Localizing "Papers, Please" (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://dukope.tumblr.com/post/83177288060/localizing-papers-please-papers-please-was <comment><USER2> For those who aren't aware: Papers, Please is a video game about paperwork. You play a border agent in a fictional eastern bloc country, checking passports, visas, and work permits. It's surprising and tense and incredibly good. It's currently on sale for $3.99 on Steam, I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER3> it's a bore, but maybe politically interesting for some

<comment><USER2> I would call the gameplay mundane, but that's the point. Completing a tedious task with high accuracy and throughput while the complexity and stakes ramp up. I found it to be a very entertaining challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One other interesting problem with localization involves the use of printf. Even if you're looking up strings based on IDs in another file (which is a good pattern), sometimes you'll need to move things around based on language. For example, if you're doing right to left languages, you might put the number before, or after the string, and the other way for left to right languages. So like ("%d %s" vs "%s %d").

The way that we got around this was adding another level of indirection, and putting printf format strings also as localized data.

<comment><USER5> The format strings have to be localized data in any case, because they usually contain literal text, not just placeholders. The real problem here is that you need to change the order of arguments in a printf call - if the string changes from %s%d to %d%s, the order of arguments in the call must change, as well.

If you're on POSIX, you can use positional arguments for that:

       printf("%1$d %2$s", d, s);
       printf("%2$s %1$d", d, s);

Because it's not standard C, VC++ does not support it directly in printf, but it offers _printf_p with such support, and you can always #define printf _printf_p.

<comment><USER6> Or you can use GNU Gettext, which provides featureful replacements for printf() functions.

<comment><USER7> I came to say this. Gettext _is_ the right answer, this is a solved problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Don't ever use the original string as key in the localization table. That will force you to translate "high" difficulty the same as "high" resolution, for example.

<comment><USER9> When translating a fixed set of messages, you translate the entire phrase, not individual words. So the keys would be "high difficulty" and "high resolution".

<comment><USER10> And even the same phrase may get a different translation at a different place, depending on context.

<comment><USER9> Good point. My only experience with translation is with logging messages in systems where everything is contained within a single statement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome article. I'm always impressed by the distance people will go for their passion. Lucas talks about ultimately having to hand draw Cyrillic versions of _each_ of the game's ten fonts. Very cool!

<comment><USER12> how do you know it's passion when he provided more languages option only after his PAID game became successful? i think there is different word for it in English

<comment><USER13> When he's still doing games when a regular job would make him more money

<comment><USER12> its called extra income when you do it for money

<comment><USER13> Translators are not free, neither is personal time

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you haven't seen the trailer, it's worth watching.[1]

Glory to Artstozka!

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QP5X6fcukM)

</comment><comment><USER15> This should be amended as (2014).

</comment><comment><USER16> Localizing well has a lot of complexity - gender, cardinal, ordinal, etc. rules, and then how to combine them with locale-specific special cases (e.g. in Spanish, a 15-year-old birthday girl is a quinceañera)

I am attempting to solve this with a small library that offers full CLDR coverage and a special expression language.

See [https://www.lokalized.com](https://www.lokalized.com)

Currently for Java 8 but am porting to JS and Python (probably Swift after those)

</comment><comment><USER17> Haxe really shines at converting compile-time assets into static types. The other related trick is to use json as a config object, and access the fully typed equivalent as a static instance within your code. It's also possible to do this with database queries.

I realize other languages provide support for this, but in my experience with Haxe it's way easier to implement something custom. The macro translation layer for manipulating the AST is flexible and speedy, and the compiler is wired directly into autocompletion requests. There's very little impedance between my fingertips and the desired outcome.

</comment><comment><USER18> Loosely related to the title: Why not create a complete modular version not only localised, but also tied to individual country's flows and processes? So it could serve as an education material. (mind:blown)

<comment><USER19> The game is about a fictional country though. Why should the localized versions be about a real country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Having just done some l10n for a client, the thing that annoys me is how even the most powerful editors, such as VS, have such awful tools for l10n. .Net's actual i18n support is pretty good overall, but the editor support is bad.

I literally had to build my own. With 2,500 different strings for a total of 10,000 words I wouldn't even consider our application even that big, it must be a nightmare in bigger projects. We haven't even done the sales site yet because the product's being upsold through a partner.

We came up with our own id naming system, then created an xlsx/resx importer/exporter that uploaded to GSheets to allow us to share files with translators. The ids and comments fields allowed us to add extra meta data, to split the strings into logical sections and sheets and order them properly. Be able to add links to the page that section of translations are on so the translator could see the context. This then additionally allowed us to highlight if a translator had missed any lines when we re-imported it, add their own questions/comments, etc. Also, as we were using sendwithus, we used the importer/exporter to allow us to import pot files from them to keep everything in one place.

Then to support those tools, I created a tool to search for phrases used before, find out the ordering from the meta data, quickly copy ids of strings we want to re-use, see missing spreadsheet tabs.

Programmatically, we had to add support for automatically translating enums into strings (think project status for example), add l10n to our audit logs so customers could see their audits in the correct language and we'd see them in English, modify how .Net did l10n of dates because their built in one is really odd with en-GB which is where we are based (shortdate is Jan 01 2025 in en-US but inexplicably 01 January 2025 in en-GB and all sorts of other oddities).

Then we used a modified version of pseudoizer (thanks John Robbins + Scott Hanselman![1]) to allow us to easily see untranslated strings while we went through the whole site without having a finished translation (we used ja-JP instead of Polish to really see the differences in date strings, currency, etc.). We ended up modifying it because it goes a bit mental with adding !!!! for things like tabs.

Probably spent a week on those tools, but boy was it worth it.

I've not tried intellij's l10n support, maybe it's better, but VS's is very lacklustre.

[1][https://www.hanselman.com/blog/GlobalizationInternationaliza...](https://www.hanselman.com/blog/GlobalizationInternationalizationAndLocalizationInASPNETMVC3JavaScriptAndJQueryPart1.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER21> I would recommend against one's own XML format and _doubly_ against CSV/some homegrown delimited format. Instead, consider something like Excel 2003 XML (one of the easier ones), OpenDocument (also pretty easy in many languages), or Office OpenXML (easy in .NET, a bit harder elsewhere) to store your translation data.

Potfiles are another option, but the tooling is pretty clunky and, in games in particular, people don't seem particularly attuned to their use. And they're not great for editing, though they might be for storage--when dealing with tabular stuff, it just makes a lot of sense to use tools that present a tabular interface. It makes life a lot easier.

<comment><USER22> If it's literally a table of strings, why on earth would anyone use ODF/OOXML? CSV is perfectly fine for editing in any functioning spreadsheet software, works reasonably well in version control (especially since a given commit won't touch multiple columns). In his case, he's using the XML format which Haxe will parse into compile-time-checked references right in his source code; sounds like a great reason to use this standardized(but Haxe-specific) XML format.

<comment><USER23> CSV has no formatting. Who wants to resize columns and set up text wrapping every time you open the file. Could save it as .xlsx and then export to CSV, but that's another step and it's not hard to parse simple spreadsheets in XML. Worth it in my book, because it enables fan translators to contribute easily since everyone has Excel.

<comment><USER24> Don t use Excel to edit csvs. It makes a hash of things at best, and frigs things up at worst.

<comment><USER21> It's not about you, though. Or me. It's about what the people working with you are most comfortable with. I can go blurf out JSON or XML or potfiles by hand, whatever. But normal people are going to go "er, no?" and even if you win that argument you've lost social capital on something that didn't really matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This article makes me unreasonably glad to be working in a framework (Django) with good i18n tooling and few special needs re: textual images.

<comment><USER13> Django solves the pluralizing issues (with some limitations) but it won't (can't) solve gender issues in translation.

See [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins...](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/templates/builtins/?from=olddocs#pluralize)

It doesn't help when the plural is 1/2/many or something different (example: Arabic/Icelandic, etc) [http://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/localization- guide/e...](http://docs.translatehouse.org/projects/localization- guide/en/latest/l10n/pluralforms.html)

<comment><USER25> Django provides ungettext for the pluralizing problem, and pgettext, if implemented conscientiously, for the gender problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Is the Steam version localized and available in german language?

<comment><USER27> The second part ("less technical stuff") specifically notes that they used Steam's private branches to beta-test the localisation and that the supported languages are Italian, Japanese, Spanish, French, _German_ , Russian and Brazilian Portuguese.

So yes and yes.

<comment><USER26> Thank you. Didn't saw that there is a 2nd part!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. For interesting subjects, which always have global reach, the virtual conversations are conducted in English. There is also a place for vernacular -- it is part of people's cultural identity -- but not in a formal knowledge setting. English is a bit like Latin used to be: the language of knowledge, technology, and business. If the subject has global reach, you will miss out on the interesting bits of knowledge, simply because you are trying to do it in vernacular. Doing anything in vernacular, will just lock you up in a small and uninteresting national silo. Nothing of any interest is national. But yes, I use vernacular. I also speak it with my kids, but I don't read it -- unless it is poetry or literature -- and I don't use it in software or in business.

<comment><USER22> Sometimes I get i18n fatigue too. I think the world would be a better place if everyone's languages fit in ASCII.

That said, the cat's kinda out of the bag. UTF-8 is at least well-done, and the algorithms are widely available. I study Japanese and have started studying Russian and Chinese; I think maybe the best way to convince people to learn English is to walk the walk. Who knows, maybe everything will go very wrong again before we get a chance to standardize.

I'm also working on an engineered language with a test suite/corpus maintained alongside the language. Maybe in the ashes of the old new world there'll be room for something like this.

<comment><USER29> English doesn't even fit in ASCII.

To write it properly, we need left- and right-facing single and double quotes, diareses and accents for words like naïve, façade and café, en- and em-dashes and the ellipsis.

Longer documents will require symbols like † and ‡, bullets and §. The currency symbols £, €, ¢ and ₹ are used by countries where English is an official language.

<comment><USER22> I can't even use symbols like that anyhow (I deal in USD, CAD, and NTD). I end up using ISO 4217 codes everywhere. You missed ¥ as well, for which I would use JPY or CNY.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How War in Syria Turned Ordinary Engineers Into Deadly Weapons Inventors - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/07/diy-arms-syria/

<comment><USER2> This is no doubt interesting, but it's very obviously a PR piece written to subtly engender American support for arming Syrian Rebels. This chaotic conflict is making for very strange bedfellows of the United States and certain extremist groups.

There was a nearly identical article in _The Atlantic_ a few months back, Edward Bernays would be proud!

[http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/diy-weapons-of- th...](http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/02/diy-weapons-of-the-syrian- rebels/100461/)

<comment><USER3> An easy way to determine if the US supports a group is to look at the language used to describe that group. Are they "freedom fighters" or "terrorists"?

France is fighting "terrorists" in Mali, not "freedom fighters". The US supports the Syrian "rebels", not the Syrian "terrorists".

<comment><USER4> Who exactly is the US? The government? Democrats? Republicans? Journalists?

<comment><USER5> All of those things. When they all agree on a terminology, the terminology can be said to be used by 'the US'.

<comment><USER4> They don't all agree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Well since the word engineer originated to designate people who built machines of war, this is not terribly surprising.

(Reference, most French language dictionaries) Such as: [http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/ing%C3%A9nieur...](http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/ing%C3%A9nieur/43051)

</comment><comment><USER7> > He points to a stack of metal objects in the corner, shaped like old- > fashioned fire-alarm bells. They are what are known in military parlance as > victim-operated improvised explosive devices—or, in plain English, land > mines.

Uh, I hope they don't use those land mines. Years after the war end, those buried land mines would still killing people.</comment>


Ask HN: Which factor does ethicalness play in your career choice? - <AUTHOR> Do you want to make a difference with your work? How important is the ethicalness of your company to you? <comment><USER2> It matters a great deal, though you might imagine otherwise: my company makes bombs.

I feel that I make a difference with my work. I can see the results in the news.

Being unethical would include things like selling duds, billing the customer for time spent on other projects, colluding with competitors to raise bid prices, bribing the customer's people to choose us, stealing plans from a competitor, hiring unqualified family, and choosing subcontractors based on bribes.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just ahead of graduation I think of my career path a lot. I feel, that I want to pursuit a career path that I will leave a good footprint in the world. Although I see a great culture in the software development community itself (e.g. open source software, Wikipedia), I would love to see more programmers with an idealistic drive towards society as a whole.

</comment><comment><USER3> Ethically earned money and positive popularity among peers would be my main driver. I'd defintely like to create a few inventions here and there related in my niche for the betterment of society.</comment>


Why Do We Need Limits and Infinitesimals? - <AUTHOR> http://betterexplained.com/articles/why-do-we-need-limits-and-infinitesimals/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Betterexplained+%28BetterExplained%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Calculus can be rigorously done with limits, continuous functions, little-o notation or infinitesmals. The key word is "or", use one approach and don't jump around. (After you understand multiple you can see how they connect and then jump around.)

Of those approaches infinitesmals look the simplest but require the most complex mathematical machinery to really do right. Yes, you can construct a non-standard model of the real number system with a transfer principle that lets you transfer between proofs done in the one to the other which lets you formulate calculus using infinitesmals. But using a construction using the axiom of choice to prove that the derivative of x^2 is 2x is kind of like using a sledgehammer to push a tack into a cork board.

<comment><USER3> Great point. I think one of the issues with calculus is that it can be studied at so many levels. Most high school classes give lip service to limits (somehow they're important), and then get into symbol manipulation (move the exponent down, subtract 1, etc.).

I think the most important thing in the beginning is to learn to think conceptually about calculus, about how to break a shape into a simpler model and solve it (not just manipulate models that are given to you). Later on (in analysis, which I've never formally taken :) ) the details about the transfer principle, epsilon-delta proofs, etc. can emerge, but realistically only a very, very small fraction of students need that. That fraction can be increased if they are able to use calculus regularly (with infinitesimals, say) and then wonder the details of how it all works.

I like to ask: Would it be such a bad thing if everyone understood calculus as Newton did, at a baseline level? Many people taking calculus leave with no understanding whatsoever, but the same isn't said for geometry or even algebra (you can make references to parallel lines, equations and feel that people will 'get it', but mention a derivative or limit to someone 10 years after calc class and you'll get a blank stare). I advocate having rough mental models that are successively refined over time (vs. presenting the most rigorous version first).

<comment><USER2> History note for you. Newton understood calculus through the idea of fluxions. It is often claimed that an insistence on teaching calculus with Newton's fluxions instead of Leibniz' infinitesmals held back research in England for a long time. (Another random note. Bishop Berkeley's famous comment about "ghosts of departed quantities" was a criticism of fluxions, not infinitesmals. In fact he had positive things to say about infinitesmals.) So yes, I do think it would be bad for students to understand calculus like Newton did. :-)

That said, to my eyes the primary problem with how we teach calculus is that we introduce too many big concepts at the same time. The key picture that people should come away with is the tangent line. But when you say that the derivative is a function defined at each point as the slope of the tangent line at that point, most people experience brain freeze.

Instead I would like to see students get to the point where they can calculate tangent lines. Then stop. Work out lots of tangent lines for lots of functions. Introduce them to how the tangent line can be used to estimate error bars. (Typical word problem, if a rock take 5 +- 0.5s to fall off a cliff, how tall is the cliff?) And then only after the picture and mechanics of the tangent line is well established should we move on to defining the derivative.

This approach, if done right, would be rigorous but informal. It should avoid the problem of causing brain freeze by presenting too many layers of generality at once. And it would really cement the key image behind half of calculus.

<comment><USER3> Ah, thank you for the clarification -- yes, Newton loved his fluxions, didn't he? In future examples I'll s/Newton/Leibniz/ :).

I think the general point is true about the brain freeze and too many big topics -- it's way too easy to just throw a definition out there, say "this represents slope which is the rate of change" and move on to the next idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Admirable intent, and it seems pretty good, but I've seen far too many people follow advice like this and end up producing confusing nonsense while thinking they're doing the right thing.

By all means take the concepts, but don't try to apply them like that. There are _so_ many pitfalls that this doesn't help you identify, let alone avoid.

If it helps you grok stuff, great. I think I'm pretty clear on how to do a quadruple coronary bypass - I'll just figure out the details as I go along, shall I?

<comment><USER3> Hey, thanks for the comment.

Yep, there is a fundamental tension between intuition and rigor. Unfortunately, I feel that rigor (and not even rigor -- rote details) are overemphasized, without giving any context, and more importantly without giving any inspiration to the student. It's like focusing on the spelling of a poem, not the content.

I do want to jump into the rigorous definitions in later posts (such as when limits exist, when they don't, why it's important) but I find intuition -> rigor is an easier path to navigate than rigor -> intuition [which often becomes rigor -> memorization]. If someone had just said "Hey, limits and infinitesimals help us solve the problem of 'How do we make an approximation which is still accurate enough?'" calculus would have clicked a lot faster for me :).

<comment><USER4> I think we're pretty much in agreement. I would rather, though, see a real example with proper rigor, but introduced and explained starting with intuition and then developed forwards into the detail.

The problem is, as I'm sure you're aware, just how many traps and pitfalls there are for the insufficiently paranoid. Working "intuitively" has a tendency not to instill that paranoia.

And, as you say, working just on the rigor tends to result in rote work with no understanding.

I think only time and practice is the real solution. The article, though, is good for someone who already has the "rote" understanding, and needs to "grok" the whole thing.

Similar criticisms can be aimed at my stuff: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=940169>

<comment><USER3> Yep, I agree with your points about pure intuition leading you down blind alleys unless you have some structure in place.

For the examples, my approach is definitely tailored for people who need to grok the subject after getting a rote understanding. It's not so much to become an expert but to realize what insights would help on the path to becoming an expert.

I figure there are thousands of other sites for the formal definition and practice problems :). I'll check out the article now, looks interesting.

<comment><USER5> I studied calculus on my own in my twenties, and I think the textbooks' focus on rigor led me down a lot of blind alleys before I started trying to come to an intuitive, often graphical, understanding of the problem before attacking the rigorous view. (There is a good textbook from 1977 that was reprinted by Dover in 1998, Morris Kline's "Calculus: An Intuitive and Physical Approach", that I wish I had available when I was studying.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Her Various Symptoms Seemed Unrelated, Then One Doctor Put It All Together - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/14/magazine/her-various-symptoms-seemed-unrelated-then-one-doctor-put-it-all-together.html <comment><USER2> > As for Huls, he is finishing up his fellowship at the hospital this summer. > Wherever he ends up, he is certain he will find new cases to challenge his > curiosity, cases he hopes to solve.

No, he won't, because only early stage residents are given the freedom from economic realities to spend hours digging and thinking through records. Docs aren't paid for their time, nor even for results - and their employers (read: hospitals) have no intention of going into the red.

Do note the key to this diagnosis wasn't finding a brilliant or deeply experienced path: it was about putting it into the hands of a curious trainee, who had the time to chase that curiosity.

I've said it before and I'll say it many times in the future: when it comes to complex patients, there's enormous value in chucking insurance out the window and just paying the doc for their time. A moderately clever doc afforded more than 7 minutes to work on a case can solve a lot of problems.

<comment><USER3> Is there a way to actually request a specific doctor have some time dedicated to figuring your case out at your expense? i.e. "Please do more troubleshooting for me above what insurance pays."

I like your idea - but I fear the industry might have already ruled it out.

-edit- Granted, I've done this in my own life by going to specialists at their own offices/outside of a hospital or medical group.

<comment><USER2> Unfortunately, no. Your doctor is contractually bound to the insurer's fee structure; they can't take an extra penny off of you. You'd have to go to someone that doesn't take your insurance at all (or just don't tell them you have that insurance).

The side effect of all this, honestly, is that doctors stop learning how to turn off 7-minute-mode. When it comes to very serious problems, it pays to go to a practice that doesn't accept insurance at all, because they never got into the bad habit to begin with.

<comment><USER4> You're right that it's difficult for physicians to "turn it off". The contractual requirements you reference, however, are basically unenforced. The only way a physician will get "caught" charging more than agreed is if the patient calls the insurer to complain. Presumably you wouldn't do that to her after she saved your life.

<comment><USER5> > Presumably you wouldn't do that to her after she saved your life.

Oh, you grossly underestimate what people are capable of. At least in China there are many reported cases of such horrible patients. Maybe US being a developed country have fewer these people, but definitely not zero.

<comment><USER4> You're right of course, and this isn't limited to the Chinese. It's best to have physicians in the family; marry one if there isn't one already! This isn't practical for everyone, so perhaps it's best to choose a capable young physician early in life, so that by the time such trust is required it has already formed.

Probably there are other professions in which one gets better service if one has an inside connection, but this situation really speaks ill of how medicine is practiced.

<comment><USER2> > Probably there are other professions in which one gets better service if one > has an inside connection, but this situation really speaks ill of how > medicine is practiced.

Having a doc in the family is a mixed blessing at best. You can get priority treatment, and the benefit of your family members full attention. On the flip side, all the docs I know that aren't fools or morons don't treat their own family for anything more serious than a scrape. You're biased, you don't want the guilt of an error, and you don't want to be the bearer of bad news. I frequently ask my wife not to ask me about her mother's health developments; I'd rather tell comforting lies than be a source of sour truth.

Being a VIP in a medical center due to your relatives gets you more ass kissing, not better care. People don't want to step on toes, or give the impression that useful care is being withheld. And if your relative is a worse doc than the one you're seeing? No one is going to overrule your family member to your face.

<comment><USER6> The value I would see in having a physician as a close relative is in learning how to communicate effectively with other physicians. Then one could in theory need fewer visits to their own doc to get to the bottom of a problem.

<comment><USER2> That's actually a problem. When I myself see a doc, I make a point of being as colloquial about it as possible. Part of our training is about taking what people say and converting it into technical symptoms; when people start to "communicate effectively" it heavily biases us towards certain diagnoses. The more intelligent/educated the patient the more likely we are to take one of their word choices at face value.

Personally, all I ever want from a patient is a clear timeline of events, their best attempt to articulate what they felt, a list of scripts, and old medical records (especially imaging.) The patient that can give me that has made the task of helping them 1000x easier.

<comment><USER3> That's really helpful to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Huls hadn't heard of Schnitzler syndrome, either. He came upon it by using > the database PubMed to look for a disease that matched the patient's > symptoms. He made a list of her symptoms and abnormalities. To get the full > picture, he combed through her earlier electronic medical records, now > archived in an old electronic warehouse, and found that her symptoms had > started maybe a decade earlier. Then he looked for a disease that fit. It > took hours before articles on this strange disorder began to appear. As he > read, he suspected that she had it.

Is this database open? If so, anyone in the same situation as the daughter in this article could spend the hours, rather than hoping a professional will. Not to self-diagnose, but to narrow down the list to a number of candidates the professionals are willing to look through. Sure, what takes the M.D. 6 hours might take me 40 hours, but if the alternative is 10 years of suffering for someone I love, it's easily worth doing.

On a similar note, I have combed through a bunch of research on a particular type of medication recently, and I hope the fruits of my labour will pay off. Time will tell. Either way, I have learned a lot.

Once you are dealing with somethibg that is difficult to diagnose and/or resistant to treatment (I might argue the two are the same thing on a fundamental level), a surprisingly large portion of medical care turns DIY. They never tell you this but unless you are actually made of bucks and can visit the best specialists in the world, it won't take long until you know more than the doctors you meet about the specific problem you're dealing with.

<comment><USER8> My first reaction to these things is that there should be a large database of diseases and symptoms along with some statistics about how strong the correlation is between the disease and symptoms. I don't mean "database" like pubmed. I mean something more machine readable with consistent coding so a symptom might be "elevated IgM" in english. The trick is coding something like that with consistent names for the tested item and consistent definitions of "elevated". Perhaps the definition of elevated would depend on the disease?

One should be able to then filter the disease database based on symptoms. Doctors seem to do this in their head, but they are not comprehensive stores of information. I suppose the problem is in the encoding of symptoms, it's not that simple.

<comment><USER9> The main problem here is human body works in mysterious ways.

We are by definition reacting different, and unfortunately statistics are not helping on this case.

Basically, we have:

\- too many illnesses (I guess 10% of top common health problems, covering 90% of all problems)

\- for each illness, we have N number of symptoms (which unfortunately all or only a subset of this can occur)

\- then we have fake symptoms (statistically out of threshold values but we are living fine with them)

this is generating a big number of combinations.

With this much combinations, it is requiring extensive amount of tests.

As everything health is also optimized for the greater good. Which requires optimum cost management.

So basically medicine today, with statistical approach, is happy to skip 1%, if it can fix 99% with 90% less cost.

<comment><USER10> > \- too many illnesses (I guess 10% of top common health problems, covering > 90% of all problems)

I think this is probably the easy thing to fix when it comes to searching, as you could pretty much leave out the common diagnoses as they'd likely have been tried - Imma call this the "Dr House, is it Lupus?" filter.

From there, you could have "try this" filter, and see what the results are. I wonder what the overlap is between tests and symptoms, but surely with 10 tests and 10 symptoms, most illnesses could be mostly identified?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It does make one wonder how broken the system is. Consider how often we hope this is the norm, and yet it is held up as something exceptional:

———————

"When I see people suffering and I know that if I took the time and effort, I could figure it out," he told me, "then I have to do something." He looks for unexplained pathological findings — in this case, the high level of IgM.

</comment><comment><USER12> Schnitzler syndrome, whilst rare, is well known to dermatologists and is in the differential diagnosis of chronic urticaria (hives). Not to take away from the resident that made the diagnosis but if the patient had been seen by a dermatologist I would be surprised if this would have been missed.

<comment><USER13> Article said a dermatologist was consulted early on and who failed to make the connection. Doesn't support your ascertion.

<comment><USER12> Of course it is possible to miss the diagnosis. My point was that this is not an obscure disease that a dermatologist would not know about.

<comment><USER14> But what you actually said is this:

 _if the patient had been seen by a dermatologist I would be surprised if this would have been missed._

I was diagnosed in my mid thirties with a genetic disorder. It is a more recently recognized milder manifestation of a well known condition. Prior to that, I was basically treated like a hypochondriac and routinely accused of being lazy.

I have read a bit about the difficulty in getting a proper diagnosis. It is routine for people to get treated like they are nuts because the doctors do not immediately have the answer. This winds up being incredibly threatening. It puts you in a position of fearing for both your freedom and your life if you keep talking about your symptoms and keep trying to find an answer, while knowing that not getting an answer may well kill you.

When I had been on antibiotics for several weeks straight with no diagnosis, I expressed my concern that I could die if they couldn't find the answer. The doctor asked if I would like a psych referral. My legitimate concern that I could die in the face of being deathly ill and doctors failing to readily diagnose it was treated like I was merely being neurotic and needed therapy.

Doctors frequently do a terrible job of identifying anything that is at all obscure and they treat patients in a way that makes it both very challenging and genuinely threatening to even try to get a proper diagnosis. I did all in my power to not wind up hospitalized because I was relying heavily on home remedies, like hot baths, to keep my symptoms down to a dull roar. I was convinced that ending up hospitalized would deny me the ability to do that and would be the death of me because doctors can be such assholes at times.

After finally getting a diagnosis, I began growing stronger and healthier. I had always been sickly and did a lot of self care. I now had an explanation as to why I was always sick and it was very empowering.

People with my condition typically get regular checkups with a specialist four times a year. As I grew stronger, my doctor began scheduling me fewer checkups and expressed zero curiosity as to how on earth this was happening when it is supposed to be impossible. When I moved because I was getting divorced and could not afford to remain in California, I did not bother to try to find a new specialist. I can manage my condition better than a doctor can and I didn't want the hassle when doctors don't really want to see me anyway because, I guess, I'm too competent to be a desirable patient.

One outgrowth of that: people on the internet conclude I am some nutcase rabidly rejecting conventional treatment. Doctors did not really want to see me. I no longer need a physician's care. But good luck explaining that to legions of internet strangers who are quick to judge and have no desire to be confused with the facts.

If you have an obscure condition, it is not unusual to know more about it than most general practitioners will. This fact is not at all respected by the general public. Claiming you know more gets pissed all over in internet discussion.

The system does an incredibly poor job of serving most people with obscure conditions. Given the wealth of information and tools available today, I find it appalling that this is so.

<comment><USER15> How did you finally get a correct diagnosis? I am in the same boat, and in my 20s. I have been to some reputed doctors/institutions but none of them seem to be in the least interested in my records or medical history or symptoms beyond 5 minutes, more in veiled accusations of being either a hypochondriac or an uncooperative patient.

<comment><USER14> _How did you finally get a correct diagnosis?_

Kismet? Fate?

My ex was career military and I had the brilliant foresight to be a supportive wife and homemaker, allowing him to shine at work. This turned out to be critical to saving my life as his last 3 duty stations before we divorced were all special duty assignments, including his assignment to Travis Air Force Base as part of a tiny contingent of Army people stationed there.

Travis has a regional hospital serving military members from 8 states. It's longest hall is like a quarter mile long and it has its own dedicated gate on the base. It also is a teaching hospital that works closely with UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento 45 minutes away and I think has connections to stuff in San Francisco, where some of our (family) testing occurred.

I had already been very sick for some weeks before we moved to Travis. Just before Christmas, we moved from temporary quarters into an apartment. January 4th, 10 weeks of chronic sinusitis turned to pneumonia and I ended up bedridden until some time in April.

I had about 2 doctors visits a week during that time and they ran all kinds of tests. All but two tests came back negative. I was told I have a ragweed allergy and a genetic disorder.

Because I was in the SF Bay Area, where by all rights an infantryman would not have been stationed normally, there were like 3 hospitals in the area that dealt with this disorder. My official diagnosis was _atypical cystic fibrosis_ based on sweat chloride results in a historic grey area. Had I been anywhere else in the world, I probably would have died, having never received a proper diagnosis.

Most doctors have heard of CF. They have not heard of atypical CF, which presents more mildly and is frequently misdiagnosed as asthma, a diagnosis I had at one time. I felt it was wrong, but it got me useful treatment, so I didn't argue it at the time.

I also did some of the following things which I list in hopes of answering what I assume is your real question of "Do you have any insights into what I can do to try to successfully get a proper diagnosis?":

I persisted in the face of a lot of nonsense from medical people.

I tried to put my emotional baggage down before appointments and keep focused on getting answers rather than venting my spleen at random doctors.

At some point, I wrote everything down. Printing this out and taking it to a doctor was a mistake because he did not have time to read it. That appointment did not go well. But getting it all straight in my own head and able to tick off some of the most important details in chronological order and in a nutshell proved very valuable.

I eventually did some of my own research online as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi HN

Clinical research types may find this still imperfect tool to be of use none the less.

[https://monarchinitiative.org/disease/MONDO:0018304#phenotyp...](https://monarchinitiative.org/disease/MONDO:0018304#phenotypes)

Full disclosure: guilty guilty guilty

<comment><USER17> Is it just me or is this site exactly what several other people in the comments here are proposing as a major part of the solution?

I'm not sure, since others are basically saying it's too hard to do.

Cross referencing conditions and diseases along with the scientific and common names for things could indeed be very useful!

<comment><USER16> That is the goal but it is a very wide and deep problem you won't catch me trivializing but we are chipping away at and seeing success. Our group working on laypersons synonyms because most folks with rare diseases do not know the terminology.

[https://human-phenotype- ontology.github.io/2016/03/24/layper...](https://human-phenotype- ontology.github.io/2016/03/24/layperson.html)

I should probably be more effusive about all we do as we always seem to be further along than most attempts(and we give it away), but as one of the sausage makers I always worry someone will run into something that is not fixed yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Surprisingly, if I google _"hives elevated levels of IgM"_ or _"hives elevated IgM"_ , _"hives fever elevated IgM"_ or several variations, the top hit is [https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/schnitzler- syndrome/](https://rarediseases.org/rare-diseases/schnitzler-syndrome/).

For _"hives elevated level of IgM"_ and _"hives IgM"_ , that's the second hit.

Does Google react that fast to nytimes articles?

<comment><USER19> It's possible and even likely that Google did react -- it is enough for people to google "schnitzler's syndrome" and click the link to rarediseases.org -- as google does track which result people choose, and rank it higher for the future (for different searches as well).

It's also likely that "hives elevated IgM" is the right search in retrospect; Before diagnosis, the search would likely have been more along the lines of "hives weight loss elevated leukocyte elevated IgM fever rashes at night" which likely didn't point as easily to schnitzler's syndrome (or maybe it did, I don't know).

The info was distilled and purified for this article. It likely wasn't that well presented to start with - in my experience, that's the case for many rare diseases: once you know what it is, it is clear that in retrospect you should have seen it all along. But that's just 20/20 hindsight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have zero medical expertise, but it sounds like this situation could be improved with software. Given a database that contains an exhaustive list of every illness and symptoms:

        illness      symptom     diagnosis_symptom_set
        </comment><comment>-      </comment><comment>-     </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----
        id           id          id
        name         name        symptom_id (FK->symptom.id)
                                 illness_id (FK->illness.id)

        (Pseudo SQL)

        SELECT diagnosis.name as name
        FROM diagnosis_symptom_set diagnosis_sympt
        JOIN illness diagnosis ON diagnosis_sympt.illness_id = diagnosis.id
        WHERE symptom.name in (hives, chills, weight-loss, .....)

This will at least give a patient awareness of what has been tried/tested and what remains, possibly saving them months or years.

<comment><USER21> Much easier said than done. There are several startups out there attempting to achieve something like that. The issue isn't in the technical difficulty, but the bureaucracy and red tape involved in getting the patient data, getting enough illness/symptom data to make diagnoses possible (which is a _lot_ ), proving to the hospital that it's worth the effort to adopt the platform, and making a solution agnostic enough to extrapolate to enough hospitals to turn a profit.

<comment><USER19> The issue is also the technical difficulty. There is huge variance and the number of variables to consider is also great.

A computer/database is a better tool for the job, of course, but the balancing act between false negative and false positives is extremely hard.

See, e.g. the (very) simplified case of base rate fallacy[0] ; There is an inherent information problem in doing diagnosis, that a large database and fast search do not address.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy#Example_1:_D...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy#Example_1:_Drunk_drivers)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My guess is the doctors who don't spend extra time trying to solve the case probably shouldn't be paid for the time separately as is being suggested here.

It would appear to me that they have already lost the innate curiosity (if they ever had it) that made them want to become doctors in the first place.

Or they're not confident enough in their ability. Doctors are already paid substantially compared to most other professions, so for them to not put in extra time on the exceptional cases makes me feel they probably feel entitled. Too much so to have any impact on the rare cases.

The doctors who could realistically find the solution are the ones who will likely want to take the case on for free.

<comment><USER23> The idea that we should count on people to spend additional time on their job for free because they enjoy it seems overly idealistic. Sure, such people exist, but the easiest way to incentivize more time on a job is to just pay people accordingly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Related startup: [http://www.pacmed.ai/en/](http://www.pacmed.ai/en/)

</comment><comment><USER25> What makes macrophages the "most primitive part of the immune system"? How about antimicrobial peptides, which are simpler and evolved earlier?

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

</comment><comment><USER26> I had almost exactly these symptoms twice in my life, as a kid. It stumped doctors then, too. It was not Schnitzler syndrome: it was not chronic and in the longest case only lasted a few weeks to maybe a couple of months. However, while I never did get a "name" for the illness doctors came to the conclusion that my immune system greatly overreacted to _something_ and went into a crazy state of attack - hives, persistent fever, painful skin, pain all the way through my bones, etc.

I wish I could put a name to what it was - I do not think my case was rare and a name does exist, but I was too young to have been told at the time.

</comment><comment><USER27> Am surprised that a Grand rounds was not convened for this. There's an online service of the same name which has the same function.

</comment><comment><USER28> I will not be reading this article because of its title.

</comment><comment><USER29> This was like a real life episode of Dr. House MD

</comment><comment><USER30> TLDR: It was Schnitzler Syndrome, a rare autoimmune disease.

Clickbait titles and suspense-novel narrative structures in articles like this really annoy me for some reason. Just get to the point.

<comment><USER31> Right; it's like someone has watched too many episodes of House and thinks that's how doctors are/should be.

<comment><USER32> In this case it is the other way around. AFAIK Dr. Sanders was the inspiration for House.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> "Symptom Number Two will shock you!"

<comment><USER34> I'm not sure why you were downvoted. That title is pretty much the definition of clickbait.

<comment><USER35> Maybe because sarcastic quips are a poor way to get a point across. Simply pointing out the title is clickbait and perhaps suggesting an alternative would be useful.

<comment><USER33> Who am I to say what a good title is? I'm certainly not the editor or the NYT (no one is, they fired their editorial staff).

But I am the person to say "this title reminds me of tropy drivel which I've seen over the past few years, and I'll supply the appropriate subheading."

<comment><USER35> Something like that would have worked better, indeed. To be clear, the HN guidelines for commenting [1] say "don't be snarky".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It can all go to zero - <AUTHOR> https://www.feld.com/archives/2018/01/can-go-zero.html <comment><USER2> Time for the monthly cryptocurrency panic thread. While I fully agree that most cryptocurrencies are grossly overvalued, these articles always pretend a 20% selloff is the beginning of the end, when, in crypto land, 20% selloffs are a pretty standard bad day for the market.

<comment><USER3> The way I understand it bitcoin is guaranteed to go to zero by design because there is a fixed limit on issue and so eventually there will be no incentive to mine and the network will collapse.

<comment><USER4> Actually Bitcoin has transaction fees for exactly this purpose. The idea is that once all the coins are mined the primary way that miners make money is from the fees that people pay to miners to get their transactions recorded in the blockchain.

For reference a lot of times you currently have to pay a fee of >$10 to get your transaction recorded in the blockchain, and estimates of around $10 million a day in transaction fees go to miners.

Of course its questionable whether fees can actually support the ecosystem, but it is designed into the system.

<comment><USER5> Yes, miners will receive transaction fees. But have you run the numbers on how much those transaction fees would have to be to match the current block reward?

The endgame seems completely untenable. No one is going to pay a huge amount per BTC transfer. So what do you think will happen to all those miners, with all their mining equipment?

We currently have a monstrous block reward every 10 minutes, and yet tx fees are already $10 to $20. Imagine how much the fees will be when there's no reward.

<comment><USER6> If I understood the system correctly, at that point mining would become much less profitable so a lot of miners would stop their operations. In that case, difficulty would automatically decrease at the same rate as miners quit, and at some point it would become somehow profitable for the remaining miners to subsist on transaction fees.

<comment><USER5> Note that difficulty adjustment happens every 2016 blocks. If the miners all decide to call it quits shortly after the previous difficulty change, the next 2016 blocks might take far longer than 10 minutes per block.

Which of course means the next difficulty adjustment would take far longer than two weeks to trigger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If Bitcoin goes to 0, I will buy all of it and display the Trezor that stores it in a museum

<comment><USER8> If people stop mining it then you can't buy it. Remember, with the current design if hash power suddenly drops enough then the network just stops.

<comment><USER9> Wow so it can you drop to zero in a very real sense before it even drops to say $40?!?

<comment><USER10> > _Wow so it can you drop to zero in a very real sense before it even drops to > say $40?!?_

Markets crash discontinuously. It was trading at one hundred, it was trading at one hundred, it was trading at 99, it was trading at 2. Go on GDAX and look at the order book. Lots of demand priced close together at the top of the book. As you go down, the bids are further apart.

As a first-order approximation, that's a decent view into what would happen if a massive bought of selling hit the exchange.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So many people love to parrot the 'It'll go down to zero!' line, especially if they don't have skin in the game, but there's pretty much no way. Specific cryptocurrencies, sure they could potentially go to zero. I'm watching one right now that's looking pretty darn close. But this entire industry? I don't think so. It's too late for that.

Too many players, too much ease of access, too much of the potential has been demonstrated at this point. Could it go down 50% or more still? Yeah possibly. I sat through 2013-2015 when Bitcoin had fallen from $1200 and got stuck in the $180-$300 range for two straight years.

I don't think that's going to happen again, not least of which because there will be people like me that would be happy to buy and hold until whenever it goes back up again at that price, but sure, it's possible.

But zero, or close to zero? No. Even this guy's example of his company was only one company, not the entire stock market.

<comment><USER12> Were you around a few years back to see real estate values drop from $300K to $25K? I saw that. And we are talking about a physical property.

$25K is not zero, but it would be hard to distinguish the effective difference if you're leveraged $250K.

So, as with any investment, if you're spending monopoly money on cryptocurrencies, scoff away. But if your retirement depends on it...

<comment><USER13> $300k to $25K? That seems awfully cheap. Where did prices drop so much?

<comment><USER14> Condo towers in Miami that were being put up and finished as the crash arrived, were often entirely empty and couldn't find any buyers. You could buy cheaper units for $30k to $50k. It was common to see 50%-70% haircuts, drops from $180k to $90k etc. Over six years (2003-2009), Miami added 23,000 condo units for a city of 400k. In Dec 2008, nearly half of those remained unsold.

Las Vegas saw some similar action. It suffered the worst overall top to bottom crash of any major city in the US.

<comment><USER15> Atlanta, and the surrounding suburbs and exurbs, saw significant drops like this as well in many neighborhoods and cities. Same with the Jacksonville, FL area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ive some positions in different cryptos. I bought them with the same mindset that I use when I go to a casino. What do I not mind losing? Its just one more investment vehicle that I plan on riding out for the mid to long term. I may win, I may lose but its not the only horse Im betting on.

<comment> Method-X Yup, this is definitely the right mindset to have. I've been involved in crypto since 2013 and I've found the key to making money is not drinking the kool-aid. Sell when you're happy with the return you've made. Investing in crypto is a little like playing poker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> [https://i.redd.it/twe79v68sea01.jpg](https://i.redd.it/twe79v68sea01.jpg)

Will the history show the future again?

<comment><USER18> What a misleading chart. It makes it seem like the market drops significantly every January. Yet if you look at a chart of the entire history of Bitcoin, you realize that Bitcoin has never dropped as much as in the last month or so. Not even close.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me so much of the .COM bubble. Same kind of discussions. I think there will be a place for cryptocurrency but before that has been established there will be a lot of people taking a lot of pain. People who have bought them a few years ago will only take paper losses but now there is real money flowing into this.

<comment><USER20> I have seen comparisons to the .com boom/bubble, and I don't buy it.

There was a lot of economic movement while _the entire economy_ moved over to the internet. Those who didn't adapt failed. Those who tried models which didn't translate also failed. Lots of experimentation, and lots of reinventing things from scratch. So lots of failure and lots of speculation-- but ultimately around a real sea change.

I don't see how blockchain tech could have a technological / cultural impact on that scale. It has _some_ value, and it will find its place in mainstream society, but I don't see how/why the market needs to test everything against it to reinvent itself as was done when the internet came to the fore. I could see that for _sure_ with AI, but blockchain? Seems pretty specific and limited.

Much more hype and much less substance than the .com revolution, IMO.

<comment><USER21> I keep asking people this simple question, which goes something like this:

Before the internet, I would wake up in the morning and have to go to a store and buy clothes, then the travel agent to book flights, then Blockbuster to get a movie to watch. After the internet I could wake up in the morning and do all that myself. That was valuable.

Before smartphones I would wake up in the morning and print out my airline tickets, then call a taxi service and have to explain to them where I was, and I couldn't tell where the driver was if I didn't see him.

OK, got all that?

Now, with cryptocurrency I will wake up in the morning and do what? I could send money to buy drugs, that's a pretty killer use case. There are some things like transferring money out of a war torn country that maybe it would help that have some value, but I'm not in a war torn country. So... where's my killer use case?

It's important to note that all the internet/smartphone examples above are INCREDIBLE use cases, and that's just scratching the surface. Booking travel used to SUCK now it's better. I can get books instantly. I can collaborate on music or video production across the country. And so on, these are big deal things. There are TONS of examples. The business opportunities here were utterly massive. Nearly everything people and businesses did on a daily basis changed in consequential ways due to the internet in ways that opened up opportunity for profit.

And even with that said most of the people who saw the promise of the internet in 1997-2000 and put money into passive investments got creamed.

Now, in all seriousness, what's my morning going to be like with crypto as a mature technology, how will it be different and better and why will I care? When will this happen, why hasn't it already happened, and how are all these people going to profit from the change?

<comment><USER22> An anti-pattern that I see on HN is very smart people spending lots of energy thinking of all the ways that something can't work. Whenever you have a tough problem, there are usually only a couple ways it can be solved, and infinite reasons it's hard to solve.

The fact that your imagination can't come up with killer use cases does not mean that those use cases don't exist. It means you haven't exercised your imagination very hard.

Further, if I think I know what crypto's killer use cases will be, also think that I can prove concept as to those use cases within 1-2 years, and I have enough money to fund that process, why would I explain those cases to you?

If you're constantly waiting for concepts to be proven, you'll always feel behind the curve and wondering why others have way more money than you, even though you're way smarter than they are. Imagination, vision, and the willingness to push beyond initial analysis are probably worth 20-40 IQ points in terms of lifetime earning potential.

<comment><USER11> Very insightful. It's all too easy to assume there's no use for something because you haven't seen it yet. There was a time when it didn't seem like there was going to be any commercial use for the internet either.

In fact, I read a book written in back in 1914, about the history of aviation up to that point, that was talking about planes being used in WWI, and a sentence struck out at me that said something like "It's not determined yet what, or if, there is any commercial use to planes as of yet, but their use in warfare is clear."

Obviously in hindsight it's clear that there are tons of commercial uses for airplanes, but back then it wasn't proven yet, and the writer apparently didn't have the imagination to even make a prediction on it.

<comment><USER21> This is patent nonsense. In 1911 the US government started extensive trials of using planes for air mail delivery which were an obvious success by the following year.

The benefits of manned flight to the military, and having a spotter above the battlefield, let alone flying weapons, were massive and immediately apparent to a child.

Maybe some writer was trying and failing to make some kind of point. I don't know the guy.

None of this really changes the point that ten years into cryptocurrency the only genuine killer use cases are contraband and speculation.

<comment><USER11> You're right, I misremembered the quote. I looked for the quote and I think I found it. This was in the book "Aircraft and Submarines The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day Uses of War's Newest Weapons" by Willis J. Abbot.

"In 1917, at the time of writing this book, there are probably thirty distinct types of airplanes being manufactured for commercial and military use, and not less than fifty thousand are being used daily over the battlefields of Europe. No invention save possibly the telephone and the automobile ever attained so prodigious a development in so brief a time. Wise observers hold that the demand for these machines is yet in its infancy, and that when the end of the war shall lead manufacturers and designers to turn their attention to the commercial value of the airplane the flying craft will be as common in the air as the automobiles at least on our country roads."

I think what happened is that I was marveling that I was reading a book where it was talking about the history of aviation before there were actual airports and consumer uses for planes, and I was essentially tying that in with 'commercial' in my memory of the passage. Up until this point in the book he hadn't mentioned any real commercial uses, but further investigation revealed that there were actual commercial flights as early as 1914, so I was wrong about that as well.

Nevertheless, most people back in 1917 would not even begin to imagine where commercial flight would lead us to one hundred years later, especially with space flight, jumbo jets, super sonic jets, drones, etc. Give crypto one hundred years and I don't think anyone will still be saying "cryptocurrency is only good for contraband and speculation". Give people the chance to build the infrastructure around it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are so many glaring issues with BitCoin that it's insane that there are people who are dumb enough to buy it at these prices. 1) 96% of it is controlled by 4% of people. That means if it were to become a currency 96% of the wealth in the world would have to be given to 4% of people either through goods or a fiat currency. 2) It's just a matter of time before enough people lose their private keys that the total number of coins in circulation reaches 0. Already, something like 30% of current coins are considered "lost".

<comment><USER24> But US wealth is controlled by less than 1%. So, what is the difference

<comment><USER25> Wealth <> currency

<comment><USER24> Some math ?

<comment><USER25> Total wealth of US households = 84.9 T [http://time.com/money/3919690/americans-total-net-worth- reco...](http://time.com/money/3919690/americans-total-net-worth-record/)

Total amount of US currency in circulation = 1.2 T [https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html](https://www.newyorkfed.org/aboutthefed/fedpoint/fed01.html)

Any way you want to figure it, the amount of wealth that exists does not correspond to the amount of currency in circulation. Both can go up and down independently of each other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The chances that BTC (or any given crypto asset) goes to zero right now (or in the near future), with the information we CURRENTLY have, are low...market gyrations will happen, things will fluctuate +/\- 20, 30, 50%, maybe they'll all go up 10x, maybe 100x, etc.

As long as folks believe there's a get rich quick possibility (or believe in the viability of crypto assets, or whatever), things will keep on as they've kept on.

HOWEVER: What that line of thinking misses is the possibility of new, external, market-shocking information. I don't know what that is or could be (the ol 'we don't know what we don't know'). Maybe someone discovers a massive and fundamental bug that renders them useless. Maybe quantum computing advances faster than we think and factoring large numbers becomes trivial. Maybe ______, maybe _______, maybe maybe maybe.

THAT is what could bring it all to $0. That's what you should be worried about. That's why this isn't a sure thing for ever and ever.

<comment><USER27> I've always wondered what Bitcoin would be worth if (1) Nuclear war destroys the internet or cloud servers (2) Mining costs more than its worth and no one mines any more (3) It becomes impossible due to legal or other reasons to convert bitcoin to a real currency without extra-legal efforts.

<comment><USER28> If mining is too difficult,the difficulty drops, until a single PC is finding every block on schedule. I'll mine, so that won't happen.

<comment><USER26> So I guess I'd say my point is that you say "I'll mine, so that won't happen" NOW, which is both fair and rational. But let's say tomorrow we discover a critical vulnerability in the bitcoin source that's been overlooked and causes the whole thing to be destabilized and, effectively worthless. Everyone moves on to BTC 2.0 (or whatever the fork is). Will you still mine original BTC? No. Why would you? It'd be a waste of resources.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think a big problem is that people are conflating two kinds of value. One is the technical value of block chain and other distributed consensus algorithms. The other is the monetary value of block chain backed assets.

The latter could indeed crash without impacting the former. Advances in the former that solve cryptocurrency scaling problems could even _cause_ the latter to crash by reducing artificial scarcity. Unlike gold there is no real objective scarcity here. It's just software.

"Bitcoin is a major innovation" and "Bitcoin is a bubble" can both be true.

BTW...

I'm waiting for someone to explain to me why this kind of appreciation in value is actually a desirable thing in a currency. It makes Bitcoin _less useful_.

It's similar to housing. How is housing being more expensive a good thing?

</comment><comment><USER30> I'll bite. This article isn't terribly useful and doesn't really put forth any new ideas. Most people are aware of how much risk is involved in the space.

</comment><comment><USER31> A few months ago I listened to an audiobook about Long Term Capital Management, both their rise and their spectacular fall. Their largest error was one I could easily see causing a catastrophe in cryptocurrency markets. Some call it a "liquidity crisis" but really its a matter of no one being willing to buy. LTCM was witness to a situation where it was positively idiotic for everyone to be getting out of the market - but they were anyway.

Humans are skittish, irrational creatures, especially in large groups. If you operate on the 'rational market' hypothesis, you're wrong. Plain and simple, just wrong. That's not how it works, or how it has ever worked. Panics happen. People hurt themselves in order to limit their exposure to even manageable risk.

But, their main insight stands, really. If you can hold long enough, things converge. It's the 'hold long enough' bit that can sometimes require a wait that costs more money than there is in the world.

</comment><comment><USER23> I see Dogecoin is no longer at it's 2 billion dollar market cap. When my dad asked me if I thought BitCoin was in a bubble, I told him that the fact that a parody coin had a market capitalization of two billion dollars seemed to indicate that something was off.

<comment><USER32> While on one hand I agree with you, on the other hand, remember the million dollar web page? In the end it was worth a million dollars.

So who's to say a parody coin isn't worth that much? It certainly caught everyone's attention.

But yeah, it is questionable, and a serious indicator there is a lot of "me too" money in the cryptocurrency space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What is the general thinking on what the right properties of cryptocurrencies should be to give them nonzero value? (e.g., cheap, low volatility, low transaction cost (in time and expense to transacting party), reliability of transactions, lack of central authority?)

To motivate this, there are many reasons for gold to have become the physical currency of choice, outlined here: [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25255957](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25255957)

I would imagine that the long-term cryptocurrency will have comparable benefits (whatever those benefits are for cryptocurrencies).

</comment><comment><USER34> Another new year, another market correction.

[https://twitter.com/cryptozerp/status/953324474077769728](https://twitter.com/cryptozerp/status/953324474077769728)

Good time to go shopping!

<comment><USER35> yes [https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/702obx/bitc...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/702obx/bitcoin_major_corrections_september_2010/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> > It can all go to zero

But there is more room to go up than to go down :)

</comment><comment><USER37> Lately, nothing makes me snicker more than google search hits like this: "Dogecoin price | index, chart, expert analysis and news"

</comment><comment><USER38> I think this summarizes the entire situation of the past 24 hours after China has banned its citizens from foreign crypto exchanges

[http://archive.is/2018.01.16-165846/https://twitter.com/AntP...](http://archive.is/2018.01.16-165846/https://twitter.com/AntPoolBITMAIN/status/953273283524227072)

Just looking at r/Poloniex it doesn't seem like quick customer turnaround is a thing.

<comment><USER39> Every bubble has money coming from somewhere. The mortgage bubble had all the BBB- derivatives that were ridiculously underpriced turning trash into treasure.

Bitcoin is all about money trying to get out of China. There is a bit of people in countries with trashy currencies trying to save, some illegal commerce and some greater fool speculation on top of that, but that's not a lot of money comparitively. As China squeezes the vice, it's going to slowly suck most of the air out of the market.

<comment><USER40> Why do you think the mortgage derivatives were broadly speaking underpriced?

There are a lot of kinds of risks you can buy that exhibit "picking up dimes in front of a steamroller" risk, and are priced fairly. That is, 99% of the time you get a free dime...

<comment><USER39> Seems AIG was the designated bagholder and lynchpin of the whole thing. Many derivative buyers got 100 cents on the dollar on all their derivatives they bought from them because the government picked up the obligations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> the idea that blockchains with utility are valued as a % of BTC is the real insanity. IMO the nature of crypto-panic will change quite a bit when fairx and other similar "every shitcoin is a cash market now" exchanges get off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER9> with transaction times of several minutes (hours?) how can people even trade that stuff?

</comment><comment><USER9> it might even go to minus one if there is another bug in ethereum. jokes aside it can't go to zero because I will buy all bitcoins once it goes back to $0.01/BTC, where it was just some years ago.

<comment><USER12> And then it will well and truly be stuck at $0. It would be foolish indeed to buy a coin of any cryptocurrency when all the coins are held by one individual.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Sorry but his was just a bad article. I like it for generating discussion about the topic but it's contents were without insight and seemed mostly just to promote the author. Made me lose most or all respect for them instead.

</comment><comment><USER43> Every year for the last four years, bitcoin went down -20%~ or so in the 3rd week of Jan. I don't know why everyone freaks out this week

Honestly, the history and trends are there, its just a thing that happens every year, I dunno man

<comment><USER44> Maybe the credit card bills that people ran up in December have come in, and they're selling their holdings to settle them.

<comment><USER43> the common theory [for the past four years] is that chinese new years is coming and its for red pockets

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Author publicly admits to giving insider trading advice.

<comment><USER46> Insider information that is publicly disclosed is by definition no longer "insider information".

Indeed, if this had been an equity, it would have been illegal for him to trade the equity without disclosing the insider information prior to the trade.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I take all my investment lessons from movies.

<comment><USER48> I jump head-first into every bubble because this time it's going to be different.

<comment><USER49> It's different 60% of the time, every time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> yeah, it can all go x10 as well, at least in term of total market cap.

</comment><comment><USER51> the part that really resonated with me was:

I don't want to make money on short-term financial trades, but rather by helping create new things over the long-term.

Anyone else have comments on this? I've been thinking this lately as well

</comment><comment><USER33> Bitcoin and many other cryptocurrencies are fiat currencies, nothing more. Bitcoin's value is dependent not on underlying fundamentals, but rather on supply and demand. Its supply is limited and will be fixed, but its demand is based on on its perceived usefulness, either for storing value or making purchases (maybe other things?). Until we see that it is useful for these things, we should assume its fundamental value is zero.

<comment><USER52> you're describing currencies, not fiat currencies. Even gold has limited 'intrinsic' value. Pretty much all of it 'real' applications have acceptable, cheaper substitutes. Anyone buying gold-plated connectors for their audio equipment is basically an idiot (source: in high school I used to work for radio shack)

<comment><USER33> There are many reasons gold has become a valuable currency: it has a distinctive density, a distinctive color, it doesn't oxidize easily, it's not radioactive or toxic, and it's relatively rare (compared to, for example, iron). Its scarcity and distinctiveness, together with its aesthetic appeal, have made it a natural choice as a currency. See, for example, [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25255957](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-25255957).

Bitcoin has none of these properties ,which makes me call it a fiat currency (like the U.S. dollar). The only difference is that the U.S. dollar does have transactional value (and limited storage value).

<comment><USER52> The distinctive color and density are intrinsic properties of gold that relate to its viability as a currency because it makes gold verifiable. In that sense, Bitcoin has intrinsic value due to its verifiability as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> At this point, Bitcoin is not much more than a phantom object. Too overpriced to use for any reasonable purchase, people are literally trading nothing but zeros and ones, no more or less valuable than the bits making up this comment.

All that can change, but only if the price drops back down to its 2016 to early 2017 values, and there are too many people invested at this price to let Bitcoin survive as an actual currency if that happens.

We crossed the event horizon a couple months ago.

<comment><USER54> _Too overpriced to use for any reasonable purchase_

Could one have a cryptocurrency which is always subdividable? Are there any which already have this feature?

<comment><USER53> It's about transaction fees and computing power. The cost of powering the computers that verify transactions has to be covered.

<comment><USER54> That's a serious design flaw. "It can do it, but it's just too expensive for anyone to afford to do it," is a design failure condition.

<comment><USER53> I think it's a natural flaw in the mining concept. Any coin that people use in a real sense will create heavy mining competition. That in turn raises the amount of computing power needed to successfully mine, meaning that transaction costs exponentially rise.

<comment><USER54> _I think it 's a natural flaw in the mining concept. Any coin that people use in a real sense will create heavy mining competition._

Are you sure it's not a flaw in pricing/incentive? If people are using a cryptocurrency "in a real sense" then the public blockchain ledger of a properly maintained cryptocurrency could be maintained by parties who are _motivated to get their transaction done._ This is not a natural flaw in the general mining concept. This is a flaw in Bitcoin's implementation of mining, due to the circumstance that most miners of Bitcoin are motivated by speculation in Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Maybe if you're holding a shitcoin, but Bitcoin? Nope.

<comment><USER56> What value does Bitcoin add to society? IF you don't add value, what's the point of having you around? Bitcoin could absolutely go to zero. I say this as a holder of some.

<comment><USER57> >What value does Bitcoin add to society?

the value is that you can have anyone in the world murdered without it ever conceivably getting back to you.[1]

(that value is obviously negative.)

Therefore the appropriate value of bitcoin is $0 because literally all of society is set up for the exact and sole purpose of ensuring that the availability of bitcoin is $0.

This is literally the only purpose for which the past 100,000 years of society have been set up.

That's it. 1) technology. 2) rule of law.

briefly 1 has surpassed 2 but not for long. social progress is worth _way_ more than technological progress.

My price target for bitcoin is $0. That said, an appropriate target is trillions in market cap and it is likely to get to that price.

\----

[1] While producing greenhouse gasses robbing our children and their children of the sole habitable habitat in the universe - but that is not enough to make it illegal.

<comment><USER58> What about the value of fighting financial censorship?

There are lots of governments and people that attempted to censor perfectly moral and reasonable transactions.

Just because it is "the law" doesn't make it right.

Do you also dislike Tor because it allows political dissenters to hide from the government?

<comment><USER59> "censor" is a loaded term. Why not "forbid"? Also, what if the solution to an abusive government is not a technological tool but a plurality of governments, many of which promote (some vision of) human rights? Central power, authority is not inherently evil.

<comment><USER58> Yes, there are different governments, some of which are good, and some of which are bad.

Which is exactly why tools for fighting censorship are important.

To fight the bad governments.

"just make the government better" isn't a solution. People have been trying to make terrible, abusive governments better for thousands of years.

But until the problem of bad governments is solved, tools to fight those governments are important.

Just like tools that allow people to engage in anonymous and protected speech and political disagreement are important.

And right now there are a lot of really freaking terrible governments.

I'd argue that around ~20 percent of people in the world right now live under a government that I'd describe as "Nazi level bad". (ex, much of the middle east has laws that literally give the death penalty for being gay. That's Nazi level bad... ).

When you have this many people living under terrible governments, tools for these people are extremely important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> We have this discussion every year when there's a major correction (hint: this isn't _that_ , this is one of the _small ones_ ).

It seems there are only two types of sentiment in the cryptocurrency market: _extreme hype_ , where you start seeing mainstream media articles about "getting rich with cryptocurrencies," and _extreme FUD_ , where everyone that has never trusted cryptocurrencies starts piling on for weeks about the tulip mania (we've never heard that one before) and how it will all go to zero _this time_.

But it never does. Almost every year, cryptocurrencies become bigger, on average. Small corrections, major corrections/bear markets, and even _super- corrections_ (2-3 year long bear markets) are all in cryptocurrencies' future. But cryptocurrencies are here to stay. They won't ever crash to zero.

</comment><comment><USER61> The comparison with the other company makes no sense. A company has a "single point of failure". At this point there's waayy too many actors and people who want Bitcoin to succeed.

The market is huge at this point. Like NASDAQ is like 7T IIRC. Crypto is today ~550B. It was like ~750B not too long ago.

Note how there's no glue joining the idea of the company and crypto. It could go down but it could also go really up even higher.

It's funny how the one thing that North Korea agrees with the West on is how dope Bitcoin is. Like in some sense NK, is very vested in this going well.

And re: zero. No, it will never be a literal zero. No buying or purchasing happens when things are priced at zero.

EDIT: HN seems to be really anti-crypto. I setup a slack channel right now, if anyone is interested in having a discussion about crypto beyond "what if it goes to zero".

<comment><USER29> People made a version of that argument with mortgages and mortgage backed securities. Mortgages are spread across too many people, too many geographic areas, etc., and there's no way they'll all decline or default at once.

<comment><USER61> Well they were wrong to make that argument. If for no other reason they were all spread across too many people IN THE US, which kinda invalidates the claim.

<comment><USER62> Crashes and recessions can be global. In fact, economic interconnection makes that more and more likely. Globalism is not a zero-sum game, everyone can win at the same time, and in fact everyone can lose at the same time as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Researchers develop device that can 'hear' your internal voice - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/06/researchers-develop-device-that-can-hear-your-internal-voice <comment><USER2> I predict this will be used for interrogating uncooperative subjects.</comment>


Drop.io Integrated in Yahoo Mail - You Can Now Attach 100MB Files - <AUTHOR> http://drop.io/file/attachlargefiles

<comment><USER2> Awesome move. Congratulations.</comment>


Researchers Claim to Have Developed a Universal Flu Vaccine « CBS Philly - <AUTHOR> http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2018/01/25/universal-flu-vaccine/ <comment><USER2> Clickbait title fail -- the strategy addresses _only_ type A influenza and is not universal.</comment>