Single dose of psilocybin eased cancer patients' anxiety, depression for years - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/single-dose-psychedelic-drug-eased-cancer-patients-anxiety-depression-years-n1123451 <comment><USER2> I've taken mushrooms quite a few times. Sometimes, it's just been mild and giggling at colors and nature. Pleasant, but just kind of a fun drug.

With a moderate dose, you tend to be introspective and consider your own life and relationships in different ways. There's usually a lesson at the end.

With higher doses, it's sometimes been just extremely confusing and not at all fun, to the extent that I'd forget my own name or what I've taken and basically just all memories. It's very frustrating to be in that state, constantly trying not to fly away but not able to ground yourself. It's a little disturbing, but not horrific. I think the reason for this is that I am afraid to lose my ego/die and I would actually benefit from a slightly higher dose to blast it away...

With really high doses though, it's been a truly beautiful, enlightening experience. I still think of it sometimes. It's very difficult to really explain in words, but it feels like kind of extreme empathy with all life. Buddhists would call it going egoless. I just felt very at peace: we all live, we all die, and it's all okay. I'm not particularly religious or spiritual at all but that experience really changed me. It feels like life is in all these different forms, and you just happen to be one variation of it, but you could easily be any other living thing, so you just feel love and empathy for all life. And you know it's finite and you're not afraid of death. I would still attempt to avoid death, but I was just at peace with it if it was inevitable. Also, when you come back to reality you're utterly, utterly convinced that you've experienced something profound, possibly, despite all your rationality, there's a message form god inside this mushroom. It's almost like the mushroom is laughing at you: "good luck going back to your normal life now." You're left with "wow? That was that?!" It's annoying honestly, because I'm not religious at all and I know it sounds crazy to even say that out loud. Of course, that feeling does slowly fade away like a distance dream or memory.

A great story it reminds me of is "The Egg" by Andy Weir:

[http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html](http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html)

<comment><USER3> This ties nicely into the two questions I have about the article.

First, have you seen clear, lasting changes in anxiety and depression? If the single-dose effect for cancer patients really is this strong, it seems like everyone who messed with mushrooms once in college should be 'treated' also.

Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

<comment><USER2> > First, have you seen clear, lasting changes in anxiety and depression? If > the single-dose effect for cancer patients really is this strong, it seems > like everyone who messed with mushrooms once in college should be 'treated' > also.

I think mushrooms can open the door, but you need to use them as a catalyst to take action in your day-to-day life to actually have lasting change. I've still been an asshole occasionally since taking mushrooms. Ultimately you're responsible for your own change, but mushrooms can help you want to change.

> Second, how well do those feelings of contentment stick around? The stories > I hear of enlightenment on mushrooms, DMT, any other "entheogen" all have > the element you describe of being unable to grasp the discovery after the > trip, and once it's in hindsight I can imagine that memory being anywhere > from comforting to aggravatingly out-of-reach.

I've had an egoless state for a couple hours or so afterwards, and then maybe for a couple days afterwards I'm generally more relaxed and happy: maybe I'll smile more and say hello to people I barely talk to. But the feeling fades after that. Lasting change happens if you really take the lesson to heart and create change in your normal life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) this study only had a six month follow up. Where did the headline pull five years' from?

2) there was no placebo group, just low dose and high dose. The investigators called low dose "placebo like," which anyone familiar with microdosing knows is bullshit.

3) the study size is still fucking tiny. With less than 30 subjects per arm, you can't take the central limit theorem for granted. With 566 patients screened and 51 accepted, I'm particularly leery - especially since they offloaded all discussion of their exclusion criteria to a supplement no one ever looks at.

4) They used a crossover study. What this means is, as per their methods:

Patient enrolled at week 0. Got low dose (or high dose) at week 4, on average. Got the other dose (high, if the first was low) at week 9. Follow up with outcome measures at week 24.

Crossovers are used to amplify your sample size IFF the effect of the drug is expected to be significantly shorter than the time period between administrations.

In this case, that's not true: NO previous research suggests that the mood effects of shrooms last significantly <4 weeks. And they know that, which is why their follow up was at 6 months.

In short, this study wasn't "high dose shrooms show improvement in mood for six months, as shown by comparison to placebo."

It wasn't even "high dose shrooms show greater improvement in mood at six months than low dose shrooms".

It's "people that take high dose shrooms and then low dose shrooms show better mood in a few months than people that take low dose shrooms and then high dose shrooms, with statistically invalid tests, and no placebo to show that this wasn't just baseline improvement because, hey, people do cope over time."

Shit study. Shit shit absolute bullshit.

Edit: My bad. I was looking at the original crap study. Not the 5 year follow up of the crap study. Old crap still crap.

<comment><USER5> >2) there was no placebo group, just low dose and high dose. The investigators called low dose "placebo like," which anyone familiar with microdosing knows is bullshit.

Care to elaborate? Microdoses are supposed to be below the active threshold.

<comment><USER4> Microdosing is beneath the hallucinogenic dose range, but not below the range of having any effect at all - eg, Prochazkova 2018, Anderson 2019 (both of the 2019 Anderson pubs).

I'm not saying the microdosing studies are well done, but they surely prohibit taking for granted that microdosing is a placebo. What little evidence there is tilts away from that.

<comment><USER5> >but they surely prohibit taking for granted that microdosing is a placebo. What little evidence there is tilts away from that.

No, I don't believe that's true. In fact, this meta study: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6364961/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6364961/)

actually explicitly mentions that the body of research doesn't support your claim about microdosing and placebo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> the-alchemist Some important details from the source:

\- "Eighty percent of the patients reported that their symptoms faded, and the effects lasted six months, the 2016 study found. At the time, this long- lasting effect was a landmark finding."

\- "The new study ... followed up with 15 of those patients nearly 5 years later, and found that up to 80 percent were still experiencing significant improvements in cancer-related depression and anxiety. Nearly all of the participants attributed their positive life changes to the psychedelic- assisted therapy."

\- "Next, he said, researchers need to conduct studies looking at brain scans taken before and after people are given the psychedelics, and also look for biomarkers that could indicate changes in the body."

So this is a follow-up study. Do an experiment, check six months later, and five years later.

Incredible, really. Forget the drug: we have scientifically figured out a life-changing procedure for easing cancer patients' anxiety for _years_ with a single dose. And it's super cheap!

The article also says they're going deep into the research, scanning brains next. Hopefully we'll see results sooner than another five years. :-P

I think the more interesting news is that the government have even allowed such an experiment. Anyone know where this research took place?

P.S. NBC's summary doesn't say (anyone have a sci-hub link to the original?) whether (or how) they accounted for the difference in time. i.e., the world was much different than it was five years ago, and people's anxiety changes too.

<comment><USER6> Many of the studies are being conducted at NYU and Johns Hopkins. You can find studies at www.maps.org.

Disclosure: I am a participant in a double-blind study at NYU that is researching the use of psilocybin for alcohol use disorder. The results (wanting you drink less) have been incredible. Life changing. The team at NYU is amazing. This is not just taking medicine. It is done with therapy, psychiatrists who are present during sessions ("sitters") and a heavy focus on set, setting and integration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It really is a miracle drug when taken in microdoses (and a complete mind fuck in larger doses) but be careful. If you have any trauma in your past that you've pushed down to be dealt with later, psilocybin will dig all of that right back to the surface. I love it.

<comment><USER8> I wonder where/how you can get it. Are there any medical tests going on that you can participate in?

<comment><USER9> So, not a lawyer but I'll give some non lawyer advice.

You can buy spores online because the active psilocybin is not in them. They are mushroom spores (it's all so stupid to make illegal, but that's another debate)

You can grow them very easily in spare space. You grow the mycelium in a jar with brown rice flour and vermiculite, there comes a point where you expose the jar to some light to help stimulate growth. Like any natural growing mushroom. Then you put them in a container that remains humid, and again light helps them grow as theyll grow towards it. Think of a mushroom growing under a leaf off rotting tree bark in the forest, same concept.

They're decriminalized where I am (denver) and easy to find. Not legal to grow and cultivate, but do it for personal use and noone is going to bother you. Start selling or distributing, yeah, no need for that. Dont do that, federal law is still backwards and you can technically get in some trouble.

<comment><USER10> Unless you know someone who deals this is the right answer. To add to this you can get spore syringes, and sometimes kits, from smoke shops. You may have to ask around and visit a few shops. Directions are easily found online.

<comment><USER11> You are totally right, but like anything illicit, Caveat Emptor... Had a former roommate who grew magic mushrooms from a spore syringe. She was convinced they were of good quality, but she was growing them in a terrarium on the floor in a shared room with a large pet rabbit. Cleanliness and Hygiene were sorely missing. I'm not a mycologist, but even my untrained eye knew something was way off with the mushrooms she was growing. She did not end up selling them, but took her lots of convincing not too.

Moral? The closer you can get to know those growing / harvesting the better. I've always had good luck through my connections for herb. I imagine in recreational 420 states, it's harder to ask the dispensary where to get Magic Mushrooms though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not a biologist, but a biologist friend of mine suggested that these results are specious because it is impossible to double-blind test the effects of psychedelic drugs. Does such skepticism have any merit?

<comment><USER13> We also don't do double blind tests for surgeries. We must have an accepted process for determining if a particular type of surgery is effective for various conditions. Applying the same standard here would make sense.

<comment><USER14> Although maybe we should.

I would love to find this study again, so far, no luck: someone decided to test an 'active placebo' for ACL surgery, of making four incisions in the usual places, but not actually scraping away at the ligament. It was comparably effective as the actual surgery.

This left me thinking that stimulating the immune system by causing trauma might be an underutilized medical technique.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've experienced this firsthand. It reminds you of who you are in a deep, basic way.

<comment><USER16> Does it remind you of who you are on a personal level, i.e. core values, aspirations, and what makes you happy? Or does it just remind you of your humanity, thus that you're connected to billions of other people through that alone?

<comment><USER17> Lower doses are more about the former, lots of introspection and viewing my life from an altered state.

Higher doses are all about the latter, a lot more ego death and huge weighty difficult to describe type emotions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If interested in this topic, read "How to Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan.

<comment><USER19> Or the classic Doors of Perception by Aldous Huxley. More of a long essay and available free!

[https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerce...](https://maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf)

<comment><USER20> Also see Huxley's _Island_ [1], his model of a utopia, where psychedelics are used for initiation. Huxley himself considered it his greatest work.

[1] - [https://doorofperception.com/wp- content/uploads/Aldous_Huxle...](https://doorofperception.com/wp- content/uploads/Aldous_Huxley-Island.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> That's not so surprising, given, that psilocybin dissolves ego almost completely even at standard recreational dosage.

We usually associate ourselves with ego and death is tightly linked with losing of ourselves.

But after you experience ego death once, you quickly realize that you're no longer afraid of death because there are no one who dies.

<comment><USER22> What are the legalities surrounding it? TX of all places has legalized thc free hemp agriculture. Shrooms seem to be the next wave of legalization an in some ways it seems like it is already partly legal. Spores at least are legal.

<comment><USER23> How is the legalization of a plant that explicitly cannot be used as a recreational drug related to the legalization of a mushroom which can be?

<comment><USER22> The cbd from hemp is used medicinally as are these shrooms. The recreational use is a complicating factor, but medicinal thc use paved the way fo recreational legality as well. Seeing a state as conservative as TX taking even a tiny step in that direction is surprising. I'm not sure how I feel about it all. Alcohol use is up, THC legalized, nictone use is down. We are legalizing and using soma, things that make us lazy, content and compliant. Shrooms may or may not fall into that category. It might make people "woke".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The recent documentary Fantastic Fungi [1] covers psilocybin patients as well (alongside other fun fungi facts), worth a watch, IMHO.

[1] [https://fantasticfungi.com/](https://fantasticfungi.com/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The doses: \- low dose (1 or 3 mg/70 kg) vs. a high dose (22 or 30 mg/70 kg)

Also they excluded people using benzodiazepines, SSRIs and MAOIs. I've taken mushrooms while on SSRIs and the trip is usually severely dampened.

<comment><USER26> > excluded ... SSRIs

Well, crap. I imagine it will be a few more years yet before I'm able to take a tiny dose. I'm a week in to taking Lexapro on top of Cymbalta, which I've been taking for over a year, and I'm hoping I can get some good results. Or at least even things out enough that I can tackle things enough to feel a little better and less anxiety.

<comment><USER25> In my experience the hallucinogenic effects are diminished but for me at least I still get a nice feeling of calm and well being. Usually the visuals are limited to a "shimmery" effect on clouds and trees, sometimes with some color but very mellow.

This is not medical advice. There are cases of serotonin syndrome from the combination of SSRIs and mushrooms. Use caution.

<comment><USER26> Thank you. Especially for mentioning serotonin syndrome. I've had supposed pain specialist doctors give me a half-dozen serotonin-affecting drugs, and then get aggrieved and hurt when I ask about serotonin syndrome. I've had something approaching it one night, and it was a terrible experience that I never, ever want to repeat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> For those suffering from similar problems and want to stay legal while giving this a try, you can buy fresh truffles in the Netherlands and do it yourself. For the first trip, it's very recommended that you get a tripsitter. If you want to try microdosing, it's not necessary although it's more of a long-term thing so travelling to NL for that might not be very useful. There are other ways to do this obviously.

The book by Michael Pollan, already suggested here, is a must read if you want to convince yourself and give it a try.

I can also recommend r/microdosing and r/psychonauts.

</comment><comment><USER28> My experience after getting really high on cbd is I see two completely infinite worlds.

One the universe which is ever expanding and one mind where number of connection make it as big and complex as universe.

I never noticed this fact until I was high that all the universe complexity exist in our own mind. It has infinitely many layers.

<comment><USER29> That is one heck of an atypical CBD experience! Sounds more like 5-MEO-DMT territory. You're doing something right man.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Incredible medicinal substance from nature. Not for everyone, like all medicines, but for those who it is suitable for, what a game changer. Have had some of the most profound life changing realizations of my life while on psilocybin.

</comment><comment><USER31> As a reminder like all medicines and psychotherapy, they really should be done with and through a trained professional than on your own.

</comment><comment><USER32> For someone with psychological trauma in his/her past, is it worth the risk of messing with one's head?

I'm thinking about something like visiting a resort-like place (recommended here; forgot its name) where they have experienced "mediators" that help you, and actual doctors.

<comment><USER33> There are conflicting reports about this. Some people with _latent_ mental illnesses can have them triggered by psychedelics. But there are plenty of people who anecdotally report being able to deal with past trauma through them.

It's impossible to predict how you'd react, but it sounds like you're looking in the right direction. Find a safe, professional place, and start small. You definitely don't want to start with a high dosage.

<comment><USER14> This argument has never set well with me. It seems to be a case of affirming the consequent: if you have latent mental illness, then psychedelics can manifest it, _therefore_ , if psychedelics trigger a mental health crisis, it must be because of latent mental illness.

I think it's quite possible, likely even, that psychedelics occasionally trigger mental health crises, sometimes long-lasting ones, in individuals who would not otherwise have experienced them.

They're also quite valuable, and that needs to be weighed against the risk. Having guidance and starting small, is good advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For those of you wanting to pick or grow your own mushrooms, I suggest watching _Identifying North American Psilocybin Species_ by Alan Rockefeller.[1] He's immensely knowledgeable on this subject, and covers some interesting legal issues as well.

Also, keep an eye out for upcoming legislation on legalizing psilocybin and/or mushrooms in your local area. Vote and put pressure on your politicians to make this happen, if you believe it should.

To have the best, most constructive experience, I'd strongly recommend reading _The Psychedelic Explorer 's Guide_ by James Fadiman.[2]

No brief summary can do this book or the subject of having a good trip justice, but at the very least be sure to have an experienced person you like and trust sit with you during the entire time you're on the substance, and try to carefully prepare for the experience and don't just do it on a whim at a party or a concert. Though such settings could work out, you will maximize your chance of having a good experience by choosing a safe, quiet space, where you won't be disturbed.

Be sure you don't have any other responsibilities for the day of the trip and perhaps the day after as well. Eat lightly the day before and day of the trip. Some people like to fast a bit, though make sure to stay hydrated. Have a clear, specific intention for the trip, and try to take something you've learned from the trip and make it a concrete part of your life afterwards. Depending on what you want to get out of the experience, you might also want to have some pictures of people you care about and maybe a rose to look at near the peak of the trip. There's a lot more to be said about this, and I'd really recommend you read the guide for more. _The Secret Chief Revealed_ , about an underground psychedelic therapist, is another great resource.[3]

If it is going to be your first time, make it really special. You'll never have a first time with this substance again, and you really don't want to squander the opportunity. Some people spend a lot of time later in life chasing the magic of that first time, and it's never the same.

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcL-7u80kjs)

[2] - [https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide- Therapeut...](https://www.amazon.com/Psychedelic-Explorers-Guide-Therapeutic- Journeys/dp/1594774021/)

[3] - [https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Conversations- Undergroun...](https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Chief-Conversations-Underground- Psychedelic/dp/0966001907/)

<comment><USER34> If you pick wild mushrooms be careful. A lot of people eat these by mistake and die. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerina_marginata](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galerina_marginata)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> is there a way to invest in psilocybin?

<comment><USER36> Ah. Here we go. The tech vultures wanting to get their hands on everything and commercialize it.

<comment><USER37> You know you're on ycombinator, right? It seems perfectly natural to want to commercialize something people want.

<comment><USER36> Sure maybe today's HN. Not the one I joined 12 years ago. When there were _actual_ hackers.

<comment><USER38> HN was Startup News before it was Hacker News. It has always had a strong entrepreneurial orientation.

<comment><USER39> There sure has been a shift though. You'd be just the guy to shed some light on these changes.

For example, when did flagged comments become unreadable, rather than simply folded up by default? I'd like to see the logic on that one, if any was given at all.

Was there an algorithm change that lets popular stories under active discussion on touchy subjects get disappeared with a few flags, or was that here from the start too?

Are there any logs you can point me to that would reveal the scale of removed stories over time?

<comment><USER38> It's hard to know what specifically you're referring to, but to the extent that I understand your questions, the answer is that things have worked that way for many years, certainly before I started moderating in 2012.

There was no need to post all those sibling comments; I didn't reply sooner because I simply hadn't seen this yet. That's one reason why the site guidelines ask you to email email@example.com instead of posting like this in the threads.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Yep, the worst thing about dying is the process, so this is a pretty big win for those that works

</comment><comment><USER41> I'm really skeptical of studies like this. There's a lot of motivated reasoning in proving the medical benefits of recreational drugs to aid in legalization; medical marijuana was one such example. And usually in threads like this it's almost always users coming up with glowing conversion stories of how LSD changed their life.

I don't like how HN has blind spots like these culturally. Just how Ritalin was used for ADHD in children and the worries of overdiagnosis should really make people skeptical about this, if just to make you think what the side effects or problems were from something that is a useful cure.

<comment><USER42> Can you link me to a study that _doesn 't have_ a motivated reason for proving something behind it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Example #4,990,275 of an effective treatment denied to Americans, because we bizarrely allow a police agency (DEA) to set national medical policy.

<comment><USER44> Are they medically allowed anywhere?

<comment><USER45> medically I don't know but in the Netherlands you can buy magic truffles in Smartshops the same way you can buy weed in coffeeshops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> How do you guys all seem to have these experiences? I'm in Europe and would not have a clue how to test this.

</comment><comment><USER47> There is a clear survivor basis in this study...

</comment><comment><USER48> Side effects may include [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mmamania.com/platform/amp/2...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mmamania.com/platform/amp/2012/9/9/3306749/mma- fighter-sentenced-50-years-prison-ripped-friends-heart-out-cooked-it)</comment>


Do We Need a Theory of Everything? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/blog/do-we-need-a-theory-of-everything <comment><USER2> Much discussion, two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815824](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23815824)</comment>


How an arcane statistical law could have prevented the Greek disaster - <AUTHOR> http://economicsintelligence.com/2011/07/28/how-an-arcane-statistical-law-could-have-prevented-the-greek-disaster/?blogsub=confirming#subscribe-blog <comment><USER2> Other fun I've had with Benford's Law.

1\. Spotting odd things in MPs' expenses: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/its- probably-worth-testing-mps.h...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/its-probably- worth-testing-mps.html)

2\. Spotting odd things in BBC executives' expenses: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/running-numbers-on-bbc- executive...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/running-numbers-on-bbc- executives.html)

3\. The Iranian election: [http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/benfords-law-and- iranian-electio...](http://blog.jgc.org/2009/06/benfords-law-and-iranian- election.html)

4\. New Age mumbo jumbo: [http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/any-sufficiently- simple-expl...](http://www.jgc.org/blog/2008/02/any-sufficiently-simple- explanation-is.html)

<comment><USER3> Benford's law does not apply to some of those things! In particular not to expenses.

Benford's law only applies to things that experience exponential growth, things that obey a power law distribution, and things that are totals of random processes.

Expenses are none of those.

<comment><USER4> How could expenses not have a power law component to their distribution? Sometimes you're buying an expensive thing, and sometimes a cheap thing, and you don't buy something between $999 and $200 dollars nine times as often as you buy something between $199 and $100.

<comment><USER5> If you have a 40$ meal limit on your expence reports you would expect to see a lot more 3X$ meals than 1X$ meals.

<comment><USER4> Yes, you will certainly get artifacts at the top of what you can expense. You will probably also get distortions at the bottom where you'll have some threshold of "not worth expensing." There will almost certainly be distortion around the boundaries, but as long as you have a big enough range you should be able to see a Benford's law effect in the middle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Benford's law would not have stopped the groupthink, willful ignorance and corruption which actually drove the Greek disaster. It's not like Greece's problem with tax collection was a well-kept secret, it's just that nobody wanted to face the facts.

<comment><USER7> I seem to remember at the time there was widespread reported skepticism about a number of countries' data. It was just accepted that the central European elite wanted to expand to sell their wares to these dodgy countries and prevent conflict. It shows how dependent the lender is to the lendee and how both sides don't face up to the reality.

<comment><USER8> Also, Greece's original accession to the EU was motivated in part by geopolitical considerations; Greece applied for membership shortly after a democratic government replaced seven years of harsh military rule.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The Tim Harford article mentioned in this submission was submitted and discussed a couple of days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3008848>

The similarly mentioned Ben Goldacre article was also submitted, but that got no discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3007964>

A detailed discussion by Terry Tao of Benford's Law (and more) can be found here:

[http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law- zipfs-...](http://terrytao.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/benfords-law-zipfs-law- and-the-pareto-distribution/)

</comment><comment><USER10> The issue with using Benford's Law with analysis is that as soon as people realize that you're using it, data can easily be manipulated to make it compatible.

The previous article by Tim Harford mentioned that Madoff's financial data was Benford compatible. So I doubt that using it would have actually prevented the Greek or any other disaster.

<comment><USER11> The article says the opposite, though it's hard to put a lot of credibility on something starting with "according to statisticians"...

 _According to statisticians, it is almost impossible to manipulate data in a way that a certain outcome is guaranteed and Benford's Law is met at the same time. Hence, tax authorities in several countries are using Benford's Law as a default testing device._

<comment><USER10> I re-read the article and you're right. The article seems to imply Madoff as an exception rather than the common case, but I still feel that if data is being manipulated at such a vast scale where an entire countries economic activity is misrepresented, you will be able to find people as smart as Madoff to 'fit' the data as per requirements.

<comment><USER12> You certainly _can_ find people smart enough to make sure that their fraudulent statistics will meet Benford's Law (or any other data model you wish). The article points out that Greece _didn't_ find people this smart.

Not meeting Benford's Law is a good indicator that there has been some dodgy dealing. However, meeting Benford's Law is not a good indicator that everything is above board.

<comment><USER10> You're looking at it from the opposite point of view than the one I'm making.

The reason Greece didn't find people smart enough to satisfy Benford's is that Benford's wasn't being used in the audit.

If it was common knowledge that audits utilize this Law, you can bet that Greece's data would have been compatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nice geek porn, but the title and the premise is basically nonsense.

EU politicians knew for many years that Greece was scamming things. Maybe not so much when the Euro started, but well before it all blew up. All kinds of circumstances, however (such as the need for Greece's vote on some other hot issue of the moment) made sure that no one had the will to really do something about it.

Statistics is nice and dandy, but it doesn't help a dime in fixing the broken mess that is EU politics.

ps. Fun trivia: if the EU applied for EU membership, it wouldn't get in because it's too undemocratic.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's nice that they made sure the data set contained the key data to their collapse. The pensions of retirees. Would the results have been the same if it weren't included? I don't have access to the paper but I'd be curious what their justification for their choice was.

Among other things, they looked at the total level of debt, the cash reserves of the government and the pensions of retired civil servants.

</comment><comment><USER15> Radiolabs had a segment dedicated to such analysis. It appears the IRS/accountants use Benford law patterns to audit tax evaders.

<http://www.radiolab.org/2009/nov/30/from-benford-to-erdos/>

</comment><comment><USER16> Are there numbers from other nation's economies/ledgers that someone's run by Benford's Law?

<comment><USER12> Not sure if you skimmed the linked article and missed this or not:

 _statistics from the Czech Republic, Sweden and the UK meet the Benford distribution particularly close and hence appear unsuspicious. All those countries have no interest in joining the Euro and therefore do not have to meet the convergence criteria. On the other hand, statistics from Latvia, Belgium and Romania (the latter notorious for its corruption) appear very suspicious, as well._

And from Tim Harford's article in the FT: [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/171aaa36-d8f1-11e0-aff1-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/171aaa36-d8f1-11e0-aff1-00144feabdc0.html)

 _Romania, Latvia and Belgium also have abnormally distributed data, while Portugal, Italy and Spain have a clean bill of health._

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> can you apply Benford's law to only 130 samples?? that's not a large set of data according to my book

<comment><USER18> As I read it, they examined 130 different time series. The article did not say how many observations were in the sample for each time series.

<comment><USER17> "They looked at 130 different values per country and year", they don't say how many years were studied but I assume the greece book fixing lasted only a few years so we are looking at ~500 samples. I honestly don't know if that's enough or not, on wikipedia they show examples of the distribution on less than 100 samples so I guess I'm on the wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The article says:

> According to statisticians, it is almost impossible to manipulate data in a > way that a certain outcome is guaranteed and Benford's Law is met at the > same time. Hence, tax authorities in several countries are using Benford's > Law as a default testing device.

I'd be very interested in evidence to support this. This doesn't sound correct. "Almost impossible?"

</comment><comment><USER20> Arcane ?

<comment><USER21> My thoughts exactly. Between reddit and HN I see a Benford's Law post every month or so.

<comment><USER22> Although in this instance I agree, I think the bigger point is that you shouldn't call _anything_ "arcane" on HN. Because it'll be well known to _someone_ and that someone—who is probably someone who could contribute a lot to the HN discussion—will think poorly of you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Come on, this is not even a real law, and the data are really shaky to justify the title of this post. 5% significance threshold means that Luxembourg or Austria satisfy the criteroa. So what? The EU is a large political organization, not a NYSE index. The real trouble for greece is not the fake accession data (Italy had similarly manipulated data), but the squandering of public money that followed.

I get it, geeks love to play with empirical laws, but this paper is at best interesting trivia. I could go on analyzing what could really prevent the disaster forever ...</comment>


Free Speech in the Age of Algorithmic Megaphones - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-domestic-disinformation-algorithmic-megaphones/ <comment> core-questions > The only way to avoid politicized battles and conspiracies around moderation > is transparency. As domestic accounts begin to be caught up in terms of > service violations that impact their speech, platforms must be crystal clear > about how these judgement calls were made. Since there will undoubtedly be > false positives, they'll also need a clearly articulated and transparent > appeals process. But as we wade into this debate, it's important to remember > that censorship is the silencing of specific voices—or the silencing of a > specific point of view—out of a desire to repress that point of view. That > is not what's happening here.

I think you'll find that the viewpoints and adherants that are being systematically censored across all major social media platforms would disagree with this. Even speech that is entirely within the bounds of the terms-of- service and could be reasonably construed as not-harassment is routinely shut down or shadowbanned on multiple platforms.

(Where's the evidence, you might ask? Alas, you'll have to trust archive sites, deleted-comment sites, screenshots, etc. to get anecdotal evidence on this at the current stage).

It's not sufficient for "transparent judgement calls" if the result is still the same: that certain viewpoints are deemed unfit for public discussion, regardless of any evidence and regardless of how polite and genteel the commentators are.

> This kind of moderation, which we are likely going to see a lot more of, is > viewpoint agnostic. It's based on quantifiable evidence of manipulative > activity.

Removing posts you disagree with is also manipulative activity, particularly when it comes about in a very inorganic way (social media companies moderating discussions, rather than moderators coming from the communities themselves setting their own standards).

It's all well and good to suggest that people who want to have these conversations do so elsewhere, but this is _deplatforming_, and it has the same effect as censorship in a world where only a small group of people truly know how to use the Internet outside of the walled garden. Social media companies are using tons of public infrastructure and are the inheritors of everything from DARPA projects to software developed in the public interest by F/OSS developers. They're not entirely private companies, in that sense; and as such they should understand their role as the modern public square and more closely respect the principles behind the cultures that spawned them.

In other words, if Facebook doesn't like what you're saying, it shouldn't really be up to them to silence you - but it _is_.</comment>


U.N. Official Warns of Gaza War Crimes; Only U.S. Votes Against Investigating - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/07/23/un-war-crimes-gaza/

<comment><USER2> US vetoes in the UN - [http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/geoff/UNresolutions.htm](http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/geoff/UNresolutions.htm)

Most are related to Israel</comment>


The Great American Soccer Hope Is Here (For Real, This Time) - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-great-american-soccer-hope-is-here-for-real-this-time/ <comment><USER2> Few weeks ago in US his _missed to be_ national team ran over that Mexico you're so afraid of, the main issue about that win is that Croatia played with the trully C team.

Mexico is everybody's worst nightmare, but our kids there left them just with the crumbs in 2:1 victory in the front of 70K Mexican supporters.

Too bad this kid is so young and chooses to play f##### sucker instead of football, he could even participate on the Croatia's bench close to Mateo Kovačić, Marko Pjaca and Nikola Vlašić next year when we'd finally take the damn cup in Russia.

Kristijan Mate Pulišić is the next good reason why I would continue to support USA football team as I always have supported. USA and Mexico are the best tournament playing squads in the world and watching them in Russia will be pleasure.

Too bad for Klinsmann, he afaic made the top technical move in Brasil, 5-1-3-1 with Dempsey in the middle of the field in the front of defenders and as the first part of three men axis with Jermaine Jones in the centre and Chris Wondolowski at the top. Iirc they had played just one half of one match or so in that formation, but it was enjoyable to watch it just like Sampaoli's Chile triangle of terrier midfielders.</comment>


The Shawshank Residuals - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304536104579560021265554240 <comment><USER2> Shawshank Redemption is one of the most "American" of all movies, the movie Frank Capra allways wanted to make but never did.

When I first saw this movie, in theaters, in 1995 I found it highly enjoyable, with a narrative very well built, but certainly not a classic. It is very conventional and I didn't see anything revealing or innovative about it.

Now I understand that its virtues are exactly its conventionalism. Its message is the same belief that drags people to churches and self help books: "preserve and you will prevail". The storytelling is perfect: a slow and steady stream of setbacks until a liberating end. It has a Morgan Freeman voice over, what can be more reassuring than this? That voice is so reliable that the man played the role God more than one time and Nelson Mandela.

Whenever you're unsure, confused and insecure about what you think or believe "Shawshank Redemption" is the most reassuring and comforting of all movies. Not even Frank Capra could do better.

<comment><USER3> 'persevere', and you will prevail

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, screenwriters are strongly advised to make sure their protagonist ends up in a jam...

<comment><USER3> ba-dum-tss

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Mr. [Stephen] King never cashed the $5,000 check Mr. Darabont sent him for > the right to turn his story into a movie. Years after "Shawshank" came out, > the author got the check framed and mailed it back to the director with a > note inscribed: "In case you ever need bail money. Love, Steve."

That's ... incredible.

<comment><USER6> King offers a number of his stories to student filmmakers for non-commercial use for $1.

[http://stephenking.com/dollarbabies.php](http://stephenking.com/dollarbabies.php)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for that - a bunch of good ideas in here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" Shawshank" was an underwhelming box-office performer when it hit theaters 20 years ago_

This is something to bear in mind when advocating shorter copyright terms or arguing that the market will establish the 'right' price for some piece of IP. Studios cross-subsidize pictures all the time as a matter of fiscal necessity. While _Shawshank_ has proved to be a very reliable money-spinner and secondary & tertiary market rentals thus subsidize lesser films, in turn it is because of the residual income from other films that films such as _Shawshank_ get made and have theatrical releases. Packaging films in the distribution cycle is a risk mitigation strategy: if every film had to be the subject of an individual deal then fewer and more (aesthestically) conservative films would get made, because neither producers' expectations nor release audiences are good guides to the long-term performance of a film. The same is true in many fields of the arts. Insistence on equating the commercial of cultural products with artistic merit promotes the lowest common denominator of whatever performs best in the initial release window, and 'whatever performs best' is typically a function of the marketing budget, which these days makes up about 50% of a film's headline cost.

<comment><USER7> That's all well and good, but copyright doesn't exist to promote the possible financial viability of art owned by megacorporations for centuries, nor does it exist to promote financial subsidies for other art. It exists, according to the Constitution, "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts ... for limited times".

Even if it did exist for the purpose of generating profit versus promoting culture and progress, I feel like many (except, of course, said megacorporation) can agree that its current incarnation is for a ludicrously, damagingly long amount of time.

In either case I'm not weeping for Hollywood; it's not like they've never made anything but a staggering profit regardless of copyright era, and if your argument is true then I'd rather have a handful fewer movies made than bow to the eternal stranglehold on all culture the current copyright regime entails.

<comment><USER8> > the purpose of generating profit versus promoting culture and progress

That's a false dichotomy. Promoting culture and progress is the end, but the means is creating a property right the value of which is, like every property right, the possibility of generating a profit.

<comment><USER9> Depends on your theory regarding arts and profit.

For others, including prominent art critics (of the European persuassion at least), "culture and progress" can mostly be harmed by profits.

<comment><USER4> Speaking as a Euro who works in the arts, I certainly prefer that art take priority over profitability if push comes to shove, but I'm also keenly aware that if there's no profit there won't be as much funding for the art. Subsidies are sort of a nice idea and I think there's a role for them in production financing, but they're a double-edged sword - they may help some deserving projects get made, but only at the whim of the subsidy-dispensers, which gets you back to a patronage system.

As well as working in film, I also enjoy opera, and I'm struck by how the San Francisco Opera does _Tosca_ almost every damn season, presumably because someone on the board or high up on the donor list really loves it. Yeah, it's a great opera, but there are hundreds of operas and even a moderately large and well-financed company like the SF Opera only does about 12 productions in a year. They aim for a mix of reliable favorites and interesting new works/productions, but the near-permanent presence of _Tosca_ on their calendar is a reminder of how badly patronage can skew things. By rights, it ought to be staged every 5-6 years; having it on stage almost every year means proportionally fewer productions of other great Verdi operas such as _La Traviata_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The writer/director had a chance to flip the rights for a huge profit and turned it down so he could make the film:

 _Mr. Darabont said he took a night to think about it. "But it was never an option," he said. "Most of it boils down to, 'Why are we here?' That was a passion I was very determined to pursue and not just sell to the highest bidder."_

<comment><USER11> I think we all love when the "underdog" wins! This has been posted on HN in the past. Enjoy!

"A partial visual history of sugru" [http://sugru.com/us/story](http://sugru.com/us/story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> By the way, I have heard high praises for the Halloween tours (I'm not sure if they are "scary" tours or not) that the Mansfield Penitentiary offers every year. If you're in the area in October, you might want to check it out.

</comment><comment><USER13> Like 'Casablanca' for many, 'Shawshank Redemption' is "my movie' of sorts to keep quoting from -- at least in terms of being uplifting. "I guess, I just miss my friend", "Everyone in here is innocent", and "Get busy living, or get busy dying", for example.

But maybe that's because I'm Irish.</comment>


Ask HN: What start up would you invest in ? - <AUTHOR>

It seems like lately I hear many people say that they wish they could invest in Facebook(twitter/Zynga/etc). But those are big and quite obvious choices.<p>What small startups do you believe enough in, that you would be willing to put some money in (if you had some extra) ? <comment><USER2> First, I'd wonder if it would be possible to have an "index fund" of sorts, say 0.001 of 1,000 startups. :D

I'd say the same criteria to invest apply to where you'd want to work. I seriously considered the following three companies, and got to the interview stage with one of them:

I think AirBnB are on the launchpad great idea, great team, making the cash. Dropbox had rabidly happy users and are able to attract top talent (eg, Zed). Dolores Labs are quite successful, though they have a tendency to drop watermelons from great heights.

None of that matters, of course. They don't need my dumb $5K or even $50K. To make an investment that's worthwhile to both ends of the transaction it'd have to be much earlier than where they are now. An investor also needs to be more than just a fanboi with money -- I'd need contacts, expertise, time to advise, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering about this about reading lots of material on fund raising.

Sure its easy to say "Id invest in this already proven company".

But when you invest as an angel say 50-100K. How would you know ? It seems that even entrepreneurs in the market are finding it hard to asses others.

<comment><USER2> You don't know; that's why it an investment. :D

If I had this money to invest, I'd put it in a 6-month CD while I did research. I'd spend 2+ days a week going to meetups, hanging out at cafes, talking, listening, making friends, making notes. Also I'd try to get time with more experienced investors and ask their advice. After that intense immersion, then I'd feel qualified to invest.

Here's the problem with that plan. The startups I'd been talking with would be _very_ annoyed with me by that time. Here I am, with all this cash, and all I want to do is waste their time asking them questions over coffee!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree with mahmud - Twilio has a great offering (& from I know, it's only going to get better!)

Other than that, I am really liking Yext, a lot!

After that, the company I used to work for seems like they're positioned to make some money (leadlogsys.com)

</comment><comment><USER4> My geo/social situation means I'm not likely to hear about a startup before it's beyond my investment capability; which leaves my own startup, which doesn't really count.

</comment><comment><USER5> For me, it's not a questing of what startups I'd invest in. I run across a lot of people at the hackers and founders meetups that I host, and it's fairly often that I come across someone that I'd love to bet on. The question of what particular company they are working on at present is rather immaterial.

</comment><comment><USER6> I am waiting for Twilio to go public. I even contacted them to see if I can get in, but no luck :-)

</comment><comment><USER7> Any startup that is working on an easy mobile payment solution. I'm excited for Jack Dorsey's new project and would definitely put some money in if I could.

<comment><USER4> Can you be more specific about what an easy mobile payment solution is and why you're enthusiastic about it?

To me it sounds like a system in Australian and New Zealand called mobile EFTPOS (I believe Europeans have something similar although it's called something else) that allows merchants to do transactions wherever they can get GPRS coverage — does the US not already have something similar?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dropbox, awesome product! Probably a nice future!

</comment><comment><USER9> The ones I use on a daily basis and love using since it solves a problem/need/pain for me.

<comment><USER10> Such as...

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> <http://www.fluidinfo.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Dropbox (if they still count as small).

</comment><comment><USER13> layar.</comment>


Ask HN: Remove language from titles in editing? - <AUTHOR>

Seems like every hot new language comes along, and a bunch of posts spring up, "how to write a blog engine, in GO/Node/Ruby/Haskell" -- I think the editoral process should probably remove these unneeded language shout outs, and let the projects stand on their own. <comment><USER2> I don't agree. Sometimes the submitted articles really are about how to do X specifically using language Y, using Y-specific practices. The title allows those who are not interested in Y to skip the submission, even if they are interested in X.

I might click on "new web browser", but would be less inclined to open a submission titled "new web browser written entirely in bash!".

By contrast, someone who is currently feverishly into learning shell programming might be more curious about "web browser written in bash" than about "new web browser'.

So mentioning bash is pertinent and useful.

From a different angle: if you're a hacker, it matters what something is written in. What something is written in is related to how that something works, and hackers care about how things work. (At least usually, when not wearing their "consumer of functionality through abstract interface" hat.)</comment>


Everything I Know About Business I Learned From Poker - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.zappos.com/blogs/ceo-and-coo-blog/2008/12/27/everything-i-know-about-business-i-learned-from-poker

<comment><USER2> Actually, I'm amazed at how certain games correlate with startups and business.

Has anyone ever played Natural Selection? You basically work with a team of 12 marines vs. 12 aliens. One marine is commander, and he must make sure resource towers are built and defended from aliens. On top of that, marines must defend their base and actively be out preventing the aliens from building new hives (as well as destroying existing hives).

The purpose of the game is to hold the most resource towers. But you also want to be with a really good team of marines, which means you don't have to micromanage "Player X, go build the resource tower in Location Y. NOW!" They naturally go to the locations and ask for you to drop a resource tower.

Aliens get special abilities based on how many kills they make. You find that highly specialized aliens are very destructive (so hire that dude who is REALLY good at Objective-C for doing iPhone development).

> Building and keeping resource towers == making sure you have enough funding > at all times, cash flow is the name of the game

> Getting with the best team of aliens/marines == hire the best people that > you can, it means zero micro-managing

> Your team could be terrible, your commander could be the best, but you'll > still lose the game == even if Steve Jobs were in charge of a company with > 100% bad employees, the company would fail

> Specializing when you can == you're a very difficult fire to put out, and > when it comes to competing, you're unstoppable

> Keeping team morale high gets player cooperation == don't be a prick, your > team doesn't like working for that type of person and won't follow orders > when the time comes

> Allowing the enemy time to build up is dangerous, always be on the offense > == always be pushing faster and sooner than your competitors

> One marine camper with a phase gate can take down your entire alien team == > corporate espionage is a bitch, Steve Jobs isn't paranoid after all

> If you can't get your team to all jump through a phase gate and rush an > alien hive at once, you're done for == team cooperation with focus is really > good

I sometimes feel like I'm playing a game of natural selection while I'm working in a startup or on a project. It's weird, I know. Ok everyone downvote me now.

<comment><USER3> I remember that game! Wish they would port to the Source engine a little faster...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tony Hsieh is awesome. I can't wait to read this book. Zappos is a company to be looked up to.

If all companies were this fanatical about customer service, the world would be a much better place.

</comment><comment><USER5> "The guy who never loses a hand is not the guy who makes the most money in the long run."

If you never lost a hand then you would be the guy who makes the most money in the long run. Everyone else would lose.

<comment><USER6> Except almost all games is played with blinds or antes. If you're too tight even though you win all the hands you play you'd still be a loser overall.

<comment><USER5> You "play" every time you're dealt a hand. Even if you fold before the flop, in Texas Hold'em for instance, you lost.

And to win every hand you play past the first street, if you want to ignore the semantics, would still make even the tightest player I know a humongous winner. The reason playing overly tight players lose (which is generally not by much) is that even the average hand that they play is an underdog to win. Make 100% of even the biggest nit's flop hands hold up and yeah, he's the best poker player in the world.

<comment><USER7> Suppose when playing live poker, your hand always holds up, but you can _only_ play pocket aces. Suppose even that no one else at the table ever figures this out. Would you take that deal? I bet not.

<comment><USER5> Well, if your hand always holds up, and you never voluntarily play worse than aces, you would still win every tournament you entered (though it would take forever). If you can't lose an all-in, you can't lose a tournamnet. So yeah, I'd take that bet.

<comment><USER7> > If you can't lose an all-in, you can't lose a tournamnet.

Only a tournament where you pay no blinds.

Checked your website, you are that semipro poker player. I'm quite sure only playing and always winning AA would be a (relatively) losing proposition for you. Not sure why you're arguing the other side here.

<comment><USER5> I'm not, I'm saying your argument is wrong. You play every hand your dealt. If you fold pre-flop, you played your hand by folding it. So I assumed you meant more "voluntarily play after the flop".

However, if you still win every hand you take to the flop, even if you voluntarily only play aces, you would in a tournament probably be forced all- in many times, in which case you'd involuntarily see the flop. But we still say you win every hand you play, so you'd never go broke.

But in reality none of this has anything to do with the OP's stupid quote. A guy who won every hand he played, any reasonable way you want to define that, would be by far the most profitable poker player ever.

<comment><USER7> > You play every hand your dealt. If you fold pre-flop, you played your hand > by folding it.

Mmmkay. This is the confusion.

It's pretty common to talk about "playing" as opposed to folding your cards pre flop. I've seen this phrasing many times.

> A guy who won every hand he played, any reasonable way you want to define > that, would be by far the most profitable poker player ever.

The point I was trying to make, and probably the OP, is that it is more profitable to win $100 and lose $80 than it is to win $10 and lose $0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In poker, it's great to have a lot of shitty competitors. What game has this guy been playing?

<comment><USER6> The only way I can reason with it is, that he's talking about large tournaments where you will likely never see the long term (10K buyins for example). Even for good/great players there is a lot of volatility there and you're probably not going to see 100k+ of these in your lifetime (Which would arguably not even be close to the long term.) With that said, I'd much rather play any WSOP with 6000 and me of the biggest fish then 4000 fish and 2000 pros.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well that's done it!

I think that poker is definitely a good training for many things, but personally feel it is most relevant for investing. The possible universe of outcomes becomes massive when you get into the area of running a business compared with the set of poker outcomes.

I wrote an "ebook" two years ago about how to learn investing through the medium of online Texas Holdem poker. I didn't release it at the time because of all the controversy about online gambling and US laws. But now I think it's time has come. I might have saved some people some money if I had have released it back then before the boom started busting. The method is called Texas Holdem Investing. And seeing that this guy will release a book of a similar type I might as well join the party.

Wish me luck!

</comment><comment><USER10> I think <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_trading> is same as gambling.

<comment><USER11> So is any insurance when you look at it from a certain angle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> best advice i have seen for a while</comment>


Computer Networks – Arpanet Doc (1972) - <AUTHOR> https://archive.org/details/ComputerNetworks_TheHeraldsOfResourceSharing <comment><AUTHOR> An excellent piece of internet history, this 30 minute doc from 1972 features many of the creators of the internet. Amazing how far ahead the people involved were thinking, many of the concepts wouldn't be fully realized until decades later.</comment>


Check-In On Facebook With Facial Recognition - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/10/facedeals-check-in-on-facebook-with-facial-recognition-creepy-or-awesome/ <comment><USER2> That is creepy, _not_ awesome.</comment>


Yahoo Rolls out Social TV Companion App Intonow onto Ipad - <AUTHOR> http://appmarket.tv/news/1400-yahoo-rolls-out-social-tv-companion-app-intonow-onto-ipad.html#.TrJcDiASxdA.hackernews <comment><USER2> Was indeed waiting for their iPad version. Have tried out their iPhone app. I can totally see the potential of a companion iPad app. I would frequently lookup related info on IMDB (most about cast and crew) and Wikipedia (show related info). [I hope they integrate these sources as well] Social integration and sports info augmentation should make this cool!</comment>


Posting a Task on Zaarly is Painful - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jasonshah.org/post/17215541293/posting-a-task-on-zaarly-painful-but-educational-ux

<comment><AUTHOR> I would love for task marketplaces like Zaarly and others to be super easy to use. So here's my take on what they can do better to make posting easier.

What do you all think about their posting process? Other ways we can suggest improvement?</comment>


The mistake that got my Girlfiend face on Times Square - <AUTHOR> http://www.thefashioncloud.com/the-diary/the-mistake-that-got-my-face-on-times-square/

<comment><USER2> Wow. Talk about your first world problems.

Did I really just read a blog post about how difficult it's been for her to come to terms with the fact that an image she expected to be on public display in Antwerp also ended up in Times Square? Oh, the humanity...

<comment> jack-r-abbit This. I have a hard time believing there was not some sort of fine print somewhere that allowed it. And if there was no waiver or contract or what ever then that was her mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Lawyer up! Lots of lawyers would take this one without up front payment. Settle and move on with your life.

</comment><comment><USER4> "Girlfiend" ??

<comment><USER5> Freudian slip.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha. Way better than saying I did a typo :)</comment></comment></comment>


Why we gamble like monkeys - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150127-why-we-gamble-like-monkeys?utm_content=buffereb10c&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been guilty of this time and time again... and not just at the casino!

"Win on roulette and your chances of winning again aren't more or less – they stay exactly the same. But something in human psychology resists this fact, and people often place money on the premise that streaks of luck will continue – the so called 'hot hand'.

The opposite superstition is to bet that a streak has to end, in the false belief that independent events of chance must somehow even out. This is known as the gambler's fallacy, and achieved notoriety at the Casino de Monte-Carlo on 18 August 1913."</comment>


MainStreet – $10k to Leave Bay Area - <AUTHOR> https://workonmainstreet.com/ <comment><USER2> Atlanta for $ to cost of living/quality. Rural Alabama like Sylacauga (metro/eletric company fiber to your home) for "work from home". Both my wife and I work from home in rural Georgia (Carrollton)...$300k bought us 25 acres, a refurbished 2500 square feet farm house, 6 stall horse barn, 1/2 acre pond, and shop with concrete floor and electricity. There are options out there, lots of them.

<comment><USER3> My first thought about Rural Alabama is how much I'd hate that sociopolitical environment (I'm black)

Granted I googled Sylacauga and the first line on their website is

>Sylacauga (syl-a-cau-ga) is a progressive community where all the pieces fit.

So they're aware of the image which is a pretty good sign...

But I'm not doing these cities/towns that are "progressive" oases in vast deserts of backwards communities ever again.

At the end of the day, the people in backwards communities are still numerous. They still end up dominating state-level politics.

Instead of embracing change and the wealth that not being a backwards backwater can bring, they actively fight it and if anything become more emboldened in trying to band together against the "common enemy"... that is progressive people (read: non-white, non-straight and/or non-Christian).

In a more ideal world, the answer to these people would be exactly what Sylacauga seems to be, forcing them to co-exist with people who are in the 21st century, but I now feel like the answer is to let these areas wear themselves down. When the pie of wealth grows and these people are locked out for their views, they'll eventually lose the power they had.

<comment><USER4> I somewhat relate to your view as a non-white POC. However, I don't think

> they'll eventually lose the power they had.

would do much to change the situation. Georgia, Virginia and Texas are states that are being fundamentally changed because of the influx of progressives from both rural areas and urban coasts. The fastest way to change seems to be to move to these places and use the democratic process to introduce real changes, and these folks will have no choice but to change their views or retreat to more rural areas of their states (usually its the latter).

The other aspect is that a lot of the southern states do actually have sizeable populations of African Americans...I really do hope that we don't just ignore them as successive generations seem to have done....

<comment><USER5> > Georgia, Virginia and Texas are states that are being fundamentally changed > because of the influx of progressives from both rural areas and urban > coasts.

Why are progressives moving en mass so much that that are able to replace the local population and fundamentally alter voting patterns? What is happening to drive people out like that? I'm not an American for the record and likely am missing parts of the context here.

<comment><USER6> They made their own states too expensive, by choice, and then couldn't live with the result.

They are moving to affordable places that vote against taxes, regulations, and government services. Oddly they continue to vote for the policy that caused them to migrate, and so eventually they must migrate again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure if this is a real site or not... but let's assume it is, what's the deal with "Stop waiting in line for brunch"? I get the commute and own your own home things, these seem like BIG deals in life. Is standing in life for brunch really the 3rd biggest problem with living in the Bay Area or is this an inside joke or something like that? Everything I know about living around there I've learned from HN and I don't think I've ever seen someone complain or even joke about troubles at brunch.

<comment><USER8> > _Is standing in life for brunch really the 3rd biggest problem with living > in the Bay Area_

It's not a problem. More another manufactured nuisance of the kind San Francisco seems to enjoy creating.

New Yorkers have brunch later, brunch boozier and--broadly speaking--brunch with a reservation. San Franciscans (or at least my friends in San Francisco) eat brunch at the crack of dawn at establishments that prefer lines out the door to taking reservations. (They may claim to take "reservations" at the door. Those aren't reservations. They're names on a wait list. Lots of waiting.)

It's a cultural factor loosely related to (a) recent population and affluence increases outstripping a locale's (b) ability to build new businesses in the midst of (c) a greater value placed on exclusivity than time. (It's also present in Brooklyn and parts of Los Angeles.)

<comment><USER9> Having a line out the door also serves as a sort of free advertising for the restaurant. If people are willing to line up and wait for their brunch, it must be good, right?

<comment><USER10> Actually, I appreciate the places that don't take reservations for brunch. The number of prospective patrons is wildly out of proportion to the number of really good brunch spots. If they took reservations, you wouldn't be able to get in for a month to a place like Plow.

Instead, I can grab a coffee (or mimosa) while I stand outside chatting with my friends or wander around the neighborhood.

If you want convenience, there are plenty of places that take reservations or can take walk-ins immediately. Some of them are pretty damn good too.

<comment><USER11> And there's always the "hidden gems" like Wayfare Tavern that only started doing brunch recently, so no line-ups yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I got a laugh out of the picture of the house; a stereotypical Eichler.

([https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-are-eichler- homes/](https://www.realtor.com/advice/buy/what-are-eichler-homes/))

Eichlers are very common in Palo Alto, but not so common throughout the rest of the US.

(Edit: And yes, I left the Bay Area, and bought what most people living in the Bay Area would consider a mansion, in a high-cost-of-living state. I paid less then my Bay Area rent for a 1-bedroom with a loft.)

<comment><USER13> Thanks, I never knew there was a name for this, though I've seen this kind of house all through the Peninsula - there are also a lot of them in the hills west of San Mateo. And, now that I think of it, Erlich Bachmann's house is one.

<comment><USER14> Likely intentional because Steve Jobs grew up in a similar home.

[https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/jobs-likeler-no- eichl...](https://www.eichlernetwork.com/article/jobs-likeler-no-eichler)

<comment><USER15> The link's headline that you posted says

"For the record: Steve Jobs wasn't raised in an Eichler—but partner Steve Wozniak was."

<comment><USER14> The article is entirely about Steve Jobs growing up in a home very similar to, but not technically, an Eichler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The idea is sound. There are a lot of amazing places in Italy where I am from. Some of these towns sell houses for few thousands. Just think about it. No traffic. No over-crowded restaurants. Your own property. Sun. Sea side.

I think this is more an issue of community. Of course if you are the only remote worker in a place with aging population is not fun. But if some start up would be able to build a community of remote workers in a specific location, wouldn't that make a lot of sense? Also once you have a bunch of highly skilled people in a specific location it gets easier for companies to hire there.

<comment><USER17> > Some of these towns sell houses for few thousands

Name of the place or it didn't happen :)

<comment><USER16> Here you go: [https://casea1euro.it/case-a-1-euro-in- sardegna-a-15-minuti-...](https://casea1euro.it/case-a-1-euro-in- sardegna-a-15-minuti-dal-mare-ecco-come-fare-per-averle/)

You buy the house for 1 euro but then you have to fix it. So I guess you have to invest few thousands.

<comment><USER18> I don't know about Italy but in the US fixing up an old house in bad condition can be extremely expensive and time consuming. Cheaper to buy empty land and build a new one.

<comment><USER19> A significant portion of homeowners do a significant portion of the work themselves. I wouldn't say it's expected that you'll DIY everything but someone buying a house that needs substantial work without the intention of doing at least some of it themselves would certainly raise eyebrows.

<comment><USER18> Which is why I said time consuming. Since time is finite you also can't simply discount it versus spending money and consider it a net savings.

<comment><USER19> It's a massive net savings for most people because the opportunity cost of free time is very low. Very few people are forgoing income by spending their free time on home improvement versus other things.

You're making the same error about opportunity cost as the classic "it's not worth Bill Gates' time to pick up a $100 bill" fallacy.

<comment><USER20> Plus if you're a knowledge worker it can help to engage in physical activities and even mental ones that exercise your mind in different ways than your job does. Seymour Cray famously used dig under his backyard when he was stuck on design problems for his supercomputers. He claimed elves from the nearby forest (the destination of the tunnel he was digging) came into his study and solved his problems while he was out digging the tunnel. He considered the digging to be an essential part of his design process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "To collect the $10,000, you'll need to become a MainStreet Member and work out of one of our MainStreet offices for at least 12 months."

This is raising red flags, somehow.

<comment><USER21> I think they meant to write work at of one of our _MainStreet companies_ (who hired you) for at least 12 months. This might be a _recruiter_ \+ _wework_ deal

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> From the contact details:

105 North 1st Street #28, San Jose, CA 95113

I'm certainly not an expert, but Wikipedia claims that's in the Bay Area...

Are they paying their own team to quit?

<comment><USER23> I was surprised to see that too. They aren't walking the walk.

<comment><USER24> Extra cynicism: by getting others to leave, they can stay and it gets better for them.

<comment><USER25> If I owned a house in the bay area, I would be asking anyone and everyone to move there. More money for me!

Rent in downtown Mountain View is higher than Manhattan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > To celebrate our company's launch, we're passing along our fees back to you > in the form of a $10,000 check. To collect the $10,000, you'll need to > become a MainStreet Member and work out of one of our MainStreet offices for > at least 12 months.

But what is a "MainStreet Member" and how does one become one? What/where are "MainStreet offices"? So is it remote or not? You're working remotely for a customer out of one of their offices? Is one an employee of MainStreet and contracting with their customers? What happens when I give them my email address? Their site raises more questions than it answers.

<comment><USER27> So this requires 12 months commitment... Isn't this $10k a form of sign up bonus that's widely available from many Bay area companies?

<comment><USER26> On the surface, seems so. But then there's the other strange requirements they don't really explain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm glad to see innovation in this space. I work remotely as an ML engineer in a "Main Street"-ish city (not really, but it's a middle-class city with a reasonably affordable COL that's part of a large MSA).

Remote work has generally delivered on all its promised benefits for me. I make much more money than I would if I got a job in the city where I live, and my apartment is much nicer than what I could afford if I still lived in the Bay area. I had hoped to move somewhere with great access to the outdoors (this is what initially made me interested in remote work), but ultimately ended up moving for relationship reasons and had to give up the outdoor mecca dream for the time being.

Now, I'm thinking of going back to office life. Since taking the remote plunge I've struggled with loneliness and anxiety about career stasis, and haven't been able to find a critical mass of educated, ambitious, like-minded friends where I now live.

There's a tremendous opportunity for whoever can make it easier to build and find in-person communities of ambitious remote/satellite workers. Offices and cities are blunt instruments for matching people on ambition and education/intelligence. If it were easier to find and integrate into smaller (but equally ambitious) hubs, it would make remote work a more attractive option for many more people.

Feel free to get in touch if you'd like to speak more on this subject.

</comment><comment><USER29> Weird. The splash page says:

> help you find a job you love in a city you can afford

But the "About", "For Companies" and "How it works" pages are pretty focused on remote work:

> Companies are more ready than ever to utilize distributed workforces, and > this is creating opportunities for workers everywhere to be part of the > digital economy... MainStreet provides the community, communication, and > career tools you need to be happy and successful as a remote employee.

> Interested in expanding your remote workforce? ...All our candidates have > been evaluated for remote-readiness so they can hit the ground running from > day one.

> The companies we work with pay us to help successfully recruit and retain > remote talent.

Sounds like it's REALLY about setting up remote work, which is not what the home page implies, right?

Doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense to me. Ah right, the "About" page leads with:

> We are three former Googlers who are on a mission to help create jobs in > rural and suburban cities around America.

OK, it's just the usual engineer-entrepeneurs trying to "get rich by doing good," with a plan that may or may not make sense either on the business or the pro-social end.

I suppose the _employer 's_ interest in paying them to help recruit and coordinate remote workers is... paying them less then they'd have to in the bay area? (plus less overhead compared to on-premises in the bay area, office rent etc).

<comment><USER30> I think its crystal clear.

They are making remote work easy for employees and employers, which enables you to work from cities other than coastal ones.

Is that really such a hard thing to understand? I Think most people connect the dots. It doesn't need a mini blog post to explain.

<comment><USER26> Sure. But what's not clear is how, especially you read further about "Main Street offices" and "MainStreet member." It's not clear if they're just remote-focused recruiting agency or something else.

<comment><USER30> I'll agree with you there. They are incredibly opaque about what, where, how much, etc.

I came away thinking ... hmmm I'm interested in remote work. I'm really interested in convincing my current employer to use a program like this.

BUT, I'm not going to take the trouble to email people because I'm an engineer, and I'd prefer to just send a link to HR.

But this link has no information. So meh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So it looks like you have to join one of their "Main Street Communities" and work remotely from there for 1 year, but I can't find a listing of the community locations anywhere. Do they not exist yet? What gives?

Terms: [https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive- terms](https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms)

<comment><USER32> So...basically good luck ever collecting on that 10k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Let's be honest, $10k is chump change for engineers pulling $400k. If you want people to move, how about offer $400k ?

<comment><USER34> I doubt there are more than a few hundred engineers with that salary in the entire Bay Area and they aren't the ones who complain about cost of living.

This is the software engineer making $80,000 a year who tries to live alone and has to spend half their paycheck on a studio.

<comment><USER25> That is quite false. When I worked at Google, my W2 income was about $270k every year, as a nobody senior engineer. I worked with multiple people that made at least $600k a year. There are thousands of engineers at Google making that kind of money, and no doubt Uber/Lyft/Facebook/Apple/Netflix/Microsoft are paying similar salaries.

This was not the Bay Area, rather New York, but the salaries are about the same in both areas.

The people that own homes in the Bay Area are Googlers that married each other. That is some good income. Enough for a shed in someone's backyard anyway!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It's really hard to beat living and working in San Francisco. Having lived here a few years I find costs highly overstated _for single people_.

e.g. some costs:

Studio in Lower Haight (water + trash included): $2100/month Utilities: $50 Monthly Muni: $81

Groceries are no more expensive than anywhere else. Eating out is similar vs other cities I've been to, and if anything the quality of the food is better here at the mid price range.

If I lived in a smaller or mid-sized city there's a good chance I would have to get a car, so any savings in terms of rent would just go to owning and maintaining a car.

<comment><USER36> I live in a medium sized city in Wisconsin (~100k population) and my costs are:

\- $850 for rent for a 2 bedroom 1200sqft apartment

\- ~$70 for utilities (i have free heat so it's less in the winter and more in the summer)

and if i still had the car i previously had, my only expense would be gas (~$100/mo) and the minor maintenance it needed, which was less than $1000/yr (i tracked everything each year i had it). I bought a newer car recently and am financing it. I pay $350/mo on it and gas is closer to $200/mo for it but that's still well within the over $1000 difference in living costs.

I think you vastly understate just how insane $2100/mo for rent is, and overstate how much it costs to own a car. If $1k a month in savings isn't enough to own/maintain a car and that's a problem for you, you need a car that doesn't cost over $1k a month to own.

<comment><USER28> Paying an extra $1.5k per month on rent isn't insane when it gets you $50 or $100k additional annual salary.

<comment><USER37> Generally speaking true, but what happens when you deduct state taxes, in a place like either California or New York. Suddenly the budget seems just about right and nothing too extravagant to write home about

<comment><USER38> What happens is you still come out way ahead. I'd dearly love to get out of the bay area, but even as a relatively low paid government contractor it's very hard to find an interesting job elsewhere that leaves more money in my pocket.

<comment><USER39> You may come out way ahead if non-local expenses are a large portion of your budget. Everybody else loses.

I'm out of the bay area, at a government contractor, with an interesting job. I can afford a huge family, currently with 14 people in the household supported on one income. Life is just easier where the houses are affordable.

I don't know what you'd consider an interesting job or what you'd qualify for, but how seriously have you looked? People can have a bias that stops them: if you allow that the interesting jobs exist, then you have to seriously consider them and ultimately act by moving, but that is a lot to think about and a lot of bother, so therefore there aren't any interesting jobs elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The main reason why we remain in a high cost area (North-central NJ) is opportunities. Yeah I work remotely now and have for awhile, and I doubt I will leave my current company any time soon... but things change, and I would hate to relocate to an idyllic rural paradise (I grew up in very small towns), lose this job and be unable to find another remote gig. At least in the NYC area I know there is going to be _something_ available within commute distance if I have to do that again.

</comment><comment><USER41> I moved to Boston about 18 months ago, and while it's not as crazy out here as it is in the Bay, I really don't think I want to spend the next ten years with a 3 hour daily commute, living in a house that costs four times as much, for half the square footage, as the one I had in rural New York.

<comment><USER42> A 1.5 hour commute is pretty unusual, how did you end up in that situation?

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Are recruiting fees that high that they are able to pay their own staff and the recruits $10k (plus the "member" benefits) and make money?

<comment><USER44> Usually 30% of the first year salary. Hire a $150k dev the recruiter gets $50k

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I just hope that if you're thinking about a move, read comments from folks that either grew up in the area being considered and/or those that moved back from.

There are very real reasons why people move into the Bay Area - and put up with all the "problems". This is coming from a person that grew up in the South and would rather not move back.

</comment><comment><USER45> At the risk of sounding overly woke, houses and cars are terrible for the climate. Also, there's a reason that big businesses and highly-educated professionals gravitate towards. More fluid labor and job markets. I'd think a better goal here would be build up technology industries in smaller cities.

<comment><USER46> Houses are terrible for the climate?

<comment><USER47> sprawling suburbs that necessitate driving everywhere are terrible for the climate

Houses themselves aren't great for the climate (there's CO2 emission in materials productions, heavy machinery operation, etc), but they're necessary for human survival so it's hard to claim we have an alternative

<comment><USER48> >it's hard to claim we have an alternative

The alternative is apartments, which use roughly half as much energy as single-family houses.

[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11731](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=11731)

<comment><USER47> Oh sure, I was counting that as "house" but you're correct that denser housing is absolutely more environmentally friendly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> As a remote worker who left a high cost of living city (NYC) myself, I'm all in favor of promoting remote work, but I don't see the value add in me adding my email there. What exactly do I get? Job listings? The site doesn't really make it clear.

I guess every startup these days starts off with a fancy landing page who's goal is to get you to input your email, which they then use to gauge interest and decide whether or not to actually build out the product. Doesn't really tempt me to want to sign up.

Also I'm all in favor of promoting underdeveloped communities in America, but my #1 hesitation would be boredom. America seems extremely rural outside of the big cities and you need a car to do anything, and I'd imagine there isn't much of a sense of community. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington D.C. and even that I found very boring. I'd love to be proven wrong, but in any case that's why I choose to work remotely from outside the U.S.

</comment><comment><USER50> I do think it's funny that the footer lists an address in San Jose.

It's also unclear from the "how it works" page whether it's actually required that participants initially reside in the Bay Area to be eligible for the program.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, they should definitely clarify that on the "how it works" page. However, they do state residency as a requirement in section 4(a) here: [https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive- terms](https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> More details seem to be in [https://workonmainstreet.com/how-it- works](https://workonmainstreet.com/how-it-works)

</comment><comment><USER53> Fine print here [https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive- terms](https://workonmainstreet.com/incentive-terms)

</comment><comment><USER54> Who is this targeting? An engineer already saves far more than this moving to a lower income tax state with lower COL (e.g. Washington, Nevada, Texas).

<comment><USER55> It's targetting people that don't want to move.

"How it Works":

> A free remote-first office, designed specifically for the needs of remote > workers

So what it is, is a we-work like space aggregator, positioning themselves somewhat above the value chain of just empty space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> We (Zapier) did this a few years back, its been really cool: [https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote- job/](https://zapier.com/blog/move-away-from-sf-get-remote-job/)

I hope it continues to catch on! Major metros certainly have a lot to offer, but minor metros or rural America does too -- it's a little odd that all the online "tech" jobs land in the former. If you have a decent internet connection, you can do your work from anywhere.

</comment><comment><USER57> Where does the money come from?

<comment><USER58> It is not entirely clear from the website, but it basically seems to be a kind of employment agency--they set you up with a workspace, and get you jobs with their paying corporate clients. So the deal they're offering is to give you a cut of the fee in exchange for moving, because they need to have workers to sell before they can make any money.

Also a little odd is that they want to bring jobs to non-urban areas, but they're selling themselves as an escape for people in expensive urban areas, rather than an opportunity for people in non-urban areas who need jobs. And it also leaves aside less expensive urban areas that need jobs.</comment></comment>