How to build a wireless street lighting system - <AUTHOR> http://www.thingsquare.com/blog/articles/smart-wireless-led-street-lighting/ <comment><USER2> Or just turn them off and enjoy more beautiful night skies, less blue spectrum light interrupting your sleep, healthier wildlife, and reduced energy usage with most likely no negative effects.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/29/turning- off-...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jul/29/turning-off-street- lights-does-not-lead-to-more-or-accidents-study)

<comment><USER3> Indeed. Slovenia, for example, has great anti light-pollution laws.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-11220636](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- europe-11220636)

<comment><USER2> Visited Ljubljana for New Years' a few years ago and loved it. Yet another reason to visit again!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Being able to dim LED street lights would be very useful, and not just for the power savings.

Many of the new LED street lights here in London are far too bright - to the point of being dazzling and irritating to pedestrians. It's especially annoying when you have them shining directly into your house!

I understand the safety advantages of having ultra-bright white lights at busy throughfares and intersections, but on quiet residential streets they are more than annoying and harmful to the character of our neighbourhoods.

<comment><USER5> Nearly all of the most recent LED street lights can be dimmed. Though, for most, it's something that done locally and generally at the time of installation. You may be able to get someone to either 1) adjust the brightness, or 2) adjust the lamp so that it shines less into your house.

<comment><USER4> If it was shining into my house I'd certainly be trying to get this done!

My my complaint is more general: Some council boffin has decided that using ultra-bright lights would improve safety, but actually they can have the opposite effect - by being blinding and dazzling to pedestrians, drivers and cyclists.

A redesign of the lighting units (perhaps with some kind of lens or diffuser) would probably help too, so that the light is diffused more and you aren't looking directly into the LED elements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aren't existing street lights already remotely controlled with the control signals modulated onto the power line? I am less sure about a back channel but I am pretty sure street lights are not turned on by simply turning on the power.

<comment><USER5> Most are turned on locally by a photocell mounted on the street light.

<comment><USER6> There is then probably considerable variation from place to place, but in Germany they usually follow a schedule turning on and off at specific times. It is also not uncommon that every second or so street light gets turned off late in the night. Sometimes they also turn on outside of the usual hours if it is especially dark due to dense clouds or heavy snowfall but I can not really tell whether this is sensed locally at the street light or centrally controlled.

EDIT: Just checked the German Wikipedia article and at least here all kinds of different systems with varying levels of granularity and autonomy are in use. Some cities seemingly even installed systems that allow turning on the street lights in specific streets or areas on demand via call or SMS during the late night.

<comment><USER7> In Germany the most common is centrally controlled. Usually a couple streets are connected to a controller, which is either triggered by a signal modulated over the regular mains from the local power provider or a central sensor, or triggered by a sensor connected to the controller.

It's usually not individual lamps, but large streets, blocks, or entire neighborhoods at once.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am curious about how the mesh topology based on Launchpad is superior to typical star topology LoRa.

It looks like each Launchpad is $30 (multiple per light?) and Pi Zero W is $10, yet an ESP32 development board _with_ LoRa is about $10. Given that street lights have a constant power source the communication challenges seem like they would be easy compared to when such devices are economizing every milliwatt hour. They could be set to always receive, and send small packets to a nearby peers to be relayed in very short windows.

</comment><comment><USER9> Let's save half a led worth energy some of the time by adding always on wireless router and computer to each street light.

Seems to me someone failed at basic math and logic here.

<comment><USER10> there's only a tiny microcontroller and radio added per light. the power consumption of this additional technology is on the order of milliamps at 3v. this is minuscule compared to the LEDs themselves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> everything comes back around. i worked in a startup in 2002 and we developed a mesh network street light controller. [https://web.archive.org/web/20020605214609/http://www.telemi...](https://web.archive.org/web/20020605214609/http://www.telemics.com)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why no ambient light sensors for automatic dimming and only report lamps with weird voltages (shorted or burned out LEDs)?

<comment><USER4> That's generally how they work today: each street light has an ambient light sensor on top and switches itself on and off automatically. Occasionally you see one that's staying on all the time, presumably because the sensor isn't working.

I haven't seen any that do automatic dimming, however. That would be a nice feature.</comment></comment>


Bitcoin is my potential pension: What's driving Kentuckians to join the craze - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/bitcoin-is-my-potential-pension-what-is-driving-people-in-kentucky-to-join-the-craze/2018/02/03/aaaea3be-05dc-11e8-b48c-b07fea957bd5_story.html?utm_term=.2654c1e71bd6 <comment><USER2> These folks need to fully understand the amount of luck and timing they need to benefit from this. Early adopters easily cashed-in, but will be much harder going forward. Everyone is a genius when it's going up, not so much on the way down.

<comment><USER3> I think the success of early adopters from bitcoin is driving many to some of the altcoins. For example, ADA is sitting around 40 cents right now. With the $1500 that was invested by Knight from the article that could've been shifted to get around 3750 ADA coins. Think of all the profits to be made if it just goes up to $1/coin! The problem is many people don't necessarily understand the risks of investing in altcoins and just see it as a way to be another early adopter.

<comment><USER4> What you are describing is basically how pump-and-dump of penny stocks works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I suspect that much if not all of blockchain consulting (including bitcoin) will be regarded as opportunistic charlatanry by future historians. Blockchainism is the alchemy of the internet age: a long, costly and (in the short term) counterproductive dead end quest to reify, through successive rounds of epicyclic tweaking, a fundamentally flawed system of philosophical premises that its most vocal and ideologically inclined proponents have mistaken for conclusions.

Yet just as alchemy inadvertantly fostered the development of the scientific method and attendant apparatus for quantification of natural phenomena, blockchainism may yield insights and instrumentation with similar impact potential, this time pertaining to the phenomena of human nature through quantification of social interaction and value formation process.

</comment><comment><USER6> Previous post with slightly more discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305197](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16305197)</comment>


Show HN: I built an open-source data viz tool that connects to DBs and APIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/chartbrew/chartbrew <comment><USER2> Not to knockdown the project, great effort. But there are many existing solutions like metabase, redash, etc. What differentiates this?

<comment><AUTHOR> No worries, I get this all the time and all I can say now is that functionality-wise most of those existing solutions are better.

The difference is in the mission I have planned for Chartbrew. I want to focus more on the user-centric and collaborative design rather than on functionality. So Chartbrew will never be as complex as many other tools there, but I'm 100% sure I can design it better. And I also plan to focus a lot on building a community interested in innovation and design. Hope this wasn't too vague. Feel free to ask me any other questions and I can clarify a bit more on different aspects.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey everybody,

I wanted to share with all of you the project I've been working for a while now called Chartbrew. It is an open-source data visualisation tool that can connect to APIs or certain databases to fetch the data directly from there. At the moment it's possible to create time series and simple pattern charts.

I started working on this with my partner in crime in the summer of 2018 and had a huge break of almost a year of not working that much on the project. In September this year, I decided to refactor the code and offer it as an open- source solution.

It was an amazing decision and since then I've been actively working on it whenever I get a break from uni and work. I also started streaming the progress and in the past couple of weeks I've been streaming almost every evening until around 1 AM, then continuing until 2-3AM in my bed.

I realised that I actually enjoy working more on the project since I decided to not treat it as a business. The initial idea was to create this as a SaaS and try our best to focus on the business aspects of it. Well, all that led to the period of burnout. Now it actually feels good to sit down, code, design and come up with new ideas.

I've been studying HCI research, UX design and data visualisation for the past 1.5 years and I now plan to pour all this knowledge in making Chartbrew a different and a better tool than the multiple existing ones out there.

Some items in the Roadmap coming soon:

* Re-designing the chart creation screens completely

* Allow combining data connections and plot charts from these combination

* Adding collaboration tools to co-create charts with other people remotely

* Collaboratively analyse dashboards, write notes, etc.

More here (needs a bit of re-work) - [https://trello.com/b/IQ7eiDqZ/chartbrew- roadmap](https://trello.com/b/IQ7eiDqZ/chartbrew-roadmap)

I will be more than thrilled to welcome everybody in the community I'm creating around Chartbrew. Any contribution is welcomed, from feedback, suggestions and code help. The code is still a bit "all over the place" since the project didn't completely move from the MVP stage, but I made progress towards fixing that.

Thanks a lot for reading! Let me know what you think of Chartbrew :)

\---

I will leave some links here if you want to find out more about what I'm doing around Chartbrew:

Streaming a lot here lately: [https://www.twitch.tv/razvanilin](https://www.twitch.tv/razvanilin)

A brief story of Chartbrew: [https://razvanilin.com/the-chartbrew- journey/](https://razvanilin.com/the-chartbrew-journey/)

Started being more active on twitter if you want to keep in touch: [https://twitter.com/razvanilin](https://twitter.com/razvanilin)

ChartBrew community on Slack: [https://bit.ly/2sx5ni9](https://bit.ly/2sx5ni9)

…or Discord: [https://discord.gg/zHmc7nm](https://discord.gg/zHmc7nm)

<comment><AUTHOR> By the way, I'm streaming on Twitch at the moment if you wanna join while I work on Chartbrew. I will probably stream until midnight CET :)</comment></comment>


Thou Shalt Not Commit Logical Fallacies [poster] - <AUTHOR> http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/poster

<comment><USER2> I have to say this.

I was getting annoyed at the oversimplified, vague, and/or unclear explanations on the poster. It's great to have a poster cataloging logical fallacies, but it's not so great if it doesn't actually explain them very well.

So I go to the home page of the site, where the first sentence reads:

"A logical fallacy is usually what has happened when someone is wrong about something."

FACEPALM.

The validity of a logical argument has NOTHING to do with the actual veracity (rightness or wrongness) of the propositions. This is basic stuff. Logic is the process of figure out what other things we know based on what we already know. If what we think we know is wrong, then we can make all the logically correct arguments we want and we'll still be drawing wrong conclusions.

<comment><USER3> And, on the other side of the coin, I fear it encourages folks to fall victim to the 'fallacy fallacy': Thinking that the presence of a logical fallacy in an argument implies that its thesis is incorrect.

On a completely different coin, nobody ever won an argument by treating it as a game of Spot the Logical Fallacy. All you'll win playing that game is a reputation for being insufferable.

<comment><USER4> > the 'fallacy fallacy': Thinking that the presence of a logical fallacy in an > argument implies that its thesis is incorrect.

It's worse than that. Paying too much attention to rigour and the mathematical validity of arguments unduly privileges strict logical argumentation over "traditional" informal argumentation.

Outside of technical areas there are almost no arguments amenable to pure logical argumentation. Think about it - why would you be arguing over something that can be mechanically deduced with certainty? In most circumstances logical syllogisms and the like are used only as "glue" to hold the _real_ argument together.

We should recognise that arguments using these "fallacies" don't have absolute persuasive power, but we shouldn't go so far as to say that they can have no persuasive power at all.

<comment><USER5> I think pointing out a fallacy can sometimes be a good defense against somebody who is insisting that something is a mechanical certainty when it is not.

<comment><USER3> Yes. But more often's the case that the fearless fallacy hunter fallaciously finds fallibility by fantasizing formality or finality.

Thereby committing a fallacy himself in the form of a straw man.

<comment><USER5> I see what you did there , I think I'm going to use that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of these are wrong. Examples:

 _Slippery slope -- Asserting that if we allow A to happen, then Z will consequently happen too, therefore A should not happen._

Slippery slope is not necessarily a fallacy -- it is only a fallacy if the warrant is extreme. If we were arguing about dropping lit cigarette butts into the trash and we both agreed that fires were bad and I made the claim that we shouldn't drop cigarettes in the trash because they often cause fires (and cited data to that effect) there would be no fallacy in my argument.

 _Appeal to authority -- Using the opinion or position of an authority figure, or institution of authority, in place of an actual argument._

This one actually infuriates me because it may be the most wrongly used logical fallacy. First, because most people who use this argument are _not_ making a logical deduction, they're making a statistical argument. To cite from Wikipedia:

 _The appeal to authority may take several forms. As a statistical syllogism, it will have the following basic structure:[1] Most of what authority a has to say on subject matter S is correct. a says p about S. Therefore, p is correct. The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:[1][2] The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject. A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion._

There is nothing wrong with this argument. The example given in the poster is very bad. As a PL student I have a bit of experience with formal methods and I'll remind everyone that the only things which can be _proven_ using logic are those which follow directly from the definitions. In real arguments, these structures basically never exist. The truth never follows _necessarily_ from the things people say, it's almost always a statistical argument. The fact that medical authorities used to think wrong things about the body didn't necessarily mean that it is or was wrong to believe in the body of scientific knowledge at the time. It only means that you have to be aware of the error margin in your statistics.

<comment><USER7> Have you read the longer descriptions?

<http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/appeal-to-authority>

<http://www.yourlogicalfallacyis.com/slippery-slope>

Your concerns seem to be addressed there.

<comment><USER6> First, those links address my points improperly, if at all. Slippery slope once again assumes that the warrant is extreme but there is no such guarantee in the construction presented.

Second, even if the extra links on the site were correct I don't see why that would make the poster itself any less wrong.

<comment><USER7> From the description: "[...] shifts attention to _extreme_ hypotheticals [...]" (also present in the A1 poster)

In any case, I see this poster as a cheat sheet: not something to learn from, but a quick reference for someone who has already done their homework and learned about those logical fallacies.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that I can't see how this is correct, even to the trained eye:

 _Argument from authority -- It is important to note with this fallacy that authorities in given fields may very well have valid arguments, and that one should not dismiss another's experience and expertise. To form an argument, however, one must defend it on its merits i.e. know why the person in authority holds the particular position that they do._

Only vaguely. You don't actually have to know what general relativity is or how it works to form an argument based on the statistical likelihood of physicists being correct. You don't really have to know "why" the person in authority holds their opinion, only that they are both an expert on the topic they are covering and that there is a general consensus among other experts on the same topic.

 _It is, of course, entirely possible that the opinion of a person or institution of authority is wrong; therefore the authority that such a person or institution holds does not have any intrinsic bearing upon whether their claims are true or not._

I'm not sure what this is trying to say, but there's certainly justifiable basis in believing that person's authority has an intrinsic bearing on the _probability_ that their claim is true.

How is the quoted definition at all useful -- to either logicians or laymen?

<comment><USER8> Perhaps suggest an alternative to be put on the poster? Seems like this is a project about education and not about proving expertise in logical fallacies. I would expect that the authors would be welcoming of increased clarity and correctness in their examples.

<comment><USER6> I tend to like this site: <http://www.fallacyfiles.org/introtof.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only thing more annoying than people who regularly commit logical fallacies are teenagers who argue on the Internet having just read the wikipedia page on logical fallacies.

For example: "the british medical association has said that smoking increases risk of cancer" therefor it is best not to smoke.

At which point you will get "Aha! You just committed appeal to authority and a slippery slope fallacy, you must be wrong!".

I suppose this is partly because in real life arguments we very rarely have sufficient knowledge in any subject to make concrete formal arguments based on direct observations, we are usually discussing the likelyhood of different things being true.

<comment><USER9> Reddit has come to love the reference to the straw man fallacy of late.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's incredibly ironic that this poster features Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle. They all commit ALL of these fallacies with regularity, with the exception perhaps of the Texas Sharpshooter, because in order to commit that one, you actually have to appeal to _data_.

"Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths." ― Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science on Society

<comment><USER11> How is that a logical fallacy? That's just a lack of data and an unwillingness to gather it.

<comment><USER10> Oh, certainly, that wasn't the point of the quote. I was just pointing out how supremely stupid these guys were, for everything they gave us. But it probably falls lightly under burden of proof.

There's a quote which I thought was from a friend of mine, but when I asked him, he denies ever saying it, so I'm not sure where it's from: "Philosophy is the history of bad arguments." I just quoted Russel, because he's a bit more of a respected authority on the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Though Shall Not Propagate Common Myths: from 'bandwagon' - "The flaw in this argument is that the popularity of an idea has absolutely no bearing on its validity. If it did, then the Earth would have made itself flat for most of history to accommodate people's popular belief."

While 'most of history' is a long time, the knowledge of a round earth has been around (and popular) since around 300 BC. It may be true that humans, and even that written (let alone verbal) histories, have been around for much more than 2000 years, the commonness of this myth warrants a different example. You wouldn't want to be seen supporting a position that only exists because many people think it is true, now would you :D

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not perfect but the icons are pretty well done. I imagine they could be used to "flag" posts, to let people know when they commit fallacies.

</comment><comment><USER14> ... would be nice if I could read the poster. "Account has been suspended" error message.

Sometime after I loaded the landing page but before I could click a link, the account/site went "poof".

<comment><AUTHOR> Back up, but if it goes down again here's a cached copy: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1579631/LogicalFallaciesInfographic_...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1579631/LogicalFallaciesInfographic_A1.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> HN could use a cheat-sheet version of this above the comment box. ;)

</comment><comment><USER16> If anyone wants it without having to go to the print shop, it's up on Zazzle: [http://www.zazzle.com/thou_shalt_not_commit_logical_fallacie...](http://www.zazzle.com/thou_shalt_not_commit_logical_fallacies_poster-228887783776402214)

You can also add it to Zazzle yourself and get it for a little cheaper, just make sure you put in the right dimensions, i.e. A2 (594x420mm or 23.4 x 16.5 inches) or A1 (841x594mm or 33.1 x 23.4 inches)

</comment><comment><USER17> Great poster, but instead of donation button, you should have a "buy a print" button.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hmm, I'm guilty of most of these.

So now I think they are heuristics rather than absolute measurements. And we should use them to teach ourselves something about logic, but not others.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great salesmanship tool worksheet!

</comment><comment><USER20> Site is down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Copy here: [http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1579631/LogicalFallaciesInfographic_...](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1579631/LogicalFallaciesInfographic_A1.pdf)</comment></comment>


Twitter is giving its users new powers to block internet trolls - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/internet-security/12069560/Twitter-vows-to-wage-war-on-internet-trolls.html <comment><USER2> Is it just me, or is this almost a non-article? The only new information seems to be:

> Bruce Daisley, the head of Twitter in Europe, said the site would give its > 320 millions users new tools to protect them from trolls

...and even that is non-specific.

<comment><USER3> Also without any specifics on how this will not be abused - Twitter really needs a lesson in comms.

Would much rather hear a firm statement that they are keeping reverse chronological tweets and 140 char limits because that is their identity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if the implementation of these tools will be similar to something already happening on Reddit, where users that comment/post on hate subreddits are automatically banned from many other places on the site.

<comment><USER5> It sounds more like the "Good Game Auto Blocker," [1] by that wonderful human being Randi "freebsdgirl" Harper [2]. It will block people on your Twitter account who are on a list of accounts believed to be associated with the #GamerGate movement, though it's known to have been overzealous at times, including an account operated by KFC in its lists [3] to much amusement. (This list seems to be generated by checking an account's followers to see if it follows the accounts of too many "leaders" or known pro-GG partisans.) In theory, there's nothing wrong with lists like these if they're just used for their intended purpose, but there's some fear that they might be used as industry hiring blacklists, as some have already proposed [4].

In short, if you're going to "troll" on Twitter (which includes sharing opinions others might not like) and end up on one of these lists, it might be best to do so strictly pseudonymously.

1: [https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker](https://github.com/freebsdgirl/ggautoblocker)

2: [http://www.breitbart.com/big- journalism/2015/06/29/harping-o...](http://www.breitbart.com/big- journalism/2015/06/29/harping-on-the-hypocrisy-and-lies-of-twitters-most- notorious-anti-abuse-activist-randi-harper-part-1/) and [http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/07/02/the- fact-a...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2015/07/02/the-fact-and- fiction-of-randi-harper/) \- NSFW language, and the author clearly has an ideological bias, but damn.

3: [http://gamesnosh.com/igda-kfc/](http://gamesnosh.com/igda-kfc/)

4: [http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2014/11/blizzard-engineer- pose...](http://www.gamerheadlines.com/2014/11/blizzard-engineer-poses- blacklist-gamergate-backpedals/)

<comment><USER6> It's interesting it contains a list of people in sourcelist.txt and code like this:

        # get a list of idiots
        open B, '<', $sourcelist_file or die "Can't open $sourcelist_file: $!\n";
        foreach ( <B> ) {
            chomp;
            push @idiots, $_;
        }
        close B;

I'd imagine calling people idiots via source code is against the GitHub TOS.

<comment><USER7> > I'd imagine calling people idiots via source code is against the GitHub TOS.

Not specifically. They have two clauses however that open it to a strictly subjective determination. First, they reserve the right to cancel any account, at any time, for any reason. Second, they have sections regarding offensive content (G.7/8), that gives them the right to remove such at their discretion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Weird. I literally JUST watched a talk by Martin Fowler on YouTube that addressed this as Twitter problem 30 minutes ago. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E3xfR6IBII](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E3xfR6IBII)</comment>


3D Printing Startup Builds Hyperloop Model in 24 Hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2423384,00.asp

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I was fully expecting to see a demonstration of a _working_ hyperloop model at scale, not just a diorama.

<comment><USER3> Me too, but you've got to start somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 3D printing company WhiteClouds was inspired to prototype the design.

 _Using three different 3D printers, the group printed each part layer by layer. The Connex 500 printed the pillars using Polyjet technology, while the tubes are made of a clear UV-cured resin and printed with the ProJet 3500 HDMax. The ZPrinter 650, meanwhile, printed the station platform and the pods. All pieces are full-color and made of sandstone-like material._

Kudos to designer Krista Davis, CEO Jerry Ropelato and everyone involved in the project --- very nice work.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PceZmSMo3KY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PceZmSMo3KY)

edit: fixed link

</comment><comment><USER5> Already posted multiple times, such as here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6246498)

Either way, it's still crap.

</comment><comment><USER6> "A few years ago, the idea of building a scale model out of printed material would have been as laughable as the Hyperloop itself."

like 30 years ago?</comment>


No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/arts/music/20noise.html?ex=1366344000&en=7fdb178d4293c8e9&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Wasn't there someone here a few days ago complaining that all startups today were webbased, and that there were no algorithmic an engineering challenges?

Well, read the article and start doing noise cancellation software.

<comment><USER3> I think the problem is that the artists need to hear what they are playing so they don't actually want this law to be affecting them.

<comment><USER2> Exactly - two parties with different goals that can be brought together using technology.

You can make active noise cancellation software using speakers, microphones and smart software that will solve their problems.

<comment><USER3> I don't think the traditional artists/performer will want to have technology solving their problems.

Many people prefer records to CDs although you can claim CDs are higher quality, not everyone is a member of the digital age.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Best service for printing postage? - <AUTHOR>

OK, it's finally time for me to use one of the companies that charge a monthly fee for postage. I know there is stamps.com and there is Endicia. Anyone have experience with either of them? And do any of these postage printing companies have APIs? <comment><USER2> For postage, just go to a USPS "Automated Postal Center", select a size, place the package on the scale, select a package, zip code, delivery, and confirm. It may take 5 steps but may only take 30 seconds per item. Pay with your credit card, attach the printed postage labels, and leave your packages with the USPS.

If you use the Dymo just for printing address labels, then not only can you start with the cheapest label maker, but you can use the address label for any purpose.

For many daily shipments, you can use a Dymo Label Writer with combined address/postage labels customized for Endicia.

Endicia's API, unless they changed it, is an always-on program that checks if a certain file has shipping information in it. If it does, it prints out shipping labels and clears the file.

Endicia has excellent support; I believe actual developers answered your questions last I used them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I used Endicia for a while a couple years ago (selling textbooks on Amazon), no complaints. They do have an API, but we used an out-of-the-box order tracking/shipping system, so I don't have any experience coding with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I'll probably use something out of the box also... it just makes me feel better knowing that there is an API there if I need it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is Endicia capable of accessing a sales database on a remote MySQL server?</comment>


Prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in adults admitted to psychiatric hospital - <AUTHOR> https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-bulletin/article/prevalence-of-vitamin-d-deficiency-in-adult-patients-admitted-to-a-psychiatric-hospital/5BE0942DB69C2F9BAB7083C08D2319C8# <comment><USER4> HN health posts tend to get posted without context and you'll get a pile of people [inadvertantly, I'm sure] pushing their supplement regime as a way to stave off clinical depression et al.

This paper is _NOT_ saying that low VitD causes psychiatric admission, just that patients may require supplements to bring them back to healthy levels.

You get most of your vitamin D from skin exposure to sunlight so it's reasonable to suggest that these people with psychiatric issues and low VitD are likely to be shut-ins.

The paper says as much... But people have a strange habit of ignoring the paper and latching their own beliefs onto the headline.

<comment><USER5> > HN health posts tend to get posted without context and you'll get a pile of > people [inadvertantly, I'm sure] pushing their supplement regime as a way to > stave off clinical depression et al.

I wouldn't say people are necessarily "pushing" their personal regimes, more often than not people are merely exchanging their personal experiences with certain issues.

Personally, I've had actual relief from a really annoying issue (nightly teeth gnashing) thanks to a helpful HN comment pointing me in the direction of Magnesium. I'm still thankful and glad that happened!

Btw: The headline is spot on with what the study found. I don't get what you are suggesting there with "reasonable to suggest that these people with psychiatric issues and low VitD are likely to be shut-ins".

Only 8.7% of all patients were vitamin D sufficient at admission. They didn't get their insufficiency from being admitted, they already usually have it when getting there.

<comment><USER6> A "shut-in" is someone who spends a lot of time at home alone, not getting any sunlight. Then when their symptoms of mental illness are manifested enough to require hospital admission, they are tested for vitamin D at that point and it's unsurprisingly low.

<comment><USER7> I guess that that is a thing that could happen in the temperate and frigid zones of the Earth. It would be interesting, though, to attempt to replicate the study in a tropical region, where it's nearly impossible to not get enough sun, even indoors.

<comment><USER8> Glass windows block the kind of UV radiation you need to produce Vitamin D. You really have to actually go outside to produce it.

<comment><USER9> In some areas the windows contain enough quartz to let UV through, we found.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As these kind of stories are so popular on HN, I recently started curating a list at [https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression](https://github.com/Jimnotgym/Hacking_Depression)

I hope it helps someone one day.

<comment><USER11> I appreciate you're trying to help with this list, but as somebody who suffers from depression, I can't really imagine anything more harmful.

If you're suffering from depression, you're likely in partial denial. Going to a doctor represents a big change, and a big acknowledgement. Techniques like 'getting sunlight' and 'doing exercise' are infinitely more attractive - <USER2> infinitely more likely to degrade into new ways of beating yourself up and blaming yourself for your medical condition.

Some people can deal with depression with meditation, self-care, and better routine. Many, however, cannot. Folk remedies are like mirages for this second group - and they put people in a circle of denial, incomplete action, and self-blame, where they try to solve their illness with ultimately ineffective remedies, then blame themselves for the ineffectiveness of the treatment.

Pills, doctors, and psychiatrists are scary. As long as a depressed person believes there's a more normal option, that's what they'll go for. So this whole smorgsaboard of things that might help somebody somehow are really just a bunch of chimeras that keep people living in hell.

I know this because I've done this. I went through a period of simply trying everything anybody recommended, no matter how ridiculous. Predictably, nothing worked. Drugs work. Therapy works. Asking a doctor what they recommend works. Random studies you read on the internet by people who may or may not have had the same kind of depression you have, with p-values of like, 0.1, do not work, and do not help.

<comment><USER12> Wouldn't acknowledging that you're suffering from depression and researching a list of things to help be the opposite of denial? I don't doubt there are depressed people who are in denial, but if you acknowledge your own depression and still avoid doctors and therapy, perhaps it is more likely due to some combination of things like shame, fatigue, apathy or hopelessness which often come with the depression itself? The mindfulness based cognitive therapy from my post and the CBT option recommended on another post here are both things you do with a therapist, by the way. Also I don't see how meditation, self care and better routine could be bad for someone suffering from depression, even if it doesn't lift them out of it, so I would still say this is solid advice.

Edit: I would also like to clarify that if you feel depressed you should absolutely go to a doctor and try out therapy. If you don't want to do this, you need to ask yourself why you wouldn't want to go to see the people who are most qualified to help you. Is it simply because you actually don't believe a doctor or therapist can help you or is it because you feel your case is hopeless? In either case, I would say then that you have nothing to lose and you might as well go try it out anyway, just in case you are wrong. If you're right, you can have the satisfaction of feeling vindicated. If you're wrong, you'll feel better. It's a win-win.

If the reason you don't want professional help is that you are ashamed someone may find out, then you need to start looking at the problem a bit more objectively. You simply have a problem that needs fixing, why not get the best people to help you fix it? And another point, if someone else judges you for wanting to feel better and have more to offer for everyone else around you, should you really give their judgement much weight? If neither of these help, maybe for right now you can just ask yourself if the shame you're predicting you'll feel in the short run is a cheap enough price to pay to feel better in the long run. I bet it is.

Lastly, if you're feeling like getting professional help is just too much effort, it can help to break things up in to steps. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write down a plan to get help. Maybe step one of the plan is you just jump on Google and find a doctor or therapist near you. Step 2 can be to call and book an appointment, step 3 can be to write down exactly what you want to discuss in your visit, step 4 can be planning how to get to the appointment (maybe plan to ask someone close for a ride or take a taxi if driving or walking there is too much), and so on. Each time you complete a step, just cross it out. With each step completed, you're on your way to feeling better and you can feel a sense of accomplishment.

<comment><USER11> Denial is rarely a complete thing. Most people will say they aren't 'that' depressed right up to being put in a clinic.

People really overestimate the organizational capacity of somebody in deep depression. Getting a doctor's appointment, showing up, then talking honestly about your problems is really hard. It's doubly hard if you think you have alternatives.

Getting medical help is a really big step. Taking St-John's Wort, or eating more cumin, isn't. And that would be great if they were equivalent. But for a lot of people, they absolutely aren't. Otherwise doctors would prescribe exercise and sunlight.

I'd be really happy if every advice column on depression just told people to go to a doctor. I mean, jesus, imagine if somebody put a github repo up about how to self-treat cholera! Depression is really dangerous. It kills a lot of people. If you have it, you should talk to a professional - not read random studies that are probably p-hacking anyway.

<comment><USER10> I will try and answer both of your posts together if that is OK.

1) I have suffered from and lived with sufferers of depression for my whole life. It is rare for me to say so on a public forum, but there it is.

2) I have been in a dangerous place and sought medical help. I was prescribed drugs which had catastrophic side-effects on me, and which persisted for years after I went through the horrible withdrawal process that the said drug causes. The drug was closer to killing me than the depression. I taught myself a kind of CBT (I didn't know it was called that back then) and I have been coping drug free for nearly two decades.

3) In the UK mental-health services are barely existent except for those in the most extreme circumstances, after nearly a decade of government cuts. Doctors prescribe drugs because that is all they can do. They refer you to counseling, but you face months of wait. Anecdotally it seems that most depression suffers never get the therapy that may really help them. Much of this is cultural in that somehow in 2018 people still think depression is not a real disease.

4) These stories are extremely popular on HN, and often make it to the front page, which suggests there is a demand.

> probably p-hacking anyway.

5) What an absurd slur.

> doctors would prescribe exercise and sunlight

6) They most certainly do exactly this. I have heard it with my own ears. A doctor told a person I know that they should try St. Johns Wort before risking anti-depressents.

> jesus, imagine if somebody put a github repo up about how to self-treat > cholera!

7) Is a strawman, but since you brought it up, prevention of Cholera is most definitely a self-help exercise of some worth. I believe the main treatment is 'hydration' btw. I urge all Cholera suffers who are able to to seek out medical attention, for those with no access to it, hydration would seem like a valuable self-help technique.

> I'd be really happy if every advice column on depression just told people to > go to a doctor

8) This list does that in the opening section. It suggests discussing the articles with a doctor too.

> I went through a period of simply trying everything anybody recommended, no > matter how ridiculous

9) The antithesis of researching a list of articles and being well informed when you chose to visit your medical professional to discuss it with them. If you are in the frame of mind to try snake-oil, I seriously doubt a list like this would make any difference either way.

10) Not all depression sufferers are 'cured' by their doctor. Not all react well (or at all) to drugs. Everyone I know who has learned to manage their depression has (once they have got through the denial) done it through lifestyle changes, CBT, lighting, exercise etc. If you search through the links you will find novel drug therapies which are helping people (dramatically) who have had no benefit at all from existing medicine, and have been shown to do so in a peer reviewed study (before you repeat that slur). If a close family member of mine was in that situation I have no doubt at all that I would be keen for them to find out about it and go and discuss it with their doctor.

11) I don't feel the need to protect anyone from information.

<comment><USER11> Obviously you had a bad experience with anti-depressants - many people do. I have also had bad experiences with various drugs. The english mental health system is horrible, agreed.

However, I don't think reading articles, however scientific, is a substitute for five years of training to be a psychiatrist or psychologist - and if you don't think p-hacking is endemic in this space, I have a bridge to sell you.

I can't stop you doing what you are doing. But if you tell somebody who has cholera that 'drinking water' was an alternative to going to a doctor, and they died, you'd go to prison. If even one person takes your advice, against the scientific consensus that anti-depressants work, tries to 'hack' their depression with your 'alternatives', you'll be partially responsible for the outcome.

Ultimately, the question is: are you confident enough of your psychiatric/psychological credentials to offer advice about a life-threatening condition?

Because that is what you are doing.

<comment><USER10> > However, I don't think reading articles, however scientific, is a substitute > for five years of training to be a psychiatrist or psychologist

Why do you keep pushing this line? The page quite clearly says on line 4 and line 6 that you should talk to a doctor. It even suggests discussing the listed things with a doctor.

If a doctor prescribed me a statin to help with my cholesterol, then I went away and read up and found that reducing the amount of bacon I was eating would also help, then I went back and discussed that with my doctor, am I better or worse off?

If I delete my Github account right now does the information I linked to go away? In lots of cases I have linked to the discussion rather than the article, where the extraordinarily critical HN crowd have pulled the article apart, searched for p-hacking and other frauds and discussed any merits. Is that better or worse than the tabloid stories that abound on health? I don't see how more information about your condition could be a bad thing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A little while back, there was this submission to hacker news that didn't get much traction/attention, but which was about a research study that seemed to suggest that Vitamin D deficiency was a symptom of an underlying problem and just supplementing with Vitamin D was not sufficient as a fix and that the underlying cause of the deficiency the study said could be inflammation related to bacterial infection.

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00011-014-0755-...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00011-014-0755-z)

<comment><USER14> I didn't know about this study or the post, but I have also brought this up before and downvoted to hell. Bacteria that can evade the immune system can eat up all your vitamin D and wreck havoc. The solution is to eat other beneficial bacteria that eat them or their food and balance things out. This bacteria is LAB pro-biotics you can find in the store. Along with that, eating fiber to feed the pro-biotics so they don't die off. But if you eat health organic food, you get all of this. There's a GMO bacteria used as a pesticide that might be causing this. Anyway, if you bring these things up you are called a conspiracy theorist on this site. Its just common sense. Eat good non-GMO and non-gmo bacteria treated food with fiber, stay away from junk food, take pro-biotics, get sunlight.

<comment><USER15> Which GMO bacteria?

<comment><USER13> Apparently Bacillus Thuringiensis is used to genetically modify some kinds of plants/seeds like corn/potato/cotton etc, so the plants become naturally resistant to certain insects/worms. But these insects/worms are also now slowly getting resistant to the bacteria (evolution). It doesn't seem like there is genetically modified bacteria itself that is used as pesticide....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is close to the rate of vitamin D deficiency in the general population, e.g. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21310306](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21310306)

<comment><USER17> The study you linked was based on a threshold of 50 nmol/L, while the originally posted study used two thresholds, 30 nmol/L and 50 nmol/L. At the 50 nmol/L cutoff, the study you linked indicates a deficiency rate of 41.6% for the general population, compared to a rate of 91.3% among psychiatric patients according to the posted study.

I'd still take the posted study with a grain of salt. Vitamin D deficiency between individuals is likely to be highly correlated within a particular region and time period due to its dependence on weather, and the authors didn't control for that. But they did say that this was just a pilot, and given the effect size it's probably worth investigating further.

Edit: fixed units

<comment><USER18> Regarding the weather: most people most often stay indoors or in cars(does the glass filter the Vitmain-D causing rays), and usually wear long pants and a shirt, so only a small body area is exposed to the sun, so it's possible that even in summer, people suffer from Vitamin-D deficiency.

<comment><USER19> Be careful with increased exposure to sunlight. UV is a known carcinogen. [https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation- exposu...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation-exposure/uv- radiation/uv-radiation-does-uv-cause-cancer.html)

There are safer sources of vitamin D.

<comment><USER20> To this end, I strongly suggest checking your local UV index before heading outdoors for any extended period of time. I use an iOS app called UVLens (no affiliation), which displays your local UV index throughout the day and can give you an estimate of how long before you'll burn (based on skin color, eye color, etc.)

Provided you're taking reasonable precautions, limited exposure to broad- spectrum UV is quite safe.

<comment><USER21> You just need to slap on some suntan location if its going to be sunny - <USER3> what I do to counter the increased risk due to meds I have to take

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If you are going to supplement your vitamin D, just make sure to monitor your calcium too. My wife sees patients taking high doses of vitamin D, because their doctor puts them on it, or they do it themselves, and they do not realize that they are doing massive damage to their bodies because their low vitamin D levels are caused by a parathyroid tumor.

[http://www.parathyroid.com/low-vitamin-d.htm](http://www.parathyroid.com/low- vitamin-d.htm)

<comment><USER23> This happens to your wife commonly?

<comment><USER22> Yes, several times a week. She is a parathyroid surgeon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > It is unclear why the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency found in this study > was higher compared with the general population.

There are relatively large number of studies linking vitamin D deficiency and mental illness. This is not the best study to use as point of discussion.

I'm sure there are review articles.

edit: like this: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british- journal-...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of- psychiatry/article/vitamin-d-deficiency-and-depression-in-adults-systematic- review-and-metaanalysis/F4E7DFBE5A7B99C9E6430AF472286860)

and this: [https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/99/10/3863/2836573](https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/99/10/3863/2836573)

TL;DR: There is a link but randomized trials are needed to find the causal link.

</comment><comment><USER25> What about other deficiencies? Other vitamins and nutrients? You'd expect people that are admitted to psychiatric hospitals to have more than one deficiency since they might not be able to take good care of themselves.

<comment><USER26> Search for micronutrient deficiencies + a psychiatric condition on PubMed and you'll get many results.

Off the top of my head zinc, magnesium, various forms of B-vitamins and selenium imbalances are seen in different disorders. Zinc deficiency in depression, zinc overabundance in schizophrenia. Both zinc and magnesium seem to have roles in NMDA neurotransmission. B-vitamins play a role in neurotransmitter production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> No comparison to prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the general population?

<comment><USER28> They might not have the correct data for comparison -- you'd need to control for climate, so national or international rate of deficiency wouldn't be a good comparison.

<comment><USER27> Sure. But I'm not sure what the takeaway is without it. I guess just another data point for future analysis. Or yeah, another paper for someone's CV and tenure promotion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you are over 60, get your vitamin D blood levels checked! Made a big difference for me, simply increasing dose

</comment><comment><USER30> Previous relevant discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771044](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16771044)

</comment><comment><USER31> I live in Moscow, last winter we had only few hours of sunlight in December. Two months ago I went to test Vitamin D and got <10 ng/ml which is extremely low deficiency, currently doing around 8000ME daily.

Reading:

\- Holick MF, Binkley NC, Bischoff-Ferrari HA, Gordon CM, Hanley DA, Heaney RP, Murad MH, Weaver CM; Endocrine Society. Evaluation, treatment, and prevention of vitamin D deficiency: an Endocrine Society clinical practice guideline. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2011 Jul;96(7):1911- 30. doi: 10.1210/jc.2011-0385. Epub 2011 Jun 6.

\- Guidelines for preventing and treating vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency revisited. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2012 Apr;97(4):1153-8. doi: 10.1210/jc.2011-2601.

\- Vitamin D deficiency: a worldwide problem with health consequences. Am J Clin Nutr. 2008 Apr;87(4):1080S-6S.

\- Vitamin D deficiency in the Middle East and its health consequences. Clin Rev Bone Miner Metab 7:77–93

\- Vitamin D supplementation guidelines Pawel Pludowski

\- Treatment of hypovitaminosis D with pharmacologic doses of cholecalciferol, oral vs intramuscular; an open labeled RCT. Zabihiyeganeh M1, Jahed A, Nojomi M.

</comment><comment><USER32> Is there any informed discussion of the value of reading articles like this versus just not and doing what your doctor says ?

<comment><USER33> That depends heavily on both your own and your doctor's knowledge/ability. If you're unsure if you can safely extract value from these articles then you should only listen to your doctor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The whac-a-mole [1] tendency of psychiatry is revealed by this line from this submission's link:

> Assessment and treatment of vitamin D deficiency should be considered in in- > patients _to protect musculoskeletal health_. Further epidemiological and > intervention studies are needed to investigate the role of vitamin D in the > pathophysiology of mental disorders. [emphasis added]

The full context of vitamin D synthesis and conversion is relevant, not just "protect musculoskeletal health". Vitamin D is manufactured in the skin from cholesterol, but has to be activated in the liver & kidneys through "enzymatic conversion" [0]. Cholesterol is manufactured in the liver. If a person's liver is burdened by "stress", malnourishment, etc, it won't have the capacity to produce cholesterol for the skin to turn into vitamin D.

Mental disorders are fundamentally related to stress and metabolism. Stress takes many forms; emotional stress is the most important. The whole organism's metabolic processes are relevant when figuring out the cause of "mental" problems.

Just the other day I talked with my ~50y.o. Canadian friend. Her brother is dying from complications of drug addiction (opiates and everything else). She said he never had a good relationship with their father, and was devastated when their grandfather was killed right next to him in a farm accident (brother was 16 y.o. at the time)...

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

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A- Mole](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whac-A-Mole) :

      The term "Whac-a-mole" (or "Whack-a-mole") is used
      colloquially to denote a repetitious and futile task: each
      time an adversary is "whacked", it only pops up again
      somewhere else. In a military context, the term is used to
      refer to ostensibly inferior opposing troops who keep re-
      appearing. In a programming/debugging context it
      refers to the fact that fixing a bug has a certain chance
      of creating a new bug which itself needs to be fixed.
      In a web context, it refers to the process of fending off
      recurring spammers, vandals or miscreants.

</comment><comment><USER35> Weird question: i saw an article yesterday saying that redheads naturally produce more vitamin d.

So, what is the prevalence of redheads in psychiatric hospitals?

<comment><USER36> Those with _pale skin_ naturally produce more vitamin D. This is because the pigmentation in your skin (Melanin), which protects skin from sun damage, also reduces vitamin D production.

Pale skin is in fact an evolutionary adaptation to living in less sunny climates. That's why Vitamin D deficiency, in an un-sunny climate like Britain, is more prevalent in British Asian and Black British populations than in White British.

This "redheads" association is due to red hair often being associated with pale skin, and not specifically due to hair colour. Some of the genes associated with less skin pigmentation also result less hair pigmentation (blonde or red hair).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> These kinds of studies often feel like the result of some p-hacking. Take a smallish sample size from a population of interest, record a bunch of data on them, then pick the result that is most abnormal and say "hmmm maybe this is why this population is different." Not saying that's the case here I'm just always skeptical until I know the methodology.

</comment><comment><USER38> And abundance of vitamin D through sun exposure is a reason why it's great to live in Mediterranean Basin, Australia or California instead of Norway, Sweden or Canada. Sun is a huge factor in both health and happiness although the northern societies seem to underplay it.

<comment><USER13> "It has been suggested by some vitamin D researchers, for example, that approximately 5–30 minutes of sun exposure between 10 AM and 3 PM at least twice a week to the face, arms, legs, or back without sunscreen usually lead to sufficient vitamin D synthesis..." as per [1]. Maybe the quality of exposure is different? Atleast from reading articles like this, it seems like normally people at any latitude should not have trouble getting sufficient Vitamin D.

1\. [https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD- HealthProfessiona...](https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/VitaminD- HealthProfessional)

<comment><USER39> This is a hasty conclusion. For example, the city of Kiruna in northern Sweden (latitude 67 degrees north) has about three weeks of total darkness each winter. So there is no sun exposure at all during that time. And even south of the arctic circle, the chance of getting 5-30 minutes of sun exposure twice a week is not guaranteed in northern countries. For example, you might be stuck in an office building while the sun is above the horizon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Throwaway account here.

I started taking vitamin D supplement a few years ago. I believe it has helped improve my Bipolar disorder (less lows where I can't get out of bed). Added to my meds and I really think it helps but case study of one with wayyyyy too many variables.

</comment><comment><USER41> I come from a place where winters are very gray and rarely offer some sun.

When I moved somewhere else, with friendly sunny winters I was surprised to learn that 'winter depression' was not even a common phrase.

</comment><comment><USER42> Depressed people do not go out. Vitamin D comes mostly from Sunlight. Vitamin D is not the cause. I am pretty sure that weight imballance can also be found in such individuals.

</comment><comment><USER43> so you'd expect to see fewer cases the further south go. I wonder how that holds up?

<comment><USER44> You would need to be careful about comparing areas that are otherwise similar or do something more sophisticated than merely comparing rates of psychiatric hospitalization between two areas. Average incomes and other factors are probably important too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Most of these patients are likely exhibiting some spectrum of antisocial behavior, which means staying indoors or generally away from other people.

I don't think it's as interesting as it seems. I'm rather certain there's a sensible explanation.

<comment><USER46> > _...antisocial behavior, which means staying indoors or generally away from > other people._

That is not at all what "antisocial behavior" means. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti- social_behaviour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-social_behaviour)

<comment><USER47> Right. I learned that in the UK there is even an Anti-social Behavior Order (ASBO), essentially a catch-all law for people exhibiting these behaviors (which apparently spans all kinds of stuff from graffiti to littering). No comment as to the rightness or wrongness of this, but there it is.

<comment><USER48> It's in the DSM, which is published by the American Psychiatric Association.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disor...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Something worth noting is that many mental illnesses cause symptoms (lack of motivation, social anxiety, fear of leaving the house, etc.) that make people less likely to go outside.

<comment><USER50> Sadly you can't affirm that to all of the affected population, that needs testing. Some mentally ill people like to go out and walk mindlessly all day long. I am sure you know some 'walkers' in your vicinity, there's always one.

<comment><USER49> Causality needs testing, but correlation isn't a wild leap. 25% of Americans suffer from either depression or anxiety, and the next-highest disorder isn't even close[1]. Those ambulatory people are highly visible, but a tiny fraction of the overall population.

1\. [https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the- numbers](https://www.nami.org/learn-more/mental-health-by-the-numbers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> TL;DR the jury is still out on whether or not you need the D for your mental health.

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure if I got downvoted for the joke, or because people think I'm wrong, but near the end of the study it says "At the current time, there is insufficient evidence to draw any firm conclusions regarding an association between vitamin D deficiency and non-musculoskeletal health outcomes, including mental illness." So the jury is in fact out on whether or not you need vitamin D for your mental health.

<comment><USER52> Both. One is a Reddit joke and the other is wrong no matter what the linked article says. There are hundreds of studies that link mental health problems like Schizophrenia and Vit.d deficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> mentally ill > stays inside more often

not really a hard conclusion to reach

<comment><AUTHOR> You haven't tested

Mentally ill > lives on the streets in the sun all day

<comment><USER54> It's not the actual presence in a dwelling that is the detrimental to mood but the implied lack of social interaction or meaningful pursuits. A homeless person can have those same problems to a greater extent and with other health issues included.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> So people locked indoors who can't see the sun have a vitamin D deficiency? Shocking...

<comment><USER10> It says in the title that the study is talking about adults _admitted_ to... that suggest they already had the deficiency

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> People who are admitted to mental hospitals don't spend much time out in the sun or eat healthy diets? Fascinating.</comment>


Final Notice for HN Tokyo Japan Bounenkai Party on Sunday, 19th Dec - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makeleaps.com/2010/12/informal-hn-bounenkai-party-sun-19th-of-december

<comment><USER2> Earlier submission, with discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2003692></comment>


6 Tips for Building Relationships with Journalists - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2010/03/22/6-tips-to-building-relationships-with-journalists/

<comment><USER2> _3\. Understand their needs - You need to understand a journalist's needs. First, understand their deadlines_

The fact of the deadline is one of the big driving forces for the need for a _meta-journalism_ site. If no one calls them to account, journalists will keep skimping on proper research and understanding for an undiscriminating public.

This applies more to general interest science coverage than to tech and startup coverage, however.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm a journalist, and I can confirm that this is great advice.

<comment><USER3> Actually, let me raise one caveat -- asking a journalist what their "angle" is might not always be the greatest idea. Especially if you use that word.

The underlying idea is a good one, but "What's you angle" -- those words -- can come off as hostile. It's kind of a cliche question that we associate with the sleaziest of PR people. It seems to say "Hey, I know you're a hack looking for spin -- what kind of spin are you looking for?"

Every good story needs a fresh perspective on whatever topic, and if you help lead us to one we will be grateful. An "angle," though -- maybe it's just me, but that word makes my toes curl.

<comment><USER4> This reminds me of Mr Feynman's dating advice.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1196928>

"Angle" might not be the most polite of terms here, but it does get everyone right to the quick of the whole discussion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My girlfriend is a journalist in fashion with focus on web. When someone emails her a vanilla press release, they are more likely to get her eyes to roll and go in the trash bin than anything else. But when a company does something personal, like give her goodie bags, take her to lunch or invite her to an event, she gets super excited. The funny part is she never really sees through the fact that they're buttering her up for good press, she just thinks of it as 'being nice'.

Another example - I recently had lunch with the daughter of arguably the most famous film critic around. Her family took a trip to visit & take a day-long tour of Peter Jackson's studio in New Zealand. She was ranting and raving about 'how nice' Peter Jackson was taking them on the tour, and how impressed they were with the studio etc. At the end I suggested, "don't you think he was just buttering you up for a good review of Lovely Bones?". Her reaction was as if it never really crossed their minds. I just find it funny that what was obviously a ploy to make a relationship for good press was so naively interpreted by the critic and his family as being 'so generous'.

Buttering up journalists is so much easier than you think it should be. Make them feel special, but don't kiss their butt... Simple

</comment><comment><USER6> 7\. Put change in their cup- or go the extra mile and help them find a job. (journalists reading- I mean this in good humor ;)

<comment><USER3> Upvoted, you silly code monkey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They forget the extra two tips for when TechCrunch is concerned:

Tip #7: Apply your lips to their buttocks Tip #8: Give them free stuff.</comment>


Bounce denotes battery health (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/bounce-denotes-battery-health/8411.article <comment><USER2> Slightly off-topic - There Chemistry in its Element podcast is a good listen. 15 mins every week talking about a different compound/element: [https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts](https://www.chemistryworld.com/podcasts)

</comment><comment><USER3> I had a friend in school that noticed that fresh new batteries are much softer than old dead ones.

All of his devices had batteries with bite marks in them.

</comment><comment><USER4> Similar neat trick: to tell if an egg has been hard-boiled, spin it on its side. A raw egg will immediately stop rotating, a cooked one won't.

<comment><USER5> Relevant: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDHFTffKTc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFDHFTffKTc) [Spinning Eggs - Mr. Wizard's Supermarket Science]

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure for which batteries this works. After seeing that YouTube video some time ago, I tried to reproduce it at home with some AAA batteries. Didn't work.

<comment><USER7> It worked with normal AAAs for me. It's just quite nuanced. When dropping from the right height the empty ones on my wooden table tend to fall over, the full ones stay more still and upright with minimal bounce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Alkaline AA batteries are one of the most common battery types [...]

Is this really true anymore? I use almost exclusively rechargeable batteries (NiMH & Li-ion & LiFePO4) our my household. Only very low power devices such as clocks run on alkaline batteries.

<comment><USER3> I buy 4 and 8 packs of rechargeables and 20 and 40 packs of disposables. I handle the rechargeables a lot more, but there are certainly more disposables by count present in my home.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Probable April Fools joke. Posted on March 31st.

<comment><USER7> I did blind tests and it totally worked.</comment></comment>


Key Reads for the young technologist - <AUTHOR>

Given the opportunity to identify 3-4 key texts for a young technologist, what would you select? Topics could span from histories to technical works, open key crypto to mobile computing. <comment><USER2> To Engineer is Human, by Henry Petroski <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfJ0EkrXqg>

And/or anything else by Petroski <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Petroski>

Systemantics, by John Gall <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemantics>

"27. The Fail-Safe Theorem: When a Fail-Safe system fails, it fails by failing to fail safe."

Someone will inevitably suggest Brooks' Mythical Man Month to a young technologist, so I'll leave that suggestion to that person in this young technologist's career.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say the most important thing is to stimulate your thinking in different ways, here are a few books that might help in that regard-

Technomanifestos: Visions from the Information Revolutionaries by Adam Brate

Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter

A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History by Manuel De Landa

Follow for Now: Interviews with Friends and Heroes edited by Roy Christopher

I would also recommend reading the works of Ted Nelson and Buckminster Fuller, as well as some fiction by Neal Stephenson, Robert Anton Wilson and other SF authors.

<comment><USER4> Great list. I didn't know about De Landa's work, looks really interesting. In the same spirit, and for something more recent, I'd recommend Lanier's You Are Not a Gadget. I also find Erik Davis' Techgnosis to be a criminally well- written book.</comment></comment>


New Mac OS X botnet discovered - <AUTHOR> http://news.drweb.com/show/?i=5976&lng=en

<comment><USER2> To see if you haven't got it:

In terminal run:

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info LSEnvironment

You should get this error:

The domain/default pair of (/Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info, LSEnvironment) does not exist

Then run:

defaults read ~/.MacOSX/environment DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES

You should get this error:

The domain/default pair of (/Users/YOURUSER/.MacOSX/environment, DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES) does not exist

If you do you are clean of this variant!

If this doesn't happen go to [http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan- downloader_osx_flashb...](http://www.f-secure.com/v-descs/trojan- downloader_osx_flashback_i.shtml) to fix it

<comment><USER3> That is for the Flashback trojan, but this is a new trojan, according to the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard to believe, the claim is that is uses Reddit's search functionality to find connection addresses. I've never been able to find anything using Reddit's search.

</comment><comment><USER5> Many independent reports of this, but I haven't seen any instruction for detecting or fixing

[http://www.tuaw.com/2014/10/03/thousands-of-macs-infected- wi...](http://www.tuaw.com/2014/10/03/thousands-of-macs-infected-with-os-x- botnet-malware-controlled-v/)

<comment><USER6> At least for detection (from the article): "During installation it is extracted into /Library/Application Support/JavaW, after which the dropper generates a p-list file so that the backdoor is launched automatically."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hmm. I've never heard of drweb.com before, and there's no instructions on how to detect the worm, but they want to sell me anti-virus software.

This might be legit, but I'll wait and see if this appears anywhere else before I trust it as being valid.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I was a little suspicious myself, although looking at their wikipedia page it does seem to be a genuine company.

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

Also, more info here seems to support the fact that they are the real deal:

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

(as usual with wikipedia, you should check the original sources to verify).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has there ever been a company that covertly creates a virus and releases it into the wild, and then "catches" it and sells an anti-virus remedy?

</comment><comment><USER9> I've never even heard of drweb....I dont see any other security companies reporting on this.</comment>


SongKick (YC S07) Raises $2m More to Out-Innovate Other Concert Alert Services - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/songkick_raises_nearly_2m_more_for_concert_alerts.php

<comment><USER2> I love Songkick. I've gone to a whole bunch of concerts that I never would have known about if it hadn't been for them.

<comment><USER3> Completely agree. It's one of the websites that I evangelize about.

Congrats to the whole Songkick team!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does SK make money? Ticket commissions?

</comment><comment><USER5> I have to say, their website looks, feels lovely.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yay for UK-based startups!</comment>


Your car is now vulnerable to malware - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/article/fbi-to-drivers-watch-out-for-these-malware-attacks-on-your-car/ <comment><USER2> "It prompted Chrysler to recall 1.4 million vehicles and mail customers a USB drive with a software fix."

As noted in article, because dropping a USB key in the mail saying "hello, stick this into your...um, car and install this" is not a vulnerability at all. I sure hope the updates are at least signed (and that whatever system applies the updates actually checks the signature). "Who cares, just paper over the current wart, don't worry about anything beyond that."</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best way for a startup to market locally? - <AUTHOR> For our startup we primarily do Social Media Marketing. So far results have been lackluster, in terms of SEO our website is not the greatest because it was made with time efficieny in mind therefore we chose to forego proper SEO for a earlier reelase date. With that said, what are some of the best ways we can get the attention of the local people in our area while being cost efficient? <comment><USER2> Launch a Startup on Product Hunt. Read more: [https://www.plerdy.com/blog/how- to-launch-a-startup-on-produ...](https://www.plerdy.com/blog/how-to-launch-a- startup-on-product-hunt/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A - How people-dense is your local area? B - How large is your local area? C - What percentage of people/companies/addresses do you see as potential customers? D - Can you spatialise any of this to reduce areas to focus on? Do potentials gather physically (or did they before Covid)?

<comment><AUTHOR> As I was filling out your questionaire, I was able to generate a few ideas on some potential marketing ideas, so thanks!</comment></comment>


Using OpenStreetMap to map the Syria conflict: interview with deSyracuse - <AUTHOR> http://blog.opencagedata.com/post/98795801193/open-geo-interview-series-agathocle-desyracuse

<comment><USER2> If this is something that you are interested in, and you have some free time, the Humanitarian Openstreetmap Team (HOT) is always looking for volunteer mappers. There were some mapping tasks related to the Syrian crisis, but I believe now the current ebola outbreak is taking priority. Anyway, they are always looking for help:

To map something now: [http://tasks.hotosm.org/](http://tasks.hotosm.org/)

More on HOT: [http://hot.openstreetmap.org/get- involved](http://hot.openstreetmap.org/get-involved)

"HOT benefits from contributors with a wide range of interests and experience. Almost anyone can make a tremendous contribution to our projects by contributing mapping, but we're also very pleased to hear from developers, documenters and ideas hackers that can engage with us and our work."

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point, here's a good recent post with some pictures of OSM data collection in Syria specifically [https://www.mapbox.com/blog/openstreetmap- data-in-syria/](https://www.mapbox.com/blog/openstreetmap-data-in-syria/)

If you're in London there's a mapathon tonight [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/missing-maps-hot-september- ma...](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/missing-maps-hot-september-mapathon- tickets-13271759189)

and many more upcoming events

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Along the same vein, Wikimapia[0] is a rich resource for finding information on Syria and other topics. The site allows users to define shapes constructed over places on the map, so people can mark buildings, villages, places of note.

I've used it often for events regarding Syria, most recently for mapping locations[1] hit by CENTCOM airstrikes against the Islamic State. The location was relatively easy to find given the amount of info the CENTCOM video published to YouTube provided.

I would suggest following deSyracuse[2] on Twitter if you are interested in this type of stuff, you'll quickly come across more interesting peers. :)

[0] [http://wikimapia.org](http://wikimapia.org)

[1] [http://wikimapia.org/31543455/2014-09-27-F-15E-Strike-on- Isl...](http://wikimapia.org/31543455/2014-09-27-F-15E-Strike-on-Islamic- State-Compound-near-Kobani-Syria)

[2] [https://twitter.com/deSyracuse](https://twitter.com/deSyracuse)</comment>