No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://time.com/3313332/salt-and-blood-pressure/ <comment><USER3> I'm a medical student who actually read the paper this article refers to. I would be very careful trying to draw conclusions from a study like this. I don't think many people in the healthcare community would be very surprised by it.

1) All clinically treated hypertensive patients were excluded - that means if you have kidney or vascular disease (hypertension) and are being treated for it, you aren't counted here. Doctors WILL care about your salt intake if you have these conditions, as they should! It is very common to prescribe something called the DASH diet to lower sodium intake and increase potassium intake.

2) If you're healthy, it means your kidneys are healthy (simplifying). One of the purposes of the kidneys is to maintain homeostatic blood pressure by excreting a combination of salt and water. To put it simply, if you eat a huge load of NaCl, say in a dominoes pizza, your blood pressure WILL NOT be affected for a very long time. I'd guess 20 minutes or so after the salt enters your bloodstream. Which means these folks can't measure that blood pressure change by testing blood pressure yearly.

3) Either medical doctors or the press that listens to them have a nasty habit of taking treatments that often work for very sick people - morbidly obese, type 1 diabetics, bed-ridden centenarians - and applying it to normal healthy folks. I will go out on a limb and say that these unilateral recommendations are almost all BS, and should be ignored. If you're healthy: eating eggs will not affect your cholesterol, eating cheesecake will not give you diabetes, sitting in a chair will not misalign your spine. It would be prudent for you to be skeptical when you hear these claims, often on daytime television or on the internet.

<comment><USER4> 1) In trying to find out if, generically, there is a causal effect between salt intake and blood pressure, it is sensible to select a healthy population. The hypothesis being tested is "In good working condition, the human body maintains correct NaCl levels". You do not want to test people with faulty metabolism, because they are outside the scope.

2) See explanation in number 1.

3) I have not read the original paper, but the news article makes no mention of such inference.

I have to say that I think the premise that the human body must be excellent at maintaining NaCl levels perfect is sound. Sodium and chlorine are very active chemical elements. Having them in wrong levels probably throws _every_ chemical reaction in the body out of whack. If I were to design a chemical machine that used NaCl, keeping the correct level would be a primary control. Evolution tends to get these things right, so our bodies probably do have excellent control mechanisms for this balance.

<comment><USER3> I almost completely agree with this comment. I should have been more clear - my gripe is not so much with the study but with its interpretation by Time.

The study may have its own problems, but draws a conclusion I agree with, that the relationship between salt and blood pressure in healthy people may be overstated.

As for your point 3: I disagree. I think the news article makes a case that salt and blood pressure have _no_ relationship, which isn't true. It is only true if, almost by definition, your salt / water regulation system is healthy.

Your point about maintaining NaCl levels is probably roughly correct, though I don't think it has been demonstrated per se.

<comment><USER4> > As for your point 3: I disagree. I think the news article makes a case that > salt and blood pressure have no relationship, which isn't true. It is only > true if, almost by definition, your salt / water regulation system is > healthy.

It never states the inference directly, although as is common in mainstream media, the title of the piece is stronger than what is then told in the text. I think you may be getting too hung up on the title, and I understand the reason. Mainstream media often over-generalizes scientific findings, more so in the field of nutrition.

In the same vein you have a pet peeve with media behaviour, I have one with M.D. behaviour. One that may paint the overly generalized title in a kinder light:

Doctors often prescribe life-style changes: Eat less, eat better, exercise more, don't smoke, sleep well, sleep regularly, avoid stress. They fail at prioritizing, because they fail at recognizing that patients will never completely change their lifestyle. Willpower is a limited resource, and should be allocated as such.

The prioritization of lifestyle changes is important. If reducing salt intake is competing with reducing BMI, it should be a no-brainer that BMI reduction should come first. It is rarely the case. They are either presented as equally important changes or, since reducing salt intake is easier than shedding 20kg, doctors go for the easy goal.

The prioritization problem should be obvious. The closer to the root of problems you attack, the better the result you'll get. Salt intake is way way down the causal chain to health problems.

As such, blanket stating that you shouldn't care about salt in your diet may be good, if it leads to freeing willpower to do other lifestyle changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The state of nutrition science is pathetic.

The science is conflicted over a simple question of fact -- whether or not a trivially measurable short-term effect occurs when you eat one of the most common food additives in the world.

If we can't even answer THIS -- it seems like it should be incredibly easy to answer -- I don't see why people can claim anything at all about diets and macronutrients.

Nutrition science needs a fundamental breakthrough and I don't know where it's going to come from but I desperately hope it happens quickly. Because a lot of people are suffering and dying of poor nutrition and we don't know basic things about what's good and bad for us.

<comment><USER6> > we don't know basic things about what's good and bad for us.

Errr, I think we know these 'basic' things quite fine. Energy burned needs to be >= energy taken in. It's just complicated for other reasons.

There are _a lot_ of incentives to stay unhealthy. There're the biological incentives (eating a shitload and packing on a few pounds is good if you're in the jungle and might not eat again for a few weeks), and the incredible cultural pressures that prey on those biological incentives (taco bell spends a lot of money to encourage you to make bad health decisions).

Salt, cholesterol, fat, carbs - these are distractions from being healthy. People who eat healthy amounts of reasonable food (although even then, there's that guy who ate twinkies for a year and managed to lose weight by keeping his calories in check) rarely suffer from poor nutrition.

Yeah, everyone knows that guy who was a vegan and ran every day for 40 years and keeled over at 45 from a heart problem. He's the exception.

<comment><USER7> Except that energy burned is not by any means a 1:1 correlation with exercised performed. We are inefficient machines, and our efficiency characteristics vary wildly in ways we don't fully understand.

Two people consuming the same quantity of energy and exerting the same number of joules on exercise equipment do not see identical or even necessarily related physiological effects. There are many, many factors - other nutrients, genetics, timing, the distribution of work over time (short intense exercise vs. long less intense exercise, etc.) and they all matter.

There are skinny people who have never been inside a gym. There are fat people who work harder than you. Obviously you can still influence your outcomes, but "energy out >= energy in" is a gross oversimplification.

<comment><USER8> while that may be true, for the mast majority of people that over simplification is fine. The high odds are that the fat person running next to me on the tread mill is over weight because they eat too much and do not move enough, not because of the 10 calories per hour I may burn in that work out due to what ever factors.

if it were a small % of overweight people you might have a point, but the high % of overweight people in US in particular is certainly because of calories consumed >> calories burned.

i think the real tragedy is people looking for magical formulas, or giving up because 'its genetics'. further proof of that is that just about any dieting regiment works, the issue is that most people dont stick to them.

<comment><USER9> Most of the population is carb intolerant. Unable to process sugar, their kidney turns it into fat and makes them feel starved at the same time. When they try to follow a balanced diet with lots of carbs, they get fatter and fatter. They try to consume less calories and they starve while creating new fat stores at the same time. For these people calorie calculation is the wrong thing. They should stop sugar consumption, restrict carbs to a minimum and without a diet they will slowly lose the weight.

<comment><USER10> _Unable to process sugar, their kidney turns it into fat_

Kidneys do not turn sugar into fat.

 _restrict carbs to a minimum and without a diet they will slowly lose the weight_

That _is_ a diet. They will lose weight if they consume fewer calories than they spend.

This nonsense is a great example of the awful ideas that people have about dietary science, and how poorly the truth is being communicated.

<comment><USER9> I don't know why I typed kidney. Obviously, I meant liver. There is no edit link so I can't fix it.

Make fat feel guilty about their weight and get them to continue eating sugar and corn syrup has only made the epidemic bigger in the last decades.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I decided to go through the IOMs Sodium Intake in Populations report[1] when the FDAs new DRIs were released. The FDA guidelines pushing for 1500mg a day stand in contrast to the findings of the Cochrane review meta- analysis(summary[2]). After looking over all the studies reviewed by both the IOM and the Cochrane review I can't figure out how the FDA are justifying their recommendations of very low intake. The only truly consistent finding seems to be that below around 2g and above about 4g is clearly harmful in that it definitely results in more hospital visits. In between is a lot more shaky. The FDA basically asked the IOM to write the bottom line first and still the IOM wasn't able to come up with any evidence that lowering sodium intake below that range was helpful. It is important to note that the vast majority of sodium studies additionally do not control for a very important confounder which is potassium intake, and that those that do seem to agree strongly with the conclusions of the Cochrane Review. IOM makes note of this shortcoming but does not draw any conclusions from it.

MealSquares ([http://mealsquares.com](http://mealsquares.com)) will be sticking with the Cochrane Review conclusions for now, but of course we will update and inform our customers based on the recommendations with the strongest evidence behind them. It's interesting to note that Soylent 1.0 went with around 1g of salt/day and was forced to change this when people started getting dizzy. it will be interesting to see what they change it to.

1\. [http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18311&page=R1](http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=18311&page=R1)

2\. [http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/11November/Pages/cochrane- review...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2011/11November/Pages/cochrane-review-salt- blood-pressure.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER12> Oxygen is bad for us. It oxidizes and damages all kinds of organic chemicals in our bodies that are required for use to live. Oxidization, however, is exactly what provides us with the energy that supports life.

Salts are electrolytes. (Electrolytes are salts?) You need them in your body so that your nervous system can conduct signals and keep things going - <USER2> your heart.

We live. We grow. We hurt. We heal. We get sick. We recover. We age. We wear out. We die.

Rather that avoiding "omg sugar" or "omg salt" or "omg fat," we should just be eating well-rounded diets. Have some beef today. And some pork tomorrow. And some fish after that. Have some fruit. And veggies. And a bit of dessert. And a spoonful of honey. And some powdered sugar on that syrup'd French toast. Just don't eat large piles of stuff for a meal. And don't eat the same thing every day.

Life's gonna kill you. Just don't clog up your body with excessive amounts of the same thing and you probably won't die early.

<comment><USER13> _> >Rather that avoiding "omg sugar" or "omg salt" or "omg fat," we should just be eating well-rounded diets._

Define well-rounded. ;) Isn't that what we're all trying to decide? We even have some people on here claiming McDonald's can be part of a balanced healthy diet.

<comment><USER12> "Well-rounded diet," n.; a large variety of foods from a large variety of ingredients. --Dictionary of Delinka :-D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nutrition hasn't much since I took some nutritional chemistry classes in college decades ago. It's still a very complex system which is almost impossible to study because you can't easily isolate different the different bits from each other. The only thing even less settled is how the brain operates and stores information.

<comment><USER15> Yes and no, IMO. For the layman, yes, it seems like a mish-mash of failed conclusions. But, I think there is a solid direction that can be found with some knowledge. We punish those who push the boundaries too quickly. This bias really needs to be thrown out and instead solid and rigorous studies should be done and confirmed. Way too many will conclude for food studies/scientists out there right now. If you are not one, you meet a lot of hostility unless you are big name. Also, don't be too old as you will be labeled as jumping the shark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Scientific American was beating this drum a while ago:

> It's Time to End the War on Salt > > [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end- > th...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-the-war-on- > salt/)

</comment><comment><USER17> The orignal study that caused the salt scare didn't claim that increased salt intake caused increased blood pressure. The claim was that a sodium intake on the high end of regular sodium intake was closely correlated with increased mortality rates in heart attack victims. There was no claim made about sodium intake and blood pressure, nor was there a claim about sodium intake and heart attack rates.

This is why I hate the intersection of journalism, science, and the public.

<comment><USER11> The entire salt->CVD claim has rested for years upon the assumption that the causal pathway is salt->BP->CVD. The IOM and FDA both talk about this extensively in their recommendations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Analyzing the effects on health of a single nutritional item - salt in this case - in pretty useless IMHO. The more I read about nutrition, the more I come to realize that it is the ratio of different nutrients what is key to our health.

Take Omega3 for example: It´s much healthier to reduce the content of Omega 6 in your diet than popping a couple of Omega 3 pills a day. This is so because our current diet has screwed up this optimal ratio [1]

Same applies to salt: The problem is not Sodium, but refined salt, that has a mineral composition so unbalanced that makes Sodium problematic.

Just eat unprocessed food.

[1] Optimal ratio Omega6/Omega3=around 1. Typical ratio in western diets: 15/1 [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332202...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0753332202002536)

</comment><comment><USER19> Did they really _prove_ there was 'no association' or did they just fail to reject the null hypothesis that there is no association? These are diabolically different things!

<comment><USER20> Indeed they are, but according to the null hypothesis precept, without persuasive contradicting evidence, there is no association. The burden is on experimental evidence to contradict that assumption, and if positive evidence isn't present, then the default assumption is correct.

Think about what _proving no association_ actually means. That would require proof of a negative, which is a widely recognized logical error, an impossible burden. To see why, imagine that I believe in Bigfoot and I will continue to believe until someone proves he doesn't exist. But no one can prove Bigfoot isn't hiding under some rock on a faraway planet, therefore I am justified in my belief. My belief is supported by an impossible evidentiary burden.

This is why scientists rely on the null hypothesis -- contradicting it requires positive evidence. Its opposite requires negative evidence.

<comment><USER19> > if positive evidence isn't present, then the default assumption is correct

What you have said above is horribly wrong and is exactly the point I am making. If it is true then I can prove anything I like just by designing a bad enough experiment.

For example, suppose I want to prove that the moon is made of green cheese. I can start with a null hypothesis that it IS made of green cheese. Then I can point my telescope in the wrong direction and find no evidence that it is not made of green cheese. Using your logic I am free to then conclude that my null hypothesis is true.

You cannot just make any null hypothesis you want and then when you fail to prove it untrue, claim it is true. If you want to make a positive claim about the null hypothesis (for example, claim there is no association between salt and blood pressure) then you have to test it directly with positive evidence in its own right.

<comment><USER20> >> if positive evidence isn't present, then the default assumption is correct

> What you have said above is horribly wrong and is exactly the point I am > making. If it is true then I can prove anything I like just by designing a > bad enough experiment.

You obviously do not understand the null hypothesis. Under the null hypothesis, a claim is assumed to be false unless and until persuasive evidence shows otherwise. Only psychologists think a bad experiment contradicts the default assumption of no effect. Serious science must pass muster with other equally serious scientists, who will call out anyone trying to cheat.

> For example, suppose I want to prove that the moon is made of green cheese. > I can start with a null hypothesis that it IS made of green cheese.

That is certainly not what "null hypothesis" means -- your utterly mistaken view asserts its opposite, the alternative hypothesis. Please learn anything at all about this topic before assuming you understand it.

> You cannot just make any null hypothesis you want and then when you fail to > prove it untrue, claim it is true.

Honestly. Learn what it means before trying to discuss it.

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

Quote: "In statistical inference of observed data of a scientific experiment, the null hypothesis refers to a general statement or default position that there is _no relationship between two measured phenomena_. Rejecting or disproving the null hypothesis – and thus concluding that there are grounds for believing that there is a relationship between two phenomena or that a potential treatment has a measurable effect – is a central task in the modern practice of science, and gives a precise sense in which a claim is capable of being proven false."

<comment><USER19> Well, your insulting tone is not particularly conducive to ongoing discussion ... but can't you see that Wikipedia is exactly contradicting you?

Try and find anything there that backs up this statement:

>> if positive evidence isn't present, then the default assumption is correct

Quoting from the same page:

"...it should be noted that the null hypothesis is never proved or established, but is possibly disproved, in the course of experimentation."

And again:

"We may, however, choose any null hypothesis we please, provided it is exact."

<comment><USER20> > can't you see that Wikipedia is exactly contradicting you?

You need to learn about the null hypothesis. And science. The null hypothesis _denies the reality of the asserted hypothesis until positive evidence supports it_. How difficult is that? The default assumption is that there is no effect, _no connection between a stated hypothesis and reality_.

If I make the claim that Bigfoot exists, and then set out to test my claim using science, under the null hypothesis _the default assumption is that Bigfoot does not exist_. This means you have it exactly backwards.

> ... your insulting tone is not particularly conducive to ongoing discussion

A description is not an insult. Learn this difference also.

Learn about the null hypothesis. Discover that the null hypothesis _cannot be used to make a positive claim or assertion_ , as you did earlier with your green cheese example. That is reserved to the alternative hypothesis, which is how pseudoscience works, i.e. make a claim and wait for someone else to disprove it with the impossible standard of "proof of a negative" or "absence of evidence":

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can't confirm. Whenever I use salt, my blood pressure goes up fairly quick. That's why I use Ansible instead.

<comment><USER22> "eik3_de is controlled by the cook's union, and is merely a puppet for the chef industry." \--C. F. Engine

<comment><USER21> haha n1

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The results section of the paper has some possibly contradictory information:

1\. "Salt intake was positively associated with SBP in men but not in women."

2\. "Salt intake was not associated with SBP in either sex after multiple adjustments."

Also isn't this kind of journalism and article titles unethical? There should be some kind of regulatory board for articles in any media.

Anyone can write anything and can cause serious harm.

</comment><comment><USER24> This title is more misleading than the article. Notice the question in the headline? That almost always means No.

</comment><comment><USER25> > those patients who were hypertensive consumed significantly more salt than > those without hypertension

Doesn't that mean there is a causative effect, or are they saying it just a correlation? People with high blood pressure tend to eat more salt? Or if it is not statistically significant, why mention it at all?

<comment><USER26> > Doesn't that mean there is a causative effect, or are they saying it just a > correlation?

Unless causality is clearly articulated, it never should be assumed. Also, it never would be stated if there was not statistically significant data supporting it - keeping in mind this is a Time article and not the original source [0] so you're dependent on the writer knowing what they're talking about as well.

[0]: [http://ajh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/03/ajh.h...](http://ajh.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/03/ajh.hpu164)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> In recent years oncology is seeing there might be a connection between lack of iodine and increase risk of cancer. So when people curb their salt intake for long periods of time they may be risking cancer since it is one of the only ways inlanders get enough of it.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sadly, the unsettled or contradicted nature of the science won't stop politicians like Bloomberg from trying to force the behavior he wants through legislation.

<comment><USER29> [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_nanny_state_didnt...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/09/the_nanny_state_didnt_show_up.html)

The vast majority of the people complaining about the Big Soda ban don't buy big sodas, and those most enraged about the Buckyballs ban either already have them or would never want them. So the reaction has nothing to do with the products themselves, the rage is on a theoretical level, "I don't want government intruding in my private choices." But they already do this in a gazillion different ways, bigger, more important intrusions. The difference is that those are invisible. You know you can't value the risks in airplane safety or radiation leaks so you trust them to do it, but you think you can value the risks of a soda and hate that they try to do it for you.

I know you are thinking, "but I can resist soda; I understand the risks"\-- never mind you don't even know the ingredients of soda, the point here is you are starting from you and multiplying by 6 billion.

When you say, "personal responsibility!" you are really saying "this is safe enough for it to be a question of personal responsibility." But you must ask yourself the question: how do you know Buckyballs and soda are safe enough for them to be about personal responsibility? Because "some other omnipotent entity" allowed them to exist. How do you know that Entity can be trusted? Because it even tries to ban silly things like Buckyballs and soda. The system is sound.

<comment><USER28> _vast majority of the people complaining about the Big Soda ban don 't buy big sodas_

Isn't that a bit like saying that only African Americans are allowed to stand up to racism?

 _the rage is on a theoretical level_

If individual liberty and personal responsibilities are only theories. I don't happen to agree.

 _But they already do this in a gazillion different ways_

So because they get away with it in harder-to-grasp and harder-to-politically- oppose ways, we should just submit to all of it?

 _I know you are thinking, "but I can resist soda; I understand the risks"_

You obviously have no idea what I'm thinking. I think about the bigger picture of a society of sheep that elects wolves to make all their decisions for them because the sheep are too busy watching the NFL and Miley Cyrus to be bothered to make decisions for themselves and take responsibility for those decisions. I ponder the paradox of a populace too stupid to decide whether or not to drink a soda but smart enough to elect angels who will protect them from themselves.

 _Because "some other omnipotent entity" allowed them to exist_

You're totally and completely wrong yet again. I'm an atheist. How does that affect your rationalization of letting others use force to make the smallest decisions in life for you?

<comment><USER29> That is kind of the entire point of the article. This quote summarizes the argument which you paraphrased after pointing out "You have no idea what you are thinking".

The argument to spell it out in a clearer way than the author is a reductio ad absurdum:

1) The system protects us from unsafe airline and car practices.

2) The system tries to ban toys and sodas.

3) Therefore, the system can protect us from anything that is bad.

The conclusion is clearly false, because lots of bad things still happen and you can't engineer a perfectly safe system. The omnipotent entity he refers is the the government, market, or whatever entity makes decisions you don't have to. In the full article there are lots of examples, from banking to whatever where the train of thought jumps from one type of savior to another, without ever pinning it down on the individual.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does the headline square with "patients who were hypertensive consumed significantly more salt than those without hypertension"?

<comment><USER20> Yes, because correlations don't prove causation. One might want to argue that people who are hypertensive consume more salt as an effect, not a cause. Not to argue that that is proven either, only that it should be on the list of possibilities that merit investigation.

<comment><USER30> The headline used "association". Plus, the article seemed to indicate it was a causation, just not universal.

<comment><USER20> It's important to understand that, until a cause-effect relationship is explained instead of being merely measured, it's not science. A more complete explanation is here:

[http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind/](http://arachnoid.com/science_of_mind/)

<comment><USER30> I was making a simple observation that the headline clashed with the article.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The latest health scare is that sitting causes all kinds of trouble. Expect articles in 10 years saying it was all a lie.

<comment><USER32> Hmm, aren't those warnings about sitting talking about a sort of ridiculous extreme though, sitting in one position for most of the day? You maybe get that on long-distance airplane flights (and even then, you take bathroom trips etc), but even people with desk jobs almost never really sit all day like that....

[And in the of long-distance airplane flights, the whole deep-vein-thrombosis thing does actually seem to be a documented problem, if a pretty rare one...]

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> To me, it sounds like poor, little, old, suffering 'Time' magazine is trying to get eyeballs.

The article sounds like a total yawn to me, that is, just old and obvious. So, I long understood: If eat some food with some table salt, that is, NaCl, then within an hour or so likely the salt concentration in blood will increase and then blood pressure will increase. But, the body has a system that regulates salt concentration; so, if the salt concentration is too high, then the body will lower the salt concentration, and the usual way is to flush out the extra salt in urine. So, net, likely within a few hours, the salt concentration will be back to where the body wants it. Typically, for reasonably healthy people, no biggie.

Somewhat separately there is a disease called _hypertension_ which means high blood pressure, and such blood pressure can be dangerous, e.g., cause blood vessels to break and leak, say, in the brain -- not good. If a person has this disease, then extra salt that further increases blood pressure, even just for a few hours, can be not good. So, for such a person, a standard recommendation is to reduce input of salt: So, e.g., don't sit around eating salted peanuts, potato chips, etc.

But does eating salt _cause_ the disease hypertension? Nope.

Then, bingo, presto, wonder of wonders, the mass media, always eager for getting eyeballs, often by grabbing people, by the heart, the gut, below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears, comes out screaming about salt suggesting that salt, exploiting really simplistic thinking, is somehow _bad_. Or, since people are sensitive to suggestions or symptoms of danger, suggesting that salt is _bad_ can get eyeballs.

Then companies that manufacture and want to sell food products, say, bread, may see a selling opportunity, lower the amount of salt in their products, and then scream on their product labels that their products are _healthy_ because they are _low salt_.

We can see how the mass media and their food product advertising customers have a common interest: The media raises fears about salt, and the food companies scream that their products are healthy because they are low in salt. It's deliberate confusion and deception, that is, in a word, a scam, all in an attempt to get money from ordinary people.

This scam has been going on for decades. E.g., back in the 1980s I was in the house of some friends; they were in their 20s and in perfect health, with perfect weight, etc. The husband was a good athlete, and his wife was drop dead gorgeous. But the wife was cooking with _low salt_ based on the scam, i.e., that salt would cause hypertension, which of course it would not.

Or, as in the title here, "No Association Between Salt And Blood Pressure", of course not. There never was any such _association_. Salt does not cause hypertension; there's never been any competent claim that salt did cause hypertension.

So, now Time gets another way to grab eyeballs -- debunk the scam that for at least three decades has had way too many people thinking the total nonsense that salt causes hypertension.

For the media, there's a pattern here: To get eyeballs, create a scam. Then, later, maybe decades later, to get more eyeballs, debunk the scam. Then continue with more scams -- there are many possible scams.

So, net, salt does not cause the disease hypertension, and the media likes to use scams to get eyeballs. Virginia, if you didn't already know this, then listen up and learn. I mean, by now, we expected something else?

</comment><comment><USER34> Or is there? Nutrition "Science" is fucking Phrenelogy

</comment><comment><USER35> Low Sodium Intake — Cardiovascular Health Benefit or Risk? Suzanne Oparil, M.D. N Engl J Med 2014; 371:677-679 August 14, 2014DOI: 10.1056/NEJMe1407695

"In response to controversy about the health effects of low sodium intake, the Institute of Medicine convened an expert committee to evaluate the evidence for a relation between sodium and health outcomes.4,5 The committee concluded that most evidence supports a positive relation between high sodium intake and risk of cardiovascular disease but that results from studies with health outcomes were insufficient to conclude whether low sodium intake (<2.3 g per day or <1.5 g per day, as recommended in current dietary guidelines6,7) is associated with an increased or reduced risk of cardiovascular disease in the general population. The committee found limited evidence that low salt intake may be associated with adverse health effects in some subgroups, including some patients with heart failure or other forms of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, or chronic kidney disease. Results from three studies, reported in this issue of the Journal, bear on this matter. The Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology (PURE) study provides new evidence about the association between sodium and potassium intake, estimated from morning urine specimens, and blood pressure, death, and major cardiovascular events.8,9 The procedure for estimating electrolyte excretion was validated elsewhere.10 The PURE study included more than 100,000 adults sampled from the general population of 17 countries that varied in their economic development and acculturation to an urban lifestyle. Approximately 90% of the participants had either a high (>5.99 g per day) or moderate (3.00 to 5.99 g per day) level of sodium excretion; approximately 10% excreted less than 3.00 g per day, and only 4% had sodium excretion in the range associated with current U.S. guidelines for sodium intake (2.3 or 1.5 g per day).

Across this broad range of populations, the relation between sodium excretion and blood pressure was positive but nonuniform: it was strong in participants with high sodium excretion, modest in those in the moderate range, and nonsignificant in those with low sodium excretion. The authors concluded from the findings that a very small proportion of the worldwide population consumes a low-sodium diet and that sodium intake is not related to blood pressure in these persons, calling into question the feasibility and usefulness of reducing dietary sodium as a population-based strategy for reducing blood pressure. There was also an interaction between sodium excretion and potassium excretion: high sodium excretion was more strongly associated with increased blood pressure in persons with lower potassium excretion. The authors suggested that the alternative approach of recommending high-quality diets rich in potassium might achieve greater health benefits, including blood- pressure reduction, than aggressive sodium reduction alone. After a mean of 3.7 years of follow-up, the composite outcome of death and cardiovascular events occurred in 3317 participants (3.3%). As compared with those who had a moderate level of sodium excretion, those with a higher or lower level of sodium excretion had an increased risk of cardiovascular-disease outcomes.

The authors attempted to rule out residual confounding or reverse causation as explanations for their findings by showing that participants with a low level of sodium excretion had a similar mean INTERHEART Modifiable Risk Score and higher intake of fruit and vegetables, as compared with those with a moderate level of sodium excretion, and that more than 90% of the cohort was free of antecedent cardiovascular disease. The findings were not altered by the exclusion of participants with prior cardiovascular disease, cancer, or use of blood-pressure medication, by the exclusion of outcome events occurring in the first 2 years of observation, or by adjustment for all identifiable confounders.

The major weaknesses of the PURE study, inherent in its study design and scope, include the absence of direct measurement of 24-hour urinary excretion on multiple occasions, which is the accepted model for assessing electrolyte intake, and the lack of an intervention component to assess the direct effects of altering sodium and potassium intake on blood pressure and cardiovascular- disease outcomes, thus making it impossible to establish causality. Nevertheless, this large study does provide evidence that both high and low levels of sodium excretion may be associated with an increased risk of death and cardiovascular-disease outcomes and that increasing the urinary potassium excretion counterbalances the adverse effect of high sodium excretion. These provocative findings beg for a randomized, controlled outcome trial to compare reduced sodium intake with usual diet. In the absence of such a trial, the results argue against reduction of dietary sodium as an isolated public health recommendation.

The authors of the third article, from the Global Burden of Diseases Nutrition and Chronic Diseases Expert Group (NutriCode),11 used modeling techniques to estimate global sodium consumption and its effect on cardiovascular mortality.12 The investigators quantified global sodium intake on the basis of published surveys from 66 countries and used a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate global sodium consumption. They then estimated the effects of sodium on blood pressure in a meta-analysis of 107 published trials and estimated the effects of systolic blood pressure on cardiovascular mortality by combining the results of two large international pooling projects that included individual-level data. They found a strong linear relationship between sodium intake and cardiovascular events and estimated that 1.65 million cardiovascular deaths in 2010 were attributable to excess sodium consumption. The NutriCode investigators should be applauded for a herculean effort in synthesizing a large body of data regarding the potential harm of excess salt consumption. However, given the numerous assumptions necessitated by the lack of high-quality data, caution should be taken in interpreting the findings of the study. Taken together, these three articles highlight the need to collect high-quality evidence on both the risks and benefits of low-sodium diets."

</comment><comment><USER36> ALL NUTRITION SCIENCE IS A BUNCH OF GODDAM LIES.

EAT FOOD THAT TASTES GOOD. STAY AWAY FROM PROCESSED FOOD. GET OFF YOUR ASS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. THAT IS ALL!

/rant

</comment><comment><USER37> This article is BS. I mean, its a FUD advertorial.

I say that based on my personal experience:

A nurse in the clinic checked my BP (as a routine) when I went to get checked for some eye infection. And she was shocked that it was 170/100 (normal is 120/80).

It was shocking for her (and of course me) because: I was 25 I looked healthy and lean (not too thin). I showed/experienced no signs of hyper tension.

My eating habits, was to go on a Frozen Prepared Food diet (for lunch and dinner) because that was the cheapest tasty food I could afford along with cereals for breakfast, for about 3 months before my BP was checked.

I dropped this diet since that day, reduced salt intake considerably. And it took about 9 months for my BP to come down to normal levels, without any medication, and with a little extra exercising.

I'd have taken this article with a pinch of salt. But, I have cut down on salt intake. So I prefer to not take it :)

<comment><USER38> Which is why for so long people believed that salt was the cause. But in your situation salt is also a proxy for a lot of other things that were wrong with your diet. Gobs of processes carbs, no 'good' cholesterol, a lack of protein, just to get started.

Since anything that cuts processed salt considerably almost assuredly improves those other metrics, I'm not sure why you believe your anecdotal evidence is so convincing.

<comment><USER37> "Anecdotal evidence" is acceptable if everyone said salt is healthy and I claimed otherwise.

btw, my diet, even though had a lot of frozen food, wasn't loaded with carbs, and was sufficient in protein.

Back to the point: When doctors I trust say that I'm better off cutting salt and sodium intake, I'll cut down on it. And because its the trusted doctors that say so, I consider it as non Anecdotal Evidence</comment></comment></comment>


The Real History of TechCrunch - <AUTHOR> https://uncrunched.com/2018/02/18/the-real-history-of-techcrunch/ <comment><USER2> This is a very important lesson for Michael Arrington and many people reading this can learn from it without losing too much emotions or money themselves:

Someone, who claims this to be a cofounder of your business even once, is not your friend! Don't support their claims, don't pity them. They try to exploit you.

This kind of person is really good at keeping you emotionally hooked, and therefore even let you find excuses for their behaviour. Think for yourself: Would you claim ownership over their pet project like that? Probably not.

So be strict with yourself and let that person go. The earlier the better. They won't change. Your interpretation is not wrong. It's not your fault. And most importantly: You have earned and will find true friends that support you. And with them together you will make lots of money if you have that in you.

<comment><USER3> Is the same true of Musk who was an A round investor in a company already founded by Eberhard and Tarpenning?

<comment><USER4> While not one of the original co-founders, Musk has devoted enormous amounts of time, money and energy into Tesla since nearly the beginning, which I think makes him close enough to a co-founder. If you read Arrington's post, he even says the same about Heather —- not technically a co-founder but one in practice given the amount of work she put in.

The guy he is calling out is alleged to have put zero time or money in — he just grabbed what he could.

<comment><USER5> I had no idea until this thread that Elon Musk hadn't been with Tesla from the beginning. I presume reasonable people can disagree, but, no, I don't think leading someone's A round, even if you take an operational role at some point afterwards, makes you a "cofounder".

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

This is kind of like Warren Buffett taking over Berkshire Hathaway.

But now Musk is definitely _the_ face and head of the company same as Buffett. That is what counts for most people after everything is said and done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I won't say a huge deal about this, as I now work with Keith again, and haven't spoken to Mike for years, but I'm extremely surprised to see this version of events, as when I worked on Edgeio (I built the prototype, and managed the dev team for a while and continued to build the system) while Edgeio's and Techcrunch's offices were both in the house Mike rented in Atherton (Edgeio was largely built from the bedroom across from Mike's and the hall outside his room, while Techcrunch's office was his bedroom...), I got a very different impression from Mike in person.

E.g. "started hanging out at my house and meetups" is a curious characterisation when Mike's house was literally the shared offices for both for quite a while.

Mike at least once described Techcrunch to me as growing out of the work done to do research for Edgeio, and Archimedes Labs as a partnership between the two. Though it is possible for both that and Mike's version now to be true, my impression as someone who was there was always that both companies (Techcrunch and Edgeio) were shared projects, and Mike did nothing to dissuade that impression though it was clear Techcrunch was more Mike's baby than Keith's.

Of course I was never privy to whatever discussions the two of them had behind closed doors.

EDIT: Here [1] is an archive.org link from 2005, that lists Mike and Keith equally, on a post posted by the web designer who also did a lot of early work on Edgeio, describing them both as editors and Techcrunch as part of the "Archimedes Ventures" family. It was hard from that kind of presentation at the time to not see it as something they co-founded. I don't want to go into it further, as that'd be speculation on my side too (and of course what Mike let someone put on the site does not have to reflect what he thought about it in private) - I looked this up to see if there was anything to change my recollection:

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051024052402/http://techcrunch.com:80/?page_id=120)

<comment><USER8> This is exact same pattern that gets repeated everywhere: Winklevoss hires Zuckerberg to do some sort of campus meetup site. While working on this, Zuckerberg crystalizes related idea of profiles and messaging among students - but only shared among friends. Winklevoss does not participate in vision, engineering or anything else but claim the credit for Facebook anyway. I can understand that in early days it would be hard for Arrington to blantly expose Keith as he can do now. Keith had already threatened about litigation and Arrington had no money or time while managing fast growing company all by himself.

<comment><USER9> That's a pretty pro-Zuck view you have there. I think the courts are in a better position to decide and they found for the Winklevoss twins. Yes, they didn't get a lot of money but they got what they asked for.

<comment><USER10> Source? According to everything I've read, the money they got was from a settlement, not a court ruling in their favor. When they sued for more after the settlement, they got slapped down by the courts. e.g.,

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-facebooks-mark- zuckerberg-w...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/why-facebooks-mark-zuckerberg- won-against-winklevoss-twins/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >As a final note, I want to add that if anyone was a "cofounder" of TechCrunch it was Heather Harde. She joined in 2006 but she was in the trenches with the team until the very end, working 20 hour days, sacrificing her personal life and giving everything she had to make the company what it was. Heather never sells herself like Keith does, but she should. Unlike Keith, she helped build that company, and gave way more value than she ever took.

As someone who's also been an early employee, I totally see why Heather does NOT claim to be a co-founder. When you work your ass off alongside the founders, you learn two things:

1\. Building a company is incredibly hard.

2\. Nobody takes it harder than the founders.

Yes, I have worked hard. In the last six years, I always worked parts of my weekend if not my vacations (which were few and far in between early on). I pulled off all nighters as well as a last minute trip straight from work to close a customer. I fell asleep on my laptop answering support questions. There were many nights of dry tears and waking up in cold sweat from nightmares that were all too real.

But what I went through is a fraction of what the _real_ founders went through. And I saw their ups and downs up close.

Startups are hard. Incredibly hard, especially for those who has to lead the ship from Day One. Early, dedicated employees see this first hand, thinking to themselves, "Man, I thought I had a good/bad day, but they are probably having it better/worse". That's why we never claim to be the "founders".

<comment><USER12> I don't disagree with you, but I call BS on the OP:

1\. 20-hour days are not actually worked, not even by slave labor.

2\. Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not heroic.

<comment><USER13> > _Sacrificing your personal life for your employer is pathological, not > heroic_

This isn't an article about heroism. Keith Teare claims he co-founded TechCrunch. Arrington says "no" and then details why.

One part of the "why" is about value-adding output. Arrington "could never get [Teare] to write anything, or help pay any bills." Co-founders add value; Keith didn't do that.

The second part of the "why" is about input. Output requires input. But it's fair to highlight both, in part to block claims of unappreciated work. In highlighting Heather's "20 hour days" and "sacrificing [of] her personal life," Arrington draws into contrast the difference between someone he considers a co-founder and someone he doesn't.

> _20-hour days are not actually worked_

Founded a company. Worked twenty-hour days. Deceptively easy to do if you're chasing a short-term deliverable across multiple time zones. (Short-term because this tactic is obviously unsustainable.)

<comment><USER14> The first 80 hours of a work week seem the hardest... the next 60 fly by in a daze of mania. It's hard to remember how to sleep and not think about work all the time, but your productivity is constantly falling. It works best for projects you can literally do in your sleep and anything requiring decision making, detail, or creativity should be done in the first day. If mistakes aren't very obvious when assembling the final blocks at the end, you'll miss them. Camaraderie is important too!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It seems the one fact that nobody is disputing is that the guy in question owned 10% of Techcrunch. Generally people who own 10% of a company had significant involvement in it. Not always, there are always edge cases, but that is a good general rule.

Maybe this is one of those edge cases. But claiming somebody who owns 10% of the company had literally nothing to do with the company is an extraordinary claim that I'd say requires extraordinary evidence. This blog post to me doesn't seem like extraordinary evidence.

But really the conclusion of this saga is pretty irrelevant. If somebody is investing in any type of business because an advisor to that business may or may not have co-founded a tech blog 12 years ago... well they have bigger problems.

<comment><USER16> Let's say he really deserves the 10%. That doesn't make him a "cofounder". That only makes him a shareholder. If owning some shares in a company made you a cofounder, by that logic any angel investor or VC is a cofounder of ever single company they funded.

And even if the law says you're technically a "cofounder", it's pathetic to call yourself that for a decade and use that false reputation for your personal gains if you didn't really do anything for the company.

<comment><USER15> FWIW I never said anything about the guy deserving the title of co-founder or not. Arrington is claiming the guy had literally nothing to do with Techcrunch, which is directly at odds with the one piece of information we know: the guy owned 10% of Techcrunch.

As for the co-founder title, my point is if you are investing in some business because an advisor is either a real co-founder or a fake co-founder of Techcrunch, you are making a stupid investment. And that goes for this guy or Arrington himself.

And yes, it is pathetic if somebody is claiming a bunch of credit for something they didn't do. But it is also pathetic to give 10% of your business to somebody who did nothing (assuming the blog post is accurate). As a neutral observer I'm inclined to believe Arrington, but at the same time I don't think he made a very strong case and presented basically no impartial evidence. Frankly I think this blog post makes them both look bad.

<comment><USER16> > And yes, it is pathetic if somebody is claiming a bunch of credit for > something they didn't do. But it is also pathetic to give 10% of your > business to somebody who did nothing (assuming the blog post is accurate)

This happens very frequently and that's why there are systems like vesting.

So you can't say it's "pathetic" to give away 10% to someone who didn't do any work. It's more of a system failure, or you suffering due to lack of experience or manipulation.

To give a specific example, there are tons of near-scam-artists who go around telling naive founders just out of college that they will introduce them to some investor, and in exchange they will get like 10% of the equity. Trust me this happens very frequently and not because the founders who fall for it are idiots, but because they're just inexperienced at that point in life. In this case, it should suck to be in that founder's shoes, but it's really harsh to call her/him pathetic because you have no idea what happened behind the scenes. But what clearly is pathetic is the older guy who know exactly what he's doing who is using his experience to scam the younger founder into believing that it's OK to give 10% of the company he hasn't even incorporated yet, all just for a single intro.

I'm not saying this is what happened in this case, but I'm just pointing out a founder giving away 10% (or even more) happens all the time, especially if you're not surrounded by the right people. This doesn't make them idiots, it's just that they were in an unfortunate situation. But someone who knows exactly what he's doing and is claiming to be what he isn't IS pathetic.

<comment><USER15> I feel pity for the older and more experienced founder who (allegedly) took advantage of the younger and naive one. But I also feel pity for the younger founder who was exploited and didn't know any better.

Maybe it is more pitiful than pathetic for the older and wiser businessman to (allegedly) take advantage of a younger and more naive person. But it is most certainly pathetic for somebody to give up 10% of their company for nothing, whether it is by being tricked or by being bullied or whatever.

That isn't a judgement on how common or uncommon this situation is, nor how intelligent either party is, nor on their value as a person. And perhaps we interpret the meaning of the word differently, but to me it means simply evoking pity.

The irony that this post itself might be interpreted as pathetic is not lost on me, but I think it is far more pedantic than pathetic so at least I have that going for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Regardless of what the legal structure was, it's pretty pathetic to keep calling yourself a "cofounder" when everyone knows you didn't do jack shit for the company.

Kind of amusing because that's what that guy seems to be doing on a Twitter thread [https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776](https://twitter.com/kteare/status/965488545187147776)

<comment><USER17> He's calling himself a "co-founding shareholder" though, which appears to be undisputed. (Not that weasel-wording is much better than outright lying.)

<comment><USER16> That's because he's replying directly to Arrington. Would be hilarious if he kept insisting he's a "cofounder" on the same thread.

But just do a google search and you'll see that the guy has been really capitalizing on the "TechCrunch Cofounder" brand for almost a decade now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It does muddy the waters somewhat and allow for a claim that he is "credited as being part of" that he was listed as an editor on the about page. [0]

In fairness to the author, he does point this out.

If this individual really did do as is claimed and really did nothing other than try to stop TechCrunch's existence, it may seem to some a strange thing to continue to associate with such an individual.

To have provided a link to the website of archimedes ventures [1] on the about page [0] where the author is listed alongside this individual as one of two "general partners" seems like a slightly surprising omission when covering the "real history."

It seems that had archimedes ventures been more successful than TechCrunch has been, the author could have been able to have claimed to be a greater part of that than this article would suggest.

[0] [https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051024041505/http://www.techcrunch.com:80/?p=2)

[1] [https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20051026074846/http://www.archimedesventures.com:16080/?page_id=2)

<comment><USER19> Meh. Put yourself in Arrington's 2005 shoes. When you're starting, nobody cares about you. He agreed to put someone on his crappy un-famous little blog to keep him happy... At the time, getting anyone to care was the hard part, not worrying about if a decade from now they'd use your reputation to scam people.

I think Arrington did a great job of showing both sides of the story. Keith clearly was vaguely involved, and Arrington admitted he didn't care until it started being used to scam people. I think that's a fair line to put your foot down and write a blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't know anything about what might have actually happened or who said what back when, but FWIW when I first met Keith a few years ago (I only see him socially, not professionally) we talked about what each of us had done in the past and about TC all he said was words to the effect of "..and I was involved a bit when Techcrunch got going. Then I ...". The only reason this even stuck in my mind at all is my GF had earlier described him as having founded TC, so I noted what he said to correct my my understanding.

Maybe other times he played his involvement up more, and maybe other times Arrington played it up more (as have been noted in these comments) but literally the only time Keith ever mentioned TC in my presence is completely consistent with what Arrington says in this blog entry "is what really happened".

</comment><comment><USER20> Doing a quick search on the About TechCrunch page and TechCrunch wikipedia page for "Keith Teare" will yield no results.

Another reason to do your due diligence when investing in ICOs.

<comment><USER21> And yet, a search of [site:techcrunch.com "by keith teare"] turns up lots of guest-writing, where the "editor's note" describes him as a "co-founder" of TechCrunch, as well as other news stories by other TC staffers regularly describing Teare with the same boilerplate.

Teare may be intending to over-emphasize his role; Arrington may be resentful that Teare is touting his involvement this way. But for a long time, the TechCrunch site itself was happy to describe Teare as a "co-founder".

So whatever the cause of the Arrington-Teare spat, it's not outlandish for Teare to be making the same claim in 2018 as appeared repeatedly at TechCrunch itself, since at least 2011 (<[https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes- labs-launches-a...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/12/archimedes-labs- launches-as-an-incubator-for-mobile-startups/>)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This gets played out in all companies every day: You do something interesting in your spare time, your manager jumps on it out of nowhere to take credit and soon enough he is the visionary leader while you get transformed in to dude doing engineering implementation of his ideas.

Lot of big projects where you will see one of the executives or managers attached, the real work - including vision - is many times done by that engineer working away in his/her weekends. I know of at least two Ted talks (one from Google exec) where the real person having the idea and doing the work never ever gets even mentioned.

Very recently this is exactly what happened my current job. I hate the guy who is nakedly and blatantly taking all the credit of my work. There is nothing I can do because he is favorite in the upper management chain. I don't even get to present my own work because he has convinced the upper management that I'm just an engineer and not good at executive-level presentations. Unlike Arrington, there is nothing I can do except leave the job but when I try that I get grilled through stupid CS questions. Meanwhile my manager was ironically featured in TechCrunch for all the work I did.

The credit stealing by managers in tech world is huge huge huge problem.

<comment><USER22> You sound come across as competent. If you don't feel justly compensated for this loss of credit, you need to walk.

<comment><USER8> I hear this advice all the time from my friends. If I was working on just another web development project, yes, I could walk away to yet another web development project. But if I was working on sending space crafts to Mars, then what other choices do I have in the world? Working on improving search results by 0.0001% at Google? Or identifying state actors at Facebook? Ewww....

<comment><USER23> That's not a very convincing argument. There are tons of interesting space companies, like these 10: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/3026685/the...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.fastcompany.com/3026685/the- worlds-top-10-most-innovative-companies-in-space)

They don't even mention all the ones I know about, like Planet Labs, or Blue Origin, or places like JPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Arrington deleted a whole bunch of tweets today seemingly about his worry that SEC is going after investors investing in... shady ICOs. anyone know what they said?

</comment><comment><USER25> I used to eulogize my role in the early internet because being one of ten thousand felt good. Now I keep quiet about it because I doubt I did much of value and none of it persists. The real work was done by people we all know and me and my fellow nine thousand mainly were early adopters with minor bug reports to our name. Work is work.

It feels like some people prefer to mythologize their roots but I think deprecation is safer.

</comment><comment><USER26> Two sides to every story. One thing that sticks out here is why Arrington of all people would easily cave and give 10% to someone who did "nothing."

<comment><USER16> TechCrunch was a tech blog which didn't require much "operation". The site was just a wordpress blog and the only work involved was probably blogging and some wordpress maintenance.

This Keith guy never blogged, and this guy is no programmer.

The best he can claim to be is an "investor", but you really have to be shameless to call yourself a "cofounder" when you really did nothing, and use that reputation everywhere you go, especially in this case to promote scam ICOs.

Whether he deserves the 10% or not doesn't really matter. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't. But you're not a "cofounder" if you did no work.

<comment><USER8> TC is not just WordPress blog. There is a lot of leg work that happens to contact VCs, journalists, founders, conduct interviews, verify details etc. I bet 80% of the work that happens at TC is not-engineering. The fact that Arrington carried this entirely on his shoulder while Keith just stayed on sidelines is enough for him not getting credited for TC. However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC.

<comment><USER7> When techcrunch started it was just a WordPress blog. It quickly grew to much more than that, sure.

> However Keith claims on his LinkedIn profile that he advised Arlington and > helped him to be successful even initially he did not believed in TC.

I've personally been present when Keith gave Mike advice about Techcrunch on more than one occasion (and I was only over about 1 week every 6 or so, so it'd be odd if I caught their only discussions), so while whether or not he did _enough_ to justify calling himself co-founder is something I don't want to wade into as I simply don't know (and is trying to keep my personal opinions out of this when I don't have first hand knowledge), I for one was an eye witness to Keith advising Mike more than once (whether or not Mike took on that advice, or whether or not it was good advice, I don't want to try to assess).

<comment><USER16> Most ethical people would never call themselves a "founder" if all they did was give advice and never did any real work. That's why we have a term called "advisor".

We're not even in legal territory here. It's about ethics. Can you see yourself calling yourself a "Techcrunch Co-founder" if you were in his shoes? If I were him, no matter how much advice I gave him I would NEVER call myself a founder if I didn't do any work AND the entire world knows that I never wrote a single post for a business whose only purpose was to blog.

<comment><USER7> Do you have firsthand knowledge of this? Because I met and worked directly with both people involved regularly during this period, and I still dont know the full details of what went down. So the way I see it, either you were directly involved but aren't disclosing your connection and hence makes it impossible to judge your biases, or you were not and you're judging the situation based on a very incomplete picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When starting a new company (esp without any compelling background), no one cares about their project. So founders often reach out/involve potential employees/advisors/supporters on the side line, and sometimes those name appears on incorporation document/contracts/rent agreement etc because founders were trying to get things off the ground. And they don't want to screw up the newly built relationship to get going.

Situation like these do not make someone a real co-founder.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Ultimately Keith knew I could just walk away from it all and TechCrunch > would lose all its value, so he relented and I agreed to pay Keith 10% of > any value I received in the company eventually to avoid litigation.

I know and have done business with Mike.

That said the above sounds like Mike may have been using resources [1] of Edgeio and so essentially to avoid litigation Mike had to give Keith a cut of the action. So as a stretch Keith could claim that w/o those resources (pay, reimbursement, guidance and so on) Mike would never have been able to start Techcrunch. That doesn't make Keith a founder for sure. But then again (taking Keith's side of this not that I have any reason to do so at all) it doesn't seem entirely unjust that he got 10% of Techcrunch. He could probably rework the 'techcrunch' connection creatively to reflect this.

Also nobody gives up 10% of a company in this circumstance (remember Arrington went to law school) unless they feel the other party has a leg to stand on and they stand to loose more. Generally of course.

[1] "He asked me to work with him on Edgeio and possibly other companies he was to start. I agreed and began working with him.".."At the time I was working with Keith Teare on another project called Edgeio, a company that he founded"

</comment><comment><USER29> How does this actually matter? Various players either have stock and money from tc or they don't.

I've seen maybe a half dozen first hand examples of companies here in Colorado bootstrapping, getting some real funding, going through a big pivot and then having their history effectively rewritten. CEO and maybe a CTO are named "founders" and neither was involved in any capacity for the first 12-18 months. After a pivot and some branding, about the only original equipment is the name of the corporation and some legal paperwork, perhaps a couple employees. Engineers do this too, surely we've all witnessed a little "title inflation" on LinkedIn, I think it's almost a disease with dissolved startups, I just assume someone gave themselves a bump when reading a resume with details from a completely nonexistent startup.

"Founder" is funnier though, it's one thing if you got payed, but it's not like you're claiming engineering experience. Seemed like a few years back at defcon and black hat, folks were getting twisted about "credit," like Apple and MS, etc.. were going to give "Solar Ninja" credit for finding a security flaw they fixed in a service pack.

<comment><USER30> The article explains exactly how it matters. Arrington didn't care that much until people started asking him about his connections to various crypto ICOs.

<comment><USER29> But he has no connection to them. He can simply say that, he can throw the ico under the bus and recommend against doing business with them. He can do whatever. If the investors talk to the wrong founder, that's not exactly helping the fundraising process, is it?

Ethics matter, truth is real, I'm not justifying any sort of dishonesty but the difference between a real Co-founder that signed some articles of incorporation or something and an early employee that you gave 10% of the company to is kind of academic. If you have to make spurious claims to get your ico off the ground some investors will sniff it out, others won't, that's business. People "round up" on their resumes, it's a known open secret, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another scumbag advisor. Seeing that name is now a confimation the ICO is a scam.

</comment><comment><USER32> Michael Arrington is named as an advisor to Nexo [1]. Is this connection legitimate?

[1]: [https://nexo.io/](https://nexo.io/)</comment>


Too small to fail: How startups can grow in recessions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/too-small-to-fail-how-startups-can-grow-in-recessions.html

<comment><USER2> I find this post rather inspiring (who doesn't like cheering for an underdog?) Although I believe he is right to use Balsamiq as an example of great success, I'm not sure Peldi's market is exactly a small niche. Sure he has targeted a small development community, but his mock-up software could certainly be useful to a wide spectrum of people. Perhaps that is where the whole "growth from a small niche" thing comes in...

But I digress. The fact is that this article outlines exactly what more founders need to focus on. Why be a small fish struggling in an ocean when you can just as easily rule your own pond? (disclaimer: I watched Finding Nemo yesterday)</comment>


Ask HN: Any volunteering opportunities in YC-backed startups? - <AUTHOR>

Thanks to the H1B policy -- I have to wait another two months before working for a top tech company in the bay area...
Too bored...
Looking for a REAL volunteering opportunity in a tech startup in SF orthe bay area, YC-backed would be the best.
What I could bring you (for free for 2 months):
-- a smart, humble and super fast-learning mind and two quick hands
-- a full-stack engineer most proficient in C/C++ and Python
-- expert level experience with security in web/network and RFID/NFC systems
-- other tech skills such as SQL/NoSQL DBs, RESTful APIs, Javascript/AJAX....
What you could bring me:
--  some fun!
Any tips? <comment><USER2> This could be problematic as I think California has some law about volunteer work can not be tied to profit related work within a company. Might recall this incorrectly but double check

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads-up, man. I am checking on Quora now<comment></comment></comment></comment>


PR converts the Three.js codebase to ES2015 modules - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/9310 <comment><USER2> It should be clear that this conversion was primarily done via a script. So it is mostly an automated conversion.

If you are running forks of ThreeJS, like we are with [https://Clara.io](https://Clara.io), you can run the same conversion script on your repo and then merge in the new ThreeJS.

I haven't done it yet, hopefully in the coming week, but it should mostly work.

Next up I hope is moving ThreeJS to full ES6 classes. :)

<comment><USER3> It's actually a lot of fun to write a script like the one they used. I highly recommend it if you have a dependency that is large and not split up into modules. I dabbled with converting Three.js into modules through a script a couple years ago, took only an afternoon to get it working initially.

I'll have to take a look to see how the official version compares to my hack of an attempt. If Inyone else is curious: [https://github.com/zfedoran/modulite- three.js/blob/master/au...](https://github.com/zfedoran/modulite- three.js/blob/master/auto-modulite.js)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rollup huh, I guess Webpack is now too de jour and will join Gulp in the pit that is Old Javascript.

<comment><USER5> Actually Webpack and Rollup go hand-in-hand. Rollup just compiles JavaScript ES6 modules into a single file, dealing with only `import` and `export` statements and some tree-shaking. Webpack handles everything else, like ES6-to-ES5 conversion, bundling dependencies, styles and everything else you need to get your code shippable to browsers and node.

<comment><USER4> >Actually Webpack and Rollup go hand-in-hand. Rollup just compiles JavaScript ES6 modules into a single file

Isn't that webpacks gig. Or what that gulp? Or was that browserify? Or was that Jello? Or was that...

<comment><USER6> You seem to be complaining that innovation is happening.

If you don't want to deal with the inevitable 'options' that are going to be offered up by a community as large as the JS community, you could 1. pick a smaller community, 2. stick to old tech (e.g. at our company we still have an app running on RequireJS that runs just fine -- RequireJS is over 6 years old). 3. calmly re-assess tech choices every year or so.

<comment><USER4> >You seem to be complaining that innovation is happening.

Not at all. I'm complaining that all of these seemingly similar tools keep superseding each other and solve...what exactly.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think competitiveness of tooling is a bad thing? I understand why it could feel overwhelming, but you really can just pick one (assuming it appears to do what you want) and if it does, stick with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've used Rollup and it worked extremely well for bundling JS that uses modules into a single file. The documentation is very good and the community is quite responsive.

The only thing that would be better is not needing Rollup in the first place.

What's the current status of browser support for ES6 modules?

<comment><USER8> In development in all browsers[1] meaning none has them yet. IIRC, one of the major roadblocks was the need to define <script type="module"> in the HTML standard[2] as well as the whole loading routine. Hence, the feature is coming later than the rest in ES2015.

[1] [https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5365692190687232](https://www.chromestatus.com/features/5365692190687232)

[2] [https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/443](https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/443)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > The solution I've used here is to put the KeyframeTrack prototype and > constructor function in separate files, which allows for a stable sort.

Thanks. I've always wanted to organize my JavaScript projects like C projects.

It's an interesting exercise, but now we have to learn how to use Rollup to hack on Three.js (I run my own fork with optimizations built in for stereo rendering, and know a few other people who do similar things). I also fundamentally disagree that plugin repos are a good idea: part of the appeal of Three.js is that it is a drop-in file that you can use anywhere for 3D graphics.

<comment><USER10> > I also fundamentally disagree that plugin repos are a good idea

Part of the reason I was motivated to do this work is that I love Three's batteries-included approach – I don't need to spend a long time configuring my project or trying to figure out how to glue different libraries together (I've written more about this here [https://medium.com/@Rich_Harris/small-modules- it-s-not-quite...](https://medium.com/@Rich_Harris/small-modules-it-s-not- quite-that-simple-3ca532d65de4#.sckmgwnd6)). Nothing has changed vis-a-vis Three being a drop-in file.

But it's a double-edged sword – batteries-included historically means including code that you're not using in your project. ES modules give us the best of both worlds via tree-shaking. And once you've learned them (you're not learning Rollup, you're learning JavaScript – this is a standard we're talking about) you'll find it's much more logical than the alternative. Trust me!

The KeyframeTrack thing is just a special case resulting from the codebase's history. It could easily be fixed more elegantly, it was just outside the scope of this PR.

<comment><USER9> So serious questions here, because I actually want to solve these problems, but I haven't found a good solution yet.

I build a framework that runs on top of Three.js. I need to not only consume Three.js and make a bundle for demos, but I also need to create a library bundle that other people can consume. Every time I've looked into Webpack or Browserify to try to do this, the only documented use cases I've seen have been for consuming, not publishing libraries.

What would you suggest as a workflow for providing drop-in packages? Most of my users are not very technical and usually don't have Node installed. They might be semi-comfortable getting a basic, essentially static site going (though they are often running on RoR), or they're hacking on scripts almost exclusively on CodePen. They want to be able to script-tag include JS files and get to work on their projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's hard to see this as anything other than an ad for rollup. There's been many attempts to modernize the Three.js codebase. Not sure why this is the one that went through.

I'm all for bringing Three.js up to date and applying modern JS tools to it. The maintainers of Three usually push back against these efforts. This PR still doesn't address the many fundamental problems with the quality of Three's source code and the attitudes of the maintainers. I wouldn't personally use Three on a large project, the low quality ecosystem will eventually harm you. It's designed as library to spin up small projects quickly. It's good at that. Beyond that I wouldn't recommend it.

For the record I believe Babylon (another WebGL utility library) has similar problems with the source code. I don't have a suggestion for the "best" WebGL library to use.

<comment><USER12> Is it, though? If "Hi, I'm the author of the ONLY tool that does bundling based on how ES2015 modules work, and applied that to your codebase, which made it both more useful to future developers and made it smaller as bundle" is an ad, I'd like to see more ads everywhere. Other than rollup there are no bundlers that perform ES2015 module bundling, which means there is no efficient tree shaking, no load-order independency, etc.

I suspect the reason it went through is because it _actually_ modernized the codebase: unlike previous ideas, just swapping ES5 notation for a newer slightly more efficient ES6 notation, this refactor actually changes the load, parse, and bundle efficiency of the codebase, from a non-standard module style to what we've now collectively agreed on JS-native module should look like; something that before ES6 simply did not exist. There were choices made by individuals or organizations (commonjs, umd, etc), but only as of ES6 are modules _actually_ a formal construct in JS, with an official spec that formalizes how imports work. Any code changes that bring older codebases in line with the new spec are fantastic: this codebase just got massively future- proofed without any impact whatsoever on its integrity.

(the one example that didn't run turned out to be a bug in the current example, not in the refactor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is this a good thing? Just seems like different syntax to do the same thing.

You can theoretically dynamically resolve the different exports asynhronously, but you could do that by exporting functions before.

ES6 makes me think I am going crazy. Everyone seems so excited to have new sugar and a ton of busywork upgrading code and resolving runtime incompatibilities. I have yet to see any feature that seems like an actual benefit to the conservative working programmer.

Maybe destructuring.

<comment><USER14> eslint also provides static analysis for dependency resolution when using import statements instead of node require calls

<comment><USER15> eslint-plugin-import found several bugs for us when we enabled it. Can't recommend it enough. [https://github.com/benmosher/eslint-plugin- import](https://github.com/benmosher/eslint-plugin-import)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I wonder what justifies turning normal code into a string to eval():

[https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/9310/files#diff-2ac7...](https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/9310/files#diff-2ac7ae14bafb96167d6b480d86c885feL5)

becomes

[https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/9310/files#diff- ff6e...](https://github.com/mrdoob/three.js/pull/9310/files#diff- ff6e5f22a9c7e66987b19c0199636480R4)

On the surface it seems bad.

<comment><USER17> This does not look like an eval. It seems to be a script that generates a JS file. The string is not eval'ed, it is concatenated.

<comment><USER16> Good point, either way it is ugly that normal code is now a string. It is in rollup.config.js so maybe this is imposed by "Rollup", but I'm not about to go find how the "outro" option differs from the "footer" option in yet another JS build tool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome, virtually all of Rich Harris' work is pure gold - this, Rollup, RactiveJS, etc, etc. Pragmatic and solves real development problems.

<comment><USER19> Don't forget his babel replacement, buble:

[https://gitlab.com/Rich-Harris/buble](https://gitlab.com/Rich-Harris/buble)

Zero config, small and fast as heck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there a way to automated these kinds of conversions? A lot of the line changes are adding "THREE." in front of the right identifier.

<comment><USER21> [https://github.com/facebook/codemod](https://github.com/facebook/codemod)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> FFS "Rollup", I gather there was not enough choice in this area, so why not create YET ANOTHER ONE.</comment>


MSU Scholars Find $21T in Unauthorized Government Spending - <AUTHOR> http://msutoday.msu.edu/news/2017/msu-scholars-find-21-trillion-in-unauthorized-government-spending-defense-department-to-conduct/ <comment><USER2> I'm filing this one under "Don't believe everything you read on the internet" until more evidence surfaces. The number is just too fantastic. That's the about the same size as our national debt, making it very hard to believe a number that large is possible.

<comment><USER3> Same, the article states that the Army alone is missing $6.5 Trillion from 2015...

Roughly speaking that's like 8.8% of the GDP of the planet. That... just doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER4> The US is known to have a massive budget for the defense. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures)

<comment><USER3> Yes... Using that link a source... the US lost more than 4 times what every country in the world INCLUDING the US legitimately spent.

Or approximately 1/3 of the of the entire us GDP, compared to the 3% listed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The number sounds ridiculously large but I'm not surprised that these things happen.

The entire financial system is built on fraud. I think that most people understand this at least subconsciously.

Many years ago, being honest and forthcoming was beneficial and people appreciated honesty.

If you made a mistake and were honest about it as soon as it came to your awareness, people would respect you for it and would be more lenient. These days this is not the case, being honest is actually a disadvantage. Lying and cheating is always the best option. People don't give a crap about honesty anymore, only money and social status.

So in a world where the value of honesty is a negative number, it's not surprising at all that fraud is rampant.

<comment><USER6> It is not clear from the article that this is mostly fraud. It appears that it might cover anything not done strictly according to procedure or documented incorrectly.

And 'not done strictly according to procedure' may or may not be a serious issue in any given case. Most bureaucracies have some rules that are incomplete, contradictory or simply infeasible.

Audits are a good idea, but I don't expect the $21T figure to stand, except perhaps in a purely formal way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Read more carefully, that's the total of all improperly accounted for transactions, not lost money.

While it's still a complete shit show. There's a huge, almost click bate difference.

<comment><USER7> The title right now is "MSU Scholars Find $21T in Unauthorized Government Spending". Did it change?

<comment><USER3> No, but the report is about journal voucher adjustments which isn't spending exactly spending.

The report says not that they're "spending" $21T, but that they made a cumulative amount of errors and corrections in their vouchers equalling $21T and have really poor audit controls.

While bad audit controls is a legitimate and serious problem, it very much is not the same as what people normally think of as "Spending".

<comment><USER8> But these are adjustments that are larger than the entire (associated) budget. How is even possible? How do poor controls lead to these astronomical errors?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Now, the Department of Defense has announced it will conduct the first > department-wide, independent financial audit in its history

I recall a few (somewhere between 5 and 10) years ago they tried to do an audit and just threw their arms up in the air and said "impossible".

A bunch of people are going to choke on their morning coffee over this but I'm just going to say it: Trump promised to bring accountability to government and here's the DoD performing the impossible. I know, heresy...

<comment><USER10> Just so you know, this (the audit) was initiated under the Obama administration back on 2010. All Federal agencies were required to go through an audit but the DOD got a waiver for 7 years, which is why you are seeing this now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm constantly amazed with the mental gymnastics people who advocate for tax increases partake in. The know the government is abysmal with money, yet think by giving it a blank check that magically all societal ills will be solved.

<comment><USER12> The problem is that the mental gymnastics of both sides are so full of holes they are absurd.

The left - we're just going to force everything to be correct and just, including of course, and most importantly, who has money for what. Needless to say, historical societies went quite far in this, and to say it didn't happen is an understatement.

The right - just give more money to people who already have it, and clearly hoard it (that's what lowering taxes does), and they will make everything just and correct. Needless to say, historically this has been done and to say things did not in fact become fair and just is an incredible understatement.

Neither works. Obviously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where would a government department get this much actual money? Do they just have unlimited debit accounts? At some point someone in the treasury has to transfer the money and notice it's above the budget right?

<comment><USER14> It's entirely possible that this spending is within their budgets.

The article talks about unauthorized spending not that they had extra money or did over budget spending. So a lot of it could depend on how one defines unauthorized spending.

<comment><USER15> It actually does say that the Army spent over their budget:

 _Skidmore got involved last spring when he heard Catherine Austin Fitts, former assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, refer to a report which indicated the Army had $6.5 trillion in unsupported adjustments, or spending, in fiscal 2015. Given the Army's $122 billion budget, that meant unsupported adjustments were 54 times spending authorized by Congress._

<comment><USER14> US budget for 2015 was 3.688 trillion USD[0]. There are many things that are possible, but US army spending nearly double of the entire US budget without anyone noticing isn't one of them.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_bud...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_United_States_federal_budget)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sure it can be frustrating to try to follow the rules in that environment when everyone around you seems to be getting their purchases through the system and you're constantly being told there isn't any money. I can imagine it would create a culture that demands lack of ethics to get anything accomplished.

<comment><USER17> I worked for the DOE for 12 years. There certainly were shady, sweetheart, and down right suspicious deals that happen for services, hardware and software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The entire 2015 federal budget was around $3.9 trillion. If just the army had spent $5.6 trillion in 2015 that would be noticed. This article can't make extraordinary claims with extraordinary proof (or any proof) to back it up.

<comment><USER19> The article has a link to [https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud- missing-money-su...](https://missingmoney.solari.com/dod-and-hud-missing- money-supporting-documentation/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How are these hidden expenses paid for without being noticed? Is the money just printed? Wouldn't that cause huge inflation?

<comment><USER21> US does own the money supply and print money, if you question our authority then you may be destroyed

see: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWuAct1BxHU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unauthorized federal spending (in these two departments) 1998-2015: $21T

Federal debt (2017): $20T

$ 20,000,000,000,000 USD

<comment><USER22> Would a blockchain for government expenditures help avoid this type of error?

We already now have [https://usaspending.gov](https://usaspending.gov) ( [https://beta.usaspending.gov](https://beta.usaspending.gov) ) and expenditure line item metadata.

Would having traceable money in a distributed ledger help us keep track of money collected from taxpayers?

Obviously, the volatility of most cryptocurrencies would be disadvantageous for purposes of transferring and accounting for government spending. Isn't there a way to peg a cryptocurrency to the USD; even with Quantitative Easing? How is Quantitative Easing different from just deciding to print trillions more 'coins' in order to counter debt or inflation or deflation; why is the government in debt at all?

<comment><USER22> re: Quantitative Easing

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

Say I have $100 in my Social Security Fund (in very non-aggressive investments which need to meet or exceed inflation) and the total supply of money (including paper notes and numbers in debit and credit columns of various public and private databases) the total supply of money is $1T with $1T in debt; if 1T _is printed_ to pay for that debt, is my $100 in retirement savings then worth $50? Or is it more complex than that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> buy bitcoin

</comment><comment><USER24> I'm guessing black ops that they don't want put on the books.

<comment><USER25> it's not that glamorous.</comment></comment>


How To Screw Up Two-Factor Auth - <AUTHOR> http://blog.meldium.com/home/2013/8/23/screw-up-two-factor-authentication

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised by people pushing OTP and TFA as an answer to our problems when most implementations use insecure key distribution. SMS is no better than email.

One could use something like PGP to encrypt your OTP list, but this would still leave the OTP list on the server for nefarious server accessors.</comment>