Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/07/01/coronavirus-drug-overdose/ <comment><USER3> People are desperate. This is to be expected. Along with unemployment, loneliness, hopelessness, helplessness, stress, fear, and anxiety have all risen greatly. This is how people cope when they are not in control of their lives and especially when they don't see a path to regain that control. I would expect more of this. Drug overdoses were already a huge issue because of societal issues. Now, they will be even more so. In a society with no community and poor job prospects, prospects for the future look bleak. Can't really blame people for wanting something to console them in such bleak times. For many, it went from bleak to dire and horrific. The handling of the pandemic is just the latest way that society has failed so many.

Being the richest country on earth and also the one with the worst virus situation can also lead to cognitive dissonance for many people. Envy of other places that are handling the situation better is another thing that can lead people to despair. As is having no leader or leadership, no direction, no goal, no plan, and no idea of what the future will bring.

It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering. Many resort to childish behaviors like refusing to wear masks or social distance to make themselves feel better by hurting others. A lot of people simply never grew up and now that suffering is inevitable, feel like they should be getting an exemption.

<comment> TheGrim-888 I'm not sure I agree with the statement that the US has the "worst virus situation".

It has some of the most cases, sure, if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not horrible. The US is #12 for cases per capita, most European countries are between 4,000-6,000 cases per capita, while the US is at 8,500, which is definitely more. But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Italy, and some other minor countries.

It isn't like the US has orders of magnitude more infections per capita, and there's more people dying per capita in many other major countries. In such countries you'd have about the same chance of catching the virus, and a greater change of dying, as in the US.

The majority of people that are refusing to wear masks are doing so because they believe the science/data supports that decision. You might disagree with that, and whether the science/data actually supports it is a different discussion, but they aren't just being "childish" and refusing to follow recommendations for no reason.

I think there's obviously political power to gain in making the situation look as bad as possible, so that a group can then use that as a foothold to advance their own political policies. It's unfortunate that the issue is so political already. But you can easily tell when it's happening when people are referring to "society failing" and needing to "reshape society" and saying how horrible it is in the US when it really isn't that bad, etc. You can't advance new politics without a narrative of the old way of things being bad.

I guess you can easily argue that there's political power for me to downplay the situation and make it look as good as possible, in order to prevent new politics from advancing. And that's true. But it's good to at least share both sides of the story.

<comment><USER4> > if you compare it by population though, it's still high, but it's not > horrible.

> But fewer people die per capita than in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, > Italy, and some other minor countries.

You listed the countries with more deaths per capita. Excluding countries with < 10,000 cases, there are 6. The 5 you mentioned, plus Belgium.

That means every other country in the world has fewer deaths per capita. The US is the 7th worst out of 66 countries. You can say that you're satisfied with that standing, but you can't say we're doing well.

Disappointment with that metric may greatly overlap with partisan disappointment in the current administration. But Occam's razor suggests the former does not require the latter.

<comment><USER5> Another thing is most of those countries the virus has stopped spreading or is slowing down in the US it is accelerating with the last 3 days each being record for new cases

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Gotta love how everyone is applauding the wisdom of Dr. Bonnie Henry in her success in keeping the coronavirus under control in British Columbia and that of the government for following all her recommendations, and yet when Dr. Henry suggests that to tackle the opioid overdose epidemic, that BC needs to decriminalize drugs and create a safe supply of drugs for the addicted, suddenly everyone stops listening to her.

Drug overdose deaths in BC in May eclipsed covid 19 deaths for the entire year. You'd think people would be a bit more concerned about drug overdoses and willing to listen to the provincial health officer and follow her recommendations.

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose- dea...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/overdose-deaths- bc-1.5607792)

<comment><USER7> It's easy to blame people for their own choice in doing drugs. Or get numb to it as isn't a new issue. But a pandemic causing an excess of deaths and huge uncertainly that could infect every person just for living a normal life is fundamentally different.

My prediction is that America seems unable/unwilling to do what's required to stem covid (lack of federal leadership is just horrific here), and as such, America will chose money over lives. It always has. And at that point, sucks to be you if you got covid and die from it -- it'll just be like any other death in America.... largely ignored as a collective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hardly a surprise, I'm sure suicide rates and alcohol consumption are going up as well. It's a combination of loneliness, lack of supervision (can't find a better word, I mean someone who could help in case of an overdose), despair about the future. This pandemic is unprecedented for the modern people, many don't have the means to deal with it psychologically.

<comment><USER9> A doom and gloom from the media isn't helping either. It's one thing to provide information, but the endless speculation about "how bad its going to get" is irresponsible.

<comment><USER10> The media stopped being about journalism long ago. It's now infotainment. Our media is destroying the USA.

<comment><USER11> >Our media is destroying the USA.

I think this is incredibly true. And it is spreading to other parts of the world.

There is a lot of sensationalism, around black lives matter protests, and very little objective analysis of the "problem". It seems incredibly irresponsible considering the results.

I would urge everyone to listen to (or read) what Sam Harris says in his podcast on the topic, he brings some objectivity and rationality back to the discussion. You feel like there is still some sanity left in the world after listening to it.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmgxtcbc4iU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmgxtcbc4iU)

[https://samharris.org/can-pull-back-brink/](https://samharris.org/can-pull- back-brink/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Back when this started I made the claim that the long term consequences of lock down would exceed the short term benefits .

Depression, Drugs overdose, murder (despair), Suicide, extra sedentary issues leading to diabetese/CVD, loss of jobs/meaning et al.

I havent seen anyone do the math of the uptick there to talk about the marginal benefit of lockdown or the fact that this, once again, is a form of biased benefit for the elderly at the expense of the younger (elderly more likely to die, younger more likely to suffer harder from lockdown)

<comment><USER13> I hear these sorts of sentiments from the USA a lot - where apparently people are actively rioting and protesting against the health lockdown.

I'm from Australia - where while we've had some grumblings about the health measures, on the whole, we've been pretty lucky. Our death toll is 104 people - which even though (comparative) low is still a tragedy.

Yet the USA death toll is over 130,000 people - that is a terrible thing =(. I do not get how the USA can be so blase about it.

And that is _with_ measures in place (although I'm sure there are breaches). Imagine if you simply let it run rampant, and let the health system get overhwelmed? (See Italy).

It does seem like its overwhelming the young who are very laid back about COVID-19, and chaff the most at restrictions.

To be frank - that seems very selfish.

Imagine if the virus had a 30% mortality rate in your cohort? You'd be terrified.

(I'm young, with two young kids under 5. My parents refused to see me or our kids for a couple of months, out of fear they might catch it from us - <USER2> missed them as did their grandkids, but I understand why - it must have been scary for them).

And even that aside - have you considered that a lot of the economic downturn isn't from the actual health measures in place - but from the uncertainty, doubt and fear caused by a virus pandemic? People are scared, and that's naturally going to curb some spending. We are a interlinked global economy, and you cannot escape that.

I hope that we'll have a vaccine soon, so we can go back to normal - but in lieu of that, trying to stamp out the virus or contain it isn't a bad goal.

<comment><USER14> Australia is still much earlier on in its pandemic than the US and other countries. Wait until the lockdowns are national, and going on for months, with no prospect of any way out in sight.

<comment><USER15> They aren't much earlier; they got cases almost the same time as the US. They're just handling it way better. And it's not like Australia is a particularly well run country.

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/australia/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For Vancouverites, you can get free take-home drug testing kits, here:

[http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/overdose- prev...](http://www.vch.ca/public-health/harm-reduction/overdose-prevention- response/drug-checking)

There's not a _whole_ lotta point, since everything has Fentanyl in it these days, except pot (probably)

And free Naloxone (Narcan) kits at Shopper's Drug Mart, London Drugs, and other places:

[https://towardtheheart.com/site-finder](https://towardtheheart.com/site- finder)

They only ask your age and whether this is your first kit. No ID required

There were 131 overdose calls in Vancouver yesterday

<comment><USER17> It's only a matter of time before hard drugs are legalized, similar to marijuana. It'll probably take 20 years, but we will get there.

I know Vancouver setup a legal opioid vending machine as a test run. Doctor checks you out, prescribes a legal opioid (hydromorphone in this case). You scan your badge and your dose pops out.

No more stealing, prostituing, robbing, or other "hustle". You just take your dose. Much lower risk of overdose and far fewer complications from shooting street drugs.

I've read about addicts in these types of programs and suddenly they don't have to hustle for 12 hours a day. They can get a job. Or, they just have the time to stop and think about their life and what direction they want it to go in.

Not claiming it's a panacea at all. But it's better than the situation we're in now.

<comment><USER18> Another perspective is to look at traditional use of opiates in cultures before they were illegal. Raw opium has a much higher ratio of lethal dose to effective dose vs heroin. For example in parts of India elderly will take some opium with their chai to ease the discomforts of old age. While you may become addicted it's unlikely you will overdose.

A big part of the potency of recreational drugs is due to its illegality forcing suppliers to pack as much of a punch in the smallest package. Another contributing factor is Western culture - you don't see a huge demand for low potency cannabis. People like their drugs strong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If anyone here is "losing it" from your routine being destroyed and your city being shut down, I highly, highly recommend you take a week (preferably 2) off and do as much outdoor activity as possible. You should not return home during this period. This will reset your brain because it will break your new covid19 routine with new activities and new location.

When you come back, use this new state of mind to change your routine before you settle back into the state you were in before you left.

<comment><USER20> yep! go wilderness camping. resets everything! circadian rhythm, routine, mental fog, etc. and added benefit of understanding how insignificant you are in the world :) optimistic nihilism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I lived alone for 2 years but most of the day I was out, working and doing my stuff. Some weekends when I had nothing to do and no one to hang out with I kind of felt what loneliness is. Not that it was a big problem to me then as I can entertain myself with a good book, a game, some movies, etc, but several weeks of that would've been very different.

Loneliness can hit you hard, very hard. And on top of that if you have any addiction and mental health problems...

<comment><USER22> Similar : moved cross country for work, felt for a few days lonely, then somehow thought "not as lonely as pets in shelters", adopted one, total improvement for both!

<comment><USER21> Good to hear. Pets are amazing.

<comment><USER22> Especially at least pairs: when the human is tired, they are like "oh well; let's play with one another".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In terms of healthy life-years lost, stay-at-home orders could be much, much worse than complete freedom at this point.

Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.

For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).

I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. Also, I do think we were rational to lock down early on when we didn't know much about the virus. But I do think we need to really attempt to quantify the indirect damages of quarantining vs not at this point. We may find that the morals of the American left don't match the reality.

</comment><comment><USER24> Well, right before the pandemic hit it was being reported that deaths of despair were up ticking so I doubt that trend has change with more pressure in the system.

March 23: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why- americans-...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/03/23/why-americans- are-dying-from-despair)

<comment><USER19> First thing when you open the article:

>Suspected overdoses nationally jumped 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April and 42 percent in May, data from ambulance teams, hospitals and police shows.

<comment><USER24> Keyword to notice on my comment: "reported"

I was stating a fact that all this was already being reported on before quarantine and added a link with a date for more context. The lion thinks everyone is like him.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember talking to a technically minded friend about my clinical depression, and I remember how she mentioned building an app to help solve it. I remember thinking at the time how sometimes building an app isn't the solution to a problem.

Sometimes the best solutions are the simplest, most straightforward, and the least innovative ones: voting in policymakers who craft empathetic public policy, donating to charity, being there for a friend.

Hope you all are doing well :)

<comment><USER26> That's a hilarious sort of tech delusion that people make fun of

Surely a react app is the only thing in the way between global peace and happiness and harmony, let's just make a nice webpage and raise hundreds of millions of dollars for it :)

<comment><USER27> > _That 's a hilarious sort of tech delusion_

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> 40% seems low... how many more are just undiscovered? A lot of people stopped going to work / paying bills / attending events this year, so it's probably getting more difficult to notice when someone is dead.

</comment><comment><USER29> The same is happening in Canada, it's because addicts are able to get money from the government and they buy far more drugs than they're used to having.

Edit: all the people downvoting me, why? not a single comment

seriously, this isn't a theory, it's just the facts

[https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid- addict...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cerb-pandemic-opioid-addiction- overdose-1.5606188)

<comment><USER30> Potentially a factor, but don't you also think widespread unemployment and general trauma - collective and individual - could play a role?

<comment><USER9> Drug addiction will cause people to do truly unthinkable things. They get a wad of cash, the only thing they think about is drugs, and to hell with anything else. It's amazing how it re-prioritizes the structure of the brain.

<comment><USER31> As someone who has experienced it, it's absolutely unreal just how thoroughly your priorities shift towards the substance. Everything revolves around it, nothing and no one else matters until that need is fulfilled.

I'm glad I've escaped that hellacious ride (for now)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> In terms of healthy life-years lost, stay-at-home orders could be much, much worse than complete freedom.

Depression causes more lost life years than cancer, AIDs, and war combined (without even accounting for how depression can cause things like alcoholism and heart disease) (source: The Noonday Demon). So it's not unreasonable to guess that the increased anxiety and depression from quarantining could be much more detrimental in terms of years lost in aggregate.

For a personal anecdote, my grandfather who was in a nursing home died during the pandemic. It wasn't from covid-19 but I certainly think the quarantine accelerated his death (and prevented any family members from seeing him in his last days even after trying desperately).

I know it's easy for someone young like me to say this, not being in much personal danger from exposure. But I do think we need to really look at indirect damages of quarantining. We may find that the American left has had the morals of this situation all wrong.

</comment><comment><USER32> A lot of drug trade has stopped due to border closures. Obviously cannot reveal sources. I guess technically i am the source of info, knowing folks who are nervous to make house payments due to mexico border

<comment><USER33> A lot of not-that-illegal-but-still-illegal drugs that are manufactured in bulk in China and India are still coming in just fine.

Source: my sources.

<comment><USER32> Whats the confrontational tone for?

<comment><USER15> I didn't read that as confrontational, just a frank statement on a topic that lends itself to being discussed in vague terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There are more and more reasons to open back the economy. Does it make sense to keep stalling? Most likely some people will avoid the infection this way, but at what cost to others.

<comment><USER35> From [https://www.wsj.com/articles/masks-could-help-stop- coronavir...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/masks-could-help-stop-coronavirus- so-why-are-they-still-controversial-11593336601)

> Hong Kong, with 7.5 million residents, is one of the most densely populated > places on earth, but recorded only six deaths from Covid-19 despite having > no lockdown and receiving nearly 350,000,travelers a day from abroad until > authorities started reducing cross-border travel on January 30.

> The key secret of Hong Kong's success, Prof. Yuen said, is that the mask > compliance rate during morning rush hour is 97%. The 3% who don't comply are > mainly Americans and Europeans, he said.

...

> The Czech Republic was the first European country to impose mandatory mask- > wearing in some public spaces on March 18, before it recorded the first > death by Covid-19. It has since reduced the number of daily new infections > to below 50 and has one of the lowest coronavirus death rates in the world.

<comment><USER36> unlike the implication of the wsj title, the real takeaway is that physical distancing is the primary mechanism of prevention, with mask-wearing for when you can't distance (like during rush hour in hong kong). it's not lockdowns, it's not masks all the time, and it's not _no_ masks all the time. it's both more nuanced and simpler than most people, on all sides, want to accept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> it's washington post, so any of this may or may not be true.

</comment><comment><USER38> No kidding, just read all the shit in the news and here on what's supposed to be a tech news site, it's enough to make anybody do that.

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm cynical enough at this point to wonder whether the states will add these terrible losses to the COVID-19-related statistics to advocate for stricter and longer lock-downs.

<comment><USER40> States have been chomping at the bit to end their lockdowns. The fact that cases are spiking again is precisely because states were too eager to end their lockdowns.

China had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in business. Anti-lockdown sentiment early on is precisely the reason the US has had to prolong its suffering. The reason long lockdowns are happening is because we can't muster strict.

<comment><USER41> > had a brutal lockdown early and thanks to that they are now largely back in > business

Wait, that doesn't make sense - are you saying that they locked down long enough that everybody who had the virus "lost it" (either by getting healthy or dying)? That doesn't sound very plausible given what we know about epidemiology. The lockdown was sold here as a way to "flatten the curve": everybody who would have gotten it will still get it, but not all at once, so the hospitals won't be overwhelmed. Is anybody claiming that China's lockdown actually eradicated the virus within its borders entirely?

<comment><USER42> Entirely? No. Nobody (I think) is claiming that.

But if you lock down so that each infected person, on average, infects less than one new person, and you do it long enough, then yes, you can completely eliminate the virus that way. And yes, that is perfectly consistent with what we know about epidemiology.

The cure may literally be worse than the disease, but we could do that.

But there comes a point where the number of cases is small enough that you use testing and contact tracing to do the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Despair deaths will be the true toll of this pandemic. I feel very sorry for everyone who is getting screwed by the extreme response to the virus.

<comment><USER43> The delay on the response in America is the real cause of the current situation including the despair involved, countries such as Japan or New Zealand that quickly took effective measures such as make everyone use face mask[0] or early closing of airports are pretty much back to normal already; America didn't close early, and more troublesome some people took being mask- less a political matter, others believe a conspiracy around it, and others render it useless by taking it off every 5 minutes due being mildly uncomfortable.

[0] [https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1277693321037611013](https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1277693321037611013)

<comment><USER10> We did delay but we have to double down: let things run it's course.

Reversing now and keeping things closed will have far worse devastation in the long run

<comment><USER43> Any significant research that supports such claim that I can read?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Genomic Analyses of Modern Dog Breed Development - <AUTHOR> http://www.cell.com/cell-reports/fulltext/S2211-1247(17)30456-4 <comment><USER2> The high and highly detailed predictability of individual dog behavior from breed alone is interesting and, particularly given many breeds' relative youth, heavily weights the nature/nurture debate in the former's favor for me.

<comment><USER3> .. for dogs. Don't let that encourage you to over-generalise about humans.

<comment><USER4> Why should it not also be the case with humans? Sure sure, our environment, development, nutrition, family bonding, etc, all has an effect on our intelligence.

Dog breeding is just a euphemism for _eugenics_.

Presumably all domestic dogs are descendents of one species of wild dog, so given that:

Give me ~12,000 years and I'm willing to bet I can give you a breed of super intelligent humans (Border Collies) and a breed dumb dumbs (Bulldogs).

<comment><USER5> I don't doubt that you could succeed in breeding humans, but I think that there are two ENORMOUS roadblocks that ought to be mentioned:

1\. The Ethics Problem. Puppy mills are still around and still bad, and breeders in the past probably did some pretty terrible things to their dogs, but the human analog of the work performed by even the most humane dog breeders would still be a terrible travesty of the most basic human rights. Maybe I'm not creative enough or open-minded enough, but I can't conceive of a way to do this ethically.

2\. The Nurture Option. A well-trained bulldog can be a much, much better dog than an untrained border collie. And one person can accomplish this training with a dog in a few years. Why spend 12,000 years breeding humans instead of putting a bit more effort into training the perfectly serviceable brains that we already have?

I tried to find some statistics to back up the latter point. The US spends about 2.7%, or 102 billion of the 3800 billion federal budget, on education. States average about 30% of their budgets, or (very roughly) 550 billion of the 1850 billion sum of state budgets, on education. A further complication is that much of education funding is done using local property taxes, which vary wildly by location, but are generally similar to the sum of federal and state funding. This is a total of about 1.2 trillion in education funding. Honestly, that compares pretty favorably to a 19 trillion GDP. And it ignores all the extremely important effort and money spent by parents to educate their children, and private spending on post-secondary education.

<comment><USER6> 2\. The problem here is that you can't train a bulldog to herd sheep. You can't train a poodle to be a livestock guardian.

Much of what working dogs do is pre-programmed. It's instinctive. Very little (if any) training is required.

Why try to train things to be things they were not already designed to be? It's FAR more efficient to breed the traits and instinct you want into a breed.

<comment><USER7> Are you trying to make some kind of analogy to humans being limited to a certain skill set because of genetics? I hope I just reading too much into your reply to this thread.

Anyways, you can train poodles to be livestock guardians. [http://www.vipoodle.org/HRP/VIP_herdingpoodles.html](http://www.vipoodle.org/HRP/VIP_herdingpoodles.html)

<comment><USER8> Are you implying that every human can do everything equally well? Talent is a thing. I wouldn't beat Usain Bolt no matter how much I trained.

<comment><USER7> No, but I'm not implying that you can't train up to the 95% percentile. Not every dog can be Balthazar[1], but almost every single dog can be trained to sit. Not every human can be Albert Einstein, but almost every single one of them can learn Calculus.

[1][http://metro.co.uk/2017/04/23/britains-biggest-dog-is-7ft- an...](http://metro.co.uk/2017/04/23/britains-biggest-dog-is-7ft-and-weighs- the-same-as-a-baby-elephant-6593159/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Beautiful cladogram

</comment><comment><USER10> woof

<comment><USER11> On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

<comment><USER12> Unless it's HN, then everyone knows.</comment></comment></comment>


The 'Dodgers tax' - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinionla/la-ed-dodgers-cable-tv-fees-20120330,0,7521642.story

<comment><AUTHOR> Dear moderator, I would prefer that you didn't change my title from 'The sports team tax' to 'The 'Dodgers tax'', because the phenomenon exists in many places, but not all HN readers may know who or what the 'Dodgers' are - especially readers outside the US.

<comment><USER2> Especially confusing as "tax dodgers" is a common phrase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Or to put another way, the LA dodgers have been until now undercharging for their broadcast rights.

This change is clearly really bad for the cable companies, and I'm surprised they haven't started charging their customers for such premium programming. If they don't, the non-watchers who are effectively subsidizing the watchers will slowly flee, further driving up cable prices..

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the top reasons people mention for sticking with cable is for live sports. If that's case, it might just be sports watchers are the only ones left on eventually anyways. I for one would be much more likely to have cable if they had al-cart pricing.

<comment><USER5> I dumped my cable subscription and switched to iTunes à la carte pricing as it's much, much cheaper for me personally. The only thing I miss is live sports.

I think many cable subscribers could save money by switching to the iTunes model but most people are happier paying a flat subscription fee than buying things piecemeal. Paying $40 for a single TV season sucks in comparison to $60 or $80 all you can watch buffet.</comment></comment>


Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System, Primitive Cognition(NeurIPS) - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/nipsfoundation/videos/480969442428608/?epa=SEARCH_BOX&jazoest=26510012195781185797116100114767988525197746586791036610490108103497776985410611380977111255101577751777965586510012081988481117781016898731055652828011071855574718599507965748676545112078708099118789511112283103 <comment><AUTHOR> Mind-blowing talk on regenerative biology and bioelectrical computation!</comment>


Clyde and Bonnie died for Nihilism - <AUTHOR> http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/clyde-and-bonnie-died-for-nihilism-15205

<comment><AUTHOR> A good re-telling of the 'real' Bonnie & Clyde story, though I suspect some of the author's personal opinion on wider matters is revealed through excellent quotes like

 _"the legendary Penn movie that invented the New Bonnie and Clyde was such a ideological crock that it deserves placement in that list of other leftist crocks mistaken by gullible critics and film lovers as somehow great: Beatty's own Reds, the appalling JFK, and the toxic oeuvre of Michael Moore and his tribe of screwball clones"_</comment>


A Collection of Business Books for Software Developers - <AUTHOR> https://www.zeroequalsfalse.press/2019/02/09/business-software-books/ <comment><USER2> Book links are all Amazon affiliate links.</comment>


Animal painting found in cave is 44k years old - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-50754303 <comment><USER2> You might also find the red ladder from la pasiega cave in Spain of interest. It's 65,000 years old which means it was painted by Neanderthals (based on current knowledge).

It blows my mind to think that another human species walked on this same planet and drew this art. To me, that's as profound as the discovery, if ever, of another intelligent species in the universe.

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/22/neanderthals- not-humans-were-first-artists-on-earth-experts-claim)

Also worth considering, is the art of Chauvet Cave and the excellent Werner Herzog documentary about it. The artistry is incredible. It stands up to anything we could draw today.

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

This art from when I last read is considered to have been done around the time that Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals were both present in Europe. It's incredible to see that these people who lived in ancient France where drawing wild animals such as Rhinos and Lions.

<comment><USER3> >people who lived in ancient France were drawing wild animals such as rhinos and lions.

My guess is that when Homo sapien met the people who live in caves, they got to talking about africa and one human was trying to explain rhinocerous and after a while they got frustrated and said "no you're still not getting it. Give me that ink over there, I'll show you."

And then they drew the rhino and also a group of people, for scale.

<comment><USER4> Or maybe they were enjoying a game of pictionary.

<comment> crooked-v On that note, it's kind of fascinating to consider that ancient humans (both homo sapiens and other human species) almost certainly had their own variations of currently universal party games like charades, would you rather, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand how the aging works.

Pure calcite does not contain uranium. How do we know the calcite didn't form in an environment already containing traces of old decaying uranium and thus trapped both thorium and uranium as the crystal formed?

Edit: I think I've figured it out (from the wiki[1])

> Thorium is not soluble in natural water under conditions found at or near > the surface of the earth, so materials grown in or from this water do not > usually contain thorium.[citation needed] In contrast, uranium is soluble to > some extent in all natural water, so any material that precipitates or is > grown from such water also contains trace uranium, typically at levels of > between a few parts per billion and few parts per million by weight.

So what I'm guessing is happening is this: Running water is dissolving uranium and going down a cave wall. The water contains no thorium because thorium is not soluble and the water is running (i.e. by the time the uranium decays it will not be on the wall anymore). Calcite forms using the minerals in the running water, and traps the dissolved uranium. Only then can it decay inside the crystal into thorium.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93thorium_dating](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium%E2%80%93thorium_dating)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not the same cave, but I highly recommend this Werner Herzog documentary.

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

</comment><comment><USER7> >"I think I said the characteristic Australian four-letter word out very loud."

"Mate" ?

<comment><USER8> Probably the other one

<comment><USER9> I genuinely don't know which word he's talking about, either. I mean I know plenty of 4-letter words but none that Australia has cornered the market on, to my knowledge.

<comment><USER10> Australians have a meme they say cunt more than other cultures.

Analytically the UK is actually higher I believe, but they are just to cool to brag about it - [https://onemilliontweetmap.com/?search=cunt](https://onemilliontweetmap.com/?search=cunt) (Possibly a bit off atm because of elections)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Also discussed on NPR: [https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year- old-ind...](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old- indonesian-cave-painting-is-rewriting-the-history-of-art)

The NPR story quotes one of the authors of a paper published today in Nature... but then brings in an unrelated graduate student to say, without evidence, that painting was invented somewhere other than Southeast Asia: "Personally, I think ... Africa."

<comment><USER12> And in the very next paragraph, the author of the paper agrees with the opinion.

"While not everyone in the field agrees, and no figurative cave art in Africa has been dated older than the Indonesian works, Brumm says he has the same gut feeling."

<comment><USER13> To be clear, there's a logic behind this: the experts are looking at similarities between figurative art in Europe and Asia and hypothesizing a common ancestor rather than coincidence.

<comment><USER14> Thats a fun theory, but how is that different than all the pyramids found around the word. I mean, it's sort of is the "easiest" big structure one can build.

<comment><USER15> Surely the paintings that survived for 44,000 years aren't the _only_ ones that were painted that early. There's no particular reason that art couldn't be older -- _much_ older, even -- but not be able to survive for much longer than that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> AFAIK most early animal paintings in caves was to show what game/food/animals there was in the local area.

Makes you wonder if future archaeologists would have the same ore and wonder at finding a McDonalds menu board buried some 50,000 years on from now. When you think of it like that, you wonder what people of the time would make of interpretations of them and how accurate they are.

EDIT - Spilling error

<comment><USER2> It's interesting that some of those oldest sculptures discovered are considered to be a form of "proto-pornography". Shows that times may change but we sure don't.

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

<comment><USER17> Hm, that seems to me like projecting our ideas to a time and culture where they may not apply.

I rather think they have religious meaning.

<comment><USER18> Their speculation seems as valid as yours; unless you've some evidence to add?

<comment><USER17> Well, to quote the wikilink:

"The original cultural meaning and purpose of these artefacts is not known. It has frequently been suggested that they may have served a ritual or symbolic function. There are widely varying and speculative interpretations of their use or meaning: they have been seen as religious figures,[5] an expression of health and fertility, grandmother goddesses or as self-depictions by female artists"

<comment><USER19> GK Chesterton is great on this subject, in _Science and the Savages_ from _Heretics_ (1905):

The secret of why some savage tribe worships monkeys or the moon is not to be found even by travelling among those savages and taking down their answers in a note-book... The answer to the riddle is in England; it is in London; nay, it is in his own heart. When a man has discovered why men in Bond Street wear black hats he will at the same moment have discovered why men in Timbuctoo wear red feathers. The mystery in the heart of some savage war-dance should not be studied in books of scientific travel; it should be studied at a subscription ball. If a man desires to find out the origins of religions, let him not go to the Sandwich Islands; let him go to church. If a man wishes to know the origin of human society, to know what society, philosophically speaking, really is, let him not go into the British Museum; let him go into society.

This total misunderstanding of the real nature of ceremonial gives rise to the most awkward and dehumanized versions of the conduct of men in rude lands or ages. The man of science, not realizing that ceremonial is essentially a thing which is done without a reason, has to find a reason for every sort of ceremonial, and, as might be supposed, the reason is generally a very absurd one — absurd because it originates not in the simple mind of the barbarian, but in the sophisticated mind of the professor. The learned man will say, for instance, "The natives of Mumbojumbo Land believe that the dead man can eat and will require food upon his journey to the other world. This is attested by the fact that they place food in the grave, and that any family not complying with this rite is the object of the anger of the priests and the tribe." To any one acquainted with humanity this way of talking is topsy-turvy. It is like saying, "The English in the twentieth century believed that a dead man could smell. This is attested by the fact that they always covered his grave with lilies, violets, or other flowers. Some priestly and tribal terrors were evidently attached to the neglect of this action, as we have records of several old ladies who were very much disturbed in mind because their wreaths had not arrived in time for the funeral." It may be of course that savages put food with a dead man because they think that a dead man can eat, or weapons with a dead man because they think that a dead man can fight. But personally I do not believe that they think anything of the kind. I believe they put food or weapons on the dead for the same reason that we put flowers, because it is an exceedingly natural and obvious thing to do. We do not understand, it is true, the emotion which makes us think it obvious and natural; but that is because, like all the important emotions of human existence it is essentially irrational. We do not understand the savage for the same reason that the savage does not understand himself. And the savage does not understand himself for the same reason that we do not understand ourselves either.

The obvious truth is that the moment any matter has passed through the human mind it is finally and for ever spoilt for all purposes of science. It has become a thing incurably mysterious and infinite; this mortal has put on immortality. Even what we call our material desires are spiritual, because they are human. Science can analyse a pork-chop, and say how much of it is phosphorus and how much is protein; but science cannot analyse any man's wish for a pork-chop, and say how much of it is hunger, how much custom, how much nervous fancy, how much a haunting love of the beautiful.

[http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301191h.html#ch11](http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks13/1301191h.html#ch11)

<comment><USER18> Fantastic quote, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I love reading about these finds. Animals are drawn with astounding detail and accuracy, while drawings of humans are absent or strikingly diminished stick figure forms. These anonymous drawings seem to predate the ego that dominates our world today.

This is truly the age of pure humanity. War was something that had to be invented, and only came about ~10k years ago. We are all descendants of the survivors of war, the most brutal and feared killers are our ancestors; the predisposition towards violence is in our blood. The humans who worked in these caves and elsewhere, consuming migratory reindeer and avoiding larger and more dangerous fauna, our ancestors slaughtered these men and enslaved these women. How different the world might be if war was never waged, it's hard to imagine as we've become so accustomed to constant warfare.

Many historians feel that the neolithic revolution, with the resulting social stratification and development of warfare that has been with us ever since, was the worst development in human history.

<comment><USER21> Just because there wasn't warfare doesn't mean there wasn't violence and blood feuds. That behavior has been seen even groups of other primates. If anything professional armies were an improvement because they laid the groundwork for a distinction between civilians and soldiers.

<comment><USER20> Violence happened but was generally something to avoid in the paleolithic due to the risk. It was too costly and it wasn't until the neolithic were population sizes high enough to make that cost worth while, and grain and resource storage made a worthwhile reward. Systematic warfare didn't appear until the neolithic, that's when we begin finding mass graves of peoples slaughtered by weaponry and more depictions of warfare in art.

<comment><USER22> The reason for the mass graves of course, is the increase in human population as a result of agriculture. It's not necessarily that as a percentage, you were less likely to be a victim of violence in the Paleolithic era.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> 44,000 years later as we enter the third decade of the 21st century...

<comment><USER24> This always really messes with me. We have a tendency to view our current civilization as permanent, but we could easily lose all of this progress with a few well-timed famines and be reduced back to barely-bronze-age tribes in the span of a few decades.

We could collapse, nearly entirely disappear and face another genetic bottleneck event, then have to rediscover all of our current society some two or three thousand years in the future and the Universe wouldn't even have ticked a single second in the grand scheme of things.

<comment><USER25> This article really pushed the point home for me: [https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arroganc...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/arrogance- anthropocene/595795/)

It's about the geological insignificance of humans, and how we could have done this all several times already and we wouldn't have any idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> IIRC ancestors of Australian aborigines arrived from ~Indonesia around ~60k years ago, and the oldest rock art in the Northern Territory (the closest part to Indonesia) with confirmed dating is apparently [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabarnmung) at ~28k years old, although its site has ~44k years of confirmed human use, which is exactly the same age as this Sulawesi find.

Very vaguely then ~60k years ago was "out of Africa", ~40-30k years ago was "Prehistoric Australasian art flourish", and ~4k years ago was "dawn of known civilizations". Makes you wonder what everyone was getting up to in the mean time... possibly killing off challengers! Nearby species died in the mean time - Flores hobbit[0] ~17k years ago, Red Deer Cave people[1] ~12k years ago.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Deer_Cave_people)

</comment><comment><USER27> I absolutely love the fact that the human-like figures are depicted with snouts and tails.

<comment><USER28> To be honest, it looks more like regular humans and animal hunter companions (dogs??).

The resolution of the info graphic is a joke, here is one with better resolution, found by reverse image search: [https://www.eltiempo.com/uploads/2019/12/11/5df119644b023.jp...](https://www.eltiempo.com/uploads/2019/12/11/5df119644b023.jpeg)

<comment><USER22> I wonder if they wore animal pelts as helmets when they hunted?

<comment><USER29> I've always loved the idea that centaurs sprung up as a reaction of non-horse- riding cultures seeing hunters on horses, though I think our brains mashing together different forms we've seen in nature is explanation enough on its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone interested in this sort of thing is likely already aware of "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. Mentioning it just in case. Highly recommended!

</comment><comment><USER31> Interesting how similar these look to cave paintings in Europe. Is it convergent cultural evolution, or was this a result of some sort of cross- continent cultural transmission?

My guess is that the first paintings were painted much earlier than 44,000 years ago, although most of the older paintings have probably been lost to time.

<comment><USER22> This is probably correct. Homo sapiens appeared roughly 200-300K years ago and they had the same brains we do. I also suspect that humans painted regularly on animal canvas and that all of them have been lost to time long ago. When you look at the Lescaux caves paintings (27K years old) and the beautiful art work there, there's no way that was done without a very practiced artist. These were Da Vincis of their age.

<comment><USER20> The aurochs in that cave look like they were drawn by an art student today. Very impressive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If you think that's cool check out some cave movies. [https://kottke.org/12/09/cave-paintings-were-stone-age- anima...](https://kottke.org/12/09/cave-paintings-were-stone-age-animations)

</comment><comment><USER33> Almost extinct, but not yet. Woo hoo!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EQvqbiNg0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EQvqbiNg0o)

Nice little stabber. I can understand the attack plan.

</comment><comment><USER34> Old time people did a lot of cool stuff. Many discoveries still to come. It's not all about banging two rocks together.

</comment><comment><USER35> If anyone's curious about this domain and theories of human development associated with it, you may want to check out Jeremy Lent's "The Patterning Instinct".

Slowly reading through it right now, and coming across the OP cave painting piece was interesting. Some rough notes below.

\----

Rough timelines & theories:

Theories:

      - Aiello & Dunbar "gradual and early" language hypothesis, Pinker, Chomsky

      - Bill Noble & Iain Davidson - "sudden and recent"

      - Ray Jackendoff (1999) - blend the two above theories, reframe from whether hominids "had language" to "what elements of a language capacity"

Timeline:

        - 8 million yrs ago - Great rift valley challenges, birth of mimetic culture (see above)

        - 2.5 million yrs ago - Olduvai - Homo habilis

        - 2 million yrs ago - transition from mimetic forms to early language/symbolics?

            - Jackendoff's development - development of mimetic language

        - 300k yrs ago

            - under Aiello/Dunbar "gradual and early" theory, we "crossed the Rubicon" to modern state just before anatomically modern humans

            - Jackendoff, we developed protolanguage - small nets of symbols

        - 40k years ago - upper paleolithic revolution

            - Noble&Davidson, arguing this was a "sudden and recent" revolution and explosion of symbols, since we had less artifacts before this period.

            - Jackendoff, modern language (giant net of symbols)

# Ch. 3 - The rise of mythic consciousness

## Great Leap Forward Theory

\- lascoux cave paintings from 17k yrs ago - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lascaux)

\- [found recently] indonesian cave paintings from 44k yrs ago?

\- [https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year- old-](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/786760790/44-000-year-old-) indonesian- cave-painting-is-rewriting-the-history-of-art

\- "great leap forward" theory (Jared Diamond)

        - If humans were anatomically modern 150k yrs ago, why did it take so long for the upper paleolithic revolution (40k yrs ago)?

          - "Why did it take so long for symbolic thinking to get going! This rather awkward question was first framed by archaeologist Colin Renfrew, who referred to it as the "sapient paradox"."

## Out of Africa

\- "The revolution that wasn't" theory (Sally McBrearty & Alison Brooks)

      - Contrary to "Great Leap Forward", argues things were slow and gradual.

\- "Out of Africa" theory / story, backed with some dna analysis

        - 70k yrs ago - humans expanded through africa, small contingent crossing red sea into arabia -> south asia -> australia

</comment><comment><USER36> Probably done by a senior hunter to explain how to corner and kill food animals. The earliest known example of a PowerPoint presentation.

<comment><USER37> Or it was the very first whiteboard interview for the position of junior hunter

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Today I learned there was a giant balloon cow god that existed 44000 years ago.

</comment><comment><USER39> Wow, those are some pretty talented animals.

</comment><comment><USER40> Mind mind would blow up if it were discovered that there was already a civilization on Earth like 200,000 years ago.</comment>


TODAY (22 OCT) IS CAPSLOCK DAY  - AND IT CAN BE VERY IRRITATING - <AUTHOR> http://capslockday.com/

<comment><USER2> IT IS HARD TO TELL WHETHER YOU'RE IRRITATED OR JUST OVERCOME BY THE SPIRIT OF THIS JOYOUS DAY.</comment>


Show HN: Banana ripeness classifier (ML webapp) - <AUTHOR> https://isthisbananaripe.ml/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, HN! I am colorblind and I can't reliably identify when a banana is ripe enough to eat, so I made a machine learning model that does it for me. The model (92% val accuracy, ~12MB) runs on your device (tf.js) and you can upload directly from the camera on mobile.

Feedback is always appreciated!

Data, code and trained model are available here: [https://github.com/giovannipcarvalho/banana-ripeness- classif...](https://github.com/giovannipcarvalho/banana-ripeness- classification)

<comment><USER2> I'm also colour blind (red-green), and can't tell ripe bananas from unripe based on the green/yellow colour. But as they ripen, they tend to develop more black patterns on them, and they're softer when you give them a little squeeze.

It's an interesting project, nonetheless, and sounds like just the sort of thing I'd like to replicate to get started in ML.

<comment><USER3> Sense of smell is the best way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried to guess an album covers decade: [https://uncover-a-covers- decade.onrender.com/](https://uncover-a-covers-decade.onrender.com/)

You are doing the fast.ai course too, right? [edit: looking at your code, no, you did not :)]

I chose my challenge to maximize my learning through something challenging enough it might fail. It's only right 60-70% of the time.

What I learned:

\- Binning in to decades might not be Ideal. Something from 79 and 80 is more similar than something from 71 and 79. I guess a better approach would have been smaller bins (3 or more per decade) and than rounding the result to the decade.

\- Be careful how you gather your learning data. I pulled from the google image search with something like "album OR LP cover 20s/30s/40s..."; this has ~20% "best of the XXs" collections in them where the cover was designed in a much later decade. I should have searched for "1920 OR 1921 OR 1922...".

</comment><comment><USER5> I just uploaded an image with some portuguese custard pies and the model went bananas.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice, pretty cool project. It correctly identified some bananas I had just bought as a little green.

Any chance for making an avocado identifier, because those are pretty tough to guess wether they are ripe.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I might give it a shot. But yeah, I think it wouldn't work nearly as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> ha I made something similar for weed, [https://chronicsickness.com](https://chronicsickness.com)

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool website! Can you go through how you set up the whole thing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I actually didn't base it on fast.ai. It went on like so:

\- I scraped from google images using queries like "ripe bananas", "green bananas", etc \- Filtered out garbage images and labeled the remaining with the help of someone

\- Trained the model (very straight forward with Keras). The code in the notebook is something like 30 lines I think.

\- Using tf.js was what took me the longest. Using tensorflowjs_converter.save_model outputs an incompatible or corrupted file. Saving it first with keras and then using the tensorflowjs_converter CLI tool is what worked. The web-ui code is also available in the repo.

\- Lastly. It is served from GitHub pages (not a problem since everything is static and runs client side), with a custom freenom domain (on a convenient .ml tld) and through cloudflare's DNS which gives me SSL on a custom domain, caching and some very basic analytics.

Everything free tier. It only cost me time (around 5h I think).

Did I miss anything you wanted to know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Next, can you develop Not Banana app? I think you could hit it big with that.</comment>


Business Ideas for Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.financialreflections.com/100-business-ideas-1-10/892

<comment><USER2> I'm out of my league here, but as far as 'on-demand supercomputing' goes, I think Plura Processing is pretty close: <http://www.pluraprocessing.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Title should be, "10 Business Ideas for the 90's"

<comment><AUTHOR> Mobile ads are a 90's idea? You should tell that to companies working on it now.

Here are some 90's ideas:

1\. Online Pet Store

2\. Grocery store that lets you order online and delivers to your house.

3\. Online auctions.

4\. Search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh wait, I also did the stalker ads idea, or sort of. I believe that someone will come up with a successful solution for location-based mobile coupons. What we have seen with our project is that this idea clicks with customers, but it is hard to develop a scalable model to acquire local advertisers. Local business owners seems extremely reluctant to embrace the internet medium for some reason (even with some free limited service, free pilot programs, etc.).

I end again with a shameless plug: <http://www.moqpon.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> "To get full FREE access to all our most exclusive coupons, you just need to get 2 friends to sign up."

#fail

<comment><USER5> I hate to play devil's advocate, but that kind of crap is the reason Facebook apps exploded. You don't get viral growth without supporting friend-spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a pretty good point, but requiring it for signup seemed a bit much. It was more than "now invite your friends."

<comment><USER4> It's actually not required for signup. You would still receive coupons for free up to a face value of $5 (which is the vast majority in volume). That was an incentive to foster virality, but your comments are very much appreciated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In a weekend I coded the virtual business card idea a few months ago, but it didn't catch up at all. Basically the click-through rate of the tiny link in email signatures is below 0.1% so its virality is basically none. <http://www.tinyvcard.com> i thought it was a brilliant name :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> That is a cool name, but it seemed really hard to actually _see_ someone's business card. The codes didn't support vanity URLs and it looked like there was a $10 signup fee. Physical business cards are designed to be read easily and shared easily. They are even pretty cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Fwitter: A site that's something in-between twitter and a forum. Get real time updates"

A chat room?

<comment><USER7> Heh. Got a side project that does exactly that (twitter-forum, NOT a chat room), and everyone that saw it first thought it was a (lousy) chat room.

I believe there is use in micro-forums (or group-twitters) different than chats; it's a group timeline, it's meant to be persistent, not real-time conversation (though faster than doing blog/forum posts) of group of people publishing related tidbits of information (or replying to / referencing it).

(Shameless plug, my project is <http://speeka.net/> , one-tech-guy side project that's practically dormant atm because of lack of spare time and biz/marketing efforts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who recently moved to an apartment sight unseen (it worked out) and will be moving again soon under the same conditions, a decent rental site would be most welcome. CL doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER9> We've been working on this for quite some time and have hundreds of thousands of rental listings on our site (don't want to spam, if interested look at my profile). We're doing well, but it's still amazing how well craigslist dominates all the verticals it covers.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pretty much being done already or a good way to go broke. Free rental listings? That's how CL pays the bills. On demand super computer weather forecasting. Ah, these mothers are expensive.

</comment><comment><USER11> They don't look that great.... I did like the CL idea tho... Needs to happen. Someone needs to compete with Craigslist.

<comment><USER12> Why not just build a front end for craigslist? (organize the real-estate data rather than text-based search)...

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm pretty sure the CL TOS doesn't allow stuff like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pyramid builder? Really?

<comment><USER10> What? You don't want to share a cell with Madoff?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Recommended OS for a college kid learning to program: Win or Linux? - <AUTHOR> Context: I am mentoring a college kid to learn to program using Python and the bit sized steps have yielded positive results so far.
Currently, he uses a NUC loaded with Win? Is it better he start to learn on Linux instead or is it just my bias (a mac/linux user)? As it is early days, the switch won't be expensive either.
What would you suggest and why? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Normally, I would say it doesn't matter, but Python projects tend to have random dependencies that aren't precompiled for Windows, and can be a pain. Though Linux gives you the fun of dealing with package managers. So who knows if it's really a win.

I'd just let them keep using Windows, then if they run into problems introduce them to the Windows Subsystem for Linux.

</comment><comment><USER3> I agree with pepsi, get a Raspberry Pi and start hacking.

And, Microsoft is now supporting development projects on the Pi with their "Windows IoT" so you can still dabble with that too!

[https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/iot/getstarted](https://developer.microsoft.com/en- us/windows/iot/getstarted)

</comment><comment><USER4> if they're using python, get an rpi with raspbian and make something using the GPIO - it's a good introduction to linux and you can easily tack on more varied tech (databases, web api, etc) as projects increase in complexity.

</comment><comment><USER5> You might end up with a harder headed dev. if he starts with Linux, but there is so much to learn higher up the stack that how much does OS really matter? At least Linux is free of license cost though.</comment>


CISPA Passes Out of the House Without Any Fixes to Core Concerns - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/cispa-passes-out-house-without-any-fixes-core-concerns <comment><USER2> And was already shut down in the Senate days ago.

[http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/04/reports- privacy-b...](http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2013/04/reports-privacy-bill- cispa-shut-down-in-senate/)

<comment><USER3> Since the EFF is undoubtedly aware of that, I think the point of this analysis is to warn people about the details of the legislation that the House was trying to pass so that we'll know what to look out for in future bills.</comment></comment>


Urban logistics that transforms emerging cities into smart cities - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/shippify-stories/urban-logistics-that-transforms-emerging-cities-into-smart-cities-7fbad6e01345 <comment><USER2> The sustainability of urban logistics is an important issue for rapidly growing cities worldwide. Although many cities have developed strategies to move people more efficiently and safely within the urban environment, much less attention has been paid to the importance of delivering goods to people at work and home.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is a good idea to start implementing into the system deliveries. Track where your delivery is coming is a relief to the customers in special.

</comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting approach to solve the "street with no name" problem in emerging countries. Data will be key to match first world mapping.

</comment><comment><USER5> The power of the crowd + tech. Great way to solve many last mile issues and improve supply chain in emerging markets.

</comment><comment><USER6> A good tool that will change both the retail and the e-commerce. Even more where you live thinking about here and now

</comment><comment><USER7> Really efficient way to improve overpast delivery services. Tracking page and instantaneous chat like no other.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excelente usar la tecnologia para reducir tiempos de entrega.

</comment><comment><USER9> This would change the logistics in the world

</comment><comment><USER10> an incredible way to improve the traditional delivery service through technology.</comment>


An LLVM/Clang Server Proposed - <AUTHOR> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyMDQ <comment><USER2> This is awesome! I was thinking about these same things for Java. Finally someone had the sense to break away from IDE hell, and do things in a flexible way with my editor.</comment>


Ian Bogost on games, doorknobs, and general readers - <AUTHOR> https://www.publicbooks.org/public-thinker-ian-bogost-on-games-doorknobs-and-general-readers/ <comment><USER2> His work on procedural rhetoric is awesome! I clearly remember the McDonalds game.

</comment><comment><USER3> I loved working with Ian back in the day at Media Revolution. He was so much fun.</comment>