Ask HN: do you keep a stash of ideas? - <AUTHOR> And if you do, do you post them publically?
I just want to see if people actually follow the "ideas are useless, execution is everything" and "share your ideas ASAP" memes :)
Here's my stash: http://firespotting.com/submitted?id=shadowcats <comment><USER2> My registered domain list is a stash of ideas that made it past the 'should I buy a domain for this?' filter :) </squattershame>

<comment><USER3> That's genius. It's a bit more expensive than a notepad and a pencil, but also more scalable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to keep mine in random scribbles but then started adding them to a text file.

Half-Bakery [1] was a great site full of random and crazy (and not so crazy) ideas. I'm pretty sure some of the stranger ones may even have come to pass. fwiw, I prefer that type of UI for collating ideas rather than the HN style.

[1] <http://www.halfbakery.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> HalfBakery was great but you had to sift through a lot of joke ideas iirc.

<comment><USER4> From my point of view, that was half the fun.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No. Ideas are really useless.

If they are unimportant I will forget them after a while and that is OK. If I forget them they are unimportant by definition. Keeping track of such things is a waste of time.

If I get really bothered by some temporary idée fixe I will work on it: search for more information, check my assumptions, analyze my options, maybe write some code to implement a proof of concept. This way at least I gain some knowledge for the wasted time and attention.

Sharing ideas of the first kind is just noise. I doubt anything can come out of it.

As for the second kind there are blogs, github, kickstarter, etc. They all put you into some process or format. Which is good if you want to make at least something useful from your idea.

<comment><USER6> Completely agree. Idea sites like firespotting and halfbakery just turn into a really good way to waste your time. If you have a reasonable idea, do some research on it. If it turns out to be feasible, do some customer development and start building it out to really test it.

Doing these things and failing 100 times in a row will almost certainly turn out to be a better use of your time than spending even 5 minutes looking for an idea by skimming through the likes of this:

      [1] "A pinterest type service where if u spot a deal.." blah blah

      [2] a rotating tube house

[1] <http://firespotting.com/item?id=1061>

[2] [http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/rotating_20tube_20house#13702...](http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/rotating_20tube_20house#1370239708)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just keep them in Evernote, never thought to post them on firespotting, that's a good idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do it! If you're not using them, don't hoard them :) Also, it gets the creative juices flowing, so it's a win to everyone.

<comment><USER7> Just put in my one good idea: <http://firespotting.com/submitted?id=cdvonstinkpot>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I stash many ideas to stop thinking about them, otherwise they distract me from what I'm currently building. Once I've written them down, it's easier to go back to the current one.

I usually don't share them because it would take too much time and would defeat my main purpose. But sometimes I just can't help myself and do that anyway :)

<comment><AUTHOR> How about creating an account on Firespotting and posting your best ones?

For me it's cathartic, it spurs more creativity, and I get a very valuable reality-check on my ideas.

Also, I've met several people there already. Who knows, one of them might be a future startup partner.

<comment><USER8> Because it would require time, a commodity I'm very short of ;) But I could consider that in the future, if my current startup fails - or succeeds to the point where I'll have more free time to think about other things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do, but I keep them to myself until they end up being a thing. (Also posted yesterday about my process: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5810585> )

<comment><AUTHOR> That's very interesting.

Maybe you could post about your process here: <http://firespotting.com/item?id=948>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've started taking a notebook with me everywhere and writing down whatever comes into my head. This includes ideas for projects, articles I'd like to write about, things I'd like to research later etc. Then when I have some free time I have a long list of interesting topics / bits of inspiration to create something with. I can't imagine making it public - I think the desire to self- censor would reduce the value of it. A lot of the ideas are rubbish and most of the stuff in there is only interesting to me but it's still valuable to have a record of those things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, ubiquitous data capture is a great way to train the brain to provide you with stuff. Write down everything it gives you, even the duds, and you will be rewarded eventually.

Firespotting is simply a more social way of doing the same thing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I carry a notebook everywhere with me and write down every idea I have during my "creativity hour". I have a nice large stash of ideas in it now. No I don't share my ideas, not because I'm selfish, or I think they're worth money (every personal project goes up on GitHub), but because they're personal projects with no real worth to anybody else (at least at the conception phase). When I think of an idea that will change the world, or if any of the ideas turn out to be any use to anybody other than me I'll be sure to share it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me about this "creativity hour" :)

<comment><USER11> I wanted to be more creative, John Cleese gave me some advice (<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9rtmxJrKwc>). Basically I sit in a café for an hour everyday (on my lunchbreak) with 0 distractions (no phone, laptop etc), and I get bored on purpose. Nice thing about getting bored is, your brain starts to think of things to prevent the bordem. You start to think of ideas, and you start to write those down. By the end of the hour you may have between 6 - 12 new ideas depending on what your train of thought was during the hour. When before I had no idea what kind of personal projects I could work on in my spare time, now I have too many, I don't have time them! Eventually they'll all go on my personal website once I get it up and running.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a cool method. Feel free to post it here: <http://firespotting.com/item?id=948>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I open-source them: <http://willgrant.org/category/idea-dump/>

Need to do some more soon...

<comment><AUTHOR> You have some cool ideas there, consider putting them on FS :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use a simple text document in my Google Drive, it is pretty plain - when I have a new idea I write it into the doc and at the same time I go through all of the others and see If I have more exact ideas related to them. Also I check back occasionally to see if I am still interested in all of them (let's call it refactoring,heh).

There are some which I share, some that I do not. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> How many do you have? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I used to use Evernote to keep track of my ever growing ideas but ultimately found keep a moleskine fits me very well...the feeling of writing it down by myself, a chance to scribble, a chance to sketch etc. made it a better fit for me and I'l sticking to that. I greatly miss the fantastic Evernote search though ;-)

</comment><comment><USER15> For passing ideas, I just stick them into an email and send them to myself. For other stuff, I keep a private github repo called 'braindump' with each idea in a separate project directory.

Whenever a project gets legs and I want to share it, it's pretty easy to then move it into a separate repo and grant access to specific people.

</comment><comment><USER16> <https://github.com/pmarreck/ruby-snippets>

One day (...maybe today), I'll turn some of these into Ruby gems. I have some kind of weird open-source stage fright, even after multiple coworkers have told me some of these deserve to be gemmed out...

</comment><comment><USER17> Not publicly as I usually end up working on them in some way or another. I use Trello to keep them organised.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tell me more about how you do this.

<comment><USER17> I have a trello board with two columns. One has all of the ideas I come up with (title, and short description on how I plan to implement the idea). If I start work on an idea, I move it into the other column, just so I can keep track of it.

Ever couple of weeks I go through the list of ideas and change the order of the items, putting the ideas which I want to work on first towards the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I do keep a stash of ideas. Mainly things that I've noticed about how things could be improved.

Currently in there are things concerning drones, forums, social noise, voice recognition, encryption, new ways of programming, and data synchronisation.

I rarely share my ideas and rarely do anything with them.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yes, and no.

I keep them in Things (a GTD-style app for iOS and OS X) in the category 'Someday'. This way I can jot them down even if I get an idea while riding the subway.

I should share them since I seldom 'Get Things Done' anyway (at least, the things categorized as 'Someday')...

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do share them on FS :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I did not expect to see so many ideas. We actually have quite a few ideas in common, which suprised me. I'm going to browse through all of them, and comment as needed.

I'm also starting to consider posting all of my ideas there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I keep a Trello board for various ideas/projects. Whenever I come up with an idea, I put it on a Trello board. I keep boards for blog posts, project ideas, and improvements to existing projects.

</comment><comment><USER22> I email my ideas to myself, and label them "Project Idea". I also include several tags in the subject in order to find them and filter them easily later on (i.e. game music learning).

<comment><AUTHOR> Game music learning sounds like a cool domain for ideas. Do explain?

<comment><USER22> It was just an example of tags I may include in the email subject, but I've developed a music learning game in the past [1], which I'm currently recoding from scratch for a music teacher who needs it for his students. I'm writing the remake as a web application, this time coded in Amber Smalltalk.

[1] <http://sourceforge.net/projects/scorer/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In a mindmap. For example Freemind <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeMind>

</comment><comment><USER24> I keep a few notes in Asana. Have started a few projects but then think of a new one and the current one becomes stagnant. And repeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> Consider posting them on Firespotting then, good way to un-stagnate your ideas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a huge excel spreadsheet of ideas, names, description, useable content. Hope to one day find time to build everything!

</comment><comment><USER26> I got a separate notebook for them in Evernote. I love the idea of sharing them though, never thought much about it before.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have a ton of half implemented projects..

<comment><USER28> Hehe, hey, I was gonna say that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> i have various ideas that I am sitting on until I am well enough to implement them. if someone does it first fine,but history is filled with people who had great ideas which were ruthlessly stolen often by bigger business's, so i keep my powder dry until I can apply it

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm drowning in them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Unload them on FS then :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yes. <http://hamburgsteak.sandwich.net/writ/bad_ideas/></comment>


ASK HN: I lack programming skills but want an IT future suggestions? - <AUTHOR>

I have time and again tried my hands on learning programming logic. I have recently for instance tried Android development although I am not too proficient in Java. I can understand the code but when it comes to implementation I lack the logic perspective.
Earlier I have tried my hands on at Unix and Linux Admin stuff. At present I am working as a recruiter but in the long run I would like to secure an IT job or atleast contribute to Open source projects.
What are the prospects in UNIX admin jobs be it onsite or remote.
Please do provide your perspective on the same. <comment><USER2> If you are talking about web-based development, you have to build a complete application all by yourself, from top to bottom in my opinion.

This means all design work, UI, HTML, javascript. All backend application code that serves the the app/endpoints etc including any database components. And finally you have to have configured your own linux box running the aforementioned application components.

This sounds really overwhelming because it is. And I honestly don't think, statistically speaking, the majority of web-devs would be able to pull this off all by themselves. (I'm not talking about HN cuz I'd say the inverse if we just sampled HN web-devs).

The point is that you are going to get your ass handed to you trying to figure it all out and you are going to feel inadequate and scared and maybe want to give up. I don't know, but I think this kind of "test" proves to yourself whether or not you truly care about making web-based software.

The important realization here is that if you prove your passion to _yourself_ I super-guarantee you this same passion will emanate through your bones and you'll have no problem convincing any company to give you a shot - passion is infectious.

Realize that the quality of the application is not as important as the fact that you yourself actually finished the project, it works (to some degree of work) and you can show it off proudly, source-code and all to your potential employer.

You don't need to be a super-designer; I'm not suggesting you train to be an elite systems ops guy. I'm saying show you are not afraid of being a "problem- solver" by solving problems, and you'll be fine =)

Best of luck to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> @apsurd Thanks. Appreciate your response. Yes I realize what you mean by getting involved in a complete application. I set out to achieve the same but ever so often I try to choose a language to learn and then I just cannot grasp the concepts.

I keep figuring out should I learn Java first or should I go back to C that I learnt years ago. This is where I am stuck and I needed help with.

</comment></comment><comment> wh-uws Are you looking for a developer job or unix sys admin?

For dev I would read this: [http://www.andrewmunn.com/2011/01/how-to-land-an- internship-...](http://www.andrewmunn.com/2011/01/how-to-land-an-internship- at-a-top-tier-software-company/)

I know it says intern but i promise if you get to know that stuff well enough it would get you full time as well.

Also get "Cracking the Coding Interview" and "Programming Interviews Exposed"

Those give pretty good overviews about what is base level knowledge to get you up to speed for a developer role.

Then things would get domain specific from there

Others would have to chime in for sys admin

<comment><AUTHOR> @wh-uws I meant that I have tried my hands at coding but I succumb to it and give up feeling I cannot grab the concepts and the system admin stuff I have no issues with but although i could take system admin as a focus I feel with being an admin I cannot create something of my own and thats what keeps me going back to learning code. I keep switching languages and I believe that is what is screwing the efforts up.

Thank you for the link. Looks like a good read.</comment></comment>


Most Open Source Android Flashcard Application - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/abettisworth/flashcards Links below are of an Android application with a functioning sqlite database for a flashcard app. Shameless plug with my first foray into open sourcing development. The code-base is yours to browse, forage, or contribute to.<p>GITHUB: https://github.com/abettisworth/flashcards <comment><AUTHOR> Links below are of an Android application with a functioning sqlite database for a flashcard app. Shameless plug with my first foray into open sourcing development. The code-base is yours to browse, forage, or contribute to.

GITHUB: <https://github.com/abettisworth/flashcards></comment>


Chime a Go Editor for macOS - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/chime/hello-world-71416b7c8195 <comment><USER2> It could be argued that language-specific efforts such as this are redundant in the face of more generalized solutions like VS Code or Sublime Text, but I think they're pretty great at spurring innovation and raising the bar for quality. Chime looks great!

<comment><USER3> First, I work on Chime.

I agree that language-specific tools can seem like a funny choice. But, it's just really hard to support one language well. This is probably why jetbrains does what it does. Of course, they surely have a large shared base, but tooling customized for one language and environment can work well.

We haven't discounted the possibility of expanding to other languages, but the general editor market is so well served that specialized tools just seemed like a better fit for what we were trying to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The linked medium article is 2017, should probably be noted in the post. Seems the editor is not available for download in 2020. One of their criteria is a little questionable:

> Has a design that doesn't feel like an afterthought

Of course, who is going to want a design that feels like an afterthought? But, this doesn't define what they _do_ want, just what they _don 't_.

<comment><USER3> Hello! I'm the author of this article, and one of the people that works on Chime. I'm not certain how this ended up on hacker news now, but oh well.

It is true, we're still not quite ready for general availability, but getting Real Close Now. If you'd like to check out the beta, we have contact info at chimehq.com.

As for our design goals, it's true that it can be very hard to put those kinds of things into words. We've tried to convey our aesthetic goals better on our website. Usually, this kind of thing is easier to show than to tell.

We're shooting for fewer features, built with more polish and style. Lots of people don't prioritize that kind of thing from their editor. But, I hope that we can connect with the few that are.</comment></comment>


OECD Data Employment – Hours Worked by Country - <AUTHOR> https://data.oecd.org/emp/hours-worked.htm <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see hours worked by full-time employees by themself. The US number of 1783hrs/worker, ends up at some 34hrs per week including part-time workers.

From the site: "Actual hours worked include regular work hours of full-time, part-time and part-year workers, paid and unpaid overtime, hours worked in additional jobs, and exclude time not worked because of public holidays, annual paid leave, own illness, injury and temporary disability, maternity leave, parental leave, schooling or training, slack work for technical or economic reasons, strike or labour dispute, bad weather, compensation leave and other reasons."</comment>


Reefer Madness: Refrigerated Shipping Containers - <AUTHOR> http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/reefer-madness/ <comment><USER2> Kind of interesting premise but the article doesn't really take it anywhere.

"Food used to spoil in refrigerated containers but now it doesn't because of science." OK, but there's almost no elaboration about what was changed. "They pack things differently and cool from below" seems a somewhat inadequate payoff.

<comment><USER3> It's a podcast. Listen to it. (I agree the payoff isn't the best in this case, but you are missing at least 99% of its quality by just reading it. You gotta listen. Being well produced is what these podcasts are all about. Also, most of the time the payoff is actually better or the stories are structured in a way that payoff is not necessary. I still think this is excellent for providing context and mood. And: Labs in containers are cool.)

<comment><USER2> > It's a podcast

Could've fooled me. Completely obscure to a first-time visitor to the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Vestey Brothers were pioneers of refrigerated meat transport.

They also invented Transfer Pricing, Shell Companies and Non-domicile status. They fought the UK tax office for over 100 years to keep profits made on foreign soil, legislation was introduced to try and tax them but loopholes and vagueness about language thwarted the authorities.

They were Britain's richest family for most of that time and still enjoy royal patronage.

[http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/aug/11/features1...](http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/1999/aug/11/features11.g2)

</comment><comment><USER5> "refers" got their start in chicago, when george h. hammond patented a refrigerated rail car design in 1868 [0].

although the technology was initially used to transport meat via rails, hammond's company (and the rest of the meat trust) quickly adapted the technology for transatlantic shipping (circa 1875) [1].

[0] [http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/series/chicago- innovat...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/bluesky/series/chicago- innovations/chi-meatpacking-top-chicago-innovations-bsi-series-story.html)

[1] [http://library.buffalo.edu/pan- am/exposition/food/health/mea...](http://library.buffalo.edu/pan- am/exposition/food/health/meatpacking.html)</comment>


U.S. life expectancy varies by more than 20 years from county to county - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/05/08/u-s-life-expectancy-varies-by-more-than-20-years-from-county-to-county/?hpid=hp_hp-top-table-main_life-expectancy-11am%3Ahomepage%2Fstory <comment><USER2> One possible partial explanation for this is the same reason why the Bill Gates Foundation wasted a bunch of money fostering small high schools. Smaller high schools were some of the best performing schools...but also some of the worst [0].

The answer is just that small counties have high variance. By chance some small counties will be a lot higher or lower than the national average.

I would be interested in seeing a Cox Proportional Hazards Model would show if the remaining changes are related to pollution, meth, economics, etc.

[0][http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/the...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/09/the- small-schools-myth.html)

<comment><USER3> But even the small counties have populations in the several hundreds or thousands, right? Outliers that die at 33 or 103 affect the average little when you have a population of 2,000.

<comment><USER4> (See edit below.)

Intuitively what you say makes sense. However, I just ran a simulation in R based on census data (actual county sizes from [1]) and the result is that you do get by-county age differences of up to ~17 years just by chance. These bigger differences do not occur often but the assumptions I made in the simulation are fairly conservative and the true random variation could easily be bigger. So 20 years does not seem absurd.

[1] [https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/...](https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=PEP_2015_PEPANNRES&src=pt)

In the spirit of open science, the code for the simulation:

      library(tidyverse)

      read_csv("co-est2016-alldata.csv") %>%
        filter(SUMLEV=="050") %>%
        select(county=CTYNAME, pop=POPESTIMATE2016) %>%
        group_by(county) %>%
        mutate(age = mean(rbinom(pop, 100, 0.7))) ->
        d

      range(d$age)

      ggplot(d, aes(age)) + geom_histogram()

Running the simulation repeatedly yields maximal differences between counties between 16 and 19 years.

EDIT: False alarm. I incorrectly assumed that census data sets uses unique identifiers for counties and that introduced a bug in the simulation. After correcting it, the simulation shows that random variation indeed explains only very small differences in life expectancy of about one year. Corrected simulation code below:

      read_csv("co-est2016-alldata.csv") %>%
        filter(SUMLEV=="050") %>%
        mutate(county_id = 1:n()) %>%
        select(county_id, county=CTYNAME, pop=POPESTIMATE2016) %>%
        group_by(county_id) %>%
        mutate(age = mean(rbinom(pop[1], 100, 0.7))) %>%
        ungroup -> d

      range(d$age)

Life expectancy as a function of county population: [http://imgur.com/a/0LgGZ](http://imgur.com/a/0LgGZ)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for sharing!

It would be interesting to know the standard deviation for counties less than say, 10,000 people, as well as the for counties larger than 10,000 people.

<comment><USER4> See the plot that I linked in the post above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not only county-to-county. My friend did his PhD dissertation on how (at least in Rochester, NY), life expectancy varies by decades between _zip codes_. His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in convenience stores (chips, soda, etc). I wish I had access to his dissertation, but he just defended a month ago and cannot find it in any publications right now.

EDIT: Not my friend's paper, but here is a similar study: [https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/publications/biblio/8355](https://hrs.isr.umich.edu/publications/biblio/8355)

<comment><USER7> > His research focused on urban Food Deserts and studied how the lack of > access to healthy food nearby restricted diets to that available in > convenience stores (chips, soda, etc).

I hear this often but always wonder which way the causation arrow flows.

Do "food deserts" cause unhealthy eating? Or do groups of consumers that prefer unhealthy eating create "food deserts" with their purchasing decisions?

<comment><USER8> In the past 10 years or so, the notion that unhealthy eating and food deserts are related has been refuted in multiple articles and studies. Here are links to some of the more popular ones.

[1] NPR "The Myth of the Food Desert": [http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth- of...](http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/132076786/the-root-the-myth-of-the-food- desert)

[2] New York Times "Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity Challenged in Studies": [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing- of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food- deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html)

[3] The Atlantic "Do Food Deserts Cause Poor Eating?": [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/food- de...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/food- deserts/414534/)

<comment><USER9> It does seem fairly obvious that it is lifestyle choice and like-minded cultural group bubbles as opposed to not having anything but garbage to eat nearby.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A very similar article by many of the same authors was reported in JAMA in Dec 2016.

From JAMA Arch Int Med article from today, p. E6: "...At the same time, 74% of the variation was explained by behavioral and metabolic risk factors alone, while one marginally more variation was explained by socioeconomic and race/ethnicity factors, behavioral and metabolic risk factors, and health care factors combined."

From the WaPo article: "Mokdad said countries such as Australia are far ahead of the United States in delivering preventive care and trying to curb such harmful behaviors as smoking. "Smoking, physical inactivity, obesity, high blood pressure — these are preventable risk factors," Mokdad said."

In NYC, and not just Manhattan, New Yorkers are doing better because of a number of interventions initiated in 2001, when Mayor Bloomberg and Dr. Tom Frieden took over as Mayor and Health Commissioner.

Adult smoking is 14% in NYC, 24% in Louisiana. Raising the cost of tobacco contributes more than half the effect of getting smokers to quit and to stop teens from ever starting.

NYS tobacco tax is $4.35 per pack and the city is an additional $1.50. Cigarette sell for at least $12 per pack here.

The tax is $1.08 in Louisiana.

Mokdad mentions Australia, where the tobacco tax is $14 per pack plus an additional $2 sales tax.

The ACA made a huge mistake in not raising the about $1 US Federal tax to a much higher number for the 13 billion packs smoked each year.

Raising the Federal tax by $4 would raise at least $30 billion each year for helping those with high risk preexisting conditions.

<comment><USER11> > Raising the cost of tobacco contributes more than half the effect of getting > smokers to quit and to stop teens from ever starting.

Yes, though it's also created a thriving black market for cigarettes, often trafficked from other states or otherwise sold without paying end-consumer taxes[0].

Separately, it's worth noting that the age for purchasing tobacco in NYC is 21, as opposed to 18 in most other places.

Furthermore, it's also just really damn hard to smoke in NYC. It's been banned in restaurants and bars for fifteen years, long before that was commonplace in other places. More and more buildings are smoke-free, which makes it less and less convenient for people to maintain a smoking habit.

[0] The cost of having an illegal market isn't always monetary. For example, Eric Garner was killed after an encounter in which police approached him because they claimed he was selling untaxed cigarettes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Eric_Garner)

<comment><USER12> 21 in CA as well as of March 2016 [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/05/05/47687267...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/05/05/476872674/california-raises-age-of-tobacco-purchase- to-21-and-tightens-vaping-rules)

I didn't notice until very recently when I saw a sign on a cash register (I don't smoke). Good for us. It's also very hard to smoke here, many places have lots of rules about where you can do it (not indoors, really far from doors, etc). I'm kind of surprised that people still bother.

That said, when riding a bike around, it's very apparent that many people smoke weed in their cars now. You can smell it for about a block or two behind their vehicle.

<comment><USER13> No kidding! I was just thinking about this last night on my 34 mi bike ride in the rural bits surrounding Athens, Georgia. It seems like every third car that passes me emits the scent of weed in some way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This map seems correlated with socieconomic status and all the health implications that go along with that. And it looks similar again to Republican voting districts. It's Sarah Palin's "Real America", so to speak.

One thing the Democrats would do well to focus on is the fact that there's a large portion of the country that is sick, where the statistics look more like an underdeveloped country. Those of us who live in the major cities would do well to empathize with this other part of the country and their malaise, even if for our own sake of having a more sane and less partisan government.

<comment><USER15> Democrat or not, those in the "other part of the country" are the ones voting against themselves, i.e. for politicians who oppose subsidized healthcare, who oppose workplace benefits such as paternity, maternity, and sick leave, those who oppose healthy food for public school students (and public schools in general...)

Those living in major cities have empathized with those in areas that consistently vote for "smaller" government, by not voting for the same policies and politicians that are causing them harm.

<comment><USER16> The belief in smaller government and general distrust of it in some such areas (but not all) is, IMO, often because paternalistic urban policies don't effectively meet rural needs. Which is taken as proof that government can't solve their problems.

The politics of benefits in such areas are also frequently driven by a perception of affordability -- it's all very nice to have paternity, maternity, sick leave, etc., but when the perception in the community is that there are few jobs, and what jobs there are can barely afford to pay people's wages to begin with, of course it's going to be accompanied by a belief that forcing the provision of benefits is just going to destroy jobs and not help anybody.

I think it's important to take some sort of needs hierarchy into perspective - when daily living is tenuous and stressful, I think many of the benefits the "too stupid to know what's good for them other parters" don't seem to be moved by are addressing the wrong steps of their needs hierarchy, or fail to take into account the financial and environmental realities of their day-to-day lives.

Just as housing has turned out to be an important first step in combating homelessness (as opposed to medication, employment, etc.), I would not be surprised if there were different first steps needed to support people in poorer, more rural, areas than what are perceived within them as very white- collar benefits.

<comment><USER17> If the rural areas are doing poorly, it's always tempting to blame the cities, or the "urban elite", or whatever. Yet the rural areas quite often dominate state politics. If their own representatives are acting paternal, it's hard to see how it's the cities fault.

Providing help to rural areas remains quite popular across the board. There is a long history subsidizing rural agriculture, infrastructure and utilities. It's proven difficult to eliminate the poverty despite that.

<comment><USER16> State politics are often little more than a reaction to national politics crossed with support for moneyed interests like car dealerships and some grandstanding/boot-licking race-to the bottom job policies. National politics really sets the tone, context, and priorities people are aware of, especially so in an era when most reporting and commentary is national in scope and local information is often via word of mouth and social media.

I do think it's true that in many rural-dominant states you can't blame a state-level urban elite, and that's not really what I intended to suggest in my comment (though I do think in "blue" states there very much is such a dynamic, witness Jefferson, rural sheriffs flatly stating they won't enforce various state laws, etc.). Frankly, I don't think blaming an urban elite at a national level makes sense either, as I don't believe what I referred to is at all intentional.

That said, I think the examples you list of things subsidized may also be examples of things that are likewise slightly misplaced priorities in terms of the larger picture. For example, I'd imagine (though I don't specifically know that) agriculture subsidies mostly go to large enterprise farming operations and have little trickle-down effect to many every-day rural people. Likewise, subsidizing rural infrastructure seems like it may be necessary regardless of any significant benefit, though it's once again highly speculative on my part (for example, I'd guess fire-fighting services require significant external subsidies in some areas, but also don't have tremendous effect on the day-to- day life experiences of average "locals").

My previous statement is also why I think the election of Trump may be an important milestone in solving some of their problems: namely I think (hope) he may be a gateway to the realization in certain quarters that what were presumed to be their problems and solutions actually aren't, leading to a significantly reformulated and broadly unified national consensus. (Yeah, probably a pipe dream...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I couldn't help but notice that the top three counties (Summit, Pitkin, and Eagle counties in CO) are largely empty space with some of the country's best ski resorts. I suspect that the life expectancy there may largely be driven by fit retirees who move there.

<comment><USER19> Not merely ski resorts, but specifically Aspen (in Pitkin County) and Vail (in Eagle County). These are not merely fit retirees, but the richest retirees in the world.

Further, there is a bit of selection bias here in that the town of Aspen is at 8000 feet of elevation. You need to have a decent baseline of physical fortitude just to step off the plane there as an older person...

Finally, for what it is worth, day to day life in Aspen (even outside of the ski season) is extremely active and everything about the town promotes that activity.

I personally don't think there is anything actionable or interesting[1] about Aspen and Vail having high life expectancies - they are completely non- representative of any piece of the real world.

[1] Well, other than fitness and activity increasing your lifespan, but we all know that already.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I really wish that journalists would learn some 3rd grade maths before writing anything with numbers in it. How does the life expectancy vary by "more than 20 years" when the difference between the counties with the highest (85) and lowest (67) life expectancies is 18 years?

<comment><USER21> You should be more diligent if you're going to be so snarky... 85 wasn't the highest life expectancy. WaPo noted three adjacent counties with very high life expectancy and captioned the graphic, "Summit, Pitkin, and Eagle Counties, each at more than 85 years."

Their actual values were 86.83 years, 86.52 and 85.94 years. Oglala Lakota County had a life expectancy of 66.81. Lo and behold, 86.83 - 66.81 is more than 20 years.

From the source article:

> _Counties were combined as needed to create stable units of analysis over > the period 1980 to 2014, reducing the number of areas analyzed from 3142 to > 3110. In 2014, life expectancy at birth for both sexes combined was 79.1 > (95% uncertainty interval [UI], 79.0-79.1) years overall, but differed by > 20.1 (95% UI, 19.1-21.3) years between the counties with the lowest and > highest life expectancy._

Pretty cool data viz here: [https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa](https://vizhub.healthdata.org/subnational/usa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Is there any reason this isn't just selection bias? Young, healthy, people with good careers travel to big cities. The rest stay behind. Do we have data to compare those who stuck around vs those who grew up there but moved away?

<comment><USER23> The map shows life expectancy at birth, so healthy people moving from rural areas to cities shouldn't effect it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Rural upstate NY. Always checking out the obits. There were some weeks there when no one broke 62. Seems to stabilized, but more rural than Appalachia. The winters are brutal, MDs are hard to find.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Truth. Here in Ithaca the health care is pretty good, but quality falls quickly after 15 minutes drive in any direction.

Not to mention that, aside from college towns and the canal cities, most of upstate NY hasn't been economically prosperous for generations. It takes a toll on folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Heck I bet within a 5 mile radius it varies. Just go to east palo alto and then go to "not east" palo alto. The reasons I think are pretty obvious and almost certainly correlated with how affluent your neighbors are. Money basically solves all problems when it comes to wealth related problems like access to good schools and healthcare. Even though in theory healthcare and education should not be so strongly coupled to money.

</comment><comment><USER26> The "life expectancy of a county" is not a trivial thing to define if you ask me. Is it how long children born now in a county can expect to live, no matter where they live or die, does it only depend on people who die in the county, or is it somehow weighted by the time people live in the county? Maybe there's a standard definition, but my guess is that most people don't know.

<comment><USER27> Conventional life expectancy measures are calculated based on the death rates at each age of the residents in that place. Therefore the death rates of people at 80+ or 90+ years may be affected by their lifestyles 30-50 years ago, so it's not always an accurate measure of how long you would expect a child just born to survive in that place.

AFAIK it's not weighted by the time people live in that place. Perhaps areas with lots of affluent retirees will have distorted life expectancy rates that may not be reflective of people who are born and spend their lives in that area.

<comment><USER26> Thanks for that explanation. So if a county has, say, a lot of hospices (and people change their residency when they go there, not sure how that works in the US), that will affect the expectancy negatively, saying nothing about how living in that county affects longevity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's a phrase that stood out to me:

>"We are falling behind our competitors in health. That is going to impact our productivity; that's going to take away our competitive edge when it comes to the economy," Mokdad said. "What we're doing right now is not working. We have to regroup."

What's the logic behind this? Out of curiosity. It's a morbid thing I hesitate to say, but from a purely utilitarian view isn't it better for a country— from a macro perspective— if people die as close as possible as they finish their working life and retire?

I might be completely off base there, and this is mostly a request for more information, not saying people should die early. As far as I'm concerned I hope we all live to 200.

<comment><USER29> Death can often be a very slow process.

Sometimes it will cause a worker (and the worker's company) to be less efficient due to health-related issues. Not to mention that caregivers (e.g., family) may also be less efficient by taking time off from work or quitting work all together.

Sometimes people will be put on disability for health reasons before they should need to retire. This is a drag on the welfare system and (often) the economy if they had been a productive member of the workforce.

There is also a potential quality of life issue (both present and expected), but that's not as easy to measure as the previous points. It also has some potentially complex implications that are beyond the scope of this post.

<comment><USER28> What would be a better scenario, though. Do we not die slowly even if we are older, which also requires more caretaking?

What's the difference between having it happen early and late?

I do agree with the Quality of life issue, though. If I'm a highly skilled worker (And thus have prospects to migrate) And some people in say, a country in Europe, live to see 150 years of age, while in my country on average people live to 70 I'm moving out as soon as humanly possible.

Realistically the gap doesn't grow that large, but I'm using hyperbole to make a point. I might be too dumb to articulate it though.

<comment><USER29> The issue in the quote is (premature?) death as it relates to economic competitiveness. That is why early -- that is, in working years -- matters more than late.

Late and slow death has its own indirect impact on economic competitiveness, but that is not the focus of the quote, imho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Oglala Lakota County which is completely contained inside the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is served by Indian Health Service with 94%+ of the population being eligible for free, government provided medical care. I notice, other than pointing it out on the map, they didn't discuss it in the article.

[http://www.richheape.com/american-indian- healthcare.htm](http://www.richheape.com/american-indian-healthcare.htm)

</comment><comment><USER31> Of course life expectancy is going to vary by county, because the variables that contribute to life expectancy; income, lifestyles, dietary habits, quality of health care, and access to health care are vastly different.

I assume you'd need a broad cultural shift in attitudes about food consumption, obesity, physical activity, and vast health care networks that ignore income to change it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some random information in this article....

For instance, they cite almost no lung cancer deaths in Summit county Colorado, while the highest rate is found in Florida.

Well, duh - why the heck would a lung cancer patient want to try and breathe thin air at 9,000 ft??? Sea-level would be much more comfortable.

Not picking on the statistics, but they could have pointed out that some of the variation is purely logical.

<comment><USER32> The three mountain counties in Colorado with the lowest death rates in the US don't have major hospitals. Without hospitals, fewer deaths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Not surprised. Visited the Midwest a few years ago, and obesity was ridiculously off the charts compared to the Intermountain West or WA/CA. The are significant social factors playing out on a wide and complex scale.

My advice, if you're stuck in one an area with unhealthy habits, is to move to an area with healthy habits.

</comment><comment><USER34> > "We are falling behind our competitors in health. That is going to impact > our productivity; that's going to take away our competitive edge when it > comes to the economy"

Interesting how it seems like health itself isn't seen as the target metric. Nope, economy is what's important.

</comment><comment><USER35> What about from country to country. I'm from the US and, at least where I live, it is rare to see someone smoking. Second hand smoke has basically become a thing of the past. But this past week we went up to Vancouver BC and we were shocked at how many people were smoking. It seemed like you couldn't go 10 feet without walking through another cloud of second-hand smoke. Apparently the anti-smoking campaigns of the US never made it up North ;-) Or maybe their socialized medicine makes it so that they don't have to worry about health consequences as much. I don't know. I just wonder if the life expectancy is lower in Canada (or at least Vancouver) since smoking seems to still be A-OK.

<comment><USER36> Smoking is more prevalent in the Pacific Northwest region than it is in, say, Silicon Valley. It is still less common than some other parts of the US. This was very noticeable to me when I moved to Seattle from the Bay Area. In the Bay Area (and many other parts of California), smoking is approaching extinction.

It is a regional culture thing. Most smokers in the Pacific Northwest are strongly biased toward the lower economic strata. By comparison, in many parts of New England (for example) there are quite a few smokers in the upper half of the economic strata.

<comment><USER37> I've lived in and around Vancouver for years, and I find there is very little smoking there. Not sure where the GP's data is coming from, but he/she is drawing very broad conclusions from a very limited dataset.

If anything, (many) Vancouverites have the stereotype of being super-healthy, yoga-practicing, organic eating folks who actively shun unhealthy things like smoking. Unless it's weed :)

edit: I was talking about the GP's comment, not your's specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Not everything is the government's fault. Go observe the lifestyle choices and dietary choices some of these people make, and then add in the drinking and smoking.

</comment><comment><USER39> And why is that a surprise ? The public schooling in USA has widely distorted the housing market creating ghettos where similar people will get clubbed together.

<comment><USER40> How is this a US problem? Everywhere I've ever visited, and I've been to as many countries as I have States, has quote on quote:

"Widely distorted the housing market creating ghettos where similar people will get clubbed together."

I think they call them neighborhoods. Rich people live in nicer houses than other people. Pretty sure it's been like this since one caveman had a bigger cave with bigger rocks to throw.

Sacasim aside I really think we need a national school system. In Georgia it varies by counties. Some counties compete on a national level others are dead last in the nation, if we aren't counting Mississippi.

<comment><USER39> > How is this a US problem?

One word: Mobility.

I lived in a slum in India and went to a private school that catered to poor kids. Got scholarship and worked my way up to start living into a high-rise. The private school had a big role to play in it.

That is not possible for low income neighbourhoods for USA anymore. The mindless regulations make private schools expensive. It is not possible for a retired school teacher to run a class-room in a garage at night and call it a school. That teacher will end up in jail and sex offenders registry. The poor hispanic neighbourhoods of south San Jose will have to rely on the pathetic public schools and those schools will ensure their students flip burgers. Those kids will find it hard to move to Palo Alto.

Public schools not only distort the housing markets but they feed into that evil spiral of poverty. I would love to see department of education dismantled completely and money given to kids to chose their schools of choice and let entrepreneurs make money by catering to the needs of all kids.

<comment><USER40> India is/was a socialist state and I would expect social services to be spread more evenly than non-socialist countries. I also believe mobility is easier in developing nations and was better to some extent right after the Industrial Revolution and workers rights movements.

I am confused by your arguments. You're saying abolish public schools. Great idea then we could create pillar schools where only the elites attend like Yale and Harvard. Then the poor people will have to take out loans from the elite to attend good High Schools. Oh wait.

I'm a product of mobility. My father grew up in rural government housing in Georgia. Thankfully he went to GaTech and stayed in an environment with good public schools.

<comment><USER11> > India is/was a socialist state and I would expect social services to be > spread more evenly than non-socialist countries. I also believe mobility is > easier in developing nations and was better to some extent right after the > Industrial Revolution and workers rights movements.

Saying "India is a socialist state" is, well, technically correct (it's in the Constitution) but a pretty misleading way to characterize the sort of social mobility in India that GP was talking about.

India is home to the longest-running continuously-serving democratically elected Communist government in the _entire world_. It's also home to what could be considered borderline anarcho-capitalist metropolises that are larger than many European countries.

As it turns out, the sort of mobility that GP is talking about is very rare in the states led by Communist and socialist parties, which have generally struggled economically[0]. It's most prevalent in the states (and cities) where the leftist governments never took hold, or where they were elected, but carried out very little of their vision in practice.

In any case, the scale of mobility and economic growth experienced in the economic hotspots of India (Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore) has been made possible by the end of imperial colonialism, and the concurrent rise of a global economy. No developed country like the US will ever be able to experience that same level of rapid growth.

[0] There is one exception, though in that state, 33% of the state's GDP comes from foreign remittances (mostly from expatriates living in the Gulf), which is incredibly high, and higher than any other state. There is definitely an object-lesson in mobility to be learned there, but it's not the sort of mobility GP was referring to.

<comment><USER40> Compare you're localized (hotspot) mobility to what the West experienced at the end of the 1800s. China is a much better example and I dislike China.

You're saying I am technically correct about India being socialist.

The reason India has mobility is the same reason black markets or black economies exist in Communist countries. Where there is a lack of government or public services, black markets will form to fill the gap, capitalism. See USSR, Yugoslavia, and North Korea. Difference is India seems to allow it. There is another comment below about staring schools in a garage for poor people. From what I've seen India has these shadow schools.

<comment><USER11> > Let me remind you the California has a higher GDP than your entire county. > My state Georgia has a 1/4 of your GDP with only ~10 million people.

No, my country had a GDP of $18.5 trillion in 2016. You must be thinking of India, which had a nominal GDP of $2.5 trillion.

Though of course, this entire digression has next to nothing to do with my previous comment, so I'm not sure why any of those numbers are relevant.

<comment><USER40> I thought you were the other poster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I create a throw away account and say this almost every time a post hints at something like this: It is commonly taught at the school of public health at Cal that "your zip code is a stronger indication of your life expectancy (and quality) than the color of your skin". This has been known for years now.

</comment><comment><USER42> If there was no difference in behavior at all between all of the people of the USA, I think you'd still see pockets of more and less progress, just due to the natural distribution of dying. I'm curious what the expected variance by zip code would be if everyone's behavior was identical.

As the article states, some countries are making more progress than the USA on modifiable risks, such as smoking. Australia is one such country. If advertising health were as profitable as advertising vices, we'd be in better shape.

<comment><USER43> It's not just lack of progress, in some areas it is regression.

You state this obvious factor as if it were immutable. The article addresses it, unsurprisingly, and provides examples that at least suggest progress can be made to limit it.</comment></comment>


How would you responsibly disclose proof that p=np? - <AUTHOR> suppose you find a proof that p = np, and with it, a simple process for solving np-complete problems. given that such a process would allow you to break all kinds of cryptographic protocols, how would you responsibly make this proof public? or would you?
if you announce that you have a proof, and provide evidence that you do, you're saying something like "in one week i will provide all computer users with a skeleton key that can open any lock" - what manner of chaos would ensue?
if you go to a trusted authority, which authority do you go to?
this sort of thing keeps me up at night. <comment><USER2> Write a paper, get it peer reviewed in a reputable math/compsci journal (preferably math).

I'm not kidding

<comment><USER3> This is the kind of thing that doesn't need peer review in a reputable journal. You can probe you point attacking NP algorithms in polynomial time, this is your proof, the reality.

Since there are security implications, giving an alert in advance is a good way to prevent side effects of your research.

<comment><USER4> Technically, you could prove P=NP without actually discovering a polynomial- time algorithm for an NP-hard problem. Not all proofs are constructive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unless you actually have it working... just relax... there's a new 'proof' written by an expert every day, that ends up being dis-proven. Also, be mindful of the addictiveness of trying to solve these types of problems. Even the thought of the hypothetical validation that could come with an answer seems to be a very powerful thing.

</comment><comment><USER6> the right answer depends on whether you suspect others have already figured it out as well. many discoveries are nearly simultaneously made by others because the components to the solution become available.

remember that powerful countries have secret teams working on this stuff.

so you should remember that your technique may already be in the hands of various good guys and bad guys.

thus, immediate disclosure may be for the best. anything else puts you in serious physical danger. because if you haven't released the secret yet, then kidnapping or killing you may keep the genie in the bottle.

</comment><comment><USER7> See [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/toast/to...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/toast/toast.html#antibodies)

</comment><comment><USER8> Don't tell anyone but very carefully selected disciples.

</comment><comment><USER9> you should watch the movie "Sneakers".</comment>


Where are the personalised UIs? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> What do you mean?

\- UIs people manually design?

\- UIs that understand their users and contexts, and adapt accordingly?

</comment><comment><USER3> They went away when every device had to be on a network and standardized.</comment>