Burgundy wine investors have beaten the stock market - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2019/08/24/burgundy-wine-investors-have-beaten-the-stockmarket <comment><USER2> Anything with low volumes isn't fair to compare, you can pretty much always pick something that "beats" the "market"

<comment><USER3> And even with high volumes, you can always pick something retrospectively that beats the market. It's not useful to look back and say, for example, if you put money into X stock at Y time you'd beat the market. You can't go back in time so it's not useful.

What is useful is to figure out what, today, may predict outperformance tomorrow. In choosing fund managers, it's not enough to choose managers who've outperformed in the past - that's not in itself predictive of the future (same is true for home prices as we learned in 2008, individual stocks, etc.). But other characteristics might be predictive, like choosing fund managers who follow a true "value" approach to stock-picking: finding companies with a competitive advantage and buying them below their intrinsic value being one approach to value.

See Warren Buffett's 1984 article "The Superinvestors of Graham and Doddsville" for the best example I know of distinguishing chance price rises from predictable rises: [https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia- business/sup...](https://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/columbia- business/superinvestors)

<comment><USER4> > It's not useful to look back and say, for example, if you put money into X > stock at Y time you'd beat the market. You can't go back in time so it's not > useful.

It's not only not useful, it's totally obvious some things will always beat the market. "Beating the market" is really just "beating the average". If there's nothing that beats the average, then it means that all stocks do exactly the same thing...

But yes like you said finding things that beat the market in hindsight certainly isn't very useful unless you can learn some specific strategy (e.g. insider information) that was used and employ it yourself (if you choose).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Stock market means average. Every "investment" that is slightly over average stock market returns for some time beats the stock market in that timeframe.

Now, doing that consistently over and over again is something to strive to, but not many other investment in the same risk category do it.

<comment><USER6> Office pools buying lottery tickets can beat the stock market...once in a while.

If you aren't doing anything economically useful...don't expect returns greater than inflation in the really long run.

<comment><USER7> > If you aren't doing anything economically useful...don't expect returns > greater than inflation in the really long run.

I think the British aristocracy would like a word with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Collector's items are like companies... Many of them beat the market for many years, until, one day, they don't!

<comment><USER9> Therefore?

<comment><USER10> Sell before the music stops!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So has Bitcoin -- so what? This is a useless article, written for content filler rather than any sort of useful, long term educational information.

<comment><USER12> > This is a useless article, written for content filler rather than any sort > of useful, long term educational information.

I guess it was either this or blank page. The latter is less likely to grab your attention. Maybe "fillers" have some use after all :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Big problem with wine collections is transfering stock into money. Selling big stashes is not going to be easy and cheap.

<comment><USER14> And also paying for storage while holding it.

And also, what is total notional value of all burgundy in the world? 1bn? That's nothing in scale with other markets.

Dumb article.

<comment><USER13> Oh yeah storage is huge part of what determine final price: for investment grade wines you need to proof that you store it in proper place with reputable vendor. those places are not cheap and will eat into your margin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> [http://archive.is/bAqJU](http://archive.is/bAqJU)

</comment><comment><USER16> So did beanie babys... ... until they crashed.

<comment><USER10> Nobody drinks their beanie babies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yabbut, I can buy $1m in stocks for $9.95, and that includes storage costs and insurance against fire/quakes/storms. And sell it tomorrow for $9.95.

<comment><USER17> What brokerage are you using? That sounds incredibly expensive for stock trading.

<comment><USER18> I suppose if I was buying a million dollars worth of stock I might actually care about getting front runned (front ranned?) on RobinHood and would consider paying a higher fee if it would mitigate that.

<comment><USER19> Are you implying robinhood is front-running trades? That's an extraordinary claim indeed. And even if they _were_ , it would not impact you in this particular case.

<comment><USER20> Not sure if this is frontrunning exactly but I think the point is that they make money by marketing your trades.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205379-robinhood-making- mi...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4205379-robinhood-making-millions- selling-millennial-customers-high-frequency-traders)

<comment><USER21> That's not front running at all.

In fact it's the perceived lack of front running risk by the buyers and sellers that make Robin Hood more valuable to Market Makers.

A big institutional shareholder may very well know more than the Market Maker at the other end of the trade, that's a risk for them if the market moves against them. Robin Hood investors are far less likely to have that kind of information so there isn't the same risk that market makers will get shafted.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > In fact it's the perceived lack of front running risk by the buyers and > sellers that make Robin Hood more valuable to Market Makers.

Basically, you get a discount trading on Robin Hood, because the people taking the other side of the bet know that you're probably not making a smart move.

<comment><USER21> Last time i explained the concept I was even less polite and got downvoted :) but yes

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Collectors who have drunk most of their Pinot already may need another glass > after seeing the result

Don't get high on your own supply

</comment><comment><USER23> On a risk adjusted basis? I seriously doubt it.

<comment><USER24> Seems like a lot of people here are using the term "beat the market" to mean "had higher nominal returns than the market" which is not a very useful metric without taking risk into account.

<comment><USER25> I wonder if wine experiences the same price volatility as stocks. I can speculate reasons why they wouldn't and would thus still provide better risk- adjusted returns but I really don't know.

<comment><USER23> Maybe they wouldn't be expressed as annualized volatility and only expressed as long tail risk: blight, climate change, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Note to self - buy luxury goods stocks after the next stock market crash.

<comment><USER27> Manufacturers of luxury goods won't be mispriced in a way you can exploit, even after a stock market crash.

Instead, what you want to buy is hobbyist and other niche goods, assuming you have cash through a recession. As people cut back their budget, there tends to be a glut of highly discretionary stuff in the resale market. Like, my brother-in-law got absolutely fantastic prices on model airplane kits in the aftermath of 2008.

<comment><USER21> "Manufacturers of luxury goods won't be mispriced in a way you can exploit, even after a stock market crash"

Why not? I would expect luxury goods manufacturers to suffer during a recession, and I would expect the stock price to follow suit.

I don't think it's a mispricing as it's reflecting to reality on the ground, nevertheless I would expect them to bounce back after the recession. So it does seem to be an opportunity you can exploit.

Your second paragraph seems to have shifted to a completely different asset class. No doubt there was fantastic prices on model aircraft kits, but you need to know the market, and it isn't apparent to me whether the model aircraft kit market will behave the same the next time. Plus it's more risky. If I buy a stock, I don't have to worry about it being fake, getting damaged, I can sell trivially at the touch of a button.

<comment><USER28> _I would expect luxury goods manufacturers to suffer during a recession_

Well, you can look at say Rolex to see what happens. They suffered yes but they didn't cut (list) prices because that would undermine their status. Instead they launched Tudor as the budget-Rolex brand and that seems to have worked OK (for the company anyway). Luxury goods manufacturers often have long histories and are able to look further ahead than a single economic cycle.

<comment><USER21> List prices aren't stock prices the gg(?)p was talking about buying luxury goods _stocks_ , not luxury goods themselves.

Plus the 2nd hand market would be more relevant to what you're suggesting.

Edit: Spelling

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Speak of economics and wine, one of the clearest examples of non-rational economics behavior was detailed by Richard Thaler regarding an economist wine collector.

[https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.193](https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jep.5.1.193)</comment>


Ask HN: Making something without a use case - <AUTHOR>

So, I've been working on something purely because I think it's neat, but I really don't have a valid use case for it. For the sake of making money, is it a valid hope to just say "Well, I'll make it... and see what people think, and then go from there."? I guess I could just be wasting my time, and that's perfectly fine with me if I enjoy the work (which I do). Does anyone have experience with this? <comment><USER2> Not everything in life is about making money. As long as your basic needs are fulfilled (and even if some are not), human spirit needs to go beyond and do things for fun and art.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why not say what your idea is and let us tear it up?

You don't say whether you would use the final product yourself, just that it would be neat. Would you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, I'm actually going to do a demo in the next week or two on HN. The idea is to provide a simple jQuery plugin to allow any element on your page to be drawn upon. Additionally, there is a way to sync that element up with a smart phone (scanning the QR code), and draw on it in real-time.

The initial idea was to add the ability to put your signature on a website using your finger on your smart phone. I dunno if that's a valid use case though, because if you're just signing once, its not worth your time to download the app. If you're signing something many times, you'd rather just press a button to add your signature.

I was thinking that perhaps marking up pages on a tablet could be useful. Just circling things on the iPad shows the circles on the page. Not sure.

<comment><USER3> Ok, you said 'without a use case' but I think there are several. If you really meant you might not be able to sell it then, well, if I had a use for it I would pay. Honestly, I don't think this is a bad idea at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Small Utah ISP firm stands up to 'surveillance state' - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/usa/utah-isp-surveillance-state-corporations-925/ <comment><USER2> the owner of that company, pete ashdown, is an outright great guy. he even tried to run for a senate seat last election[1] -- without PAC $ and a focus on passing a constitutional amendment to overturn citizen's united. But instead utah got stuck with good ol' Orrin Hatch, which was one of the chief proponents of building the NSA datacenter in bluffdale that is going to store all the stuff collected by PRISIM et. al. [2]

the world needs more Pete Ashdowns and more Xmissions.

1\. [http://peteashdown.org/archive/2012/](http://peteashdown.org/archive/2012/) 2\. [http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2013/06/utah-senator-who- pus...](http://www.nextgov.com/big-data/2013/06/utah-senator-who-pushed- local-12-billion-nsa-data-center-now-silent/65222/)

<comment><USER3> Don't forget Hatch's "contributions" to the US run back decades.

1\. The shuttle solid rocket boosters were built in Utah. Hatch is credited with bringing that pork to Utah. Otherwise, the boosters could have been built somewhere along a waterway and floated down to the vehicle assembly building, but coming from Utah they have to be built in pieces and shipped overland. Thus the need for an O-ring where the pieces fit together. Politics contributed to the Challenger disaster.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Boo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Solid_Rocket_Booster#Construction)

(I admit, all politics are debatable, and there were other contributing factors in the Challenger disaster, but shipping the SRBs from Utah is just stupid, in my opinion.)

2\. Pro-bailouts, pro-debt, and extremely pro-copyright:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch#Political_position...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orrin_Hatch#Political_positions_and_votes)

<comment><USER4> Look at how powerful America is today, and imagine how powerful it would be if it was run pragmatically every step of the way. Long term, the world might be a better place because of people like Orrin Hatch.

<comment><USER3> What if more young people during the space shuttle era decided to be astronauts, astrophysicists, or just take more science courses?

Maybe I don't understand your point but I think NASA has done a lot of good for humanity as a whole, _despite the politicians_.

Should America be less powerful? I think China is growing fast and the question will be moot soon anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In addition to the praises from @ryankschaw & @letney's, Pete is involved in a lot of local causes and provides free internet to many organizations.

I've been with Xmission for the better part of a decade now, and the service they provide has almost always rocked. On the rare occasion when it didn't, their service department did rock, keeping customers informed as progress was made - even if the problem wasn't under Xmission's control (for example, at one point I was connected via a phone line which got cut - they actually followed up with the phone company and would call my cell phone to give me updates).

</comment><comment><USER6> When I realize, after reading these stories, that I read them on "RussiaToday" I always feel a bit sad.

A former advisor to Vladimir Putin, has labeled the channel as "the best Russian propaganda machine targeted at the outside world" ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_(TV_network)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RT_\(TV_network\)))

These news are important here, but we have to be careful not to associate concepts like "freedom of speech" and "example of democracy" with countries like Russia, given the actual situation the people there live under I am not sure we can say Russia holds human rights in the highest regard in my opinion.

<comment><USER7> Attacking the source of this article and the country of its origin contributes little to the conversation.

<comment><USER8> Russia Today is the equivalent of Fox News in America. Keep that bias in mind as you browse their other articles and videos.

Russia Today is exceptionally critical of American politics, and their international video newscasts are pretty much dead center criticisms of America. They barely mention Russian affairs, if at all. Whenever I catch a glimpse of them on MHz WorldView I have to change the channel.

<comment><USER9> No idea why you were downvoted, there's nothing outrageous in your comment.

Every time I watch RT, I can't help getting the impression that it's on a mission to criticize and attack the US at every opportunity. All this, while ignoring far more egregious crimes within Russia itself. It's blatant, unashamed hypocrisy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Without reading the headline, I knew it was Xmission.com.

The founder/owner, Pete Ashdown, was the sole Democrat running against Orin Hatch in 2006. He failed to get the democratic nomination in 2012.

Pete has long been an advocate of digital privacy and is a true Internet pioneer.

</comment><comment><USER11> I too came to comment about how I knew it was XMission before I clicked and wanted to mention the great things Pete Ashdown has been up to. But, I see others have already covered that.

While we're on the topic. Pete, please expand Utopia Fiber to Lehi! You promised :) [0]

[0] [http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/shuzq/iama_isp_owner_w...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/shuzq/iama_isp_owner_who_is_running_for_the_us_senate/c4e7mo7)

<comment><USER12> +1 for Utopia in Lehi :)

Off topic: I see you went to Neumont University. Cool to run into a fellow Neumie.

<comment><USER13> I'll third that request for fiber in Lehi and also claim some Neumont pride.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I work for a small ISP and pretty much "run the show". Since joining the company, I've been successful in getting approval from the owners on what I feel are appropriate retention policies and such. There's still a lot to be done but my hope is to someday be running our operation very similar to how Mr. Ashdown is running his.

I think I'll sign up w/ Xmission for a hosting account for a few months (even though I have no need for it) as a show of support.

<comment><USER15> I had Xmission in Utah. They were a great ISP to boot. I miss them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The second I hear "XMission", I remember Maddox's website ([http://maddox.xmission.com/](http://maddox.xmission.com/)).

Maybe I spend too much time on the internet.

</comment><comment><USER17> Read it the right way. The described behavior is the right thing to do, brave and patriotic. But two things will happen here:

1\. It will not be forgotten. The behavior to resist those warrants will result probably in imprisonment, and in every case it will be made sure he doesn't get more power. Source is that case: [http://www.atlassociety.org/brc/blog/2013/06/10/was- telecom-...](http://www.atlassociety.org/brc/blog/2013/06/10/was-telecom-ceo- sent-prison-because-he-resisted-nsa)

2\. The data is accessed anyway, the suggested way of doing that as far as was disclosed to infiltrate the company, either by using a mole or a backdoor (sure, both is possible). At least that would happen if it were an ISP outside of the USA, I don't believe they make that distinction anymore.

</comment><comment><USER18> As a wee lad, I uploaded my first bits of HTML onto Xmission's shared hosting in 1997. Good memories. Thanks to them, I didn't have to succumb to Geocities advertisements.

A few years ago, they launched a cloud platform: [http://www.stackable.com](http://www.stackable.com)

</comment><comment><USER19> Er, so, not rolling over for bullshit requests is a very good thing (telcos take note), but I'm not seeing a difference here from any company that doesn't comply with improper requests, but does comply with "proper" ones, just a matter of scale:

 _" The government began sending data requests to Ashdown 15 years ago but the entrepreneur, who launched his business in 1993, acquiesced just once - at the advice of his lawyer. He agreed to hand over the data only after receiving an FBI request accompanied by a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in 2010. Local governments and police in Utah were behind most of the other formal inquiries that he received."_

(except that he confirms that he received and complied with a FISA order)

</comment><comment><USER20> If you don't live in Utah how can you support this guys business? I commend him for standing by his principles.

<comment><USER21> Shared or VPS hosting, for one.

[http://xmission.com/hosting](http://xmission.com/hosting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I just talked to XMission's chat representative. They support Ubuntu! I'm switching over soon.

</comment><comment><USER23> What do you know, it's my old favorite mirror for linux distros.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is the same xmission as in [http://maddox.xmission.com/](http://maddox.xmission.com/) a wonderful tribute to the first amendment.

</comment><comment><USER25> I admire this man for his willingness to stand by his convictions.</comment>


Get Ready for Same-Sex Reproduction - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/neodotlife/same-sex-reproduction-artificial-gametes-2739206aa4c0 <comment><USER2> > "I do think we're less than 10 years away from making research-grade > gametes," she says

> Even then, same-sex reproduction will face one more biological hurdle: > scientists would need to somehow make a cell derived from a woman, who has > two X chromosomes, into a sperm cell with one X and one Y chromosome, and do > the reverse, turning an XY male cell into an XX female egg cell

So no time soon.

I'm still only just getting used to the whole surrogacy thing (not related to the same-sex procedure described in the latter section of the article) that gay couples use today. When I grew up, none of my friends were from gay parents that had the child through a surrogate mother. It's becoming more and more common now. There are even books aimed at explaining gay relationships - [http://www.gayrva.com/arts-culture/the-most-amazing- german-c...](http://www.gayrva.com/arts-culture/the-most-amazing-german- childrens-book-explaining-same-sex-relationships-youll-see-today/)

Not that I'm against it or for it. Just observing that it was not something I had to understand while growing up.</comment>


"The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision" - <AUTHOR> http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/jun08/6280/

<comment><USER2> The author should have submitted the last two paragraphs, and left it at that. The singularity does indeed seem to be more of a religious than a scientific vision - rapture for nerds. This is the only worthwhile sentence I find in this article.

John Horgan sounds like so many other critics declaiming that dramatic technological progress is impossible. History has in many examples proved critics wrong in a spectacular way. Although he doesn't say it directly, Horgan implies that "thinking" machines will not be created in at least 50 years - which to me sounds just as ridiculous as declaring heavier-than-air flight or space flight impossible.

The article doesn't really contain any decent points at all - the author cites neuroscience researchers east and west claiming that any dream of smarter- than-human machines are impossible, which seems to me as far from refuting any central argument. 'We don't understand the brain, so intelligence and consciousness can never be understood in a decent time-frame' seems to be as close to a key point as any I am able to interpret out of this.

      The implication of his thought experiment is that our
      psyches will never be totally reducible, computable,
      predictable, and explainable".

_Never_ explainable? Just like the stars, motion, nuclear physics and the rest of the human body?

Cochlear implamts are also cited as having "poor sound quality" - how does this prove that implants won't get better?

There is really nothing to see here - perhaps there would be if the author made his points a bit clearer.

</comment><comment><USER3> We need to stop measuring the intelligence of computers by how many calculations per second they do. Right now we can put together computing systems that can do the amount of calculation under discussion, but fairly slowly. So what if it takes 10x as long to get a thought out? It's all in the program, and no one has the slightest clue how to program thought for now.

I'm also skeptical that the singularity will really move all that fast -- how do we know how much time it will take for each 1% of improvement? Just because a computer is capable of self-improvement doesn't mean that it will be fast self-improvement. I'd imagine that while the computer is better at each step, each step is also harder.

</comment><comment><USER4> Good read. But if there is a conclusion to be drawn here, it's that we have a severe lack of common-sense POVs about human enhancement. On one end we have Ray Kurzweil, and on the other we have articles like this. The real useful path is provigil-like incremental steps, which are utterly marginalized and looked upon with suspicion. And this kind of small steps can be seen quite often in the past few years... from a flash game that increases IQ to electrodes that greatly enhance memory making to 100 times more cognitive science articles then 20 years ago.

You don't have to upload to live 120, You just have to get over Alzheimer and cancer and strokes. You don't have to be able to completely understand the brain in order to learn faster or be more productive. There are already many many things we can do, but as far as I can tell we have a problem of perception: making medicine to cure dandruff is commendable, but any kind of enhancement is frown upon. This also is religion at work.

</comment><comment><USER5> So someone offers to upload your brain into a computer and you go along with it?

"In other words," said Benji, steering his curious little vehicle right over to Arthur, "there's a good chance that the structure of the question is encoded in the structure of your brain — so we want to buy it off you."

"What, the question?" said Arthur.

"Yes," said Ford and Trillian.

"For lots of money," said Zaphod. + "No, no," said Frankie, "it's the brain we want to buy."

"What!"

"I thought you said you could just read his brain electronically," protested Ford.

"Oh yes," said Frankie, "but we'd have to get it out first. It's got to be prepared."

"Treated," said Benji.

"Diced."

"Thank you," shouted Arthur, tipping up his chair and backing away from the table in horror.

"It could always be replaced," said Benji reasonably, "if you think it's important."

"Yes, an electronic brain," said Frankie, "a simple one would suffice."

"A simple one!" wailed Arthur.

"Yeah," said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, "you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? — who'd know the difference?"

"What?" cried Arthur, backing away still further.

"See what I mean?" said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.

"I'd notice the difference," said Arthur.

"No you wouldn't," said Frankie mouse, "you'd be programmed not to."

Ford made for the door.

"Look, I'm sorry, mice old lads," he said. "I don't think we've got a deal."

<comment><USER6> For one thing, this would make the free/open versus proprietary software issue a lot more crucial than ever before. I can imagine accepting software updates (for software I have opted into) from a well-run open source project. Of course the idea of mind=software is itself only a very loose metaphor that fails to capture the nuances of development of an embodied mind. But I could imagine some computer extension to the brain that would add new cognitive potentialities to the existing repertoire of brain structures. Who knows, maybe it's not that far off? There are already direct brain interfaces for very simple kinds of control of machines.

If a programmable brain extension acts like other high-level brain modules then it should create a new range of abilities rather than dictate a rigid behavior. The former is something that could gain wide acceptance, and the latter would be an unethical way of enslaving people. The unethical rigid control of behavior also seems easier to implement with current knowledge since much more is known about low-level brain and spinal control networks than is known about high-level cortical abstraction.

<comment><USER5> "Who knows, maybe it's not that far off?"

I have a more-or-less open mind, but I can see significant problems. I mean, how many times have we been told that some big new thing is just "five years away" and yet it never arrives? I suspect a rapture-like singularity is not going to happen, but augmentation (which to some extent is already happening) will accelerate in a very interesting way.

Anyway, it certainly highlights the ethical side of software engineering, as you point out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Religion is based on faith--believing in the impossible, contrary to all empiric evidence. Belief in the Singularity is a simply a prediction based on current technology vectors. If you understand the theories behind artificial intelligence, and believe Moore's law will continue for 10-20 years, the Singularity is a logical conclusion. To call it a religion reveals a deep misunderstanding of the theory, and the motivations of the people who think it is a possibility.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a religion in any complete sense, but it's kind of obvious that a gigantic leap of faith is involved (starting with the use of the definite article in the phrase "The Singularity", as was shrewdly pointed out by a recent commentator here), and I do think the leap can fairly be called religious. Why?

First, despite what you and others say about "empiric evidence", Moore's Law doesn't at all imply a concomitant leap in programming power (is _our_ capacity growing exponentially?), and extrapolation from actual achievements to date points in a decidedly more mundane direction.

Second, the "singularity" predictions are the latest in a tradition of extravagant millenarian claims that people have been making about AI for decades. These claims have consistently turned out to be overblown, if not vacuous, in retrospect. Extrapolate from _that_ historical trend and you arrive at quite a different (and rather more plausible) picture.

Third and most interestingly, the emotions and language surrounding the "singularity" are distinctly religious. This really stands out in what I've seen of the discourse. Since many advocates of "singularity" are of an intellectual cast that objects to the more popular religions, it seems to me as if some are directing their religious impulses into technology. As someone brilliantly says in the OP, it's "The Rapture For Nerds". (Notice that definite article again.)

By the way, I don't mean "religious" as a criticism per se. Personally, I think religious impulses are part of being human. What fascinates me about The Singularity discourse is the incongruence between its technological subject matter and its vividly religious emotional language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What to think about the singularity? I'm not sure this article tells us much either way. I'd guess interviews with top mechanical engineers in 1890 about the prospects of landing men on the moon within 80 years would have sounded much the same.

<comment><USER9> Only if those top engineers were convinced that landing on the moon would be the turning point for mankind becoming space travellers, and felt the need to prepare humanity for its coming. Actually that sort of thing did happen, but the point is just how far those absurd notions are from reality. No human has been further than the moon 40 years later.

I'm not sure a single bit of the wild speculation that occurred in 1890 will be useful when if we ever do begin large scale space travel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "XXXXX is a religious rather than a scientific vision"

where XXXXX = Evolution, Gravity.....

Just because something deals with issues that religion addresses does not mean it is not scientific.

<comment><USER11> You don't notice the rapture of the nerds themes in 'the singularity'? Or the 'god like powers' themes of the singularity? That is totally a religious pattern of thought.

<comment><USER10> Yep I see them there. But does that really have any bearing on the likely hood of it being true? Religion encompasses our greatest desires so if technology becomes sufficiently powerful wouldn't the fulfillment of those desires be a likely result?

Is there a danger that some people's thinking could be influenced by their desire for it to happen? Of course. But I think that just as many people are likely to dismiss it for irrational reasons as well. That is why it is important for people to keep their eye on the real science.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's a good article on why it always seems like the Singularity is just around the corner:

[http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2006/02/the_singulari...](http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2006/02/the_singularity.php)

</comment><comment><USER13> All this (awful) article shows is that there's a big need for 'singularitarians' to do a better job of communicating to the wider community.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an emotional reaction that comes up frequently. Arguments are answered with "but that's not at all what we said, you just don't understand". (I don't mean "emotional" as a criticism, though I realize it probably sounds that way.) The problem is that it's a moving target. For example, the objection that "exponential advances in hardware are not matched by exponential advances in software, so extrapolation from the former doesn't apply to the latter," is met with something like, "You are uninformed if you think The Singularity has to do with extrapolation from Moore's Law. That's a common misunderstanding." One wonders how the misunderstanding got so common if that's not what the advocates said! Anyway, this moving-targetness is to me an indicator of religious attachment to a concept.

<comment><USER13> I stopped arguing for this stuff in online forums because it's not the most effective way to communicate it to a lot of people. Instead I'm working on writing up stuff that can be useful to a wider audience (instead of the few dozen people who would read this comment.) I'll submit it here when I eventually finish writing it up.

Secondly, there's a lot of fractured mutually incompatible thought that goes under the banner of "Singularity". There's a lot of people who _do_ think it has to do with some sort of intersecting exponential curves (this is the Kurzweil school of thought).

See this link for an overview of the three mutually exclusive camps, as told by Eliezer Yudkowsky: [http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major- singular...](http://www.singinst.org/blog/2007/09/30/three-major-singularity- schools/)

" _One wonders how the misunderstanding got so common if that's not what the advocates said!_ "

There is no "the advocates", because "Singularitarianism" isn't a single movement. The fact that it's fractured only indicates that there's three (or more) different camps -- these are _different_ people saying _different_ things, not the same people acting as a 'moving target'. I don't see how that makes it a religion. And you're right that there's a decent chunk of people who are dreaming of utopia and bliss and do take a Sci-Fi sort of attitude toward it -- but there are good scientific reasons to work on these issues, and good reasons to be worried about the implications.

For what it's worth, my claim basically comes down to two things: 1) AI is feasible. 2) There will be profound changes when AI appears on the scene. And we need to worry about the big issues relating to this.

I _hate_ the term 'singularity'. It's too associated with Kurzweil's take on things, and it evokes connotations of a 'hard takeoff'. I prefer to just talk about AI's importance, feasibility, implications, and dangers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> self limiting factors may make our technological approach to the singularity asymptotic.

<comment><USER15> Such as the finite speed at which humans integrate and interpret data and mentally design experiments and technologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sorry, is there that much of a difference? Really?</comment>


Feds break Apple's code of App Store silence - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/31/dziuba_apple_fcc/ <comment><USER2> "butthurt"? really? is this a serious article?

<comment><USER3> It's The Register. They're always like this.

<comment><USER4> Actually, it's Ted Dziuba, he always writes like this. (And it's usually funny.)</comment></comment></comment>


A 12pt Font Should Be The Same Size Everywhere - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kickingvegas/12pt-should-be-the-same-everywhere/blob/master/absoluteMeasurementDPI.md <comment><USER2> "My appeal is to software and hardware developers to ensure that a 12 point font will be rendered the same size everywhere, regardless of screen size and density."

This is a not very well reasoned appeal. If it were implemented, every Keynote presentation would be unreadably small when projected onto the big screen, literally the same size as the presenter holding up a piece of paper for the audience to read with their binoculars. Likewise, no more than a few characters at a time would be visible on a phone.

There is simply no serious counteragument; nobody can say making things unviewable would be a step forward.

The best you can do is complain that the _name_ of the units is misleading. Fine. So what about introducing a new unit that is truly faithful to a real world measuring stick? You can argue for that all you want, but guess what? Nobody in their right mind would actually use it, outside of exotic scenarios, because generally you want to avoid the above effects. You want your user interface to be visible to users at different screen sizes meant to be viewed from different distances.

Thus, even if we were to introduce a new "TruePoint" or "TrueInch" unit, it would be largely.. and I beg you to excuse the pun here.. pointless.

<comment><USER3> I agree about the _physical rendering_ size always being the same for a point, a point should be more general, but I still think there is some utility for having things defined in real-world units showing up as real-world units when measured on glass in the same z. An inch is an inch, and if it's too big for the display it should be clipped and if it's 100 feet away it should be unreadable. It would be useful for classes of devices--instead of special casing for resolutions, ratios, and densities, special case for desktops/laptops, phones, tablets, home projectors, conference projectors, etc.

But what's really missing is the explicit presence of a projection surface and the ability to adjust the factors that go into the calculation when projecting. It would be nice to have a unit that lets you say "I want this item to be as tall as the subjective inch if a person holds a ruler one foot away from them." That way no matter how close or far away I'm looking at the item (assuming the display is large enough--too small and too far will get it clipped, too few pixels will get it blocky), if I hold a ruler one foot away from me the item will be "as tall" as the ruler's inch mark. (Edit: I'm having fun trying to visualize a powerful enough 64x2 display built on a mountain. Where I grew up, there is just a single letter. From afar: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Little_mountai...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d9/Little_mountain_utah.jpg) And from on top of it: [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeeaDcCiD4o/TexykEujKiI/AAAAAAAAHR...](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QeeaDcCiD4o/TexykEujKiI/AAAAAAAAHRA/DQSDreeonko/s320/2011+1914.JPG))

<comment><USER4> > "I want this item to be as tall as the subjective inch if a person holds a > ruler one foot away from them."

Sounds like you're looking for arcseconds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well yes, 12pt should be the same everywhere, but points are a terrible unit of measurement for anything computer-related.

Points are useful on paper only. They should only exist in the context of word processing and like, where we expect things to be printed in an actual physical size, with 72 points to an inch.

For computer interfaces or web documents, we just need some kind of measurement that is a relatively known proportion to the computer or browser's interface. Fortunately, CSS "px" does that rather well -- it doesn't indicate physical pixels, but rather logical pixels, and we all know what "16px" text looks like relative to our OS, and it works great. And happily, people rarely use "pt" in CSS, and in my opinion it should never have been an option in the first place.

<comment><USER6> That's like telling me points are a terrible unit of measurement for print because we use different sizes of paper and points should be relative to the paper size.

The _whole goal_ of points is that a point is a point is a point, regardless of whether I'm printing on a business card or a billboard. Why can't we have that uniformity for digital devices, too?

<comment><USER7> Just curious, but why not inches / cm instead of points?

<comment><USER8> An inch is too big. A centimeter is too late.

<comment><USER9> Real metric users would tell you to use millimetres instead of centimetres anyway. Powers of 1000 and all that.

(Real metric users would also spell it "centimetre", but if adopting the American spelling will expedite a changeover I think it's a fair trade.)

<comment><USER8> A millimeter (which I rather often call "milímetro" or "millimètre") is also too late. By the way, the SI uses powers of ten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You seem to be taking it as given that the size of stuff should match between different displays, but you don't give any reason why that's desirable. I understand the argument for 1:1 WYSIWYG in DTP, but not for UI. I haven't been doing much DTP in the last decade.

Some people prefer larger UI and some prefer smaller — partly due to differences in vision and partly just preference — and today's industry lets them choose. Your proposal takes away that choice and thus is guaranteed to anger people.

<comment><USER11> First of all, whether or not something offends people is rarely the best reason to do something.

Secondly, "choice" is a generous way to describe it. It's more that sizes are happening of basically their own will, whether the user likes it or not. At least if inch measurements were respected, the designer could be deliberate about a decision. This would not invalidate user stylesheets or zooming; I can't fathom a single disadvantage here.

<comment><USER10> I'm more concerned about UI widgets where user stylesheets and zooming tend to not exist (and zooming would produce blurriness if it was used).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> scary... my experience is that the more platforms try to get this kind of thing right, the more they get it wrong.

back in the 90's, photoshop would try to do all sorts of gamma correction on images you were editing with the consequence that, if you didn't turn it off and make sure it was always turned off, you'd get your colors wrong 100% of the time.

a system like that working requires that all the pieces be correctly configured, and the consequence is that instead of having something that's 4.1 inches on one platform and 5.2 on another, you have something that's 12.7 inches on one platform and 1.4 on another.

<comment><USER13> Gimp had the only cheap effective, backward compatible solution:

There was a setting that showed a ruler in the screen, you could scale it to match a ruler you were holding against the screen.

It disappeared after a while...

<comment><USER14> I don't think this would be necessary if folks ensured their X server's Screens' resolutions were configured correctly.

        $ xdpyinfo | grep -A 2 '^screen #'
        screen #0:
          dimensions:    1920x1080 pixels (483x272 millimeters)
          resolution:    101x101 dots per inch
        $

The all X clients would know how many pixels represented a physical measurement on the screen.

<comment><USER13> And how do you configure it? most lcd manufacturers put wrong info on labels and dmp info

<comment><USER14> One uses

        Option "DPI" "96 x 96"

in an xorg.conf or similar file; this overrides DDC from the monitor. Note, not all monitors have the same density of pixels in both directions. [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#Display_Size_and_D...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xorg#Display_Size_and_DPI) has more.

<comment><USER13> but my monitor does not have the real DPI the label on it's back says... configuring by DPI is moot.

i read a little more on the link you provided... and the closest to the gimp old way of doing that is putting the width and height of the viable area of the monitor in mm. think that might work rather well if it's correctly implemented.

<comment><USER14> I wasn't suggesting reading a label. One measures the visible picture in real life, e.g. ruler, and calculates the DPI. CRTs didn't have a label on the back and, anyway, one could adjust the picture size.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It would be nice, won't happen of course but here is to hoping.

The challenge isn't typography, its people. People who want their document to be as wide as their phone on a phone and as wide as their tablet on a tablet, and not quite as wide as their screen on their desktop or laptop. If you force them tom compute their 'zoom factor' they get annoyed. People who give them what they want, get their business. And typography continues to suffer.

<comment><USER13> That's not the point of the article. If it's badly used or not is not discussed.

The point is that even if it could cure cancer, it's not possible to be done on any display.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Github repo as blog post?!?! Hows that for some transparency in your edits:

[https://github.com/kickingvegas/12pt-should-be-the-same- ever...](https://github.com/kickingvegas/12pt-should-be-the-same- everywhere/commits/master)

<comment><USER17> And if you want to get really fancy, there's Github Pages -- <http://pages.github.com/>. So, you get all of the benefits of the repo approach, but your pages can be all sexy and stylish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This sounds like a good idea at first[1], but then you realize that text is often accompanied by graphics that are not vectorized. Resolution independence when coupled with raster images is a _hard problem_. You can render the text at the desired size fairly easily, but you can't resize a bitmap arbitrarily without it looking pretty terrible. This is why resolution independence hasn't happened for displays despite lots of attention. It's also why Apple just doubled everything to keep it simpler.

[1] Actually, it might not even seem like a great idea at first if your first thought is to contrast your phone screen and TV screen.

</comment><comment><USER19> I don't think I see the point, aside from for historical reasons and printing (though that one's already been solved quite thoroughly...)

The beauty of electronic displays is that they can be tailored to your specific wants and needs. If I want to view your text, I should be able to view it at a size that's comfortable to me on whatever device I want to read it on. If I'm not reading it, and am instead waiting for updates, I should be able to scale it down and put it somewhere in my workspace that doesn't take up too much room or distract me.

To have an edict that says 12pt must always be 0.4233cm or 0.16777in (quite a ridiculous measurement) achieves nothing. What if I want to display the resource you built for display at 12pt on a 24 inch monitor? A 6 inch phone? A projector? What if I have bad vision and want it larger? Suddenly, 12pt needs to get multiplied by some arbitrary factor and it's lost all of its usefulness again.

My expedient excuse is that it's not necessary unless you're dealing with something static and physical.

<comment><USER20> The basic solution is fairly simple (and I'm surprised there's not much mention of it here): use something other than "point". In an ideal world, there would be three measures:

Points/inches/mm/etc. - used _only_ for displaying content which must match the physical world. For the most part, this means "page preview" and when you want to display some image at "actual size".

Arcseconds/radians/etc. - used for displaying content that is intended to fill a certain field of view. The vast majority of content.

Pixels - used for fitting to pixel grids and 1:1 display, or other scenarios where scaling artifacts are not acceptable.

There is a considerable deal of fiddling to do with this, especially with regards to user-configurable scaling (which would be extremely important for arcseconds/etc., given that field of view depends on distance to device), but the basic need for some angular measure seems obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This will lead to more harm than good. Sure, designers can use it to their advantage to create great pages, but some people who don't account for this will make their websites so their 12mm font looks great on their 4000px monitor but everything looks fuzzy on my 1024 px screen. And oh god the scrolling when I try to use my ipod touch to browse the site.

<comment><USER13> that's what they do already. i'm totally missing your point. How does this not happen with px? and with em and % being also based on px...

</comment></comment><comment> homer-simpson For your reading pleasure, here is (imho totally flawed) argument by one Mozilla guy who thinks otherwise:

[http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/01/css-absolute-length- unit...](http://robert.ocallahan.org/2010/01/css-absolute-length- units_12.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> Shouldn't we just switch to dimensional measurements like millimeters, inches, etc and expect the operating system to use whatever metric it chooses to make it display size appropriate (pt, px, em, etc)?

I think the problem with this is that developers (me included) have enjoyed using resolution to to change the physical size components in order to gain screen real estate. Perhaps, shifting to a zoom/scale setting would be a better approach than tying ourselves to resolution.

Humorously, it would be kinda like a print guy measuring font size in fibers and the size of the type changing based on fiber density. :-P Then again, they probably do that.

</comment><comment><USER23> No. I want to be able to make slides that work on projectors. The only unit able to handle this would be "angle based on standard viewing distance", which will require markedly different "actual lengths" for different devices.

<comment><USER24> It has been pointed out before that the CSS `px` is such a unit: <http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx>

(Although I seem to recall the discussion here was skeptical of the idea.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A point is not necessarily 1/72 inches. TeX, for example, uses 1/72.27 by default. See <http://www.oberonplace.com/dtp/fonts/point.htm> for details on the different definitions of points. Even once you've settled on a definition of point as a unit of length, there's still the problem of defining what a "12 pt font" means; does it refer to the cap height, the length of an em-dash, or something else?

</comment><comment><USER26> For the web, users must be able to override font size independently of layout (all fonts, not just some of them).

Zoom text only feature in Firefox makes it much better than Chrome for me (even IE has a really poor man's implementation of this).

</comment><comment><USER27> "Font-hinting becomes less necessary at 200 PPI and higher."

Umm, no. Font hinting is still important at 300 DPI, so it's also still important at 200 PPI.

</comment><comment><USER13> i was fighting with the same thing the other day... then i realized, i do not look at my 24" monitor at the same distance then i look at my 4" phone screen.

So, which size should the font be if i'm designing for both those screens? pt sure isn't the answer.

this being only tangentially related to the topic :) so, back on topic, yes, i wholeheartedly agree that pt should mean what it mean. it's just retarded that it's not. and you are not even accounting for TVs which cut random portions of the displayed image for no reason, making this even harder to calculate the real dpi.

<comment><USER28> Ironically there _is_ a straightforward answer: arc distance. What angle does the font (or pixel, or whatever you're trying to scale) subtend from the position of your eye? This works always. It's sometimes hard to define for some devices (e.g. TV's, which might be used a widely varying distances), but even then the world has come up with standard conventions (e.g. assume you're 10' from your 40" TV, assume your phone is about 12" away, assume the controls in your car are at a 30" arm length...).

And, of course, it's not implemented anywhere. So we all suffer with "dpi" and "px".

<comment><USER29> According to CSS 2.1, px _should_ be defined in terms of an angle: <http://inamidst.com/stuff/notes/csspx>.

<comment><USER28> That's fun. Obviously that's not how it works, 1px is 1 physical pixel everywhere I've ever seen. Think of how much would break if something decided to do this "right" ...

<comment><USER30> On retina displays it is two pixels.

<comment><USER31> I haven't paid too much attention to this but shouldn't it be a square of four pixels? That would be true double resolution, right?

Or is there some pixel trickery like those olpc displays? [<http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Display>]

<comment><USER32> px is a measure of length, not area.

A 12 px high font is 24 px high on a retina display.

A 12 px by 12 px box is 144 px^2, or 12 x 12 x 2 x 2 = 576 px^2 on retina.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Huh? I sit at a different distance from my monitor than my phone is from my face. I buy high resolution monitors, not because I want the "OMG the circle is a smoother circle" sense of a Retina display but because I want greater density. If we're nitpicking about "pt" in particular, fine. But if we're saying we should design UI elements and text specifically so that it's always the same size, count me completely out.</comment>


Ask HN: Big list of open source projects looking for donations? - <AUTHOR> Is there a concise list of open source projects looking for donations? I really think donating to open source projects you care about should be closer to a subscription model than a sporadic/rare event. There should be a facilitation process to quickly find recipients individually or by groups.<p>Also, new donating models can be studied. For example, a project can distribute part of the donations to their code dependencies. <comment><USER2> You might be interested in [https://snowdrift.coop/](https://snowdrift.coop/) Their site/model is still evolving, but they've done some pretty good research on what other options there are already out there [https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding](https://snowdrift.coop/p/snowdrift/w/en/othercrowdfunding) .

As per the original question I don't think there is any such list of projects seeking donations and if there was one I doubt it would be concise. If you're personally interested in donating to a project via a subscription it shouldn't be that difficult to contact the maintainer to see if they'd be interested in receiving those donations and if they could setup some service to receive subscriptions.

</comment><comment><USER3> Please donate existing projects or hire C++, C, Python developers to contribute to the open-source community and pay the developers. There are tons of project they need either donation or developers which get paid for small amounts.

1 - FFMpeg for Windows to become more friendly 2 - NodeJS for Windows to become more easy and friendly so that we can stop using fooling us by moving to random programming languages : Java, C#, D, Go etc etc

3 - Please invest on TWAIN, ISIS, SANE protocol to be Freely available in NodeJS

4 - Please invest on rfc-turn servers 5 - Please invest VLC. To make for windows operating system to have screen-capture and then make that captured screen to be available as virtual webcam source. Like Manycam

6 - Please invest for Node-WebKit, to make it for windows bulletproof hackers browser.</comment>


Man 69, who 'identifies as 20 years younger' launches legal battle to change age - <AUTHOR> https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/11/07/dutch-man-69-identifies-20-years-younger-launches-legal-battle/ <comment><USER2> Reg: What's the point of fighting for his right to have babies, when he can't have babies?

Francis: It is symbolic of our struggle against oppression.

Reg: It's symbolic of his struggle against reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think he's a pretty good age right now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Its called, denial.</comment>


No one knows what will happen if the Silicon Valley boom ends - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2015/10/27/9617996/silicon-valley-boom-fragile <comment><USER2> Thankfully it won't. Most of the old California industries are legacy.</comment>


Show HN: Code2flow – easy flowcharts with no mouse, no dragging and no hassle - <AUTHOR> https://code2flow.com <comment><USER3> If you are looking for a way to generate flowchart diagrams from a DSL description, the classic is Brian Kernighan's PIC: [http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/v8/picmemo.pdf](http://doc.cat-v.org/unix/v8/picmemo.pdf)

I am surprised at the amount of people that have never heard of it. It is probably already installed on your Unix system. There are several implementations with various improvements, such as [https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/dpic/](https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~aplevich/dpic/)

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's just me, but if it takes more than five minutes, to figure out how to go from the example chart to a png, perhaps there's a reason no-one knows it.

<comment><USER4> This took quite some time to dig up. In case anyone else was wondering, this produces a png (assuming foo.pic contains the example pic instructions): $ pic foo.pic | pic2graph > foo.png

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Smart. Plays to the strengths of the keyboard by using text input, vs awkward dragging of elements with the mouse (especially with big graphs).

2\. Is 'pseudo code' the best description to use? Even the word 'code' can put non-technical people off as they associate it with complexity.

3\. The pricing: hosting and support are good reasons to pay, but 'full confidentiality'? It seems you are going out of your way to make the product insecure because the user is not paying. It comes across as a bit money- grabbing.

4\. The gif on the front page works well to show off the product simplicity in an intuitive way. My only thoughts is the flowchart could do with looking a bit more 'web 2.0'; SVG elements so you can have rounded corners, shadow effects, colours that work together, arrows that look more professional etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. Thank you. 2) Probably not good for nontechnical people but on the other hand most accurate for technical people. 3) Your point sounds reasonable. How would you describe the need of some companies need to host 100% of their data? Medical companies for example. This is the point I was trying to convey in the pricing. 4) Square is the new web 3.0 :)

<comment><USER5> I suppose it depends if you selling flowchart software to mainly technical people? Else if it is more like Excel users, you may want to go with 'as intuitive as Word' or something similiar.

I'd just list 'fully secure' or 'encrypted' as one of the features, and not put it in the price plan at all.

True enough on the Web 3.0 look! I'd recommend using one of the many colour palette tools on the Web though, just to get a more natural softer look between the various hues.

<comment><USER6> By full confidentiality I believe they mean that customers host the software themselves.

<comment><USER5> That is already made clear in a separate bullet point though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey y'all, I've been working on this part time for a couple of years now. Recently it started getting more traffic so I thought I'd try sharing this project with hacker news. If it's useful to you, and the free app is good for most use cases, then hopefully it will reach wider audience. Cheers.

<comment><USER7> I hope your pricing model ($100-$300/month) is meant as a joke, and you're not really serious about it. It's extremely expensive. I can drag and drop text boxes in google docs just fine and it's not costing me a dime. The added productivity would be worth it if I was doing this all day long, but it's not the case (as a software engineer).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome to use the free trial version and I can assure you that the SaaS paid version will be very affordable.

As for $100/$300 pricing, these are on premise business/enterprise versions meant to be used by bigger teams where data confidentiality is crucial.

<comment><USER8> I think the feedback you should get from that comment isn't that the price is too big, but that the pricing page may not be as clear as you think. I.e. you never intended that dev to pay 100$/month but he/she took it that way.

I think this is a great execution of a time consuming problem, good job!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> heh I knew them lines looked familiar

        digraph  {
                "Hey" [shape=circle]
                "Welcome to graphiz" [shape=box]
                "You are new" [shape=diamond]
                "How are you" [shape=box]
                "It's super easy" [shape=box]
                "write plain english thats code like" [shape=box]
                "wanna do a condition" [shape=diamond]
                "editing"[shape=diamond]

                "Hey" -> "Welcome to graphiz" -> "You are new"
                "You are new" -> "It's super easy"[label=True]
                "You are new" -> "How are you"[label=False]
                "It's super easy" -> "write plain english thats code like" -> "wanna do a condition"
                "wanna do a condition" -> "Just write an if"[label=True]
                "wanna do a condition" -> "editing"[label=False]
                "Just write an if" -> "editing"
                "editing" -> "How are you"[label=False]
                "editing" -> "see stuff update via entr"[label=True]
                "see stuff update via entr" -> "editing"
                "How are you" -> "goodbye"
        }

Now I want to study up on parsing to build my own ast to dot generator

<comment><USER10> Yes! I just made a massive digraph last week with [http://graphviz.org/](http://graphviz.org/) Render above to PNG with:

dot above.gv -Tpng -oout.png

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another alternative is [PlantUML]([http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram- legacy](http://plantuml.com/activity-diagram-legacy)) which also has sequence, class ... diagrams

<comment><USER12> Stay the hell away. We had to use this at my last job and it drove people nuts.

<comment><USER11> Kind of surprised. My team uses it and the fact that it is all text driven (works with git) has them all sold. We mostly use class and sequence diagrams.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How do you arrive at the pricing model for this? $100 per month $300 per month? How is that justified?

Also how do you win against competitors? Is this project something that couldn't be duplicated in a week or so? No disrespect intended, maybe there is more to it that I'm seeing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me start by saying that the free trial is perfectly functional and you can use the product totally for free and you are welcome to!

The pricing for individuals is gonna be published soon along with the SaaS product. It's probably gonna be something like $10/mo but still couple more features need to be built to justify that (like permanent links which content can be edited)

As for the $100/mo - we do have business/enterprise customers who find lots of value in it. I guess the price has been initially verified by the market so should I justify it?

I guess I can justify the price by saying that the project has taken numerous hours of engineering, testing and experimenting. I think this is natural in pricing models that bigger customers pay more.

If you can do the same in a week than good for you.

Peace and take care :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, if this product can save more than 3 engineering hours per month for your whole company than I'd say the self-hosted product is totally worth it. Simple math. :)

<comment><USER14> If only companies thought that way. It's all about budgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've been playing with a real time visualization of various graph visualizations that have nice text DSLs. Current progress is open source and includes an Atom Package for editing and visualizing results on the fly, as well as a command line tool for generating SVGso from the textual representations.

[https://atom.io/packages/diagrams](https://atom.io/packages/diagrams)

and

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/diagrams](https://www.npmjs.com/package/diagrams)

Desktop oriented for offline use.

<comment><USER16> Looks great!

I think StackEdit is another tool to create flowcharts and sequence diagrams.

[https://stackedit.io/editor](https://stackedit.io/editor)

[https://github.com/benweet/stackedit/blob/master/public/res/...](https://github.com/benweet/stackedit/blob/master/public/res/WELCOME.md#uml- diagrams)

We can create a flow chart with following markdown.

```flow

st=>start

e=>end

st->e

```

<comment><USER15> This is awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Don't listen to the feedback you're getting here about pricing.

It looks like you're used by people in healthcare, and they pay primarily for self-hosting.

My suggestion: replace "Data not confidential" with "HIPPA compliant" and double your prices. The free version works for 99% of people who just want to draw a flow-chart, and you charge reasonable prices to healthcare orgs that have to be extra careful because of regulations.

<comment><USER18> I completely agree.

Start high and work your way down until you get consistent conversion ratios that match up with your personal goals.

OR start low and then keep increasing the price until you hit a conversion wall.

Both ways work!

This is an amazing read on the subject:

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pric...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/saas_pricing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is just great. Are you planning to introduce an "Export as GraphML [0]" function? My ideal workflow would be to use code2flow to quickly build up the core of a flowchart, and then importing it into a full blown flowchart editor like yEd for the fine tuning.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting idea, I'll definitely look into it and let you know. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is awesome! Any chance it can somehow output to a text based chart?

This is basically what has been preventing me from using [https://monodraw.helftone.com/](https://monodraw.helftone.com/) \- i didn't want to draw simple flowcharts. If this can output text for a sane price, you've got a customer!

(though, i would prefer an offline app, fwiw)

<comment><AUTHOR> By text-based do you mean ascii-art? Right now you can output graphics alongside with text to PNG, PDF or SVG - [https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.png](https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.png) [https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.pdf](https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.pdf) [https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.svg](https://code2flow.com/8qRgzO.code.svg)

<comment><USER20> Yea i meant Ascii art - Monodraw is an amazing program, and as much as i _want_ to buy it, i haven't because i don't want to _draw_ the flow charts.

Your solution is something i've literally talked about here before, so it's welcome to see! But i still need/want ascii. I suppose i don't _need_ it.. i just like being able to view things in CLI/etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cool tool. How does this compare to [http://flowchart.js.org](http://flowchart.js.org) ?

<comment><USER22> After trying both, Code2flow is much easier to use for quick diagrams but not as feature rich. Flowchart.js has a bit of a learning curve IMO but much more powerful. Code2flow has free and paid options. Flowchart.js open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like the concept! But there is one thing that seems really weird to me: Edges connecting to other edges instead of nodes. I don't recall seeing that before, at least not very often. I suppose there might be some cases where it helps the layout but I still would make it optional and maybe even default off.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I'm not sure what you mean but if you can post a link to a broken flowchart I could try fixing it.

<comment><USER24> The front page demo does it with the while loop.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see, this arguably makes such loops easier to follow. I'll look into making it optional though.

<comment><USER25> I've seen this before but the edges join together cleanly: one of the edges "merges" (like a freeway on-ramp) with the other edge.

In the demo on the front page, there's clearly a pseudo-node that the edges stop at, and it's jarring.

edit: this thing: [http://snap.philsnow.io/2016-11-18T11-19-57.mpfpkk55hj0dunqf...](http://snap.philsnow.io/2016-11-18T11-19-57.mpfpkk55hj0dunqfi8dn.png)

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, it does look a bit weird in that case. On the other hand check out this flowchart [https://code2flow.com/KdNVeJ](https://code2flow.com/KdNVeJ) \- the same thing looks very clear here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems very productive. Definitively worth trying.

I've used graphviz for a bit, which is similar in mindset, and I can see myself using this, as a product.

Now I think the pricing can be a little bit too much.

<comment><USER27> It's a huge price for interactive use, and I don't see much here that truly beats graphviz.

I prefer echo "digraph G {Hello->World}" | dot -Tpng >hello.png

For a stretched example [http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery/gradient/cluster.html](http://www.graphviz.org/Gallery/gradient/cluster.html)

<comment><USER10> These amazing Graphviz examples by AT&T research are linked in the docs, but now only on archive.org: [https://web.archive.org/web/20130514141942/http://www2.resea...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130514141942/http://www2.research.att.com/~yifanhu/GALLERY/GRAPHS/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Cool to see this on HN. I've been using for at least a year to help document some specific use cases in our code. I appreciate the stable URLs that make this possible.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't know what you are using as a graph layout engine, but if it can export to a few standard layout formats (dot file, GraphML etc.) I would use this all the time.

</comment><comment><USER30> I run a small business, and for $3,600/year (unbranded), I will easily choose to stay with Inkscape. I understand the importance of branding, so "white label" is a necessity. My use case is to document process flow in systems, which remain unchanged for months at a time.

Contact me if you want to talk about a pricing model that would make sense for my market segment. Maybe per-chart pricing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just wrote you an email but I'm replying here as well. If you just need to make some flowcharts they will not have a code2flow stamp in any of the pricing tiers. Maybe except free trial, but it does not watermark the output either yet. You are welcome to use the free trial until we have a paid SaaS or buy the basic self-hosted version.

The enterprise version is for companies embedding code2flow in their own products.

Many thanks!

<comment><USER31> Add it on your pricing grid. "No watermark" could be enough for some people to switch over from free to paid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nicely Done!

I played with a simple OAuth2 flow and it worked great. I'm going to see about using it for all of our documentation.

Business is probably too steep for us and we wouldn't want on-prem anyway. A Saas Pro plan might be interesting if it's affordable.

Note: Download to PDF failed silently for me. Printing worked great. I haven't tested SVG or PNG yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm glad you like it. I just deployed a fix that should address the download problem. Cheers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is very cool! I would however just want to draw it all by hand, like a paint tool. Also it could look a bit better.

<comment><USER34> Check out drawexpress. It works best with a stylus. I use it on my Lenovo yoga book and it's brilliant. I can put something that I have in my head onto a neat looking graph amazingly fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great idea!

My brain jumps from the code being psuedocode to instead being actual Swift, and the chart would be displayed in the output section of an Xcode playground.

Anyone know if something like that exists? Or if it may be easy to port an idea like this to inside a Playground?

</comment><comment><USER36> I actually built like the same tool for internal use at the last company I worked for.

</comment><comment><USER37> Oh man this looks really neat. Thanks for building it.

</comment><comment><USER38> I love your idea, and I think it seems like a nice implementation. But feel your price point will push this well beyond its value.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is Sass version in the works that will be probably $10/mo - <USER2> working on the features and billing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Not really sure why, but have issues seeing the screencast.gif on Safari 10.0.1 (11602.2.14.0.7), El Capitan.

</comment><comment><USER40> Looks cool!

Can you share a really complex flowchart that uses most of the options?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have anything large at hand that I can share. Here is a small real- world use case [https://code2flow.com/wclEvF](https://code2flow.com/wclEvF) \- and this is another [https://code2flow.com/KdNVeJ](https://code2flow.com/KdNVeJ) In the latter example, please note that "Update failed: flash error" generates only one node in the flowchart.

The most complex flowcharts were created by customers and testers but I don't want to expose their data. They have hundreds of lines of code resulting in huge diagrams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> This is beautiful. Thank you !!

</comment><comment><USER14> What would be cool is to paste in actual code e.g. Java and produce a flowchart based on some conventions e.g. convert camel case to sentences.</comment>


Corruption Perceptions Index – Ranking 180 countries (2017) - <AUTHOR> https://www.transparency.org/news/feature/corruption_perceptions_index_2017 <comment><USER2> I find it interesting that some well-developed countries see their scores fall slightly over the last few years.

I wonder if it's because there's an actual increase in corruption, or because people have gotten more disenchanted. If it's the latter, I wonder if it has any connection to the increase in the popularity of the (extreme) right-wing politics in the recent years.</comment>


Flexport Wants to Be Uber of the Oceans - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-11/flexport-wants-to-be-uber-of-the-oceans

<comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526167](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9526167).</comment>


Exercise Alters Our Microbiome - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/well/move/exercise-microbiome-health-weight-gut-bacteria.html <comment><USER3> I dropped all forms of sugar and corn syrup a few months ago. I was never a health nut. Quite the opposite.

It's incredible how much your physiology alters just from that. Water tastes good now. I used to drink water with crystal light, because it was so bland.

Shed 20lbs without even exercising.

I eat bananas, apples, peanut butter and chicken. Learned to cook a few things. You sort of have to, if you want to avoid sugar and corn syrup.

Any ingredients with dex-, wheat, corn starch, -ose, dairy, added sweetener, agave, artificial sweeteners, etc – you can drop it, if you try. No pasta, no bread. No white potatoes.

I wonder how much the input to our body affects us vs exercise? It seems substantial.

And it's crazy how much more you have to spend on food just to make it work. Easily 2x or 3x.

EDIT: To clarify, the interesting part is that I'm never hungry. I eat as many bananas and apples as I want. When I want some variety, my go-to is Nathan's hotdogs with no additives (no dextrose/corn starch), or throwing coconut milk into chicken with spices and garlic. For whatever reason, the weight keeps coming off, for months now.

Grain and dairy seem worth avoiding. I don't know why.

FWIW I drank diet soda before this, but it was easy to eat sugar: chocolate covered pretzels were my feel-good food. It's easy to dupe yourself into thinking you're eating healthy by doing one thing in one area, but totally the wrong thing in a different area but "in moderation." My only solution was quitting it cold turkey.

<comment><USER4> I don't get why you would exclude potatoes and eat bananas. They are very very similar foods.

Everything that is flour based is refined, lacks fiber etc so I get the pasta and bread exclusion, but the potatoes one makes no sense imo.

Overall in this thread, once again americans discover that they eat shit and simply cooking meals yourself from scratch (with limited fat of course) with no treats between meals makes you lose weight. For Europeans, the whole USA deal with food is really laughable. An american friend (largely overweight of course) was taking a starbucks with cream extrasugar and what not everyday. He was astonished when we said that it was really high on calories (and has stopped since). What is wrong that most americans (even educated ones) seem to have no idea of what an healthy diet is ?

<comment><USER5> Is nutrition and cooking / domestic skills part of the American school curriculum or widely taught ?

<comment><USER6> Not really. That's one of those things they've been dropping from the curriculum. Where it is taught, half the time it isn't mandatory and is often unhelpful.

I personally had 9 weeks of combined sewing and cooking, that really taught me nothing. (My sister got a lowered grade for not following the recipe exactly). I was lucky - I had already been cooking for a few years by then because I liked it. Had that been my only introduction to cooking, though, I'd not be very functional as a new adult.

My "financial" education happened in 8th grade - age 13, when you can't rent an apartment until 18 most times. This consisted of a car salesman teaching us about loans and interest and tax forms... giving us extra credit if our parents looked at a car. Even more credit if they bought one.

That said, most high schools have some sort of child development classes as an optional class. If you are interested in stem classes or otherwise on a college-bound path, you might not be offered such classes or be able to fit them into your class schedule. High school cooking, if even offered, generally focused on job placement where I lived.

<comment><USER7> About the only thing I learned in the cooking part of my class in 8th grade-- which had in a prior generation been called "home ec" and "shop" but was now "life skills" and "industrial arts"\--was that everything I made myself tasted better than anything that came out of the school cafeteria's kitchen.

The part about putting the fork on the left and the knife (blade facing the plate) and spoon on the right was useless filler. When they added in salad forks and dessert spoons, I really had to wonder how many rich people just got tired of screaming at their servants for putting the soup spoon where the dinner spoon should go. A _practical_ class would have graded us on our use of chopsticks, instead of the correct placement of the asparagus-tickler for a 15-course banquet.

They never taught us about peanut-butter burritos that require no cooking, water, or refrigeration--great for when you have no utilities turned on. They never mentioned the magical amino-acid balance of beans-rice-corn or ordinary potato, for when you can't afford actual meat. They certainly didn't say anything about the locked trash containers behind the grocery store or haggling over the coupon policy. They didn't go into any detail about how the remains of one meal can be used to stretch the next. That would have been useful stuff to learn for the bottom economic quintile we were to be dumped into after high-school graduation.

My own kids don't even have it as an elective. Future food comes from a box or a vending machine. I suspect that the last master chefs will be programming DLC modules for all the auto-cook robots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is only tangentially related, but I've been practicing intermittent fasting for the past year, and I _cannot recommend it enough_ \-- it honestly changed my life. I feel better, I sleep more regularly, I have more energy, and my mind is more alert. I only eat from 12PM to 8PM. IF is also supposed to have an impact on your microbiome, reduce inflammation, and encourage autophagy (especially in the brain).

PS: Please talk to your doctor before you make any major dietary changes. I'm just some guy on the internet. And I'm most definitely not a doctor.

<comment><USER9> As a counterexample, I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM and it triggered a starvation response in me and 4 days in, it made binge on what ever I set my eyes on. I do a bulk of moving around in the morning. So maybe I should do it in the evening, may be like a 7AM to 5PM. I am a woman. So the physiological differences may also come into play. I dunno.

I am just adding this comment because, invariably articles on food & health results in comments about intermittent fasting with glowing reviews. It really does marvels for some/many. There are also cases like me for whom it does seems to hurt. Maybe I am approaching it wrong. Just adding my anecdote for a balanced view.

<comment><USER10>
      I tried to fast from 8PM to 11PM

I hope you meant 11 _AM_.

<comment><USER9> Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> TLDR

The scientists found that the animals [mice] with gut bugs from the runners were better able to resist and heal tissue damage and tamp down inflammation than those whose microbes had come from sedentary mice.

...recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise. About half were obese and the rest of normal weight.

they had the men and women begin supervised workouts, during which their efforts increased over time from about 30 minutes of easy walking or cycling to about an hour of vigorous jogging or pedaling three times per week.

The subsequent analysis showed that the volunteers' gut bugs had changed throughout the experiment,

Most of these changes were not shared from one person to the next. Everyone's gut responded uniquely to exercise.

But there were some similarities, the researchers found. In particular, they noted widespread increases in certain microbes that can help to produce substances called short-chain fatty acids... believed to aid in reducing inflammation in the gut and the rest of the body.

They also work to fight insulin resistance, a precursor to diabetes, and otherwise bolster our metabolisms.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was shocked to read that the gut microbiome's gene set is about 150 times larger than the human gene complement [1]. I don't know a ton about microbiology, but it seems like that wouldn't drastically increase the time to sequence these microbes since we are talking about total set size, not the size of individual genomes? There is still so much to learn from the human genome alone - I fully expect many of our next great medical advances will come from studying these gut flora.

Hopefully that will also bring a little more science to the probiotics industry :)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3779803/)

<comment><USER13> It's a bit of a tricky comparison. Bacterial genomes are jam-packed full of protein-coding genes, while human genomes have genes spread out between much larger regions of both "junk" (viral elements, pseudogenes, and repetitive elements) and regulatory regions.

A human genome is 3 billion base pairs, and a bacterial genome is ~3 million base pairs. Considering there are probably 100-1000 bacterial species of clinical / gut ecological importance in a person's gut, it happens to sort of work out that it takes roughly the same amount of sequencing to sequence your gut microbiome as it does your genome.

Studies like this one do not do that. They only sequence marker genes which describe which bacteria are there (however, this process doesn't include all bacteria, doesn't tell you what those bacteria do, or what their small differences are). It's like a census where you just ask for people's last names.

That being said, after reading I think this was a nice little study. It had a small sample size but pretty clear effects that fit in with a lot of priors that we already have about the gut with regards to butyrate production by specific species.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The course on Coursera about Microbiome ([https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome](https://www.coursera.org/learn/microbiome)) has been extremely helpful for me in understanding gut bacteria and Microbiome.

Hope it helps.

</comment><comment><USER15> I have pretty mild IBS symptoms, but I concur - exercising at the very least has helped regulate my gut. At least to the extent that I can live a normal life without having to be constantly aware of the nearest bathroom.

Can't recommend regular exercise enough to those experiencing similar issues. Running would be my recommendation. I wonder if the rhythm of exercise is partially responsible.

<comment><USER16> Can I ask for more details on how you are exercising - frequency, duration, any special tips? I have mild IBS-D but find that running sometimes seems to exacerbate my symptoms. I've found research pointing both ways on this.

<comment><USER15> Every other day approximately. Not too much running - 15 mins maybe. Then an hour of weight training.

The most important thing has been regulation. I stay away from foods I've recognized as being triggers. I was taking probiotics for a while. I was stressed, anxious. All contributing factors. Learning control has been a key for me.

<comment><USER16> Very interesting, thank you! For a while I was running in the 30-60 minute range and my gut was getting more and more irritable over time. Your experience lines up with the research I found - that intense, prolonged or overly frequent exercise can worsen leaky gut / intestinal permeability symptoms, but regular exercise at a relatively low intensity may improve it. This makes me want to try reintroducing running into my routine.

Also very interesting that weight training doesn't trigger any symptoms. Can I ask - how hard do you push during weight training? Are you on a program like StrongLifts 5x5? I was running and then doing weights back-to-back and stopped both after I realised it was making things worse.

I have the same experience as you in terms of biggest improvements - <USER2> and cutting out trigger foods has been a huge help. I miss a lot of foods, but I like having a stable gut much more than I miss the foods...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I stopped reading as soon as I saw:

> They began by recruiting 32 men and women who did not exercise.

This is not worth reporting - certainly not in the matter-of-fact manner that they did. It is far far more likely there is nothing worth seeing here.

I wish I had the resources on hand to explain why I believe this. It relates to p-hacking and finding results that just fade away with more in-depth investigations.

32 doesn't mean the criteria for something that should be reported to the general public. Investigated further? Sure.

<comment><USER18> Why? 32 is a big for a human study.

They recruited 32 people that didn't exercise, they didn't choose them after they already had the data.

<comment><USER17> The evidence required for these kinds of studies is far greater than it might initially seem. The sheer number of other variables (environmental factors) makes it very easy to assign causal relationships incorrectly. I mean to say that I'm willing to bet most individual studies involving "32" participants (or on that ballpark) are basically wrong. By individual studies I mean those where the evidence for the phenomena is _almost_ just that study.

Some anecdotal evidence (lacking being able to share the resources that I've read in the past) is the "science" in (and media reporting of) the fields of nutrition, psychology, sociology and similar fields where the environment is impossible to fully control. They seems half-baked (or outright contradictory) because the media reports on findings that don't have very strong evidence behind them (need further research) while _making it seem like_ it is an established fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has anyone done research on the probiotic industry? Are there brands that are considered safer, better, than the rest?

I was reading about the vitamin pill industry, and that made me stare questionably at the probiotic bottle my wife buys -- where does it come from and is it safe? Two questions I have no answers for.

<comment><USER20> I had a physician recommend VSL3 (the powder form). I believe you can buy it w/o a prescription, and it's available at most Costcos. My understanding is the powder is more bio-available than any pill form.

<comment><USER19> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Title: Exercise Alters Our Microbiome The first sentence of the article: Exercise _may_ change the composition and activity of the trillions of microbes in our guts...

Kind of a title bait.

Also, if you measure your microbiome every day you would see that it varies widely from day to day. So these results based on one measurement before the experiment and one measurement after are not reliable.

<comment><USER22> what are other MB influencing factors ?

mood ?

circadian rhythms ?

diet ?

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h Oh, is this going to be like "X changes your brain"? Where it turns out that doing _literally anything_ changes your brain because it's designed to optimize against absolutely any environment.

<comment><USER18> Even the composition of your microbiome itself can alter your brain chemistry (actually, it's usually called the gut brain axis).

The study here used fecal transplant from lean to obese mice as well as a less invasive test; so it really does seems like a meaningful distinction.

<comment><USER22> backfeednack

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Are they doing the exercises outside?Maybe they are measuring the effects of normalized vitamin D3 levels...

I smell a great purge in healthy articles.Myself im going to stick to my guns and common sense [http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq- test/](http://www.unz.com/jthompson/diet-is-iq-test/)

<comment><USER24> You used 'vitamin D3 levels' and 'just use common sense' in the same post. You have no way of knowing if vitamin D3 makes any difference at all without delving into scientific literature and statistics.

<comment><USER23> You know im just a programmer,right? [http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog- view/vitamin-d-improves-...](http://www.timeforwellness.org/blog-view/vitamin- d-improves-gut-bacteria-566)

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying you are wrong; I personally believe vitamin D3 is important, too. (I'm also not a medical professional)

I'm just saying that the importance of vitamin D3 is not something that can be figured out by common sense; it's the sort of thing that requires a double- blind study.

<comment><USER25> The importance of vitamin D3 can also be seen in the Somalia diaspora in Nordic regions. The veiled Somali women, with their dark skin, burka clothing and home-dwelling habits, have very low vitamin D levels, leading to health issues in themselves and leading to autism spectrum disorders in their offspring.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4396835/) [https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali- immig...](https://www.somalispot.com/threads/new-research-somali-immigrants- in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency.32980/) [https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali- immigran...](https://www.vitamindcouncil.org/new-research-somali-immigrants- in-sweden-suffering-from-severe-vitamin-d-deficiency-during-pregnancy/) [https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s---- f-seve...](https://www.gnc.gu.se/digitalAssets/1349/1349916_s----f-severe- vitamin-d-deficiency-.pdf)

<comment><USER24> Yes, I understand that there is some scientific evidence that D3 is important. I'm not contesting that evidence.

My point is that scientific evidence and "common sense" are very different sorts of things; in common use, "common sense" means something that is observable without education or technical training.

In general, I think "common sense" is less useful that the knowledge you can gain through dedicated work of educated scientists and statisticians.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>