A new hypothesis in medicine: give patients drugs they know don't work - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/6/1/15711814/open-label-placebo-kaptchuk <comment><USER3> I know a lady who was managing a convenience store / pharmacy who eventually quit and became a reiki healer. Prior to this kind of study any _real_ scientist would _know_ it's total garbage. But somehow she makes a living doing it. Is it all duping? I suspected not.

In my mind what people who paid her were getting was something that they almost universally can't get inside the traditional medicine system here in the US at least, someone who cares.

Most encounters with doctors here in the US are 10 minutes or less at least for an office visit. If you have a lot of symptoms or back-story or whatever the doc might cut you off and ask questions and keep directing the conversation rather than hear you out. That might be an efficient use of their time, but it's not good for the placebo effect to work because part of that seems to be caring, wanting the patient to get better, doing things (even things we _know_ won't work) to help.

This lady has I think only hour long appointments which are totally unheard of in the traditional system. It's not surprising that if the placebo effect is real that seeing someone who can really only _care_ (or at least pretend to) could be effective.

<comment><USER4> Auto immune diseases are all untreatable and severely reduce quality of life in some cases. One thing proven to slow their progress is stress reduction.

As you can imagine, being less stressed is really hard when you have a chronic illness. This is exacerbated by doctors ignoring you. Having anyone spend an hour to help you in any way is such a relief. I wouldn't be surprised if this played a large role.

As another example, my wife and I have had six miscarriages. We're 25 and both healthy and the many doctors we've seen agree. Well if the doctors don't have a diagnosis, they don't wanna see you.

When it comes to recurrent miscarriage, there is no treatment. They suspect there are likely auto immune diseases we don't know about. Indeed, this seems likely. Most studies on potential treatments cannot be reliably replicated. The only thing that has been shown to reduce miscarriage risk in future pregnancies is tender loving care-- having a doctor who will talk with you for hours whenever you want, and being taken care of.

So now we see a new matronly obstetrician. She's a bit quirky but we feel like she won't abandon us like the other doctors did. Her appointments are multiple hours long, and she's happy being paged in the middle of the night when we've found out we're pregnant again. At 5 am when you find out you're pregnant after five miscarriages, nothing is more calming than a soothing voice on the telephone

This doctor has also encouraged us to seek out alternate practitioners, like acupuncturists and massage. She doesn't believe in their treatments working per se (she's an md and is happy providing real treatments), but I think she understands they these practitioners will at least make you feel calm and taken care of. Whereas I used to laugh at people who would see them before, I get it now.

When you have a medical condition that is chronic and there's no end in sight and no cure available, you need a friend more than a doctor, and unfortunately, there's not much overlap between the two

<comment><USER5> > Auto immune diseases are all untreatable

I think you mean "incurable." Not untreatable.

Otherwise, I sure wasted a lot of time memorizing immune modulators and autoimmune disease treatment protocols for my board exams.

And yes, doctors' job is diagnosis and treatment. If for whatever reason you're not a candidate for those two things, they have nothing to do for you. This is like complaining your IT guy isn't there to support you when your PC gets stolen by a house invasion. That's not what that relationship is.

<comment><USER6> You've really captured the essence of the pretentious doctor with this comment. Bravo.

<comment><USER7> Honestly, I'd prefer a doctor that could look at me and say "Sorry, but you shouldn't buy any more of my time." Being able to say when you can't do any more is probably the _antithesis_ of arrogant doctors - what you really have to watch out for is a pseudo-quack that will send you off on increasingly strong medications with zero-approaching success rates without telling you!

<comment><USER5> He has half a point: my first comment was more glib than it needed to be.

But, yes, docs who take your money to pat you on the head rather than admit they can't help you aren't doing you any favors. Most docs are more ethical than that (and then get lambasted for "not wanting anything to do with you if they can't treat or diagnose you.")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the actual trial: "Patients were randomized to either open-label placebo pills presented as "placebo pills made of an inert substance, like sugar pills, that have been shown in clinical studies to produce significant improvement in IBS symptoms through mind-body self-healing processes" or no- treatment controls with the same quality of interaction with providers."

Sounds like they didn't give them pills that the patients "know don't work" as the Vox title states, but instead told the patients that trials showed that these pills did work just not through a chemically induced action.

<comment><USER9> But that's the truth, isn't it? From a scientific perspective, it might be interesting to see how well the placebo effect holds up if patients literally think it won't work, e.g. by selecting participants who haven't heard of the placebo effect, and not informing them. But from the perspective of helping people, if the placebo effect is to some extent caused by knowledge of the placebo effect, so much the better; there's no deception in that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> A data point from my personal experience: 15 years ago I started developing acute dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) which eventually got so severe I went to see a doctor about it. It was diagnosed as acid reflux, and I was prescribed proton pump inhibitors. That seemed to help for a long time, but a few years ago the symptoms started to return. They got so bad that I went back to the doctor, and this time was diagnosed with a newly discovered malady called eosinophilic esophagitis (EOE -- [http://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and- treatments/related-condi...](http://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and- treatments/related-conditions/eosinophilic-esophagitis)). EOE is an allergic reaction in the esophagus, which made sense because the initial symptoms appeared shortly after we got pets -- a dog and a cat -- for the first time, and I'm allergic to both. Case closed, or so I thought.

A few months ago, despite the fact that both or dog and cat had long since died, my symptoms started to come back worse than ever. Things got so bad that at one point I was actually heading to the emergency room (I never made it because before we got there I threw up, which fixed the immediate problem). But that episode scared me enough that I made another doctors appointment.

There followed a truly bizarre confluence of circumstances: first, my wife fell down and broke her arm. Then my doctors office called to confirm my appointment, but my wife picked up the phone and thought it was her doctors office calling about her arm. She thought the appointment was for her, but she hadn't made an appointment, so she told them the appointment was a mistake an they should cancel it, which they did. I called to reschedule, and that delayed it for another few weeks. The day of my new appointment, my doctors office called and said they were running hours behind because of computer problems and needed to reschedule again. Bottom line: it has been several months now and I still haven't been able to see a doctor.

But here's the punch line: in the intervening time, my symptoms have _completely_ disappeared. If I had been able to see a doctor, I would almost certainly have ascribed this positive outcome to any intervention she would have done. And yet there has been no intervention, but only because of these weird twists of fate that kept me from seeing my doctor. Moreover, I _know_ there has been no intervention. And yet I suddenly feel better than I have in 15 years. It's really weird.

<comment><USER11> _" The great secret, known to internists and learned early in marriage by internists wives, but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning."_

\- Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell (Among other achievements, he was dean of Yale Medical School and president of Sloan-Kettering. This collection of essays was published in 1974 and is absolutely prescient and fascinating - <USER2> offers profound thoughts on the nature of science, computing, and medicine that have stood the test of time astonishingly well.)

<comment><USER10> But that't the whole point: for fifteen years it _didn 't_ get better on its own. In fact, it got progressively worse over a period of months and years. When things got really bad (like on-the-floor-writhing-in-pain-wishing-I-were- dead bad) I went to see a doctor. The doctor did something (meds, endoscopies) and _then_ things got better, and they'd stay better for a few years before they slowly, steadily, and inexorably got worse again. This cycle repeated itself three times in fifteen years. This most recent episode was the fourth cycle.

What makes this last episode interesting was that fate intervened to force me to do a control experiment, and the outcome has been dramatic: I feel as good (if not better) than immediately after all the prior interventions. In 15 years I have _never_ had that happen if I just did nothing.

<comment><USER11> Wow! I did somehow miss the 15 years aspect. Mysterious. I'm glad you're feeling better.

<comment><USER10> Thanks! Me too! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In the late 70's there were a couple of guys who tried to bring placebo pills to market. They had a bottle of sugar pills and a little booklet that listed all the various things placebos had worked for along with the percentage effectiveness. If you had something that the placebos weren't that effective for, well, you just took more...

The FDA wouldn't go for it.

</comment><comment><USER13> > People on no treatment got about 30 percent better. And people who were > given an open-label placebo got 60 percent improvement in the adequate > relief of their irritable bowel syndrome.

There's a few differences between these groups:

\- People on the placebo pill were reminded about their illness at least once a day (when they took the pill), and can be expected to have special attention for their illness.

\- People on the placebo pill were seeing a doctor, and had the prospect of going back to the doctor to evaluate their progress.

\- For people NOT on the placebo pill, all hope was basically lost.

So perhaps "hope" (however small) is the underlying psychological effect causing this, or perhaps it's the attention from self.

<comment><USER14> This echoes the negative effect of praying for the sick. Those who were prayed for feared their conditions were serious enough to warrant prayer and lost some hope. Perhaps if you are given a sugar pill, and are told it's only a sugar pill, you also relax about the threat of your condition -- well, it can't be that bad!

<comment><USER15> I can't find a reference for the following at the moment but there was something about the perceived health being a far better indicator for life expectancy/longevity than the actual health. The mindset of the patient seems to matter a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This isn't so new, a major study lots of this is based on was published in 2010. Here's a skeptical look at that study:

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-effects-without- dec...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-effects-without-deception- well-not-exactly/)

<comment><AUTHOR> >a major study lots of this is based on was published in 2010.

this is from 2016 Dec ( see "4.1 Limitations" )

"Open-label placebo treatment in chronic low back pain: a randomized controlled trial." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5113234/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5113234/)

 _" Conclusions Our data suggest that harnessing placebo effects without deception is possible in the context of a plausible rationale. More research on this possibility is warranted in cLBP and other conditions defined by self- appraisal."_

<comment><AUTHOR> 2 replays ( "Letter To Editor" )

"The effect of nothing? Time to abandon the concept of placebo" ( Traeger, Adrian C.; Kamper, Steven J. )

Pain: June 2017 - Volume 158 - Issue 6 - p 1179

doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000884

[http://journals.lww.com/pain/Citation/2017/06000/The_effect_...](http://journals.lww.com/pain/Citation/2017/06000/The_effect_of_nothing__Time_to_abandon_the_concept.28.aspx)

( "open image in new tab" to read )

\--

"Are placebo pills presented as experimental treatment a true placebo?" ( Mestre, Tiago A.; Ferreira, Joaquim J. )

Pain: March 2017 - Volume 158 - Issue 3 - p 535

doi: 10.1097/j.pain.0000000000000793

[http://journals.lww.com/pain/Citation/2017/03000/Are_placebo...](http://journals.lww.com/pain/Citation/2017/03000/Are_placebo_pills_presented_as_experimental.21.aspx)

( "open image in new tab" to read )

<comment><USER17> Your links give a 403 permission denied error.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, I replaced the links to the original page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how far you can go with this. I mean, there is a huge scale from homeopathy ("I know this does not work, but some believe in it"), things labeled placebo and administered by a doctor, smarties in a pill bottle and buying someone a candy bar and saying "here, that will make you feel better".

I'm pretty sure I know a few cases of self-administered placebos. When you are sick everyone has the wondercure, be it healthy food, some natural bee-wax- antibiotic, homepathy, "it's all just psychosomatic"/"there is allways a deeper reason for a sickness" or what not.

They probably all just need someone to bring camilla tea and a wet cloth for on the forehead :)

<comment><USER19> The thing is, homeopathy claims to heal all kinds of illness (cancer for instance), while the author of this study leaves it very, very clearly that it only works on the perception of illness by the mind.

He clearly states that the placebo won't work in quantifiable illnesses because those quantifiable effects don't depend on the perception from your brain.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> If a licensed professional gives you a placebo for your illness, they're also effectively saying it's not that important to worry about, which changes the psychology of the patient.

<comment><USER21> ... this is like walking through a minefield, but here it goes.

A lot of the illnesses they're talking about in the article, like IBS, lower back pain, and CFS have a strong psychosomatic component to it for a lot of people. They essentially say this in the article--something like "this won't work for malaria, but it will work for pain."

This can be a really controversial position, and it gets really twisted by a lot of people. No I'm not advocating mind-body dualism. What I'm saying is that there's top-down influences on physical symptom perception and that probably influences bottom-up processes, leading to some sort of vicious circle.

I think a lot of these psychosomatic conditions are really explained by the same processes involved in the nocebo effect. There have been studies to support this, showing that psychosomatic patients report more nocebo effects in control conditions than other patients and controls.

The idea you're discussing--reassurance effects--is interesting and actually really understudied I think. However, I think there's an equally plausible hypothesis, that you're kind of fighting negative psychosomatic effects with positive psychosomatic effects in certain situations.

I don't think that's _all_ of the placebo effect, but I do think there's some broader causal system involved that encompasses placebo effects, nocebo effects, and psychosomatic illnesses and effects, including more psychosomatic psychiatric conditions (e.g., conversion disorder, psychogenic seizures, etc.), as well as psychological effects on disease process (e.g., stress effects on inflammation).

I kind of wish this area of research didn't get so bogged down with political infighting, which invariably happens. Patients start insisting that we're being dismissive by discussing psychosomatic processes, some researchers will spuriously start criticizing other researchers for advocating Cartesian dualism, as political smear tactic, when the real issues pertain to emergent processes and top-down mutual influences. It's a very interesting area of research with lots of potential, but tends to get oversimplified really quickly to score political points.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Maybe that's what I need, I have residual headaches after a stroke (CVT). It seems to be a common issue and it doesn't come from the head pressure.

<comment><USER23> What sorts of treatment do doctors suggest for that?

<comment><USER22> Just pain-killer or nothing if the pain is low enough. It looks like it is a source of pain-killer overuse, and psychiatric issues. In my case the pain responds very well, so I just treat it with paracetamol, but I have used just 8 doses in 3 weeks.

To put it in context, tho, it is an extremely rare kind of stroke (5/1,000,000 per year), so the select people having had this stroke might have pain medicine issues, but it is not a contributor of anything in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't have the resources right now to condense the arguments or cite the evidence, but the Skeptics with a K podcast [1] has recently done a whole series on why the article and pretty much every other study mentioned in the comments so far is not any evidence of "the mysterious power of the placebo" but actually misuse of analysis on experimental biases. Well worth a listen.

[1] [http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/skepti...](http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/category/podcast/skeptics- with-a-k/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Also, more expensive sugar pills work better than cheaper sugar pills. (And bigger ones, colourful ones, etc). Presumably this means something like homeopathy could work better than sugar pills.

It's easy to ridicule homeopathy, and it certainly shouldn't be used for illnesses that are easy to treat. But, perhaps it could be a valid treatment for chronic, hard to treat conditions. It's certainly very elaborate and expensive.

<comment><USER15> The bad thing with homeopathy is not that they're fooling people to take substances that have no effect on their own and only work via the placebo- effect. It's the "making a lot of money from sick people by selling expensive placebos"-part that's despicable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > _Thinking you're going to get better is not what makes you better. That's > the mind-cure idea: It doesn't happen. It's not the way it is ... I'm a > little bit of a standard deviation or two out from consensus._

This surprised me. I've been under the impression that the body's immune system could be modulated by the brain. The science has changed underneath my feet, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _We have great drugs, but they don't often treat symptoms that well. What > really bothers people are the symptoms. The symptoms are things they can > perceive that are modulated by the brain._

so, Kaptchuk's open-label placebo therapy appears to be centered on and limited to a person's subjective experience of their illness. that's all this is?

<comment><USER17> > that's all this is?

But those things can be debilitating, so anything that helps without causing harm is pretty important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's exactly why I take homeopathy medicine. I know that the science behind it is pseudo; but I also know that placebo effect works regardless. At least, on my particular sample size of one it definitely does.

<comment><USER28> This is truly terrible advice and you ought to feel bad for promoting it here.

[http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html](http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html)

<comment><USER29> But he's not offering advice. He's offering a data point. There's nothing wrong with that.

<comment><USER28> [http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html](http://whatstheharm.net/homeopathy.html)

<comment><USER30> I could swear I have already seen this link somewhere /s

Plus this article is a fraud. The people it lists were killed by ignorance, neglect or their own informed choice, not by homeopathy. I don't think anybody has yet died of drinking a small amount of water and the guy you are harassing said nothing about giving up other treatments, just using homeopathy as placebo.

<comment><USER28> As controls are not as tight as you know real medicine several have in fact died of homeopathic meds that contained far too much of the active ingredients

<comment><USER29> But then those homeopathic meds were _defective_. Being harmed by a defective product is hardly unique to homeopathy.

<comment><USER28> Why are you defending a sham industry designed to separate fools from their money that discourages people from seeking real medical attention.

<comment><USER30> Dude, it's HN, barely anyone here seriously supports homeopathy.

The problem is that you are trying too hard to convince everyone. For me, if I knew nothing about the topic, this in itself would be a huge red flag to distrust you. Slow down and make sure to attack the right people for the right reasons.

It's not true that all of this shit is low quality, I presume mainstream stuff advertised on TV like Oscillococcinum might be safe. It's not obvious that all of that is cynically designed to separate fools from their money, some of the vendors may be cranky enough to believe it or at the very least they may see it helping in some cases due to the placebo effect and conclude it must be good then. And every time you say something others know for sure to be false, you are undermining you own credibility.

<comment><USER28> The thing I am attacking is an entire industry of con artists. Presuming medical advice is good because you heard it on tv is amazingly poorly thought out. Its as badly thought out for example as believing that the power of positive thinking provided by a fake cure is enough to balance out literally not knowing how to get good functional medial advice. In modern life where everyone who doesn't crash their car into a wall will need competent advice to reach their potential age this is a necessary survival skill long term.

Homeopathy is without exception useless nonsense. for example Oscillococcinum is duck offal diluted. The logic behind its operation doesn't even make sense in homeopathy land. Its the approximate equivalent of bad sci fi wherein having made up some imaginary laws of physics the author can't even stick to them properly.

I honestly don't know what algorithm you use to assess credibility. You suggest that you are put off by strong opinions but reassured by hearing about things on TV. You try to ascribe positive motives to modern day patent medicine scammers but distrust the motives of people angered such deceit.

Consider refining your judgment.

P.S. What did I say that you "know not to be true"?

<comment><USER30> > Presuming medical advice is good because you heard it on tv is amazingly > poorly thought out.

Never said that, only that mass-manufactured stuff widely used for decades probably is safe or it should have been banned long ago.

> Its the approximate equivalent of bad sci fi wherein having made up some > imaginary laws of physics the author can't even stick to them properly.

No argument here.

> You suggest that you are put off by strong opinions but reassured by hearing > about things on TV.

Not really strong opinions but nagging and repeating things you've already posted without a word of explanation. Also, you stated as a fact that homeopathic drugs are of low quality without any sources or examples, it's the first time I'm hearing about this, why should I believe it if this kind of incidents aren't commonly reported afaik? At least dragonwriter was able to provide some example.

> P.S. What did I say that you "know not to be true"?

Nothing, but others may. You say it's a sham industry designed to part fools from their money, I know that there are people who religiously believe in this stuff, therefore there may be vendors who believe it too, somebody may know such vendors and then how does it make you look _to them_? And it's these people you need to convince, I have never used, produced, distributed or recommended homeopathic drugs and very likely never will.

<comment><USER28> Cigarettes are mass manufactured and widely used for quite some time. Its recently been found that some fake sugars may give you a massive boost to your chance to have your brain rot via Alzheimer's. Asbestos was widely used previously as was leaded gas was everywhere decades after it was widely known how bad it was. Not being banned his historically been a really bad predictor of safety.

I linked to a whole list of people that died or suffered via trusting alternative medicine. Anyone wanting further info can check out [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeopathy)

Honestly though one shouldn't need to fully explain that homeopathy isn't real in the same fashion as its usually not required to explain why witchcraft, literal magic, young earth creationism, or voodoo isn't real.

I'm not trying to convince anyone silly enough to believe, I'm trying to discourage people from promoting it as benign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> other interesting articles:

Changing Mindsets to Enhance Treatment Effectiveness

JAMA. 2017 May 23;317(20):2063-2064. doi: 10.1001/jama.2017.4545.

[https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crum_zuckerman_...](https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crum_zuckerman_jama_2017.pdf)

==

You can train your body into thinking it's had medicine ( 09 February 2016 )

Jo Marchant asks if we can harness the mind to reduce side-effects and slash drug costs.

[https://mosaicscience.com/story/medicine-without-the- medicin...](https://mosaicscience.com/story/medicine-without-the-medicine-how- to-train-your-immune-system-placebo)

==

The Vodka-Red-Bull Placebo Effect

People take more risks when downing caffeine-and-alcohol cocktails—but only if they know what they're drinking.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/caffeine...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/caffeine- and-alcohol-placebo/529641/?single_page=true)

==

Howe, L. Goyer, P., & Crum, A. (2017). Harnessing the Placebo Effect: Exploring the Influence of Physician Characteristics on Placebo Response. Health Psychology.

[https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/howegoyercrum_h...](https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/howegoyercrum_harnessingtheplaceboeffect.pdf)

==

Crum, A., Phillips, D., Higgins, T. (2016). Transforming Water: Social Influence Moderates Psychological, Physiological, and Functional Response to a Placebo Product. PLOS One, 11(11).

[https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crumetal_transf...](https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crumetal_transformingwater.pdf)

==

Crum, A. & Phillips, D. (2015). Self-Fulfilling Prophesies, Placebo Effects, and the Social-Psychological Creation of Reality. In R. Scott and S. Kosslyn (Eds.), Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.

[https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crumphillips_em...](https://mbl.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/crumphillips_emergingtrends2015.pdf)

<comment><USER31> Those seem to back up this quote by the doctor from the article: "What's going on in the patient's [mind] is that the rituals of medicine... activates specific quantifiable and relevant brain regions that release these neurotransmitters. And they modulate symptoms."

For minor ailments for which there are no real cure (and are probably entirely psychological) building a new habit covers up the old one and subsequently cures the patient's pain.</comment></comment>


Font detectives who ferret out fakery - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/meet-the-font-detectives-who-ferret-out-fakery/ <comment><USER2> The morning after the Pakistan scandal hit the news, I woke up with a lot of traffic to my blog post from June 2006 that covered the new "C" fonts from Microsoft from the Vista and Office betas: [https://neosmart.net/blog/2006/a-comprehensive-look-at- the-n...](https://neosmart.net/blog/2006/a-comprehensive-look-at-the-new- microsoft-fonts/)

As the article says, Calibri wasn't _commercially_ available until November, but people found out I had access to it and that I had posted screenshots of text typed in that font dating a full 5 months before the commercial release (and before the forgery in question).

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe lesser known than the cases presented in the article, there is a very similar case with more serious implications than some press misinformation or copyright infringement:

[http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2012/10/did- mi...](http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2012/10/did-microsoft- steal-its-fonts-from-the-turkish-army.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Reminds me of a case that came to light today. Apparently an early beta of a Star Fox game was found for the Virtual Boy, with pictures posted online.

However as people quickly figured out, the font used was only released online in 2011. So it couldn't have been used for a game released in 1995.

Similar logic was used for the renders (taken from a 1997 game) and the rating pending logo.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fyuq7TL...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fyuq7TLukQMJ:www.planetvb.com/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php%3Ftopic_id%3D6836%26post_id%3D38151+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/70axwv/star_fox_r...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/70axwv/star_fox_redzone_unreleased_virtual_boy/?st=J7M5JW9S&sh=3d631a01)

</comment><comment><USER5> The impact of the Bush Killian fake memo was huge. This was the first time that a major news network put out a demonstrably false partisan news report with potentially major political implications. The news media is still living with the loss of trust from that incident.

<comment><USER6> With this recent election, I don't think the media has learned its lesson. Not just the fake Russian dossier on Trump, but also the three CNN reporters who resigned for another forged document[0]

[0]. [http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-cnn- resig...](http://www.latimes.com/business/hollywood/la-fi-ct-cnn- resignation-20170626-story.html)

<comment><USER7> I haven't heard much of the Russian dossier on Trump since shortly after the initial news broke. Was it proven to be fake or is it just that there's been public evidence to suggest that it's real?

<comment><USER7> Too late to edit my comment now, but

> _... is it just that there 's been public evidence ..._

should read

> _... is it just that there 's not been any public evidence ..._

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This came up recently for myself. I received an email from someone claiming to represent a legislative group pushing an amendment to a bill. They said "here's an amendment we worked out, will you sign on?" Looking at it I could see, when you let the eyes rest out of focus, that the fonts were not the same. Two slightly different fonts. This with the version history showing it had been modified that day, from an original creating months before, made me deeply suspicious. So I said no, and it was a good thing I did. The bill failed which is what I wanted.</comment>


The Humans With Super Human Vision - <AUTHOR> http://discovermagazine.com/2012/jul-aug/06-humans-with-super-human-vision#.UViRAavF0R8 <comment><USER2> I'd like to point out that all the fourth cone can really do is give you a higher resolution... nobody can see infrared or ultraviolet.

<comment><AUTHOR> _all the fourth cone can really do is give you a higher resolution_

Higher resolution in distinguishing shades of color.

 _nobody can see infrared or ultraviolet._

If the fourth cone sensitivity is shifted outside of the currently visible spectrum, then the carrier would be able to see infrared or ultraviolet -- there's nothing in physics or biology that would preclude it.</comment></comment>


Bigelow Space Operations – B330 Space Station - <AUTHOR> http://www.bigelowspaceops.com/b330.php <comment><USER2> Can we attach a few of these units together, like 10 units, and then spin them up to create a rotating space station?

<comment><USER3> No kidding! Sadly it seems they don't plan this far ahead...so much potential: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLWxptFFYc&feature=share](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmLWxptFFYc&feature=share)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like how you could throw one of these up on a single Falcon Heavy launch. The lack of windows seems challenging to me, if you're going after tourists I would think this would be a priority feature.

<comment><USER4> If I remember correctly, the B330 is too big in terms of width to launch with the current fairing on a Falcon Heavy; although I think that Elon indicated at some point that they could do bigger fairings at customer request.

It'd definitely be awesome to see essentially an entire space station go up on top of one FH though.

<comment><USER5> It would be better to design the B330 to be its own fairing with just a launcher specific adapter ring at the base. That would provide a significant weight savings, reduce the volumetric constraints, and eliminate fairing separation mishaps.

<comment><USER6> Fairings are an extremely tricky thing to design, and the B330 is not made out of materials that can survive a launch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Could they land something like this on the moon and build a quick habitat?

<comment><USER8> I think the real challenge would be getting it to the moon. A falcon heavy ought to be able to get it into orbit, but then you're still a lot of Delta-V away from a moon landing.

<comment><USER7> Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did it almost 50 years ago in a tin can, built from a box of scraps!

<comment><USER9> Landing this thing on the moon would be a dramatically bigger technical challenge than the Apollo Lunar Module.

The B330 supposedly has a mass of 50,000 lbs, which apparently doesn't include any significant propulsion mechanism. The LM was less than 10,000, including engines, and still required about 24,000 lbs of fuel for a round-trip. Even if you assume that you could just scale up the design by a factor of 5, you're still talking about something that's too big to launch on a Falcon Heavy.

<comment><USER10> Fueled LM had mass about 15 tons, empty second stage - 2 tons, second stage fuel - about 3 tons. So to land B330 with mass 50,000 lbs you'll need about 75,000 lbs of fuel (and then scale some more because you need to include tanks and engines).

Not trivial... but I think can be done with another launch of a boosting stage.

<comment><AUTHOR> This would be my guess as well. Launch the habitat, and then launch the translunar tug/landing apparatus.

<comment><USER10> Ok, we need about 3.1 km/s for translunar injection, about 1 km/s to enter Moon orbit and then some 2.4 km/s to cancel orbital velocity (1.7 km/s) and land. Total is 6.5 km/s . For storable fuels with Isp of 3.5 km/s mass ratio becomes exp(6.5 / 3.5) = 6.4, so if you want to land 50,000 lbs mass on the Moon, you have to start from LEO having 320,000 lbs or 145 metric tons. More than Saturn V and more than twice FH. And here we don't even include tanks for fuel and engines which will get us to the Moon.

We can consider LOx/LH2 stage, which improve masses considerably. Wonder why SpaceX didn't buy XCOR yet?.. [http://space- access.org/updates/sau148.html](http://space-access.org/updates/sau148.html)

So it's doable with at least one docking, and perhaps more. Maybe refueling should be involved as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


P vs. NP: An Assumption That Runs the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2015/11/p-vs-np-assumption-that-runs-internet/ <comment><USER2> It's a decent introduction to P vs. NP but gets a few things wrong: factoring is technically an NP problem, but it's not (known to be) NP-complete, and packet routing is a pathfinding problem rather than a TSP, which is distinctly in P.

Also it should probably address the silly arguments that pop up that there's no bounds on the exponent for the runtime of an algorithm (O(n^100) is still in P), but this doesn't and hasn't happened in practice. And the implications for security would be huge because we would have to redefine what we mean by provable security, and then have to make some other arbitrary distinction. Is n^100 secure, but n^99 not? How does parallelization affect runtime? Things become a lot messier. So for now P vs NP is an extremely useful distinction and I have yet to see a convincing argument that it's not.

<comment><USER3> _" there's no bounds on the exponent for the runtime of an algorithm (O(n^100) is still in P), but this doesn't and hasn't happened in practice."_

That n^100 doesn't happen in practice might very well be selection bias. Perhaps humans are really bad at finding solutions that genuinely require polynomial work greater than O(n^4) [see note 1]. In fact, if P=NP, that would explain why we haven't thus-far found the polynomial time algorithms for any NP-complete problems.

 _" we would have to redefine what we mean by provable security, and then have to make some other arbitrary distinction. Is n^100 secure, but n^99 not?"_

That doesn't seem materially different than having to pick key lengths. There is some amount of work you expect to be beyond what your opponents could theoretically muster. Pad a bit for safety.

 _" So for now P vs NP is an extremely useful distinction and I have yet to see a convincing argument that it's not."_

We're using NP as a proxy for "provably different lower bound on checking versus finding". It's not a bad proxy, but having an actual proof of lower bound should be even better whether or not it is exponential, provided there's a sufficient gap to make realistic key sizes useful.

[1] Edited to add: As pointed out to me below, there are plenty of examples of O(n^k) with arbitrarily high k. This certainly undermines my speculation about human capabilities. At the same time, it means it _does_ happen in practice.

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of algorithms with n^k where k>4, just not useful ones.

Off the top of my head, checkout work by Eric D. Demaine. His work is on problems that seem very real, and solutions (algorithms) definitely show very lovely interaction of several different areas of research, problem solving skills at its finest.

[http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/polynomial-...](http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/6660/polynomial- time-algorithms-with-huge-exponent-constant)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! That weakens my speculation about human capabilities, though the fact that it deserves calling out as "problem solving skills at its finest" seems to leave me some wiggle room ;)

To be honest, I'm not sure how to quantify the relative populations of higher- exponent and lower-exponent found algorithms, and if there is a skew some of that might well be due to the decreased attention to the space of higher exponent algorithms due to lower expected usefulness...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _If P equals NP, then you could solve anything as easily as you could verify > it._

This is the core oversimplification of the article—if P=NP there's no guarantee that the solution is _as_ easy as the verification. O(n^3) is still more expensive than O(n^2), even though both are in P.

</comment><comment><USER6> A joke about P=NP:

[http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/phcollapse.pdf](http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/phcollapse.pdf)

<comment><USER7> That was pretty good, and it would have been better for me if I knew all the classes involved.

For those in the same position as I, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_hierarchy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_hierarchy) may be a good start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article seems to assume that problems in P are computable no matter the size. If it is shown NP=P, but the best algorithm we have is O(n^100), we still don't have a computer that can actually finish the computation.

</comment><comment> andrew-lucker There are NP problems in network routing and analysis, but implying that shortest path is NP would be an oversimplification.

</comment><comment><USER9> Related: has anyone seen any good speculative fiction stories that start from the premise of a constructive, practical P=NP proof and go from there?

<comment><USER10> There's a short story, 'Antibodies', along those lines in Charles Stross' 'Toast' collection. [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/toast/to...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/toast/toast-intro.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The author doesn't seem to understand very well a lot of the problems he's describing.

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand how verifying a TSP is any different to solving it - I.e. don't I have to do just as much work to verify that a particular solution is correct as if I was solving it from scratch? I.e. brute force?

<comment><USER13> There are a few ways to ask the TSP question. One question is "give me the shortest route geometry", this problem is NP-hard and can't be verified easily, this is what you're thinking of. However, the decision version of the problem is usually phrased "Is there a tour of less than length L", and this is NP-Complete - takes a while to find the tour, but it's trivial to check if it's less than length L.

<comment><USER14> That works for one way (where the tour exists), however, if the true answer to the particular decision problem is "no! it can't be done in L steps!" \- then the only way to verify is to repeat the whole process, no?

Having an easily verifiable tour that does it in L+1 doesn't really help in verification that some other combination could or could not do it in L steps.

<comment><USER15> NP only requires that you can verify a positive answer in polynomial time. Problems with polynomial time proofs for negative answers form the class Co- NP.

Besides that, if you can solve the decision problem and the distances are well-behaved, for example integers, you can solve the other variants, you can perform a binary search for the minimal tour length and you can find the actual tour by probing all edges, i.e. removing one by one and checking whether that increases the minimal tour length.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Routing is not the same as the Traveling Salesman problem unless you want your packets to go thru all the routers. It's a shortest path problem, which is P.

P == NP does not really mean that solving is as easy is verifying the solution. The former could be O(n^4) while the latter O(1). It rather means that if a solution can be verified in a reasonable time (polinomial), then it was also possible to calculate it in a reasonable time.

</comment><comment><USER17> When ever I see P != NP around, it reminds me of when a matrix is equal to its self adjoint, and I wonder if you use any predefined curves and treat it as a polynomial eigenvalue problem, then project it onto a lower dimensional complex space, if one can then use the solutions to generate approximately the observed ciphertext?

</comment><comment><USER18> There is no need for the optimal. E.g. you can solve most routing problems with >95% efficiency using heuristics with O(1) or O(log n) asymptotic time complexity.

<comment><USER19> Sure, but that is kind of beside the point. For most problems where the distinction between P and NP is important, the biggest being encryption, "95% efficiency" is absolutely useless.

<comment><USER18> Until a "95% efficiency" heuristic/approximation can be applied to a primality test, in that case (e.g. if someone finds a geometric heuristic for primality).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A very important point is that we have very good approximations for the TSP problem _when embedded in an euclidean metric space_.

</comment><comment><USER21> lately i've been musing on the idea that a poly np-complete algo is conciousness</comment>


Indoor farming: Good for cannabis, not so good for food - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2015/12/29/indoor-farming-good-for-cannabis-not-so-good-for-food/ <comment><USER2> The reason some vegetables (particularly tomatoes) taste fairly subpar in the United States is because of the journey they make to reach your salad. If the tomatoes are coming from across the country (or Mexico, or another nation) they are actually picked prematurely so instead of ripening on the vine they ripen during transit. If you've ever had a tomato that tastes "mealy" this is the reason.

This mass transportation of food over long distances explains why you can get an orange any time of the year in Boston but also why the quality can be so poor - you're far away from the source.

After moving to San Francsico (from Boston with it's crazy winters) where local produce is available pretty much year-round at the local food Coop, I've noticed a pronounced different in the average quality and notably lower prices.

<comment><USER3> The advantage of vine-ripening is a myth, as I have discovered first-hand by growing tomatoes in a home garden. For optimal flavor, tomatoes should be picked when they have just a slight blush of color but are still almost entirely green, and then finish ripening OFF the vine. When allowed to ripen on the vine their texture and flavor suffer - they tend to taste and feel almost rotten.

The reason mass-market tomatoes taste worse, and your California tomatoes taste better, is because they are different varieties. The varieties that make it to e.g. Boston in the winter are selected to be edible after a long journey, not for flavor. The varieties that you get in San Francisco year- round are grown closer to their ultimate destination and can be selected more for flavor than for their ability to survive long journeys.

<comment><USER2> Yes, I meant to emphasize the long journey being the main factor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Outdoor grown pot (for me) is way better than greenhouse or indoor grown pot. Same for tomatoes - if you have the chance, grow your own. Outdoor tomatoes are way way tastier than the mass produced industrial crap.

I think that we don't understand plants' needs at all... just let the plants grow naturally.

<comment><USER5> I agree that mass-produced tomatoes seem to have been bred to also have no flavor. I'm not going to blame this on greenhouses though - there's a local family farm that produces tomatoes that are just as tasty as those from my garden but are available for an extra 3-4 months of the year. (Note that I'm in central Pennsylvania)

<comment><USER6> I'm really suspicious when americans are stating some vegetable/fruit is "tasty". Everytime I go to the US, what strikes me is the very low quality of the food products. Even in France, what I consider a shitty tomato taste better than the regular ones in the US I tried.

It's not a misplaced patriotism, it's just that I fear a lot of americans really don't know what food is supposed to taste like anymore. Which is very scary.

The same thing is happening here in Europe, but at a much slower rate. Not sure if it's reassuring though.

<comment><USER7> It's not a new phenomenon; it's actually a very old one. Much of this US food culture that you (IMHO rightfully) decry comes from our cultural heritage, which, despite our post-WWII wealth, was _then_ a poor country. Go back a hundred years in the US and what you'll find is a country mostly full of farmers, who are mostly concerned about A: having any food _at all_ and B: making sure they don't die from the parasites in the food, one way or another.

I was born in 1978, and I was still raised in a culture of blasting my meat until all the pink is gone, and boiling my vegetables until all flavor was gone. My influential-grandparents were both raised on a farm, which influenced what my parents ate. (To this day, neither of my parents will even _consider trying_ sushi, because it's raw fish. That's it. That ends the argument for them. You Don't Eat Raw Meat. You don't even eat slightly pink meat.) While this may have produced generations of people with low standards, it was _caused_ by trying to make dubious food safe-to-eat. Even today, many of our official government standards still source from this heritage, being rather excessively conservative and recommending cooking meat as if it's still full of parasites, just to be safe.

So, it's not that "Americans" don't know what food is "supposed" to taste like anymore... many of us have _never_ known what food is "supposed" to taste like, for many generations. This isn't a situation created by "Big Food", it's a pre-existing situation that allowed Big Food to drop in, and offer Americans food that tasted _better_ than what they were used to. That it turns out to itself have been quite mediocre is a measure of just how bad what came before it is!

The trend in the US is quite clearly upwards; I think perhaps if you aren't at least 30 right now that might not be obvious, but believe me, it's getting better, not worse. Yeah, you can still buy Doritos, which haven't hardly changed in 30 years, but the produce sections! Holy shit the produce sections. If you were presented with a produce section from 1985 you'd reach to clean your glasses, if you have them. Absolutely night and day. And the other selections too; I can't go back in time but I wonder if my mom could even have bought _any_ sort of extra-virgin olive oil back then, to take just one example, let alone have 10 different selections.

<comment><USER8> I have always wondered about this, thank you for the good explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This seems like a no brainer-- of course it's cheaper to use inputs from freely available outdoor sources rather than metered and/or artificially provided ones. Since these plants evolved in that setting, it works rather well for them.

There are still many important reasons to pursue indoor farming. For one, population dense areas have few other options, especially in a crisis. Perhaps more importantly, space travel, colonizing other moons & planets, or even the radiation-proof underground cities we may need right here on Earth would all depend exclusively on such technology.

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems like a false dichotomy: why not augment a greenhouse with LED lights?

For some crops, like wine grapes, growers prefer to "dry farm" or use only natural rainfall.

In dry years, however, most are forced to irrigate if nature hasn't provided enough water.

If LED lighting prices (and generation costs) continue to decline, why not "light irrigation" for cloudy climates or latitudes that don't get enough light for a full growing season.

</comment><comment><USER11> The startup right next to us at Greentown Labs is devoted to letting people grow herbs and such in their kitchens.

[https://grovelabs.io/](https://grovelabs.io/)

I've learned a lot about growing plants under LEDs talking to them. In the long run space exploration will require us to do a lot of indoor plant cultivation.

</comment><comment><USER12> Indoor farming is not good for wheat or corn, or really anything where the majority of the plant isn't fragile and/or valuable. Even if we had a mini- wheat without a stem it would be hard to compete with the outdoors. But it's great for leafy vegetables.

<comment><USER13> Interesting. Why?

<comment><USER14> Cheap space, lower nutrient requirements, less (depending on the crop) or more conventional infrastructure, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well, I am just going to leave this article here: [http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japan-automated- facto...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/japan-automated-factory- lettuce/)

Indoor farming will be much more cheaper, efficient, and more environmentally friendly.

Imagine how much transportation is required to deliver food from a farm to the grocery to your table.

<comment><USER16> Indoor farming will not be cheaper, efficient, or environmentally friendly. It will be more expensive because it has to supply all of its inputs while outdoor farms get a _massive_ energy subsidy from the Sun. The amount of energy required to deliver food from a farm to the grocery is NOTHING compared to the energy we spend getting it from grocery to table; indoor farming will change none of that. It is a delusional pipe-dream from people who do not understand modern agriculture.

<comment><USER15> Ok, this article claims the productivity: [http://weburbanist.com/2015/01/11/worlds-largest-indoor- farm...](http://weburbanist.com/2015/01/11/worlds-largest-indoor-farm- is-100-times-more-productive/)

Let me find a research paper and see if it is really valid or not

So, I still don't find any reason why vertical farming, which is indoors is a problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming)

What are your thoughts on this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article mentions that the cost of growing wheat indoors would result in an $18 loaf of bread, so there is a breakeven point. If the cost of transportation and water continues to rise that breakeven point will get closer. Saying that it will never work out reminds me of the early 1990s report that the Army did finding that if we used a tiny portion of the Mojave desert to grow Algae, the only inputs of which would be grey water from LA and sun, we could provide enough bio-diesel to take care of all of the USAs transportation needs. But they killed the project because it would only make sense in a world where gas would cost more than $1.50, which would never come.

<comment><USER18> This fails to explain the barrier to reviving that idea when the price of gas rises.</comment></comment>


Ray Optics Simulation in the Browser - <AUTHOR> https://ricktu288.github.io/ray-optics/ <comment><AUTHOR> Note: use on desktop as it doesn't seem to work well on mobile.</comment>


Cloning block devices online using Software RAID - <AUTHOR> http://www.redpill-linpro.com/sysadvent//2015/12/06/data_migration_with_md.html <comment><USER2> Creating RAID devices and rebooting twice (once to start using the RAID device, and again to stop using it afterwards) seems excessive here. I do this sort of thing with a script very much like lvmsync:

[http://theshed.hezmatt.org/lvmsync/](http://theshed.hezmatt.org/lvmsync/)

except that it works on any block device, not just LVM.

If implementing your own script instead of lvmsync all you need to do is dd off the block device while the VM is running, shut the VM down and then dd only the changed chunks. This can be achieved by reading both the source device and the target device, hashing the chunks and comparing hashes to tell if you need to write the chunk again.

You don't care that the source device is changing under you as you're reading it, because all you're trying to do is get an initial rough copy of the data. The final sync with the VM shut off gets all the changes and makes it consistent.

I typically see single digit changed megabytes per gigabyte of active filesystem, so the final sync goes very quickly.

This also has the advantage that it works in any scenario you have a block device, so would work for OP's host connected to two SANs, but also when you have two hosts each with local storage. You can just do it over SSH.

Another thing you can do is to play with xnbd to put a proxy block device on the destination:

[https://bitbucket.org/hirofuchi/xnbd/wiki/Home#!scenario-2-s...](https://bitbucket.org/hirofuchi/xnbd/wiki/Home#!scenario-2-simple- proxy-server-distributed-copy-on-write)

That may be helpful if the storage is local to each host and is truly massive, as a VM on the destination host can use the NBD block device and be unaware that it is proxying requests back to the original host for data it does not have.

Eventually the data will all be synced across to the target host and then the VM can be rebooted to switch back to the non-NBD local block device.</comment>


Reconsidered and double-handing it [Response to Sarah Lacy's post about Waze] - <AUTHOR> http://geektime.com/2013/07/09/reconsidered-and-double-handing-it/

<comment><USER2> Israel is the best! Waze is amazing and ther is nothhing that you can do about it!

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like everyone in Israel is talking about waze ...

</comment><comment><USER4> great one</comment>


Google Ditches YouTube, Back To Relying On Microsoft For Earnings Calls - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/14/google-ditches-youtube-goes-back-to-relying-on-nemesis-microsoft-for-earnings-calls/

<comment><USER2> I wish there was an MG warning tag on this post. I can't stand that guy's writing style.

<comment><USER3> Personally for mega-blogs that mix facts and opinion (and I think they are better than traditional news organizations) I'd recommend accurate facts (and basing opinion on accurate facts) being the minimum standard.</comment></comment>


Powerful 'mechanical trees' can remove CO2 from air to combat global warming - <AUTHOR> https://asunow.asu.edu/20190429-solutions-lackner-carbon-capture-technology-moves-commercialization <comment><USER2> > Until now, technologies being developed to capture CO2 from the air have > been constrained by the cost of capture and the ability to harvest the gas > at scale. The technology being deployed by SKH addresses both issues, > bringing the cost of capture comfortably below $100 per metric ton at scale > — the lowest in the industry — making it both commercial and impactful > toward reducing global warming.

So, What would it take to commercialize this technology?</comment>


LibreOffice Has Found its Rhythm - <AUTHOR> http://ostatic.com/blog/libreoffice-has-found-its-rhythm <comment><USER2> > Nearly 9 out of 10 downloads of the new version of OpenOffice have been for > Windows machines, rather than Linux, according to recently released > statistics from Apache.

I'm fairly certain that Linux users install the majority of their software from package repositories rather than downloading and installing from websites.

<comment><USER3> I thought all the major distros had obsoleted OpenOffice. Or at least removed it from the default set of apps for the bundled versions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm a Windows user and I use LibreOffice. The new version really is excellent. I've debated for a bit which version I should be on (Open vs. Libre) but as of this release I am very content to stay put.

</comment><comment><USER5> Glad to see this, and kudos to the team. Ever since I heard that they were taking code cruft seriously (<http://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2012-01-09-unused.html>), I've had high hopes for LibreOffice.

</comment><comment><USER6> On the Mac, LibreOffice has not found its rhythm yet (and the same goes for OpenOffice).

Just one example: Mac OS X 10.7's fullscreen mode is still far from being implemented:

<https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=39983>

On the other hand, LibreOffice is good enough to replace NeoOffice that seems to be stuck in its Java foundation and the need to pay for up-to-date versions. And I like in particular Writer in many parts better than Word.

Kudos to all LibreOffice developers and supporters!

<comment><USER3> Implementing a full-screen mode that only exists in 10.7 certainly isn't a showstopper bug. Even the original reporter (a Mac user) called this a "low priority". Saying LibreOffice "has not found its rhythm" and using a tiny feature request like this as an example is a bit silly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The numbers should not be very surprising considering how much bigger the Windows install base is compared to the Linux install base.

</comment><comment><USER8> "LibreOffice Has Found its Rhythm" "... of new downloads for Apache OpenOffice"

Are there 2 names for this product?

</comment><comment><USER9> I was debating whether to use Office 365 or another Microsoft variant for awhile now, but this update is really snappy. Debate is over.

</comment><comment><USER10> Most disappointing thing out of this is that there is a third "fork" of OpenOffice.org that is license incompatible and Mac OS X specific: NeoOffice. I had always thought it was a separate suite.

<comment><USER11> NeoOffice has been inferior to OpenOffice and LibreOffice for quite some time unless something drastic has happened recently.</comment></comment>


Why IKEA Wants to Move Downtown - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/12/ikea-locations-downtown-american-cities-suburbs/576952/ <comment><USER2> They aren't opening _stores_ there, just _showrooms_.</comment>


I`m planning to sell my startup - Mu6.me. - <AUTHOR>

Mu6.me (http://mu6.me) is a social sharing service. It`s fast, easy-to-use and cross-platform. You can easily share your music file to your friends with only 3 step without register. It also has an intelligent music detection to read the detailed information from uploaded music. Mu6.me is massive with Facebook social traffic and the top 8,000 website of Taiwan. Everything sounds good, and I love my startup. Well, as the founder of Mu6, I have a lot of personal reason that I have no enough funds and resource to continue keep Mu6 servicing now, so I want to sell this startup to one of company that can keep Mu6 servicing for the world. If any companies interested please contact me directly.
Or if you are the kind of person who can help me to sell this to other companies, you will 5%-10% of the price.
My email is email@example.com
Looking for you, thank you! <comment><USER2> That's twice now you've posted this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually, it's a pretty good idea for a site. Good luck with selling it.</comment>


Olivia MFSK - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivia_MFSK <comment><USER2> Now that Fountain Code patents have started to expire, hopefully they'll start to be incorporated in applications like these. Most recently this one [0] expired today, on June 11th!

With fountain codes [1], you could decode the correct encoded message after receiving a certain number of _any_ randomly generated sub-messages. The number of required sub-messages depends on the original encoding parameters. This encoding is great for very lossy one-way channels.

[0]: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US6307487B1/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US6307487B1/en)

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

<comment><USER3> This expired in February. Google Patents puts the current status as today's date, so it looks like this happened today but it did not.

<comment><USER2> Oh, good catch!

That's pretty misleading. Especially because I was expecting it to be expired this year, but didn't remember when exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would love to read an ELI5 explanation on how it is possible to decode something that is under the noise floor.

<comment><USER5> The sibling post did a good job at outlining some techniques. I'm going to give you a simple example that might help with "ahhh you can get stuff under the noise"

Let's say you have a noise source made up of random numbers from -1 to 1 (mean 0). And a signal that represents a binary 1 as 0.1 and a binary 0 as -0.1. Our binary signal gets added to the noise.

With one bit and one noise sample, we don't really get much out of it. 0.567 - 0.1 = 0.467 and 0.567 + 0.1 = 0.667. Looking at 0.467 and 0.667, we can't really make any judgement of whether either of those samples is a 1 or a 0.

If you extend your bits out though so that, say, one bit gets transmitted 100 times, then you can take 100 samples on the receive end and take the mean of those. Because the noise source has mean zero, the noise component of the (noise+sample) mean should come out around zero. So you get a mean of maybe -0.075, or a mean of 0.083. At that point, it's reasonable to say "it was likely a -0.1 or 0.1" that was transmitted.

All of the fancy techniques enhance this process, but at its core that's fundamentally what's happening. Some of the techniques spread things out over different frequencies, some spread out over time, but it's all roughly the same idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hang on ... intercontinental radio contact with one watt RF power

I know that's not a lot of power but can anyone provide comparisons to "normal" communications intercontinental?

<comment><USER7> Compare to how much power a single long range fibre line eats + all copper network in between it and end users.

Olivia was designed to trade a lot of band _width_ for great noise immunity. In comparison, FSK31 is like 70% as good and is just 31hz wide.

<comment><USER8> Spectral density is a major factor.

It is a shame that SMS and other low MTU packets aren't transmitted over a low bandwidth channel, or at least as a failover option. SMS coverage would be doubled in range, at least.

<comment><USER9> Like pagers? Probably just a function of effectively duplicating all of the management/authentication/security on top of another physical layer.

<comment><USER8> No, like LTE Cat NB1 or LTE Cat 0, but at higher transmit power.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Those interested in this may also find the linked Wikipedia page for PSK31 and PSK63 of interest.

Also, JT65 and FT8.

<comment><USER11> Also [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_(amateur_radio_software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WSPR_\(amateur_radio_software\))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You can also use this modulation scheme to embed hidden messages in image files.

</comment><comment><USER13> Any HF capable SDR can be used to receive HF Olivia under $20 with a simple mod called direct sampling.

[https://phasenoise.livejournal.com/1723.html](https://phasenoise.livejournal.com/1723.html)

<comment><USER9> For folks that want to sniff around a little first, you can hit websdr.org and listen to receivers all around the world. Most digital mode demodulation software just listens to the audio pipeline on the PC, so you can actually decode Olivia, FT8, JT65, CW, etc from these sites as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> [Meta] This is probably the one clickbait practice at HN I like: a no-context, you'll-find-out link to Wikipedia. Don't change it! A description would be a spoiler.</comment>


Researchers used a neural network to reconstruct a lost Picasso painting - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614333/this-picasso-painting-had-never-been-seen-before-until-a-neural-network-painted-it/ <comment><USER2> That has... so many obvious artificial flaws it's not even funny.

I'm surprised I got a downvote. Compare the fake (e) to the real (d). The algorithm appears to have gotten the broad color scheme correct, but that's about it as far as the similarities go. There are uncomfortable smudges all over the painting, the lighting makes no sense, and several details have blurred together around the hands, feet, everything.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _They have taken a manually edited version of the x-ray images of the > ghostly woman beneath The Old Guitarist and passed it through a neural style > transfer network. This network was trained to convert images into the style > of another artwork from Picasso's Blue Period._

Perhaps a more accurate title would be something like "Researchers used a neural network to stylize a manually retrieved lost Picasso painting"

Original paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.05677.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1909.05677.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks like poop. It didn't even do a good job of faking brushstrokes, much less guessing at what the colors might have been. It's a half-assed job that's not doing much more than a style transfer phone app could do.

Doing this right, imho, would entail taking x-rays of every Blue Period Picasso possible, and training a network to output the visible image when given an x-ray. I don't know offhand how many paintings were in that period, so there may not be enough work to usefully do this.

<comment><USER5> > it didn't even do a good job of faking brushstrokes

That part could be intended. There is a blurred line between recreation and falsification and maybe they wanted to mark clearly and a plain sight that is not a real picasso work.

> It's a half-assed job

100% agree with that, this is not even a lost painting. It was there all the time. Is a discarded try, a misfit that didn't pass the painter's test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a neat idea, but the execution was kind of minimum-viable-attempt.

You can do this yourself though, just google some famous paintings with X-RAY images and try it. I doubt this is very accurate but it is fun.

I posted a few [https://twitter.com/jonathanfly/status/1175966107091574784](https://twitter.com/jonathanfly/status/1175966107091574784)

<comment><USER6> In particular [https://twitter.com/jonathanfly/status/1176355623857991681](https://twitter.com/jonathanfly/status/1176355623857991681)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This title is misleading. The painting was recreated, not retrieved. The title of the article itself is "This Picasso painting had never been seen before. Until a neural network painted it."

<comment><USER8> I actually prefer your title

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So much "research" is just people doing normal mundane work but they happen to be familiar with the process of publishing research papers so they do that for whatever they can think of. This particular work is more like a hobby or perhaps some curiosity for art historians to look at. They didn't do anything that we couldn't already and obviously do anyway.

</comment><comment> d--b Jesus it looks like crap.

Compare with the two other painting, the guitarist and the one they used for style transfer, it just has nothing to do.

Maybe the problem is that they took too much of the underlying painting, which was either very unfinished or damaged.

Anyways, this is quite useless.

<comment><USER10> > Jesus it looks like crap.

Maybe that's why he painted over it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Computers are useless they can only give you answers" \- Picasso

</comment><comment><USER12> Top third of the screen is covered with a cookie warning, bottom third is warning me that I've read 1 of 3 free articles, when I scroll down to read this article they already count as read, there's a big empty space, followed by a prompt to subscribe to some newsletter, followed by _four lines_ of said article, which fade over into a button to _actually_ read it - followed by an attempt to distract me with a _different_ article.

I get the hint, you really don't want me to read the article, so I won't.

<comment><USER13> Browsing with JavaScript off, and all I get is the contents, an image, and some "related articles" at the end. It truly is the best way to browse in 2019. Deeply ironic, considering all the time and effort web devs have put in to creating all the annoyances you list.</comment></comment>


Chaitin's Constant - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaitin%27s_constant <comment><USER2> He even did more:

Mathematician GregoryChaitin defines elegance in computer programming in this way: A computer program written in a given language is elegant if no smaller program written in the same language has the same output. He goes on to prove that it is impossible to prove that a given program above a certain very low level of complexity is elegant.

[https://wiki.c2.com/?ChaitinElegance](https://wiki.c2.com/?ChaitinElegance)

And he gave some examples in his book.

[http://jillian.rootaction.net/~jillian/science/chaitin/www.c...](http://jillian.rootaction.net/~jillian/science/chaitin/www.cs.umaine.edu/chaitin/unknowable/index.html)

See the example code in LISP here:

[https://github.com/darobin/chaitin-lisp](https://github.com/darobin/chaitin- lisp)

<comment><USER3> The general principle here, which is quite foundational in computer science and the theory of complexity, is that of "Kolmogorov complexity". The Kolmogorov complexity of a certain string (roughly speaking) is the shortest computer program needed to produce that string. Much like Turing's halting problem or Church's beta-equivalence, it is impossible to write a program to calculate the Kolmogorov complexity in general. It is "non-computable".

<comment><USER4> > _it is impossible to write a program to calculate the Kolmogorov complexity > in general. It is "non-computable"._

I don't get it, why couldn't you "simply" iterate through every program shorter than the string you're trying to compress, compiling and running each while discarding the ones with the wrong output and halting when you either find a working program or run out of shorter strings to try?

Edit: Oh, I get it now, you can't tell whether or not a given long-running program will eventually produce the target string without solving its halting problem.

<comment><USER3> > Edit: Oh, I get it now, you can't tell whether or not a given long-running > program will eventually produce the target string without solving its > halting problem.

Exactly right! I kinda think that these non-computable problems are all sort- of the same problem, just viewed from different angles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you want to read a bit more from the mathematician himself on this very topic he wrote an accessible "pop-math" book about it, "Meta Math!: The Quest for Omega" though you'll need to look beyond the author's rather strange choices of metaphor ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249849.Meta_Math_](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/249849.Meta_Math_)).

<comment><USER6> It's been a while, but I assume you're referring to the similarities drawn between information theory and sex. This was pretty offputting to me, until I realized the connection was deeper than I recognized - DNA is an apt comparison.

I've read plenty of "pop math" books, and this one stands out as somewhat odd. It's also a quick read and, somewhat uncommonly, written by a person closely connected to the topic - so I'd recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just want to drop this playlist here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLPO- RTFU2o&list=PL86ECDEDE3...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLPO- RTFU2o&list=PL86ECDEDE3FA8D8D1) as its one of my fav lectures

Gregory Chaitin Lecture at Carnegie-Mellon University in 2000, he gives a bit of history of parts of math/computing that leads up to him talking about qualities of random. He touches on Cantor, Bertrand Russell, Hilbert, Gödel and Turing.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the link. I just watched that lecture and it really concretized a number of concepts from the literature. Kudos to Gregory Chaitin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Afaict Chaitin independently came up with the concept of Kolmogorov complexity... as a teenager!

</comment><comment><USER10> The surprising thing to me was, following the link to "normal numbers", that this is called out as one of the only proved irrational normal numbers, even though it is proven that the set of irrational numbers is normal almost everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER11> Can somebody explain to me how is this useful? Is it used for anything?

Or is it pure theoretical concept with interesting emerging properties.

<comment><USER12> The constants themselves would perhaps be useful but they're non-computable so we can't find out what they are anyway.

The idea is useful yes.

<comment><USER11> > The idea is useful yes.

Well that's the crux of my question, how can it be useful wen its completely undefined.

<comment><USER13> The idea is mathematically useful.

If you're asking about it's practical use, it has none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Numberphile has a video explaining the relationship between the number categories, and includes a brief discussion of where Chaitin's Constant belongs.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TkIe60y2GI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5TkIe60y2GI)

</comment><comment><USER15> In contrast: [https://www.jamesrmeyer.com/topics/chaitins- omega.html](https://www.jamesrmeyer.com/topics/chaitins-omega.html)

</comment><comment> benji-york I'm a fan of Fulton's constant.

Fulton's constant is any number of 9s. E.g., 9, 999, or 999999.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not to be confused with his Croissant.</comment>