Ask HN: Favourite books on leadership? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Khaneman: It is not a book on leadership really, but on decision-making. It is backed by reproducible nobel-prize winning research and builds a ver clear mental model. My only quibble is that the author should call "system 1" "the intuitive mind" and "system 2" "the deliberative mind" for the sake of better affordance.

Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen: This is by the same group behind Getting to Yes. It presents a clear mental model for how to better predict the way your words will be perceived and how to avoid misperceiving what other people are trying to say.

The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni: The first part of this presents a clear model the prerequisites for a team to be effective. The Second part presents a model of how to get agreement on mission and strategy. If you prefer a more allegorical/narrative style, the author has several books that teach different pieces of this book.

Each of these is available on Audible, if you find it easier to listen while commuting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Coincidentally, I am just now rereading Certain Trumpets, a collection of 16 brief case studies by Gary Wills. An interesting feature is that, for each leader he also discusses an antitype. So for electoral leader Franklin Roosevelt, the antitype is Adlai Stevenson. For business leader Ross Perot, the antitype is Roger Smith, the GM executive also criticized in the documentary "Roger and Me" (the book came out in 1994).

The book is history/biography not how-to, but he makes some general observations. He emphasizes that good leaders are made possible by good followers, who are united by the same goal and recognize the leader's likelihood of reaching it. He also emphasizes that there isn't some generic talent for leadership. The talents required of a leader depend on what the goals are. So, in general, a good military leader might not be a good elected leader etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> Paid to Think: A Leader's Toolkit for Redefining Your Future, by David Goldsmith

Truly a thought provoking read that will give you ideas to create an immediate impact your business. Here's a podcdast interview with the author > [http://www.blogtalkradio.com/waynehurlbert/2013/01/04/david-...](http://www.blogtalkradio.com/waynehurlbert/2013/01/04/david- goldsmith-paid-to-think-a-leaders-toolkit)

</comment><comment><USER5> How to Castrate a Bull: Unexpected Lessons on Risk, Growth, and Success in Business by Dave Hitz

[https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Castrate-Bull-Unexpected- Busine...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Castrate-Bull-Unexpected- Business/dp/0470345233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462968164&sr=8-1&keywords=castrate+a+bull)

</comment><comment><USER6> Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson [1]

A fascinating story about how to build and sustain success when the team keeps changing every year. Also very interesting is how to deal with multiple personalities and get them all working in one direction.

[1] [https://www.alexfergusonleading.co.uk/](https://www.alexfergusonleading.co.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER7> High Output Management by Andrew Grove [1].

Leadership requires good management of oneself, and this is an excellent book on management.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew- Grove/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Output-Management-Andrew- Grove/dp/0679762884)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would say 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I will go as far as to say that if I had to read one book throughout my life this would be it. Love it.

</comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy- SEALs/dp/14...](http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Ownership-U-S-Navy- SEALs/dp/1427264295)

</comment><comment><USER10> One book that I found to be amazingly helpful about engineering leadership / management is [http://leadingsnowflakes.com/](http://leadingsnowflakes.com/)</comment>


Donald Trump's Presidential Run Began in an Effort to Gain Stature - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/13/us/politics/donald-trump-campaign.html <comment><USER2> I am no fan of Donald Trump but it is amazing and disturbing to see the media bias against him. I was watching General Electric News (i.e., MSNBC) this morning and the reporter was smearing him, and frankly I think she lied about a few things she said.

I have the same complaint about the coverage for Bernie Sanders - seems really slanted against him.

On the other hand, the coverage for Clinton and the other republican candidates seems fair.

<comment><USER3> Neither one are establishment candidates. They have too few ties/obligations to the powers-that-be and the media..

<comment><USER4> I think they view attacks on trump as apolitical since "he doesn't represent the mainstream of the party". Turns out the "mainstream" of the party is more deranged and racist than even most liberals suspected.</comment></comment></comment>


Shopify now on Rails 5.0. started 12 years ago on 0.5, the First version released - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tobi/status/819246328211443713 <comment><USER2> It seems Cookpad's claim of largest Rails Monolith may not be true anymore. (1) But I have known this for sometime when I heard China' Rails Ticketing System were built on Rails, then I assume peak traffic would be larger then Google + Twitter + Amazon Combined. Although they have moved off the Rails due to scaling issues.

I wonder if Shopify have any Ruby performance or Rails Scaling issues to share?

And the last thing is Rails just prove to be popular and works well for ( and may be only ) paid SaaS. It allows you to quickly iterate your product until you find a product / market fit. And once you have generate a revenue stream, the Server / Software Scaling Cost becomes relatively minor compared to Human Cost. But for those who are on a freeminum model and depends on Ads, Cost of running Ruby Rails may quickly out pace your budget before you have large audience to generate revenue.

1\. [https://speakerdeck.com/a_matsuda/the-recipe-for-the- worlds-...](https://speakerdeck.com/a_matsuda/the-recipe-for-the-worlds- largest-rails-monolith)

<comment><USER3> Somewhat of a tangent - are there _any_ huge Ruby apps that are not Rails monoliths? All of the big Ruby apps are big Rails monoliths - Cookpad, Github, Shopify. Of course they probably have some services, but you wouldn't call them a "microservices" architecture by any means.

<comment><USER4> Sounds like Stripe may be a large service oriented system written in Ruby but not Rails. [https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Stripe-choose-to-use-Ruby- for-...](https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Stripe-choose-to-use-Ruby-for-its- backend-language)

<comment><USER5> Interesting that the bulk of their web interface was written in CoffeeScript at the time of the answer even though they weren't using Rails. I've just never seen a well-known product using CoffeeScript without Rails.

I do wonder if that remains to be the case or if they've moved their web interface to something else. They've released a number of new products the past year, and I'm sure at least one isn't CoffeeScript given the content of the post.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd be quite curious how much money keeping Rails up to date has cost Shopify over the years, compared to the benefits.

Compared to a lighter weight framework like Sinatra, Express, etc., it seems that Rails is only a benefit if you were unable to make halfway decent library and architecture choices on your own, or if for some reason you benefit from hiring people who are already familiar with a particular Rails version.

It's very interesting that companies like Shopify and Github have continued paying the upgrade tax with Rails... a tax that is necessarily mainly because of the tight coupling between core components and the assumption of tight coupling included in most of the library ecosystem. Seemingly, Shopify is well beyond the phase where "hey that gem will save us two weeks" is really a relevant factor.

This is not a criticism of Rails, just an expression of surprise that companies like Shopify and Github still consider it a value-add after the upgrade tax.

<comment><USER7> I've personally shepherded a 100kloc Rails app from 1.2 in 2007 through 4.2 in 2016, so I can offer some perspective.

First, I think you overestimating the upgrade tax of Rails, and underestimating both the value-add of Rails and the upgrade tax of any other library.

In my experience, the most painful upgrades just as often come from random gems (or gem interactions), or ruby itself. You aren't going to avoid this pain by using Sinatra. If you choose only low-level libraries and you roll everything yourself, then yes, you can potentially avoid this pain, but now you're reinventing a lot of wheels.

It's not just a matter of a gem saving two weeks, it goes to the very heart of the buy-vs-build question. Assuming the same quality of work, upgrading a well-maintained gem is going to be less work than maintaining the functionality yourself. The conventions and tight coupling of Rails may run counter to architectural decisions you want to make, but on the flip side they prevent a _huge_ amount of bike-shedding (I didn't appreciate this until I jumped onto a legacy Django project and discovered a different flavor of chaos). Assuming you have the chops to design a better architecture from scratch, and assuming you put forth the effort to achieve a similar level of polish to what you get with large community-driven open-source frameworks like Rails, you still have to document and enforce your style guide and architectural decisions, and train your engineering staff on them in a way that you get for free with every Rails dev. On balance if you are building typical web applications Rails gives a ton of value, and if you are using a non-trivial subset of features then the upgrade tax is probably lower than curating your own stack, and much lower if you are re-implementing parts of the provided stack from scratch.

The important question is not really Rails vs Sinatra, but rather the stability of specific libraries. In that regard I used to consider ruby the most unstable and I would recommend against using ruby for anyone that cares about maintenance cost. However over the last few years it seems like Ruby has stabilized significantly (Rails 4.0 => 5.0 was dramatically easier than Rails 2.0 => 3.0), and Node has really taken up the mantle of moving-fastest-and- breaking-the-most-things.

My general feeling is Rails is pretty effective for any significantly sized web backend, even if it's just an API, as long as it's talking to some kind of relational database and make use of Rails RESTful routing conventions. If you're talking microservices then I would prefer Sinatra, but at that point I would probably consider Go or Node or Elixir for the improved performance profile that likely would be a more primary consideration if I was going down that route in the first place.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the well thought out comments. Very insightful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a LOT of code in the controllers. If I had to guess, it sounds like they're putting business logic in their controllers, which is a fairly well- established anti-pattern.

How's Shopify's platform performing these days?

<comment><USER9> They have 452 classes in controllers and 41374 LOC. It's an average of 91.5 lines of Ruby per controller, not so many for the usual 7 scaffolded methods and some extras like strong params.

About performances, I always thought that writing logic in controllers, models or lib was a matter of readability and ease of maintenance.

Does it make a difference to the CPU if 50 lines of code run in a controller or in a model or in a file in lib or in a gem?

Maybe do 452 controllers slow down the router?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> My holiday project was to upgrade a Rails project I helped create to Rails 5. The BadgeApp [0] is used to certify open source projects as satisfying the Core Infrastructure Initiative's Best Practices Badge. It is open source, so you can see the diff [1] if you're interested. The upgrade took me several hours, and was greatly assisted by our 99% test coverage. Biggest line count change was from needing to explicitly specify params in tests. The biggest annoyance was that Fastly's gem still doesn't support Rails 5, so I needed to fork it [2].

I too am hugely appreciative of the Rails ecosystem.

[0] [https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices- badge/](https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices-badge/) [1] [https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices- badge/...](https://github.com/linuxfoundation/cii-best-practices- badge/commit/405e012f433814e049f0198b12841d008740b84b) [2] [https://github.com/fastly/fastly- rails/pull/67](https://github.com/fastly/fastly-rails/pull/67)

Here are the app statistics:

      +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+-----+</comment><comment>-+
      | Name                 |  Lines |    LOC | Classes | Methods | M/C | LOC/M |
      +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+-----+</comment><comment>-+
      | Controllers          |    687 |    476 |       8 |      59 |   7 |     6 |
      | Helpers              |    184 |    134 |       0 |      21 |   0 |     4 |
      | Models               |    711 |    470 |       5 |      55 |  11 |     6 |
      | Mailers              |    160 |    115 |       3 |      12 |   4 |     7 |
      | Javascripts          |    405 |    308 |       0 |      35 |   0 |     6 |
      | Libraries            |    369 |    281 |       0 |       0 |   0 |     0 |
      | Tasks                |    369 |    281 |       0 |       0 |   0 |     0 |
      | Controller tests     |    605 |    513 |       6 |      53 |   8 |     7 |
      | Helper tests         |     56 |     45 |       2 |       7 |   3 |     4 |
      | Model tests          |    398 |    309 |       9 |      37 |   4 |     6 |
      | Mailer tests         |     71 |     54 |       4 |       5 |   1 |     8 |
      | Integration tests    |    614 |    446 |      10 |      25 |   2 |    15 |
      +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+-----+</comment><comment>-+
      | Total                |   4629 |   3432 |      47 |     309 |   6 |     9 |
      +</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>----+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>--+</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+-----+</comment><comment>-+

<comment><USER11> If I can bother you with a dumb question, how do you produce these statistics?

<comment><USER12> bundle exec rake stats

<comment><USER7> Also, for discovery of a bunch more goodies:

bundle exec rake -T</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Content for a Product Nobody Gives a Shit About - <AUTHOR> http://www.bullethq.com/blog/creating-content-for-a-product-nobody-gives-a-shit-about/

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm online so any questions shoot them below. Pete</comment>


What we learned raising on AngelList - <AUTHOR> http://jmlite.tumblr.com/post/53843610748/what-we-learned-raising-on-angellist-based-in-a-small

<comment><USER2> > At the same time we were contacted by AngelList. They wondered if we were > interested in being featured on AL.

What I'm getting the more I read is getting featured is _the_ tipping point in AngelList fundraising. I haven't seen too many success stories from companies who weren't featured.

<comment><USER3> Well not really in that they never ended up featuring us this time around. It all happened very quickly with emerge whom we connected with via AngelList. I do see your point though and suspect in general that would be true.</comment></comment>


Iran Vows to Unplug Internet - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704889404576277391449002016.html?mod=WSJASIA_hpp_MIDDLETopNews

<comment><USER2> The free flow of information vs. censorship is the key social issue of our time. It is almost like having a front row seat to watching history repeat itself re. Printing, radio and television.

<comment><USER3> "History repeats itself -- first time as tragedy, second time as farce" -- Marx.

I suppose we are at the farce stage with the Internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _On Friday, new reports emerged in the local press that Iran also intends to roll out its own computer operating system in coming months to replace Microsoft Corp.'s Windows._

Yeah, I'm sure that'll work out well. Iran has always been known as a hot-bed of bleeding-edge secure operating system design, right? And SecureBSD folks will be happy to pitch in to help build an OS that kills free speech dead.

<comment><USER5> Well, North Korea created its own Linux, so perhaps it's natural that Iran would have its own BSD... <http://rt.com/news/north-korea-cyber-weapon/>

<comment><USER6> Named... ISD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder how soon after their halal-net goes online that someone will get some bridges going and 4chan _et al_ become available.

<comment><USER8> My thoughts were more of the Internet version of Radio Free Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh the irony of creating software based on ideas and technology stolen from companies of the culture which they are trying to "keep out". Reminds me of the pictures of people with signs saying "Death to America", while wearing Levi's jeans and Gucci sunglasses.

</comment><comment><USER10> Is that a really short article? Or do you have to pay to read the whole story?

<comment><USER11> Looks like the Google-the-title trick doesn't work anymore unless you clear your cookies or use another browser. Anyway, the full text is at <http://pastebin.com/hhJLD6bs>

<comment><USER12> Anyone else find it amusing - or is it ironic? - that someone provided free access to an otherwise hidden article about censorship online?

<comment><USER13> A private corporation restricting access to information isn't censorship. If it were an article that the government put behind a paywall, you _might_ be able to construe it as such, but even then it seems silly since there's still no limit on the expression itself.

<comment><USER14> _"A private corporation restricting access to information isn't censorship."_

      Censorship is the suppression of speech or other public communication
      which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or
      inconvenient to the general body of people as determined by a
      government, media outlet, or other controlling body.

<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Censorship>

<comment><USER15> Unfortunately, the quoted text was missing a key word. Rephrased here:

"A private corporation restricting access to ITS OWN information isn't censorship."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Before you all get uppity, don't forget that both America and Canada are:

1) Spying on their citizens. 2) Not above an Internet kill switch. You know, for the kids.

<comment><USER17> but the fascinating thing here is that evan Iran, who explicitly see it as an existential threat - which is way more serious than "won't you think of the children", seem unable to even think of disconnecting it entirely.

There is a certain amount of political capital in shouting loudly about thinking of the children, and the evils of the net. However, if Iran can't even turn it off because they rely on it for commerce and other key functions, How much worse would a lack of net hit the west?

Like the war on drugs the arising war on the net, driven in part by the death throws of big media, will be a lot more bluster, grandiose talk and rather lucrative funding of projects than effective action.

(you notice I've ignored spying. I reckon Google know more about me than the government does. My generation will flap about going "ooh ooh the privacy!". My children will grow in a world that has never been different and will find ways to adapt)

<comment><USER18> _evan Iran, who explicitly see it as an existential threat_

It probably _is_. The real question is should the outside let the government of Iran disconnect their citizens to keep their ideals? Should "wilful obstruction of facts known and shared by other humans" become a kind of humanitarian offence, with a bit of leeway for yet-to-be-agreed reasonable law enforcement purposes? Should it become a more pressing consideration the more the difference between rich scientific countries and closed- off/poor/controlled societies grows?

The UN human rights declaration includes Education, and the Cairo declaration of human rights in Islam forbids discrimination on racial, political affiliation and belief grounds, and also "emphasizes the "full right to freedom and self-determination", and its opposition to enslavement, oppression, exploitation and colonialism."

"22(c) states: "Information is a vital necessity to society. It may not be exploited or misused in such a way as may [..] disintegrate, corrupt or harm society or weaken its faith."

22(d) states "It is not permitted to arouse nationalistic or doctrinal hatred or to do anything that may be an incitement to any form of racial discrimination."

(Source: Wikipedia). A right to education isn't much good if it only covers being educated in what some people want you to know. Information may not be used to disrupt or weaken the faith of an Islamic society by that convention, which the internet probably would, but censoring it for being "western" seems close to nationalistic and doctrinal hatred. (Iran may have nothing to do with the CDHRI).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is shortsighted because if the leaders in Iran listen to Eli Pariser talk or read his book "The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding From You" they would learn that the Iranians are more likely to develop tendencies towards extremist Islam rather than away from it due to the "filter bubbles" created by the personalization features of sites like Facebook and Google.

</comment><comment><USER20> Sweet, back to the streets.

<comment><USER21> There's no quicker way to foment a revolution than cutting off access to our cutting edge Western pornography.

<comment><USER22> s/our cutting.\\+/the internet./ and you would have got like 20 upvotes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it ironic that while reading an article about the 'free flow of information', I get stopped by a pay wall?

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a good time to remember John Perry Barlow's " _A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace_ ":

[http://doc.cat-v.org/political_science/cyberspace- declaratio...](http://doc.cat-v.org/political_science/cyberspace-declaration- of-independence)

</comment><comment><USER25> Ahmie's time to run away is coming, it seems ...</comment>


Chrome will soon let you permanently mute websites - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/+FrancoisBeaufort/posts/a1KFYUhke4Z <comment><USER2> Good, but a better idea would be to flag sites that auto play video or audio and penalize them in search.

Seriously, this is a frigging plague. I can't understand how designers rationalize the idea of blasting someone with a video or sound without their explicit approval. At the very least it is incredibly annoying. At worst it can be jarring and even inappropriate depending on time, place and context of the person doing the browser. And then there's the consumption of cellular data if you happen to be on a mobile device.

I would like search results to include a nice bright red warning saying "WARNING: Site auto-plays video or audio". Even better, drop them down to the tenth page in search results until they stop being assholes.

That will fix the problem. I don't want to have to go around a bunch of tabs and mute them.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would like a feature that auto-closes a site that has overly obstructive ad- blocking features or sign-ups.

Off the top of my head:

-Forbes

-Washington Post

-Business Insider

I'm sure there are more, but that's a good start...

<comment><USER4> I don't know about auto-close, but I would love to have a quick way to "blacklist" websites such that whenever I saw a link to these sites it was marked and I don't even bother clicking.

<comment><USER5> if Google made that kind of information (number of times a site was blacklisted) were be available, would sites be incentivized to clean up their act a little?

<comment><USER6> I doubt it. Big media sites would be blacklisted by many for being "too liberal".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly offtopic: has anybody noticed that Chrome does not let you block notifications from Google websites like drive, docs etc? It's highly annoying.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm so happy since I learnt to master uMatrix...

I recommend it to everybody, especially those who are HTML developers and already know what those checkboxes are about. Change the defaults to something else and only unblock stuff you really trust.</comment>


Ask HN: Student Job? - <AUTHOR> Hi!
I'm in my final year of high school and I want to study computer science at University. It's always been my dream to go to college and learn. I studied a lot in high school and I participated at many competitions, so I didn't think I would have troubles in going to university.
However, now I've found out my parents can't pay for my tuition fees and living costs. Also, there are no loans I can take out (I'm not in the USA,  but EU).
Is there any job I could take as a student in order to afford to go to University? I would love to work in a field related to computer science, but I'm not sure I could find something.
Thanks a lot, any advice would mean a lot to me! <comment><USER2> Technically you don't need a degree to work as a software engineer, or a web developer. You have the option to learn some of the lower hanging fruit of our industry, generate income with your skills, and fund your schooling if you still think it's important. Any way you slice it, it's going to take you a while to reach industrial competency, it will take time to get truly oriented.

Two important aspects of university that are harder to come by in the wild:

It forces you to learn how to learn and it carves out a lot of time for you to dedicate to learning.

If your personal circumstances allow you to force those two things upon yourself (with intense discipline), that's your best bet.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER3> I was under the impression that higher education was free in the EU.

Either way, in the US, I know a couple of folks who got their CS degree and waited tables. They graduated with zero student loans.

</comment><comment><USER4> It would help if you tell us in which EU country you are. Depending on the country, there might be scholarships etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://lambdaschool.com/](https://lambdaschool.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Do you know how to code?

Your network should find you a job pretty quickly. Might not be what you are looking for but it can pay the bills.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would advise you to learn some kind of programming language and look for work for freelance.

</comment><comment><USER8> have you considered community college and doing a co op or campus work?</comment>


Facebook seems like following Amazon's Path - <AUTHOR> http://www.greyb.com/amazon-facebook-patent-portfolio-insights/ <comment><USER2> Please don't editorialize the titles of stories you submit to HN.</comment>


2M chickens to be killed in US processing plants due to lack of employees - <AUTHOR> https://www.wcvb.com/article/2-million-chickens-will-be-killed-in-us-processing-plants-because-of-lack-of-employees/32279804 <comment><USER2> I don't get it. If they had enough employees, then these processing plants _wouldn 't_ kill 2M chickens?

I think these birds were doomed. A more accurate title might be "Processors throw away 2M Pounds of chicken meat due to lack of employees."

<comment><USER3> I think the word prematurely is missing

<comment><USER4> > I think the word prematurely is missing

If its a the processing plant that's kind of true, even if they could run them through the automated 'harvesting' system its probably really expensive to store until an undisclosed time for it to be processed and then sent to market. At a significant loss in Market price, I imagine. So its best to take the subsidy/insured loss and restart again.

This is actually really fucking sad... I hope it encourages more people to focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste and do something about it. I hope we don't have to see the same thing that happened with toilet paper, and paper towels happen with our food before people get the message that we have to re-think our entire infrastructure.

> Americans eat 24M chickens per day. So 2M killed is only a fraction of the > number eaten in a single day.

That's a horrible calculus, and quite frankly stereotypical of People so detached from their food system: have you taken into consideration the externalities of hatching, raising, and ultimately getting them to Market size? It's actually incredibly costly. And they were probably factory farmed, which makes it even worse given the cruel practices involved.

On a positive note: Spring is finally here, and I saw a bunch of people's Community Garden's today.

<comment><USER5> > focus on the World's broken food supply and its immense waste

That is an extremely hyperbolic statement.

According to the United Nations [[https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez](https://tinyurl.com/y9esnjez)] fruits, vegetables, cereals, and roots account for 70% of all food waste. It is unfortunate that due to a global pandemic they had to be put down, but chickens are the most efficient form for preserving and delivering calories from grains to the table.

Additionally, industrialized and developing nations waste food at the same rate - just in different stages of the logistics chain. No system is perfectly efficient, and while there are improvements to be made - it is pretty damn amazing that the majority of 7 billion people have a meal a day.

<comment><USER6> Well, that raises further questions. How could a chicken farm or chicken meat in a freezer be more efficient forms of calorie storage than a grain silo or a shipment of flour? Do you have a source?

<comment><USER2> Because frozen meat stays good literally forever. Flour eventually goes bad. Grain can rot.

<comment><USER7> Your comment inspired me to do a little reading, since this is an interesting idea (and maybe represents an opportunity in the supply chain... maybe what we need is better/newer technology for long-term storage of grains/flour/etc.).

Apparently, flour can (should?) be frozen for long-term storage, and would keep indefinitely: [https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it- okay...](https://cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/33890/is-it-okay-to-keep- flour-in-the-freezer) (unfortunately that link to University of Nebraska is 404 now).

Long-term grain storage concerns: [https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and- equ...](https://www.agriculture.com/machinery/grain-handling-and- equipment/grain-bins/8-tips-f-longterm-grain-stage_214-ar45622) ; as a non- expert, this begs the question of why more climate control is not done, to create indefinite/permanent storage (probably just not economical to do so, but given disruptions like COVID-19, maybe this will change?).

<comment><USER8> > just not economical to do so

Yup. Grains are so incredibly cheap that's it's not worth preserving them.

My favorite stat to pull out at parties:

The price of a bushel of wheat (aka 60 pounds) has been approximately one British pound since the mid 1300's.

It's currently worth about 4 British pounds, but that says more about how much the British pound has declined against the USD than it says about the price of wheat.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, but not at all accurate.

First: Its only 'cheap' because Wheat is an almost universally subsidized crop in most of the World. Which means the farmers externalities are obscured in what is actually a ubiquitous but environmentally challenging crop to grow in terms of land use, and irrigation. Harvesting, too if you don't have access to modern combines and want viable yields. Not to mention growing practices themselves and if its a GMO crop its often sprayed into oblivion with all kind of pesticides that cross contaminate and pollute water supplies and kill local insects and soil bacteria, microbes, and unsettle the flora/fauna.

Second: The USD-GBP bushel parallel is also not correct as neither are what they were meant to actually represent since becoming fiat: A pound sterling in the case of GBP, and grains of silver (371.25) in the case of USD. The measurements are off for the analogy that you're trying to make.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Americans eat 24M chickens per day. So 2M killed is only a fraction of the number eaten in a single day.

However it's still deplorable that we can't find a way to not waste this amount of food.

<comment><USER10> Americans go through 24M chickens a day, but a significant portion isn't eaten. Think of all the food thrown away at restaurants because it sat too long, food that goes bad in the fridge (oops! guilty), food that kids get served but don't eat (as a parent, I see this a lot).

While it is disturbing to hear this, I'm sure this amount of chicken meat is wasted on a daily, or at least close to it.

<comment><USER11> Roughly 40% of food created, is wasted: [https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report....](https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/wasted-2017-report.pdf)

<comment><USER12> Well the alternative would probably be empty food shelves like you had in planned economies like the DDR and Soviet Union. Just in time food production just doesn't work for things that have to start production ~2-6 months before they are delivered and have a shelf life of ~1-2 weeks. Fresh bread delivered to bakeries regularly sells out here and this is expected, same with Meat and some vegetables. But there is no way to achieve empty vegetable and Meat shelves without pissing people off.

<comment><USER13> Part of the current waste is a desire for photogenic foods; minor blemishes don't sell as well as pristine items.

Another part (not counted in the statistics if I understand right), is obesity. We over-consume to the point of illness.

Another part is deliberate over-production in good years so that we don't go hungry in bad years. This part ought to be considered as unavoidable.

Another part is the types of food. Meat is, in general, a wasteful indirection between sunlight and us. Even ignoring any argument about vegetarian/vegan diets, I accept that this isn't _universally_ so, as some land (I don't know about fish vs. seaweed) is unsuitable for growing human crops. However, it remains broadly true.

In principle, though perhaps not in practice, indoor farming (not just artificial lighting, also greenhouses etc.) could supply a more consistent yield. I can't comment on the economics of that, not even a little. However, as farming as a whole represents a very small, and still diminishing, fraction of the west's GDP, my _guess_ is that it could _become_ achievable even if it is not _yet_ achievable.

<comment><USER4> > Part of the current waste is a desire for photogenic foods; minor blemishes > don't sell as well as pristine items.

Agreed, often to the detriment of your second point.

> Another part (not counted in the statistics if I understand right), is > obesity. We over-consume to the point of illness.

Also agree, most cultivars are created not for taste, quality or nutrient density/availability but for shelf life and transport robustness. Which when looking at this from a biological metabolic satiation feedback system standpoint, specifically those damaged from processed foods and, you get that end result. Its actually really dark when you think about how poor the Human physiology and psychology has responded to excess in the modern age, and we al do it to ourselves to some degree.

> Another part is deliberate over-production in good years so that we don't go > hungry in bad years. This part ought to be considered as unavoidable.

Agree again, the key difference is if best practices are put into place: food shelters, food banks can be well supplied for those in need and value added products can be made to recapture perceived waste and sent to Market, what isn't used from that is fed to livestock or composted and returned to the soil.

> Another part is the types of food. Meat is, in general, a wasteful > indirection between sunlight and us. Even ignoring any argument about > vegetarian/vegan diets, I accept that this isn't universally so, as some > land (I don't know about fish vs. seaweed) is unsuitable for growing human > crops. However, it remains broadly true.

Partly agree, its way over-consumed in the North and South America in relation to the rest of the World. I took it particularly hard when I realized how accustomed I had become to it, especially after 15+ hours of exhausting farm work. My body had come to depend on it for recovery, and mood enhancement.

However, I think/know it can be done correctly with proper field grazing and rotation systems: part of my apprenticeship was tending to 45 dairy cows at the base of the Swiss alps on less than 35 acres in Spring, while keeping quality and yield of milk near or at same and within budget. Its hard, actually really hard... but it can be done. Its about putting the right incentives in place, that milk was bought for 2,5 CHF a liter from a a well- renown local Cheese artisan. When they go up the Alps in the summer-fall its closer to 5 CHF as its much higher quality and more desired by cheese makers, but are smaller yields with higher transport costs.

> In principle, though perhaps not in practice, indoor farming (not just > artificial lighting, also greenhouses etc.) could supply a more consistent > yield. I can't comment on the economics of that, not even a little. However, > as farming as a whole represents a very small, and still diminishing, > fraction of the west's GDP, my guess is that it could become achievable even > if it is not yet achievable.

I think your post underscores how easy people can get lost in the superficial view derived from focusing on just statistics and averages, can you quantify that statistical analysis in GDP without seeing the loss in all economic activity if food shelves are empty? Agriculture/Food is actually the World biggest Industry [1] its just impossible to properly quantify.

Also, Modern Greenhouses can be very efficient at creating profits when correctly modeled: I worked in Germany on a farm that had 2 half hectare glass houses with temperature/humidity controlled sensors, self watering and auto- lifting panels. I've only ever seen this for large scale, well funded MJ operations in the US. But, the yield was amazing for things like nightshades in one, and quick growing greens in the other.

The fact that we could charge 5 euros for a healthy Eggplant, 3,5 euros for a head of salad, and 4 euros/Kg for tomatoes because of Biodynamic prices (with more demand than supply) made this a lucrative operation.

The few days I did at the Farmer's Market for that Farm were eye opening to say the least; the main issues with this model I saw were infrastructure costs and labour as they require a long pay-back period but when it does it pays well if you're a multi-generational farming family as they were.

I wrote a proposal in my, later stolen, journal and notebook about how if Ag subsidies shifted from crop insurance to solely infrastructure/equipment based models how the food supply would change. I didn't get far, as I couldn't apply any analysis or experimentation to it but you just reminded me of that idea I had.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the information :)

Slight misunderstanding, my apologies for being unclear.

I was trying to suggest greenhouses for staple crops like rice or wheat, so that the overproduction margin for famine years could be significantly reduced rather than totally eliminated.

I didn't make that at all clear, sorry.

Do any greenhouses grow meaningful quantities of staple crops? This is far outside my area.

<comment><USER4> > Do any greenhouses grow meaningful quantities of staple crops? This is far > outside my area.

None that I know of as its unlikely to be a good idea outside of a breeding program because of the opportunity costs; I imagine staples like wheat/rice/potatoes confined to such limited scale/size would not be able to recover the costs if profit from yield is the only source for ROI in its current model.

> I was trying to suggest greenhouses for staple crops like rice or wheat, so > that the overproduction margin for famine years could be significantly > reduced rather than totally eliminated.

Perishability is an inherit and unavoidable factor, and famines are not uniform throughout the Earth which is why I think optimizing the Global Food Supply Chain, rather than entirely abandoning it is the goal; the Citrus Industry in Florida nearly collapsed a few years ago due to a psyllid issue that destroyed nearly 1/2 of Florida's orange groves [1], only to find out in PR (after failed studies in China and Mexico) where topology differences revealed that its preferable to grow citrus at higher elevation to avoid the disease they were seeing below that--after a certain elevation, reported at 600M, the groves weren't as susceptible to infestation from the psyllid.

Having data, metrics and analytics in place accessible in Real Time in a readily available and comprehensible system for producers to work with is critical moving forward in the 21st Century; adapting an Ag model to suit this is no longer a luxury but has become a necessity if we have any chance of surviving on this planet as Climate Change, and nearly unpredictable weather patterns/disasters are becoming ever more prevalent and even more severe.

Again, the opportunity costs in not addressing this problem is so unbelievably immense to anyone who takes the time to just look; we can see the 2 million chicken culling and its subsequent waste and be outraged--and it would be justifiable--but more importantly I hope it serves as indication of what is seen as common practices and serves as a catalyst for change as this cannot go on any longer without severe widely felt repercussions.

1: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of- science/wp/2...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/speaking-of- science/wp/2015/01/20/one-way-to-beat-a-bug-thats-destroying-floridas-citrus- get-them-high/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is our collective karma, to outsource cruelty to industrial animal farming.

Even though I have become mostly vegetarian, it is quite tempting to buy meat for the convenience and the fact that sometimes it is much cheaper than fresh vegetables (at least in the west).

Human progress and social evolution has somehow come with greater compassion for fellow beings. Will our coming generations value compassion in itself and will that affect the way we eat/farm.

Will an advanced alien visitor be shocked by our animal farming or will will they hunt us down for meat. I guess we should expect either based on our own behaviour.

<comment><USER15> I find the assumptions embedded in this argument very strange. It brings up a huge number of questions.

Only a conscious being would feel pain, so what is consciousness? Does it come down and embed itself into creatures that are born? If so, if they weren't born, would that be necessarily better? What if consciousness, if it didn't have a body to enter into, appeared in a different universe from ours with its own, possibly worse, sufferings? Wouldn't it be better to give the animal a full, relatively pain free life than the possibility that it would suffer greater in some other universe in some other dimension?

Or does consciousness originate on the spot, somehow born along with the creature? In that case it would be better to not be born at all? Or would it be better to have more consciousness in the universe, despite the suffering an individual might experience, rather than otherwise? Is consciousness a good in itself? Would a universe devoid of all conscious beings be the perfect good, lonely, desolate, without meaning. Or one full of them, with shared misery to go around?

All in all, it's seems quite a murky topic to be throwing around judgement on people about.

<comment><USER16> Well, it's murky, but some easy thought experiments might bring clarity: * Should we raise humans on factory farms, in order to increase the amount of conscious experience? * if so, and assuming that humans pay more attention to aversive stimuli than positive/neutral stimuli, should we deliberately torture them?

Both propositions are obviously horrible. But why? The answer is similar to why the death of worms < chickens < pet dogs < people < great people.

Consciousness is a matter of connected/integrated complexity; as a result, millions of worms do not eventually produce the depth and richness of human consciousness. Secondly, consciousness is dependent upon other conscious beings; our consciousness isn't really our own, it is part of a shared web. So, consciousness that does not participate in that shared web is less conscious, in a real sense, than consciousness that does.

For both these reasons, if we value consciousness, the only real benefits of factory farmed chickens would come from how they help contribute to the overall conscious ecosystem. Perhaps they let us build more integrated complexity, in which case, thanks.

<comment><USER15> > Well, it's murky, but some easy thought experiments might bring clarity: * > Should we raise humans on factory farms, in order to increase the amount of > conscious experience? * if so, and assuming that humans pay more attention > to aversive stimuli than positive/neutral stimuli, should we deliberately > torture them?

> Both propositions are obviously horrible. But why? The answer is similar to > why the death of worms < chickens < pet dogs < people < great people.

>Consciousness is a matter of connected/integrated complexity

Can you prove this supposition, though? Would that make the internet conscious, for example? I would think not.

I think the propositions you mentioned seem horrible because of an offshoot of our instinct to form tribes to survive better. It feels bad to torture people and other beings that help us survive, because that's integral to our survival. A lone human being has a much rougher time than a group does, and a group that trusts each other would survive better than where everyone is at each other's throats.

My theory is that human beings need a religion to feel sane. If there isn't an organized one that they accept, they create one of their own. This is why these sort of "common sense" laws of morality (better to not raise animals in a factory) come into being. People need to believe in a higher set of laws than what man can provide, even if there isn't any real justification for them one way or the other.

<comment><USER16> > Would that make the internet conscious, for example? I would think not.

The internet is governed by consciousness and consciousness emerges from it, in the same way as our neurons or brain parts are not conscious per se but are structured by consciousness and provide the mechanism for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd say set them free.

But given the breeding of commercial chickens they'd simply not survive in the wild - not stop growing and after just days be unable to move, and easy prey.

If you're fortunate enough to have land, use it, even a balcony or window sill can be put to good use. There are plenty of guides on YouTube, and for a window sill no need to spend money on herbs again. For food or for leisure (or both) - if you like flowers grow some flowers!

And don't throw away potato skins, carrot tops, strings of beans, etc. Compost them, it really enriches the soil.

<comment><USER18> Releasing them would be dooming them to a horrible death. They'd end up ripped apart by wild animals or otherwise injured and live in pain until they die.

<comment><USER19> > They'd end up ripped apart by wild animals

...so exactly like the fate of literally every other wild animal on Earth.

<comment><USER18> Not really. Wild animals mostly live in the environment they are adapted to. Most birds survive just fine out in the world. Chickens are not adapted to anything, but rather selected by us, and they certainly weren't selected for toughness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Sadly this trend will continue. There will be a lot of wastage because our society and systems were built on higher levels of consumption, for better or for worse.

There's momentum built in a system of scale and we're seeing what happens when the end consuming falls off the charts.

Once society starts back up, we'll see the opposite where we'll be angry there are shortages of things we expect even though we're "back online".

</comment><comment><USER21> Just today I saw the news about famine in West Africa. Sigh...

<comment><USER22> We live in a bubble, I feel so out of touch with how people live in many of the other places in the world. Last October I visited Pakistan and what I saw there really made me think about the scale of globally inequality that's just allowed to "exist". Not just in food, but so many other places in our lives we take for granted.

<comment><USER23> Pakistan is a lot of human created issues though. They have the most fertile land in the subcontinent along the indus river. However they have had absolutely no population control measures unlike India and Bangladesh which are almost at replacement level fertility. Throw in a backward society, mismanagement, lack of democracy and you get this.

My point simply is that the hunger is not merely because of shortage of food.

<comment><USER24> There is no winning with population control measures. Hans Rosling did a great job to spell out the arguments and evidence in his book "Factfulness" which made the charts in most countries. Really recommended reading and incredible enlightening.

To give a very short version of his conclusions: the only factor reducing births is reduced child mortality. Better healthcare and generally better economic prospects and birth rates drop on their own - no need for central planning or interventions. The book lays the evidence out extremely well and if you're a person that likes to have his/her worldview challenged I warmly recommend it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I think chickens are ground up with their feathers and ugly bits by falling from a treadmill.

I guess one can't sell that as food but I'm pretty sure they can do something with it.

Although, it's fine by me, meat is in its nature pretty wasteful, in addition to those 2M chickens there's probably more tons of soy protein wasted on chicken feed.

Good thing that protein rich legumes do not need much processing.

<comment><USER26> My family and I are on day number 1153 of eating beans every day (and no animal products)

<comment><USER27> I've had vegetarian rice and beans many times, forced to by lack of money for protein. It's just a bland mixture of sadness and despair

<comment><USER28> > It's just a bland mixture of sadness and despair reply

That might have been from the lack of money, not the food itself. If you're eating them by choice and making the right dishes, beans are fucking delicious.

I understand that you associate beans with poverty, but when your circumstances are better (or now that they're already better, I don't know which) try them again, this time with some good recipes. And not the canned shit - gotta buy 'em dried, soak 'em, cook 'em in a slow cooker, instant pot, or pressure cooker.

<comment><USER27> I do eat beans all the time, its a staple food here. G

I just make them with meat, pork, sausage and the whole party

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Taking a critical look at one's own meat consumption can be enlightening, because it is something that we often take for granted. Do I eat meat because it is necessary for my health? If not, what are the reasons? How is the meat that I'm eating produced? How long do these animals live compared to their natural life span? What is the environmental cost of animal farming? Etc., Etc.

I did not find convincing answers to these questions, so I stopped buying and eating meat.

<comment><USER19> I eat hamburgers because they are delicious.

I assume that the ethical, ecological, and societal impacts of that decision is somehow internalize in the price.

I know I am wrong - but I hope that becomes true one day.

<comment><USER24> So you are aware that you are deluding yourself but don't take steps about it? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> All I got from that was:

Sorry, this content is not available in your region.

</comment><comment><USER31> Squint really hard with me... From an environmental point of view I think its encouraging there is so much headway we can collectively make by reducing waste than hoping new tech and infrastructure will allow the same level of consumption

[https://www.nrdc.org/resources/wasted-how-america- losing-40-...](https://www.nrdc.org/resources/wasted-how-america- losing-40-percent-its-food-farm-fork-landfill)

</comment><comment><USER32> hmm anyone else get this:

"Sorry, this content is not available in your region."

<comment><USER33> I got the same 403 message.

Luckily outline.com was able to fetch the article: [https://outline.com/yecexc](https://outline.com/yecexc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How much of deforestation their food would have resulted in?

<comment><USER19> None. Chicks eat very little and grain is already plentiful in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> While people in developing countries will be suffering shortly because of lack of protein and malnutrition, I'm sure many in the West will celebrate this as a great step towards veganism.

<comment><USER24> I doubt any vegans will celebrate unnecessary slaughter of 2M chickens.

And animal protein consumes a lot of plant protein to make. If you want to feed people it's much more efficient to send over the soj and grain the chickens are fed, rather than the chicken meat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Can we not just put them in a field for a while?

</comment><comment><USER37> Word on the street is they would be able to kill them properly if the employees were there.

</comment><comment><USER38> the true victims of covid-19....

</comment><comment><USER39> I am disappointed, Does anybody can act to not waste all this food in this time?

<comment><USER4> > I am disappointed, Does anybody can act to not waste all this food in this > time?

Yes: you! That's what it takes, if I'm honest.

But if you're asking about startups, yes there is on based out of Texas and Colorado called Food Maven:

[https://foodmaven.com/](https://foodmaven.com/)

Check out Roy Choi's PBS series Breaking bread, its all good, there they highlight how other places have tackled this issue in regards to environmental impact, local economic commerce, and food insecurity. It's really a rad series, and makes me glad Roy has gotten the success that he has!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrV8WrqnyrM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrV8WrqnyrM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> We need to lift this shelter in place order and hold these assholes accountable.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't remember who but someone (Naval?) had this quote that generations 100 years from now will think of us as utterly barbaric for eating animals. When I look around how we treat animals as if they were just sacs of meat, its amazingly heart wrenching. In Alaska I saw a casual 4th of July competitions where you throw dead fish and other person catches it. Sometime fish fall apart and all its guts spread out during these games while audience literally laugh at that scene. I wonder how people get so heartlessly cruel that not only they are killing animals for entertainment but also enjoy when their bodies fall apart? What is their internal justification system? A devout Christian explained to me that its their God given right to be superior to animals and God has instructed them to consume these animals. In a Chinese restaurant I had hard time explaining someone that fish is not really a plant. It seems minds can be programmed to shield away from any cruelty. Perhaps that's how people working in Nazi camps justified cruelty towards Jews: they aren't really living beings like rest of us, they are something else quite lower so no need to take all these to heart.

<comment><USER42> I hate to break it to you, but in general our treatment of animals is way better than a 100 years ago. Animal shelters? Animal cruelty laws? Etc.

That fish throwing contest? Oh, it's almost definitely older than 100 years (as are dog fights, dolphin slaughter, goose pulling, cock throwing and other wonderful traditions from around the world).

<comment><USER43> That is one side of the scale. The other side of the scale has the meat industry in it (which is absolutely not like 100 years ago). As someone who used to work in a slaughter house, I am not convinced that today is better. I can see our children looking back in a few generations and think of us as barbaric. I thought of it as barbaric and surreal when working there.

<comment><USER42> The scale? Yeah, the scale is much bigger. Conditions for animals? Not much different than 100 years ago [1]. And I'd argue they are better in many cases (and in many countries).

[1] [https://io9.gizmodo.com/utterly-disturbing-century-old- photo...](https://io9.gizmodo.com/utterly-disturbing-century-old-photos-of- meat-packing-1579470458)

<comment><USER44> Those open-air stockyards in Chicago look like crap, and even then still miles better than what pigs go through today. At least they saw the sky for more than the few minutes just before their deaths.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is just wrong.

Anyone who justifies in any way this is evil.

With practices like this, and other less murderous but still extremely wasteful shit like airlines burning thousands of gallons of fuel to keep their "slots" ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22511488)), I for one won't even mind if something decimates our so-called civilization.

<comment><USER46> [https://www.quora.com/How-many-chickens-are-killed- everyday](https://www.quora.com/How-many-chickens-are-killed-everyday)

 _The U.S. consumes 9 billion chickens per year, so that's 24 million chickens killed per day for food._

So this article (about the 2m chickens) is about 9% of one days worth of chicken death in the usa, just for reference.

(I agree with your point, industrialised meat production is nighmarish)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Your opinion on we heart places? Our startup from New Zealand. - <AUTHOR> http://www.weheartplaces.com/

<comment><USER2> It has no purpose. Once again, let me be the bad guy because nobody else will: it's not useful!

The idea you have behind it is good, but you have done a shoddy work of communicating it.

Think of it from the perspective of someone external to the page. I open it and see a bunch of pictures of beaches. I could go to google images and type beaches and I'd see the same thing. I'm never going to go to Turtle Island, I never heard of it, and I'm not interested in it.

So, what would be useful to me then? Imagine I could go there, and then click on my own city. Then I see a bunch of photos of obscure bars and fun places (and not the monument in the center of the city) then it would be useful. If I knew I was going to New Zealand in december, I could click on christchurch or something, and I'd instantly see the cool places to go to, then that would be useful.

I know you've had these ideas, the problem is that you presented the actual way to get to the useful stuff as very cumbersome and unclear. Instead, you're putting technical stuff on the front page like "tags", "tools", "KML feeds".

I have no idea what a KML feed is even though I'm a technical guy. And why in heavens name is OpenID the most important "feature" you support? Is that not a bit of a wrong setting of priorities?

"Cool Bookmarklet"? A bookmarklet that has a low temperature, or does this bookmarklet wear dark glasses and doesn't dance in the club?

Yes, I know I'm being rough on you here, but it's better to hear this stuff now before it becomes impossible to change.

You have had a great idea, but you need to communicate clearer. You're communicating too technically and you need to do it different. How you do it is up to you, I'm just making you aware of the fact.

<comment><USER3> You should mentally add "you idiot!" to the end of all your sentences. If the resulting sentence makes sense, rewrite it until it's so polite that adding those words doesn't make sense.

Your points here are somewhat valid, though. I'm just irritated at reading your rants, thinking "wow, this guy is kind of mean," and then looking up and seeing "maxklein" as the username.

<comment><USER2> I know I'm a bit mean, but someone has to be the mean guy. Personally, I dislike this fake politeness and niceness that people hide behind all the time. It makes life boring.

I'm just saying things the way I see them without sugercoating them at all, I'm not being mean for the sake of being mean. I'm just saying what's in my mind without trying to reformulate it such that the other guy does not get hurt.

When I demo my own project, I hope others do the same. Because that will make me improve and change till I can hopefully finally make something that is just frickin great. I care about this stuff here, this is not my job, it's my art. Art has to be aesthetically pleasing, and you would not criticize someone for saying his honest opinion about a crap piece of art, would you? And I'm not saying that the project above is crap, it's actually quite good, but there are some things that are not right in my opinion.

Niceness is overrated. If you're trying to make something great, then you need to feel the flames when you're small. That's what will mould you and make you into a hard mean money making machine. If everyone just pats you on the back and encourages you to "follow your dreams", then you'll end up making something that nobody wants.

When people tell you straight to your face what they don't like about your project without trying to be all diplomatic and sparing your feelings, you have an opportunity to look at other peoples perspectives and improve and change things.

<comment><USER3> What you're talking about is being honest with people regarding feedback. I respect that and agree with you.

But it is possible to be tactfully honest. You're not.

<comment><USER2> Okay, I'll try to be nicer next time while still staying honest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Note #1: I hope I don't come across as too critical mate, I'm just trying to be helpful!)

I just had a little play around with the site and I was a little confused to what it actually did for a few moments (even though I did read the tagline, it more or less blended into the toolbar up the top) Perhaps an "About Us" type box between the second signup section that is in a contrasting colour to draw your attention to it? Perhaps a light turquoise or light yellow background to ensure it is well defined in the layout of your pages. This would also give you the opportunity for another signup call to action.

So I think you really need to change a couple of design elements to make it clear what the site is about.

Some other design elements I would look at (and I'm just being picky now, but trying to be honest aswell) would be caption under each picture could perhaps not be in that little black box underneath each image? Whitespace is a wonderful thing so I'd use it wherever possible. Ensure the flag is there in the whitespace too - It's just right now each image gives me the impression it looks like Google Adsense

\- Perhaps less boxes for places on the frontpage too? You don't really want to overwhelm your new users with too much information. Maybe try some sort of large gallery that shuffles through various locations and pops up it's location underneath (I'm trying to remember the name of the open source thing you can use, but have a look at <http://graphpaperpress.com/demo/monochrome/> and you will see what I mean) ... I think with the larger cycling gallery and an about us box, you could essentially shorten and shift the grey text under your tool menu, ie make it a plain tagline "for remembering and discovering places to visit." and leaving it under the sitename above the tool menu, which would also neaten up the design.

\- Perhaps explain to users what your features actually mean (the majority of users of websites don't know terms like KML)

\- The sidebar has a weird amount of extra margin on the right of it, making the whole page seem shifted to the left.

\- Perhaps you could combine the Login/Signup into one large box by joining them together and where the whitespace is in the middle add the word "or"... it would reduce the amount of hot pink as I think that comes across as distracting. Maybe the addition of a closing option to close the window again?

(Note #2: I hope this came across coherently, I've been up & coding/doing math on and off for the last 30 hours and I'm about to go to bed)

<comment><USER4> Ok, I just did a very rough & quick chop job in photoshop to try and explain what I was mumbling about, remember its a _very_ rough copy.

Having another look at the image, I'd probably even make the images below even more thumbnail like, perhaps a series of small tiles?

[http://marklancaster.org/storage/weheartplacesquickmockup.jp...](http://marklancaster.org/storage/weheartplacesquickmockup.jpg)

Hope that helps mate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"... Your opinion on we♥places? ..."_

Good but frustrating to add places. Maybe it's me but I'd rather either:

\- entry box like twitter to enter location

and how do you enter the street address of a mountain?

\- so a pin button locator where you can fine tune the placement on the map itself

A geeky way would be allow users to also enter Geolocation, lat/lon. But that's not important. The entry works but adding entry to the front page removing the requirement to add an add-on will increase usage.

One thing that does bug me and could be be a problem. It has to do with the restrictions on flickr images but there is a technical solution. I added this image ~ <http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/2803128286/> to my account ~ <http://www.weheartplaces.com/users/bootload> The image is mine so copyright is clear for my use. Others can use it as well, but if you ignore the licensing ~ <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en> by placing adverts you leave yourself open to a lot of flack. Eg: If you get big ppl will be able to enforce their license agreements. The technical solution is to use the flickr API ( flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo ) ~ [http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.licenses.ge...](http://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.photos.licenses.getInfo.html) to check the copyright permissions and respect them. Ignoring the licensing problem will become a problem ~ [http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157601196183552/?...](http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157601196183552/?search=fair+image+use) and <http://www.flickr.com/groups/lawgroup/>

</comment><comment><USER6> There's not enough information on the front page to entice me to sign up. I suggest you add a bit more description as to what users can do on the site.

Also, I suggest the usual HN advice: let users do as much as possible before requiring them to sign up.

Good luck!

<comment><USER7> Just so you don't ignore it, I second the idea that you should make users sign up later rather than earlier. This was my leave-point for the site - "ooh, that looks nice, let's add that. Bah, not nice enough to sign up for anything _close_ "

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I couldn't figure out what the goal of the site was. Now that I've clicked around more, it seems a little like 43 Places (<http://www.43places.com/>), but even now I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to build a collection of places (cause of the "I've been there!" links), learn more about interesting places through comments, share/tag photos ala Flickr, or what. You can possibly be all of those things eventually, but the homepage needs a clearer call-to- action.

Also, minor nit, if I click on Register or Login but change my mind, there's no way to close the dialog.

Very nice-looking!

</comment><comment><USER9> Go visit <http://www.lovelettertomontreal.com/> and then compare it to something like <http://www.weheartplaces.com/places/54-copenhagen>. Now, how can you make something as awesome as the first out of the latter? If you can succeed at that, you might have something great.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like the concept & the brightkite integration.

I was going to comment on Di fara pizza, but when I clicked _post comment_ nothing seemed to happened. Only something did happen - _post comment_ button is below the fold, but the login/register layer appears above the fold. I found it after clicked 5 or 6 times, giving in, and scrolling up to hit the site id for home.

This is in webkit, btw.

</comment><comment><USER11> The map here is sort of useless:

<http://www.weheartplaces.com/places/108-jumbo-pass>

It needs the zoom controls, and you should probably use the terrain mode.

</comment><comment><USER12> You need to not copy the look of weheartit.com (visual bookmarking service) unless you produced that too. That'd be a good start</comment>


Y Combinator founder: there is no tech bubble - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2011/02/17/graham-y-combinator-no-tech-bubble/ <comment><USER2> Well that was fast.

This actually reminds me of something that's been bugging me for a while.

If you're Mark Zuckerberg, or Paul Graham, one of the google execs, or basically any high-profile tech person...do you still get to sit at the lunch table with everybody else?

I love talking to people here on HN, or joking around on reddit. I used to be _very_ active on slashdot, and had a lot of really interesting discussions with people there. I can do this because nobody really cares who I am. If I say that I think the iPad is stupid, it doesn't make the news.

So if you're Paul Graham, and you just want to jump into a discussion and "shoot the shit" with people, how do you do it?

Especially if you're Mark Zuckerberg, do you not even get to use the product that you're in charge of because _everything_ you say is going to be dissected by thousands of bloggers and tech journalists? Do you still get to post to slashdot without people thinking that it's an indicator of where facebook is heading?

<comment><USER3> I think if you're running a big company you have to be cautious about what you say in public. If you're just an investor you can take more risks.

Spending a decade publishing essays that got port-scanned by forum trolls has also helped. It has trained me to make sure what I'm saying is true before I hit submit. (Or at least within a few minutes of hitting submit; I added the delay feature to HN explicitly for this purpose.)

<comment><USER4> I thought it was great that you dropped in on Hacker News — something like this is exactly the kind of low-cost commentary we need from some of the leaders of the valley from time to time.

I feel like there are at least a few disagreements about the state of a tech bubble in the valley. I mean, the poll got a few votes, so it's an issue worth noting — right? Then again, that probably comes from a significant amount of inexperience on my end. But I feel like your opinion is valuable even outside of the subset of the conversation in Hacker News. (Maybe we need a Bolzanno- Weierstrass analogy for discussion within specific venues and the discussion in the valley as a whole.)

I just think something like this is an easy way to get your opinion on the matter without having to get in front of you and waste your time on an issue that isn't exactly pressing. I mean, I don't know how I would feel if reporters hounded me every day asking if I still believed there was a tech bubble. But it's still an issue that obviously a lot of people care about and like to read about.

Anyway, my two cents. But, like I said, I'm pretty inexperienced when it comes to this whole "silicon valley" thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My simple response is, "Denial is a river in Egypt." Paul Graham is not an impartial observer in this debate. YC (and by extension him) are some of the loudest advocates for the current startup generation. Should a bubble burst around them, YC would stand to loose tremendously in money and prestige regardless of the merits of their individual investments.

<comment><USER6> The saying is actually "…not just a river in Egypt." The fact that the Nile _is_ a river in Egypt is somewhat less enlightening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That's exactly what someone would say if there WAS a tech bubble! We're doomed!

<comment><USER8> Your comment is funny but true. People will always find rational reasons to explain away sky high valuations. Even the first time around, Pets.com had a very high market potential if it capitalized successfully on projected internal sales growth rates and expanded to the size of the pet care market.

I take all these comments very very lightly. In my experience, the surest sign of a bubble is when the non-savvy bench investors in your life start talking about "great investment opportunities". When 9/10 people in your office are buying a house as an investment opportunity, there is probably a bubble. When 9/10 of your office is investing in the secondary facebook market (or something similar) chances are there is a bubble.

</comment></comment><comment> DanI-S There may be no bubble, but there's definitely an echo.

<comment> mkr-hn That's because the tech world is a giant parabola.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The claim is that the people investing now are super smart guys like Yuri Milner, so there is no bubble.

I'm mildly skeptical - Silicon Valley VCs appear to be as affected by herd mentality as everyone else.

</comment><comment><USER10> All this talk of bubble misses the fact that there is _real growth_ happening in the technology sector.

The growth is a combination of many factors, by mostly it seems, the following:

* redistribution of services from a small office, small local market, to a small office but a global market. The models of today, aren't all that dissimilar to what they used to be, just the internet kills the road warrior salesman/support guys, and PayPal pretty much kills the international banking problems too.

* redistribution of premium telecoms based services from traditionally state controlled companies, to smaller, more agile and less restricted companies: this is a LOT of $$$. Look at the services that 5 years ago, people were talking about mCommerce - they are mostly online and ad-funded, app purchase funded (via Apple or Google, not the telcos), and soon to be Facebook credit funded.

* the depressed global market, making a traditional software engineering or marketing/sales job a riskier proposition, reducing relative risk of startups

* a generation of still young investors who have lived through a real boom/bust cycle, and stayed in the game, and understand at least one of the above factors.

Is there a bubble? Only if this growth collapses. I don't see any reason for it to. The economy will start to recover, the markets for apps will stabilise, and there will be some fallout, but don't confuse real growth for unfounded growth.

(What about the Yuri Milner move? Well, knowing two YC 10 W founders, I'd put whatever stupidly small % of his wealth was, of my own wealth into their company ANY day.)

</comment><comment><USER11> this is so meta.

I'm writing a post on HN about a article about a post on HN.

<comment><USER12> Kind of makes you sick doesn't it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if there is a tech bubble, so what. You just need to do due diligence when dealing with a company. Does the company offer true value or is it a fad? For example, FaceBook. yes, there are millions of people on there, but their revenue source is from ads that have little ROI. Zynga is another one, how long can you convince people to keep buying dresses for your virtual pig?

</comment><comment><USER14> Except - unless I misinterpreted it - PG didn't quite say that. He pointed out the differences between the tech bubble then and what's occurring now. Sure, I'm nitpicking, but I think it's an important distinction. If there's a bubble, it will surely be different than before and isn't it a bit early to make sweeping predictions? PG didn't make any.

<comment><USER15> I am definitely skeptical of this article's conclusion.

Just because Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg are poised to make a lot of money doesn't mean that there are a lot of people out there who are going to hop on tech stocks because they look hot and lose a lot of money.

It's certainly true that Facebook, LinkedIn and other tech companies are _making_ something that has an impact on the lives of others, but that doesn't mean that valuations aren't going to get horribly out of whack.

In fact, Zuckerberg and Milner stand to make a big pile of money if valuations do get horribly out of whack. Just as the banks did during the mortgage loan fiasco.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Even if there is a bubble, who cares (in these parts at least)? Back in 2001, you needed money to build a product. The bubble bursting meant no money, and thus no product. These days a downturn won't prevent you from building something.

</comment><comment><USER17> I haven't experienced the first bubble, so no context there. However at least from my own experience with VC and angel investors, they are all quite risk averse and insist on seeing solid traction/revenue befor even considering investment. Among all the most popular sites, Twitter might be the only bad example and exception here without a solid revenue model, whereas Facebook, Linkedin, and Groupon all boasted a stellar revenue already. I do think the investors have learnt from the last bubble and changed the mentality a lot.

</comment><comment><USER18> Does this need to be said? Is there anyone suggesting that there is a tech bubble like there was in 2000?

I mean that literally. Is there a single person on the face of the earth voicing that opinion? Because I haven't heard it.

The tech bubble in 2000 was more than overvalued companies, over hyped stories, and big promises. What I see now is the same thing that happens every day in other financial sectors.

</comment><comment><USER19> Thanks for the post. We don't want investors running away.

</comment><comment><USER20> "It's different this time."</comment>


U.S. cancer death rate drops by largest annual margin ever, report says - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/08/u-s-cancer-death-rate-drops-by-largest-annual-margin-ever-report-says/ <comment><USER2> The most effective drugs for lung cancer approved in the last few years are PD-1 and PD-L1 inhibitors. The leading drug is mercks pembrolizumab

Here are some of the most widely cited studies of pembro in lung cancer that illustrate its clinical benefit:

Open label pembro vs chemo in first line non small cell lung cancer: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1606774](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1606774)

Development of PD-L1 biomarkers in 495 patient phase 1 study: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1501824](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa1501824)

Pembro + chemo in lung cancer: [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1801005](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1801005)

Pembro + docetaxel for previously treated lung cancer: [https://mdanderson.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/pembroli...](https://mdanderson.elsevierpure.com/en/publications/pembrolizumab- versus-docetaxel-for-previously-treated-pd-l1-posit)

<comment> semi-extrinsic Fun fact: you can identify these drugs as Monoclonal AntiBodies due to the suffix -mab.

This category has been incredibly successful against a wide variety of debilitating illnesses like autoimmune, cancer etc. My doctor told me that surgery for arthritis is a dying specialisation in medicine, because the new drugs like infliximab are so effective.

The discovery of how to produce them got the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1984, and the more recent discovery of how to tailor them via directed evolution got the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018.

<comment><USER3> Apparently that's true for rheumatoid arthritis but osteoarthritis still gets a lot of surgery.

Source: my SO the MD.

<comment><USER4> There is no cure for osteoarthritis because it is purely mechanical degradation of joints with aging. You get a lot of pain as your joints disappear. Most of the treatments are symptomatic (strong painkillers) or surgery (replacing joints with prosthetic ones). Very different from RA as a condition.

<comment><USER5> There is a solution for osteoarthritis, joint degeneration - it's by injecting your bone marrow, stem cells into the joint. A company in the US, Regenexx, has been doing research on stem cell treatments for 18 years now. Other places in the world have been doing stem cell research for 30+ years, it just hasn't become mainstream or widespread yet - so the knowledge isn't distributed well yet.

<comment><USER6> The evidence isn't strong for it either. The randomised controlled trials have very small n-numbers, are unblinded, have subjective primary outcomes. Needs a big trial to convince people it works.

<comment><USER5> You can see before and after MRI imaging of areas with injury and then healed. Obviously we have to define the process of what is being talked about when saying "stem cell treatment" and determining degeneration level of tissues, along with health of the individual - and therefore the health and potency of their own stem cells, are other factors to consider.

I'd say the bigger issue is filtering out the bad-greedy actors who jump into this space, who are piggybacking on the excitement generated from of word of mouth from patients who have benefit greatly - from clinics who have protocols they follow for what they know works and what won't work.

I have been getting stem cell treatments from a clinic in the US for a few years now to treat many different areas of injury (limited number of areas they can treat due to limited amount of fluid they have to use after aspiration and post-processing) and from my own experience, and that of speaking with other patients in waiting rooms (and even hotel lobby) who have returned for additional treatments - it certainly works, heals, regenerates tissues with the right protocol and condition. The most painful injection spot I had was a ruptured, torn disk, in my low back - I am doing that area again on the 16th of this month, as part of a number of areas, because it helped permanently reduce radiating pain from that area greatly; I plan to do an MRI of area a few months after this next treatment to have post imaging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Summary: The death rate from cancer has dropping slowly but surely each year (at about %1.5-%16 rate). This last reported year was largest single percentage drop in that process - 2%. That could also be phrased as 98% of the deaths happened the previous year (2016) also happening that year (2017). Half-full, half-empty, etc.

So it's a blip but an encouraging blip. At the same time, the headline makes this sound much more extreme and excite.

<comment><USER8> Half-full - If the 2% rate is retained in 35 years the number of cancer deaths will be halved. Considering that 87%[1] of cancer-related deaths happens after 50 it is a very hopeful outlook for young people

[1]: [https://ourworldindata.org/cancer](https://ourworldindata.org/cancer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could it be that people are dying from opioid ODs, suicide, and other means that tragically cut lives short? Cancer risk seems to be a function of time and entropy. The longer someone lives, the more likely I suspect they'll succumb to cancer eventually.

<comment><USER10> That was my first thought, but the article specifically addresses that. It's due to improved treatments for lung cancer. Take lung cancer out of the data and the death rate improved by 1.4% last year, which is basically the same as the baseline 1.5%/year rate that cancer deaths have been dropping since 1991. If it were due to the opioid epidemic, you also wouldn't see that sustained drop over 3 decades - life expectancy in the U.S. has only been falling for 3 years.

<comment><USER11> Decommissioning coal plants & spinning up natural gas plants could hypothetically help with lung cancer too.

<comment><USER12> Long term, sure. Short term, you'd be looking at the link between air quality levels and chronic diseases like COPD, asthma, and congestive heart failure.

That might show up as an increase in the number of living people with these conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> For those wondering about lack of e-cigarette mentioning, World Health Org says e-cigarette doesn't help reduce lung cancer for now.

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-tobacco/who- says-e...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-tobacco/who-says-e- cigarettes-smoke-free-products-do-not-help-reduce-cancer-idUSKCN1UL29C)

<comment><USER14> This article is short.. I don't understand how e-cigarettes (granted the liquid is not full of shitty chemicals) can not be an improvement. The carcinogenic compounds were said to come from tobacco combustion byproducts. Theoretically in e-cigarettes.. there's no combustion, only vaporization of nicotine and the liquid. So what's the link ?

<comment><USER15> One trouble with e-cigs that prevents them from being an unmitigated win is that their aggressive marketing targeted towards children is highly effective at getting new users addicted to nicotine. This is a reversal of the trend of long term gradual decline in the use of tobacco-derived products (in developed economies, anyway).

On the face of it this seems unrelated to lung cancer rates, but there's concern in the public health community that some percentage of these users will graduate to smoking tobacco over time.

I don't think we really know whether those concerns will be borne out, or whether they'll counteract adults switching in time to save themselves.

<comment> t-writescode I have trouble believing that people will actually switch from ecigs to actual cigarettes. Adjustable nicotine flavored steam vs cough-inducing smoke with possibly less nicotine?

I guess a cigarette is smaller and easier to use where there's no electricity source?

I guess a small percentage might migrate, though, as always happens with anything where you _can_ migrate.

A small percentage would try regular cigarettes in the first place too. It will be interesting to see if small subgroup of bigger, new subgroup is larger than historical subgroup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's hard to take this very seriously when the claim is that it's "only" due to advances in the treatment of lung cancer. Given that lung cancer rates are almost surely driven by smoking rates, and that the rate of adults who smoke regularly has dropped significantly over the last couple decades, how could the fact that there are fewer adult smokers not also be a significant factor in declining lung cancer rates?

To claim this is only driven by treatment innovation and not public policy changes is wildly misleading.

<comment><USER17> The rate has been declining for years, but this year the decline is larger than expected. They're talking about that increase in the reduction of the rate.

<comment><USER16> What's your point? The YoY decline in smoking rates since 1970s is not linear.

This stat is effectively meaningless without accounting for the rate of the US pop that develops lung cancer in the first place. If you want to measure treatment effectiveness, then the right measurement is something like '% of US population that develops lung cancer who are effectively treated/cured' and not 'overall cancer death rate'.

The fact this headline is so broad when it's really about lung cancer and not all cancers and doesn't account for any factors outside of 'treatment innovation' leads me to believe this was pushed by some healthcare trade group.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for this counter argument. I do wonder why people jump in the comments and drop name pharmaceutical companies and their products.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If you're interested in hearing a counter point to these types of medical "press release" articles, I can't recommend enough following Vinay Prasad on Twitter. Here is his thread about this report: [https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1215081457854468096](https://twitter.com/VPrasadMDMPH/status/1215081457854468096)

</comment><comment><USER20> I personally think that part of the reductions are coming from foreign healthcare screenings (off the books) and/or a combination of early term options).

The cost for treatment [1] may have some considering alternate options for screenings and treatment after seeing someone elses experience/ordeal beforehand or reading about first-hand accounts online.

[1] [https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans- debt/info-2018/the-h...](https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans- debt/info-2018/the-high-cost-of-cancer-treatment.html)

<comment><USER21> The reductions are absolutely coming from new treatments in particular immunotherapy.

When I started Med school 19 years ago the average survival of metastatic melanoma was 6 months, it is now closer to 5 years (ie basically remission). Many other cancers (including lung, which this article pinpoints as being the main driver in falls over the last 12 months) are now benefiting from the second and third generation of these drugs

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This absolutely should be taken with a grain of salt.

First realize that these statistics are calculated via an entire field, known as "medical statistics" not surprisingly, that has enormous controversies inside of it.

Using a variety of mathematical calculations and formulas, they arrive at something called the "average death rate" that is supposed to massage out the differences between geographic regions and populations to determine the final number.

Devra Davis, Ph.D., M.P.H., wrote about this to tragic degree of detail in her book "The Secret History of the War on Cancer". For background she was Director of the Center for Oncology at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute and is still also a Professor of Epidemiology there.

The cancer death rate has not budged that much in 40 years. Survivability has extended, absolutely, and that is worth something, but not more than a few years. Compared to AIDS, a disease also without a real cure but that has extended survivability by decades this is unacceptable.

The amount of brilliant researchers driven out of the field, the failure of the Susan G Komen foundation to invest in actual research (this can be seen as more of a problem with the nonprofit industrial complex though and not per se cancer research), the null hypothesis requirement failures at NIH, and just the general climate of unethicalness and neoliberalism that began emerging in the mid 1970's are all blamed, and there is truth in most of those arguments.

There is an old joke about how many white upper middle class cancer patients does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, one to do it, and the other to write a book about it.

I go back and forth about whether that joke is inappropriate, and Mark Nepo is one such person who falls into that category but has written moving essays about the experience, but every time I read Barbara Ehrenreich's "Cancerland" it makes me incredibly bitter. And I say that as a person who really likes Tony Robbins for the most part but who still is disgusted by the whole forced optimism cure through hope that the entire industry has turned into in lieu of actual breakthrough achievements. The fact that the latest and even somewhat exciting area of research in cancer treatment is the investigation on the role and use of viruses, a _soviet_ innovation that has been investigated by the Russians since Stalin was alive even though they were mercilessly mocked for decades for this, is just tragic.

<comment><USER23> > The cancer death rate has not budged that much in 40 years. Survivability > has extended, absolutely, and that is worth something, but not more than a > few years. Compared to AIDS, a disease also without a real cure but that has > extended survivability by decades this is unacceptable.

Ignoring the fact that cancer is a much harder problem than HIV, extending survivability is how the cancer death rate changes. Everyone who doesn't die by other causes would eventually get cancer because DNA replication can only happen so many times before accumulated replication errors trigger it. In a sense, curing HIV means more people will die of cancer (other things equal).

Also, cancer is not one thing. You have a particular type (like NSCLC), but also your particular genetic mutations may be unique or nearly so, affecting different combinations of oncogenes and tumor suppressors in different ways. This makes it extremely difficult to treat. Even broadly useful approaches like cancer immunology work better for some than others.

> There is an old joke about how many white upper middle class cancer patients > does it take to screw in a light bulb? Two, one to do it, and the other to > write a book about it. I go back and forth about whether that joke is > inappropriate,...

IDK about inappropriate, but maybe find an outlet for your anger other than cancer patients?

<comment><USER24> > _maybe find an outlet for your anger other than cancer patients?_

That's a pretty high horse you're on there. Parent wrote an honest and thoughtful comment, and you wrote a thoughtful response until that last dig.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Could someone do some quick math and extrapolate what cancer death rates might be in 2050?

<comment><USER26> Sure, but it isn't a useful exercise. Presumably there are limits to the current new treatments, once we figure out what those limits are we will hit a new death rate. I expect to see that before 2050. Then we have to wait for the next new treatment.

It seems unlikely that there are an infinite number of great treatments waiting to be discovered. Most likely we are asymptotically approaching some non-zero minimum death rate. (note that the function is not linear, and we just saw one interesting step)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> With the shift in public perception about keto, carbs, etc maybe we're actually onto something?

<comment><USER28> You think carbs cause cancer? Oh my, the anti-carb brainwashing is more powerful than I thought. If anything I predict there will be a future upsurge in some cancers (colon etc) if people keep avoiding carbs. We need fiber. Fiber comes from foods that contain carbs.

<comment><USER27> Yes people think that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In unrelated news, the US alcohol-related death count has doubled

[https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794772148/alcohol-related- dea...](https://www.npr.org/2020/01/08/794772148/alcohol-related-deaths-have- doubled-study-says)

</comment><comment><USER30> Let me offer an easy explanation: normal rates of annual progress in cancer treatment and prevention were compounded by (quite abnormal) decrease in life expectancy. Which naturally makes cancer, which correlates highly with age, less common. Basically, people are dying of meth or fentanyl before they get a chance to get cancer.

<comment><USER31> This possible explanation is explicitly addressed and debunked in the article as the reason for cancer deaths declining. As has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, this is about immunotherapy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Don't mean to be a killjoy, and perhaps this is stating the obvious for the HN crowd but this doesn't mean the broader rate of cancer is down; but that medical treatment has improved. The latter being more lucrative than prevention (at least for the med community).

I'd also like to mention, that these are deaths limited to cancer. Death is attributed to something else this stat will be affected. This is, in theory, you can "survive" cancer but die from something related to that condition and it won't count as a cancer death.

I'd liken it, somewhat, to war. Yes, less soldies are dying. But survival comes at a cost. No arms. No legs. Mental and emotional wounds. Etc.

I'm not knocking the progress with cancer; only providing some necessary context that's often missing.

<added>

The point is, beating up data is easy. Be mindful of what you might be looking at, especially if the outcomes are good for an industy's well-being.

</added></comment>


What bookies don't want you to know about NFL underdogs - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/136918/what-your-bookie-doesnt-want-you-to-know-about-nfl-underdogs-2/ <comment><USER2> Well, as somebody who enjoys going to the track now and then I can say it is definitely a losing strategy to consistently bet on the favorite and get odds like 1:1.2

<comment><USER3> Every betting strategy is a losing one unless you have significant insider knowledge that the bookmakers do not.

<comment><USER2> Well, I think it is a lot more fun to win at 1:10 than it is at 1:1.2 so my utility function is definitely higher in the first case.</comment></comment></comment>