What Happened to 'Miegakure,' the Game That Promised the 4th Dimension? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kmknd/what-happened-to-miegakure-the-game-that-promised-the-4th-dimension <comment><USER2> I exchanged a couple emails with him years ago, as I wanted to share an interface I designed for viewing 4D (or higher) geometry. It runs in the browser and you can try it at [http://transdimensional.xyz](http://transdimensional.xyz)

The each column is a slider with previews of how it will look when the slider is rotated

<comment><USER3> That's a beautiful bit of UI design that almost manages to make the intrinsically unintuitive feel actually intuitive. I doff my hat to you.

<comment><USER4> Some [optional] labels for axis and a way to reset would be nice.

<comment><USER5> Any labels you can assign are arbitrary, there's no intrinsic height or width etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Update from May 17, 2019: "Still working on Miegakure?" "Yes"

[https://twitter.com/marctenbosch/status/1129523036015681536](https://twitter.com/marctenbosch/status/1129523036015681536)

Not much to go on since this article came out.

</comment><comment><USER7> So the trouble with coming up with an innovative game mechanic, publishing information about it, then being slow to produce your game, is...

Someone will implement it in minecraft or roblox first. Came home earlier this week to find my son playing a Miegakure clone in minecraft.

Here's CaptainSparklez doing a let's play of it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNlvtvvQ-M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSNlvtvvQ-M)

Here's where you can download it: [http://www.minecraftmaps.com/puzzle- maps/the-hypercube](http://www.minecraftmaps.com/puzzle-maps/the-hypercube)

<comment><USER8> The most popular Counter-Strike maps of all time (de_dust and dust2) were visual copies of a map from a trailer for TF2, and were released in 2000. TF2 finally came out in 2007, sporting a completely different look.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The dev has released a toy box built on his work: [http://4dtoys.com/](http://4dtoys.com/)

It's... confusing, but as far as I can tell, accurate.

<comment><USER10> That was my experience too. I mostly got the idea but still failed to anticipate what would happen when I made the shape move in some particular way. We don't think in 4D and it's just not easy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looking at the 4d toys video, it occurs to me that we can't really see in 3d, we only see these 2d projections. But it's far more information rich than a slice, and we can mentally model 3d. Some of this is certainly an innate ability to model 3d, and familiarity with the component shapes. But it also comes from shading and other surface area effects.

Could 4d be projected onto 2d in this fashion? Not a slice, but more like a shadow with surface effects. Maybe with red/green/blue lights in different positions in 4d space?

<comment><USER12> Check out this link from the venerable Ken Perlin:

[https://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/demox/Hyper.html](https://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/demox/Hyper.html)

There's a hard-to-get-running-due-to-age Java applet there which, when it used to run easily, was very powerful for getting me to understand 4D in an intuitive way.

It has a variety of stereo viewing modes, ranging from eye-crossed 3D (and wall-eye), to red/blue glasses, and so forth. It also has an excellent option for "thick" lines, that accentuates the position of the 4D object by making lines closer to the camera thicker.

The trick is to use your brain's two different depth perception mechanisms in different ways. You have hardware depth perception in the form of parallax difference between your two eyes, and you have software depth perception in the form of your brain's image analysis capabilities that, given a 2D wireframe, can determine a 3D projection of it. This is always fun with optical illusions, where you can see that your brain only really uses small localities for these calculations - observe the traditional "blivet" fork for an example.

Anyone who has looked at an isometric rendering of a wireframe 3D cube on paper knows that there are two ways you can perceive this shape, and that's the key to getting 4D intuitive perception going. You should already be accomplished at mentally switching the cube back and forth without even closing your eyes before you move on to another dimension!

If you use a hardware stereo mechanism like crossing your eyes to get one depth axis, you can concentrate and use that software depth perception to get the second depth axis. In particular, it's important to note that different mouse buttons and key combos will rotate the shape in different axes, so just make gentle movements with each to get a feeling for the range of motion. One set of axes will rotate the cube as though its 3D projection was one of the two possible software-depth-perception interpretations of it, and the other set of axes will rotate it as though the other interpretation was correct. You can seamlessly move back and forth between those states!

Perlin's applet features a variety of shapes, from the classic hypercube, to a simplex with the fewest possible edges (akin to a triangular pyramid in 3D) on to a sort of Klein bottle. It's really tricky to figure that one out, but in the end it's basically a sort of hypertorus where the inside and outside can become one another. Yeah, that's not really conveying very well in text, is it....

<comment><USER13> I can't get this running at _all_ , which is a shame, because I find the thing you're describing incredibly fascinating. Any advice?

<comment><USER12> Nah, I have no idea. Find an old machine with Win XP and IE 6 maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll hazard a guess as to what happened.

The dev is terrified to release anything less than perfection and is insanely good at adding more content and can always justify to themselves procrastinating on release by working on more content.

What? I'm not projecting. You're projecting. Shut up.

<comment><USER15> But this is also fine! It's also unexplored territory. In the words of Mr. Miyamoto: "A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad."

Releasing it when it is _ready_ rather than releasing it to release it is probably better in this case. Especially if the creator ever plans on other 4D game projects, since he has his own game engine to create them now. Better to not have someone's first experience with a 4D game be "This was garbage." in that case.

<comment><USER16> Duke Nukem Forever would beg to differ. The risk with delaying is that you may not be prioritizing the important things. Because you just bought yourself more time, it's easier to do the part you enjoy, instead of the part that's needed.

<comment><USER17> DNF was fine, it just wasn't the amazing masterpiece people expected. Miyamoto's quote can be true, but it can also be true that while delays can get you to 'good', that doesn't mean they can get you to 'great', and 'great' might sometimes only be achievable through aggressive cutting to the core experience. Not necessarily rushed, but not without deadlines and hard choices either.

For games pushing a new gimmick this seems even more true, and especially the idea of iterating on things that maybe aren't even quite "good" in order to learn more and eventually understand how to make something great even if a lot of the time greatness seems accidental. Two examples come to mind... Doom was made in a year, but was a culmination of even shorter projects successively refining what FPS meant. Portal was done in a little over 2 years, but was also built on the experience of Digipen students' project game that introduced the gimmick mechanic along with others at Valve with experience making FPSes (along with some writers who knew what they were doing).

<comment><USER18> DNF felt like a pretty good Duke Nukem game.

Unfortunately, at least my tastes and expectations in games have changed in the intervening 15 years, and it no longer suited them at all.

<comment><USER19> DNF had nothing to do with what made D3D actually good: amazing level design, creative weapons and enemies, fantastic music, tons of secrets, and a variety of weird environments. D3D took all the joys of shareware, episodic DOS gaming and brought them to 3D. DNF took all the juvenile bits and wrapped them in a half-baked CoD shell.

If only the game was as good as the 2001 E3 trailer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Jonathan Blow played a preview build of Miegakure at PAX East 2016 in his "Storytime" talk, where he solves some of the early levels:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBl7Rnkt78&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwBl7Rnkt78&feature=youtu.be&t=25m16s)

His analysis of the game is great — he says it parallels early sci-fi and speculative fiction, which started by asking "what if?" questions to build stories around worlds constructed from the answer ("What if the world was four dimensional?" in the case of Miegakure, or "what if the world was two dimensional?" in Flatland.)

Braid was born of asking similar questions. ("What if you could play with the flow of time?") Jonathan suggests that games elevate the art of asking that question further than fiction because you actually have to _build_ the world spawned from your "what if?" question rather than write it. But it creates some of the most interesting games — he demos some others in his talk.

It's great to learn that Marc ten Bosch is still working on Miegakure. I really enjoyed the previews and the concept art on his own site: [http://marctenbosch.com/news/](http://marctenbosch.com/news/)

</comment><comment><USER21> A first I thought this was a time shifting game like Braid, but this feels sorta like FEZ, except instead of a character learning about a 3D world from his 2D origins (which most people can understand playing SNES/Genesis games vs modern console games) into something way more bizarre that we can't even visualize.

The 2nd video on the page is really great at explaining this.

I haven't heard of this game before .. hopefully I'll forgot about it until it gets released. :)

<comment><USER18> This reminded me of the enormous mess surrounding Fez 2 and Phil Fish's exit of the game industry At Speed.

Regardless of any other opinions I may have about the game industry's toxicity, I'm always somewhat sad to recall that, as I wonder what it might or might not have turned out to be.

<comment><USER22> what happened to Fez 2 and Phil Fish?

<comment><USER23> Short story is the same ol, same ol. Creator creates beloved thing, People want to get to know the creator, Non PR savvy creator says awkward things with good intentions, People recoil and Creator recoils from reaction.Creator self destruct - in this case Phil Fish cancels Fez 2 in a reactionary manner. Phil still works in game dev as a consultant from what i remember of my cursory web stalking

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remember seeing one post then, another post later, about the journey the developer was making when coding it.

I was attracted by the ideas used, but that "4th dimension" thing, really didn't seem so solidify much.

I'm guessing that in the end, it was all about playability, and that probably the novelty of the game dynamics wore off rather fast, leaving behind a dull game.

I think the developer probably got a lot out of the journey as well, thus making releasing the game very likely irrelevant.

<comment><USER25> i played a build a long time ago and it had a "charming indie game" thing going for it beyond the 4d stuff, i think he will release it eventually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While you wait, you can play with [https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/learn-the-ways-of- the...](https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/learn-the-ways-of-the-fourth- dimension-with-a-bonkers-vr-playset/) from the same guy.

</comment><comment><USER27> Designing a 4D World: The Technology behind Miegakure [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZp0ETdD37E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZp0ETdD37E)

</comment><comment><USER28> This article didn't really say that much, aside from that the game still isn't out and still doesn't have tangible details about a release.

I really do hope to play it one day, but I'm starting to think that the game is on a death march and will end up unsatisfactory no matter what. I am eagerly waiting to be proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER29> What makes a good blog post, or trailer does not make an enjoyable game.

</comment><comment><USER30> At a short glance, it reminds me a lot of Monument Valley, which cleverly changes the dimensionality of the world with rotation.

</comment><comment><USER31> Afaik Mr. Bosch has finally engaged an artist sometime in the past couple years, when the levels were done or nearly so. They went on looking for the final look of the game—which is quite different from the earlier shots, judging by illustrations on the blog (though it's unclear how close they will be to the finished product): [http://marctenbosch.com/news/](http://marctenbosch.com/news/)

So it seems that currently it's time or art, implementation of said art, and polish.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if it would be more intuitive to display a projection of the 4D scene in 3 dimensions (then projected onto a 2d screen), rather than a 3D cross section of the 4D scene.

</comment><comment><USER33> I have been wondering, what would be the major challenges to create a 4d "space" in virtual reality with some kind of sensors that would let sense the orientation and maybe even speed/acceleration in the 4th dimension?

</comment><comment><USER34> Makes me wonder what would have happened if it had been developed bazaar- style.

<comment><USER35> > Makes me wonder what would have happened if it had been developed bazaar- > style.

I am not aware of any good game that has been developed bazaar-style.

<comment><USER17> Battle for Wesnoth? I liked it a lot anyway. It was developed with making it easy to get more developers, too: [http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html](http://aosabook.org/en/wesnoth.html)

<comment><USER36> Also 0 A.D.

[https://play0ad.com/](https://play0ad.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Relevant XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/721/](https://xkcd.com/721/)

<comment><USER38> This comic mentions Flatland, which is an excellent book. Reading it might give some insight as to what observing our 3D world would be like from a 4D context. You have to extrapolate it from the idea of viewing a 2D world from our perspective. Honestly, it would probably be disturbing. You'd be able to see everything at once. Like, inside and outside of everything from all perspectives at once. I'll pass.

This probably won't help you figure out how to play Miegakure, though. Although I thought the comparison to FEZ was apropos.

<comment><USER39> We live in a 4D world. Just because we can only move through one of the dimensions at a steady rate in one direction doesn't mean it's irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It didn't disappearing

</comment><comment><USER41> Technicality. These worlds are 5D. Time is a dimension. Your overall shape is represented by four dimensional geometry traced across space-time.

The only difference between time and space is that entropy propogates across time but not space.

<comment><USER42> Nobody refers to our own world as "4D" or flat cartoons as "3D" though. In colloquial speech, the number before the D is the number of spatial dimensions, so "4D" is correct here.

<comment><USER41> You're absolutely correct. But notice how I used the term technically?

I just wanted to point out that time is basically a spatial dimension and we have alot of experience with 4D objects. The temporal aspect of time is entropy; that is the only difference.

Other than that the equations literally call it spacetime and treat it as the same thing.

The 4th dimension you experience in the game is literally time with the arrow of time removed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> So far, every "3D" game is actually 4D. This game could be a 5th dimensional game, but then the main character needs to see all other 4th dimensional realties (like in Rick and Morty). I had the same problem with Rick and Morty's "A Rickle in Time". However, they got the monster (who is actually a 5th dimensional being not a 4th dimensional) right by being able to see all the uncertain possibilities. This game would need that type of awareness to be considered 5D. Otherwise, it's a normal 4D game.

<comment><USER43> What?

Saying that "the fourth dimension is time" when people bring up the idea of things with 4 dimensions of space, is a frustratingly common confusion.

No. One can think of "3 dimensions of space and one dimension of time" as a 4 dimensional thing, but that does not mean that every time that someone talks about 4 dimensions, that they would be properly interpreted as talking about time.

4 spatial dimensions usually just means that it takes 4 coordinates to pick out the points (though one could also be talking about, like, the Hausdorff Dimension of something, but whatever.)

... are you making a joke?

<comment><USER39> I'm not confusing anything. The game has time interwoven into the game play. Therefore the fourth dimension of space is the fifth dimension of the game. I really hope you are joking.

<comment><USER43> Dimensions aren't ordered like that. There isn't a dimension which is "the fourth one". The game has 4 spatial dimensions, and, like basically all games, has 1 time dimension.

People don't talk about the time dimension because it is irrelevant (edit: because there is always 1 time dimension, so no new information is conveyed by mentioning that the game has a time dimension).

Do you really think, when someone talks about a "2D game" that they mean that the game world has one dimension of space and another dimension of time? Of course you do not! That would be foolish! They are obviously talking about a game with 2 dimensions of space.

The whole "the 4'th' dimension always means time" idea is a stupid convention from bad sci-fi, which also brings us nonsense like "a journey into the seventh dimension".

Call time "a" 4th dimension, as in, other than the 3 of space, sure, fine, people can tell what you are talking about. That just is imposing an order based on the order you are referring to things at the time.

<comment><USER39> I actually get really annoyed by the misnomers! Just because you think time is irrelevant doesn't mean it is. Without it there would be NO movement. Btw, space and time aren't separate. That's why we call it space-time.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Runsit – A process manager in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bradfitz/runsit

<comment><USER2> FWIW I also started writing a init-like server in Go. One thing I ran into was that Go's APIs sort of coerce you into having an extra thread per process. runsit also has this issue. See line 489 of runsit.go, pasted below.

You can do it non-portably in Go by using os.ForkExec and Wait4(-1). The portable exec package assumes you will call Wait(pid), and not Wait(-1), which basically implies using a thread per process. Go's runtime isn't magic -- if you call libc/syscall wait(), an entire thread will be blocked, and the runtime can't use it for anything else. In this case this is the lifetime of an entire process, which is forever for server processes.

I'm pretty sure nobody would use a real PID 1 that burned a thread per process (systemd, upstart, etc.). But yes, for most use cases, in the grand scheme of things, it's probably not a big deal. I suppose Linux has an O(1) scheduler, although I'm not quite sure how this affects scheduling (interested in any comments).

But this goes to show that portable APIs are awkward and obscure for low level code. Better to use raw Unix APIs for something like an init server. Python and Java have similar problems.

IMO all interesting code nowadays is POSIX-like, so we should drop the pretension of portability and simplify our lives. Unix works.

        // run in its own goroutine
        func (in *TaskInstance) awaitDeath() {
          in.waitErr = in.cmd.Wait()  // ties up an OS thread for the lifetime of a process
          ...
        }

<comment><USER3> A goroutine is not a thread. That only ties up that one goroutine.

<comment><USER2> Your first statement is true; the second isn't.

Re-read what I wrote. If that doesn't convince you, then download and run the code. Run "pstree" on it and observe how many child processes and threads there are. You'll learn something useful about the relationship of the Go runtime to the OS.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just an introduction: Currently I'm using runsit as an alternative for supervisord and I'm happy with it so far. Stdout and stderror of the processes can be queried with a very simple HTTP interface. Runsit watches a config directory for any changes and applies them immediately. Config files are in json format.

<comment><USER4> Mind sharing a (lightly commented) config? I've been using Supervisor to run my Go services for a long while (the built-in log rotation is one of the big attractions) but keen to try alternatives. I never found mmonit and other alternatives to be as comprehensive as Supervisor.

<comment><AUTHOR> For instance I use following config (nginx.json) for nginx:

{ "user": ["_env", "${USER}"], "cwd": "/var/www", "standardEnv": true, "numFiles": 1024, "binary": "/usr/sbin/nginx" }

And php-fpm.json:

{ "user": ["_env", "${USER}"], "cwd": "/usr/sbin", "standardEnv": true, "numFiles": 1024, "binary": "php-fpm", "args": [ "-F" ] }

Hope that helps

<comment><AUTHOR> Forgot to tell you that nginx shouldn't be daemonized:

      echo "daemon off;" >> /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I built [https://github.com/gwoo/goforever](https://github.com/gwoo/goforever) which has similar goals. I definitely like some of the ideas in runsit like automatic config watching. I still need to handle log rotation with something like [https://github.com/natefinch/lumberjack](https://github.com/natefinch/lumberjack)

Thanks for putting this out there.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm a big fan of Go and have a few Go binaries running on hundreds of clients (and a few servers) right now. They are being managed by Runit though. Since the names are so similar, did you get inspiration from Runit? And if so, what would be the main differences/advantages besides being portable to more platforms (Windows I presume)?

@chubot mentions the thread-per-process overhead. Runit does process-per- process so in that aspect Runsit should be a bit lighter. Then again, Runit is extremely tiny, its statically compiled binaries taking up next to nothing. The wait(-1) trick sounds good, but there must be a reason why for example Runit doesn't use it, since afaik Runit only runs on POSIX systems.

Keep up the good work!

EDIT: a web interface, that's pretty spiffy! (though I've made something similar work for Runit by querying the status of a service and serving up a dashboard, with a Go webserver of course).

</comment><comment><USER7> In case anyone is interested, we open sourced a process manager and web interface a few months ago.

[https://github.com/VividCortex/pm](https://github.com/VividCortex/pm) [https://github.com/VividCortex/pm-web](https://github.com/VividCortex/pm-web)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a site for this or some nature of docs?

I'm still searching for a process manager that I can love for use with Docker (I've played with runit and am currently playing with s6), but the total lack of readme or docs makes this link fairly unhelpful.

<comment><USER9> Huh. I have somehow never heard of s6 but it looks very promising. What did you find when using it for this purpose?

<comment><USER8> My initial thoughts were less than positive, just because building it is a less-than-stellar process. Part of that is because it has a couple of deps that must also be compiled (skalibs and execline), and part is because it follows the slashpackage conventions ([http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html](http://cr.yp.to/slashpackage.html)).

Now that I've got it build, the next hurdle is making init scripts in execline. It's a fairly simple language, and I enjoy the premise behind it, where scripts should be clear and deterministic.

Overall, s6 provides a lot more helper tools for daemon management than runit did, so it looks like it's gonna be great for my use case. I've got an automated build set up to handle making a Docker image with s6 prepared:

[https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/dock0/service/](https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/dock0/service/)

<comment><USER10> Seems you are knowledgeable about these matters, I am not. So could you put in perspective why would runsit be interesting. I have run into several names that claim to handle this problem, you have mentioned s6 and runit, then there is monit, launchd, supervisor... Are there some glaring lacks that needs to be filled. Do they all do the same thing or do they have specialized niches ?

I guess I am asking for a lot, no need to indulge, but if you do, much appreciated.

@akerl_19 Thanks. I have but two upvotes to give.

<comment><USER8> Unfortunately, I can't really say whether or not runsit is an interesting entry in the group of process management tools. While I'm very willing to dive into the code if I run into issues or am looking to customize things, the lack of any documentation or overview has prevented me from trying out runsit yet. Partially, this is for the obvious reason: it's difficult to get started with a tool that doesn't document how to use it. Additionally, the lack of documentation is a warning sign that this project won't be maintained in the long term as a community project. Which isn't to say that projects that begin without a strong focus on documentation or community cannot change in the future, but in my experience the vast majority of these projects end up being "a thing the author wrote for themselves, which becomes abandoned when they no longer use it".

As far as the variety of other tools:

launchd is an interesting concept but hasn't picked up a ton of adoption by things other than OSX.

I've used supervisord for some other projects, but never as the main init system, and the python dependency has thus-far prevented me from doing so: I like my init process to be statically compiled so that the initial system startup has as few deps as possible.

I really enjoyed runit; I'm only trying out s6 now because it has a few more helper tools for controlling process startup and management, and appears to have better support for log handling. Runit was very powerful as an ultra- light-weight init system, and both runit and s6 have very thorough docs, with runit having a large catalog of community-provided initscript examples.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Trump to sign EO suspending work visas through 2020 (H1B, H2B, H4, L1, J1) - <AUTHOR> https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/503914-trump-to-sign-executive-order-suspending-certain-work-visas-through <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585596](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23585596)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605557](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23605557)

The second thread is still active, so we've moved comments hence thither.

<comment><USER3> "hence thither" way to use two of my favorite words correctly!</comment></comment>


Survival Skills - <AUTHOR> http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/2008/08/everyday-survival/laurence-gonzales-text

<comment><USER2> _1\. Do the Next Right Thing_

I was in the next train to the one that blew up at Edgware Road in London on July 7th, a few years back. I remember that for the first time in my life I understood the meaning of "paralised by fear". I literally couldn't move for 2 minutes. All that happened in my head during those two minutes was the never- ending, looping thought that I could be dead in the next few seconds. I can remember this feeling to this day, the fear gripping at the back of my neck.

The moment where I started to move again was when I saw some people trying to pry the doors open (the carriage was filled with smoke). Somehow, a new thought broke into the loop... "I'm a healthy, emotionally stable young man in his mid-twenties; I should be able to help". So I stood up and went to help. And the paralysis was gone.

So I certainly agree with this point. Excellent first point. If you find yourself in a life-threatening situation and equally paralysed, remember this: find something useful to do, stand up and do it.

<comment><USER3> Did you get the self evaluating "life before your eyes" feeling? I have once (its a bit embarrassing, but I nearly choked on a 1 dollar coin, and I wasn't young enough for that to be a realistic possibility) - but I remember despair and then acceptance and then it was like a dream. All in about 30 seconds of not breathing... I would never have believed it had I not experienced it.

The funny thing was, while I was "thinking" all this, my hands were actively pressing my chest as hard as they could which eventually dislodged it, but I have no memory of doing that.

<comment><USER2> No, I didn't actually. My mind was literally just a loop of the terrifying thought "I'm about to die", with nothing else, apart from a very persistent soundtrack (a progressive house tune, one of my favourites at the time, that kept going through my head for the following 45 minutes). I think the music was part of my brain's attempt to keep me calm and focused.

Once I started moving, the soundtrack continued, but the loop was gone.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for sharing your stories guys, great stuff.

But when you're old and telling your respective stories to your grandkids replace dollar coin with prime rib and progressive house tune with Beethoven's 9th.

Cheers

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the tip. I was going to replace it with wrestling a terrorist or something like that... let it get embellished over time.

What an embarrassing way to go...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Save 15 page turns: [http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/08/everyd...](http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/print/2008/08/everyday- survival/laurence-gonzales-text)

I enjoyed reading that. A skydiving instructor said that what kills most people is Panic. He said that finding your rip-chord or detangling yourself is something that panic prevents, thus causing death. The "I am going to die" thought is the most dangerous one because no other thought survives in it, even when those other thoughts are what can save someone. This is why drills and practice routines are so important: to have something to fall back on automatically when the conscious mind closes down: to thus do life-affirming things that would otherise be simple and straightforward if it weren't for fear, with such things possibly also reempowering the conscious mind and bringing a person back into the present.

Something else worth mentioning is paranoia and risk aversion. A little bit is healthy, but too little or too much of it either brings one into too much life-force so that situations cannot be managed in small and understandable components thereby making life dangerous, or too little life-force so that one loses the point of being alive, which to me is pushing boundaries and growing.

</comment><comment><USER6> As it relates to startups, the first bullet point almost says it all:

1\. Do the Next Right Thing

We hackers are too easily attracted by glamorous problems instead of the important ones. We'll constantly prematurely optimize or build interesting features before useful ones. Survival depends more on prioritizing and focus than genius in the typical case.

Great Read.</comment>


Show HN: Meadow Education: A beginner's guide to medical marijuana - <AUTHOR> https://getmeadow.com/education/how-is-marijuana-medicine <comment><USER2> Speaking as an MD, the evidence for medical marijuana is, uh, _pretty thin_. In fact, most people would decry the mismatch of research to marketing if it were a traditionally prescribed drug.

The barriers to meaningful research are coming down, but the research just isn't there yet. I suspect that therapeutic targets will emerge, but no amount of enthusiasm changes the fact that high-quality research hasn't happened yet. On the other hand, there are real problems associated with use, such as an increased risk of psychotic disorders, problems with concentration, etc.

I consider it part of my job to look at the evidence and remain free of bias, because most marketing is put together by those who stand to make a lot of money off of what they are selling. If I apply those same criteria I use for other drugs I prescribe to marijuana, the outlook is not so good.

Recreation marijuana, on the other hand, suffers from no such pretense. People use it to get high, and understand the risk. This, to me, seems like a much more honest system for the use most people want.

<comment><USER3> So research is too thin to assume any therapeutic use, but strong enough to claim real problems such as an increased risk of psychotic disorders and problems with concentration?

<comment><USER2> Yes. Each individual paper covers a very narrow topic. For example, here's a recent paper - _White matter fractional anisotropy over two time points in early onset schizophrenia and adolescent cannabis use disorder: A naturalistic diffusion tensor imaging study_

This paper tells me nothing about headache relief, or nausea related to chemotherapy.

<comment><USER4> It sounds like you are reasonably well informed in this field, whereas I can barely parse the abstract for the linked paper. I was hoping you could give me an educated opinion about negative effects of cannabis use in non-adolescents. It seems like papers are mostly finding negative effects for adolescents only.

Also, the particular paper you mention seems to be studying adolescents with "Cannabis Use Disorder (CUD)". Is this just a roundabout way of saying they are a pot smoker, or is there a difference between cannabis use and "cannabis use disorder"?

For example, consider a non-adolescent who uses cannabis sporadically but does not have a "disorder" (i.e. no addictive tendencies). Do you have an opinion about cannabis use for that individual?

<comment><USER2> To answer your first question, Cannabis Use Disorder specifically refers to a pattern of use that leads to health problems, disability, and failure to meet important responsibilities at work/school/home. So it's not defined by use but rather by consequences of use.

Second, there are a number of large cohort studies looking at this question. Here's a recent one: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26006253](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26006253) _Psychosocial sequelae of cannabis use and implications for policy: findings from the Christchurch Health and Development Study._

It followed a group of 1200+ kids in New Zealand for all kinds of stuff, but in this particular paper they looked at cannabis use.

Their conclusion: In general, the findings of the CHDS suggest that individuals who use cannabis regularly, or who begin using cannabis at earlier ages, are at increased risk of a range of adverse outcomes, including: lower levels of educational attainment; welfare dependence and unemployment; using other, more dangerous illicit drugs; and psychotic symptomatology. It should also be noted, however, that there is a substantial proportion of regular adult users who do not experience harmful consequences as a result of cannabis use.

In conclusion, it seems that some adults can use occasionally, or even regularly, without a problem on one of the outcomes they looked at. Those with a personal or family history of addiction or a psychiatric disorder are probably at higher risk for a problem.

But, it comes back the same problem mentioned before: Every study can only answer the narrow questions they have considered, How does cannabis impact the risk for vascular disease, or dementia? Perhaps it helps, perhaps it hurts.This study does not answer that question.

<comment><USER5> Is it possible that the subjects who went to cannabis already had problems, are self-medicating, and would have achieved the adverse outcomes anyway?

<comment><USER2> This was partially controlled for in their analysis, but it's a cohort study meaning that people weren't randomized into groups. So certainly there could be some of that happening, but the analysis minimizes (but doesn't totally eliminate) how much that influences the outcome.

Behavioral science is hard, and messy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a very professional looking site and just goes to show how far medical marijuana has come ... in the US. As a UK citizen, I'm full of jealousy and saddened by the fact that we're probably further away from legalisation than ever. This petition [1] shows that there is at least some demand for a change in the law, but it seems unlikely to occur anytime soon with the current government in power.

</comment><comment><USER7> So, err, when are we gonna get medical MDMA and medical LCD?

</comment><comment><USER8> Very nice site. Slight typo under the CBN explanation tab -- you have "oxides", which is a noun; I believe you'd want "oxidizes" there.

</comment><comment><USER9> Washington State just did way with medical marijuana. At a marijuana industry convention I recently attended it seemed more and more are starting to turn their back on the current medical claims and just hoping to get in as a capitalist in the recreational market. Given the industry is getting more and more attention on the federal level, might be a good move for other states to just go recreational and skip the medical farce.</comment>


The Dangers of Thinking Like an Economist - mkr-hn https://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-dangers-of-thinking-like-an-economist/

<comment><AUTHOR> > Furthermore, even if the probabilities were known, what matters is not just > the weighted relative costs and benefits, but the potential for absolute > disaster. If there is a 1% chance the world will end unless we do x, we > shouldn't do a cost-benefit analysis. Instead, assuming x is feasible, we > should simply do it.

This is extraordinarily dangerous thinking. The "One Percent Doctrine" [1] is and was a huge driver behind the rationale for all the national security and counter-terrorism efforts in the post September 11th era - former Vice President Cheney is recounted as saying "If there's a 1% chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al-Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response." That very same logic was likely extended to Iraq - if there is a 1% chance Saddam is building WMDs, we must invade (it helps that the Bush Administration believed the chance was far greater than 1%).

Another problem with this 1% kind of thinking is that it's not even clear _if_ many of the kinds of events that are purported to end the world would actually end the world - global warming won't cause human extinction; it will just cause hundreds of millions, if not a billion, deaths (through disease, flooding, displacement); the same applies for nuclear holocast.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_One_Percent_Doctrine>

EDIT: I realized the irony is that you could call this the "Dangers of Thinking Like a Politician."

<comment><USER2> It's even worse than that, because the example being used to condemn cost/benefit analysis actually reinforces it.

If you have a 1% chance of _destroying the world_ , you're pretty much going to want to avoid taking that chance in almost every case according to a cost/benefit analysis, since 1% times the trillion trillion dollars that _the world_ is worth to us will end up being more valuable than any alternative. The exception is when the next best alternative is even worse, i.e. a much higher probability of something only slightly less catastrophic.

On the other hand, suppose the calculated probability is not 1%. Suppose the alleged world-ending calamity is that the Flying Spaghetti Monster is going to be displeased and set fire to all of reality if you don't pay me a billion dollars. The probability of that actually happening is not 1%. It isn't 1% of 1%. It's close to, but not exactly, 0%. Is the argument that you should still pay me a billion dollars? After all, the risk if you don't is that the world will end. I accept payment as cashier's checks or wire transfer.

<comment><USER3> _"If you have a 1% chance of destroying the world, you're pretty much going to want to avoid taking that chance in almost every case according to a cost/benefit analysis"_

No, you aren't. If that 1% chance is balanced by a 99% chance to increase the world's wealth by 2%, the expected gain is .98%, so anyone using pure expected cost/expected benefit analysis would give the go ahead if the cost of this were, say 0.5%.

The problem, I think, is that those statistical calculations do not handle the case where there are outcomes that imply that one cannot repeat the game often enough to filter out statistical variations. In that sense, it is related to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martingale_(betting_system)>: Yes, you can beat roulette, if (and that is a big IF) you don't go broke in the process.

<comment><USER2> >No, you aren't. If that 1% chance is balanced by a 99% chance to increase the world's wealth by 2%, the expected gain is .98%, so anyone using pure expected cost/expected benefit analysis would give the go ahead if the cost of this were, say 0.5%.

If you could actually improve the world by 2% in doing that, maybe you should -- but don't discount what that would mean. You're not talking about a 2% increase in GDP. GDP measures commerce per year, we're talking about _everything, forever_. You have to account not only for the loss of the economy, but the loss of human life, family, humanity itself and all future endeavors of any nature by anyone. And if the alternative is a gain rather than a competing loss, you have to put a value on our desire to avoid losses as being greater than our desire to make gains. If you still think you can create a gain that would balance that loss, let's hear it.

And the fact is that we do as a factual matter make decisions like that. We built nuclear weapons because the risk of blowing up the world was calculated as being a better choice than the risk of fascism taking over. We grow genetically modified food because the ability to feed the population is deemed more important than the risks it entails. You can dispute decisions like these, but then you're just disputing the value we've placed on each alternative, not the process of comparing relative values in order to make the choice.

The idea that some risks are insufferable doesn't break economics, it just changes valuations. You have to consider both the consequence and the probability. Otherwise the world should pay me the billion dollars, because there is some risk that the alternative will be world-ending.

People object to putting a number on things like life and love, but there is no avoiding it. At the end of the day you have to make decisions. You have to weigh love against safety against money and make a choice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >This found its reductio in Bryan Caplan, who suggested that voters are rationally ignorant of politics because the costs outweigh the benefits, and so economists (who are obviously right about everything) should dictate public policy. You know, like in Chile.

At his most extreme, Caplan proposed a weighted voting system, where higher education led to more votes. That's a far cry from "dictating public policy," and even further from the Chilean system, where some Chicago-school economists had moderate influence on a dictator's economic policies and essentially zero influence on other aspects of governance (i.e., whether people should be disappeared).

<comment><USER5> And to all the people who like to bash Chile and the Chicago School, there are other good things in Chile besides the startup program, just take a second to look at the GDP per capita growth :

[http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&#...
It started lower and below average, it's now at the #1 spot. [because it is well know Argentina is lying on its number since ~2008]
On other development rankings, Chile also is in the top scores - like fighting against corruption.
Maybe, just maybe, some good things were done, or it wouldn't work as well. Just saying that as someone who seriously consider Chile (along with India).

<comment><USER6> Isn't the parent referring to Pinochet? He was ousted in 1990. I'm not sure how much you can attribute the modern Chilean economy to his work. He was also a brutal dictator, so you know, there's that...

<comment><USER5> Since the current non-strop trend started in 1983 (click the graph), yes I would attribute some of the current performance to him and the Chicago School, with however great respect too for the presidents elected ever since 1990, who have keep the economy in working order, and by behaving properly, kept the democracy working as well : it's a country of laws (Allende gross disregards for that were reproached to him by the supremes) Anyway it's all past history. Let's wonder more about the bright future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm no big fan of die-hard economic thinking. (I don't think many have been since the Great Irish Famine.) But the arguments in this article are weak and do disservice to actual criticism.

> Is there some level of carbon tax at which we would forego every lake on > earth rather than apply it?

Of course. If the neo-nazi party had an infallible way to preserve all lakes on Earth for a mere 99% of our income, I think we'll all pass up the opportunity. (Don't tell me it's not a carbon tax. You do breathe out CO₂.)

>If there is a 1% chance the world will end unless we do x, we shouldn't do a cost-benefit analysis. Instead, assuming x is feasible, we should simply do it.

Unless paying x leaves us unable to deal with a 2% threat. Really, by this logic we should just follow the fantasies of whoever comes up with the most catastrophic scenario - no matter the likelihood. Cthulhu rising from the deep, anyone?

<comment><USER8> > by this logic we should just follow the fantasies of whoever comes up with > the most catastrophic scenario - no matter the likelihood.

This is called "Pascal's Mugging." [http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilitie...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/kd/pascals_mugging_tiny_probabilities_of_vast/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, this is ridiculous. Every person who goes through a serious education in economics knows of the fallacies that you can arrive at by only "thinking" with complete, dry rationality. In fact we have two terms for it:

Positive Economics: "What is"

Normative Economics: "What ought to be"

The majority of focus stays inside of positive economics because the "What is" analysis leads to a much higher amount objective results. It keeps the fucking "opinion" out of it (or at least attempts to at a much greater degree).

Case and points:

1\. All economists are aware of going down the dead-dry rational rabbit hole; In fact, he points this out in the last paragraph by quoting one of the greatest ones.

2\. Most fields lack the level of objectivity and mathematical proofing that economics contains; Bringing that power over to other fields is beneficial.

3\. Making a blanket statement that all economists approach things in a blanket statement manner, in and of itself makes this article ridiculous.

Someone start a blog called "Learning Economics." The only people who oppose it so heavily are often the ones who don't understand it enough.

</comment><comment><USER10> > If there is a 1% chance the world will end unless we do x, we shouldn't do a > cost-benefit analysis. Instead, assuming x is feasible, we should simply do > it.

What is the chance the world will end even if we do x? What does feasible mean? Is killing 10% of the population feasible? Is this potential end of the world happening in a year, or in a thousand years?

I'd go on, but this is starting to look a bit like a cost-benefit analysis.

</comment><comment><USER5> It stars well, then gets weird.

 _"Is there some level of carbon tax at which we would forego every lake on earth rather than apply it?"_

Obviously, there isn't (+infinity), because of diminishing marginal returns. Everything is a tradeoff.

That's basic economic theory, so yes it applies to the environment. And if you want to figure out how much people care about lakes and nature, you can use existing data about cities adding or removing parks - you'll see people like nature, but not so much as to pay +infinity tax.

Because, you know, diminishing marginal returns - again.

</comment><comment><USER11> Inefficiency can in itself cause injustice. For example, the cost and inefficiency of the court system discourages people from using it. This can lead to things like settling even when it's unfair. Or for a more spectacular example of inefficiency you could look at the court system in India. [1]

For a positive example, look at small claims court in the U.S. A case decided in a few minutes might result in more errors, but an efficient court system, even if somewhat less accurate, could result in better outcomes on average.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_India#Judicial_bac...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judiciary_of_India#Judicial_backlog)

</comment><comment><USER12> So, those who want to give politicians the power to redistribute our money don't like the results of economic analysis, and now they are telling people to avoid thinking like economists because economics is wrong. Fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER13> _What is the opportunity cost of me writing this blog post? ... I could also be sleeping, cooking, at the pub, or any number of things, but weighing up the various trade offs and benefits of these actions 'like an economist' is simply not possible._

And yet somehow the author's brain does make these decisions, mostly subconsciously.

It seems like a big part of the author's criticism of "economic thinking" is that it oversimplifies reality. The conscious human brain simply does not have the capacity to consider all of the possible inputs and outcomes of problems in a system as complex as the world economy.

Human consciousness seems to be a very low-bandwidth single-threaded process while the amount of information processing occurring in the brain which we are not consciously aware of is immense. This may explain why when it comes to complex systems naive common sense often seems to work better than the careful analytic thinking that has been so successful in simpler fields such as physics and engineering.

</comment><comment><USER14> > This found its reductio in Bryan Caplan, who suggested that voters are > rationally ignorant of politics because the costs outweigh the benefits, and > so economists (who are obviously right about everything) should dictate > public policy. You know, like in Chile.

Allende was overthrown for his abuses of power after calls from the parliament and the supreme court. Economic policy was a complete afterthought.

> Chicago School economists managed to persuade first legal theorists, and > then those involved in the legal system itself, of the efficacy of their way > of thinking, eventually forming the 'law and economics' ... Nor should it > surprise you that the movement had a large degree of – ahem – 'support' from > various moneyed interests.

Sasha Volokh: Is Law and Economics a Right-Wing Plot? <http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/28943137> (the audio gets better)

<comment><USER15> Allende was unacceptable to the US before he even became president, so the claim that he was deposed due to your so called "abuses of power" is absurd on its face - he can't possibly have a abused power before taking power. Declassified documents prove indisputably that the US plotted his removal before he even took office: "Recent documents declassified under the Clinton administration's Chile Declassification Project show that the United States government and the CIA sought the overthrow of Allende in 1970 immediately before he took office ("Project FUBELT"). Many documents regarding the U.S. intervention in Chile remain classified." from: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Allende>

<comment><USER14> > he can't possibly have a abused power before taking power

He came into office in '70, and the coup was in '73. From the very link you posted: "29th President of Chile In office 4 November 1970 – 11 September 1973." What CIA planned doesn't take precedence over what actually happened.

<comment><USER16> Yes. By the time they enacted the plan they had an excuse, but they had planned to depose him before they had evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Perhaps magical thinking serves a psychological purpose when managing stress during the early stages of entrepreneurship and long odds of success. However, this ode to eschewing analytical thought, and going with "what we know" or whatever alternative it is proposing is an embarrassment.

It is an epistemologic absurdity, since, if we simply "know" anything, we have to question provenance of that knowledge. Our unscientific random biases and assumptions may be as likely to be right as they are wrong, but analytical thinking improves upon them, especially at the multiple perspectives and scales for appreciating outcomes as allowed by economic analysis. Critical thinking does require more effort than going with your gut, but that extra effort is justified when the improvements are great.

Anyway, the post kind of disproves its own point, since the straw men it uses are low-effort applications of heuristics rather than economic analysis. The author seems to believe that economics is a discipline defining a specific set of aphorisms that can be universally applied to any situation.

Perhaps there's a joke in there somewhere about learning a more rigorous version of economics before you can "unlearn" it or even advocate the virtues of "unlearning" it. Presently, it resembles the work of people who claim that science can't explain how bees fly or other similar nonsense as justification for reveling in ignorance.

Incidentally, though it isn't really central to the subject of the article, the quote about sociology is out of date, since modern sociology involves a fair deal of modelling and mathematics.

</comment><comment><USER18> The funniest part was where he said politicians were not self-interested.

<comment><USER19> There certainly are those who are self-interested, but there are many more who really do care about the public good. You hear about the ones doing backdoor deals and shady stuff like that on the news because it makes a more interesting story than someone who goes to work each day trying to make their city a little nicer, or pay teachers a bit more, or cut down on crime, etc.

<comment><USER18> You can't do much public good if you don't get re-elected. Since public opinion suggests people want more services and less taxes, something is going to have to give.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > If there is a 1% chance the world will end unless we do x, we shouldn't do a > cost-benefit analysis. Instead, assuming x is feasible, we should simply do > it.

To me it's pretty simple this has a value and if doing the alternative is valued worse then no you don't do it.

Everything has a value - smog, a lost lake, all lakes lost, death, extinction of animals, happiness. They can be hard to find but we can make approximations around probability curves.

The real issue is when you start valuing things like the environment and life people turn off because they can't handle the fact a Starbucks coffee has a higher value than millions of the worlds humans. And while they blank this stuff out it makes change hard.

</comment><comment><USER21> The dig at Chicago School Law & Economics was off-base. L&E wasn't some attempt to subvert the justice system by "moneyed interests." It was an attempt to put parts of the legal framework on a rational economic footing. At it's best, it gave justifications for things in the law we always believed but didn't have a formal way to talk about.

He does make some good points re: environmental laws. We overestimate how well we understand probabilities, and worse, humans generally tend to diminish the weight of uncertain benefits in the face of certain costs, by a factor greater than what the underlying probabilities warrant. Global warming is a perfect example. Even if you believe that there is not consensus on whether there is anthropogenic global warming, does that mean the rational thing to do is spend $0 combatting the possibility? Of course not, not unless you think the probability is 0%.

On the other hand, putting environmental law on a firm economic basis has also been a boon. Speaking in terms of negative externalities and cost shifting instead of "hippie treehugger values" has salvaged the movement even during a time of a hard political shift to the right in the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's an interesting read mostly because he links to a bunch of interesting sources but the ones I've read so far don't actually support his claims. "Knights, Knaves or Pawns?" barely touches on public choice theory at all, and public choice theory in turn isn't incompatible with welfare agency employees "being generally public spirited and less motivated by money than those in the private sector".

</comment><comment><USER23> No economist, not even a mathematical finance major thinks about a cost- benefit analysis when considering something more complicated and more chaotic (e.g. everything else in life) than purchasing options or other such cases.

This really does nothing to talk about Economists, as [brianchu] points out, it should be more along the lines of "Dangers of Thinking Like a Politician."

</comment><comment><USER24> There is no problem in thinking like an economist. There is danger in thinking, we could use this knowledge to predict everything.

Thinking like an economist, helps people to make better decisions - in a lot of cases.

</comment><comment><USER25> Actual interesting criticism of economics by Charlie Munger:

<http://www.tilsonfunds.com/MungerUCSBspeech.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER26> This blog is great, and the Twitter account is pretty awesome too.

I don't always 100% agree with it, but I do find almost every post _interesting_, either something that's relevant to my own thoughts, something that makes me think a different way, or whatever.

This post is one of the ones I wish I had read a few years ago. I basically now distrust any opinion that makes a claim to 'economics' without at least mentioning what particular brand of economic religion they adhere to. (I, of course, have my own as well...)</comment>


Ask HN: For employees, is picking a good early startup more luck than skill? - <AUTHOR> I've read blogs and accounts of people joining early stage startups as employees and then seeing the startup go big, either by getting lots of growth and funding, or they become acquired by a billion dollar company.
I'm sure it's survivorship bias, since who knows how many startup failures are there (and I think having some of that bias is healthy for aspiring business founders). But when that person joined after being at only one or two companies in their entire career, and then they just happened to join the right company even when it was early stage (when things are most speculative), it feels too good to be true. Did these people end up just being smart enough to predict the winners more easily, and then choosing a job offer from them? Or is it mostly luck at the early stage?
I've been at five different early stage companies. Today, two of those still exist and not making much more revenue. One is because they're a web agency and not really set to be a huge company. And the other is a startup that seems to be in the same place it was, either spinning their wheel or rather its growth is not very rapid, and still is not really making headlines, four years after leaving the company.
I feel like I'm doing the startup thing wrong, like assuming it's mostly luck. When I browse Angel.co picking companies that might be interesting to me, I feel like it's just rolling the dice. Is this a correct assumption? Or is there more skill than I take credit for, and I simply lack enough business acumen to make a well educated decision to pick future winners from losers? <comment><USER2> You are right that there is certainly a lot of luck involved, but there are many things you can do to improve your odds. Interestingly, the kind of factors that matter are often counter-intuitive to engineers, so engineers are probably disadvantaged when trying to pick a good early stage startup.

Some things to pay attention to: 1\. funding and ability to attract substantial funding from top-tier firms... it's not a guarantee, but it improves your odds 2\. CEO who values engineering quality and culture: again, it is possible to be successful without it, but it's far less likely 3\. business-minded, focused founders 4\. good market for venture-backed companies with potential for multiple paths to success

</comment><comment><USER3> In my experience, simply finding early stage startups is hard. Oftentimes they don't even have a web page during the earliest stages, and if they do, you likely wouldn't be able to find it, and then it might not have any contact information, and if it does have contact information, you have no idea what they're doing, to know if it's worth contacting them or not.

I think it might be easier to find early stage startups if you try to aggressively network in that space, but not being much of a networker I couldn't say. I guess I should add that I'm in Seattle which seems to have a much smaller startup scene than the Bay Area.

I got my most recent job through AngelList but in that case I didn't use it to research companies, I just spammed every startup listed in Seattle that had an opening I was remotely qualified for, and then just talked to whoever responded. Before that I had basically scraped CrunchBase for startups in the Seattle area that had received funding at some point or another. I applied at a bunch of companies, but I don't think I got a single interview out of it.

This is a long winded way of saying that, yet, in my experience getting into a good startup is pretty much just luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I found the last early stage startup I worked at through Craigslist. This was usually my stomping grounds to find some occasional part time or contract job and we had a very informal process from first phone call to job offer.

This guy seemed to have his head on straight, and having both degrees in law and computer science, felt like a slam dunk combo to run a SaaS business without getting into hot water. However, sales tanked in my second year of worked there, and was eventually laid off. Three years later, they're still around doing buisiness, but I don't know if they're coming or going. You can sometimes never tell from the outside, when they're not making news headlines and feels like they could be spinning their wheels.

I live in Chicago, where a lot of startups are B2B more than B2C and don't really spam hunt most places anymore, because it's hard to find a lot of information about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You're probably not going to be as good at it as a VC or Angel investor and there's still a relatively low chance of picking a winner for them so I'd say yes, luck is probably going to be a significant factor.

You should be able to improve your odds in theory by taking into account some of the same factors that successful investors look at but since they still rely on a portfolio to make a decent return and you can't realistically 'invest' in as many companies as an employee as they aim to you're still going to be quite luck dependent.

</comment><comment><USER5> There are so many moving parameters here. You can only improve the odds.

Like joining startups from founder / company which had a good previous exit

Due deligence is ofcourse a good method to choose, but that will also be based on your own understanding, perception and how convincing the business is to you. After accounting all, its agains a probablistic choice. By going with 2nd time startups / businesses, you are increasing your chanceBy going with mid- age founder you are increasing your chance further.

You can build your own logic this way, of pure increasing the chance type of parameters. But again, if only 1 percent startups succeed, the other question is what is success that you want - continual of good salary, getting hired at nother company, stock option or see the success of company listed and encashing it. There will be more secondary and tertiary questions to those questions.

The word "success" will have different meaning here.

By adding tertiary logic to the above explaination you will start finding answers and selection method to your target. But that too, may increase the chances for 1 percent to 2 percent.

You may not exactly come to know, what you should know. But you will know, what you must know - at the minimal level.

</comment><comment><USER6> What are you trying to achieve by being an employee at startups?

Is there an alternative strategy for achieving this goal?

e.g. if the goal is "save a bunch of money and retire to do $whatever_youd_prefer_to_do"...

> At a big company, we have a career's worth of income in six years with high > probability once you get your foot in the door. This isn't quite as good as > the claim that you'll be able to do that in three or four years at a > startup, but the risk at a big company is very low once you land the job. In > startup land, we have a lottery ticket that appears to have something like a > 0.5% chance of paying off for very early employees. Startups might have had > a substantially better expected value when Paul wrote about this in 2004, > but big company compensation has increased much faster than compensation at > the median startup. We're currently in the best job market the world has > ever seen for programmers. That's likely to change at some point. The > relative returns on going the startup route will probably look a lot better > once things change, but for now, saving up some cash while big companies > hand it out like candy doesn't seem like a bad idea. [1]

[1] -- [https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/](https://danluu.com/startup- tradeoffs/)

Strategically, it's not great to end up in a position of having to pick winners, particularly when there's lots of idiosyncratic risk --- it'd be better to be able to invest in a diversified portfolio of reasonable looking bets. you can't do this as an employee of startups --- startups typically want you to work at least 5 days per week, and pay you for at most 5, so its a bit hard to diversify. you can diversify your capital as an investor, if not your time. also, investing in things that arent your day job reduces the correlation between your main source of revenue and your assets (less risk of both getting wiped out due to a single event like your employer going bust).

</comment><comment><USER7> VCs are an entire industry dedicated to betting on early stage startups and get it wrong a majority of the time. Seasoned veterans in specific industries are often blindsided by startups they write off initially. So yes, its luck.

I think more important is to choose a company that has a team you get a long with, is working on things you find interesting and if possible is aiming to achieve something you are interested seeing done too. If a sudden layoff would be damaging for you, look at their runway or stage to mitigate risk.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the unfortunate reality is as a new grad entering the startup scene it can take a few failures before knowing what to look for. I think I've gotten moderately lucky on try 3, but no exits yet.

My only advice is ask as many people as possible what they think of the startup, listen to them and don't be blinded by big promises.

Also, as previous he threads have pointed out, financially you will be much better if you just go work for a FAANG. If you really want you can use your accredited investor status to buy into other startups.</comment>


A media company in Mumbai is giving women a day off during their periods - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1026185/culture-machine-a-media-company-in-mumbai-is-giving-women-a-day-off-on-day-1-of-their-periods/ <comment><USER2> Stuff like this, while done with good intentions, can threaten to entrench discrimination by having different sets of rules and expectations for people based on their gender. A better solution would be to give 12 extra holiday days per year to everyone, but make it known that it's acceptable to take them under those circumstances.

<comment><USER3> Men don't get a day of pain and cramps each month so I don't see why we should get the day off. Periods aren't fun, and I don't think men deserve a day at the golf course in exchange.

<comment><USER2> It's a tricky one, but on the whole I'm against 'positive' discrimination. It's still discrimination, it can still create contempt and undermine hard work (they're only in that job because they're [a], a smarter [b] probably didn't get the job, etc.)

It applies to maternity/paternity leave too. Until maternity and paternity leave are required to be equal by law, there will be a bias against hiring women, due to the simple mathematics. If the 'risk' is equal for a man or a woman, the bias is eliminated.

<comment><USER4> Even if men and women are given the same amount of leave, there are still two problems. First, social norms lead to men and women not using it equally. Second, single individuals don't have equal access given that society has a significant gender disparity in single parents, that men can't get pregnant, and that even if the leave is equal for adoption, there is still discrimination in adoption.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nobody is going to take advantage of this because "Oh btw, I'm on the rag so I won't be in today" isn't exactly the message you want to broadcast to your coworkers.

Then there will be the people who take advantage of this on Mondays and Fridays leading into long weekends.

Then everyone will hate the policy.

Then they'll extend the extra 12-days to everyone because you can't take back something like this when you market it this way.

Then nothing will get done on Mondays and Fridays leading into long weekends.

<comment><USER6> Are long weekends really such a bad thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Question for the women ou there: Do you perceive this as a magnificent idea or as implying women have a periodic weakness that impacts their performance every month?

Do you think this sort of policy feeds into wage gap stuff, or fights against it?

As a reasonably feminist guy, I can't decide how to feel about this. It seems like it's implying women can't work one day of every month, and also seems like a great idea because dealing with office folk while in pain is not fun.

Do you think a policy like this works better (only?) in a predominantly female company?

<comment><USER8> hey, personally I do feel really bad in the first day and when I need to go to work I always think "I wish I could stay at home and work from there", so it really impacts my performance and from one side it is indeed a great idea, but it is sexism towards men - they also feel bad from time to time, so why not unify this practice for all and just give more paid day-offs / sick leaves, as was already mentioned in the comment above. Also, I am not very comfortable letting everyone in the company know when the period starts and gossip about that (yes, this is also a topic for gossip).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Half the women in my office have their schedules synced up. A policy like this could create a monthly ghost town

<comment><USER10> I think that's mostly a myth.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In an ideal world where employer and employee trust each other it would be a great option for women who need it (not all women do) and a right thing to do. In the real world, where the level of trust is low, and sexism (both male and female) has become an extremely toxic topic, I don't see how this can work. Maybe only in small family-type companies.

</comment><comment><USER12> Geez. Completely wrong direction (and probably just marketing) with underlying sexism.

Female here. Just want to state that it is not nearly as bad for most women most of the time. And effects vary quite a bit, quite a few even get an energy push around day one. (Disclaimer: Your or your friends' mileage may vary.)

</comment><comment><USER13> I fully support letting people go home when they are objectively counterproductive.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why not give women 12 extra days of work from home (when applicable) for a year and see how it goes rather than setting up different rules for different genders? Or am I missing something here?

<comment><USER15> Your suggestion is different rules for different genders?

<comment><USER16> There is no shame in that, given that it is well defined. For instance. In almost all sports you have a male and a female devision. Just based on pure strength or something.

Call it what you want. There ARE differences in various humans. Some are male, some are female, some have kids, some don't, some have two legs, some don't, etc.

Want to give them all equal chances? Listen to what they can and experience and get them to listen to each other for mutual respect.

<comment><USER17> So based on these differences, women should thus work more hours then men since they have less strength in manual work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> interesting. If this ever became law, it would incentivize hiring men over women because you'll get 5% less value out of hiring a woman employee.

the math: lets assume that there are 260 working days in a year. women get 12 extra holidays per year for their periods, which means they only work 248 out of the 260 days. 248/260 = 95.4%.

very interesting indeed.

<comment><USER19> Maternity leave in theory has the same disadvantage, as generally women take this more than paternity leave (though I think that's changing) - it can be combatted by public denigration of companies that consider men to be preferable hires on the basis of lower risk of disruption and lower costs.

Thus I don't think it'd be a problem.

<comment><USER4> >it can be combatted by public denigration of companies that consider men to be preferable hires on the basis of lower risk of disruption and lower costs.

Was this said in sarcasm? I feel like it was, but I'm not a good judge of when sarcasm is used.

<comment><USER19> Which bit sounds sarcastic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> My wife has two very bad and painful days (the first two) every period. I am not sure how she would handle if she had a job.

<comment><USER21> Sick leave? As far as I know that's exactly what it's for. It also has the benefit of not discriminating whether it's period cramps, migraines, a broken leg, food poisoning, or depression.

EDIT: I'm German. Sick leave is completely separate from vacation days here and not limited (although you get less money after six weeks because your health insurance takes over from your employer). Generally I find that one of the only acceptable solution to the problem at hand. Giving half your employees extra days off is a bad idea, conflating vacation and sick leave is a bad idea, and forcing employees to come to work when they're unable to is a bad idea.

<comment><USER22> Speaking for myself (as a standard US employee with a "progressive" HR, I mean Human Asset Management dept), I get 0 sick days. I get three weeks (15 days) which is supposed to be for both vacation and sickness. Someone who can't work two days a month would either be fired or be taking leave without pay, and never able to take paid vacation.

<comment><USER23> I feel very sorry for you and others in your position to hear that.

the UK has some very forgiving policies on sick leave ([https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick-leave](https://www.gov.uk/taking-sick- leave)). in fact you don't even have to provide a doctors note if you take just a couple of days off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> well intentioned but this could lead to "tests" for women that have issues in that area when the boss thinks she's cheating the system.

but giving them 2 extra days to take at their leisure isn't a bad idea imho.

but then that would lead to less pay in some instances.

</comment><comment><USER25> That's sexism though.

<comment><USER26> Now I'm wondering if you consider it sexist against men, who are denied this benefit. Or against women, who are (once again) stereotyped as weak and unreliable?

I guess the answer is "both". But I can't shake the feeling that this is actually much worse for women than it is for men.

In principle, I don't even have a problem with some groups getting a few more days off, or other special arrangements. Some countries have rules for minority religions, for example, allowing them to celebrate their respective holidays. But I can't really imagine any women thinking that this would be a good idea.

<comment><USER27> It's sexist as it gives people an advantage based on their sex. This is unfair for:

* women who are in pain more than one day a month because of their periods

* men who have prostate troubles or other illnesses exclusive to men

And it gives an unfair advantage to:

* women who aren't in pain during their periods

* women who have their period less than once a months (for example because of the Pill)

The criterion to get the day off shouldn't be "are you women?" but "are you in pain?". They probably chose the former because they think it correlates that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Let women decide on women issues #HappyToBleed [http://menstrupedia.com/](http://menstrupedia.com/)

</comment><comment><USER29> My wife would love this if it were implemented here.</comment>


The Long Fail: Web 2.0's Faith Meets the Facts - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/18/tom_slee_long_tail/

<comment><USER2> Harvard Business Review had a less emotionally loaded article with lots of factual research and the same conclusion - long tail is a myth.

</comment><comment><USER3> "biting the hand"</comment>


Scientists can see the bias in your brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-03/sfn-scs031020.php <comment><USER2> it would be intersting to kludge this all the way out to a wearable feedback device. Would it be a better thing or would it cause the choice maker in our brains to atrophy in some way?</comment>


Novelist Pat Conroy was 'dying' three years ago. Here's how he got healthy - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/how-writer-pat-conroy-lost-weight-and-took-back-his-health-just-in-time/2015/08/17/2dfe493a-2bcf-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html <comment><USER2> I really liked "The Water is Wide", and his other books. Great author and glad he overcame his health issues.</comment>


Covid-19 screening tool seeking community contributions - <AUTHOR> Please contribute to a simple mobile friendly COVID-19 screening tool!
github repo with contribution instructions: https://github.com/tconley/screencovid.com
live app in development: https://tconley.github.io/screencovid.com/
This project is based off a phone call I had with Sajung Yun, PhD from Johns Hopkins. He is very much interested in saving lives, and has analyzed the data available to come up with a simple formula for a covid screener. He created a screening tool, but it wasn't a mobile friendly UX. You can see what he's put together at https://www.screencovid.org/. The goal is to get this new tool production ready by Mon 3/23 at which time it'll be available at screencovid.com
You can view Dr Yun's findings and rationale behind the screening at https://github.com/tconley/screencovid.com/raw/master/Presen... <comment><USER2> You are making presumption that every user is familiar with swiping card UI from Tinder. Also, after some poking around and finding how it actually works, there's no way to reset or change your choice - only hard reload.

I would add simple instructions how to use this tool, e.g. "Swipe left for No, left for YES answer". Also do calculation for user, do not show just numbers. Simple if statement at the end of questionnaire should state "Based on {the algorithm} you should consult a doctor immediately". You must emphasize that there is a margin of error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks butz, have some community folks working on these enhancements now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No offense, but the site at screencovid.org seems totally mobile friendly to me, and has a clear ui - check off the symptoms you've got is a known pattern that everybody is familiar with

The GitHub site is a confusing UI (swiping cards away does what?) and it spills off the side of my screen on mobile - I'm not sure why development is needed here when the original site is totally functional

<comment><USER4> Why? seeking fortune or fame...

<comment><AUTHOR> lol. researcher asked for help and I had enough time sheltering in place playing video games, so helped them out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Preface IANAD. I suggest that sniffles (rhinorrhea) as well as duration of flu like symptoms (elevated temp, cough) as differentials for your diagnosis tool. Covid-19 is marked by less rhinorrhea and longer duration illness than flu i.e. time before it is severe enough to require hospitalization. You can see the rhinorrhea in the aggregate data in Table 1 [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2002032) You can see the rather long illness period in Figure 2D [https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316](https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2001316) Flu is typically 4days (3-7 according to CDC [https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/acip/clinical.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/acip/clinical.htm)) whereas this illness just last and lasts (both anecdotally from the NEJM paper) Apologies if I haven't captured better refs...

One other rather interesting comparison is: [https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DqfSnlaW6N3GBc5YKyBOCGPfdqO...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DqfSnlaW6N3GBc5YKyBOCGPfdqOsqk1G/view) page 26. This may help also develop other differentials that your tool can use. Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi, check out [https://www.clearstep.health/covid19](https://www.clearstep.health/covid19) for an existing screener that we are deploying with health systems next week!

<comment><USER7> "Sorry to hear you're concerned about coronavirus (COVID-19)."

Sorry?? Why are you sorry to hear that I'm interested in using your tool?

<comment><USER8> They mean "Sorry that your circumstances and symptoms are such that you're worried that you may have COVID-19"

<comment><USER6> Yes, this is what we meant. It does sound a bit weird though, we'll consider changing the wording. Thanks!

<comment><USER8> I couldn't find a pithy version that was much better. You may want to drop that part altogether--it comes off as a bit of a platitude since you wouldn't be on the site otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi,

I wanted to make a population health tool that would anonymously collect heart rate data from the Apple Watch together with an approximate location. Increase in resting heart rate during sleep is a good sign of infection.

[https://github.com/unrelatedlabs/infection- alert](https://github.com/unrelatedlabs/infection-alert)

Could not get it publish, because Apple insists on IRB approval.

Any researched want's to get this through IRB? App is done and open source, backend is also built, the data is supposed to be public.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there any more documentation on the scoring system?

As I understand it, the weights are just the percentage of COVID+ patients that had each symptom. Fever gets 90.5 points because between 83 and 98% of pts had a fever and (83+98)/2 = 90.5.

The thresholds are back-calculated from recommendations: A 60 year old with a fever and dry cough should see a doctor. Using the point system above, that's 212.9 points, so...that's where the line is drawn.

This feels _very_ adhoc to me, even though the (fractional!) point system makes it seem rigorous.

<comment><USER10> Furthermore, each of the (binary!) checkboxes seem to linearly add weight to the total value, which seems overly simplified.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Would be great for countries who have givven up on testing the non verry ill ( like netherlands ), to get some idea of how it spreads, (especial if coupled with IP lookup to geo location)

</comment><comment><USER12> In the symptoms list on the Screening page I don't see "Loss of taste or smell".

Isn't that something that a significant portion of patients have reported?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have asked the medical folks to look into this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The ".com" tld, along with no licensing information on github does't make me feel very good about the request for contribution.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx for feedback, added MIT license! We have both the .com and .org domains, once we're ready for production they'll show the same material!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I can submit some UX enhancement proposals. Is there a way to do that which makes sense? Github issue with a link?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, pull requests or issues on github are appreciated!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> We said that about 2008 crisis as well....ahahaha

<comment><USER16> Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? We ban accounts that do that and you've unfortunately been doing a lot of it.

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