An Open Letter to Elena Ferrante, Whoever You Are - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/elena-ferrante-pseudonym/573952/ <comment><USER2> I don't blame any writer for wanting to be anonymous. In today's world, your race, gender, sexual orientation, age, hair color, clothing style, political affiliation, birthplace, and any other discernible group identity will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the appropriate tribalist- identity.

To quote from Ferrante's Wikipedia page:

 _Ferrante holds that "books, once they are written, have no need of their authors." She has repeatedly argued that anonymity is a precondition for her work and that keeping her true name out of the spotlight is key to her writing process._

Some people just want to write a book...and have it be read as a book, not a sociopolitical statement. Call it the "craftsman ethos", if you like.

<comment><USER3> "... will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the appropriate tribalist-identity."

And destroy you should you write something that others don't like. Privacy is becoming an invaluable good whose loss can't be undone.

<comment><USER4> Who has been destroyed in this fashion?

<comment><USER5> To pick an example, as a kid I read Ender's Game Because it was SF and had a cool cover. Now, because of the odious nature of the author's personal politics, I don't read his books.

This is entirely his own fault, but if he was just another name on a book I would still be buying his novels.

To pick another example, there stuff like this: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55f1...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55f1a255e4b002d5c0785287/amp)

<comment><USER4> In neither case is the person's tribal identity used against them for writing things that others don't like. Orson Scott Card holds a professorship. He just published a book this year. A large corporation made a mass market film out of his book, well after he had been writing things that others didn't like.

The controversy with the poet seems like a different issue, but even so -- Michael Derrick Hudson seems to be in exactly the same place before Sherman Alexie assumed he was a Chinese woman 3 years ago.

<comment><USER6> Maybe OSC isn't a good example of an author being destroyed, but it IS a good example of being unable to separate the person from their work.

If you really need examples of how a public identity can impact how your work is viewed, see every famous person who has been named in the #MeToo movement.

(Please don't attack me for that statement. I'm implying neither support nor opposition to #MeToo in this post. That's not the point.)

So in the case of Ender's Game, I first read it without any knowledge of who OSC was or what his views were. And I came away from reading it as being about the underdog, about how complicated power and morality can be, about trying to do the right thing. I thought it was a wonderfully complex story because almost every character sees themselves as trying to do the right thing, yet are seen as villains by others.

Then I read about OSC and think: Did I miss the point? Did he? How can the person who wrote this wonderful story not see that they are in turn bullying others? It complicates the whole relationship to the story.

Of course, you may argue that I'm the one who is mistaken. That's fine. But we have to at least agree that the more we know about the artist the more we think about their art differently, and vice versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "After all, as one of the most famous writers in the
        world today, you are a legitimate subject for inquiry,
        whether you welcome it or not."

Either I am completely out of touch, or this statement is not true.

It's probably the former. One of the mentioned novels titles sounds vaguely familiar, but I have never ever heard of Elena Ferrante.

I only read this letter because I wondered why an open letter to someone I'd never heard of was posted to HN.

* [edit] Having said that, I completely agree with and respect her right to remain anonymous, whether she is influential through her writing or not. I also completely agree with the assertion that a book, or indeed any work of art or performance, exists totally independently of it's author once published or performed.

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty well-read, although not really in the "general literary" genre. And I also only heard about her a few months ago.

That said, the person who introduced her to me made it quite clear that Elena Ferrante is extremely well known, and was shocked that I hadn't heard of her. And I've seen then somewhat confirmed this - she is indeed pretty famous (e.g. this article).

So I understand the boat you're in... let's just consider ourselves today's lucky 10,000 :)

(And no, I haven't read her book yet, but I'm planning to).

<comment><USER9> Sounds like marketing to me, nothing more.

from the article: "global superstar"

I guess the bar has been lowered past the floor now.

<comment><USER10> She's a legitimate global superstar in fiction writing. Her books are popular enough to move the percentage of total book sales represented by translated fiction in English-speaking markets (she` writes in Italian). Strangely enough, her approach is often considered a kind of anti-marketing: no book tours, few interviews, strangely downscale cover art - people, mostly women, just really love her writing.

<comment><USER9> I guessed I stepped on the wrong narrative because just questioning this author's superstardom has gotten me to -4 on a mostly male site where most people can't even downvote. I have no opinion on this author, but can we please stop pushing everything like it is the second coming of christ just because women like it?

As I said, marketing.

<comment><USER10> I didn't downvote you, but those who did probably decided your response was not particularly well-informed. Men might dominate HN, but women are over- represented as consumers of fiction (and nonfiction), in both print and ebook format-in the UK market, for example, they buy over 2/3rds of fiction books. So simply being popular with women is enough to be a literary phenomenon.

<comment><USER9> While I don't disagree with your reasoning, I haven't read this author. However another user describes this author as "what Paulo Coelho was back in the 1990s, but adapted to the #metoo and gender politics momentum."

Now when I saw the heavy handedness of my comment's downvoting, I was surprised. Having further looked into this, I now find the root of the rot of modern discourse: the censorship of gender politics. So I stand by all my comments in this thread and I consider your well reasoned market analysis entirely immaterial to this discussion.

<comment><USER11> I imagine you were downvoted because you posted shallow dismissals and flamebait, both of which break the site guidelines. Please review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and follow them when posting here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is there such a complaint? Anonymity is a privilege of the author, isn't it? There are authors who remain anonymous even to this day, one I know is B. Traven, the author of the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. The precise authorship of individual articles in the Federalist papers is unknown. Also, I believe, if you really want to go that far back, the author of Ecclesiastes is not identified.

And then there are known but reclusive authors. J. D. Salinger, and Cormac McCarthy are modern hermits.

Authors are entitled to their privacy. Why should we pry?

<comment><USER13> Salinger has certainly got this reclusive business down to a t - nobody's seen or heard anything from him for a good 8 years now.

<comment><USER14> It's easier to avoid appearing in public when you're dead.

<comment> xkcd-sucks Tell that to Carrie fisher

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> An interesting read, though I find the constant cries of sexism somewhat annoying, as they don't really seem to add any substance to the text other than legitimizing the authors subjective impressions, which, as far as I am concearned, don't need any lagitimization in the first place.

<comment><USER16> The problem is that doubts about sexist and other -ists and -isms have become weaponised in our culture today. it doesn't even matter WHEN you said something or whether you apologised for them as kevin hart's case has shown. his case is even more egregious since he was obviously appealing to the comedic social context of the time.

better start caring before someone uses your lack of care against you

edit: downvotes without rebuttals on an comment like this are a data point in themselves i think

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why are people being so antagonistic in this thread? Personally, I'm ignorant about this author. If you know their work, could you let me know what I'm missing?

<comment><USER18> I'm wandering the same. I have read this open letter and I cannot understand what the letter about. What author tries to tell? Why he have wrote this letter? Unclear message with unclear motives... My guess based on this, that the letter is exploded emotional instability caused by books of Elena Ferrante.

But, I'm not sure: if I cannot understand something, it doesn't mean that it is nonsense. Seems the only way to crack this and to understand what happens is to stop being ignorant about Elena Ferrante and read some of her books. Doesn't seem to be a fun.

<comment><USER19> It's not spelled out, but along the way she writes about various clues that (my interpretation) the books might be some sort of collaboration between a prominent Italian author and his wife. And who knows, maybe others?

But never mind the essay. For what it's worth, I liked the first book in the series and got bogged down in the second. It's an interesting glimpse of a particular time and place in Italy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > After all, as one of the most famous writers in the world today, you are a > legitimate subject for inquiry, whether you welcome it or not.

No she isn't. She doesn't owe jack shit to you or anyone else. The sense of entitlement in this piece is really off putting. Read her books or don't. That's it. For once accept the work as it is and don't try to interpret it against the background of the authors views, opinions or worse: her race, gender and whatever else millenials come up next.

<comment><USER21> While I think Elena would agree with you (having said "a book, once written, has no more need for it's author" though I'm probably paraphrasing), she isn't trying to stay out of the public eye.

Despite refusing book tours and interviews, she has done many interviews-by- email. She has a regular column in The Guardian, which frequently discusses exactly these issues of gender and authorship.

I think if you want to stay anonymous but keep your public platform, you're welcome to try, but it won't be easy. And I think it isn't wrong to try to understand the people with platforms making public statements and influencing large and important discussions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> What was that George Burns joke?

Sincerity is everything, learn to fake that and you've got it made.

So is this an extension, destroy the value of sincerity/authenticity instead?

The letter seems like little more than a pretty intense bout of literary critic navel-gazing.

</comment><comment><USER23> This country has a tradition of semi-anonymous writing. (See the federalist papers) I think with AI semantic analysis, the ability of writers to remain anonymous will be threatened. Software will out anonymous writers.

For non-fiction, this is important. (Is it worthwhile to know that a book about public Health Care is authored by a pharma exec?) Can the same case be made for fiction? Or is the damage of not getting art too big to dispense with the pretense of anonymity?

</comment><comment><USER24> Authorship is always both an individual and a collective act of creativity. We've millenia of shared culture poured into us. Similarly the interplay between the feminine and the masculine voice: Each can only exists in contrast to the other, and we all have elements of both voices within.

"Et nous sommes encor tout mêlés l'un à l'autre"

</comment><comment><USER25> I've never seen anything in an "open letter" format that didn't sound like it was written by an asshole.

<comment><USER26> There are some good open letters by shareholder activists, especially if you understand the broader context: Pensioners enjoying meager dividends while management getting fat paychecks.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but those people have an investment to protect. This article reads as an extended attempt to bully a writer who values her privacy into surrendering it to please people who have no real right to know anything beyond what she has already revealed. It's such a vile attack that I couldn't finish reading it. "Asshole" doesn't begin to cover it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Ah well. If the absolutely not politised Time magazine has placed her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, then the guy you replied to is a dork. No questions asked! ;P

<comment><USER29> Look at the other people on the list this year. Donald Trump. Cardi B. Hugh Jackman. Satya Nadella. Sean Hannity. Jacinda Ardern. Elon Musk. Oprah Winfrey.

You can argue about the exact selection of people. You can say that Time is 'politicised'. But this is clearly a list of people who are very well known.

It's not embarrassing to admit that you had a blind spot about a particular author, musician or politician. But it is a bit silly to then go on to claim that since you haven't heard about them, they can't be that famous after all.

<comment><USER30> I live in the EU, which is quite Americanized by any standard, and I'd bet nobody around me would recognize the name of Sean Hannity (or Nikki Haley, another name on the 2016 list). That list just seems hopelessly parochial to me.

<comment><USER31> It's a list of influential people, not most famous. Knowing who they are I'd say you could reasonably put both on such list.

<comment><USER30> What's Nikki Haley's influence on the world?

<comment><USER32> Being the US representative to the UN, I imagine she helped delay action on climate change and things like that.

<comment><USER30> She's only been the ambassador to the UN since 2017, yet she appears in the 2016 list.

<comment><USER32> Man, Trump really makes the years seem longer...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Elena Ferrante does not exist.

<comment><USER34> neither does "lostjohnny."

<comment><USER33> Her books are not even hers.

Elena Ferrante is a product, we should not speak about the influence of the author(s) of the books, but about the influence the marketing department has.

<comment><USER34> Every famous author is a "product", it doesn't make them any less real.

JK Rowling has a much bigger marketing machine around her, for instance, but it would be wrong to claim that she, or her books, aren't worth mentioning in a discussion about Harry Potter, only Bloomsbury and Warner Bros.

<comment><USER33> That's where the confusion kicks in.

I'm sure in good faith you believe Elena Ferrante is a woman, but we don't even know if the books have been written by a single person or if each book has a single author...

It's an interesting marketing phenomenon nonetheless, but we are not looking, IMHO, at someone writing under a pseudonym for personal reasons.

We are looking at the absence as a marketing tool, that amplifies the curiosity around the product.

It would be like talking about Hawthorne Abendsen as a real author.

<comment><USER14> It's interesting to think about whether it really matters. The text is the same either way. If you judge a book on the words on the page, it doesn't matter much how they came to be there, so criticising 'her' work on different factors seems irrelevant.

<comment><USER33> That's my point.

We should talk about the books and not about anything else.

My first answer was to someone who wrote, and I quote

> _I don 't blame any writer for wanting to be anonymous. In today's world, > your race, gender, sexual orientation, age, hair color, clothing style, > political affiliation, birthplace, and any other discernible group identity > will be used to analyze, market, and categorize your work into the > appropriate tribalist-identity._

There's no evidence that this is the case, in fact the evidence point to the exact opposite direction.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


United States Patent: Method of exercising a cat - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/patents?id=OfwkAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&zoom=4&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

<comment><USER2> You might also be interested in my patented method of exercising a dog which involves a spherical shoulder-launched device.

</comment><comment><USER3> An old "friend" but still amusing. Check out <http://www.delphion.com/galleryarch> which has a wide range of silly patents. I have always liked US06025810 (Hyper-light-speed antenna) which appears on the same page as the cat exerciser patent.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a brief conversation with the "inventor": [http://www.metafilter.com/56994/Death-ray-fiddlesticksit- doe...](http://www.metafilter.com/56994/Death-ray-fiddlesticksit-doesnt-even- slow-them-down#1523704)

</comment><comment><USER5> I've seen this before, but it never ceases to amaze me how ridiculous this is.</comment>


TIL Sega once made a game about the console wars - <AUTHOR> http://www.redbull.com/us/en/games/stories/1331624089665/visa-denied-the-best-games-unreleased-in-the-us

<comment><USER2> Terranigma is a FANTASTIC game. I highly, highly recommend it. I think it moved me more deeply than Dragon Age: Origins, Mass Effect, Final Fantasy 6 & 7.</comment>


Anonymous vows revenge after 15 arrested; AntiSec hacks continue - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/07/anonymous-vows-revenge-after-15-arrested-in-italy-antisec-hacks-continue.ars <comment><USER2> I guess I'm stating the obvious here, but showing the world that you "don't tolerate censorship" by taking down a public website is a just a wee bit silly.

<comment><USER3> By that logic, locking someone in jail for kidnapping is a bit silly as well.

They both involve not allowing someone to leave confinment, but one is punishment and the other is a crime against personal freedoms.

<comment><USER2> It's not a very good analogy, but yes, if you locked up a kidnapper because you "don't tolerate forced confinement" then I think that would be silly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Italian government should worry about throwing Berlusconi in prison before they worry about Anonymous.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but apparently they are busy and will get around to it in a few years

<comment><USER6> Berlusconi in jail? Not going to happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since when is a business refusing to provide service (Nimbuzz) "censorship"?

<comment><USER8> I'm assuming that they are making a distinction between refusing to provide telecommunications service and refusing to serve someone at a restaurant.

<comment><USER7> That is senseless though. Is telecommunications service a basic need? Do they have a monopoly on it?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good. Just keep poking those heads up out of the foxhole. That will start working any time now.

</comment><comment><USER10> This specific group of Anons were really asking for it. I don't like all powerful governments like the next guy but these Anons (like many of the past) act and behave like a group of young rebellious men with nothing to do, who desire to feel powerful by causing trouble and saying it's in the name of justice.

The companies whose servers they broke into now have more of a reason to fear them than the oppressive governments anon was against in the first place. I can talk shit about Obama and Bush all day without worry, they won't hack my site. Speak out against anon...

</comment><comment><USER11> I can't believe I didn't see this coming. It's so obvious in retrospect.</comment>


Antikythera Mechanism - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism <comment><USER2> For anyone interested, the Clickspring YouTube channel is recreating the Antikythera Mechanism.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR- Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCworsKCR-Sx6R6-BnIjS2MA)

<comment><USER3> The Clickspring creator hasn't provided updates for months on his Antikythera reconstruction, but recently he updated his patreon supporters of the reason why: He has discovered something new about the mechanism, previously unknown, that he is working on publishing. Fascinating!

<comment><USER4> Ohh exciting. I saw this thread and wondered what happened to that project.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On my recent vacations to Athens I visited National Archeological Museum where the Antikythera is displayed. I highly recomend seeing this device and its recreations live there.

Especially seeing the recontructioned devices gave me completely new perspective about ancient Greece.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a friend in honours year computer science who did a project on tomography of the antikythera mechanism (working on image analysis software to remove ghost images of other layers), and helped discover why his advisor's previous model of the mechanism was mechanically immobile (when you turned it, it locked). He'd discovered that an axis seen end-on was actually 2 axes, if I remember correctly.

Amazingly enough he forgot to mention this in the end of year presentation of his work, so I got to ask that question to remind him... talk about burying the lede.

</comment><comment><USER7> This guy on youtube is crowdsourcing a series where he is recreating the mechanism [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPN...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ML4tw_UzqZE&list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the fact that these devices were well attested in history ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism#Similar_devices_in_ancient_literature)) but still such a surprise when they appeared in archeology.

<comment><USER3> It is as if knowledge about them was methodically wiped off history, or more likely (since history is written by non-engineers) it was not understood well enough to write about it.

<comment><USER9> No need to posit a conspiracy here. People died, and there weren't enough new people entering the field to learn it all before the critical mass of knowledge died with them.

I believe that the bulk of knowledge, in most fields, is passed from person to person through active practice, not through books. Books, as a cheap way to widely distribute knowledge, are relatively recent innovation, and most of what I know about any topic is not written in books. Or if it is, it's almost an afterthought, not the primary method of knowledge transfer. What book did you read to learn to tie your shoes, or drive a standard transmission?

On a related note: what is humanity's Bus Factor for creating a CPU? I know a little about semiconductors from school but I certainly wouldn't know where to start, even for a tiny 8-bit one. I doubt Intel writes down everything they've figured out. Could 2 or 3 especially unlucky "city-killer" asteroids send us back to a pre-information-age society?

<comment><USER10> This seems to happen a lot. One people seem to keep chasing is Damascus steel.

Even in more recent history, too. I like to research fine weapons. Apparently the process Colt used on their pistols to color and shine them is completely undocumented and now unknown. Similarly, it's said there are not enough people alive that know how to handfit a revolver. I'm not sure how true the latter is, but really makes you wish Wiki or the internet existed further back.

<comment><USER11> Also, supposedly, the styrofoam used inside thermonuclear weapons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Plenty of previous discussion: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Antikythera%20comments%3E0&sor...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Antikythera%20comments%3E0&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

<comment><USER13> And how does posting a Wikipedia article link make it to near the top of Hacker news?

<comment><USER14> Firstly someone has to create a mechanical calculating technology that is lost to history before being discovered in a shipwreck by a society that has globally networked its modern equivalent. After that it gets complicated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For people that want to try this with a good quality 3d printer:

[https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1821540](https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1821540)

I recommend 0.1 layer height and conservative settings for a slow, but high quality print.

</comment><comment><USER16> Jonathan Blow draws some interesting implications of discoveries like this one in a recent talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW- SOdj4Kkk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pW-SOdj4Kkk)

</comment><comment><USER17> Any 3D printed versions?

<comment><USER18> There is a really cool LEGO version someone built and you can see on YouTube.</comment></comment>


Eating out increases levels of phthalates in the body, study finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/mar/29/eating-out-increases-levels-of-phthalates-in-the-body-study-finds <comment><USER2> Sounds like this is mostly about fast food chains, not restaurants in general. It also seems like this story should really be about calling out specific restaurants/chains for contaminated food, not presenting it as a general fact about restaurants.

<comment><USER3> There is little difference between "fast food chains" and "restaurants in general".

Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.

Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.

Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in 1958. So do most restaurants.

And so on.

Places where the chef goes out to the farmer's market every morning, hand- selecting the ingredients, and then painstakingly crafts your meal using only metal and ceramic are the exception rather than the norm.

Even one-off family restaurants where you get "good" food are doing most of this stuff, just because it is the norm, and they don't see anything wrong with it.

If you don't believe me, just go in the kitchen of your favorite restaurant and observe what the chef does and read the ingredients on the big containers of "raw" ingredients.

<comment><USER4> > _Fast food chains make their food from prepared components that they buy in > bulk through some sort of homogenized supply chain. So do most restaurants.

Fast food chains involve a lot of plastic in their food preparation, even hot food and even while cooking. So do most restaurants.

Fast food chains use food components that are optimized for shelf life, using whatever chemicals that the FDA said are "generally recognized as safe" in 1958. So do most restaurants._

Depends if in "non fast-food restaurants" you include a TGIF or a Chipotle.

<comment><USER3> I'm including both corporate chains like TGIF and Chipotle, in addition to:

* that sushi restaurant in the strip mall, that serves you rice cooked with fluoride water and soy sauce with sodium beonzoate

* that "gourmet" deli that serves you sodium nitrate-laden on top of pesticide- and preservative-laden bread with a yellow #5 pickle.

* that coffee shop that pours a hot beverage at 140F/60C into a plastic-lined, plastic-lidded cup.

* that cafeteria in that corporate office that heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag before pouring it into the serving pot.

* and so on

Our food system resembles a Brave New World-esque intelligence test that most of us are failing.

<comment><USER5> > fluoride water

So... tap water? Most countries add flouride to their tap water because it improves dental health. Unless you're a redneck screaming about alien mind control, that isn't some crazy scary chemical compound.

> soy sauce with sodium beonzoate

*Sodium Benzoate

Again, perfectly boring salt that reduces pH. Not some scary mind control substance, just a salt you can produce at home.

> sodium nitrate-laden

Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile.

> pesticide- and preservative-laden bread

Pretty much been the case since humans found out about vinegar. I wouldn't call < 1% in total to be "laden" though, unless you're eating an awful lot of bread.

> yellow #5

You realize that was a myth that it would reduce your sperm count right? There is a segment of the population that has a sensitivity to it, but it's pretty small.

> heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag

Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass shards in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs.

I'm sorry, but your points here aren't some ultimate "gotcha", they're just anti-scientific scaremongering. I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those hats, but I heard that causes alzheimer's.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> > sodium nitrate-laden_

 _> Every preserved meat in the world. Also found naturally in Chile._

Just because it's common or "natural" doesn't mean it's not bad for you. There are legitimate health concerns about nitrate use in foods.[1][2]

 _> > heats up frozen soup in a plastic bag_

 _> Again, most plastics are rated for this. Also helps cut down on glass shards in your food, or badly sanitized cookware giving you the runs._

How do you know which plastics are being used by the restaurants you eat at? And what does "being rated" for heating actually mean? Does it mean that no plastic or other chemicals from the bag actually gets in to the food? As a consumer I have no way of knowing.

 _> I'd tell you to stock up on tinfoil for those hats, but I heard that causes alzheimer's._

This sort of snark is really not welcome on HN. Please try to be civil.

[1] - [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer- pr...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed- meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages)

[2] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16510960)

<comment><USER6> Ignoring conspiracy theory gibberish (in this case the fluoridated water rubbish) is MUCH worse than calling it out. You want HN to eventually be populated solely by 'science proves immunization causes autism' fruit-cakes? Then keep doing what you're doing, which is ignoring their lunatic conspiracies and attacking anyone who calls them out with petty sanctimonious appeals to the rules.

<comment><USER3> Instead of calling you out, I'll just leave these here...

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433161/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3433161/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144112/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144112/)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11275672](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11275672)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17097768](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17097768)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This only seems to be a correlation between people reporting having eaten out and the test levels. I can't see why restaurant food would be that much different to home cooked food unless there was something very wrong with the supply chain or kitchen practices.

The newspaper article does not mention if they have looked at following the source of these phthalates back up the chain to see where they actually come from.

<comment><USER8> My theory is that most affordables restaurant don't make food anymore, they assemble it. So it comes from multiple packages. Add the fact there is a lot of take away / doggy bags, which means repackaging the finished product, and stronger hygiene regulation, which mean detergent used in contact with the food, and you have more opportunities for phthalates to come by.

While at home, you may very well cook it from more raw ingredients, with less packaging, put it on a plate, and just quickly wipe the table and plate when you're done.

You will also cook a big meal for the entire house, while a lot of restaurant are just fast food, preparing one meal per person.

Remember, for most families, they won't go to a michelin restaurant. They will got to Scramblz', Chipotle or the local "italian".

<comment><USER9> I think this may be US-specific. In the UK, there are certainly chains that 'assemble' food, but there are also a whole bunch of similarly priced chains amd independent resturants that cook fresh food. It's not michelin star quality, but it's fresh. In general I think resturaunts tend to add more seasoning (such as salt, sugar, etc) than most people cooking at home would.

<comment><USER10> I wouldn't be too sure it's just the US...there was a somewhat-recent controversy in France: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french- restauran...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/french-restaurants- acknowledge-serving-factory-frozen- food/2013/07/09/9857b69a-dda2-11e2-b797-cbd4cb13f9c6_story.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This should be "Eating out in industrialized fast food American food chains increases levels of phthalates in the body".

A restaurant is a different thing. In places like Spain, France or Italy when you say "restaurant" you never refer to "MacDonnals", "BurgerKing" or "FostersHollywood".

<comment><USER12> What are you talking about? BurgerKing is certainly classified as a restaurant in Spain, France, and Italy. What do they call these places? I'm not sure how you validate such an absolute statement. My own travels had many examples of people in these countries using restaurant to refer to both fast food and sit down restaurants.

There are thousands of web pages like this s one using restaurant to describe McDonalds in Spain - [https://www.quora.com/What-is-mcdonalds-in-Spain- like](https://www.quora.com/What-is-mcdonalds-in-Spain-like)

<comment><USER13> You're referencing a quora post by an American about some time spent in Spain. How is this an authoritative source? The following answer specifically rails against fast food and contrasts it against "restaurants and tapas bars", implying a difference.

Sure you can use restaurant as a term to refer to a "place where food can be ordered" \-- but if someone speaks the word, fast food is not what comes to mind.

<comment><USER14> Well, the word will come to mind for those of us who use words correctly, rather than twisting them because we feel superior to the people at one establishment or another.

 _a business establishment where meals or refreshments may be purchased_

[https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/restaurant](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/restaurant)

My impression of the food service industry is that you have big companies like MCD that control their own supply chains, really expensive places where the chef goes to market every morning, and 95 percent of everything else where they serve whatever arrives on the Sysco truck. There's no need to get uptight --it's all just calories with a 1000 percent markup.

<comment><USER15> > My impression of the food service industry is ...

Once more: this is a very American view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In addition to the issue of relying entirely on correlation, this report only states relative percentage increase without stating absolute levels or comparison to any known risk thresholds. Maybe 35% higher exposure isn't a significantly greater risk.

If it is a significant risk, I don't think I can rest easier only getting two thirds the exposure staying at home. That's still a lot of plastic if I'm actually that close to a toxicity threshold.

Edit: Also, as I noted in another comment, both CDC and Wikipedia are much more conservative about the health impact, making the question about toxicity threshold even more relevant.

[https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects)

</comment><comment><USER17> I can't tell if we treat our environment or our bodies worse, but the same mental process seems to drive how we treat each.

The result is the same: to save a percent here and there we trash both.

<comment><USER18> I'm really sorry but I don't get the anaology. Eating home is significantly cheaper than eating out. How are those two things similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In my office, I see seemingly reasonable white-collar employees regularly microwave their lunch in all sorts of flimsy plastic containers. I'm not even shocked anymore.

<comment><USER20> I think the people who know not to microwave plastic, and don't, are a _very_ small minority. The people who have never heard it are in a slightly larger minority. The people who have heard it's bad, but choose not to heed the warnings for convenience sake, are seemingly the majority.

Most times I've mentioned it to someone who is about to microwave plastic, they say something along the lines of "oh yeah, I've heard that before", as they continue to put their plastic in the microwave and start it up. I've given up on trying to educate people about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Are phthalates bad?

<comment><USER22> > Researchers investigating levels of phthalates in the human body, which have > been linked to asthma, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes and fertility issues > in the past few years...

<comment><USER16> Neither CDC nor Wikipedia show very clear support for this assertion, especially given that the actual levels in the study weren't reported. Just relative percentages.

[https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html](https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Phthalates_FactSheet.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phthalate#Health_effects)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Everybody here has an idea of why this occurs and they all mention packaging. Did you see inside a McDonalds kitchen? They use plastic trays to cook and hold foods instead of stainless steel we would see in high end restaurants.

I am certain that food grade plastics leak into food at high heat when oils and other food compounds are present.

</comment><comment><USER24> The headline is misleading

<comment><USER25> Misleading in some measure, as is almost every headline - given that appropriate qualifiers necessarily disqualify the text as a headline. But most of us assume that's the case and judge accordingly on the content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's the receipts, they are printed on paper that has these chemicals and handed to people right before they eat. As a test try not to touch the recipe when they attempt to hand it to you and get ready to be just about assaulted by the clerks as they try to force you to take it.

[https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal- paper-r...](https://cen.acs.org/articles/95/i35/Touching-thermal-paper- receipts-extend.html)

</comment><comment><USER27> I'd be interested to see more at-home test kits for these sorts of biomarkers.

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought this title was referring to the euphemism.</comment>


Ask HN: what about a mailing list for HN community? - <AUTHOR>

Mailing list may have a cleaner interface than web, every email address subscribed to the mailing list is associated with a handle on HN web site, which can be ensured by some way. What do you think about this? <comment><USER2> That would just fork a bunch of threads from HN onto the mailing list, without the benefits that the site offers.

HN is currently 'pull', a mailing list would make it 'push'. I think one of the great things about the website is that you get to choose when you go there, a mailing list (especially a busy one) gets in the way of work pretty quickly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Almost all good email clients are able to manage mailing lists nicely, even gmail have a mailing list filter which can be set to make emails from the list go directly under a folder, skipping your inbox. So with a sane email client, a mailing list doesn't necessarily get in the way, you can check it once a day.

<comment><USER2> I think mailing lists are great and have a purpose, I'm subscribed to several. Btw, mail clients are a matter of preference, being able to handle mailing lists does not qualify a client as 'good', and not being able to do so does not qualify one as 'bad'.

I just can't see the case for essentially moving HN off-web to a mailing list.

If there was a sufficiently narrowly scoped mailing list I might do it (say, one for announcements for startups looking for seed funding, or a mailing list for 'it flies' announcements for startups that make a certain benchmark, say profitability, or a successful exit).

Generalized stuff not so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I want to be able to "pitch" an idea to a group of people and have some of them accept to implement it for equity, or choose to fund it for investment.

I feel like I latched on the first successful idea, mainly because it was 'ramen profitable' from the first instant, but I have done the market research for plenty of Plan Bs and Cs and would love to see some of them come to fruition NOW, and not wait for me til I have the time. The good part is that my Plan A is 'advertising', and it can carry all others on its back free of charge. Everything piggybacks on everything else.

Or maybe I should just hunker down and get this one rolling then come back for the others one at a time.

Too many bright minds and too much time is being wasted on "web 2.0" utilities and single-serving crap. Corporate intranet software is where "we" need to be at.

<comment><AUTHOR> What are you talking about? I was suggesting a mailing list for Hacker News community to hang out.

<comment><USER3> You have an audience like this and all you wanna do is "hang out"? I wanna put their time and mine to better uses.

<comment><USER4> Hard to think of a worse use of everyone's time than a constant stream of pitches.

<comment><USER3> Call me a masochist, but I find the "Comment on our startup" posts the most inspirational and useful on this site.

<comment><USER2> Agreed, but why split that off to some other medium, that works well enough as it is.

That just gives you two places to look for the same information, once in the mailing list and once on the site.

The one really big advantage I think to mailing lists over the current HN setup is that you'd get rid of those ridiculously small pageback limits.

There is plenty of good (make that great) stuff on HN but you are not going to find it by browsing around.

The only way to do that is to use a search engine and search engines do not work well unless you have something specific in mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would subscribe to a list with "Ask HN" type of discussions.

<comment><USER6> I use this for the same purpose: <http://ask.searchyc.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is a chatterous group - which you can recieve/send updates from/to via email (or web, Gtalk etc).

<http://www.chatterous.com/hnyc/>

<comment><AUTHOR> A mailing list is different from a chat room in that emails are typically longer, insightful and doesn't need instant response chat room needs.

<comment><USER7> I know (though I have found chatterous to be somewhere between the 2 extremes) but it seemed to suitable for what the OP was suggesting.

<comment><USER2> gp = op.

<comment><USER7> huh?

<comment><USER2> btw0 posted the original article.

<comment><USER7> oh, sorry. I couldnt figure what gp meant :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> let's wait for google wave ...</comment>


Fulfilled by Voodoo: Just-in-time manufacturing and fulfillment - <AUTHOR> https://blog.voodoomfg.com/2018/04/05/fulfilled-by-voodoo/ <comment><USER2> this looks awesome! i have a custom jewelry shopify store... how can i plug into that?

<comment><USER3> We have a plug-n-play Shopify <> Shipstation integration, where all you need to do is give us your Shipstation credentials. From there we just need to know the products/SKUs you'll be making with us.</comment></comment>


1900s ID Cards That Kept Trans People Safe from Harassment - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/trans-id-passes-weimar-germany-marcus-hirschfeld <comment><USER2> I created an account to comment here on the topicalness of this.

Given many of us on HN work in the field of online identity, this is supremely relevant topic.

As someone who has had acquaintances who transitioned, (one operation, one "asterixed" as another commenter described) and worked with a more than a few non-binary people, identity as experienced, and how it gets implemented by bureaucracies, companies, and the state, is an area where engineering runs up against basic philosophical problems.

One example was a mental health intake assessment that needed to handle patients who would present at different service providers as male or female separately. Given they may or may not provide govt ID that specified a gender, and different drugs and protocols for serving them would apply based on both their eligibility, history and the identity they were last treated under, providing identity to people with dynamic identities is requires non-trivial solutions, with life altering impacts.

Prior art from pre-digital culture for handling dynamic identities is a really big deal. Even as someone of a decidedly unsympathetic political stripe, one would be missing a lot of facts to believe what we now call non-binary gender identities are merely a modern thing.

The association of a changed identity with criminality is more a peculiarity of very recent mentalities than trans identities. I have worked on a variety state identity schemes and candidates for them, mainly steering them away from being used as a way to oppress people.

In non-health environments, the trans case was not a significant use case because we worked on the credentials, treating the legitimacy of identity as something for the customer to decide, but the trans identity use case would actually serve as a useful limit on how deterministic an identity credential or document is.

I get that there is a lot of political stuff around this topic, and talking about it is difficult because of the political consequences for wrongthink, but HN is probably one of the most relevant places to talk about the significance of dynamic identity.

<comment><USER3> I do not want to make political noise. I have nothing to do with non-binary identities. I do not have much sympathy for those who oscillate between genders. Doing that in the context of medication seems like asking for trouble. Doing that in everyday life is disrespectful to regular people who are just trying their best. My F marker on my ID matches my genitals. I just want to live my quiet life, after being successfully treated for a serious disorder, but those damn old records keep coming up.

<comment><USER2> One of the things I fought (using PIAs) was automated warrantless police access to certain records because the data would get shared with foreign border agencies as part of data agreements, causing the very headaches you imply.

I got shared role accounts banned across a sector, and per-user database lookup transaction logs added to a solution so that at least the breadcrumbs would exist. It cost a lot, including my own renewal on the contract, but a couple years later it caught some pretty bad actors.

The challenge is that the bad stuff happens to the square pegs first, and tech creates a lot of square pegs. If nobody resists, they apply it generally. Nobody is obligated to be a poster child, and that sucks you have to put up with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is a field in state IDs and US passport files for previous names. It is ostensibly there for maiden names or fraudsters. Countless times it has outed me as a transsexual, and causes me to face harassment from cops or ICE agents.

<comment><USER4> I'm curious, what are you doing that cops are looking up your information so often? Is this from being pulled over for traffic violations? I'm struggling to think of the last time I had any interaction with someone who wanted to see an ID from me. Maybe I just don't get out often enough ;-)

<comment><USER3> Actually, it was only once with a cop in recent memory, and yes it was for a traffic violation.

I am a frequent international traveller as well.

In neither circumstance should what the computer has about my previous genitals come into play. I write that I am a transsexual here for simplicity, but I am not "trans". That is not who I am. I am a woman, not a woman with an asterisk.

<comment><USER5> > I am a woman, not a woman with an asterisk.

I think the information the asterisk conveys is important. For example, I don't think trans women should be allowed to compete against cis women in sports on even terms since it is physiologically unfair.

<comment><USER6> It's really only important in the long term for medical reasons. There some some diseases which have genetic factors which your doctor needs to be aware of. Similar to knowing that an adopted child is not natural born from the parents. An inaccurate or incomplete genetic history of a patient can result in misdiagnosis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How do you deal with the arbitary actions of authority figures against you for being different? Get a piece of paper from a different authority figure that says actually this is fine.

<comment><USER8> It's somehow seems to be a very German solution, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There is a great art exhibition on the era of the Weimar Republic in Frankfurt: [http://www.schirn.de/en/exhibitions/2017/splendor_and_misery...](http://www.schirn.de/en/exhibitions/2017/splendor_and_misery_in_the_weimar_republic/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Kept people safe from Harassment *until 1933 when they provided a very convenient list for the Nazis to "harass."</comment>


A Graph Convolutional Neural Network Approach to Antibiotic Discovery - <AUTHOR> https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/btc-covid19-convolutional-neural-network <comment><USER2> This post is nicely written. We are from the Pande Lab @ Stanford and are very supportive of this work being done by Barzilay et al at MIT. We cite each others' papers for good reason.

If this type of research interests anyone here, Genesis Therapeutics -- Stanford spinout and a16z-backed -- is hiring!

Here is our HN "who's hiring?" post. Join us in using deep learning to discover medicines for patients suffering from devastating diseases.

Genesis Therapeutics | South San Francisco, CA | Onsite | Full-time | [https://www.genesistherapeutics.ai](https://www.genesistherapeutics.ai)

We're a hybrid AI + biotech company, developing novel neural networks to predict molecular properties and using them to accelerate the development of new medicines.

\- Core deep learning tech was invented by co-founder + CEO Evan Feinberg during his PhD at Stanford's Pande lab (the lab that did Folding@Home). See the peer-reviewed PotentialNet paper: [https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.8b00507](https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.8b00507)

\- Raised $4.1m seed round led by Andreessen Horowitz

\- Our platform was validated in collaboration with a top-five pharma company, in a public paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11789](https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.11789)

\- In addition to strong software + AI talent, our small team has top drug discovery scientists who have collectively discovered eleven FDA-approved treatments

Here are our open roles:

\- Software Engineer: [https://jobs.genesistherapeutics.ai/apply/ILdjypU87G/Softwar...](https://jobs.genesistherapeutics.ai/apply/ILdjypU87G/Softwar..).

\- AI Engineer: [https://jobs.genesistherapeutics.ai/apply/NAtx0CsIIL/AI- Engi...](https://jobs.genesistherapeutics.ai/apply/NAtx0CsIIL/AI-Engi..).

Tech Stack: python, pytorch, postgres, docker, kubernetes, various computational chemistry libraries + tools

Please apply online, or email your resume to: firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER3> Graph convolutions are really powerful for handing structured data like chemical compositions. With the right corpus, I think this area is ripe for unsupervised feature representation learning approaches like what we've seen with BERT-like approaches and how they've dominated NLP in the past few years.

Side note: I worked with Kyle a few years ago on the MIT-MGH Deep Learning for Mammography project. I'm glad to see his work + brilliance being recognized.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unrelated question for the AI experts here: What's the potential for AutoML solving problems with just X and Y. I understand that you'd need to search a large subspace but at what stage is it currently and can it solve problems as complex as the one here?

<comment> nil-sec If with AutoML you mean substantial architecture search (as your question seems to suggest) then the answer is it's feasible only for the largest players in the field. It's possible to use some tricks but even then your standard cluster with a few hundred GPUs isn't going to cut it for large scale problems. That said, any problem that e.g. google deems valuable enough can be meta-optimized to oblivion. Same holds if you have a huge pile of cash and think a few percent performance boost is worth it.

<comment><USER4> So AutoML is not smart yet? Its just about throwing more compute?

<comment> nil-sec Nothing is smart yet. What people understand under automl is different but I'm referring to meta learning here, be it the architecture, the optimizer, the learning rate etc. Optimizing these things requires an outer loop in addition to training the architecture and for architecture search in particular this boils down to training lots of models and evaluating all of them. There are ways of making this search a bit better than random search with techniques such as regularized evolution (essentially evolution with a bias for younger individuals) or other tricks but all of them require huge compute resources.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Riak 1.3.1 released - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/basho/riak/blob/1.3/RELEASE-NOTES.md

<comment><AUTHOR> Riak looks really cool.

I wish I could play with it on Windows without having to set up a VM on my SDD-challenged laptop. Other Erlang stuff seems to run OK, Riak seems to be have some /bin/sh magic under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER2> Riak has been working really well for us at PaeDae. Thanks for such a great product! Can't wait what else is coming?

If i had a feature request, it would be bulk data insert kind of how Redis does it.</comment>


Show HN: Repl.co, real-time collaborative editor with in-browser C# execution - <AUTHOR> http://repl.co/

<comment><AUTHOR> I hacked this together in one weekend about a month and a half ago, and figured others might find it useful.

Also, to be clear, it's not actually a REPL or meant to be one; I just liked the name.</comment>


Look at me, I'm skinny - <AUTHOR> http://www.fistfulayen.com/blog/?p=420 <comment><USER2> So let me get this straight:

1\. Give up all your free time to working out. 2\. Eat nothing that is delicious ever again. 3\. Statistically, not significantly prolong your life. You could still die of heart disease at 50 because your genes are just not good genes. You could get cancer and keel. You could sleep an hour to long, and throw a clot and die. 4\. Some people feel better in general doing the above 3 steps.

I am overweight, by a fair margin. But I'm not especially unhappy, insecure, or immobile. I have plenty of hobbies that involve outdoor things and my lifestyle doesn't inhibit those. My doctor says that losing weight is more for reducing long-term stress on my joints: my cardiovascular system is fine so long as I don't gain more weight.

So why the fuck should I, or the legion of people like me, care or listen to what this exercise freak says? I've got dogs, a girlfriend, and some hobbies taking up all the non-work time in my life. Who actually wants to do what he says, especially when the benefits are so incredibly dubious?

<comment><USER3> Or just eat less.

 _To quote former FDA commissioner David Kessler from the book I just read (and the impetus for this post), The End of Overeating, "People get fat because they eat more than people who are lean…we finally have strong evidence that weight gain is primarily due to overeating." Period._

This has been conventional wisdom for years now. Everything else is just details, though people love to obsess about the details, because "eat less" doesn't provide the same level of excitement and optimism as "eat this freaky diet." Even the theory behind most of the low carb diets is that avoiding high-glycemic-index foods smooths out your insulin levels, which helps regulate your appetite, which helps you avoid overeating.

Likewise, exercise is a big help for me in eating less, because it improves my mood, which makes it easier for me not to overeat. I've talked to lots of other people who, like me, find that a moderate amount of exercise actually decreases their appetite. (If you burn enough calories, you end up driving your appetite back up, but not many people burn many calories in relation to their intake. I work out about three days a week; averaged over the week, I burn about 150 calories per day, which is helpful but not a big deal.)

<comment><USER2> So you put "Don't eat delicious things" higher up the chain that he does.

And then you still burn a huge chunk of free time accomplishing no tangible thing in exchange for a dubious assurance of a fractionally longer life.

I used to be in much better shape than I am now, but my life was _miserable_. Exercise did not make me feel better, coming to terms with my life and my environment and having some control over my situation made me feel better. My opinion has been that the "workout high" is more about having control over yourself and your situation than any real lasting benefit.

<comment><USER4> I've found that I generally just don't enjoy physical activity. It just isn't pleasant much of the time, particularly on days where I'm already tired. The only way that I manage to get a good amount of exercise is by biking to work. I can sort of trick my schedule by overlapping with commuting time. If I had to drive to work and the gym I just wouldn't go to the latter.

I now bike about 50 miles per week and my appetite is enormous. I start getting hungry about 3 hours after eating, and if I have lunch at 12:30 I can actively seeking food around 5:00, walking to other buildings just to get a handful of chips, i.e. I don't eat just because it's there. I'm also pretty tired in the evenings after the ride sometimes. I sometimes wonder if it's worth it.

<comment><USER5> Don't give up, keep exploring possibilities. Would holding a cute person in your arms make physical activity fun? Try dancing. Does nature or landscape photography excite you? Go hiking. Like shooting things? Play paintball. Want some self defense skills? Take up martial arts. Like flowers? Take up gardening. Use your imagination to combine interests and activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't like being skinny. I've been skinny my entire life. Last year, I was 6'0 and 135 pounds. I started working out and eating more. I'm up to 160 and look a lot better. I don't look like I'm starving, I fit in my shirts a lot better, etc.

If you want to gain weight and are interested in a food hack, buy lots of milk. Over here it's about $1/1000 calories. You can't beat that. I drink half a gallon a day and it's done wonders for me. You probably want to be weight lifting if you do this though.

<comment><USER7> could also eat lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches

<comment><USER8> Peanut butter and jelly is horrible for you. Peanut butter just has a bunch of sugar in it.

<comment><USER9> That may be true for some brands. Smuckers (the kind in my fridge) contains only peanuts and salt.

<comment><USER8> As it is the brand in mine but a lot of people eat that trash, Jiffy, or Skip for example, and you might as well just each a candy bar at that point.

<comment><USER10> You keep saying this, but if you browse the Peanut Butter's here [http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-j-m-creamy-natural- pe...](http://caloriecount.about.com/calories-j-m-creamy-natural- peanut-i95144)

You'll find that most commercial peanut butters only have 2g or so more of sugar per serving then their natural counterparts.

<comment><USER11> The serving size for peanut butter is also around 2T (~30g) so that 2g of sugar is basically going to double the sugar content of the serving...

<comment><USER10> Yeah but 3g is < 10% of the 40g of recommended sugar in a day and way less then the 50g in a Snickers bar.

[http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_daily_recommended_inta...](http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_daily_recommended_intake_for_sugar)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> He eats (what looks like¹) around 1400 calories a day:

 _Pre-workout: Protein power, Glutamine, and Lecithin mixed w/water

Breakfast: Whole grain non-instant oatmeal w/ Oat Bran, Raisins, Almonds, Skim Milk (no sugar), plus a multivitamin and some omega 3 pills

Lunch: Small salad w/protein (lettuce, broccoli, tuna, tofu, garbonzos, black beans, salsa, flax seed oil)

Afternoon snack: Cottage cheese

Dinner: Some lean protein (fish, eggs, etc) w/veggies, ideally

Bedtime snack: Plain yogurt w/berries and maybe some protein powder_

¹Based on a calorie counter and normal serving sizes.

<comment><USER13> I was going to say that it didn't seem like much food, especially that salad at lunch and itsy bitsy afternoon snack. I'm a skinny kid and I have to eat waaaay more than that to keep my weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Eating less is the one proven way to live significantly longer. [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070502143834.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070502143834.htm)

<comment><USER11> You don't live longer on those diets, it just seems longer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can promise you that it takes more than a "lunch salad" to keep Oprah fat.

Your body is a two-port function - it's not rocket science.

What comes in must come out, and if your body doesn't use up all that food energy then... (you get the idea)

</comment><comment><USER16> Taking weight loss advice from someone who admits to always being slim seems a bit silly to me. This guy seems to have a long standing exercise routine and enjoys his flaxseeds and cottage cheese just fine. Very few people are going to just wake up one day and start exercising religiously, give up meat, and buy some tubs of protein powder. It may work for him but it's not going to work for most people who aren't used to it. So what's the net value of this article? Someone masturbating about their lifestyle choices after proclaiming that was not their intent? Lame.

Ultimately I think the biggest problem with obesity in the US is how out of proportion calories are to the amount of food ingested. It's probably something that the brain has trouble dealing with. Visually it's hard to imagine this little candy bar being more calories than a gigantic salad. And as Americans have proven time and time again they are found of not accepting logic and reality in favor of house wife superstitions and slack jawed common sense. Of course on the other extreme I've met (grossly) overweight nurses and doctors who obviously know better but cannot deal with it. That's also hard to explain given. If it were so simple I would think these smart people with first hand experience (everyday) of the health risks of obesity would be among the most capable group to deal with the problem. To me this suggests there is a very real mental or chemical cause for obesity that isn't as simple as "eat less, lose weight"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought I would post this (via @bfeld) because of the discussion about startups and sacrificing health to succeed. Here's a guy who runs an up and coming startup who is doing the opposite.

Brad's post is here: [http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/06/how-to-be- skinnier.h...](http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/06/how-to-be- skinnier.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> > Trying to eat less sugar/carbs, so I swapped out the boxed cereal (even the > healthy one I used to eat) for oatmeal.

As far as I know, oat is a cereal.

> I stopped eating meat

What's with this anti-meat movement? I'm not saying that we should eat a lot of meat, but still a steak (barbecue) tastes very good. I don't eat a lot of meat compared to other persons, I tend to eat the vegetables, but I sure like some steak once in a while, especially when it's pork. In case someone wonders, I'm thin.

<comment><USER5> _As far as I know, oat is a cereal._

In America, "boxed cereals" conjures up images of Captain Crunch or Frosted Flakes, which are full of sugar, and usually eaten cold with cold milk. Oatmeal, while it may be a cereal and may come in a box, is usually not placed in the same group as it is usually eaten hot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> it's a great article. lots of will power in there. I like it. I've recently decided to get into a routine as well to try to lose 25 pounds. I'm not fat, but if I can lose 25 pounds I'll be at my target weight. And working out is fun if you get into a habit of doing it regularly. Don't think I could go as far as to stop eating meat, but I am planning to stop drinking beer on weekdays as a start, and most likely stop all together later on this summer. Thanks for sharing the link on HN.

</comment><comment><USER19> > Eat five or six times a day

This is bad advice. You want to eat two large meals and a light one to minimize total insulin exposure. If you eat and snack all the time you keep insulin spiked up too much.

Working out six days a week to stay thin is completely ridiculous. Once or twice should be sufficient if you're eating right.

<comment><USER20> Hmm...I think eating five or six times a day is generally considered good advice because it assumes you've selected food that are whole grain/have a low glycemic index so that your insulin levels remain level throughout the day.

<comment><USER19> You don't want constant insulin levels. You want as much time with very low insulin levels as possible. You get that by eating two or three meals and avoiding snacks. It's also beneficial to skip a meal every now and then and have a longer than 12 hour fast.

<comment><USER21> As I've seen advice urging you to keep your insulin level constant throughout the day, and this is the first time I've seen anyone trying to contradict that, do you mind citing something?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


8.8-magnitude quake hits Chile - <AUTHOR> http://us.mobile.reuters.com/mobile/m/AnyArticle/p.rdt?URL=http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61Q0S920100227

<comment><USER2> We live in Santiago and woke at about 3.30am to mild shaking that was growing stronger, so we got out of bed and went to the centre of our flat, where the building is strongest. The shaking was pretty violent, and seemed to go on for a long time (I imagine it feels longer than it is, but I would say at least 30 seconds). The power went out at some point.

When the shaking stopped we found a torch and looked around - books and decorations had fallen down (luckily a large pot of jam had fallen over, but stayed on the kitchen table top). In every room there are cracks in the plaster and flakes on the floor - the corner of the kitchen looks like it may have more serious damage, with a vertical crack where two walls join.

People were going outside, but it wasn't clear to us it was safer (there are many electrical cables in the streets, and we live in a lovely avenue with many old elms - unfortunately they have a habit of dropping branches on people in winds, and at the time we weren't sure how they would be affected, although in retrospect I guess a strong wind is worse than an earthquake for a tree). But from our window we could see one neighbour, with children, drive away - presumably to a relative's house.

We found a radio with batteries, found a station that was broadcasting news, and listened for a while. Some people's phones were still working, as they were calling in, and the general impression was that it wasn't so bad; this morning the news is worse, and I hope the people we know in Concepcion are OK.

Eventually we went back to sleep - there were aftershocks that normally would have been pretty worrying, but that now felt like nothing worth bothering with.

It will be interesting to see how the big, new buildings (often covered in glass) have survived. Just a little way east of here they are constructing what will be the tallest building in South America (the Costanera Centre)...

<comment><USER2> While we have power here, it seems much of the city does not (we've just been out trying to buy food). Many road junctions near us (Providencia, La Reina, Las Condes) are without lights; some bigger buildings have backup generators running.

If anyone is reading this from Chile and is looking for bread, I've got details here - [http://www.acooke.org/cute/Earthquake0.html#Sat27Feb20101346...](http://www.acooke.org/cute/Earthquake0.html#Sat27Feb20101346300300)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for that link! I might need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmm, it seems that fortunately the damage, while significant, isn't as catastrophic as one might expect from an earthquake of that magnitude (7th- largest on record, if the 8.8 is confirmed). I don't understand these things too well, but besides Chile's relatively good infrastructure quality, it looks like the depth of the event, and the kind of ground/soil in the region, had something to do with it.

For example, even though this was much stronger than the Haiti earthquake (8.8 v. 7.0), the Mercalli intensities are much lower: [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010t...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010tfan/index.html) v. [http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010r...](http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/index.html)

<comment><USER2> Yeah, this is nothing like Haiti, thankfully. It was deeper, further away from major population, and the building codes here are taken seriously (I think you're also right about soil being a problem in Haiti, but I don't know much about that).

In a sense, it's a relief - even if it's the gambler's fallacy - it feels like "ok, that didn't kill us, so we're OK for another few decades" (no disrespect to the people in Concepcion, who have had it much worse - the news is still coming out; when we went back to bed we didn't know it was anything like as bad there as it is now appearing).

<comment><USER5> If I remember my school geography correctly the type of soil, bed rock and water table massively effects the impact of an earthquake.

<comment><USER6> It does, certain mixes give properties like a shock absorber, which is the case I'm guessing with Chile. Haiti unfortunately is an island, and most islands by nature are volcanic which usually not only means the bedrock is usually closer to the surface but that it is a much more rigid material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Live stream from TV Chile <http://www.ustream.tv/channel/tv-de-chile>

</comment><comment><USER3> I was with my brother and we had just arrived at his home when the quake struck. I have to say it felt much more violent than it actually was. The damages seem to be surprisingly fewfor a quake of this magnitude.

I ended up going home at about 5 am as I wasn't able to get through on the phone. Luckily, there were several folks who gave me rides that got me a lot closer, so I didn't have to walk far. The whole city was dark, but I didn't see major signs of damages along the way.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a HN-worthy note, my wife told me about this before I turned on my computer. She learned about it on Twitter.

<comment><USER9> When we had that 3-4 quake outside Chicago earlier this month, my wife was convinced a tree had fallen against the house or something. USGS Shakemap had no data yet.

On a hunch I searched twitter and saw over 200 "OMG WHAT WAS THAT?" messages. Confirmed the quake before anything else.

<comment><USER8> I keep saying, only half-jokingly, Twitter is turning us into nodes of a global collective mind.

When she said that she became aware of the quake, I questioned what did she mean with "she".

<comment><USER10> If only the collective mind could communicate with more than 140 characters at a time...

<comment><USER8> I doubt organic brains can rely on that many bits when firing their neurons.

<comment><USER10> Well, sure, but then a real collective mind wouldn't use twitter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Boston Globe's Big Picture has a good colleciton of photos from the disaster area.

[http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/earthquake_in_chile...](http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/02/earthquake_in_chile.html?camp=localsearch:on:twit:bigpic)

</comment><comment><USER12> For anyone looking for missing persons <http://chilepersonfinder.appspot.com/?lang=en>

<comment><USER13> Very cool. Great use of GAE's quick deployment/scalability. I assume this is based on a general purpose people finder app?

<comment><USER14> It's cloned from the <http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/>. That one was written from scratch in a couple of days after the haiti quake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> People on Twitter are reporting tsunami warnings in Hawaii. Can anyone there give an update?

<comment><USER14> The general warning: [http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/pacific/2010/pacific.2...](http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/messages/pacific/2010/pacific.2010.02.27.104329.txt) The main page: <http://www.prh.noaa.gov/ptwc/>

At 19:18Z it's predicted to hit New Zealand. That'll be the first word of how dangerous it is at range. About 2 hours later it'll hit Australia and Hawaii. It'll slowly sweep oceana and asia south-to-north after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> non-mobile version: <http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61Q0S920100227></comment>


Ask HN: Are Facebook chat bots worth building, and how to promote them? - <AUTHOR> The primary issue I have with the Facebook messenger platform is that there's no distribution/promotion channels.  In the iOS app store, new apps appear in the "New" section and you can get some new users that way.  In the old days of Facebook, there was a similar system.  With chat bots, I don't see how to promote a bot once it's completed.  There's no bot store.  Essentially, the task becomes asking users to have both Facebook + Messenger, and to install the app by sending a message.  That sounds like a lot of friction. <comment><USER2> you can use site like www.botpages.com to promote them, they also offer analytics platform for bots inspector.botpages.com/signup</comment>


First Image of Mercury From Orbit - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/first-mercury-orbit?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+UK

<comment><USER2> Related: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2387165>

Note that doesn't mean this isn't of value!

ADDED IN EDIT: Really? A down-vote? For pointing out a related item - sort of "If you like this, then you'll like that" typeof thing? OK ...</comment>


U.S. Soccer hires lobbyists to argue women's national team isn't underpaid - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/07/us-soccer-lobbyists-womens-national-team-not-underpaid-1452331 <comment><USER2> I understand there's a demand for Women's soccer in the US, but does that demand spread internationally like Men's soccer? For a sport where supply and demand forces salaries up in order to secure wins, at least in the men's side, where are the market forces out of balance on the women's side?</comment>


Should the Microsoft Kin be Taken Seriously? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bigtimewireless.com/microsoft-kin-review/

<comment><USER2> "Apparently the Kin is intimately connected to the net through something called the Studio, which is basically an online backup for absolutely everything you do on the phone. Texts, emails, photos, contacts, all of it end up in the Studio and displayed in a glorious collage for your viewing pleasure. Does this disturb anyone else? Seriously, a place where everything you do on your phone is plastered up on screen?"

I'm sorry but if you're on a site called "bigtimewireless" and you're posting a phone review (of sorts) you should at least be knowledgeable enough to be familiar with that phone's immediate predecessor. It's not like the Sidekick's popularity was that long ago.

In fact, it was less than a year ago (Oct. '09) when a big controversy in the online world was Sidekick losing the very online data that this reviewer is treating like it's a brand new thing

</comment><comment><USER3> If they're cheap enough for kids/teens they'll probably dig them.

<comment><USER4> Without games? Without web? Unlikely.

<comment><USER5> There is a web browser, near the end of this article is it mentioned: <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2362514,00.asp>

<comment><USER4> Still, it appears to be 3rd party software proof.

Without farts, it does not exist in the teen crowd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The cost of devices themselves are so heavily subsidized by the carriers, that unless the data plan was significantly cheaper than a full smartphone, I would have a hard time seeing the Kins finding a niche to fit in above regular phones.

What finally convinced me to get a smartphone was that I was essentially paying for it anyway over the term of the contract just to access trivial amounts of data on a device that could barely display it.

</comment><comment><USER7> No. It shouldn't.

Yes it may make money, but who honestly believes this is a contender in this brave new world of smartphones? There's nothing exceptional about the phone at all. And it would take something exceptional to break into the market.

<comment><USER5> Smartphones made up 14% of all phones sold last year [1]. There is a huge market for people who want a smarter phone but don't need a true smartphone because they don't scratch the surface of what the smartphones can do at the cost they are provided (eg iPhone at ~$80/month). If Kin is priced low and the monthly rate is equally low there is huge potential IMO.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone- sales-200...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/23/smartphone-iphone- sales-2009-gartner/)</comment></comment>