First robots have arrived in plan to replace 1 million Foxconn workers - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2012/11/12/1-million-robots-to-replace-1-million-human-jobs-at-foxconn-first-robots-have-arrived/ <comment><USER2> Ultimately all progress in human material conditions comes from "eliminating jobs". Back In The Day it took 80% of the US population just to keep everyone fed. When tractors came along most of the population went into manufacturing, and with robots people go into services. You can't have more stuff without finding ways to produce the current level of stuff with less people.

<comment><USER3> >>Ultimately all progress in human material conditions comes from "eliminating jobs".

I think it should rather be eliminating the need to work for things like food, clothing, medicine and shelter.

As automation increases by multiple folds, I see this as a inevitable fallout. Needing to have a job to even survive might not even be relevant as concept in the future.

<comment><USER4> Needing to have a job to even survive _must_ not be relevant in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally I think this will generate some social unrest in my hometown where foxconn has a factory. Those robots will drive millions of young workforces out of a basic job. I'm pretty concerned about the near future.

In the long term though, this seems to be the only way to go: automate boring jobs.

<comment><USER6> From the perspective of the owner, the social unrest is a temporary problem. As robots take over jobs, the potential for social unrest in the future reduces. Bosses don't have to worry about wage demands, housing, transport, kids, strikes etc.

They're unfortunately not focused on automating boring jobs, which would at least have some benefit for the worker. They're reducing variability and the need to negotiate with humans.

How long before the next jobs are eliminated, then middle management jobs, then everyone except those who own the robots?

In my country we've had miners striking, demanding pretty large increases. My default answer has been to automate the lot and put robots underground, but on the other hand...

<comment><USER7> > _From the perspective of the owner, the social unrest is a temporary > problem. As robots take over jobs, the potential for social unrest in the > future reduces. Bosses don't have to worry about wage demands, housing, > transport, kids, strikes etc._

That's not how it works. You're thinking it of the perspective of the factory owner, not the overall society.

In fact, the potential of social unrest in the future increases: all those people, brought over from their villages and left unemployed in the big city, with wages for unskilled labor going down (due to even less demand after the automation of most jobs), and no future, will not end well.

> _In my country we've had miners striking, demanding pretty large increases. > My default answer has been to automate the lot and put robots underground, > but on the other hand..._

But on the other hand, we have (as a society) exploited the work of those workers at the time that the job could not be automated (which is still the case today mostly), while paying them less that it's worth it.

"You'll work for a pittance, and if you argue about it, we will force you to using the police instead of negotiating better wages."

And that in an extremely harsh job, where a huge percentage of miners dies of cancer.

<comment><USER6> I'd ask you to read it again. I'm arguing _for_ the workers, but pointing out why the managers are making their decisions.

It's not because they're trying to make boring work go away. Managers don't optimise for the health of society. They do it for their own gains.

> all those people, brought over from their villages and left unemployed in > the big city

They're migrant workers. They have to go home after their term is complete. In China you can't just move to a new city or region.

I'm not saying it's right. I'm pointing out the perspective of the decision makers. With respect to the miners I was pointing out the obvious parallels, and why my default perspective on striking miners might not be correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Anyone else is happy about that ? When everything will be done by machines we will have to think about what it means to exist in this world without being a little hand.

<comment><USER9> People's live shouldn't be wasted doing repetitive tasks year after year, just to afford food and shelter.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps they shouldn't, but we've just gone and replaced their jobs without having solved scarcity - which is the magic pill that needs to be invented for a function society where you can do nothing productive yet still live.

In all practicality this means we need to retrain tens of thousands of people in some _other_ form of repetitive task that hasn't been taken over by a robot. It doesn't mean they get to go off to a Star Trek-ian utopia where they can pursue higher pursuits without having to worry about survival.

In the long run this will probably pan out to be a net positive - these robots can do a job better, more precisely, and less expensively than a human, which will advance the state of the art further.

In the short run this will create unrest, poverty, starvation, and possibly arrest the hard-earned development of a country trying desperately to claw its way out of poverty.

<comment><USER11> Robots destroy lives!

It's funny, software automates far, far more than robots do, and yet you would be hard pressed to find people on this site who hold the opinion that software destroys jobs. Software adds value, it may create efficiencies but it is not a job destroyer. And the same is true of physical automation as well.

We've come a long way since the days where everyone worked on the farm, or everyone worked in a factory. Automation has never created poverty or starvation. Look at Japan, which went through _exactly_ the same process as China is today. In the mid 20th century it was a country heavily dependent on exports fueled by cheap labor (in 1950 Japan's per capita GDP was less than 1/5th of the US's). But it didn't take long for them to automated like crazy. Is Japan a poor, unruly, starving country today? No, it's one of the richest countries in the world with one of the highest standards of living.

<comment><USER10> > _"and yet you would be hard pressed to find people on this site who hold the > opinion that software destroys jobs"_

You've found one right here. Not all software destroys jobs, but much of it certainly does. More often than not this destruction is a net positive for society - but it tends to create localized minima that are hard to resolve.

In less abstract speech: by using software to destroy jobs we create more jobs that ostensibly have a greater positive impact to society, but that's really very little comfort to the auto plant worker in Michigan, or the call center agent in Minnesota, or the travel agent in California, most of whom are severely underqualified for these new jobs, and have no reasonable way of becoming qualified.

Humans are not discrete units of productivity - specializations, experience, education, intelligence, all of which exist as substantial barriers in making humans easily interchangeable.

One cannot reasonably take the position of "relax! we won't even remember this in 100 years", even though it is true. While society will recover from these periods of change, you still have millions of unemployed, hungry, desperate people at your door step _right now_ , and you will have to face that problem regardless.

> _"Automation has never created poverty or starvation."_

Are you _serious_?

"Automation has never created a net decrease in productivity in the long term (measured in decades)" is probably more accurate.

If you want to see automation creating poverty and starvation just go to the rust belt in this country. Go to Detroit and see the boarded up houses, the burned out husks of neighborhoods, and then try to say with a straight face "automation has never created poverty or starvation".

Whenever this topic comes up on HN (and elsewhere) the response is invariably highly binary. Either automation is a noble advancement with no negative effects, or automation is a complete evil that destroys people. Both views are equally ridiculous. Automation is an inevitable fact that is, in the long term, a positive for society - but it creates _very_ significant localized destruction for substantial amounts of time (measured in terms of human life).

The ignorance of that last part is dangerous. Automation has already put millions out of work just in _this_ country alone, and will continue to put more people out of work. There are substantial gaps between the unemployed and the new classes of jobs that are being created, and bridging this gap is neither inevitable, nor trivial, nor will the magic of unbridled capitalism solve it automatically. It is a tremendous social issue that faces every society on this planet, and it should not be trivialized.

<comment><USER12> I think it will depend on the culture its dropped into. Norway seems to have benefited greatly from its oil but its been a curse for some African countries. Total automation could be the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So if the Chinese are just replacing people with robots why can't America, or really any nation, do that now? Or why didn't they do that sooner? If we want to bring back manufacturing why not start with robots? It might not bring back the mass amount of jobs, but it will bring back more exports and stabilize the trade deficit. The robot repairmen will stay busy that's for sure.

<comment><USER14> There's no need to "bring back manufacturing". China didn't pass the USA as the world's largest producer of manufactured goods until last year. And contrary to popular belief, the reason why the USA shed so many manufacturing jobs over the previous few decades has little to do with Chinese competition, and a whole lot to do with the USA's rapid adoption of robotics in factories.

The real causes for the USA's trade deficit have less to do with its ability to manufacture goods and more to do with macroeconomic conditions such as its strong currency, relatively low domestic savings rate, and relatively high rate of foreign investment.

Theoretically, it should eventually sort itself out due to normal market forces. For example, domestic savings should increase and foreign investment should decrease as Americans begin to quit living on credit and start refilling their bank accounts. Incidentally, this sort of thing happened a few years ago, and was accompanied by a huge drop in the size of the trade deficit.

<comment><USER15> I was hoping to see someone mention this, because there's a great conversation that we're not having because of the lack of awareness of the extent of automation and even lights-out machining.

There was a wonderful article on lights-out machining in the States that I found thanks to HN - sorry I don't have the link - but which mentioned that manufacturing in the States grew by a third since 2000, while jobs were slashed.

That really complicates the conversation.

Lots of people seem to implicitly assume that by giving companies incentives to manufacture here, we can solve the employment problem. Um ... nowadays, there are manufacturing jobs that require knowledge of CNC machines and maybe even programming and/or metallurgy. Skilled stuff.

I want to know: now that we don't have the easy fix that 'wet robot' jobs gave us, are jobs on the whole being created or destroyed in high-tech societies? Even assuming people can be given technical skills in the numbers that they'd need, the openings for skilled technical work hardly seems sufficient for the masses of people being made redundant.

I feel like a Luddite even typing that.

<comment><USER16> You are being a Luddite. People will shift into cushy service sector jobs. Craft beer, massage parlors, landscape architects, mobile game programming, whatever wealthier societies might want more of.

<comment><USER15> That sounds fantastic, because service sector jobs tend to be local.

Massage parlors and landscaping -- pretty geographically limited, ie limited competition, and scale poorly, ie no large competitors with economies of scale.

Is that the overall trend? The things that wealthy societies want -- in the future, will they increasingly or decreasingly come from geographically limited services that scale poorly and are thus good candidates for employing large numbers of humans? Even if increasing wealth grows the pie, will enough of the things we want in the future be the kinds of things that lots of our individual neighbors can give us?

I wouldn't bet on it.

I mean, I think it'll all work out -- it always has -- but I could also see lot of things we take for granted, like high employment and industrialized education as sufficient to prepare people for work, revert back to the historical mean a bit.

<comment><USER14> I don't think one needs to be so pessimistic about it.

The historical trend is that as technology improvements have reduced the need for human labor in industries that used to be big employers, humans think up new and exciting ways to put the excess labor force to use.

When we look back on the era of cottage industry, we don't remember it as a golden age of high employment. We remember it as an era where the standard of living was lower because the huge amount of human labor that went into textiles meant that they were comparatively expensive. So expensive that after people were done paying to clothe themselves they had little money left for other consumer goods such as clocks, books, or glassware.

Similarly, we don't look back on the era of peasant agriculture as a time when every able-bodied person was virtually guaranteed a job in the thriving agricultural industry. We remember it as an era where most everyone was tied to the land and eked out their lives doing backbreaking labor.

As for whether the service economy can replace the manufacturing economy, I don't think that's a question we need to speculate on. Looking back on the past few decades of American economic development, it's clear that it already has. And that employment rates in the USA have remained relatively high throughout that process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I submitted a story last week I was a little disappointed got no comments or upvotes, but if this ([http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/11/06/evil-high- speed-...](http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/11/06/evil-high-speed-robot- hand-proves-humans-doomed-to-be-servants-to-our-coming-borg- overlords/?fromcat=shareables)) is what robots in labs can do no, then things will continue to be exciting and interesting as these technologies get commercialized, become hackable and find new uses.... what COULDN'T robotics like this be used for? (that link was the one I submitted if that wasn't clear)

<comment><USER18> Ahh, I remember seeing this video back when it first surfaced. One of my favorite comments I saw somewhere (maybe slashdot?) was that robotic capability is usually insufficient for something like dribbling a ping pong ball ... until it isn't, at which point it can do it hundreds of times a second flawlessly.

I'm sure I've paraphrased quite liberally with the comment, but hopefully the intent stands. With sufficient engineering we should be capable of many many things quite soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I guess we'll see an increase in robot suicide rates.

<comment><USER20> If the rate is anything like that of computers or other complex technical gear, they will need plenty of engineers. Nowhere near the number of people they are replacing on the production lines, but still not an insignificant number.

<comment><USER21> _but still not an insignificant number._

I doubt that. You need humans to construct and program robots. There is no reason why you'd need humans to maintain and repair robots.

For a (slightly contrived) analogy you could look at modern farming or datacenters. It's not uncommon for a modern farm with thousands of cattle to be run by a work force smaller than 30 people. The same is true for datacenters that house ten thousands units of rather complex machinery.

In purely manual labor (assembly lines) a 1000:1 workforce-reduction doesn't seem unlikely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does this mean the robots can be installed in the US and we made iPhones and iPads here in the US, at least the robot service jobs will be local.

<comment><USER23> As far as I understand it, China currently has a monopoly on rare earth minerals: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/06/08/rare- earth...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2012/06/08/rare-earth- minerals-an-end-to-chinas-monopoly-is-in-sight/)

<comment><USER24> Actually the US has a pretty fantastic supply of rare earths. the US used to mine a TON, then imports from China got cheaper, so they stopped mining domestically. In this process, lots of "knowledge capital" was lost, but we still have vast reserves of rare earths. The big problem now is the lack of infrastructure to get at them again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> <http://marshallbrain.com/robotic-nation.htm>

</comment><comment><USER26> According to the article that is 83.3% of their workforce that will no longer need to be paid. It will take about three years to recoup costs, which means more profit for Foxconn and Apple and more subsistence farming for previously Foxconn employed Chinese peasants.

Labor Problem Solved™!

</comment><comment><USER27> "these robots are manufactured in house"

Wow, that's just… mean. Being tasked with building the machine that will put you out of job.</comment>


BankSimple Raises A Big Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/banksimple-funding-2010-9

<comment><USER2> Congratulations to Josh, Shamir, and Alex on the successful fundraising!

<comment><USER3> Thanks Greg!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> yeah! Looking forward to being a customer of this bank.</comment>


Non-transitive Dice - <AUTHOR> http://singingbanana.com/dice/article.htm

<comment><USER2> This does a great job of demonstrating some of the curious effects of premature rounding. The non-transitivity is only possible because after generating a pair of random numbers, the outcome is rounded to one of two values ("Win for Player A" or "Win for Player B"). If there was a notion of "Player A won by two", then the dice could be ranked by expected value.

This is one reason why (for example) counting the number of studies that confirm vs. reject a hypothesis is not going to give the best indication of its validity. It's also why we don't track changes in market indices by counting how many items increased against how many decreased.

</comment><comment><USER3> For any poker players out there, this is analogous to the Texas holdem preflop matchups JTs, 22, AKo.

AKo > JTs : [http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=Ah+Kd%0D%...](http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=Ah+Kd%0D%0AJs+Ts)

JTs > 22 : [http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=2h+2d%0D%...](http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=2h+2d%0D%0AJs+Ts)

22 > AKo : [http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=2d+2h%0D%...](http://twodimes.net/poker/?g=h&b=&d=&h=2d+2h%0D%0AAd+Kh)

<comment><USER4> To elaborate on your point a bit, for the non-poker players (I am one, so I understand your analogy, but non-poker players might not quite, at least in this presentation):

Typically, when playing a game of poker, one considers a pocket pair (22, 33, 44, etc.) in a game of Texas Hold'em, vs. two "overcards" (2 hole cards bigger than the pocket pair) to be considered, for quick calculation purposes, a coin toss. However, the pocket pair in a given situation vs. two overcards of a different suit, is a slight favourite overall.

So this problem typically presented - I believe it was originally stipulated by Daniel Negreanu, a professional player, but I could be wrong - is, a knowledgeable poker player challenges a poker player with less knowledge to a speculative bet.

The knowledgeable poker player offers the opponent to choose a hand from the following: AKo, JTs, or 22. Then the player on the up-and-up chooses second - and given their knowledge of the slight advantage in a given situation, chooses the hand with the higher odds.

However slight they may be, of course, the expected value always allows the player choosing second to edge out the person who chose first.

Because they are so similar in odds, an average or below average player may not realize the slight advantage 22 has over AKo, while JTs has the slight advantage over 22. AKo over JTs is of course a larger advantage than the other two situations - almost a 60/40 advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There's a Flash game about non-transitive dice at <http://ded.increpare.com/~locus/OfDice/>, called Platonic Archetypes of Dice (found via <http://www.metafilter.com/88574/Nontransitive-dice>). In the game you start off with a normal die and battle NPCs in the manner described in the article. After you defeat them, you get their die to battle the other NPCs with. It's actually a long, boring, tedious game, and you would only want to play it to perhaps get a grip on the idea of non-transitive dice. If you do play it, I recommend stopping playing after winning about three matches, before getting sucked in trying to finish a timewasting, boring game.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm getting a 509 bandwith limit exceeded so here's google's cached version, without the images.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YwutCvF...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YwutCvF5DbAJ:singingbanana.com/dice/article.htm+http://singingbanana.com/dice/article.htm&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

</comment><comment><USER7> Looks like a great game for on subways/trains and such to scam people a bit. I'm impressed.

</comment><comment><USER8> This looks like a really good way to conceptually grasp how the probability parts of quantum mechanics work!

<comment><USER9> This is not obvious to me, can you elaborate?</comment></comment>


Ask HN:  Anyone working on something in the Senior-Care market? - <AUTHOR> I'm working with a few people in the Charlotte, NC area on a radio show for seniors and would like to feature a few companies that are bringing new ideas and products to the senior-care market.  Was curious to see if anyone in the HN community was working on something related to seniors or their caregivers. <comment><USER2> We just released the first-ever comprehensive search engine for people seeking long term care services. PatientsHaveChoices.com aggregates data about each provider from multiple sources, and transforms it into meaningful information. It allows end-users to shop and compare providers, ultimately making an educated choice. Let me know how I can help.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I'm a designer very interested in the senior care market. I did my thesis project on assistive eating devices (<http://averyseriousdesigner.com/3d_bowl.html>), and did research at 2 bay area elder care facilities. Since then, I've gotten connected to a Stanford prof who's connected to the elder care space, who teaches a class about assistive device design. I've also done work with Golden Leaf Care, a Bay Area web startup trying to create a better online experience for families seeking care for their relatives. I'm also in touch with Omhu (<http://omhu.com/>), a new New York based company dedicated to making and marketing really well- designed products for the elderly. Hit me up, I'd love to connect you with any/all of my network!

</comment><comment><USER4> I work at <http://www.call-em-all.com>. We have many senior care facilities that use us for automated notifications regarding health, medication, etc. We also work with many healthcare staffing companies which staff for in-home caregivers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting, I would really be interested in following up with you about this. I'm very interested in improving quality of life while at the same time reducing costs and overall inefficiencies. My email is email@example.com.

<comment><USER4> I'll have our biz dev guy follow up with you. He'll know more about how the senior industry uses us exactly as well as having more input of additional potential uses within that industry.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds great, thanks so much!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I... uh... wouldn't call it exactly that, but I'm extending <http://www.deadmansswitch.net> to include checking-up features (phone, sms, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> Hah, interesting concept. At first glance, I thought it prob. wouldn't be the best thing to feature this on a show that targets people who see friends pass on a weekly, if not daily, basis. However, after thinking about it more, it would be interesting to see how they (seniors) think about the concept and if it differs from our(younger folks) point of view. Our show will be a live call-in show, so it could make for an interesting segment. What's your email?

<comment><USER5> We've had people ask about using it to check up on their elderly relatives regularly, e.g. have the software email them if they haven't responded for a day or so, so it's not strictly about passing.

The features I'm adding are phone integration, which would call someone and email if they didn't pick up after X times, or something to that effect.

My email is in my profile, it's email@example.com.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My mother does residential care in Texas. Her perspective will be different than most other people you will speak with. Let me know if you'd like to talk to her.

</comment><comment><USER7> My friend Laura runs Grandcare, I can get you her contact info if you like. <http://www.grandcare.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> That would be great. Thanks so much. my email is firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thumbtack is a marketplace for services of all kinds such as home improvement, event services, instruction, etc. We have a number of senior services as well -- in home care, personal assistants, drivers, etc.

You can view our senior services here: <http://www.thumbtack.com/browse/family/seniors/>

You can email me at email@example.com if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I know an entrepreneur in Ohio who runs a very large (multi-million) nursing home software company. Email me at firstname.lastname@example.com for details!

<comment><AUTHOR> your inbox just increased by 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm the CTO at ALMSA Health - we have a SaaS EHR used nationally in Assisted Living and Skilled Nursing communities. Do you plan to stream your station online? Would love to look at linking to it - get in touch if you'd like some perspective on the development of EHR platforms tailored toward the long-term care industry - email@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We will indeed be streaming live (thanks to our local CBS affiliates' already set-up streaming servers). I've sent you an email, and if you have any further questions please feel free to contact me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A good friend of mine started <http://www.seniorcarehomes.com/>. His love & passion for helping seniors is amazing. I think it would be very beneficial to feature him/his company on your radio show. You can reach him at Erwin(at)seniorcarehomes.com. Tell him Jonas sent you.

<comment><USER12> The website is exceedingly poor--sorting by distance doesn't work, bits of template text are not even filled in and it's obvious the information is generic. The website is the opposite of "love and passion for helping seniors".

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hello. I run <http://www.lifeensured.com> feel free to email me email@example.com.

Best, Mike

</comment><comment><USER14> <http://angel.co/senior-citizens>

</comment><comment><USER15> Hello mw63214, could you add your email address in your profile?

</comment><comment><USER16> www.emota.net --- super cool stuff (a buddy is working there)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool, I'll def. give them a shout. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> im working on a product in the senior care market

<comment><AUTHOR> check your email

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am, as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> You have mail.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is your failed/unfinished projects ratio? - <AUTHOR> Lot of times we end up measuring our unfinished projects as failures. I don't want to argue whether unfinished is a failure or not, but draw our irrational minds towards this observation. The journey to this ratio will be helpful to some of us.
And then I need some data also for my research, which I will share.
Do share how you reached this number, what assumptions you made,  etc.
Every small projects count :) <comment><USER2> I'm not a programmer by trade so I exclusively work on smallish projects, not profit driven but rather interest driven.

Percent of seriously considered side projects that I actually start: ~10-20%.

Percent of projects started that are 'finished' to a functional bare minimum: ~50%. Let's say this is around 20 projects over the past 10 years. Range of maybe 30-300 hours invested per project.

Percent of finished projects that have enough reach or impact to feel successful: ~15%. Of these, probably 200-300 hours invested per project.

If I were trying to do profit-driven projects based on an uninspiring idea to address an uncertain market gap (that I otherwise wouldn't care about) then I think the failures would be more painful.</comment>


GE and Whatever Happened to Six Sigma? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/work/1635960/whatever-happened-to-six-sigma/ <comment><USER2> When I joined GE 10 years ago, Six Sigma was on the way out. There was a brief time period, a few years ago, at the end of Immelt's era IIRC, when the Lean Startup seemed to be the new favorite methodology, but I have not seen it really used in projects, most people still don't know what a MVP is.

More recently, Larry Culp seems to want to focus more on Lean (which is already heavily used in manufacturing across GE).

Take that with a pinch of salt, since GE is still rather big, experiences may vary.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Systems like Six Sigma appeal to managers because they are rooted in the pursuit of predictability, and all managers crave predictability"

And what innovator wants to work in a place like that? I left years ago because that culture was driving me crazy.</comment>


Whiteboard problems in pure Lambda Calculus (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.jtolio.com/2017/03/whiteboard-problems-in-pure-lambda-calculus/ <comment><USER2> IMO Lambda calculus should be taught wider in CS programs. It brings useful models, builds (if one likes theory) good background to functional programming paradigms, etc.

However, to me, this post was hard to read. Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus) provides a much better introduction: from informal motivation to formal descriptions. My 2c.

<comment><USER3> I want to budget cognitive learning cycles to learning lambda calculus, but I've tried superficially a couple of times and couldn't find a practical reason to do so. Prioritizing picking up a more nuts & bolts skill has always seemed more engaging and lucrative. If I already know some Lisp-ish stuff from languages I already know, is there some benefit to picking up Lambda Calculus that isn't super obvious?

<comment><USER2> Just my 2c -- maybe not, this is just a way of thinking about problems that might come handy in some usually unexpected way. Also, it could be cool to mumble to your geek friends on use cases of alpha conversion and beta reduction.

Seriously though, I do not know Lisp, but if you know OCaml you probably have a good feel for lambda calculus just from practical application of the language. My 2c.

<comment><USER3> Learning OCaml is something I've wanted to do. I'll add this to the list of reasons to learn it :) Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I stopped reading after...

(λU.(λY.(λvoid.(λ0.(λsucc.(λ+.(λ*.(λ1.(λ2.(λ3.(λ4.(λ5.(λ6.(λ7.(λ8.(λ9.(λ10.(λnum.(λtrue.(λfalse.(λif.(λnot.(λand.(λor.(λmake- pair.(λpair-first.(λpair- second.(λzero?.(λpred.(λ-.(λeq?.(λ/.(λ%.(λnil.(λnil?.(λcons.(λcar.(λcdr.(λdo2.(λdo3.(λdo4.(λfor.(λprint- byte.(λprint-list.(λprint-newline.(λzero- byte.(λitoa.(λfizzmsg.(λbuzzmsg.(λfizzbuzzmsg.(λfizzbuzz.(fizzbuzz (((num 1) 0) 1)) λn.((for n) λi.((do2 (((if (zero? ((% i) 3))) λ_.(((if (zero? ((% i) 5))) λ_.(print-list fizzbuzzmsg)) λ_.(print-list fizzmsg))) λ_.(((if (zero? ((% i) 5))) λ_.(print-list buzzmsg)) λ_.(print-list (itoa i))))) (print- newline nil)))) ((cons (((num 0) 7) 0)) ((cons (((num 1) 0) 5)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) ((cons (((num 0) 9) 8)) ((cons (((num 1) 1) 7)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) nil))))))))) ((cons (((num 0) 6) 6)) ((cons (((num 1) 1) 7)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) nil))))) ((cons (((num 0) 7) 0)) ((cons (((num 1) 0) 5)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) ((cons (((num 1) 2) 2)) nil)))))

</comment><comment><USER5> _My team at Vivint, the Space Monkey group, stopped doing whiteboard interviews a while ago. We certainly used to do them, but we've transitioned to homework problems or actually just hiring a candidate as a short term contractor for a day or two to solve real work problems and see how that goes. Whiteboard interviews are kind of like Festivus but in a bad way: you get the feats of strength and then the airing of grievances. Unfortunately, modern programming is nothing like writing code in front of a roomful of strangers with only a whiteboard and a marker, so it's probably not best to optimize for that._

<comment><USER6> The logical way forward is then to _actually just hiring a candidate as a short term contractor for a week or two to solve real work problems on site, in a team with other employees and see how that goes_.

<comment><USER7> Yeah. Because a programmer in a new team is likely to be productive after a week or two. /s

<comment><USER8> In my experience, good and bad candidates differentiate themselves pretty quickly. Being productive is not the expectation, it's about gathering more empirical data on the candidate's actual skills with real development.

<comment><USER7> Which is a really awful way of hiring. Forcing someone to go through the hassle of being a contractor for a couple of weeks, only so you can decide whether you want to hire them afterwards. I suggest you don't try this in Belgium, where employee protection is a thing and this sort of nonsense doesn't fly.

Unless, of course, you're looking for a long term contractor and not an employee.

<comment><USER8> What exactly is nonsense about it? They get paid for part-time work they otherwise would have to do for free during an interview or as homework.

<comment><USER7> Everything is nonsense about it. In most parts of the world, setting up to be a contractor (as opposed to an employee) is a hassle with various implications (tax, retirement, insurance,..). Doing it for a couple of weeks as part of a hiring process? Get real.

Getting someone to do actual work during an interview is also a no-no. As soon as someone walks through your door and you ask them to do actual work, they're your employee, period. They are now automatically entitled to compensation and a minimum severance period. You can interview people in almost any way you want, but as soon as it involves doing actual work, you're toast. This may be different where you live, but it strikes me as being unethical at the very least.

Hiring is hard. But exploiting people (by expecting them to do actual work, homework, forcing them into temporary contracting) is not the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Extra weirdness with this turing-complete combinatory logic with only a single combinator [1,2]. Combinatory logic being like lambda-calculus but where are only allowed to use some predefined functions and function application (you can't create your own functions). Bonus: since iota/jot/zot only have 1 symbol + application, programs are binary trees (with the combinator in the leaves) which we can write in prefix order as "1" for leaf and "0<program><program>" for node. And now (modulo some io details) we have a cool language where any bitstring is a valid program.

[1] [http://www.nyu.edu/projects/barker/Iota/zot.html](http://www.nyu.edu/projects/barker/Iota/zot.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iota_and_Jot)

</comment><comment><USER10> Every day I feel amazed at how much smarter other people are.

<comment><USER11> Lambda calculus is simple and easy to understand. I learnt it in university from scratch and I think that everybody can do it. Set theory has a quite similar, manageable, learning curve.

<comment><USER12> And set theory and lambda calculus have nice 'interoperability' (e.g. λx[Dog(x)] is a characteristic lambda function for the set {x | x is a dog}.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Previously at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13914004](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13914004).

</comment><comment><USER14> Factorials in pure lambda calculus, compiled to native code and running in non-geological time:

[http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda- calculus.html](http://www.flownet.com/ron/lambda-calculus.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Could anyone describe practical benefits to studying lambda calculus (other than, perhaps, to better understand the underlying concepts in LISP)? It seems kind of interesting because it is a way to describe what programs do with a very small number of building blocks. But why is it useful? What insights does it bring?

<comment><USER16> not a good student, can't give you a good overview but this kind of blew me away: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curry%E2%80%93Howard_correspondence) \- you also can explain the y-combinator from first principles. Not sure how practical that is :)</comment></comment>


The long search for a terminal font is over - <AUTHOR> http://mir.aculo.us/2010/10/12/the-long-search-for-a-terminal-font-is-over/

<comment><USER2> I also prefer dashed zeroes. And the curly lowercase 'l' in Menlo really bothers me (the creator of Mensch got it right, IMO, by straightening it out.) Obviously this isn't a poll, but if it were, I'd vote for Inconsolata-dz. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> The long search was over with the first monospaced font. The procrastinating busywork of being precious about screen fonts, on the other hand, will never be over no matter how many trivial tweaks people throw at them.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I prefer dashed zero.</comment>


Fewer premature babies born since Covid-19 lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/fewer-premature-preterm-babies-born-during-pandemic-calgary-around-the-world-1.5665089 <comment><USER2> Let's not ignore the possibility that the reduction in pre-term birth could be due to women receiving less pre-natal screening, leading to conditions that would warrant immediate induction going undetected. In fact, data collected from a hospital in the UK indicates a 4X increase in the incidence of stillbirth.

From: [https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/934056) edit: Non-paywalled: [https://outline.com/MZUPk3](https://outline.com/MZUPk3)

> The incidence of stillbirth was significantly higher during the pandemic > period (16 of 1,718 births; 9.31 per 1,000 births) than the prepandemic > period (four of 1,681 births; 2.38 per 1,000), a difference of 6.93 > stillbirths per 1,000 births.

A hypothesis put forth by the authors on why this is:

> they say the uptick in stillbirths may be due to indirect effects such as a > reluctance to go to the hospital when needed (such as in the case of reduced > fetal movements), fear of contracting COVID-19, or not wanting to further > burden the National Health Service. Changes in obstetric services may also > have played a role.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, is the data there to show COVID infections of stillbirth? Can that account for at least some of them to offset?

<comment><USER4> Considering only 0.4% of the UK population has gotten covid ( 300,000 cases / 68,000,000 population) I would say it's incredibly tenuous to blame the 400% stillbirths increase on covid infections.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Heart attacks are similarly down 40-60%.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus- doc...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/well/live/coronavirus-doctors- hospitals-emergency-care-heart-attack-stroke.html)

And cancer diagnoses are down by half.

[https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0](https://youtu.be/TWF8KLKy-I0)

Of course, no, they aren't down, it's just that people that absolutely should be going to the hospital aren't and they're endangering their lives trying to avoid COVID-19.

Could something similar be at play here?

I laughed out loud when they suggested that this is a "low stress" time to be pregnant. All indicators show the opposite.

<comment><USER6> So you're saying people are just pushing through heart attacks then going about their business?

<comment><USER5> That's exactly what the NYTimes piece I linked to postulates:

"The most concerning possible explanation is that people stay home and suffer rather than risk coming to the hospital and getting infected with coronavirus. This theory suggests that Covid-19 has instilled fear of face-to-face medical care. As a result, many people with urgent health problems may be opting to remain at home rather than call for help. And when they do finally seek medical attention, it is often only after their condition has worsened. Doctors from Hong Kong reported an increase in patients coming to the hospital late in the course of their heart attack, when treatment is less likely to be lifesaving."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Air pollution is something to be taken _very_ seriously,

Regarding that (and since we are hackers here), I bought myself one of these last year:

[https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power- sht20](https://m5stack.com/products/pm-2-5-sensor-usb-power-sht20)

Pretty affordable and it works really well, readings match another device I have which was much more costly.

Since then I turn it on from time to time, I live in an apartment near a highway, I am impressed by:

How much air quality changes between days, during the day and depending on whether there's traffic or not,

how much it changes due to household activities (cooking, cleaning).

and how it changes when someone is smoking, even outside of my unit.

Thanks to this I have developed a routine of opening/closing windows at certain times that allows me to improve the average air quality inside my place. If I had the time (and some actuators) I could probably automate that, that would be cool yeah :D.

I highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm looking to find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if anyone knows let me know.

<comment><USER8> > I highly recommend getting one of these or a similar sensor. Also, I'm > looking to find something similar but capable of measuring CO and CO2, if > anyone knows let me know.

I have some suggestions for bare boards/chips that you can program yourself and run your own self-hosted IoT cloud over WiFi.

CO: $8 [0] + [1] and very very easy. Great place to start, but these sensors have a reputation for being somewhat garbage (see downthread discussion for more detail). I wouldn't use it as an emergency carbon monoxide alarm but it'll do sensitive measurements (10 to 500ppm), even if it's not accurate and I'd guess not particularly repeatable over time. There are more expensive ones available which may be more reputable. Just need an arduino or any other micro controller. I personally like [2] because it has built-in WiFi but still very cheap. I run a basic web server on them that exposes the data to Prometheus/Grafana. See [3].

CO2[4]: $60 here and you'll want a $10-20 ESP32 or ESP8266 to go with it. Arduino libraries are already written for it and the Arduion IDE has good support for ESP32 so I doubt it would be much work at all to test on / port to ESP32 and fix any porting bugs when they pop up. Alternatively if you feel like writing the interface from scratch you can go down the $40 for equivalent parts from Arrow, DigiKey, or Mouser. Honestly - interfacing with these things is generally not complicated at all as long as there aren't hardware bugs or undocumented behavior.

tVOC: $20 here[5] It looks like your PM 2.5 sensor does not also measure total VOC, so this could be handy. For a very scientific breakdown of how a metal- oxide detecting chip can be used to calculate VOC's, see the following[6]. Thankfully, there is free firmware supplied by sparkfun which does all the heavy lifting, but whenever you're using a chip cross-purposes its good to double-check the math and science.

I personally combine these kinds of sensors with the WiFi-enabled ESP8266 or ESP32 microcontrollers, which make for ~$20+ USB-flash drive sized sensors I can litter around the apartment/outside. I like controlling my own cloud, because I can't stand how Nest only provided 7 days of historical data, or reliance on cloud servers for things like itead.cc / EWeLink apps. It's stupidly simple to set up Prometheus and Grafana to self-host your own cloud. See mine here[7]

If anyone decides to go this route and gets stuck anywhere, feel free to ping me. Email in profile.

0: (CO sensor) [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/9403)

1: (Board for easy soldering/mounting) [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/8891)

2: (Cheap ESP32) [https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland- esp32-wroo...](https://www.microcenter.com/product/613822/inland- esp32-wroom-32d-module)

3: (HTTP server running on $10 microcontroller) [http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/](http://esp32.rosskoepke.com/)

4: (CO2 sensor) [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/15112)

5: (MOx sensor which is programmed to output tVOC -- I would not trust the CO2 though) [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14193)

6: [https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441...](https://amt.copernicus.org/articles/12/1441/2019/amt-12-1441-2019.html)

7: [http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home- off...](http://grafana.rosskoepke.com:3000/d/MrL-NKnMz/ross-home- office?orgId=1&refresh=5s&from=1595306888709&to=1595911688709)

<comment><USER9> for what it's worth, i wouldn't trust any sensor in the form of the sparkfun CO sensor (link 0 in your comment) -- there was a fellow in denmark who did a ton of research with these sensors to create an electronic nose that exploited their huge lack of sensitivity. most of them are sensitive to a huge range of gases beyond what they are ostensibly labeled for, so he would drive them at different voltages and could basically get fingerprints of various substances: the nose could smell the difference between different types of olive oils or detect different spices. they are also very finicky to changes in temperature / humidity.

<comment><USER8> Oh, I completely agree. Particularly the ones for various flammable gases. I've tested some of them in a lab and found them lacking for scientific analytic data collection, although I still found use for them as binary "presence" sensors to provide additional leak-point monitoring. I wouldn't recommend using them to meet safety requirements; I only used them to go above and beyond the minimum safety measures. I found they worked well enough to alert humans "hey this fitting might be coming loose" well before a whole-room LEL monitor on the wall noticed anything.

I'd love to see that Danish fellow's research to get a sense for how terrible the non-flammable gas sensors are as well.

I might have suggested a more expensive/reputable sensor but as I remarked in another reply -- it's my opinion that any solid-state gas sensor should probably be verified and calibrated against reference gas compositions. Let me know if I'm mistaken though! I just find it difficult to trust any manufacturer's datasheet claims.

I also tried to state in my original post that the CO sensor shouldn't be used in a safety-critical application. But I'll make another note to make sure people read these down-thread discussions so they're not mislead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Here is entirely anecdotal speculation as to why this is happening (credentials - mom of two). In the late stages of pregnancy the uterus starts preparing for birth by doing Braxton hicks contractions. The uterus flexes its muscles. They get stronger and physically push the baby down like a ping pong ball coming out of a balloon. BH contractions are also like clock ticks to pregnancy, the closer you get to delivery the more frequent and stronger they get. If you get dehydrated, they accelerate. If you get stressed out or exhausted, they accelerate. If you skip a meal, they accelerate. Late stage pregnancy mothers legitimately need less physical strain and more opportunity to take care of their bodies or the baby comes early. Keeping the same active pace of work for a few weeks in the third trimester can cost years of additional effort and suffering as a premature baby may accrue permanent damage. Remote work allows for your body to rest while your brains can work at full speed for longer. It is challenging to make "remote" work right now, but for my part, I'm constantly prototyping and brainstorming ways to make the experience better. We can do so much more in our lifetimes if reduce the dangerous commutes.

<comment><USER11> > Late stage pregnancy mothers legitimately need less physical strain and more > opportunity to take care of their bodies or the baby comes early. Keeping > the same active pace of work for a few weeks in the third trimester can cost > years of additional effort and suffering as a premature baby may accrue > permanent damage.

You are rediscovering why in traditional societies woman stop working when getting pregnant. This is not a plot by the so-called patriarchy but something that have been intuitively understood by humanity for millennia: woman need lot of rest before and after the baby is born.

<comment><USER12> The plot by patriarchy is not asking women to stop working during the third trimester. The plot is to ignore those needs and punish women who stop working by not paying them maternity leave or holding their pregnancy against them when they come back to the workforce.

<comment><USER13> I think we need to move past the genderization of capitalism (an abstract force) into "patriarchy" \-- Capitalism has no interest in gender, age, or pretty much anything relating to human qualities. The trending force for capitalism is to have humans automated away -- let alone be given free money to have a baby.

I actually find the notion of "patriarchy" incredibly sexist -- were not men the canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the dehumanization of capitalism?

I happen to support capitalism as a means of production -- but it should be understood as an abstract, inhuman force like an optimization algorithm. "Patriarchy" is a red herring.

<comment><USER14> > I actually find the notion of "patriarchy" incredibly sexist -- were not men > the canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the > dehumanization of capitalism?

Given that women didn't have a vote when the Industrial Age made coal mining into a primary power source, and given that marriage was seen as making the concept of rape logically impossible until 1992 in the UK [0], I disagree.

Separately, I would argue that while capitalism will exploit such prejudices, I don't think it is the origin of them.

[0] obvious trigger warning applies: [http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1991/12.html](http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKHL/1991/12.html)

<comment><USER15> > Given that women didn't have a vote when the Industrial Age made coal mining > into a primary power source, and given that marriage was seen as making the > concept of rape logically impossible until 1992 in the UK [0], I disagree.

I'm not following how this relates to the comment you're replying to. Are you saying that women are the original victims of capitalism? Or that capitalism was created by men? Or something else?

<comment><USER14> I'm denying the claim "were not men the canaries in the coalmine -- the original victims -- for the dehumanization of capitalism?"

Lots of men had their humanity disregarded, but women were treated worse, and that legacy continued for a very long time.

These issues still exist in some places, based on what I've seen reported by trans people who transition so successfully that people who knew them before the transition mistook them for their own opposite gendered siblings and treated them differently in accordance with gender stereotypes rather than by merit.

<comment><USER15> Those examples don't contradict the claim you're denying. The claim wasn't "men had it worse than women". It was that capitalism originally hurt men (coal miners, specifically). The commenter was arguing that capitalism is not a plot by the patriarchy devised to oppress women. To contradict their claim, you need an example of capitalism originally victimizing women.

I doubt anyone here would disagree that women have suffered more from sexism.

Incidentally, and unrelated to that point, you chose oddly mild examples of bad treatment of women. I'd much rather live in a society where I couldn't vote or charge my spouse with rape than be a coal miner and suffer from black lung and be in significant danger of dying in a workplace accident. You could have gone with the awful treatment of women under the Taliban, to name one example.

<comment><USER14> Noted, and thanks for keeping it polite. :)

I find your preferences shocking, considering when childbirth anaesthetic was invented, when abortions and woman-centric contraceptives became commonplace, and when the idea of doctors washing their hands between autopsies and the maternity ward became common sense rather than being treated as an insult.

I really couldn't use the Taliban. They're (1) modern day and (2) primarily a theocracy.

<comment><USER15> I think we're just interpreting how the hypothetical choice works differently. You're right, I wouldn't want to live in the 18th or 19th century at all. But I'd prefer to not be able to vote (in isolation of other factors) to being a coal miner (in isolation of other factors).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Potential upstream causes:

"One is social distancing, which may have cut down on the amount of general infection from contact with others.

Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads."

I'd love to see increased incentive for cities to act hastily on reducing <pm2.5 air pollution. Talk about a covert inequality exacerbator.

<comment><USER17> It's possible one of the worst long term pollution problems is from tire wear which is not addressed by cleaner running vehicles, so there's multiple avenues to address there but most solutions only address the fuel/exhaust, was a hacker news story earlier this year.

<comment><USER18> The contribution of tire and brake pad wear is really quite low compared to other sources of air pollution.

From Evangeliou et al. (2020), Atmospheric transport is a major pathway of microplastics to remote regions, page 3:

"Surface concentrations of tire wear particles (TWPs) range between a few ng.m−3 and 20 ng.m−3 for PM2.5 and up to 50 ng.m−3 for PM10 (Supplementary Movie 1). Brake wear particle (BWP) surface concentrations reach 50 ng.m−3 at maximum (Supplementary Movie 1). The highest concentrations were calculated for eastern USA, Europe and South-eastern Asia. All concentrations (TWPs 0.4 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.8 μg.m−3 for PM10; BWPs 0.8 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, 1.4 μg.m−3 for PM10) were far below air quality limits for PM (annual mean 10 μg.m−3 for PM2.5, double for PM10) and lower than typical black carbon (BC) concentrations in remote regions."

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17201-9)

<comment><USER19> But the type of pollution does matter. An important question is does it have a greater impact. And given the studies linking health to distance from the freeway, I think that question needs further investigation.

<comment><USER20> Electrics have less brake wear and probably more tire wear due to weight increases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's a study from Denmark showing a 90% drop in the rate of extremely premature births (gestational age below 28 weeks - the HN article talks about 32 weeks, so the drops cannot be directly compared):

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.22.20109793v1)

</comment><comment><USER22> My guesses (in order of likelihood):

1) More sleep, and easier to respect their circadian rhythm

2) Reduced un-conscious stress levels related to: the comfort of being at home in a safe place...the comfort of knowing they won't go into labor early while far from home and around non-family members...the comfort of knowing they're eliminating unforeseen risks that come with venturing out into the world

3) Significant reduction of non-natural movements/processes such as: getting in/out of car, sitting in stiff desk chair all day, work-schedule dependent restroom use, commuting related stress

4.) Reduced air pollution

</comment><comment><USER23> > "By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and > from work, and that might have helped them," Alshaikh said.

Ah yes, I'm sure my 7-months-pregnant wife would agree that this has been a lovely, low-stress time. Wouldn't have it any other way.

<comment><USER24> You seem to be dunking on them for making a qualitative judgement, but they made a comparative one.

<comment><USER25> I think spenczar5's reaction is fairly understandable in the context. Live in close quarters with somebody in their 7th month of pregnancy and 5th month of lockdown and we'll see if your goto reflex is to explain further.

There's a need for a lot of sensitivity in this conversation. It's easy for us to armchair-expert this to death... that isn't necessarily a good thing.

<comment><USER26> I mean, "armchair quarterback" doesn't really apply to posing a hypothesis, does it?

<comment><USER25> I didn't say quarterback, did I? For all that HN loves to rip on studies with small sample sets or sketchy statistics, or worse, deriding people sharing their experiences as anecdotal, this community is sure fond of positing alternative hypotheses with zero evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Interesting, their is also a big difference of % premature births between rich countries up to a factor of 3: [https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-...](https://obgyn.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1471-0528.14273)

</comment><comment><USER28> I have some anecdotal experience here which is not in the same trend.

Our baby was born 10 weeks premature on the 4 June, although her being premature seemed to be entirely unrelated to COVID-19. I'm happy to say they've been doing super well and we expect them to come home this week.

Although not related to prematureness, of interest in regards to pregnancy and COVID-19 was that the gynaecologist mentioned during pregnancy that they had anecdotally noticed that during our lockdown here babies in utero were on average noticeably bigger than usual. They supposed that it might be related to moms on average being more relaxed due to not needing to do things like stressful work commutes.

Our baby was quite a bit bigger than average for their maturity which was quite fortunate given how early they arrived.

</comment><comment><USER29> > By staying home, a pregnant woman may have less stress from commuting and > from work

Classically in Psychology the stress of planning a holiday is more than the stress of the death of a loved one.

This might now be considered wrong (?), but you are taught this because stress is not what the average person thinks it is.

That said, shopping and going out is now really stressful, it's an ongoing changing conditions we are not used to, so surely they mean physical stress, but not sure why they did not say that?

Is it because you can't politically say if women rest at home when pregnant it's better for the baby?

</comment><comment><USER30> _Another is less air pollution, from fewer cars being on the roads.

"This might actually help because studies in the past showed that air pollution actually increases the risk for preterm birth," Alshaikh said._

One takeaway that doesn't involve arguing about the so-called Patriarchy and what not: Let's just try to lower pollution rates generally. It's good for everyone, including but not limited to pregnant women.

</comment><comment><USER31> My son was born 10 weeks (started having issues 14 weeks) too early. One of the primary reasons he was born that early was that my wifes Cervical was expanding too fast. The remedy lay down don't move.

A simple explanation could simply be that by people having stayed at home they are less likely to be physically active and stressed.

I'll bet you that's the primary reason.

</comment><comment> a0-prw A similar thing has been reported in Denmark ("big fall in extremely premature births").

[https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i- ekstremt-...](https://www.tvmidtvest.dk/coronavirus/stort-fald-i-ekstremt- tidligt-foedte-boern-under-coronanedlukningen)

</comment><comment><USER32> Hospitals furloughing workers and fewer premature babies are definitely outcomes I did not expect.

</comment><comment><USER33> Nevermind the 3 causes they are looking at.

I think that this is very likely due to removal/lessening of the impact of doctors on what is a natural process. If doctors are less involved, things take their natural course without problems.

Let's not forget, that the third largest cause of death (higher than covid) is iatrogenic death: [https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic- disord...](https://www.globalresearch.ca/drug-induced-iatrogenic-disorders- the-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us-and-britain/5626283)

There is, in fact, a strong case to be made for closing doctors, hospitals, etc down, in order to increase the populations health!

EDIT - I don't know why my comment is being downvoted. I think I'm making a rational, reasonable argument! If you disagree, no problem! But perhaps state why you think what I'm suggesting is wrong.

</comment><comment><USER34> 'Don't give birth during a plague' is reasonable as a biological imperative.

</comment><comment><USER35> I theorize its because the "pace of (modern) life" has slowed down.

</comment><comment><USER36> The stress of non-cummuting may have been offset by the stress of 'OMG there's a pandemic' \- a more existential kind of things.

The Scientologists have some very aggressive rules about 'quiet' around baby and birth, rather extremist, but I think there is something to it.

Even in the womb, we are picking up information - imagine all the noise, hormones, moving around etc. we get from pre-birth to age 1.

I wonder if we should head out to the countryside 3 months before and after.

It would be powerful to see more research into this, because the results could be revelatory not just in relation to birth, but in other life activities.

Edit: I'm not suggesting there's any 'Science' in 'Scientology', rather, it's an expansive and odd cult with just a ton on out-of-the-box thinking, a lot of it initiated way back when treatment of mental illness was actually draconian (ie lobotomies, arbitrary detention, brutal treatment) and there are often 'kernels of truth' in some of these things. The 'quiet during and around birthing' always struck me as something actually rational in a way. Not scientific either but Glenn Gould attributed his musical genius to the fact his mother would play softly while he was still the womb (thus he's literally been playing 'before he was born') and I don't think it's unreasonable at all to think 'maybe there is something to it'. Early childhood events have incredible impact on our lives. I think of it like 'the time when the kernel code is established' and things gone wayward at that level cause idiosyncrasies for the rest of one's life.

<comment><USER37> I am pretty sure most people don't remember whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years. For a child below 5 years, if you talk about something that happened a year ago, from their perspective it never happened (unless you remind them of the thing repeatedly, in which case they actually remember your repetition, not the original event). Also, the babies themselves contribute some of the noise.

The "something is to it" part is probably that you shouldn't play loud metal music in the hospital. Which probably no one does anyway. But being afraid to say a word... that's just superstition.

<comment><USER36> "whether someone said something during their birth. Generally, people remember very little from their first years"

You're missing the context here. Babies don't understand speech, so it's not like words are going to matter.

And this has nothing to do with 'memories'.

Loud noises, unnatural humming sounds like vehicles, the constancy of it all - is highly unnatural.

The possibility that hormones can alter our development is implied in the article, it's not entirely unreasonable that other stressors can affect us as well.

We were 'designed' to come into a very quiet world (granted, it was a rugged place) but it was audibly very quiet.

Since all of us - adults, children, react in a variety of ways to sound (stressing, soothing etc.) I suggest that audio, in the very earliest phases of one's life can possibly be a stressor.</comment></comment></comment>