The risk of nitrites and nitrates in bacon - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/01/bacon-cancer-processed-meats-nitrates-nitrites-sausages <comment><USER2> And in other news, "nitrate free" bacon sold in the US isn't actually nitrate free;

"Ever since the "war on nitrates" of the 1970s, US consumers have been more savvy about nitrates than those in Europe, and there is a lot of "nitrate-free bacon" on the market. The trouble, as Jill Pell remarks, is that most of the bacon labelled as nitrate-free in the US "isn't nitrate-free". It's made with nitrates taken from celery extract, which may be natural, but produces exactly the same N-nitroso compounds in the meat. Under EU regulation, this bacon would not be allowed to be labelled "nitrate-free".

"It's the worst con I've ever seen in my entire life," says Denis Lynn, the chair of Finnebrogue Artisan, a Northern Irish company that makes sausages for many UK supermarkets, including Marks & Spencer."

<comment><USER3> Is it possible to find legitimately nitrate-free bacon in the US? If so, under what brand?

<comment><USER4> No. Bacon, salami and some other meats must be cured by FDA definition (either nirites added and sold as "cured" or sold as "uncured" but with "celery juice" which really means it's still cured)

Confusing I know

<comment><USER5> That's not entirely true. It must be cured, but it doesn't necessarily need nitrites to cure it.

You can buy salt cured bacon here: [https://shop.bentonscountryham.com/ProductDetails.asp?Produc...](https://shop.bentonscountryham.com/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=hscb)

<comment><USER6> Benton's is great bacon, but:

(1) You can look at that price tag and see why it's unlikely to be your go-to bacon,

(2) Last I checked, Benton's used a nitrate cure, and

(3) Seriously, intensely smoked food (Benton's bacon qualifies) is probably going to be more carcinogenic from the smoking compounds than from the cure. Unlike nitrate->N-nitrosamine, we're pretty clear on how smoked food causes gastric cancer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The author fails to meaningfully contextualise the risk, giving what I think is a completely misleading account.

According to the best available evidence, eating 50g per day of processed meat increases the relative risk of developing colorectal cancer by 18%. Given the prevalence and prognosis of colorectal cancer, this equates to about one premature death per 200 people as a result of eating processed meat.

Is processed meat somewhat bad for your health? Almost certainly. Is your daily bacon sandwich worth a 0.5% chance of a premature death? That's entirely your decision. I'm a vegetarian for ethical reasons, but that level of risk wouldn't faze me in the least if I really liked bacon. Factors like obesity, inactivity, smoking and alcohol use dwarf the risks posed by processed meat.

Constant fretting over small risks posed by our diet may be distracting us from clear messaging on big risks. I've heard countless people say "everything gives you cancer, so why worry about it?" or "scientists can't make their mind up about what you're supposed to eat, so I just ignore them". It isn't news that smoking, being obese or drinking too much alcohol are incredibly bad for your health, but it's a message that deserves repeating. I fear that those messages are being drowned out by a constant trickle of stories about "superfoods" and cancer risks.

The author of this article has previously made exactly this point in an article criticising the "clean eating" fad:

 _" When mainstream diets start to sicken people, it is unsurprising that many of us should seek other ways of eating to keep ourselves safe from harm. Our collective anxiety around diet was exacerbated by a general impression that mainstream scientific advice on diet – inflated by newspaper headlines – could not be trusted. First these so-called experts tell us to avoid fat, then sugar, and all the while people get less and less healthy. What will these "experts" say next, and why should we believe them?"_

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why- we-...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/why-we-fell-for- clean-eating)

<comment><USER8> > _According to the best available evidence, eating 50g per day of processed > meat increases the relative risk of developing colorectal cancer by 18%. > Given the prevalence and prognosis of colorectal cancer, this equates to > about one premature death per 200 people as a result of eating processed > meat._

That is a huge number.

<comment><USER7> _> That is a huge number._

Compared to what?

<comment><USER8> Compared to the lifetime odds of almost all other mortality risks: [https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics- mortalit...](https://www.iii.org/fact-statistic/facts-statistics-mortality- risk)

Not to mention just in itself -- opposed to 0 people dying prematurely because of that.

<comment><USER9> 0 dying? Doesn't it just say it increases your chance by 18%?

So instead of 1 in 170, not eating nitrates makes it 1 in 200.

<comment><USER8> I said "0 dying _prematurely_" because of nitrates. Those 170 would have had it anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I, as the author, am also surprised there haven't been more nitrate-free versions of the same products appear on the market.

I realize it's a privileged position, but I'd gladly pay more for a salami/bacon that doesn't last as long to get rid of the carcinogen.

<comment><USER6> There is no such thing as "carcinogen-free" bacon. Bacon tastes the way it does because of the carcinogen; further, the only reason it's safe to sell in packages is that it's cured with that carcinogen, without which these products are all ideal germinators for botulism.

Products that claim to be "nitrate-free" are lying. They're exploiting the native nitrite/nitrate content of (extracts of) green vegetables rather than adding nitrates directly. Your body does not care about this difference, but your psychology does.

<comment><USER11> There's some discussion of the Botulism claim in the article. Apparently Italian ham producers dropped nitrates in 1993, and there hasn't been a case of Botulism since. The article also mentions that Danish organic bacon is supposedly nitrate free.

<comment><USER6> Could be. I read the 2015-2001 food-borne botulism surveillance reports, and came to three conclusions:

* Botulism is incredibly rare.

* Don't eat seal blubber.

* Be careful with your pruno; one jailhouse batch took accounted for the majority of cases in 2012.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article drastically overstates the evidence, which comes not from experiments but from epidemiology--that is, purely observational studies where you ask people what they eat and follow them to see what happens. This type of study has a horrible track record, and there's a solid theoretical basis for expecting them to produce false results. That there are "more than 400" such studies is irrelevant, because the problem with epidemiological studies isn't a problem with sample size, and the same confounder can distort all 400 studies in the same way.

<comment><USER13> This is, perhaps, the biggest takeaway from this article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is alarmist and misleading.

First: it is not true that the nitrates in green vegetables are entirely benign. All sodium nitrite potentially metabolizes to sodium nitrate; depending on what vegetables you consume and when you consume them, many have nitrate content; all nitrate you consume potentially metabolizes to N-nitroso compounds. People have claimed that other compounds in vegetables neutralize the formation of nitrosamines in the digestive tract; researchers have refuted that claim.

You knew you were in trouble when the article tried to make a clear dividing line between vegetables and meats, because it's not even surprising that vegetables can be carcinogenic. When cooked, potatoes, corn, flour, coffee, and peanuts all create significant amounts of acrylamide, which is also a known and potent carcinogen.

"Slow-cured, nitrate-free, artisan hams are one thing," says this article. What, exactly, does that mean? "Nitrate" and "slow-cured" are practically synonyms. Nitrates (the slow-acting form of curing salt) are what prevents the germination of botulism. Whether the ham cure uses "Prague Powder" curing salts or celery powder, the biological impact is the same --- but because people have been so alarmed about nitrosamines for so long, virtually everybody (falsely!) claims to sell "nitrate-free" product.

To a pretty good first approximation, everything delicious adds some additional exogenous risk of carcinogenesis. It may very well be that cured meats carry relatively more risk than other foods (it seems very unlikely that switching from store-brand bacon to artisanal ham will help you here). But this article, written by "British food writer" Bee Wilson, doesn't even include the word "milligram" \--- but does think you should know that someone once found a correlation between hot dogs and _brain cancer_.

This is junk.

<comment><USER14> You seem to be ignoring the fact that meats can be cured with plain old Sodium Chloride as mentioned in the article. Forgive my ignorance if I'm wrong there, as I read the article but haven't any other knowledge on this topic.

<comment><USER15> No, you're correct, the traditional approaches to curing are salt (NaCl), sugar, and smoking. No need of saltpetre or nitrites. You can cure your own truly nitrate-free bacon at home if you're so inclined.

Smoking, of course, introduces its own set of carcinogens.

<comment><USER6> I don't believe anybody cures with saltpeter anymore, but if you want your bacon to taste like bacon, you're going to use curing salt.

<comment><USER16> I just came back from the shop in my village where they were selling bacon made on the local farm. Having recently read this article I checked the ingredients: Preservatives (E250, E252). A quick search told me that E250 is Sodium nitrite, and 252 is potassium nitrate (saltpetre). Apparently the whole range 240-259 is for nitrates.

<comment><USER6> If they're using "natural" nitrates from e.g. celery extract they might be accounting for the KNO3 in the vegetable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just moved out and started cooking bacon and eggs every morning.

After reading this article, I think I'm going to continue eating bacon and eggs every morning.

<comment><USER18> > _every morning_

Why not occasionally? I'm not going to stop eating bacon and ham. But I might stop keeping it regularly stocked at home.

<comment><USER17> > _Why not occasionally?_

To be honest? Because I really like having a routine. It's something that in a lot of ways I can't have, but I'm exactly the type of person who would benefit a lot from one.

So if cooking breakfast the same way every morning is a way to gain a shred of routine in my life, then I'm all in.

<comment><USER19> Aren't your posts in this thread just saying "I don't want to change my lifestyle despite the evidence?"

That's _the_ human default. People never want to change their lifestyle. Just like how most people don't exercise and are overweight.

It's just not really something to celebrate.

<comment><USER17> It's better than denying the evidence and claiming it's a global conspiracy.

Understanding the risks is important, but you literally can't live your life avoiding everything that could cause harm to you. It's about picking your battles.

In this article, it's the nitrates, not the bacon itself. Next time I go to Costco I'll take a look and see if there are options with no or fewer nitrates.

<comment><USER20> At Costco you'll see a lot of products lying about being nitrate-free because they contain celery which contains citrates.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the heads up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> >Learning that your own risk of cancer has increased from something like 5% to something like 6% may not be frightening enough to put you off bacon sandwiches for ever. But learning that consumption of processed meat causes an additional 34,000 worldwide cancer deaths a year is much more chilling

No, it really isn't. This is pure sensationalism. I can't stand articles which try so desperately to scare me. It makes me even less likely to follow suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER22> In my lifetime experts have been wrong about so much when it comes to food and nutrition I just can't take any of them seriously. So I try to imagine what kept humans alive for 300k+ years. Then you realize humans live in incredibly diverse environments and manage to survive on whatever they can find. So we can pretty much survive eating almost anything. There are plenty of people who live long enough to know their grandchildren while eating the most disgusting toxic foods.

Thus the only guide I can trust is, how does this food make me feel when I eat it? Coca cola makes me spike then feel like shit, eggs make me feel happy and satiated, bacon and avocado too. Fried chicken makes me feel grimy and sluggish as does pasta and beer. Leafy greens make me feel amazing and make my stool less disgusting.

I can only imagine this is all that earlier humans had to go on and so I choose to listen to my body.

<comment><USER23> This is one of the reason of the obesity epidemic. Our body loves sugar which was very hard to come by, but which now is cheap and abundant.

Also keep in mind that up to 200 years ago average life span was ~35, so cancer didn't really had time to develop.

<comment><USER24> Low average life span had a lot more to do with high infant mortality rate. It wasn't that most people were dead by 40, just that a lot more were dead by 5. If you made it through adolescence gray hair was totally within reach.

<comment><USER25> I'd like to read more about this.. Source? Is there a historical histogram, over time, of lifespan somewhere?

<comment><USER26> Something that made it to HN recently was this paper.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/)

> _Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life > expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the > incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. Their levels of physical > activity and hence calorific intakes were approximately twice ours. They had > relatively little access to alcohol and tobacco; and due to their > correspondingly high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and > vegetables, they consumed levels of micro- and phytonutrients at > approximately ten times the levels considered normal today._

That infant mortality was sky-high prior to the 20th century is pretty well known - I can't think of a good, detailed source for that off the top of my head. But what I can tell you, on the subject of longevity in general, is to do the following:

\- Look back through the genealogical record, for you personally. "People old enough to have kids" is a good sort-of proxy for life expectancy minus infant mortality. I personally found that my ancestors regularly lived into their 70s and 80s. Very few of my ancestors died younger than 70, going back to the 1600s.

\- Another good example is to look at history. Pick up Livy, for example, or someone along those lines, and see how often someone dies of non-violent causes before they've entered old age. It's pretty uncommon. When it did happen, it was usually because of a horrific plague that killed people left and right.

Basically, historically, people _generally_ (we're talking about a huge expanse of time and different cultures here) lived pretty healthy lives. They were much more active than we were, ate fewer processed foods, and often ate very healthy foods. People didn't smoke and didn't eat much sugar. There also wasn't a lot of industry spewing carcinogens and endocrine distributors everywhere. If you lived in a peaceful area and time, in relatively sanitary condition, your odds were very good that you'd live long into old age. Even if you lived in a nasty city (and I'd call Victorian England pretty nasty) your odds weren't bad. Where things fell apart was in war and plague. And as discussed in the paper above, when people did die in old age, they tended to pretty quickly of infection-related causes.

Life expectancy has probably risen and fallen over time, depending on different historical and cultural factors. The popular model of "it's just been getting better and better over time" is not at all correct - it's no coincidence most charts begin in ~1900. The Victorian England paper is a good basis for reflection because it's clear that the medical technology of that time was not dramatically different than that available a few hundred years or even two thousand years earlier, and neither was their diet or lifestyle extraordinary, even if it was good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wouldn't it be more accurate to say nitrite & nitrate are killing us?

<comment><USER18> Doesn't appear to be unique to nitrites and nitrates. "Processed meat includes hot dogs, ham, bacon, sausage, and some deli meats. It refers to meat that has been treated in some way to preserve or flavor it," with processes including "salting, curing, fermenting, and smoking" [1].

[1] [https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/world-health- organization...](https://www.cancer.org/latest-news/world-health-organization- says-processed-meat-causes-cancer.html)

<comment><USER28> Does this include chicken and turkey that you get at the deli counter at the grocery store?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In terms of harmful ingredients, phospates (used to increase water content) might actualy be more dangerous than nitrates. Consumption of added phospates is linked to renal failure, CVD, and yes, bowel cancer.

It's thought that disruption of biophoton communication is the mechanism by which phosphates promote cell undifferentiation, proliferation, and, eventually, cancer.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _The health risk of bacon is largely to do with two food additives: > potassium nitrate (also known as saltpetre) and sodium nitrite. It is these > that give salamis, bacons and cooked hams their alluring pink colour_

Is nitrate/nitrite [1] free prosciutto okay?

EDIT: Apparently not. "Processed meats, which are transformed by salting, curing, or fermentation. This includes everything from hotdogs and bacon, to lunch meats like salami and prosciutto" [2].

[1] Is there a single word for these?

[2] [https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9616524/processed-meat- bacon-...](https://www.vox.com/2015/10/26/9616524/processed-meat-bacon-who- cancer-red-meat)

<comment><USER2> TFA says that prosciutto di parma with it's 18 month aging process is truly nitrate free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm colour-blind, and I've never given even a seconds thought to the _colour_ of bacon - the only things I look for is that it's smoked and has a nice amount of fat.

Now that I do think about it, the colour of bacon (well, as far as my broken eyes can tell!) is a bit... 'weird' for cured meat - I actually find the colour of parma ham more pleasing.

I just checked online at the local supermarket (Tesco in the UK), and it seems they don't even stock bacon made without nitrites, which is quite disappointing.

</comment><comment><USER31> > The WHO advised that consuming 50g of processed meat a day – equivalent to > just a couple of rashers of bacon or one hotdog – would raise the risk of > getting bowel cancer by 18% over a lifetime. (Eating larger amounts raises > your risk more.) Learning that your own risk of cancer has increased from > something like 5% to something like 6% may not be frightening enough to put > you off bacon sandwiches for ever.

Uh, no, it isn't. Does anybody even eat "a couple of rashers" of bacon _per day_?

<comment><USER32> Probably some people do, but then they probably have many more pressing health concerns than a fractional impact of nitrosamines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm willing to pay a premium for my processed meat products (and thus, indirectly, reduce my consumption of them). Does anyone have any experience buying nitrite-free bacon/salami/etc in the US? I think I can still find a butcher locally (and I mean an actual stand-alone butcher store, not the meat/deli counter at a grocer), but what do I ask them for? Just "locally made" or are there brands who eschew adding pure nitrites to their products?

<comment><USER34> > _Does anyone have any experience buying nitrite-free bacon /salami/etc in > the US?_

Yes. It's everywhere and costs about the same. But that may not be sufficient.

<comment><USER35> But as the top post indicates, in the US celery-derived chemicals earn the "nitrate-free" label but are chemically indistinguishable from the "real deal" (and thus have the same health concerns).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> All processed meat is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (part of the World Health Organization) as carcinogenic.

Here is a list of all substances absolutely known to cause cancer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinoge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IARC_Group_1_carcinogens)

</comment><comment><USER37> Are the nitrites particularly risky versus the alternatives? I recall the world health organization warning about basically all forms of red meat and cured meat: [http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red- meat/en/](http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/)

</comment><comment><USER30> If the evidence is so damning, and alternatives are available, I don't see why at least the EU can't legislate - surely it's not party to the same kind of lobbying that allows big business to rule the roost in the US?

<comment><USER38> The evidence isn't particularly damning. Sure, there is some increase in cancer risk, but it is a small increase.

A lot of times when something is in the news for contributing to cancer, you can look at the statistics and still conclude that very few people that do the thing will get cancer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The nitrites and nitrates are essential to making bacon (and other cured meats) taste good. The article is clickbait; the risk of bowel cancer in the study was increased 18% - that is, from a low number to an 18% larger low number. This isn't a public health crisis, this is a perfectly rational individual choice.

Also, "uncured" bacon is a lie; one of the main ingredients is celery powder, which contains - you guessed it - naturally occurring nitrites.

<comment><USER40> Bowel cancer is the 3rd most common cancer in the USA, and cancer is one of the largest human causes of death that is fairly hard to avoid otherwise:

[https://www.verywell.com/what-is-the-most-common-cancer- in-t...](https://www.verywell.com/what-is-the-most-common-cancer-in-the- us-2249408)

So it's not a small chance.

<comment><USER39> Let's use real numbers shall we?

[https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/colorect.html](https://seer.cancer.gov/statfacts/html/colorect.html)

 _Approximately 4.3 percent of men and women will be diagnosed with colorectal cancer at some point during their lifetime, based on 2012-2014 data._

Your chance (roughly) goes from 4.3% to 5% if you eat bacon (and salumi, prosciutto, etc) regularly. Whether or not you personally consider this small or large, it seems like a pretty straightforward cost/benefit analysis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm guessing this applies to most jerky sold in stores too?

</comment><comment><USER41> This just in, corporations are self-interested and corrupt.

If you've reached middle age without realizing that literally everyone in the world is lying and cheating to get ahead then you are not paying attention.

"How did it get this way?" Because Bacon didn't always cause cancer, Bacon doesn't cause cancer. Industrial processes cause cancer. The headline is misleading. The article even states that there are non-cancer-causing methods of manufacture. So whatever, keep eating bacon.

This is a great opportunity for safe meat producers to label their bacon "Non- Carcinogenic!" when they use the proper methods.

</comment><comment><USER42> But it is killing us so deliciously ...

</comment><comment><USER43> Well the FDA, USDA, etc have all but destroyed small farm independent food processing so we'll all have to wait until our central planners decide to change their definition of cured meats to include those not treated with nitrates.

</comment><comment><USER44> Pure click-bait headline. It's not bacon that's killing us it's the nitrates used to process it. You can buy uncured, nitrate free bacon.

<comment><USER45> Its still "probably carcinogenic" according to the WHO - [http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red- meat/en/](http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/)

<comment><USER46> I mean so is the entire state of California...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Nothing new here, according to the World Health Organization:

\- red meat is classified as probably carcinogenic to humans

\- processed red meat is classified as carcinogenic to humans (" there is convincing evidence that the agent causes cancer")

source - [http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red- meat/en/](http://www.who.int/features/qa/cancer-red-meat/en/)

<comment><USER47> Which was mentioned in the article...

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Animal agriculture is a large contributor to climate change, intrinsically inefficient (i.e calories eaten << calories "harvested"), and an ethical nightmare.

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

<comment><USER49> what does this have to do with the subject discussed here? Can't vegans just take a break?

<comment><USER50> I would say it's relevant - not only is reducing consumption of bacon and meats good for your personal health, it's good for our climate and overall environmental health. Raising pigs industrially is a huge environmental problem that affects a lot of people, especially in the American south.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> There is an agent added to pork meat to make it look pink. The pink making substance is called natrium nitrate E250 look for it the next time you shop meat in the super market. Natrium nitrate has a skull symbol marking it as a poisonous substance on Wikipedia. Food industry labels natrium nitrate not as a make pork look pink but as a preservative.

To avoid natrium nitrate you can by some ecological food.

The German version of Wikipedia has a skull symbol marking it as posinous on natrium nitrate [https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natriumnitrit](https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natriumnitrit)

<comment><USER25> "sodium nitrate"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Don't the studies show that, by and large, no it isn't? Even the conclusion of this article dives in to how little this study is showing directionally. "Processed meat may be another factor to consider when thinking about your overall risk of breast cancer." is far from a definitive "yes it is really killing us" opening title. :(

I mean, yes, it increases your risk. And when we have solved many of the other high causes, it will have an obvious benefit for getting rid of it. So, very glad we know this. But right now? You are far more likely to be killed from other things than from exposure to bacon. Such that, statistically, it isn't where most people should worry about starting.

<comment><USER53> > Don't the studies show that, by and large, no it isn't?

No, the studies are very clear. They were widely misreported.

There are two things: how good the evidence is, and how strong the effect is.

The evidence that processed red meat causes cancer is now as strong as the evidence that smoking causes cancer. We know that both do cause cancer.

But processed red meat doesn't cause much cancer. Smoking causes a lot of cancer.

<comment><USER52> I was explicitly attacking the strength of the effect. Poorly, I grant.

That is, yes it increases the risk. It is such a weak source, though, that you are still better starting elsewhere, and are here unlikely to die from cancer if you eat these. Contrasted with smoking, where it is a strong influence.</comment></comment></comment>


New Proof Settles How to Approximate Numbers Like Pi - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-proof-settles-ancient-question-of-how-to-simplify-numbers-like-pi-20190814/ <comment><USER2> Ugh. In the title:

"Ancient" means 1941. "Simplify" means approximate. "Numbers like pi" means irrational numbers. "How to" means "how accurately you can".

Background to the actual conjecture: if you take any irrational number and ask how well you can approximate it by rationals p/q, then it turns out (the proof isn't trivial but e.g. plenty of undergraduate mathematicians would be able to follow it without too much trouble) you can always find infinitely many approximations where the error is no bigger than of order 1/q^2.

The actual conjecture: suppose you want it to be true that for _almost all_ irrational numbers, you can find infinitely many p/q with an approximation error no more than f(q). Then (so conjectured Duffin and Schaeffer, and so apparently Maynard and Koukoulopoulos have proved):

you can do it if and only if the sum (over all positive integers q) of f(q) phi(q) is infinite, where phi is the "Euler totient function": phi(q) = number of things <= q and coprime to q.

Very crudely, how fast does this allow f to decrease with q? Well, the sum of 1/q is infinite but "only just"[1], so we want f(q) phi(q) not to decrease much faster than 1/q. phi(q) varies fairly wildly but crudely is "not usually much smaller than q", so we want f(q) q not to decrease much faster than 1/q; that is, we want f(q) not to decrease much faster than 1/q^2. In other words, the "classical" result I started with is kinda-sorta about the best you can do. (I think that at this level of handwaviness this has been well known for a while; the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture is about making it extra-precise.)

[1] The sum of 1/n is infinite but that of 1/n^(1+h) is finite if h>0\. The sum of 1/(n log n) is infinite but that of 1/(n (log n)^(1+h)) is finite if h>0\. The sum of 1/(n log n log log n) is infinite but that of 1/(n log n (log log n)^(1+h)) is finite if h>0\. Etc. So in some sense the boundary between finite and infinite is very close to the (kinda-nonsensical) 1 / (n log n log log n log log log n ...).

<comment><USER3> To be clear, in the statement of the conjecture, we do not need f(q) to be a polynomial or "nice" function of q like 1/q or 1/q^2 — it may not even be an increasing function of q (so statements like "we want f(q) not to decrease much faster than 1/q^2" can be a bit misleading) — one can have arbitrary functions like, say, specifying that f(12)=1/4, f(20)=1/8, and for other q, f(q) = {0 if q is a multiple of 7 (so basically such denominators are never allowed), 1/3 if q does not contain the digit 9, 1/(q log q) otherwise}, etc. I imagine the fact that the proof has to work with arbitrary functions was part of the difficulty.

<comment><USER2> Yes, f can be _any function at all_ here, and indeed this allows for the sort of more complicated things you mention, and indeed this is where a lot of the difficulty lies. Duffin and Schaeffer, for whom the conjecture is named, had already proved it subject to a restriction on f that kinda-sorta requires it not to vary too wildly.

(One other bit of precision that I glossed over: the conjecture is actually about approximations p/q _for which p and q have no common factor_ and that genuinely makes a difference here.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I understand that the article is trying to simplify the topic for a general audience, but there are some things that are just plain counterproductive (even if the article clarifies what they mean later):

> New Proof Settles Ancient Question of How to Simplify Numbers Like Pi

The title, obviously. This should say "approximate", since we're not simplifying pi.

> Under what circumstances is it possible to represent irrational numbers that > go on forever — like pi — with simple fractions, like 22/7?

Never, unless you're approximating.

> He proved that for every irrational number, there exist infinitely many > fractions that approximate the number evermore closely. Specifically, the > error of each fraction is no more than 1 divided by the square of the > denominator.

The first part is obviously true and should have been merged with the second part.

<comment><USER5> Mathematically speaking, Pi can't be "simplified", but I'm personally curious what ratio is Pi to the highest precision necessary to calculate anything tangible (the circumference of the universe to the Plank length). Practically speaking one could say that is the simplification of Pi.

<comment><USER4> You'd need something along the lines of 60ish digits: [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=diameter+of+the+observ...](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=diameter+of+the+observable+universe%2Fplank+length)

<comment><USER5> Yes, but what's the ratio that's precise within 10^-60

<comment><USER4> Here's one: 3141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375105820974945/10^60.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's a demonstration I made recently, of best rational approximations: [https://shreevatsa.net/fraction/best](https://shreevatsa.net/fraction/best) — much of this Quanta magazine article sets up background on such approximations, so playing with the numbers on this web page may help build some intuition about the problem.

In particular, the Duffin-Schaeffer conjecture that has just been proved involves asking about the set of irrational numbers that are approximated to within an error of f(q) for each denominator q, while the webpage above simply finds the best possible approximations for a single fixed irrational number (well, rational…) from the (semi-)convergents of its continued fraction — so any denominator is allowed and the error (for convergents) turns out to be the Dirichlet bound 1/q^2.

(For best results, choose a really large bound on the denominator and only ask for the "bestest" rational approximations. The source code is just a single HTML file and a bunch of plain JavaScript files to do the computation, so if you can improve it, please do so and let me know: [https://gitlab.com/svat/web- fraction/tree/master/website](https://gitlab.com/svat/web- fraction/tree/master/website) .)

<comment><USER6> In your calculator, what does "bestest" mean?

<comment><USER3> Best rational approximation of the second kind (as defined in the text higher up on the page). Partly a joke, as there's already a natural idea of "best rational approximations" (the first kind), and these (the second kind) are even better than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to see rational numbers much more used in computers instead of floating point. Not just for improved representability of widespread numbers such as 1/3\. Also what the article hints towards: accuracy of pi in half- precision 16-bit floating point is around 1/(2^11) ~ 0.0005, while 355/113 is more precise 1/(113^2) ~ 0.00008 and the fraction is still possible to be stored in 16-bit.

<comment><USER8> $YOUR_FAVORITE_LANGUAGE almost certainly has a rational library for it. Give it a try and use it for some serious mathematical purpose; nothing will show you why we don't do that all the time like trying it.

I invite you to ignore any syntactic issues that may arise, like perhaps having to use x.Add(y) instead of x + y. If those were the fundamental problems, the solution would be trivial. That's not the fundamental problem with rational numbers being the pervasive default; the problem is that for your increased precision, you pay for algorithms that you are used to being O(1) in space and time, albeit with potentially imprecise results, suddenly taking on seemingly-random values for both, with disturbing amounts of things like "O((log2 denominator + log2 numerator)^2)" showing up and then stacking on top of each other (^4, ^6, ^8, etc.).

<comment><USER9> And yet if you announced to a general audience of programmers that you had a marvellous new programming language that guarantees performance but doesn't guarantee correctness, you'd be laughed out of the room.

<comment><USER6> Of course, a general audience of programmers prefers JavaScript and Python, because we want our languages to be both slow and incorrect.

More seriously, general programming always prefers performance over correctness, because correctnes is expensive and very few programs are rocket surgery where perfect correctness matters. We have languages decdicated to correctnes, like Ada and Coq. They are very niche because they are slow and they require a lot of work the programmer doesn't want to do to hold up their end of the bargain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hate how the article waffles between "almost none", "virtually none" and "negligible".

There is a word with precise mathematical meaning that matches naive non- mathematical intuition: "almost all" / "almost none" (aka full measure set).

This concept is easy to explain to lay people: count up lengths of intervals, do some limiting process trickery to deal with the fact that the set cannot be written as a finite union of intervals. Alternatively, choose a real number uniformly at random from some interval, probability one will hit the "almost all" set and probability zero will hit one of the others.

"negligible set" is often used to describe sets that have zero measure and small Baire category. "Virtually" also has different mathematical connotations.

Upside is that it was well explained that the contents of the new result is "don't worry about overlaps between different denominators".

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow. Maynard FTW yet again. A Fields medal down the track would be no surprise at this rate. He has several more years to qualify.</comment>


How much water does California have? California Reservoir Levels - <AUTHOR> http://engaging-data.com/ca-reservoir-level/ <comment><USER2> Reservoirs are but one source of California's water. Groundwater is another. Whether recent rain has had time to percolate and recharge aquifers instead of running off remains to be seen.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The interactive graph at the bottom does a nice job showing how much the rains this winter have brought the reservoir levels back up to the seasonal average.</comment>


Uber blocks drivers who picked up coronavirus-infected man - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-51358042 <comment><USER3> I found the headline misleading - Uber didn't permanently block the drivers, it temporarily suspended them from driving. Uber also temporarily suspended all the people who had been in the car that day. They also notified all these folks and sent them info on health providers.

That actually sounds pretty prudent and helpful to me. If I were one of those __240 __passengers, I 'd be a little upset to find out I'd been in a car after someone carrying the virus, but grateful to know I'd been exposed. Then if I started getting symptoms, instead of thinking "well, there's no corona virus in Mexico, it's a cold, I'll just sleep it off," I'd go in for treatment right away.

I realize it sucks for the drivers who are counting on driving income, but WOW is an Uber driver an effective patient-zero, just two cars exposed meant 240 people exposed! Can you imagine if Uber _didn 't_ intervene after it knew about the exposure? Future headline: thousands infected in Mexico after Uber fails to quarantine exposed drivers.

<comment><USER4> They could offer some kind of compensation for drivers they block that did nothing wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This seems worrisome to me, because Uber is not directed by epidemiologists and is in direct conflict with the governments they work for in many places. The measure of suspending passengers will only be effective if those passengers have no other means of transportation; more likely they will take the bus, increasing the risk of contagion rather than decreasing it. I don't trust Uber to make these tradeoffs.

Also, of course, it's unjust, especially if they aren't paying the drivers who got exposed to the virus by the work they did for Uber. But every quarantine measure is unjust; my concern is primarily that this one may be pointlessly or even counterproductively unjust.

I wonder if we will see Uber using this kind of surveillance information for political rather than epidemiological purposes in the future. Presumably it can already be subpoenaed if, for example, a government is indicting a journalist for sedition or treason, or a divorce lawyer is looking for dirt on a spouse. But what about network analysis to identify people who are associated with pro-taxi groups, or companies where suddenly everyone is working late? Is there a stock trading angle there?

They did previously use this data to try to cut off Lyft: [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/uber- alle...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/13/uber-allegedly- used-secret-program-to-cripple-rival-lyft) and I think to identify police who might be signing up as passengers.

<comment><USER6> If Uber _didn 't_ do this, and the driver infected someone, everyone would be screaming at them. (Witness people screaming at Uber for transporting a 12 year old who committed suicide - somehow that's Uber's fault.)

There's no way for them to win this unless government steps in and tells them what to do.

<comment><USER7> There's an easy way for them to win - pay the drivers some amount, perhaps their 50th percentile earnings of late, despite them not driving.

My own employer has a coronavirus policy, now: if you have traveled to China for personal or work reasons, you're expected to work from home for two weeks upon returning. We're not actually a company that has a work-from-home program, and there are people who have left the company because organizationally we won't allow remote work on an ongoing basis. We have a culture that favors in-person meetings over making things available digitally for remote employees. But there's a VPN, and for this purpose, the company says, do what you can do from home and we'll still pay you your full salary.

(That sort of policy, by the way, is better _for society_ than Uber's - <USER2> suspended Uber driver would spend their days doing things other than waiting quietly at home. Probably they would try to make money, and especially in the gig economy, they wouldn't have to tell anyone why they've got some free time suddenly. Maybe they'd drive for Lyft. But if Uber said, stay home and we'll pay you to stay home, they probably would.)

Then again, my employer actually has an employer-employee relationship, not a reseller-vendor relationship.

(Another way to solve this, by the way, is enough of a social safety net that the government can feel comfortable stepping in and saying "Stay home, and we'll send you a government paycheck to stay home." Then Uber can keep treating drivers as Galt-endorsed microbusinesses and not as expensive legacy employees, but you still get the same benefits to society. Also, probably you'd have better health insurance for the drivers.)

<comment><USER8> > There's an easy way for them to win - pay the drivers some amount, perhaps > their 50th percentile earnings of late, despite them not driving.

That's not how contracting works.

<comment><USER7> It's not how it often works, yes, but parties are free to make whatever contract they want. There's no rule that contracting can't work that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is interesting with regard to granularity of tracing human movement and interactions, privacy issues aside. Useful for analyzing such a public health issue.

</comment><comment><USER10> Well done Uber good move! I hope they compensated the driver and gave the other passengers some free credits etc

</comment><comment><USER11> _" coronavirus man"_? That seems a shade dehumanizing.

Edit: I think the HN revision of the title, "coronoavirus-infected man", is a lot better. _" Coronavirus man"_ sounds like the name of an awful superhero.

<comment><USER12> Why? A man that has caught coronavirus. Would an "ill man" be better? A man that has caught an illness.

We need to stop being offended so damn much. The society is getting softer and more punishing to unintentional offenses.

Edit: LOL @ the superhero comment</comment></comment>


Unclogging Toilets at $400k a Flush Hits Navy's Costs - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-24/unclogging-toilets-at-400-000-a-flush-among-navy-cost-overruns <comment><USER2> People are having a lot of fun with this headline, and it is shockingly expensive, but it's pretty important to point out that the costly "flush" is a periodic maintenance procedure. It doesn't literally cost $400k every time someone flushes a toilet.

<comment><USER3> It is confusing as written - the $400k us for the occasional system flush, not per each flush of each sailor. I get that they wanted the word-play, but it would have been clearer to just write "400k for a periodic system flush", instead of un/intentionally obfuscating it.

<comment><USER4> Nobody would click on this article otherwise.

<comment><USER5> That which can be destroyed by the truth, should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is wild. You really only need the first and (weirdly) last paragraphs though:

> "New toilets on the Navy's two newest aircraft carriers clog so frequently > that the ships' sewage systems must be cleaned periodically with specialized > acids costing about $400,000 a flush, according to a new congressional audit > outlining $130 billion in underestimated long-term maintenance costs."

> ...

> "The pipes are too narrow and when there are a bunch of sailors flushing the > toilet at the same time, like in the morning, the suction doesn't work," > said Oakley. "The Navy didn't anticipate this problem."

<comment><USER7> Root cause: Insufficient engineering safety margins.

Solution: Re-engineer a new solution, retrofit.

<comment><USER8> This isn't an apartment block. That's a combat ship. If they see a problem they might even fix it with administrative measures like locking out a part of bathrooms to limit their peak load, that's it. There are strict space and weight concerns, especially as any weight on a ship, especially top weight, pulls a lot, lot of other weight with it...

<comment><USER9> They actually did what the other guy is saying, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Overall, the Ford's estimated lifetime operations and sustainment costs have > grown to $123 billion from $77.3 billion, the most of six programs GAO > evaluated.

That's an expensive boat.

<comment><USER11> Its a floating city, a floating airport, 2 nuclear reactors, supports 4500 people, and go at > 30 knots. Yeah, that comes at a cost.

<comment><USER12> 27 million dollars of upkeep per person is still pretty ridiculous. How many parts are they burning up on a daily basis?

<comment><USER4> Why is the "per-person" cost relevant?

<comment><USER12> Because, after you remove the cost of having the crew and supplying them with basic maintenance parts, it gives you an idea of how many people on the ground are needed to support each person onboard, _just_ to supply expensive parts that are being constantly burned through.

Ideally this supply of burned-up parts would not be particularly huge.

But I didn't realize that number was for a full fifty years, so I'll take back the 'ridiculous'. It's still a whole lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "New toilets on the Navy's two newest aircraft carriers clog so frequently that the ships' sewage systems must be cleaned periodically with specialized acids costing about $400,000 a flush..... The pipes are too narrow and when there are a bunch of sailors flushing the toilet at the same time, like in the morning, the suction doesn't work," said Oakley. "The Navy didn't anticipate this problem."

Sure you can quantify the cost of the flush job. Harder to quantify is the cumulative stress put on sailors due to basics things like toilet not working properly.

My home toilet is serviceable, but it isn't great. So I absolutely adore powerful toilet flush at our corporate office. It's like airplane toilet at sea level.

<comment><USER14> This can also be fixed by fixing what they feed the sailors.

<comment><USER15> I don't know if giving all the sailors diarrhea just so the pipes don't clog is such a wise trade-off.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure there's a middle ground between bricks and slurry =).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just place all toilets at the outside wall of the ship and have them go to the bathroom right into the ocean. the waste will trivially dilute in 352 quintillion gallons of water.

<comment><USER17> My limited understanding is that Marpol Annex IV says that's not allowed, except in US waters and if US law allows.

[http://www.marpoltraining.com/MMSKOREAN/MARPOL/Annex_IV/r11....](http://www.marpoltraining.com/MMSKOREAN/MARPOL/Annex_IV/r11.htm)

I wonder if a country can prohibit a US Navy ship from free passage if it violates MARPOL.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> My god, that's 40 toilet seat covers per flush!!!

[https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/10/senator- dem...](https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jul/10/senator-demands- answers-pentagons-10k-toilet-seat/)

(Or adjusted for inflation: 625 toilet seat covers per flush, in 1986 toilet seats.)

[https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1986-07-30-vw-18804-...](https://www.latimes.com/archives/la- xpm-1986-07-30-vw-18804-story.html)

<comment><USER18> > that's 40 toilet seat covers per flush

Yes, another example of scandalous but misleading article headline. Reading along, the astronomical cost is in fact quite understandable:

> while the actual cost of the toilet cover is relatively low, it's not > something a manufacturer regularly produces. So the company ends up halting > other production to make the cover, and the government ends up paying the > costs of lost production. [...] C-5 is an old aircraft with limited > manufacturing resources. Producing a new latrine cover required reverse- > engineering the part, with new drawings and recasting a new mold. And since > so few replacements are needed, the amortized cost is high.

Also:

> toilet covers, which can be 3D printed for $300 [...] service is looking at > ways to bring down those costs by turning to methods such as 3D printing. > [...] "We are reproducing those parts now, so we are no longer buying seats > at that price," Air Force spokesperson said.

So by the time the article was written the $10k toilet cover was in fact history.

</comment></comment><comment> Fire-Dragon-DoL I can't help but think "that's some costly s--t!"

</comment><comment><USER19> surely just add a minimum-pressure latch to the flush?

If there's not enough suck, it won't flush, reducing the problem to absolutely-simultaneous flushes etc?

</comment><comment><USER20> Aside: do the US really still need carriers to project air power? I wonder where in the world the US can't just lean on a local ally to provide an airbase + some cash.

<comment><USER21> Air power is pretty much the transfer of explosives from one place to another. In other words, a carrier is a better battleship than a battleship.

In modern times, however, a ship with a bunch of missiles is a better carrier than a carrier. An electronic circuit board is a braver and more accurate pilot than a pilot.

Even better, cut out the middle man. Forget the ship, just send the missiles directly from home to the enemy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> A year's worth of FAANG salary flushed down the drain every time someone drops too heavy a deuce. As far as government waste goes, this example is very impressive, and should take the crown from $30K toilet seats, $5K screwdrivers and $1300 coffee cups. And if you want to audit it, you can do so for a small fee of $400M:

[https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics- features/pent...](https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics- features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/)

<comment><USER23> Nice hot take on the headline... maybe actually read the article and add something a bit more substantial to the discussion?

<comment><USER22> Is there anything more "substantial" to add? US Military is legendary for flushing money down the drain. Quite literally in this case.</comment></comment></comment>


Rob Pike on Google Go: Concurrency, Type System, Memory Management and GC - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/interviews/pike-google-go

<comment><USER2> The raw FLV video appears to be located at: <http://flv.thruhere.net/interviews/10-oct-rob-pike-2.flv>

There's also an MP3 link hidden on the page (search for MP3).</comment>


Minimum Viable Phoenix - <AUTHOR> http://www.petecorey.com/blog/2019/05/20/minimum-viable-phoenix/ <comment><USER2> I really wish this tutorial existed 5 years ago. It would've convinced me to actually _try_ Phoenix instead of pulling up the official getting started guide only to scream internally at all the moving parts and start looking for alternatives.

But on the other hand, had this tutorial existed 5 years ago, I wouldn't have found Sugar (sugar-framework.github.io), and in turn wouldn't have started contributing to it, and in turn wouldn't have gone on the various deep dives into OTP and Plug necessary to comprehend it, let alone become one of the maintainers of it (albeit a rather neglectful one; this year's New Years Resolution is to address some longstanding bugs and get it back into a state where it could actually _be_ to Phoenix as, say, Padrino is to Rails or Flask is to Django), so I guess it ain't all bad :)

<comment><USER3> I hear ya. I think Hexdocs is great and I really appreciate the standardization of the Elixir community on one documentation format/site (though ironically it doesn't look like Sugar uses hexdocs), and in particular it's great at listing the various functions/modules etc within a package. However, I find it to be very lacking in terms of guide/tutorial content, and the Phoenix guide [1] is a great example of how it falls short. Compared to stuff like Django, which has _amazing_ documentation, not just for the API, but also for guides that tell you how to do stuff like add routes, add authentication, do advanced queries [2], etc, the Phoenix guides are missing a lot.

It took me until I actually read an entire book about Phoenix (Programming Phoenix 1.4 [3], which I do recommend) before I actually got onboard with it. And while there's nothing _wrong_ with reading a book, it is a significantly higher barrier to entry compared to something like Django or Rails, frameworks which a beginner can be taught the basics of in a single day just by browsing through the official documentation.

Now, with all that being said, I _really_ do enjoy working in Phoenix now that I actually "broke through" that initial barrier of understanding. It and Elixir are very well thought out and pleasant to work with, even if they do take a little bit of extra effort to get started.

1: [https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/up_and_running.html](https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/up_and_running.html)

2: [https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/contents/](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/contents/)

3: [https://pragprog.com/book/phoenix14/programming- phoenix-1-4](https://pragprog.com/book/phoenix14/programming-phoenix-1-4)

<comment><USER4> > However, I find it to be very lacking in terms of guide/tutorial content.

I found this to be the case too, but the community is very helpful on the forums and IRC. Everyone is really friendly and doesn't troll you for being new.

My way of learning so far has been to take in the docs to get the basics, stumble and fumble around on my own, look at code from open source projects, experiment with those things in my app and then as a last resort ask for help from one of the community outlets if I get legit stuck on something or have a question on best practices that I couldn't find online. It's been working out so far, but it's definitely a much more difficult road than binge watching 100 railscasts videos because every feature you want in your app has been designed in a production ready way and perfectly explained on video (that's how I learned Rails in about 3 months while building a quite involved app as my first "real" Rails app a number of years ago).

But like you said, I also came to the realization that Elixir and Phoenix might be one of the most well thought out combinations of software I've ever used for building web apps. Although at times, I do wish I could invent a time machine and fast forward 2 years to see where everything is at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ive been waiting for a tutorial like this. I am most likely doing something wrong, but sadly the code samples do not function as listed. Even cloning the repo and executing the commands listed only results in errors after the first step.

<comment><USER6> Author has provided the link to git repo in the article. All you have to do is,

git clone [https://github.com/pcorey/minimum_viable_phoenix](https://github.com/pcorey/minimum_viable_phoenix)

mix deps.get

mix compile

mix phx.server

and you're good to go

<comment><USER5> But the article is about phoenix from nothing. The reader is encouraged to work through each literate commit. Mix is not used until half way through the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like this style of "literate commits".

</comment><comment><USER8> What is Phoenix?

<comment><USER9> Phoenix framework for the Elixir language. It's a web framework that leverages the natural concurrency and performance structure of the Erlang VM to handle both standard web development and web sockets.

That's the high altitude view.

In my professional opinion, Elixir and Phoenix also address the vast majority of short and long term issues that cause problems in projects without a negative impact on developer productivity. I'm a big believer it both. It's also got the perk of being so lightweight that there's almost no performance impact to using Phoenix instead of raw Elixir.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really great idea and well executed. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER11> Meanwhile it still doesn't have Authn/Authz built-in.

<comment><USER12> It's a deliberate decision to not impose any set authn/authz structure on the user as many projects have differing requirements in that area.

Maybe someone could make a project creator on top of Phoenix that adds some basic authn/authz to the default structure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Another framework. May merciful Providence deliver us.

<comment><USER14> In all fairness it's been around for quite some time.

Moreover, the abundance of frameworks is not inherently a bad thing in my opinion. You don't need to learn it if it doesn't solve a problem for you after all.

<comment><USER15> I'm not agreeing with the GP's attitude about more frameworks. In fact, I really enjoy working with Phoenix and am glad the author(s) put in the hard work to build it.

But

> You don't need to learn it if it doesn't solve a problem for you after all

is not true. I don't like React and I have to use it at work because that is what was chosen.

<comment><USER16> React is nigh-universally agreed to solve a set of problems related to frontend web development. You may not recognize the pain of those problems and it may not solve them the way _you like it_ , but the way you've attacked the sentence is really strange.

<comment><USER4> What if you could eliminate a lot of the pain points that React solves but without having to write much (if any) Javascript but still have an application that feels like it's rendered client side while getting server side rendered templates for free, and things like "but I can share my logic between the backend and frontend" goes away because the backend can do both?

This is just one type of problem that Phoenix's LiveView solves and LiveView is only a small aspect of what Phoenix has available. I'm very thankful work is being done in this area instead of just accepting that everyone wants to use React.

<comment><USER16> I mean, cool, great. I like React and I like TypeScript more than I like Elixir so that does nothing for me, but great.

But I'm not sure why you replied to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ed Asner to Union Actors: Just Say No to Minimum-Wage Plan for 99-Seat Theaters - <AUTHOR> http://deadline.com/2015/03/ed-asner-minimum-wage-union-actors-99-seat-theaters-1201398596/ <comment><USER2> "It's been acknowledged all of these years. I don't think there is any other craft or union in which practitioners need to practice their art." \- Ed Asner, in the article posted.

Am I misreading this, or does he really think that other tradespeople don't need to practice?

<comment><USER3> I read that the same way at first, but I think the implication is that other tradespeople don't necessarily need other /venues/ to practice. Or at least other venues that other parties pay to provide.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its basically the actor version of unpaid internships.</comment></comment></comment>


Build an app that uses screen capture in Google Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://www.twilio.com/blog/2017/10/screen-capture-in-google-chrome.html <comment><USER2> I made something similar that uses the Chrome App API. Basically it creates a HTTP server that acts an MJPEG server which sends the currently captured tab. All of those APIs have a really vast array of features... kind of scary actually.

Source code: [https://github.com/speps/grumpy-pi- cast](https://github.com/speps/grumpy-pi-cast)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there possibility for remote control? Like simulating keyboard and mouse. I did not find an API for this.

<comment><USER4> This would be great.

Also any one know of open source tools that have remote control of the users machine?

<comment><USER5> Guacamole: [https://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/](https://guacamole.incubator.apache.org/)

<comment><USER6> That's just what I needed, thanks for sharing !!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Unfortunately still broken on gnome/wayland: [https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784199](https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=784199)

edit: gnome bug not linux

<comment><USER8> The GNOME bug is indirectly related, but linking to just it distorts the situation quite a lot.

Wayland has no screen recording API by default, so compositors implement their own - some already have their own, some, such as GNOME's mutter, don't.

But even if mutter implements it, that doesn't really fix it for all situations - there's many users on KDE, for example, for whom the GNOME bug is entirely irrelevant.

Linux != GNOME.

<comment><USER9> Mutter has experimental support for a PipeWire stream, exposing two APIs: org.gnome.Mutter.RemoteDesktop and org.gnome.Mutter.ScreenCast

Thanks to the gnome-remote-desktop project, which landed in stable Fedora back in September.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What about using WebRTCs to record, stream screen data? This should work on Firefox, ... as well.

<comment> TD-Linux In fact, in Firefox it works without creating the extension.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to be following this post up with how to do the same in Firefox and how to put that all together for as much support as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> bros... can we use es6 and more in a chrome extension bc it's defo running in chrome? Just a thought from scrolling through this post and spotting some sexy arrow functions which I've been dropping from anything client side

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting question, depends on the support you're expecting.

In this case the desktopCapture API was introduced in Chrome 34 but arrow functions only turned up in version 45 onwards.

You can set a minimum Chrome version in the extension manifest though, which would mean you can set a version that guarantees the JS support that you want.</comment></comment>


Shapecatcher - draw the unicode character you want - <AUTHOR> http://shapecatcher.com/ <comment><USER2> Similar visual search for LaTeX characters: <http://detexify.kirelabs.org/classify.html>

<comment><USER3> First thing I thought of when I saw Shapecatcher was Detexify. The similarities are obvious, it was most likely his true inspiration, or at least part of it, yet he didn't mention in the about page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought it said "unicorn". I was dismayed to find that my beautiful, refrigerator-worthy rendering of a unicorn was interpreted as a few Arabic characters, some arrows, and a domino tile.

<comment><USER5> Yet it knows USSR: ☭ recognized just fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great concept, but 1 for 5 in recognition. Matched dollar sign. No euro, no pound, no ampersand, no pi? Maybe I'm a horrible artist, but 49 suggestions (some that look like pi) and no pi?

<comment><USER7> Another datapoint: I had no trouble with any of those.

<comment><USER8> Pi took me a couple of goes, and when I drew a somewhat narrow ampersand, it gave me a few erroneous results.

Both were successful, and put the desired character at the top of the list. All the others worked first time.

It would be excellent if it could be made to learn, with users being able to say "that's what I meant"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Am I the only one who tried "ಠ" and couldn't get it to work no matter what?

<comment><USER10> I tried a snowman ☃ - it's pretty low on the list but you'll find it with a crude but detailed drawing.

<comment><USER11> The secret is adding the snowflakes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very cool. Would be useful to see a section of neighboring glyphs in the area of a selected glyph (I want to find the spade suit and see some other suit glyphs too)

</comment><comment><USER13> I was recently searching for a unicode Thumbs Up, and came up empty handed (there is none). So I drew one in this thing, and got some useful approximations at least:

ຢ ථ

I also came across this one, describe as "weary cat face":

🙀

Seriously, Unicode? You've got "weary cat face", but no thumbs up? I am disappoint.

<comment><USER14> <http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/1f44d/index.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I noticed that the second attempt had more accuracy than the first since I was able to see a similar character (white rook) and then modify my crude drawing to eliminate extra information that was adding white noise to the search. Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER16> I tried really to get the thumbs up character, but no luck: <http://i.imgur.com/YoWFh.jpg>

Handy tool anyway :)

</comment><comment><USER17> Apparently it can't do chinese or Japanese characters.

<comment><USER18> Agreed. I randomly tried イ, ア, 月, 四, and 行. It pulled back tons of results for each of them, but not a single list contained the correct result.

<comment><USER19> Yeah, I encountered the same issue. The only thing I can think of is that I'm drawing them in the handwritten style, but the recognizer probably needs them to be in the digital font style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is top notch. Any chance you would make this so that you could embed it in another website - maybe for a cost/month? because I can think of some sites right now that could really use this.

</comment><comment><USER21> Very useful, fun and even has research value. Draw a circle and find a lot of emoticons. I couldn't find any of the letters from my mother tongue though, hopefully they will be added.

</comment><comment><USER22> It is astonishing how many types of vertical dashes there are.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is cool! I'd love to look into using the recognising algo in a rewrite of motion captcha. Similar concept.

Great site.

</comment><comment><USER24> Just used it tonight... encountered a letter psi 𝜓 in a recaptcha form and it helped me find it. ;)

</comment><comment><USER25> Hundreds of people just checked to see if there was a Unicode character that resembles a penis.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is a genius name. Sounds catchy, but still nails what the product actually does.

</comment><comment><USER27> I'm drawing some seriously inappropriate things, and this site does not disappoint.

</comment><comment><USER28> Bookmarked! Wow, quite an amazing product. How long did it take you to develop?

</comment><comment><USER29> Great. Tried some Tamil characters. It was able to recognize most of them.

</comment><comment><USER30> Couldn't get it to recognize the "look of disapproval" character :-(

</comment><comment><USER31> Did not recognize my unicode snowman, but it got pretty close: Ṏ Ổ ồ

<comment><USER16> I actually got the snowman as the 8th result when trying (and failing) to draw the unicode character "pile of poo" U+1F44D: <http://i.imgur.com/VBvK6.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great stuff, unfortunately it doesn't catch my Devnagri letters.

<comment><USER33> I got one right after 10-15 tries. <http://i.imgur.com/4SJsf.png>

But it does get almost all Malayalam letters I tried.

Awesome work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I tried drawing a lowercase 'a' twice, and it couldn't find it.

<comment><USER35> I tried drawing the symbol for pi 3 times, and in dozens of results did not see the character for pi. Odd.

<comment><USER16> I got pi on the first try: <http://i.imgur.com/IPyn7.jpg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very nice! It caught my terrible rendition of the interrobang.

</comment><comment><USER37> I can't, for the life of me, draw and get it to recognize "ñ"

<comment><USER38> Strange. Worked first time for me: <http://i.imgur.com/JD2qb.png>

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Touch support would be nice to have.

</comment><comment><USER40> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3208967>

<comment><USER41> When that link was posted, the site was non-operational.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> ⚛ Jimmy Neutron! ⚛

</comment><comment><USER43> This is amazing.

</comment><comment><USER44> I tried some astronomical symbols, like ♃, but they don't seem to be supported yet.

<comment><USER45> One of the first things I tried was Mercury ☿ and it did work (even first match) - and that's despite my drawing skill.

<comment><USER44> Interesting. I actually tried a few different variations of Jupiter's symbol (like making the curve more or less exaggerated, higher and lower, etc.) and couldn't get it to work.</comment></comment></comment>


How to reduce timber waste: put your logs through a CT scanner - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/green-jobs/how-reduce-timber-waste-put-your-logs-through-ct-scanner.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+treehuggersite+%28Treehugger%29 <comment><USER2> Related:

[http://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/sites/woodworking/files/st...](http://www.woodworkingnetwork.com/sites/woodworking/files/styles/large_landscape_desktop/public/Bolefloor- wood-flooring.jpg)

A marriage of woodcraft and computing that is both visually pleasing and efficient!

The company doing curvilinear wood flooring is called Bole Floors.

Here is an even more attractive example of curvilinear wood.

[http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/detail/innovativ...](http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/detail/innovative- detail-private-grotto-sauna_o)</comment>


Molyneux's 1989 Populous remade as Caplin's Reprisal - <AUTHOR> http://www.reprisaluniverse.com/site/#playreprisal

<comment><USER2> Populous II was fun, so an upvote for you. Nice site design too. I can't play right now but I'll give it a shot at home.</comment>


How Sociopathic Capitalism Came to Rule the World - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/11/sociopathic-capitalism/506240/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> My fiance Aunt works with troubled youth in a relatively at risk community. In her decades long career, she has met a single clinical sociopath (many psychopaths but those are not as interesting, primarily characterized as a lack of empathy and a high need for stimulation). The sociopath was best characterized as chronically violent (history of physical abuse to pets, siblings, partners, parents and police) and disturbed every professional they came into contact with on the basis of their ability to transcend and violate your emotional boundaries with ease (and seeming satisfaction). 10x more charming, manipulative and sadistic than most people could conceive of being. Ie. A sociopath.

The organization of the world economy is not sociopathic. The orgnization of the world economy involves money, people and resources numberated in values not easily comprehended by our relatively linear cognitive abilities. It is comprised of a very large number of primarily good people making a primarily well intentioned effort to be successful for themselves, get respect, live well and if they can do useful things for other people. There are many reasons why people might still be in the gene pool but depending on the conditions of the environment they (and their ancestors) were raised in, the ability to be zero-sum competitive and hyper focused on what your competition does, could have been useful at one time and still may be.

HN nerds appreciate and give status to activities that try to create positive sum wealth for people, but the markets we work in can be just as zero-sum and unpleasant as winning an election or becoming CEO of a bank. It is not bad to win zero sum contests, we just need to create status incentives to make new things and create new wealth in favour of ruthlessly battling for old resources and zero sum opportunities to have power but do little good.

People think they are mad about capitalism but really they are mad about how hard it is to topple the faceless natural oligopolies that have taken over as default economic institutions as a result of the complexity and regulation in our globalized world. Instead of villainizing "capitalism" or giving up on trade and growing vegetables on your apartment balcony, I think we should do things that create new value and opportunities for people. It is a leadership bottleneck, to value creativity and give it status over role-based power, and an ongoing battle between people oriented towards different things.</comment>


Books About Parsing - <AUTHOR> http://blog.reverberate.org/2009/06/26/books-about-parsing/

<comment><USER2> The "A Regular Expression Matcher" in _Beautiful Code_ is a command-line wildcard matcher (from memory), and lacks parentheses and alternation. Useful, and probably an ideal example for the book, but much less powerful even than a mathematical regular expression.

See for yourself: [http://books.google.com/books?id=gJrmszNHQV4C&lpg=PA1...](http://books.google.com/books?id=gJrmszNHQV4C&lpg=PA1&ots=rKS- utWaqe&dq=patent%20kernighan&pg=PA1)

<comment><USER3> Still very cool though, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you will learn much faster about parsing if you just read source code. Once you have looked at more then two implementation of the same thing you start to see similarities and differences and pick up the ideas in use.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like a theory rather than something you're tried. :-)

You might be right, but regular expressions (for example) are one of those relatively rare tools in computer science that are both very practical and very theoretical - difficult to grasp without understanding the concepts. Personally, I did have a (brief) look some source code (for parsing particles for the XML Schema in Xerces; and the perl-style regex library in Java), but they really didn't make much sense until I went back to the Dragon book. Maybe if I'd spent more time on the source code, and looked at many more examples, and also mixed in some less sophisticated examples, it would have also become clearer... but I really don't think so. You need the ideas that the code is trying to implement, in addition to seeing the surface code. Regular expressions, and implementations of Thompson's powerset algorithm are really hard to understand even with the concepts.

But like I said, you could be right. Why not try out your approach, to test it as a hypothesis, and let us know how you went, with a "Tell HN: learning parsing by reading source code" submission?</comment></comment>