Obesity Paradox: Overweight patients with some chronic conditions fare better - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/550527/obesity-paradox-scientists-now-think-that-being-overweight-is-sometimes-good-for-your-health/ <comment><USER2> The article seems to mix "thin" and "normal weight" all the time, being just poorly written. Including underweight people and normal people in the "thin" category is a major mistake.

Also, this quote is troubling: "That people at higher weights are going to be OK."

Not only NOTHING in the article supports that, almost every single piece or research shows the opposite: that in general, people at higher weights have much higher mortality rates. The article just shows that, when some chronic diseases are present, overweight people seem to fare better than non- overweight (which I take includes underweight people).

Even if they fare better under certain very specific conditions, in general they fare quite worse. Source: [http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/questions/ask- th...](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/questions/ask-the-expert- does-being-overweight-really-decrease-mortality-no/)

<comment><USER3> Those higher mortality rates start _above_ what qualifies as "mildly obese," though. Even discounting factors such as existing illness and smoking, people with higher weights (weights below the "obese" definition) in general have longer lives.

Once you go beyond the "overweight" (or perhaps mildly obese, which has a negligible uptick in mortality) then the curve starts changing very rapidly.

[http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/...](http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and- families/features/why-being-overweight-means-you-live-longer-the-way- scientists-twist-the-facts-10158229.html)

[http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/being-overweight-is- li...](http://healthland.time.com/2013/01/02/being-overweight-is-linked-to- lower-risk-of-mortality/)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, but that's not what the results show: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21121834](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21121834)

Body-mass index and mortality among 1.46 million white adults.

 _With a BMI of 22.5 to 24.9 as the reference category, hazard ratios among women were 1.47 (95 percent confidence interval [CI], 1.33 to 1.62) for a BMI of 15.0 to 18.4; 1.14 (95% CI, 1.07 to 1.22) for a BMI of 18.5 to 19.9; 1.00 (95% CI, 0.96 to 1.04) for a BMI of 20.0 to 22.4; 1.13 (95% CI, 1.09 to 1.17) for a BMI of 25.0 to 29.9; 1.44 (95% CI, 1.38 to 1.50) for a BMI of 30.0 to 34.9; 1.88 (95% CI, 1.77 to 2.00) for a BMI of 35.0 to 39.9; and 2.51 (95% CI, 2.30 to 2.73) for a BMI of 40.0 to 49.9. In general, the hazard ratios for the men were similar._

And the conclusion:

 _In white adults, overweight and obesity (and possibly underweight) are associated with increased all-cause mortality. All-cause mortality is generally lowest with a BMI of 20.0 to 24.9._

<comment><USER3> This is going to shock you, but there are a great many studies on this, not all of which come to the same conclusion. From a meta-analysis:

 _Relative to normal weight, both obesity (all grades) and grades 2 and 3 obesity were associated with significantly higher all-cause mortality. Grade 1 obesity overall was not associated with higher mortality, and overweight was associated with significantly lower all-cause mortality. The use of predefined standard BMI groupings can facilitate between-study comparisons._

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23280227](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23280227)

<comment><USER2> This is going to shock you, but I guess you didn't read the Harvard link addressing that specific study that I posted on my first post. But here it goes:

[http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/questions/ask- th...](http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/questions/ask-the-expert- does-being-overweight-really-decrease-mortality-no/)

Shocking, right?

<comment><USER4> Please don't use "I guess you didn't read" as a rhetorical device. That sort of point-scoring only makes comments more abrasive and doesn't add information.

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

<comment><USER2> My apologies, I got carried away by the "this is going to shock you" :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder if anyone has run the data using body fat percentage instead of BMI. BMI is a very coarse metric that will sometimes label short and/or muscular people as overweight/obese when they are quite healthy (think football players or weight lifters).

<comment><USER6> I came to post more or less this exact same comment. BMI does not take muscle mass into account at all. The Rock has a BMI of 31 (260lbs at 6'5") which is classified as obese. Hafþór Björnsson has a BMI of 41 (419lb at 6'9").

I agree with some of the other commenters too in that a full nutritional/lifestyle analysis over a long period of time is next to impossible because it relies on self-reporting which is known to be flawed [1][2]. People under-report their intake and overreport their exercise frequency and duration.

[1][http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2082216](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2082216) [2][http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/4/766.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/76/4/766.full)

<comment><USER7> > The Rock has a BMI of 31 (260lbs at 6'5") which is classified as obese

Why shouldn't he be classified as obese? If he was that heavy because he was working out then that would be one thing, but the reason he's that heavy is due to using steroids to put on low quality muscle mass. I don't see why that would be any less unhealthy than just sitting around eating doughnuts or whatever.

<comment><USER8> If it were as unhealthy as eating donuts (which you would need to prove), it would most likely be unhealthy by a different mechanism. So it would make sense to distinguish this if you want to find out what causes illnesses.

I also don't understand what you mean by "low quality muscle mass".

<comment><USER7> > I also don't understand what you mean by "low quality muscle mass".

Muscle with a low weight to power ratio, and/or with an unfavorable type I to type IIa/b ratio. E.g. you can quickly bulk up by lifting 3 x 3 at a high weight (or whatever Starting Strength recommends), but you're going to develop much lower quality muscle than if you just do 6 x 10 or whatever in terms of power. And similarly if you're not doing cardio in at least 90 minute increments then on a regular basis then your type II muscles aren't going to be able to properly utilize fat, because they'll never get past the point of just relying on stored glycogen or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> AFAIK a plausible thesis for why overweight is correlated with better health is that the extra fat means greater energy stores in times of crisis. Basically, if you're thin and you get sick or injured, your body doesn't have the resources to heal itself effectively.

<comment><USER10> Not sure about that. Just one pound of fat has the caloric value to sustain you for over a day. 10% BF for males (and 15% for females) is low enough that your mother will probably say that you're too thin. So you could go for a week without ingesting any calories for a week if you were to lose 5% BF while you're sick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems like these kinds of "studies" are only made to write headlines and to write books (notice how half of the people quoted in the article have some surprising new "facts" that they reveal in a book they wrote?).

The only paradox is why researchers still latch onto a calculation of health based on just height and weight that was concocted in over 150 years ago. What other field would rely on such a primitive, outdated formula and use it as the base of research?

<comment><USER12> Another paradox is why the media always seems to portray meta studies (correlation) as fact (causation).

This just in: Margarine Causes Divorce in Maine [1]

1\. [http://tylervigen.com/spurious- correlations](http://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) (99.3% correlation between Maine's divorce rate and margarine consumption)

<comment><USER13> > Another paradox is why the media always seems to portray meta studies > (correlation) as fact (causation).

correlation vs. causation is a completely different axis of differentiation from meta-study vs. (direct) study, which is a completely different axis of variation from (something that isn't fact) to fact.

So, you've conflated at least three _different_ distinctions there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It should be called the "slightly overweight paradox".

Article makes lots of qualitative statements. Much easier to look at the data (900,000 person study): [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662372/figure/f...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2662372/figure/fig2/)

Optimal BMI appears to be 23-25 (at least for minimising the risk of death).

Another large study (1.46 million people) shows a similar result: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066051/figure/F...](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3066051/figure/F1/)

Looking at either side of optimal BMI: People with a BMI of 26 (BMI 25-30 'overweight') have mildly better survival than those with 21 (18.5-25 'normal'). Push BMI up a little bit to above 28 and death rates are worse than with a BMI of 21. Not a huge paradox. Maybe we should just shift 'normal' BMI range to 20-27.

</comment><comment><USER15> And low birth-weight children born to smoking mothers have a lower infant mortality rate than the low birth weight children of non-smokers [1]. Clearly that must mean that smoking while pregnant can "protect" your baby, and totally not a misuse of statistics.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth- weight_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_birth-weight_paradox)

</comment><comment><USER16> You can't write reality into compliance.

But you can make a lot of money failing.</comment>


Inside the World of D.I.Y. Ammunition - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/05/us/3d-printed-guns-homemade-ammunition.html <comment><USER2> DIY cartridge manufacturing is relatively common in many parts of the US. The two big drivers of this activity are reducing ammunition costs and research/experimentation with new cartridge designs or loadings.

The cost driver is the most straightforward, and has two different angles. The first angle is that recycling spent ammunition can be significantly cheaper than buying newly manufactured ammunition -- treating brass as a waste material is expensive. The second angle is that there are hundreds of exotic or less common cartridge types that have a market volume much too low for economies of scale to kick in on an industrial manufacturing line, which makes them relatively expensive when produced in a munitions plant. Individuals and small shops can often manufacture this ammunition much cheaper than the equivalent industrial plant due to the much lower overhead of running a small batch.

Cartridge research and experimentation is a world unto itself. There is an enormous amount of performance variance (both precision and ballistics) due to relatively small changes in geometry, configuration, powder, bullet, and firearm characteristics. Not only are there a large number of "hyper-miler" types who try to squeeze every gram of precision and ballistic performance out of a particular firearm and cartridge geometry, the hardcore types will design entirely new cartridges (and matching firearm components) to explore parts of the design space that are not possible with existing geometries. This is a popular hobbyist area, sort of like brewing a thousand slightly different beer recipes, that is enabled by the fact that it is straightforward to manufacture custom ammunition at home.

The vast majority of all DIY ammunition manufacturing exists for one of these two reasons, it isn't political or ideological. I'm sure a few of them are ideological but it isn't their primary motivation. The idea of designing new cartridges specifically optimized for the characteristics of printable firearms is interesting though.

<comment><USER3> You can also produce vastly more consistent rounds handloading compared to manufactured - which is why a lot of hunters I know will handload.

<comment><USER4> Is there scientific evidence behind this?

Ie: tests with proper blinding or mechanical non-human shooters?

<comment><USER5> It's well known in the competitive shooting world, where competitors calibrate their rifles from benchrests that minimize the effect of the human operators.

[https://www.theboxotruth.com/educational- zone-98-shooting-a-...](https://www.theboxotruth.com/educational- zone-98-shooting-a-rifle-from-a-benchrest/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Back when I was a teenager I used to do this sport called Cowboy Competition Shooting. Think normal competition shooting, but everyone's dressed as some character from a western movie or trying to realistically portray some figure from the 19th century American West.

A lot of the people in the crowd would make their own ammunition. Myself included. I never saw anyone go as far as to make their own lead bullets, but we all generally recycled spent cartridges and reloaded them with powder and lead to make them whole again.

There really wasn't anything particularly ideological about it though, no concern that one day big government would take our guns or anything like that. It was a simple necessity of the hobby. A single day of shooting would often have you spend 100+ rounds of ammunition and replacing your loses was expensive. On top of that most of these events took place on some rancher's land, and it wouldn't be particularly kind to leave all these brass casings all over his property. Better to recycle them than throw them away or leave them to slowly pile up.

On an unrelated note, nice perk about the sport and the fact that this all took place on a ranch is that lunch often came from where it was served.

<comment><USER7> Reloading is fun but can trigger OCD :) For some reason was a natural in archery in my teens and decided target shooting would be a interesting skill. Opportunity presented itself in the form of a Ruger .220 Swift M77V bullbarrel stamped _made in the 200th year of American liberty_ and a Remington 700 (right! the one with the defective bolt design which can misfire when chambering a round, which on occasion it did) in 7MM Rem Mag, both acquired from a late grand uncle's estate. Then segued to RCBS reloading equipment, primer pocket brushes, case trimmers, then weighing individual powder loads, you know the rest (that .220 Swift needed case trimming after only a few firings). Goal was a 1 inch (2.5cm) group at 200 yds (183M) with the Remington (which had the kick of an angry mule). When that goal was met, decided NEXT!, then moved on to flying. Consider yourself lucky to have had open ranches in your area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reloading is a contemplative and exacting pursuit. And single missed powder measure could cause a bullet to lodge in the barrel and the round following could cause an injurious catastrophic failure. My father reloaded on a single stage press (one operation on one round at a time) due to economics. As a boy I was always given the "privilege" of shagging brass (no cracks from the Brits please) at the range. Each usable casing was worth a few cents and it added up.

Today, reloading is the stock and trade of top shooters in competitions such as the Precision Rifle Series and the King of Two Miles, where shooters attempt targets at ultra long range. Each case is sized trimmed and annealed by hand and measured with micrometers. Powder is measured down to the individual particle using scales costing over 1,000 dollars. Primer pockets are treated as well. Consistency wins these matches and these hand loads are more consistent than even match grade factory ammo.

Shooters use doppler chronograph to create their own data on how these loads perform in their rifles.

Last comment. This article puts a lot of emphasis on cast bullets. Lead only bullets aren't used nearly as much as the used to be. Pistols, as opposed to revolvers can be finicky with lead and the vast majority of rifle rounds are jacketed.

<comment><USER9> >Powder is measured down to the individual particle using scales costing over 1,000 dollars.

Really? I'd imagine that at those ranges it would make more sense to spend all your time on superior wind & barometrics measurements rather than counting powder particles...

<comment><USER8> You're point is valid but some of the participants are spending 10K+ for Vectronix range finders so they are pretty far down that rabbit hole already. Wind is a dark art because at those ranges it likely varies in intensity and direction over the distance to the target. I guess you could say they are having to estimate the effect of multiple competing force vectors. I have read that some people consider the spotter the more skilled member of a two person shooting team, implying that the wind calls and environment are more difficult than the holdover and breaking the shot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The #1 reason my friends load their own ammunition is cost, not independence or ideology.

A single box of .45 rounds will set you back $25. Depending who you ask, reloading costs a third of that (plus upfront costs for the equipment).

[http://www.massreloading.com/reloading_savings.html](http://www.massreloading.com/reloading_savings.html)

<comment><USER11> Sadly, this cost analysis doesn't even mention time spent, though, given the motivation of the site, that could detract from the message.

I realize that some participants may consider it a part of a hobby, in which case the dollar value of the time may be negative if not zero, I can't imagine this would be everyone (especially of the subset who load their own due to cost).

Someone might even value that "lost" leisure time higher than their hourly work earnings.

<comment><USER12> Time isn't a very big factor, TBH. Reloading a single cartridge involves 3-4 steps, and there three different types of equipment you can use in reloading.

* A single stage press has to be reconfigured for each step, so you run a batch of cartridges through one step at a time. Typically you can do ~50 cartridges an hour.

* A turret press is configured to do all of the steps, but only works on one cartridge. Pulling the press lever advances to the next step, so you work on one cartridge at a time, taking it through all the steps to completion. Output of 100-200 cartridges per hour.

* A progressive press is basically a turret press that holds multiple cartridges, so each pull of the lever performs each step on a different cartridge and produces a finished cartridge. You easily put out 750-1000 per hour.

Even with cheap cartridges like 9mm your reloading component cost is around half the price of of retail ammo. As the cartridge you're reloading, the savings increase pretty drastically. For example, I used to reload high powered .357 Magnum shells for about $0.20 a piece that would cost upwards of a dollar a piece retail.

<comment><USER11> > Time isn't a very big factor

If that's true, then I'd hope the analysis to mention something like "and an hour or two" in addition to mentioning the dollar cost savings for 1000 rounds.

> there three different types of equipment you can use in reloading.

Presumably their up-front purchase cost is significantly different. The OC's link didn't mention that, so I'd assume the cheapest option.

> Typically you can do ~50 cartridges an hour.

This cheapest option means that, according to that site, the savings range from $7.68-$66.50/hr (not counting equipment purchase?). That strikes me as a significant, if not very big, factor, if someone considers this a chore, rather than part of the hobby, since that range of hourly rates is at least the same OOM as what people would value their time at.

> easily put out 750-1000 per hour

As little as 1 hour per 1k is, I agree, insignificant, even for someone placing a high dollar value on their chore-avoided leisure time. How much more does that equipment cost?

Do those time figures include extra time to recover the brass, and any other differences (positive and negative) in handling pre- and post-production? It's easy to focus on only the most time-consuming part of the process, but everything adds up, and, for beginners or other low-volume participants, it can inflate the per-unit time cost.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm just super glad they highlighted the fact that it's much easier to make a gun with normal off the shelf/modified metal than to 3D print one. Every other article that involves 3D printing guns is all "the world is over, people can make guns all by themselves!".. the only real difference is the reduced amount of metal in regards to detection

</comment><comment><USER14> Some of my childhood summers were spent in the back room of a jewelery store casting wax models of custom rings/bands.

One summer the owner had me casting wax slugs for his handgun in the same fashion, which he used for DIY shell recycling.

Judging from the cardboard box they had setup back there for target practice, the wax slugs were very effective. As an adult I've wondered on multiple occasions if those wax slugs were actually a good alternative to lead for indoor self-defense where the risk of unintentionally shooting people through walls is high.

<comment><USER15> I used .44 wax slugs for a while. They were quite dangerous at very short ranges and were not able to penetrate two layers of sheet rock.

<comment><USER14> Are these commercially available? Is there a particular manufacturer you'd recommend?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very cool but seems very labor intensive. I probably shoot about three-four hundred rounds a week...can't imagine making them! Fortunately there are a lot of ammo sellers online that keep prices pretty low and deliver.

But kudos to these folks as they will keep downward pressure on prices

<comment><USER17> I can load about 12 rounds/min of 45 ACP on my 5 stage press, but that does not include time for tumbling the brass, etc.

If ammo prices skyrocket again, which they will, then reloading makes more sense.

I made a couple of video a long time ago on the press and tumbling:

[https://youtu.be/gCOjenjFKmI](https://youtu.be/gCOjenjFKmI)

[https://youtu.be/i3qFDbVm7sA](https://youtu.be/i3qFDbVm7sA)

<comment><USER10> > 12 rounds/min

Wow! I get like 1/min on my single stage press.

Maybe it's time to upgrade.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't hand load so much for accuracy. I hand loaded to make loads that weren't available commercially.

The most extreme would be 230 grain "logs" for shooting bowling pins with a .357 revolver. (158 is normal.)

</comment><comment><USER19> There's a couple good reasons to do your own ammo. 1. Cost. Bullets are very expensive, and you need to shoot to use your firearms well when you need them. The whole 'individualism' thing is applicable to anything people would do themselves other than forking over money for it. If bullets are cheaper, the equipment and time to reload would not be worth it.

<comment><USER17> Bullets are cheap. Rounds cost more, which is why I reload. I can reload .45 ACP for 1/2 the cost of economy ammo, and get better consistency.

Even if commercial ammo were cheaper than reloading, many precision rifle shooters load their own rounds for accuracy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is that bracelet on Mr Crumling's wrist? Looks like some screw tool.

<comment><USER8> It is a multi-tool bracelet made by Leatherman called the Tread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Has this been incorporated yet into some post apocalyptic film? Because I was just talking about this the other day. In the post apocalypse, everyone has a gun and no one ever seriously addresses where they are getting their ammo while gunning down zombie hoards daily.

<comment><USER22> It's a major character point for a character in the Walking Dead (Eugene)

<comment><USER23> It's very unrealistic that he's the only character with even a passing familiarity with reloading, and that Rick and the gang never run across any proper reloading setups or manuals. Eugene has to reinvent an extremely crude version the process.</comment></comment></comment>


Bitcoin's mining difficulty has increased by 41.9% over the last 30 days - <AUTHOR> https://kaiko.com/statistics/difficulty <comment><USER2> Nobody on HN pointed out who is behind the increase... This is BitFury who just launched a 40 megawatt data center filled up with their new 16 nm chips which reportedly achieve approximately 0.06 joule per gigahash. They also use immersion cooling which gives them an insane PUE of 1.02. So the mining capacity of this DC alone is ~650 Phash/s! We saw an increase of ~200 Phash/s in the last 30 days, so presumably they are at only operating at 1/3rd of their capabilities so far:

40e6 (watt) / 0.06 (joule/gigahash) / 1e6 (petahash/gigahash) = ~650 petahash/second

BitFury's immersion cooling tech:

[http://datacenterfrontier.com/immersion-cooling- bitcoin/](http://datacenterfrontier.com/immersion-cooling-bitcoin/)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV7MDhqNyXE&t=0m42s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV7MDhqNyXE&t=0m42s) (shows the fluid boiling - starts at 0m42s)

[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/Bit...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/BitFury- Launch-Energy-Efficient-Immersion-Cooling-Data)

BitFury's 16nm chips:

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151216005453/en/BitF...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151216005453/en/BitFury- Announces-Mass-Production-Fastest-Effective-16nm)

<comment><USER3> So less than half of one datacentre entirely owned by one company is enough to commit a 51% attack. I get that they say they are going to work on distribution these chips to ensure they don't end up in that position but let's be honest they just destroyed any claim that the network is powerful enough to avoid malicious control by one miner now. They've not even raised that much money.

<comment><USER4> Malice isn't enough. The only special power of a 50% miner is to consistently resolve double-spend attempts in its favor. If this happened, it would surely lower the value of Bitcoin. This, an attacker must be not just malicious but also irrational enough to forfeit the $800,000 in Bitcoin that it creates daily by virtue of its 50% control of the network. (6 blocks/hour x 24 hours/day x 25 bitcoin/block x $450/bitcoin x 50%)

<comment><USER5> Stupid question: if control of 50% of the hash power is so unimportant, why does Bitcoin rely on hash power anyway? Why not simply have a consensus system without proof-of-anything?

<comment><USER6> If you remove proof-of-work, then the question then becomes: what else do you measure consensus by? A few other crypto currencies have tried other metrics but they all aim to for the same thing: removing the need for human trust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly-more-available link [https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty](https://bitcoinwisdom.com/bitcoin/difficulty)

Hash rate has increased by 41.9% over the same period, so the difficulty has kept the time-to-generate relatively fixed - just the way it's supposed to work.

The real news is that someone or someone(s) have added ~200PH/s worth of processing power to the network in the past 30 days. This is probably from some high-power ASIC miner being released, or from some consolidated mining concern going live.

</comment><comment><USER8> The billion dollar question is how we can have completely decentralised (and not merely distributed) consensus without proof of work. It's a difficult question, and various proposals like Proof of Stake (not secure) and Consensus Ledger (not secure, not decentralised) have all failed technically and on the market.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/Bit...](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151211005837/en/BitFury- Launch-Energy-Efficient-Immersion-Cooling-Data)

<comment><USER10> 40MW! For bitcoin! This is nuts!

<comment><USER11> For comparison, how much power does Visa, Mastercard, the Federal Reserve (and its printing presses), banks, and all of the buildings and employees that work in the traditional financial sector use? Now think about that in every single country on this planet. It's a lot more than 40MW. The Bitcoin network is a steal by comparison.

<comment><USER12> You're comparing the microscopic bitcoin economy to the financial infrastructure that services the entire planet; it's a ridiculous comparison.

How would bitcoin's power consumption stack up if it were tasked with servicing tens of millions of transactions per second?

<comment><USER13> > How would bitcoin's power consumption stack up if it were tasked with > servicing tens of millions of transactions per second?

It would stay almost the same since the hashing power is not connected to the number of transactions.

Also by the way, no one does tens of millions of transactions per second, visa does something like 40,000 at their absolute peak.

<comment><USER14> No, no, no.

The amount of power wasted by BitCoin indirectly depends on the monetary turnover of the system. Because if somebody can spend $1mln to perform 51% attack and move around $1bln, that will likely be done. Hence, the power wasted is proportional to the turnover of the system. Otherwise, it does not work.

Also, when a bank charges me 1% for a wire transfer, they pay salaries from that money and some people buy food. The power burnt by BitCoin is actually literally immediately irrecoverably physically _wasted_.

<comment><USER13> You seem adamant about something that you clearly do not understand.

> Because if somebody can spend $1mln to perform 51% attack and move around > $1bln, that will likely be done.

Then why hasn't it been done? The answer is that bitcoin doesn't even remotely work like this. You would have to sign a transaction, then double spend it to yourself, then BY CHANCE mine enough blocks to satisfy the person giving you whatever you are buying before they see the double spend.

That is not going to happen. Someone receiving a million dollars will not give over a briefcase of cash the second they see the transaction, and that's the only way something like this would work. If you are taking money out of an exchange, the exchange would never even credit your account, let alone send you money. They would see the double spend transaction and if by some chance (0.015625%) you managed to mine the next 6 blocks or so, they would just wait longer since there is a double spend out there. By the time they might actually send you money, the chances of you mining all the blocks up until that time is practically zero. So you would then be gambling your million dollars against enormous odds.

You might not want to believe that bitcoin works, and it might seem counter intuitive that the proof of work is important and useful, but this isn't about how you wish the world works, it is about how the world ACTUALLY works, and that is why bitcoin actually works.

<comment><USER14> You are focusing on a single scenario of an individual double-spender. Why don't you consider some other scenario, e.g. a hacker getting control of a major BitCoin mining facility to disrupt things just for a laugh? I've seen a lot of that happening. There are tens of possible scenarios. Mining capacity is highly centralized these days and that trend will likely develop further (see the subj). The mental model of "one malicious node against all the honest nodes" is totally bogus.

So far, my observation is that BitCoin can't run cheaply on the reasons already mentioned. I will only buy your argument if you'll show me a graph of power consumption vs turnover and it will happen to be sub-linear.

<comment><USER13> If a miner gets hacked, then their blocks will go to the attacker, or they won't be mining. Blocks will be mined more slowly and transactions may take longer for the same number of confirmations until the miner comes back. If a bank gets hacked, people steal money enormous amounts of money by directly changing their ledgers. I don't see this as some sort of a loss for cryptocurrencies.

I'm not sure what you mean by turnover although you might want to learn more about bitcoin before you rail so hard against it.

<comment><USER14> Turnover: the amount of business transacted during a given period of time. How much BitCoins change hands in a month, for example. Actually, plotting that in dollars is even more correct, as electricity costs are not paid with BitCoins.

Ultimately, that is a graph of dollars moved vs dollars wasted. (I explained the difference of "spent" and "wasted" in a different comment.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Bitcoin feels a bit like the gold standard. Massive mining operations dumping huge volumes of resources and energy to acquire some thing that is only mildly useful. It seems quite wasteful.

<comment><USER16> There's a pretty good writeup about this issue in the Stanford/Princeton Cryptocurrency Class:

[https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B4-bDFu_72Beelkxd3VlbXoyd0E&...](https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0B4-bDFu_72Beelkxd3VlbXoyd0E&export=download)

Excerpt: According to our estimates then, the whole Bitcoin network is consuming maybe 10% of a large power plant's worth of electricity. Although this is not an insignificant amount of power, it's not yet a large amount of electricity compared to all the other things that people are using electricity for on the planet.

Any payment system requires energy and electricity. With traditional currency, lots of energy is consumed guarding and moving gold bullions around, running ATM machines, coin sorting machines, cash registers, and payment processing services, and transporting money in armored cars.

Some people say Bitcoin wastes energy because the energy expended computing SHA-256 hashes doesn't serve any apparent purpose. But you could make this same argument for traditional currency as well — there's a lot of energy being wasted and it doesn't serve any purpose besides maintaining the currency system. So, if we value Bitcoin as a useful currency system, then the energy required to support it is not really being wasted.

That said, we can ask if there's a way to do better ...

<comment><USER14> I believe that most of money consumed by the financial system actually goes back into the economy. Some bankers buy sushis, then sushi chefs buy gasoline, then oil drillers... and so on.

BitCoin tends to waste energy irrecoverably.

Apples-to-apples comparison is a challenging task, but the modern financial system hardly has that feature of burning more for the sake of burning more.

<comment><USER17> > I believe that most of money consumed by the financial system actually goes > back into the economy. Some bankers buy sushis, then sushi chefs buy > gasoline, then oil drillers... and so on. BitCoin tends to waste energy > irrecoverably.

Bitcoin is best technical solution we have for an existing societal problem. As soon as better technical solution will be created (e.g. proof-of-stake which can be relied upon), Bitcoin will be modified to use it. And Bitcoin will continue to operate with lower costs - burning less energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Once the 16nm chips become a commodity, it will make sense that the hashing power would get more distributed.

I hope figures out how to get a solar powered, interchangeable bitcoin miner in a box at a positive ROI. It may seem impossible now, but solar prices are falling faster than expected.

<comment><USER19> Why would you expect hashing power to become more distributed? Mining is a race to the bottom/thin margins, and the differentials in power rates far exceed normal miner profit margins. It would still only be profitable to mine at scale in a few select locations in the world.

<comment><USER20> > "Why would you expect hashing power to become more distributed?"

[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151216005453/en/BitF...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20151216005453/en/BitFury- Announces-Mass-Production-Fastest-Effective-16nm)

"Valery Vavilov, CEO of BitFury, said: "We are very excited to launch mass production of our super 16nm ASIC Chip. The final results of our hard work have fully met our expectations. We understand that it will be nearly impossible for any older technology to compete with the performance of our new 16nm technology. As a responsible player in the Bitcoin community, we will be working with integration partners and resellers to make our unique technology widely available ensuring that the network remains decentralized and we move into the exahash era together. BitFury warmly welcomes all companies interested in joining our integration and reseller program.""

<comment><USER19> That doesn't address any of the concerns I raised.

<comment><USER20> Yes it does. If the article is correct, the 16nm BitFury chips will be sold to interested parties, so new mining capacity won't be dominated by a single company, thereby ensuring newly mined BitCoins can be distributed throughout the network.

If your concerns were about something other than distribution, please clarify.

<comment><USER19> They will be sold to interested parties.. and hosted in the same data center. Back to square one.

It takes a price per kW-hr differential of about $0.03 before it makes sense to put miners on a plane. That's far less than the power differentials one would expect, so those miners will stay put. Just paper ownership will change hands.

<comment><USER20> > "and hosted in the same data center."

This is why we're disagreeing, I can't see any indication that the chips will not be used in other data centres. Where are you getting this information from?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> An interesting though exercise:

Does the new capacity make a bitcoin more valuable or less valuable?

Intuitively seems like more valuable, but the average cost in energy to mine the marginal block has gone down (otherwise the new miner wouldn't be mining) and that's often though of as the floor on BTC value.

Seems like having a stronger network is a net plus, and since they're probably not near the 50%+1 threshold it probably is in fact a stronger network. Although maybe they will get close if marginal miners are forced to turn off if the price of XBT drops and BitFury is enough more efficient.

Although BitFury is probably not a bad actor, technically a 50%+1 attack is not obviously illegal (IANAL), although a government might step in ironically enough. It seems to me these types of more centralized setups do introduce some tail risk to the system.

<comment><USER22> There's an interesting book on the economic underpinnings of Bitcoin-

[https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/chainbook/The+Anatomy+of+...](https://s3-us- west-2.amazonaws.com/chainbook/The+Anatomy+of+a+Money- like+Informational+Commodity.pdf)

> we now know that there is a near precise model that describes the cost of > running and maintaining the network. The way the cost estimate is determined > is through how Bitcoin acts as a decentralized waste heat creator that > activates and deactivates heat generation based on market participation and > pricing signals. What do the randomizations necessary for cryptography and > the waste heat produced by computing devices have in common? One word: > "exergy," a term of art describing the maximum useful work possible during a > process that brings a system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. Exergy > is always destroyed in the seigniorage hashing process - for example - if a > token's value increases to $1,000, this means that at most $1,000 worth of > waste heat will be generated somewhere in its creation.

From my reading of the text, it's not so much the additional hash power that's valuable, it's the additional money spent building and operating the ASICs. In theory, the market cap of a proof-of-work system should approach its total cumulative cost to secure. The more watts you see being dumped into the environment calculating hashes, the more you should value Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin is worth less than its cost to mine, no rational miner will mine (if they want BTC they'll just use their electricity budget to buy it on the market), so the competition (and therefore the cost) to mine each block goes down. If Bitcoin is worth more than its cost to mine, mining becomes profitable to anyone willing to put up the capex, so the competition (and therefore the cost) to mine each block goes up. There's an equilibrium where the value of Bitcoin is equal to its cost to mine.

The actual price of bitcoin as seen by the average consumer is insulated from the cost to mine because of effects like speculation, perceived future movement, and the value provided by ease of spending / anonymity, so the economic theory isn't really accurate, but that's why it's a theory!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> No one is afraid of the ecological cost of crypto currencies ?

We are in a world where the energy has a frightening ecologic cost and people to spend it in gigantic quantities just to create a virtual money...

<comment><USER24> >No one is afraid of the ecological cost of crypto currencies ?

I am. But this is a drop in the bucket compared to financial sectors that deal with "real" money. Really, isn't nearly all modern money "virtual"? Nevermind the fact that a lot of money only exists electronically, modern money doesn't actually physically represent anything. Therefore: virtual.

<comment><USER23> The problem is not the virtual character of the money, but the energy involved to create it.

The idea behind it is that you need energy to gather money (metalic money for example). but this is pointless for bitcoin, it's just wasted without any utility.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> looking at the chart there are plenty of places there was more increase in difficulty in 30 days. In the whole 2014 difficulty seemed to have multiplied 40 times! I understand the magnitude is a whole different story now though..

</comment><comment><USER26> More powerful miners beget higher work needed to mine. A small cadre of people with ultrpowerful mining gear have pushed a more difficult task on the rest of us.

<comment><USER27> ... by simultaneously facilitating a large ratio of bitcoin's infrastructure.

<comment><USER28> Not 100% sure, but from your tone it sounds like you think they are performing some kind of service. This is not true. Miners do not increase the number of transactions the network can handle. An infinitesimal amount of the electricity going into mining is actually goes to process transactions. A raspberry pi in a shoebox running mySql is capable of processing more transactions than the entire bitcoin network, liquid nitrogen and all.

All that mining does is give the person with the most hashrate more voting power in which transactions will be accepted. Innovation in mining hardware and data centers does not in any way increase bitcoin's security.

<comment><USER29> > All that mining does is give the person with the most hashrate more voting > power in which transactions will be accepted. Innovation in mining hardware > and data centers does not in any way increase bitcoin's security.

This is completely wrong. The higher the difficulty, the harder it becomes to attack the network, which is a critical feature. If anyone who rented a data center could attack Bitcoin at this point, it would be even less stable (much less!) than it has been already.

<comment><USER28> No. Read what I said. "Innovation in mining hardware and data centers does not in any way increase bitcoin's security."

If everyone can use technology to push a higher hashrate, then what has changed? The people who can get their hands on new mining chips first have an advantage for a little while, but in the end it's a zero-sum game. The pie is 100% of hashing power/block validation power. How can you divide a pie into more than 100%?

<comment><USER30> If a dedicated data center is more effective than a commodity data center then that increases bitcoin's security, because it means a greater proportion of the hashrate resides with people who have an expensive long-term commitment to bitcoin and it's more expensive for an outsider to match that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some alternatives. Permacoin([http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf](http://cs.umd.edu/~amiller/permacoin.pdf)) has mostly the same security properties, but effectiveily non-outsorceable, and work done is useful. We made the first open-source implementation of that [https://github.com/ScorexProject/Scorex- Lagonaki/tree/master...](https://github.com/ScorexProject/Scorex- Lagonaki/tree/master/scorex-perma) .

I also have paper draft about better Proof-of-Stake protocol, and would like to share it with people from academias to get a feedback. Please write me ( kushti at protonmail dot ch ). I also have half-written paper draft about PoW+PoS hybrid chain.

</comment><comment><USER32> What broke?

<comment><USER33> It doesn't mean anything is broken.

The recent rise in price justifies bringing miners online or shifting them away from other cryptocoins.

Halving day is coming soon too.

<comment><USER34> It's predicted to happen mid-2016, 70% of all coins to ever be mined have been so.

This has been a really interesting tech to watch over the years.

<comment><USER35> What happens when we reach 100%?

<comment><USER36> We re-learn why a deflationary currency is an awful idea.

<comment><USER13> Like precious metals? Deflationary currencies have been used successfully for over 1000 years.

The only people it is bad for are governments. Throughout history there is a patter of promising, spending, and becoming insolvent.

The idea that an individual wouldn't choose a deflationary currency is ludicrous. Inflationary currencies are what you want everyone else to use.

And by the way, the cat is out of the bag. Cryptocurrencies are here, bitcoin or not. When people can choose to use any currency they want, will they choose one that inflates? I doubt it.

<comment><USER19> Yes, like precious metals. The history of precious metal economies is pretty bad -- decades-long recessions and wars triggered by fluctuations in the commodity markets. Deflationary currency is not a good thing, and bitcoiners will eventually realize this.

(Note I work on Bitcoin Core and co-founded Blockstream, a prominant bitcoin company. The value of Bitcoin is not the currency, but rather what censorship- resistant, distributed global consensus gives us.)

<comment><USER30> > (Note I work on Bitcoin Core and co-founded Blockstream, a prominant bitcoin > company. The value of Bitcoin is not the currency, but rather what > censorship-resistant, distributed global consensus gives us.)

You can get that while being less deflationary though, e.g. Dogecoin.

<comment><USER19> Or Freicoin, which I co-authored with another Blockstream founder. But neither has the network buy-in and security of Bitcoin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> What a colossal waste of electricity. Great, they've created a general ledger and currency formed by individual untrusted participants, but who in the aggregate are trusted.

What about this: Why not just diversify your risk by doing transactions or investing in currencies/assets across a diversified set of untrusted counterparties? Same net effect, and a lot less electricity wasted.

<comment><USER38> Huh? How does this "diversifying risk" idea let you do any of the major bitcoin applications? (For example, how would your idea that has the "same net effect" as bitcoin allow anonymous markets?)

<comment><USER37> Bitcoin is not anonymous. The entire ledger history is exposed. Through network analysis you can figure out who the original anonymous holder is. And as soon as that holder tries to convert to a fiat currency their identity will be exposed. It's precisely because Bitcoin is way more traceable than cash, the US government has not tried to shut it down despite a lot illegal activity being paid for via bitcoin.

As soon as Satoshi tries to convert any of his coins into dollars or any other legacy currency everyone will know who he is.

<comment><USER38> This is wrong. Plenty of people have converted to fiat and not been caught, there are ways of mixing coins.

<comment><USER37> Actually, we're both wrong. Just because you have not been caught does not mean there hasn't been loss of anonymity. And if you mix enough coins you can decrease the chances of being pinpointed exactly as the source, but you cannot definitively remove yourself from the bucket of suspects.

<comment><USER38> >And if you mix enough coins you can decrease the chances of being pinpointed exactly as the source, but you cannot definitively remove yourself from the bucket of suspects.

Not in my understanding. I have some coins X that are tainted. I send them to you, Y. You, Y, happen to have other coins completely unrelated to the address I sent my X coins to, and you send them to me at address Z. There's no blockchain link between X and Z.

I suppose physically tracking you down, assuming you keep logs, could hurt me, but if I trust you not to keep logs then I'm safe after you delete the logs.

<comment><USER37> This is what I mean about reading the whole ledger. If wallet X is a target, then anyone who transacts with X is a target (which includes Y (anyone with a direct link to X) and Z (anyone with an indirect link to X)). We are dealing in probabilities here, but we definitely don't have untraceable transcations. The authorities have a finite number network paths/leads they can track down.

Of course, the more washing transactions you do with dirty coins the harder it is to track down the original wallet. That being said, the blockchain is somewhat self limiting in how many transactions it can processes per unit of time and thus the its obfuscating capabilities are diminished.

<comment><USER38> But Y might be over Tor, or might not keep logs. There's no mechanism I can see for getting past wiped logs after the fact. If everything is done in RAM, and the machine is rebooted every few days, there's pretty much nothing you could do afterwards.

If all you need is a finite number of leads, then trivially the number of humans/bitcoin users is finite. I don't think that makes a difference.

<comment><USER37> Regardless of whether or not Y is over TOR, it cannot serve as a cut out. All the transactions are stored on the blockchain. So if Y tries to convert to dollars, then they have him. Or if Y's proxy Z tries to convert to dollars, they have Z (and by extension Y).

For these reasons, I cannot figure out why they don't know who stole the MtGox bitcoins. The only way to hide is to forever keep your booty in bitcoins. Whenever the thief tries to convert his/her bitcoins to money or goods, the veil of anonymity will be pierced. And given the amount money involved in MtGox, it would be blow wide open.

As an aside, this has to be one of the deeper HN threads that has not devolved into a flame war. kudos to us.

<comment><USER38> It doesn't matter if they catch Y, as long as he didn't keep logs. Nobody, not even Y, knows who Z is, so Z can safely use his coins.

>For these reasons, I cannot figure out why they don't know who stole the MtGox bitcoins.

When you don't understand something, something might be wrong with your model. ([http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/if/your_strength_as_a_rationalist/) comes to mind).

The exact addresses of the Gox stolen coins aren't known AFAIK. Even if they were, to cash out you only need to get someone to accept them without verifying ID. I can send coins to an exchange, and have them send me other coins in a different cryptocurrency, and send those to another exchange, then convert back to btc. If the intermediate currency is something like Monero, then the chain analysis must stop there.

I'm not saying most mixing happens through alts, but it is a fairly foolproof method for anonymity, at the cost of not supporting volume and high fees.

Also, you can sell to people for cash, so any investigation hits a dead end. There are probably dozens more ways to cash out anonymously.

<comment><USER37> > as long as he didn't keep logs.

It doesn't matter who keeps the logs, the blockchain is the log. I really think you are the one who is missing something. Because the blockchain has the entire history, everyone knows every transaction wallets X, Y, Z and any other wallet has ever done.

> A block chain is a transaction database shared by all nodes participating in > a system based on the Bitcoin protocol. A full copy of a currency's block > chain contains every transaction ever executed in the currency. With this > information, one can find out how much value belonged to each address _at > any point in history_.

[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_chain)

<comment><USER38> You don't understand how mixing can work. I send money to your right pocket, you send me money back from your left pocket. At no point were your right and left pockets connected. As soon as you destroy your logs of what your pockets were, there's no way to identify which pocket was which.

Do you understand the concept of taint in block chain analysis, and how mixing can produce untainted coins?

<comment><USER37> I'm talking about tainted wallets, not coins. When a tainted wallet tries to transact outside the bitcoin system, then you're busted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> This is a strong indication that a light show is coming.

<comment><USER39> What?</comment></comment>


Google Pays Female Workers Less Than Male Counterparts, Labor Department Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-pays-female-workers-less-than-male-counterparts-labor-department-says-1491622997 <comment><USER2> What they're counting matters. It seems if Google has the goal of hiring more females than industry average, then the stats are stacked against them when you look at their worker pay distribution, even if Google isn't doing anything wrong.

Suppose the population is distributed in their experience and productivity, and that you can measure these to some extent.

Suppose your field has _way_ more males than females. This is not your fault, more of a pipeline thing, but you want to be more equal internally than the outside world is. Most people commend this kind of thing.

If you are fairly paying both genders, wouldn't you _necessarily_ have to take more unproductive and inexperienced female engineers to reach your goal? And if you're fairly paying based on those criteria, won't the female population be paid less as you try to take on a more-than-average number of them?

I'm not saying any of this is how it ought to be, just that it seems like a typical conclusion with napkin math, and would result in these allegations while Google is actually trying to do good.

Interestingly if equal pay were _not a thing,_ I would expect the opposite headline: That Google would pay women much more than men to work so that they could attempt to correct a gender imbalance internally that exists in the external population (software workers).

<comment> oval-atom Considering that there are probably hundreds of companies listed as Federal Contractors, and among them, the major Defense Contractors with thousands of employees. I would find it difficult to believe that Google has any grounds that would make them an exception to complying with the Federal requirement of submitting Compensation Data. From experience I can assure that Defense Contractors would have exploited any loophole or angle to relieve them of fulfilling this Federal requirement. Of note here is that Google was asked to submit this data back in September of 2015 and have been given numerous opportunities to meet their obligation. "Diversity and equal pay" of the workforce has been a very visible topic as of late, so you would think that Google would take a position of being in the forefront, and setting an example especially in the tech industry. It hasn't been too long ago, Microsoft was being chastised for its apparent lack of diversity and equal pay. Google was not forced to be a Federal Contractor; they accepted that position and therefore accepted the responsibility of meeting the Federal requirement from the beginning. If Google had a problem then, they should have not accepted the responsibility of being a Federal Contractor. Maybe Google has taken the position that they are "Too Big to Comply" or they do have something to hide. But the old adage applies, "They knew what they were getting into in the first place", and they undoubtedly accepted compensation.

<comment><USER3> I recommend reading some of the news that started this 3 months ago[0]. Quote from Google's response:

"However, the handful of OFCCP requests that are the subject of the complaint are overbroad in scope, or reveal confidential data, and we've made this clear to the OFCCP, to no avail. These requests include thousands of employees' private contact information which we safeguard rigorously."

[0] [https://www.law360.com/articles/877558/dol-sues-google- over-...](https://www.law360.com/articles/877558/dol-sues-google-over- withheld-compensation-data)

<comment> oval-atom Again, Google entered into a contractual agreement to be compensated as a Federal Contractor. DoL's request is part of that contract. Google's stand for protecting private contact information is basically mute. The IRS also contains much of that information. I recommend reading the official complaint. [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can't read the whole article, but does it (or DOL documents) include details like amount of experience and job function?

I've heard that much (not all) of the aggregate gap (i.e., on the national level) goes away after controlling for those variables.

Curious if that applies here, and if so, to what degree.

Edit: consider recent headlines promoting outrage at Marissa Mayer's successor earning double her salary because he's a man. Turns out he's a veteran executive with 20 years of C-level experience. Mayer didn't have that. It may be an extreme example, but it's a good reminder to be cautious about pay gap assertions.

<comment><USER5> I can't find the source but I read something recently that said that after controlling for position and experience the pay gap is around 7%. Off the cuff, I find that to match my intuition. If you could hire women engineers for 80% of the equivalent man, then all companies would wan't to hire every other companies women at 90% of equivalent because they would still be getting a deal and the women would get a big pay bump. This is not happening.

There is a pay gap and we should fix that. It is also very likely to vary widely in different industries. I also wonder if it all really caused by closed minded hirers who pay women less because they are going to be "too emotional" or other such nonsense.

<comment><USER6> That 7% isn't uniform through all age groups. At below age 25 women at the some education and position earn more than men. from age 25-35 the wage gap reverts, and from age 35 and up men earn more than women. With a work force that generally starts at age 20 and stop work at around age 60 the total result gives you that 7%.

So what would a rational fix be to that?

<comment><USER7> What's your source on a gap with higher earning women below age 25? All I can find is [http://www.aauw.org/files/2017/01/spring2017-the-simple- trut...](http://www.aauw.org/files/2017/01/spring2017-the-simple-truth- figure-5.jpg) which doesn't control for education or position, but with women going to college in higher numbers than men...

I can't find any statistics that show women out-earning men, at any age or education level, in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Note that this is not originally a WSJ story; for those without a subscription, you'll learn just as much by reading from the same news source that WSJ is commenting on (and which they link to in this article):

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google- pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay- disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit)

Of course, when I say "just as much" I mean "not much", because neither party has released anything substantive to rebut the other's claims. Until then, the court of public opinion is going to be both passionate and completely uninformed. But if I'm being cynical, that's probably the point of reporting on it at this stage.

</comment><comment><USER9> Until the government releases their methodology it is hard to know how factual this assessment is.

Google has done a lot of work internally to even up the gap and claims that they have achieved parity.

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google- pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay- disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit)

Either party could squelch the un-informed debate by releasing the data and the methods used to arrive at their conclusions.

<comment><USER10> DoL is suing Google to access for data in order to complete their evaluation of a pay gap. DoL suspects a pay disparity. It needs more data to come to a definition conclusion for which it asked Google and was denied access.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14067113)

<comment><USER9> Don't you think the headline is a bit premature then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It is hard to discern what is going on, and it feels strange to say I trust Google ahead of the government.

Google is full of engineers who prize logic and fairness above most else, and culturally most the engineers I meet in most places espouse gender parity and equality. In light of this, it is hard to believe Google would not find a way to even up payscales. That said, while non-management says one thing it is often the case that management find a way to enact the opposite.

Something in me feels like this has the air of a dirty underhanded PR-war to it, and the government is trying to pressure Google into something we don't know about...

<comment><USER12> While I generally agree with your main point, I have witnessed engineers who espouse equality publicly until their own remuneration is the topic of discussion, at which point self-interest kicks in and "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..." becomes the private narrative.

While a lot of progress has been made in reducing the gender wage gap in tech, we still have a long way to go.

<comment><USER13> > "of course I should earn more than A, because x, y, z ..."

Unless "x, y, and z" include "because I'm a man and she's a woman" then I don't really understand your point. Of course most employees think they're underpaid, and they can all come up with reasons, due to performance on the job, specific incidents, experience, and level of education why they should be paid more.

How is that related at all to gender wage gap in any industry, let alone tech specifically?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would be surprising and novel if the DoL statisticians had produced an unambiguous correct analysis. They're working in a complex field, and under pressure and regulated to use the wrong tools in many cases---so I'm sure plenty of the people there are excellent and could do great work---DoL statistics in general are not a good basis for action.

Example: DoL is required by law to track non-white applicants and hiring to jobs. Alice is not white, and applies to ten open jobs at Example.com, a hot new startup. She's hired for one. DoL reports this as 90% of non-white applicants being rejected. If 10 non-white applicants each apply for all those ten jobs and are all hired, one job each, that's 90% rejection.

A mix of law and regulation requires counting this way. Near one edge case (plausibly including SV today!) the error doesn't matter much. But as you get anywhere near justice, this isn't helpful.

So without seeing the details of this analysis, I'm skeptical that DoL's way of counting is helpful here.

<comment><USER15> I think you are constructing a strawman. If rejection statistics were indeed calculated as you describe, it would scale with the number of job seekers crossed with the demographic. I am going to go with DoL statisticians not being idiots.

<comment><USER16> Strawman or not, the public has a right to the methodology and criteria behind the DoL's claim, without which we are free to disbelieve their allegations without justifying ourselves.

<comment><USER15> We should hold both Google and the DoL to the same standard, nowhere does "trust us" form a compelling argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The US Dept. of Labor is suing Google for not revealing compensation data [0].

The Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) has suspicion on pay disparities and in order to investigate further sent a request to Google to access some records (Point 9) [1]. Google denied OFCCP access to these records. Now, DoL has taken Google to court to get access to the records they need to investigate further and complete their evaluation. I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it.

[0] [https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104](https://www.dol.gov/newsroom/releases/ofccp/ofccp20170104)

[1] [https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsrelease...](https://www.dol.gov/sites/default/files/newsroom/newsreleases/OFCCP20162406_0.pdf)

<comment><USER13> > I wonder why Google is being so evasive about it.

The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing expedition. They turned over records, but like most private companies, don't like turning over records for no reason, especially about highly confidential information such as compensation packages.

<comment><USER10> > The article says that Google thinks the DOL is going on a fishing > expedition.

That's because the system is designed in such a way. The DoL can't make a case without access to meaningful data. So, if the system is designed to make access difficult this is what we end up with.

> They turned over records

They did not turn over records - that's what the entire lawsuit is about as mentioned in the court documents.

<comment><USER17> Clearly they've turned over at least some records before. They're making their case with 2015 data.

<comment><USER10> I don't think so. The lawsuit clearly mentions that Google denied access to data. In fact, Google attorney is on record saying that we denied access too.

<comment><USER17> Then what is the 2015 data mentioned in the article?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The DoL claims "discrimination against women in Google is quite extreme, even in this industry", while Google claims "every year, we do a comprehensive and robust analysis of pay across genders and we have found no gender pay gap".

DoL is probably lacking data, and has a somewhat simplistic methodology (i.e., they see woman are paid less, but they don't know why). I highly doubt Google is intentionally discriminating against woman, I actually think they are probably trying very hard to have equal employment practices. But they still might be discriminating without knowing it.

Here is what _could_ e happening: The DoL says "you pay women less, even when they have the same experience". Google says "we pay for performance, not experience, when you take performance into account there is no pay gap".

What Google might be missing is that there are unconscious biases causing performance reviews of woman to be more negative. I think that is highly likely. My understanding is that Google is highly reliant of performance reviews and performance pay, so under those conditions the DoL might be correct in saying discrimination is "quite extreme, even in this industry".

</comment><comment><USER19> Assuming labor markets are liquid, if the pay gap is true it means either: 1\. Women really want to work for Google and take less pay than working at other employers or 2\. Women at almost all employers are receiving less money.

There were times not too long ago when there were Jewish quotas. Nobelist Physicist Richard Feynman was denied entry into Columbia and he went to MIT instead.

Nobelist Medicine & Physiology Author Kornberg was one of 3 of 200 Jewish applicants to get into medical school from his university.

Those universities/firms that didn't have Jewish quotas and discrimination got a good boost in performance over those who had quotas and discrimination.

If they women are only getting paid less at Google and not other firms then they should change firms. If other firms are paying less, then Feds should go after them as well and not single out Google. Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent women from Google.

In another part of the WSJ article, there is a complaint that most of the employees are male and asian or white. They should examine the portion of people attending top engineering schools: male and asian or white.

<comment><USER20> > Any firm that pays women as much as men should be able to hire the competent > women from Google.

Only if that firm pays men and women more than Google pays (competent) women.

<comment><USER19> Does Google pay more than Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Facebook, ....?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> At what point is a company responsible for discrepancies in pay due to behavioral differences that likely exist between genders. Most jobs have a salary range for each title and they present candidates an initial figure at the low end of that range. To get a figure at the top end of that range, the candidate needs to initiate negotiation and have the skills/experience/practice doing so, including the knowledge that they need to do things like talk about competing offers and avoid divulging their previous salary.

There is plenty of research showing negotiating differences between the sexes (including differences in negotiating based on the gender of the counterparties relative to one another).

Shouldn't the government instead compare discrepancies between initial offers for the same position instead of actual salary negotiated?

If they don't use initial offer, then the business needs to correct for this and every way I can think of to correct destroys the firm's ability to recruit the difficult candidates while still remaining competitive with other firms. The firms that correct for these differences will pay more on average for labor than its competitors and will likely lose out on the capable candidates that know their self worth and demand compensation that reflects that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can someone who actually has access to the story answer the following questions for me. Is this before or after controlling for:

\- field of work. Is this the whole company or just devs?

\- years at the company.

\- age, as a crude proxy for total experience at all companies.

Also does it say the magnitude of the gap?

There's a number of ways this headline could be true, all may be unfortunate from a societal perspective, but it only shows bias on Google's part if this is after controlling for the things companies say they base their pay on.

<comment><USER15> They also base the pay on negotiation, something which men are much more aggressive about and that woman who negotiate hard are judged unfairly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This often happens in cultures - not sure Google is such a culture - were you negotiate your initial salary, raises and need to push for promotions.

When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money than they are comfortable with.

<comment><USER24> > When advising women on interviewing I always suggest they ask for more money > than they are comfortable with.

I do the same for men.

Saw a few guys jump ship recently for significant raises. Turns out they were badly underpaid :D

<comment><USER23> Yes me too ;-) But especially with women. Since reading "Negotiating Your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute" a long time ago I've applied this to myself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Methodology is important here. A lot of the logic behind pay gap talk assumes that the jobs men and women do in the same company are exactly the same, as if these are assembly line jobs and worker output can be compared in a direct and straightforward manner. Anyone who works in tech knows that what each person contributes varies greatly and there's no way to directly compare what two people do or even the amount of experience they bring to the table when they're hired.

</comment><comment><USER26> What is that Google would gain from this? Not that they are strapped for money. It could only lead to such bad publicity. And if the women engineers were hired by Google, they obviously are good at it. Can't understand the rationale behind it, if true.

</comment><comment><USER15> My incoming is already intimate knowledge to the state and my employer. Why isn't the DoL doing this type analysis across all employers? What exactly has to be divulged that the gov doesn't already know?

</comment><comment><USER27> Has anyone ever considered that women regardless of industry get paid less because they don't negotiate for more? As a female from the tech and other industries including talent acquisition rarely do I come across another female who asks for more or alternative compensation in either the hiring, review, or promotion stage of their career. As a benefits manager I've known the top limit companies will pay and sat quietly as female executives accepted offers that were 20-30k away from what the company was willing to give. Bottom line if you don't ask for more you won't get it. Men ask, women rarely do.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not certain why anyone would be surprised. Remember the spreadsheet from 2015?

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+le...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=google+spreadsheet+compensation+leaked)

</comment><comment><USER29> They should replace all their men with women and reap the profits

</comment><comment><USER30> Companies like google are obsessed with diversity. The idea that they'd systematically pay women less is laughable - you will not find more liberal environments outside of academia.

I can't help but wonder if this is politically motivated.

</comment><comment><USER31> Just identify those workers as male. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER32> Another (non-paywall) article:

[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google- pa...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/07/google-pay- disparities-women-labor-department-lawsuit)

Seems like it is early days on this lawsuit. The DoL are asking for more documentation about employee's pay and Google is calling it a "fishing expedition." This is definitely one to watch, but I won't be drawing any conclusions this early in this lawsuit (since even the DoL say they need more documentation to prove their case).

</comment><comment><USER33> Prior HN comments and no paywall Guardian story: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14063043)

</comment><comment><USER34> Link to avoid paywall [https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.c...](https://www.facebook.com/flx/warn/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fgoogle- pays-female-workers-less-than-male-counterparts-labor-department- says-1491622997&h=ATNo1YZ- SgUdJ8wz83J0cO5LV8wz3OcKeYvQQ8ypDdqLNSLm74vBUcKyDN0isAyNoRFXEIRbjE7oj8XngWr9Jq- i-jw9mFUAIg&_rdr)

<comment><USER35> Going to the site via Facebook doesn't avoid the paywall.

<comment><USER36> It did for me

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Non-paywalled but not identical version: [http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn- google-w...](http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-google- women-20170407-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER38> There is no such thing as equal pay for equal work. Two people within the same gender aren't paid equal in the Tech or any Professional services Industry forget across genders. More importantly, can someone define what equal work is? Same role/title doesn't translate to equal work. Every person has different capabilities even within in the same role and if it happens to be that a Woman outperforms than her peers then she should be paid equal or more and I wholeheartedly support that but the sad part with Women is that they never talk about such cases but instead Just hangs on to the phrase "Equal pay for Equal work" so they know if they make enough noise they can get equal pay but they never mention a word about equal work. And after working for 10 years in the Industry (which means I am young so don't think I am talking about some B.C era) and statistically speaking most of the time it had always been men who did tasks that are above and beyond from their regular duties. Sheryl Sandberg Just spits out some none sense. She just got so Lucky to be the COO at FB in the first place. she thinks that if a company can control # years of experience, education level, and blah blah then that will be the deciding factor for Equal pay. I am like really? So two people with same amount of years of experience can perform the same way? Two people with the same education level are equally bright? What if one person went to college Doofus and another went to Stanford? I am sure going to better college doesn't automatically translate into a bright and efficient person for the company but it is an accomplishment one should acknowledge for their hard work. so in short, none of these factors can be controlled and the way most companies Judge pay depends on how well one performs in the Interview which is very much reasonable. If we do the Sheryl Sandberg way we actually don't need an HR department (which Btw, is lot of Women) we can just write a program to accept or reject applicants if is really that straight forward to control the factors she is talking about. I think it would be great if someone can actually make Sheryl Sandberg to code on a daily basis and deal with all the production issues. I went to an Ivy League school and I worked as a TA for many Computer Science courses. I had worked with many students (both Men and Women) I had seen them getting Jobs at Google and FB and whenever they told me they got into Google or FB I used to ask my students so What questions did they ask you? Typically it is Algorithms most of the time as we all know and I can for sure say that the Algorithms questions asked to Men are way Significantly harder than Women. Now why is this not highlighted? Because companies like Google, FB wants to highlight that they hired Women. I bet my entire savings (I truly mean it) that if I go Google even today and pick random sample of 50 (25 Men Vs 25 Women) and randomly ask the Algorithm questions Men will significantly outperform Women because I know the level of difficulty questions asked for a Women and Men to get into Google. This is totally unfair. And I hate Men for giving up on these issues. I am sure most companies know all of this. They want to pay equal because they don't want to deal with one more hassle. If I am a CEO of a large organization I will be all over the media asking Women define what Equal work is before they start talking about Equal Pay. And I would look at it case by case If a woman outperforms her peers then As a CEO I would actually pay more period.

</comment><comment><USER36> I can't wait to see Googles response. I have no idea why they would even open themselves up to this criticism when they could easily align the salaries.

<comment><USER8> They responded and denied it; frankly it's plausible that they're correct (but also that they're not). It's not yet fair to assume one party is correct over the other while both try to drive the media presentation. Let it play out.

<comment><USER39> I would lean towards both being correct depending on how they looked at the data. If you did purely education level, degree field and years of experience related to position then I would expect minimal deviation. However, you can go further tweaking how you look at each of those variables.</comment></comment></comment>


Hospitals with better IT have fewer deaths, study shows - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9127072 <comment><USER3> Interesting - But this could be a correlation vs causation issue - <USER2> with better IT may also be better organised / located / funded / regards / etc (hence have fewer deaths).

<comment><USER4> Also, only looking at patients older than 50 means they're presumably overrecording the effect on things like heart surgery and underrecording it on things like emergency treatment of work accidents. Still an interesting study.</comment></comment>


The Invasion of Giant Pythons Threatening Florida - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/snakes-ate-florida-180972534/ <comment><USER2> I was involved in management of a small natural preserve. One of the activities was to control some of the more pestilential invasive species, such as Oriental bittersweet. But without a huge expensive effort, invasives really can't be eradicated or even very well controlled. I'd estimate that upwards of a fourth of the plant mass was invasive species, from allianthus to wisteria.

In the end, I decided it didn't really matter - that these new species were simply doing what all organisms do, which is to compete to survive and reproduce. The fact that they are doing so in a new ecological setting is just what evolution predicts.

<comment><USER3> > I was involved in management of a small natural preserve... In the end, I > decided it [management of a small natural preserve] didn't really matter

Therefore you shouldn't be doing this job. Is as simple as that

<comment><USER4> Please don't cross into personal attack in HN comments. That's not why we're here.

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

<comment><USER5> How is that comment a personal attack? I don't see any references, critical or otherwise, made to Merrill's motives or character.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "...and their ability to extend their windpipe, snorkel-like, outside their mouths, so they can breathe while their mouths are entirely occupied with swallowing"

this is a pretty incredible fact about pythons!

<comment><USER7> There's video here: [https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/how-snake- breathe...](https://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/how-snake-breathes- while-eating-huge-meals/3152640/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm dreaming of a remote game where players fly a fleet of drones to go hunt for pythons in the everglades.

<comment><USER8> An infrared camera drone with AI should be able to identify giant pythons and other invasive species. Someone make it.

<comment><USER9> How do infrared cameras do with cold blooded animals?

<comment><USER6> I was wondering that myself. Looks like they can resolve...

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wYxiffT7izY](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wYxiffT7izY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was a programme where they got the Irula tribe (with help from the reptile man - Rom Whitaker[2]) from India to trap the pythons, which was touted to be a success as well[1]. Not sure what happened to it?

[1] [https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article12...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/article128233064.html) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Whitaker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romulus_Whitaker)

<comment><USER11> Does not seem like it was remotely successful. From [1] - "Probably the most audacious effort came last year when two renowned snake catchers from India's mountain-dwelling Irula tribe chanted their way across the Everglades for two months. They bagged 33 pythons. But that figure, like the 1,000-plus snakes killed to date in civilian hunting programmes, is a drop in the ocean."

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/25/snakes- flori...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/aug/25/snakes-florida- hybrid-pythons-super-breed-threat-danger)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> My wife and I have just done a great little tour of an eastern part of the Everglades from Gator Park, and the airboat captain talked about the python problem.

There were audible gasps when he mentioned that it's thought the pythons are responsible for a 90% reduction in indigenous species over the past 20 years.

When I asked him what they're doing about the problem, he didn't seem to know much, so this article is both very timely and hugely enlightening!

It also suggests that this topic needs a lot more awareness.

</comment><comment><USER13> Are they edible?

I'll answer my own question: [https://www.outsideonline.com/1794941/florida- officals-dont-...](https://www.outsideonline.com/1794941/florida-officals- dont-eat-python-meat)

No, no you can't because Burmese pythons have a very high mercury content.

<comment><USER14> Wow. Yeah, don't eat those:

"For some reason, the pythons that are coming out of here, they have mercury concentrations higher than mine waste, a mercury mine," said Everglades superintendent Dan Kimball. "According to (USGS scientist Dave Krabbenhoft), they've never found anything that has this high of mercury levels that's still alive. It is amazing."

<comment><USER15> Sounds like a great way to collect Mercury in your local neighborhood

<comment><USER14> I wonder where its all coming from. Just bio-accumulation? But yeah sounds like a nice way to remove some mercury from your local ecosystem. Then sell it as "snake silver" to esoterically leaning folks.

<comment><USER15> Nice business idea! Now the only thing we need are some giant pythons...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In addition, you can't eat the suckers because they accumulate mercury!

[https://www.outsideonline.com/1794941/florida-officals- dont-...](https://www.outsideonline.com/1794941/florida-officals-dont-eat- python-meat)

</comment><comment><USER17> So what will happen is a new ecological balance will develop.

The snakes will hit the limit of their expansion.

The prey animals will develop ways to avoid the snakes.

The area will be forever changed, but just as alive as it was.

<comment><USER18> But not really because people will keep changing things at a pace greater than natural selection and evolution.

<comment><USER17> Probably.

This will in turn evolve a fauna that is well adapted to change.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read this article in the magazine, and towards the end, there is a mention of two Pythons found alive in the Gulf of Mexico, at least 5 miles from shore.

<comment><USER20> I may be misunderstanding something you're saying, but this is also in the online article...

<comment><USER19> I did not read the online article, so I did not want to assume the content was identical.

Regardless, pythons living in saltwater off the coast of Florida, has been added to my list of fears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think this is how Florida wanted to go. Its its time.

</comment><comment><USER22> this seems like an interesting project for genetic engineering - to create pythons which breed only sterile pythons...?

</comment><comment><USER23> unleash the robots. Otherwise it's impossible, they reproduce like there's no tomorrow and they have no natural predators. Anything that harms them probably ruins the environment for others

</comment><comment><USER24> pip uninstall Florida

<comment><USER25> apt-get remove python

<comment><USER26> Just install anaconda. What could go wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Who would win? A hundred giant pythons or 1 Florida Man?

<comment><USER28> I think even one on one, a sufficiently large constrictor could take down (asphyxiate, if not eat) a full sized floridian. But that's not accounting for tool use, which changes the matter completely.

<comment><USER29> The Burmese pythons in the 'glades have been known to eat alligators.

If you've never seen a large constrictor grab prey it's easy to dismiss them as slow and easily avoidable. But these strike with incredible speed, and can wrap themselves completely around their prey in a second or two. Then the squeezing starts... A knife or a gun is only helpful if you can reach it and use it quickly enough.

But, when not hungry, especially if digesting a large meal, they tend to hide, don't really move and are pretty much harmless.

So it really depends if the snake is in hunting mode or not.

<comment><USER30> The trick is to not look like food.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm betting on Florida.

</comment><comment><USER32> Attach small bombs designed to go off only when squeezed or digested to rabbits and set them loose. (Include radio trackers.)

</comment><comment><USER33> There have been many reports of bloat recently in Python. Now we have hard evidence.

</comment><comment><USER34> I dislike the title of this post which is different from the title of the article it links to. Pythons are not evil and they are not good, and a python definitely doesn't invade anything.

A bunch of morones with more money then sense and an infantile itch to scratch, decided that importing predators from a different continent is s good idea and now the state of Florida is facing the consequences. Not a snappy headline, but this is what this is.

<comment><USER35> <title>The Invasion of Giant Pythons Threatening Florida | Science | Smithsonian</title>

You're mistaken. The top heading differs from the title, but that's not unusual.</comment></comment>