees.

That leaves parts of my generation racking up student loans they literally cannot pay off with the careers they will get, all the while assuming they'll be alright financially because "degree!"

Of course, college is a big bundle of things: Friends, connections, good time, hopefully skills to get a job. Of course, college is a great thing and completely necessary for some people. But there are a lot of people going into so much debt they would have been in a better position financially by not going.

<comment><USER4> I'm left with the question of how hard can it be to google the job prospects of the degree you're interested in? It's never been easier to discover that sort of thing.

Even during the medieval (i.e. pre internet) times I attended college, the pay for various majors were well known. Highest was chemical, lowest astronomy.

<comment><USER5> This is something that is super-frustrating to communicate in these discussions. I end up talking with people from the previous generation a lot, and this is something I hear, "how did you not know that that was dumb and shallow?"

Here's how: from grade school up onto high school, kids in my generation were told, by literally every adult around, "get a degree, it doesn't matter what in, you'll get a good job." The language never differed, there was never talk of trades, of military service, of starting a business, none of that. _Every single adult and authority figure said the same thing_.

When you're young, even if you start questioning stuff like that, when everyone you turn to says the same thing, where are you supposed to go for other points of view?

<comment><USER4> Isn't part of the point of college to no longer unquestioningly accept what you're told by adults?

How can you go through 4 years of college and never even once google starting salaries in your chose profession? And none of your peers do either? And not notice any of the constant flow of articles on reddit and hackernews about this issue?

This is neither unknown nor secret nor obscure knowledge.

> Every single adult and authority figure said the same thing.

Not me. I've said otherwise for 40 years.

<comment><USER3> I said, "to hell with this" and dropped out, so I may not be the best person to ask, but I think "common knowledge" is more difficult to question than most people think. Especially when you don't recognize it as such.

Overall, the frustrating thing to watch is that the kids saddled with six figure student loans, a generic degree and no special skills were just playing by the rules. They were trying to find their passion and studying really hard just like good boys and girls should, then life kicks them in the teeth.

I think people in college now are much more cognizant of it, but five years ago people didn't talk about student loans as much.

<comment><USER6> Even five years ago, the student loans were significantly lower, right? I graduated 9 years ago, and I paid exponentially less. I can't even believe it when I see the tuition costs, even at my public university.

I find myself wanting to continue to give people the same advice I received, the same advice that served me so well, and the advice I believe in strongly—go to college. It will make you a better person. You will become yourself there, and improve yourself and grow. Better, improved, grown, whole people are the ones who earn more money, but that's a side-effect, not a goal.

But when tuition is _four times_ what it was when I found that advice invaluable—it's much more difficult. Even in this thread I'm still giving the same narrative around the intangible and immeasurable value of a college education (I believe in it still, very strongly), but the cost is out of whack.

This is what an economic imbalance feels like, folks. There's beginning to be a huge rift between the perceived value of a university education (invaluable, extreme, incomparable experience, must-do, must-have) and the price (extremely high).

We cannot comprehend it. After all, who can put a price tag on being a better, improved, more whole person? Is it $20,000? Sure. What if we double it? $40,000? Sure, still invaluable. $80,000? Remains invaluable, intangible, unmeasurably important. $160,000? How can we deal with this? How can we put a price tag on a whole experience that remains, throughout all the number shifting, invaluable?

Needs intervention.

I still fully believe that the university experience is invaluable. But that's not the problem. The problem is that it's become overpriced because we are mentally unable to reconcile the immensity of its effect on a life with a single price tag. Thus, it is open to economic "play."

So we rail against it and come up with alternatives, and rationalize that it's not as invaluable as we thought it was after all, and, well, why don't we take some parts here and connect them with this series of tubes and voila! This is the same thing for only a fraction of the price; why would you ever go to that big overpriced agglomerated monster anyway when you can get these results right here?

All the while, I can't help but see holes in the real quality of the experience of growing up. You have to be smart about it, I guess.

Clearly, there's a reason this is an argument, and not a clear-cut case of college being valuable so you should go do it, and the reason is a price tag.

At least it's simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Higher education is important and must continue. The problem is that, in America, costs are out of control. Some blame it on the ease of obtaining student loans; some blame it on poor management, decrease in public funding, decrease in alumni donations, reduction in federal research grants.

Probably it's a combination of all of the above. But when the average private school is trying to charge $50K+ per year for an undergraduate education, and the average public school is over $10K per year, something's seriously wrong.

I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living.

You could take an old warehouse, subdivide into about 10 lecture halls and classrooms, get a bunch of chairs and whiteboards, and hire 20 professors. That's in essence all a university should be. In this day and age, of course, you could add some online access, at a minimum stream the lectures in real time which costs almost nothing.

These glitzy $100 million "student centers", multimillion dollar athletic facilities, on-campus coffee shops and restaurants, dorms, hordes of administrative officials, assistant deans, etc. pulling down six figure incomes when they don't even teach -- that's just lifestyle crap that has nothing to do with education (although, sports teams can sometimes bring in big bucks). It all costs money -- maintenance, insurance, expansion, lawyers, advertising, marketing -- money, money, money. That's what has done in the American university system. Some of these campuses have turned into towns- plus-shopping malls and have lost their original vision.

<comment><USER8> > I would tighten up the student loan system, cap it at $10K per year, and > then let the universities figure out how to roll back their ridiculous > tuitions that have risen many times faster than has the cost of living.

I suppose they'll be forced to when their student numbers dive because nobody can afford it anymore, but what happens in the meantime? Only the rich get to go to school? Or if the public funding tap gets shut off, are private lenders going to step in and just make it cost more? Lowering the "expectation" that going to school is what all good American youths do is another solution that gets proposed sometimes (though maybe at odds with your premise "higher education is important and must continue"), so maybe lower attendance rates is acceptable, but I wouldn't want it to fall along class lines, or any other uneven distribution of demographics.

You could gradually step the funding down each year, but it seems like the steps would either be so small it would take generations to reform, or so big that it's basically as hard as doing it all at once.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps in addition to loan caps, the states should increase grants to their public universities, and that will help keep down tuition.

The private schools, however, are kind of on their own. They'll probably need to cut back on the frills and hope students still want to apply. We're probably going to see a few closures of private schools over the next few years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This semester I have two "fun" professors. One always finishes class 25-30 minutes early- just completely stops lecturing for the day, not for questions or anything. Add up every single class he does it for the whole semester and the sum is probably worth about a third of the entire semester. That's quite a bit of money down the drain. A second professor that I have has openly stated he has "stolen" and only _slightly_ modified (his words, not mine) slides from some other member of faculty here (who I think got them from Stanford); the system we use for classwork/quizzes/etc. is from some other university and he didn't even know when we'd have our midterm because he hasn't even started to think about writing one yet since he "can't get it from anyone else and needs to write one" on his own (again, his words).

The latter situation has been rather commonplace with many classes I've taken here for my degree. It's just not right. I feel like my time and money are being wasted, and rather than gaining valuable knowledge and experience, this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself.

No, it's not worth the cost. From what everyone has told me or everything I've read in the past, we need degrees otherwise the chance of landing a job (in my case software engineering) plummets and only some are lucky enough to be successful without one.

And so here I am, losing out on more even than just money with not much to show for it.

<comment><USER10> _> this is all rather just a detrimental experience in and of itself._

heck, that's nothing! wait until they lose one of your exams, or you write an essay that goes against a professor's political beliefs. that's when the real fun starts and you start making time/money cost benefit analyses with your own ethics!

make a deal with the devil, or waste several thousands dollars and 10 weeks?

...then again, if that isn't real world experience, what is???

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Interesting quotes from the article:

"Two thirds of students who graduated in the last nine years and whose debt matches or exceeds the national average do not believe their degree was worth the cost."

Gallup's executive director for education and workforce development Brandon Busteed speaking to the WSJ:

"When you look at recent graduates with student loans it gets really ugly, really fast. If alumni don't feel they're getting their money's worth, we risk this tidal wave of demand for higher education crashing down."

As Bill Ackman had warned:

"When asked if he was concerned about bubbles forming in debt markets as central banks around the world continue to keep interest rates near zero, Ackman cited student loans as his biggest concern.

"If you think about the trillion dollars of student loans we have outstanding, there's no way students are going to pay it back," Ackman said. He foresees a future where debt-laden students protest government officials, leading to some form of forgiveness.

The $1.3 trillion in student loan debt outstanding in the U.S. has drawn parallel among some investors to the subprime mortgage bubble of the mid-t0-late 2000s."

<comment><USER12> I really don't like the idea of loan forgiveness (despite being a potential beneficiary), but I really do expect there to be a tipping point soon.

<comment><USER13> Even for predatory lending? Our culture basically tells kids that they _have_ to do this _or else_. Preying on vulnerable kids who are just getting out on their own for the first time and do not have any experience dealing with finances on their own in the real world over long terms.

<comment><USER12> I understand the issues very, very well. I have student loans and grew up in the current generation. I'd benefit substantially. I don't like the idea of it (unless it came with compensation for those who did pay theirs off, even if it's less compensation - maybe some kind of tax credit?), but I agree that we're getting closer and closer to the point where the issues with forgiveness are simply overwhelmed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I regret going to college, and I'm fairly certain I wouldn't encourage my kids to do it unless they really wanted to... and had good scholarships to diminish the costs.

If you compare the long-term earnings, lets say over 50 years, of taking all the money that would have been spent on college, and especially if you add private school tuition to that (which many parents would in order to get into a good college in the first place), depending on the exact numbers college can be an outright losing proposition.

Some quick examples for investing your school tuition:

$300,000 at 5% interest invested at 22 == $3,440,219.94 at age 62.

$10,000 average private school tuition invested each year from 6 to 18 + $100,000 college tuition invested at 18, 5% interest rate == $6,472,837.02 at 62

vs

$10,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $2,312,827.95 at 62

$20,000 avg invested annually starting at 22, 5% interest == $4,625,655.91 at 62

Of course there's lots of ways to play with the numbers, and other considerations to take into account. Do you really, really want a specific career that requires a college degree, or do you just want a middle-class lifestyle? Is that career goal realistic, or will you just end up another depressed burnout? Plus most graduates won't be able to invest $20,000 per year starting at 22, that's highly optimistic, and most people who don't go to college won't have absolutely zero lifetime earnings either.

The opportunity cost of time spent attending schools you don't enjoy versus doing other things with the "best years of your life" is another factor, too.

<comment><USER15> 5% interest risk free is a pipe dream.

<comment><USER14> Are college degrees risk free by any means? Especially since degrees now often confine you to a narrow career path compared to what was available for graduates in previous generations. But point taken - a more detailed analysis should consider the risk-adjusted returns for each path (college vs non- college).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In principle, this should not be a question. College is NOT something that should be looked upon as an "investment" requiring ROI. Sure enough, in civilized countries like Germany, or Sweden, or Denmark, college isn't thought off as a significant expense that requires ROI calculations because it is free. That's how it should be, given that the market does not understand the value of education.

It is only in this corporate-run hyper-capitalistic country that we're having this ridiculous conversation. For US graduates, college may indeed not be "worth it".

<comment><USER14> Except that _someone_ still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial then that means society still has to make choices about whether the ROI for doing so is actually worth it. Resources spent giving people an education they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. The free college of other countries still comes with its own cost,; it's just hidden from the individual members of the public by being spread across the whole taxbase.

If you want to learn and absorb knowledge there are many cheaper ways to do it, e.g. libraries or MOOCs. But that won't give you a special status signaling symbol (the degree) that you can use to get past HR departments into the hiring process. That creates positional externalities that are a huge expense for society beyond just enriching people's lives through knowledge and education.

<comment><USER13> >Except that someone still has to pay for it, and unless the cost of college is trivial

Compared to the price, the cost is trivial. If the price wasn't hyperinflated, it wouldn't be an issue.

We see similar things in healthcare. "But _someone_ has to pay for this $40 inhaler!" (Which only costs $1 in any other industrialized country.)

What society needs to make choices about is whether the ROI of price-gouging everyone for things that we all agree that everyone needs is actually worth it. Resources spent giving rich people more money that they won't actually need is money that could have been spent on other things like healthcare, disease research, or enriching their lives in other ways. Like, for example, education.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> All I know is that I spent two years deep in abstract algebra and other proof- heavy classes, and it was some of the best training in rigor and thoughtfulness I've ever had. Wouldn't trade it for the world. But, then again, most recent grads weren't math majors. I think my university of 30k graduated about 15 math majors a year.

</comment><comment><USER18> I dropped out of college with all of my classes finished but lacking high school credits that I became retroactively deficient for... because I switched from Engineering to A&S.

The only F in my life (generally straight-A student) was in Computer Science.

Currently: architecting, setting, developing coding standards for a Fortune 100. Computer programming is one of the few academic careers in which you can succeed sans papers.

</comment><comment><USER19> How on earth are you going to know if an intangible investment like education will be "worth the cost" over your entire life time?

</comment><comment><USER20> A few thoughts:

1) Do these graduates know what it's like to try to get by with a high school diploma? Think of the level of education you had when you graduated from high school. Regarding just jobs, the data is clear that people with college degrees earn more.

2) College educates you not just for your first job, but for a lifetime of jobs. And not just for careers, but for life - citzenship, family, community, and your own personal growth, understanding of the world, of ideas, and your well-being. To measure its value on the basis of early jobs is a mistake. They should have paid more attention in class.

3) The idea that you can have just as much knowledge without spending 4 years taught by experts, surrounded by peers, and utilizing the enormous capital facilities colleges provide, is hard to believe.

4) Perhaps college isn't something that should be priced by the market. It is of exceptional value - even if you just consider effects on lifetime income - much more than anyone pays.

<comment><USER21> >>2) College educates you not just for your first job

I agree largely with your points but I would point out that if #2 on your list is true in some regard, it's highly ineffective. People with college degrees start unnecessary wars. People with college degrees ruin economies with finance schemes designed for maximum personal profit over the interest in a healthy society. People with college degrees beat their partners and children. People with college degrees abuse substances, and they fall prey to the ravages of induced mental health issues and poor physical health choices like obesity or sedentary lifestyles.

In addition I've found many Americans with college degrees to be incurious about the world outside their own life and often outright hostile to intellectualism.

Not all people with college degrees are like this of course, but enough to make me think that if #2 is an intended and assumed function of post-secondary education then these institutions are not very effective in that mission when you compare the credentialed population with the rest of us.

And yes, I have no college degree. Despite high-test scores, AP credit in math, sciences, history and English, sports and other activities I was only accepted to my State Schools' Engineering program out of my applications, and only begrudgingly, which meant I had to actually write a lett er to the Dean's office about how very very much I wanted to be an Engineer. When I got there I realized how much of the 'education' offered was ridiculous nonsense. I had to drop out after a year to attend to some family issues and was forced to enter the workforce immediately doing tech support and clawed my way into professional software development.

It's been a struggle most of the time not having a degree I can simply point to, but that's been mostly due to having to overcome the biases of the credentialed versus those of us with no formal credentials. I consider myself incredibly fortunate in life though, as for example I'm composing this post from Kolkata after taking an amazing and profound trek through the Himalayas. None of my friends with college degrees have done this ;)

<comment><USER20> > t's highly ineffective. People with college degrees start unnecessary wars. > People with college degrees ruin economies with finance schemes designed for > maximum personal profit over the interest in a healthy society. People with > college degrees beat their partners and children. People with college > degrees abuse substances, and they fall prey to the ravages of induced > mental health issues and poor physical health choices like obesity or > sedentary lifestyles. ...

Certainly it could be much more effective and we shouldn't lose sight of how much room for improvement there is. But I'd bet that, as a group, college- educated people are much more productive, healthier, and probably happier. Of course, that doesn't describe any particular individual.

Have a great time on your travels. I think it's almost impossible to understand the world without experiencing cultures far from our own. (I'm assuming you aren't Indian.)

<comment><USER21> Thank you for your kind words! Upon further reflection I have to admit that I was discounting the value of even marginal encouragement in those areas you've mentioned. I agree that colleges and universities expose people to others with differing backgrounds in a way that is difficult otherwise, and that is undoubtedly a great thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Having a college degree sends a signal that you can dedicate yourself to education and follow through. I find employees with college degrees are better than those without, regardless of degree.

I suggest getting a degree and putting in some hustle to get out with zero or little debt. Scholarship, side jobs, whatever it takes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was recruited to join Microsoft a while back. At the end of the 8hr day of interviews, the VP formally offered me the job. However, he made a point of mentioning his concern that I dropped out of college, twice. Being a cocky young buck at the time, I in turn pointed out that the founder and (then) Chairman of his company, Bill Gates, was a dropout. He explained to me that there were exceptions to every rule, which was why he was extending the opportunity, but in his experience, college was akin to bootcamp. If I couldn't get through 4 years of doing what I was told, how could he be sure I would do what I was told at Microsoft? I drove back to the hotel, phoned the internal recruiter and declined the offer.

He was on to something, of course. But I'd already known that I march to the beat of my own drum.

<comment><USER23> I had a coworker once who was a college drop-out and had exactly all of the flaws that the VP warned about in your story. He was highly intelligent, and could have made a great software engineer, but his focus and work ethic were terrible, and his work suffered for it terribly. He was exactly the kind of person for whom everything was easy their whole life, then they finally reached a level where blind intelligence alone was not sufficient, and has no persevering skills to fall back on.

I hit that same crisis my sophomore-junior years of college, but powered through it and finally learned the skill of hard work (which most other students had already mastered by high school).

<comment><USER24> Can I ask how you got over it?

I am going through the same thing, except I _was_ in a hard high school program but ended up in a university with an easy Comp Sci program. I am a senior, and the graduate class I am taking this semester is the first time I have been mentally challenged by the Comp Sci department. Because of this, I tend to "give up" easily in other things that I am interested in but are harder (mathematics), or I am not motivated to build apps for fun and portfolio, even though the ideas and the languages come easy to me.

<comment><USER23> Set a schedule and force yourself to spend, say, forty hours a week worrkimg on schoolwork. And be honest with yourself and don't allow cheating. Once I forced myself to spend a lot of time studying, the easiest thing to do was to simply spend lots of time reading the textbooks, getting assignments perfect before turning them in, and handling all of the optional/extra credit portions of the programming assignments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For college classes, we were told to study three hours outside the classroom for every hour inside the classroom. Rearranged over a four year period, that means I spent three years in the library or at home studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc., as well as some calculus, biology, psychology. In this rearranged sense, I spent only one year in class, listening to lectures, talking to professors during office hours, talking with fellow students.

Some people tell me they will study CS on their own. But to get to my level, they'll just have to spend the same three years as I did on my own studying algorithms, data structures, theory of computation etc. The only question is if that year of sitting in the classroom, talking to professors with doctorates and published papers, interacting with other students etc. is worth the time. As well as the money - a Bachelors at my decently ranked public college is currently $26k tuition plus about $4k for books etc. But you can get Pell grants, low interest government backed loans etc. It was slightly cheaper a few years ago.

I think the year's work and $30k are worth it. Spread out over a 40 year career, it's less than one thousand a year. In terms of job opportunities, salaries etc. it's definitely worth it.

One thing is students don't even know what they need to know. On my own I probably would have just dove into learning a language like C++ or Java, and then probably would have gotten more specific as I used the language I learned to implement things in some framework for that language. College went the other way - I learned a foundation of calculus, graph theory, theory of computation. Then on top of graph theory I learned data structures, on top of theory of computation I learned algorithms. So when I started using languages, I knew what was going on.

Some of the caveats in the article should be obvious, but are worth being there. People should think twice about going to an expensive private school they and their parents can't afford, if they don't have any idea what they are going to do when they graduate. Some of the kids even in level 300 CS courses openly told me they were slacking, doing the minimum to pass. I'm not sure why they were even bothering going in the first place.

Before I went to school, many job listings said "BSCS required". Even if they didn't, human resources would often interrogate me about what credits I had, what my college plans were etc. Once you get a BSCS, these things are no longer a problem. Plus you have a technical base that people without a degree who are doing CRUD PHP or Node.js do not have.

</comment><comment><USER6> Give 'em 5 years, then ask.

I had very little understanding of the importance of my college education the year after I graduated, but I think it's invaluable now.

<comment><USER26> I graduated 15 years ago. Still don't get it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> A college degree is the new high school diploma. The minimal level criteria for general labor/bagging groceries.

The female:male gender gap in college is moving towards 60:40, people not getting married, not being able to afford to get married... we're going to need a war or something to straighten this out.

<comment><USER28> Good news: the US is currently at war with ISIS.

Bad news: that hasn't helped for a while. I would wager it hasn't helped since the rise of the MIC.

Note also: lots of general labor/bagging groceries people has diplomas. But that's just because pretty much _everyone_ has a diploma. I would be extremely surprised if they thought they were actually using their degrees.

It's a crap situation, and victim blaming doesn't help (not directed at you). We just happened to be lucky that we like STEM. I know I was lucky enough to find my passion before college, then follow it, which luckily just happened to be a booming field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Steve Jobs on the cost of his college: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc&t=2m17s)

</comment><comment><USER30> A good education is priceless. It's sad that apparently many people are dissatisfied with their college experiences, but I've always felt that if you went to a good school and feel that all you got out of it was debt and a diploma, maybe you are the problem.

<comment><USER31> what part did the university contribute that was priceless?

<comment><USER32> More: What part of what the university contributed was _education_?

What part of what the university contributed was education _that you could not have otherwise obtained_?

And the real problem: What part of the education, that you got from somewhere other than the university, could you prove to a potential employer that you actually had received?</comment></comment></comment>


John McAfee, antivirus pioneer, arrested by Belize police - <AUTHOR> http://news.techworld.com/security/3355622/john-mcafee-antivirus-pioneer-arrested-by-belize-police/

<comment><USER2> Why would he need such a large cache of weapons? Is Belize really that dangerous?</comment>


The Elevator Button Problem - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/elevator-button-problem.html <comment><USER2> > There's nothing to stop you contradicting yourself by indicating a different > direction of travel. Which makes you wonder why you had to indicate the > direction in the first place.

You had to indicate the direction in the first place because the system can give you a cab that's already going in that direction. Even if nobody is in the cab it may be going to another floor that someone has pressed the call button before you. If you press a button for the opposite direction it will still go in it's original direction.

Eventually it will change direction and go your way but that just ensures you'll spend the maximum time in the elevator. During your ride in the wrong direction another cab may have freed up or there could have been one already free but a few floors further than the one going in the other direction.

That's also why elevators have the up and down lit arrows at the top of the door to indicate which way it's going. This keeps you from getting on one going the wrong way if it come to your floor first to either drop off or if both call buttons were pressed.

</comment><comment><USER3> There's another way. Indicate which floor you want to get on. No buttons inside the elevator. Works fine for not too many floors. I know a mall with four floors where this is implemented. 2 underground parking levels, 1 ground floor and a floor above it for the gym and spa at the top.

<comment><USER4> That's how elevators work in the company I am at. You don't have an up or down button. Just a keypad with all the floors (and some additional buttons for people with disabilities).

The way it works:

\- when you select a floor number, a LCD screen tells you which elevator of the pool you'll be using

\- in the elevator, no buttons except alarm, keep doors open, close doors

\- in the elevator, there's a display that tells you on which floors the elevator will stop (because you can't have the whole "floor button is lit up")

The good things about this system:

\- you don't get to be in an elevator which is going to stop on all floors because the system is intelligent enough to allocate elevators appropriately

\- better use of the resources (eg you don't have everyone getting in the first available elevator, going up and then a second one comes and is empty)

\- no more pranking anyone by pushing all the buttons (because you can only do that while waiting for one and the system will dispatch the demanded floors to the pool)

The bad:

\- you can't change your mind once you called it. If you selected a floor, even if you don't get in the elevator, it'll stop there

\- you can't change your mind once you're in. Best case is you can stop at an intermediate floor if someone is going there or called the elevator.

\- it's frustrating when the system allocates an elevator for you and it comes after one that isn't going anywhere.

<comment><USER2> > no more pranking anyone by pushing all the buttons (because you can only do > that while waiting for one and the system will dispatch the demanded floors > to the pool)

While it would stop pranking it opens it up to denial of service. Most new elevators don't let you select more floors than the persoson capacity of the cab. With the external keypad system someone could hide on a floor with nobody around and keep entering floor numbers.

Incidentslly, I was on a full elevator when a kid pressed all the buttons and ran out (this was before the protection I mentioned became popular). I could hear the groans of my fellow passengers. Fortunately I was shown a trick by an elevator tech for that brand a few weeks ago. I held the door open and reached up and tripped the door switch. All the lit buttons went out and I just aelected my floor again. Got a round of thank yous as everyone else selected their floor again.

> you can't change your mind once you're in. Best case is you can stop at an > intermediate floor if someone is going there or called the elevator.

That could be rage inducing. Imagine forgetting something in your car and being stuck going up to the top of a very tall building. And then going all the way back down.

There really should be a button for "let me off at the next valid floor". I'd hate to be stuck in an elevator when someone gets sick and has to hurl or worse shit their pants.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Enormous.io – The layer between your app and your database - <AUTHOR> http://enormous.io

<comment><USER2> The front page is very blank on a large monitor - I got the impression it was waiting for a big chunk of content to load, until I returned some time later to see it still mostly white.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback :)</comment></comment>


Coffee no longer comes with cancer warning and may actually prevent it - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/coffee-no-longer-comes-with-cancer-warning-it-may-actually-prevent-it/ <comment><USER2> The "science" of foods that cause cancer is some of the worst science there is. Pronouncements like this create a well-deserved skepticism of the claims of science among non-scientists.

</comment><comment><USER3> The drink specific studies are generally pretty terrible, but the studies relating to the temperature of drinks and the risk of esophageal cancer are well accepted. And that's what the current medical school students are being taught.

(Meta-analysis of hot beverages and esophageal cancer ([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4457273/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4457273/)).)

</comment><comment><USER4> These studies are nonsense. Please keep this stuff out of HN.</comment>