Meat based diets made us smarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128849908 <comment><USER2> This title appears to be knowingly misleading. Towards the end it actually goes on to say 'And cooking is what he thinks really changed our modern body'. In fact it could just have easily been cooked starchy foods that had the biggest impact in supplying more calories. Either way it was the additional supply of calories that made the difference - not some magical ingredient of meat. I guess the diet Taliban are a ready audience for a journalist without any actual original research to report on.

<comment><USER3> It looks to me like the author was building a point about evolutionary bootstrapping of brain growth by eating meat ("but eating meat apparently made our ancestors smarter - smart enough to make better tools, which in turn led to other changes, says Aiello"). Brain growth was later accelerated when early humans gained the intelligence to cook.

From what I understand about brain development from my child's pediatrician, dietary fat is important. I don't think the calorie argument is airtight. There's more to the story than is presented here.

Anyway, the author opens with information from one source who seemed to focus on meat and later includes information from another source focusing on cooking. An editor probably read two paragraphs and wrote the headline. Nothing to get bent about.

<comment><USER2> > It looks to me like the author was building a point about evolutionary > bootstrapping of brain growth by eating meat

He actually spoke to 2 separate anthropologists who had different views about our evolutionary diet and he chose to weave them into his own narrative. The second anthropologist, Richard Wrangham wrote the book "Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human" and as you can see below he strongly contradicts the notion that we ate much raw meat

[http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/books/27garn.html?_r=1&...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/books/27garn.html?_r=1&ref=books)

Instead of writing about the differing opinions the author choses to strongly favor one view hide the fact that other is even in disagreement.

> Nothing to get bent about.

I think that deliberate twisting the of truth is something to legitimately get 'bent' about. The sad thing is the more than 50% of the people who see this will come away thinking they are basically saying 'meat makes you smarter' when neither of the views presented suggest anything of the sort.

<comment><USER4> The latter anthropologist is actually a vegetarian, so I very much doubt he believes that "meat makes you smarter." That was the part that made me really notice what the author was doing — when he smugly notes that his his source has to _settle_ for a vegetarian meal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Large-scale agriculture and cooking made us even smarter. A good pot of rice and beans will net you even more energy with less work than meat. It's also less likely to spoil and give you any number of diseases.

<comment><USER6> Have a look at "The Worst Mistake In The History Of The Human Race" by Jared Diamond [http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...](http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf)

Agriculture was (is?) a disaster for our health.

Edit: I noticed that you spoke about increased energy intake and brain size, not just health.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing that. What strikes me is that even given all that Jared argues, it's somewhat preposterous to call agriculture the worst mistake in the history of the human race.

Agriculture paved the road the specialization, and hence the progress, diversity, safety and richness we see in our lives today. We can argue over whether these are virtues or not, but we can't turn our heads from the Darwinian view of life. Living as a nomad, with everybody toiling just to feed the mouths doesn't scale. And, Natural Selection says any group that is able to specialize even a little bit gains strategic advantages over non- specialized groups. No wonder hunters and gatherers were driven to extinction.

Is Jared kidding us when he says that social echelons are bad? I guess, he thinks our hunter-gatherer ancestors treated everybody equally and with respect. I guess 30 seconds in front of Discovery Channel would tell him how apes live - alpha males "ruling" over females, and killing other males over food and right to reproduce. I'm quite amazed at his ability to scorn at social echelons and other malices brought upon us by agriculture while giving a silent nod to killing for food in the same breath!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another theory:

"How much intelligence does it take to sneak up on a leaf?" \- Larry Niven (The Ringworld Engineers)

</comment><comment><USER9> Organic meat may be good in small doses. However most of the meat today is not the same as it was centuries ago. The book "The China Study" does a good job at explaining the diseases caused by meat.

<comment><USER10> I don't eat much meat - I don't eat beef or pork at all, I eat some fish and chicken. I think too much meat is hard on your digestive tract, and the high caloric density with relatively low micronutrients makes it a bad call for me. Chicken, fish, yes. Beef, pork, other mammals, no.

BUT, the China Study book is very questionable. There's a very thorough rebuttal here:

[http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JXW2AQARAXZL/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R2JXW2AQARAXZL/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm)

It's a very good rebuttal. I agree with a low-ish meat diet, but the China Study book (as opposed to the actual study) is riddled with errors and bad science.

<comment><USER9> I don't want to be right yesterday, so thanks for that link. I agree that the book contains lots of promotion, but it still helped me a lot in understanding the role that nutrition has in our lives. My take home from that book is that eating a lot of processed foods and meat is harmful, and it's better to eat whole foods instead, mostly plants.

Edit: I'm not a vegetarian by the way.

<comment><USER11> > eating a lot of ... meat is harmful

As one of the links explains, the data shows almost the opposite. More meat was weakly protective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Perhaps the cooking is key, as stated in this article: [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/08/990810064914.htm)

Digesting meat is a lengthy process, which I'd have thought would still tire us.

I thought it was pretty conclusive that our digestive systems weren't suited for meat, and that's why there is so much colon cancer.

The raw foodies suggest that cooked food, triggers an immune reaction. Though you'd have thought we might have gotten used to it by now.

You'd have thought the powers that be would have figured out optimal human nutrition by now!

<comment><USER13> I think that's it's pretty obvious that our digestive systems are suited for meat, since we're completely incapable of digesting most plant matter.

Humans are incapable of metabolizing most of the foliage out there, whether or not we cook it, whereas we can draw nutrition easily from fruit, nuts, and even raw meat.

Our dentition patters are further evidence; we're dentally equipped as omnivores, but our dentition patters learn more towards carnivore than they do herbivore.

<comment><USER14> While we can eat and digest meat, that fact doesn't address the larger question of what is optimal for us to eat.

Our canine teeth are quite pathetic compared to true carnivores: 4, not very big. Compared to all our molars, side-to-side jaw motion for grinding veggies, etc. Also, compare teeth patterns of our primate relatives with us, and their diets - gorillas and chimps have much larger canine teeth, but their diets are mostly vegetarian.

Also, if we're meant to eat a lot of meat, why are our digestive tracts nothing like carnivores'? Compare length, acidity, and time to digest.

Finally, thousands of people die every year from choking on food. I don't think they're mostly choking on berries, leaves, or rice.

<comment><USER15> > Our canine teeth are quite pathetic compared to true carnivores: 4, not very > big

You know that people can use tools, right?

<comment><USER16> Are you suggesting that we've been using tools so long that our teeth have evolved to account for this adaptation?

In other words, are you suggesting that there was a human at one time that had a more canine like mouth?

<comment><USER15> No, I'm saying that big canines are useful for killing things, not eating meat. People don't kill the way a tiger does, and probably never have. I don't see how it follows that people weren't designed to eat meat.

<comment><USER16> Is there an example of an animal you have that supports the assertion that it is hunting habit that determine the style of teeth and not diet?

I'm curious because I always thought diet was the driver in mouth design, while hunting was more a factor in eye placement.

<comment><USER15> Most teeth are for chewing or incising food, and thus I'd expect most teeth styles to be designed for diet. Canines aren't used for eating - they're used for killing. So I'd be surprised to learn that they evolved for diet only. I'm too lazy to do the research, but I'd be happy to be learn I'm wrong. A quick search turned up a somewhat relevant article about large canines in primates (not carnivorous):

[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080626145058.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080626145058.htm)

It discusses whether they evolved the large canines for fighting or to impress females, but either way it wasn't related to diet.

<comment><USER16> Actually, if you read further into the article it seems to suggest that, yes, in fact there was a time when hominids had large canines, and we evolved into our current tooth structure.

Interesting link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is this person suggesting?

I'm assuming that the size of a person's brain is based on two things. First, their genes. Second, the environment including diet.

If the researcher is suggesting that diet increases brain size, well that should be easy to measure on living people and will give a fairly definitive answer.

If the researcher is suggesting that eating meat changed our genes, well that needs to be explained.

</comment><comment><USER18> The older I get the more I realize our biology has an agenda of its own. I wonder if people who smoke cigarettes are really unconsciously building up their immune systems for their great great great grand children for an unforeseen future where the atmosphere gets really bad and they need the immunity to live long lives.

These kinds of thoughts make for great sci-fi.

<comment><USER19> You know Lamarkism was discredited long ago?

Anyway I do believe a good story could come from there.

<comment><USER20> Lamarkism might be seeing a revival. Not really! But something you might see as similar: epigenetics. Scientists are increasingly aware that gene expression is controlled by more than the genes themselves. Some of these control factors may be inheritable.

<comment><USER21> [citation needed] It's important to be clear what people are talking about when they mention epigenetics. What examples did you have in mind?

<comment><USER11> He gave you a citation. search on epigenetics. It's seen a lot of headlines in the last couple years.

<comment><USER21> Where do we see a specific citation in the thread below my question or nearby? A lot of different phenomena have been labeled "epigenetic" in the last few years, without great consistency. I have quite a large number of reference works on genetics at hand in my office, and I was asking specifically which study the HN participant to whom I was replying had in mind.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Self-inlining anonymous functions in C++ - <AUTHOR> http://matt.might.net/articles/self-inlining-anonymous-functions-in-c++/

<comment><USER2> This is truly revolting, offensive code. Unless you like C++ template metaprogramming, I recommend you don't look.

:)

<comment><USER3> (Edit: fixed formatting) Revolting? I think that's a pretty good, if complex, example of "pushing the limits". IMHO, the label "revolting" is reserved for code like this:

      Derived() : Base() {
        THISCALL(0x535AA0);
        *(DWORD*)this = 0x7E1AF4;
      }

That's the kind of code I get to write in my hobby project.

<comment><USER2> It's using the type system to encode an arithmetic expression, with unique types for every distinct subtree; and then using statically-dispatched calls to inlined methods to get the compiler to embed the tree in-place, so that the optimizer's constant folding can evaluate the tree. The amount of code and data that's being shifted around and manipulated inside the compiler to generate a rather trivial end effect is what's offensive to me. If C++ were slightly more expressive, the technique would be unnecessary; but some C++ acolytes actually extol these kinds of techniques as a feature!

<comment><USER4> The technique is unnecessary, regardless as to C++ - its just a different way to write code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty cool - the final compiled code looks pretty tidy considering the hoops being jumped through. :)

</comment><comment><USER5> If you are interested in this subject, you might find the following pertinent:

<http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_42_0/doc/html/lambda.html>

and as someone posted here before:

<http://gcc.gnu.org/projects/cxx0x.html>

There's also an interview with a "brief" summary from Scott Meyers at [http://www.se- radio.net/podcast/2010-04/episode-159-c0x-scot...](http://www.se- radio.net/podcast/2010-04/episode-159-c0x-scott-meyers) that mentions lambda functions.

<comment><USER6> Wow. Things that look like expressions, but are most definitely not, through the magic of operator overloading. So you can translate some expressions straightforwardly, but other expressions not, with the cases for what works and doesn't requiring careful thought.

So this works:

        for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << *_1 << '\n');

This doesn't:

        for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << '\n' << *_1);

But this does:

        for_each(vp.begin(), vp.end(), cout << constant('\n') << *_1);

Considering how complex it is to figure out what works and what doesn't in that lambda slot, I'm not sure it's worth the effort. Of course I'm not a C++ programmer, and this is yet another reason why that might not be such a bad thing.

(Note: this is regarding Boost lambda, if that wasn't clear.)

<comment><USER7> _Considering how complex it is to figure out what works and what doesn't in that lambda slot, I'm not sure it's worth the effort._

I am a C++ programmer, and that's exactly the conclusion I came to regarding Boost's lambda. I use Boost's bind library all the time, though.

But! C++0x has real lambdas, so we won't have to resort to this trickery much longer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Feels like somebody doesn't trust #define's for their C++ code. While you don't get the type "safety" you get something thats a bit more natural.

<comment><USER9> You can't do this with #define alone. You can pass these "functions" around arbitrarily, and it still works.</comment></comment>


No departments - <AUTHOR> http://www.startuplessonslearned.com/2010/06/no-departments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+startup%2Flessons%2Flearned+%28Lessons+Learned%29 <comment><USER2> Compartmentalization addresses scaling. In particular, it addresses scaling group interaction between the members of a group with a common group goal but heterogeneous skills, responsibilities, and individual goals. It can address this problem well or poorly, but all the good solutions (and probably all the solutions) involve some amount of compartmentalization, and allowances for cross-compartment interactions. The really good solutions don't have huge downsides, but they all have costs. And there are tons of ways to do it wrong.

If you are a small start-up, you do not have this scaling issue yet. You shouldn't bring in the solution if you don't yet have the problem, especially because the solution is costly, treacherous, and difficult to do well.

</comment><comment><USER3> I started to write a comment here but it became a bit lengthy and so thought I would post it to my blog. You can find it here<[http://blog.parishmedia.info/post/708546766/no- departments-y...](http://blog.parishmedia.info/post/708546766/no-departments- yes-communication>); if you are interested. For the tl;dr version, the problem isn't departments, its communication.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the exact same problem HN discussed yesterday with the post on Hiring people with different skills.

You either have to hire people cross trained or you have to be willing to cross train them yourself.

Just assuming that cross training will happen on its own is a big mistake.

</comment><comment><USER5> Departments means middle-managers. Middle-managers have no direct responsibility for making the product/company successful; they are destined to optimize their own department.

Which always ends up: construct the smallest possible product feature set with the largest possible budget (money AND time). Voila! the greatest chance of departmental success.

All middle managers should be lined up and shot (lined up so one bullet will do for the whole line). The company will immediately begin to be more profitable, and ramp up from there.</comment>


Seeing Interactive (YC W10) Changes Name To OwnLocal, Launches Deals Network - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/18/seeing-interactive-changes-name-to-ownlocal-launches-hyper-local-deals-network/

<comment><USER2> Makes a lot of sense. My friend and I worked on a hyperlocal news concept with some journalists at the LA Daily News in 2008 but just couldn't see a way to make a business model work. We joke now that we should have realized that the only news that readers and advertisers would have been interested in was saving 50% or more on limited-time deals, and it would have been nice to realize that while the paper still had a robust sales staff.

But in all seriousness, it's a perfect fit for local newspapers. Much more efficient than a national company trying to reach into lots of markets itself. Now that this can move beyond newspapers into just about any local outlet, the possibilities for OwnLocal are very intriguing. Great growth potential and an exciting product. This looks like the future of local deals.

By the way, it's a shame newspapers have no money left, or they could retool to do some awesome targeted marketing. If they had the ability to make more customized newspapers for some selected addresses (not just region-by-region), they could unlock a different market for advertisers.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the new concept. My mom gets frustrated that the Groupon deals aren't truly "local", and that makes her want to unsubscribe. You guys are in a great position to solve this. Congrats Lloyd, Jason & Jeremy.

<comment><USER4> This is certainly among the best things we can do. We view it as a complement to all the other things we're doing to save local journalism.

You can view a deal going on for The Press-Enterprise (one of our top 100 newspaper clients) here: <http://www.pedeals.com>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Smart move. This is probably the best thing a local paper could do to stay relevant in the broader media scheme right now.

<comment><USER6> Exactly, Newspapers are in a prime position to leverage local confidence in the paper "brand" to reach out to otherwise disaffected local SMB website owners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The problem with being hyper-local is that it requires hyper-local sales and marketing. This is extremely time-consuming and expensive with small returns: a hyper-local deals campaign is by definition a small one. Very, very hard to pull off for a small business.

<comment><USER4> We couldn't agree more. That's why we don't go it alone. We work with local publications and organizations to very quickly build a sales funnel out of existing contacts and relationships. This is the way we work for all our products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not sure I understand the differentiator between OwnLocal and Groupon. Could someone explain, maybe with product examples? As far as I can see, they're going "hyper-local", but what's more hyper-local than a restaurant with 50% off a block over from my house? Maybe I missed something. Either way, good luck OwnLocal!

<comment><USER2> As I see it, although it's essentially the same product, it's a significantly different outlet.

The comparison I'd make is between Blockbuster and Redbox.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> With apologies for cynicism, how long will it be a viable pivot for struggling startups to move into the daily deals space?

I've seen it 5 times now, once at the behest of the VC, and it clearly can get you to revenue, I just don't know if it still leads to profits & scalability.

<comment><USER4> Hi Kevin, this isn't a pivot at all.

It's another product we can sell to our newspaper and local organization partners. We haven't met a newspaper yet that is happy with their daily deal provider. They asked us if we would make a solution and we did.

<comment><USER9> Cool, the name change made me think you were moving away from the old business model (as did the submission title).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice move. Groupon may lose it's effectiveness in hyper-local markets after a while. It just becomes too costly for markets of such a size. OwnLocal will provide a much more sustainable option for local businesses, especially at the price points they are charging.

</comment><comment><USER11> Good luck getting your site back online!

<comment><USER4> Yeah, we're not too happy with Rackspace right now...

Edit: And we're back.</comment></comment>


Structured Page Fragments by YouTube (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/youtube/spfjs <comment><USER2> What's the reason for posting this? It's been posted before ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10667783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10667783)) and the repo seems to be dead since beginning 2017 (4 open PR's from 2017).

It also looks like it doesn't fit the current web-meta anymore :)

<comment><USER3> It's still used on youtube.com today[1], what's your problem with something not being updated? The PRs are trivial stuff, the issues don't seem too bad either.

[1] <script src="[https://s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/spf- vflhSOzLf/spf.js"](https://s.ytimg.com/yts/jsbin/spf-vflhSOzLf/spf.js") type="text/javascript" name="spf/spf" ></script>

<comment><USER2> When a PR isn't merged or closed within a couple of months at least, the project doesn't look healthy to me. It might still function. Just wondering what the reason of reposting this would be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unpoly [1] lets you achieve the same effect without having to wrap your content in a JSON transport envelope. There are no two cases for static and dynamic navigation. The HTML you already have is used for transport, fragments are targeted with CSS selectors.

[1]: [https://unpoly.com/](https://unpoly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> > A [...] framework for fast navigation and page updates

Not sure what the criteria for "fast" is, but on my 12' MacBook with Safari, it's consistently faster (and less glitchy) to just load a new Youtube page than to let this "fast" navigation do it. Using Youtube is actually painful because of this.

<comment><USER6> I can't agree more. These JS shits makes the web pages unusable day-by-day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this whole idea flawed? How is dynamic JS content update easier for browser than static HTML5 content? Overall amount of CPU time and RAM used will be larger so if anything it's not faster or lighter. Also turning off JS for site using this lib makes it unusable.

<comment><USER8> Well, youtube does manage to play the video instantly but having to wait 5+ seconds for recommended videos and comments to load is pretty awful and distracting once they load

<comment><USER5> The worst is that on Safari (at least, might also affect other browsers), when navigating to a different page and setting the player to fullscreen, it will go back to windowed mode when the other page components (related videos, etc) load. It's a nightmare.

<comment><USER8> That too, and it also happens on firefox

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have a strong feeling this isn't actually faster in most cases, but I'll try and see. Maybe it's the fact that your main content can in theory load faster than the page parts that are not as important.

</comment><comment><USER10> How does this compare to PJAX : [https://github.com/defunkt/jquery- pjax](https://github.com/defunkt/jquery-pjax) ?

<comment><USER4> With pjax you choose a selector that is updated. This is usually a <div> in your layout that houses the main page content.

spfjs lets you target multiple containers with a single update, e.g. in YouTube the video area and the sidebar with related content.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even YouTube isn't using it anymore</comment>


Ask HN: Creating the Perfect™ Job Listing for engineers. What needs to be in it? - <AUTHOR> A few days ago, I posted "Trouble hiring senior engineers? It's probably you - When hiring senior engineers, you're not buying, you're selling" and got lots of great feedback here on HN[0] and reddit[1].
I was pretty negative about the quality of most job descriptions, so naturally many people asked for examples of good job listings. I'm now writing a follow up post for which I'm trying to create The Perfect™ Job Description for engineers. Of course, "perfect" is highly subjective, so I'd love to get your input.
Here's a few random ideas I had so far:
- Salary range (an obvious one)
- We know you value focused development time and we understand that interruptions are costly. We keep meetings rare, light and short. Average meetings take X minutes.
- We understand that time spent at the office doesn't equate to productivity. On average, team members work X hours per week.
- Here's what the rest of our hiring process looks like: (Link with answers to: How many rounds of interviews? Coding challenges? Timeframes?)
What do you think should be in it? What should definitely NOT be in it?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18955731
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/agajxv/trouble_hiring_senior_engineers_its_probably_you/ <comment><USER2> \- Distinguish carefully between requirements and "nice to have". Don't call it a requirement unless you're pretty much completely unwilling to hire anyone without it.

\- Note oddities of your physical environment, like open plan office, non- adjustable chairs, desks, monitors, noise like a loud restaurant, no public (non-MITM) WiFi, etc.

\- Note oddities of your development practices, like forced pair programming, daily meetings, Scrum/Agile/Flavor-of-the-Week, everyone must use Eclipse, everyone must use Macs, source control in Perforce.

\- Note actual average weekly hours, with some hint of variance.

\- Note actual annual turnover.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points! Didn't think of turnover, which can be a really good indicator.

Office environment is of course also very important.

<comment><USER2> Yeah. I once took a job paying FANG-level comp, but with a publicly inferrable turnover of 35% per annum. _Big_ mistake.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Looks great so far. I'd like to know the company's values, what dev practices are in place (XP, scrum, etc) and what they actually mean to the company. How difficult or easy deployment is. How much time is spent on features, bugs, and maintaining legacy code, what the stack is for legacy and for the new stuff, listed separately. Etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback! That's all great stuff and some things I didn't think about, I really like explicitly separating the current stack from legacy code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the best job postings I've ever read was basically a description of "this is what your typical workday will be like".</comment>


Interactive Design and Optimization of Free-formed Free-flight Model Airplanes - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KJUVJAUY8o <comment><USER2> These are more accurately described, I think, as paper darts - the lack of camber in particular, makes this more of a dart design tool. But! Its a step closer to having a real airplane design tool .. if they can layer the wings and produce camber using the same simple cutout techniques, then we have something even more useful for the budding junior pilots of tomorrow to use to learn how things fly.

(Disclaimer: I'm working on an airplane printer. You turn a handle, feed in raw materials, and get a flying product at the other end of the box. I'm focusing on Kline-Fogelmann wing style, since its a very easy and workable camber technique .. hope to have something to report to HN about the project soon..)

</comment><comment><USER3> A very interesting paper [0]. I'm actually taking a similar approach (though, more generic in nature) for my CFD work (namely, using experimental data to help correct my numerically obtained answers for the same craft). After that, we take very different approaches in our work.

[0]: [http://www- ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ume/publication/2014_siggr...](http://www- ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ume/publication/2014_siggraph_GliderDesign.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This is the coolest thing I've seen all day. Every kid should get the chance to play with this software in school and build their designs

</comment><comment><USER5> Have they released the actual software? I'm learning making amateur planes and can't wait to use this.

</comment><comment><USER6> Does anyone feel the female narrating voice is artificially-generated from a script?

</comment><comment><USER7> I want this in the next mobile game I play.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is the app available?

<comment><USER9> Seems not. Their webpage is: [http://www- ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ume/GliderDesign/2014_sigg...](http://www- ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~ume/GliderDesign/2014_siggraph_GliderDesign.html) but I haven't seen any download link. I would love to play with it, thought.</comment></comment>


Perceived Physical Activity and Mortality: Study - <AUTHOR> https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/mind-over-matter-how-fit-you-think-you-are-versus-actual-fitness-2017081412282 <comment><USER2> With the first study, I notice that they didn't take into account the participants' general attitudes and happiness levels. It's possible that the people who "thought they were more active", felt that way because they were more optimistic/confident/happy in general, which in turn leads to the reduction in mortality.

The second study is more convincing, since it relies on randomly assigned groups. However, I don't think they measured the participants' actual level of activity during the course of the experiment? It's possible that the different interventions led to differences in activity level, during the experiment period, which led to the physiological improvements later seen.

Perhaps I'm being overly cynical in not accepting the study's conclusion. It just seems too fantastic, that someone can lose weight and reduce their mortality, merely by deluding themselves on how active they really are.

<comment><USER3> Yes, a hidden factor seems far more likely. There is probably some secondary variable that affects both your mortality rate and your perception of your own fitness. This seems much more likely, even to the point of seeming obvious.

<comment><USER4> Feel like it might be being optimistic. I believe "positive outlook" at the very least has correlated with better health, longevity, etc.

Feeling in better shape (and not actually being so) is a byproduct of optimism.

<comment><USER5> "Being healthy makes people feel healthy" (and thus more optimistic/active/positive) would be the more occhamish interpretation of that correlation.

<comment><USER4> But I think it goes both way, with anticipation driving outcome as much as if not more than the other way around. That's the gist of the study. How you feel is more important than how healthy you actually are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would read that as "adhoc guess of people outperforms statistical model," so the model probably misses some factor that people just take into account. As an example, someone who knows that they have cancer and that therefore their health will rapidly decline in the near future will likely not report that they are leading a healthy and active live, even though data right know shows that they are trying to keep in good shape. Or a combination of many similar but less spectacular things.

Not to belittle the researchers, but trying to outperform a brain that gets data about the individual situation 24 h a day is a quite hard task.

<comment><USER7> Outperforming the brain is different from making poor assumptions regarding data collection, isn't it? It sounds like in your example the model is not winning because of inaccurate setup but at the end you're conceding that humans might just be innately better than the model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish physical movement was somehow integrated with software engineering more. Weak solutions like standing desks don't make it the cardio equivalent of something like a cleaning job.

It's sad that we sacrifice health for more money only to spend it on health- related issues we accumulate from our career choice.

I always thought that maybe having to carry a medicine ball up a hill in order to deploy a service would be fun.

<comment><USER9> I love to exercise - but I really like being able to keep that separate from other aspects of my life.

I've worked manual labor jobs. They suck, and they damage your body. If you think sitting all day long is bad for your health, imagine what even just pushing a broom thousands of times a day is doing to say, your rotator cuff.

Pack a healthy lunch, keep your hours reasonable, get up from your desk and walk around every couple hours, exercise in your free time, and your office job won't kill you.

As to which type of job is more "fun" \- a construction foreman once told me that he always sees these guys who try working construction to get away from their office job, who try to find meaning/enlightenment through manual labor - a sentiment you hear here a lot - and they always go back to their office job. Always.

But the guys who manage to escape the jobsite for the office - they never, ever come back.

<comment><USER10> And yet construction workers were the happiest group surveyed:

[https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/construction-workers- topped-r...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/construction-workers-topped- rankings-happiest-employees-matt-jones)

Personally, I really couldn't agree more with what you're saying. The prospect of doing manual labor for a living just sounds awful. Getting dirty and smelly, blowing out my knees and ruining my back, having my brain stuck in idle for 8 hours all day every day, massively increasing my probability of suffering a crippling or fatal work-related accident. And an office job has the possibility of leading to a work-from-home situation, which would allow you to get whatever level of exercise of whatever type you want every single day of the week.

<comment><USER11> > having my brain stuck in idle for 8 hours all day every day

You'd be surprised how many times manual labor requires solution finding. Even figuring out a leaking pipe or a problem in the electricity panel requires ingenuity. Designing and making custom furniture can be complex. A competent construction worker / repairman can be like a dev and payed like one (& sometimes harder to find). Take a look at those DIY videos to see what I mean. Not to mention the tooling these guys have in their shops ...

<comment><USER8> Yea, the opinion that you can only use your brain in an office job is wrong, but that opinion is somehow is imprinted on everyone.

I know people who work(ed) construction who are actually very smart and they constantly belittle their own intelligence because they don't have a college degree or have a job that works with computers. Vice versa I know people who attend graduate school at tech institutes who are actually stupid in many ways but are so full of themselves because they've managed to memorize enough to pass engineering classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The little review "suggesting that how fit you think you are affects your risk of death more than how fit you actually are," seems to not have parsed the studies it claims to be quoting.

"No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were "a lot less active" than their peers, this was associated with a statistically significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when compared to people who thought they were "more active." Again, this is regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors (smoking, being overweight, etc.)."

This was -after- controlling for actual fitness (eg. BMI). That doesn't mean "perception matters more than BMI," it means "perception matters a lot in explaining the variance that remains after removing all the variability explained by actual fitness."

The second study wasn't just about "activity perception." It came with a positive message from authority figures, and offered an additional validation of an otherwise low-prestige job. Both of these things might contribute to a motivation-driven short term effect that has nothing at all to do with long term self-perception not long term mortality.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I don't doubt that thinking of yourself as fit helps (not least by encouraging you to remain more active), I have to wonder if people who feel physically unwell on a frequent basis are not more likely to think of themselves as not fit.

</comment><comment><USER14> > No matter how they ran the numbers, if people thought they were "a lot less > active" than their peers, this was associated with a statistically > significant higher risk of death: at least 18% when compared to the general > population (those whose data were not included), and up to 71% higher when > compared to people who thought they were "more active." Again, this is > regardless of actual physical activity or other health risk factors > (smoking, being overweight, etc.).

Knee-jerk, hobby-horse-compliant hypothesis: reduced levels of perceived activity are a symptom of below-average/impaired interoception [1], and effects of that deficit (less efficient homeostatic feedback, inability to recognize progressive injury and illness in its early stages) are responsible for the increased mortality.

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

> Interoception is contemporarily defined as the sense of the internal state > of the body. It encompasses the brain's process of integrating signals > relayed from the body into specific subregions—like the brainstem, thalamus, > insula, somatosensory, and anterior cingulate cortex—allowing for a nuanced > representation of the physiological state of the body. This is important for > maintaining homeostatic conditions in the body and, potentially, aiding in > self-awareness.

</comment><comment><USER4> > "Our mindset affects our motivation."

It effects more than motivation. Take stress for example. Under stress - e.g., "am I fit enough?" perhaps? - the body releases cortisol. To the best of my knowledge, cortisol has been linked to weight gain. Stress effect sleep, which has system-wide implications. Etc.

The mind is the body and the body is the mind. The Western separation of the two is a myth that should be considered irrelevant at this point.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wasn't there a study of hotel cleaners whom had an overall increase in health because they were told their jobs already included exercise? This also seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy effect, whereby a "healthy" thinking person makes slightly different choices than someone else whom believes themselves to be "unhealthy."

</comment><comment><USER16> I can't get the math to work to reach 475 million American adults.

Our current population is only 347 million and the birthrate is about 1.25%. Running a total for the last 20 years or so I can't get more than 300 million adults or so.

Any math folks that want to analyze the number of unique adults entering/leaving the US from 1990 to 2011?

<comment><USER17> I think idea is the sample size of 60k was varied enough to represent a population size of up to 475M. More than enough to reflect the real population and then some.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Perceived Physical Activity and Morality would also be an interesting study.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's quite difficult to measure a potential reality that could be outside accepted reality using the tools of accepted reality.

That is to say, there are so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or impossible to explain with existing science. Those who do not accept such possibilities naturally do not see proof of them, and those who do accept those possibilities may see them or even perhaps imagine that they see them when there may be a simpler explanation.

I find it ironic that some rabidly religious people cannot accept any explanation for events other than what their book(s) tells them, while at the same time strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different books. Neither group sees their mirror image in the other...

<comment><USER20> > so many cases of thoughts seeming to affect reality that are difficult or > impossible to explain with existing science

Rather, science has explained many of these cases already.

Humans are prone to confirmation biases, are really bad at probability, and have quite faulty memories.

Those facts combined result in phenomenon that exist outside science because any time science sheds light upon them, it turns out that it is a construct of the human brain unrelated to reality.

> strictly "scientific" people likewise behave the same, but using different > books

Scientific people do not hold on to books with no evidence and accept challenge. Science is more about the methodology and reasoning than about the current conclusions. If a scientist is ignoring something counter to their books, it's because the books have provided more scientific evidence than the challenging opinion.

There's a massive difference here, and simplifying science down to "it's like religion, but the bible is other scientist's books" is neither helpful nor accurate.

<comment><USER19> I did not simplify it as you state, and I certainly did not make a blanket statement.

But regarding science and possibilities, how often in history had science said somethingwas not possible or real, and by rules of science at that time they were correct, but later with more understanding science began to allow the observed thing to be "real".

Science, its definitions and rules, are ever changing and advancing. Thus it is fair to say that at any given time we are dumber than we will be in the future.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> ...or people can "feel" their general status and therefore those that think they will not live long didn't actually live long.

</comment><comment><USER22> People had a measure of fitness that was accessed by asking "how active / fit are you?"

Researchers had a different measure of fitness.

If the researcher's measurements are less predictive than people's estimates, one possible reason is that there's some powerful mental effect going on.

However, a more parsimonious interpretation might be that self-perceived fitness was a better measurement than the one the researchers came up with. This isn't completely unreasonable because the subjects have access to more information about their own health than do the researchers.

<comment><USER23> Agreed though the previous study had an intervention and so more directly supported the idea that the belief created benefits.

</comment></comment><comment> your-nanny >a representative sample estimated to reflect over 475 million US adults.

Thems some odd numbers

<comment> your-nanny The number exceeds total us population. However if it's a count over time with entry if new persons into popukatiob then possible

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The brain has pretty direct contact to all the cells of the body. Regardless of overall activity, if the brain has an idea in mind, it can make it happen.

There's a tribe in Africa that comes to mind. They studied them, because they don't eat that much and they do a ton of activity. It turns out, when they run, they just burn fewer calories than most people. So, intake, calories burned, overall health, it all seems to not follow a hard and fast rule, apart from the intention of the mind.

Ignore politics for a second, the amount of time he spent on his feet and the amount of energy it must have required during the campaign, and how Trump's doctors say he's really healthy(assuming you believe them), but his diet looks pretty bad, but you know in his head, he's saying, "I'm the healthiest, I'm so healthy, my health is great, it's the best".

Take-away from article? "I'm so healthy, I'm the healthiest, my health is huge, it's the best."

</comment><comment><USER25> Yes mindset is important. But having run 8 marathons I can tell you wishful thinking is not a substitute for training.

You can't really quantify fitness, there are too many subtypes (running? swimming? weightlifting?) This study used blood pressure and weight (among others) but those can vary wildly based on genetics and diet, I'm not sure they're reliable indicators.

The point of the article (as I understand it) is that positive thinking can influence your health. Fine. But let's not get carried away: you're not going to roll out of bed and complete an Ironman without training just because you think you can.

EDIT: Mods have updated the title to better reflect the first underlying study (which focuses on mortality, not fitness).

But 1) even with the focus on mortality, it's still hard to correlate PMA and mortality and not control for diet, exercise, history, genetics, etc. and 2) if PMA doesn't correlate w/fitness, it's hard to see how it can make you live longer (i.e., can you be morbidly obese and positive and live longer than an athlete with a bad mental attitude?)

PMA is good. But I'm having a hard time believing you're going to live longer -- seems like there are 50 other factors that are more important.

<comment><USER26> I thought capacity for taking in oxygen[1] was a general indicator of fitness. But then again, I haven't looked into this since highschool 15+ years ago.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VO2_max)

<comment><USER25> What about powerlifters or weightlifters? Super strong. Get winded walking up a flight of stairs.

My point is, there is no one universal definition of fitness.

The most reliable measure I've heard of is belly fat, which you can measure with a calipers. But you can't wish away belly fat with positive thinking, so I think the writers of this article are taking this study a little too far, IMO.

<comment><USER27> Belly fat would be a poor measurement of a lot of powerlifters fitness as well.

The article seems to be mixing up "fitness" and "chance of death", which, while they are related, are probably not as directly correlated as they seem to be in the article.

<comment><USER25> Yes, the article seems to take liberties from the two studies it quotes.

But I also am skeptical of the underlying studies. So many factors in mortality rate I'm having a hard time believing they were able to control for all of those (weight, age, diet, exercise, family history, etc) and isolate "positive thinking."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I can't believe this waffle qualifies for a Harvard medical school publication. Clearly the wooly-haired management and soft science types have overrun Ivy League Medicine.

<comment><USER29> This comment breaks the site guidelines, which ask: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." So could you please not post like this here?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> You need to be logging at least 150 workout days a year to be considered fit.

<comment><USER31> I workout less than 100 hours a year in 1 hour sessions and I'd consider myself pretty fit. My peers and any physicians I've visited also agree.

I have to ask, by whose standard?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a social media optimization service? - <AUTHOR>

I'm thinking of building a SAAS solution for social media optimization from a developers point of view.  It would help you make sure your technical bases are covered on sites you're running and hoping to share on Facebook, Twitter, Google etc.
It would scan your shareable pages and ensure that all of the opengraph/schema.org tags are present, meta tag images the correct sizes for different screens and that everything is up to date with the changing resolutions/standards.  It would continuously monitor your pages so that if standards change or say a software update nixed the og tags you would know immediately.  I'd also try to provide accurate previews of what the posts would look like on different screens given your sites meta info.  I'd have it set up so that you could test a site behind http basic auth etc, so you could test your social tags before going live with the site.  (this has been a particular annoyance to me at least)
Similar to http://smo.knowem.com/ but a bit more fully featured and with continuous testing features.
Is this a service you would use?  I was thinking of a 19/49/99 pricing structure depending on 1/3/5+ users and the number of pages it'd test. <comment><USER2> I somewhat work in that space and the answer from me personally is no. There are a couple of reasons behind that decision for that which might help you.

1\. This isn't something I need to constantly check, the standards don't change that often and when they do, there is a lot of noise on all industry blogs about the fact.

2\. I can see if the markup on my pages will work by just using the provided tools from most of the major social networks such as Facebook. As a worst case scenario I could just post something myself to see how my pages looked.

It just isn't worth the kind of money that you are talking about for me to consider doing something like this. In reality the process of signing up and onboarding me is probably roughly comparable to the work it would take me to just test it myself in my mind.</comment>


Why Neo4j and Cypher beat SQL for analyzing code smells - <AUTHOR> http://www.airpair.com/neo4j/introduction-graph-databases

<comment><USER2> Seems like the problem size is small and persistence is not required, so I'm curious why you use a database at all. Is it more for the querying than the storage? If you don't mind being Windows-specific, LINQ over raw C# objects would be a (nice, simple) possibility. (I'm database-ignorant; trying to learn, not criticize.)

</comment><comment><USER3> "When I started to develop this tool, I just used SQL, because it was the only database I knew"

You may want to correct that.

<comment><USER4> IMHO, it's kudos to her for being honest; but... PhD and now an AP? ... uhm...

<comment><USER5> The researcher in question is smart and an engaging speaker. I've had the privilege of hearing her speak about spreadsheets, which was surprisingly interesting.

Every day is a chance to learn something new.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great post!

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting concept, should be turned into a SaaS!</comment>


Finally confirmed: An asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/147978-finally-confirmed-an-asteroid-wiped-out-the-dinosaurs

<comment><USER3> No, you became more certain that an asteroid hit a certain place to within a 11,000 year range. Title is false. From the actual paper's abstract:

> The Chicxulub impact likely triggered a state shift of ecosystems already > under near-critical stress.

So this confirms that one thing (likely) happened while other things were happening. I can think of other things that were happening that would put the ecosystem into near-critical stress:

\- For one thing, the Deccan traps were spewing crazy huge volumes of noxious material into the atmosphere for about 30,000 years.

\- For another, the supercontinent cycle was in a period of orogeny and likely caused an icehouse climate. There would be lower diversity in "bottom rung" niches, which combined with the hazardous effect of global volcanic eruptions for 30,000 years could very likely destabilize the food chain. This bodes poorly for large megafauna which reproduce relatively infrequently and require large amounts of specific foods to meet their nutrition requirements.[1]

There was a large confluence of factors and it makes intuitive sense that, just as the abstract says, a large impact could be the proverbial straw on the proverbial camel's back. I have no doubt the asteroid was important.

But this Roland Emmerich disaster movie interpretation of geology isn't nearly the whole picture. My best guess as to why we latch onto this hypothesis, aside from how admittedly awesome it sounds, is because it's hard for us to accept that this kind of change is gradual and can sneak up on us. It takes the matter out of our hands and alleviates us from certain responsibilities. Clearly something sudden must happen because otherwise we totally have this under control, right? But that sort of waxing is not terribly useful.

[1] (Update). Note how avian dinosaurs survived, but plesiosaurs did not. The air was apparently survivable enough, but the near-shore ecosystem - <USER2> would be adversely affected by the reduction in coastlines from a supercontinent aggregation - lost its large lumbering members sitting atop the precarious food chain. None of this constitutes evidence, but I think my wild- ass guess is at least as valid as any other wild-ass guess, consensus or not.

</comment><comment><USER4> See a current submission to HN

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5187709>

for a more nuanced discussion that is not a rehashed press release, but an edited long-form article by an experienced writer on the topic.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I read the title, I was also shocked by the word 'confirmed.' Any kind of explanation about dinosaurs explanation should be a theory. We can say 'the new evidence provided support for a theory' but cannot say 'the new evidence confirmed that the theory is the truth.'

<comment><USER5> I made a spelling mistake for that post but can no longer edit it. It should be 'Any kind of explanation about dinosaurs extinction'

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was hoping for some more evidence of causation. The new research is still circumstantial, in that before it was the assumptive cause because the impact was dated to within ~1 million years of the extinction event, and now it's even more assumed to be the cause because it has been dated to within ~11,000 years of the extinction event.

Where was the line drawn for it to be "confirmed"? Is circumstantial evidence the best we can do?

<comment><USER7> There's also the issue the extinction event is not instantaneous, but took a long time

As per wikipedia: "The fossil record shows that the tempo of the K-Pg extinction was extremely rapid, occurring on a scale of thousands of years or less"

But it is "confirmed" in the absence of better opposing evidence. Better results probably only with a time machine, or a better explanation

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps science changed in the last decade, but when I worked on my PhD words like "confirmed" and "definitely" were frowned upon.

<comment><USER9> we've learned how to science a lot harder these days

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Frequent asteroid impacts lend credence to the Doomsday Argument [1], which, simply put, argues that it is unlikely that the human race will be long lived, simply because it is growing so fast. According to the DA, there is a 95% chance of extinction within 9,120 years.

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

<comment> rkuykendall-com While we might all be disappointed that man has not left earth for the last 40 years, I am reasonably confident we will be able to get our act together within the next 9,119.

Reasonably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a tough time believing the word "confirmed" when the scientists behind the study use the words "likely triggered".

<comment><USER12> As a programmer who have to replicate bugs everyday just to tag something as confirmed, I have high respect for the word. Scientists do not, apparently.

<comment><USER13> >As a programmer who have to replicate bugs everyday just to tag something as confirmed, I have high respect for the word. Scientists do not, apparently.

If only scientists had the option to check all their theories by spinning up snapshots of Cretaceous–Paleogene Earth in a test universe.

Unfortunately, they have to make due with an fractional set of undocumented logs in form of geology.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CheapHarry – Fb bot that helps you get the cheapest Amazon prices - <AUTHOR> https://m.me/cheapharry <comment><AUTHOR> Hey! :) So, I finally have my first Messenger chat bot out the door... CheapHarry basically is a price monitor for amazon.com that lives inside Facebook Messenger. Just send him a link to any amazon.com products or your whole wish list and he will message you when prices drop (also, he tries to be a little funny but maybe isn't... :D). Just an fyi: Amazon prices actually fluctuate quite a bit and often it is worth trying to find a local low. :)

[https://m.me/cheapharry](https://m.me/cheapharry)

Any ideas on how to market? So far I am trying around with Fb ads a bit... PH is on the list as well...

<comment><USER2> Why bot and not browser extension?

<comment><AUTHOR> I feel it's easier to use for the average joe... My thinking is the average user doesn't really install browser extensions (?) and is already on facebook. Plus alerting with new price alerts should be quicker and easier to reach in Messenger then via e-mail or in-browser.

<comment><USER2> Well, I think chatbots are easy enough that it's worth a try. I'm not saying you shouldn't have built it.

It's just that a lot of people (most?) do their online shopping on mobile devices, and switching apps and then copying/pasting URLs is kind of tough in that context.

Anyway, just a question. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. Yeah, I mean it's just a try, will see.. :)

As for the mobile context: it should work with the native share functions in mobile browsers. So no actual copy/pasting required. I might wanna show that off in my "marketing" a little...

<comment><USER2> > _it should work with the native share functions in mobile browsers_

I honestly never thought about that. That's a much better workflow! And it actually solves the problem of most mobile users being unable to install plugins.

Sounds promising!

<comment><AUTHOR> any ideas for getting it into users' hands?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google admits its new smart speaker was eavesdropping on users (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2017/10/11/technology/google-home-mini-security-flaw/index.html <comment><USER2> Hmmm yet again, I am inclined to not believe this. How is it that these bugs always end up invading our privacy, and not the other way round? ("Google/Facebook admits a bug in their system reduced the data they could collect"). Because those bugs are true bugs as far as these companies are concerned, and they're squashed ASAP.

This is like when Facebook had an oopsie about leaving the microphone on, "oh no sorry it was just a bug." Right, when you abused an iOS API to leave your app running all the time, a side effect was that you also recorded all the conversations on the phone. These companies are becoming a cancer on our privacy.

<comment><USER3> >How is it that these bugs always end up invading our privacy, and not the other way round? ("Google/Facebook admits a bug in their system reduced the data they could collect")

Because you and I both know that's not newsworthy and wouldn't make it out from inside the company where it happened?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > My Google Home Mini was inadvertently spying on me 24/7 due to a hardware > flaw

Are we really supposed to believe this?

Charitably, Google does not take privacy seriously, because they release products that have gaping flaws they neglect to test or correct. It would have been trivial for a test engineer to see a unit is collecting data on conversations without the wake word.

Or uncharitably, Google does not take privacy seriously, because they are releasing spyware, and just lie when they get caught.

Edit: In this case, maybe some leeway can be given because they were test devices, but it still makes me wary of having these type of things in my home.

<comment><USER5> This case seemed a pretty cut and dry bug in pre-release software. They actually launched the device with the at-fault feature disabled while they fixed the bug, even. I get that Google is difficult to trust when it comes to privacy issues, but in this case it seemed like a bug much in the way a few weeks ago an Alexa picked up keywords that it understood as "Call this person" and the people on the other end of the call were able to hear a private conversation.

<comment><USER6> > This case seemed a pretty cut and dry bug in pre-release software.

In this case it was actually hardware—the button used to manually trigger the device (instead of saying "okay google"). Seems weird that Google managed to screw up a button, but i doubt it was malicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> By this point, is the the only difference between breaches by Google (and its ilk) and Equifax is that in the case of the former we can opt out using it?</comment>


Why did US weapon manufacturers choose a startup from Lithuania? - <AUTHOR> http://www.eylean.com/blog/2014/07/why-did-us-weapon-manufacturers-choose-a-startup-from-lithuania/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=DM31

<comment><USER2> On premises solutions are returning back?</comment>


Black Mirror's third season opens with a vicious take on social media - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/24/13379204/black-mirror-season-3-episode-1-nosedive-recap <comment><USER2> Umm, welcome, time traveler from two years ago? I'll try not to spoil season 4 for you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to be that guy, but (2016)</comment>


Martin Shkreli on Drug Price Hikes and Playing the World's Villain - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g&feature=youtu.be <comment><AUTHOR> Shkreli is slowing or perhaps quickly becoming an anti-hero against drug companies. Sort of movies like He was a quiet man. He's inadvertently becoming a poster child for drug price reform.</comment>


How to Keep Your Company Alive – Observe, Orient, Decide and Act - <AUTHOR> https://steveblank.com/2020/04/01/the-ceo-playbook-for-keeping-your-company-alive/ <comment><USER2> The title quote "observe, orient, decide, act" is called the OODA loop, and it turns out the OODA loop is significantly more valuable than the article lets on.

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

The OODA loop was developed by military strategist John Boyd, to explain how to direct one's energies to defeat an adversary and survive. Boyd emphasized that "the loop" is actually a set of interacting loops that are to be kept in continuous operation during combat. Boyd also indicated that the phase of the battle has an important bearing on the ideal allocation of one's energies. Boyd's views on the OODA loop are much deeper, richer, and more comprehensive than the common interpretation of the "rapid OODA loop" idea.

<comment><USER3> I highly recommend the biography "Boyd" about this man. I think I got the initial reco from this site.

<comment><USER4> Boyd was an amazing man and his biography is a must read for anyone who wants to accomplish the impossible in life.

[https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who- Changed/dp/B01...](https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pilot-Who- Changed/dp/B01I5OK43U/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought the OODA concept was pretty cool when I first read about it and John Boyd. And it's fun to say. OODA Loop, OODA Loop, OODA Loop. But it has been _seriously_ overused, to the point where nowadays it's just a shibboleth that "thought leaders" use to show their "edginess" or whatever.

The problem is that "orient" has no real meaning in most decision-making contexts, and watching people stretch it to fit is almost painful. Sure, if you adopt _exactly_ the right point in the word's semantic field, and carefully distinguish it from its neighbors (Observe and Decide), and squint a bit, it can make sense, but _good_ metaphors or acronyms don't work like that. They don't require a High Priest to provide interpretation. A better metaphor, which I learned in a talk on autonomous computers at a UC Berkeley CS retreat in ~2001, is:

      * Measure

      * Analyze

      * Plan

      * Execute

I might not have remembered the terminology exactly, let alone the acronym, but I think it's close. Steps 1/3/4 are roughly equivalent to the same in OODA, but step 2 is _quite_ different. More about accuracy/completeness than about rapidity, though _of course_ both are always important. I suppose one could substitute different words to make a catchier acronym like MAKE or MACE. If increasing dilettante appeal seems important, feel free. For me, the important thing is that we're not all fighter pilots and _it 's OK_ to have a qualitatively different decision process. Come up with your own metaphor, your own acronym, that fits _your_ situation intuitively without such arduous adaptation.

<comment><USER6> OODA is certainly overused but "Orient" is hardly a mystery or metaphor – Boyd described it as the continuous re-evaluation of your "Cultural Traditions", "Genetic Heritage", "Previous Experience", "Analysis/Synthesis", and "New Information", and explained each of those in detail.

<comment><USER7> This hasn't explained what "Orient" means at all, you've just piled new concepts that need explaining on top of it and said it's a summation of them.

<comment><USER8> I'm completely new to this acronym but I'm grokking orient as "account for your bayesian priors."

<comment><USER9> That's about perfect

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We've had 10 years of frothiness in venture markets. Many employees under 30 don't even know what a downturn looks like. They're used to high pay, constant calls from recruiters, and venture capital flowing into their companies. Even the companies who flop, no big deal, just go down the street to the next company. I worry that that generation is going to have the most difficulty with these changes. They'll wonder why things are contracting, why difficult decisions need to be made, can't we just wait this one out...?

I've never seen anything like COVID-19. I lived through the dot-com bubble, watching friends who want from an IPO party to crying and packing up their car back to Iowa within 6-months. Tech contracted and survived. Then there was the 2008 financial crisis. In that case, the damage was spread out beyond tech centers. Capital markets dried up and life seemed very uncertain for awhile.

With COVID-19, we went from extreme prosperity to an unprecedented shutdown of _global_ economies with massive uncertainty as to how long this will last. Every business will be affected, the vast majority of them negatively.

I really wonder whether everyone is prepared for what it means to live in scarcity instead of abundance.

<comment><USER11> "We've had 10 years of frothiness in venture markets. Many employees under 30 don't even know what a downturn looks like. They're used to high pay, constant calls from recruiters, and venture capital flowing into their companies. Even the companies who flop, no big deal, just go down the street to the next company. I worry that that generation is going to have the most difficulty with these changes. They'll wonder why things are contracting, why difficult decisions need to be made, can't we just wait this one out...?"

I went through this in 2002. It took me a long time to accept that the good life in the years before wasn't because I was so smart but because of a favorable market. It was quite a shock to actually having trouble finding something new and also to accept that my pay was significantly lower. Somebody told me at that time "now you see how job search always has been for most of us".

<comment><USER12> We've been trying to hire since last year and have really struggled because rates devs have been looking for on the market are well above what we could see them returning value-wise for their experience level (that's just the nature of the market, I get it). When you have people getting £130k for doing React at a fintech company... well, I just hope people are prepared for the market changes that are underway.

Honestly, I'd rather this was all over and things went back to normal, but I do think that there's going to be a fairly hard reset of salaries for people that previously had a really sweet ride.

<comment><USER13> > When you have people getting £130k for doing React at a fintech company...

How much is that as a fraction of the value of an average family home in your location?

If there's a big fall in salaries, there's also going to be a big fall in property values.

<comment><USER11> "If there's a big fall in salaries, there's also going to be a big fall in property values."

I don't think so. Rents will go up and housing ownership will be concentrated even more on wealthy people and big companies.

<comment><USER13> The destruction of AirBnB may push rents down. Hard to see how rent can go _up_ beyond what people can actually afford?

<comment><USER11> Rent, health care, education and housing cost can go up to a level that it eats up most income for average people. That seems to be the trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There's no doubt action (and speed of adaptability) is important, but I'd also highlight a 2nd virtue - patience.

Action for the sake of action is called panic. People who like to control things (executives, leaders, me, etc) often feel like they need to be doing something to have a sense of control in the midst of chaos.

The only thing that needs action right now is triage - cost-cutting. Cash flow to survive and keep payroll going for the next 12-18 months. Once the safety net is in place, the mood changes from frantic survival to calm.

At that point, the ratio of thinking:acting time should arguably double. Recessions take _plenty_ of time to unwind. Take 30 days (not 2) to gather information from across the org and evaluate trending opportunities. _"Measure twice, cut once."_ applies to pivots, too.

Re-developing new models for recognizing opportunities and a new decision framework for when to act upon those opportunities takes time. The folks who spend more time thinking about where the puck is going to be vs. reacting to its every jitter are the ones who will come out ahead.

<comment><USER15> This is such an important point. However, sticking to the "panic only as much as needed" idea is difficult because, sometimes, incentives are skewed to reward panic. Think about all the laws that are passed without regard to the side-effects because "someone ought to do something about this". In peacetime, prepare for war. Before the crisis hits, you should take the time to think through how you and the people around you need to behave and what is likely to trip you up. Don't assume you will do the right thing. Plan to do the right thing.

<comment><USER16> Or as Deming liked to say, "Don't just do something -- stand there!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A similar title for this article could be: "How to bodysurf your way out of a tsunami"

Good luck, you're screwed.

If you're a cash flow negative startup even slightly tangentially related to an industry impacted severely by COVID, you're done. This economic shutdown is end of days for a huge number of small businesses.

The media is hyping shutdown until at least May, but I'm seeing more "June and on". If that comes to pass, there will be very few small businesses left standing in the heavily impacted industries. It's going to kill a lot of otherwise healthy businesses too.

The stimulus is mostly a feel good measure for politicians. How many of you have gotten your checks? How many have applied for EIDL loans and received them? How's the PPP going?

Oh I'm sure they'll iron out the kinks, but it'll be too little too late. Hope ya'll are up to date on your Steinbeck, because that's what's coming.

</comment><comment><USER18> A similar model taught to pilots is DECIDE:

      - Detect that change has occurred
      - Estimate the need to counter or react to the change
      - Choose a desirable outcome
      - Identify actions to achieve the outcome
      - Do the necessary action
      - Evaluate the effects of the action

It suffers a bit from being a backronym, and I don't know anyone who explicitly applies it "in real life," but I do emphasize the last item with students because it's so often overlooked. A lot of people will see a need for a change, do something to make the change, and then fail to notice that the desired outcome wasn't achieved.

I see this omission in software systems a lot too, which manifests as a lack of monitoring, control, verification, and/or alerting. An ETL process that doesn't verify the correctness of its output, for example.

</comment><comment><USER19> I imagine in many cases, what they chose to do in the past matters more than what they are doing now...in terms of survival.

Cash reserves, assets you can get loans on, percentage of workforce that are contractors or professional services, flexible contracts, reasonable real estate costs, for example.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some changes in the business environment seem non-intuitive. My cloud migration consulting work (which I thankfully do remotely) has seen a quick uptick. A lot of customers want to migrate to cheaper clouds or reduce their cloud footprint. I was expecting not have much work as many of my startup clients see revenue pressure. But in the short term a few months the opposite may happen.

</comment><comment><USER21> > " Notice that the word speed appears twice. This is not the time for > committees, study groups or widespread consensus building. Even with > imperfect information, the future of your company depends on your ability to > make rapid decisions and start acting."

Yikes. I guess principled decisions have to go? Executive authority!

It reminds me of the president in The Simpsons Movie... "I was elected to lead, not to read."

<comment><USER22> The OODA loop was invented by Col. John Boyd during the Vietnam War and is being adapted here for the business environment.

The point is for some hard decisions, you will have to act on imperfect or incomplete information. A good leader will make a decision, because doing nothing and hoping you get more info will in fact be worse than making the wrong decision. As you get more information, you can then alter or tailor your decision. This is especially true in a military environment.

For an example in a popular movie, look at 1st Lieutenant Norman S. Dike Jr. in Band of Brothers.

<comment><USER23> Isn't the point of getting inside the opponents OODA loop to force them to make decisions faster than they are able to sensibly and ergo force wrong decisions. If you get inside your own loop by hurrying your decision making forcing wrong decisions how is that sensible?

It also seems obviously untrue that acting on a wrong decision is better than doing nothing. The results of a wrong decision could of course be worse than the results of not making a decision in haste.

If you're already at the point of being forced to make decisions then you've already screwed up? You're being reactive.

<comment><USER22> >Isn't the point of getting inside the opponents OODA loop to force them to make decisions faster than they are able to sensibly and ergo force wrong decisions. If you get inside your own loop by hurrying your decision making forcing wrong decisions how is that sensible?

Nope. The point is if I am inside their OODA loop, I can make decisions and react quicker than the adversary. Now they are reacting to my decisions and I have the advantage.

> It also seems obviously untrue that acting on a wrong decision is better > than doing nothing. The results of a wrong decision could of course be worse > than the results of not making a decision in haste.

The keyword there is "could be". That's what makes leadership hard. You have to know when is enough information to make a decision, and when you need to wait. Or if you made the wrong decision, what can you do now?

EDIT: For an example, there's a small brewery down the street that cannot can all of their beer. Making beer takes 3 weeks at least. So there's predictions of COVID-19 ending in May to Sept. So what is the right choice? Do I hope that it ends early and brew beer in a couple of weeks, or do I wait until Sept? What about all of the perishable supplies I have now?

It does me a lot more harm to wait until the "all clear" and then order supplies. Why? Everybody else will do the same thing, and now I am out of beer for three weeks (and longer for other beer). That is a lot of revenue left on the table lost.

What about making it now? Well if I am too hasty, now I have beer that will skunk because I cannot sell it fast enough.

So the brewery owner needs to see what info they have now (obverse, orient), and decide and act. What will cost me more money?

<comment><USER23> > Nope. The point is if I am inside their OODA loop, I can make decisions and > react quicker than the adversary. Now they are reacting to my decisions and > I have the advantage.

Yes you'll have the advantage because they'll be making bad decisions as the situation will have changed by the time they've decided to act on older information. It's not sufficient to simply act faster you have to be making good decisions as well.

> The keyword there is "could be". That's what makes leadership hard. You have > to know when is enough information to make a decision, and when you need to > wait. Or if you made the wrong decision, what can you do now?

Yes exactly so acting isn't axiomatically the thing to do. Although making a great folly seems like a great way to get lionized in military history. :D

<comment><USER22> > Yes exactly so acting isn't axiomatically the thing to do. Although making a > great folly seems like a great way to get lionized in military history. :D

Usually when battles are studied in military history, they try to look at it based on what the leader knew then versus what we know now. Hindsight is always 20/20\. There are examples of famous battles where even studied now, military strategists say that the losing commander did the right thing, based on the information available.

<comment><USER23> For sure you can make good decisions based on the info available and still lose. You can also make bad decisions and still win. Sometimes decisions that seem vital are totally pointless etc. etc. etc.

<comment><USER22> ...what?

I think you completely missed the point of th OODA loop.

<comment><USER23> I understand the OODA loop thanks.

I was replying directly to your point that military historians found that some military commanders were making good decisions based on the info available even if they caused grand follys. I was pointing out that doesn't really say much as most people try to make good decisions but won't always be able to or won't be making decisions that actually matter as external forces overwhelm no matter what decision is made.

The best laid plans of mice and men often go askew to paraphrase Burns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Your revenue plans are no longer valid."

Probably my favorite line in the script :)

<comment><USER25> If they were in the first place, that is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> While OODA is an interesting and increasingly popular concept, it is really only useful when applied to very short intervals of time. You can and should expect that an opponent with "a reasonable amount" of time will make the correct response. In business that timeframe is much longer than the few minutes or seconds a modern aerial duel might be concluded in.

The general idea of OODA is that if you can "play fast" you can beat someone who can otherwise "play better". Think about how blitz chess differs from traditional multi-hour games, even though the rules of play are the same: for example it is often possible to exert time pressure by playing "confusing moves". This concept of "fast play" translates into the business timeframe more as the concept of "agility" (to be contrasted with large-company "inertia"), whereas businesses only try to confuse one another on television or by accident :-)

Concepts similar to OODA but more applicable to a business context and timeframe would include PDCA [1] and DMAIC [2].

PDCA a.k.a. the "Deming cycle" stands for "Plan, Do, Check, Adjust" and is closely related to the concept of "kaizen" [3] (or "continuous improvement"). PDCA happens in timeframes that can best be described as a "short project" (or a "kaizen event").

DMAIC ("Define, Measure, Analyse, Improve, Control") on the other hand is a framework commonly used for larger business interventions where the stakes are higher, more project members are needed, more structure is required and so on. It is a key feature of the Six Sigma [4] approach as well as Lean Six Sigma [5].

Note: I'm sure there are other valid approaches too. I'm just mentioning the ones I am familiar with in case anyone else is interested in methods to help businesses improve and respond to change.

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

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

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

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

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

</comment><comment><USER27> Unemployed Engineer here. I can also sew. Not sure what I should be doing. Should I make non government certified masks?

<comment><USER28> >Not sure what I should be doing.

Set up a schedule to modernize your skills and start applying to remote first companies.

>Should I make non government certified masks?

Yes, in the unscheduled time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not a single reference to the actual creator of this model, John Boyd, a fighter pilot.

</comment><comment><USER30> In Akamai the mantra is - Stabilize, Adapt, Emerge

</comment><comment><USER31> ...that and money</comment>


Disabling Callkit for China Apps - <AUTHOR> https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/103083 <comment><USER2> I feel bad for the Chinese Internet loving nerds and non-nerds alike. Their government is a repressive and misguided authoritarian regime that needs to be removed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Curious as to why China would want to block Callkit specifically. Is this just an easy way of saying "actually we don't want apps with any kind of VOIP functionality and will eventually block you anyway".

<comment><USER4> Yes. Same reason iPhones and iPads sold in China can't make or receive FaceTime Audio(-only) calls, even when used outside China, and even after firmware upgrades etc.

<comment><USER5> I've never purchased a "new from the Apple Store" iPhone in China. But I've purchased a second-hand/refurbished US model iPhone in country off of Taobao. And you can make/receive FaceTime Audio-only calls with it, in-country.

<comment><USER4> Yes, iPhones manufactured for countries other than China aren't affected. It's only the ones that are made for China, and distributed through the the apple store or carriers' own stores.

<comment><USER6> This may be an alternate explanation for what seem to be 3 out of 5 buyers in line at Apple iPhone launch events in NYC area being Chinese nationals with no English?

I assumed they were reselling locally in the NYC grey market electronics shops, but why all Chinese? Taking non-crippled phones back home, or making it easier for tourists to get in these shops, makes sense.

<comment><USER7> They are simply reselling it for profits. iPhone Trading in Grey Market are billion dollar business, not to mention US tends to get allocated the most iPhone per stores, and are one of the cheapest worldwide.

* The cheapest is actually iPhone in Japan, but due to hardware enabled sound when taking photos as required by law, there aren't any demand for Japanese iPhone.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>