Fat-fueled brain: unnatural or advantageous? - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/mind-guest-blog/the-fat-fueled-brain-unnatural-or-advantageous/ <comment><USER2> I've been doing Keto since Feb 25 2016. My primary goal when switching over was weight loss, which turned out to be easy. I'm 25, male and was experiencing growing health complications related to obesity. I've lost well over 60 lbs since making the switch despite the fact that I maintain a primarily sedentary lifestyle though I now work out weekly as well as take bi- daily walks.

There are downsides though. It's not cheap, it's restrictive and it requires you to build a fairly sizeable knowledge base in order to successfully maintain the diet and your own health. For instance your body consumes more water in order to burn fat stores which leads to the body burning through electrolytes more rapidly. It is very common to supplement electrolytes every day. It is common to drink broth while on Keto in order to cover the daily salt intake requirements of Keto, ~5000-7000mg every day on top of normal dietary salt intake. Failure to cover the daily electrolyte requirement will lead to muscle cramps and more severe symptoms brought on by electrolyte deficiency in the body. Prior to supplementing magnesium I experienced leg cramps and quickly realized what was going on.

However there are significant health benefits. Weight loss, improved mental clarity and better energy levels throughout the day, as well as less need for frequent meals are positive effects that a lot of people experience on Keto. It is also a useful tool for reversing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes type 2 and pre-diabetes.

When it comes to the stuff you "have to give up" while on Keto it's mostly a case of strict moderation rather than completely cutting things out. The things you do try to cut out though like bread, sugar, potatoes, pasta, corn- syrup etc have good alternatives available in most grocery stores. You can bake bread out of almond flour, make pasta out of almond flour (or have someone make it for you), replace potatoes with sweet potatoes and so on.

If you're thinking that keto sounds like it's too much hassle please leave me a reply and I'll gladly talk about whatever you're unsure about.

<comment><USER3> Has there been any more research into the long term health effects of Keto?

I tried it years ago, but found it to be more of a pain than it's worth (I seem to have better luck with intense exercise 3x per week and avoiding sugar). And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries or increases cancer risk.

Atkins did not look like he was in good shape inside when he died.

It strikes me as a body hack that bypasses a lot of bodily processes evolution may have counted on as we developed. But it seems like we know a fair amount about the chemistry and processes involved, so I'm curious.

<comment><USER2> >And it seems like tons of meat and cheese is actually bad long term, in the sense it clogs your arteries

This is an inaccurate conclusion based on old studies where the subjects underwent a high-carbohydrate high-fat diet. Recent studies on ketogenic diets (low-carbohydrate, medium-protein, high-fat intake) shows that dietary fats and dietary cholesterol barely make any sort of impact on the subject's cholesterol. Rather it is dietary carbohydrates and genetics which are the primary contributor to raised cholesterol and arterial blockage. When it comes to arterial blockage, studies have found that there is no significant correlation between high dietary fat intake and cardiovascular disease.

>or increases cancer risk

Keto is primarily a high-fat diet, not a high-protein or high-carb diet. Studies have showed that a sugar found in red meats called Neu5Gc is primarily correlated with inflammation in the body and the development of certain cancers.

If you're on keto you're less likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and while there is not enough data yet to draw a scientific conclusion preliminary research indicates that individuals who follow keto are at less risk of developing cancer due to restricting sugar intake.

See: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restric...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ketoscience/search?q=cancer&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

All of these posts link to multiple, verified studies which go into details about what I just said.

<comment><USER4> What you said about cancer risk or long term safety of the whole class of those diets. Especially anything related to mortality and morbidity endpoints.

Cholesterol numbers are nowhere near the end of story, they're just markers. Rat and mice studies are useless for this purpose.

Please correct me if I am wrong. Preferably with published larger studies. In humans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm on my third ketogenic diet stint, and I can attest to how fantastic it is. I'm narcoleptic and I experience nearly no symptoms on the diet, my fiancée is epileptic and is transitioning off her meds to the ketogenic diet (with the supervision of her nutritionist and neurologist), and a former employee uses it to keep her benign tumor from spreading (actually! And she's totally normal, again with doctors). All of us report much better hair, skin, daily energy levels, ability to think more clearly and focus better, and massive weight loss. The first month my first time doing keto I lost 30 lbs without trying to, ended up being a total weight loss of about 70lbs and I became very lean and muscular.

Why stop? Bread is delicious and it make social eating event difficult / less engaging. You can take a meal off from the diet and be fine, but it's a slippery slope of will power.

<comment><USER6> no alcohol either ... that is a deal breaker for a lot of people (including myself)

<comment><USER7> Alcohol is actually fine on a low carb diet. Beer has carbs but Vodka, Rum, etc are totally fine.

In fact alcohol tends to have a greater effect on you when in ketosis so you even save some money when out drinking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Genetics plays a very large factor in fat and cholesterol metabolism, and one that I think explains the variance in success with the ketogenic diet.

e.g. FTO, PPARG, APOA5, FABP2, and APOE.

Essentially, not everyone processes fat the same way, and for some, especially those with APOE4/4, a high fat diet may actually be deleterious to health.

People with the right genes will have great success with ketogenic diets... but convincing their friends to join in might not have the outcome they expect.

<comment><USER9> This is key.

Apoe status appears to control the absorption rates of LDL cholesterol (tiny balls of fat).

Individuals with apoe4, appear to have really low LDL cholesterol absorption rates between cells, and high blood-LDL cholesterol concentrations.

Having done a bit of research on optimal dieting, its pretty inconclusive.

This study shows negative consequences resulting from high fat diets for apoe4: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27656136)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> what I wonder every time I hear people be very enthusiastic about how their diet improves their quality of life, is if it's just a case that eating good food and working out (which a lot of people do when starting a new diet) is the trigger to feel better as opposed to the vegan / raw food / ketogenic / paleo / high-carb specifics, not to mention the obvious placebo effect of starting something new that supposedly will help you feel better.

It does feel that we as a species, being omnivore, can do just fine on all sorts of different diets, and maybe the reason these testimonials come up for all sorts of different diets, is that it's the staying away from sugar / processed food, the working out, caloric restriction, weight loss and consequent improvement in quality of sleep that cause the improvements, as opposed to the food specifics.

Going from eating fast food, not working out and sleeping badly, to eating less caloric whole foods, working out and sleeping well would make anybody feel so much better and lose weight, regardless of what type of whole foods they pick.

If this is the case, then it opens the opportunity to pick your diet more based on say environmental impact or ethical reasons, as opposed to say feeling that your veggie diet is not as good as your friends' paleo diet because you have been veggie for 10 years and your friend just went paleo and so they are in the "omg I feel so much better" phase.

Wish it was possible to do a double blind study on diet and its effects but unfortunately for obvious reasons that's not possible. On the other hand it is quite possible to quantify your diet's environmental impact / footprint, which makes minimizing it reasonably feasible.

<comment><USER11> I was wondering about this too. Many of the comments on this thread are "I felt great on keto and lost X lb/kg". Could you be feeling better just because you lost weight? if you have no weight to lose is there anything to gain?

<comment><USER12> I think a lot of those types of testimonials come from people who have tried other dieting styles and failed with them. One of the biggest reasons that people really enjoy keto is that a high fat + protein diet leaves you feeling sated even though you are eating less calories. You are not STARVING all the time like with a simple calorie reduction diet. Another reason is that by eliminating sugar/carbs, you aren't dealing with large insulin spikes anymore, and that evens out your mood.

<comment><USER13> +1

I tried the standard advice (Canada Food Pyramid + exercise). I felt miserable (tired, irritable, hungry) and couldn't sleep well.

Keto has been the exact opposite. I feel great all the time. I sleep better. I no longer get daily nosebleeds. For the first 6+ months, I didn't exercise at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it's actually quite difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet. I tried it for a while, and since I couldn't have carbs OR too much protein, I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, but not too much, salmon or chicken. I'm not arguing that it doesn't work for a good subset of people, but it's not the kind of diet that's easy to keep up over time or is all that economically feasible for some. Keto diets are actually _more_ restrictive than vegan or kosher or halal, and it's not a surprise that they're mostly prescribed for epilepsy - it definitely feels like a "sick person diet".

I also wonder if it's possible to work out while doing keto. Since muscles use glycogen to work, and the keto diet is intentionally low in glycogen, does that make weight training and cardio harder? Especially the former, since you're limited in how much protein you can eat, and strength training benefits from having ~150g of protein per day.

<comment><USER15> > _The main problem I have with ketogenic diets is that it 's actually quite > difficult and sometimes expensive to eat a 90-95% fat diet_

From what I've seen, your diet should be ~60-70% fat, 5% or less carbs, and ~25-35% protein. Definitely not 95% fat.

> _I had several instances where my dinner in a pinch was melted down cheese > and half-n-half. Your diet basically becomes cheese and avocados with some, > but not too much, salmon or chicken_

What about vegetables? I ate a lot of salads when I did keto. I also ate a lot of fattier meats, such as cured italian meats and ground beef. No reason to eat super lean protein when fat is most of your calories; buy the cheap fatty stuff and enjoy it. Also, eggs? I was having an omelette every morning.

> _I also wonder if it 's possible to work out while doing keto_

It's very possible: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22835211) but I doubt it would be if you're not eating _any_ protein...

<comment><USER14> I prolly fucked the diet up, then. It certainly _felt_ like I was eating almost all fat...good to know that I can take advantage of cheap fatty meats like short ribs, oxtail, and marrow then.

As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings.

<comment><USER15> > _As for vegetables, I missed carrots and peas too much. Mustard greens and > broccoli are apparently okay, though. I could always just make salads out of > baby spinach and arugula, but I suck at making salad dressings._

The rule for veggies is to avoid starch and stick to dark leafy greens.

My go-to easy dish would be a "taco salad", where I'd cook some ground beef and serve it with cheese, salsa, sour cream over lettuce. There's also lots of dishes possible with kale and spinach.

> _take advantage of cheap fatty meats_

Fish included! No reason to worry about eating "too much" salmon. Cook it with butter sauce and it should fit your macro-nutrient ratios perfectly.

> _I prolly fucked the diet up_

As another comment said, it's no wonder you felt sick. Also, the "keto flu" is a known phenomenon while your body adapts and flushes all the water out of your system. Drink a lot of electrolytes (chicken broth is a good source) and you'll feel better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No comment on the main topic, but the "unnatural or advantageous" binary in the title is a confusion that I really dislike. "Natural" and "good" are independent axes. No relationship should be assumed. Tuberculosis is natural, but not good. Brushing your teeth is unnatural, but I'm happy to call it good.

This can seem obvious, but the error crops up all the time in serious ways. E.g. women voting and joining the workforce was seen as unnatural, therefore wrong. People market all sorts of quack remedies as natural, and therefore good.

It goes the other way, too. Slavery was seen as right, and people decided it was therefore natural. (See the various declarations of secession of the US states for examples.) Violence is seen as wrong, so people decide it must be unnatural, ignoring our long history as predators, the amount of education we give children about not hitting, and our societal structures for limiting violence.

Is and ought: two entirely separate things.

<comment><USER17> Cyanide is also natural.

Organic farming permits organic pesticides, half of which are cancerous as well and may have worse environmental impacts [0]. The organic label doesn't guarantee that you're getting more ethical/better/safer products - and it is worth a lot of money.

[0] [https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html](https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~lhom/organictext.html)

Funny, when I first saw your comment it was collecting negative votes, so I came in to lend it some support. Now it's on top!

<comment><USER18> A few thoughts: Does 'organic' regulation permit the use of paraffin coatings? I imagine the prolific use of paraffin in conventional produce could make rinsing away pesticides quite difficult.

Copper sulfate is one of the most common organic pesticides that I am aware of. It's certainly nothing to gorge on. However, when handled safely, it may be preferable to directly engineering a pesticide into the plant.

On the organic farms I tended, there was very minimal use of pesticides or herbicides. The inherent diversity of the farm allowed the temporary discontinuation (rather than synthetic maintenance) of problematic plants, and either experimentation with others, or the continuation of what was presently working. For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand, some of the weeds being edible (amaranth) and providing snacks during the process, at least for me ;) Personally, I prefer this method to glyphosate.

The term "natural" may not be synonymous with "healthy and safe", but it does functionally delimit e.g. Roundup from acetic acid.

<comment><USER19> "For weed control we relied on hay and profuse weeding by hand,"

For a while I've said that "robotic fast food joints" are one of the touchstones I'm using to say that robotics has really arrived. I've been considering adding "robotic weeders" to my list. How much would our agriculture change if instead of pesticides, we physically weeded everything?

The robot may not even need to "remove things by their roots", which would be quite complicated; if it can sweep by reliably every two or three days just trimming everything that isn't desired crop would probably do fine.

Bushy plants low to the ground might take more work, but given the way corn grows it seems like we could robotically weed corn pretty effectively.

<comment><USER18> Of course, it would result in less hours/pay for some, but I'd still welcome _effective_ robotic (solar-powered?) weeding anytime. Maybe it would work with corn, but the vegetables I'm accustomed to are delicate and I suspect it would be a great undertaking to duplicate the efficiency of the hand on a large scale. I'm honestly not sure if "trimming" would work or not. Seems frightfully difficult to me, but so is ingenuity. PS: I am not a professional farmer, so take my opinions accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Actually, I've tried the ketogenic diet. It's great, however it does have negative side effects. That is the lack of fiber. This can lead to hemorrhoids. Which can be extremely painful. Everything was great, I burned a lot of baby fat, but it was painful in the toilet, there was bleeding involved.

You need to supplement yourself with fiber if you want to try the ketogenic diet.

<comment><USER21> There are many options for avoiding your problem. Vegetable fiber using vegetables with minimal or zero reserve carbohydrate should do it. Cabbage for instance also offers additional benefits from its phytochemicals. See for instance [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304423806000483)

<comment><USER22> You can even go one step further and eat Sauerkraut. A lot of the (limited) carbohydrates in the cabbage are fermented into lactate, which has some health benefits, and if you make it yourself it is a good probiotic.

<comment><USER23> Yup - and it's got a lot of potassium too! Definitely a keto staple for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> While I don't think a ketogenic diet is an optimal diet in terms of longevity or overall health (as all blue-zone diets are carb rich), it does appear to confer some benefits in the short term which are fairly compelling. The vast majority of humans are adapted to seasonal eating, with high carbohydrate diets during spring, summer and fall, and very low carbohydrate diets during winter (or during the wet/dry seasons). I suspect that our bodies have evolved around short periods of keto-adaptation as part of a natural rejuvenation cycle. Given our modern non-seasonal eating habits, that would mean we're missing out on a natural bodily process that is important to health.

<comment><USER24> Out of curiosity, are there any areas with a fat rich diet, which has good access to quality health care? It seems most cultures, which aren't based around hunting and gathering, have a carb based diet, as it's simply the most feasible for supporting a large population.

<comment><USER22> Not all blue zones have access to stellar health care. I'd argue that the health care of Nicoya peninsula in Costa Rica isn't much better than what keto-adapted people of Alaska or Greenland have access to, but the life expectancy difference is pretty large.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Something to watch out for - the first time I tried a ketogenic diet, I developed a terrible rash on my torso after three weeks. After a few fruitless trips to the dermatologist, I found that it was very possibly something called prurigo pigmentosa, a rash that tends to occur in people fasting or in ketosis. Someone even set up a website about it - www.theketorash.com. It's unfortunate, as I had been successfully losing weight. No one really knows how to treat it, except for, well, eating more carbs.

</comment><comment><USER26> This has been scattered around the existing comments, but I'd be really interested to hear people who are keto comment explicitly on its perceived cognitive effects. I know a number of pretty successful scientists who have told me they feel that being keto provides them a significant performance advantage. I'm really interested in how it affects perceived energy, clarity of thinking, fatigue, and creativity.

I'm gearing up for keto induction myself in the next month (the social things are the hardest for me to deal with, so require a lot of planning to make it feasible), but I'd love to hear (or be pointed to) stories on this topic, especially for knowledge workers / intellectual-types.

<comment><USER27> I went through about 2 months of pure keto earlier this year. Small disclaimer, I generally follow a "warrior" diet and intermittent fasting. I think keto gave me a similar "sharp" awareness and energy. For whatever reason, not eating, while difficult at first, provided me with even more energy and clarity in the same way keto did. Even though I continued doing fairly intense workouts 3 days a week.

<comment><USER28> I also get a lot of mental clarity and alertness after extended periods of not eating, followed by tiredness and fogginess after a meal. This might be one reason why I'm underweight.

Unfortunately, a keto diet isn't really an option for me (vegetarian, and allergic to many vegetarian protein sources).

I wonder what the underlying science behind it is.

<comment><USER27> Science behind keto? This article explains it pretty well.

<comment><USER28> No, the science behind feeling mental clarity after extended fasting.

Unfortunately, everything I could think to Google just returned a bunch of grandiose pseudoscience.

<comment><USER27> Yeah I'm not a scientist either but I would equate this to the opposite of feeling sleepy after a big dish of pasta. Food does have a certain effect on the body especially if it's full of carbs. What I get out of fasting and keto is the opposite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I do keto once a year for about 3 months, and truth be told I feel like a superman. I feel more energetic, loose a ton of fat (ironically with increased fat intake), get more stuff done and overall feel better. The only reason is stop doing it is because I'm a sucker for sweets :)

I started all this by asking a friend of mine who's a personal trainer what's the best way of loosing 15 kilos (because I was fat) and he prescribed me a keto diet. Lost all 15 in three months and no, haven't gotten them back.

EDIT: on the flip side, my wife's menstrual cycles got completely messed up and her periods started to hurt a whole lot more, so she stopped it.

<comment><USER30> I did keto for 4 months at the beginning of this year, and I did lose 40 pounds, and generally felt great. But then I started getting more active and picked up tennis. I found that after 30 minutes, I was completely out of energy. It wasn't that I was tired, it was that I literally felt like I was out of fuel. Taking a swig of Gatorade immediately picked up my game, and so I had to introduce carbs back into my diet just to stay active.

<comment><USER29> That's quite the contrary to my experience. I combined the diet with a daily 5km morning run, and I had no problems with it, not only was I not exhausted, I was powered up. But maybe that's just placebo :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I have been living in ketosis for the past 2 years, very rarely breaking the lifestyle diet. Although the majority of my weight loss started off with calorie restriction and a high-protein/moderate-fat/low-to-moderate carb diet, I eventually hit a plateau for 6 months, until I finally learned about and tried ketosis, switching to a high-fat/moderatere-protein/low-carb diet which allowed me to lose 30 more pounds, for a total of 85 pounds, or 260 to 175 pounds. I have logged almost everything I have eaten with [https://LoseIt.com](https://LoseIt.com) so I have the data to show everything including before and after photos of myself, along with my complete understanding of my experience with ketosis. You can read my article here: [https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit-diet](https://mypost.io/post/no-bullshit- diet)

</comment><comment><USER32> I did a keto diet for a few months 3 years back and one of the things that I noticed very quickly was the reduced need for sleep. I slept at least an hour less every night and I felt great. Apparently it's due to a reduced production of melatonin.

</comment><comment><USER33> Anecdotes:

I started keto over a year ago after struggling with weight my whole life. I have always been heavy for my height. Anyways, two years ago I was in a motorcycle accident and the doctors told me that having plaque in my arteries significantly increased the damage (I had internal bleeding requiring surgery). So I decided to fix my shit. Started working out a couple times a week, but the weight didn't go down for six months, when I found keto.

I won't get into the benefits, unless anyone has specific questions. I just came here to say this:

Once in ketosis, I started learning to enjoy hunger. Enjoying hunger made weight loss work without much conscious effort. I have lost 50 pounds in a year, then maintained the lower weight for another year.

</comment><comment><USER34> If we're sharing anecdotes here, I've also tried a ketogenic diet for about 2 months. I wasn't trying to lose weight, I was just curious what it was like. The only change I noticed was I became slightly weaker, lifting only about 90% of my previous weights. But this might have been placebo, because I had already heard that it could happen. I stopped the diet because it made cooking and eating difficult for no obvious gain.

<comment><USER5> The first time I did keto I lost a lot of weight until I started lifting, and while the scale stopped changing entirely I continued becoming much more lean as a result. Definitely have more power lifting with carbs though.

Also it's possible that your carbs weren't low enough (the diet is extremely restrictive, generally you want less than 10-20g carbs which is most / all from leafy vegetables) and you may have been stuck in glycolysis/ ketosis transition which makes you feel weak.

<comment><USER34> I followed the restrictions carefully and confirmed ketosis with urine testing strips. And I didn't _feel_ weak, I just couldn't lift as much. I doubt I'd have noticed any difference at all if I wasn't lifting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> For those talking about ketogenic diets in general, try Atkins 2.0.

I'm not for fads, and I don't even believe claims that "caloric intake doesn't matter" if you only eat protein/fat etc.

That said, I've found that their Atkins 2.0 four-stage plan makes sense, and incorporates most of what modern studies say.

It's also not the caricature "steak and eggs" diet that some people believe Atkins or ketogenic diets are. They have some strict whitelist of food for the stage 1 (2 weeks, which you can extend to lose weight faster), but the other 3 stages gradually add back carbs into your diet, and you are even encouraged to add them "at your own personal balance", so you end up with a final balanced diet you can keep following forever that's not about ketosis anymore but health and sustaining your weight.

They do promote some of their own branded snacks etc, but you can ignore those, and they have tons of information on their site to do the diet on your own.

As I wrote in another comment, following it for 3 weeks, immediately after trying a couple of others for the last months to no effect. Not only I lost 10 pounds and counting, but am less sleepy and lethargic during afternoons at work, can wake up better, and have more energy. Those could also mean that I was gluten intorelant (never bothered to check, but I did ate tons of breads) and staying off bread made me better. Or maybe it's that I cut sugar completely which is also part of stage 1 (except for fruits and sweeteners).

I also don't care to eat anymore -- before I looked forward to every meal of the day (or snacked like crazy between).

</comment><comment><USER36> "Emerging evidence from animal models and clinical trials suggest keto may be therapeutically used in many other neurological disorders, including head ache, neurodegenerative diseases, sleep disorders, bipolar disorder, autism and brain cancer. With no apparent side effects. "

I suffer from bi-polar disorder and have been swinging back and forth between a "traditional" (IE eat too much of everything) and a keto diet. My wife has made comments that she can tell when I am on keto by my mental stability but I've never read anything to back that up until now.

My only problem with keto is cheating. If I cheat once then I crave anything with carbs in it. I don't usually have those cravings after about the first week of ketosis.

</comment><comment><USER27> Since we're discussing this, I wanted to ask a question in regard to electrolytes.

First time I tried keto everything was fantastic except I missed the electrolyte requirement and ended up with heart palpitations along with muscle cramps and overall crappy feeling once enough time passed and I unwittingly ignored the electrolytes.

Talking to doctors proved to be worthless because most of them haven't even heard of keto nor understand why anyone would do that.

Does anyone have advice or reading materials in regard to this aspect of keto?

PS I am a completely healthy male of 27 years old and active lifestyle. I'm pretty positive there's nothing wrong with me physiologically.

<comment><USER23> There are some great resources on the keto subreddit (reddit.com/r/keto). I personally had similar issues when I first started keto - several times a week i found i had to be conscious of my electrolyte intake and would supplement with broth and often almond milk (potassium). However 6 months in I've found it's less of an issue, even at lower electrolyte intake, but I'm not sure why. I never found the need to hit the super high recommendations on /r/keto though - I found that 4,000 - 5,000 mg per day was more than enough, and I'd get heart palpitations and muscle cramps generally under 2,500 / day. You'll see a lot of people on /r/keto saying you _have_ to hit 7k+ a day, and people who drink salted water all day - personally, I think that's overkill.

<comment><USER27> That's what I'm worried about. Taking in too much and simply the hassle of having to mix salted water every single day.

<comment><USER36> I take ZMA and potassium daily. I will drink electrolyte water too. When I get home from the gym and feel drained I will drink 8oz of chicken broth for the salt. I had some severe cramps before starting this.

<comment><USER27> Potassium in pill form is only sold in very small doses, correct? How do you reach the high daily minimum?

<comment><USER36> I don't know what the daily values are to be honest. I just take it until my symptoms, mostly cramping, go away and stick with that dosage. I basically eat broccoli or brussels sprouts with dinner every day. They both seem to have a decent amount of potassium.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If certain crazed bureaucracies have their way, it may become burdensome to benefit from ketosis: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_tax#Denmark)

When I experimented with keto, two products were essential to my ability to do so; coconut oil and butter. It infuriates me that some in positions of influence and power (but not of productivity!) would dare usurp people's dietary choices based on the careless assumption that saturated fat is bad. Although such propositions have so far been unsuccessful, I doubt the mischief has ended. Where is the Charlton Heston of fat!?

<comment><USER37> The 'assumption' about saturated fat is not careless. Increasing saturated fat intake increases total plasma and low-density lipoprotein cholesterol concentrations.

<comment><USER18> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22131700)

I support any form of ethical research, but not the hasty imposition of its ostensible results onto the masses. At least not in the case of personal decision in regard to diet.

As noted in the above link, ghee has been used for thousands of years. Health advantages have been attributed to it. There is controversy and that is fine. Let people make their own decisions. Certainly groups of people having nothing to do with the production, distribution and consumption of ghee have little claim to profit, although they may freely wail to their content about how much they resent it.

<comment><USER37> People should make their own decisions.

Here are the USDA's macronutrients dietary reference intake guidelines, with notes on adverse effects of excessive consumption: [https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uplo...](https://fnic.nal.usda.gov/sites/fnic.nal.usda.gov/files/uploads/macronutrients.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I do the opposite diet, the Fuhrman "End of Dieting" so called nutrarian diet of mainly veg and beans with meat once a week, sometimes less. Saved a ton of money on food, lost weight back to my early 20s levels and have stamina to do 2 jobs, one very physical(climbing stairs all day) and one mentally taxing that I do 5 hours a day before my physical job. I also have energy to get in a research paper after both jobs where before I wanted to crash and burn after eating a heavy meat meal. Complete anecdote but if anybody doesn't want to eat a lot of meat and keep a low weight read that book.

</comment><comment><USER39> Whenever I'm keto adapted, I can fast for 23 hours out of every day without any effort. I eat once, between 6PM and 7PM.

Recently, I've been following the zero carb movement, which advocates only eating animal products (meat, fish, fat, cheese, cream, egg) and drinking water. I'm looking forward to exclusively eat beef and drink water for an entire month.

</comment><comment><USER40> If you checkout the foundmyfitness podcast with I believe Dr. Satchin Panda, ketosis is discussed and the doctor indicates that you can eat sweet potatoes, or even ice cream once in awhile and not be taken out of ketosis. And even if it does you can get back into ketosis easily.

</comment><comment><USER41> I see a few ad hoc source recommendations, but is there a solid resource (or list of resources) surrounding this? Particularly who would benefit from this diet, good foods, what to expect from your first few weeks/long term, should it be something you do in phases, etc?

</comment><comment><USER42> I think the body can generate fat from any type of food, even sugars, the thing is just to learn to use that stored fat, instead of overconsuming

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone here got tips for a lactose intolerant vegetarian? (and I don't mean "eat meat" tips)

<comment><USER39> [http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo](http://www.reddit.com/r/veganketo)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> So keto is all or nothing?

I won't experience any benefit by just increasing fat calories and decreasing carbs?

<comment><USER39> You're correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Works very well for me. By far the brain works better.

</comment><comment><USER46> Maybe both.

</comment><comment><USER47> Nutritional information is laughably conflicting.

Example:

Eat meat, it's essential!

Don't eat meat, it will sky rocket your cholesterol!

Buy organic, it is much healthier!

Organic is over-priced and isn't proven to be healthier, don't buy into it!

Fruit is so healthy, you should eat plenty of it!

Fructose is bad for you, don't eat too much fruit!

Every piece of information you end up reading, there is another piece of information somewhere out there that completely conflicts it. What even is FACT anymore?

<comment> white-flame There's also the fact that bodies are different, and have developed differently and gotten used to processing things in different quantities and different ways.

All these studies looking at people overall to figure out the effect of some food on "the average person" is IMO misguided. We need to study links between foods and an individual's body state, be it their gut ecosystem, ethnic/genetic indicators, in combination with the rest of their diet, and such things.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Git GUI for Mac? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone recommend a good commercial or free Git GUI for Mac. Thanks. <comment><USER2> Not sure what features you are looking for, but Textmate has a Git Bundle that gives you access to a pretty good range of git functions. (It's what I use for all of my non-cmd-line or github git interactions)

<http://blog.macromates.com/2008/git-bundle/>

GitNub OSX:

<http://github.com/Caged/gitnub/wiki>

There is also GitK

</comment><comment><USER3> For a more fully featured and active fork of GitX check out <http://github.com/brotherbard/gitx>

</comment><comment><USER4> GitX <http://gitx.frim.nl/></comment>


Vectorized mentoring students in Distributed Systems - <AUTHOR> https://vectorized.io/scholarship/ <comment><USER2> I helped early on to review this plan for Alex and the Vectorized team, so I'm very excited to finally see it be released to the world.

Vectorized consists of quite the lineup of engineers ([https://vectorized.io/team](https://vectorized.io/team)) and anyone who gets to be mentored by them will be gaining a huge advantage when it comes to Distributed System design and implementation!

</comment><comment><USER3> ceo here;

you get:

1\. 1500 bucks a month. 2\. mentorship from ppl that have built very large systems before 3\. hack on _any_ project you want

Bonus:

You keep all your intellectual property. we don't care. we just want to help under represented groups in tech.

dm me if you need more details, than what's on the page.

<comment><USER4> Hey, I think I meet these requirements, I have degree in physics, have some computational physics experience from classes doing some simple parallelization of nonlinear system (bug population) but have had a hard time bridging the gap to breaking into tech. I do have an idea and having a mentor would be very helpful, I was wondering where I could dm you. Thank you</comment></comment>


Build - Polish - Polish - Polish - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oscardelben.com/build-polish-polish-polish

<comment><USER2> This explains why 80 lines of code to make a "todo list manager" in your favorite language can turn into 80K lines of code to make it a commercial success.

Don't confuse the sketch with the masterpiece.

<comment><USER3> Not quite 80 KLOC and not a commercial success (but featured by Apple as App of the Week)

<https://github.com/6wunderkinder/wunderlist>

Lots of nice Polish</comment></comment>


Get ideas for A/B testing from website evaluation by experts - <AUTHOR> http://visualwebsiteoptimizer.com/split-testing-blog/ideas-ab-multivariate-testing-website-evaluation-feedback/

<comment><USER2> _I think this redesign is definitely an improvement over existing design. What do you think?_

Oh, the irony is killing me.</comment>


Show HN: Broadcast 2.0 – Making Podcasts Social - <AUTHOR> http://broadcastapp.co <comment><AUTHOR> Broadcast 2.0 wants to make podcasts more social with the ability to tune to into what your friends are listening to, seeing whats trending, have a conversation in the comments feed and the ability to track your submissions</comment>


Skype lies, breaks "Skype-to-Skype"calls are free promise - <AUTHOR> http://skypejournal.com/blog/2010/05/30/skype-lied-iskype-3g-breaks-skype-to-skype-calls-will-be-free-promise/ <comment><USER2> Not fair. I pay my operator a monthly fee for mobile data (10 € for unlimited 384 kb/s including two SIMs / devices, to be exact). Skype pays for their incoming/outgoing data – it doesn't cost extra for them whether the data is originated from mobile network or <any-type> network. Skype is simply not justified to charge extra based on client's connection type, not even if I used Iridium network to route my bytes to them. Maybe Skype has grown big enough to behave as asshole and they know it.

<comment><USER3> Skype-to-skype is cool but when you're tethered to a computer and internet connection it clearly has limited to value to most people.

Now that phones that run apps and have internet connections are popular the game is changed entirely. They _had_ to give it away for free before because it wasn't as useful. When you can use this on the go it becomes much more useful and they will see many more people using it.

When things change that drastically sometimes you have to re-evaluate your business model.

<comment><USER2> Then moneytize transparently, i.e. based on true costs. Charging for skype-to- skype calls is fine as long as clients are treated equally whether they were using dial-up, wifi, satellite or avian carriers. The type of client's connection is as unrelated as the color of his/her socks.

<comment><USER4> People always seem to think that things are priced according to the cost to the supplier, that is wrong. Goods and services are priced to what the consumer will pay for them. Skype are providing a service and people are (they hope) willing to pay for the convenience of having it on their phone. Welcome to the free market.

<comment><USER5> You're both wrong--and rehashing an old argument that got resolved a long time ago. Goods and services are priced based on _both_ the supply side and the demand side, specifically upon the intersection of the supply and demand curve.

<comment><USER6> Not in a monopolistic environment, which due to Skype's strong network effect it may effectively be. The concept of a demand curve depends on multiple suppliers with different reservation prices.

<comment><USER5> No, there's still a demand curve. A monopoly has the power to set a vertical supply curve wherever they want (i.e. at the profit maximizing point) but the demand curve is still simply the demand curve.

<comment><USER6> Yes sorry, meant supply curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This probably has to do with whether or not a device is able to participate in Skype's p2p call routing. If being on 3g introduces too much latency or has too limited bandwidth to contribute in the network, then each client will have a marginal cost to Skype. Maybe they're trying to ensure they can keep up with that.

Or maybe they're just grubbing for money.

<comment><USER8> Interesting point. Though I thought I read recently that their planned switch to SIP would end p2p functionality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm intensely curious who's pulling the strings behind this, is Skype really to blame or is it the mobile carriers putting pressure on them to collect more ARPU by creating yet _another_ fee to collect from subscribers.

<comment><USER10> my bet is on the mobile carriers putting pressure on them, especially AT&T. The last I checked, Skype was still plenty free for Verizon. In fact, it seemed like Verizon and Skype took time to make sure their system worked wonderfully together, forcing local calls to go through Verizon themselves, international to have the option of going through Skype, and Skype to Skype going through a special phone number. In fact, I just tested Skype on my Motorola Droid on Verizon's service. It works wonderfully and said nothing of a soon ending of the free service.

<comment><USER11> If it was the carriers, Skype had all the hand--no one wants to hear that their carrier wants to make you pay more money. They could have announced that carriers were looking for ways to try and get you to pay but that Skype told them they wouldn't play ball. Instant win.

This stinks of a money grab on Skype's behalf.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Skype will break its freemium promise to Skype users in three months. Skype for iPhone will require a subscription to make Skype-to-Skype calls over 3G/Edge starting in September 2010 according to Skype. This changes things from "Skype-to-Skype calls are free", which they've been saying since launch, to "Skype-to-Skype calls are free over landlines and Wi-Fi unless your Verizon or Three mobile operator subsidizes your service."

Skype has no marginal cost if I make that iPhone 3G call. Why are they charging separately?

Presumably subscriptions will apply to future use of Skype-to-Skype on Blackberry, Nokia, and Android phones.

<comment><USER12> _Skype has no marginal cost if I make that iPhone 3G call._

If I were AT&T and I could start charging Skype for 3G calls, I would do it.

<comment><USER13> Shouldn't net neutrality prevent AT&T from charging more just because Skype uses a certain part of the internet?

<comment><USER10> This isn't a net neutrality issue. This is a 'people are circumventing our system through our system and we need to stop them', as well as a "our networks are HEAVY LADEN with traffic because of all these smart phones we didn't quite have the infrastructure to support. We need to start clamping down a little" issue (I imagine)

<comment><USER14> > This isn't a net neutrality issue.

Of course it is. Packets should be packets, if you don't have the network to handle the packets, lower caps or raise prices, don't start making people pay based on the kind of packets they send or receive. It is precisely a NN issue.

> " We need to start clamping down a little" issue (I imagine)

"Clamping down a little" is not a problem, "clamping down on (VOIP|Gaming|long-lived downloads|P2P streams)" is

<comment><USER10> > if you don't have the network to handle the packets, lower caps or raise > prices, don't start making people pay based on the kind of packets they send > or receive.

> "clamping down on (VOIP|Gaming|long-lived downloads|P2P streams)" is

P2P streams and long-lived downloads have two major things in common: heavy bandwidth over long periods of time. Those activities, in particular, are considerably heavier on the network than, say, downloading a single, or even a series of webpages.

One way the major carriers can do this is by disallowing certain kinds of activities. For example, as seen on the iPhone, users are not allowed to download files more than 10MB in size. That isn't a case of "what" a person can download, but instead an issue of "how much" a person can download in a small period of time. Is that still 'net neutrality'? And, if not, then how is VOIP any different?

(This is under the presupposition that the price increase was ATT's doing, and they're not doing it because it's taking away from their profits; but instead they're fearing that VOIP will cause an even greater tax on their already strained network.)

<comment><USER14> > One way the major carriers can do this is by disallowing certain kinds of > activities.

> Is that still 'net neutrality'?

If you disallow specific network activities, yes it's a network neutrality issue.

> users are not allowed to download files more than 10MB in size

I do not believe that is correct. The AppStore application is configured to not download applications over 20MB (up from 10MB since February) over 3G, and the iTunes application does the same thing for music or podcasts, but that's a setting at the application level. I don't think e.g. Safari refuses to download files more than 10 (or 20) MB, or that the connection cuts off with a corrupted file.

> That isn't a case of "what" a person can download, but instead an issue of > "how much" a person can download in a small period of time.

No, because again you're disallowing specific activities (e.g. VOIP, P2P) not certain network behaviors (data streams of over 1MB for over 10mn for instance). Therefore your network management is about activities (traffic shaping) not resources (resources management) which makes it an NN issue. Because you're arbitrarily preventing the users of the network from performing specific activities even though the network itself can handle them.

> This is under the presupposition that the price increase was ATT's doing, > and they're not doing it because it's taking away from their profits; but > instead they're fearing that VOIP will cause an even greater tax on their > already strained network.

I don't believe that for a second, but again if the issue is resources, then write policies in terms of resources, not activities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From Skype's perspective, how is the cell network different from any other ISP? It's the carriers who will shoulder the burden; and there's no indication that any of the fee is going to them, given that Skype says "operator fees may still apply". I don't get it.

<comment><USER16> It's many times more useful to use Skype on your mobile. If you're on 3G, it means you have no access to desktop Skype. And if it's more useful to you, they can charge for it.

<comment><USER15> The extra usability is a function of the carrier's network, not anything on Skype's end. And since many of us are already paying our carriers for data plans, why should Skype arbitrarily charge us a second time? I still don't get it.

<comment><USER16> It's pretty straightforward and not very "nice":

> _why should Skype arbitrarily charge us a second time?_

1) because they can; 2) who's going to stop them (definitely not carries who gain on that agreement)

<comment><USER15> No one's going to stop them from doing what's within the law; that's a given. I'm saying it strikes me as unethical, and it assumes a certain infancy in the public's tech acumen... which perhaps there is! But it still seems like a poor assumption to base a business on going forward.

Now I'm just hoping someone comes out with a iChat/AIM/Jabber/GTalk-like P2P standard for voice (does this already exist?).

<comment><USER16> Not sure about iChat and AIM, but GTalk already uses an XMPP-based protocol called Jingle. Theoretically you can use it between any 2 jabber clients which support it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Upon seeing this I am contemplating canceling AT&T service - keeping my iphone and get a Verizon or Sprint MiFi router and use Skype to place the calls, as well use my Google VOice number to ring my skype in number. I use my GV # now anyway so I can just forward it. I dont talk on the phone that much more so text, facebook, email and twitter.

Im not sure im going to do this but it's tempting even more when skype will be able to run in the background on my 3GS when 4.0 comes out. I would save myself $10 to $20 a month doing this. THe MiFi I can carry in my wallet.

</comment><comment><USER18> was it a promise to be free forever? or just one of their features, which they are free to change whenever they wish?

<comment><USER19> <http://www.skype.com/intl/en/security/safety/safe-payments/>

_Skype-to-Skype calls will always be free_

<comment><USER18> yep, it does say that quite clearly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm wondering how long Skype calling in fring <[http://www.fring.com>](http://www.fring.com>); will remain for free.

</comment><comment><USER21> What a sensationalist headline.

So what if they've introduced charges? If someone else provides this for free, go there. If not, cough up!

<comment><USER22> But they gave me their word!

<comment><USER23> where?

<comment><USER24> It still says so here: <http://www.skype.com/intl/en/security/safety/safe- payments/>

"Skype-to-Skype calls will always be free but there are a few things that cost a little such as calling mobiles and ordinary phones when you want to get hold of your friends that havent started using Skype yet."

<comment><USER23> Ok. That's much better. When people maike claims, it is always good to put evidence. The discussion would have been different if that was put there.

But I believe charging is the only was that network operators will allow Skype to work at all. It would be good if they explained it that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I guess I don't think it's that big of a deal. When Skype promised "free Skype-to-Skype", I don't think they considered that they would eventually be used on smartphones. It'd probably be smarter if they'd just charged a few bucks from the app first place, though.

This may also be a condition imposed by Apple, because people with unlimited data plans would use Skype instead of their (limited) included airtime, which I'm sure doesn't make cellular partners too happy.

<comment><USER26> But does Skype via 3G actually cost them more than a WiFi call? Assuming their calls still use the data network, it's not like they have to buy and maintain gateway equipment. I don't see how the smartphone issue is relevant.

I agree though, that this move may be more political than anything else w.r.t cellular partners.

<comment><USER11> It doesn't cost them anything more, but I bet it means more usage. It's a lot easier to have Skype always in your pocket than just when tied to WiFi. I think they foresaw a future when data-plan only phones make all their calls "for free" through Skype.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> When I bought my last phone nearly three years ago, the selling point was that pre-installed skype app worked for free over their 3G network and skype to skype calls were free. Skype out calls were barred though. I presume this new charge only applies to iphones? If it is the case that Apple badgered them into applying a charge which some are suggesting, I presume this information will leak at some stage. Won't be good PR if true.

<comment><USER28> I can think of absolutely zero reasons, technical or otherwise, that Apple would _want_ Skype to charge for only its iPhone software, much less a reason strong enough to "badger" them into charging. Isn't it far more likely that Skype's new buyers see that they need to begin to monetize their largest usage stream in order to survive, especially since that usage stream has started to migrate to more "usable" platforms?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Somewhere, some company will level the playing field on this feature. It's happened to phone companies, why not on this app?

</comment><comment><USER30> Does this have anything to do with a potential difficulty in establishing direct connections between Skype clients that are both on 3G networks? Are they running relays for these clients that they are trying to recuperate from?

</comment><comment><USER31> I was already considering a full jump to Google Voice. This may seal the deal.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think they started lying earlier when they offered 'unlimited' that isn't really unlimited, but subject to a so-called fair use policy. I would call that 'virtually unlimited'. FTC, where are you??

</comment><comment><USER33> I lost any trust for Skype the first time they emailed me that I had 7 days to use some credit or they would confiscate all of it. How is that not theft?

<comment><USER34> That was discussed here, probably when you brought it up last time. It's the same reason that gift cards expire and properly written NDA's have time limits. Nobody wants to owe somebody something until the universe dies, especially accountants, and especially if the people to whom that debt is owed, are dead or have forgotten about it. It would be insane to carry it on your books until doomsday.

<comment><USER35> I disagree with this, it's entirely possible for vendors to honour gift cards (and credits) indefinitely. In fact, here in Canada, in most provinces, if not all, it's law and has been for some time: <http://www.gov.on.ca/mgs/en/News/133713.html>

<comment><USER36> The problem comes in the accounting. Try borrowing X million dollars against 2X million in assets when you have 4X outstanding debts that can be called in at any time. Sure, they probably won't be, and you might discount them to near zero, but the lender won't be so generous.

<comment><USER37> But in the sale of the gift cards/credits, at a 1:1 exchange rate, your assets would increase as well as your debt, surely?

<comment><USER36> Sure, at the time of sale. But you will spend/disburse the money you receive in short order and be left with a looming debt on your balance sheet.

<comment><USER38> Exactly.... I actually found Skype's way of handling this to be far more fair and less predatory than most - not only were they generous with the expiration date, but they insisted you only had to log in and place a single call (spend a penny or so) to keep it going another 6 months, or whatever.... it's just keeping dead liabilities from accumulating... and skype was NICE about it, sending me all those notifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Skype mobile is really a different kind of product. If they want to charge for it they are entitled. Phone calling is getting cheap enough as is.

</comment><comment><USER40> Skype not playing honest with their customers? Hardly news is it? I dropped them several years ago because of basic dishonesty on their part.

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm not bothered by this, because it's their funeral. There are other VoIP programs, it's not particularly difficult to write one, and with Android set to dominate open-architecture 3G phones, something else will dominate VoIP. Hopefully, something open source and using an open protocol. (SIP?)

Oh and if you bought an iPhone and can't access the cost-free VoIP solution? That'll teach you to buy locked-down hardware, you idiot[1].

1: this description does not apply to people who took an eyes-open decision to buy locked-down hardware, knowing it was locked down, realising the consequences and accepting them.

<comment><USER42> It's not easy to create a competitor to Skype.

Skype's main attraction is not the technology, but the network effect and it's closed system. You could make a cool SIP client for Android/iPhone/etc. but it wouldn't matter because you wouldn't be able to talk to 90% of the mundane's who only have Skype.

<comment><USER43> Skype's network effect and lock-in is extremely small compared to something like Facebook, or even something like an IM network.

Think about it: early adopters (techies) start using a free competitor (or several free competitors). They get their less tech-savvy friends and family to switch. The rest of the world follows. It's easy to explain ("It's like Skype"), the carrot is obvious ("except it's free"), and the lock-in is minimal - download a new client, enter the contact you want to call, and you're done. There's no chat history, or complex social network, or tons of uploaded pictures, etc. etc., to keep people from switching.

I don't think the "mundanes" really use Skype, they still use regular phones. If someone's savvy enough to use Skype, they're savvy enough to switch to a free competitor if it's good enough.

<comment><USER44> Last time I checked Skype's user count was above 500 million and they have 50+ million daily active users. Their network effect is pretty huge.

<comment><USER43> That really depends on the average size of someone's network. How many networks are only composed of 2-3 endpoints? (most common example - talking to family "back home"). Compare to Facebook's 100+ average network size.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ReadTheMan – searchable online man pages - <AUTHOR> https://readtheman.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm looking for some feedback on this side project. I've been looking at a number of man pages and I realized that most man page sites are lacking in search utilities and in their presentation. So, I started building ReadTheMan. My current goals are to expand the amount of quantity and improve the quality of existing pages. Thanks for checking it out!</comment>


Show HN: Covid-19 Risk Estimation Tool - <AUTHOR> http://pavelkasik.com/covid-19-risks.html <comment><AUTHOR> After reading the BMJ study ([https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3223](https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m3223)), I realized a lot of people could benefit from a more nuanced understanding of the various factors and how they contribute to the overall risk of COVID-19 transmission. But the table in the study was somewhat hard to read, since it was basically a five-dimensional chart. I am a science journalist who started learning how to code this March. This is only my second public tool, so please be gentle. Comments and suggestions are appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER2> If I move them all to the middle, no change to risk. Then, Environment to the far right and back. It's now medium risk.

The console has some errors, which might be related.

Otherwise it's a good interactive summary that's not talked about enough.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the bug report. Just fixed it. A version of a picture was missing, and the script interrupted because of the error. And thank you also for your kind feedback.</comment></comment>


100 years ago, American women competed in Venus de Milo competitions - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/100-years-ago-american-women-competed-in-serious-venus-de-milo-lookalike-contests <comment><USER2> For Science!</comment>


List of companies incorporated with Stripe Atlas - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1D4ZhaWwrOdEt38Byo1bT4dhwIW5Z2BAoj-PGOfzNayg/edit#gid=0 <comment><AUTHOR> Feel free to add companies you know off that are incorporated with Stripe Atlas.

<comment><USER2> I appreciate this list but I think that you should have some protection from malicious actors.</comment></comment>


A debit card for your Bitcoin Wallet - <AUTHOR> http://blog.greenaddress.it/2014/06/19/a-debit-card-for-your-greenaddress-wallet/

<comment><AUTHOR> Link to the reddit discussion [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/28jozx/a_debit_card...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/28jozx/a_debit_card_for_your_greenaddress_wallet/)</comment>


Why Git Sucks and You'll use It Anyways - <AUTHOR> http://vospe.com/2010/09/22/why-git-sucks-and-youll-use-it-anyways/

<comment><USER2> Everything in the IT field sucks, learn to love it. He gives four reasons why Git sucks and tons of reasons why it doesn't. Cool slideshow but it should've been titled "Intro to Git"</comment>


Police hijack a botnet and remotely kill 850k malware infections - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/01/police-botnet-takedown-infections/ <comment><USER2> Previous submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20827480](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20827480)

</comment><comment><USER3> This headline is misleading. Avast did the work. The police just gave the necessary legal approval.

<comment><USER4> Irrelevant. If it is authorised by the police, then they did it, and while Avast is the tech people behind it, attributing it to the police is more correct (it could've been some other tech company, but only the police can authorise such an attack).

<comment><USER5> > Irrelevant. If it is authorised by the police, then they did it, and while > Avast is the tech people behind it, attributing it to the police is more > correct (it could've been some other tech company, but only the police can > authorise such an attack).

Doesn't the government have to authorize this kind of thing in order for it to proceed, as a prerequisite? Do we also say the government IPO-ed when a company IPOs? It can't happen without authorization. Just trying to understand this rationale.

Seems weird to give credit for allowing something versus the actual doing of the thing.

<comment><USER6> Well I don't know how France works but in the US, no the government doesn't need to authorize this. The police are required to follow the law just like everybody else. A judge could grant some sort of ex-parte legal judgement making an action legal. The police here just said "yeah we don't care." The article says the prosecutors gave the go ahead, my guess is that they said "Yeah we got all the evidence we need, shut her down" and that's what happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is an interesting line to cross - that a company you have no relationship with can make changes to your machine - admittedly in the name of good.

Imagine that flaw they found turned out to have been a trap and they bricked 850k devices.

<comment><USER8> That's why they do it with careful monitoring and approval from law enforcement. If you tried to do this vigilante-style, no matter how good your intentions, you're asking for trouble.

<comment><USER9> There was that one guy who intentionally bricked devices.

I feel like being too lazy to update probably means you don't care anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Loving the fact that Monero tries hard to stick to, one CPU one vote!

</comment><comment><USER11> Microsoft has done the same in the past, takeover a botnet and the feds went to a judge to get approval to disable it on the infected machines.

It sounds silly in a way but legally seems like a good process.

</comment><comment><USER12> By the time the AV companies get police involved there always seems to be a million infections. I guess they don't have resources to do this often and locations are disparate, often coming from off limits regions for western police.

Still I often wonder what a well funded and legitimately defensive gov agency could be capable of accomplishing if they wanted to seriously take on this problem.

<comment><USER13> > By the time police get involved there always seems to be a million > infections. I guess they don't have resources to do this often.

According to the article, the police didn't do much of the actual work -- the police were only involved to give legal approvals necessary for Avast to avoid legal trouble.

Edit: Added the original quoted comment text, OP has since edited

<comment><USER12> Yeah thanks I tried to clarify. That's very relevant, that an AV company had to tell them and do everything in the first place.

If they don't have the advanced skill set needed to shut them down they can always contract it until they develop their own in-house experts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Cool story, just a tiny nitpick..

> The malware also has wormable properties

Malware doesn't have wormable properties, the bug being exploited to implement the worm is the thing that is 'wormable' in industry parlance. I think what they mean here is that the malware is a worm

<comment><USER8> I think that's a little pedantic. The wormable properties are the vulnerabilities the malware is exploiting. The vulnerability and malware could both be considered to have wormable properties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this, like, a good thing? What other kinds of exploits are governments going to greenlight for the "good of the people?"

<comment><USER5> > Is this, like, a good thing? What other kinds of exploits are governments > going to greenlight for the "good of the people?"

This is an exploit of the malware though, not some other third-party app that just happened to be on the same box.</comment></comment>


Paul Graham's Essays Visualized as Infographic Series - <AUTHOR> https://blog.adioma.com/tag/paul-graham/ <comment><USER2> What was the criteria for choosing which essays to visualize? I don't see a lot of his popular one...

<comment><AUTHOR> We only pick the one that have a structure that is easy to visualize. Which usually looks like headings and sub-headings or a list of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't see a lot of his essays here... Did I miss something?

<comment><AUTHOR> see the reply above ^

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> lots of work and many facts, wow. Do you do the analysis manually or extract the facts somehow automatically?

<comment><AUTHOR> All the work was done manually. We just selected those essays which has a structure, summarized either in bullet points or headings. We edited each fact, reducing text, because with icon you don't need as much text. Regarding automation I experimented with text extraction (using abstractive text summarization) but haven't got good results yet.

<comment><USER4> Understood, thanks. The "Where Are The Big Ideas" is my favourite.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, the infographic is loosely based on his essay "Schlep Blindness". I recommend to read the original essay as well

"How to hold a program in once head" \- is my favorite one.

<comment><USER4> > ordinary programmers working in typical office conditions never really > understand the problems they're solving

Cannot agree more</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Modern culture emerged in Africa 20,000 years earlier than thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-modern-culture-africa-20120730,0,4412702.story <comment><USER2> I am not sure exactly what the newspaper's claim is, I didn't see any links to a technical paper that I could follow up on. But I understood behaviorally modern humans to have been around for about 50,000 years. Are they just claiming that modern humans reached southern Africa earlier than previously thought?

<comment><USER3> I think this is exactly the case. Behaviorally modern human in South Africa, about the same time as in Europe.

I believe the paper is <http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/07/23/1202629109>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm know if I'm wrong about definitions or the title is misleading but this is talking about the definition "modern humans" in the sense I was expecting: neolithic culture (agriculture, pottery, permanent settlements, megalithic relics, large groups).

Rather this is evidence for what I've heard called "behaviorally modern humans." They know about behavioral modernity in other places (including Africa) during this period. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_modernity>

Still fascinating, but don't expect 40 thousand year old pyramids.

<comment><USER3> Since some cultures are still hunter-gatherers and did not adopt agriculture, it would be strange to interpret culture as agriculture.

Also, megalithic relics predate agriculture. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gobekli_Tepe>

<comment><USER4> I meant "modern culture" and sure, all the elements of modern culture do not necessarily coincide.

Göbekli Tepe is still a mystery. It might be easier to push back the date for the neolithic revolution than explain how/why hunter-gatherers built such big structures and how they were sustained in the necessary numbers to do so.

Either the dating is wrong, the neolithic started earlier or our understanding of paleolithic cultures is flawed enough to make us rethink the paleolithic- neolithic classification altogether (maybe agriculture ins't such a key component).

Semantics aside, the discovery mentioned in the article basically finds evidence of human behaviors known to have existed during that period elsewhere in the world.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Help me open source my existing "Github for music" startup? - <AUTHOR>

asarazan posted a now-deleted thread about an album he posted on Github. In the comments, I posted the following:
* * *
I actually had something like this built (before I started coding) as a startup out of Rails & Flex... but, after ~12 months of being unable to solve some UX problems and pursuing the wrong business model, it's now just sitting online.
URL = http://youphonics.com/login; username => hnguest; password => goodolyc
Since some of you actually seem to be into the idea of Github'ing music (ericb, baddox, asarazan, xpaulbettsx, mrspeaker, zcid, JoachimShipper, johnny22, beaumartinez...), it'd be neat if any of you want to help me package and open source the code base!
* * *
I hope that, even though the original thread may not have been appropriate... this is. :)
[Edited for formatting, added guest credentials] <comment><USER2> Although the submission you speak of was deleted, its discussion thread wasn't[1].

YouPhonics certainly sounds like a good idea, capturing the "social" aspect of GitHub. I assume it allows you to mash-up and remix peoples tracks? That would be killer, and I'm sure people using services such as SoundCloud[2] to host their tracks would quickly migrate to it. (If you have the time, post an guest login here for us to demo it.)

I second rch's motion[3] to GitHub YouPhonics' code―even if it is ugly and hacky (depending on your level of perfection, whose code isn't?!). If anything, you'd make all the effort you put into it even more fruitful.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2429930> [2] <http://soundcloud.com/> [3] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2430432>

<comment><AUTHOR> Re: [1] – true, though access to it became severely impaired for folks who browse HN posts through RSS readers. Still keeping an eye on the thread, thanks for linking!

Re: [2] – your assumption is 90% correct. There are nuances, but it becomes ridiculous to explain with words. Guest login: username => hnguest; password => goodolyc

Re: [3] – duly noted. Another one or two in your camp, and I will absolutely disregard the advice I previously received!

<comment><USER3> _Guest login: username = > hnguest; password => goodolyc_

This isn't working for me. Has it changed, or am I somehow boning it?

<comment><AUTHOR> It wasn't working for someone else before (~7 hours ago, just got back from dinner and a meeting), but I had fixed it before I left.

Just tested; it's totally working now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady This is a pretty cool idea. I'm sure DJ's and artists creating remixes would find it really useful. I don't know how much help I would be specifically but sticking the project on GitHub sounds like a good way to get some traction.

If you get it going I know I would definitely use it (and if I can help with any of the coding I will).

<comment><AUTHOR> Sweet! Let me know how I can get in touch – firstname.lastname@example.com, or @anulman

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It'd definitely be cool to see YouPhonics open sourced. There are a decent number of desktop-based OSS out there that do similar things, but not usually polished, and certainly nothing I know of that's web based.

I'd love to help out however I can.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woohoo! Send me over an email at email@example.com... that way, we can discuss your specifics without overcluttering the page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> <http://merge.fm>

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://indabamusic.com> <http://thounds.com>

Yes, there are others in the collaborative creation space. Indaba's currently leading, and I know and love the guys behind it.

<comment><USER5> Really? That's pretty cool, I used to be a developer at merge.fm, would love to talk to the Indaba guys if you could drop an intro. My site's: <http://roshfu.com> if you want to make sure I'm legit first :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Contacted you over Twitter to keep this page as uncluttered as possible ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How about creating youphonics as an org on github? I'd look for something to help out with, given a public repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I initially thought of doing. But, after seeking advice from 3 more senior developer friends, they recommended first going through the codebase and sectioning it out.

That said, I'm more than ready to prove them wrong. If at least 4 others ask for the same thing (through this thread, PMing, email...), it's on.

 _[Edited for clarity]_

<comment><USER6> That's sound advice - It might be tough to get excited about a rough codebase without some context. But rough code is still better than just an idea, or a typical spec...

I'll check back later.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want, just shoot me an email (email@example.com) and I'll let you know if/when the last vote comes through.

Worst case scenario: I'll invite you to a private repo shared via Dropbox.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for letting me take it for a test drive - it's ambitious, but definitely has potential.

Very interesting...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cost of a Join - <AUTHOR> https://www.brianlikespostgres.com/ <comment><USER2> I love a good writeup backed up with some performance benchmarks.

But I'm a little befuddled as to why the three possible solutions to putting a "status" column in your Products table were:

        1. Add a status_id column to the product table and reference a new status table
        2. Add a status_id column to the product table and let the app define the mapping of what each status_id is
        3. Add a status column of type text to the product table

What about :

        4. create an enum column with your possible statuses.

If you ever reach more than 65k possible statuses, you've got a different problem.

Perhaps the status example is just a hypothetical example? Although the author says they would use option 1 in this case, so what gives? Seems crazy to create a join table for 'status'.

<comment><USER3> I was using enums, but then I found out that you can't alter an enum inside a transaction.. very painful in a knex environment where up/down all occurs within a transaction

<comment><USER4> If knex doesn't provide facilities for running migrations outside of a transaction, you're going to have an awful time.

Useful operations like CREATE INDEX CONCURRENTLY can't be run in transactions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The submitted URL is not stable, it just links to the front page. So for the benefit of later-visitors, here's the direct link:

[https://www.brianlikespostgres.com/cost-of-a- join.html](https://www.brianlikespostgres.com/cost-of-a-join.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hmm, I think these results are somewhat suspect. Postgres isn't even really hitting its stride yet at a million rows. You have to start looking at 100GB+ database sizes otherwise most everything fits in working memory, or at least the indexes do.

My experience has been that joins are, in fact, cheap in larger databases but they do scale on the size of tables, so you should be cautious about excessive joining.

In the extreme case, I wouldn't make a table for each attribute unless there were some overriding reason (at which point you've rediscovered column-based databases essentially). I do sometimes go up to 5th or DKNF normal form though, which I think is substantially beyond what most people designing or revamping a database would do.

<comment><USER7> Normalize till it hurts... Denormalize till it works :)

<comment><USER8> Golden words. This is the cycle that keeps repeating in complex production systems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great to see this analysis. Especially with the proliferation of ORMs that create relationship tables like confetti it is very useful (and comforting) to know that needing to join a large number of tables is not in and of itself a performance disaster. It does not alleviate all my concerns with join-happy designs, but it is definitely good to know.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are two general (potential) problems due to the use of (multiple) joins:

* run time: performance disaster

* design time: conceptual chaos

Some of them are analyzed in [1] where it is essentially argued that join considered harmful and a join-free (column-oriented) approach is described. This approach has been implemented in [2] which is a library for batch and stream data processing, and in [3] which is a library for data analysis. Their main common unique feature is that they rely on _column operations_ , that is, data processing is described as a graph of operations with columns as opposed to using set operations like join.

[1] [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301764816_Joins_vs_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301764816_Joins_vs_Links_or_Relational_Join_Considered_Harmful) Joins vs. Links or Relational Join Considered Harmful

[2] [https://github.com/asavinov/bistro](https://github.com/asavinov/bistro) \- A general-purpose data analysis engine radically changing the way batch and stream data is processed

[3] [https://github.com/asavinov/lambdo](https://github.com/asavinov/lambdo) \- A column-oriented approach to feature engineering. Feature engineering and machine learning: together at last!

(Disclaimer: I am an author)

</comment><comment><USER11> I really don't understand the reasoning for the 3 choices:

 _1\. Add a status_id column to the product table and reference a new status table_

 _2\. Add a status_id column to the product table and let the app define the mapping of what each status_id is_

 _3\. Add a status column of type text to the product table_

3 is unacceptable under any circumstances, and 2 really just makes no sense from a database perspective (unexplained values in a database is just wrong).

Choice 1 is pretty normal, but I am really curious about the whole idea that any app needs to join with that status table to get anything but flags, values, state, or labels associated with that status. The idea of using a status table as the starting point of any join is just wrong and shows some very poor data management in the relationship between the app folks and database folks. I can see using a text field to look up and store the id, but really the mechanism that is populating your status table (with any flags, values, state, or text that is associated with each status) should generate the equivalent code or config for the app.

Indexes on status are often painful because status is generally not a large number of values and having an index that doesn't cut down the number of rows significantly is often a problem. My big rule about this is _if the app asks for a status field on an object, expect someone (probably your report writer) to want all the objects with the same value of status field_. A typical example is open invoices. You really need to look at where the index is sparse and does it help in each situation. This is especially true if you track statuses through time (e.g. itemId, statusId, effBegUTC, effEndUTC)[1]. It is definitely worth the time to look at work tables, views, and each index with someone with some experience (yes, a good DBA).

1) If you are mostly looking to get all the items currently in a single status then leave out effBegUTC from the index and alway put a single value in the effEndDt for current (e.g. 9999-12-31). an index with (EffEndUTC, statusId) is better than (effBegDt, effEndDt, statusId). Including the itemId in the index really depends on the optimizer and how covered indexes are handled.

</comment><comment><USER12> Would love to see an analysis that depends on the width (number of columns) of the table.</comment>


You Can Have a Sales Team and Still Do Inbound Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.ginzametrics.com/blog/you-can-have-a-sales-team-and-still-do-inbound-marketing <comment><USER2> I don't know - there's a lot missing from this article/post. No offense but you can't have a "sales team" if you have to read this article to determine whether or not it's right for you. I'm not trying to be flippant so I hope my writing isn't making this come off in a negative way. What I'm trying to express is just how difficult it is to build a sales model from the start, and then to execute that model. It's just not easy for a first-timer and, let's be frank: that's who is reading this article.

Can your business support a sales team? It depends. Hell, it depends on so many factors that I don't even know where to begin.

I started writing out examples/questions but it's just too much - there is so much missing info that it's just not time/cost effective to write it out. As rpwilcox says, this is business 101 and, IMO, if you are still at business 101 stage, you don't have the experience to build a sales team.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Scott - don't worry, it didn't come across as too negative and I appreciate your feedback. :-)

There is definitely a lot missing as my main goal was just to help people realize that it's not an either / or thing when it comes to sales vs. inbound marketing. Granted, this is business 101 but in the startup community, because of the speed at which companies move, you have first time entrepreneurs without that business 101 experience trying to move the needle in a meaningful way in a very short time. It's because of this that answering these sorts of fundamental questions is ideally done sooner than later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Absolutely agreed. The sales team is for outwardly following up and helping get people into that top of the funnel - and educating them to pull them further into that funnel. I wouldn't ever have a business without them.

Inbound is a great harvester of existing interest, but not 100% reliable.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is something that both myself and a lot of other entrepreneurs have tried to figure out so I thought I'd share. Comments / thoughts appreciated!

<comment><USER4> Good article, ordered Predictable Revenue immediately. I'd like to read much more about sales in Hacker News. We hackers often forget that many Internet giants, like Google, rely a lot on large sales teams to generate their revenue.

<comment><USER5> I also ordered it. From what I've read so far, it will go alongside SPIN Selling and Crossing the Chasm as my favorite sales/marketing books.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you name your company? - <AUTHOR> How do you get a creative name that is: 1) Easy to say 2) Easy to spell 3) Makes sense to what you do 4) Has an available url <comment><USER2> The same problem that everyone else has: naming things is hard. I would probably focus on building your product first and then naming it after you've got something functional. Asking friends and family to come up with a name can sometimes help. There are plenty of online name generators out there that can help. One bit of advice I highly recommend, let the availability of the domain name you want dictate your name. Nothing worse than coming up with a great name and discovering you can't buy the domain name you want.

<comment><USER3> >> One bit of advice I highly recommend, let the availability of the domain name you want dictate your name. Nothing worse than coming up with a great name and discovering you can't buy the domain name you want.

This has changed. With the advent of generic TLDs, the breadth of available domain names have greatly increased. You can always add a suffix if company name is not available - XYZ.com is not available, try XYZ.tech. If not, try XYZtech.com, XYZ.io, etc..

<comment><USER4> That's generally a bad idea if you're a startup or any business. The main issue is that most people recognize a .com domain with being trust worthy. Whether that's reasonable or not is up for debate. And if you send email from .xyz domains, there is a higher probability of being marked as spam. If it's a side project using tlds other than .com would be ok, but for a serious business, don't.

<comment><USER3> I think that's only going to change.

Here is a $560B company that uses new gTLD: [https://abc.xyz/](https://abc.xyz/)

More [https://www.quora.com/Which-Companies-use-io- Domains](https://www.quora.com/Which-Companies-use-io-Domains)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been through the same issue a few months ago. This article has a few good recommendations. [http://startupbros.com/how-to-pick-the-perfect-name-for- your...](http://startupbros.com/how-to-pick-the-perfect-name-for-your- business-or-startup/) I'm not affiliated to them in any way, but hope this helps. Good luck :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> yes i would agree with all of those plus [http://www.marketingmo.com/creative- brand-development/how-to...](http://www.marketingmo.com/creative-brand- development/how-to-choose-a-great-brand-name/)</comment>


ClojureScript Koans: Learn ClojureScript from inside your browser - <AUTHOR> http://clojurescriptkoans.com <comment><USER2> There are some good criticisms here about some of the discontinuities in difficulty, but first and foremost I really want to congratulate OP for doing something to address the instant gratification problem in learning to program. You can open this site in your browser and immediately start interacting with code rather than trying to get your java environment/editor/etc. set up, and that's _fantastic_ , we really need more tools like this.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like this, but it seems too cryptic for a true novice to actually learn from, _especially_ if they've never been exposed to Lisp syntax. Who is the intended audience?

I see that it's something of a port of the Clojure Koans, has there been much feedback on that as to whether people are able to truly learn the language this way? I'm intrigued by new methods of instruction, but this seems like it would be a very frustrating trial-and-error game to a beginner, as there is virtually zero actual teaching. We're supposed to be making programming more accessible, not less. It seems like this kind of thing ends up as a fun toy/experiment for people who already know most of it.

It _is_ very nice though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Creator here.

You're totally right it's not a good way to learn the language in isolation. A little context: this is the first project I've built in any Lisp, so learning Clojure/ClojureScript from scratch is still very fresh in my mind.

When I worked through the original Clojure Koans, I had a REPL open and made judicious use of online resources to figure out each answer. As an experienced programmer who was brand new to Lisp, treating the koans as a sort of 'open- book exam' was very effective for me. Perhaps explicitly suggesting that workflow on the home page would be a simple but worthwhile addition.

<comment><USER4> Really fun! Reminds me of "little Schemer"* in the sense that there are no 'instructions' so you are encouraged to try various things out.

In my opinion this way of doing it is good. It works for me.

* [http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer](http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/little-schemer)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This goes from easy/novice up to advanced level in a short amount of time. I did some koans until I arrived at functions/9 which is:

(= 25 ( ___ (fn [n] (* n n))))

I found this one to be not so trivial, granted I'm still a novice clojure user, but I still think that it went up rather steeply here.

I think if they really want to introduce new people to ClojureScript, then the koans need a friendly help system and the ability to show the solution and have it explained to you.

It should also have a short introduction in Lisp that explains prefix notation / s-expressions. I think that would make things a lot easier.

<comment><USER6> (fn [f] (f 5))

I do love the format, but what I like a bit better about Clojure Koans is that you can see the previous ones for a bit of a reminder.

Maybe for each section, they could leave up the ones you'd successfully completed so you could refer to them.

Other than that minor nitpick, I love this.

<comment><USER7> Or the threading macro #(-> 5 %)

<comment><USER8> Or (fn [f] 25)

<comment><USER9>
        (constantly 25)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very nice!

Would like to see it feature a ToC so one can easily move between the koan categories.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! (Creator here.)

I came _this_ close to delaying the site launch so I could build in a table of contents, but figured it wasn't 100% essential to shipping. Given the great response I've gotten to the koans, I'll probably add one in very soon.

<comment><USER11> I'm working thru it in order. I didn't feel the need to jump around, but it would be nice to know how much longer I have to go, i.e. how many more screens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This reminds me of [http://4clojure.com](http://4clojure.com) with a simpler [nicer?] (but less featureful) UI.

I want to add a slightly off-topic remark, but 4clojure actually runs the tests in a sandbox on the server. This is compiling to ClojureScript, and I have to wonder if it's "good enough" or whether down the line some koans might run into problems being ClojureScript instead of the real Clojure on the JVM.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. I like the non visible UI. Almost Brett Victorian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> #5 in sequence comprehensions part doesn't seem to work for me. I've checked my solution in console clojure interpreter and it evaluates to true there.

<comment><USER15> Same here. After checking in a local ClojureScript REPL, I just changed the URL to sequence-comprehensions/6 and went on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was playing with this, but is a little long and I wanted to know if the end is near, so add a percentage bar also it would be useful to have an index of topics.

</comment><comment><USER17> Lots more Koans: [http://pineapple.io/tags/koans](http://pineapple.io/tags/koans)

</comment><comment><USER18> [http://clojurescriptkoans.com/#higher-order- functions/10](http://clojurescriptkoans.com/#higher-order-functions/10) got me good. Why is it one needs to use `(count a) (count b)` instead of just `a b` like worked when comparing string lengths in a previous ClojureScript Koan?

<comment><USER19> The `<` function only works on numbers but, unlike java, it will correctly coerce numbers with different representations.

        (< 1 ;; Long
           1.5 ;; Double
           2N ;; BigInt
           )

If you want java-style comparisons use `compare` instead.

EDIT: Ooops, this is cljs, not clojure. The correct answer is that string comparison is lexicographic in js:

        "is" < "length" < "word"

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome site!

Having done a few Clojure projects lately, I got most of these right immediately, but there were a few I messed up. It would be cool if you could go through these flashcard-style: one try for each koan in a category, then re-show the ones you got wrong, and repeat until you get them all right.

<comment><USER20> Anki, has Clojure flash-cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Really interesting way to learn. I made it into vectors and then got completely stuck on subslice. Maybe a hint text or something or a way to skip it or get the answer if I have not got it after a few tries.

I might be typical but once I hit that screen and could not go further I closed it.

Still really good work!

</comment><comment><USER22> I chuckled when I realized you could just copy and paste the expression and it will pass the equality test. Obviously you don't learn anything this way, but I'll admit I used it once or twice when I got stumped.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting... I would second adding some hints after _n_ failed attempts. You could just expect the user to go off to google but it'd be a nice touch to get a small hint in-place.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice, but needs help / clues</comment>


Snippets Velocity - <AUTHOR> http://allgeektout.com/2010/11/productivity-hack-using-notational-velocity-for-code-snippets/ <comment><USER2> The procedure described here is unnecessary and counterproductive. NV stores code snippets all by itself without any issues.

An explanation that I've had to give many, many times is as follows:

 _The reasoning behind Notational Velocity's present lack of multi-database support is that storing notes in separate databases would 1) require the same kinds of decisions that category/folder-based organizers force upon their users (e.g., "Is this note going to be work-specific or home-specific?"), and 2) defeat the point of instantaneous searching by requiring, ultimately, the user to repeat each search for every database in use.

The idea behind NV's search-by-default functionality is that your notes can be self-organizing; for any about-to-be-entered title you will see a list of (mostly) related items that can inform the final destination of your note. Unrelated entries do not appear, because your search will not reveal them._

<comment><USER3> Agreed, it makes way more sense to just put a 'snippet' tag on the entries for code snippets.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Curated – Find, share and discuss great content with friends - <AUTHOR> https://curated-app.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

I'm one of the cofounders of Curated and I am happy to announce that we have just launched our app as an Android open beta.

It's an app where you can discover, share & discuss awesome content you find. We have support for books, podcasts, articles and videos.

We made this app because we believe the best way to find something you enjoy is to have it recommended to you. With Curated you can find out what your friends are reading, watching & listening to - giving you a fresh stream of content suggestions that you're likely to be interested in.

You can also use it as a reading or watch list to save things you want to look at later.

You can access the android beta from [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockspin.w...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rockspin.weaveapp) We're currently working on the iOS version.

We're also one of the companies in this year's Startup School - being there has really motivated us and helped us reach this point, so shout out to anyone who's part of it as well!</comment>