How The Koenigsegg Regera Hits 248 MPH Without A Gearbox (2015) - brian-armstrong https://jalopnik.com/how-the-1-500-hp-koenigsegg-regera-hits-248-mph-without-1689181377 <comment><AUTHOR> The article mentions it, but this is _very_ similar to the setup in the Honda Accord Hybrids. Many spec sheets list them as "CVT" or "e-CVT" but those are all wrong -- there's no normal or CVT transmission at all. Instead the car is motivated by an electric motor that can close a clutch plate (in the Koenigsegg it's a hydraulic system probably to handle the greater HP and torque) and engage the ICE engine. When the ICE isn't being used to help out the electric motor it runs basically whenever it wants to and charges the batteries.

This review from 2014 has a great explanation: [https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/review-2014-honda-...](https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/02/review-2014-honda- accord-hybrid-with-video/)

<comment><USER2> A prius works in the same way, correct? In some ways this is a simpler system than conventional ICE-only drivetrains, I think this should have been pushed downmarket even faster than it has been. For people without the ability to charge (e.g. in Switzerland the vast majority lives in rentals without charging ports in the garage) this seems like the best solution so far.

<comment><USER3> The Prius system is actually much more complicated involving a set of planetary gears to couple torque in and out of the drivetrain. The Koenigsegg system doesn't use the ICE below 30mph (because that would stall the engine at its fixed ratio) where the Prius can.

A modified Koenigsegg with ratios adjusted for cruise at the local speed limit (and a lot less power!) sounds like it would work quite well.

<comment><USER4> It's not more complicated; it's less complicated.

The Prius eCVT is just like a traditional planetary gearbox, but instead of having a complex set of auxiliary gears on clutches which need to be closed in pairs to vary the speed of the planet gears, thus the output shaft, it uses electric motors to spin the planetary gears at exactly the speed needed to obtain the desired output speed.

The Prius CVT is absolutely genius in its simplicity.

Here's a good video on how a traditional planetary automatic operates: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugao6jTyM7k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ugao6jTyM7k)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brian-armstrong There's also a fantastic video where Jay Leno asks Christian Koenigsegg himself about this transmission and the 7 speed racing transmission

[https://youtu.be/4jhB9Yx0hyY](https://youtu.be/4jhB9Yx0hyY)

</comment><comment><USER5> >It also has a "battery drain mode." Basically, when you are ending your journey, you will tell the Regera where you will be parking the car, at home or a charging station. The Regera will then make sure that the battery is fully drained before it gets to the end point, which means it'll be ready to accept a charge. Very smart. It has a fully electric mode of about 22 miles.

I thought this was the worst thing you could do to lithium cells?!

<comment><USER3> "Fully drained" for the system probably doesn't mean "fully drained" at the cell level, since (as you say) there is a point below which draining cells damages them. The reported "0%" line will be some way above that.

<comment><USER5> On second thoughts, I'm guessing that what this ACTUALLY does is make sure that the petrol engine doesn't waste fuel recharging the battery unnecessarily at the end of the trip when it's going to get plugged in.

<comment><USER6> I like that idea - it means if you are doing less than 22 miles you can run it as a plug in hybrid and not use fuel. I used to have an old high performance sports and the fuel use for going down the shops etc was annoying.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I want to see the dyno chart. Either there are some serious power spikes/valleys with this setup, or they are nerfing (ie reducing) power at various points to smooth things. There is no way direct-drive IC engine makes anywhere near similar power at 100kph as at 200 (double the rmp). This may be fast, but a transmission would make it much faster.

(A modern trans, at this power/price, would only be 200lbs at most. Less than carrying a passenger.)

<comment><USER8> There shouldn't be any spikes, really. Much less so than with a transmission, which has peaks for every gear.

The car would basically have the following stages:

1\. All electric. ICE is just powering a generator. 2\. 50km/h+: ICE clutches in at 1000 RPM. Not much power provided. 3\. 100km/h+: ICE starts delivers at 2000 RPM. 4\. 250km/h+: Peak torque (assuming sweet spot of around 5000 RPM, just a guess)) 5\. 400km/h+: Redline at 8250 RPM, nothing left.

You'll probably have two torque peaks: Initial electrical acceleration and its drop-off, and ICE peak and drop-off. Depending on how well-tuned this is, it might be smooth between those two peaks.

A trans, on the other hand, would have lows, peaks and shift losses between every gear change, and that's combined with a higher permanent loss.

However, arguably, you could have made a more impressive car while saving weight: By removing the ICE. You'd probably lose a bit of top speed, but make up for it in acceleration. 400km/h is useless.

<comment><USER9> Probably a fine setup for optimising straight-line acceleration and 0-400 times, with questionable track performance. A conventional high-performance car is able to make use of the engine torque at any time by shifting to the appropriate gear and keeping the engine in a narrow rev-range. This, on the other hand relies solely on the electric motors to fill that gap before the torque peak at, say, 250 km/h.

<comment><USER8> I'd argue the exact opposite.

A conventional high-performance car will struggle with its lacking acceleration and narrow optimal rev-range. Every shift is a performance penalty, and the transmission itself is inefficient. It's only really acceptable for straight-line 0-400, where the shift range is only gone through once, and even then it's often too much, with people preferring two-speed transmissions for drag. For a real race, it becomes extremely wasteful.

The only benefit of a conventional setup is the ability to handle extreme top- speeds that direct-drive will have difficulty with. However, in most races you're quite far from 400km/h, making this benefit useless. Instead, you constantly need immediate acceleration and power from variable speeds, which an ICE with transmission will always struggle with.

While this particular car is not that impressive performance-wise, it's tuned for racing, not top-speed. An purely electric racer will run circles around it, with their only downside being tendencies to battery overheating for certain races. On that note, see VW's recent pike's peak record: [https://electrek.co/2018/06/21/vw-all-electric-race-car- fast...](https://electrek.co/2018/06/21/vw-all-electric-race-car-fastest-time- in-pikes-peak-qualifying-round/).

<comment><USER7> But nobody is saying that conventional is better. They are saying that this rig could be improved.

<comment><USER8> It would appear that someone is suggesting that a conventional transmission would be an improvement, which I find unlikely.

But yes, it can be massively improved. IIRC, this car is beat in acceleration by a Tesla Model S P100D, which isn't exactly a supercar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 400 km/h

</comment><comment><USER11> Hey at last, maybe in my lifetime I'll see the motor per wheel AWD design I've been fathoming for the past ten years.

<comment><USER12> Yes, I've been imagining this too since 25 years ago now, also thinking how it would not need turning wheels, just power differential like paddling a boat. Not sure if this part can be done though or if it would break under the pressure... I should have studied engineering to find out.

<comment><USER13> This is how tanks steer! And also (to some extent) why using them on roads ruins the roads. If you tried in a traditionally wheeled car then all of the drive shafts would snap though!

<comment><USER14> I used to think that the treads actually ruin the road because it changes to contact surface on which you apply the power differential from a line (on a tire) to a rectangle(the tread), i.e. it tries to rotate a flat surface which can't be rotated, so somethings got to give. Arguably a tire wouldn't have the same problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> TLDR: At low speeds, such a car is basically an EV with a petrol power generator and some power control circuitry which chooses to alternate between charging the battery or powering the electric motor directly. Under heavy acceleration and after a certain speed threshold (enough for the petrol engine to utilise the fixed final drive ratio), a clutch is engaged and then mechanical power is sent directly to the motor, then to the wheels.

<comment><USER15> Its more like an ICE with electric drive just like some tanks have - the Tiger I comes to mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> That's all cool and good, but now I wanna know how you use something hydraulic for a clutch.

<comment><USER17> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_coupling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluid_coupling)

<comment><USER16> Thanks! The TLDR seems to be that there's an input turbine and an output turbine. (I probably should've seen that coming.)

The modern replacement, torque converters, seem to be essentially the same but with some magical modification of fluid flow in the middle: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torque_converter)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's pretty telling as to what sort of person I am, that I initially read the title as "How the 1,500 Hit Point Koenigsegg Regara" rather than "How the 1,500 Horse Power Koenigsegg Regara".

<comment><USER19> Same for me. Too many Pokemon, MMORPG and MOBA games in my life.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone here follows rotary hybrids? Mazda apparently is working on one for 2020, but no sports car so far...

<comment><USER4> I believe the rotary engine will be relegated to range-extending electricity generation for an otherwise pure EV in Mazda's setup. Much like the BMW i3 has a small generator option for longer range.</comment></comment>


Macintosh 128K: Technical Specifications - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/SP186 <comment><USER2> That's sort of impressive that MacOS supported the original mac up to MacOS\System 7 (released 1997 - a full 13 years later)

<comment><USER3> Not quite: it supported System 7.0.1P, which was released in March 1992 [1]. That's 8 years; still pretty impressive.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7#Version_history](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_7#Version_history)

<comment><USER2> Oh my mistake, I read the wrong version dates from that very wikipedia page. But yes you are correct, that is still pretty impressive

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Support Discontinued 9/1/98"

not bad.

<comment><USER5> This is not unusual for products that existed before a formal support lifecycle was established. Microsoft often uses a 12/31/2001 date for such products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So think about this...the top-of-the-line iMac display currently supports 2560x1440 (or 3686400 pixels) while the original mac supported 512x384 (or 196608 pixels).

If you spread out that increase over the course of 30 years, you are adding 10.5% more pixels each year, while cutting the price by ~60% (from Macintosh to present iMac)

It's been a crazy 30 years!

<comment><USER7> The original Mac had a screen buffer of 24KiB, which isn't enough to even hold half of a Retina-scaled iOS icon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Amazing to compare what fit into 128k back then vs how much memory it takes simply to run the Calculator app now...

</comment><comment><USER9> You could run System 7 on a 128K Mac? That's crazy.

<comment><USER10> Only with a ROM and RAM upgrade (effectively making it a plus). It wasn't cheap, as these components were soldered to the motherboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I just love that it lists the BTU/hour that the machine generates.

<comment><USER12> It is however not needed as the wattage is also available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Last Modified: Apr 19, 2012"

</comment><comment><USER14> What does the big 64 KiB ROM chip ?

<comment><USER15> I understand that significant parts of the OS code were burned into ROM in order to free up RAM, which was more expensive. Code for things like the window manager, etc. Later versions of the OS patched bugs in the ROM by loading the patches into RAM. A rather inventive design at the time.

<comment><USER16> Not only later versions. The original ROM already was patched: [http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Cut,_Paste_and_Crash.txt). Mac OS was the only OS I know of that had a system call for replacing system calls.

<comment><USER17> AmigaOS had "library vectors" (see Exec.library SetFunction) for patching ROM libraries too.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sergey Brin's Home Page - <AUTHOR> http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/ nothing like a timeless ripple effect on your profile photo ;-) <comment><USER2> Even more interesting is his old resume :

[http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/resume.html](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/resume.html)

Or rather what is hidden in a comment in the HTML - (view source to see it):

He certainly accomplished much of that..plus a whole lot more..:)

<comment><USER3> Unfortunately, there's no history of this page beyond 2006

[http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://infolab.stanford.edu/~se...](http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/resume.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the classics from the photo directory there: [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/photos/drag96.jpg](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/photos/drag96.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER5> With time I'm beginning to think Sergey and Larry got incredibly lucky with respect to finding each other for the project that would eventually take off. Sergey always comes off as the enthused tech head, whereas Larry goes for big picture stuff, (a little like a variation on Woz and Jobs) but it seems like since that initial convergence they've been diverging more and more.

I love the way it says "Currently I am at Google".

<comment><USER6> On one hand, they undeniably got lucky finding each other.

On the other hand, they were both researchers in the same field, at one of the best CS universities of the world.

Poisson's law and all; luck favors those who come prepared :)

<comment><USER7> I think you mean Pasteur.

<comment><USER8> I don't care what he meant, I need to get prepared!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Research on the Web seems to be fashionable these days and I guess I'm no exception. Recently I have been working on the Google search engine with Larry Page."

love it.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm bummed that his brother's Geocities website is no longer live.

<comment><USER11> I'm so nostalgic for Geocities and Tripod and the rest. It was a good time.

<comment><USER11> The mid-ninties: It was innocent and simple, but you felt so technologically advanced to be able to publish something online. It wasn't about making millions. No one was judging your code. You used Java Applets to make dynamic menus and that was the pinnacle achievement. No one turned on Javascript. You only worried about Netscape and eventually IE, but you really didn't worry that much about either. You didn't think about domain squatting because you weren't sure how to get a domain and it really wasn't worth the cost, whatever it was. If you did, you got your name from Network Solutions or that startup, Register.com. CGI was for professionals. Perl was for scientists. You kinda checked email every couple weeks. You may have even shared an email address. You were ahead when you had a separate phone line for dial up. You were a big shot when you got DSL (from Phoenix). Your DSL was bought out every six months. It was Phoenix, then Earthlink, then... You got AOL CDs in the mail weekly. You remember gmail invites.

Edit: And this was your editor: [http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php](http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/index.php)

<comment><USER7> More succinctly: you were 20 years younger. That will always be a better time. :)

<comment><USER12> Except for The Doctor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cached URL: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aYC2MlU...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:aYC2MlUeHk4J:infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

<comment><USER14> Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think I went to google.stanford.edu for years after google.com existed.

Those were the very end of the days where I could spend hours following links to the corners of the (much smaller) WWW. Now, if I let myself go down those holes, it happens on Wikipedia or Youtube.

<comment><USER6> tvtropes.com is a wonderful rabbit hole :)

My apologies in advance to your employer for the many lost hours of work this comment will cause :X

<comment><USER16> tvtropes.org

I hope you don't waste time on tvtropes.com ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If we are talking nostalgia, I remember the first time I heard of google; it was around the first time I heard of napster. Fourteen years ago. How the landscapes have changed.

<comment><USER18> Hopefully, Google will take the path of Napster!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _We describe a new architecture for data mining (sorry not yet available online)._

Have they made it available since then? ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, yeah I guess they found that architecture might be a bit too valuable to open source

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wait ... is the applet gone for good?

[http://web.archive.org/web/20000816170648im_/http://www- db.s...](http://web.archive.org/web/20000816170648im_/http://www- db.stanford.edu/~sergey/sergey.gif)

</comment><comment><USER21> The first link is the course he taught with Larry Page [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/349/](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/349/)

</comment><comment><USER22> Rejected logo idea: [http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/google.gif](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~sergey/google.gif)

</comment><comment><USER23> Wonder if the listed personal phone number still works.

<comment><USER24> The guy that answered didn't seem to be sergey

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting resume. I remembered my first webpage when I was learning HTML. The funny thing I noticed was "THE END" at the last.

</comment><comment><USER26> He dreamed about more than 200 billion dolar in his simple html comment unconsciously. Heavenly!

</comment><comment><USER27> Created by Applixware HTML Authoring System, Release 4.3 on Fri Jan 16 02:08:09 1998

</comment><comment><USER28> This is a troll comment to see what pending looks like.

Edit: OK, now I see what it looks like.

</comment><comment><USER29> I see no mention of his hottie mistress. Disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER30> Did/could Stanford claim any IP on Google?

<comment><USER10> They've paid Stanford at least $337 Million in royalties for the original Google algorithm: [https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=19621](https://news.stanford.edu/thedish/?p=19621)

<comment><USER31> Ouch. Current market value on 1.8 million shares = $2,154,600,000. I think they managed that rather poorly (I understand it's common for investment funds / trusts / endowments - which perhaps the IP was held by - to liquidate soon after an IPO, but I'd think a university like Stanford could have more patience).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ha. Office 420.

</comment><comment><USER33> that's an interesting find :)

</comment><comment><USER34> Anybody try to call his number? lol

<comment><USER35> I was tempted but felt it'd be a bit crass and not unlikely to bother some other poor soul who has nothing to do with this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Damn researchers, never update their webpages and certainly not their photos.

<comment><USER37> I like the melting effect on the photo. Old school.

<comment><USER38> Sometimes old school web design can be really charming and nostalgic.

<comment><USER39> You got any nice examples? Currently doing some research on the matter.

<comment><USER40> Check out neocities. I think archive.org has a geocities archive too.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please review streamtu.be - <AUTHOR> http://streamtu.be/

<comment><AUTHOR> It summarizes/ranks links being discussed on Twitter, not simply by looking at the tweets, but by visiting the destination sites being pointed to. It was written as a testcase for software I'm writing for streaming realtime financial data (prices and graphs) to modern browsers, but I've grown fond of it since. It's for people curious about "what's cooking" on Twitter.

</comment><comment><USER2> Chrome gives me a "The website at getfans.info has been reported as a "phishing" site" warning. Maybe look to see if there's an XSS hole on your site?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not on my site. It's because I'm trying to link directly to the favicons from the original site. I have a fix shortly (caching favicons locally). That also fixes some of the sites who prompt for logins when the browser tries to pull the favicon. Thanks for reporting it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ideas/comments welcome.

</comment><comment><USER3> Who is this for? Why?

</comment><comment><USER4> can I filter by country or language?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, but great idea, at least for the larger countries when/if they have a sizeable Twitter base, and assuming the language can be sniffed out fairly easily (well, the asian languages should be easy...).</comment></comment>


Why do so few scientists make significant contributions and so many are forgotten in the long run? - "You and Your Research" - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.virginia.edu/%7Erobins/YouAndYourResearch.html

<comment><USER2> This is such a wonderful article. Since I first found it on PG's site several months ago, I come back and read it about once a month. Not only is it a good motivator to stay after whatever I'm working on, it's also a great way to make sure I'm working on what I'm interested in. Without fail, it makes me focus on what I really should be doing, which, sadly, is not always what I AM doing.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I've never read that. Here's my favorite section:

'Since from the time of Newton to now, we have come close to doubling knowledge every 17 years, more or less. And we cope with that, essentially, by specialization. In the next 340 years at that rate, there will be 20 doublings, i.e. a million, and there will be a million fields of specialty for every one field now. It isn't going to happen. The present growth of knowledge will choke itself off until we get different tools.'

<comment><USER4> It would be cool if scientist could record their research in a machine understandable format. Then people could either state their assumptions or conclusions and the computer would provide the other side, or state what information is missing.

<comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem>

<comment><USER4> Oh, I know that scientist currently use computers to prove things. I mean as a general method of organizing and correlating knowledge that anyone could use. I've seen a similar project, an ontological Wikipedia, but it's probably too tedious for the general practitioner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find this formatting so much more better to read <http://www.paulgraham.com/hamming.html>

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a better format, yes, but the original article includes an introduction, and some questions that aren't in that version.

Edit: my mistake; the questions and answers are included in PG's website. I think that's only the intro and the biographical stuff that is not in that version of the article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "When you are famous it is hard to work on small problems. This is what did Shannon in. After information theory, what do you do for an encore? The great scientists often make this error. They fail to continue to plant the little acorns from which the mighty oak trees grow. They try to get the big thing right off."

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow what a valuable article. That was awesome. Thanks for the post.</comment>


How Mike Moloney Bootstrapped a Profitable Startup as a Teenager - <AUTHOR> http://www.webhostingsecretrevealed.net/blog/web-business-ideas/how-mike-moloney-bootstrapped-filtergrade-a-marketplace-for-creative-entrepreneurs/ <comment><USER2> Mike is the man! Extremely inspired by his journey so far.</comment>


Makefile Assignments are Turing-Complete (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://nullprogram.com/blog/2016/04/30/ <comment><USER2> _However, since there's no way to "slice" a value, subtraction isn't possible._

That's incorrect. It's trivial to implement subtraction in GNU Make. I did it as part of my GMSL project: [http://gmsl.sf.net/](http://gmsl.sf.net/) In fact, you can implement a whole load of functions natively using GNU Make's macro language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure you can do all kinds of things using gmake but this is about POSIX make. See also [1] from the same author.

[1]: [http://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/08/20/](http://nullprogram.com/blog/2017/08/20/)

<comment><USER2> Very good point.</comment></comment></comment>


More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=carbs-against-cardio

<comment><USER2> The article contains this astonishing statement: the meta-analysis "found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease". No association! Yet this has been public-health, government, industry dogma for more than a generation. The history of this catastrophe has barely begun to be written.

<comment><USER3> It usually takes about a generation for bad ideas to pass.

<comment><USER4> It depends on whether government gets behind a bad idea or not. Bureaucracy doesn't like diversity of thought and tends to reinforce current thinking. Look at how long its taken for alternative medicine to get blessed.

<comment><USER5> Huh? Bad example. "Alternative medecine" that actually works just becomes "medecine". The fact that this happens rarely is due to the fact that most products marketed as alternative medecine are a crock and don't hold up when tested. If anything, the fact that government allows these things to be marketed at all is a perfect example of bureaucracy accepting diversity of thought (when it really shouldn't!)

<comment><USER3> I'd rather the government accept medicines with centuries of empirical evidence than lab-synthesised chemicals which have been pushed rapidly through official process using cherry-picked clinical trials and promises of lucrative paid positions for soon-to-be-ex-FDA officials.

<comment><USER5> Citation needed.

But seriously, as far as I'm aware (and I try to stay current on this topic), there is no 'medicine' out there with "centuries of empirical evidence" that isn't already accepted. There _are_ loads of compounds that _claim_ to be effective, but when tested they are found to be no better than placebo.

Even if a compound is found to be effective, it isn't enough to make a good medicine. The active ingredient needs to be identified, extracted, and stabilised in a product that allows doctors to safely control the dose that a patient receives. Skipping all of that work and just trying to take an uncontrolled substance is dangerous - you can't tell if the active compound has broken down, or just isn't present in a particular sample, or conversely, is present in dangerous amounts. Furthermore, the naturally occurring compound may have other, undesirable compounds included with it.

Modern medicine aims to control for all of this, and yes, the complexity can be off-putting compared to the simplicity of "natural" solutions, but there are good reasons for that complexity existing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Weston Price was a prominent dentist and nutritional researcher in the 20s and 30s.

He went on a tour around the world, studying isolated groups of people, their diet (including mineral content) and checking their dental health, using it as a proxy for resistance to infection and proof that dietary needs are being met.

From studying groups as diverse as a remote Swiss village, windswept Scottish fishing town, African tribes, Pacific Islanders, and Inuit, he came to a series of conclusions which are at least somewhat in agreement with this.

A secondary point was also that poor nutrition of the mother, could be seen in children due to crowding of the tooth and other maladies.

<http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200251h.html>

The book is a little archaic and I am sure that some of the text sounds odd to modern-day ears, however if you can read past that you can find some interesting information.

I am aware of the skepticism some have about Weston Price, but recommend at least skimming his own words rather than reading only choice tidbits presented by those who disagree with him or would debunk his views as junk science.

<comment><USER7> Looking at the websites of the Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation <<http://www.ppnf.org/> > and the Weston A Price Foundation <<http://www.westonaprice.org/> >, both linked from Price's Wikipedia article, I am not convinced that those who call his views "junk science" are wrong.

Among their tenets:

* supporting raw whole milk instead of pasteurized milk

* believing that facial structure has an effect on health (and that the nutrition of one's parents affects this)

* campaigning against the fluoridation of public water

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the modern foundations espousing his ideals _do_ promote junk science like homeopathy. But some of his original research is still interesting. Consider reading some of Stephan Guyenet's blog posts about that research (<http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/>) (grain of salt implied, like with any prescriptive nutritional advice).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Gary Taubes' _Good Calories, Bad Calories_ is a great book that examines the science behind low-carb diets and attacks low-fat diets as completely lacking scientific support and being essentially the biggest public health disaster of the 20th century.

<comment><USER10> I recommend it too. The title makes it sound like light pop-science, but he did _a lot_ more research than I expected, and unlike most people commenting on diet, he went to the primary sources, and even went back a far as 150 years to see where the current mainstream view comes from.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> All grains regardless of how wholesome they are have numerous issues with them.

1\. Glycemic index / load...all starchy carbohydrates raise your blood sugar quickly and then cause a crash. This includes both white bleached flour as well as whole grains.

2\. Gluten is the protein found in many grains, wheat being the most common. Gluten is responsible for SO many of today's problems. Seriously just google "gluten" paired with any autoimmune disease or other health condition and you will find loads of information. This is not just for people who are diagnosed Celiacs but for all.

3\. Lectins are found in all grains and legumes. They are the defense mechanism for the plant to warn off predators to not eat them. They are toxic. When we consume them they are considered "anti-nutrients" and bind to various nutrients in our body such as calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, etc. The more you eat, the more your body is leached.

4\. Calorie per nutrient, grains are horrible. It is impossible to calculate a grain based diet to meet all the recommended intakes while staying below the recommended calories. When you calculate a diet based on lean meats, fruits, vegetables, seeds, and nuts, it appears you are taking in a multivitamin.

5\. Grains are acidic and the body is meant to run on an alkaline base. If you end the day leaning towards the acidic side you again start to leach nutrients, specifically calcium from your body. Replacing grains with fruits and vegetables gets you back to the alkaline side. The only acidic foods that should be consumed are grass-fed meats.

The Paleo approach is DEFINITELY the way to go for any person who is trying to get healthier and recover from chronic diseases your doctors have misdiagnosed you with. It is seriously amazing the vast number of misdiagnoses that occur when a holistic nutritional approach isn't considered.

<comment><USER12> \+ many to what is written above, except the issue with acidity, which is as of now an excessively dubious hypothesis, see:

[http://www.imminst.org/forum/Acid-base- hypothesis-t40269.htm...](http://www.imminst.org/forum/Acid-base- hypothesis-t40269.html)

Also, I shall point out that oat is a glaring exception to the grain rule; it has NO gluten and lectin, it has a relatively mild impact on blood sugar and has a lot of fiber, with special mention of beta-glucan, an immunoprotectant, anti-cancer and blood sugar regulating fiber. However, make sure that it is plain rolled oats, steel-cut oats or oat bran; Cheerios is not a towering source of oat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe we will start to finally see products in major super markets that are affordable and don't have tons of refined carbs. Right now it is either really expensive or really time consuming to eat a variety of food that doesn't have refined carbs.

<comment><USER14> What do you mean by refined carbs? Does it include bread, pasta, potatoes, etc? Because I don't think those are bad for you because they don't cause blood sugar levels to rise as quickly as stuff like HFCS and sugar (but I could be wrong).

<comment><USER15> What's the evidence that you're thinking of that HFCS is particularly bad for you? Sugar is bad for you no matter what form it takes.

<comment><USER16> I don't think sugar is bad for you. Excess sugar certainly is, but then excess anything usually is.

<comment><USER15> Take the spreadsheet 'carbocation posted, sort it by "glycemic index", skip past all the nulls, and you have a list from "foods this SciAm article suggests are unhealthful" to "foods this SciAm article suggests aren't unhealthful". You'll find sugar, flour, potatoes, and white rice at the top of the list, and fats and oils near the bottom.

<comment><USER17> There are some interesting counterexamples; it's possible to make white bread with a GI of 40 or so. Flour doesn't necessarily mean high GI, nor are ingredients the sole determinant of GI. There's a paper kicking round where the authors baked white bread with GIs between 40 and 100 (from memory). The _only difference was proving time...

<comment><USER18> That's because the longer a dough is proofed, the less white flour remains in its refined state — the yeast has had its way with as many sugar molecules as it could belch. The flour is still the GI determinant, it's just not refined white flour anymore.

<comment><USER17> Longer proving time gave a higher GI. That seems at odds with your explanation. Have I misunderstood?

<comment><USER18> Could you rustle up a link? That makes little to no sense to me.

<comment><USER17> [http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&...](http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayFulltext?type=1&fid=932472&jid=BJN&volumeId=96&issueId=05&aid=932460)

Tables 1 and 2 will give you a quick summary.

<comment><USER18> Ah. First of all, those proofing times are not nearly long enough for the effect I was referring to to come into play. Secondly, each Bread sample is not at all controlled for its proof time, they are explicitly varying the volume of each bread (more volume = more proofing time, which is required in bread-making). Since the entire point of the study is that volume is correlated with GI, the results make sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Based on the interest generated in the glycemic index by this article, I found a link to the National Cancer Institute's glycemic index chart for over 4,000 foods.

Link here: [http://riskfactor.cancer.gov/DHQ/database/gi_values.csfii_94...](http://riskfactor.cancer.gov/DHQ/database/gi_values.csfii_94-96_foodcodes.xls)

Discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1333106>

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen A few months ago, I thought that sugar was glucose, and therefore good for the brain. On that basis I would drink two liters of Coke a day for the brainpower. Then, while on this forum, someone posted a link to <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM> (Sugar, the Bitter Truth), which let me know that sugar is not pure glucose.

I resolved to find glucose, and I eventually did. I had to go to one of the more industrial neighborhoods in Santiago (I live in Chile) to find it, and after a few trips there I had myself a 55 lb sack of dextrose mono-hydrate, which dissolves in water to form pure glucose.

Now I mix it with water for 250 calories of food for thought per glass or put it in half-liter plastic bottles to drink at school. It's amazing stuff, it's 100% healthy, and it's great for working at hard problems.

<comment><USER20> Just drink some organic orange juice. It's way better for you.

<comment><USER21> Better yet, eat the oranges.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> t colin campbell, michael pollan, & Tim Robbins are probably the 3 most important writers on this topic. while the latter two definitely write more to stir reaction, prof. campbell basically published his results in the china study.

basically, all three writers/experts agree that a vegetarian diet consisting of unprocessed foods is the best (although not foolproof) way to ensure that you will lead a long and disease free life.

the modern food revolution is only about 60 odd years old at this point - human evolution cannot keep up with how quickly our food has changed and how quickly our caloric intake has increased. perhaps in 10,000 years we will be able to find a way to absorb nutrients from krispy kreme donuts and pizza but for now its best to stick low on the food chain and as michael pollan say - "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants".

Anyone looking for sources or more info i recommend the following:

The China Study - T Colin Campbell The Food Revolution (Or Diet For a New America) - Tim Robbins The Omnivore Dilemma (Michael Pollan) Healthy At 100 - Tim Robbins

one last note - Diet for a new america was written in 1988!!! This information has been out there for decades - politics and misinformation has kept it relatively out of mainstream media and on the sidelines but the statistics and information is out there for those who take the time to look...

<comment><USER8> I _strongly_ disagree with your recommendations for Campbell and Robbins (and I assume you mean John Robbins, not Tim Robbins). Like most nutritionists, they do agree on eliminating refined carbohydrates and processed foods from your diet. But these two specifically argue that saturated fats are unhealthy and low-fat diets are optimal, the exact _opposite_ of the thesis of the study and article.

Robbins is a dietary extremist and his books make Quackwatch's list of non- recommended books that "promote misinformation, espouse unscientific theories, and/or contain unsubstantiated advice" [1]. The National Council Against Health Fraud even had a critical blurb towards his television program about _Diet For a New America_ in their '91 newsletter [2].

While I find Campbell's actual research in the china studies important, the book infers much more than the studies showed, not to mention a lack of supporting follow-up studies that control for the most common criticisms (genetics, rates of exercise, comparisons with mostly meat-eating populations without diseases of civilization, etc.). I have a real issue with taking descriptive information from data and turning it into prescriptive advice before accumulating sound evidence. For a good critique, the always awesome SkepDoc Harriet Hall posted a review on the Science-Based Medicine blog (which I highly recommend) [3], although the comments get bogged down about her linking to a similar criticism by the Weston Price foundation.

Oddly enough, as a lifelong vegetarian myself, I find myself wanting to agree with these authors and recommending them to others. But it's disheartening these authors feel the need to fortify their ethical choices with shoddy scientific inferences. Yes, following their recommendations will almost certainly lead to better health, but only because those recommendations merely happen to correlate well with a healthier than average diet, not because their assumed causations about optimal health are necessarily correct.

However, I do agree with your recommendation for Pollan.

[1] [http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecbooks.ht...](http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/nonrecbooks.html)

[2] <http://www.ncahf.org/nl/1991/9-10.html>

[3] <http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=385>

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> _The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease._

Considering that this is the conclusion of the study, the article itself seems to soft-peddle the implications, stating in multiple places that saturated fat may be "less bad" than refined carbohydrates. I'm a little mystified as to why the article itself refuses to conclude that saturated fat is not a cause of heart disease. The evidence that it plays a role has never been particularly compelling.

</comment><comment><USER24> Almost all nutritional research seems inherently flawed to me only because it's so difficult to control the diets, lifestyles, and (obviously) genes of the study participants.

 _The China Study_ makes some compelling arguments for avoiding "animal-based" foods, but of course, there are people like the Inuit, who don't exhibit high incidence of cancer and heart disease despite eating mostly animal-based foods.

I try to take all this stuff with a grain of salt, but the idea of "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." seems most sensible to me. And I'd probably add to that, "Get some exercise."

<comment><USER25> Due to the lack of carbohydrates in their diet, Inuits apparently process protein differently than most others, through gluconeogenesis. I can't say whether that has any substantial impact on their susceptibility to cancer, but it's not _necessarily_ inconsistent with the "China Study" findings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I always wondered about this as a kid in school, when they talked about 'the food pyramid' and that nonsense. It's not like when you eat animal fat, it slides out of your digestive tract unchanged into your own tissue. It has to be broken down and digested and turned into something else. At the time, I remember thinking it would have been like assuming you could eat someone else's brains and gain their knowledge.

But I was just a kid and they were the grownups, so I didn't say anything and believed what they were telling me.

(Nothing, literally nothing, I learned in school outside of how to read, write, and perform simple arithmetic has been correct or useful in my life.)

<comment><USER27> Domesticated animals have more fat than wild animals. Maybe wild animals are better for us, than domesticated.

<comment><USER12> Not really; pigs in particular have been bred to contain much, much less fat and more muscle than what is typical in wild boars and ancient pig breeds. The relatively rare mangalitsa hog is a perfect example of a fatty breed. Although I note that this preference of lean pigs started only in the 20th century with the anti-fat craze and the advent of vegetable oil production.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's not as simple as avoiding refined carbohydrates. Rice, baked potatoes, watermellon, dates, and parsnips all have a very high (>90) glycemic index, while some refined carbohydrates such as whole wheat bread and pasta have medium to low GI (<70).

<comment><USER17> Yeah. What's more, the same kind of bread from different makers can have significantly different GI. The sugar content of fruit (and so, presumably, its GI) varies with all sorts of things. So I completely agree that it's not that simple.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm always a little perturbed when I read about "refined carbs" being bad for you. This is partially because of the "Paleo Diet" folks who rail against any and all grains (and legumes) all the time.

How refined is too refined exactly? Is whole wheat bread considered refined? Oatmeal? Granola?

Or are we specifically talking about white flour here?

<comment><USER30> Not an expert by any means but I imagine that they are talking about high fructose corn syrup and bleached white flour.

<comment><USER15> No, I don't think that's true. Grains in general are troublesome (there are some worse than others, so that for instance bran won't kill you and flax is downright good for you [but yech]), but this isn't some fad about how bleached flour is particularly bad for you. Foods consisting primarily of flour are in general not going to be particularly healthy.

Here's a link:

[http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_gl...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsweek/Glycemic_index_and_glycemic_load_for_100_foods.htm)

'carbocation posted a link to an Excel spreadsheet of GI listings for lots of foods, too.

You'll find that the lists aren't simply about demonizing Coca Cola and Wonder Bread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's hard for me to believe I'm saying this, but if this new study is true then apparently it's time to revisit the Atkins diet.

</comment><comment><USER4> If it comes from a factory, factory farm or a lengthy cooking process, the food is optimized for low cost and nice appearance. It may be disastrous for you healthwise.

If a food is found in nature and humans evolved with it and like eating it, its more likely to be good for you if eaten with the sort of variety of foods you'd find in nature.

The fact that we like it is itself information about how healthy a food is, provided technology isn't fooling our brains somehow.

<comment><USER32> I too love snickers bars! I pick them from my garden each day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've mentioned Ray Peat's articles before on this site but if you've found this article interesting, have a look at some of his articles: <http://raypeat.com/articles/>

</comment><comment><USER33> Barry Sears (of the Zone Diet), among others, has been saying essentially this for 15+ years. But I think ppl are starting to catch on, e.g., most know that corn syrup is terrible for you.

</comment><comment><USER34> How can this be?!?!?! The scientific consensus _was_ overwhelming!!! Al Gore and Michael Mann tell me I am not to question scientific consensus and to do so I shall be branded a "denier".

</comment><comment><USER35> The problem is the insulin response generated when the various sugary carbohydrates hit the blood stream; "slow" carbohydrates are nowhere near being a problem.

<comment><USER19> What you say is almost certainly true with regards to diabetes risk. However, the association is less perfect with regards to atherogenesis; in other words, the glycemic index/heart disease risk may be purely mediated by diabetes.

Nevertheless, this article is a great start; I like that the media is now starting to pick up on the correct correlation between carbs and atherosclerosis - and if they also begin to understand and convey the glycemic index, so much the better. As the studies discussed in this reasonably well- cited article indicate, carbohydrate load correlates with the atherogenic lipid profile, whereas saturated fat load does not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> By whom this study was funded? The Association of American pork producers, I guess. =)</comment>


Why Germans pay cash for almost everything (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/262595/why-germans-pay-cash-for-almost-everything/ <comment><USER2> This is from 2014. The two previous mentions here on HN ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9344114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9344114) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332696](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8332696) ) each had 3 comments.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple solution to collect email addresses on a to-be-launched Site?  - <AUTHOR>

I want to place email, name and address fields in a parked home page on a Web site that has not launched. I need to collect emails and build a database so that I can announce progress and eventual launch. Ideally, I want to respond to anyone who completes form with an automated email. I'm looking for a selfhosted solution, ideally php but since other users may have this problem, you can submit any one you know, no matter wich language, any Wordpress plugin/template suggestion will also be really good. Thanks <comment><USER2> You could try embedding a google form: <http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/05/embed-your-forms.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> MailChimp</comment>


New Yorker on Clive Wearing: man with Memento-like memory retention of a few seconds - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/24/070924fa_fact_sacks?printable=true

<comment><USER2> Er, no, Oliver Sacks _wrote_ the article. The article is _about_ Clive Wearing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Fixed.</comment></comment>


Google Fuchsia: A system built for 'Instant Apps' on steroids - <AUTHOR> https://9to5google.com/2018/02/16/fuchsia-friday-instant-apps/ <comment><USER3> AI-driven search, always-on, cloud-focused, centralized, over-engineered for maximum tracking/profiling, decisions left to a single authority... I didn't think Google could outdo itself but along comes Fuchsia.

This is my knee-jerk reaction and I admit I'm looking ahead as Fuchsia evolves further. Trying to see the benefits of this in the long-term but currently failing. Is this another nail in the coffin to conventional desktop OSes as we possibly evolve (or de-evolve) in the decades to come?

I sometimes imagine what systems like those in ' _Star Trek_ ', ' _2001 - <USER2> Space Odyssey_ ' (HAL) and others might look/feel like. Is Fuschia an attempt to get us there (cynical flipside: albeit with authority figures bent on reestablishing control of a narrative they have lost over the last few years).

How much control do we give up and... can we trust the gatekeepers?

<comment><USER4> I watched an episode of Star Trek TNG this morning where they disconnect the microphones in a room so the computer can't hear them.

(the one where Barclay gets zapped with the brain light)

On Star Trek though the computer runs on free energy and is just a tool. Google has to make money.

<comment><USER3> > On Star Trek though the computer runs on free energy and is just a tool. > Google has to make money.

Right. As I think ahead, though, the only tools we're essentially getting are from commercial companies. Even our own governments (worldwide) are running these tools from the same commercial sources.

I'm not aware of any solutions being built now for the kind of interconnected future (smart homes, smart cars, smart "news", etc) that isn't centralized and also coming from commercial sources (Google, Amazon, etal).

The Star Trek/2001 analogy is about an OS system that isn't too dissimilar to our own connected future. Instead of handling a Star Ship, these systems would be running smart homes, managing our lives. That's a lot of profiling in the hands of a few companies (and their _" partners"_) who may not have the best intentions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This all assumes constant, good and cheap data network coverage tho - is that an assumption the whole OS is making? :-( if so.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, open some previously-unused (or even not-recently-used) feature of an app and suddenly bam, there goes 100mb of data.

<comment><USER7> Ad networks do this shit all the time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Instant apps are an interesting concept. I believe my Android 8 phone supports them but I really didn't notice any of them running. Maybe it's how they are designed. Anyway, does anybody know the answers to these questions?

1) Are they going to ask the same permissions every time an instant app is downloaded or are they caching the answers of the user?

2) How do they pick the instant app to download when multiple apps can do the same thing?

3) As a consequence, how to know which company to contact for assistance and/or ask for our personal data (think GDPR)?

<comment><USER9> Try Vimeo. It is the only instant app I have seen yet. It seems to lay around and be more instant if you have already launched it.

<comment><USER8> I went to vimeo.com with the browser of my phone (Firefox). Started to watch a video, the video plays inside the browser. I checked if I had instant apps enabled in Settings (Apps, Advanced, Default apps, Opening links) and I did. Maybe it's because I'm using Firefox? Would it work with Chrome? Oh well, it really doesn't matter. If I want an app I'm installing it, otherwise it's perfectly fine not to have it. Actually, I prefer not to have too many things going on without me knowing.

<comment><USER10> I believe you need to use Chrome

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I prefer PWAs more than this. Instant apps is highly proprietary. PWAs have the potential to work across platforms.

<comment><USER12> With a lower UI/UX quality than any native UI, but hey it is portable.

For example, WebGL based games still don't run properly on devices that barely sweat with OpenGL 3.x native apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What happened to Escher? The repo is deleted and I can't seem to find anything on it.

<comment><USER14> I'm not sure why Escher started in a separate repo (possibly to make testing on Linux easier), but it's been moved to its rightful place inside of the Garnet repo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> i hope they don't overengineer this OS by trying to reinvent the wheel. Just a regular mobile OS, working fast on cheap hardware, with an elegant SDK and the possibility to develop apps using cross-platform tools would look appealing enough to me. IE : take iOS or android, fix the parts that are broken, and remove useless feature ( because you don't care about backward compatibility anymore), use a modern and safe language for the sdk, make it open source enough that people can have experiment with it, and you've got a winner.

</comment><comment><USER16> This reminds me of Apple's OpenDoc[1]

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

</comment><comment><USER17> Progressive installation is great

I'm getting a bit apprehensive about the feed centric view though. What are the odds Google is going to require full browsing/identity/use/location/voice/video/file permissions for everything, by mixing it all together into one 'experience', like they do with the Google assistant

I suppose at least it's open source

<comment><USER5> Based on what happened with Android and Open Source, I'd be wary. Over time some of the Open Source core apps and bits of the O.S. (I think?) were replaced with closed source things via Google Play. There was good technical motivation for doing so - it bypassed the slow carriers and allowed users to get the latest updates quicker - but the end result was the same.

I'm also wary of the feed thing to. As well as the data access thing you mention, how does it decide what the "best" app for a task is and do I get any say? Also, I wonder if it will end up with a situation that if you want your content to be available to these users you have to make it available with no control over how it's presented? (You could argue that on the web currently most content producers have messed that up with trackers, ads, etc which is a fair point but I don't know if this is the answer.) If so, whether it's Open Source or not makes little difference to most people trying to publish stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perhaps I'm missing something, but it seems hugely wasteful to require apps to be downloaded for every use.

<comment><USER19> they would use caching heavily, they just don't delete it until you actually need some free space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ephemerality sounds like JIT but for apps. Seems the necessary stuff to run the app will be downloaded dynamically and cached locally to run later. Though, why cant be this done in the current setup? What are the limitations that fuschia overcomes in this regards?

</comment><comment><USER21> So... like web pages? [https://xkcd.com/1367/](https://xkcd.com/1367/)

(except worse because it's a walled garden)

<comment><USER22> "Apps" do not imply walled garden.</comment></comment>


Hacker News Folks Get Long Overdue Thanks - <AUTHOR> http://linuxlock.blogspot.sg/2013/07/hacker-news-gets-long-overdue-thanks.html <comment><USER3> While this is a great and heartbreaking story that makes me proud to be an active member of HN it's also a symptom of the totally broken US healthcare system.

From wikipedia:

The United States life expectancy of 78.4 years at birth, up from 75.2 years in 1990, ranks it 50th among 221 nations, and 27th out of the 34 industrialized OECD countries, down from 20th in 1990. Of 17 high-income countries studied by the National Institutes of Health in 2013, the United States had the highest or near-highest prevalence of infant mortality, heart and lung disease, sexually transmitted infections, adolescent pregnancies, injuries, homicides, and disability. Together, such issues place the U.S. at the bottom of the list for life expectancy. On average, a U.S. male can be expected to live almost four fewer years than those in the top-ranked country.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), the United States spent more on health care per capita ($8,608), and more on health care as percentage of its GDP (17.9%), than any other nation in 2011. The Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among similar countries, and notes U.S. care costs the most.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_States)

<comment><USER4> Edit: It has been (correctly) pointed out downthread that I have helped hijacking a very personal post for political point scoring - which I think is fair. However we lack a decent history function in HN so I leave it here otherwise the thread will read strangely.

Thank you - as a Brit I read this too. I cycled through emotions - fear and sympathy for the diagnosis, hope as some of our best professionals consider new options, and then.

WTF describes it best.

Americas attitude toward health care is odd from our perspective - <USER2> mismatched socks odd but like a Collegue suddenly announcing that aliens are real, they look very talk and thin and one is living in his attic

That kind of odd

(I am glad that the OP has recovered, heartened by every success medicine has against this disease. Just ... It's odd how nearly this was a different story)

May you have a long and happy life.

<comment><USER5> The UK has notoriously poor cancer outcomes.

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer- sur...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1560849/UK-cancer-survival- rate-lowest-in-Europe.html)

<comment><USER6> You understand we've done a lot since 2007, right?

EDIT: specifically, "survival rate" is just "how many people lived for 5 years after diagnosis". Thus, you detect a lot of slow growing prostate cancer and your survival rates go up, even though nothing has been done to reduce the incidence of cancer, or stop any more people from dying of cancer.

When you look at US cancer mortality rates they look pretty good, until you restrict the numbers to the under-65s, when suddenly the numbers look pretty average. This might be because poor americans don't get access to treatment until they're 65 and qualify for some aid.

<comment><USER5> Can you provide a link to a study that shows UK cancer outcomes exceeding those of US outcomes in populations under 65?

<comment><USER7> [http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1710486](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleID=1710486)

<comment><USER5> This appears to say that incidence of cancer is worse in the US, but that outcomes are better.

<comment><USER7> OK, I'm starting to think you're right about that. Here's another source that agrees with you.

[http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13497&page=3](http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=13497&page=3)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great story of compassion and triumph. So... How do we make it scale?

Is it mandatory insurance? Insurance doesn't make everything affordable, but it probably wild have been helpful. Though maybe the co-pay would have been $50k.

Universal tax-payer funded insurance? The term "tax payer" is interesting because politicians and pundits forget that we're all tax payers in one form or another. Granted some pay more, some are net consumers of govt services. But tax payers mean us, and those with more earned income more than those with less. I think the main difference between taxes and donation is choice.

Single-payer or government provided healthcare? Pretty sure that no one would identify the government as the picture perfect example of efficiency. Plus, putting elected officials or their appointees in charge of handing out goods and services doesnt seem to be sustainable. Not that putting profit seeking entities in charge has yielded the ideal result.

Making drug providers, healthcare providers and everyone else in that supply chain non-profit? Profit has enormous motivational powers. Not always for good. But it is pretty amazing what can be accomplished by organizations setup to create wealth.

Big Data? Sorry, I couldn't resist. Well, lets use that as a proxy for innovation. It would seem that greater opportunity for innovation would help. Lower barriers to trying new drugs, procedures, diet, treatments would allow for potentially lower cost solutions to be created.

Separating health care from your job? Of your insurer only needs you to be healthy until you find a new job, there's not much in incentive for long-term healthcare and preventative screenings to identify tumors and other problems before they become an expensive problem. Though that would seem to be an arguement in favor of a single payer system.

Sorry, I don't have an answer. Hopefully, great stories like the OP continue. But if we don't make it scale then we haven't really done all we possibly can do.

<comment><USER9> _Single-payer or government provided healthcare? Pretty sure that no one would identify the government as the picture perfect example of efficiency. Plus, putting elected officials or their appointees in charge of handing out goods and services doesnt seem to be sustainable._

It seems odd to me that so many Americans seem pessimistic about their own government. I could understand if the attitude was, "We could make universal, socialized healthcare work. We could make it cheaper than Canada's. We could make it better than Sweden's. We just don't want to for ideological reasons."

But how can it be that the attitude is, "It would never work here?" You're the greatest empire in the history of civilization. What is this word "can't" and why is it in your vocabulary?

<comment><USER10> Well, we do already spend more than the UK on providing health insurance (divided by total population), but we're just providing it to seniors and poor people.

The problem is the morass of laws we've accumulated around healthcare over the years for various reasons that now interact in complex ways that nobody foresaw. Like the law designed to make Medicare or Medicaid (I forget which) drugs cheaper that ended up making it illegal to give free birth control to college students.

We also have the laws from when people believed that competition increased costs and so tried to ban competition between hospitals. Or the committee that sets doctor's reimbursement rates for Medicare procedures based on the *$%@# labor theory of value. And the laws designed to prevent people from overcharging Medicare that means that everybody has to worry about those rates across the industry. Or the way that the makeup of that committee means that primary care physicians gets shafted.

And the fact that we allow so few schools to teach medicine means that they can charge an arm and a leg, which means that those poor shafted PCPs need the kickbacks they get for assigning specialist care in order to pay off their student loans and malpractice insurance.

And I could go on.

And now we have this system that's incomprehensibly complex. So Congress has no way of figuring how to fix it on their own. There are people who've spent years figuring out how all of this works, but that's their job and if the system was actually fixed their job would be gone and that understanding they spent years acquiring would be useless.

Which isn't to say that this is entirely hopeless. There have been some efforts at the hospital level like Kaiser Permanente's to ameliorate the perverse incentives in the system and capture some of the value unlocked by that. And there are some laws that could be changes or repealed (like the one against hospital competition) without really breaking anything. So I think that gradual reform might be possible, but it's going to be a long road that doesn't particularly involve the issues that people tend to talk about around healthcare.

<comment><USER11> In slightly less words and with slightly less accuracy, you're unwilling or unable to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

To an extent I wonder how much of that is due to lack of recent experience with starting from scratch. The United States hasn't had a revolution, a war on its territory, or a regime collapse in a long time.

<comment><USER12> What first-world country has?

<comment><USER11> Germany and Japan were rebuilt from the ground up after 1945, France is now on the fifth republic, Spain, Portugal, and Greece shed dictatorships in the 1970s, some of Eastern Bloc now qualify as first world and have undergone a major change in 1989-91...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is truly a wonderful story. But it makes you wonder how many others in a similar situation weren't so fortunate.

I lived in the US for two years, and I never understood the aversion to government healthcare. The Canadian system is far from perfect, and I know there are failures. But it's still a lot better than soliciting for online charity on a case by case basis.

I'm impressed and humbled that it worked in this case. Just a little disturbed that it was necessary at all.

<comment><USER14> I am not sure this story is really about the need for socialized medicine. This is more about the need of specialist care and second opinions. If most doctors he saw determined that he most likely would not survive treatment, a socialized medical program may have very well denied payment for such treatments, and he would have had to resort to fundraising anyways.

Maybe if the system was flexible, nimble and could make judgement calls on the side of compassion, it might work, but this is difficult in both public or private sector institutions.

<comment><USER13> Good point. I do think the frequency of cases where the only option is private fund raising is much reduced under public systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The real thanks goes to the oncologists. I'm pretty sure they would have shrugged off the monetary losses to save a life.

<comment><USER16> I wholeheartedly agree that the oncologists deserve a lot of praise/gratitude for their work. That gratitude is precisely the reason why I disagree with the latter half of your statement. I think it is unfair to to suggest that they would have accepted a monetary loss. Nobody visits an oncology specialist because life is wonderful. Every patient is somebody's mother, brother or spouse and every patient is facing an uphill battle.

Doctors deserve a paycheck to feed their families and pay off medical school debt just like everyone else.

<comment><USER15> Of course they do. But if he'd only raised $30k, they'd have gone "Welp, not enough, guess you're just going to have to die"? I seriously doubt it. You're going to serve the patients you can serve and get the recompense you can - people without insurance are going to bring some losses, but you don't just let them die.

<comment><USER16> _" people without insurance are going to bring some losses, but you don't just let them die."_

Are you aware of the health insurance debate/disaster in the US? How long can doctors operate at a loss?

I must say that you are very fortunate if you do not know someone who has died of cancer and was unable to see/pay every specialist they could fit in to their final months days. People die of cancer all the time wishing they had the money to see the ______ oncology specialist.

<comment><USER15> I've actually worked with health insurance billing.

The way it works is that they bill ridiculously large amounts, which nobody without insurance can pay. They know this. The insurance companies negotiate it, other people pay what they can, and it all more or less works out in the end. I'd much, much prefer to see a single payer system.

Seeing every specialist is different than being in treatment with a doctor and having them cut you off because you can't pay. It's very rare I hear of a doctor going "well it's a shame you can't afford to pay for this surgery" \- nearly always they do it, bill it, and accept the losses. Hospitals recover less than 20% from people without insurance.

<comment><USER17> Do doctors make individual decisions about working pro bono, and does it come directly out of their paycheque, or does the hospital cover it for them?

<comment><USER18> Texas oncology is a private practice. The $50K most likely paid for all the non-labor costs of the treatment. The doctors were working for free; i.e. they weren't compensated for their time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's great that people here helped him out and that a life was saved, but it's also sad that some US citizens - in this case a veteran - have to beg for healthcare.

<comment><USER19> It's a tragedy when anyone, anywhere, dies because he/she cannot afford or has no access to adequate medical care.

We have a very long way to go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Often the least mentioned and discussed approach to solving the healthcare morass is the customer driver model of healthcare.

David Goldhill is the author of Catastrophic Care: How American Health Care Killed My Father--and How We Can Fix It

He advocates restricting the insurance system gradually and phasing out eventually, to increase accountability and vastly improve delivery standards.

His father was afflicted by a series of hospital infections that compounded his condition and eventually killed him.

When admitted in hospitals, he was thrice subjected to medical procedures that were meant for other people.

This Atlantic article is eminently readable.

How American Health Care Killed My Father

[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/09/how- americ...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/print/2009/09/how-american- health-care-killed-my-father/307617/)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_7qCpiS_ZQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_7qCpiS_ZQ)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9y_FttOGE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A9y_FttOGE)

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OAj9J_HW4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0OAj9J_HW4)

</comment><comment><USER21> Nobody is turning this into a political issue. This IS a political issue. The only people who argue otherwise are Americans that selfishly support the current system in their country.

Well bully for them. If they want people to stop "politicizing" issues that are entirely the result of the political game they play, then maybe they should stop being so selfish when a story like this comes up and some poor American has to pass around a hat so he can continue to live.

The minor inconvenience of ruining some feel-good story for you is nothing compared to the blind eye you choose to turn in regards to everyone out there who has the exact same problems but doesn't have HN to turn to to fund their treatment. One is barely an issue, the other is a travesty that you can help to change.

Expect this to come up every time until it's no longer needed.

</comment><comment><USER22> I remember when this story was first posted. It's not often in life that someone gets a happy ending. It's a moment we can all revel in.

</comment><comment><USER23> This story makes me glad to live in France and have such a good healthcare system.

<comment><USER24> Also, you get to live in France... :]

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow - that a tear jerker that's hard to respond to. Glad to hear he is well!

</comment><comment><USER26> HN : 1 USA health system : 0

</comment><comment><USER27> I honestly thought this was going to be a SEO success story when I saw the white hat vs black hat picture.

</comment><comment><USER28> What's with all the extra periods in the title?

<comment><USER29> iPhone keyboard is my bet. Two taps of the space bar (easy enough to do accidentally) gets you " ." and capitalizes the next letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Well done to HN. You cared.

</comment><comment><USER31> I am very happy for you! It's amazing what a community can do when its focus is directed towards a single goal.

<comment><USER32> Spot on.

If only all of humanity did this to each other.

<comment><USER13> Except for the US, most of the developed world does, via public health care. It's not perfect, but better than the alternative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I have often wondered given the kind of cost involved in good health care in USA, along with college fees, why don't more Americans move to Europe for health care and education where it is probably free most of the time?

P.S.: I am from Pakistan.

<comment><USER34> Don't most of those "free" public health care systems only apply to citizens? I recall a story about a foreigner in Germany having to pay for their care, even if the price was reduced. Non-emergency care in the UK, for example, requires legal residency, which may be hard to come by for someone too poor to afford health care in the US. France requires non-EU citizens to have insurance for care in France to get a visa, as I understand it.

So, it's not just as easy as "let's pack up and move to the EU so we can get free healthcare tomorrow." Otherwise, you can imagine that every time a non- insured American got sick, they could compare the cost of getting new insurance to the cost of a plane ticket, and the plane ticket would win, I'm sure. =)

<comment><USER33> Yes, of course. But then I am talking more about the whole life, not only in the case of emergency etc.. I mean for someone like me, from what I have read about American healthcare and education system, I will choose Europe any day over America. And even though, I really don't have that choice with my passport. But in the case of US citizens, the choice seems realtively easy.

<comment><USER12> Being a US citizen doesn't mean that you can just waltz into Europe. Like other commenters said, you usually need to be a citizen or at least some sort of permanent resident to take advantage of European healthcare. Obtaining such status usually takes _years_ and is only possible for the young and highly employable.

Packing up and moving is simply not an option for those who cannot afford to pay for healthcare in the US in the first place, and oftentimes logistics like family, employment, and language would prevent that anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Any link to the original thread?

<comment><USER35> This one, from 330 days ago, looks like it was the main one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4430020)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Feels good to be part of such a community.</comment>


Using Chrome to calculate the square root of e - <AUTHOR>

It maybe extremely obvious for most of the experienced HNers but I accidentally found it and I think it is quite neat.
It is just the Google Chrome Javascript console: It is three clicks away: Wrench->Tools->Javascript Console
Sometimes you need to calculate something simple and you are not online or you do not have other more powerful tools. Just by:
>Math.sqrt(Math.E) ; square root of e 1.6487212707001282
Of course somebody can do much more things with that(it is the Javascript Console after all).
I found it neat and I wanted to share. I apologize to those that find it obvious. <comment><USER2> Or just javascript:alert(Math.sqrt(Math.E)); in address bar.</comment>


In Silicon Valley, being nice and persistent opens doors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.letslunch.com/2011/03/22/in-silicon-valley-being-nice-and-persistent-opens-doors/

<comment><USER2> This also works everywhere else.

<comment><AUTHOR> True. But not everywhere are people open-minded and as willing to help each other as in Silicon Valley. I should know, I come from Paris :-)

<comment><USER3> I dont know about Paris dude. I was there last year (just on a holiday) and I actually found people nice. I was truly expecting people snickering "haw haw haws" at foreigners :D May be they just felt too sorry for me to make fun of me?</comment></comment></comment>


Pictish symbols revealed as a language through application of Shannon entropy  - <AUTHOR> http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/03/26/rspa.2010.0041.full <comment><USER2> Mark Liberman at Language Log has doubts: [<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2227>]

</comment><comment><USER3> Another mystery from the same region is how they managed to melt thousands of tons of rocks to make forts with vitrified walls:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitrified_fort>

The Tap o' Noth in particular is rather impressive.

<comment><USER4> They didn't -- it was melted by the dragons that attacked those forts. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A long time ago I read that someone applied a statistical test for language to human DNA. They found that DNA which codes for proteins failed the test, but "junk" DNA passed.

I'm sure there's a mundane explanation, but it was fun speculating about what it might say.</comment>


Windows Phone 7 gets cut'n'paste, other tweaks in update - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/03/23/nodo_wp7_update/ <comment><USER2> Before anyone says "about time", I'd just like to add: compare the WP7 initial release timeline to the Android initial release timeline. (Can't reasonably compare to iOS because WP7 and Android are multi-manufacturer and multi- carrier right out of the gate, whereas iOS is a closed system on limited carriers.)

Android v1.0 - 2008-10-21

Android v1.1 - 2009-02-09 (111 days)

Android v1.5 - 2009-04-30 (191 days)

Note: v1.5 ("Cupcake") was the first generally available update. v1.1 was exclusively for the T-Mobile G1.

WP7 v1.0 - 2010-10-21 in EU region (earliest date)

WP7 v1.1 - 2010-03-23 (153 days)

MS launched a brand new platform with 10 different devices on 60 carriers in 30 countries. Google launched a brand new platform on 3 HTC phones (Dream, T-Mobile G1, and Era G1), and if you look at the manufacturer release history, things didn't start to take off until v1.5.

Haters gonna hate, I suppose.</comment>


What is a good product roadmap process for a seed stage (SaaS) company? - <AUTHOR>

We are thinking of implementing a product roadmap process something like what is described in this article:
http://firstround.com/review/This-Product-Prioritization-System-Nabbed-Pandora-More-Than-70-Million-Active-Monthly-Users-with-Just-40-Engineers/
Curious if anyone has implemented a similar system. If so, what worked well, what would you change? Does this type of approach promote positive dynamics between business and technology sides of the company? <comment><USER2> Personally, we've only ever implemented something of an ideas board but we also measured the cost of implementation and impact to the business. It has been useful in helping us figure out where we should focus our efforts on. I do think this system has value especially for seed stage companies with constraints. I do plan to apply this methodology on a personal level to see how things work - better prioritization means less time wasted doing non- essential work. After all, we only have 2 guys and a ton of constraints on our time. Thanks for bringing it up!

From my experience as a consultant, the way to develop positive dynamics between the business and technology side of things is to get them to talk and discuss what's on the table. The business should be familiar with what the customers want or asking for and the technology side should be familiar with what's needed to make things happen. There needs to be lots of discussion all round to get the positive flow happening and everyone agreeing on one direction. Otherwise, it's just a scattered piece-meal mess. It seems like this process would help get everyone on the table so in theory, this approach should help.

Good luck! Would love to hear how it goes.</comment>


Show HN: Upsite.markdown – Beautiful websites with a few lines of markdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/upsite-markdown <comment><USER2> Direct Link : [https://www.upsite.io/markdown](https://www.upsite.io/markdown)</comment>


Show HN: Open source React/Next clone of YCdb.co - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/moflo/jpvcdb <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, we really liked the work that Matt and team did on YCDB.co, which was released on HN a few weeks ago, and created an open source clone of the site. We plan to fork this and use it as the basis for a similar website that's focused instead on the Japanese startup market and thought others might enjoy using it as a starting point. The clone site is built using React/Next, with Algolia and Firebase/Firestore data providers and is hosting using Firebase "clientless" cloud functions. The Ant Design React library was key to our rapid development and has been a joy to develop with.</comment>


Best Buy Buyback Program Genius for Them, Horrible for Consumer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestbuy.com/sb11/buyback.html?ref=0&loc=0

<comment><USER2> For most Internet/technology savvy folks this won't be appealing.

A few years back I realized that most of my technology purchases were actually "rentals." I purchase them at full price, use them for a year or two and then unload them on eBay or Amazon marketplace. This goes for cameras, cellphones, laptops, etc.

The rental price is basically the delta between what I purchase it for and what I sell it for. I've found that savvy decisions about when to sell a piece of technology can minimize the depreciation.

A popular example is selling an old iPhone in May in anticipation of the latest and greatest coming out in June. By selling in May I minimize depreciation.

The mistake I see many of my friends make is holding onto a piece of technology for too long under the false belief that they'll "find a use for it someday." Over the long haul the monetary value falls to zero (or near zero in the case of an old 2nd gen iPod shuffle I discovered yesterday) as does its usefulness.

<comment><USER3> I make exactly the mistake your friends do--I still have the first smartphone I ever bought, from, I believe, 2000. I also have a 3g I should've sold shortly after getting the iPhone 4.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> They'll give you 10% of the original price for a 2-year-old TV? Or 50% after 6 months? Come on, who can pass up that deal!?!?!?

// end sarcasm

// you could get a lot more via Craigslist

// But I bet this is targeted to folks who "rent" from Rent-a-Center or other such outfits...

<comment><USER5> From what I can tell the buy back program for a TV is like $99.99 up front, given I bought my TV for $800 (42" Sony Bravia) I wouldn't even get my money back at 10%. This is 100% unadulterated scamming.

>// you could get a lot more via Craigslist

I could get more via the bulletin board in my apartment building's laundry room. Shit, go to the local college campus' and put up a couple of fliers on their bulletin board.

Who even replaces a TV after 6 months or 2-years unless it's a complete lemon? This must be targeted to the limited subset of people with no common sense, disposable income and a severe lack of anywhere else to spend it (IE not in college or university, not struggling to pay rent, don't have kids). So basically this is aimed at morons in the 25-35 range who are either incapable of finding a partner and accidentally get pregnant, or who somehow managed to be "just-that-stupid" but also somehow managed to comprehend the consequences of sex.

Personally I'm even amazed this has an applicable market. I mean I know it's parasitical in nature but really this is like trying to poison the world by lacing all the worlds supply of caviar with a less than lethal dose of arsenic hoping we'll gradually reach a lethal dose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't stand people who get the latest kit because they want to be "cool". I take a functional attitude to buying things, and unless there's a compelling reason for me to upgrade them (more pretty graphics, a new OS that my hardware cannot run, my old stuff is breaking), I don't see the point of chasing the latest and greatest. I guess we have early adopters to thank for driving innovation in a way, however I'm sure there's a lot of people out there with iPhone 3s who queued up for iPhone 4s purely because it is a status symbol.

Out and out materialism is a delusion of modern society.

</comment><comment><USER7> Smart of them to offer the program "free" right now while there's buzz about it. I can't find anywhere on the site what the up-front cost would be on, say a laptop or a cell phone.

Lack of clear pricing makes it hard to successfully criticize the program while it's new and fresh in the news, and later on they'll do what they probably intended all along and charge $100 up front to let you sell your $1300 TV back for $130 3 years from now.

<comment><USER8> $99 for 4 years of buy-back.

<comment><USER9> Is that $99 _per item purchased_ , or just $99 to be part of a 'buy back' club? If the latter, for people who buy a lot, it might almost not be a horrible program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I was interested in this because I bought a netbook and recently bought a Macbook Air because I got tired of the former. It's been over a year, but I'm sure I could get more than a paltry $50 for it, and worse, having to buy it at time of purchase is an additional expense that makes little sense.

On the other hand, BB can lure people into buying these, then giving them reduced cost hardware that they can profit from a 2nd time. Genius.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure the same people who trade in their cars to dealers and buy new cars will take advantage of this. People seem to value convenience and simplicity over actually making smart choices or pocketing money (which is probably why debt levels are so high)

</comment><comment><USER11> Interesting but here are my questions: where are they unloading all this used merchandise? How do they grade equipment?

Is this going to be like the cash4gold.com shenanigans?

<comment><USER12> _How do they grade equipment?_

Just get the extended warranty as well and you'll be covered.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget your extra Monster HDMI cables while you're at it.

<comment><USER14> Ultra High Fast, no less. Personally, I only use Ludicrous speed cables.</comment></comment></comment></comment>