Obesity and Overweight Prevalence for the U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/obesity-overweight.htm <comment><USER2> This is directly related to the way American cities are designed. It's a car centric culture where big houses are far away from each other. That means driving everywhere. That means long commutes. That means TV over communal activity. That means big grocery runs with shelf stable food.

Then pile on hyper sweet drinks and nutritional misinformation campaigns, and of course Americans are going to be overweight. The worst part is it's becoming culturally acceptable for children to be overweight. I do not advocate for fat shaming—but there is a limit to my tolerance. Children should not consume anywhere near the amounts of sugar that they do and the pervasive attitude of "just one [soda, ice cream, pop tart, pie slice, muffin, cupcake, cookie] won't hurt!" is incredibly damaging. Five grams of refined sugar a day. That's it. That is less than one tenth of a "personal" (16oz / 500ml) bottle of Coca Cola.

We're poisoning our kids.

<comment><USER3> I'm italian and I visited united states a couple of months ago. In my opinion the biggest problem is that you don't have decent food at affordable prices. Healthy food has nonsensical high prices and if you want something at a human price you don't have much choice except fast food. What a shame.

<comment><USER4> Healthy food isn't expensive. You can buy chicken breast for $3 to $5 a pound. You can buy a head of lettuce for $2. Oatmeal is dirt cheap. Most vegetables are less than $3 a pound.

<comment><USER5> It may be true that these ingredients are available in certain markets for those prices, but that isn't accounting for a significant portion of the true overall cost of healthful eating.

Healthy food tends to spoil, and if you're not able to go shopping multiple times a week and have unpredictable availability for meal preparation, you're going to see a lot of spoilage. If 30% of your fresh produce ultimately spoils, your actual cost is 43% higher.

Healthy food requires a degree of planning and execution which takes time and focus. Finding healthy options which are appealing for 3x meals a day is a lot of work if you aren't happy with 1 or 2 standbys every day.

Healthy food is extremely hard to find on the go. If you don't have a kitchen at your disposal generally you are shit out of luck for finding something that is truly healthy. So for example, the quality of my diet is highly inversely correlated with the amount of travel I am doing in a given month.

Making unhealthy choices more expensive through taxes is extremely regressive for many of these reasons.

<comment><USER6> you're suggesting that humanity has historically had easier access to healthy (fresh) food as they went shopping multiple times a week? I doubt this. What makes you think there was improved transportation options or significant amount of free time ?

<comment><USER7> Either they lived in a city with multiple food stands and stores within walking distance, or they lived on a farm and grew it themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The interesting thing is that obesity and overweightness rates are very different between States.

Most coastal States have regular rates among rich countries (albeit still high). 23.1% of Californians are obese, which is a lower rate than France, Ireland, and most of Western Europe.

There's a completely different story in the South, where more than a third of Mississipi's population is obese.

</comment><comment><USER9> Methinks that if 70% of you population is affected, something is effecting them.

It's not just "low will power" even if that explanation makes 30% of people smug.

<comment><USER10> It's the food. I've visited the U.S. several times, and every time I'm shocked by how hard it is to find affordable healthy food. Even so called "healthy" options like salads are often loaded with egg yolks, fatty dressings, bacon bits and all kinds of unhealthy ingredients. Portion size is also way off.

<comment><USER11> ... and salt, sugar and butter. I was surprised to learn that supermarket chicken and meat is routinely injected with salt water and other chemical in a process known as 'Plumping'....

Source: [https://www.naturalnews.com/037153_food_industry_chicken_fil...](https://www.naturalnews.com/037153_food_industry_chicken_fillers.html)

<comment><USER12> One of that article's sources is _cracked.com_. They're not really known for the strictest journalistic standards. Here's a USDA website describing conditions of meat in stores: [https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food- safety...](https://www.fsis.usda.gov/wps/portal/fsis/topics/food-safety- education/get-answers/food-safety-fact-sheets/meat-preparation/water-in-meat- and-poultry/ct_index)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Doesn't a 25 BMI seem like kind of a crappy metric for "overweight"? That makes my 6'4" brother "overweight" at like 205 which seems nuts. That doesn't feel overweight at all.

(Defined in the footnote on page 222)

<comment><USER14> BMI is _not_ meant as an individual health measure. It's a general population measure valid over a large sample size.

6'4" is a statistically rare height. I believe BMI is less valid for the extremely tall and extremely short. That doesn't mean it isn't useful when viewing the whole population.

For an individual, BMI + a waist measure is a better indicator. Your brother probably isn't overweight, unless he has low muscle mass and a large waist - but that individual anecdote does nothing to argue against the population level validity of BMI.

<comment><USER15> >It's a general population measure valid over a large sample size

This assumes a relatively symmetric distribution of heights and weights though, right? I'm curious if the tails for which BMI is individually invalid are equally populated. Basically, are short, fat people as common as tall, thin people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> These numbers aren't shocking. Many people are "casually" fat, meaning they carry an extra 30-40lbs around their gut. Probably accumulated slowly by 2-3lbs a year. They don't fit the classic image of an obese person but they are obese according to BMI.

I moved to SF which is a relatively fit city. Going back home in the Midwest I am shocked by the number of people who are overweight. Fat is normalized there. It wasn't until I lived in a health conscious area and checked my own BMI that I realized how skewed my image of a healthy person was. In the Midwest if you are active you are considered healthy, even if you are overweight. It's not until you are 100lbs overweight are you considered fat. And this doesn't even touch the HAES mentality.

<comment><USER17> As a non-american, I'm wondering how a fit person is considered in the midwest? Is it seen as a good trait or rather something odd?

<comment><USER18> It's not necessarily odd - obesity rates are high, but not so high that a healthy weight is exceptional. Being generally muscular or trim isn't a negative, and probably isn't going to get anyone dismissed as a fitness nut.

That said, an average to low-normal BMI can certainly get comments. I'm smack in the middle of the healthy BMI range, and not exceptionally muscular or anything else that would distort that. Living in and visiting friends in flyover country I get comments like "you're too skinny", "you need to eat more", and so on. No one is particularly judging me, there's just a shifted sense of average where BMI ~21 feels like the low end of the range.

(And of course they're not exactly wrong; eating Midwestern food and living in a driving-centric suburb had the predictable effect on my weight, so on some level thinner people there _are_ behaving unusually.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Of course "overweight" has as-good or better long term health outcomes so... Meh?

[https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/1/55/849914](https://academic.oup.com/ije/article/35/1/55/849914)

<comment><USER18> This is an interesting paper, particularly the sections on _how_ Americans have gained weight. "Obesity is up!" is much less informative than specifying which populations have gained how much like this does.

That said, the section on health outcomes is not hugely compelling. The "normal weight has worse outcomes" studies (particularly the famous NEJM one) have a significant set of problems.

NEJM simply didn't use the same bucketing as common parlance, so bucketed comparisons (as opposed to BMI ones) are basically meaningless.

More broadly, these studies are generally correlational, which produces serious issues regarding patients suffering from diseases. Eating disorders have very high mortality and often cause low weights, while conditions like cancer and neurodegenerative disease often cause both mortality and low weight. Without correcting for that, you're actually noticing trends like "late stage cancer patients are both skinny and sick".

I'll have to go and dig up references, but I thought the current state of research suggested that among otherwise-healthy patients, especially men in middle age or older, health outcomes noticeably worsened beyond the middle of the overweight category?

<comment><USER19> I mean I don't know what's come out in the last months, that's just the famous one because it's such a large group but you can go poke around Wikipedia all the smaller studies seem to go back and forth though so if there is a negative effect it's probably a weak correlation or a weak effect [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Body_mass_index&i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Body_mass_index&ictd%5Bmaster%5D=vid%7Ebf66b9f4-81bf-4b84-a086-ea695ef9d0e7&ictd%5Bil726%5D=rlt%7E1441195210%7Eland%7E2_4755_seo_b8085c8cba90fd4c39b7aca234576e4a#Variation_in_relationship_to_health)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And it's changing quickly. Here's the same statistic from the last 30 years:

1988–1994 54.9

1999–2000 64.1

2001–2002 65.6

2003–2004 66.5

2005–2006 67.3

2007–2008 68.3

2009–2010 69.2

2011–2012 69.0

2013–2014 70.7

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2016/053.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2016/053.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER21> How many of these people are actually "overweight" as far as health and how many are "overweight" according to BMI?

When I was in the best shape of my life from my mid 20s to my mid 30s, working out 12 hours a week (part time fitness instructor and a runner) with a body fat of 12% (measured with calipers) and a 29-30 inch waist, I was according to the BMI calculations 30 pounds overweight. Even now weighing 10 pounds more and I'm considered "obese", I wear a size 30 regular cut pants.

Where exactly am I suppose to lose 40 pounds from? Realistically, I need to lose about 15.

<comment><USER22> I know it's anecdotal, but from NY to FL to TX to CA, I don't find myself commonly walking amongst people who are too fit to throw off BMI.

<comment><USER23> Yes, applied to large populations it can be a useful measure. Applied to individuals, it's fairly useless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interestingly, based on that same dataset, high cholesterol decreased from 20% in 1988 to 11% in 2014. Any ideas?

[https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#053](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus16.pdf#053)

<comment><USER25> Statins

<comment><USER26> Yup. Highly effective and widely prescribed.

<comment><USER27> What do the meta-studies have to say about statins and life expectancy? Back then, before we had statins we had clofibrate. It decreased cholesterol levels just fine but overall mortality went up.

Also, why isn't dietary adjustment the first-line treatment for high cholesterol?

<comment><USER26> > What do the meta-studies have to say about statins and life expectancy?

For long term maintenance, they're definitely recommended. Near EOL is a bit different, but I don't know the guidelines.

> Also, why isn't dietary adjustment the first-line treatment for high > cholesterol?

It is, but only in conjunction with medication. It seems that having a poor diet (e.g. high saturated fats) has long-lasting effects on cholesterol levels, and short-term dietary changes do little to "repair the damage", so to speak. Additionally, we know very little about what other factors affect HDL/LDL levels. For example, for a long time, there was concern that dietary cholesterol had an impact on serum levels, but I believe now the consensus is that this is false.

Cholesterol is complex, and while its role in disease is what gets attention, it's a vital compound with a number of downstream effects. In most cells, it acts as a modulator of membrane structure and function: absolutely crucial aspects of every cell's job, regardless of what tissue they're in. My point is twofold: first, statins likely have unknown "off-target" effects on cholesterol synthesis throughout the body (which potentially speaks to the life expectancy issue); and second, the comorbidity of high cholesterol and obesity is likely more complex than "bad diet."

Of course, keep in mind that having a "good diet" in the cholesterol sense (low saturated fats, possibly low dietary cholesterol) has been shown to be a good idea regardless. It's temporary changes to diet that seem ineffective, at a population level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> When you're poor, you prioritize calories over nutrition, and Americans are becoming increasingly "poor". From [https://twitter.com/hugwins/status/963282840292032512?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/hugwins/status/963282840292032512?lang=en):

> When you are in a place where it's eat food that gives you no vitamins, no > protein, no micronutrients, etcetera, or eat food that does not give you > enough basic breakdown of glucose to get your body through another day, you > do not have the luxury

<comment><USER29> But McDonalds and fast foods are much more expensive than healthy foods like rice, beans, rolled oats and potatoes, onions (all can be had for less than 1$ per pound). They should allow people to purchase those foods, and maybe even publish a guide on how to stretch each dollar farther.

as i said before, Beans especially are very well balanced, super high in fiber, protein and micronutrients.

<comment><USER30> I can't feed yourself on onions. And diet based on rice and potatos is not all that better for you. And you have to know hoe to prepare these so that they are remotely tasty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Anyone have statistics on what % of those overweight adults are actually healthy, or at least have an acceptable body fat %? Many athletes and weightlifters would be considered overweight by BMI due to muscle mass. And according to the "Adults" PDF, that's the metric they're using. It's probably not a large percentage but I get ticked off a bit to know that you can be in the "overweight" BMI category and have clearly defined abs.

I've also noticed that the muscle-building culture is much, much smaller in the rest of the world than America. So while I'm sure we have a lot more fat people, we also have a lot more buff people, both of which are contributing to this percentage.

<comment><USER32> "Healthy" is such a nebulous term it is hard to reply in a serious fashion.

Many HAES-advocates, for example, would claim they're extremely healthy despite weighing 300lbs+. Any poor effects are just coincidental, and the weight is not a cause.

The best way of discovering how healthy somebody is? Perform an autopsy. Beyond reporting on aches, pains, lumps, worn out joints, the simple fact is people can appear very healthy right until they drop dead. Blood tests, CT- scans, etc, can be used to look at very narrow metrics, but they don't tell give a useful "healthy vs. non-healthy" response.

<comment><USER33> What is the deepest most complete diagnostics we can run on humans without them having to be dead? I would be interested in such a lab exercise even if it cost a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We're not doing enough to understand the environmental factors in a trend like this. As fashionable as it is for each generation to shit on the next, "will power" is clearly not explanatory for a shift of this magnitude.

I have to wonder if our sedentary lifestyle, processed foods (with additives examined under an ignorant lens), stress (income inequality, constant stimulation, glowing objects being the center of our lives), are wrecking our microbiomes and other broader systems from a VERY young age, or causing other systems-level changes that make it hard to correct with behavior changes in adulthood.

Because ultimately, even when people get educated, get active, eat better, etc -- the trends aren't reversing.

</comment><comment><USER35> Holy shit, this is the scary part to me:

* Percent of adolescents aged 12-19 years with obesity: 20.6% (2013-2014)

* Percent of children aged 6-11 years with obesity: 17.4% (2013-2014)

* Percent of children aged 2-5 years with obesity: 9.4% (2013-2014)

<comment><USER36> It will get worse. You rarely see fat children with skinny parents. But a lot of fat parents have fat kids too. Once these grow up it will be more and more likely that their children will get fat too.

Also when you grow with a lot of fat people around you you don't even know how normal weight looks. I noticed this last time in Paris. I had completely forgotten how normal weight looks.

<comment><USER14> It's worse even than that. Over 40% of people in France are overweight now - the numbers have increased rapidly over the past 20-30 years.

Paris is leaner than the French average, but you were probably still seeing a population with a fair amount of overweight people. Just, less overweight than what you're used to.

Seeing Paris 110 years ago would be a shock. (On many levels, but certainly on the average body composition level).

I have a book by Georges Hebert, who was an influential fitness instructor in France about 100 years ago. In it, he has pictures of French peasants shirtless, and some African tribesmen and women. They are in a form that today would be considered "unrealistic".

I can't find any of the peasant pictures online, but here are a couple of examples of the Africans:

[https://actionlondaise.blogspot.ca/2016/03/georges-hebert- ce...](https://actionlondaise.blogspot.ca/2016/03/georges-hebert-cet-illustre- inconnu-35.html)

[http://ayeparkour.blogspot.ca/2012/02/tracuers-of-legend- geo...](http://ayeparkour.blogspot.ca/2012/02/tracuers-of-legend-georges- hebert.html)

(The top photo on the second link is Hebert)

<comment><USER36> George Hebert certainly is "shredded"!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Some here say nutritional misinformation is one of the primary culprits, however, the reality is if you go tell someone "stop drinking soda, it's unhealthy", they will tell you "I don't care."

If people are not motivated to eat healthy, what are you supposed to do? Perhaps this goes back to educating your family on healthy eating, consequently if everyone were doing that, we'd see a trend of increased concern for healthy eating.

</comment><comment><USER38> I am certainly not suggesting it's the right answer but in threads like these rarely do I see industrial seed oils with high omega-6 polyunsaturated fat content being suggested as a culprit. The use in food correlates as well as anything else that is being suggested with the rise in obesity rates and metabolic conditions.

</comment><comment><USER15> If you read the fine print you'll see they're using BMI to determine if people are overweight or obese. BMI is a tragically flawed metric ([https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/265215.php)) and I would approach the 70.7% figure with caution. The more compelling story in the stats is the trend showing a gradual rise from 54.9% in the period between 1988-1994 to the more current figure of 70.7% in the period between 2013-2014. I'm skeptical of the raw figures given issues with BMI but highly doubt such a massive increase came from US adults getting significantly taller or more muscular (both factors that can inflate BMI for healthy individuals).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This might be a good YC "request for startups."

Virta Health is one I've seen.

And the Robert Johnson Wood Foundation is working on this cause: [https://www.rwjf.org/en/our-focus-areas/topics/childhood- obe...](https://www.rwjf.org/en/our-focus-areas/topics/childhood-obesity.html)

\--

Diet seems crucial.

Obesity isn't really helped by exercise. ([https://www.vox.com/2018/1/3/16845438/exercise-weight- loss-m...](https://www.vox.com/2018/1/3/16845438/exercise-weight-loss-myth- burn-calories))

"Significant weight loss was observed with any low-carbohydrate or low-fat diet. Weight loss differences between individual named diets were small. This supports the practice of recommending any diet that a patient will adhere to in order to lose weight." (Many diets work. Most important is optimizing for one that will be continued long term / rest of their life)

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25182101](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25182101)

\--

Overweight-obesity is also a top 3 preventable cause of death for US people (and many other nations).

[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/smoking- hig...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/smoking-high-blood- pressure-overweight-preventable-causes-death-us/)

About 1 in 12 of _total_ deaths each year in the US can be attributed to the person being overweight or obese.

~7x more Americans die each year due to obesity/overweight than due to opioids. (Though opioid deaths are rising much faster.) [https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/o...](https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends- statistics/overdose-death-rates)

\--

What causes obesity?

The "greatest contributor to weight gain" is eating more calories than are burned. ([https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/obesity/conditioninf...](https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/obesity/conditioninfo/cause))

It seems that food types do play into this - in part because eating 1000 calories of sugar will leave you much hungrier than eating 1000 calories of fat, so while in theory you've eaten the same amount of calories, in reality the sugar eating person will probably eat more the rest of the day.

<comment><USER39> I did a small investment in a food oriented start-up and I really hope they will succeed in their dream of feeding people healthy stuff. Many companies claim to want to 'change the world for the better' when actually they are just looking to make bank. These guys are driven because of their ideals, they're super nice and have a good idea + track record. Time will tell if it works out.

<comment><USER4> Its not about eating healthy food, obesity is about the over consumption of food. You can maintain a healthy weight eating hamburgers and fries every day. The problem is portion size.

<comment><USER39> It's a combination of:

\- food quantity

\- genetics

\- physical activity or lack thereof

\- food quality and make-up (plant / animal for instance)

\- and an addictive element thrown in for some individuals

<comment><USER40> I'm curious, what makes you say genetics is an important factor? And what would make our genes change en masse in the last 50 years?

<comment><USER39> Our genes did not change but some people are simply more predisposed to obesity than others on account of their genetic heritage.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787002/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2787002/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> While this might be true, the CDCs "healthy weight" ranges are laughably inaccurate for anyone that does weight resistance training. And in my circle of friends, this is becoming the more common form of working out.

The CDC calculations basically assume 100% of us are sedentary.

</comment><comment><USER42> Maybe it's not a problem, but I don't think it helps is when asking and/or researching what to go do, enjoy, see, explore, experience when traveling or moving to a new city. The most common responses almost exclusively and only mention food and local places to eat or drink. As if it's the only thing to do and enjoy? Anyone else notice this or is it just me?

I don't know about other people, but I only spend a small percentage of my day actually eating, needing, or hungry enough to sit down and eat. I've got a whole day not including sleep to do so much more! Food is good, but I want to have some fun, see things, explore, meet people, relax and not eat.

</comment><comment><USER43> IMO the only way for this number to go down is to educate future generations better on nutrition and the importance of taking care of their bodies. I have no faith that the vast majority of people currently overweight will ever weigh much less than what they do today, and studies have backed this up. 95% of people who lose significant weight gain it back after a year. The few stories of people who keep weight off for good does not scale out to the general population. Indeed, it still seems the best way to lose weight is to go back in time and never gain it in the first place. It is never too early to talk to your children about responsible food consumption.

</comment><comment><USER44> I have a very unpopular opinion on this: if someone is overweight, and isn't sick or malfunctioning in any way that negatively impacts themselves, their loved ones, or society, then who gives a shit?

The libertarian and contrarian in me doesn't care what someone weighs, or how they choose to life. So extrapolating to a larger population, or society, I still fail to see how being collectively overweight is a negative in and of itself if there were no damaging burdens created because of that.

In fact, I think we need to subset the 70.7% population to weed out the "innocously fat".

<comment><USER45> Being overweight is bad for your individual health.

We know certain things in society have an impact on how overweight people get.

Identifying and fixing those things is worthwhile.

No one is insinuating that we should force people to become fit or anything, as you imply here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> We have some bizarre cultural hangups around food in our country, that's for sure.

I was made fun of at lunch in my youth for bringing things like whole carrots and canned garbanzo beans and turnips/radishes.

</comment><comment><USER47> I think this one chart explains the situation succinctly.

[https://s9.postimg.org/vue47ugq7/image.jpg](https://s9.postimg.org/vue47ugq7/image.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER48> Because this article is on the front page and this one about having an active lifestyle is too, I thought to link it here for discussion and reference:

 _Adopting a more active lifestyle could benefit your personality decades from now (bps.org.uk)_

> > [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16447654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16447654)

</comment><comment><USER49> Maintaining healthy weight cuts your risk for an enormous amount of fatal illnesses including stroke, heart attacks, and many types of cancer.

Want lower blood pressure? Lower your weight.

Want higher testosterone and lower estrogen? Lower your weight.

Want lower cholesterol? Lower your weight.

Lower diabetes risk? Lower your weight.

Healthier gallblader, liver and kidneys? Lower your weight.

Reduce back pain? Lower your weight.

Aid sleep apnea? Lower your weight.

</comment><comment><USER50> I work in health tech and I genuinely believe that this is an endemic problem that can't be solved by a startup. It is a social issue approaching a health crisis and we need to have our policy, educator, and parents addressing this. While private industry can help, the ultimate responsibility lies with our democracy.

</comment><comment><USER51> What I didn't know until recently, is how juice and fruits make you take on more fat [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Cardiometabolic_disea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fructose#Cardiometabolic_diseases)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This seems directly related to diet.

[https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention- source/obesi...](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention- source/obesity-causes/diet-and-weight/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Real question here (US specific) -- how do the subsidies work, that they make corn cheaper, and milk more expensive? Are they truly both subsidies or is one another form of intervention that causes a different market result?

</comment><comment><USER53> In case anyone else is curious about their definition of overweight. Found it in the paper.

        Overweight is defined as body mass index (BMI) greater than or equal to 25, based on the NHANES variable, Body Mass Index.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is there any country where the percentage of overweight population is decreasing?

</comment><comment><USER55> It also sucks to frequently throw out spoiled produce. If you live alone or with roommates, go to restaurants, etc chances are nearly half the produce will go bad. It's not expensive so much as disheartening.

</comment><comment><USER56> Yes, you can see that quite clearly with any trip into a public space. But 70% is a low estimate for many parts of the country. And morbid obesity is becoming extremely common as well.

Obesity and the fat epidemic will bankrupt the US health care system.

Sooner than later, weight must be tied directly to out-of-pocket health care costs, via premiums, taxation, tax credits, or some other financial incentive and/or penalty combination for horrendous lifestyle decisions. Maybe go the Japanese route with a metabo law too. Obviously merely being an unhealthy glutton with high disease propensity and increased mortality is not a motivator for the majority of populace, so make them pay for their bad choices the same way someone who speeds frequently pays higher car insurance.

</comment><comment><USER57> The majority of websites are overweight too.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think it is important to diffirentiate between people who are born with overweight body and cannot do anything with it and people who would have normal weight but are gaining it because of unhealthy food or lifestyle. Sadly, the page doesn't have such a table.

<comment><USER45> As I understand it, the idea that people are "naturally" overweight and cannot change that is a complete myth with no scientific backing.

In some cases, certain diseases/medications can cause a very small weight gain but nothing significant.

<comment><USER58> Yes, I don't know if it is checked scientifically, but people have different figures. If we take several people of the same height and age and will give them the same food and the same amount of physical load, they still will have different body mass.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> time to invest into some diabetes meds pharma stocks

</comment><comment><USER60> 29.3% of US adults are underweight

</comment><comment><USER5> If this is based on BMI, I couldn't care less. It's a terrible metric which is not _fit_ for its purpose.

"Obesity is defined as body mass index (BMI) at or above the sex- and age- specific 95th percentile BMI (based on the variable BMXBMI) using cutoff points from the 2000 CDC growth charts for the United States: Methods and development. NCHS. Vital Health Stat 11(246). 2002. Available at: [http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_246.pdf](http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_11/sr11_246.pdf). Excludes pregnant girls."

Almost everyone I know is "overweight" by this metric, which, as it turns out, means they are healthier (in terms of less likely to die from any-cause overall) than their thinner peers.

Show me the bell curve of longevity versus _body-fat percentage_ , and what percentage of Americans are 1-sigma past the right side of the peak of that curve. Even _body shape_ , for example, is a much better indicator of all- cause mortality than BMI. E.g. [http://absi-calc.appspot.com/](http://absi- calc.appspot.com/)

<comment><USER61> BMI is a sufficiently sensitive metric for this. BMI can be relied on to confirm overweight/obesity. It cannot be relied on to confirm normal weight (that is to say, if your BMI says you're overweight, you're overweight. If it says you're normal weight, that may or may not be true).

<comment><USER5> If you spend 3 months body-building, you will know first-hand that this isn't true.

<comment><USER61> 70% of the US population must be body-builders.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What if successful posts on HackerNews are just luck? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ploki.info/what-if-successful-posts-on-hackernews-are-just-luck-post-mortem-of-what-if-successful-startups-are-just-lucky/

<comment><USER3> Everything is luck, and everything isn't luck. I make the comparison talking about my app business. Making a great app is like buying a lottery ticket that happens to have an expected outcome of greater than 0. The better you make the app, the more likely it is to succeed. If it's a great app, it will make some money, but to have a hit you also have to have a lot of luck. You pretty much can't have a hit though without making it good.

It's the same with a post on HN. You have to actually have good content, but that is not enough to guarantee the front page. You have to have good content, and you have to get lucky. I've had stuff get near the top of the front page and get > 15k views and I've had similar content fall off the new page with just a few views and no votes. As with the apps though, you can't have hit if it's crap. You have to be good and lucky.

<comment><USER4> The word "luck" suggests a chaotic nature to the outcomes; the initial conditions being the time of day of the post, the first few up/down votes, what people are online and browsing at the moment. Of course controlling for quality content, as you say.

But there might also be some intrinsic aspect to successful posts that's hard to analyze and replicate and that is entirely orthogonal to quality, such that that post would have made it to the popular page even under different initial conditions. So it's "luck" in the sense that it hits some sweet spot in the fractal plane of our imagination.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not entirely related and this could just be coincidence, but.. I've seen a few cases lately where people have linked [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) or just asked people to go there to vote their story up and the stories have fallen off the front page sharply despite doing well.

People used to claim getting people to hit /newest was the best way to encourage votes (since votes from direct linking to items were penalized or not counted in some way) but I suspect votes made from direct visits to [https://news.ycombinator.com/newest](https://news.ycombinator.com/newest) are now also subject to the same fate.

<comment><USER6> "Stories have fallen off the front page sharply despite doing well" is an instance of flagging overcompensation, not punishment for vote rigging.

Also, some domains have been penalized, which is why some articles fail to make the front page even with many votes on r/newest (e.g. medium.com)

<comment><USER7> Why are some domains penalized? Just curious.

<comment><USER6> Usually domains with a high submission quantity of typically low quantity content. (imgur.com, quora.com, qz.com.) However, higher-quality domains such as github.com and arstechnica.com get penalized as an offset to the fact that duplicate submissions result in upvotes.

See the full list at: [http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking- really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really- works.html)

<comment><USER3> > However, higher-quality domains such as github.com and arstechnica.com get > penalized as an offset to the fact that duplicate submissions result in > upvotes.

I've never understood that. Submitting content _IS_ upvoting content. Clearly if I'm willing to take the time to submit content I want to upvote it. I'd personally think that multiple submissions of the same thing should get a bonus, not a penalty.

<comment><USER6> That might be a problem if spambots are involved, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Luck is useful, but not sufficient.

Luck, or a voting ring, helps a post to reach the front page. Depending upon the time of day, an article needs to get a few upvotes quickly.

Once it's on the front page, it's up to the content to make it stick.

</comment><comment><USER6> As with startups, it's not about luck, it's about _timing_. The original article was posted on a Monday, which typically leads to the most amount of activity (and with the greater amount of activity, the faster the snowball effect of vitality.)

See also: a heat map analysis I had made analyzing which day-of-week and time blocks result in the greatest number of viral posts on average on Reddit: [http://i.imgur.com/ct5LNcG.png](http://i.imgur.com/ct5LNcG.png)

</comment><comment><USER9> Luck and / or referencing a number of lines of javascript...

(I am sorely tempted to re-submit my old links with "in 0 lines of javascript" at the end, since I'm a python programmer :P It'd be fine if they were viewed but not upvoted, it just makes me sad when my work gets pushed off the front page by 100 "blah in pure CSS" links before a single person takes a look :( )

<comment><USER10> well, that just suggests that HN viewers heavily skew interest for javascript/CSS rather than python. Either that or its total blind luck.

<comment><USER9> Indeed, the community cares about how many lines of what language an app is written in, rather than what the app /does/ :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Success is almost always lucky, but it's rarely only lucky.

Was luck involved in "What if successful startups are just lucky?" making it to the front page? Surely. But it was also an article that caught the interest of many prominent HN readers and posters. Luck isn't going to get you anywhere if nobody cares about what you're saying.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it _luck_ when I accidentally upvote (and can't _un_ -upvote) a HN story when simply trying to scroll down the page on iPad?

I mean, I'm not saying _all_ my upvotes are haphazard, but there has to be a margin of 'accidental upvotes' to which the pattern could never be discerned anyway…

I can't be the only one… ¬_¬

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It's a postmortem of an article who had 20,000 unique visitors and stay 20 hours on frontpage of hackernews.

</comment><comment><USER13> Out of my 30 or so submissions, 4 reached the front page. I only wrote one of those myself though the other were just stuff i found interesting. I found the timing to be crucial, a time where its relatively early in the day in Europe and the west coast worked best.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think you guys are overthinking this. In the grand scheme of life and the universe, is getting a 'successful post' on HackerNews really all that high up on the list of things to care about?

</comment><comment><USER15> No one from North Korea visited your page. That must hurt.

</comment><comment><USER16> pretty sure there is a lot of that... but there is with all success. its just downplayed because people like to think they earned things they didn't - <USER2> vice versa that failures are not their fault.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you moderator... a penality... Why?

</comment><comment><USER17> It is just luck. I'm a frequent reader and upvoter of the new section, and even considering possible auto-penalties, what gets upvoted can be just as dependent on non-content factors (which I'll conflate with "luck") as it is on actual merit.

The easiest non-controllable factor is: external exposure and canonical IDs. Some stories jump to the top not because a whole bunch of people were reading the New page, but a whole bunch of people were on Twitter/Reddit/Slashdot/NYT and then tried to be the first to submit a story...if they all used the same link, then the first submitter gets all the upvotes, and the OP benefits from that.

The second uncontrollable factor -- ostensibly -- is title. Did the OP have a great link-baity title? That'll catch the eye of New post readers. Obviously, you can take the vigilante action of writing your own title and hoping that it isn't egregious enough to get flagged before it hits the front page...but that is also "luck"

And of course, time of day and activity is important. Did your great tech blog post come at a time when Apple announced a bunch of new products, or when the NSA got caught red-handed again? Instead of 30 possible open spots on the front page, you may have been competing for 20.

\---

I've seen great stories not get a single second upvote, and then resubmitted the next day and get hundreds of votes...and nothing about the user or submission would suggest that the first submitter was punished. It's just luck of the draw many times. I've managed to rack up a decent amount of karma but I've never thought it was because my submissions are higher quality than anyone else's...and conversely, people who feel they don't get any traction shouldn't take it personally.</comment>


The Peter Principle Tested - <AUTHOR> https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/05/the-peter-principle-tested.html <comment><USER2> Every time I see this brought up I'm reminded of The Office. Mostly due to this incredibly in depth analysis: [https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the- gervais-principle-...](https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais- principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/)

<comment><USER3> That's a brilliant series of articles. Everyone should read it.

<comment><USER4> It's totally depressing/demotivating.

<comment><USER5> I've reached a point in my career where I know how I want a project to go, and the only hope I have to make it go that way is to take a management position.

But then _I_ don't get to enjoy the project, because I'm not participating in creating it. I'm the host of the party, or I'm a reveler, but I can't be both.

The handful of former bosses who foster the sorts of things I look for are no longer project managers. I now joke about winning the lottery so I have enough money to do one of my hobbies for a living, or write software for one. What I know about running a software project has come at the expense of knowing how to _sell_ a software project.

<comment><USER6> Dang, I can relate to this 100%. I had to check the username to see if I actually wrote this myself :-p

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Some of the big tech companies already have a solution to this problem (good performers might not be good managers):

They make it possible to make good money as an individual contributor without climbing the management ladder.

<comment><USER8> That is almost word for word mentioned in the article:

>For example, technical organisations, like Microsoft and IBM have long used split career ladders, allowing their engineers to advance as individual contributors or managers. These practices recognize workers for succeeding in one area without transferring them to another.

I think there is an interesting component here, though. There are no C-level individual contributors, really. At the head of an organization, is a manager/leader. The skill of management really is rewarded/recognized in organizations more readily. I think that makes sense, since the coordination of individual contributors is the most difficult problem to solve.

OTOH, I'd say casually that most of the best leaders are those that were also excellent individual contributors. To really be the top of the management ladder, I think the empathy of personal experience is the more important than most managers give it credit for.

<comment><USER9> _There are no C-level individual contributors, really. At the head of an organization, is a manager /leader._

Even the top level technical track folks who are nominally IC's wind up doing some leadership. This makes sense; there's fundamentally a limit on how much you can accomplish all by yourself. Somewhere along the road, your visions will require the work of more people than only yourself.

You can be a technical leader without being a manager, so it's not all bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Peter Principle has always struck me as an unnecessarily pessimistic way of looking at the world. Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what they have experience with, they are not immediately competent? This is especially true when the skills required are non trivial.

Maybe rather than assuming that people come out of the womb "competent" or "incompetent" at a certain level, we could consider providing more training and support both before and after they are promoted into significantly higher roles.

<comment><USER11> > Why should we find it surprising that when workers are promoted into a role > with a greater -- and often vastly different -- responsibilities than what > they have experience with, they are not immediately competent?

I think we all agree with you in this regard. However, that's not what The Peter Principle is about. It agrees that most people can handle their promotions, even if it takes time. It is an observation on occasions where people _stop_ getting promotions.

The point being made is that people stop getting promoted once they are put in a position they are not capable of performing well. If they _are_ capable of performing well, they will likely be promoted again, and later again, until promoted to a role not fit for their skillset. So it is not so much a commentary on competence as it is on circumstance, but circumstance that many systems are designed to allow or even encourage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Obvious solution is just give people more money for doing the same thing.

<comment><USER13> Apparently no management ever wants to be paid less than their employees.

<comment><USER14> I see it all the time: sales people making monster salaries, far more than management. It is effective at retaining and keeping sales people. Unfortunately it introduces a different set of distortions because the short term value of making the next deal can derail long term health and goals.

<comment><USER15> I was a junior presales engineer at this one company, which was very, very sales oriented. At one point I realized that I had more latitude to expense a meal for a business meeting than the VP in charge of engineering, who had 30 people under him.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are many reasons not to continue to be promoted (limited spots at the top being the primary reason).

Sales -> Management is a unique story though. Sales people are often competitive with each other. It would be interesting to know if any managers add value to the sales process or if the value add is more or less random. (i.e. simply not predicted by prior sales or other metrics).

</comment><comment><USER17> This was discussed last year when the working paper was published:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16972249](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16972249)</comment>


Windows 10 Mobile End of Support - <AUTHOR> https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4485197/windows-10-mobile-end-of-support-faq <comment><USER2> Most Android phones produced since my Windows Phone was produced will probably stop getting updates before December 10th, 2019. Despite being a dead platform, I have eleven more months of security updates available that release like clockwork.

Even in it's death, Windows Mobile has continued to demonstrate an unmatched commitment to quality and support that nobody else on the market can really speak to.</comment>


Thanks for breaking our connected homes, Amazon - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/snips-ai/thanks-for-breaking-our-connected-homes-amazon-c820a8849021#.2ob5n68ej <comment><USER2> If your connected home requires a round trip to the cloud to turn a light bulb on, that's a major fail.

Yes, you may lose the ability to control your home via Alexa, but the core functions should all be managed locally. Even a phone app should be able to talk to items on your home network via WiFi, or directly via Bluetooth.

This is also the place to make the obligatory point that any cloud service that isn't running in multiple AWS regions is not serious about being highly available.

EDIT: FWIW, my home is wired with a fair amount of Insteon gear, which continues to work just fine if I unplug my router.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Having a connected home that runs on a cloud server is akin to having a lock > on your door and being forced by a corporation to hand over the key.

No, it's worse than that. Law enforcement can completely bypass you in this case and just ask Amazon for the hypothetical "key."

> Your IoT should be Private by design, running without needing the cloud.

Completely agree. That's why I've been saying how stupid it is that Google's routers (you know the ones you're using in your own home) have to be configured _over the Internet_. Google is one of the main "bad actors" in this scenario, as it's trying to push more stuff like this with their "Physical Web" initiative, as well as the web Bluetooth and WebUSB HTML APIs.

They are also part of the Thread Group, through Nest. Thread is primarily a P2P protocol that can also enable devices to connect directly to the Internet. I don't think I've heard of Google using the P2P function yet. They prefer to use only the direct Internet connection, because that's how they can also gather your data in _real-time_.

This is also why I support the idea of using client-side embedded "machine learning accelerators" in IoT devices as soon as possible. Otherwise, Google and Amazon and Microsoft will tell us how you _need_ to send your data to their clouds so they can give you "AI features".

No you don't. IoT machine learning accelerators will make cloud connections for this purpose almost unnecessary. Most of the "AI features" you'll probably want on IoT devices (like say your surveillance camera identifying cats, or even strangers) should be quite basic and the embedded accelerators should be enough for such tasks (or will be soon).

As a bonus, devices using local AI capabilities should work much better, too, because they analyze the data locally and they don't have to send it back to Google/Amazon or use your (probably capped) data allowance.

<comment><USER4> >> Your IoT should be Private by design, running without needing the cloud.

The correct term you want to use is home automation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Use products that have been tested for such application. Your damn light bulb really does not have to have an Internet connection. No, really.

IoT is not needed for for home automation. You use your local network for this - WiFi, cabled Ethernet or even serial (there are various protocols for this like KNX standard).</comment>


The Guardian view on forcible integration in Denmark: this cannot end well - <AUTHOR> The Guardian view on forcible integration in Denmark: this cannot end well<p>https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/08/the-guardian-view-on-forcible-integration-in-denmark-this-cannot-end-well?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Submit_to_HN <comment><USER2> Please make the title go to the link</comment>


IPv6 Support for Amazon S3 - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/now-available-ipv6-support-for-amazon-s3/ <comment><AUTHOR> From the documentation [[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ipv6-access.h...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/dev/ipv6-access.html)]:

"Before EC2 (VPC) supports IPv6, we recommend that you continue using the standard IPv4-only endpoints from EC2"

In other words, IPv6 in VPC is coming.

<comment><USER2> Yup, same comment in the YouTube[1] video at :33.

1\. [https://youtu.be/sMvrx8exfek](https://youtu.be/sMvrx8exfek)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> >Now Available – IPv6 Support for Amazon S3

Yay!

>S3 Feature Support – IPv6 support is available for all S3 features with the exception of Website Hosting

Oh.

<comment><USER4> Oh what the hell. What use is it then?

<comment><USER5> Image hosting.

<comment><USER4> But not IPv6 image hosting.

<comment><USER5> web site hosting is a distinct feature from file serving.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great to finally see AWS start moving to IPv6! I'm sure just getting S3 to support it was a massive effort on the backend infrastructure (in all their data centers around the world - except for China apparently) and they've going to spend a lot of time looking at the new traffic and tweaking their network.

I don't forsee just S3 access having a huge impact outside of Amazon though, since IPv6 has the biggest impact on end-users, and I presume most of those are hitting CloudFront, ELB or EC2 endpoints.

Here's hoping CloudFront is next!

</comment><comment><USER7> Why is this being supported on an entirely new endpoint instead of added to the existing ones?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's kind of sucky, but there are a couple of good reasons for it:

1\. Some people have broken IPv6 connectivity. Their OS will prefer the IPv6 address and won't fall back to the IPv4 address until after a lengthy timeout.

2\. People might have IP address restrictions in place that currently only have IPv4 addresses whitelisted. If suddenly they started using IPv6 addresses they'd be blocked and their applications would break.

<comment><USER8> (1) is the user's OS responsibility. All modern OS systems have a complex system in place already for this (using ICMP preflighting and DNS resolution timing checks and simultaneous v4/v6 connections, among other things). We're already in a world were networks _have_ to be IPv6-first or IPv6-only (mobile networks are IPv6-first and soon likely to be IPv6-only; several large US cable ISPs have moved or are moving to IPv6-first/IPv6-only; etc), at least in the consumer world.

<comment><USER9> > (1) is the user's OS responsibility.

I don't care whose "responsibility" it is: if it costs my company a customer and it is something that can be fixed on my end with a seemingly simple workaround, it is something that I should fix, and I am glad that Amazon is thinking this through, particularly if it breaks an existing user when they roll out the upgrade. I mean: imagine if 0.1% of Netflix customers woke up today and the only immediate recourse Netflix has when they start being flooded with complaints is "you will need to upgrade your OS: we can no longer support whatever slightly older version you have.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally! Some movement on IPv6. Long overdue, but it's just nice they're taking care of it.

Python 3 on Lambda too, maybe? Or is that wishful thinking?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12235314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12235314)

</comment><comment><USER11> About f*cking time. Google - what are you going to do about it? ;)

Lest we forget:

[https://code.google.com/p/google-compute- engine/issues/detai...](https://code.google.com/p/google-compute- engine/issues/detail?id=8)

[https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=672099](https://forums.aws.amazon.com/message.jspa?messageID=672099)

<comment><USER12> Google actually supports IPv6 on Cloud Storage, which is their equivalent to S3. Neither Google or Amazon support it on VM instances yet.

<comment><USER13> I'll note that Azure fully supports IPv6 because it was obvious 10 years ago that building a cloud host without it was a dumb idea. Why it is taking AWS and Google so long I have no idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> What? The Azure FAQ says:

"The foundational work to enable IPv6 in the Azure environment is well underway. However, we are unable to share a date when IPv6 support will be generally available at this time."

[https://azure.microsoft.com/en- us/pricing/faq/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/faq/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does their website hosting thing support it yet? I currently have a site set up as:

BUCKET.COM.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com

Is there a dual stack version of that?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, S3 website hosting still doesn't support IPv6.

<comment><USER14> Do you know why that is?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, just relaying what the documentation says.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What about HTTP2

</comment><comment><USER16> [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2460](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2460) "December 1998"</comment>


Google Chrome Frame is now in Beta - <AUTHOR> http://blog.chromium.org/2010/06/google-chrome-frame-now-in-beta.html <comment><AUTHOR> Although it's unlikely any end users will install Chrome Frame that are unable to just install Chrome, I think intranet developers could drive its adoption.

Here's the pitch: "We could build this new intranet app for $100,000 if we roll out Chrome Frame to the users, or for $200,000 if we need to support vanilla IE6."</comment>


Ask HN: What are your favorite sayings? - <AUTHOR> Do you have any favorite sayings or quotes that you live by?
My father use to say "You do not always have to know the answer, just understand the question"
The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long - Blade Runner <comment><USER3> My father did quite well for himself early in my life. He started out selling car alarms and then found himself in a different sales business but it really took off. When I was 9 we moved from the modest and kinda rundown yet nonetheless charming ranch house in a subdivision to a massive mansion on the cliffs overlooking the ocean thirty minutes away from all my former friends and family (in an area where a car was necessary). We had a private beach. I had my own duplex room in a turret with a wraparound view. And yet we moved out of there three years later because we were all unhappy and missed our old friends and just a simpler life.

I talked to my dad about this a few years later, asking if he had any regrets or reservations about giving up on his dream of a beachside mansion (Something he had talked about for as long I can remember). I'll never forget what he said to me then and I oft remind myself of it. He said to me,

"Sometimes our dreams are the wrong dreams."

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing this. I'm currently struggling with life decisions that stem from conflicts between pursuing long term dreams that have become achievable versus the real value of actually achieving them.

<comment><USER5> >"Action expresses priorities." Gandhi

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other." \--Benjamin Franklin

Basically, he's saying that while learning from your own mistakes is impactful, it's smarter to read/watch/listen so you can learn from others' mistakes instead. I think it's one of the wisest sayings, because people who haven't internalized this lesson are largely incapable of heeding any other advice anyway.

</comment><comment><USER7> "It is better to be hated for what you are then to be loved for what you are not." Andrew Gide "People think it is holding on that makes you stronger, but sometimes it's letting go." Herman Hesse "Action expresses priorities." Gandhi

</comment><comment><USER8> Work hard. Be strong. Don't complain.

I was climbing in the desert with a friend once, and we headed out to a Thai restaurant in a small town for dinner afterwards. He reached for his wallet after dinner and a small paper with those words on it fell onto the table. I asked him about it, and he said that was the advice his grandfather always gave him. Those words are now posted on my classroom door.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Consistency is the virtue of a narrow mind" (Emerson; my take - new evidence requires new thinking). "No entity without identity" (Quine). "Listen to the system" (me, when debugging & reminding self to actually read error msgs instead of making assumptions). "No good deed goes unpunished" (trad, but my take on corporate politics). "Res ipsa loquitor" (Hunter S Thompson; the thing speaks for itself). "Nimium non sufficaret" (me on a pub crawl - too much is not enough!)...

<comment><USER7> In the book Santaram by Gregory David Roberts there's a quote that provides a different perspective to "No good deed goes unpunished". It says "Every virtuous act has some Dark secret in its heart; every risk we take contains a mystery that can't be solved."

<comment><USER9> Nice angle. Yes - motivations, consequences and the apparent and underlying connections between them often confound. Especially if you take things at face value!

<comment><USER7> Many religions/philosophies advocate service and virtuous acts as the path to happiness. However the underlying need for happiness exposes ego on some level creating an uneven foundation no matter what. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER10> Humans eh? So selfish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _I think the first virtue is to restrain the tongue; he approaches nearest to gods who knows how to be silent, even though he is in the right._

Cato the Elder

I like this quote because it reminds me not to argue needlesly.

See yesterday's submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483952) and

and this quote from Dale Carnegie:

 _Why prove to a man he is wrong? Is that going to make him like you? Why not let him save face? He didn 't ask for your opinion. He didn't want it. Why argue with him? You can't win an argument, because if you lose, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it. Why? You will feel fine. But what about him? You have made him feel inferior, you hurt his pride, insult his intelligence, his judgment, and his self-respect, and he'll resent your triumph. That will make him strike back, but it will never make him want to change his mind. A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still._ \--Dale Carnegie

</comment><comment><USER12> There aren't many right or wrong decisions in life. You make a decision and then work really hard ensuring it was the right one.

-My Mom

</comment><comment> grif-fin "Let us not be afraid of vision and hope. It was the daring of visionaries that has brought us this far — from gloomy primordial marshes to where we are today — reaching for the galaxies, reaching for immortality." F.M 2030 - Up- Wingers

</comment><comment><USER13> "The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way." Marcus Aurelius (from his Meditations)

<comment><USER14> I enjoyed his meditations. If you have never read "Art of worldly wisdom" I think you would enjoy. Short maxims like Marcus and its free on google books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both._ \- François-René de Chateaubriand

I think that the so-called "work/life balance" is different for different people at different stages of life. This quote reminds me to pursue my vision of excellence as guided by my stage in life.

</comment><comment><USER16> They thought a king would make them free. - Terry Pratchett

I'm not afraid of failure; I'm afraid of succeeding at things that don't matter. - William Carey

You can pick your sins, but you can't pick the consequences. - <USER2> Strawberry

</comment><comment><USER17> "Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." \- Jim Rohn

</comment><comment><USER18> To forgive and forget means to throw away dearly bought experiences. /Arthur Schopenhauer/

People change their rulers willingly, hoping to better themselves [...] are deceiving themselves, because they afterwards find by experience they have gone from bad to worse. /Machiavelli/

Every shitty product finds its shitty consumer. /my dad/

</comment><comment><USER19> "All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger (it's impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer."

― Niccolò Machiavelli

"To hell with your cancer. I've been living with cancer for the better part of a year. Right from the start, it's a death sentence. That's what they keep telling me. Well, guess what? Every life comes with a death sentence. So every few months I come in here for my regular scan, knowing full well that one of these times – hell, maybe even today – I'm gonna hear some bad news. But until then, who's in charge? Me. That's how I live my life."

– Walter White

"You ask me if an ordinary person by studying hard would get to be able to imagine these things like I imagine. Of course! I _was_ an ordinary person who studied hard. There is no miracle people."

– Richard Feynman

</comment><comment><USER20> We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit. - Aristotle

</comment><comment><USER21> If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the moment. -Lao Tzu

Forget injuries, never forget kindness. -Confucius

Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something. —H. Jackson Brown Jr.

The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. —Winston Churchill

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change. —Stephen Hawking

The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all. —Mulan

I can accept failure, but I can't accept not trying. —Michael Jordan

</comment><comment><USER22> "When there is unclarity in the immediate situation it is generally because the opinionated mind is grasping and rejecting." — Zen Master Foyan

"Just do what's in front of your nose." — Henry Miller

</comment><comment><USER23> "Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment."

</comment><comment><USER17> "Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed." \- Wayne Dyer

</comment><comment><USER24> "Play stupid games, win stupid prizes."

</comment><comment><USER25> The opening of the _Dhammapada_ sticks in my mind: "All that we are is the result of what we have thought."

</comment><comment><USER26> Simple, but...

Energy flows where attention goes

</comment><comment><USER27> TANSTAAFL</comment>


'Boaty McBoatface' Ship to Be Called RRS Sir David Attenborough - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/06/boaty-mcboatface-ship-to-be-called-rrs-sir-david-attenborough <comment><AUTHOR> "The name Boaty McBoatface will live on in the form of the ship's remotely operated submarine, which will be dispatched from RRS Sir David Attenborough to allow the research crew to collect data and samples from the Arctic and Antarctic."

<comment><USER2> Oh, that's clever! It prevents the entire ship from getting the (unofficial) nickname Boaty McBoatface, because people won't want to confuse it with the official name of the ROV.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Favorite Movies? - <AUTHOR>

A little while someone asked about favorite books, so I thought I'd ask about movies.
For myself (in no order...)
Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
The Nines
Primer
Love Exposure <comment><USER2> Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Blade Runner. Three "impossible love" stories.

The Seven Samurai and The Magnificent Seven.

The Wild Bunch.

Tampopo.

</comment><comment><USER3> Stardust, Finding Forrester, anything Pixar, The Princess Bride, The Fifth Element and Hackers.

</comment><comment><USER4> probably not my 3 favorites but they quickly come to mind when i think favorite movies: evil dead 2, citizen kane, talladega nights

</comment><comment><USER5> Little Miss Sunshine

Pleasantville

</comment><comment><USER6> Gattaca</comment>


Ask HN: What tech is needed to 'escape' quarantine? - astro-codes What technologies do we need to develop or promote to make it safer to return to a pre-coronavirus world?<p>I.e:
- Abundant passive fever cameras? - 'At home' salivary testing kits for contagious diseases? - Handheld devices for detecting pathogens on surfaces? <comment><AUTHOR> Waiting is the technique (technology) that will solve the problem effectively. Gadgets are to monitor people are neat, but I think they are an ineffective technique (technology) against the virus.

Wait a a few years and the virus will have infected most of the world. It will be reduced to the status of a common cold after everyone has resistance. The first colds unleashed on humanity were horrific, but year after year humanity became resistant.

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://www.kinsahealth.co/](https://www.kinsahealth.co/)

</comment><comment><USER3> First tech you need is a vaccine.</comment>


The Go Scheduler - <AUTHOR> http://morsmachine.dk/go-scheduler

<comment><USER2> Nice article. I've been following golang-dev on and off over the last couple of years, this helps many of the concepts that have went over my head previously click together.</comment>


The Hodges Conjecture - a $1m prize question - <AUTHOR> http://m.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/mar/01/million-dollars-maths-hodge-conjecture?cat=science&type=article

<comment><USER2> That's the mobile version. Here's the not-mobile version.

([http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/mar/01/million-d...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2011/mar/01/million- dollars-maths-hodge-conjecture?cat=science&type=article))</comment>


SICP, On Second Thought - <AUTHOR> http://prophipsi.blogspot.com/2008/02/sicp-on-second-thought.html <comment><USER2> _Second, SICP contains problems that are just plain busy work. Exercise 1.14 is a good example of this. I really don't want to draw on paper a huge tree which represents the process generated by evaluating a procedure._

When I was a freshman in college I attempted to test out of first-year physics so that I could get on with the second-year classes. I went into a private meeting with the professor who was grading the tests.

"Well," said the professor, "you made some pretty silly mistakes here, and here, and here. But I recognize the problem: you don't draw diagrams. Here, for example, you made a silly mistake on this ladder-against-the-wall problem because you didn't draw the balance-of-forces diagram."

I admitted that this was the case.

"You were a really strong high school physics student," said the prof, "so you probably got used to being able to glance at problems and intuitively figure out the answer in your head. But the procedure is important. You have to draw these diagrams, and you have to make them correct. You will soon learn to draw them very quickly, but you must learn to draw them, because there are harder problems than the ones you did in high school, and you will find that you can't always hold everything in your head."

And so I did.

I thought fondly of that professor a couple years ago when I first saw the infamous airplane-on-a-conveyor-belt problem. I didn't find it that hard to solve. I was taught by a master.</comment>


Should We Assume There Is No Privacy Online? Have Widgets Killed Privacy? - <AUTHOR> http://www.centernetworks.com/politics-privacy-online <comment><USER2> From the article: Load up Fred Wilson's blog. He has about 50 widgets on the page. How can a person easily figure out what the privacy policy looks like for the entire site (blog + widgets)? Who knows what any of those widgets are tracking about us, right? Should we even care?

Perhaps cookie settings are too promiscuous? However, I'm not sure how you'd change the default behaviour in a way which doesn't break a large number of websites and/or confuse a large number of non-technical users.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep track of the components you develop and run? - petr-k What methods or tools do you use to keep track of the various components (whole systems, microservices, libraries, ...) and their interdependencies in your organization?
When the number of these components grows rapidly, it can become increasingly annoying having to search for these components, navigate between their source code, documentation, CI setup and history, recent log entries, deployment information (number of instances, endpoints), metrics, monitoring dashboards, etc.
I know Spotify tries to approach this with an in-house tool called System-Z (see https://dzone.com/articles/modeling-microservices-at-spotify-with-petter-mari). Have you seen any other interesting tools in this space?
Do you think it is beneficial to have tools that make this easier and show all the necessary information in one place (via UI or an API), possibly along with visualizing application dependencies? Or do you believe this is basically a non-issue, given how lots of organizations are moving into the cloud, where vendors can provide a lot of these tools for you? <comment><AUTHOR> For most organisations traditional tools like IDEs, version control systems, logging and monitoring should indeed suffice. A great IDE such as IntelliJ IDEA and a tool like GitLab help a lot when it comes to keeping track of source code dependencies and deployments.

Having a tool that visualises all dependencies in one place is nice to have but it shouldn't be essential to run a system.

If you're running a larger number of services service discovery and properly naming services is vital rather than being able to visualise them.

</comment><comment><USER2> We use rez for package management (libraries) and it does have tools to show every package that depends on your package, or, every library you depend on (and their dependencies) in a node graph.

We use consul UI to show all the services that we have, where they're running, number of instances and so on.

We use ELK for service specific metrics / centralized logs.

We use Confluence WIKI for user / dev docs. Plus the README on the project git.

<comment> petr-k My point was, do you ever feel the need to integrate all these pieces of information from the tools you mentioned, into one place? So that you do not have to keep several tens of browser tabs open whenever you inspect a particular set of services?

<comment><USER2> Hmm not really because most of those things have alerts to warn us when something is wrong.

Also, we have a Kibana dashboard which does have information from different sources and it easily tell us if everything is good or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> git-pull For [https://devel.tech](https://devel.tech) and [https://www.hskflashcards.com](https://www.hskflashcards.com), I split the common JS, SCSS, and Python code into a git submodule.

I named my common library "based":

\- Uses reStructuredText + docutils to display content in a consistent fashion ([https://devel.tech/features/django-vs- flask/](https://devel.tech/features/django-vs-flask/), [https://www.hskflashcards.com/downloads](https://www.hskflashcards.com/downloads))

\- Common fabric source code for deploying Django websites, updating the sites

\- Customized crispy-form templates and SCSS files

\- Using Yarn "Workspaces" to load the common JS/SAAS code ([https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/workspaces/](https://yarnpkg.com/lang/en/docs/workspaces/))

\- In Webpack, I share common webpack code via wrapping the configs in a function and passing in dependencies.

\- Common Python code is available to be accessed for reusable Django applications, but also plain-old python

\- And use of "import_string" in django settings to load additional plugin configurations [1]

[1] [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/utils/#django.uti...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.11/ref/utils/#django.utils.module_loading.import_string)

P.S. I am writing an article (in draft atm) about import_strings in Django at [https://devel.tech/tips/n/djms3tTe/demystifying-djangos- impo...](https://devel.tech/tips/n/djms3tTe/demystifying-djangos-import- strings/), intended for people new to Python and Django. You can also use import_string in your own Django code to 'opt-in' to any sort of feature you keep in a common codebase. In my circumstance, I use it as a way to register docutils roles and directives via django settings. This pattern also holds true without Django, too ([https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/importlib.html)).

P.P.S. I highly recommend Yarn Workspaces. It's fast, and really makes it a lot easier to share front-end code.</comment>


Notorious North Korean Hacker Group Has Stolen a Fortune in Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.ccn.com/571-million-notorious-north-korean-hacker-group-has-stolen-a-fortune-in-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> Has anyone confirmed its really NK and not some proxy.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I'm very skeptical about the claims that north koreans are doing this. It just doesn't seem possible that they could have built up such an advanced level of exploitation when they have such minimal infrastructure.

<comment><USER4> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_121](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_121)

Building up an offensive computer hacking operation is relatively cost effective compared to building a military. All that is required is a few computers and some expertise. Cyber warfare is perhaps the only battlefield where North Korea could compete with world powers. With these crypto hackings, the operation probably pays for itself many times over</comment></comment></comment>