Genetic Secret to AIDS Immunity Found - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/26682/?p1=A3

<comment><USER2> I spent the past year sharing office space with Paul's lab, so this result doesn't really surprise me. I dislike the title that Technology Review is running, but that shouldn't detract from this.

The major histocompatibility complex sits on chromosome 6. Our best disease associations for HIV and autoimmune disease show up here. There are a number of published associations outside of this region, but nothing as blazing hot as the signal in the MHC. There's an ongoing debate in the field about 'missing variance' -- we can estimate the heritability of diseases haven't found enough variation in the genetic soup to explain the heritability.

(I'm afraid I need to run out the door, I'll do my best to answer questions on this work or similar studies.)

<comment><USER3> There are some groups within the Broad Institute that I think have the tools to more or less resolve the question of the missing heritability (genetic variance), and I'm sure you know these folks too. This work isn't published yet, so sadly we can't really talk about their answer.

<comment><USER2> I don't believe I'm privy to any secrets, but I'll do my best not to leak information.

My complaint is with additive models of liability. [In brief compute an independent relative risk for each SNP. To compute the risk of disease, take the log sum of the relative risks.] I haven't seen a model that can take into account epistatic effects.

<comment><USER3> But heritability expressly excludes non-additive factors so I don't think that should be a problem. I agree that non-additivity affects the overall variance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I haven't read through the whole paper yet (behind a paywall (I think... I'm at a university that subscribes, so I have access) here: [http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.11952...](http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/science.1195271)), but table 1 is somewhat telling: there is no single mutation that's found in all controllers, and not in progressors. Instead, there's a collection of SNPs that controllers have more often than progressors, but not all controllers have any given SNP.

<comment><USER3> You're almost never going to get perfect genetic discrimination in all-or- nothing fashion.

The final figure is very interesting: the key SNPs that affect controller status are located near one another in 3-space in the HLA-B binding groove at a key site for antigen presentation. The fact that the genetics are all pointing to specific parts of the molecule in 3-space is extremely helpful.</comment></comment>


Stripe Atlas: Getting your first 10 customers - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/atlas/guides/starting-sales <comment><USER2> How I got my first 10 customers for my SaaS in 2017:

1\. I answered Quora questions for which my product was a potential answer.

2\. To each person who followed links from the Quora answers to my site and signed up, I wrote a short email asking if I could personally help. I tried to make it obvious these were not auto-generated emails.

3\. I did all I could to help the people who responded.

What I didn't do:

Email cold prospects.

I know Patrick (author of the article), and I hold his advice in high regard. I just want to show that there is another way to get the first 10 customers.

<comment><USER3> I've noticed a lot of questions on Quora are saturated by those kind of answers. It seems to be an accepted tradeoff, shameless and often bias self- promotion in exchange for a medium-effort answer. Furthermore it seems to me that a lot of these self-promotional posts are done by paid shills of the company which in my view further discredits them...

As a dev I'm constantly evaluating trade-offs between products and its gotten to the point that for many subjects I won't even check quora links.

<comment><USER4> I had the opportunity to attend a fireside chat with d'Agostino at The Family in Paris. Someone asked that very question. The answer was they view pitching one's product as a perfectly valid answer to questions such as "what's the best product to achieve X".

As a dev I don't mind these pitches when looking for tools. The comments/votes often provide a rather complete picture, at least for the most active questions

<comment><USER5> I wonder how many of these questions have the question and answer both created by the same person under two separate accounts..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quora needs to crack down on self-promoters. Every other answer includes a link to site for a product or a service. Its taking away from the genuine nature of real questions and answers. Now its just a place business people go to get the word out about their service, product, research, etc.

<comment><USER7> If you're seeing a lot of these kind of answers, you can sign up for my service [http://quorareporter.ai](http://quorareporter.ai) . Makes reporting these kind of things a breeze, and learns automatically from your input! Shoot me a DM on twitter @quorareporter for some discount codes for your first 10 reports.

<comment><USER8> You should find some Quora questions asking about self-promotion in Quora questions and let folks know this service exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to add that if you're product is fairly technical, or solves a pain that's engineer-focused, you're likely better off finding folks on place like GitHub or StackOverflow. Quora and the like is great, but they tend to be high-level or broader questions.

As an aside: if you're trying to find something to build, just look through GitHub issues and look at the products waiting to be built ;)

<comment><USER10> "just look through GitHub issues and look at the products waiting to be built"

Interesting idea. Thanks for that. On the topic of quora, I converted alot of followers by putting the product and describing it in depth on my profile. It happens to be a promotional tool. So Quora is so far the most effective strategy for me because a good number of people view my posts and most power users have something to promote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is off-topic but is anyone else dealing with an insurmountable number of charge-backs selling digital goods using Stripe? I'm using Radar, Sift Science, email verification, CAPTCHA, post code checks, country and domain restrictions, rate limiting and every other trick in the book and yet reportedly a third of my payments is fraudulent.

The way credit card payments work seems backwards and hopelessly broken. I reached out to Stripe several times but keep getting the same templated response. What gives?

<comment><USER12> We might be able to help at Chargehound. We're the only automated system that fights chargebacks for you. We're also the only one on Stripe's platform that's endorsed by them: [https://stripe.com/works- with/chargehound](https://stripe.com/works-with/chargehound)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the suggestion. I do this manually and never won a dispute. I suspect the fraud is being committed by a single person or group of people for the purpose of testing stolen credit cards. In some cases victims contact me after seeing my business name on their statement. I also report suspicious transactions myself.

<comment><USER13> Can you verify, even after the purchase, and automatically refund them?

As an example, will the spammers click a validation link?

<comment><USER11> I send a verification link to new email addresses before accepting payments. They do click them.

<comment><USER14> Do those verification clicks come from the same ip address as the initial order?

<comment><USER11> Good question, I don't know. I could fail the verification if it doesn't match.

<comment><USER14> It's not 100% because you may get some folks who sign up on a PC but deal with email on a phone, but if they're on home wifi then it'll be the same address. If your emails are sent immediately then differing IPs seem like they'd be rare.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a side project that's turning into a full-time gig. Farm financial analysis software.

I did a year of blog posts and email marketing before launching last December. Launch generated 30 customers and $45,000 in ARR.

Edit: I don't have the numbers in front of me but I spent $5-10k on FB ads prelaunch

<comment><USER16> That blog is the perfect example of how to create content that provides compelling value for your target market, and establishes credibility for your product. Great stuff!

Have you tried publishing a column in newspapers and the like that farmers typically read? I bet it would be popular and a powerful source of leads.

<comment><USER15> I haven't published anything or sought to. I should look into that. I've been laser focused on the blog and email list. I need to broaden my reach though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For any founder getting started, I highly recommend the book traction: How any startup can achieve explosive growth.

While most of the advice is better suited to well-funded startups a lot of the tactics can be improvised for smaller startups as well.

Another tactic I highly recommend in your emails to prospects is to use personalization. Make sure that your opening has a direct and personal appeal to the customer. In order to look for avenues for personalization look at news about the target company, events and product launches or news aligned in the business segment. I have even seen one industrious sales rep use college football news as part of their personalization tactic.

<comment><USER18> I second the recommendation on the book Traction.

After reading that book, it really opened my eyes to all the possible distribution channels and every single one, when executed well, can be success including ones thought to be so low-tech. Which really leads to the mantra of go where your customers are regardless of whether they are online or not. Offline channels can be very effective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I thought Patrick was a strong advocate of inbound marketing (writing articles and other forms of content). I am sure he still is but I can recall in one comment he had mentioned something that went like: "it's better to put effort in writing one piece of content rather than 10 cold emails."

I am sure both cold emailing and inbound marketing have their own place, but this guide seems slightly uncharacteristic of what Patrick has recommended—and found success with—over the years.

<comment><USER20> I think I'm still an advocate of inbound marketing, but feel like I've also been learning a bit over the last 10 years. One thing I've learned is that the lead time on it, particularly if you're starting from the position of no platform and (potentially) no experience producing public artifacts, is quite long.

The lead time on writing emails is pretty short; you can execute on it today, have a call lined up for Thursday, and get agreement in principle by Friday (depending on the complexity of the sale, but assume something which could be adopted in a low-touch fashion). Having a customer on Friday is a lot more effective in terms of learning what still sucks about your product than getting your first customer in February 2018.

Your mileage may vary; there are lots of ways to play mix-and-match among approaches here. (I'd note that most of my previous success with high-value deals was indeed mix-and-match; something inbound like "Hey I liked this blog post" from a software company occasioned "Really glad to hear that. I have some thoughts about how it is relevant to your situation, too: $THOUGHT, THOUGHT, THOUGHT. Would you like to discuss in more depth?" occasioned Actual Sales Work (TM) quite a bit of the time.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It seems to me that building the product is relatively easy when compared to acquiring (and retaining) customers, growth, etc. Often it seems the focus is on technology and product with marketing being a no-brainer, given. Typically, reality is the other way around.

</comment><comment><USER22> Using stackoverflow/quora to answer questions and then link people to my blog for long reads as a fallback seems to work really well for me.

So basically the answer is given but I also add my relevant link for rewarding myself, having answered that question for free and hoping it helped the person asking in exchange for a click to my brand seems fair.

</comment><comment><USER23> I run a niche marketplace site. I use ambush sales tactics to find customer on forums. Once i convinced them to email me THEN 2nd task is to convert them with a free listing THEN ask them to pay, if i sell their listing / ev car. I started testing $100 got paid, raised it to $150 got paid now im at $250 and getting paid. I am considering to push it to $500 ( maybe not). I think $250 is fine for me im good with selling 4 listings / month and making 1k/month. I use FB messenger to chat with customers and Email or SMS works just fine! i'll keep at it. I have a small email list now of buyers 100-200. I know its not much but an extra $1k-$2k/month for me is fine at the moment. I don't have dreams to be a millionaire or scale or [add your fancy start up lingo here] just keepin it real. Wealth is discretionary time.

<comment><USER24> I remember seeing a post from you about your marketplace, along with a thoughtful explanation behind your tactics. It sounds like you have a great approach that's working really well, and I really appreciate you sharing all of that info.

Out of curiosity, why wouldn't you push it to $500? Your market, in my naive outsider view, seems to have the discretionary income to handle that.

I ask because I'm wondering at what point do you determine you've set too high of a price? Was there considerable drop-off in conversions near that number? Or a gut feel?

<comment><USER23> I am at $250/now. I am now seeing some interesting data patterns on selling price and am considering maybe asking for $500. Right now i am gonna stay with $250 and slowly begin testing $500. But i just started testing a tesla on demand model im not sure how that is gonna work: [https://onlyusedtesla.com/ondemand/](https://onlyusedtesla.com/ondemand/)

Problem: a tesla owner takes his tesla in for servicing. Servicing center has no loaner for him. Service center rents a tesla from my platform for the customer. Problem is inventory. Also tesla can use my platform to get customers in for a short term rental then try to convert them into a sale ( sell them a tesla)

So new business models are unfolding. there are other ways to make sales. I will of course test my threshold. ;-)

<comment><USER25> Instead of jumping to $500, is raising it by $50 an option?

If you jump to $500 and some pay, but not enough, then you revert to a lower number, people who paid $500 may feel slighted. Moving up at $50 reduces the impact and those who paid lower will feel like they got a bargain. Maybe...

<comment><USER23> So i just sold a model x 90D on the site and this guy who is a dealer paid me $500. Now i just listed another model x 90d for him. So i am thinking for a dealer i'll ask them to pay $500 it could be just this guy or i just got lucky ( one off) But the idea of raising it in $50 increments is interesting and I will start testing ASAP! Another online dealer wants to list their used tesla inventory now, they are a well funded start up based in NYC no lots. I gotta work out a monthly deal with them i don't even know how much they are paying to cars / autotrader but looking into it. ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For your first 10 customers, I recommend that the early startup team not wait till the product is ready. Ideally, someone at the startup (Founder ideally) takes the lead and spends 20% of their weekly time talking with prospective customers.

In fact, attempt to start engaging with prospects through the product development process. This tactic is very useful both for product validation and messaging validation.

</comment><comment><USER26> > _Patrick has built four software companies that did business > internationally._

Is this in reference to Bingo Card Creator and Appointment Reminder? Or was there something equally notable in Patrick's international business track record?

<comment><USER27> I think Starfighters was another, a recruiting firm that found talent via coding challenges, for which Patrick built a mock stock exchange with an API for people to write trading bot clients to defeat specific 'levels' of the game. It was a lot of fun.

[https://www.starfighters.io/](https://www.starfighters.io/)

[Note, as the site is defunct, it appears the TLS certificate hasn't been renewed and so you'll probably get a security warning from Chrome.]

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> We are pre-launch startup. We got our ten first customers presenting at 1 million cups events and some pitch events here in Dallas. We haven't go live yet, but we already do have paying customers :)

</comment><comment><USER29> I got my first 10 customers by going to all the Hackers/Founders and 106 Miles meetups and just demoing Browserling to every single person that I met on my tiny 11" macbook air.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. Use Stripe

2\. Get booted at 11th customer cause their underwriting doesn't like your name.

3\. Use different provider.

<comment><USER31> According to your own site[0], it sounds like Stripe declined to continue to serve you because of an association with a cannabis business. (That's a sub- optimal reality, but I think it's disingenuous to state that it was because they didn't like the name.)

[0] [http://edoceo.com/blog/2017/04/stripe-rubbing-salt-in-the- wo...](http://edoceo.com/blog/2017/04/stripe-rubbing-salt-in-the-wound)

<comment><USER30> They did, then after I raised that issue, they invited me back, thanked me for being a poineer and said I should proceed and likely wouldn't get caught this time.

I told them to check first, cause I don't want to move platforms then have an issue.

So, weeks later they told me that underwriting doesn't like my new name and I won't get to use their platform.

Bad names include the terms "weed" or "the". Acceptable words are "GrowFlow" or "Mister Kraken" \- direct competitors who basically sneak through.

Even when everyone knows what's going on everywhere.

<comment><USER31> Bureaucracies are inherently risk averse; that is what it sounds to me like you ran into. You have my sympathy for it. I think it's wrong and a net loss to society, but I also have no impetus to criticize a banking/finance company from staying away from anything that even smells possibly grey.

<comment><USER30> You didn't understand. They have accepted 2/3rds of they grey, and booted me - twice - based on name alone, even after lengthy phone calls and email threads spanning weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Research > personalized email > set the call for discussion or demo > close the deal is a GREAT active way to get customers. That said, I find many people in Tech opt for passive, less intrusive sales methods. Both can be successful, especially over time. But if you can get good (and even comfortable) with the Active way to sell, he potential for you to build scalable businesses in most any arena is near limitless.

</comment><comment><USER33> > $500 a month supports low-touch sales and software which costs more than > $5,000 or so annually requires high-touch sales

Am I parsing this wrong? $500/month x 12 = $6,000. $6,000 > $5,000. So wouldn't both of these examples require high-touch? Maybe that was a typo and it's supposed to be $50 not $500?

Or is the focus supposed to be on monthly vs annual billing?

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been working on a series of content with this exact same title but it looks like it will have a different slant. I always get something of value out of all of Patrick's content over the years and this is no exception. Getting the first customers is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, thing for many entrepreneurs.

</comment><comment><USER35> Warm personalised emails via ReplyApp. huge conversions. requires crafting the perfect email and testing delivery. Email list must be culled prior for product market fit.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am a single founder Atlas company with an app that I've been working on for a while now. I'm sitting in Starbucks waiting for Apple to open so I can charge my phone and go to a nearby college campus to get my first users. I don't know anyone here so this is a tall task. I'm going to collect AT LEAST 100 "no's" today. Wish me luck

<comment><USER37> Where are you located? What's your app? It's not shameless self promotion unless you're shameless about it! :-D

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Disregarding the actual contents of the article:

How is this article #1 on HN being up for 30min w/o any comments?

<comment><USER39> Internal promotion likely.

"Hey all, just posted the article. Please go upvote and don't follow links to vote"

<comment><USER40> HN is good at detecting and penalizing this.

<comment><USER41> Generally speaking yes. However it _can_ be gamed for sure, just not consistently in the long run. Not saying Stripe did this in this particular case (in fact I'd think quite the opposite), but just like Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter's situation, it can be done with the right motivation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Confusing name; I thought this was about Atlassian.</comment>


Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens - <AUTHOR> https://www.studyfinds.org/digital-overload-average-adult-will-spend-34-years-of-their-life-staring-at-screens/ <comment><USER2> "If children get outside enough, it doesn't matter how much they study they do. They don't become myopic," said Ian Morgan, researcher at Australian National University.[0]

"Researchers say kids and teens need to get sunlight during the critical years of their development while their eyeballs are still growing.

"The mechanics of how sunlight protects their eyes are not clearly understood. One theory suggests that sunlight triggers the release of dopamine in the retina; another speculates that blue light from the sun protects from the condition.

"The solution is simple. Have kids "spend more time outside, have less demands (from) the schools and relax a bit," said Seang Mei Saw, professor of epidemiology at the National University of Singapore."

[0] [https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east- asia/index.h...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/04/05/asia/myopia-east- asia/index.html)

edit: quotation marks

<comment><USER3> I'm sure there is a correlation, maybe even a strong one, but I have quite a bit of anecdata to suggest it is not true in all cases.

(I grew up on a farm, and spent a helluva lot of time outside, and needed glasses long before my family had a computer; my father would have spent even more time outside than I did, and likewise is pretty nearsighted.)

<comment><USER2> The link references the rate of myopia in South Korea increasing from 18% in 1955 to 96% in 2011. This suggests 2 things:

1\. Myopia is not entirely genetic, because genes for myopia could not have spread to almost all Koreans from almost no Koreans in the span of 56 years.

2\. Myopia is somewhat genetic, because myopia existed in a significant proportion of the pre-industrial population.

<comment><USER3> Prefixing this with an acknowledgement that I totally believe there was a change in the prevalence of myopia due to changes in environmental conditions (amount of sunlight, artificial lighting, etc etc)...

I _am_ curious whether 18% was the _diagnosed_ rate of myopia in South Korea in 1955 or the _actual_ rate of myopia in 1955.

In 1955 South Korea was a poor country; now it is one of the wealthier countries (per capita) in the world. On the one hand, it is entirely believable to me that access to eye correction is radically greater than ~70 years ago, and there was a lot of undiagnosed vision problems in 1955. On the other hand, it's also entirely believable to me that literally every 20 year old (male) was given a vision test in 1955 in South Korea, because of the War. On the third hand, it's _also_ entirely believable to me that the vision test given was fairly easy to "pass", and that a many of the people who passed it would have a level of myopia that we would now prescribe glasses for, because hey, better vision is better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> So a few minutes ago I wrote code for a company, producing economic value. Last night I kept up with family, maintaining healthy personal relationships. Right now I'm engaging in intellectual discussion of major issues with other people. And last night I watched an episode of Mr. Robot, engaging my brain with a stimulating story. And yes, sometimes I just look at animal gifs on imgur.

I see no problem continuing any of this for 34 collective years.

<comment><USER5> How much of that time was caring for your eye health so you don't go blind early?

<comment><USER6> Is there anything to indicate that excessive screen usage can cause blindness? Especially since LCD aren't that bad concerning eye strain.

<comment><USER7> I get pretty nasty headaches and my eyes start hurting after looking at monitors with PWM backlights. Some of my screens are fine, some begin to hurt my eyes after an hour or so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is about the effects of eye strain, not the overall mental health of looking at content on a screen.

With that in mind, what is it about a screen (emitted light) that is worse than outdoors reflect light? One item I can think of, is that looking at something with reflected natural light, the iris contracts based on the total amount of light hitting it. Whereas a screen may be brighter than the ambient light in the room, causing more of a point source of light to hit the retinas that would normally happen (which is why I've always found it more comfortable to watch TV with some other light on in the room vs. the room in total darkness).

<comment><USER9> Screens are optimized for energy efficiency, so their emissions are restricted to a narrow range of visible frequencies. They don't even really cover the whole range of colors, but mix them by combining RGB, which isn't the real thing. Eg you can make something looking like violet light by mixing blue and red, but it's not the same thing as the "real" violet.

Sunlight, however, is a wild mix of broadband EM emissions across basically the whole spectrum, as you'd expect from a glowing ball of plasma (halogen bulbs are actually similar in that regard, they need and do have a UV filter). About a third of the sun's emitted energy hits the earth's surface as near infrared light, and then there is UV etc.

Near infrared light is very beneficial, the mitochondria in our cells can increase their energy output as a direct consequence of receiving photons in that frequency range. There are lots of studies that showed improvement of many health conditions following near infrared or red light therapy. I wouldn't be surprised if NIR light helped prevent myopia too.

<comment><USER10> As far as your visual system is concerned, "real" violet (e.g., from a tunable laser) and the "fake" RGB violet are pretty much the same--it's coded as the relative amounts of red/green or blue/yellow almost immediately after the cones.

<comment><USER11> Not necessarily. There is a lot of analog in the eyes beyond the nerves, and we don't know all the effects of ambient light on the entire eye structure. Even if the neural impulses end up being similar (and I doubt that) the eye as a whole organ may not respond the same way. Maybe that heat energy triggers something in the cornea? We don't know.

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree that UV and IR exposure may be important. Variations in UV exposure are thought to account for changing rates of myopia, for example. There may be non-image-forming receptors with different spectral sensitivities for circadian rhythms.

However, the structure and function of circuits involved in color representations has been studied to death, and it overwhelmingly points to a tristimulus model where the activation of the S/M/L cones matters, rather than the complete power spectrum of the illuminant. The sensitivity of rods and cones has measured measured with exquisite sensitivity, both behaviorally and by directly recording their electrical activity. Many downstream neurons in visual cortex get their input from individual L/M cones (parvocellular pathway). The others (magno, konio) have a fairly simple mix of inputs from a simple, spatially organized combination of the cones. In some cases (especially within the retina), the individual fibers have been traced and mapped.

There is a hell of a lot we don't know about the brain, but the very early representation of color isn't one of them. If you've got sources saying otherwise, I'd love to see them.

<comment><USER10> (This may come off a bit harsher than I meant. It's just that I'm surprised to hear someone doubt what I thought was a well-established principle with lots of data behind it. If you do have anything suggesting otherwise, I'd legitimately love to read it.

If not, WebVision is an excellent resource with a long chapter about color. [https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color- vision/co...](https://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/part-vii-color-vision/color- vision/)

The Visual Neurosciences is a behemoth too, if you can find a copy; I don't think it's online.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _The Onion_ was way ahead (as usual): [https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of- waking-hours-spent-sta...](https://www.theonion.com/report-90-of-waking-hours- spent-staring-at-glowing-re-1819570829)

</comment><comment><USER13> Part of how myopia works: When your peripheral vision is in focus too much, because something is close to your face like a screen, your eye (which grows on its own, without brain involvement), is told to grow longer to to help reduce the over sharpening of the world it thinks it has.

This happens in developing humans, at some point in adulthood it's suspected this stops (although some people see worsening myopia past the typical age range where it stops).

<comment><USER14> would it help to keep your phone or monitor further away?

<comment><USER13> Having less focus in your peripheral vision might help slow myopia progression, so possibly. However wearing glasses and contacts automatically add more focus to peripheral vision, signaling the eye to grow. So moving something further away from your face while wearing glasses or contacts may have less of an effect. Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it now is experiencing. However I haven't seen any evidence this can reverse or improve myopia, rather this just seems to slow its progression.

<comment><USER15> > Having periods of blurry vision, like looking at something far away for some > time without glasses or contacts, may be beneficial in that it may signal > the eye to become less football shaped to help correct for the blurriness it > now is experiencing.

I literally just had that yesterday, and was wondering what it was. My eyes have always been very good, but I have been a bit worried of late after a few such blurry episodes...

<comment><USER13> no, I mean intentionally unfocusing your eyes by looking at something far away without wearing correction. Involuntary blurriness or double vision is unrelated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Haven't we also gained 34 years in longevity in the last 100 years? So, net net we are good? :)

More seriously, what types of activities did screens replace? Was it talking to other people? Physical activities/labor? Reading? Nothing?

<comment><USER17> I know your first comment is mainly in jest, but... [https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes- life-...](https://www.seniorliving.org/history/1900-2000-changes-life- expectancy-united-states/)

For white folk in the US, even the life expectancy at birth (arguably an inflated metric) hasn't increased by 34 years since 1900. For all people in the US (basically everywhere else, too, I think), that ~30-40 years is dominated by infant/youth mortality getting driven hard towards 0.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> 13 hours a day on average?

That seems quite high to me.

Assuming you sleep 8 hours, that only leaves 16 other hours for potential screen time of which 13 we are apparently looking at a screen. Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio-breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left.

So of all of our waking hours, we spend 13/15.5 = 84% of every minute we are awake looking at a screen? 50 seconds of every 60 seconds staring at a screen?

Seems high to me.

<comment><USER19> I bet I'm around 12-13 hours more days than not. Maybe higher. And my phone addiction/dependence is moderate compared to some so it probably comes in a distant 3rd after laptop (easily #1) and TV (all movies, shows, and video games combined)

> Lets assume another 30 minutes a day for getting washed & dressed, bio- > breaks, brushing teeth, preparing food + drink etc (30 mins seems low, but > I'm being generous), so 15.5 hours left.

Laptop on the dresser/counter playing Youtube. Phones are waterproof—read news or catch up on morning messages in the shower. Laptops that aren't giant bricks and have battery life good enough that you aren't constantly hunting for an outlet and towing your power supply around, plus (even more so) smartphones, have changed everything.

Also depends on how they're counting screen time. Kinda like TV-watching stats. My parents leave their living room TV on probably 15+ hours a day. Does that mean they're "watching TV" if they're making lunch (good view of the TV from the kitchen) but half paying attention to the TV? Or I've come over and we're talking but the TV's on and you (or at least I) can't _entirely_ ignore it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Eye strain is a serious problem and actually becoming a bottleneck for my productivity. Flux and dark-mode everything are mandatory, and I recently bought blue-light filter glasses and can't stare at a computer screen without them anymore. I had been reading ebooks on my phone out of convenience, but I stopped due to the eye strain and will revert back to using the Kindle.

If you spend the majority of your life staring at a screen, don't take your eyesight for granted. As you age, it will deteriorate, and it's really not fun, especially when your career/livelihood depends on you being in front of a screen.

<comment><USER21> I think we are all in the same boat. For me switching from reading to hearing wherever the option makes sense helped a lot.

Basic news coverage is fine in podcast form, audiobooks work fine for non fiction (going at 2x or 3x speed doesn't kill the atmosphere) and it makes a good excuse to exercise while listening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The medieval peasant spent how much time staring at dirt?

<comment><USER23> Few of them stared at brightly glowing dirt, though. And few of them continually stared at dirt a foot or two in front of their faces.

There's debate how much damage that difference causes, but pretending there's no difference is an unhelpful approach.

<comment><USER24> Tone down your brightness then? I use heavily customized dark themes absolutely everywhere, and my screen is hardly brighter than dirt. I have no problem looking at it for 30+ hours straight (though I don't do this anymore for other reasons.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> While this article touches on eyesight, it seems like it's quite a myopic view of the issue (see what I did there? ;)

But seriously, we spend over half of our "healthy years" staring at a screen? This should be begging deep philosophical questions

\- How do you want to spend your life?

\- When you look back at your life, how do you want to have used your time?

\- What is important to you?

Some questions I struggled with when I went on a sabbatical was "what makes me feel alive, really alive?"

Ironically, my answer for many months was, "I don't know, but it's not staring at a screen."

Many other people's answered things like "rock climbing", "sky diving", "going dancing", and I think those are pretty decent answers, but mine settled on "anything that makes me grow".

I also thoroughly spending time with other people in real human-to-human interaction. This feels like a huge slap-in-the-face wakeup call.

<comment><USER26> A big component is surely from work. In which case, how does the philosophy extend to take into account the fact that people are in offices working?

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I think this is an important question. I think some of it will be inevitable, but I don't think we focus much on "decreasing screen time"... when so many companies (facebook, google, et al) get money from people spending more time on screens (advertising). There's no incentive for corporations to spend less time looking at screens.

The few companies that do promote that -- such as REI... are outdoor companies. Which could lead you to a really pessimistic thought that even the co-op companies are really just profit motivated (I don't believe this, but there is the correlation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> These stats always freak me out when you extrapolate it over the long term. The average adult will also spend 2 years commuting or an entire year of their life sitting on the toilet.

Lot's of wasted time here people. I think this also shows the power of what we can accomplish by spending 10 minutes a day doing something.

<comment><USER28> why would spending time on the toilet be wasted time?

actually, sometimes, doing practically nothing is very valuable for one's state of mind.

<comment><USER29> I'd avoid the toilet simply due to avoid increasing risk of hemorrhoids.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Important thing is, people don't just stare at screen. Many of them achieve smth else too.

For example, last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of the word on screen.

Helping them turn waste plastic into 3D printing filament:

[https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at- ho...](https://medium.com/endless-filament/make-your-filament-at-home-for- cheap-6c908bb09922)

<comment><USER31> > last week I've probably spent 50 hours with people front different parts of > the word on screen

You've spent time with a _simulation_ of those people, their voices lossily compressed with a biased frequency response, their images projected through a non-eye lens on a 2D surface, their heads bigger and closer than you would have in real life, while rest of their bodies hidden, with hundreds of milliseconds delay between interactions. Don't get me wrong, it is a very convincing and useful simulation for many purposes, but it is a simulation nonetheless.

We might have overlooked this previously, but we will slowly be gaining an understanding of the effects of sole social interaction coming through videochat. I know for some, no matter how many zoom calls they do a day, it doesn't come close to creating the same relational satiety.

<comment><USER32> Speaking personally, most of my good friendships growing up (and even now) were with people online and they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me. I've been really surprised to hear people (who seem to have been forced into interacting with folks online because of covid) start popping up claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow invalid or inferior, as your post seems to imply. I would have thought the presumably largely computer geek HN crowd would be full of folks with similar experience.

<comment><USER31> > they feel perfectly fulfilling and real to me

That is the whole point of a simulation. Hyper-palatable food, cocaine, porn etc. they also feel good and even hyper-real in our nervous systems in the short term, but that's not a good way to judge if they pose long term complications. Though, I'm not saying video chat is necessarily a hyperstimulus, we don't know yet.

> claiming that online interactions aren't real and are somehow wrong

I'm not saying it is wrong, and in the absence of real thing it is the rational thing to do. But thinking that it is the real thing is kidding ourselves and to the extent it replaces real life interactions, it could have long term harm. I know this is not an exact comparison, but we have already seen this with uni-directional audio-visual entertainment replacing real relationship time. We feel like our favorite youtubers, podcasters, netflix protagonists etc are our friends, or at least relationally worth investing time in (otherwise we wouldn't consume them). Same might go with the 50 people around the world we videochat.

<comment><USER33> I've been dating someone online for the last two months and I agree there is something missing, perhaps something chemical, that can't be transmitted over a screen and a speaker. But your viewpoint seems a bit too myopic. Humans are exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling in the blanks. I have no doubt that people can have deep and meaningful interpersonal communication without being face to face. I know I have many times, and I have certainly experienced intense emotion with people remotely, and built trust, and felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex).

Maybe reconsider the idea that it is a problematic simulation, because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place. If video chat is an illusion, then so is face to face communication, as neither one is an unfiltered experience. The filter of standing two feet from someone is only marginally different than the filter of a video chat. The real filter, the one doing the heavy lifting in both cases, is our brains translating the raw data of the physical world into our lived experience.

<comment><USER31> > Humans are exceptional at adapting, and our brains are brilliant at filling > in the blanks

This is exactly the problem. Our adaptive machinery can adapt to the wrong stimulus and get stuck in that. This is called "reciprocal narrowing" and is the mechanism that sustains addiction. I'm not saying videochat is necessarily the wrong stimulus or has an addictive potential, but being able to adapt doesn't mean it is the right thing for us in the long term.

> felt my social needs sated (if not my physical needs, specifically sex). ... > because it's really no more a simulation that how our brains translate > vibrations and light waves into sounds and pictures in the first place

This sounds like a reductionistic, cartesian model of what is going on. It assumes something like "Stimulus gets in through my senses, interpreted through my consciousness in my mind and I get what I need" or "my relational needs and my physical needs are mutually separable". Cognitive science experiments show us existence of phenomena like "blindsight", in which there is stimulus processing without possibility of conscious awareness; "implicit learning", in which there is learning without conscious awareness. In other words, our conscious awareness of what is going in is not necessarily a good indicator of what is actually going on, nor if our long term needs being actually met. We don't know if we can delineate relational and physical needs (here by physical I mean physical presence, not necessarily tactile stimulus) or to what extent we can reduce relationality to vibrations and light waves going through our auditory and visual systems.

I want to make it clear, I am not saying videochat is bad, I've spent my whole week videochatting and feel like I've met certain relational needs. But it is nonetheless a simulation, and I actually can feel tired and lonely even after a day full of videochat. I don't intend to equate both, and I want to be careful not to displace the real thing with its simulation when the opportunity arises to be present in person. Just like I need to be careful about diet coke and hyperpalatable fast food not confusing the hell out of me to the point of replacing real, long-term sustainable nutrition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does staring at two screens at the same time count double? At work as an iOS developer I look at two computer monitors, an iPad screen and a phone screen. When I watch TV at night I'll look at the TV and my phone. I'm sure I can get my count really high.

<comment><USER35> It might actually be better, as you keep changing focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just my personal experience: i definitely notice my eyesight getting worse and my eyes getting tired when I look at screens for a while. Worst are phones , then iPad , then laptop. TV causes me the least strain. I think it may have to do with the viewing distance or the background light.

When I don't look at a screen for a few days while on vacation my eyesight gets much better.

</comment><comment><USER37> We spend 34 years of our lives staring at computer screens.

The rest of the time is just wasted.

<comment><USER33> Those sound like the first lines of a movie I would watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Drooling too? Or just staring? How about "looking at", "watching", "reading", or just "using"?

</comment><comment><USER39> I used to spend a lot of time in book/magazine/paper reading. Now I read off screens mostly. 34 years of my life spent reading would be time well spent regardless of the medium.

</comment><comment><USER40> Some good tips to prevent myopia:

\- 30/30/30 rule: Every 30 minutes look at something 30 feet away for 30 seconds

\- Take regular walks outside: it will lower your blood pressure, and expose your eyes to violet light

\- ensure brightness of environment closely matches brightness of screen to prevent eye strain

</comment><comment><USER41> So, as a child my mom always insisted on me reading with lots of lights turned on. She claimed that reading the dark causes short sightedness and etc.

Now, as an adult, I find that I have my screen's brightness turned up way more than my peers. For example, although it's currently very sunny right now in LA, I have my brightness turned up 100% on my 16" MBP. Though, in the evenings, it's more comfortable at 3 or 4 steps down from 100%.

I can't help but to wonder -- did she condition my eye to be less sensitive to light and have thus slightly ruined my low-light vision?

<comment><USER42> Why wouldn't you have your brightness at 100% if it was sunny? You need the backlight to be bright to avoid it being washed out by sunlight. It would be weird if you said you used 100% brightness in the dark, but that's perfectly reasonable when it's sunny.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Protip for everyone, since I've done a lot of research on this:

If at all possible, cut the blue from your screen at all times.

I use flu.x [0] and even during the day I set my color temp to 5800K instead of the standard 6500K. You won't notice the change much, but it will make a huge difference on how tired your eyes get.

I also go down to 1850K at night (candlelight basically) to both ease strain on my eyes and not mess up my sleep. It makes a noticeable difference.

[0] [https://justgetflux.com](https://justgetflux.com)

<comment><USER44> I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day. Even during the day under florescent lights and an open window, if I have to toggle it off for any reason it feels like my eyes are being stabbed with tiny knives.

I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?) but I personally definitely staved off eye strain and dry eye issues with f.lux and no other changes.

<comment><USER43> > I set mine to 3800K for 24 hours a day.

Sometimes when I travel to the other side of the planet but don't update my laptop clock, it goes into "night mode" midday. I can use it but I find it jarring with the natural light.

> I don't know about the sleep stuff (is that hard science yet?)

They have links to studies on the flux page [0] although I'm not sure how much of that is peer reviewed or if the sample sizes are big enough.

I know that it makes a difference for me. My sleep quality went way up when I started using flux, and it goes down when I look at screens without it too late at night (like my not-so-smart-TV).

[0] [https://justgetflux.com/research.html](https://justgetflux.com/research.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This was already true for people I know who were watching TV all day since the 70s

</comment><comment><USER46> Average adult will spend 34 years with a miracle portal into infinite knowledge and possibility.

<comment><USER19> Hardly. Scratch most topics past the surface level and _if you 're lucky_ the Web can find you the book you need. Usually though you'll need to find the best book the Web can find you, then use that book and/or correspondence with experts to find the ones you actually need.

The problem seems to be a mix of tons of stuff just not being on the Web yet, even decades in (some of it's in ebooks, though, yes, but a whole lot isn't) and Google having given up on "organizing the world's knowledge" or whatever their supposed mission was (now it's plainly "organize the world's advertising dollars into our bank account") so it may be there but good luck finding it.

<comment><USER47> I'm not sure about that. The topics I want to dig into I usually find it's harder to get the level of depth I want on a topic in book form than I do than to find videos on YouTube.

Some random examples:

\- I'm interested in turbine engines, AgentJayZ has a while host of videos taking real turbine engines apart, talking about obscure features like compressor variable valve vanes etc.

\- Plumbing, almost everything I've ever needed to know about plumbing has been available from PlumberParts / dereton33.

\- Woodworking, I basically learned everything I know from watching people like Matthias Wandel.

\- Recently I've been digging to electronics, I have an excellent book "Practical Electronics for Inventors" but every now and again I need to hear a different take on the same things and invariably there is a good video or article which clears it up for me.

What's more, to get the level of detail these guys show for free in book form would mean investing in some seriously expensive books, most of which hide the interesting parts under a lot of uninteresting maths.

<comment><USER19> Oh yeah, for the subset of content that is "watch an expert do a thing" the Web has become _extremely_ good. Nothing before touches it. In part I think it's remained so because almost all the content is on one site—there's no web search involved in finding it at all, you just search Youtube (which is owned by the main company that might help you find videos on other sites). If Google'd found a way to reward putting academic & deep cultural-knowledge material on a platform they owned such that they had a near-monopoly, perhaps that site would be good. The web at-large might remain basically useless for it (or, probably, even worse, as everyone went to that single platform) such that it depends on one's perspective whether it's the _Web_ delivering value or just _Google 's platform_ that could be served just about any damn way at this point (if they decided to transition over to a new non-Web protocol _just_ for Youtube and put it in Chrome they might well succeed in forcing everyone else to adopt it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Average Adult Will Spend 60% of Their Existence With Their Eyes Open.

</comment><comment><USER49> If this was "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at books" would that also be a bad thing? To me and my work/reaserch/fun it's the same...

</comment><comment><USER50> Can we quantify the "net screen time" once we subtract away from activities that took up time but have since been replaced/optimized by automation?

But leaving that aside, the 34 years figure is understating the true time spent. That figure is referring to 34 years of 24-hour days. If we subtract 8 hours a day for sleep, it is actually 52 years of our waking hours.

</comment><comment><USER51> If you are in IT, or any knowledge worker for that matter, do we even have a choice?

<comment><USER14> e-ink monitors?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Formerly the average adult spent 34 years staring at text on the printed page.

</comment><comment><USER53> 100 years ago the average adult (who dealt with information as we do today) probably spent 25 years of their life staring at paper.

It's the content, not the medium, that matters.

</comment><comment><USER54> "screen time" is too broad a term and is too often described as something bad. But we need to understand screens are more like papers, and what we consume off the paper is what matters.

</comment><comment><USER55> OP: "Average adult will spend 34 years of their life staring at screens"

Comment: "And for 33.9 of those years, it will be at things that are _not work related_..."

<comment><USER56> I'm not sure about you, but 6-8 of those 13 hours of my day are spent working.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> I'm happy to be above average at something at last.

</comment><comment><USER58> Aaaand now I feel the sudden urge to get away from this screen and go walk through some trees. I'll see ya all later.

<comment><USER59> I'm an ape man i'm an ape ape man no i'm an ape man

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRHqs8SffDo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Good thing I started out super far-sighted. If anything, my vision has improved with time focusing on close screens. :P

</comment><comment><USER61> Better than staring in books as before. Imagine the bok giving feedback to you or allowing communication.

</comment><comment><USER62> Staring is an embarrassing word for this person to have imposed upon the actual study.

Science journalism is a real problem.

</comment><comment><USER63> If the average adult spend 34 years staring at screens, what would us tech workers average?!

</comment><comment><USER64> I wonder if they count staring at "n" screens for 1 hour as "n" hours.

</comment><comment><USER14> has anyone seen endmyopia.org? a friend of mine suggested it because he said he was able to perform "eye exercises" to improve his eyesight. He said it wasn't perfect, but he no longer needs glasses.

<comment><USER65> I just created an account just to answer you. Yes, endmyopia.org is great. The same way we develop myopia, we can revert it naturally in 99% of the cases. I was really skeptic at the beginning, but if you participare in the forum, read a lot and follow thousands of people taking part of the process, you will belive it for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I don't think that's true. Eventually, we'll have implants.

</comment><comment><USER67> I've spent 34 years staring at screens since February.

</comment><comment><USER68> Oh, I can totally beat that and do way more than 34 years.

</comment><comment><USER69> Well, personally I don't sit staring at a screen, I watch movies, play games, talk to people, build stuff and learn new things. You wouldn't say reading a book is "staring at paper" would you?

<comment><USER70> Do books do the same damage to your eyes as screens?

<comment><USER71> Probably? It's not like screens shoot death rays. It seems very likely that looking closely at patterns within a rectangle has the same effects whether it's made of paper or electronics.

<comment><USER72> CRTs used to emit X-rays, so they actually did shoot death rays.

<comment><USER73> Any ray is a death ray given sufficient dosage.

<comment><USER74> And that was the day the Care Bears let their stares full power be known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Ugh, I did not need to see this today :(

<comment><USER76> Ironic

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> Collecting info, react to info, organise info, communicate info etc.

Otherwise might as well say we look for our life. It is not staring at. It is something else.

</comment><comment><USER78> speak for yourself, some of us are definitely above average

>_>

</comment><comment><USER79> phd's will spend 5 years starring at paper

</comment><comment><USER80> And programmers?

</comment><comment><USER81> I read this, and wanted to put my phone down. I failed.

</comment><comment><USER82> Pfft. Amateurs.

</comment><comment><USER83> time well spent, imo

</comment><comment><USER84> That fucking sucks.

</comment><comment><USER85> seems low

</comment><comment><USER86> Average adult will spend 31 years of their life lying on the bed

If we want to be pessimistic and reductionist there's many other ways to do this too</comment>


Show HN: Responsive HTML Email Templates for Developers - <AUTHOR> http://htmlemail.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Email is hard. Responsive email is even harder. Developers and startups often need the same set of templates to send out with their service so I put these together.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thanks for putting this together. Been looking around for a long time for top level email templates that have been pre-tested. Going to check this collection out. Appreciate your hard work and putting it out there for other devs to use.</comment>


The conundrum of self promotion and social media - <AUTHOR> http://fvrit.com/archive/2008/03/10/the-conundrum-of-self-promotion-and-social-media.aspx

<comment><USER2> Couldn't read it, the link has been down for a few hours.</comment>


Make your own 'prime factorization' diagram - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2012/04/make-your-own-prime-factorization.html <comment><USER2> "This tries to find visually distinct colors that humans will be able to distinguish."

Which are also vomitously ugly. There's a reason graphic designers don't rely purely on algorithms to select their palettes for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's interesting how different points of view lead to different conclusions. I actively like choices of color like this, because for me, they make the differences clear.

Personally, I almost inevitably find that other color schemes that designery or arty people describe as "gorgeous" or other similar adjectives are like having my face pushed through mush. I can't find the detail, the contrast.

In short, I can't find the information.

My father was a sign-maker, and he used to love getting contracts from architects. The color schemes were fabulous, and the signs beautifully designed. He would advise against the designs, and then execute them faithfully. The clients were always pleased with the results.

Why did my father love these contracts? Because he knew that in 6 months the owners of the buildings would return to have the signs removed, and new ones installed. Ones that didn't blend beautifully into the background. Ones that were considered by artistes to be garish and unpleasant. In short, ones that could be seen by the people who were looking for the information they contained.

So beware when you choose colors that you think blend nicely, or are attractive, or are lovely in some aesthetic sense. You might be losing the ability to communicate effectively.</comment></comment>


Gabor Cselle leaving Google - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gaborcselle.com/2012/05/my-next-step.html

<comment><USER2> Again :)

<comment><USER3> For the 3rd time actually if you count not converting after my internship with you.

<comment><USER4> your HN profiles about section is out of date, just saying.

<comment><USER3> Technically not until tomorrow which is my last day. Thanks for the reminder!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like everyone is leaving Google lately. Best of luck Gabor.

<comment><USER6> Nobody works at Google anymore, it's too crowded.

<comment><USER5> I hear they have plenty of space over at AOL and Yahoo! though ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I thought people had an idea first before leaving!?!

<comment><USER8> If you did have an idea before leaving it'd still be wise to "have" the idea after you left, out of an overabundance of legal caution.

<comment><USER3> Good point - I wouldn't be too worried about Google's lawyercats (unless you do something egregious) but for other companies this may be really important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if people are staying for less of their earn-outs now than in the past.

<comment><USER3> I would guess I'm actually above average just based on my personal sample of people who have gotten acquired.

<comment><USER10> meaning stayed longer than average?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good luck. Hope to see you soon!

-Roman

</comment><comment><USER12> welcome to the jungle...or even better: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg&ob=av3e](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1tj2zJ2Wvg&ob=av3e)</comment>


A Year of PyPI Downloads - <AUTHOR> https://caremad.io/2015/04/a-year-of-pypi-downloads/

<comment><USER2> Great to see that Python3 support for frameworks such as Flask and Django are catching on. I personally feel that the big frameworks should push more when it comes to the adaption of Python3. The only reason I ever still use Python2 is because of frameworks such as Twisted[1] not supporting Python3 yet.

[1]: [https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Plan/Python3](https://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/Plan/Python3)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wish there was a way to tell which pip installs were done by humans vs. by automated tools. It would be interesting to track what people are doing by hand vs. what machines are doing. I suppose that may be impossible to implement, though.

These graphs are very insightful. Thanks for offering us some visibility into the Python package download picture.

<comment><USER2> What would you classify as "by hand" and "automated tools"? Because commands like pip install -r {file} could be seen as both in my eyes.

<comment><USER3> By hand meaning "pip install -r {file}" or more generally pip with any arguments typed directly at the command line.

Automated meaning pip with any arguments run by another script.</comment></comment></comment>


Arch Linux – "It is what you make it" - <AUTHOR> http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Arch-Linux-It-is-what-you-make-it-1343717.html <comment><USER3> I switched from Ubuntu to Arch on my servers and linux desktops a while back.

Here's are the key benefits from my perspective:

\- _shallow mental model:_ I know where everything is, I know all the moving pieces

\- _pacman:_ outstanding package manager.

\- _aif:_ dieter has done a great job making a modular install framework.

\- _AUR:_ compared to PPAs, AUR is simple and easy to contribute to (both commentary and packages)

It really does take time if you want to understand Arch deeply. Not crazy amounts of time. Less than vim, I'd say ;) but enough that you shouldn't expect instant results. The knowledge gained is very rewarding and applicable to Linux systems in general.

<comment><USER4> Can you explain to me what's so great about pacman? As of the last time I used Arch (a few years ago), you can't roll back to an old version unless it happens to be cached on your system. For a rolling release system it creates a lot of hassles.

It seems like a very straightforward package manager, what does it have that apt doesn't have, for instance?

<comment><USER3> I think some of the other comments have addressed this, but I'll comment on the rollback issue.

If you just want to rollback you can download the current package if it's not in your cache. If you want and rollback to previous version, there's downgrade and the Arch Rollback Machine <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Downgrade#ARM>

Really, though, it's never been an issue for me. I've yet to encounter a situation where I nuke my cache and don't have rollback packages available. It boils down to a management issue. If you are nuking your package cache, I assume you are smart enough to have determined your system is running correctly first. There are cases where you might still want to rollback after clearing your package cache, so there is ARM.

Personally, if I ever hit that situation (absolute worst case scenario) I have backups and can reinstall an Arch system in minutes. Haven't had the need yet.

<comment><USER5> The only time it backfired at me is when the package you want to rollback to is not in your cache, and basically the only time it happens is for the version installed during the install phase: the installer does not copy the package from the install medium to the target package cache, as it uses it straight from the medium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Arch as my primary OS for about 1.5 years and have no inclination whatsoever to move away from it. Like many people, I previously used Ubuntu, but grew fed up with the focus of their development efforts on areas which I considered to be inconsequential. Seeing the direction that Ubuntu has taken since then, I'm glad I made that decision when I did.

For me, the best thing about Arch is simply how flexible it is. It feels more like a toolkit for building your own custom OS than anything else. That's obviously not for everyone, but it's definitely for me. I've got a trimmed- down, keyboard-driven, and CLI-focused interface that would not appeal to the average user, but it was fun to configure and I've learned a ton from the experience. My computer behaves exactly the way I want it to, with virtually no compromises, and that was a far easier goal to attain with Arch than with any other system I've tried.

Also, as a bonus for anyone interested in Haskell, there's a rather large Haskell community within the Arch community. In fact, there's a vast user- maintained repository of Haskell packages built for Arch (a large portion of the packages available from Hackage) which you can enable just by adding a line to /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.

For anyone who likes to tweak and tinker, and who loves having full control over their computing experience, I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER7> What interface are you using? I use wmii on my arch boxes.

<comment><USER8> From his comment about Haskell, I'm guessing Xmonad.

<comment><USER6> Yep, that's correct.

My config is here: <https://github.com/tmhedberg/xmonad.hs/blob/master/xmonad.hs>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been a GNU/Linux user for a bit over a year now, I think. Started out with Ubuntu 10.04 dual booted with Windows, then completely ditched Microsoft in favor of the better operating system some when in January. A bit later, after getting bugged by a good friend and fellow hacker on IRC for a while, I finally set out to install Arch, and got hooked.

Arch Linux can, in my experience, best be described as a journey. A journey to the top of a mountain. It starts steep, sometimes gets hazardous, and I fell down more then once and had to start climbing from the start. But with every time, it became easier as I got to know the mountain, and set out with new knowledge about the steps and stones, as they were aligned perfectly for climbing once you knew how to climb them.

Then finally, I reached the first peak - a custom, running and stable install - and just as you might hold your breath at the sight presented to you when you look down from the top of the mountain you just climbed, I felt kind of serene - I learned so much about my system during the installation, how it worked and how elegantly simple it was once you understood it's philosophy, it was overwhelming.

I knew I arrived at a place where I wanted to stay. Or rather, a place from where I could climb even higher mountains - because the Arch journey is probably never at its end. There's always something more to learn about the system - my system. Something to tweak, somewhere to hack around or some configuration to customize for my needs.

I won't say I'll stay with it forever, as in the world of GNU/Linux, one might always discover something new. I will say, however, that installing (and subsequently running) Arch was (and still is) one of the best and most rewarding things I've done in my life.

To anyone who is interested in learning new stuff and doing things on his or her own, I warmly recommend trying out Arch. You shall not be disappointed.

<comment><USER10> This is true to my experiences as well.

I started with Archbang, then CTKArch, and then finally installed my own from scratch. Archbang and CTKArch are excellent liveCD versions of Arch but in the end I found I did not like the personal choices made by the creators of those releases. My system is now truly mine. I am in love with it.

My system is stable, and bleeding edge - an oxymoron.

Intellij is in the damn repositories... MondoDB 2.0 - the day it was released was in the damned repositores.

Anything else can't compete.

After installing Arch, and failing at least 3 times and being successful 2 other times, I found an appreciation for the way in which Arch did things. My first version was a Mac OSx clone with some personal touches. It was beautiful; but I was too ambitious and went with BTRFS which was a mistake. So I reinstalled and now I'm on XFS and things purr.

I can setup a development environment in less than 10 minutes using pacman and then keep it updated easily.

To setup the equivalent environment on Ubuntu would take much longer for me.

I am not a linux newb nor a guru, but after using Arch I feel like I can hold my own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A couple of days ago I was given more RAM to my work computer. I had to run couchdb instances with lots of allocated RAM. The 32bit Ubuntu was not enough anymore so I needed to install a 64bit OS. Somehow I wanted to try Arch and the installation from scratch to the everyday tool took a bit over two hours.

I really like this distribution. Pacman (the package manager) is super fast, the system is much easier to configure from the command line than Ubuntu and the best thing is Arch's documentation. All the information you need to know can be found from the Arch wiki. No need to browse blog posts or forums, the wiki is so good.

My setup is very lightweight. I have only the minimal Arch installation with Xorg and xmonad, vim, RVM and Firefox. This distro is made for command line use and there it really shines.

Here's a screenshot how I want my work desktop to look. Nothing fancy, no distractions and fast usage without mouse. <http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2402047/screenshot3.png>

<comment><USER3> that colorscheme looks familiar... I making my dotfiles public today and I've got a solarized themed xmonad/xmobar config up at <https://github.com/altercation/es-etc> .

The only difference with yours will probably be the tabbed decoration theming and xmobar theming. I'd love to see your xmonad.hs too if it's online somewhere.

<comment><USER11> Sorry to disappoint, but I really run xmonad with very minimalistic setup. I just need the different tiling modes, couple of hotkeys and xmobar for system information.

The more important part is my vim config, which can be found from github, of course. <https://github.com/pimeys/dotvim>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I think I am going to have to give Arch a try.

One thing that has kept me on Ubuntu family distros is font rendering. Ubuntu's patches for freetype, cairo, xft, etc are quite simply requirements for me for a desktop Linux.

Some distros have these by way of some guy maintaining his own set of patched packages. I have always been reluctant to rely on these.

I was thrilled when Linux Mint came out with Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is Debian + these font patches + some other Mint-y friendliness (but still mostly Debian).

The fact that Arch maintains the *-ubuntu family of patched packages means I just might consider using it, too.

<comment><USER3> It took me a while to get font rendering working the way I wanted in Arch, but it _is_ possible (that's by way of encouragement... don't let this be a showstopper for you; I understand why it's important).

Infinality is great but even it requires some massaging to get it to the state I like (though of course now I have my configs pretty much ready to install off a repo).

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The biggest draw of Arch for me is pacman. The system itself is incredibly simple (and incredibly fast), but more importantly, it's really easy to design and compile your own packages for it. To make a Debian package, you have to edit a bunch of control files, run a bunch of shell scripts, and then it packs all that up in some obscure cpio-based format.

With Arch, on the other hand, it's one program - makepkg - with only one or two "control files" (PKGBUILD and maybe an install script), and it generates a nice, easily-inspectable .pkg.tar.gz file. Plus you can find just about any package you could want in the AUR, and if not, you can find one that builds like it and then modify it to work with your package.

<comment><USER14> Definitely agree. The AUR makes it really easy to manage software not in the official repositories- without that it becomes difficult to keep track of what's installed and often impossible to uninstall.

However, it would be nice if pacman used signed packages, especially in light of the recent kernel.org situation.

<comment><USER3> Not done yet, but I think pacman 4.0 has signing support. I also hope the recent events will spur continued development here.

<comment><USER15> signing support is the only missing thing IMO

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use Arch not so much for the extreme customization aspect, but because if and when something goes wrong, the entire system is simple enough that I can usually fix it.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've heard this argument multiple times that Arch Linux is what you make of it and it really teaches you Linux, but I'm getting older and trying out lesser distro's now. :) However while I admire its passionate community, I'm genuinely curious, how does it differ from Slackware? In the sense, how exactly does Arch differ from Slackware in terms of teaching you the guts of your own system?

<comment><USER18> I used Slackware for something like 13 years, and have been using Arch for maybe 2. If you'll allow me to post a link to my own stuff, I put together a blog entry about exactly this question:

<http://beej.us/blog/2009/12/arch-vs-slackware/>

Both Slack and Arch are excellent, but not quite the same in their objectives. I run Arch on my netbook and desktop (with FVWM) and love it.

<comment><USER17> That is quite helpful, thank you. It helped me stick with Slackware for now since my criteria fits your Slackware objectives and strengths list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For those who've never used it. You know all of the "boilerplate" frameworks that have been hot recently? HTML5 Boilerplate is one, iOS Boilerplate is another... well Arch is the Linux Boilerplate if there ever was one. It gives you only the essentials that you need and leaves the rest up to you.

<comment><USER19> That's a good analogy - I've never heard that one before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> While Arch isn't my primary OS at the moment, I really enjoyed the process of installing it. It felt like the software equivalent of building your own computer. It was very satisfying to learn about all the different parts and assemble those that I wanted,

</comment><comment><USER21> I run arch on all my daily machines: two desktops and a laptop. Two things are brilliant about arch: 1) how easy it is to improvise a new package if what you need to install is not available in the repo 2) how you can run the last version of every software without the system ever breaking.

If you are a linux power user, I cannot think of a better distro than arch.

</comment><comment><USER22> Sadly it's one of few distro vulnerable to man-in-middle attack so you need to be careful where from you do your updates.

<comment><USER6> Package signing (via gpg) is being added in the forthcoming Pacman 4.0, so this won't be the case for much longer. It's already available in the testing repository, in fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I stopped running Arch when known broken upstream X packages were released into the mainline and the response from the devs was "RTFM, noobs"

<comment><USER24> care to shed more light on the subject?

<comment><USER23> That's really all there was to it. It was about... 2 years ago? I forget what exactly was broken about the packages. But the bug was from upstream and was known to the Arch Devs at the time they OKd the package built upon broken sources to roll out. It got pulled in by just updating the system. I asked what was going on and got directed to a message about it that I didn't fully understand and when I asked, I was told what I said above. As were many other users confused about the sudden breakage of X.

That wasn't really the first time I'd encountered ultra rude devs. I shortly after switched to Gentoo which I found to give the deep control that Arch did but amazingly was a system that worked properly and the community wasn't full of jerks. Hopefully the Arch community has changed, but I don't really intend to try and find out.

I do run Debian now though.

<comment><USER25> If I remember the same incident that you're talking about, it was a single file that had to be manually removed, and the fix was displayed right on the home page of <http://archlinux.org> for months..

<comment><USER26> The final solution could often need only minimal effort to carry out, but to debug and find out the problem, it takes much more time.

And the fix should come in through the right channel, like the package README or ChangeLog. Not sure if the home page of the whole distribution is the appropriate place for a fix like this.

<comment><USER27> The message should show up on screen when installing the package. If many packages are upgraded at once, a user could miss it. The output is also sent to /var/log/pacman.log

All that said I'd recommend to anyone new to subscribe to the 'Latest News' RSS feed: <http://www.archlinux.org/feeds/news/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Helpful, friendly community. No-nonsense packaging. Easy setup and recovery. Been on Arch ever since moving up from Slack 10 years ago, now use it every day in a demanding IT workplace. Maybe it's not the distro for newbies - <USER2> the distro for me and you <3 :)

</comment><comment><USER29> ArchWiki has been among the most helpful guides in me getting an understanding of Linux. Also, seeing the latest AUR discussions about a package when pulling it down has been a lifesaver a few times.

</comment><comment><USER30> I never used Arch but I have used Gentoo for really long. Everything what I read about Arch sounded a bit primitive to me.

Are there any advantages of Arch over Gentoo?

Or are there good comparisons?

<comment><USER31> So far the main difference I've seen:

With Gentoo you have to compile everything yourself (as much as I can tell).

With Arch, you _can_ compile everything yourself, but don't have to: official repos have packages precompiled, but the package source is there if you want something different.

<comment><USER30> On Gentoo, you can also use binary packages. You can setup some variable to some host which has all the binary packages for you. There are some public servers with x86 and amd64, although none are really official.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I stopped using Arch 2-3 years ago because their x86_64 packages were minimal. Was this improved?

<comment><USER25> What do you mean by 'minimal'? If you're talking about wine and flash, there are 32 bit builds available to be installed in 64 bit.. But that's the way it has always been.

<comment><USER33> I recall I had the same impression back at the time. Arch lacked multilib support if I'm not wrong.

I recently switched from 32bit Arch to 64bit and it works great so far, multilib included.

<comment><USER34> For the record Arch is one of the only distributions with sensible multiilib support. Most of the bigger ones require purity and force you to install a chroot if you want to run 32-bit applications. Fedora is multilib by default but it sucks because it always installs 32 and 64 bit versions of everything by default instead of reasoning that you'd be OK to use 64-bit most of the time by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> CTK Arch is a good pre-configured Arch... [http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and- furi...](http://linuxblog.darkduck.com/2011/05/ctk-arch-fast-and-furious.html)</comment>


Case Study: Do Twitter retweets or Facebook likes/shares generate more traffic?  - <AUTHOR>

We run http://FanPageList.com/ and were excited to see that our friends at the WWE tweeted about John Cena's ranking on our Top Athletes on Facebook list: http://twitter.com/#!/WWE/status/45537384107999233
The @WWE Twitter account has about 250K followers so we fully expected to receive a big boost in traffic which we did (had over 350+ concurrent users at the peak). What we didn't expect was Facebook generated about 6X more traffic to fanpagelist.com than Twitter:
Looking at our Clicky Dashboard using their Social Media Traffic Source report for yesterday, fanpagelist.com received:
3,851 visitors from facebook.com 662 visitors from twitter.com
Checking our Facebook Insights dashboard, we saw 1.3 Million Share Story impressions yesterday. Share story impressions according to Insights are "The number of times people viewed stories generated from organic shares"
Compare that was 107,043 Twitter impressions using  TweetReach, (http://tweetreach.com/reach?q=fanpagelist.com), over the most recent 50 retweets. This isn't a complete comparison since there were about 120 retweets yesterday about fanpagelist.com but gives you an idea of how Facebook drives more traffic than Twitter.
We have both a Share button on my pages and Like button (via the Wibiya toolbar) but we think the fact that Facebook Likes now have better visibility in News Feeds probably did help boost traffic: http://mashable.com/2011/02/27/facebook-like-button-takes-over-share-button-functionality/
We wanted to blog about this and show nice and pretty graphs but it was faster to write-up a quick post to share with HN readers.
Fan Page List team @fanpagelist <comment><USER2> I'm pretty surprised by this information! I've heard the exact opposite - people are more likely to click Twitter links then FB shares, which mirrors my personal experience using both. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Show HN: Interactive Website I did - <AUTHOR> http://magnovite.herokuapp.com

<comment><USER2> This is actually quite fun. I would suggest that you make it simpler and more straight-forward to get to the game part, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are right. The website is meant as a landing page for an event. But yeah, I should make the game mode more obvious and straight forward to get to.

</comment></comment><comment> mycroft-holmes What's being used for the connecting dots in the background? Is there a library somewhere I can use?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I dont know about a library, I got the idea and the core code for the effect from [http://lamberta.github.io/html5-animation/](http://lamberta.github.io/html5-animation/)</comment></comment>


Swine flu deaths rise to 17 in Bay Area - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/Swine-flu-deaths-rise-to-17-in-Bay-Area-5141467.php

<comment><USER2> From a public health perspective, this kind of news story is actually very helpful. The reason is that before H1N1, one of the main reasons for young, healthy people to get the flu vaccine was to protect at-risk populations through herd immunity. That is to say, you wouldn't want to give your grandmother the flu when you went home for the holidays.

With H1N1, there is actual risk of serious illness or death for young, healthy people. Public awareness of this is key in increasing vaccination rates.

Even without H1N1, the US government is pushing flu vaccines hard for everyone [1]. Apart from a few very rare contraindications, pretty much everyone is eligible for a flu vaccine. There are essentially no serious side effects.

So, you should get your flu shot.

1: The government's goal is to have 90% of 18-64 year olds vaccinated for seasonal influenza by 2020 ([http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/objec...](http://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topicsobjectives2020/objectiveslist.aspx?topicid=23)). We are a long way away from that now, with vaccination rates for the general population around 45% ([http://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/nifs-estimates- nov2013.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/flu/fluvaxview/nifs-estimates-nov2013.htm)).

<comment><USER3> Hang on, I'm in the UK and I've had flu shots, but surely these are effective only against the standard seasonal flue strain de jour, not H1N1.

<comment><USER4> At least in the United States, this year's trivalent vaccine includes a strain of H1N1.

[http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu- season-2013-2014.htm...](http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/season/flu- season-2013-2014.htm#vaccine-protect)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I live in the east bay and I pretty much just got over the worst cold I've ever had in my life. I haven't had a fever in years and I was stuck in bed for nearly two weeks. It's been 4 weeks now and I still am coughing but it's getting better. I don't know if it's this, but I've never had anything like it. My entire body ached and nothing helped. pseudoephedrine, nyquil, ibuprofen, ok well ibuprofen helped a tiny bit, but not enough to be functional. It was just awful. I'm going to do a better job at getting vaccinated.

<comment><USER6> What was the diagnosis? Did the doctor prescribe any special medicine. Did he confirm it was swine flu?

<comment><USER5> I did not go see a doctor.

<comment><USER6> Honestly, I was afraid I was going to hear that. In Europe you usually see the doctor for something as minor as a cold that persists for more than a few days. It might look as a waste, but they will catch that percentage of non- cold cold cases and prevent serious infection.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> ICU doc here.

The money side is interesting too. Sorry to be a little blunt. Regular ole influenza typically kills the older and sicker; that's a cheap death because they die quickly.

H1N1 hits people our age who are generally healthy and strong. I bet on a couple of cases I have spent over $500k saving the lives of an individual h1n1 patient. They probably spent half that again in rehab--if they live. Plus, think of all disability, lack of working, etc.

Sure a bunch of things kill more people. But H1N1 really hits productive, young healthy people.

This year's "flu vaccine" does have H1N1 protection. You wouldn't drive without a seatbelt. When H1N1 is around, the flu vaccine is another "seatbelt" you need.

</comment><comment><USER8> This article caught my eye. Just yesterday my GP in PAMF who also works at Stanford Hospital mentioned the H1N1 and how it is on the rise in the bay area attacking young folks.

Someone who never gets a flu vaccines I actually got one this time. He explained that vaccines today carry the virus protein not the actual virus and are a lot safer then before. Obviously the preservatives inside the vaccines are still debatable and the skeptics will finger point at that.

Even though there are more deaths from the standard flu in USA, it affects those with a weakened immune systems (elderly & sick). H1N1 attacks the healthy and young folks. That is more serious than a flu which prays on the weak.

</comment><comment><USER9> How many people have died in the same timeframe in the Bay Area let's say in car accidents or in homicides?

<comment><USER10> While usually a good heuristic, such comparisons do not apply when dealing with _self-replicating_ phenomena, like viruses and bacteria. It might be 17 now, but without proper care it could easily get to 7k or 7M.

<comment><USER11> Deaths from H1N1 tends to be treated as unique and scary, despite overall being much lower than deaths from plain old normal flu. It's hyped largely because it has higher mortality for people who are not normally in the death- from-flu demographic.

Back at my old job (doing special projects and data journalism for a small- town newspaper), I got to do week-by-week tracking of the flu season during the first year H1N1 was big in the media. Index of coverage is, surprisingly, still up and mostly works:

[http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/](http://www2.ljworld.com/data/flu/)

For the period we tracked (end September 2009 to end January 2010), deaths from "normal" flu outnumbered deaths from H1N1 by a factor of 33.

The demographic difference also comes through there: 14% of deaths from "normal" flu were under 65, while 80% of deaths from H1N1 were under 65.

<comment><USER10> Thank you for a very informative comment.

I didn't realize that the normal flu deaths, even when looking at the percentage of people under 65, outnumbered deaths from H1N1 by such a large factor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As an aside, it is H1N1 and has a broad mix of genetic material (human, pig, avian), obviously being transmitted human to human. It isn't generally called a swine flu. And I believe this year's flu shot is effective against this strain.

If a high casualty, large scale pandemic occurs (or _when_ , as many virologists predict) it will dramatically reshape society. High density areas, large concentration workplaces, any pathogen friendly concentrations of people...society will change quickly. SARS had relatively low transmission and a small victim count, but it still caused significant way-we-work damage in the Toronto area.

</comment><comment><USER13> Stories like this annoy me. I get why it's news, new flu strains are always a possible rerun of 1918. But still.

Tens of thousands of people die every year from flu, mostly elderly people. But now 17 mostly young people have died, it's more newsworthy.

It's kinda like they're suggesting that once you're 65, your life really doesn't matter much any more.

<comment><USER14> No it's suggesting that this is NEWs. Young people don't tend to die from flu.

<comment><USER15> It depends on the virus strain, in some strains it's the young and strong who die easy due to having a stronger immune system reaction [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cytokine_storm)

<comment><USER10> Bottomline, the only entity that can be accused of ageism here is the nature. I regret to inform everyone, but yes, _biology_ discriminates.</comment></comment></comment></comment>