A new transducer could dramatically lower the cost of ultrasound scanners - <AUTHOR> https://news.ubc.ca/2018/09/11/could-a-diy-ultrasound-be-in-your-future-ubc-breakthrough-opens-door-to-100-ultrasound-machine/ <comment><USER2> We'll see if they ship!

The company that is really killing it in this space right now is [https://www.butterflynetwork.com/](https://www.butterflynetwork.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I worked at a startup making a handheld ultrasound machine back over a decade ago. Even back then we could easily power the transducer using a mobile phone capacity battery, you just need to step up the voltage to around 100v so you could feed it through the transducer and you'd get a signal back.

Last I heard the place is still going although most of the people I worked with have left already.

EDIT: Back then we were eyeing up using MEMS technology instead, though I don't think anything happened with that.

</comment><comment><USER4> This would be great for animal husbandry. So much guesswork and tracking of schedules would be unnecessary if a veterinarian weren't required e.g. to determine follicle size. I will buy three or four, when they're $100.

<comment><USER5> I would too, for the same reason and for other "paravet" diagnostic work on my unit.

That said, in cattle I found (with a bit of vet coaching) it wasn't hard to recognise follicles, distinguish from (and gauge size of) a corpus luteum, etc by manual palpation, at least for someone who AIs reasonably regularly anyway.

Our vets seem no less accurate this way than with their expensive heads-up toy! (I doubt I'm as accurate - I don't get anything like the practice they do - but very handy for quick sanity check.)

<comment><USER6> you can get chinese vet grade USS machines for ~$500

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity (and some docs I'm writing) :

Any brand or model you can tell me?

That's price bought in the US or sourced in China via AliExpress or similar?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Paired with deep learning it would be very helpful for early tumor screening at home. My girlfriend already had cancer twice, but the usual screening is done only once every 6 months.

<comment><USER9> Overscreening/overtreating is a problem. We all have tumors growing all the time, but our immune systems fight them off.

[https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/avaho/article/98510/oncology/...](https://www.mdedge.com/fedprac/avaho/article/98510/oncology/how- much-too-much-cancer-screening)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> For the extra keen, here is the Nature Microsystems & Nanoengineering paper about this work released Aug 27 2018:

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0022-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41378-018-0022-5)

Disclosure: one of the co-inventors in the article was my graduate supervisor. I had no relation with this work however.

</comment><comment><USER11> I hope this reaches hospitals and patients soon. I recently had to pay ~$1k for a transvaginal ultrasound at Stanford Hospital. That is what I paid AFTER insurance, I think the hospital billed the insurance company another $5k or so. Absolute highway robbery, and prohibitive for many people in need of these assessments.

<comment><USER12> > _A pelvic ultrasound typically is covered by health insurance when ordered > by a doctor for diagnosis of a problem. For patients covered by health > insurance, out-of-pocket costs typically consist of a copay of $10-$50 or > more, or coinsurance of 10%-50% or more._

> _For patients not covered by health insurance, the cost of a pelvic > ultrasound typically varies by provider and geographic region. The typical > cost range is $250-$1,100, with a national average cost of $525, according > to NewChoiceHealth.com[1] . For example, Concierge Medicine[2] in California > charges $275 for a pelvic ultrasound_

[https://health.costhelper.com/pelvic- ultrasounds.html](https://health.costhelper.com/pelvic-ultrasounds.html)

<comment><USER13> > ... _Stanford Hospital_ ...

The times I've used them, the original bill was so outrageous I fumed for days.

Insurance paid ~$15K and they billed me for my entire OOP max for the year ($7,500) for a service that cost about $400 tops to provide.

Contested the bill and they do a medical review of the coding. They had billed as "intensive care" the administration of a single shot and a standard blood count.

They actually came back and claimed the coding was correct! Kept fighting it for about 6 months and they ended up dropping the entire thing at no cost. But they still got to keep the insurance payout.

Just another form of price gouging / variable pricing which should be illegal.

<comment><USER12> I was pointing out that grandparent didn't shop around. Convenience always has a cost.

And in US, it's always worth asking for the uninsured price too. When you don't use your insurance, the medical providers compete against themselves and you get market price. Of course, insurance tries very hard to prevent you from bypassing them.

<comment><USER13> Completely agree with you! At the same time, my personal experience is that Stanford Hosptal billing is outright fraudulent.

And they appear to know it, so don't treat the bill as some final price, it's actually just the first round offer to take advantage of people who don't have the time or inclination to fight it.

<comment><USER12> It seems you are right. Must be one of those bay area perks :)

> _Stanford Hospital and Clinics in Palo Alto and Sutter Medical Center in > Sacramento are two of the most profitable U.S. hospitals, yet both hospitals > carry the "nonprofit" designation, according to a new study._

> _The most profitable hospitals had the highest patient care markup rate, the > authors found._

[https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/03/nonprofit- stanf...](https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2016/05/03/nonprofit-stanford- hospital-among-top-u-s-hospitals-profiting-off-patients/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The thing looks pretty fragile -- one of the reasons why they use piezo based systems is they are pretty robust.. I guess I am not clear how this system equates to getting a $100 ultrasound machine.. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say this system probably is _not_ going to replace normal ultrasound systems for some time.. but could be used to wrap one of these membranes around say your heart and have something like an implantable ultrasound heart monitor..

<comment><USER10> Sorry, can I have some explanation on how piezo-based ultrasound systems aren't considered fragile? Even within their casing, dropping or banging one risks damaging the crystals.

Using Philips Lumify, Clarius' C-3, and other transducers, I think we've seen a bit of what low cost ($1k - $10k range) ultrasound machines with the same form factor can do to the market. Rather than displace the whole market, low cost ultrasound created a new fragment and opened doors for more clinicians and more clinical applications. The higher end machines are still regularly used and sought after (you can't really get the image quality and amazing beamforming otherwise).

I do like the idea of implantable ultrasound heart monitor! Fun to think about.

Disclosure: one of the co-inventors in the article was my graduate supervisor. I had no relation with this work however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> One still needs expensive FPGA or DSP for beamforming in decent ultrasound machine. Nothing for 100$. Maybe some single channel sensor, but I also doubt that after FDA approval price will stay in 100$ range. Plus I am worried about long time stability of polymers. Moisture or UV or mechanical load can alter polymer's structure.

<comment><USER16> Moore's law will take care of the processing cost nicely, especially as more commodity processors become powerful enough to handle it.

The ADCs and other analog stuff might be more of a hurdle, the design of them is quite hard, they aren't able to take advantages of smaller transistors as well, and competition in the space is decreasing as semiconductor companies keep merging (e.g. Analog Devices and Linear Technologies).

<comment><USER17> At these low frequencies very simple oversampling Delta-Sigma ADCs work well, considering the sample rate is in the low 3-digit MHz range at most, which can easily be processed by even an 15$ FPGA that has SerDes suitable for USB3 or PCIe2 [0]. Considering you can just shift the noise out of the frequency of your ultrasound with the correct averaging filter in the FPGA to convert the 1-bit high sample rate to many-bit passband (one might want to fold the quadrature demodulator for RX phase sensitivity into this filter to save on comnpute). It would basically be a many-channel, fixed frequency (by software configuration only) RX SDR.

[0]: [https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Lattice/LFE5UM5G-25F-8MG...](https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Lattice/LFE5UM5G-25F-8MG285I)

<comment><USER18> The clock jitter may get you. You can oversample and decimate to obtain the equivalent ENOB, but then the sample clock stability becomes more difficult and costly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great, now instead of simply googling my symptoms, I can also attempt to read an ultrasound. Image search maybe?

<comment><USER20> You can also use ultrasounds to see your body composition. As in how much of this body part is fat vs muscle.

Although I think 3d imaging will work in a more convenient manner for that purpose, and it will only get cheaper, so I doubt it will become that popular for that purpose if it was made cheap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ok, that is just awesome. There are a ton of uses for low cost ultrasound from trauma care to package inspection.

<comment><USER22> Package inspection? As in parcels? If so, how do they get an acoustic window?

<comment><USER17> X-ray/CT is much more useful for these.</comment></comment></comment>


Replaced occurrences of master/slave terminology with leader/follower (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/django/django/pull/2692 <comment><USER2> This desire for a linguistic shift in the terminology has been around for over a decade. See [http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/master.asp) .

FWIW, this pull request ( from May 20, 2014 so by HN tradition there should be a (2014) in the headline) is mentioned at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_%28technology%29#...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/slave_%28technology%29#Appropriateness_of_usage) , along with Drupal 8.</comment>


The rise of conscious breathing - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/04/cosmic-orgasm-rise-of-conscious-breathing <comment><USER2> This feels like an April fools joke article.</comment>


America: Still Full of Ideas, But Not Making Jobs - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/node/18621224

<comment><USER2> I am from Australia and have a comment here:

The article quotes that Obama "worries that the next breakthroughs in energy, transport and information technology will occur elsewhere".

The reality is that these people "elsewhere" would probably love to come to the US to carry out those breakthroughs, but they don't due to

1) The steep visa requirements, and 2) Even if they were granted access, then they know full well that they would be hit with patent lawsuits from large companies the second their work showed any promise.

I can't speak for the entire rest of the world but personally this is the reason I will not bring my startup to the US - it is simply safer and easier to keep the company out of the US and sell online to its citizens.

If anyone there really cared they would stop this software patent mess and hurry up with the startup visa.

</comment><comment><USER3> Summary: Design it in the US, build it in China.

The difference between the space race back then and the current situation now is that "out innovating" China doesn't really lead to many jobs here in the US.

<comment><USER4> I worry that we will be missing out on the category of new design ideas that are developed while building something. Out of a factory full of people intimately familiar with making a widget, a few of those people should have some pretty good ideas for a better widget or a better way to make the widget. But these days, if the factory is in the US, there are almost no people in it.

<comment><USER5> That is exactly Andy Grove's recent argument as well - innovation comes not just from people with random ideas, but from the knowledge organizations develop as they make things. You can't outsource the latter and expect your innovation pipeline to remain as full.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their is a shortage of skill trade people in the country. It might be time for some people to go down that career path.

<comment><USER7> I agree completely, as I know you are talking about electricians, plumbers and similar professions.

However, some of that stuff may have gone to china too, sort of. What do you do if your dishwasher breaks? Throw it out, buy a new one. (Unless you can fix it yourself!) TV? same thing.

There's also no such thing as a 'milk man' anymore either. I don't think it was always like that.

I think it might just be the result of automation having increased the efficiency of production techniques.

The ability to create an abundance of products cheaply could(has?) cause(d?) a net increase in relative poverty simply because fewer trades are considered skilled (middle class).

<comment><USER8> To pick a nit... In many communities there actually are people who deliver milk. For example: <http://www.royalcrestdairy.com/> in Denver/Colorado Springs area.

<comment><USER6> Food and milk delivery is actually quite common in ND, SD, and MN. for example <http://www.schwans.com>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> With Exxon making $11bn in _profit_ , no wonder no one is making jobs here. Just because "gas is $5/gal elsewhere" is no reason it should be here—because our economy runs on cheap gas. When gas gets costly so does food, and so does the feeble reenergizing of the economy.</comment>


Show HN: Foodcratic – Another food finding iOS app - <AUTHOR> http://www.foodcratic.com <comment><AUTHOR> FAQ: Why not yelp or another competing restaurant review app? I wanted to focus solely on the food and I believe the best way to do that is with a simple up/down rating system. You can rate up/down menu items to reflect if the food was good or not. And you can rate up/down the restaurant if you'd come back. Do I stand a chance?</comment>


Paris Syndrome - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_syndrome <comment><USER2> I wonder if the same mechanism applies to other things that we develop expectations of like relationships, careers, success?

To me Paris syndrome seems much like the old adage of "never meet your heroes" neither will live up to your idealised expectations.</comment>


Analyzing the MD5 collision in Flame - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trailofbits.com/2012/06/11/analyzing-the-md5-collision-in-flame/

<comment><AUTHOR> The title originally indicated that the analysis was done by Alexander Sotirov, one of the co-authors of "MD5 considered harmful today"[1] among other things. I am not sure what happened to the attribution.

[1] <http://www.win.tue.nl/hashclash/rogue-ca/></comment>


The plans to reopen the economy are scary - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2020/4/10/21215494/coronavirus-plans-social-distancing-economy-recession-depression-unemployment <comment><USER2> I'm extremely skeptical of any analysis that discusses political non-viability at this point. If you asked any commentator 2 months ago whether it was politically viable to issue general stay at home orders, or to give every American a bunch of free money, or to pass a multi-trillion dollar stimulus bill, they would have told you no.

<comment><USER3> Giving every American a token cash handout is something Republicans have done before, it's hardly unbelievable if you actually have historical context. And by far most of that bill is corporate handouts. And the oversight has been fired. Everything about this aligns exactly with what you'd expect politically. It's a debacle.

Furthermore, while there has been a lot of shutdown, it's not equal across the board. Tons of places are taking half measures or no measures still, and the reasoning is entirely politically biased (business more important than people, etc.) It's clearly a case of more right leaning areas taking less cautious measures in favor of money.

In fact, I'd argue that everything that has happened, especially all the horribly obvious "mistakes" (read: intentional, corruption riddle, failures in the case of the federal administration) aligns with political viability as expected and confirms in retrospect the claims about viability.

<comment><USER4> > It's clearly a case of more right leaning areas taking less cautious > measures in favor of money.

While I see where you're coming from with this statement, I'm not sure I agree. From where I stand - a town of 13k people surrounded by a large rural area - it makes sense that we're taking less aggressive action because the virus is not yet endemic here. Given the growth of confirmed cases in my area (northern Arkansas), it seems those steps are working adequately to keep it from becoming endemic as well.

I propose that areas with lower population density are taking less aggressive action, and those areas are also predominately right-leaning.

<comment><USER3> Literally everyone in this scenario thinks this way at first because they can't comprehend exponential growth. Nobody can, there are actual studies that show nobody can understand it so it's not a slight.

The only way you can convince me based on evidence elsewhere that your scenario is going to be any better than anywhere else is if your leadership in your area is doing aggressive testing, contact tracing and targeted isolation protocols akin to South Korea.

<comment><USER5> Consider the R0 value that you're trying to reduce by social distancing.

New York City starts with a high value. People encounter each other in apartment hallways, packed subways, crowded streets, and huge stadiums.

Rural places don't have any of that. People don't pass by any non-family when going from home to car. Non-family don't share that car. The streets are nearly empty of people, with just the occasional person out walking a dog.

There might not be exponential growth. If R0 is below 1, there is exponential decay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author considers letting the epidemic run its course on the demographics most at risk, to be the most unrealistic outcome. He writes:

> I care about my privacy, but not nearly so much as I care about my mother.

Most people care about their own mother. But if lockdowns, unemployment and poverty continue, I can definitely imagine people saying, "I don't care about _your_ mother, so why should I stay unemployed and confined to my home just to keep her safe? I'm sure _my_ mother will be fine." Of course, believing that one's own parents will escape the epidemic might be mere wishful thinking, but this is the way that human beings rationalize things in times of crisis.

<comment><USER7> In the UK they're now making noises about letting the 20-30 year olds who live alone go back to work first.

I imagine this is really code for "if we infect all these low-risk people first, we get a large proportion of our workforce immunised, for a fairly low hospitalisation proportion".

I don't know enough about the models, but I also guess having a large chunk of your low-risk population already immune reduces R0 for later waves too.

I can also see it back-firing when these same people think it's alright to nip round Mum's to say hi and give her a quick hug, it's only 5 minutes after all.

I've also heard that a large fast food chain estimates it will take up to 8 weeks before they can get supply chains up and running again. As an example the sheer quantities of lettuce they need aren't being planted because there's no demand for them, and you can't just magic them out of thin air when someone says 'you can open your stores again'.

<comment><USER8> Current plan for Norway is to start gradually opening up after Easter:

* Opening up kindergartens, physiotherapy, hair salons and allowing cottage holidays from 20th April

* Opening schools for 4 youngest classes, After School and some higher education in final years from 27th April

So you go after lowest-hanging fruits gradually, but it's a learning phase and could need rollback if people don't follow restrictions enough to contain contagion. This advice is a mix of political and expert analysis, after observing decline of new cases and deaths, after timely though not early, lockdown.

Norway is a small and nimble country, so could more easily be leading the response in the West. Though a new normal will have to include pandemic response in nearly all aspects of social life. The clustering and stochastic nature of the spread may become somewhat managable, with enough tracking, testing and preparations.

<comment><USER7> Does anyone know why I've seen various reports that they think opening schools will have a low impact on the virus spread? Kids still get infected, so will spread the disease (and I would assume more than most people being careful) as well as then spread it to their households.

Is it because children rarely commute outside a community, so it wouldn't spread between communities, just within communities already infected?

<comment><USER8> Contagion very rarely trace back to kindergarten and schools, kids have much higher chance of mild infections and it is possible low amounts of virus exposure are safer. Not enough evidence so leaders need to lead and experts collect data and analysis, what measures may not contribute enough to justify.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the things the press seems to have had trouble grasping is that there are _no good options_ , and quite possibly never were. (Short of stopping the virus from spreading out of Wuhan in the first place, which might barely have been possible if the world acted fast enough - but that was never going to happen.)

<comment><USER10> It certainly could have if other countries had closed border with China early. But some news outlets were running unfortunate headlines.

<comment><USER11> The US never really closed their border with China. Americans returning from China were let back in with minimal checks, and some were probably presymptomatic. Not only would it have had to be earlier, it would have had to strand American citizens abroad until they could be tested, which was never on the cards.

<comment><USER9> Quarantining all the Americans returning from China might've been sufficient, though that would be politically (and maybe even legally) dicey.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For how much I understand the need to lower the curve and reduce the R0 of the infection, I start to see also another argument.

We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders.

Again, since the quarantine started in my area I exist twice to buy groceries and that's all. So I understand the need and the importance of it.

But should I really throw away on year of my life? Shouldn't we quarantine only the elders? Would your opinion change if you were living by yourself with your significant other locked up somewhere too far away to meet in two months?

And yes I am aware that also younger people died from the virus but the chance are so much smaller that I don't believe is fair to compare it.

The opportunity cost is so much different and nobody is addressing the issue.

<comment><USER13> >We are basically pausing the life of younger people, indefinitely, to protect the elders.

No, we're pausing the life of everyone to protect everyone. If you overload the hospital systems then everyone dies. If you pause and keep things barely managable then mostly only old people die.

<comment><USER12> I believe we both agree that locking down 20/30 years old people who still have to study, to meet people, to make experience, to find lovers and to find themselves is very different that lock down 70/80 years old people right?

Then there is no doubts that the virus hit hardest the elders.

Again, what I am saying is that younger people are hit by the lockdown much more than the elders while being the less concerned about the virus itself.

And we should talk also about this.

<comment><USER14> > Again, what I am saying is that younger people are hit by the lockdown much > more than the elders while being the less concerned about the virus itself.

The problem with saying this is that it's incorrect. Many elders suffer during lockdown in the exact same ways and in some cases to the exact same extent that younger people do, including in the ways you imagine: socially, sexually, economically.

Additionally, there are many young people (many of them here on HN) who do just fine during lockdown because WFH and online interaction actually promote their senses of well being. [0]

The insistence with which you have been asserting that young people are being "punished" reveals adherence to an agenda more than an evenhanded analysis of the facts.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22821256)

<comment><USER15> _The insistence with which you have been asserting that young people are being "punished" reveals adherence to an agenda more than an evenhanded analysis of the facts._

I don't think that's fair to the OP. They seem to me to just be describing what they see and feel.

In a cold, utilitarian sense, the ripple effects from messing up a young life are many times more significant. If schooling, work, romance, and childbearing of young people are all disrupted, you can expect to see that in the economy for decades to come (just look at the name "baby boomers" for the opposite case). But, again in the cold utilitarian sense, if the life of someone with 10-20 years left is disrupted, that disruption doesn't last as long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Oh my god, the system described by the CAP plan covered in this article _cannot_ be allowed to come into being. Instant dystopian nightmare state. This kind of tool can't be un-made.

<comment><USER17> It does not have to be built that way: [https://github.com/DP-3T/documents](https://github.com/DP-3T/documents)

This is what we'll hopefully be using in Switzerland.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, the PEPP-PT approach will not protect privacy in many European countries. This is because an individual is linked to a phone number. Since you cannot purchase a SIM card in many countries without showing ID (and a copy of your ID is made and sent to the state authorities), the state is easily able to match phone numbers with people's real identities. Consequently, the authorities will easily be able to track the user's movements, or at least track what other people that person interacted with over a period of time, which is essentially the same thing.

If you read the PEPP-PT documentation closely, the "privacy protections" are mainly keeping you anonymous to other ordinary people. But people should reasonably want to remain anonymous from the state as well.

<comment><USER17> I agree that PEPP-PT is not too clear on their commitment to protecting privacy. I disagree that anything about the DP-3T system divulges SUM numbers. Go read the 3 pager and see.

<comment><USER6> In order to automatically send warning SMSs to everyone you have been in contact with, the system has to link app users to phone numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe I'm just fed up with how the news has been handling this situation, but I find usage of words like "scary" in a title to be incredibly worthless. If I can't even get to the end of the title without being told how to feel, it speaks volumes about the intentions of the post.

This is just one of the numerous examples of lazy and bad intentioned attempts to use anxiety to convince readers to click the article. The entire journalism industry should be ashamed of how the absolutely miserable way in which they've handled this event.

You need to take a hard look at yourself if your industry revolves around damaging people's mental health in order to draw page views.

<comment><USER19> Very well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> He's saying that such-and-such is politically unviable, but that's what we were all saying about business shutdowns, too.

<comment><USER21> In my state (Ohio) at least, protest are starting to form on the legality and length of shutting down businesses. It's still only a handful of people but seems to be growing every day. There is a very slim chance the government can enact shut downs for long and still maintain authority

<comment><USER22> Where in Ohio is this? I'm not doubting, just like to read local news on it as I'm in Ohio too.

I applaud DeWine for acting quickly, but I'm concerned that maybe for rural and small city locations the shut down was too much. I wonder if we are creating a cry wolf effect for non-metro areas. All the mass effects in my area are purely from the response. Of course, one may say, what if we hadn't a shut down; but, I think that argument is going to be harder to make to the small businesses in a small city or rural area next time around.

<comment><USER23> [https://www.nbc4i.com/community/health/coronavirus/dewine- ac...](https://www.nbc4i.com/community/health/coronavirus/dewine-acton- address-protestors-heard-shouting-during-thursday-coronavirus-update)

Hope this helps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As somebody who has been tracking and interested in this story since late January, the one thing I can without qualifications is that whatever seems true now will change in a few weeks' time.

In general the outlook has gotten better as the data got better and we were able to compare notes, although there have been some setbacks, too.

I don't think we'll ever, ever get back to "normal" as this is the pandemic we've been reading about and planning for over the last century. Nobody [alive today] has ever lived through something like this and it is bound to have lasting consequences.

But I would be cautious about reading long-term plans. I know everybody wants to know how the story ends, but people who have engaged in long-range planning over the last couple of months have consistently had to re-plan. I would expect that trend to continue. We don't know exactly what small changes might have large consequences. For instance, monitoring temperatures at points of entry and exist for all businesses could have a major effect, or forms of "frontier testing"

No doubt this is a period for the history books. We'll probably have to live through it to finally figure out how it's all going to end.

<comment><USER25> what do you mean "nobody has ever lived through this?" We've had huge pandemics in the past: the plague, Spanish Flu, measles, polio, smallpox. I agree we should be cautious about reading long-term plans.

<comment><USER26> Thank you, this context is important. Swine flu killed between 150,000 to 575,000 globally in 2009, and almost nobody even remembers it. HIV is a recent pandemic that many living people have lived through, from discovery to treatment.

And of course the flu, which is different than SARSCoV2, kills between 250,000 and 500,000 each and every year. If you're 30 years old, between 7 and 15 million people have died from flu in your lifetime.

<comment><USER27> Coronavirus has already killed 100k, and we're still in the first quarter.

<comment><USER28> Yep, and also we don't have overloaded hospitals, young people critically ill, mass graves, and unplugged global economy for the flu.

It's hard to argue that this isn't _VASTLY_ worse than the flu in both scope and intensity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Bad shit happens to a minority of people every day, permanently disrupting their lives and forcing them to abandon long-term plans. The majority remain oblivious and see an enduring status quo.

Suddenly a Black Swan craps on everyone at once, and a great many people are whining 'why is this happening to me' and 'when will someone fix this so I can go back to my routine'.

Guess what? Your routine is probably fucked. Throw it out, get used to the new normal, and accept that _no one knows how to fix this_ (yet?), just like every other time we get hit by a context-changing problem.

Of course some people get too attached to their context, and those who come later and find their remains might label such events as 'out-of-context problems'...

</comment><comment><USER30> When are we just going to admit that our choices are:

1) indefinite lockdown 2) everyone gets the virus

Between a 0.5% chance of dying, and life imprisonment, I'd take my chances.

<comment><USER31> Here's the thing though, that binary choice is predicated on what we know right now, tomorrow we may know more, and we will definitely know more in a few weeks, in a month or two we may know enough that we have better choices to make. Our ability to treat this virus is very limited right now, but that may not be true in a month, so just throwing up your hands and saying let everyone die now when we don't have good treatment options is basically just signing peoples death warrant for no good reason.

<comment><USER32> This, precisely. Maybe we find better treatment (especially treatment that reduces the incidence of patients needing hospitalization or ventilators). Maybe we get testing technology widespread enough that we don't have to treat everyone like they're positive unless proven otherwise. Maybe we get antibody tests that allow us to figure out who isn't immunologically naive to the virus. Maybe we learn more about how it spreads. Maybe we learn more about why some people are asymptomatic.

Basically there are countless ways in which quality of life can be improved over time as we continue to maximize efforts to contain spread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> As long as our political leaders are elected for ignoring science, society will face big problems that we rely on science to keep at bay.

</comment><comment><USER34> Cynically, since the morbidity is mostly in the elderly parts of the population vs. the younger ( a la 1918 ), I can see the Lt. Gov of Texas's attitude of " let the olds make their sacrifice" be the driving principle...

<comment><USER35> Not simply just old people [1]. Texas has also categorized religious gatherings of 50 as an essential service, whereas abortion clinics have been closed.

Texas is taking a very different approach from California.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> If we tolerate any of these plans, we get what we deserve.

Louis CK's "OF COURSE... but maybe" skit:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLGzFQg_1xc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLGzFQg_1xc)

<comment><USER37> What's the alternative? Let the virus rage, totally overwhelm the medical system and kill a whole bunch of people? Stay on lockdown for years until a vaccine's ready?

<comment><USER36> That's a false dichotomy.

We could have locked down the vulnerable (60+ and those with pre-existing conditions), and anyone with a temperature, focused our healthcare efforts on them and let everyone else go about their business with more caution (masks + hand washing).

We would have built societal (cows are a herd, humans are a society) immunity by this point and could slowly return to normal for the at-risk crowd.

As it stands, we haven't built up any social immunity and will have to wait over a year for a vaccine which, by definition, we will not know the long term effects of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For what it's worth, CUNY (City University of New York), which has more than 250k students, decided that their Fall semester will be online. At least in New York City, things will not go back to normal in 2020.

</comment><comment><USER39> > _" The CAP and Harvard plans both foresee a digital pandemic surveillance > state in which virtually every American downloads an app to their phone that > geotracks their movements, so if they come into contact with anyone who > later is found to have Covid-19, they can be alerted and a period of social > quarantine can begin."_

If this refers to the bluetooth supported apps I've seen developed by several institutions, does this not sound like a horrible idea? Let's say two people walk past each other on the street or stand close in a shop, as far as we know the risk of transmission is non-existent or extremely low. Are you just going to build a connected graph and then ping everyone if one person gets sick? You'd be pinging half the population of a dense city after one day.

Before putting these surveillance measures into place I'd like to know if they're not causing more harm and paranaoia then they help.

<comment><USER2> I don't mean to rip on you, it's important to notice problems, but that seems very solvable. Just require some minimum duration of proximity before you alert.

<comment><USER39> It's not that easy. Social networks, particular urban dense ones have the characteristics of small world networks ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small- world_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network)). The distance between every person in a city is maybe 5-6 individuals. You can imagine how many hundred people you stand next to, how many people they stand next to, and so on.

So if say, the chance of being infected in an interaction is say 5%, then the chance at a distance of two is 0.25%, the chance for someone at a distance of 3 is merely 0.01%, etc..

Do you really think it's a rational use of resources or your attention that if you're one of the countless 'distance 3' people to alert you? Unless you had some mysterious ability to determine with extremely high fidelity that infection has occured from metadata alone, which doesn't exist, it's a tool for mass panic.

Bluetooth will give you a match for up to 10 meters. The official safe distance is 6 feet. You can't even tell from a bluetooth match if people were close enough _at all_.

<comment><USER2> No, that doesn't seem rational. Only the distance 1 people should be alerted - that's how it works in existing contact tracing systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This is a silly article. Every plan made to date has been laid to waste by reality.

</comment><comment><USER41> > Any feasible plan starts with massive testing, completely subsidized by the > government. And yet just yesterday the president claimed we don't need mass > testing.

This is something I've been saying from day 1: short of universal vaccination, the only way to get back to some form of normalcy is widespread testing of the population. Any government with some sense of reality would spend billions in testing, to avoid losing trillions in the economy. Unfortunately it doesn't seem that the US government has any notion of how (or desire) to do this.

<comment><USER42> Testing when?

When you have symptoms? Too late.

330 million people testing weekly? Not possible.

There is no realistic way to mass test everyone in a meaningful way.

<comment><USER43> How much money would it take to make testing everyone a realistic possibility? How much money are we losing by just shutting everything down? Which one costs more?

<comment><USER42> I'm not sure it's a function of money, probably more likely capacity and time to create capacity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What level of normalcy? Free domestic movement, business open, schools open? That will probably work with some restrictions if social distancing works. Countries are trying different levels of restrictions so it will soon be obvious what works and what doesn't.

International travel, sports events and other large gatherings I'm not optimistic will be back to normal in 2020 unless something big changes.

</comment><comment><USER45> "Normal" is a wild goose chase. Society is too fluid to call "normal" at any time. It's just _different_.

</comment><comment><USER46> It'll be interesting to see if public k—12 schools will let older teachers teach from home, while forcing students to show up to the physical virus breeding grounds.

<comment><USER35> I think this whole phenomena has led to a nuanced discrimination of age in the essential services workforce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This article should have been titled: "There is No Plan".

</comment><comment><USER48> It seems 98% of all people who get Covid-19 recover.

Some countries like Sweden are doing fine, open for business.

I don't think it's quite as dire as the author thinks.

</comment><comment><USER49> I started studying the US news reports of Covid-19 related to ventilators weeks ago when I realized there were no interviews with survivors, and ignored the speculation around partial testing results and R0 calculations because of the lack of hard data, and exponential rate of infection making analysis moot.

Essentially, ICU admission for ventilators, and subsequent deaths, are the most complete and factual data we have.

The solid information we have is that 66% - 90% of ventilator patients die, as reported for both China and the US. Interviews with doctors all report that ventilators are supposed to be used for up to a week, not 3 weeks.

Although the occasional patient makes it off a ventilator, from a public healthcare policy standpoint, ventilators just don't work well enough, so there's no reason to "flatten the curve" now (April 10, 2020) aside from accumulating PPE (masks, gowns, gloves for hospital staff.) (A cure will likely take 18 months to invent and approve, so that's not something to put on a roadmap.)

The plan should be this:

1\. have our healthcare policy experts (CDC, etc.) study today's reported data on patient mortality and PPE supplies for a couple days

2\. inform seriously ill, high-risk corona hospital patients about the risks of ventilators (ie. you're probably going to die on one anyway, and horribly)

3\. have dedicated quarantine and palliative buildings for moderately ill confirmed corona patients with O2 available (like the Javits Center in NY, as an example for discussion, or an anchored cruise ship moored off each major city). Recovered people can work there safely it appears.

4\. have dedicated hospitals for corona ICU patients if they choose to try a ventilator (China has dedicated hospitals)

5\. lift the US lockdown and treat corona like any other seasonal flu, mainly because it is, and also to avoid destruction of our economy and related uncertainty

6\. the exception is passenger airline flights, which should be grounded until further notice. develop a plan to make airliners safer to fly (hepa filters, etc.) Cities shouldn't be under lockdown, but airlines are almost certainly a major disease vector and need to be treated as such.

(FYI: Wuhan has an international airport only 2 hours flying time to Shanghai Pudong International, which is a major hub. So that's likely how it spread world-wide.)

The impediments for the US to implement this plan are:

1\. as a society, the US has lost the ability to formulate and execute policy at the highest level, whether healthcare, hurricane response or infrastructure. At this time, we need experts (like the CDC) to lead.

2\. Trump should not be involved in any way, since he doesn't care about facts.

(The reasons California Governor Newsom broke contact this week with the federal government are essentially the above.)

I'll add my collection of supporting links later today. They are all consistent with each other, so the facts I outlined above are not in dispute.

Although the information from China was publicized late, it appears overall to be accurate and helpful. They used their previous experience with corona and bird flu infections to move fairly assertively on Covid-19 - a far better response than the US or Europe.

Please leave a comment if you want an area of my outline above to be fleshed out more.

If somebody could look into how Sweden and Germany have fared with less social distancing, that would be helpful. Please leave a comment about that.

AMA.

<comment><USER9> The big problem with this plan is that it would require giving up and letting a large number of Americans die, which is a political and social nonstarter given current expectations around life, death and healthcare. (Well, at least amongst the secular parts of America. Some of the more religious communities seem to still hold the view that it's futile and arrogant to think this is something we can fight, much to the anger and bemusement of secular society.)

<comment><USER49> For herd immunity, the number discussed is 80% of the population getting Covid-19. Since there are cases world-wide, I don't see containment at this point working.

To even consider containment succeeding, we would need a way to test 300 million people a couple times a week. Since we can't do even 1 million tests a day, the math doesn't add up.

"Giving up" is a strange way to look at it. We have various flus annually. There will be a time limit to lockdown of several weeks, not 18 months.

So it's important to look at the data and make an informed public healthcare policy decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> As we enter summer, the question no one is asking is:

Can mosquitoes transmit this virus like they do malaria?

<comment><USER50> I don't know enough about them to say for sure, but I haven't heard of any sort of virus being transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria is caused by a parasite, not a virus.

<comment><USER42> EEE then. That's a virus transmitted by mosquitoes. Malaria was a bad example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> This will be a good chance for state governments to show how well they function and coordinate absent federal guidance.

Maybe they will form their own federation to circumvent the current federations ineffectiveness. [https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/governors...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-09/governors- consider-supply-consortium-to-skirt-fema-dysfunction)

That's at least one emergent non-California nation state coming to be. Maybe we could call it the Great States. Toronto can come too. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis)

Culturally; North Central, The North, Midland, St Louis Cooridor, Inland North, W. Pa.; make a nice package. [https://www.wbez.org/stories/_/9054d7a4-f876-4c53-8ce1-08ada...](https://www.wbez.org/stories/_/9054d7a4-f876-4c53-8ce1-08adae048d28)

<comment><USER21> States shouldn't need federal guidance and should prefer not to receive it. Without federal oversight, states and municipalities can tailor policy to their own area

<comment><USER51> I don't disagree, absent a well stocked National Stockpile, the Great States should build their own emergency reserve for Natural Disaster and Pandemic. Each state building its own stockpiles of some things that don't hit all areas equally could be wasteful. Keep close relationships with manufacturing firms who are prepared to be ready on short notice.

This is as much a failure of planlessness as it is policy.

<comment><USER2> Although it should be noted that many states _did_ have adequate stockpiles and haven't had their health care systems overloaded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Lots of business are converting to delivery. I think this is good. The warehouse style of store, prevalent since the 1960s is an outdated model.

Schools are moving more courses online. Another major upgrade.

The restaurant experience hasn't been rewarding for a long time. People should learn to cook at home. Experiment with fancier cuts of organic meat.

Movie theaters have been terrible for decades. Sticky floors, too many commercials, overpriced food. Now many film festivals are moving online.

Fast fashion was just a way of getting people to buy poorly made clothes from sweat shops.

So much of the crap people bought recently was just excessive junk; causing an environmental disaster.

We should just pay people to stay home and learn new skills. Why not pay people to taking online biology courses though the pandemic? There should be a startup that pays people to stay home and take biology courses. Exams can be online and for real verification done over video conference with an examiner. The startup then can get a % of your salary when you start working. Or, be paid through advertising from medical companies.

<comment><USER53> But isn't there something to be said about the kind of human experiences each of the "outdated" industries you mentioned provide? Namely schools, stores, going to movie theaters with friends, etc. People like seeing and being around other people. Some really, really don't, but most do. Moving the majority of activities indoors forever will have a negative impact on the psyche of the most people.

I agree that what most people buy is junk and that there is waste in the spaces you mentioned. But I'm not sure how "natural" is will feel for people to do all that isolated in their homes with a small amount of people indefinitely...

<comment><USER52> What I see happening. People are indoors and pursing something that they are really interested in. Maybe knitting, trumpet playing, etc. They are connected with new people online who share the same interests as them. In a few months people will be connecting in person with these people. Modernity will do what modernity always does...connect people who have distinct, unique, interests together. As a society I think that we've outgrown the idea of just going to a movie theater and hanging out with friends. I think that the older model society will re-emerge...fraternities, social clubs, members only places, hackerspaces. Let's say you get passionate about a hobby right now, lets say playing an instrument. You'll want to find a safe space to meet. Maybe a few people will pitch in some cash and just rent a space to turn into a private hangout club. With the coming recession space will become cheaper.

<comment><USER54> You really think everybody is enjoying being isolated inside, alone, with no human contact, no mass gatherings like concerts or games?

> As a society I think that we've outgrown the idea of just going to a movie > theater and hanging out with friends.

This is an antisocial and unhealthy perspective. We've yet to see the mental health ramifications from this extended period of isolation. We're not built to sit inside by ourselves all day. Even as great as online connections can be, they are no replacement for the real presence of a human being. Saying we've "outgrown" it is preposterous.

<comment><USER52> In some societies people don't have much a say of what they do, who they hang out with, what jobs they do. In a small rural society everybody was/is expected to conform. Modernity lets us hangout with people that we share interests with. This crisis will push that even further. We'll hang out more with people that share our interests, and less just hanging out randomly.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hidden Injustice: County Counsel Works to Keep OC's Snitch Scandal Under Wraps - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/07/orange_county_sheriff_department_district_attorney_snitch_court_scandal.php <comment><USER2> It seems a lot of this sort of stuff would stop happening if they just incarcerated members of the US justice system for the crimes they got people wrongly convicted for.

E.g., you put a man in jail for ten years over a robbery he didn't commit, by fudging evidence, and you as prosecutor are then forced to serve the ten year sentence.

Ludicrous of course, very eye-for-an-eye, but it might certainly put a dent in the rampant corruption that seems to be happening stateside.

<comment><USER3> Heck I don't even care if they get the same sentence, I just demand they be held accountable. Which doesn't seem to happen anywhere.

<comment><USER4> Ken Anderson spent five days in jail for his role (Brady violations) in the Michael Morton case. Morton served almost 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. [http://www.statesman.com/news/news/ken-anderson-to- serve-10-...](http://www.statesman.com/news/news/ken-anderson-to- serve-10-days-in-jail/nbmsH/)

Funny story, his successor has just been sentenced to 10 days in jail for contempt of court for violating a gag order in connection to a capitol murder case. She hasn't served it yet, and probably won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Another related article: [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/29/1388819/-Judge- disq...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/29/1388819/-Judge-disqualifies- all-250-prosecutors-in-Orange-County-CA-because-of-widespread-corruption)

Al Jazeera is investigating and they've gotten their hands on tape recordings: [http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america- tonight/art...](http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america- tonight/articles/2015/5/28/orange-county-snitch-scandal-audiotapes.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think reading this story some people might think, well, who cares, this guy is guilty. And in this particular case, the actual guy on trial does happen to be very guilty in deed. He did confess, and I think they had a pretty strong case against him without the jail house snitch.

BUT, I would like to point out that this is still a very important case because a) this is illegal, and b) because jail house snitches are extremely unreliable. That's putting it mildly. In reality, ALL jail house snitches are liars and they will literally tell the police anything that the police want's to here. Have you ever wondered why a good lawyer will NEVER give a copy of the clients file to a client, if that client is in jail. If you do that, there is a very high likelihood that someone in jail will sneak a peak in that file, find out what kind of evidence the cops have, and will immediately claim that they have independent knowledge of that evidence, because the client confessed to it.

Cops promoting jailhouse snitching can lead to higher conviction rates, but not better justice. In fact really good investigators, you know, the once who actually want to find out the truth, not just convict people, will slip some false leading questions during their interview to see if they can catch their "star witness" on a lie, or so I have been told by an investigator who used to be detective for many decades before retiring and becoming a PI.

</comment><comment><USER7> Incidentally, the California courts have erected enormous barriers to transparency, perhaps inadvertently, by using a collection of differing docketing systems from county to county, and then charging outrageous fees for records.

A scathing letter I sent to the California Judicial Technology Council was successful in lowering Los Angeles County's search fees from $4.75 per 20 results to $1.00 per search back in March. They rarely get any comments at all from the public (because no one knows they exist).

See [http://www.courts.ca.gov/jctc.htm](http://www.courts.ca.gov/jctc.htm). And send in comments!

</comment><comment><USER8> Judge: "I'm a big believer that these are public courts," he said. "The public should know what we are doing here. It protects the integrity of the system."

Right on. Secrecy may have a place at the international level (NSA etc), but at local jurisdictions, if you're keeping secrets from your population, THAT is a problem.

<comment><USER9> But, convictions would go down! /s

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another related article:

[http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-jailhouse- sn...](http://www.latimes.com/local/orangecounty/la-me-jailhouse- snitch-20150313-story.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> I was going to upvote this, but the site displayed a popunder-type ad when I clicked to read page 2. Here's the "print article" link:

[http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/07/orange_county_...](http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/07/orange_county_sheriff_department_district_attorney_snitch_court_scandal.php?print=true)</comment>


Depth First Learning Fellowship: $4000 grants to build ML curricula - <AUTHOR> http://fellowship.depthfirstlearning.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone! One of the creators of DFL here. In an attempt to more deeply understand fundamental concepts in machine learning, we designed Depth First Learning. It's a pedagogy for diving deep into machine learning by carefully tailoring a curriculum around a particular paper or concept and leading small, focused discussion groups. So far, we've created guides for InfoGAN, TRPO, AlphaGoZero, and DeepStack.

Since our launch, we've received very positive feedback from students and researchers. Now, we want to run new, online classes around the world.

We intimately understand that the process of curating a meaningful curriculum with reading materials, practice problems, and instructive discussion points can be very rewarding, but also time-consuming and difficult. We wanted to make sure that the people compiling the content understood that their efforts were well worth their time and consequently decided to launch a fellowship program.

Thanks to the generosity of Jane Street, we will provide 4 fellows with a $4000 grant each to build a 6 week curriculum and run weekly on-line discussions.

If you'd like to lead a class about an important paper in machine learning, please visit [http://fellowship.depthfirstlearning.com](http://fellowship.depthfirstlearning.com) to apply. We look forward to hearing from you, and I'm happy to answer any questions about it!</comment>


The Chairless Chair, an invisible chair that you can wear - <AUTHOR> http://edition.cnn.com/2014/08/20/tech/innovation/the-chairless-chair/index.html

<comment><USER2> Extensive discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8204412](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8204412)

Also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8206208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8206208)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8215212](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8215212)</comment>


Getting Started with Touchscreen UIs in Java Platform, Micro Edition - <AUTHOR> http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javame/touchscreen-ui-163480.html

<comment><USER2> Does anybody know or can post any sources which show how much share J2ME have in the mobile app platform market?</comment>


An argument for argument from authority - I don't have time not to trust people - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/new/ThereIsNoTimeForThis.html?HN2

<comment><USER2> The link doesn't work for me. Maybe the server is overloaded but from the title of your post it seems that maybe the author doesn't understand the fallacy of the false appeal to authority. There is nothing wrong in quoting experts or quoting articles in which experts are quoted. This is not a logical fallacy.

There is something wrong with an argument in which Person A makes a claim. Person B then voices suspicion or doubt as to the veracity of the claim. Person A claims expertise in area C. Area C is not all related to the claim.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but I realised that my previous submission of this item somehow lost part of the title, and I wondered if that made a difference to whether it got noticed. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't, don't know, so I thought I'd try again.

ADDED IN EDIT: I see the title has been silently truncated here too - it did say:

An argument for argument from authority - I don't have time _not_ to trust people.

ADDED IN FURTHER EDIT: Well, I see my comment has been down-voted. I don't know if that's because they disagree with the item I'm pointing to, or upset that I've re-submitted. <fx: shrug> Don't really care, although it would be nice to get a reasoned argument in either case. If you really think the re- submission shouldn't stand then just flag it and it'll get deleted.

OK - FINAL EDIT: I've tried again to fix the title and this time it's worked. I've decided I _really_ don't understand what's going on, so I'm going into the Big Blue Room for a bit. I should do that more often ...</comment>


The Intelligence of Earthworms - <AUTHOR> https://www.historytoday.com/archive/natural-histories/intelligence-earthworms <comment><USER2> I love to spend time in my garden looking at all the different creatures: all insects, for example, seem to have a very intricate behavior. Recently I noticed how bees, not being able to drink nectar from comfrey flowers due to their elongated form, would pierce a hole in the flower's petals in order to reach the nectar.

It seems to me each creature, each species, have their own kind of intelligence. Plantes also seem to me to have an awareness of some kind. They know where the sun is, they know when to sprout, they can find water, they have such complex relationships with everything around them, the microbiome in the soil, other plants, insects.

Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless.

<comment><USER3> > _Truly I find the mechanistic view of nature so grim and pointless._

Ok, but an anthropomorphic view of nature is fanciful and _also_ pointless.

This is not alive by any but the most inclusion-oriented definitions, and yet it follows light: [https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot- instructio...](https://www.popsci.com/make-light-following-robot- instructions/)

Talking about "intelligence" and "awareness" makes sense _sometimes_ because we don't understand where our consciousness comes from. For mechanisms where we have the capacity to concretely observe how and why they happen, cavalierly throwing in notions like "intelligence" and "awareness" is an emotional deception, a pathetic fallacy ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pathetic_fallacy#Science)), that adds nothing except fantasy.

You see a complex mechanical process and call it grim and pointless unless one introduces metaphysics. I see a complex mechanical process and call it fundamentally beautiful and awesome without needing the metaphysics.

<comment><USER4> It turns out that the bio-molecular machinery that neurons use to do their thing is also present throughout all cells. In other words, all life thinks. Brains are just concentrations of thinking tissue.

"What Bodies Think About: Bioelectric Computation Outside the Nervous System" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698)

<comment><USER3> > _In other words, all life thinks_

Only for a hyper-inclusive definition of "think" that loses any communicative value.

<comment><USER5> I don't understand the problem with being inclusive a bit. Plants could be aware, so could be all life of all the Kingdom, we kill them and we eat them for own survival.

What's wrong with that? We're just a bunch of talking animals. A huge bunch with complicated tools but technically still wild animals.

As for sun tracking in plants I do agree with you it's probably not a sign of intelligence. If that's your point, you can just point out that part.

<comment><USER6> In that case, what word is left for what a human does in their brain that a plant can't?

<comment><USER7> Why does there need to be a specific word to describe that?

You can just say humans and plants think in different ways, or through different mechanisms.

<comment><USER8> > Why does there need to be a specific word to describe that?

Communication efficiency. I'd like to have one short term for this so that I don't need to make elaborate differentiations every time I need to use it.

<comment><USER9> "Our language is an imperfect instrument created by ancient and ignorant men. It is an animistic language that invites us to talk about stability and constants, about similarities and normal and kinds, about magical transformations, quick cures, simple problems, and final solutions. Yet the world we try to symbolize with this language is a world of process, change, differences, dimensions, functions, relationships, growths, interactions, developing, learning, coping, complexity. And the mismatch of our ever- changing world and our relatively static language forms is part of our problem." \- Wendell Johnson (Semanticist)

Good example of ppl who make up new words to "simplify" things as their world gets more and more complex every year are Lawyers and Accountants. But even so sometimes you end up requiring buildings full of them to decipher what one sentence they came up with last year actually means this year.

The problem is not the Lawyer or the Accountant but Human Language itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I find it fascinating that just a few centuries ago, most philosophers and scientists considered that humans were the only "intelligent" species. Today's research consists of diverse animal species where it is so common to see how even the smallest of species like Zebrafish or fuit-flies possess extremely complex neuronal networks which process external stimuli ranging from visual, audio or social cues and produce very specific ("intelligent") responses. This was thought to be absent in non-human species to a greater degree in the past but now we have so much evidence to disprove that.

<comment><USER11> It's quite fascinating that as we are making AIs which are smarter than humans in 'narrow' applications, we are also becoming more aware of existing lifeforms that are already smarter than us in 'narrow' fields of their own, e.g. a squirrel's memory for food stashes.

I wonder whether our society will integrate interactions with AIs and nonhuman animals as part of the same process.

<comment><USER10> We might need organizations to protect "robo rights"? I think I already saw some piece of information where someone tried to enforce that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Minute creatures swarm around us, objects of potentially endless study and admiration, if we are willing to sweep our vision down from the world lined by the horizon to include the world an arm's length away, a lifetime can be spent in a Magellanic voyage around the trunk of a tree —E. O. WILSON

Got that that quote from Micheal Crichton's Micro. After reading that book I don't know how many endless hours were spent reading abt the brains of wasps and centipedes and spiders and ants and butterflies :))

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not sure. Leaf pulling could be reflexive, there's no thought involved in my hand flinching in response to a sudden pain. The fact that the worms ignored lights when busy with some activity is interesting, but if that is always the case then is there early any judgement involved?

We know now that highly complex behaviours can arise from fixed rules. Is there any evidence of learning, judgement or adaptation? If not is there really any thought? I'm not really very much persuaded on either side of the question.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's an emerging model of soil as a single living organism, in this milieu earthworms are the "guts" of the soil.

</comment><comment><USER13> Currently reading "1493" \- which is about the effects of the Columbian exchange of plants and animals after the discovery of the Americas - and was fascinated to find out that earthworms are an invasives species in North America, which mostly didn't have any since the last ice age.

</comment><comment><USER14> TL/DR: Darwin eventually came to believe earthworms have some amount of intelligence because they drag leaves in certain specific ways, including leaves not native to their environment.

I found it an interesting coincidence to read here about Aristotle's thoughts on animal intelligence, because just a couple days ago I made a note of this passage from Aristotle's "Prior Analytics": "Let A be raven, B intelligent, and C man. A then belongs to no B; for no intelligent thing is a raven. But B is possible for every C; for every man may be intelligent." I'm sure that's not the specific place this author is talking about but it's interesting to see Aristotle's philosophy about animal intelligence creep even into his works on dry formal logic.

<comment><USER15> I know it was said over 2000 years ago, but ravens are quite intelligent. Raking up there with primates and estimated to be similar to a 3-4 year old human. Birds get a bad rap with terms like "bird brained", but it's rarely true, even for those that people consider pests like pigeons[1].

A researcher from the University of Washington has a really great blog on corvids I follow (crows, jays, ravens, rooks, magpies, etc)[2].

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_intelligence](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigeon_intelligence)

[2] [https://corvidresearch.blog/category/raven- intelligence-2/](https://corvidresearch.blog/category/raven-intelligence-2/)

<comment><USER5> I wonder why there aren't more examples of speaking animals.

Screw down a baby bird or a cat in a box, give him computerized English tests with prizes and/or punishments like food or electric shock or elevated oxygen level, whatever, 12 hours a day learning and 12 hours for brain to soak in a day's programming, for couple months.

Exactly above is an animal cruelty, but I bet something to that effect would get him speaking in matters of months to few years.

<comment><USER16> This is just my own personal theory, but one reason is that we just scoop animals up, put them in a room, and expect to try finding speech patterns. What would happen if a flock of hyperintelligent pigeons found some human babies and locked them up in a room until it's time for snacks and games? There probably wouldn't be much language observed aside from a few repeated sounds.

Another is aside from insects and humans and maybe some birds, not many creatures have multi-generational, continuous societies grounded in one region. Humans have towns, cities, and countries. People have had their entire family history confined to one town or one country with interconnected cities for centuries or even thousands of years. This lets humans develop a common means of communication between others who we see frequently or between those who share a similar background. A lot of animal groups get pretty divided and don't live in large and everlasting packs. There's not much evolutionary pressure for complex language to evolve. We don't even know when humans first developed languages capable of expression of abstract thoughts, but it was probably sometime after we started to organize ourselves and cooperate to form lifelong communities.

The last one is that even if animals had a language, our brains just might not recognize it. For example, to many Europeans, picking up the idea of a tonal language at 40 is pretty tough. They might not even notice the difference in sound. Animals might have some way to distinguish words that we're just not looking at. I think this is one time where the recent ML/AI surge might come in handy. Record thousands of hours of animal sounds and put it through a black box. We've identified some sounds from prairie dogs as carrying meaning, but I don't think we've managed to identify grammar or sentences yet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Brief History of Shopping: From Sears to Amazon in four uneasy upheavals - <AUTHOR> https://www.city-journal.org/brief-history-shopping-16232.html <comment><USER2> The really big operations of each generation each had a breakthrough in information processing. Sears figured out to do fulfillment from a big catalog for a large number of orders without O(N * M) operating cost. If you just have a big warehouse and people running around picking orders (like Safeway Select), the bigger the inventory, the costs climb with the product of the inventory size and number of transactions. Sears in Chicago covered several city blocks with multi-story buildings; they needed a better approach.

The breakthrough was the "schedule system". Orders came in and were recopied onto pick slips for different departments. Each order was given a temporary bin and a 45 minute pick window. Only orders for a given time window were picked in that window, and picking was by people close to that area of merchandise. Picked items were sent to the bin for that order, and at the end of each window, the bins went off to the checking and shipping station. If something was missing from the order, a second try was made in a day or two, and shipped separately. This is O(N * log(M)). Huge win.

This was all done with carbon paper, pneumatic tubes, and other advanced 19th century technology. They had the key idea - move data, not merchandise.

WalMart had a similar edge. They were one of the first retailers to bar-code everything. All the scanners were networked. HQ in Bentonville, Arkansas knew within hours what was selling and what needed to be restocked. They were able to keep unsold inventory down without being sold out. Unsold inventory is the curse of retail. Over half of apparel is eventually discounted or dumped. Sam Walton once commented that their edge wasn't size, but data.

Amazon everyone here knows about, so there's no need to explain them.

<comment><USER3> >> Unsold inventory is the curse of retail.

Absolutely. I run a small retail pet-farm store location. This is such a curse, that I often wonder why it isn't talked more about among small retailers. Certainly the salespeople from the different suppliers never ever talk about about it for obvious reasons. The problems with not talking about it to me is that I may go out of business if I don't understand this principle/curse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IMHO, Sears is going under because it's a terrible shopping experience. I worked next door to a Sears - my office was literally 50 feet away. I'd occasionally pop in to pick something up and the checkout process never took less than 15 minutes. There was only one person handling the checkout and that person was operating at the speed of a sloths up to its neck in molasses.

It never ceases to amaze me that for all of the money brick and mortar retailers spend on marketing, etc. they cheap out on the most fundamental part of retail - taking the customers money.

</comment><comment><USER5> Reminds me of this slide from a Walmart presentation from last year. Leading retailers by revenue, 1970 vs 2017:

[https://i.imgur.com/GK2kvh3.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/GK2kvh3.jpg)

<comment><USER6> How long before Amazon and Walmart swap places?

<comment><USER5> Amazon has to roughly triple in size in retail to pass Walmart, with zero growth on Walmart's side.

In retail sales, I would guess Amazon could catch up to Walmart in 10 to 12 years if everything goes well for Amazon, assuming Walmart holds steady (which impressively they have so far). Walmart did finally grow for the first time in years in 2017, jumping from $485b in sales to $500b (they were stuck in the $482b-$485b range for three fiscal years).

Walmart has perhaps ~$450b in strictly retail sales globally. Amazon should be at something like $160b to $180b this year (in retail, including Whole Foods). Walmart's US retail sales were 270% larger than Amazon US for 2017. One of the not often discussed data points, is that Amazon's traditional online retail sales are no longer growing very quickly. That big retail growth slowdown has been hidden by the success of AWS and more recently advertising. I'd bet on their online sales growth being a slugfest going forward, with their online growth rate dropping to near single digits within a few years.

There's actually a very plausible scenario where Amazon never passes Walmart in retail. That premise is that it's between very difficult and impossible for Amazon's online sales to match what Walmart's epic physical store position makes possible in terms of retail sales volume. It's not a popular media premise though, the Amazon-crushes-all story is what sells. Perhaps Amazon will divert a lot more resources toward expanding physically going forward to counter that (at least they seem bent on that, maybe they've figured out that online retail sales will never match offline sales in the US).

Amazon so far has been mostly eating other retailers, and perhaps robbing Walmart of some growth it would otherwise have picked up. As Amazon pursues its next $100b in retail sales growth, is it possible for that to not detract from Walmart's $500b in sales? It's difficult to picture Amazon getting as big as Walmart in retail, without killing Walmart. If that does happen - they both survive intact - the rest of retail will be a complete wasteland of destruction (there's not enough growth in the US economy to accomodate two mainstream retailers the size of Walmart anytime soon, without _a lot_ of other retail getting killed in the process).

<comment><USER7> Fascinating. Simply fascinating.

I have so many questions for you. Have you been studying Walmart long or is it just a passing fancy? How does a company just squeeze out ~$15 billion dollars from a revenue machine in motion (was there some long term plan that came to fruition? Did the pull some Office Space kind of caper and "find" it in their books?)? I have had this picture in my head of Walmart being very similar to fungi (mushrooms specifically): all people see is the storefront, the spiteful and mean-spirited "people of Walmart" caricatures, and the evil business destroying monster (these would be the toadstools); hidden beneath the surface is a massive network of nodes, pathways, connections, and raw infrastructure constantly shifting mass and energy at every moment in every type of climate and condition. I read somewhere that they lose ~$4 million a month in theft and damage. I thought that was a lot... $500 billion... that was one of the stimulus packages that saved the banks...

Fascinating. Your comment was a delight and I am off to dig up more on the company that will hopefully carry humanity to the asteroid belt.

<comment><USER5> Walmart is so large, they're projecting to save $200 million per year on energy costs by switching to all-LED lighting and away from fluorescent lighting in their stores, parking lots, etc. That savings is almost equivalent to the full-year operating income for Salesforce.com in their last fiscal year ($235m).

The $15b gain in sales was in part due to ecommerce gains, while physical retail remained steady with modest same store sales gains. Thanks in part to the Jet.com acquisition, they grew by 44% online in 2017 (fourth quarter online growth dropped to 23%, with the Jet.com boost rolling past). They've been going around buying up independent retail brands, like ModCloth, Bare Necessities, Bonobos. They view that brand accumulation as building up a moat vs Amazon, I'd expect them to continue with that.

The most interesting thing about Amazon today, is that at least 3/4 of the value in their business is outside of traditional retail. Their relatively young ad business will be worth more than their retail business within a year or two (if it's not already). Sometimes I think Alibaba was their primary inspiration for going aggressively that direction, more so than Google or Facebook. With enough of a thriving ad business on top of retail, they can do things no other normal retailer can ever do when it comes to margins, they can safely take their margin in retail to zero (ie intentionally yield zero profit in retail, and build an ad business as big and profitable as Facebook's). Walmart can't compete with that tactic, it'll draw intense anti-trust scrutiny over time if they do it.

Competing with Amazon has helped push Walmart's annual profit down considerably over time, despite sales doing well: $15.9b (fiscal 2014 profit), $16.3b, $14.7b, $13.6b, $9.8b (fiscal 2018). If Amazon uses the nuclear option on margins with a thriving ad business (not to mention AWS) as a profit buffer, they might be able to push Walmart into losing money in retail in a price fight. I'll be curious to see if that's the direction Amazon goes competitively.

I spend four to five hours per day reading and have a very strong memory, so I hoover up a lot and remember most of the things I read. No particular focus on Walmart.

<comment><USER8> I had no idea Amazon advertising could be so profitable it could out-earn its retail business but looking into it it makes sense. Amazon search results by keyword has to be the most effective form of advertising I'm aware of. Google searches, social media ads, TV ads, etc., are mostly just throwing up noise. But when I search on Amazon, similar to how I used to search eBay, those promoted results are relevant to something I'm actively looking to buy. And since Amazon is my go-to retailer for nearly all non-basic necessities, it's probably the most relevant and targeted advertising I see by far.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Entrepreneurship Is Not Sexy  - <AUTHOR> http://coconutheadsets.com/2009/06/19/entrepreneurship-is-not-sexy/ <comment><USER2> "It's immensely cool to be an entrepreneur now... 'when I was at university, the cool guys all pretended to be in a band, now they all pretend to be entrepreneurs'"

\- The Economist, Special Report on Entrepreneurship, March 14, 2009 (<http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13216025>)

<comment><USER3> Having a start-up is Punk 2.0

Maybe Y Combinator is the new CBGB.

<comment><USER4> OMG.CBGB? FTW!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It was about grinding it out. It was a story of will. It was a story of perseverance. It was a story of doing tasks that, from the outside looking in, would seem boring, dry, and monotonous."

Sounds sexy to me.

<comment><USER6> Well, or more to the point, it sounds like the real work behind all "sexy" pursuits. Movie stars don't get to be movie stars by going to ritzy parties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _"Too many entrepreneurs stop after they build the product. They think that building products is what makes them an entrepreneur"_

The most true statement I've heard about entrepreneurship in a while.

Actually I think there's a good business in making deals with all the people out there that have a finished, or almost finished product they've abandoned when they found out that the product is not the end of the trip but the beginning, and getting together a bunch of business and marketing guys to sell and market the stuff.

<comment><USER8> It seems like it takes a long time for someone to realize that they don't have the will to see their product to the next step. Or that they haven't built something that's worth millions of dollars.

This seems like a good approach to doing what you suggest: [http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/04/the-red-gate- mill...](http://blog.businessofsoftware.org/2009/04/the-red-gate-million- dollar-challenge.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a startup, particularly as a founder, what you do matters to you personally in a very real way. You are deeply connected with the problem you're solving, the people you're helping and the fruits of your labor. In a regular job at a large company, you are alienated from the problem you are solving and the people you are helping by a large organization in an operating environment that is often organized around other goals than solving people's problems.

Startups give meaning. If that isn't sexy, I don't know what is.

If it didn't do that, if it wasn't so sexy... nobody would do it. Because as the PG quote goes, its "...like getting punched in the face repeatedly." But as the author points out... for some people its just a fantasy, there is no deep need to follow through on it. You either have the bug or you don't.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a saying, plucked from Team America, of all places: "You need a montage."

Basically, there's a reason films about a person standing up to triumph over a powerful adversary often compress the most important intervening moments, in which the person acquires their capacity to overcome, into a short segment: because those intervening moments aren't fun, and they aren't entertaining, even if they are ultimately fulfilling.

So it's what I say when people talk to me about being frustrated with the difficulty of steps made toward their aspirations: "You need a montage." As in, you're going to have to slog through a bunch of difficult, tedious stuff if you ever hope to overcome the odds against you.

But knowing that, and taking it on even so, is what marks so many great achievements.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are ups and downs in any job and a lot of grinding no matter what profession it is. Even passions like music takes A LOT of effort - and one must be lucky, great and work very hard to make a breakthrough.

Like Peter Norvig wrote in "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years": one should not really strive to become an expert or successful at something in 10 days, but 10 years. I think the same can be said about startups, i.e. look on the long-term goal and not the short-term one.

</comment><comment><USER12> Well, the one thing that motivates me to come back to entrepreneurship despite some past failures is simply the fact that,

There is a future in working for yourself. If your plan succeeds, you own your destiny and with it comes financial independence.

What is really the future for an employee? If the business goes south, you are laid off. If you work really hard you get promoted and make a little more. Hardly a recipe for financial independence.

Of course that's oversimplification, but the payoff in entrepreneurship is highly gratifying and motivating.

</comment><comment><USER13> _No one would ever say "let's just build the hotel... put it out there and see what happens."_

I've started to think of it as building a raft to get off a deserted island. You probably don't need the titanic. You probably want more than a raft. And then it's all in the sailing (skill of the team), wind (market fit), and how much water you brought (capital/resources).

</comment><comment><USER14> I have to say this captures my experience and thoughts on the matter almost perfectly. At Constrex, we launched the product around 8 weeks ago, and I'm now going through the hard, hard slog of raising awareness and educating the market as to what benefits we can bring them.

It's been damn hard going, and will continue to be for quite a while, but in some perverse way, I'm really enjoying myself. I'm definitely keeping this post book-marked, to send to people tempted to become entrepreneurs. It could just be a good litmus test: if you don't find it too discouraging, then maybe - just maybe - you might have what it takes to get a business off the ground.

</comment><comment><USER15> This post really hits home for me in particular. We just launched our product about 3 weeks ago and although we're making money, it's not the big splash we'd hoped. I know that I at least had envisioned building a product, making it awesome, and not worrying very much about the sales and marketing. A good product sells itself right? We've been doing some soul searching and I think we're just going to have to grind through the transition from product development to managing a business and selling a product. I'm both terrified and excited.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don Juantrepreneur is sexy, though.

:)</comment>


Software Engineering ≠ Computer Science - <AUTHOR> http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/software-engineering-computer-science/217701907 <comment><AUTHOR> as a software engineering student I often feel discouraged because I'm studying Software Engineering (and not Computer Science), I reached a conclusion that I don't want to get into research but rather learn how to create and maintain software (system programming and security for example are two topics I like read about and get into).</comment>