A Chicago woman fell victim to Candida auris, a drug-resistant fungus - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/17/health/candida-auris-fungus-chicago.html <comment><USER2> Johanna Rhodes, an infectious disease specialist at Imperial College London, told the New York Times: "We are driving [the spread of antifungal-resistant organisms] with the use of fungicides on crops." The Times also cited a theory from Tom Chiller, head of the CDC's fungal branch, that C. auris has become increasingly prevalent as the widespread use of azole fungicides has killed off other fungi on crops.

So ... let's suppose I care about slowing the development of drug-resistant fungi. As an individual, what can I do?

I basically buy into the claim that widespread overuse of antibiotic drugs in humans has caused an increase of multi-drug-resistant bacteria and I'm generally on board with limiting my own use of antibiotics (e.g. not asking a physician for an antibiotic prescription for a minor illness that is most likely viral). I'm not so sure I understand the literature on antibiotic use in livestock and I happily eat meat without thinking about what drugs the animals were given.

What should I do with respect to azole fungicides and my grocery-shopping decisions? I don't currently see strong evidence that buying food marked "organic" is better for health or the environment, but should this new-to-the- public-consciousness information about azole fungicide use in crops change my mind? Should I be trying to buy crops which were not made with the use of azole fungicides? What kind IS that -- are those fungicides on the permitted/proscribed list for things that carry the marketing label "organic" in the grocery store, and do certain farming practices end up using a lot more of this apparently irresponsible pesticide versus certain other practices?

I took a cursory look at this for about half an hour and could not figure it out, even after trying to understand primary-source literature from the past few years about C. auris and USDA rules. I also can't even tell if individual consumer-level actions make a difference, or if it's not worth trying.

Admittedly science reporting is really tough but it's a little surprising that nothing in the literature I could readily find clearly suggests what researchers think consumers should do differently (if anything).

<comment><USER3> > and I'm generally on board with limiting my own use of antibiotics (e.g. not > asking a physician for an antibiotic prescription for a minor illness that > is most likely viral).

I, on the other hand, have an illegal supply of powerful antibiotics and antifungals sitting in my medicine cabinet. They're technically for fish, but do the math: there are only a handful of factories making these pills in the world, and the pills are indistinguishable. I don't feel guilty about it in the slightest.

There has been a fundamental change in the role of doctors and healthcare professionals in the past 30 years, and I don't like it. You can go to a doctor, and you can both agree that you have a certain infection, and the doctor will refuse to prescribe a drug which all parties know will cure the infection. I think that's a new development in medical practice.

So that's why I have fish medicine. Because when I'm sick for 3 weeks and still getting worse, fuck the greater good, I'm getting mine. And that's why you should take fish medicine, too: because as long as there are people like me, you're fighting a lost cause.

<comment><USER4> _You can go to a doctor, and you can both agree that you have a certain infection, and the doctor will refuse to prescribe a drug which all parties know will cure the infection_

That's really not a thing that's happening. You might find a doctor reticent to throw antibiotics at minor infections, but that's because of their side effects rather than anything to do with antibiotic resistance.

In any case, even if there are a small number of people misusing antibiotics, it's likely that the effect of their use in farming is far more harmful in the whole.

<comment><USER5> indeed, it's mostly that they know which antibiotics and other drugs work on which infections, and when they will not work at all. So many people demand drugs for colds and flu, and it is only the incompetent doctor that will give you antibiotics for viruses. Patients generally aren't good at diagnosis or choosing correct treatment, even with their apparent certainties from google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "First identified in the ear of a woman in Japan in 2009 ("auris" is Latin for "ear"), the germ has spread around the globe, mostly appearing in hospitals and nursing homes, where it afflicts people with weakened immune systems."

Looks like it managed to spread without much hindrance due to its immunity. Wonder just how common it'll get since it's so hard to get rid of.

</comment><comment><USER7> Is this becoming a serious problem? Or is this just getting more press attention suddenly? We've had outbreaks and near-hysteria of various sorts (HIV, SARS, swine flu etc). But those seem orders of magnitude easier to manage than this fungal infection. You don't need to tear down hospital rooms after an HIV patient spent time in it.

<comment><USER8> The cases are accelerating, and the information is actively being suppressed from the public (for what they see as good reasons, I guess). Something tells me that candida auris will change the way hospitals are built and maintained.

<comment><USER9> >The cases are accelerating, and the information is actively being suppressed from the public (for what they see as good reasons, I guess).

Do you have any sources for these claims or is this tinfoil-hattery? What would be these "good reasons" for suppressing information? And if the information is unavailable, how do you know that "the cases are accelerating"?

<comment><USER10> The linked articles explicitly say that hospitals are not publicizing the infections because they want to avoid panic. Previously rare fungal infection showing up in five hospitals is a pretty significant uptick.

The fact that it's extraordinarily hard to eradicate is notable as well. One of the linked articles mentioned having to tear out ceiling tiles and flooring to get at it.

<comment><USER11> There is a difference between being reluctant to disclose information and suppressing it; the article says the former, the poster recast it as the latter.

<comment><USER12> The CDC and health department are specifically prevented from disclosing what institutions have had outbreaks. That seems like "suppression"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was scrolling on Weibo the other day and came across a news story about a killer fungus sweeping across the USA. Several deaths with 60% percent chance of death, they said. Well that was certainly news to me so I googled it. Nothing. Not a single shred of information. I wrote it off as shoddy Chinese journalism.

<comment><USER14> I don't think anyone was really reporting on it notably until a big NYT[0] article a few weeks ago.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant- can...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/health/drug-resistant-candida- auris.html?module=inline)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Need to put Streptomyces noursei and Candida Auris in a petri dish together and let them battle it out.

Hopefully the bacteria wins and we can create a new antifungal from the results.

</comment><comment><USER16> Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590180](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19590180).

</comment><comment><USER17> I currently have a ringworm infection on my leg, which hasn't responded to 3 different topical antifungals. Wondering if I am going to die...

<comment><USER18> I cured mine with 10vol.% lavender oil + 10vol.% thyme oil in carrier oil (grapeseed oil). I couldn't be bothered by going to a doctor and it worked fine. Essential oils are non-selectively toxic so do be careful.

<comment><USER19> >I couldn't be bothered by going to a doctor

Do you live in the USA?

I can't believe "going to the doctor" can still be a problem, unless you're in war zone or one of the worlds' poorest countries but that doesn't apply to the US, does it?

<comment><USER18> No, I live in the EU with full insurance, but going to a doctor would mean going there during working hours, waiting a few hours, getting a script and going to the pharmacy. Essential oils OTOH could be delivered by mail and even though I had to pay for them convenience won out. But considering the emergence of antifungal resistance it might have been a good choice in the end ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Did anybody tried to apply blackseed and garlic light deep - fried coconut oil concoction? Just curious, sharing as it is our sub tropical Assam-Burma jungle traditional remedy for anything and everything fungal infection since time immemorial. Regards to all.

<comment><USER21> The issue is that the fungus has entered their bloodstream.

<comment><USER22> Seems to me like this problem: [https://xkcd.com/1217/](https://xkcd.com/1217/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> We need to end so-called semi private rooms. This fungus was apparently found on the ceiling of a man that died of it. Sick people sharing rooms and toilets is a recipe for disaster.

<comment><USER24> What do you propose for hospitals who can afford only crowded wards and shared toilets?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Looks like nature is eliminating weak chains in any way possible.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is a comment in this thread downvoted and killed, but I think it's not an entirely unreasonable question - and it's possible that someone here knows the answer:

> Did anybody tried to apply blackseed and garlic light deep - fried coconut > oil concoction? Just curious, sharing as it is our sub tropical Assam-Burma > jungle traditional remedy for anything and everything fungal infection since > time immemorial.

<comment><USER27> I'm wondering if they tried chicken noodle soup. That's been my family's home remedy for sickness and considering we seem to get better after every cold, it has a 100% success rate.

To be less sardonic, it's an unreasonable question because it has zero scientific basis. I've had naturopathic family members attempt to give things to children that were definitely not safe in any shape or form.

<comment><USER28> How about the idea that you can make tea from the leaves and bark of a willow tree, and use it to treat fevers and aches and pains? Does that sound like a ridiculous folk remedy?

<comment><USER27> If you want to be remarkably disengenous and take my argument out of context, sure.

But I will not stand for people recommending alternative medicine for absolutely everything. I already had to deal with a family member doing just that, forcing random concoctions of nonsense onto a family member suffering from cancer and attempting to divert them from actual treatment. Especially when they act like they're better than doctors and can't back up their recommendations with anything remotely resembling research.

<comment><USER28> _But I will not stand for people recommending alternative medicine for absolutely everything_

I totally agree. The anti-vaxxers, for instance, are incredibly dangerous not just to the health of individuals, but to modern civilization.

My point is that just because something is a folk remedy, or predates the invention of the scientific method, doesn't mean it's inherently without value. Rigorous scientific studies can and should be done on these sorts of things—I don't think anyone should blindly accept a folk remedy, especially one contraindicated by proper research.

But there is a certain dismissiveness amongst many folks like us of anything not invented by the pharmaceutical industry that may do us all a disservice.

<comment><USER29> > But there is a certain dismissiveness amongst many folks like us of anything > not invented by the pharmaceutical industry

I don't think that's true. The cures don't need to be invented by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously. But they do need to be studied and commercialized by the pharmaceutical industry to be taken seriously.

How could you take seriously a pharmaceutical product which is rejected by its own industry? Obviously it's not commercializable in an honest way if that's the case, or someone would have done it by now.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


World's Largest Containership Also Sets Record for Largest Engine Ever - <AUTHOR> http://gcaptain.com/worlds-largest-containership-also-sets-record-for-largest-engine-ever/ <comment><USER2> When I toured the USS Carl Vincent (a nuclear air craft carrier) at Alameda I was surprised at how "small" its engines were relative to large container ships. It helps that they are electric of course (no big gas expansion chambers) but I suspect if it weren't for the proliferation concerns cargo ships of this size could be economically run on nuclear power plants.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, Nimitz-class carriers have far more powerful engines,[1] as do as do Russian-made icebreakers, which are civilian ships,[2] as did Savannah, an American civilian ship.[3]

Edit: Carl Vinson, like most nuclear-powered vessels to date, is direct-drive. The Ohio Replacement Submarine is slated to have electric drive.[4]

1 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A4W_reactor)

2 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear- powered_icebreaker#Russ...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear- powered_icebreaker#Russian_nuclear_icebreakers)

3 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah)

4 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Replacement_Submarine#Ele...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_Replacement_Submarine#Electric_drive)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why is it good for ship engines to be so low rev? I imagine part of it is fuel savings, but with cylinders that big ...

Does it burn more fuel to run a small engine at higher revs, or a big engine at lower revs?

The only other thing I can imagine being a factor is torque. Do low-rev engines have higher torque?

<comment><USER5> (speaking just to size, not RPM:) The square-cube law causes the burning gasses in a larger cylinder to bleed less heat away into the water jacket compared to a smaller cylinder. This is the primary reason why the largest diesel engines in the world are also the most efficient.

Theoretically, the 14-cylinder Wärtsilä-Sulzer RTA96-C could be even more efficient if it were instead a gigantic single cylinder. There must be some other engineering or economic limitation which prevents us from manufacturing 25,000 liter cylinders.

edit: example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square- cube_law#Engineering_exa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Square- cube_law#Engineering_examples) "Watt recognized the problem as being related to the square-cube law, in that the surface area of the model's cylinder surface to volume ratio was greater than the much larger commercial engines, leading to excessive heat loss"

edit2: There is also a square-cube law with aerodynamic losses related to piston speed (how fast the air gets sucked into the engine: "pumping losses"). The slower you spin the engine, the lower your pumping losses are. However, I believe this plays a smaller role in affecting efficiency than the heat losses. (also, this engine is turbocharged, which changes things a bit).

<comment><USER6> A single cylinder that big would have SERIOUS vibration issues. Imagine dropping, oh, a 20,000lb weight from a height of 10ft. Every 6 seconds or so.

<comment><USER5> That can be overcome with balance shafts. [http://what-when- how.com/automobile/engine-balance-automobil...](http://what-when- how.com/automobile/engine-balance-automobile/)

<comment><USER7> Like what Tyler said, balance shafts to counter a single cylinder would be huge but also they'd add unnecessary complexity that could otherwise be overcome by adding additional cylinders instead.

Furthermore, in order to obtain the same level of torque in a single-cylinder that a multi-cylinder engine creates you'd have to account for the power generated per cylinder.

In the Wartsila RTA96C you have HP up to 109,000 (rounded) and torque up to 5,600,000ft-lbs [1]. These #s are for all cylinders. Assuming it is the 14-cylinder variant generating this power and you want to reduce this down to a single-cylinder package then you can easily deduce that the displacement would be around 25,480 liters (mentioned elsewhere in this thread).

Assuming a stroke to liter ratio of 1.374mm/liter (2500mm stroke for each 1,820 liter cylinder) you'd end up with a 35,009mm stroke for a single- cylinder engine vs. a 14-cylinder engine. Since there are 25.4mm in an inch that's a 98-inch stroke for 14-cylinders vs. a 1,378-inch stroke for a single- cylinder or an 8-foot stroke vs. a 114-ft stroke.

Finally, since you'll need a piston many times larger than the current setup for a single-cylinder vs. a 14-cylinder engine then you can imagine how much mass you have moving which can do some serious damage if it becomes unbalanced. Also you'd have an engine that instead of being long and relatively low is now very short and extremely tall (not something you want in a ship where capsizing is a very real concern).

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96-C)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _eighty three rpm_

wow

For some reason I'm fascinated by how _slow_ this thing is, but it seems obvious, with the size and all.

<comment><USER9> At the full-rated (as opposed to down-rated operational) output specification provided, that translates (for used to US units) to:

93,496 HP @ 84 RPM

5,845,726 lb-ft @ 84 RPM

The most mind boggling number for me is the torque figure. Almost _six million_ lb-ft of torque. Power is an important figure when determining how much work you can do, but torque is important when engineering the components that will go in to your drive line. For example, transmissions typically specify a maximum torque input, as well as a maximum rotational speed. Independently, neither can be exceeded, regardless of power input. For example, the transmission in my car is good for about 450 lb ft and 9,000 RPM. I'd love to read over some of the engineering specs for the driveline components attached to this thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can anyone comment on why it's 2 stroke?

Just for simplicity? I have to imagine the stuff coming out the exhaust isn't so great for the environment.

<comment><USER11> A 2 stroke diesel is different from a 2 stroke gasoline engine. It doesn't have the same environmental issues because there is no oil in the intake. The only downside is it needs a supercharger to work so it's not practical in small engines. Most(all?) large diesels like in trains and ships are 2 stroke because of the better power/weight ratio.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I didn't know that.

If there is no oil in the intake, how is it lubricated? Does it have an oil pump and system like a 4-stroke? (with a sump for the bottom end, etc.)

<comment><USER7> 2-stroke gasoline engines such as dirtbike engines are run with oil in the gas (thus oil in the intake) for economic and spatial reasons (removing or shrinking lots of parts like oil pumps, oil pans and ports.

It doesn't really lubricate like a 4-stroke where oil is pumped up and then scraped back down into the pan. It is still pumped up but it is stored in devices inside the cylinder liner where it is only dispersed as necessary. Each cylinder instead has oil squirters (receptacles) in the cylinder liners and essentially when the pressure under the piston is low enough that the system has determined there is insufficient oil, spring pressure from the oil squirters forces out enough oil until the pressure in the cylinder (under the piston) is enough to overcome the spring pressure and thus the oil squirters stay closed [1].

[1] [http://www.wartsila.com/file/Wartsila/1278511883776a12671067...](http://www.wartsila.com/file/Wartsila/1278511883776a1267106724867-Wartsila- SP-A-Id-2s-Engines-d.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Compares one ship to another, first engine is described in terms of kilowatts and the next in horsepower. Talks about cargo capacity in terms of TEUs (shipping containers, I guess) rather than gross tonnage, which is the way we've always talked about ships forever.

I know nothing about ships but I suspect this is the shipping equivalent of Information Week.

<comment><USER6> TEU = 20ft Equivilant Unit. The traditional 40ft semi-trailer style container is actually 2 TEU.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you even start an engine that big?!

<comment><USER14> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air- start_system](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air-start_system)

Basically pump a huge amount of compressed air into the cylinders at the top of their stroke, and then start combustion once the engine is moving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The two-stroke engine is rated at 69,720 kW @ 84 rpm, although has been de- > rated to 56,800 kW, and stands a whopping 17.2 meters tall (that's over 56 > feet!).

Is it really the "largest engine ever"? The Saturn V was 110 meters tall; even discounting the payload that's pretty damned big.

<comment><USER16> Surely most of the 110m of the Saturn V was fuel tanks? Perhaps they don't count towards the size of the engine. If they did, then I imagine include the fuel for this ship would make it pretty big.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This one may be larger, though it depends on what one means by "largest". It is certainly more powerful.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C3%A4rtsil%C3%A4-Sulzer_RTA96-C)

<comment><USER18> I agree - the Wärtsilä-Sulzer is both more powerful and longer (but not taller). This steam engine at Kempton from the 1920s is taller: [http://www.kemptonsteam.org/history/the- engines/](http://www.kemptonsteam.org/history/the-engines/)

Still, whichever is largest, all these engines are very impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Largest? I cannot find how large it is, but it has stiff competition from a steam engine built in 1850: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_De_Cruquius](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_De_Cruquius)

<comment><USER20> There were lots of physically huge reciprocating steam engines in power houses and pumping stations just before turbines came in. The power ratings were low by modern standards.

<comment><USER19> I know, but the original article measures the size of the engine in meters, not Watts. So, the question is whether this thing is larger or not, not whether it is more powerful.

The cylinder in this steam engine has a 3.5 meter diameter (from the website of the museum at [http://www.museumdecruquius.nl/historie-cruquius/de- stoommac...](http://www.museumdecruquius.nl/historie-cruquius/de- stoommachine/\);) from the photo of the machine room at [https://www.flickr.com/photos/33129810@N07/4971573233](https://www.flickr.com/photos/33129810@N07/4971573233) I guess it is at least 10 meters high, and that doesn't include the boiler room. So, I would guess this is a fairly close race.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> How is the block on one of these engines fabricated? I would imagine it is not a one piece casting, so are a few smaller castings bolted together? Are they made of stacks of plate? Do they have to build a gantry mill over it for machining?

</comment><comment><USER22> Why wouldn't a gas turbine be more efficient?

<comment><USER23> Gas turbines are more efficient in terms of size and weight for a given power level but burn more fuel. Merchant ships mostly care about fuel efficiency.

<comment><USER22> So why do power plants use gas turbines?

<comment><USER24> Do they? I thought most fossil-fueled power plants use coal, which they burn to power a steam turbine. Natural gas plants often use gas turbines, but this is very different from the gas turbine used by a ship: the latter burns kerosene, not natural gas. (Natural gas is uneconomical to power a moving vessel; because it's a gas, you need space to store it, and that space can be orders of magnitude bigger than an equivalent energy-density of diesel fuel or kerosene.) Diesel engines or oil-powered gas turbines are very rare for power plants, outside of backup generators for hospitals etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes, but can it run Docker?

<comment><USER26> Well, if it does go...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Better Search For Wiki? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a better search solution for a wiki-based knowledgebase I manage.
In a nutshell, I am looking for something along the lines of google custom search but I need to be able to restrict access to the search results to my users only (kerebros).
Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> Solr (<http://lucene.apache.org/solr/>) is a web search engine built on top of Lucene. It should get you most of the way there.

</comment><comment><USER3> For free or for pay?

A Google Mini is about $3K (<http://www.google.com/enterprise/mini/index.html>). That's about as close to a private google custom search that you'll find. I used to admin one, I believe you could integrate it's authentication into LDAP or Active Directory.

<comment><AUTHOR> The place where I work actually own extensive google search appliance but to get through inter-departmental red tape will be harrowing- not to mention I won't be able to admin it.

Looking for something free- ^^ Solr looks promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run a few mediawiki's, and so far the search that comes with it has been adaquate.

For other sites I have experimented with CLucene, htdig, and maybe some others. A decent search can be put together in the course of a couple of days of careful attention.

Do you think that your current problem could be the basis of a paid-for service ? I.e., if you could pay a monthly or per-use fee, give credentials to a service that would then access the private data you wanted indexed, and then provide the search functionality in a way that only your server could fetch it (and then re-display it to the authenticated user), would you buy it ?

I have also thought about using open source software to make a search appliance similar to google's, and selling them or selling an installer CD that would configure an old PC to be one.

</comment><comment><USER5> if you are using MySQL or Postgres

Sphinx Search Engine <http://www.sphinxsearch.com/>

it searches the database where you stored your documents. It doesn't crawl your website.

The quality of the search results is superior.

<comment><USER6> Sphinx is definitely easier to get going than Solr, but tends to be slower and doesn't scale as easily as Solr(Search on Lucene with Replication).

But these two are the best options, just depends on your needs/trade offs.</comment></comment>


Depression and suicide linked to air pollution in new global study - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/18/depression-and-suicide-linked-to-air-pollution-in-new-global-study <comment><USER2> > The results show strong correlations, but research that would prove a causal > link is difficult because ethical experiments cannot deliberately expose > people to harm.

This is kind of my hobby horse: you don't need to subject people to harm to test causuality. You can do the opposite: Remove harm and see what happens. Maybe give people free HVAC upgrades to filter more particles.

<comment><USER3> Or, like, reduce air pollution since in addition to this possibility it's already known to cause asthma, lung cancer, and heart disease.

<comment><USER4> This is not true of asthma. Outdoor air quality in the United States has improved over time [1] and asthma rates has increased.

[1] [https://www.epa.gov/air-trends](https://www.epa.gov/air-trends)

<comment><USER5> Anecdotally, I was diagnosed with asthma as a child and walked around with an inhaler for a few years. I liked it, it tasted funny and seemed like a cool gadget at the time. But I did not have asthma. And I'm convinced there's no way my parents would've been diagnosed with it 30 years ago with the minor symptoms I had.

So perhaps the asthma numbers are influenced by an increased willingness to diagnose it. Just a thought.

<comment><USER6> The guys say that death by asthma (severe cases certainly) are gently falling, but it looks pretty flat to me.

[https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthma_stats/asthma_underlying_de...](https://www.cdc.gov/asthma/asthma_stats/asthma_underlying_death.html)

Do you have any intuition for how to identify an increased willingness to over-diagnose? It may be true, but how do we test this hypothesis?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I live in Northern India which has heavy air pollution. I recently bought an air purifier. Just the difference in the quality of sleep is amazing. And it is not a placebo effect. The filters are already visibly grimy. The PM 2.5 consistently now is around mid 20s down from around 180-190.

I would recommend it to all in North India who can afford it, esp households with small children.

<comment><USER8> > And it is not a placebo effect.

How do you know?

<comment><USER9> I think he means based on the size of the effect it's unlikely to be a placebo.

<comment><USER10> right, but 50% of the effect of opiates is placebo, so we shouldn't be too surprised. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11207392](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11207392)

<comment><USER9> Placebo's effect on pain is one of if not the largest placebo effect, but the effect size on sleep is much smaller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is way beyond air, this is water we drink, the chemicals in processed food, the pesticides in the produce. The compounds in furniture, paints, stains, carpeting, general building materials including insulation, plastic plumbing,HVAC components, insistence on living in un-ventilated, year around closed windows spaces.

<comment><USER12> This is also about population density and the lifestyle in more populated (denser) areas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm pretty confident that depression is not a result of air pollution, but rather that both air pollution and depression are results of industrialization. The problem is not chemical. The problem is how we live.

<comment><USER14> What gives you this certainty?

<comment><USER13> Because the medicalization of depression is a convenient way to avoid thinking about the fact that it is a prominent feature of the status quo, not some aberration. Pollution correlates with industrial manufacturing and warehouse work environments and crushing poverty that forces people to live in a manner consistent with economic efficiency rather than with human happiness and well- being. Long work hours and little money contribute to social isolation. Debt traps put people in situations in which they could not possibly ever claw their way out.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24121465](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24121465)

> A meta-analysis of pooled odds ratios showed a significant relationship > between debt and mental disorder (OR=3.24), depression (OR=2.77), suicide > completion (OR=7.9), suicide completion or attempt (OR=5.76), problem > drinking (OR=2.68), drug dependence (OR=8.57), neurotic disorder (OR=3.21) > and psychotic disorders (OR=4.03).

When are we going to start designing our economies around creating a healthy and enjoyable environment for humans to actually live in, and not arranging human lives around squeezing the greatest amount of economic efficiency out of them as possible? The way we make ourselves live is tantamount to animal abuse.

<comment><USER15> > crushing poverty

My grandma lived in what essentially was a pre-industrial society. She lived in crushing poverty (i.e. being hungry most of the time). Then, our country industrialized and she was never hungry again.

<comment><USER13> I won't disagree with this, I'm sure that what your grandma struggled through was difficult. I wouldn't argue for us going back to pre-industrial society. Technology can be a massive unadulterated good when it is applied correctly to our problems.

That doesn't mean, however, that the way we live doesn't desperately need to be improved upon. We may have lost hunger but we gained depression. Maybe we should be lucky to die of suicide rather than to starve, but I think we can and should try to build a world where we don't have to do either.

EDIT: I also want to add that debt is an entirely different but very real and horrible kind of crushing poverty. People in debt have their basic needs met, but they are slaves to a number they carry over their heads, often for the rest of their lives. I can't honestly say that is always a better life than to be free to do what you want even if you must constantly contend with hunger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No doubt pollution will make you sick, but I'm inclined to think that depression has a lot to do with just living in an over-crowded, unattractive, big industrial city environment, having little contact with the natural world.

<comment><USER6> Suicide rates are higher in rural America than in urban America.

[https://www.cdc.gov/ruralhealth/Suicide.html](https://www.cdc.gov/ruralhealth/Suicide.html)

Why imagine what is true when you can take a second and find out what is true? The truth is external to you, look for it. I don't want to be a jerk, but you have generated a hypothesis(great), why not test it against the facts available to you? Maybe you owe it to yourself.

According to this, it is also true of Germany:

[https://ij-healthgeographics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1...](https://ij- healthgeographics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12942-017-0112-x)

Let me know if you have better data. (I am aware that Indian Reservation tilt the scales big time toward rural areas, but do not think that removing them as outliers changes the balance)

<comment><USER17> That seems like it's likely mostly just conflated with one of the well known causes of suicide, financial instability and generally being poor. The better data would be studies that try to compare similar socioeconomic classes, age ranges, etc.

I wish it took only a second to find out what is true, but data is complicated and has lots of confounding variables, and it's too easy to not account for them and get totally untrue information out of the data.

<comment><USER6> Why insist on causality depending on a single variable? This is very strange to me. Of course the trust is confounded, the truth is multi-variable.

The algorithm to pursue truth:

        1. Find out how you personally differ from happy and healthy people.
        2. Reduce those differences however you can.
        3. Watch yourself become happier and healthier.
        4. That's the whole thing.

Does being poor suck? Yes. Reduce it's likelihood and it's impact.

Don't demand that information conform to your assumption before you can take action. Take action and document your assumptions and challenge them along your journey to improvement.

A neural network does not make demands of its data set. It changes itself to better match the limited truth that it does see.

Uncertainty and doubt are your enemies. Challenge them with data don't reduce yourself to paralysis. Look up "Epistemic learned helplessness".

An example: Will flossing improve my health? Be the kind of person that wants to improve their health and tries to improve their health. Try flossing as matter of character, not based on whether it does independent of the social class of other flossers. If successful people think that other successful people floss, then they will too. There is no isolation among the variables. Don't demand that of reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are many factors at work here but I am sure being forced to stay indoor is depressive as hell. The city where I live has been in constant smog with AQI in the range of 200~300* and every outdoor activities are stopped, I can't even talk a walk around the nearby lakes to relieve my stress.

* the air is terrible already and the government is going to build more coal plants, powered by the 'cleanest coal' approved by the POTUS, sigh. Instead of one nuclear power plant now we have four coal plants instead, great.

<comment><USER19> What city & country is this?

<comment><USER20> POTUS = prez of US

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Why Correlation Usually ≠ Causation: Causal Nets Cause Common Confounding" [https://www.gwern.net/Causality](https://www.gwern.net/Causality) \- that should be a required reading.

<comment><USER22> So much this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not sure how to reconcile this with the fact that suicide rates in rural areas of the US far exceed suicide rates in urban areas. Do the availability of guns in rural areas really offset this effect that much?

<comment><USER24> In the UK there was a study on social isolation comparing rural and urban people to evaluate the assumption that people in "isolated" rural areas are lonely. It found the reverse - that people in urban areas are more socially isolated.

[https://www.co-operative.coop/campaigning/loneliness](https://www.co- operative.coop/campaigning/loneliness)

"The report briefly mentions the 'rurality factor' as presenting greater barriers to connection, with rural areas having fewer and more expensive support services such as transport links. However, it goes on to suggest that 'rural communities were felt to be less closed off than their urban counterparts', with rural participants more likely to ask how people are, or stop for chats."

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Something that isn't immediately clear to me is whether they accounted for the causes of air pollution.

If not this is like observing that there are a lot of loud bangs in warzones and concluding loud noises kill people, even though they are at best just a side effect of the actual causes.

<comment><USER26> I'm questioning this as well. Air pollution is almost always an attribute of big cities, which mostly imply certain lifestyle. For example, living in concrete box for most of one's life is new to our species.

<comment><USER9> Also air pollution is usually highest near freeways and plants which are also notoriously poorer areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Way back in the 1920s, my great-great grandfather killed himself. The obituary paralleled the family story of his life: he'd been a drifter of sorts his whole life, always looking for some way out of the life of a dirt-poor, subsistence farmer. He was the first member of the family to leave the Amish / Mennonite colonies of the east and come west. When he died, he was far from home in the middle of nowhere, not a penny to his name.

Last night around the dinner table we were discussing an article from The Week about video game addiction. It described young men a lot like my great-great grandfather, with just the moment in history changed. It seems fairly straightforward that the root causes are:

\-- Limited economic opportunities / safety net. \-- Lack (for whatever reason) of social ties and support. A lack of an outlet for emotional intimacy.

Are chemicals, including in our air, at play? Sure, possibly. But, it seems clear that in any case you hear about a suicide the story is basically the same - someone simply did not see a future for themselves. We have not come fully to grips with a post-industrial / post-agrarian economy here in the US, leaving many _men_ in particular without much purpose.

The rural / urban divide is mentioned in this thread - living here in rural America (hi y'all!) is a microcosm of the rest of the country - we have the same problems as cities, just on a different but compressed scale. You see both the happiest and most miserable people up close. If you have the financial means to live away from the city, then you can be the big fish in the small pond, IE: both the financial and social I mentioned above. On the other hand, if you are living paycheck to paycheck, surrounded by a limited social network, etc, is it really that surprising it leads to depression? That's the same regardless of your physical location.

</comment><comment><USER28> Oh more likely, both of them are correlated with a third variable (i.e. confounding) which is most likely living in a dense city

<comment><USER29> This. Unless the Guardian is doing a big disservice to the underlying material, this sounds like sloppy science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article is a dumpster fire, read to actual journal article - DOI: 10.1289/EHP4595

"DISCUSSION: Our findings support the hypothesis of an association between long-term PM2:5 exposure and depression, as well as supporting hypotheses of possible associations between long-term PM2:5 exposure and anxiety and between short-term PM10 exposure and suicide. The limited literature and methodological challenges in this field, including heterogeneous outcome definitions, exposure assessment, and residual confounding, suggest further high-quality studies are warranted to investigate potentially causal associations between air pollution and poor mental health."

Don't really get the point, not really sure the journal is P hacking with PM10 being suicide and PM2.5 being depression but PM2.5/10 gives you cancer's which is depressing, why wouldn't you clean your air?

</comment><comment><USER31> Oh wow, this totally. My wife had a rough time in Beijing during long stretches of bad air, and I knew other people whose moods would visibly change during those times.

The suicide aspect I'm not sure of, but many people I knew had the option of leaving and did.

</comment><comment><USER32> plug: if you're interested in air quality issues, we're hiring at Aclima. ping me at igor at aclima.io. we're deploying a distributed sensor grid to get actionable air-quality intelligence around the world, which we believe can motivate regulators to act, and motivate citizens to bug their regulators.

we're looking for folks interested in: * data engineering * firmware and IoT platforms * full-stack and internal tooling * data scientists and other kinds of scientists interested in data, air quality, and atmospheric/environmental modeling

</comment><comment><USER33> [https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](https://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations)

</comment><comment><USER34> Buy a personal HEPA air filter on Amazon and get purified water delivered. Quit trusting your city officials with your health.

<comment> blaser-waffle Probably cheaper and easier to test your water and air.

If your air or water quality suck, take it to city hall

Also worth noting that the city can only do so much. A factory 3 counties over could spew noticeable smog, and you don't have any recourse outside of moving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I can't find the link to the actual study. What I'd like to know is whether there was any research into the actual causal relationships (such as the other study that was linked with pollution particles found in brains), or if it was just statistical correlation between places with high pollution and places with high levels of depression and suicide. If the latter, it could well be a spurious correlation (e.g. pollution happens in big cities, people in big cities tend to have more stressful jobs, stressful jobs cause burnout and depression...)

<comment><USER36> [https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP4595](https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/EHP4595)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Not unsurprising, though obvious caveat about correlation and causation. I wouldn't be surprised if pollution is correlated with other things like low quality of life, poverty, etc. All of these probably interact to create an environment that leads to poor mental health.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm all for cutting all pollution but is this just not a long shot to try link the two and get more results faster. linking it to more health issues and deaths

</comment><comment><USER39> Surely not because industry-based jobs let people depressed and surely not because places with industries have been polluting air more than other places. Sure....

</comment><comment><USER40> Anyone have a link to an effective air filter? So I can order one and benefit from the placebo effect. Preferably on the 'zon so I can get 2-day shipping.

</comment><comment><USER41> Fwiw, Scott Alexander wrote a couple great articles about depression in 2017:

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/12/toward-a-predictive- th...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/09/12/toward-a-predictive-theory-of- depression/)

[https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/13/what-is-depression- any...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/06/13/what-is-depression-anyway-the- synapse-hypothesis/)

The first tries to fit it into a predictive processing framework, the second rounds up a variety of findings, including correlation with inflammation and treatment with ketamine.

</comment><comment><USER42> The more we look at the data the more it seems that if we want to save lives we have to replace coal plants with nuclear plants.

</comment><comment><USER43> So, living conditions in your typical high polluted city have nothing to do with being depressed or suicidal?

</comment><comment><USER44> Whenever I go to the countryside and start breathing the pure air I start to feel drowzy AF. Also allergic AF.

</comment><comment><USER45> Isn't air pollution tightly correlated to living in large cities? How do these studies factor that in?

<comment><USER46> [http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH- Modules/BS/BS704-EP713_Co...](http://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/MPH- Modules/BS/BS704-EP713_Confounding-EM/BS704-EP713_Confounding-EM5.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Based on my travels it always seemed the more humidity the more relaxed the environment/people.

</comment><comment><USER48> What counts as air pollution? Smog? Sulfur dioxide?

<comment><USER49> Quite a simple concept, it's particulate matter in the air, the greater the density the worse the effect on humans, animals, and ecology. It would be difficult to measure the effect of one specific particulate's effect.

Particle pollution — also called particulate matter (PM) — is made up of particles (tiny pieces) of solids or liquids that are in the air. These particles may include:

        Dust
        Dirt
        Soot
        Smoke
        Drops of liquid

Some particles are big enough (or appear dark enough) to see — for example, you can often see smoke in the air. Others are so small that you can't see them in the air.

[https://www.cdc.gov/air/particulate_matter.html](https://www.cdc.gov/air/particulate_matter.html)

What Are People Dying of on High Air Pollution Days? [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935184710048)

"The air pollution disasters in London in 1952, the Meuse valley in 1930, and in Donoroa, Pennsylvania, in 1948 made it clear that extremely high levels of particulate-based smog could produce large increases in the daily mortality rate."

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Temperature variability also factors into this. Though by itself is not a major factor, it seems to be a combination of things.

If anything we are not "killing the planet" we are destroying the conditions that allow life to thrive on Earth. I've been following these links since 2013 and more studies are showing this could be a "thing."

"Here we estimate associations between multiple environmental factors (air quality, residential greenness, mean temperature, and temperature variability) and self-assessed mental health scores for over 20,000 Chinese residents. Mental health scores were surveyed in 2010 and 2014, allowing us to link changes in mental health to the changes in environmental variables. Increases in air pollution and temperature variability are associated with higher probabilities of declined mental health. Mental health is statistically unrelated to mean temperature in this study, and the effect of greenness on mental health depends on model settings, suggesting a need for further study. Our findings suggest that the environmental policies to reduce emissions of air pollution or greenhouse gases can improve mental health of the public in China."

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10196-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10196-y)

 __ _More importantly:

1\. Air Pollution Linked to Mutations [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2002/12/air-pollution- linked...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2002/12/air-pollution-linked- mutations)

2\. Air pollution causes sperm mutations [https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080113/full/news.2008.439.h...](https://www.nature.com/news/2008/080113/full/news.2008.439.html)

3\. January 1994 What Are People Dying of on High Air Pollution Days? [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00139...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0013935184710048)

"The air pollution disasters in London in 1952, the Meuse valley in 1930, and in Donoroa, Pennsylvania, in 1948 made it clear that extremely high levels of particulate-based smog could produce large increases in the daily mortality rate."_ __

Edit: A Few more from earlier times:

1996 Feb: Psychiatric aspects of air pollution. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8637739](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8637739)

December 1984: Air pollution and depressive symptomatology: Exploratory analyses of intervening psychosocial factors [https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01256411](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01256411)

Nov. 2, 1999 Air Pollution Linked to Increased Heart Rate [https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/19991102/air-pollution- linke...](https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/19991102/air-pollution-linked-to- increased-heart-rate#1)

1981 Dec The psychological effects of indoor air pollution. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805416/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1805416/)

June 1989 Psychological effects of air pollution on healthy residents—A time- series approach [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02724...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272494489800027)

</comment><comment><USER50> Nothing was more depressing than growing up in LA in the 1970s, lungs hurting, and 30% of PE classes cancelled because of smog. I remember looking at the sickly yellow light casting this disgusting puce sheen on the asphalt. The city was all I knew, and I hated it. Once a year we would go up to the Eastern Sierra and I felt released, natural, like this was how the world should be. Returning home to the smog and traffic was a depressogenic gutpunch.

<comment><USER51> I didn't grow up there during that time, but moved there in the late 70's. There were indeed many smoggy days. But surprisingly it got much better after about 10 years. I assume it was a result of stricter regulations. These days the air quality in the LA area is generally pretty good, with historical PM2.5 data showing "green" most of the time [http://aqicn.org/city/los- angeles/](http://aqicn.org/city/los-angeles/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> The authors admit there is no causal relationship established between pollutants and depression. It's pure correlation. I don't understand how nebulous studies like this even get published. Still very convenient that we have _yet another_ reason to abandon fossil fuels. Almost starting to feel like a trendy scapegoat and honestly an irrelevant comment given the total uncertainty behind the relationship.

But the Guardian made clear it's bias when it advertised for funding with a giant banner claiming "Trump must be impeached.". This isn't objective, fact based journalism, it's propagandist advocacy journalism.

</comment><comment><USER53> also: look into anti nutrients, some of the depression might just be nutrient deficiency. Can be tested by fasting for 4 days.

<comment><USER26> If that's the case, how would fasting work? Wouldn't it just reliably deprive you from nutrients hence give you a depression?

<comment><USER53> I don't know why, but there are a lot of people where fasting works for depression. Then there are ways of eating which seem to have an effect like low fodmaps. Etc.

<comment><USER6> Being the kind of person that is willing to experiment to solve their problems is better than being a person that is miserable and changes nothing.

A random walk may not get you out a bad situation, but staying put is strictly worse less likely to get you out.

What would a reinforcement learning agent do?

<comment><USER26> I'm just trying to understand the connection between

>some of the depression might just be nutrient deficiency.

>Can be tested by fasting for 4 days

<comment><USER53> anti nutrients causing inflammation(body uses nutrients to fight inflammation), leaving them out calms the inflammation and the body can use the nutrients it has better. Btw. supplementing zinc and magnesium seems to help ppl with depression. Lectins(all seeds) as in beans, nuts, corn and wheat are binding to iron and zinc, I forgot what was with the magnesium, but it played a role as well...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Air pollution linked to overpopulation. Overpopulation linked to high birth rates. So, in conclusion : Depression and suicide linked to high birth rates

<comment><USER55> You didn't go far enough:

Air pollution linked to overpopulation. Overpopulation linked to high birth rates. High birth rates linked to sex. So in conclusion: Celibacy cures depression and suicide.

Of course, why stop there? We could keep going deeper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Wouldn't a cleaner observation be: "depression and suicide linked to the largest cities in new global study"?

<comment><USER57> The cleanest observation would be Everything is Correlated ([https://www.gwern.net/Causality](https://www.gwern.net/Causality)) and correlation is not a productive way of investigating the world.

<comment><USER6> Correlation is all we have to go on mostly.

If A causes B and B causes C then we can only say that A and C are correlated. If the average chain of causality is 4 long then the Bs outnumber the As and Cs.

Inductive (observation) evidence is more available than deductive (purely logical) evidence. Why limit yourself to only deductive evidence?

I don't have to resort to a chemistry lesson to convince you that drinking bleach would be very harmful, right? Can't I merely show you photos of bleach- bellied-corpses?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> The causal relationship seems like a stretch here. I highly doubt reducing air pollution will cure anyone's depression.

That said, it has other value in signally regions of high air pollution are regions of higher proportional depression.

Areas of high pollution are less desirable to live in. If you live right next to a highway, garbage dump or power plant, your property value is going to be lower. (I must admit, I'm taking a US-centric perspective here)

With that in mind, you could just as easily conclude that living in poorer regions causes depression.

Anyone who thinks curing depression is as simple as cleaning up the air is oversimplifying a much more complicated relationship.

<comment><USER59> > If you live right next to a highway, garbage dump or power plant

In cities like London most of the city is like that. probably same as L.A. or New york, the whole place is next to a highway + powerplant + garbage dump</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have money, What should I invest it in?  - <AUTHOR>

Just curious to know success stories are out there of folks that invested in businesses that took off. And any advice they are willing to give? It could by any time of investment such as real estate, stocks, coin laundry, etc... Assume someone had about 30k to start <comment><USER2> Unless you have a good insight, you're probably not going to beat the market. I'm a big fan of Betterment: [https://www.betterment.com/](https://www.betterment.com/)

Make a financial goal, and Betterment will tell you the possible outcomes if you put X% in stocks and 100-X% in bonds. You select a risk level you feel comfortable with and it'll handle the rest for you. It's also like a bank account - you can deposit and withdraw at any time.

As the Wu-Tang Clan said, you need to diversify your bonds: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rDtmT246s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_rDtmT246s)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha thanks for the site, and thank you Wu-Tang Financials

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The worst thing you can do with your money is make a mistake with it. So make sure you don't rush into anything without fully understanding what you're getting into.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can just give it to me.</comment>


Crypto optimizations for Go from CloudFlare/Intel blocked by licensing issues - <AUTHOR> https://groups.google.com/forum/m/#!msg/golang-codereviews/m5QTnSUZU6c/Jc5yaMyF2_QJ <comment><USER2> I thought this was going to be some sort of crazy patent issue or something to do with Intel's proprietary compilers, but instead it's a simple license incompatibility where authors are trying to transfer code (that's been BSD/Apache dual-licensed in OpenSSL) into Go, which uses its own license.

<comment><USER3> More to the point, if I understand correctly: mixing these licenses is _legally_ permissible for the Go team (or anyone else who wishes to apply to the patch) but the resulting codebase is no longer uniformly governed by Go's CLA.

Intel doesn't want to relicense their code (which would AFAICT not meaningfully change the terms of the license, but would result in its authorship being lumped together with the rest of "The Go Authors" for licensing purposes) and the Go team's legal counsel apparently has some reason for being unwilling to accept the resulting mixed-license state.

<comment><USER4> One of the reasons the GO legal council insists on all code being under the CLA is that if google ever wants to change the license of the go codebase they can do it without asking the contributors. If any code is not under the CLA, changing the license becomes complicated.

<comment><USER5> As "the legal council in question", this is actually not the problem at all :)

There are actually remarkably simpler problem than this:

For starters,

Everyone in the world, using go, would now have to reproduce _two_ copyright notices, instead of one.

If they messed up, intel could sue them :)

Exporting that liability to the rest of the world would be irresponsible.

In any case, it's not just about mixed licenses. In a good open source project, everyone contributes on the same terms. Period.

<comment><USER4> You are unlikely to read this at this point, but I was going through my old comments and just saw your reply.

In any case, I was commenting on the purpose of the CLA in general. I believe my comment still applies accurately to that.

As far as the specific issue goes, I agree that everyone should be contributing under the same license.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the record: we (at CloudFlare) are happy to support any Go-compatible license for the code. Hopefully we can convince Intel to do the same.

<comment><USER7> Can someone explain why the existing license (dual Apache and 3-clause BSD I believe?) is _not_ Go-compatible?

I mean, here's what I turned up for the "Go license", and it's almost _verbatim_ 3-clause BSD:

[https://golang.org/LICENSE](https://golang.org/LICENSE)

What more could Google Legal possibly want here beyond a full copyright assignment? What possible risk is there merging two 3-clause BSD code bases?

<comment><USER8> > What more could Google Legal possibly want here beyond a full copyright > assignment? What possible risk is there merging two 3-clause BSD code bases?

The two BSD headers aren't literally the same (one credits "The Go Authors" and the other credits Intel Corporation). Put another way, the licenses share the same _type_ , but the value of the "licenser" field differs.

Adding more licenses to the same codebase makes it really messy for people to use, because it means they have to actually check which parts of the codebase they're citing in order to know which headers to include in their code.

This last part is similar to the reason that the 4-clause BSD license is considered problematic, for what it's worth[0]. In this case, it's a practical issue, not a strictly legal one.

[0] [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.en.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/bsd.en.html)

<comment><USER7> No, it really doesn't. People have been combining BSD and "other" stuff for decades. How many systems shipped with the TCP stack (or zlib, or libjpeg, or...) linked right into their binaries? How many of them ran into "really messy to use" license problems? They just shipped it. The license says they can, and they did.

This just seems extraordinarily meta to me. What is the _actual_ risk here? Quantify "messy" and "be safe".

(And FWIW: the fourth clause was considered bad because it put a restriction on how the software was distributed and communicated about. None of the licenses we're talking about in this thread include the advertising clause, or anything like it.)

<comment><USER5> "No, it really doesn't. People have been combining BSD and "other" stuff for decades. "

hopefully, with proper notices :)

"This just seems extraordinarily meta to me. What is the actual risk here? Quantify "messy" and "be safe". " Okay.

The risk is: If you don't reproduce the copyright notice, and Intel doesn't like you, they could come after you for copyright infringement.

Just because you don't hear about it on reddit or hacker news doesn't mean people don't have private enforcement actions over this stuff.

Shocking, I know.

Now, don't get me wrong, Intel is a wonderful company and I love them, but exporting that kind of possible liability onto the rest of the world would be pretty irresponsible, regardless of how nice a company Intel is.

Past that, the other part is "everyone should be contributing on the same terms to an open source project".

Otherwise, you'll soon have a million copyright different notices to reproduce.

<comment><USER7> So... how is it conceivably "safe" to use Go in my own work, which is provided to me with the same (literally verbatim!) polluting copyright requirement. I love Google, but like you said, all it takes is for me to forget the copyright attribution and you guys are going to sue me into jelly.

Where am I missing the logic here? Or are you offering symmetric contributor agreements to everyone that asks?

<comment><USER5> So, for starters, let me point out that Google's CLA (which would require for contributions like this) grants rights from contributors directly to you. So if Intel signed the CLA and contributed this code, even if you forgot the notice, they would have no recourse.

([https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google- corporate](https://cla.developers.google.com/about/google-corporate), clause 2)

This leaves "Google itself". In that case, the problem you raise is one true of _all_ BSD licensed stuff, not just Go.

So yeah, you should be careful with notices, no matter who they are from, google or anyone. You are trusting that if you mess up, you won't get screwed by those people. It seems highly unlikely google would ever sue anyone, but like i said, you are trusting it won't happen if you screw up. (I try to be straight with people about stuff like this).

Your only solution to this in toto would be "don't use BSD licensed software" in your works.

Note that this is true of plenty of other open sourvce licenses as well (IE if you screw up GPL compliance minorly, you are trusting the copyright author won't sue you). One of the only ones that doesn't require attribution for binaries is the zlib license. Statutory damages for intentional copyright infringement are quite high, and they don't actually even have to prove they lost profits or whatever.

As for Go, one of the _other_ reasons we don't want to accept other-licensed code and code not under a CLA is so we can fix this problem by changing the runtime library license to not require attribution (but this will take a bit longer for various reasons) :).

(There are certain other languages that know they have this problem with the runtime license, but have decided they don't care if they are likely to make accidental/intentional copyright infringers of large classes of people. I will leave it to the crowd to figure out which these are :P)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Perhaps someone needs to bypass Intel's lawyers and talk to some engineers or marketers, so they can circle back around and explain the situation to the lawyers; I see no way in which it is not advantageous to Intel to ensure the license is compatible, so they can sell more server chips with AES instructions to more people. It sort of sounds like the Intel lawyers are giving the default lawyer "no" rather than a considered answer. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure this needs to be on the top of HN. It's a licensing issue that I'm sure we can work out between CloudFlare, Google and Intel.

<comment><USER11> I disagree, it is relevant for HN: it's open source. I'm really curious as to why we can't just use it anywhere given the BSD license.

<comment><USER12> BSD header must stay on the code. Council doesn't want BSD headers in the GO code. Not clear there is actually any way forward unless someone can find a way to convince them that it is manageable to put BSD code into the repo. Another good reminder that cooking your own license is a bad idea.

<comment><USER8> > Another good reminder that cooking your own license is a bad idea.

I don't know what you're referring to here, since nobody has made their own license. The problem as I understand it is that (some of) the code in the patch is covered by a BSD license from Intel, which is not the same as the rest of the Go code, which is covered by a BSD license from the Go authors.

The text of the BSD licenses themselves is mutually compatible, but because the licenses credit different sources ("Go authors" vs. "Intel Corporation"), that makes them different licenses. It is legally possible to combine them, but practically annoying for anyone else who may want to reuse the code later.

<comment><USER12> Hrm. I think you're right. I had gone and looked at the GO license and was rather confused because it looked like the bsd 3 clause to me except for a change directly inserting Google's name into the 3rd clause. Could that be the source of the incompatibility?

<comment><USER13> I am not a lawyer, forgive any inaccuracies. These are 2 instances of the same/similar license type - they remain 2 different licenses with different conditions that have to be met individually even if the code is merged.

The licenses are compatible. However, for the Go team (and downstream lib users) to satisfy Intel's license, they'd have to credit Intel as authors, in addition to "the Go Team". This can become unwieldy if code is pulled from many different sources (code authors would need to check the authors of the various parts of the Go Standard libs they are using to give the correct attribution).

This can be avoided if Intel itself makes the contribution & make use of a CLA (Contributor License Agreement) that assigns the necessary rights to the Go Team - meaning there is one license to be satisfied for the whole standard lib.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It is not immediately obvious to me where Intel comes into this. The submission says it is the Cloudflare author's own work.

Is it because the co-author of the mentioned paper (Shay Gueron) is from Intel? The commit doesn't explicitly say he also co-authored the code, though -- maybe that should be clearer.

<comment><USER15> [https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/4d3fa06fce52682bfb...](https://github.com/openssl/openssl/commit/4d3fa06fce52682bfbc503c7ded2d0289e3f8cde)

[https://rt.openssl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3149&user=gues...](https://rt.openssl.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=3149&user=guest&pass=guest)

Looks like the patch is derived from OpenSSL and the OpenSSL part was developed by Shay Gueron and Vlad Krasnov.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Non-mobile link: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang- codereviews/m5Q...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/golang- codereviews/m5QTnSUZU6c/Jc5yaMyF2_QJ)</comment>


AWS IoT 1-Click - One click creation of an AWS Lambda trigger for any device - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/iot-1-click/ <comment><USER2> More details coming tomorrow including a $29.99 at&t button. Comes with 3 years of battery.

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish the specs for the buttons were open so we could see a bunch of different devices out there. Or are they already open...?

</comment><comment><USER4> "possible actions include calling technical support"

made me chuckle

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess it is AWS day at HN today... Soon we will need a new sections just for AWS

<comment><USER6> AWS re:INVENT is on this week. Lots of announcements.</comment></comment>


Code For Twilio's Free Fantasy Football Draft Room App (Node.js + Redis) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/crabasa/ff-draft-app

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. Is it just a conference call? I wasn't going to give them permission to use my microphone or camera, so I couldn't tell if it did anything else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, it's essentially an app that creates online conference calls. I would have liked to ship some more features (list of participants, chatting, etc) but didn't have time.

This app also showcases two early versions of NPM modules for Twilio:

1) twiliosig[1]: used to valid that HTTP requests for TwiML documents are coming from Twilio.com and not an unwanted 3rd party.

2) twilio-client-token[2]: used to generate JSON web tokens[3]. This is a hard requirement for Node.js developers who want to build Twilio Client[4] web applications.

[1]: <https://npmjs.org/package/twiliosig>

[2]: <https://npmjs.org/package/twilio-client-token>

[3]: [http://self-issued.info/docs/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web- token...](http://self-issued.info/docs/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web-token.html)

[4]: <http://www.twilio.com/docs/client/twilio-js>

<comment><USER2> Okay, makes sense. It looks like a cool technology demonstration. I've been exploring node and I've done a lot with fantasy football so I'll probably check this out further.

I guess by "features" I was expecting things like a list of fantasy football players, a draft timer, a way to display who was picked, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> At best this was always going to be a companion app, since almost all fantasy football leagues (ESPN, NFL, Yahoo) have online draft tools. I _wish_ that kind of data was exposed via a real-time API, let's hope someone from the Yahoo API team reads this thread.</comment></comment></comment></comment>