Voynich manuscript: the solution? - <AUTHOR> https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/voynich-manuscript-solution/ <comment><USER2> Other than declaring that the solution is obvious to a self-declared expert such as himself, the author (Nicholas Gibbs) doesn't appear to give any proof of his theory.

So far I can can find online, this piece is the only thing he has ever published about the Voynich manuscript: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22nicholas+gibbs%22+voynich)

Who is Nicholas Gibbs? Does anyone besides Nicholas Gibbs trust his opinion on these matters? And how did he convince the TLS to publish this drivel?

(to avoid being entirely negative, here's a link to a blog that shows what some better Voynich research looks like: [https://stephenbax.net](https://stephenbax.net))

<comment><USER3> " _As someone with long experience of interpreting the Latin inscriptions on classical monuments and the tombs and brasses in English parish churches, I recognized in the Voynich script tell-tale signs of an abbreviated Latin format._ "

Oh, my.

Either this is a parody or a tutorial on how to identify "crazy person goes down rat hole" situations.

<comment><USER3> " _Systematic study of every single character in the Lexicon identified further ligatures and abbreviations in the Voynich manuscript and set a precedent. It became obvious that each character in the Voynich manuscript represented an abbreviated word and not a letter._ "

And here we go....

<comment><USER3> " _This was problematic until I realized that not only had the folios of the manuscript been cropped (the images of flowers and roots have been severed and the tops of folios hacked) but, more importantly, the indexes that should have been there were now absent. Indexes are present in many other similar books: a system of cross-reference for illness, complaints, names of plants and page numbers. For the sake of brevity, the name of both plant and malaise were superfluous in the text so long as they could be found in the indexes matched with a page number._ "

Whee! It's like a slip-n-slide greased with butter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There are many crank analyses of the Voynich manuscript floating around out there. The only thing I've seen that has any believability (I'm a former linguist) is this:

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ](https://youtube.com/watch?v=4cRlqE3D3RQ)

[https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8nHbImkFKE4)

tl;dr: it's probably real writing, likely related to Roma/Syriac

<comment><USER5> As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'.

The videos are an impressive phonological reconstruction, but I predict (based on the assumption that the math isn't lying), that it would be effectively impossible to get much beyond ad-hoc phonetic correspondences with Romany, to any predictive morphology or syntax.

The solution in this article is rather plausible. If the writing is in a highly restricted vocabulary, with highly restricted syntax, and highly constrained domain, it would be possible to get the observed information density.

Comparing it to, say, Linear B or Egyptian hieroglyphs is instructive. Both of those clearly have the information density of regular human language.

In the end, the solution might be a combination. It might use some Roma/Syriac nouns, but it seems clear it doesn't use them in anything like a normal linguistic context.

Caveat: IANALinguist

<comment><USER6> > As I understand it, Voynich has a too low information content to be an > alphabetic (or -- a fortiori -- logographic or syllabic) representation of a > human language. If true then it is almost certainly not 'real writing'.

That is an extraordinarily European viewpoint, where alphabets have a few tens of glyphs, each representing a single letter (or, in the case of capital letters, two glyphs per letter).

Imagine an alphabet similar to Arabic where each letter may have up to five glyphs, or even an alphabet in which the _position_ of the glyph changes it's letter. Or Korean, where each 'letter' is composed of two or three interchangable components. Or Han, in which the number of instrument strokes in the glyph affect it's meaning.

There are so many variations on what constitutes a letter, never mind an individual glyph or a full word/concept, that one cannot use strictly European analysis techniques on arbitrary writing systems.

<comment><USER7> _Imagine an alphabet similar to Arabic where each letter may have up to five glyphs, or even an alphabet in which the _position_ of the glyph changes it 's letter._

But we don't have to imagine a random alphabet which Voynich might have been written in. We can look at the actual language in the manuscript. It often shows three or four Latin-like glyphs repeated. Unless you have access to some special way these symbols are differentiated or otherwise convey information, a way that all other would-be interpreters have missed, you really don't have an argument.

And as far as European thinking goes - there's no evidence I know of a non- European origin to the manuscript.

Edit: and the languages you cite have a larger, not smaller information content than European languages, see;

[https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6167/most- su...](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6167/most-succinct- written-language/6604)

<comment><USER8> I do agree that the repeated glyphs and almost-repeated "words" are a big red flag against "can this actually mean anything?", and I'm not sure the idea of abbreviations really explains that.

However, many medieval documents even in known real languages do contain almost undifferentiated glyphs one after the other:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_(palaeography)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minim_\(palaeography\))

Not quite the same, but something similar might conceivably apply to e.g. the Voynich's c-like characters.

<comment><USER7> Well, I believe what article was saying was the text was shorthand for a sequence of actions - repeated letters implied repeated actions. In this case, sequences herbal infusions, bathing, magnets, etc.

IE, there's no text to translate, it's not an abbreviation for any standard text.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I see comments suggesting that it wouldn't be worth the effort to translate this based on the author's hypotheses, but there has been a substantial community around trying to do just that for a long time. FWIW The NSA appears to have published a book around 1978, _The Voynich Manuscript: An Elegant Enigma_ [1], and a couple of the things from this article jump out at me after having read that book that raise red flags about the article's interpretation. The idea that there were multiple artists is far from being universally accepted, and experts who have studied this in the past have not been able to conclusively state that there were more than one or two authors or artists, although the possibility does remain open. Secondly, the suggestion that each glyph represents a full word in latin has also been studied - see the link for more information, but the frequency distributions and vocabulary size do not seem to make sense if that is the case (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

In all I am surprised more progress has not been made since the advent of the internet and its crowd-sourcing potential. There is definitely no shortage of interpretations all over the internet, and in headlines from time to time. The last one I recall from a couple of months ago suggested that there was a specific Jewish birthing practice being illustrated on one of the pages that suggested a certain origin of the text. [2]

[1][https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical- fi...](https://www.nsa.gov/about/cryptologic-heritage/historical-figures- publications/publications/misc/assets/files/voynich_manuscript.pdf)

[2][https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/05/author-of- myst...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jul/05/author-of-mysterious- voynich-manuscript-was-italian-jew-says-scholar)

</comment><comment><USER10> Like, is everyone ignoring the picture at the top of the article? That looks like a pretty believable direct translation of the ligatures to me. I know its not the whole thing, but it is plausibly consistent.

That image is titled p16_Gibbs1.jpg. To me that hints that the author is serious and is planning to release a detailed paper.

His final statement at the end of the article is really bold. "Not only is the manuscript incomplete, but its folios are in the wrong order – and all for the want of an index."

Perhaps the author is going to provide the index, and the correct order for the folios while providing what he believes to be the missing pieces from other texts from that time period?

This article looks like a teaser to me for something significant. Let's hope anyway.

<comment><USER3> [http://www.voynich.nu/writing.html](http://www.voynich.nu/writing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The idea that the Voynich manuscript is a medical text seems plausible, but the theory that it uses a logographic representation (one symbol per word) rather than an alphabetic or even a syllabaric (one symbol per syllable) one seems less likely to me. A cursory examination of the manuscript ([http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html](http://www.voynich.nu/folios.html)) reveals that the lexicography looks much more like an alphabetic encoding than a logographic one like Chinese. The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space. Also, it appears that there are too many repeated symbols and insufficiently many distinct symbols for a logographic language.

<comment><USER12> > _The symbols are collected into word-like groups separated by white space._

Couldn't the same (whitespace separation) be done for sentences in a logographic representation?

<comment><USER11> Of course that's possible, but I don't think so. The lengths of the groups seem to me to be distributed more like words than sentences.

[UPDATE:] More info here: [http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html](http://www.voynich.nu/analysis.html)

This is particularly interesting:

"The apparent lack of common phrases is one of the main anomalies of the Voynich MS text."

If that's really true I think that's a big clue. (Exactly what it's a clue _of_ I'm not sure :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Where's the actual solution? I feel like I'm missing something because what I see is some plausible commentary about it and some interesting discussion of Latin and ligatures but where's the actual decoding of the writing?

<comment><USER14> As I read it, the writing is un-decodable because it's not really "writing" in the conventional sense, it's recipes encoded using single-letter abbreviations, many of which require an index to decipher. No index is present, and the author surmises that it was never completed, or lost.

<comment><USER15> I'm reminded of the work that was done to reverse engineer the Intel ME 11 [1], it was compressed with an unknown Huffman code which the team was nevertheless able to recover somehow. And that was with variable-length words!

[1] [http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel- me.html](http://blog.ptsecurity.com/2017/08/disabling-intel-me.html)

<comment> unkown-unknowns From your link:

> In particular, MINIX was chosen as the basis for the operating system > (previously, ThreadX RTOS had been used). Now ME firmware includes a full- > fledged operating system [...]

Woah, did I read that correctly? That there is a version of MINIX running inside of the Intel processors of presumably almost every modern computer with an Intel CPU that has Intel ME in it? If so then that's insanely cool! I mean I still dislike Intel ME itself and wish I could disable it easily and without risking damage/destruction but the idea of there being a version of MINIX running on my computer right now is quite cool.

<comment><USER16> Would be interesting to estimate if there are more MINIX instances or Linux instances running at this point.

<comment><USER17> If you count Android devices as running Linux, then no, since most of them are ARM-based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fascinating, if accurate - and I rather hope it is. If it is, it would make the whole thing a rather instructive example of how siloing knowledge can hide truth; the author's domain knowledge has given him the tools to identify the manuscript, but it's generally been in the domain of conspiracists and 'hidden knowledge of the ancients' types.

It would be good to see a thorough study of it to test the author's hypothesis, of course.

</comment><comment><USER19> Rather convenient "solution".

The solution is the heading and index...which are missing.

Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be solved.

<comment><USER20> > Author might be right, but that is essentially an un-provable statement and > doesn't really amount to a solution. But rather a statement that it can't be > solved.

Not at all. Someone more motivated than the author can choose to decode it. If much of it was lifted, then you can trace back the lifted "recipe" to the earlier work and construct the index.

However, it's going to be very painful, slow work. For no real gain (who really cares about a sloppily done Medieval health self-help book?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> As Czech myself, I prefer to believe the theory of several clever guys tricking someone important to buy a nonsense book of secrets, splitting the spoils, having a good laugh. Resonates well... Heidrich called us the Laughing beasts for a reason.

</comment><comment><USER22> "I have a brilliant proof, but not only is the margin too small to hold it, it has been hacked off".

</comment><comment><USER23> This guy started with a hypothesis and then set out to prove it by looking for evidence. He then said the evidence was missing (hacked off) but his hypothesis was still true. Really, it is not very persuasive.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't see a lot of "why" in this supposed solution. If what the author says is true, it sounds like an incredibly painstaking process to encode all of this, especially when it was something so tedious (it would make more sense if the source material were interesting or salacious!). I can sort of understand abbreviating the long plant names to individual symbols, referenced from an index, and I can understand ligatures for things like "etiam", but why make each and every single character represent a whole word? Surely the end result is that the manuscript, even with the index, becomes very, very hard to read?

And is there a good explanation for why this document apparently stands alone in history as the only manuscript written in this way? Were there others, and we just lost them? Was this just a particularly egregious example of this forgotten art, and others written in this manner were easier to decipher? Lastly, there's a whole Wikipedia page about "scribal abbreviations" \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scribal_abbreviation) \- if decoding the Voynich manuscript were so easy as the author makes out ("It became obvious...") then why has some other medieval expert not already figured it out in the near-century people have been studying this manuscript?

</comment><comment><USER25> What if it is just Lorem Ipsum by someone who could draw but not actually write?

<comment><USER26> Not sure if serious, but on the off chance... seems unlikely. We create "Lorem Ipsum" gibberish to fill space because modern technology has made it trivially easy to do so. The same exercise would have taken a medieval writer many laborious hours.

<comment><USER27> But in contrast to Lorem Ipsum might have been sold for a high price, _a la_ The Emperor's New Clothes?

Or, there's something called "spirit writing" isn't there, a sort of written form of speaking in tongues? Presumably the doing of which is also considered to be it's own reward.

Heck, perhaps a scribe went psychotic.

<comment><USER8> It might have been sold for a high price, but vellum and coloured inks were expensive at the time, and it is a very long document when a much shorter one would still seem to fit the bill.

Seems a bit of a gamble if that was the plan, and the scribes were presumably either well-to-do or trusted by someone well-to-do if they could get their hands on the raw materials. That makes the prank/con/crazy spirit writing theory seem less likely to me but certainly doesn't rule either out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A sample translation is the _key_ thing I wanted to read in this article, and all they gave was an illegible low-resolution snippet without an English translation -- very annoying.

As best as I can read, the purported Latin translation in the image at the top of the article says:

 _Folia de oz et en de aqua et de radicts de aromaticus ana 3 de seminis ana 2 et de radicis semenis ana 1 etium abonenticus confundo. Folia et cum folia et confundo etiam de eius decocole adigo aromaticus decocque de decoctio adigo aromaticus et confundo et de radicis seminis ana 3._

Feeding the above to Google Translate gives:

 _The leaves of Oz and added to the water and the aromatic radicts semen Ana ana 3 2 seed and the roots ana 1 etium abonenticus the mix. The leaves, when the leaves are decocole adigo and the mix of the aromatic decocque of the cooking adigo an aromatic mix of roots and seeds Ana 3._

Yes, I realize that the author's translation might be completely mistaken, but I'm curious to read what he thinks it says. If someone can make out the words better, please do so.

<comment><USER29> Ana is the equivalent quantity of different ingredients used in the pharmaceutical preparation in Italy. To me that translation makes sense. Google translate is messing up badly it should be something like this for my remote knowledge of Latin: 1 leaf of oz in water, 3 ana (equivalent quantity) of aromatic roots, 2 ana of seeds, mix very well together. Infuse the leaves mixed together with the aromatic (roots) and with the roots infusion and mix all together with 3 ana of root seeds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So the whole thing is written in a form of shorthand and the core index/naming that define what the individual pieces are is missing. I wonder if this wasn't meant as a "production" manuscript but as a reference document for the replication of a larger work?

<comment><USER31> was thinking the same thing. Kind of like a compression algorithm. Keep this low-paper version with an index if a scribe needed to write out another copy. Of course, if that were the cases, then it would probably be for a higher volume book and some copies of the real thing might be lying around somewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I see a theory, not a translation, am I alone in this?

<comment><USER33> Nope, hardly a "solution."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Don't have time to read this properly but have been reading about the VM lately, most interesting researchers I've found are Stephen Bax[1] and this YouTuber[2]

[1] [https://stephenbax.net/?cat=5](https://stephenbax.net/?cat=5)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- sW5dOlDxxu0EgdNn2pMaQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC- sW5dOlDxxu0EgdNn2pMaQ)

Some really interesting analyses in there.

</comment><comment><USER35> He doesn't address any of the central mysteries of the manuscript, including that none of the plants in the herbarium don't actually exist in nature and the "tubes" that the women in the bath section travel through, not to mention their odd skin coloration. Plus his exploration is convenient in that he doesn't have to actually decipher anything.

</comment><comment><USER36> Other people have also suggested Latin as the most likely base language. A better discussion is provided here: [http://www.science20.com/patrick_lockerby/patterns_of_latin_...](http://www.science20.com/patrick_lockerby/patterns_of_latin_in_the_voynich_manuscript-225418)

</comment><comment><USER37> A fascinating analysis, half done. If the whole text were decoded and the indices rebuilt, would be more convincing.

</comment><comment><USER38> There is a good general synopsis of the Voynich manuscript on wikipedia:

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

Interesting stuff!

</comment><comment><USER39> Interesting. Noticed youtube pushing Voynich in suggestions out of the blue last week, now there's an article posted up here days later.

</comment><comment><USER40> tldr;

        By now, it was more or less clear what the Voynich
        manuscript is: a reference book of selected remedies
        lifted from the standard treatises of the medieval
        period, an instruction manual for the health and
        well being of the more well to do women in society,
        which was quite possibly tailored to a single
        individual.

</comment><comment><USER31> My theory: it is music, not writing. I wonder if that is even possible?

<comment><USER41> any data can be interpreted as sound, but it might not be perceived as musically coherent

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

</comment><comment><USER43> Site no worky without javascript, could someone paste a copy, please?</comment>


Call Python functions from VBA in all Microsoft Office apps - <AUTHOR> http://docs.xlwings.org/en/stable/whatsnew.html#v0-12-0-oct-7-2018 <comment><USER2> A couple of years ago I played with xlwings, but found it too slow for our usecase (a few cells modified per second) plus we found the Windows requirement quite onerous.

I wound up reading/writing our spreadsheets in pure Python -- we used xlwt which doesn't support xlsx, so I'd probably consider using openpyxl these days.

(Specifically we were selecting parts of spreadsheets based on row/column headers inside the spreadsheet even if they weren't in the first row/column or there were multiple tables per tab; if this sounds useful to you check out [https://github.com/sensiblecodeio/xypath](https://github.com/sensiblecodeio/xypath) )

<comment><USER3> Why not just use Pandas? Whenever I want to do any slightly complex modification to an excel table I just load it into Pandas instead. It's a complete breeze and very fast.

<comment><USER4> Pandas uses the openpyxl module, which can both read and write. It's quite nice and pure python, too. Pandas is more high level and gives less control but also less code.

<comment><USER5> Props to openpyxl, just used that module to do some quick and dirty spreadsheet manipulation to save some colleagues a bunch of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does anyone have any current info on native Python support in Excel? I recall Microsoft announcing they would offer this at some point in the future. I would really really prefer it to VBA.

<comment><USER6> > Microsoft announcing they would offer this at some point in the future

No, the ran a consultation asking whether there is interest, got overwhelming support for it, but have not commented on it since.

<comment><USER7> That's because it's not in line with their strategy of telling everyone what they're having and they'll have to lump it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool, but I find even cooler the native support in LibreOffice, IIRC. [https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros/Python_Guide](https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Macros/Python_Guide)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's getting to the point where simply opening a Microsoft Office document is roughly the same as opening a random .exe file.

I think we should treat them with the same kind of paranoia.

<comment><USER10> > t's getting to the point where simply opening a Microsoft Office document is > roughly the same as opening a random .exe file.

This isn't exactly new. In fact it was much worse the late 90s / early 00s, the heyday of windows viruses. There was absolutely no security, opening an excel document automatically meant running arbitrary code that had full system access (via COM, etc). Many viruses spread over email by word and excel documents.

At least now, macros execution is disabled by default. Unless you explicitly enable automatic macro execution on all documents, I wouldn't be too worried about opening a documents. Of course, there's the occasional vuln ([http://georgemauer.net/2017/10/07/csv- injection.html](http://georgemauer.net/2017/10/07/csv-injection.html)) but excel isn't exactly the only software with occasional findings of execution vulnerabilities.

<comment><USER4> Printing requires enabling macros. Most people knee-jerk-click «enable editing» anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 16 seconds demo: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzG3LBZEWI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXzG3LBZEWI)

</comment><comment><USER11> The other direction is more interesting: Generating/templating Word or Excel documents using the COM interface using the comtypes/win32com python packages. That's what I currently use to generate release documentation as part of a delivery pipeline.

</comment><comment><USER12> You can also call C# functions using [https://excel-dna.net](https://excel- dna.net)

<comment><USER10> or F#!

<comment><USER13> or VB.net (relevant to VBA users if they want to move 20 years forward at little learning cost)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> cool, was wondering if it's still maintained (last big update from May).

Something I was wondering: If xlwings reads a big chunck of data in a dataframe, is there a way to keep it in memory without the need to re-load it every time one wants to do something with it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our [video course]([https://training.zoomeranalytics.com/p/xlwings](https://training.zoomeranalytics.com/p/xlwings)) allows us to spend more time again on developing xlwings. With regards to your question: Please open a [GitHub issue]([https://github.com/ZoomerAnalytics/xlwings/issues](https://github.com/ZoomerAnalytics/xlwings/issues)) and give us some more background of how exactly you want to use this.</comment></comment>


How A Young Community Of Entrepreneurs Is Rebuilding Detroit - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3007840/creative-conversations/how-young-community-entrepreneurs-rebuilding-detroit

<comment><USER2> It's been really interesting to look at Detroit as an outsider since I've been coming every few months and working out of the Detroit area for about 10 days each time and making mental comparisons to San Francisco and the valley.

The biggest challenge I see is that the area with the greatest concentration of available low-priced office space (downtown) is also where I wouldn't want to live. Once you spend some time in Detroit, you understand why it's called MotorCity, it's highly pedestrian unfriendly and I wouldn't trust the public transportation system unless I'm willing to risk my safety.

The other challenge is that there are towns/areas around Detroit that seem to be better fit for building a new tech/startup hub when compared to Downtown Detroit when it comes to quality of life, pedestrian-oriented, and safety:

\- Corktown - closest thing to the Mission, this area has an edgy industrial loft type of gentrification going on with a lot of young hip folks. This area is right on the edge of downtown but you go a few blocks away to look for housing and you encounter 50% burned down or houses in disrepair which means you can't really walk around the area feeling safe once it gets dark. I wouldn't walk there in the daytime given how few people are in that area and the number of abandoned properties.

\- Royal Oak - town about 11 miles North of Detroit. It's like the Marina district, lots of trendy hip shops, safe to walk around, good quality housing and vegan food options as well as good cultural scene. This area has the shops and lifestyle that Downtown is lacking.

\- Birmingham - further north in the suburbs, Google and McCann are located in this wealthy suburb. Features good food, high end shopping, a small upscale town feel (like Pacific Heights). Safe to walk around, good quality parks nearby, working and functioning government.

I like the motto and energy of Detroit that comes across in the form of "Detroit Hustles Harder" but I think you gotta address the core issue of having a city that people can feel safe in. I grew up in a poor neighborhood of LA and have never felt as unsafe as I feel driving around the large swaths of Detroit that have been left to rot.

<comment><USER3> They call it Motor City because it's where they used to make cars, not because it's pedestrian-unfriendly.

<comment><USER2> Yes, but I was making a larger observation about the car-centric culture that exists here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I blogged [1] about Detroit (I grew up just north of 8 mile for a time) recently and my solution to the overarching problem of the city was/is: a tax holiday for residents of Detroit.

The biggest problem Detroit has is declining population of income-producing people. Yes, there are issues of businesses for people to work at being in the city, but let's face it, people will drive to work wherever they are, at least until there's _much_ better public transport there.

Businesses get tax breaks to locate in particular areas - why don't residents? Michigan could/should introduce a 10 year state tax holiday for residents of Detroit. If you live in _Detroit_ the city, you pay 0% state income tax (or... a reduced sliding scale or something like that).

People will move there. People will relocate there. Supporting businesses will follow - more restaurants to serve local residents - residents who are earning, not the left-behind/leftover residents of a hollowed out city. Almost everyone who _can_ get out of Detroit has already.

Efforts of entrepreneurs to turn things around are good and should be applauded, but the problem is of a bigger scale than most people realize, and imo should be tackled at a state level via tax incentives (a great social engineering tool). One rebuttal I got to this is many in surrounding areas (Royal Oak, Ferndale, Easpointe, etc) would object because they'd be losing residents to Detroit. It probably would happen some, but the entire area has lost a lot of population as more people leave the region (and state) than move in.

As companies try to lure people back - I've heard from more than a few people that Ford is hiring aggressively - "no state income tax if you live in Detroit" would be a nice extra incentive.

[1] [http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/solution-to-detroits- current-p...](http://michaelkimsal.com/blog/solution-to-detroits-current- problems/)

<comment><USER5> The median US household income is something like $50k/year. Probably lower in Michigan, but we'll call it $50k. Michigan has a 4.25% income tax, so eliminating that would be a savings of $2,125. But you have to pay federal tax on that. Let's just say you're paying 15%. So now we're talking a savings of about $1,800. $1,800/year isn't chump change, but it's also not a life altering amount of money. For me personally, it's nowhere near enough money to put up with all the negatives that come with Detroit.

<comment><USER4> People that earn more would save more, and would have more incentive to move there, especially if you can get larger tracts of land to have a bit of privacy.

Yes there are negatives, but the solutions are going to need to come from getting larger numbers of working/earning people living there day in and day out. Adding another casino or ballpark will do pretty much _0_ for Detroit as a whole - it'll make the few square miles in downtown prettier, but people will just continue to drive in and out, nothing more.

People jumped through hoops a few years back to 'save' a few thousand for the 'new home buyer tax credit', which basically landed them with a mortgage. And that was a one time event. A family saving $2k+/year for, say 10 years, would be, if not life altering, certainly a modest incentive. Individuals making a decision like this won't be enough - it needs to be large groups who have enough purchasing power to attract other businesses/jobs to Detroit as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The place is surreal. There is so much infrastructure rotting and even burning right there in front of your eyes. I grew up in LA and was there during the riots and it left an impression on me. Cities need to be designed properly or they become a social catastrophe. Detroit is the case study for us all.

Especially in downtown and in patches, there are things happening that could bring it back. Dan Gilbert is the perfect person to improve the situation, he's about as witty-gritty Detroit as it gets. Due to his efforts, there is some support infra for startups emerging and that will have some effect. Shopkeepers much more so, IMHO.

But always beware of people with big ideas for your city: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKWtQvABBMY>

<comment><USER7> Detroit's urban planners made a lot of big mistakes. When the freeways were built in the fifties they cut entire neighborhoods in half. When Reneissance Center was built on the river in the words of one critic they pulled people off the streets and installed them in a fortress cut off from the rest of downtown.

But other cities made equally dumb mistakes but they recovered. The riots in 1967 scared people and began the destruction. I went downtown with my grandfather two weeks later and it looked like a war zone with buildings still smoldering.

Dan Gilbert is wagering a billion dollars of his fortune to turn things around and so far imho is doing very well indeed.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts- ques...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-quest-to- remake-downtown-detroit.html)

The NYT sees what Gilbert is doing as a philanthropic effort but Detroiter's see him more as a Billy Beane type.

[http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/4496/the_new_york_ti...](http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles/4496/the_new_york_times_dan_gilbert_and_detroit_s_commerce_phobia)

<comment><USER6> I read several books about urban planning and cities and it helped me understand how this happened all over the us. Detroit just got the worst of it. There are countless examples of horrible planning decisions in D., so many street-life-killing fortresses and dead voids everywhere.

I do think that the people of D. will overcome these obstacles now that the core problems are identified.

Do you remember anything about the conditions leading up to the riots?

I remember taking a series of bus rides through central LA in 1990 (2 years before the riots) and all I could see were thrashed neighborhoods and desolate stretches. It is a whole different world now, so much more life on the streets when I go back.

<comment><USER8> Hey, any book recommendations? Not for Detroit specifically, but urban planning is interesting.

<comment><USER6> Death and Life of Great American Cities \- the intellectual blueprint of the great counter-reaction to reductionism and modernism [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_Ame...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_and_Life_of_Great_American_Cities)

City of Quartz \- all about the history of LA and its power structures, lots of great anecdotes about zoning and the nasty history of racial segregation through real estate <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_of_quartz>

Suburban Nation

The Modern Urban Landscape

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know Detroit pretty well and while the danger is certainly there, it doesn't negate the opportunity. The city could also be a great laboratory for a firm developing tech to minimize the crime danger.

<comment><USER9> Yes, in fact I hear that a company called OCP is running some interesting experiments in just that area: [http://blog.khanneasuntzu.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/OCP...](http://blog.khanneasuntzu.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/03/OCP.jpg)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also relevant, check out the decline in Detroit at present:

[http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Detropia/70229260?locale=e...](http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Detropia/70229260?locale=en- US)

Watched this weekend and it is available for streaming. Pretty scary to think this sort of decline could hit any major city.

Why has this been downvoted?

<comment><USER11> Smaller cities implode as well. I was just in Newburgh, NY - a once gorgeous, historic town on the Hudson just 60 miles from Manhattan, now the murder capital of New York State. Literally. Driving around that town is like visiting the set of The Wire.

I couldn't help but think of what Newburgh would look like if it was in France, Germany or England. Probably a tourist attraction. Makes you kinda depressed at how easily Americans give up on urban areas.

<comment><USER12> I used to visit Newburgh a fair amount when I was younger. Do you think by chance the large number of historical buildings is actually whats creating part of the problem?

<comment><USER11> No, I don't think so. I'm not really sure how historic buildings could cause blight.

I know a big "urban renewal (read: slum-clearing) project in Newburgh demolished the historic waterfront in the 60s/70s. Then they never built anything to replace it.

Here's an good overview of the boom/bust: <http://www.newburghrevealed.org/historymigration.htm>

"One long time resident remarked, "Newburgh was a nice, solid town. Then everything changed. Just like that""

<comment><USER12> Historic buildings can cause blight the way that any building restriction can. They limit supply and raise costs. Historic buildings in particular, affect the ability for new business owners to bring in businesses as well as limiting homeowners.

Another great example of that is Washington DC, which has incredibly strict building limitations and a large number f protected historical buildings, which means that despite massive tourism, the city is largely a slum with millions of workers choosing really long commutes over living in the city.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've thought for more than a decade that the Midwest would be the "New Place" for 2005-2025. The coasts seem kind of played-out. The elites here (in NYC and SF) are already in place and going to try to block any real innovation. Silicon Valley was built in a time when Northern California was seen as a backwater-- sure, one with nice weather, but not a place the Northeastern elites took seriously-- and that was _why_ it was able to generate so much momentum in the 1950s to '90s.

However, there's the problem of capital, and also one of risk-aversion. It may be that Michigan (where failure has already happened) is where the next wave starts. I can't predict such things, but it's interesting to follow the pulse of it. Does technology really still need high-priced locations? It seems to think it does, but that may be a venture capital get-big-or-die bias.

One thing that pisses me off is the talent-pays aspect of real estate. Why is New York expensive? Because companies want to hire here. Why? Because _people like me live here_. So we are effectively paying because we're awesome. Well, fuck that. Why am I _paying_ a bunch of people who have nothing to do with productive activity because of that? If we, as a group, stopped being awesome then this city (even the country) would be fucking nothing. It's people who keep cities going.

I could really see a Midwestern city just killing it by throwing a few million dollars at some really great startup ideas. Bring 100 of the best programmers in the country together and pay them a market salary to work on whatever the fuck they want, then wait 5 years, see what they build and get a critical mass effect.

<comment><USER10> I like this idea. Now do you propose that a municipality create a startup accelerator with the requirement for funding being that you are willing to relocate?

Would be pretty amazing if they through in office space / housing for the first few years. One would have to believe it would pay off quickly.

<comment><USER13> _Now do you propose that a municipality create a startup accelerator with the requirement for funding being that you are willing to relocate?_

I think that could work. I'd focus on long-term projects and an "autonomy fund": $100,000 per year to 100 top-notch engineers. The city gets a non- voting 37.5% stake (implied valuation of $266.67k per year) in whatever you build, and you have to have at least half of your employees working there at least 45 days per year, or maintaining a residence (tax base).

<comment><USER14> This is a very neat idea.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Software will be unpatentable in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzcs.org.nz/news/blog.php?/archives/97-.html <comment><USER2> The article notes an unexpected by-product of the U.S. Supreme Court's _Bilski_ decision: apparently, it has caused examiners to become more aggressive in rejecting software patents that represent purely abstract ideas. Of course, the line between what constitutes patentable "method" and unpatentable "idea" is murky. Nonetheless, before _Bilski_ , the governing rule was pretty much that any method can be patented if it leads to a "useful, concrete, and tangible result," a highly liberal standard first adopted by the Federal Circuit in its _State Street_ decision in 1998. _State Street_ had opened the floodgates to unprecedented grants of software patents, both in number and in looseness of quality. It was precisely this idiotic outpouring of dubious patents that the Federal Circuit court itself tried to stem when it adopted the highly arbitrary "machine or transformation" test that was ultimately rejected by the Supreme Court on further appeal in _Bilski_. Though the Supreme Court rejected the machine-or-transformation test as a definitive standard for patentability of methods and also specifically affirmed the patentability of methods, it pointedly _rejected_ the ultra-loose _State Street_ test while stating that machine-or-transformation _can_ be used to provide an important "clue" to patentability, thus signaling that the USPTO and the courts were to be much stricter in evaluating method patents in the future. In addition, four justices (in dissent) would have struck down method patents altogether. Taken all together, then, the _Bilski_ case has begun to rein in the worst abuses in this area, even if the rejections now rest on calling out a method as being a mere abstract idea.

This all may be cold comfort to those who despise the effects of software patents but it is a significant step forward in reality to help prevent abuses. And, of course, the ultimate corrective in this area for all the mistakes made since _State Street_ is that such patents will in time enter into the prior art. This does not help anyone today, or for the near future, but it does mean that between a stricter standard going forward and the eventual lapse of the more frivolous patents previously granted, sanity is likely to be restored to this area over time.

Of course, for the short term, the abuses will remain as a carryover from the last 12 years and there is not much that can be done about this short of congressional action redefining what constitutes patentable subject matter. Since such action is nowhere near occurring, the U.S. will likely remain a treacherous terrain for companies in the software patent area for some years to come (and that would include New Zealand companies trying to ship their products here).

<comment><USER3> _four justices (in dissent) would have struck down method patents altogether_

Actually, they were in concurrence. The decision was 9-0 but there were four votes for striking them altogether (Stevens), four votes for a much narrower decision taking an agnostic stance but rejecting Bilsky's patent, and Kennedy agreeing with half the first and half the second.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you are of course correct - thanks for clarifying (while the four disagreed with the majority on this point, they all agreed in the result that Bilski's patent itself was no good). The perils of doing a late-night post!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At last! Software patents hinder innovation and reward it unfairly. No need to worry, no end of capitalism here: this will just push everybody to wrap their treasured algorithms as services (e.g., Google, Facebook, …), but with the priceless advantage of not having to constantly worry about legal repercussions and liability. Small players such as start-ups and third-world companies (once this wonderful idea catches on) will benefit the most. Last, but not least, core applications are very likely to become joint, open-source efforts, increasing efficiency and productivity. Thank you, New Zealand! Hello, Utopia!

</comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know how this affects companies exporting software from NZ to, say, the US?

I am assuming you're fine until you have an official/legal presence in the US, at which point you come under US patent law. Does this sound correct?

<comment><USER6> Invention patents cover, among other things, importation, manufacture, and use of the patented invention. So without US patent licenses, their US customers could be liable for infringement.

<comment><USER3> That leaves SaaS an open question. What if you send your data out to be processed in a software patent-free country and receive it back later? That's not the same as having a machine that infringes at all.

<comment><USER6> I'm not clear what the boundaries are, but I imagine that this is settled by existing patent law. Surely at sometime during the previous 200+ years, some patentholder has sued somebody in Detroit or New York for shipping materials to Canada for processing using a process or machine that was patented in the US but not in Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> How will thus affect the Patent Cooperation Treaty?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_Cooperation_Treaty>

</comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone expect this to last when people start using NZ as a safe-harbor and major US corporations like Microsoft and Oracle lobby for repeal? It just doesn't seem plausible with a country as Westernized as NZ.

<comment><USER9> The European Union doesn't recognize software patents either. The world didn't collapse from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm assuming NZ didn't sign a free trade agreement with the US like Australia (the US-Australia free trade agreement ensures US copyright law applies to and overrides Australian copyright law).

<comment><USER11> > the US-Australia free trade agreement ensures US copyright law applies to > and overrides Australian copyright law).

Can you elaborate on this? I understood treaties to have no legal force in Australia until domestic laws were passed to give them force. I know there are exceptions to this rule (like _Teoh_ ) but AFAIK they don't involve overriding domestic law

<comment><USER12> They don't. The commenter made a huge generalization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So this means that we can have a safe-harbour Sourceforge or Github in New Zealand. Someone should start that service.

<comment><USER14> You break patents not by writing or hosting software, but by using it. So a safe-harbour patent free cloud in New Zealand could help.

<comment><USER15> NZ really doesn't have the available bandwidth to do anything like this. That is until <http://pacificfibre.net/> goes live

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> hurrah!

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow, that is really cool. The quotes in the article explain exactly why software patents are absolutely horrible for innovation. Pretty much every idea ever that can be written as software has been patented at this point. Any code you write is probably violating some fucking patent, and if you're making money from software you write, it's only a matter of time before the patent trolls come knocking. It absolutely disgusts me. Maybe I'll move to NZ. I'm really impressed by this, seriously.

<comment><USER18> New Zealand also has other sensible policies. (Or lack of non-sensible ones.)

E.g. they do _not_ have deposit insurance (on bank deposits).

<comment><USER19> What's wrong with deposit insurance? If I give my money to someone else to hold for me, don't I want some guarantees that they will give it back when I need it? Or do they cause problems elsewhere?

<comment><USER18> Yes, you want some guarantees. But it's the job of either you or your debtor to get those guarantees. Not the job of the general public.

The biggest problem is moral hazard. With outside guarantees you don't care about default risk. And debtor will compete solely on return, not on risk- adjusted return.

Without an external backer, you will watch your bank much more closely. And banks can't be watched closely enough.

The Reserve Bank of New Zealand has a page ([http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/finstab/banking/regulation/3256868.h...](http://www.rbnz.govt.nz/finstab/banking/regulation/3256868.html)) explaining why they don't have deposit insurance in New Zealand.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Examples of (but no "get-rich") paid membership sites? - <AUTHOR>

Hey, I'm considering making a paid membership site with deeply researched info about a niche topic. Not about how to make $ on the internets. Do you guys know of good examples that I could have a look at, again, that are not trying to teach you how to make money on the internet but instead provide some niche info and charge membership fees. Seo comes to mind, but let's leave that out too, it's also about making money on the internet :) <comment><USER2> <http://StartupToDo.com> \- Provides community requested / rated guides on how to accomplish different startup processes, from making screencasts to getting press coverage.

There are a lot of pickup artist communities that offer improved info & forum access for a membership fee.

Most "deeply researched info about a niche topic" gets packaged and sold as an e-book. And most of it is about making money, relationships, or learning a skill. As they say, people will only pay for something that gets them paid, made, or laid.

Searching for "membership site examples" brought up many results (most of which you have to pay to join a membership site on how to make membership sites to see). I'm sure if you go far enough through search results you'll find some, though.

There are a lot of pickup artist communities that

</comment><comment><USER3> What about metafilter.com? I haven't joined, but I read their content daily. They charge a one-time membership fee of $5, which allows you to post a question on ask.metafilter.com once per week. Members can comment on anything they desire, leading to many diverse niche questions being answered by 'the hive'. They do supplement their revenue by google text ads, however.

</comment><comment><USER4> The Motley Fool sells investment advice newsletter subscriptions. Is that the kind of thing you're looking for? Granted, their newsletters are about making money through investment returns, but not necessarily via the internet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> So in this case, I'd actually hire someone fulltime to answer question and research stuff members need to know.</comment>


Open Source Licenses in 2020: Trends and Predictions - <AUTHOR> https://whitessource.com/top-open-source-licenses-trends-and-predictions <comment><USER2> What is the basis for these stats? new projects? new repos? new files? new commits? the lack of details makes me wonder.

<comment><USER3> The older post [0] has some info:

> Our research team analyzed our database of over 3M open source components > and 70M source files, covering 22 programming languages.

[0]: [https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog- whitesource/t...](https://resources.whitesourcesoftware.com/blog- whitesource/top-10-open-source-software-licenses-of-2016-and-key-trends)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Aside from the stats, which are not really surprising, I still find it very hard to get my head around licensing and I bet that this is the main reason why MIT is used. MIT is indeed the only license that is really understandable.

The mentioned choosealicense.com is not really helpful with choosing a license because it not really explains all the legal terms used, in my opinion. There are many blog articles out there but to this day I couldn't find a single overview that describes each of the major licenses in a regular-human way. And this overview is what I would need. Simple language, tailored to the most important questions: copyright, attribution, what can both non-commercial and commercial users do and what not, and what are my rights as the owner. If you have any resources on this please share it!

<comment><USER5> The only way to understand the fundamentals of licensing is to hire a lawyer. Because if you are unwilling to hire a lawyer, it doesn't matter how you license the software or whether you license it or not. The only person who can enforce the license for your software is you. And that requires paying lawyers. If you really care about what people do with your code, closed source is the way to go.

On the other hand, the big difference between licenses is how easy it is to incorporate contributions. That is why Linux thrived under GPL. It's why the formality of Apache's process is well suited for corporate contributions where participation will be vetted by the legal department...and why Apache is less suited for an ecosystem like Javascript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > Changes to licensing in leading open source projects like Mongo DB and Redis > are reminders that...

That the author should do their homeworks and get the facts right. Redis is BSD licensed for 10 years now. Redis modules by Redis Labs, never a part of the Redis core, changed license.

Article flagged because I can excuse a casual commenter here but if you write an article about OSS licensing and are not able to show facts in the correct way, for me there is no place on the HN top positions.

<comment><USER7> If you choose to profit off a common brand you also have to live with the fallout of that choice. You can't use the Redis name only when it's convenient and say "but that's not real Redis" else.

Those "Redis" named products were open source and now are not.

<comment><USER6> To be honest in the community it is crystal clear what "Redis" refers to, there could be confusion about the project organization itself versus the company (Redis / Redis Labs), but people now that Redis is what they normally use, download from Github and so forth. So there are no excuses.

<comment><USER5> I don't have a dog in the fight. I'm just reading the article casually. I understand the point you are making and have some sense of why Redis has the license structure it has. I don't have any criticism of it. I'm glad for its success.

The description of Redis would be out of place in an article about Redis. For an article about licensing, the statements about Redis are not a terrible way of pointing out that there are a myriad of flavors in the world of open source. The description has cosign similarity not relational calculus's exactitude. But I still see why it might elicit your response.

Anyway, thanks for all the fish.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Presenting Oscar, the Modular Body - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfoVOGMz054 <comment><USER2> Reminded me of the movie eXistenZ.</comment>


Diluted blood plasma found to reverse aging in mice - <AUTHOR> https://newatlas.com/medical/diluted-blood-plasma-reverse-aging-in-mice <comment><USER2> This is basically _filtering_ the plasma to remove harmful stuff, which is present in the older mice but not the younger. That's probably because the older mice's liver and kidneys aren't as effective as they used to be. The conjoined experiment worked because the young mouses liver and kidneys were filtering for both of the mice.

This sort of filtering (which includes albumin replacement) is already available for humans. My ex-wife was hospitalized when her liver failed. Her blood was full of toxins, which overwhelmed her kidneys and eventually caused them to fail too. The toxins in the blood had a lot of bad effects, and would have killed her. While she was waiting for a liver donation, she had to undergo blood dialysis pretty much every day. She was hooked up to a machine that pumped her blood out, filtered it, replaced albumin (which was lost in the filter), and then pumped it back in. Each treatment took about two hours, and was really stressful and dangerous. Her blood pressure had to be carefully managed, and the machine couldn't keep her blood at the exactly correct temperature so it ached when going back in.

Bad as it was, it kept her blood clean enough for her to hang on until she got a transplant. She was on kidney dialysis for a year after that until she got a kidney transplant too.

This was incredibly expensive, because of the albumin. Also incredibly dangerous. You would not want to do this as an elective procedure.

<comment><USER3> I think the medical care or something else was expensive. I did a search and I see 20% albumin solution was about $8 per 50ml.

[https://www.drugs.com/price-guide/human-albumin- grifols](https://www.drugs.com/price-guide/human-albumin-grifols)

I searched and apparently there's about 3 liters of plasma in the body.

So that's only about $480 for a full replacement of the body's plasma, or $240 for what this research did.

It's probably more expensive because of the machine for filtering the blood and so on. But it doesn't seem that the raw materials for the replacement solution are expensive.

<comment><USER4> It would seem to be a pretty big factor if I'm reading correctly that it'd be $480/day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For context, Irina Conboy (the senior author of this work) has been publishing on the concept of tissue regeneration for a long time now, but I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to consider this line of work to constitute a reversal of aging.

This New Atlas article alludes to work done in 2005, which was a paper Irina published in Nature [1] while she was a postdoc in Tom Rando's lab. They had joined the circulatory systems of young and old mice, and showed that this process could improve the regeneration of both blood and muscle. Significantly, they had highlighted a cellular pathway, called Notch, which they said was responsible for this effect.

In the years since, Irina has focused on the same models -- regeneration of blood and muscle -- but has been looking for a better way than Notch to explain the original findings. It's clear that there are factors in young blood to which _some_ old cells can respond favorably. Importantly, however, none of these measures actually _reverse_ aging in the ways that matter (lengthening telomeres, correcting oxidative damage, etc). Experimental mice treated this way also _don 't_ live any longer than usual, except for the very specific cases where you're treating a disorder that would normally shorten their lifespans.

1: [https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03260](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03260)

</comment><comment><USER6> I was doing the double red donation for a while before running out of hematocrit. Read about this study and decided to go back to donating but this time just doing the standard whole blood so I could dilute plasma a bit. Will update this post with results in 200 years if this works!

<comment><USER3> It would be interesting if they would try the same research but reduced to just doing blood-donation-level blood extraction from the mice over a period of time.

Unfortunately, without REPLACING your blood with something, the percent concentration of anything harmful in your blood with be the same. I wonder if it requires a quick replacement with a large percentage of the saline solution to have any effect.

Quick links:

[https://www.umms.org/-/media/files/ummc/community/blood- fact...](https://www.umms.org/-/media/files/ummc/community/blood-facts)

""" The average adult has about 10 pints of blood in his body. Roughly 1 pint is given during a donation. A healthy donor may donate red blood cells every 56 days """

The original article says HALF the blood plasma was replaced. So if I understand this correctly, a blood donation would need to be done 5 times to match the amount taken out.

Is there an option to get a saline solution to replace blood volume when donating blood?

<comment><USER7> > _without REPLACING your blood with something, the percent concentration of > anything harmful in your blood with be the same_

Not necessarily. If the process that produced the bad stuff is slower than serum production, the concentration will be lower. If it's the same, for example, if it's a problem with the serum production processes themselves, it won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I submitted this to reddit with limited discussion :[https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/hmu8dc/diluting...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/hmu8dc/diluting_blood_plasma_rejuvenates_tissue_reverses/)

I'm 29 years old and I've started donating blood regularly in an effort to achieve the same effect. Ideally you'd donate plasma, but there is an important difference between the treatment in the study and donating plasma: in the study, they replace the plasma with saline and _albumin_. Donating plasma does not replenish your albumin. Albumin is regenerated relatively quickly, however.

<comment><USER9> In blood donations you do not have any replacement either, correct? So from that perspective is there any advantage over plasma donations?

<comment><USER10> You can donate plasma twice a week, as opposed to every other month for blood.

<comment><USER11> Also you typically get paid a small fee for donating plasma.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here David Sinclair's response back in May [https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/125991292869585715...](https://twitter.com/davidasinclair/status/1259912928695857152?s=21)

</comment><comment><USER13> If you're interested in the science of aging I highly recommend the book "Lifespan: Why we age and why we don't have to" by David A. Sinclair a pioneer in this field. Detailed book with tons of citations but still accessible to the layperson.

<comment><USER14> I found some of the science interesting in that book; my main memory is that Sinclair is annoyingly arrogant and self-centered. I returned the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A blog post about existing information about plasma exchange in humans:

[https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/06/29/human- tria...](https://joshmitteldorf.scienceblog.com/2020/06/29/human-trials-of- plasma-exchange/)

</comment><comment><USER16> "in mice" .... Everyone here is talking about starting to give blood to mimic that study but on any other "mice test prove XYZ" every single comment is "mice != humans".

I treat all of these articles the same way as I treat news about breakthrough new battery technology, aka: maybe it works in a lab but until it's out there it's as good as useless. Simply google "mice drug lifespan" and enjoy the hundreds of articles promising long, alzheimer free, life "in the near future". You can even use google search tool and look back at 2015, 2010, 2005...

<comment><USER8> That's a good point! The only reason I'm comfortable self-experimenting on this one is that 1) there's already evidence that frequent blood donors outlive non-donors (obviously that's an observational study, but still) and 2) there's actually already a clinical use for plasma replacement therapy in Alzheimer's that's roughly identical to the one done in the study.

In addition - they theorize that it's a buildup of bad elements in the blood that causes some runaway process that contributes to aging, so it might follow that less extreme interventions (~15% removal of blood plasma, like plasma donation, which takes around 800 ml out of the ~5500 ml of plasma in your body) done more frequently might provide the same effect.

You're right though - totally unproven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Due to a past (super low risk) medical condition, I cannot donate blood. There's not really any other way to replicate this, right?

<comment><USER17> But you can throw blood away

<comment><USER9> Right but there's no organization devoted to extracting blood and throwing it away.

<comment><USER18> How hard is it to learn how to draw your own blood? eg. what the nurses do when you give a blood sample for lab tests.

<comment><USER19> For tests, healthcare professionals draw a _very_ small amount (some tubes hold less than 5ml, each).

Donating blood takes upwards of 550ml out of your system. It's in another league entirely. They unfortunately cannot be compared like this.

<comment><USER20> half a liter sweet jesus thats a lot

<comment><USER21> "That's almost an arm full" old Tony Hancock reference for the older British reader (google Tony Hancock blood donor Sketch).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > making conjoined twins of old and young mice so they shared blood and organs

You say conjoined twins, I say chimaera. That's freaky mad science right there.

</comment><comment><USER23> Previous discussion from June: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23556209)

</comment><comment><USER24> So now we really need to figure out how to grow blood.

Edit: nevermind. I misread the original study and thought that was what they had done.

<comment><USER25> Isn't the point here that it's not being replaced with blood? just saline + albumin?

<comment><USER8> Exactly. In fact, the authors note that the effect on their own defined markers of aging was _more_ significant when using saline + albumin than when using young blood.

>In our paper, we looked at the hippocampal neurogenesis, which is the formation of new neurons in the area of the brain that is responsible for learning and memory. We saw an eightfold increase in all the animals after neutral blood exchange, which is much higher than anything else that was observed either by heterochronic parabiosis or reported by young blood infusion. In old mice transfused with 50% young blood, we did not see an improvement in neurogenesis, which, again, puts a question mark on potency of young blood in old mammals. Does young blood by itself work as a medicine or not? If you dilute old blood by 50%, in neutral age blood exchange – with albumin-supplemented saline, there is quickly better neurogenesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> So not a "blood letting," but a "blood plasma letting," very different, you see.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is it possible to make synthetic albumin? Doesn't all of it come from humans?

</comment><comment><USER27> This reminds me a whole lot of traditional wet cupping techniques.

</comment><comment><USER28> This can also explain why if you turn vegan can improve on your health and life.

FYI, I am not vegan and my brief stint didn't produce endless energy, but I can see how this could work.

<comment><USER29> I turned at 49, two and a half years ago.

My reasons are many. Besides the moral side, I think having a lower % of methionine in my diet then someone who eats meat/eggs/dairy will help me live longer. I also lost 70 pounds, and nothing else I ever did got me to lose and appreciable amount of weight for long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Could it really be this simple?

I have this theory that if we all started to live forever we'd all kill each other going mad. There is only so much mental trauma a human can take so extending life would aggravate this to a point of no return.

This is why the cycle of life is so precious. A minimum of second hand information is passed between generation as we get through a lifetime. We distil the best and worst.

But we would become so detached and apathic, living forever sounds like hell.

<comment><USER31> > There is only so much mental trauma a human can take

My experience has been that I get mentally healthier as I age.

For reference, I'm 33, so the "experiment" is far from complete, but early results are quite promising.

As an aside, I attribute this to using my mind in a better way than other people. I have achieved this through great effort and investment of time, which has come at the expense of other areas of my life.

There is no instruction manual for the human mind, but we need one.

As another aside, your position is anti-life and anti-humanity. That isn't supposed to be an argument that stands on its own; I'm just pointing it out.

<comment><USER32> How many traumatic experiences have you had? Have you ever been permanently injured? Have you directly experienced a war? If you lived to be 1000 what are the odds that your answers to these or similar questions would change? Just because you have been fortunate enough to not have experienced major trauma at 33 does not mean you will continue to be this lucky.

<comment><USER31> I have experienced major trauma. I think it's enough to justify what I've said. I'm not willing to answer specific questions about that or give you a list.

I don't think you are right to assume that a 33 year old has not experienced major trauma. That would not even be a valid assumption for a much younger person.

I'm sorry if my original comment was demeaning to other people who have experienced trauma. I can see how it could be. I meant to give people hope that you can heal (at least enough to get on) in many cases. I did not mean to put people down for struggling with trauma. I certainly have struggled with it.

<comment><USER32> Based on what you had written I was assuming that you had not experienced major trauma. The questions were intended more to point out ways that someone could be 33, or significantly younger, and have major trauma and were not intended to get specifics about the trauma you suffered. I am well aware that young people can suffer major trauma and this was clearly not the best way to get my point across.

I'm glad that you were able to get better but not everyone can. Your anecdote doesn't invalidate my point. If you lived long enough, statistically you'd be extremely likely to suffer from a major trauma that you would not recover from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/sunday-review/blood- plasm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/01/sunday-review/blood-plasma- industry.html)

Somewhat related, but blood made up 2% of total US exports in 2016. We are the only developed country that allows people to sell their blood. It's depressing to know that the rich will literally be living off the poor's blood.

<comment><USER34> Most every advanced material good and service that is cheap today was once rare and expensive. Prices fell as the methods for producing those goods and services became more efficient. If the rich are paying for something as exotic as YouthBlood™ this should delight you, as it is only a matter of time before producers of said product will find ways to scale and cheapen it.

<comment><USER33> Maybe I'm not autistically analyzing this like other people in this thread. I just wanted to point out that the article mentioned taking young people's and putting it in old mice for better living. Currently the poor are exploited for cheap blood because many have no other option.

<comment><USER35> > " _autistically_ "

I think many of us would appreciate it if you did not use autism as a negative label.

<comment><USER33> Why not? Autistic people have a certain way of doing things, so it seems like a valid comparison to me</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A good idea with bad usage: /dev/urandom  - <AUTHOR> http://insanecoding.blogspot.ca/2014/05/a-good-idea-with-bad-usage-devurandom.html

<comment><USER2> Suffice it to say that the author is mistaken when he claims that "The former is pretty much raw entropy, while the latter is the output of a CSPRNG function"

/dev/random ist not "pretty much raw entropy", it is _the exact same_ output of the kernel's CSPRNG as /dev/urandom is giving out.

See [http://www.2uo.de/myths-about- urandom/#structure](http://www.2uo.de/myths-about-urandom/#structure)

</comment><comment><USER3> > Using poor sources of entropy like /dev/urandom on Linux, or worse, > gettimeofday(), and using them to generate long-lived keys.

He missed the point, people complained because he claimed urandom was a poor source of entropy. That post is about using urandom securely, and he even shows that he doesn't know the difference between random and urandom.

<comment><USER4> I think you missed what he was saying. He phrased it a few different ways in the blog and the comments, the clearest probably being: "(/dev/urandom || gettimeofday()) is a very poor source of entropy".

He was complaining about a particular usage he was seeing in the wild, not random and urandom, as he explicitly says a few times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not wanting to nitpick, but if attacker manages to unlink("/dev/urandom") then you have bigger problems than just not trusting this one file. Nothing application developer can do will make this system more secure.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you feel about TL;DRs on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR> I've been on Hacker News a very long time. Recently I have noticed that many posts have a "TL;DR" comment giving a brief summary of the linked article.
These TL;DR comments bother me tremendously, but I can't quite articulate why. I feel like maybe it bugs me that someone takes the time to post an interesting article and a comment with nothing more than a summary implies that the article is not worth reading.
I even looked in the guidelines for comments to see if it's discouraged, but didn't find anything.
I realize that communities grow and change over time, so maybe my opinion is uncommon. What do you think? <comment><USER2> To be honest, I feel profound gratitude to the TL/DR comment author who cared to read the article and write the summary for me. And sort of annoyance towards the original article author. I believe everybody MUST learn to write good TLDRs/abstracts/conclusion/summaries for their own articles or GTFO. "Someone takes the time to post an interesting article"? How do you know it's interesting before you read it? How do you feel once you waste time to read a multi-page article just to realize the valuable knowledge you have acquired actually fits in a twit? Those who find themselves actually interested in the details and everything else can go on and read them, those who don't should not be forced. If you care about your propagating ideas - take care to write a TL/DR.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sometimes I (and others) give a TL;DR to _our own posts_. It's saying, "If you're not going to take one or two minutes to read this wall of text that I wrote, here's the short version."

Scientific papers have abstracts. Business and government papers have executive summaries. This is not an unusual thing. So I ask: Is it the _practice_ that bothers you, or the label we use to signal it?

<comment><AUTHOR> The _practice_ does not bother me at all. I'm a big fan of abstracts, executive summaries, top highlights and posting TL;DRs of your own work. I do it all the time for my own writing and think it's just good practice.

What bothers me is when person A posts a link and person B comments with nothing but a summary.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you do data backup? - <AUTHOR> I currently store most of my data on an unlimited Google Drive system that my school provides, but I am looking to move to something more redundant. Do you guys have backup applications? S3? Something of the like? I am curious. <comment><USER2> I would not want to store everything on a Google Drive. If something happens and Google (or some other company with multiple services) blocks my primary address, all my data can go with it.

I'd prefer a dedicated backup service. Personally, I use Backblaze for backing up my PC. Still have to set up a process to back up my other devices on to my PC, so that Backblaze automatically takes care of it.

Actually, I am also looking for an option to clone my Google Drive elsewhere, perhaps to Box/Dropbox due to the same concern as above.

</comment><comment><USER3> I store my important documents on Google Drive, and have tarsnap back up that folder twice a day. Code gets backed up to private repos on Github.

In the past I've used Backblaze and can really recommend it -- good interface and reasonable pricing for unlimited storage.

</comment><comment><USER4> I generally like 2 backups of my data (one each on and offsite), and one bootable backup of my system drive for quick disaster recovery.

Which specific options to use for each depends on many factors (budget, OSs, how often you're connected to a lan etc), but I've been very happy with Backblaze for offsite. It's unfussy, relatively cheap, and I've found it ultra reliable.

My current onsite solution (for a macbook) is Carbon Copy Cloner over ethernet to a Raspberry Pi with a large external HD. I also use CCC for my disaster recovery backup (to a local SSD over USB).

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't backup, I keep all the stuff I care about in a reputable cloud (iCloud, Office 365) and that's it. My machine is pretty much a thin client - if I ever loose it, I'd only need like 30 minutes to set up a new one with my cloud accounts and get back to work. I religiously try to keep as little local "state" as possible on the machine for this exact reason.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use an external HDD and keep it in a drawer at work. If something needs backing up sooner it goes in dropbox.

</comment><comment><USER7> I store my data in a five node ceph cluster via CephFD, backed up to a ZFS RAIDz2 array on another box (pull backups) and also to crashplan for my off- site backup.

</comment><comment><USER8> Crashplan, but I'll need to find a replacement as they are discontinuing the home edition</comment>


Ask HN: If all code runs as machine lang, why do programing languages matter? - <AUTHOR> I am learning to code and know a bit of Java and C. What i understand is all the code we write ultimately converted to machine language which is run in the CPU. The optimization we look forward while coding is for best time and space complexity which looks to me like language agnostic. So why do we have so many programming languages and ardent followers supporting or opposing one another? Is it mainly based on the programming paradigm (OOO vs Procedural)? If so, why the same paradigm has multiple languages? <comment><USER2> > So why do we have so many programming languages and ardent followers > supporting or opposing one another?

This is two questions. Having a diversity of languages helps (I'll get into why). We don't need ardent followers advocating getting into flame wars that benefit no one.

As you say, every language is ultimately converted into machine code. However, the final machine code is not the same. Each language has it's own strengths and weaknesses and this affects the final output. Some of these are

* Strong or weak type systems - stronger type systems allows you to encode invariants of your program, ensuring that the final machine code doesn't blow up in unexpected ways when your user runs it

* Interpreted or compiled - Interpreted languages (arguably) allow faster iteration while compiled languages have a more optimized end product. More here - [1]

* Light or heavy run times - part of that machine code might or might not include a runtime. This runtime could manage threading, garbage collection and so on for your program.

These are some of the many are trade-offs that languages make. Depending on the trade-offs chosen, the language is a good fit for some applications but not others. For example, a runtime like the one used by Java probably makes it unfit for embedded programs compared to C, while Java is probably a better fit for writing web servers compared to C. Overall, we're better off because we have the option of choosing Java or C (or Python or Rust or ...) depending on the problem we're trying to solve.

As for people fighting over languages, don't pay it too much attention. Such discussions can get quite heated but ultimately they're quite meaningless. People will choose what makes sense for them.

[1] - [https://craftinginterpreters.com/a-map-of-the- territory.html...](https://craftinginterpreters.com/a-map-of-the- territory.html#compilers-and-interpreters)

</comment><comment><USER3> Like many things the return on investment decreases with complexity. Assembly is easier than trying to program with the actual opcodes but is specific to a CPU. C and its ilk are portable between CPU's, easier to read, less error prone and easier to read for humans. After that the return starts to diminish.</comment>