Medical records on the blockchain – the history of a bad idea - <AUTHOR> https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2019/04/20/medical-records-on-the-blockchain-the-history-of-a-bad-idea/ <comment><USER2> I cringe every single time someone suggests blockchain in our space. Either it's easier with other tech (even public/private key tech doesn't require blockchain), or open to potential leaks/abuse in the future (tracking how everyone voted).

There are a lot of use cases, most even, where it's not a great fit, and there are other, better, approaches.

Disclosure, I work for an election services company...

<comment><USER3> I've discovered that some people say "blockchain" when they mean "immutable, distributed, cryptographically-verified database" \-- which is actually a useful thing for many people.

The Byzantine fault tolerance, public consensus, and mining aspects that we associate with "true" blockchains are the parts that people can't find a way to justify and can typically be ignored.

<comment><USER4> >"immutable, distributed, cryptographically-verified database"

>Byzantine fault tolerance, public consensus, and mining

Why would I want ANY of these things associated with the system that manages my medical records?

I don't want them to be immutable, if there's an error I want it corrected. Clearly there should be security to control who (my provider) can update them, and perhaps turn on the database transaction log to track what updates were made by whom and when.

I don't want my medical records to be distributed for obvious reasons.

Encrypted, sure, but "cryptologically verified" seems to be overkill as there's little incentive for third parties to try and forge medical records.

Byzantine fault tolerance? Lol. My medical records get updated maybe once per year, by my provider, and no one has an incentive to insert false data.

Public consensus? See above.

Mining? Come on.

99.9% of the time when someone says we should use blockchain, they really just need a database, this is one of those cases.

<comment><USER5> >> I don't want them to be immutable, if there's an error I want it corrected.

Immutable here means no in-place update, you have to update using an "errata" record. This is the requirement for many type of official documents, even before computers were used.

>> I don't want my medical records to be distributed for obvious reasons.

Distributed here means no single point of failure.

>> Encrypted, sure, but "cryptographically-verified" seems to be overkill as there's little incentive for third parties to try and forge medical records.

Encryption without authentication opens up many types of attack. You almost always want authenticated encryption

<comment><USER4> >>>Immutable here means no in-place update, you have to update using an "errata" record.

Yes, and people have been building financial systems with relational databases using this journaling principle (updates and deletes handled by inserting new records and timestamping) for decades.

>>>Distributed here means no single point of failure.

Which can be done with most standard RDBMS or NoSQL databases and clustering/sharding. Not that the scale of medical records is anywhere near requiring any of this. Do you really want multiple copies of your personal medical records on some public blockchain?

>>>Encryption without authentication opens up many types of attack. You almost always want authenticated encryption

For financial transactions, sure, but for medical records? For what purpose? Other than me and my provider (and any specialist I select) why would anyone else even need to access my medical records? Who would be faking them?

None of this makes any sense for medical records.

<comment><USER5> Make up your mind. First, you said these properties were useless, now you're saying these properties have been in use for a long time using relational database, which means they're really useful.

>> Do you really want multiple copies of your personal medical records on some public blockchain? No I don't. This thread's starter and I never said that these properties can only provided by "blockchain", neither did we said that "blockchain" should be used. We only said that these properties were useful and people wanted them.

>> For financial transactions, sure, but for medical records? For what purpose? Other than me and my provider (and any specialist I select) why would anyone else even need to access my medical records? Who would be faking them?

For example, a fraudulent specialist with access to your data can modify your prescription so they can steal money from your insurance provider and also take these extra medicine to sell on the black market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I feel its become very fashionable to dismiss the simpler applications of the tech because of how unrealistically its been applied. It's so easy to do too. Look at the insane valuations, the fraud, and hype cooked up by marketers, and the whole thing looks very stupid. But its a mistake to let this get in the way of critical thinking.

There is a reason why the topic is brought up so often and its because among all that garbage there is genuine potential. It requires education, and R & D to unlock most of it. But at some point we'll have straight-forward tools that can be applied to solve a variety of common problems.

I predict the end result won't look any where near as exciting as it is today. It's likely going to end up being a flexible and boring set of auditing tools. But that's still going to improve the transparency and efficiency of many organizations. And give how archaic some of the processes around businesses are today -- those changes are still going to look revolutionary in their context.

<comment><USER7> If you could tell me even one application of this technology outside of cryptocurrency, I'd genuinely be interested.

<comment><USER8> * Decentralized, anonymized reputation management. Imagine an ebay score that couldn't be owned by ebay, or any another company.

* Decentralized digital Asset ownership verification. Again, imagine facebook without a facebook. Or imagine purchase a music or software token that you could use on any provider, and never expired. Sign up for a new streaming service and take all your songs/videos/games with you from the old one.

* All the legal structures of a company, purchased off the shelf, handling all the vagaries of human resources and accounting, but without managers or payroll accountants. Just remote teammates, who may never have worked before, but know they will get paid a salary, receive evaluations and promotions from their peers.

These are just toy examples, I'm sure if I took more than a few seconds, I could give you much better ones. The problem with blockchain isn't finding applications - it's finding _monetizable_ ones.

All the examples above would make amazing open source projects, but IMHO would be very difficult to generate revenue without compromising their decentralized nature, by inserting oneself into the transactions to take a cut. Centralized control of an application is almost a requirement for monetization, and, blockchains, are, by definition, intended to circumvent centralization.

Moreover, trust and verification aren't new problems, and we already have plenty of centralized solutions for these problems. So, blockchain applications both have to be better than what was there before, _and_ work around the decentralized nature of the system.

Consequently, people trying to make a living on the blockchain mostly resort to monetizing the networks themselves - in other words, developing cryptocurrency-like products of some form. Is this decentralized? Not entirely, but it's less centralized than what came before. If people disagree with the behaviour oof the ethereum foundation, they can fork the currency. However, this still a long cry from actual decentralization. It is certainly an open question what value 'kindof-sortof' decentralized networks provide.

<comment><USER9> None of which you have listed can be proven by blockchain as it has proofs for today. All would rely on external sources of truth which entirely live outside the verification of the blockchain. The blockchain in these cases would be an immutable chain of unverified facts.

<comment><USER8> * An anonymized reputation system is the equivalent of a transaction ledger. It needs no external source, as long as the involved actors agree to enter into evaluation of each other.

* Digital assets ownership ultimately only require external sources of truth for storage of whatever digital asset they intend to provide. I concur that this would be impossibly expensive to provide via an existing blockchain implementations, without an external point of truth, but still a technically possible feat.

* An entire company on the blockchain? Sure, it's not reasonable at the moment. It was just an attempt to paint a bigger picture. The fact that it's 'not yet reasonable' is why many people are starting to try. By the time it's 'reasonable', someone will have done it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As someone who is a CEO of a medical blockchain startup which is trying to find actual meaningful use cases, I agree 100% with the conclusions of this post.

(finding actual convincing use cases in the medical space for this tech is hard)

<comment><USER11> so...why are you still the CEO of a medical blockchain startup? Surely you escorted yourself off the premises by now? ;)

But seriously, isn't this putting the cart before the horse? The usual order is "find a problem, build a solution", not "find a technology, build a solution, work out who has a problem it can solve". How's that working out for you?

<comment><USER12> There might be potential uses for distributed ledgers in an industry that is required by law to share your care history. This specific company not having arrived at a concrete product does not negate the potential upside. All it takes for them to do is develop a technology that can be of interest to an industry giant and become acquired. Im not saying this is the case here, but it is a real option.

<comment><USER11> ahh, I see... so more like speculative R&D, developing a technology to the point where it's saleable to a larger organisation. So there's no need for a customer problem to solve, it's just about building enough capability with the tech to become acqui-hirable, is that right?

<comment><USER12> To a point. I cant comment on regards to this being the goal of the company above.

We should consider the following:

A startup can have a product offering and also be the product itself.

<comment><USER11> not sure that works in many places outside Silicon Valley. I've been working in the startup scene in Perth, Western Australia, for years now, and the opportunities for getting bought areslim. A startup there needs to have a global customer base to stand a chance of making revenue, let alone equity growth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work in this space and I am hard pressed to see where blockchain could improve patient control of data. The real problem that I have is that health data rules and workflows are completely unlike any other type of data I have worked with. Ownership of data, attribution of information, interoperability, all of these elements are context dependent. Centralised, independent storage of information so that all healthcare providers (with the patient's permission) can access critical records is a much simpler solution. It is still complex, but at least you don't have the byzantine bullshit of the blockchain sitting beneath it.

</comment><comment><USER14> I recently worked on a yellow paper that outlines a data exchange with no centralized authority that puts ownership and encryption responsibility of that data back onto the users of the network. It's a data exchange not a blockchain because all data should be mutable and nullifiable. Blockchain is the wrong technology for so many things that it's been hyped for.

<comment><USER15> Perhaps your comment was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it sounds like this data exchange is a replacement for the World Wide Web? It's not IPFS is it?

<comment><USER14> IPFS was a technology we evaluated but decided it was not appropriate given specific requirements of all parties that will be using it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Never have I seen someone so angry that a college student gave a vague talk, a startup made some exaggerated claims, and a university research project wasn't completed.

I hope he doesn't read hacker news. The vague talks, exaggerated claims, and unfinished research projects here would give him an aneurism!

</comment><comment><USER17> Of all the crazy applications that I've heard for the blockchain, medical records are easily the craziest.

<comment><USER18> Elections on a blockchain are probably in the same ballpark

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> To be generous to those proposing blockchain for health records I think their intent to suggest that it be used for the access/authentication layer of a more conventional secure database, but that's just a guess.

<comment><USER20> I've found this diagram to be extremely helpful for thinking about why/why not to use blockchain: [https://i.redd.it/uu0qg8t28tq11.png](https://i.redd.it/uu0qg8t28tq11.png) (p.42 [https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2018/NIST.IR.8202.pdf))

One problem is blockchain is good for _identity_ but not so much access/authentication.

<comment><USER21> When I look at the first flowchart - there's no way a PMI-certified Project Manager would say No to any question on the flowchart - so Blockchain it is !

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> May be of interest to some: In recent years healthcare has adopted centralized PKI in the Direct project. [https://www.directtrust.org/](https://www.directtrust.org/)

</comment><comment><USER23> When a technology does an unexpected thing, something you'd never thought would be possible, it is tempting to think that it is magic and it can do all the other impossible things.

</comment><comment><USER24> Gosh I love David Gerard....

</comment><comment><USER25> Hard not to imagine a pompous Brit spraying saliva everywhere while reading this.

To the content - there is only one way to place data on the cloud that is impervious to all global state, corporate and nefarious actors. That is with a robust blockchain. Whether or not you think that is useful in medical records is another story.

I've been a medical doctor for 10 years and think that it is.

<comment><USER2> How do you use this and not allow for anyone with access to the block chain to also have access to all medical records? How do you secure this data without also securing the block chain access itself? How do you provide this security without effectively losing the usefulness of the block chain in general? How do you do this in a way that is effective in terms of performance/speed?

<comment><USER26> I don't have a side in this fight, and in general I absolutely agree with "solution in search of a problem", etc, but, if I had to think of an application:

All medical records are encoded as transactions between doctors and patients - that is, if person A is diagnosed with medical issue A by Doctor A, a public transaction is sent from a patient, via anonymized address, with a few bits of information:

\- Amount (public due to nature of transaction on blockchain)

\- Doctor (public due to complexity of anonymized destination addresses on blockchain, lets not solve impossible problems)

\- Encrypted with the public key of the Doctor, the medical record

\- Encrypted with the public key of the Patient, the medical record again

\- Public, well-known "code" for some medical transaction, for example "code 1" could be a checkup, "code 2" could be a heart-transplant - I'm completely unfamiliar with the medical world so I suspect this system most likely already exists

\- Encrypted with the public key of the Doctor, a random UUID identification code

This would allow Doctors offices to collect all their records by reading thru all transactions. Offices could validate that the patient correctly filed the transaction before accepting the transaction, and one can imagine software such that patients could easily file the transaction without having to copy the medical records, etc.

Additionally, using the public key of a doctor, one could verify that similar medical procedures were priced fairly compared to their own (ie: you could see the average cost of checkups, etc). This is most likely a naive assumption about pricing in healthcare, but maybe a good feature thanks to blockchain?

It would be particularly neat if it was powered by a contract, via something like Ethereum - You'd still need a bit of government help, but:

\- Retrieval of medical data by the Doctors office is signed by a secret key contained in a contract oracle. When data is retrieved, it's signed with a timestamp indicating when the data was obtained.

\- Laws requiring that valid signatures for valid timestamps from the contract oracle accompany _any and all_ use of medical records.

\- Assuming the fines were steep and enforced, medical records could not be used for longer than a certain date, could be invalidated, and could be "observed being observed" by the patient.

In other words, assuming minor changes in the legal/medical system, the blockchain could actually be used to create immutable records of medical transactions, protect patient privacy, etc.

But if to accomplish this blockchain _also needs_ a trusted 3rd party and law enforcement... Then i'm not sure how it's better than any other application, except that it comes with a free globally available API, which is not actually a bad feature. Just not world-changing is all.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have you used nats.io in a project and what is your experience with it? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I'm one of the NATS maintainers though have been using the project for several years. Most of the community is more active in the Slack channel: [https://slack.nats.io/](https://slack.nats.io/)</comment>


A pixel-perfect JavaScript library for drawing text underline - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/wentin/underlineJS

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://wentin.github.io/underlineJS/](http://wentin.github.io/underlineJS/)</comment>


Show HN: OrgStack - a complete data validation platform for engineering teams - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone!
My name's Christian, and I'd like to share what we've built at OrgStack - a complete data validation platform for engineering teams: https://orgstack.io
It's estimated that data quality issues cost US businesses over $600 billion per year[1].  Poor data quality is difficult to detect, and even more difficult to resolve.  This eats up engineering resources and leads to outages in production infrastructure.
Our goal is to make it easy for data and software engineering teams to manage data sources, receive critical alerts, and trace data-related incidents to their source.  We drew inspiration for the UI from some of our favorite services, like NPM, Loggly, and Jenkins.
Thanks in advance for taking the time to check out what we've built.  We really appreciate your feedback, and we'd love to hear your thoughts and questions in the comments.
[1] http://download.101com.com/pub/tdwi/Files/DQReport.pdf <comment><USER2> "Powered by open source OrgStack's core validation engine is open source and available to the community." \- repo is not available?

Feels like an empty landing page to test the idea at this moment.

</comment><comment><USER3> I strongly suggest you get rid of the stock images and add the menu item "Pricing"

</comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't look like an open source does it?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the name of the online text game that was on HN a few months ago - <AUTHOR> A few months ago I saw an online text/interactive fiction game on HN but I just can't find the link again. The website had a white background and was of a minimalistic design. It had an almost-gothic style flowery decoration near the borders. Does anyone have the link? <comment><USER2> this one ?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5961205](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5961205)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, white background. Minimalistic design

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> the site design was something like this: [https://www.binaryturf.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/twiste...](https://www.binaryturf.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/08/twisted-intellect.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> Nethack?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. It was a relatively new game. I recall that the link on HN was to a blog review of it and not a direct link.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: E-commerce back end as a service company? - <AUTHOR> I remember reading about a company that did a e-commerce backend only and let their partners/customers build the app experience themselves, and then forgot it's name. Do you know of such a company? Thanks. <comment><USER2> Like snipcart?

</comment><comment><USER3> Moltin?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not this. They didn't do frontend. They only did backend services. They explicitly talked about doing recommendations, merchandizing and CRM with integrations through all the usual suspects. It was an alacarte approach.</comment></comment>


Show HN: TimeSnapper for Mac Beta - <AUTHOR> TimeSnapper has been a windows-only product for a decade, we're now at beta stage in our Mac version which you can use by joining here: http://www.secretgeek.net/ts_mac_beta <comment><USER2> How does it handle external screens?

I don't know the exact use case for this app, so take my feature request with a grain of salt. I implemented something similar for myself which I used for 2-3 years. At first I took a screenshot plainly, but I found that the context was really hard to figure out. I ended up adding a webcam picture to each screenshot, this helped me place where/why I might have been on that specific website. My use case was mostly novelty though. But I still like looking back at the pictures every now and then. You can see my examples (+ script) here: [http://www.jontelang.com/blog/2015/08/15/automating- screensh...](http://www.jontelang.com/blog/2015/08/15/automating- screenshots.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> The beta period may reveal more challenges, but so far we've routinely used it on 5 screen setups, with varying DPIs. Is that the sort of thing you're asking about?

I love your blogpost/screenshots.

<comment><USER2> Actually I meant if you have 2 screens connected. Will it screenshot both of them or just one.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes indeed. You can capture either: just the current application, just one screen, or "all screens"

Some of the options can be seen in one of the screenshots:

[http://www.secretgeek.net/image/ts_mac_options_50.png](http://www.secretgeek.net/image/ts_mac_options_50.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The same can be achieved by just running screencapture(1) periodically, although cron is broken in Mac OS and probably you can't access screen from cron jobs. So, while loop in shell with sleep, for example, or StartInterval in launchd job.

Avoiding screenshoting when screen is locked is more complicated, though. You have to access Quartz.CGSessionCopyCurrentDictionary somehow, i.e. from python.

P.S. does Automator or Applescript allows to achieve the same functionality?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a nicer experience than using a hand rolled script, particularly playback and handling of edge cases.

It's a bit like saying "instead of buying food from a shop you could just grow your own food." It's technically true, but then you're responsible for all the care and feeding of the tree instead of other activities that are higher economic value to you.

When we first thought of the idea, over a decade ago, people immediately raised that concern. But few of them wrote the script. Or if they did, they abandoned it after a while and it languished because they didn't invest the time to do it nicely.

Playback of the images is the first big advantage to having someone else write the code. But also it means that someone has put effort into dealing with cases such as multiple monitors, and multiple monitors with varying DPI and so on. Avoiding screenshots when idle, avoiding duplicates etc.

But I do love scripting up personal solutions to things, and spend far too much time doing exactly that. So I like the attitude.

<comment><USER4> Yup, this is a very common effect that is used by almost every technology in existence. Almost anything is replicable, and engineers love to point that out, and how little time it would take them to replicate as a humblebrag hidden as a comment on triviality of the product. In reality, though, convenience and user experience is what makes the world work, not how easy something is on paper, because that last 20% that makes anything valuable can sure as hell be paid for only in the currency of blood, sweat and tears. (And time.)

Industrial revolution was a thing because it made easier the manufacturing of clothing. People could do it by hand before, the end product wasn't something a human hand couldn't. It just made it slightly simpler, and here we are 200 years later, counting atoms on microprocessor semiconductor walls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sweet! Looking forward to this. I already do something with just some scripts. Having a full fledged app would be nice.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think playback is the thing that makes it nice. Glad to hear about you scripting it... it's really useful to have records, in a whole bunch of situations.

<comment><USER5> Yeah the playback is what makes this cool. I started using TimeSnapper and am really liking it. I do think it is lacking some depth and features. I was going to email TimeSnapper back to give feedback this weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I switched from Windows to Linux quite a few years ago, but when I was on Windows, I was a paying customer and huge fan of TimeSnapper. It's one of the few tools I truly missed after the move.

Well done, Leon. Glad to see TimeSnapper is still going!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much enobrev, that's really heart warming. ;) I use a bit of Linux myself these days via WSL (and digital ocean droplets running .net core). I feel strangely at home on Linux in a way I can't really articulate. Perhaps in a past life I was a file descriptor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hope our IT guys don't see this or it'll be a mandatory install via JAMF with all pictures sent to a management shared folder.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been delivering TimeSnapper on windows for a decade and have never done anything to encourage or support that kind of "customer".

We're popular with freelancers and accountants and developers and people interested in personal productivity.

Every now and then there are people who ask for features that involve hiding timesnapper or centralising its output... we direct them to read the EULA and ask them to uninstall the product as they're not someone we're interested in dealing with.

If I wouldn't want it done to me I don't help people do it to others: end of story.

<comment><USER8> Have you considered any of the following to protect privacy & mitigate eavesdropping:

\+ password or SSO protection for access to the app's data (use Kerberos/AD SSO for credentials?)

\+ an end-user controlled encrypted store for the data & screenshots (FUSE/WinFSP?)

\+ a daily local push/popup notification displayed to the logged-in user with... a) app status b) data summary c) a quick action to toggle the background recording service on/off

Just my $.02. Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> All good suggestions ankushnarula!

In the Windows version you can password protect the images. Because they're stored locally there hasn't been a massive uptake in this feature, but some people do use it.

The icon is not easily hidden from the task tray (and we don't provide any option to encourage that). We found a daily notification too intrusive (as users ourselves).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's not an electron app.</comment>


Video from 2012 PyData Workshop: Boosting NumPy with Numbexpr and Cython - <AUTHOR> http://marakana.com/s/2012_pydata_workshop_boosting_numpy_numbexpr_and_cython_video,1105/index.html <comment><USER2> Very excited to optimize some of my NumPy work using this. Can someone recommend any similar resources?

<comment><USER3> Don't know if you are aware or if it's useful to you, but the author of PyCuda/PyOpenCL is at NYU and both have numpy support.

<comment><USER2> Bookmarked--thanks! I should probably meet with Andreas too.</comment></comment></comment>


Back to the Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.firstthings.com/article/2020/03/back-to-the-future <comment><USER2> On Stagnation, I think the argument is very weak. Compare 1970 to today and we don't have any invention better than running water. Sorry what? If you want to compare centuries go ahead- but I think it's almost inarguable that life has changed much more significantly 1900-2000 than 1800-1900. Information is basically now costless to store, communication with anyone on earth is practically free, and we can literally travel to any point on earth in a matter of days. The idea that we've stagnated just seems frankly absurd to me. Are all those achievements less important than running water? I don't know, running water probably saved more lives - but Alexander Fleming was hardly a slouch in the 1920s.

If you want to _only_ compare 1969 to now, I'd like to point out that there's a really obvious problem. We don't have 200 years of hindsight to say "Oh that invention completely changed the world". How are we feeling about Genome sequencing, how about the plethora of green energy generation technologies? How about the Electric Car? The Internet?

I just feel like the stagnation assertion is ridiculous.

<comment><USER3> > _but I think it 's almost inarguable that life has changed much more > significantly 1900-2000 than 1800-1900._

Yes, but much more insignificantly 1950-2000 to 1900-1950 -- and slowing down ever since.

> _Information is basically now costless to store, communication with anyone > on earth is practically free, and we can literally travel to any point on > earth in a matter of days_

None of which is particularly exciting, and the latter is probably detrimental to the planet.

We could already communicate with anywhere instantly back with the transatlantic telephone. The rest is evolutionary, not revolutionary.

Even communication satellites we've had for 50+ years already. Heck, the base internet is 60+ years old, and the web 3 decades.

<comment><USER4> > Yes, but much more insignificantly 1950-2000 to 1900-1950 -- and slowing > down ever since.

Here are a few more significant innovations since 1950:

0\. Search Engines 1\. Video Games 2\. GPS 3\. Medical 3D Imaging (CT/MRI) 4\. Genetic Sequencing 5\. 3D Printing 6\. Autonomous Machines (ground robots, drones)

> None of which is particularly exciting

You aren't excited about having all of human knowledge in your pocket? Does something have to fundamentally change our understanding of physics for you to get excited?

<comment><USER5> You can search for facts at the touch of a button, but understanding and wisdom remains a time intensive task that requires immense focus. Focus and attention has become a rather rare commodity in this age.

<comment><USER6> Knowledge is a prerequisite for wisdom. Wisdom is up next.

<comment><USER4> I feel like you can get a descent amount of wisdom with the right youtube playlist

But an interactive tutorial would be better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Most likey we've done all the low hanging fruit: supersonic flight is categorically more difficult than subsonic yet is a diminishing return given that so much time is just spent preparing for the flight. And, Peter's opinion not withstanding, it is impossible to communicate faster than light which is where we are.

But if we have become decadent, it hardly surprising in a society where opinion is give more weight than facts and people are not even willing to preserve their democracy.

</comment><comment><USER8> "As for the world outside of MIT's PR materials, it appears much the same as it was in 1969—just with faster computers and uglier cars."

I this sentiment is actually right, especially when you realize that Thiel has made it clear that he isn't all that impressed with the advances of the last 30 years. We've seen innovation in software but not many breakthroughs in physics and atoms. For example, the predictions of the 50s and 60s about how we would live (flying cars, greater health, space travel, cleaner, futuristic cities) seemed to hope for those breakthroughs. The reality of where innovation happened is much more depressing: pocket computers, information superabundance, and porn.

For example: there has yet to be a breakthrough in the last 50 years that could even come close the impact of antibiotics and nobody has set foot on the moon in five decades. But if you told someone that in the late 60s, I think they wouldn't believe it.

<comment><USER9> " _For example: there has yet to be a breakthrough in the last 50 years that could even come close the impact of antibiotics and nobody has set foot on the moon in five decades. But if you told someone that in the late 60s, I think they wouldn 't believe it._"

This shouldn't be that surprising when you think about the situation just a little bit. Antibiotics are important because they cover a wide variety of diseases that formerly were untreatable. This is the case because they all have the same cause: bacteria. Other classes of disease, such as cancer, aren't so simple. There isn't a single treatment that can reliably cure all forms of cancer and theoretically there really can't be. It's just a fundamentally harder problem. There's a lot a low hanging fruit in basic discoveries but then we hit a wall when we attempt to apply them to more difficult problems.

Back in the 50's (I think) there was a fascination with the possibility of weather prediction. It seemed reasonable at the time that because the weather was ultimately a deterministic system we could predict it months in advance just by figuring out the physics and running the correct calculations. Then we discovered chaos theory and "sensitive dependence on initial conditions" and we realized that weather prediction was a fundamentally much harder problem than we could have predicted. We simply can't ever measure the atmosphere accurately enough to accurately predict the weather more than a few weeks in advance and even then we have to take a probabilistic approach.

There's a similar deal with fast planes as mentioned in the article. Back in the 60s and 70s all the big aerospace engineers wanted to be working on supersonic airliners like the Concord. Decades later, that effort seems to have been a waste of time. It turns out that the physics of supersonic flight present challenges and the economics of intercontinental travel don't really cover those challenges. The changes that have been made to airliners over the last few decades have been instead in terms of efficiency and safety. Even in the military sector, which can throw tons of money at pie-in-the-sky ideas has run into this. The most populous strategic bomber in the US Airforce is still the B-52 which was introduced in the mid 50s. We do have more advanced weapons, but we can't afford them, and we can't afford them precisely because of the changes that make them more advanced.

If someone in the late 60s wouldn't believe that we'd not repeat the success of antibiotics or return to the moon, it would have been because of misconceptions about the nature of the problems involved in the 60s rather than because of some form of decadence that settled in after the fact.

<comment><USER10> I think your argument risks being an example of how Thiel might argue that we educate ourselves into complacency. The discoverers of antibiotics had no reason to believe there would exist a treatment to cover such a broad spectrum of diseases; it's only in retrospect that we understand the mechanisms within which we say "we have found the low hanging fruit". Fleming's mode of inquiry and curiosity led him to discover a new branch of tools, but the article contends that our focus on specialization has taught us to bury ourselves in complexity and accept feeling relatively helpless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Holy freaking irony, Batman. Isn't this the guy who founded Palantir, the company enabling the current industrial/surveillance complex that will surely prevent "sclerotic" institutions from being reformed? A gay man writing in a Catholic journal about the problem of low birth rates? WTF am I reading?

Nonetheless he makes a few good points, but the irony burns!

</comment><comment><USER12> The discussion of sterility and sclerosis seems reasonable to me. On the subject of stagnation and repetition, I find that my perception is diametrically opposed to what the author of the book and Peter Thiel say. I am a baby boomer, and I am absolutely blown away by things like 3D printers and rocket boosters returning from space and being reused, not to mention the possibility of quantum computing. As far as the arts are concerned, I believe the difference between the olden days and today is that today, there is way more of everything rather than less. This causes an odd distortion of perception. In the 1960s, you could easily name a few progressive bands, musicians, movies, etc., because there were so few. Today, the stuff you can find on the Internet is vast, but there are no few big names to stand out. Or, more precisely, there are a few big names, but that's the repetitive stuff that the author laments. The new, creative, progressive stuff doesn't have those. Go on the Internet, you'll be surprised!

<comment><USER13> Quantum computing, like AGI, will be 10 years away, maybe a couple more centuries. 3D printers are pretty insignificant atm. Space x and Tesla are the exception.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [https://archive.md/gjlhN](https://archive.md/gjlhN)

</comment><comment><USER15> Ouch, that "Subscribe today" banner should have its fonts either embedded on the page or rendered into paths. Without that, it looks like this: [https://imgur.com/a/kxie7Cb](https://imgur.com/a/kxie7Cb)</comment>


First app for audio transcription base on your mobile and speech recognition - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/agile-dictation-audio-file/id979463309?mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a first app to let people convert the wav, mp3 which more than 3 minutes to text!</comment>


Stochastic geometric series - <AUTHOR> http://efavdb.com/stochastic-geometric-series/ <comment><USER2> This is nice. So, follow-up question.

In economics, there's "input-output models" which amount to the summation of adjacency matrices for inter-sectoral demand linkages such that

S = I + A + A^2 + A^3+... = (I-A)^(-1)

We know this to be true because matrix A is markovian, so it's a bounded operator, so we have a Neumann series. What happens if we have probability distributions for the elements of A?

This is the context where it arises: we define a vector of x interindustrial demands that must satisfy itself through production coefficients A (the weights in the graph of cross-sector dependencies), such that

x = A _x

but then we give this balanced system an additive shock ("consumer demands") b so that

x' = x+e = A_x+b

but we still want to satisfy Ax' = x'. So:

A _(x+e) = A_ x+b => A*e = b => e = (I-A)^(-1) b

This is the shock to the interindustrial demands provoked by b. We have to know that (I-A) is invertible, which by the Perron-Frobenius theorem is true if A happens to be markovian.

This matters because the interindustrial linkage graph A is very noisy (it's hammered into place at the national accounts offices from disperse information), and much basic demand-shock appraisal (in a multi-sector context at least) still uses this basic ("Leontieff") model; and more sophisticated models apply variants of this too; but it's very hard to get anything said about confidence intervals -- other than by means of simulation.

So -- maybe it's an interesting, applied problem to work on!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome idea!

<comment><USER2> Can I maybe email you if this is (in your estimation) a conversation worth continuing? I have a feeling it gets fast lost in an aging HN thread.

At any rate: probably the most important problem to be posed by such a "random input-output theory" is stochastic divergence. Random matrix theory, of which I can make little sense, does present some knowledge about the distribution of eigenvalues given some stochastic structure, which numerically gives us probability estimates to whether we're breaking Perron-Frobenius and posing an explosive system. But the relevant problem is in reverse: what is the set of acceptable stochastic conditions such that we can guarantee that S = I+A+Aˆ2+... = some finite value?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I'm very happy to talk some more about this. My email is email@example.com (will delete this post after you email).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jaamiah.com – Pakistan Smartest Education Portal - <AUTHOR> Nowadays, every scholar craves to have all the impartial details regarding schools, colleges and universities on a sole platform rather than exploring the online web portal of each institution individually. Jaamiah.com imparts outright information about the educational institutions of Pakistan to encourage interregional literacy, validate the academic opportunities and plan careers. As of social and ethical responsibility, it also incorporates the support of professionals to guide right-way and entertain the queries.<p>https://jaamiah.com <comment><USER2> it seems just like a static website with a community portal what so "Smartest" about it ?</comment>


Tallow: Transparent Tor for Windows - <AUTHOR> https://www.reqrypt.org/tallow.html <comment><USER2> "Tallow is not a complete strong anonymity solution.

Tallow makes no attempt to anonymize the content sent through the Tor network. This content may de-anonymize you. For example, logging into GMail via Tor will de-anonymize you, since you are the only person who knows the password to your account!"

<comment><USER3> I'm annoyed by the phrasing here, specifically that this is phrased as a drawback of using Tallow. This isn't anything specific to Tallow, it's specific to Tor, and it's also not a vulnerability, it's just how Tor _works_.

I think it should be phrased differently, and point out that if Alice goes through the best onion routing in the world, she will still reveal her identity if she opens "Alice's Lockbox" on the other end of the connection, assuming she's the only one with the key. She'll also reveal her identity by the time she's actively using the "Lockbox", if you compare it to activity coming from Alice's house to the onion router. All of these are known "vulnerabilities" in Tor, which aren't really vulnerabilities, just things you need to understand before using it.</comment></comment>


Schwarzenegger signs law that computer professional with salary $75k+ can not get overtime - <AUTHOR> http://www.seyfarth.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publications.publications_detail/object_id/ea977a60-e710-4f97-bab0-c6116be8789d/CaliforniaGovernorSignsNewLawEstablishingThatComputerProfessionalsWithaSalaryof75000orMoreAreNotEntitledtoOvertime.cfm

<comment><USER2> I'm curious which lobbyists were able to use the current financial crisis as leverage to push this through as urgency legislation.

"Um, in order to continue being a really awesome company despite the economy, we're going to have to ask that you change the law to protect us from our overworked programmers. Thanks."

</comment><comment><USER3> It sounds like a reasonable clarification of the law. Although it doesn't sound very urgent.

</comment><comment><USER4> fuck you too, man.</comment>


Asynchronous Coding For My Tiny Ruby Brain - <AUTHOR> http://pdxjs-twitter-node.heroku.com/ @technoweenie talks about node.js <comment><USER2> Could have linked to your blog instead, maybe thrown youtube link there.. this is a bit random.</comment>


Riots and Political Theory: A Reading List - <AUTHOR> https://www.southampton.ac.uk/politics/news/2020/06/11-riots-and-political-theory.page <comment><USER4> > Riots are extra-public because crowds riot rather than institutionalized > groups such as parties or social movements. Riots are extra-state because > they violate the state's monopoly on violence. Riots are extra-legal because > they are a form of unlawful assembly. Riots are extra-Parliamentary because > they operate outside of the normal legislative process.

Then, by definition, a riot won't have a durable justification, since its goals are fluid, it uses extraordinary methods, has no accountable leadership, and doesn't seek enduring change.

<comment><USER5> Which I think is pretty fair. There's always bad actors who try to justify riots, but almost everyone agrees that they're bad - the "pro-riot" side of a discussion is usually along the lines of "you know, a violent crackdown just isn't going to work, so we'd better do suchandsuch or they'll keep on being angry".

<comment><USER6> I think you'd be surprised at how many (particularly young) people and leadership from organizations either refuse to denounce or outright condone rioting.

<comment><USER5> Refusal to denounce rioting can be problematic, but I'm not comfortable equating it with support. If people came by demanding that I denounce some random riot, I wouldn't do it, not because I'm pro-riot but because I reject the implication that the rioters have anything to do with me.

I've been quite surprised seeing how many people will condone rioting, but I'm still confident it's a small minority, shrinking to a barely existent minority for riots which can't plausibly be spun as honest protests.

<comment><USER6> Refusing to denounce rioting is almost always paired with something along the lines of "rioting is the language of the unheard" or "our organizations will not denounce any black person's display of grief and/or rage", as is the literal case with one of the organizations from my hometown [0]. I cannot see that as anything but support. But trying to justify actions, you are, by definition, supporting those actions.

To be clear, it's the justification, not refusing to denounce.

[0]: [https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and- politics/madison-...](https://madison.com/ct/news/local/govt-and- politics/madison-protest-organizers-defend-vandalism-as-contributions-to- liberation/article_2815e2cd-02fa-5413-a2d9-416de5f2d94e.html)

<comment><USER7> "If you are not with us, you are against us."

<comment><USER6> I go out of my way to show that's not the mentality I have, nor one I want to promote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There definitely is an informal and growing consensus on just riot theory.

I hypothesize that the treatment of riots by liberal (classical sense) scholars has been based on their rationalistic optimism and a belief that domestic political problems can be solved non-violently. If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and right.

I personally hope that the view that violent riots are illegitimate wins out, but I am not planning my life around that hope.

Addendum: I should note that, if one were opposed to the liberal (classical sense) project, the encouragement of riots (regardless of them being left or right) would be an excellent strategy.

<comment><USER9> > If they can't, that throws the entire liberal (classical sense) project into > question, and opens exhilarating, dangerous doors on both the left and > right.

Only if they _can_ be solved with violence. I'd argue that even if a particular issue can be solved with violence, the net result will generally be worse than the status quo as the violence will rarely be limited to such issues.

I'd think that for an undirected mob, violence that was a net beneficial effect would be even more rare than violence by a well regulated army. E.g. U.S. military violence during WWII was arguably a net benefit. What would be an example of mob violence that led to a net benefit?

<comment><USER10> French revolution started with a riot. While the terror state that came soon after is condemned, it was the violent spark that realized the Enlighment ideals in Europe.

1830 was a riotous year globally. Belgian independence started with a riot, and was successful in a sense, carving out a place for libertarian optimism and industrial expansion from a war-weary continent.

These are both fairly conventional pop-culture interpretations. But maybe similar developments would have happened without the flash in the pan of some undirected mob breaking things.

<comment><USER9> The French revolution led in fairly short order to the French empire, which is generally not considered to have been a net social benefit.

I suppose the Boston Massacre could be an example.

<comment><USER11> After the fall of the french empire, my country kept the new laws, the new roads, and the new social structure. We just got rid of the french who had been running things and put locals in their place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A lot of people in this thread seem to have some false dichotomy in their mind - either you are peacefully protesting or you are rioting by burning random cars and destroying uninvolved storefronts. There is another option: peacefully protest but try to occupy administrative buildings and only use violence as a response to police violence. This is what happened in many post- USSR countries in the so called "colour revolutions", Euromaidan, etc. In particular in Euromaidan there were heavy clashes with police, but no destruction of private property (at least not deliberately by protesters). Police cars were burned, paving stone, garbage bins, etc were used for fighting/barricades, but this doesn't hurt anyone in particular the way destroyed car or store would. Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.

<comment><USER13> >Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.

Makes it seem like those rioters have different - maybe opposite - <USER2> than the protesters.

<comment><USER14> This is pretty common:

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-police-admit-they- went...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/quebec-police-admit-they-went- undercover-at-montebello-protest-1.656171)

"However, the police force denied allegations its undercover officers were there on Monday to provoke the crowd and instigate violence."

"Police came under fire Tuesday, when a video surfaced on YouTube that appeared to show three plainclothes police officers at the protest with bandanas across their faces. One of the men was carrying a rock."

"In the video, protest organizers in suits order the men to put the rock down, call them police instigators and try unsuccessfully to unmask them."

These events are not commonly believed when there isn't clear cut video evidence, though. Property destruction will be, by default, blamed on the protestors rather than police instigators. In this case the police were easily identified simply because they were sloppy and forgot to not wear police issue boots. Had the video not proved that _and_ that they intended to commit violence, this would have been a wild conspiracy theory.

I don't quite understand why this practice isn't extremely illegal in every country that has pretenses towards democracy. It's a form of fraud.

<comment><USER15> The government and the police permit themselves to commit fraud, as it is often a convenient means by which to achieve their objectives (i.e. the police can lie to you, but you cannot lie to the police).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm very very surprised that the number one parallel has yet to ever be mentioned in these kinds of discussions: the 2005 Paris riots.

French police were held responsible for the deaths of North African teenagers and riots broke out all over suburban Paris that caused waaay more property damage than anything we've seen in America this summer. French media framed the entire issue as brown people showing their true colors by not posing any 'coherent' message to French political establishment, eg. no slogans or demands. French politics sense has drifted further Rightward, further edifying the French political ideal that if you wanna live in France you better play by our rules (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same thing]).

<comment><USER17> > (same thing in Germany where you have to pass a cultural test to gain > citizenship, imagine such a thing in America! [And no, answering questions > about the constitution, the foundational legal document, is not the same > thing]).

I don't know how I feel about this. On one hand, I kind of like that we're more liberal than Germany or France on this. I don't like how liberals in the U.S. fail to appreciate that fact and think the U.S. is super racist and xenophobic. (I guess if they're comparing against a platonic ideal.)

<comment><USER18> Different parts of the US exemplify the full spectrum of tolerance to xenophobia. Our bests are pretty darn good (not near perfect), but the variance is high.

<comment><USER15> US law/regulatory policy may be a good measure, and is definitely less xenophobic than than of many/most European governments. The best example is what happens with refugees and immigrants, who are treated as interlopers in France; American policy is 'skeptical' of refugee claimants, but much more likely to permit them to settle and work if the claim is accepted.

<comment><USER19> To say nothing of the fact that their children born in America are natural- born citizens of the United States, unlike almost every other similarly industrialized/wealthy country (the Maple Leaf State doesn't count!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As with any destructive force, rioting is not a sustainable state of being. It is a blunt object to signal "Things are not okay" from societies whose frustration boils over in trying to achieve change through more articulate language.

Rioting rarely affects change in the systems in the direction desired, as its methods are misaligned with desirable, sustainable values. Thus, it allows ruling classes to paint a harsh narrative of the rioters - leading in many cases to greater inequality and worse conditions.

Riot theory seems like an interesting starting point to understand the socioeconomic climate in America today. A dialogue from which would naturally lend itself to survey the options that members of a community have in articulating opinions and criticisms of the systems they live within.

Note: I haven't had the chance yet to read the articles linked by Mr Havercroft, but look forward to doing so.

</comment><comment><USER21> The problem with riots is they often get co-opted by actors whose goals are not in alignment with the goal of the original rioters. Also, there isn't usually a singular person, group, or entity who will take responsibility of the riots and say "We are rioting for XYZ reasons". Contrast this with peaceful protests, where the reasons for and goals of the protests are laid bare by its leaders. They are, in turn, able to promote their cause and have their grievances aired to the public at large. Finally, the destructive nature of riots poison the public perception of the rioters and their reasons, regardless of whatever just causes the rioters might have for their actions.

<comment><USER22> I'm in agreement with the co-option risk.

Keep in mind that coption (or corruption) holds true for _all_ tools of power.

Regulation (capture). Legislation, executive, judiciary and bureaucracy (bribery, lobbying, special interests, nepotism, blackmail, ...). The press. Police and military. Taxes. Fines. Investigations (surveillance). Treaties. Emotions (fear, anger, guilt, embarrassment). Attention. Religion. Culture. Language. Narrative. Buildings, roads, ports, railroads, walls, canals, and tunnels. Bulldozers. Guns and stilettos. Bread and circuses. War. Peace.

Literally _everything_.

This doesn't make all of these bad, or mean they're never useful. But tools of power _are_ useful because they _do_ have effect, and can be used for both good and ill.

The trick is seeing the tools are used for good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a fantastic article and reading list. I'm disappointed at how so much of the discussion around the most recent rioting has devolved to being pro- protest vs anti-rioting. The riots, like the spread of the pandemic are symptoms of wide-spread, systemic failures in our social, political and economic institutions.

The psychologist Stephen Pinker, has pointed out that violence itself is a tool of last resort in the human toolkit. The violence of rioters is mostly spontaneous and fueled by anger, flamethrowers and sledge hammers directed at objects belonging to a system they feel has not responded to their needs or concerns. The fact that violence is not the best tool for the job is irrelevant by this point.

Cooler, smarter and more sympathetic heads should actually focus more on what triggered the riots and determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances and hopefully prevent the recurrence of such failures. The reading list offers an excellent beginning for that. Discussing the efficacy and justification for rioting probably doesn't.

<comment><USER24> > determine the changes that are necessary to remediate legitimate grievances

Except that the grievances don't appear to be that legitimate and the changes that would be necessary don't appear to be too popular with the majority of the population. Capitulating to a violent mob out of fear of further violence surrenders control from the democratic process to escalating barbarism.

<comment><USER23> Well, one particular grievance among them, that a person passing off a counterfeit 20-dollar bill doesn't deserve death at the hands of police, probably is legitimate. Choosing to remediate that injustice is not capitulation to the mob, but fulfillment of the promise of equal protection under the law that the democratic process was supposed to protect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> In places where information distribution monopolized by ruling class riots are the only method to signal disagreement to both a) ruling class and b) other non-ruling people.

<comment><USER22> "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."

\-- John Fitzgerald Kennedy

[https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make- peacef...](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/89101-those-who-make-peaceful- revolution-impossible-will-make-violent-revolution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One reason thinkers usually place riots outside the discourse is because they are an artificial spectacle, and which are necessarily tolerated by a faction in the establishment who could easily suppress them with violence, but they don't because the effect of the riots supports their strategy for change in their institution.

Situationism, and anarchist ideas like "the propaganda of the deed" covered rioting from a more earnest perspective, but in watching movements and protests for a couple of decades, there is always someone within the establishment in whose interest it is to tolerate rioting. This also explains the regular use of police provocateurs to break up peaceful protests by manufacturing riots, and instead of mere explanatory power, you can use it to predict how long an establishment will tolerate a spate of rioting. It's a ritualized performance and a spectacle.

</comment><comment><USER11> Rumsfeld's contribution to Riot Theory:

> "While no one condones looting, on the other hand, one can understand the > pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who > have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be > taking their feelings out on that regime, ... I don't think there's anyone > in any of those pictures ... [who wouldn't] accept it as part of the price > of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."

[https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld- Looting...](https://www.upi.com/Defense-News/2003/04/11/Rumsfeld-Looting-is- transition-to-freedom/63821050097983/)

</comment><comment><USER27> If you are interested in hearing an on-the-ground perspective to accompany the theory, you could do worse than watch this. NSFW language.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go)

<comment><USER22> Kimberly Jones, "How Can We Win".

Excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Shouldn't it be easy thanks to Zuckerberg and Co to profile the Personality Trait distributions of any assembling group?

I mean given what marketing teams are able to do these days, in real time, I think any bunch of Violent Trait holders assembling anywhere will be straight forward to identify.

Anyways alternative reading list for the non-violent crowd - <USER3> specifically the Champran Agitation, the Rowlatt Act(non-coop movement), and then the Salt march.

What I liked about it is he didn't react to an issue by just giving speeches, blaming anyone or mindlessly protesting. He would go to the site of the issue with qualified people and work the problem. Gain support through those actions, across all kinds of social, cultural, religious, linguistic boundaries, no one thought possible. And that would freak out the powers that be for whom divide and conquer is the default method of clinging to power.

Nothing freaks them out more than when 2 groups that dont get along march together. And thats when they start making compromises.

</comment><comment><USER29> Riots are also non-specific. The violence directed toward the "enemy" of the riot is at best a large fraction of the riot's violence. The rest is directed simply at its surroundings. The stores big and small, nearby homes, anyone who happens to be walking by and fitting the wrong description.

You can't do that and be just. A "just riot" would be an attack directed against a specific entity and people would label it a terrorist attack or mob violence, not a riot.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'd add to this list Riots and Pogroms by Paul Brass and Among the Thugs by Bill Burford.

</comment><comment><USER31> Riots helped bring about the American Revolution!</comment>


Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence Failed to Confirm (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-who-found-evidence-for-gluten-sensitivity-have-now-shown-it-doesn-t-exist <comment><USER2> If you go read the study, there is a potentially rather severe experimental flaw.

My wife has what seems to be fairly severe gluten intolerance, which shows up approximately 3 days after she consumes even small amounts of glutinous. She had this for years before trying an elimination diet and discovering this effect. Please note that it shows up even if she does not know she has had gluten -- we sometimes are able to sort out ingredients after the fact, and if she has the reaction, it will show up if we look deep enough.

The report says, the test was done by rotating diet every 3 days. If my wife were in the study, her reaction would show up in the next food rotation. So to measure the effect we see with my wife, the experiment would need to measure reactions with approximately a 3 day delay- otherwise it would look like the sensitivity was random. The article does not indicate that this approach was taken so I wonder about error.

As for my wife, her health improved dramatically after eliminating gluten from her diet, though it's pretty clear that she doesn't have ciliac.

Perhaps it's something else in the gluten containing foods (and not in other foods) besides gluten that's having this effect, but if so, avoiding gluten is a very good marker for whatever this gluten-containing-food substitute might be.

<comment><USER3> Your own study has a pretty severe flaw as well, namely confirmation bias. To do this better you need to set a fixed time period in which you will look for gluten consumption and record everything she eats.

Then every so often you (the partner) looks back X days to see if she's eaten gluten. The key is, you can't know ahead of time whether she had a reaction, which is tricky I know.

The way you're doing it, you would find the same results if she she consumes gluten on a semi-regular basis unknowingly but has no allergy. You're only looking when you expect to find something, which is guaranteed to skew the results.

<comment><USER4> Confirmation bias does not exclude being correct. I have the same experience with a family member having gluten intolerance. We have experimented with diet. On gluten. Off gluten. Eating what is thought to be gluten free and having the usual reaction. And then finding out it wasnt. Having symptoms dissapear after a while of gluten etc. etc.

There might be confirmation bias, and it might be an n=1 test, but it is also 100% repeatable.

And it might not be the gluten, but proteins that are in the same foods as gluten. So when you stop with gluten you also stop with the other proteins. But that is really irellevant when you got the sensitivity.

<comment><USER3> There's no use in drawing conclusions from a broken experiment, whether it's from a team of scientists or an at-home test. Having no experience with gluten insensitivity myself, I am simply suggesting a way to bring some rigor to this conversation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As someone who has Coeliac disease: shhhhhhh! /s

When I was first diagnosed, you couldn't buy groceries or eat out _anywhere_. Now, pretty much every restaurant has gluten free options marked on their menu; every supermarket has a wide range of bread, flour, cake mixes, biscuits, and so on; and manufacturers of packaged food are swapping out incidental gluten-free ingredients like wheat starch for gluten-free alternatives. You can bet that's because of people that think gluten-free food is "good for you", rather than the much smaller group of Coeliacs ourselves.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think it's a good thing for people with celiac disease that pretty much every restaurant has gluten free options on their menu?

Most restaurants advertising gluten-free items don't have dedicated cookware, utensils, cutting surfaces, grill areas, etc., which greatly raises the risk of cross-contamination.

And a significant percentage of gluten-free products in supermarkets are made in shared facilities that process wheat - why count that as helpful for celiac sufferers?

EDIT: I'd seriously love to be able to psychologically go into the average restaurant or fast food place and buy their gluten-free food without getting sick, so I welcome evidence as to why I'm wrong.

<comment><USER7> Head Chef here: for a celiac I'll use fresh equipment for their meal. My cutting boards are bleached and sanitised every night, my knives are constantly being cleaned and we certainly don't reuse dirty pans.

<comment><USER6> Where is this at, if you care to share? And do you know if your menu states anything about this? Most restaurants I look into (and won't eat at as a result) say stuff like:

"Gluten Free – Did you know that Chef Heather knows each and every ingredient that goes into her dishes? If you require a gluten free dish, please tell your server, or ask the Chef about it. Gluten Free is Not available for every dish." [http://plumtreebistro.net/bistro- menu/](http://plumtreebistro.net/bistro-menu/)

But when I email the restaurant, such as Plum Bistro, I get replies such as, "Hi there we are not a gluten free restaurant. We simply offer gluten-free options it's not advisable to dine with us if you have celiac disease because cross-contamination may occur."

Or another restaurant, after enquiring about their gluten-free options: "Thanks for your inquiry. We don't have specific cross contamination protocols."

I find these, or restaurants that have fine print about shared facilities and not assuming risk of cross-contamination, to be the norm in Seattle.

<comment><USER8> There is a difference between what the chef will do for you after a one-on-one discussion vs. what their marketing people will claim in written documentation that will come back to bite them in court if you get sick and sue them. We live in a litigious society, and it impacts our communications.

But they are right -- if you are Celiac, and it is so serious that a shared utensil is dangerous to you... their CYA statements are probably correct that it is not advisable to eat there. That doesn't mean you cannot do it... but it is your decision whether to go against that advice, and take that risk upon yourself... not their decision to give you a green light and put that risk on their kitchen staff.

<comment><USER6> For me, having to have a one on one discussion with the chef (not my comfort zone) about whether they can make celiac-safe food isn't the same thing as almost every restaurant having gluten-free items on the menu. BTW, plenty of restaurants seem to list fried foods that are gluten-free but also mention that they share the fryer with items containing gluten. That's not legalese, that's certain contamination.

<comment><USER7> A good chef will put a wok with fresh oil on and fry the gluten free in that(we can use that oil in our normal fryer top up).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm just going to listen to my body. Had the blood test twice, negative both times, yet after years of isolation diets and experimentation, it's gluten that gives me diarrhoea and eczema and by not eating it, I'm fine. The doctors I spoke to before I worked out the cause just said "oh it's IBS, you'll just have to manage it".. except by giving up gluten I'm 100% fine, ha!

I appreciate "hipsters" who avoid gluten because they help increase the variety of gluten free food options, but I'd just go paleo if it went away because the sickness isn't worth it.

<comment><USER10> It's likely FODMAPs: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FODMAP)

These are found in foods that coincidentally also contain gluten and there's a demonstrated effect on digestion.

<comment><USER11> You claim it's likely FODMAPs. What's your evidence for that?

<comment><USER12> the guy who first brought up gluten sensitivity recanted and now cites FODMAPs as the likely cause. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23648697)

which happens to be the article your commenting on to begin with!, just for some reason a dupe from two years later. its in the first sentence of the abstract.

<comment><USER11> I have a friend who strictly follows a low FODMAP diet, so I'm fairly familiar with it. The thing is, if you are following a strict gluten-free diet it is very likely you are eating lots of high-FODMAP foods! (have a look at [http://www.ibsdiets.org/fodmap-diet/fodmap-food- list/](http://www.ibsdiets.org/fodmap-diet/fodmap-food-list/) for example, if you want to check it out for yourself).

So I don't see how "avoiding gluten" could be confused with FODMAP issues in most cases.

Also, as I've posted in another comment, there's been more recent research, in a reputable journal, which has found a biological explanation of wheat sensitivity. See this article for a write-up: [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123632.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123632.htm)

<comment><USER12> the article you posted is for Wheat, not Gluten (a protein)

do you see how it is incorrect to attribute a problem to an ingredient, when a different ingredient in the Wheat may be causing the problem?

Maybe it's just semantics, but blaming gluten when it likely is something besides gluten seems wrong. Gluten is not a synonym for Wheat.

<comment><USER11> > do you see how it is incorrect to attribute a problem to an ingredient, when > a different ingredient in the Wheat may be causing the problem?

You're talking about people with a real health problem. They discover that avoiding gluten seems to help. In practical terms, to avoid the health problem they need to communicate to others what is, as best as they can tell, they need to avoid.

They can't magically click their fingers and know exactly what the problem is. It takes research like this to find out stuff like that. In the time being people have to get on with their lives. Now there's an opportunity for them to know better, an opportunity that didn't exist before.

It's like you're expecting people to somehow have known in advance exactly what was going on.

<comment><USER12> >They discover that avoiding gluten

no thats not what they discover, they discover foods that lack something, that sometimes correlates with foods lacking gluten ...

how many people eat pure gluten, by itself, as a control. no they eat complex foods that have many molecules in them.

I am saying, semantically, calling "wheat free" "gluten free" when its something else in the wheat, is to misidentify the problem.

<comment><USER11> > I am saying, semantically, calling "wheat free" "gluten free" when its > something else in the wheat, is to misidentify the problem.

I never claimed that gluten was the problem, or that it was somehow accurate to call gluten the problem if it wasn't gluten!

I was responding to your claim that the issue was likely FODMAPs, and I gave two responses to that 1) the people you claim likely had improvements by inadvertently following a low FODMAP diet would likely have been consuming a high FODMAP diet 2) there was more recent research showing that there was an alternative explanation for the FODMAP one.

Also, as far as I can tell, they don't know that it is something other than gluten. They don't know what it is.

> no thats not what they discover, they discover foods that lack something, > that sometimes correlates with foods lacking gluten ...

What I said was correct. If they avoid gluten they get improvements. That does not mean that gluten was the problem.

<comment><USER12> I wasnt the person that made that claim. I was answering where the "source was" aka the article you are replying to

your inadvertantly thing doesnt make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kind of amazed at the number of people railing against this study and only providing personal anecdotes in return.

Putting aside the dangers of that kind of thinking, it seems clear that a lot of people have become reasonably quite frustrated with real health symptoms they are experiencing. Feeling sick and being brushed off, regardless of the circumstances, must only make the situation harder to deal with.

For those who believe firmly that they've nailed down gluten as the cause, maybe it'd just be safer to just keep those beliefs to yourself and not risk a potentially flippant diagnosis of psychosomatic idiopathy.

<comment><USER14> People have _always_ been like this... it just used to be that the "doctor" was always willing to bleed you or physick you, or whatever. Now doctors are trained only to render useful treatments, but the desire for woo is unchanged.

As you say, people don't like feeling ill, and if the answer is, "You're human, maybe it's environmental, or it's just you, etc..." people would rather take the illusion of personal control. That has never changed, and is unlikely to change unless medicine advances enormously.

People aren't very bright and thoughtful at the best of times. When we're really hurt, what little reason we have goes out of the window.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> On mobile

I've had IBS nearly all my life. At 40 it started to get worse, and continued to get worse, until I started bleeding rectally. I started have bad diarrhea constantly, so bad that I was hospitalized for dehydration. Nobody could tell me what was wrong. I started food elimination, starting with dairy and gluten. In 4 days _all_ my intestinal problems disappeared, along with lifelong migraines. Added diary back to my diet with no problems, added gluten, full on diarrhea and rectal bleeding. My wife is a biochemist, so she started doing blind testing, I didn't know what I was eating, my body did, I reacted within days of having gluten. I eliminated gluten from my diet and got rid of my IBS for good, 99.9% of my migraines and I lost 30 pounds I still ate the same just replaced the gluten.

My son exhibited ADD/ADHD signs along with some severe emotional immaturity. In the course of my investigation I read that gluten intolerance is a spectrum disorder the symptoms can vary widely, so I took a shot and switched him to a gluten free diet. He reacted in about 18 hours, he became a totally different person. It was stunning, removing the gluten was life changing for him. His grades changed immediately, just looking into his eyes, they looked different. No more up and down no more over reactions, no more anything.

Gluten alters his brain chemistry and it's noticeable within hours of his eating gluten. We didn't tell anyone at first that we removed gluten, but everyone who interacted with him noticed it the first time they saw him after we switched his diet. His teachers wrote notes, his friends wanted to know what meds he was on. We did blind testing with our son, once, the change was so dramatic it scared us, he eliminated gluten and hasn't looked back.

My doctor and his doctors tell us we are succumbing to the effects of mass media. It's no wonder health care is a mess in the U.S.

<comment><USER16> so... were you tested for celiac disease?

<comment><USER17> The Celiac test is expensive and sometimes comes up negative if you're just gluten intolerant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This article is reporting on a paper published in 2014.

Here is an article reporting on some more recent research:

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123632.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160726123632.htm)

<quote>

"Biological explanation for wheat sensitivity found

Weakened intestinal barrier, systemic immune activation may explain symptoms in people without celiac disease

Findings from the study, which was led by researchers from Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), were reported in the journal Gut.

"Our study shows that the symptoms reported by individuals with this condition are not imagined, as some people have suggested," said study co-author Peter H. Green, MD, the Phyllis and Ivan Seidenberg Professor of Medicine at CUMC and director of the Celiac Disease Center. "It demonstrates that there is a biological basis for these symptoms in a significant number of these patients." </quote>

If you're wondering about the Gut journal, "Gut is an official journal of the British Society of Gastroenterology. ... IMPACT FACTOR 14.921"

[https://www.google.com.au/search?q=gut+journal+impact+factor](https://www.google.com.au/search?q=gut+journal+impact+factor)

[http://gut.bmj.com/](http://gut.bmj.com/)

Disclaimer: I don't have any expertise in this area, and this is just one paper - there may well be contrary studies that I'm not aware of.

<comment><USER18> > Weakened intestinal barrier, systemic immune activation may explain symptoms > in people without celiac disease

The immune activation is likely caused by a response to the gut biome. One theory is that certain foods are not well absorbed by the digestion system, leading to an overabundance of food for the gut biome. This leads to bacterial overgrowth (or imbalance), causing an immune response. It's this immune response that causes the negative symptoms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I regularly had intestinal distress (constipation or diarrhea + bloating & gas) after most meals as a kid.

It was trauma & stress/anxiety-induced.

All this report tells me is science is still awful at controlling for emotional state of subjects or detecting trauma.

</comment><comment><USER20> Note that the current blood test for celiac disease will give a false negative if you haven't been eating wheat and have been avoiding gluten for some time, so it's perfectly possible to be celiac and be diagnosed as definitely not celiac if your doctor doesn't know this (which many don't.) Even a probe examination of the small intestine may give you a pass if you have been avoiding gluten for, say, months. The expected damage won't be there.

</comment><comment><USER21> Inaccurate title. Should be _non-celiac_ gluten sensitivity.

<comment><USER22> While the title could be better, celiac's is not a sensitivity, it's an allergy - an autoimmune disorder. That's an entirely different class of complaint.

<comment><USER23> Celiac disease is not an allergy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One of the difficulties in thinking about "gluten sensitivity" and food sensitivities in general, is that it glosses over the complexity of the situation.

For example, when you eat a food, it may interact with your gut biome. In fact, it can change the composition and activity of the bacteria in your gut. For some diseases, it is becoming increasingly clear that the primary cause of the problem is not the food, but how the gut biome reacts to the food. If your body is unable to properly absorb the food, gut bacteria may have an over- abundance of nutrients, causing them to grow too much and release toxins in the body, damaging your ability to absorb food, while also potentially poising you in the process.

This has been implicated in diseases as far ranging as ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, autism, and Celiac disease.

Scientists are finally beginning to catch on to the complexity of the situation. I have Crohn's disease, and am just now starting the Specific Carbohydate diet. The basic idea of the diet is that it starves the bacteria, by limiting foods that reach the final phase of the digestion process, where the problematic bacteria exist. There have been two new studies released this year with positive results. Sadly, its difficult to get funding for this kind of research; the monetary incentives are not there the way they are for drug companies.

</comment><comment><USER24> The takeaway from this research wasn't "this is all in people's heads", it's "there's something else about wheat that has a negative impact on some folks; science's best guess has been that it's gluten, but it's likely something else in wheat."

Here is, for example, an article written by a less linkbaity news source than Business Insider: [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/22/314287321/sen...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/22/314287321/sensitive- to-gluten-a-carb-in-wheat-may-be-the-real-culprit)

If folks have doubts about whether some sensitivity to wheat exists in some people, searching PubMed for "gluten sensitivity" or "NCGS" should hopefully dispel those doubts.

Or I guess you could hang out in an enclosed space with my in-laws after they eat bread. It's pretty unmistakeable.

<comment><USER18> > but it's likely something else in wheat.

This is actually flawed thinking. It may not be in the wheat at all, but in how the gut biome reacts to the wheat. This is an important distinction that can lead to very different treatments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So how does this small sample study prove _anything_, apart from the conclusion that gluten intolerance cannot be self diagnosed?

<comment><USER26> It seems to prove the marketing power behind the word of a scientist

EDIT: at least in the food industry. I bet climate scientists are jealous of the clout

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is big news.

But how did they "prove" gluten sensitivity in the first place?

Was this work not reproduced by other teams? How could science be erring for so long?

<comment><USER28> "So long"?

This was about four years from initial study to publication in popular press of the followup study. The polywater error was nearly a decade; it often takes quite a while to fund and perform followup studies.

<comment><USER27> I could be wrong, but I have friends who have been diagnosed to be "gluten sensitive" more than about five years ago. How would that be possible, given that it takes time for a study to enter clinical practice?

<comment><USER29> Did they have an official diagnostic made by a medic or it was a self diagnostic?

Did the medic do any lab test or only a questionary of self reported symptoms?

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure, but it sounded like they visited a MD.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Moderators: (2015) missing.

</comment><comment><USER31> Whatever it is, something in gluten containing foods really messes up one side of my family (non Celiac). And they universally don't diet or care about eating healthy at all, so I'm inclined to believe them that it's not placebo.

The study suggests it may be another "FODMAP" in foods containing gluten causing the effects. So the practical impact on a diet for "gluten sensitive" people at the moment is the same, although hopefully this advances the science of treatment and more specifically targets research.

Then the article ignores that part about FODMAPs and suggests "go ahead, eat bread!". Great job, science writer.

<comment><USER32> While I have not read the actual paper, according to the article the participants in the group were very carefully tested against different levels of gluten in their food, and they reported _negative effects_ for each level of gluten contents. Note that the food was _also_ controlled for FODMAPs, again, showing effects even without any known effector. So there does indeed seem to be an gastrointestinal effect of eating these foods, but, again, according to the article, it seems to be psychological in nature.

The conclusion seems valid: gluten content doesn't make a difference, and negative effects are reported even in the absence of gluten and FODMAPs. At least for the group of participants, neither gluten nor other FODMAPs seem relevant.

Until the affected people know better what it is that causes harm to them, they can (and probably should) ignore gluten content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> But there is a huge industry around this so it will be igored.

</comment><comment><USER34> I wonder if this was somehow funded by the bread industry. People will eat gluten again. Most of my friends are actively avoiding gluten, I am not.

<comment><USER35> Yes they were. [http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(13)00702-6/a...](http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085\(13\)00702-6/abstract)

Funding comes partly from George Weston Foods, perhaps Australia's largest bakery. This is very relevant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Article is dated 2015 and the original 2014

</comment><comment><USER37> My wife did an elimination diet a few years ago. It turns out that doesn't do well with either dairy or gluten. If she eats a bagel, she looks 6 months pregnant for a day or two.

</comment><comment><USER38> Misleading title.

> Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence Have Now Shown It Doesn't > Exist

Should really be:

> Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence Failed to Confirm Original > Findings

VERY significant difference. They didn't prove that it _doesn 't exist_, they proved that they couldn't single it out in a particular experiment.

<comment><USER39> Thank you! We've updated the submission title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The one problem is that these people are constantly eating gluten. The gut needs time to heal from things that bother it, and while inflamed anything will bother it. I have a gluten intolerance. If I am eating gluten constantly, I will get sick on many foods for a while; gluten free or not.

I think overall this headline is just click bait. We shouldn't be looking to prove that "x thing does not exist" because people in real life do experience x and saying a test proves otherwise doesn't just make that condition vanish. Instead we should be looking at "is x really y" or "is there something we don't understand about x".

<comment><USER41> It won't make your condition vanish, but it will help you find out what is really happening. If it's not the gluten, and it's something else, wouldn't you a) want to know? and b) let off the slander campaign against bread?</comment></comment>


Reduce size of animated GIFs, automatically convert to WebM and MP4 - <AUTHOR> http://cloudinary.com/blog/reduce_size_of_animated_gifs_automatically_convert_to_webm_and_mp4

<comment><AUTHOR> Animated GIF-based videos are spreading like wildfire around the web. Cloudinary can automatically convert these animations to MP4 and WebM video formats to dramatically reduce their file size and bandwidth usage while improving viewer experience. You can also dynamically resize, crop and manipulate these animations in the cloud, to best match your graphic design.</comment>


How Bitcoin payments should work - <AUTHOR> http://alexsmith.io/?p=83

<comment><USER2> hacker news should be renamed to 'bitcoin updates'

<comment><USER3> alex smith is pretty much spamming hn with his bitcoin posts

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm done for a while.

<comment><USER4> Word of advice: ignore the bullies. A quick and easy way to tell they're probably a troll is if they have less than 2 avg comment karma (you can see it in their profile). As such, any hostile comment they make should be ignored.

EDIT: Submitting a bunch of tech-related stuff to HN is a good thing. Ignore the bullies and just write.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I don't endorse feeding the trolls I did submit a bunch of stuff today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would agree except that each use case (restaurants, bars, retail, online, mobile, etc.) are completely different. Each needs its own solution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. What I am trying to describe is a sort of one size fits all jumping off point.

<comment><USER5> Replace VISA/MC's model with Bitcoin. Coinbase's API is a good starting point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think he missed the point of "P2P currency"...

<comment><AUTHOR> P2P can rely on an open standard of hardware, right?</comment></comment>


A port of the original 1979 Unix to modern hardware - <AUTHOR> http://www.nordier.com/index.html

<comment><USER2> See also "xv6" (<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2010/xv6-book/index.html>), (roughly) a reimplementation of v6 UNIX for SMP x86 used by MIT's operating systems class.

They're even writing their own version of Lions' Commentary for it.</comment>


Ask HN: Why aren't we all salting webpages? - <AUTHOR> Let's Encrypt has begun the process of getting all websites on HTTPS, but for static sites this might be pointless for ISPs and others who could easily maintain databases of page size -> URL. If we add salt to our pages, we can overcome that risk, right? <comment><USER2> Provide a sample! This could be a fascinating secure alternative.</comment>


Usborne 1980s Computer Books for Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/feature-page/computer-and-coding-books.aspx <comment><USER2> I learned to code with these books. It reminds me of how good is to learn to code by copying code.</comment>