Life as a cancer patient: 'it feels like dying from the drugs meant to save me' - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/sep/26/life-as-a-cancer-patient <comment><USER2> I am a pancreatic cancer survivor. It is considered incurable in 2019 and I'm here because of a 1930s era surgery called a Whipple procedure. Around 9% survive five years or more -- a number that hasn't really changed.

In a belt plus suspenders move I underwent 2 rounds (six infusions per round) of chemo plus 28 consecutive weekdays of radiation after surgery. All my doctors are amazed at my recovery, a few saying the best they've seen (though it came with diabetes and a different digestive pathway).

Chemo was awful. Mine came with a bag of steroids first to mask the effects for a few days. I scheduled my sessions for Thursday, knowing it wouldn't hit me until Friday night. One Saturday I slept around 20 hours.

However, by the end we had figured out how to minimize the effect of the chemo. I needed my wife who watched me diligently. Cancer is not a one person job! She made sure every time I opened my eyes I stayed hydrated and ate something.

Chemo should have gotten worse. It actually got easier.

My cancer never caused me pain. The treatment... that's another story. I left the hospital with my belly held together by 16 staples.

<comment><USER3> Trying to help my wife through chemo now, and the staying hydrated and eating something is kicking our butts. Her oncologist believes that her nausea is due to directly to disease progression and it's relentless.

We're now on a regimen of phenergen every 6 hours but that just prevents cyclic nausea from occurring AND it knocks her out to where she's sleeping at least 20 hrs a day. Then when she wakes up she can only eat a little bit or she'll throw it back up. For hydration we finally just got home health giving her a liter twice a week plus a liter at chemo once a week.

She just recently over the past day or two has started to be able to hold a bit more down, but she's essentially got a form of PTSD from throwing up 5-10 times a day for 2-3 months.

Congrats to you on beating it man, especially pancreatic. This stuff really sucks.

<comment><USER4> Dehydration itself can make a person nauseous.

You don't have to take anything orally to treat dehydration. A bath or shower can help with hydration at times when she can't stand to take anything orally.

Dehydration isn't always as simple as a lack of fluids. It can also be impacted by a lack of electrolytes and inadequate fat.

So it may help to add salt to the bath. Table salt can be problematic for someone in frail health because of the additives. Sea salt, kosher salt or _canning and pickling_ salt won't have those additives. You can probably find the latter two readily at a local grocery store. Good sea salt can be ordered online.

If fluids and electrolytes are insufficient and you think she may need more fat, this can also be remedied without giving her anything by mouth.

Coconut oil is high in medium chain triglycerides. These can be used directly by the body without being broken down via digestion, so the body can absorb it if it is applied topically (to the skin).

Coconut oil has a long history of being medically recommended by the medical establishment for people with serious gut issues, such as folks being treated for stomach cancer.

Don't overdo it though because it can promote nausea and diarrhea, especially when taken in large quantities. You want to do small amounts regularly so the body can handle it, not start with a tablespoon of oil at a time. That will not go happy places.

Coconut oil is a little on the sweet side, so some people don't like cooking with it because of how it impacts flavor. As an alternative, butter is a decent source of medium chain triglycerides.

Clarifying butter to make ghee can remove elements that some people don't tolerate well. This can be helpful to people in frail health as an alternative to oils they aren't tolerating well while sick.

<comment><USER3> Hey the coconut oil suggestion is awesome, thank you so much! I'll definitely look at getting some quality oil and adding it to our regimen. I tinkered with MCT oils and whatnot in the past for my own health and have definitely 'greased the chute' by accident lol.

Totally agree on the side effects of dehydration. I could see the cycle happening over the course of a week or two and we'd end up in the ER (8 times in the last four months now). We've finally got her set up with a port and have home health services coming by mondays and fridays with hydration (and labs). Then she gets a bit more during weekly chemo on Weds. We're only a week into it and it is already showing benefit.

Thanks again for the suggestions!

<comment><USER4> Keep an eye on the port. If they aren't kept adequately clean and end up infected, it's ugly from what I gather.

Best.

<comment><USER3> Yep. There's a whole protocol that the nursing staff has to do when they 'access' (aka stick) it. Extra disinfectant, both my wife and the nurse wear a mask, then an adhesive cover applied right after the catheter is put in.

The way it was described is that the port doesn't have an immune system, so infection can camp out there. They said that if she got any kind of bacterial infection anywhere they may need to remove it because the infection can spread there and hang out.

That said, she's super stoked to have it (finally). My wife's arm's look like she's the world's worst junkie. Giant bruises up and down both because she's always been hard to get started with standard IVs and they've wrecked the veins in both arms. :/

<comment><USER5> Hang in there, one stranger to another.

<comment><USER3> Thanks !!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Traditional chemotherapy is toxic to all cells. Cancer cells grow rapidly (part of what makes them dangerous). So the toxic effect gets the cancer cells first, since cells that are growing take up the most chemotherapy. But other cells grow rapidly too, like hair and intestinal cells, which is why cancer patients lose their hair and have terrible nausea/diarrhea.

All (almost all?) cells take up some chemo. So, you are actually dying, just hopefully more slowly than the cancer. And then we stop the chemo before you all the way die.

This is why the bar for a cancer diagnosis is so high. We need biopsies to try to get as close to 100% accurate diagnosis as possible.

<comment><USER7> That's right. Chemotherapy is, sadly, a very primitive treatment.

I regret we have spent so much money on cancer genomics, when some outsiders where trying to push for immunotherapies. Thankfully, that changed 3 or 4 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Cut, burn, and poison: well practiced and sometimes effective but yeah it's horrific to experience and barbaric.

I regret we aren't spending more on both genomics AND immunotherapies AND whatever else bears exploring.

<comment><USER9> I am quite optimistic IO and cell based therapies will minimize these techniques. But there's more baking to be done before they can be rolled out. The "primitive" techniques can be quite reliable for specific cancer variants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In pharmacy school I was told the paradigm in infections diseases was to identify the amount of medication to kill the pathogen, then give a little more. In oncology, it's to identify the amount of medication that would kill the patient, then give a little less.

<comment><USER11> I've heard it put similarly bluntly - you hope the chemo kills the cancer before it kills you. I know a few people who are actively undergoing chemotherapy, and my grandfather died of pancreatic cancer (metastasised to liver IIRC), and it's quite clear the heavy tole it takes on them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Visual loss is a very rare side effect of chemotherapy, and permanent visual loss even rarer. The more common and no less serious side effects of heart muscle damage and secondary leukemia are not mentioned in the tagline, being ill-suited as click bait I presume.

I have given the chemotherapy described here to many patients. There is wide variation in how patients experience chemotherapy. Some finish and tell me it wasn't as bad as they expected. I'm quite sure they only tell me things like this in the privacy of the consulting room. They would never say this to another patient in the waiting room. They feel bad for not having had the kind of widely publicised terrible experience.

Beyond the tagline, the account is reasonably accurate, although at times indulges in melodrama, about mitochondria of all things. It also doesn't do a good job of talking about the cognitive dysfunction associated with chemotherapy. This is a complex issue. In randomised trials, patients receiving placebo cancer treatments tend to report high rates of some cognitive problems. That chemotherapy itself is causal in every case is certainly in doubt. The mere experience of being diagnosed with cancer as you might imagine can have profound cognitive effects.

I am not quibbling for the sake of it. There are patients who decide not to have chemotherapy, and sometimes what they have heard about the experience from 'alternate' channels (such as newspaper taglines) has an out-sized influence on their decision. This is why a responsible editorial team would have had this article reviewed by medical professionals and patient advocates, and taken their advice about more judicious highlighting of potential side- effects. The article also doesn't quite deal with the fact that triple negative breast cancer is a really bad disease to have. Metastatic disease has a median overall survival of 18 months. If chemotherapy had not completely eradicated the cancer as it did in her case (the chances are about 50-50), 40% of patients develop metastatic disease in 3 years.

</comment><comment><USER13> Chemotherapy is scary. It seems so counterintuitive to choose to inflict this kind of damage to oneself, in the hopes that it will prevent an even worse outcome.

Part of it is that there is this nagging feeling that it might not even be the right approach, given the legion of side effects of all kinds. Even oncologists get vague and evasive when this is questioned. In the end we can only rely on generalized statistics about survival rates, unsure of how it applies to individual situations.

I disagree with the anger people often show towards cancer. It's like people project some kind of malignant personality onto the phenomenon. I think of it as a natural part of life, like early hair loss. You can die from it, but death comes anyway, for one reason or another. At least with cancer you have time to get used to the idea, unlike an accident, heart attack or whatever. I guess I am a bit of a fatalist.

<comment><USER14> > It seems so counterintuitive to choose to inflict this kind of damage to > oneself, in the hopes that it will prevent an even worse outcome.

Especially since the "worse outcome" \-- your own non-existence -- is the one thing in the Universe you are guaranteed to never experience (though your loved ones can experience your non-existence, and that can be a good reason to try to avoid it).

<comment><USER15> > your own non-existence -

Why is it so hard to accept this? Why is it so scary?

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty accepting of it, and in a weird way kind of looking forward to either "sleeping forever" or finding out I'm wrong about what happens. Still, in certain moments thinking about it, I feel fear. I think it's instinctual.

That said, I think I fear the moments before death more than death. I went to the hospital recently for chest pain. Heart issues run in my family. Both grandfathers and all but one of my uncles (on both sides) had heart attacks before they were my current age. I do keep myself generally healthier than they ever did, but of course a huge chunk of it is genetic. I didn't feel I was having a heart attack, but I didn't know. (I wasn't, I found out later.) I felt a significant level of fear.

My fear wasn't really focused on death, but on never leaving the hospital; on the last time I did things being _the last time_ ; on being trapped, in a sense, prevented from doing the things I still wanted to do; and leaving my girlfriend and daughter to deal with either a protracted illness or my absence.

Death itself wasn't really a worry. I think I kind of grok that things won't be my problem anymore then and I'm cool with it. On the other hand, maybe that's just delusion. I'll be third in line when they start handing out immortality shots. (Trying to split the difference between flawed implementations and over-regulation.) I think it's just because I like to live, but maybe I'm just afraid not to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A line from a passage I remember reading as a medical student, has stuck with me after a decade and a half. It described anticancer therapies as having the effect of "... poisoning patients to the edge of their existence..." It is not my belief that the side effect profile of anti tumor drugs has improved much.

So, yeah. Treatments for cancer can suck just as badly as the disease itself.

<comment><USER18> That's not just the effect, it's the mechanism of action for chemo — right?

It takes advantage of cancers rerouting blood and being overly aggressive in gathering resources to make those the first of your cells to die as you're poisoned to death, on the theory that there's some slightly sublethal dosage that kills only some of your cells (and hopefully, the cancerous ones).

<comment><USER17> Different classes of anti-tumor drugs employ different mechanisms; some more than one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> My father was diagnosed with lung cancer 4 years ago. He is on his third round of chemo. I recommend reading "The Emperor of all Maladies" for an insightful book on cancer. Even though medicine has made great progress fighting cancer, the scorched earth approach is what most of these treatments come down to.

<comment><USER20> PBS produced a documentary film named Cancer: The Emperor of All Maladies in 2015, which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 2010 book The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer,

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I knew two people who both got cancer about the same time. One said no to chemo. The other said yes to chemo.

The differences in quality of life until death were _dramatic_. Neither had a longer life than was expected had they not taken the chemo, but the one who did lost hair, physical dexterity, then life. Suffered greatly.

The other one suffered much less, but still died.

The doctors all said take the drugs. You don't have to take the drugs. Do the research. Chemo isn't always beneficial.

Sometimes... it's just _hope_.

<comment><USER22> I know someone who smoked a pack her day her whole life, and died at 90 while remaining in good health for the age the decade before.

I know someone who never smoked in his life and got lung cancer at 52.

Does that mean anything? Should we now conclude that smoking prevents lung cancer?

Quality of life, health, remaining lifetime, sickness progressions are all very complex interactions. All you can do is what happens on average, and play the odds based on that.

<comment><USER23> Dr. Gabor Maté theorizes that one's emotional state influences the expression of cancer in people who smoke. A smoker who is constantly in a state of emotional stress is much more likely to develop lung cancer than a smoker who is not.

See: [https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no- chapte...](https://drgabormate.com/preview/when-the-body-says-no-chapter-one/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I struggled to read the Guardian article thanks to the overly purple prose (I write professionally, that sort of writing really ticks me off), but the comment discussion here is fascinating.

I'm a cancer patient, a year out of chemo. Almost 1.5 years ago I was given 2-3 years to live. Bladder cancer metastasized to lymph, liver and lungs is not a good thing to have, apparently, and I was put onto a fairly aggressive chemo course to try and hold it at bay for a while. The chemo was tough, but I started an intensive treatment course of my own at the same time: cannabis oil, large amounts every evening. It massively buffered my against the side effects; I had a good appetite and my hair got a bit thin but never got too bad. All the same I did very nearly die from sepsis a few days after I finished my chemo course – cannabis can't help when your immune system is trashed and you pick up some normally minor and forgettable bug!

But the big deal for me is that scans now show "no evidence of disease" rather than just shrunk and static. My consultant is saying this level of response is unprecedented and he now expects to be having these meetings for years to come. I know we need proper large-scale trials, I know I'm presenting an anecdote here, and like most of y'all I'm suspicious of miracle cure stories. But the results I have now are SO far beyond anything my oncology team ever expected that I am convinced cannabis has played a significant part along with the chemo in the cancer battle itself.

I've been documenting my experiences and listing my methods and techniques in a blog. Is it acceptable to post the URL here?

<comment><USER25> Yes, please do.

<comment><USER24> The blog is at [https://cancerwriter.com/](https://cancerwriter.com/) and it explains what I've done and how others can do it for themselves, in detail. At the very least it brings great relief, and I do think it's far more valuable than just that.

<comment><USER25> Thanks, I've been looking through it. I was really hoping for good news about your treatment and I was happy to find it. Cannabinoids are an exciting medical frontier and I think you're doing a good thing here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> As someone doing cancer research and running a clinical lab, diagnosing cancer every day, I read the accounts of folks with cancer with a certain degree of lachesism. I want to know what this is. I know chickenpox and a broken leg and I know what it's like to have a loved one with cancer. But the thing itself, I do not know.

I spend every waking moment thinking about how to hunt cancer. It used to be reflex, now it's been so long it's somewhere between habit and addiction. My cognitive self knows I don't want cancer. But there's definitely a weird, fucked up interest in what it's like.

<comment><USER27> I have a lot of admiration towards your "obsession"; it way more meaningful than any of mine, so respect! May I ask, in your opinion, what can I do to lower my chances of getting cancer. So far, I monitor grilled meat consumption, do yearly fasts and watch my carbs. I'd appreciate any advice :)

<comment><USER28> Cut out any food or drink that includes processed sugar.

Limit alcohol consumption, except for a few glasses per week of red wine.

Reduce intake of any animal products with hormones or artificial feed sources in the supply chain.

RO filter water in the home, whether it's to drink, cook with, or for other uses.

Filter air in your home, especially if you live near pollution sources (e.g. within 1500 ft of a major roadway). Make sure you buy an air filter with a carbon/charcoal component.

Exercise 30 minutes per day, moderate cardio is fine.

Avoid cheaply processed home goods (think: dollar store inventory) in favor of higher quality products, e.g. wood furniture instead of plastic or synthetic material.

Avoid carpet and synthetic flooring materials in favor of porcelain tile or natural wood.

Do most household cleaning with non toxic cleaners, e.g. vinegar based products with few extra ingredients.

The rabbit hole goes deeper, but there's a list to start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> cancer treatment can also cause cancer and does - it was likely the cause of the death of my grandpa - but he got 10 more years due to a chemo-therapy from an otherwise lethal cancer - fuck cancer.

</comment><comment><USER30> Being alive to criticize the treatment is usually better than the alternative.

<comment><USER9> You capture the nuance by saying usually.

Many people, logically, would arrive to this conclusion. When the treatment starts, one is even energized. Then, in the middle a person regrets being so optimistic at all. They find their assumption of life being better than death more naive than they could have imagined.

It's not just the treatment. It is the wider picture of your life stopping. And within that context your body, deteriorating, is only one component.

<comment><USER3> It's not really clear to me what people are asking for. If cancer pays a visit, you have two main options:

1 - Don't treat the disease and either do nothing or basic palliative care. The cancer is unlikely to go away on its own and will begin to spread to your lungs and liver and brain and mutilate your body until it doesn't function and you die. Less up front pain, possibly less area under the painful waking hours curve, but almost certainly an early death.

2 - Treat using standard of care chemo/surgery/radiation. Doctors do the mutilating and poisoning a bit more selectively, you lose dignity, bodily functions, jobs, relationships and gain a stigma and a curse of uncertainty. Maybe they get the upper hand and you live a life with lower but possibly acceptable quality. Maybe they don't and you still die but possibly a bit more slowly.

There's no good option yet. People are stuck between a rock and a hard place right now. That's why you can't go more than a few hours without hearing about cancer on TV and see walks and fundraisers and ribbons and shaved heads.

<comment><USER9> Yup. It's a challenging position for patients, caregivers, and medical professionals alike. Each burdens the quandary in a different way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My gf had grade III brain cancer. She had chemo two times. As chemos go, the one for brain cancer is fairly bening. The only side effect was nausea on initial chemo dose. Easily countered by antiemetic given only before first few initial doses, later withdrawn. The only other side effect was low blood cell counts that didn't manifest any symptoms but caused chemo to be delayed by a week till it recovered. Steroids given for brain swelling had more effect as they increased her appetite and kept water in her body causing her face to swell a bit. Ask your doctor for medication that amplifies urine production if you are given steroids. That helped when she was given it for the second time. Also after steroids were stopped her skin needed few weeks to recover from being prone to acne.

Possibly the only drug that might have felt like it was killing her was the morphine, as it can depress respiratory system, but at this stage there were so many things that might have been killing her that it wasn't important.

</comment><comment><USER32> My wife worked in oncology for about 5 years as a clinical pharmd. She and all of the doctors said they would never put themselves through chemo

</comment><comment><USER33> If I ever have a cancer diagnosis that would require extreme treatment or a pro-longed period of suffering, i.e. stage 3 or 4, I'd seriously consider shooting myself rather enduring months if not years of agony.

In theory I'd have insurance, however why put my family through years of seeing me suffer and become a person they might not recognize?

<comment><USER34> Because there is hope.

<comment><USER33> My point wasn't about hope, I "hope" to live a life without years of agony. Living through years of chemo on to live a diminished or slightly less-painful life with a looming chance of the cancer re-occurring isn't a life I "hope" to live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Aspiring survivor of a stage 3 sarcoma here. I went through 8 months of treatment in 2016. I had no symptoms, no pain, NOTHING prior to being diagnosed. There was just a huge lump on my shoulder. The idea that I was about to willingly pump poison into my body and make myself sick when I felt perfectly fine was definitely hard to wrap my mind around. But, no question, it was the right thing to do. I'm married and have 2 young kids. Telling them I had cancer was the hardest thing I've ever had to do. Thankfully, I live near one of the world's best hospitals and had amazing doctors and nurses. My treatment was in-patient and they kept me loaded full of fluids and anti- nausea meds. Yes, those 9 months were grueling, but they were bearable. I'm very fortunate. I've known others who've gone through much, much worse.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is an alternative to maximum tolerated dosing chemotherapy (standard) and it is called adaptive chemotherapy [0]. The aim with adaptive chemotherapy is to just stop the cancer from growing larger and using the growth advantage of the chemosensitive cancer cells to keep the resistant cells under control. This approach is much easier on the patient. I would look very carefully at this approach if I was ever in need of considering chemo.

0\. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160224164357.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/02/160224164357.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've had multiple relatives have cancer, some multiple times. Two relatives had cancer twice. Another, five times. Assorted others had cancer at least once.

I took care of a relative following a mastectomy. Making sure she got adequately hydrated brought her fever down. I got two hours sleep her first night back from the hospital because I devotedly pushed fluids at every opportunity.

She coughed up phlegm after I made her get enough food and drink into her to drop her temperature a degree. She said I probably prevented post-operative pneumonia.

My late father had colon cancer in his late sixties. He lost a third of his body weight before it was diagnosed.

My parents were told to get their affairs in order. He wasn't supposed to live.

His surgery that was supposed to be two hours lasted six. The cancer was much more extensive than they expected, but it hadn't invaded other organs. They peeled it off the outside of them instead of cutting out parts of them.

He had a thirteen inch scar from sternum to pubic bone with a dent going around his belly button. My mother treated the scar with German Penaten cream and treated his skin with Penaten cream.

Her mother died from uterine cancer when my mother was in her teens. My mother was convinced that radiation treatments killed her mother. She always had some excuse why my dad couldn't make one of his radiation treatments every week.

He lived about another two decades.

The cancer clinic at Martin Army Hospital was impressed with the condition of dad's scar and asked what they were doing. My mother explained it was the Penaten cream. They added it to their regime.

After my father defied his sentence of death, the civilian cancer doctor that treated him interviewed my mother on tape for two hours and changed the practices of his clinic based on what she said. The doctor knew my mother is the person who kept my dad alive.

Their big thing was hydration. They calculated how much fluids he needed and they made sure he got enough every day. Caffeinated drinks and alcohol did not count.

When he was too sick to eat, she made him homemade milkshakes or slushies once or sometimes twice a day in place of meals. On not so bad days, I think she used milk, good quality ice cream and fresh fruit. On super bad days, she used ice, frozen fruit and fruit juice.

He was gaining so much weight during a time when most cancer patients are continuing to lose weight that his doctor yelled at her to slow it down. He had a long-standing heart condition and her doctor was afraid she was kill him by putting too much strain on his heart with the rapid weight gain while he was still undergoing treatment.

My mother wanted to be a doctor in her youth. She delivered babies in her teens. She never got to be a doctor, but she was always patching someone up as long as I can remember.

<comment><USER23> That's a lot of cancer in one family :/

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I'm also very curious about oncolytic toxicity.

personal sad story: uncle diagnosed with stage4 (mets) in late dec, got rounds of chemo 4 months after the diagnosis during which time the tumors didn't grow (based on the few bits we could read in his file). But after the 3rd round his health dropped to the floor, didn't last long after that. I believe the toll on his system was just too high. And I'm curious what are the mechanisms at play.

</comment><comment><USER38> I cannot possibly fathom the terrible experience of cancer patients going through chemo. My great hope though is that a bunch of these will be rendered treatable with the immunotherapy solutions out there and being developed right now, which though expensive today for most people today, might be bought down by the demand supply mechanics of economics....

</comment><comment><USER39> I'm surprised no one has talked about diet here. Not a single one. There are many cases of cancers being completed reversed by change of diet, many cancers survive off of glucose and so switching to a fat based diet has helped many people go into remission as well as dull and intensify the effects of chemotherapy.

Cancer is a living biological cell after all and will prefer certain sources of energy over others. Starve it of it's primary energy source (glucose) and it will die. Human non-cancerous cells on the other hand are very versatile and can survive off either fat or carbs. Sad how the first thing people would rather do is try chemo than give up off their carb and sugar addictions.

<comment><USER40> Human brains survive exclusively on glucose, according to your theory they'd die too.

<comment><USER41> No. They can make use of glucose or ketone bodies. I recommend a biology textbook before commenting on fairly basic and long-established facts.

However, even if they only metabolised glucose, the brain's requirement is for a constant but low level supply. It doesn't need to be provided by a dietary source; the body will synthesise it on demand from its energy stores. The cancer will need to compete for that small quantity with the rest of the body, which will limit its growth.

When you eat sugar, the body can't immediately store it since it takes time to do so, and blood sugar levels spike for a period before reducing back to baseline levels. During this time sugar is in great excess in the bloodstream and tissues, and the cancer is able to utilise as much of it as it can, which can result in its survival and growth.

The survival and growth of a cancer is largely based upon various kinetics, proliferation rates vs death rates, and the evolution of a cancer through selective pressure over time. One of the key switches is to anaerobic metabolism. It lets them switch to lactate production to survive a lack of oxygen. But it comes with a limitation: they are restricted to glucose and other simple sugars to survive. By strictly limiting their availability, it can have a significant effect upon tumour viability. Until it undergoes another change under selective pressure, of course, but it's a simple and potentially very effective course of action, without any great risk of harm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Immuno-oncology and fasting are the future, but polychemotherapies still have their uses.</comment>


Ask HN: Do your product managers have access to GitHub? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> they should be talking to customers not looking at my commits.</comment>


Evidence for biological shaping of hair ice (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.biogeosciences.net/12/4261/2015/bg-12-4261-2015.pdf <comment><USER2> I hadn't heard of this before a couple days ago.

I imagined an art installation in which one finds and captures examples of hair ice and then preserves them under glass in a chilled chamber.

<comment><USER3> This idea reminds me of an installation by Julian Charrière I saw [http://julian-charriere.net/projects/tropisme](http://julian- charriere.net/projects/tropisme)

<comment><USER2> That's great!

I've been meaning to go check out the Snowman @ MoMA

[https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/4982](https://www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/4982)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I had never heard of this stuff before. It's WEIRD: [https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FrostBeardDetail.j...](https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FrostBeardDetail.jpg)

<comment><USER5> There was a mildly popular submission two days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17292623).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The mycelium is quite interesting. Even when you look at hair ice, you can see the pattern that plants also use for obtaining nutrients (i.e. roots).

</comment><comment><USER7> We're really loving hair ice on HN these days eh?

<comment><USER8> This is how HN does memes.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A kernel built on V8 - <AUTHOR> http://runtimejs.org

<comment><USER2> but why?</comment>


Ask HN: macOS Safari Support for PWAs? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know if MacOS Safari supports or is planning to support PWA "Add to Homescreen" behavior like iOS Safari? <comment><USER2> I did web development for a few years, and I think that technology is approaching the end of its lifespan. Google did Flutter, and in the last couple of months I've been learning Swift and SwiftUI instead.

I think one of the reasons web apps were so popular is that competing platforms didn't have declarative layout, installation was difficult, and programming in C++ or Java is harder than Swift or Javascript.

In each of those areas, Apple now has a good-enough story (SwiftUI, App Store, Swift), and I think there's no reason for me to bother with web apps anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wouldn't expect much from Apple. The App Clips they announced today would have been perfect candidates for PWA's but instead they are going in the direction of mini-apps. That very well reflects their lack of interest in PWA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Android supports a version of App Clips (Instant Apps) and PWAs. I'm not sure they're mutually exclusive, especially since iOS already supports PWAs.

<comment><USER3> There is a huge gap between iOS and Android with regards to what's supported for PWAs.</comment></comment></comment>


Digital pregnancy tests with 8-bit Holtek microcontroller and 64 bytes of RAM - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2020/9/4/21422628/digital-pregnancy-test-teardown-processor-ram-ibm-pc <comment><USER2> No 802.11n Wifi and open telnet port for IoT insecurity?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe the next generation will do.</comment></comment>


Chemistry textbooks will have to be rewritten - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/07/07/scichemistry107.xml <comment><USER2> The headline seems a bit sensational to me.

They have found a way to cause an unusual interaction, but that doesn't make the whole of chemical knowledge up to this point any less useful or correct.

</comment><comment><USER3> "the maths of quantum mechanics quickly becomes to difficult "

Huh, what was that 'to difficult'.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the practical implications of this?

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting</comment>


Beyond Agile: The Studio Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/08/28/agile-and-the-studio-model/ <comment><USER2> I think the author mixes up a few "start-up" concepts (MVP, failing fast, etc.) with "agile" concepts (people over process, early delivery, etc.) and therefore is kind of shooting all over the place. I'm not going to argue that scrum is somehow not "true agile" (by definition, agile-or-not is entirely driven by the context of the team), but there's definitely a few points of warning in the Studio model proposed:

* a single architect / visionary to provide the "creative direction" within a project is a huge bottleneck. It's possible for showrunners to get down into the weeds of the scars on Orc's faces on a fantasy show; for a large software architect to get into the mechanics of on-disk data format is obviously failure. Filming is short sprints of hard deadlines in a way software development simply isn't.

* "magic happens about 85% or more": eek. Have we not learned that long periods of development with nothing visible are dangerous?

There's lots in here that I agree with; some of it seems a bit self- contradictory (i.e. "we need redundancy / understudies at all levels" versus "hire and level up creative people"), but overall this just reads like another list of "here's a lot of stuff that often goes wrong. My manifesto is to not do that". It's not amazingly actionable.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't entirely agree with the original author either; the comments on MVP also jarred a little with me. That said, the two points you mentioned in your bullet points both resonated with me.

I do agree with the original author that software development needs a clear vision of what you're trying to achieve. Without someone to articulate that vision and then everyone working to realise it, it is easy to fall into a trap where lots is going on and yet there is little _useful_ progress being made. What you characterise here as a bottleneck, I might characterise as having focus. This is very much about the big picture and co-ordinating different contributions, though, not about micro-management.

I also have a lot of sympathy with the argument that software projects don't necessarily add value incrementally just because the code is being developed incrementally. To borrow the traditional bad car analogy, you can have the most ergonomic steering wheel ever designed and you can put the best performing tyres on your rims, but until you've connected them, the value of the overall product is still negligible.

Of course software is different in nature to a physical product, but I still think the critical point in the development process — where you have not just evidence of product-market fit and potential market but a sustainable offering that you can actually sell in large enough volumes or at a high enough price to justify the development — is often only reached towards the end of a major round of development work. Visibility of incremental progress towards that point might be reassuring and motivating, but neither of those is the same as having value as a deliverable product. So while I'm all for manageable, incremental, sustainably paced development, I do think there is a real world danger of emphasising that too much and consequently taking an unnecessarily circuitous route to the critical point, making the development slower and more expensive than it could have been.

<comment><USER2> All the points he made about design up-front I'm entirely on board with: obviously it's difficult to say how much is necessary / right / overkill, but you definitely want to think about what you're building.

TV/film/studios as a model don't offer a particularly compelling vision (to me, anyway). Games work a lot like that, and I think they're probably some of the worst development jobs you can have (as a rule).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the "studio" terminology also seems a slightly awkward fit here. There were some good points made, but I'm not sure it's the best analogy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this a thought-provoking article. It's a follow-up to the author's previous piece, _The End of Agile_ [1], which was discussed on HN a week or so ago[2].

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/08/23/the-e...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/08/23/the- end-of-agile/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20776316](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20776316)</comment>


Show HN: Bookup App - location-based print book swapping - <AUTHOR> http://www.bookupapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I can't try it to offer any feedback, because it looks like its only for Apple machines, but it reminds me of [http://www.bookcrossing.com/](http://www.bookcrossing.com/)</comment>


7 Reasons to Hack - <AUTHOR> http://microsoftjobsblog.com/blog/7-reasons-to-hack---hackathons-help-you-build-your-network

<comment><USER2> The post is about hackathons, but I'd argue that all of these reasons apply to hacking in general. Of course, that makes it a much less controversial thesis (this is Hacker News, after all), but it raises the question: what's the value of hackathons in particular?

</comment><comment><USER3> There are wayyy more than 7. This post just scratches the surface of the hackathon value prop.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1\. You enjoy/love it.

FIN.</comment>


Is it okay for a Senior Technical Architect to know nothing about writing code? - <AUTHOR>

Is it okay to not know what you're doing as a senior technical architect? In a dream I worked with someone who worked on software for a couple years and never committed anything. He lost the source so had to decompile the build and start building on that. He took code from the codebase, copied and pasted it, commented some stuff out and then checked in literally copied and pasted code with changed log statements. He didn't understand there was a problem with duplicating code like that. How does this happen? How does a senior architect get to that level and have absolutely no development experience. <comment><USER2> If the company I worked for hired a STA without appropriate coal face experience, I would quit. Simple as that. Any system such a person designs is almost certain to end up being a death march project.

Any management who would hire such a person would also be suspected of gross incompetence.

As you say it was only a bad dream. Hope you never have to face such a reality.

</comment><comment><USER3> No way any architect should know nothing about writing code, or have no dev experience.

It is ok if they don't know everything, but would expect anyone in a senior position to know their limitations (and be able to shore them up if it's important).

</comment><comment><USER4> > How does a senior architect get to that level and have absolutely no > development experience.

Depends on what the "senior architect" role requires.

Quite often it means making boxes and slides in large enterprisy organizations.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know several people who have architect titles that are horrible coders and over engineer everything they touch. None of them are as bad as your dream but none would be on my list of people to call when things need to get done now.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, but it is better a Senior Techinical Architect that knows how to code. (But why wouldn't you start learning?, it's not that hard.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Dude, its just a dream. Its okay.</comment>


Even in the dark, brain "sees" its own body's movement - <AUTHOR> http://news.vanderbilt.edu/2013/10/dark-brain-sees/ <comment><USER2> I've seen this doing the rounds, and I'm a bit surprised by the publicity it's getting. The interpretation of the results is fanciful. The results merely show that a person's report of an event will be biased by their expectations. This can be done with anything. There are more rigorous studies of "efference copy" which are actual signals that are sent out to different parts of the brain indicating that a movement is about to be made. Such efference copies are important for actions involving timing where the proprioceptive feedback from the limbs would arrive too late to be useful (so some brain regions get a predictive signal that allows them to plan further action in time).

<comment><USER3> They aren't relying strictly on subjective reports, though. They are also doing eye tracking. It'd be more solid if it was backed up by MRI or EEG or some other kind of brain function measurement, but that's something, at least.

I've experienced this effect numerous times (for my whole body, not just my hands), and I always figured it was due to proprioception cross-talking with the geometry-extracting part of visual processing. The result that synaesthetes report more vivid images seems to support something like that. Definitely worth doing neurological studies on to see exactly how it works, but I never realized it was the sort of thing that anybody would be surprised by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few years ago, I took a tour of this underground cavern in Northern California. About 50 stories (this may be incorrect) underground with absolutely no natural light coming in.

The tour guide took us to the deepest part, turned of all the lights and told us that this was what being in absolute darkness was like. The tour guide also told us to wave our hands in front of our faces. I thought I saw my own hand in front of me and before I had a chance to comment about that, the tour guide mentioned how if you think you see your hand, you're not.

Glad I came across this. Really helps shine some light (I'm sorry) on what I saw.

</comment><comment><USER5> I thought there was a word for this: proprioception. The fact that this could bleed into visual perception does not seem surprising. Your brain has a sense of your body's position in space.

</comment><comment><USER6> I've noticed this effect (based on the title) when I close my eyes in a very dark room. I can sometimes "see" a very faint silhouette of my arms, and sometimes the object they're holding, roughly where they should be if the lights were on, slightly darker than the eigengrau[0]. I've wondered whether part of my brain is generating an "expectance mask" (my made up term) in my visual system.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau)

<comment><USER7> Eigengrau is the color of my Moleskin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get the difference between 'seeing' my hand, and looking in the direction of where I know my hand to be.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation as to how often UX analysis of sites should be done - <AUTHOR> I guess I'm going to be fighting city hall, figuratively. One of the governmental web sites I have to deal with for my business has abysmal UX, and they wanted me to provide some data. I interpreted the bad UX as meaning they had a bug, and I also thought 'oh but I have provided that data therefore they are all sorts of messed up hah hah'.
So they started a proceeding to close down my company, using a law evidently only established for closing companies due to bankruptcy. In order to stop this process, according to the governmental agency, I have to:
1. give them the data (done)
2. pay fee for misunderstanding their site and not giving them the data earlier (done)
3. get an accountant to write a detailed report as to why I am not bankrupt and pay an extra fee for them to accept this report (required by bankruptcy law not pertinent to my case)
I'm trying to appeal against step 3 as being way too much. And as part of my case I would like to have guidelines as to how often UX analysis of sites should be done because
a.) I believe this problem with their site has existed for a while
b.) the caseworkers dealing with my case immediately understood the mistaken assumption I had made when talking about it over the phone, leading me to assume it is something they all know sucks about their site but according to them it was just the way it was and nothing was going to be done. So I think it might turn out there actually hasn't been any UX analysis of the site and its usage or any recommendations to fix things for the last few years, because governmental work - our clients have to use us! <comment><USER2> I don't think there are really guidelines on 'how often' UX research should happen. Ideally it is integrated in the development cycle and something like this is found in a usability test and fixed before deployment. Usability testing and UX research are a continual process.

<comment><AUTHOR> right, unfortunately in dealing with governmental bodies it is best to point to something in a document written by someone with some apparent expertise in a matter that would say something like 'Usability is something to be continually evaluated, in order to have get the best and most accurate view of an application's usability for its target group it is best to have a semi- annual testing regimen based on analytics of the actual application usage in between the last system improvements...yadda,yadda,yadda'</comment></comment>


In Colorado, an experiment is underway to rehabilitate the state's homeless - <AUTHOR> https://psmag.com/radical-efforts-to-end-homelessness-a-sober-utopia-36d7b532185b <comment><AUTHOR> A similar-seeming program in California at the former Fort Ord in Monterey:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Transition_Center](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Transition_Center)</comment>


Nintendo DS Is the Best-Selling Videogame System in U.S. History - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/nintendo-ds-is-the-best-selling-videogame-system-in-us-history/68903/ <comment><USER2> You've posted 11 articles in the last 5 minutes. The last several you haven't even waited a minute before posting the next. Cool your jets.</comment>


Where SSDs Don't Make Sense in Server Applications - <AUTHOR> http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/2009/04/12/WhereSSDsDontMakeSenseInServerApplications.aspx

<comment><USER2> A 2008 Sun article sees Flash as having the following position in the server storage hierarchy: cache, DRAM, Flash, disk, tape: <http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/not_a_flash_in_the>

Which is what the present article is talking about in this line:

 _The benefits of SSDs as an intermediate caching tier are also limited, and the cost of provisioning such a tier was justified for fewer than 10% of the examined workloads_

</comment><comment><USER3> I guess the real questions is are SSDs good enough to replace data that now sits in RAM? For example, Google keeps their entire search index in RAM. Would they be better off keeping it in SSDs?

<comment><USER4> Not even close. The bandwidths of RAM vs. SSDs differ by a couple orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER5> Especially with the Intel X-25 at around $4.50 per GB and DDR2 running at $10 per GB - there just isn't much of a cost savings for completely disparate performance.

<comment><USER6> When you calculate the price of RAM, consider the slots as well. Putting a TB of RAM in a server requires more than just DIMMs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Shouldn't he wait until the cost comes down and settles a bit before he bothers writing a whole screed about the expense? It's like decrying the HDTV as not worth the money -- they're over $10,000 each! Or, they were, a few years ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, obviously the price of SSDs will change in the future, but the question is whether they are a good idea for server workloads _now_ , not in 2 or 3 years.</comment></comment>


Heartbleed certificate revocation tsunami yet to arrive - <AUTHOR> http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2014/04/11/heartbleed-certificate-revocation-tsunami-yet-to-arrive.html <comment><USER2> The first graph shows an interesting bump in SSL cert reissue activity on April 2nd - 5 days before public disclosure.

Could this be the day Google, CloudFlare, and other major internet companies in-the-know before the public disclosure, patched their servers?

Is this graph generally available, for any time range, from NetCraft or another monitoring service?

I'm aware the graph shown has a time range too narrow to conclude anything but this made me think that monitoring this graph or noticing unusual reissues from major internet services (Google/CloudFlare/AWS/Facebook) could be used as an advance warning mechanism that a significant SSL flaw is about to be publicly disclosed.

<comment><USER3> "We fixed the flaw on Monday March 31, 2014 for all CloudFlare customers, with public notification on Monday April 7, 2014, after the researchers' public announcement." [https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/201660084-U...](https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en- us/articles/201660084-Update-on-the-Heartbleed-OpenSSL-Vulnerability)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Out of curiousity, it there really any benefit to revoking a certifcate? Most (all?) of the leading browsers do not check the revocation list, so this move seems like an empty gesture. Is the Internet vulnerable to MITM attacks until this generation of certificates expire?

Do you think Firefox, Chrome will release an update in the next few weeks with revoked certificate checks enabled?

<comment><USER5> To really protect against active attacks, browsers can't just re-enable OCSP checking (i.e. return to the status quo as of a few years ago). They would also need to make failure to contact the OCSP server a fatal error (something which I don't think has ever been done by default before), and that would probably cause so many problems I can't imagine the browsers doing that.

Personally, I'm never again going to buy a cert that's valid for more than 1 year, and even that's too long. Google uses certs that are valid for only a few months, but they're only able to do that because they are their own certificate authority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At godaddy, seems the flare has been lit:

[http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/openssl-and-heartbleed- vu...](http://support.godaddy.com/godaddy/openssl-and-heartbleed- vulnerabilities/?pc_split_value=4&countrysite=in)</comment>


Show HN: OpenVPN in 4MB – Or how I learned to stop worrying and love the WR840N - <AUTHOR> https://milankragujevic.com/openvpn-in-4mb-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tl-wr840n <comment><USER2> Why not simply Wireguard?</comment>


Sub-3-hour weekend project: How much wine do I need? - <AUTHOR> http://www.howmuchwinedoineed.com/

<comment><USER2> I read the headline as, "How much wine do I need to create a sub-3-hour weekend project?"

</comment><comment><USER3> That's cute but are you concerned about liabilities that might result if what you are doing can be construed as advising people to drink irresponsibly (by giving them helpful instructions for doing it)?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think people can be trusted to make their own decisions about what they can handle. We've been looking for single serve site ideas for a while and this one came to us when trying to calculate how much wine we needed for our first company birthday party.

It's a good point though, maybe it should have a _Please enjoy alcohol responsibly_ disclaimer. Consider it done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I could have used this yesterday! Ended up overbuying wine for an event. The result on your app is about how much we ended up actually using.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We had a similarly successful experience with this calculation for a party of about 50 people, hence we knocked the app together.</comment></comment>


Stranded In SF? Corral Rides Shows Uber, Lyft, Sidecar And Muni In One App - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/29/stranded-in-sf-corral-rides-shows-uber-lyft-sidecar-and-muni-in-one-app/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> At the risk of hater downvotes, that screenshot looks eerily similar to the situation I always find myself in while in SF. Lyft and Sidecar have nothing available or have ungodly wait times (6-15 minutes while standing in a busy part of the city), while an Uber can pick me up in under 2-3 minutes every time. Additionally, a lot of Lyft/Sidecar drivers will just pass on rides that are too far away and wait until someone closer makes a request. They can do this because the demand is significantly greater than supply, so it has little impact on them. This is very obvious by just watching the display while you're trying to flag down a ride (note: true even with 5* rating).

This makes me wonder if they should even be included as they're incredibly unreliable. It'd be interesting to see Corral run some analytics on the data they're gathering to see which options have severe availability issues, and when/where.

</comment><comment><USER3> Been using this app for a little while. Indispensable!!

<comment><USER4> Does it use the Muni API for real-time next bus/train tracking? Or is it, like Google Maps, based off of the published (aka, worthless) schedule?

<comment><USER5> It uses google. I use Rover instead; they do the routing themselves based on the real-time arrival data (and they include sidecar and instantcab, though not lyft.

<http://www.roversf.com/></comment></comment></comment>


Why did we choose Scala for TrueAccord? - <AUTHOR> http://eng.trueaccord.com/2014/10/06/why-we-chose-scala/

<comment><USER2> I selected Scala (with Play Framework) for mostly the same reasons: JVM ecosystem, expressiveness, thread-safety, hybrid functional and OO style, type safety and good runtime performance. I chose it over C#, Java, Python and Ruby. After using it for over a year, my experience is very much alike to the one described in this article. I don't see myself switching language or platform anytime soon.

<comment><USER3> Same here.

The article also highlights that adopting Scala often also means adopting a more functional programming style.</comment></comment>


Dear JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://thejameskyle.com/dear-javascript.html <comment><USER2> "This page is unavailable when linked to from news.ycombinator.com.

Please find a less toxic place to spend your time.

Here is a great song for your time"

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, oh wow. Sorry for that. I have JS disabled and didn't get that notice.</comment></comment>


Tesla raises wages 30% in Germany soon after firing its US workers - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1107802/tesla-raises-wages-30-in-germany-soon-after-firing-its-us-workers/ <comment><USER2> Because it had to! Germany has a very good business vs workers balance. People forget that ultimately businesses are here to help society, not to make a buck. Making money is a side effect.

Germany works to balance the 2 and when they get out of wack they work to fix it.

We need to look at them and see if we can find some benefits in what they do.

<comment><USER3> Finnish software company [https://www.reaktor.com/](https://www.reaktor.com/) has offices in NY and they offer basically the same benefits as people in Finland have. Especially vacations (four weeks guaranteed), parental leave and no too much overtime.

(Reaktor has been selected as the best place to work in Finland four times a row)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> so the US needs to catch up with unionising and good employee protection laws and he will pay them extra too. Tesla is a business and as with any business they will pay the minimum they can get away with.

<comment><USER5> They fired the U.S. employees, they didn't fail to give them raises. Obviously they thought the minimum they could get away with was to not have the employees at all. Not sure labor laws would fix that.</comment></comment>


How We Got 10M Teens to Read Fiction on Their Phones - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@prernagupta/how-we-got-10-million-teens-to-read-fiction-on-their-phones-19a2a475084c <comment><USER2> This story mad me sad. A/B testing fiction? Chat stories? The new world wasn't made for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Chat stories" with "comic-book inspired" young-adult plots, made to be read on mobile phones... Sounds like they've reinvented Japanese cell phone novels[1]. Sci-fi/fantasy YA plots are also common to light novels [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_novel) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_novel)</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's Hoodie - <AUTHOR> http://quietbabylon.com/2013/mark-zuckerbergs-hoodie/ <comment><USER3> Based on the responses here on Hacker News, it seems like some of you didn't get it.

This article is about social privilege, and how different the life circumstances of the founder of Facebook are from many of the people using his product.

It's underscoring the fact that Graph Search could only be built by someone who doesn't understand the sometimes life-or-death importance of privacy, who has never had to fear any real consequences from any expression of identity or presenting the same face to all people.

A large segment of the readers of Hacker News have the same blind spots as Mark Zuckerberg, and this comes out whenever any question of social privelege as it relates to technology comes up here. This is a problem. The products we're building have huge, and usually unexamined, social consequences, and I don't think ignoring those consequences will work long term.

This is true in other fields that claim "neutrality" the way technologists do. Most working U.S. journalists, for instance, work for pro-government, pro- Capitalist news outlets. We call this "objective". Any deviation from that norm is "bias".

Keeping identifying information in a centralized location that is subject to subpoena by law enforcement is a norm now, too, one that has serious social consequences. So your decision to roll your own auth system and saying "fuck it, I'll just make them log in through Facebook" is about _a lot_ more than how many keystrokes you have to enter and how much maintenance you're going to have to do down the road.

We should start factoring social consequences in to our technical decisions, like, ten years ago, and I'm afraid it's going to take a lynch mob empowered by Graph Search for people to get this.

<comment><USER4> I prefer people post under their real name if possible, but know that it is not always possible. I do want these problems fixed eventually if possible too.

<comment><USER5> But is that truly de-anonymizing? I share my legal name with several famous people, and numerous SEO'd professionals. Barring more specific searching knowing specific details I am relatively hard to identify. Same with just about anyone who fits the (common first name, common last name) paradigm. On the other hand (rare first name, rarer last name) is relatively easy to uniquely identify.

<comment><USER6> For most purposes, it is de-anonymizing. There might be several famous people who share your name, but is there more than one person with your name who is currently an undergrad at Caltech studying CS? In most cases, a name combined with a little bit of context will identify an individual.

<comment><USER7> The difference, for me at least, is effort.

There's a vast difference from if people can do a search for your name, and get page up and page down of stuff from every forum you might post on, vs. if people need to track down your nym's.

In my case, my HN id is trivially easy to connect to my full name, but unless you go to the effort, these comments won't show up.

My Reddit comments are still easy to connect to my full name if you try, but it does not reflect my name directly, and it will take more searches for most people. I don't care if people who know me figure it out - I've e.g. often made clear statements that identify me in comments there, by e.g. replying in threads when posts from my blog has been posted there. I don't care if the odd person here and there make the connection, with or without my help.

I don't care if people who care enough to put effort into figuring out the connections figure it out (though I'd find it rather creepy if someone thought that worthwhile) - they'd find other avenues to get information about me anyway.

But I _do_ somewhat care that off-hand comments I make that are more like a casual chat than a serious debate or public statement does not end up ranking at the top of a Google search for my name.

I "curate" my online life that way, by deciding what I post and what usernames I use, depending on how much or little I care about tying a specific service to my public identity.

<comment><USER8> But you can only do that because HN, Reddit and other sites - unlike Facebook and Google+ - allow you to create that chasm between the two identities.

There's nothing wrong with an individual choosing to use his legal name in his profile, but we should be weary of making that decision for others. Personally, I won't join any service that maintains such policy.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely. I may join such services, but I will self-censor. I hardly use Facebook, for example, because I don't _want_ all those personal details spread to a lot of people I care less about that many people I only know by handles, but feel social pressure to add. So my profile exist, but is pretty much devoid of content, and it will remain that way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What a thoughtful essay. "But it uses a silly writing device to illustrate a point it could have just made plainly!" Whoa there, critical-thinking-by-the- numbers guy, maybe the article is also about fashion.

As a child, I considered style choices a silly and inconsequential distraction from the beautiful truths of the universe: e^(ipi) + 1 doesn't care what I'm wearing, so neither should I, therefore it doesn't matter, QED.

While today I still wish fashion would just go away so I could wear this conference t-shirt in peace, I contend it offers a reflection of who we are. Consider that while half the Senior Developers of the world can't program their way out of a FizzBuzz test, and half the world can't even read at all, _everyone_ can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic. "No, it offers a reflection of what the establishment wants us to be!" I'll leave it to the reader to reconcile those two views. "But I just care about finishing Project Euler problems in APL so I just decide to wear sandals and this old shirt like all my friends!" _Fashion mattering doesn't depend on you caring._ Even you, APL-man, know Zuck couldn't wear his hoodie working for Quinn Emanuel unless he owned it (real question: how many people show up in suits at facebook?).

I was shopping for pretty scarves (!) with a product designer and suggested that ads are the clearest reflection of what a given demographic _is_. He agreed so quickly I wondered if I were late to the party. So when the Scientology ad in the Atlantic showed up, I thought of my favorite TLP quotation: if you're reading it, it's for you. The obvious question was "why is the Atlantic publishing this!?" The more depressing question is "why am I in Scientology's target demo?"

Fashion is an advertisement about yourself. "But the relationship is not always so obvious!" Hence the hoodie the world's richest web geek refuses to remove. "But I don't care what Zuckerberg wears!" If you're reading it, it's for you.

<comment><USER10> "everyone can look at someone's dress and decide if it's fashionable for their demographic."

You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic. I certainly have no clue whether something is fashionable. I'd be hard pressed to tell you if two colors go together. I do no know if I dress more or less formally than my coworkers, or if my normal clothes present any sort of image. My style is not a conscious rejection of fashion, it is simply some clothes that I've concluded aren't too far outside what I'm expected to wear and therefore don't make me stand out.

<comment><USER11> _You may have forgotten where you are discussing this topic._

I couldn't blame anyone for this stereotype but I don't think it's true. I suspect quite a lot of people here are into or have a nose for fashion (though not necessarily in the haute couture/catwalk sense).

<comment><USER7> If nothing else, anyone who visits e.g. Silicon Valley and hangs out with geeks there, will quickly start picking out the "geek uniform". I find it funny when fellow geeks thinks they're clueless about fashion, and still manage to dress in very specific ways that makes them recognisable as a group. That _is_ fashion, even if they're not following _mainstream_ fashion.

The first time I visited the Bay Area, I stood out like a sore thumb because I didn't fit into "Bay Area geek fashion" (I dressed too "smart" because it was my first business trip abroad). I see that here in London too - e.g. if a developer comes into the office in a shirt, it tends to elicit comments. There are even small but noticeable differences between how the developers and designers dress.

<comment><USER12> For my own clarification, do you mean that, in London, if a developer comes into the office in a _dress shirt_ they stand out as overly formal? Or do you mean if they come in with _only_ a shirt (ie no tie and jacket) they stand out as under-dressed?

<comment><USER13> Maybe he worked in the London porn industry, and _any_ shirt is over-dressed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> >People who know they're being watched change their behaviour. In a world awash in surveillance devices, hoodies are an element of fashion driven by an architectural condition. They are a response to the constant presence of cameras overhead. People who don't want to be watched wear them. People who want to be the kind of people who don't want to be watched wear them. People who want to look like the kind of people who don't want to be watched wear them.

>It is difficult to imagine a more suitable uniform for the notoriously private CEO of a company dedicated to expanding our ideas of what should be public.

>June 2, 2010, Zuckerberg, hoodie removed, begins answering Mossberg's question.

Honestly, this seriously reminds me of the kinds of essays that most students fall into the trap of writing in English classes in school - fake certitude, speaking in absolutes, a pervasive tone of academic hysteria, and drawing parallels and implications by mere association. In my view, it tries to dissemble a sense of profundity, however hollow.

The final sentence is a particularly egregious example of drawing an association out of thin air. This essay may as well have introduced itself as studying the symbolic motif of the hoodie and its role in the constant conflict between privacy and surveillance in the literary work Facebook, by Reality.

EDIT: I would like to lightheartedly add that these essays were always really fun for me to write in school because I would get top marks for them despite knowing how meaningless they were.

<comment><USER15> It also struck me as written by someone on the East Coast, which appears to be the case (the writer lives in Toronto). Here in Seattle nobody would spend so many words writing about the hoodie. People wear them. Business professionals wear them. Sometimes even CEOs. It's not a symbol, it's just clothing.

<comment><USER16> You missed the entire point of the essay. 1) The hoodie is more than just an article of clothing, and 2) it wasn't really about the hoodies.

<comment><USER15> No, I got it. It's overwrought symbolism posing as profundity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've been telling my friends this: Graph Search is going to be the biggest privacy shitstorm we've ever seen, by a large margin. The only way it's not going to be is if Zuck et al cave quickly and lock it down to just search in your own network before the media picks it up. Basically Graph Search is the piece de resistance of Zuckerberg's vision for the world: ultimate transparency aided by algorithms to surface "public" information (ie, information the person posting it did not realize it was public.) It's the last big piece of the puzzle and closes the loop. The current product launch is just one "frontend" to these algorithms. Make no mistake the creation of this search engine is a huge inflection point since now things can be built on top of it.

The thesis (I think) has always been there would need to be a huge trial by fire, teaching the public about what information is _actually_ public, and what it means to be "on the Internet" not via privacy settings, or blog posts, or tutorials, but by pure unadulterated necessity through fear. You will _have_ to lock your shit down now or face the consequences of massive dissemination of that information. There will be no more friction. There will be causalities, and I think Facebook thinks it is an inevitability that "privacy through obscurity" becomes a thing of the past, so might as well be them to kill it. If you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, particularly one that is going to be made by _someone_ , so be it.

"Market efficiency" of social data is going to be achieved: just like when a news report comes out about a company its stock price instantly updates to reflect it, so to will the world itself, and the people in it, reflect the publication of personal information thanks to the ability of the world to see it via software like Graph Search. Anyone who wants to know anything about you or what you do will be able to, instantly, unless you understand the scope of the things you publish intimately.

<comment><USER18> I have an easy solution to that, personally: I don't share my deepest darkest secrets on social networking sites.

I can't imagine anything I've posted to Facebook being a problem if it was all printed in tomorrow's New York Times. Maybe other people should take the same approach.

<comment><USER8> Let's hope other people don't post them for you. At least when email was the main social network, the effects of indiscreet friends and acquaintances didn't usually appear on Google.

<comment><USER18> Maybe it's to my advantage that I'm not in any kind of closet, but I also don't share my deepest darkest secrets with people I don't trust implicitly.

<comment><USER17> It's not exactly your "deepest, darkest secrets" you need to be worried about. Do you really want your boss to know your interests? Do you really want your ex-girlfriend to know if you've moved somewhere nearby? Etc.

<comment><USER18> Sure, why not? If there's anything like that I did care about, Facebook would be none the wiser anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "It's 1945. I sit in a Brooklyn kitchen, fascinated by an arrangement of cogs on black velvet. I am sixteen years old. It is 1985. I am on Mars. I am fifty six years old..."

That's what the style of this article instantly reminded me of. Like the source I quote, the article was done very well indeed; well enough that I picked up what was happening without the use of Dave Gibbons' art. Good language, even good poetry. Impressive.

And the point he's making? Memorable. Doesn't matter if I agree with his point or the connections he's drawing. This is quality stuff all round.

<comment><USER20> Damn, I gotta read Watchmen again soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Making the world open"? Facebook doesn't even offer RSS feeds, so thanks for the chuckle. "Making the world connected"? The world is connected anyway, introducing middlemen into it makes it arguably less connected, that is, it introduces more connectedness that sucks, instead of the kind that doesn't. Thanks for honing my doublethink radar or something.

<comment><USER22> 1B people disagree with you.

<comment><USER23> 1B people aren't even asking themselves those questions.

<comment><USER22> If people didn't think FB was making things more open and connected, then why are they even on the site (and returning frequently)? It may not be YOUR narrow definition of open and connected but clearly they are deriving value from connecting and sharing with their friends and family.

<comment><USER23> _clearly they are deriving value from connecting and sharing with their friends and family._

Which they would be doing anyway if FB didn't exist. FB to them is convenience, nothing more. Many of them probably think that FB _is_ "the Internet", just as many AOL users thought that in the 90's. They are only "connected" inside the walled garden; they have no idea of all the things that are outside it.

<comment><USER22> Wow that's pretty condescending.

Yes, it is a convenience... Much like email is a convenience over snail mail and Face Time is a convenience over meeting in person. Arguably the car is a "convenience" over the horse.

Discounting the breakthrough in technology that spawned the term "social networking" doesn't really help your position.

AOL may be a defunct company but in their hey day they brought millions of people online. They deserve more than your mockery.

<comment><USER23> I didn't say there was no value in convenience. Of course there is. I use email. I'm posting here instead of xeroxing and snail mailing what I write. But HN isn't trying to monetize my personal information, and it isn't trying to be my only portal to the Internet.

Yes, AOL in its heyday brought lots of people online--and made them think that going through AOL was the _only_ way to get online. Facebook has brought a lot of people social networking--and has made them think that allowing Facebook to monetize their private information is the _only_ way to do social networking. They are encouraging people to choose short-term convenience at the expense of long-term control over their own data and their own online lives.

My point is that saying "lots of people use Facebook" is not the same thing as saying "Facebook is doing things that are good for its users, or the Internet, or society, all things considered". Same for s/Facebook/AOL/.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This isn't wholly bad writing, but what he's published is really just an early draft: ~version 0.3 in the writing process, the point where you've meandered your way through your early thoughts, lost direction and momentum, then squished all the loose ends and odd thoughts into a limp pseudo-conclusion, because you generally don't have anything clear to say in your mind the first time round. At this point I would be stepping back, taking some time to think about and deconstruct what and why I was exactly interested in in the first place, looking for the seeds of what really interests me. Then I'd strip it down to its fundamentals, generate a potential argument, do some more research, and start a new draft cycle. Usually I'm only getting to something I would consider publishing around 3.0 or 4.0. Or I've realised that the ideas didn't pan out and I've shelved the project - another very important skill for writers! Anyway putting in this extra effort is hard work but worth it, because otherwise your thoughts always come out like this: pretty, suggestive, but directionless. Basically people need to learn to be patient and not rush their ideas - a hard but necessary lesson in our times.

(I usually edit most of my comments here multiple times: written and posted hastily, then subjected to extended consideration.)

</comment><comment><USER24> Poetic and engaging writing, but ultimately dishonest. It relies on the symbol of the hoodie to carry the speech through pathos, and that does take it quite far, but no argument is given. Are we expected to fear Zuckerberg, or the consumer website Facebook? The author stirs drama but does not direct it, and the resulting flatness feels disingenuous -- yet another Facebook piece that feels important with no insight. The author has identified that there is something significant to culture in Facebook's work that is also frightening, but can't quite articulate it, because that is actually difficult to do given how bleeding edge these issues are; instead, lazily, the author appears to give up. Disappointing. I'd love something with more teeth.

<comment><USER3> It's giving you some things to think about without coming to a conclusion for you, and it's interesting how disorienting you find this.

<comment><USER24> Well, that's the thing: I don't find that interesting, I find it lazy. It's _already_ lazy to write about Facebook, especially in a negative or fearful tone. (How much of that mongering do you see in a day? One article on the frontpage a day on average, yes?) When a writer chooses Facebook's ethos as a topic I'm looking very critically for true insight, but most end up punting on this -- this author included.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it was really about Facebook's ethos at all, and I think people are going to continue writing about Facebook negatively until we all find some way to solve the problems they're causing.

It's not just going to go away because it's a dead horse. That's like saying that anti-war protesters should just stop showing up, "because, duh, we all know war is bad, so just put your little placard down, already."

<comment><USER25> That's not a fair comparison. A protester's purpose is simply to make it known that they are for/against a certain cause – to increment the number of visible proponents/opponents.

A blog post needs to do a lot more than that if it is to be deemed a success. Especially if it is quite long. It should bring some insight. @nkwiatek thinks this particular blog post didn't bring much insight. If this is true, then it's valid to use this as a criticism. A long blog post with a reflective tone implicitly promises to bring something more to the table than "I think X is wrong".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Based on the title, I thought this article would be about Zuck's fashion choices, but it surprised me by diving into much deeper topics about individual identity, privacy, and revolutions. Great writing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Even billionaires need their security blankets.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very interesting. The linked UK Police (FIT) spotter cards, contain a well known British personality, namely Mark Thomas. [http://quietbabylon.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/Police-sp...](http://quietbabylon.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/01/Police-spotter-card-002-500x367.jpg)

He can be seen on here on YouTube: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPL8hlKJCk&list=PL06987B...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASPL8hlKJCk&list=PL06987B4A09FB8A8D)

Legend...

</comment><comment><USER29> Beautiful, suggestive theme. Nice work.

</comment><comment><USER30> The site has gone over its bandwidth limit, so mirror time. Here's Google's cached copy: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:quietba...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:quietbabylon.com%2F2013%2Fmark- zuckerbergs-hoodie%2F)

</comment><comment><USER31> The sad part of an entire article about Mark's hoodie, is that the significance to mark himself was missed. What is inside the back of his hoodie?

<comment><USER32> The article wasn't really about the hoodie..

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Jobs had black turtlenecks as a signature style. I think Zuckerberg sees Jobs as a role model and imitates his practice with hoodies. What else could he choose to look "cool"?

</comment><comment><USER34> Off topic but I've heard that Zuck has a cupboard full of same hoodie (or t-shirt) so he doesn't have to worry about what he is going to wear in the morning.

<comment><USER35> That's a pretty common trope - supposedly Steve Jobs was the same way.

I wonder how true it is.

<comment><USER20> I recently bought ~30 pairs of the same underwear which I prefer. I definitely see locking down a set of favourite items for the basics of your daily wardrobe, and then buying those items in bulk, as a big efficiency boost if you have more important things to do with your mind than worry about the what you're going to wear each day. Makes sense to focus on basic items: socks, undies, t-shirts, pants, jerseys. Then you don't have to worry about needing to do laundry all the time, running out of items you prefer, choosing between different models, choosing when you go shopping again. Ultimately you would want to extend this beyond clothes: food, household items etc. and automate it as much as possible, so you don't even have to worry about re-buying - <USER2> system is set up to order replacements on schedule as required.

Edit: just realised I'm in the process of doing basically the same thing with discovering and standardising my favourite haircut.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Very interesting writing style, and a wonderfully thought-provoking read!

</comment><comment><USER37> When you grow up, the hoodie is replaced with a Berghaus fleece :)</comment>


Study: Tesla battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 yrs of driving on gas - <AUTHOR> http://climatechangedispatch.com/study-tesla-car-battery-production-releases-as-much-co2-as-8-years-of-driving-on-gas/ <comment><USER2> What are the CO2 emissions of the mining, refining, and delivery of 8 years worth of gas?

</comment><comment><USER3> The link is from an anti-renewables propaganda website. See for instance this article with the title: We pay a fortune for renewable energy when we should be exploiting fossil fuels

[http://climatechangedispatch.com/we-pay-a-fortune-for- renewa...](http://climatechangedispatch.com/we-pay-a-fortune-for-renewable- energy-when-we-should-be-exploiting-fossil-fuels/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Your argument is invalid. Ad hominem. Attacking the source doesn't make the reported 17 tons of CO2 per battery incorrect.

<comment><USER4> But it makes the article a lot more likely to use biased sources and present the argument unfairly

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Overlooked in a lot of discussion of the CO2 impact of Tesla vs ICE is the effect of the added weight of the batteries on the amount of road damage a car will cause. A study in the 1950's showed that road damage is proportional to the third power of the axle weight of the car. If the Tesla weights 1/3 more that a similar ICE vehicle it will cause (4/3)^3 or about 3 times as much damage to the road a similar ICE. Replacing the fleet of ICE cars with Tesla type cars would lead to the road being replaced 3 times as often. Note concrete production is large CO2 emitter.

<comment><USER6> My friend who is a highway engineer would disagree with you. He says that roads will last a very long time as long as the shear limit of the road is not exceeded, but that once the maximum shear is exceeded the road will deteriorate. So, semis that do not exceed their weight limit are not a problem, but hauling a bulldozer around on a flatbed with four axles when it should have six will really do damage. It makes sense to me because my experience has been that when anything is operated within it's design limits it can last a very long time. So, unless the cars you are talking about have very narrow tires, I don't think they will be the problem you propose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fake news. The people whose instinct told them that a pro-fossil fuel blog was peddling bullshit were correct.

[http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/news/a2...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid- electric/news/a27039/tesla-battery-emissions-study-fake-news/)

<comment><AUTHOR> >The headline is based on a Swedish study. It posits that production of a 100 kWh battery—Tesla's biggest—produces 17.5 tons of carbon dioxide. We'll take that at face value so we can dig into it here.

The link you provide does not dispute the 17.5 tons of CO2 per 100 kWh battery. Here's a figure for you. Cars produced in 2015: 68,560,000

[http://www.statisticbrain.com/cars-produced-in-the- world/](http://www.statisticbrain.com/cars-produced-in-the-world/)

If 100% of those cars were Teslas, that would be 1.2 Gigatons of CO2 from battery production alone. For reference, CO2 contributed by the burning of all fossil fuels combined is around 4-5 Gigatons annually.

[http://soilcarboncenter.k-state.edu/carbcycle.html](http://soilcarboncenter.k-state.edu/carbcycle.html)

1.2 gigatons is not a small number and that's before the cars even hit the road. Sweden must have realistic numbers. They pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. Popular mechanics have pledged nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Genuine question but I'm assuming making the power train for a normal car releases greenhouse gasses too.

The totals for both should be released for a fair comparison

</comment><comment><USER9> Sure but I bet all the fiddly bits of an ICE car take as much CO2 as the battery. Not only that, manufacturing thse batteries at scale is a relatively new process that's bound to improve with time. Mechanical engines, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER10> Where is the report? Which journal is the study published in?

<comment><AUTHOR> You didn't even read the submission, did you?

>IVL The Swedish Environment Institute has, on behalf of the Swedish Transport Administration and the Swedish Energy Agency, investigated the climate impact of lithium-ion batteries from a life-cycle perspective.

This is Sweden, the country that has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2050.

<comment><USER11> Tesla has pledged that the Gigafactory would be net zero: [https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/teslas- gigafacto...](https://www.treehugger.com/renewable-energy/teslas-gigafactory- will-produce-much-renewable-energy-it-uses-net-zero-energy.html)

If this is accurate and comes to pass, then assuming like the Swedes did that the batteries would have 50% fossil fuel sources for production wouldn't apply.

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105404_tesla- gigafactor...](http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1105404_tesla-gigafactory- energy-no-solar-panels-yet-but-no-natural-gas-at-all)

Last I read, no panels.

<comment><USER12> It's not even a third complete, I think it's a little premature to be complaining about the lack of solar panels.

[https://i0.wp.com/electrek.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/gigaf...](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/gigafactory- march-2017-2.jpeg?w=1400&h=&crop&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)

[https://electrek.co/2016/07/24/tesla-gigafactory-picture- sho...](https://electrek.co/2016/07/24/tesla-gigafactory-picture-shows- construction-double-size/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IBM's SystemML Machine Learning – Now Apache SystemML - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/SparkTC/systemml <comment><USER2> So what's the benefit to using SystemML on top of Spark (or another scheduler) vs. using Spark's own MLlib? From the links below, it seems MLlib supports a superset of SystemML's algorithms (with the small exception of survival analysis). Are there any plans for the projects to use insights from each other, or to merge in some way? Because it seems quite silly for Apache to sponsor two competing machine learning libraries with exactly the same goals.

[https://sparktc.github.io/systemml/algorithms- reference.html](https://sparktc.github.io/systemml/algorithms-reference.html)

[https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/mllib- guide.html](https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/mllib-guide.html)

<comment><USER3> Great question. I'm part of the committer team for the project at IBM, so I'll leave a few comments representing our thoughts. As a quick overview, SystemML provides an R-like DSL, called _DML_ , consisting of linear algebra primitives (vectors, matrices), built-in functions for common functions (such as sums, means, matrix construction, etc.), UDFs, etc., as well as a compiler/optimizer engine that can generate optimized runtime plans from the same DML script for a single node (laptop), Spark, or Hadoop MapReduce. We definitely have algorithms already available as production-ready examples, but the goal of the project is to allow for _declarative_ ML using customizable scripts written at the mathematical DSL level, rather than to provide a fixed _library_ of algorithms at the base language level (Scala, Python, etc.). MLlib (including the newer ML API) is awesome, and provides a great set of algorithms that fit in quite well with Scala, Python (& Java). SystemML is great in that it provides the ability to run customizable, linear algebra-based ML scripts (that can be automatically optimized within the engine) on Spark. Together, it's a great combo. We also have an API for Scala that lets one embed DML into a Scala program similar in manner to how an SQL script can be embedded [[http://sparktc.github.io/systemml/mlcontext-programming- guid...](http://sparktc.github.io/systemml/mlcontext-programming-guide.html)].

Here are our new Apache links:

[https://systemml.apache.org](https://systemml.apache.org)

[https://github.com/apache/incubator- systemml](https://github.com/apache/incubator-systemml)

<comment><USER2> Very cool - so the algorithms shared with MLlib are just an example of what can be achieved with such a DSL. This could actually be very useful for inference on domain specific generative models that need custom-derived update steps. And probabilistic programming could be built on top of this. I stand very much corrected - this is definitely a project worth attention from the community separate from Spark itself!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cynic in me thinks this is just another IBM project thrown over the fence to die in the Apache graveyard. I hope that's very wrong in this case.

<comment><USER5> I wonder why companies even bother open sourcing their software with all the critics looking for angle's to their motivation. Better to keep it private and not put up with the arm chair open source critics.

<comment><USER6> The cynic in me thinks it's often a case of a product line they no longer want to support but for which an established user base already exists (Flex comes to mind). The optimist in me thinks this isn't necessarily a bad thing though, it's certainly better than just killing it altogether. The FOSS idealist in me thinks it's great to be getting all this stuff, under an Apache licence!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks interesting and something I will definitely watch, but at this point I think I will still stick with [http://h2o.ai/](http://h2o.ai/) (another JVM based ML open source project that integrates well with 'Hadoop'). I have been really impressed with the quality of the product and even more so with the quality of the people behind the it.

</comment><comment><USER8> interesting.. so it allows R syntax. I wonder why they didnt build it on top of Renjin [1]

[1] [http://www.renjin.org/](http://www.renjin.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ah, Apache. Where projects go to die.</comment>


The Rise of DataOps (From the Ashes of Data Governance) - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/the-rise-of-dataops-from-the-ashes-of-data-governance-da3e0c3ac2c4 <comment><AUTHOR> Legacy data governance is broken in the machine learning era. Let's rebuild it as an engineering discipline.</comment>


Ask HN: How are you going to cope living in the time of a pandemic? - <AUTHOR> I'm curious how you are going to adapt in the next week, month, six months, and year? <comment><USER2> I've done a pretty lean amount of stocking up of supplies since I'd hope that even in a quarantine situation, there would be an opportunity once every week or two to restock. I don't have a lot of money, so going all out would ruin me since the roof over my head is just as important as food. What gives me anxiety is the fact that I've mostly worked in food service type jobs, and I've been working part-time until recently so that I could have some free time to skill up and get better work, so in a pandemic, it might become harder to find work that'll pay rent and for food. I only have enough money for one or two months of rent left, so I'm pretty desperate, trying to find work again while under all this anxiety. I have to avoid getting sick too, because I don't have healthcare and am not insured. I'll probably become homeless and die if I had to go to the hospital and got a bunch of debt I can't possibly pay. All I can do is pray and hope for the best honestly.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's too contagious and difficult to contain. In a month it will reach every country. In three month the pandemic will be over. In less than a year we will be back to normal.

<comment><USER4> Unless you're unlucky, and are one of the up to 10% of your particular cohort that doesn't make it.

<comment><USER3> I'm estimating 7 millions of deaths, so it's definitively not good news. The 10% is only for people that is old or have previous respiratory problems, and it's hopefully inflated because mostly only the people with strong symptoms get tested.

Hopefully we can make some measures to reduce the number of death, specially when the hospital are expecting a big spike of case instead of a surprise.

Anyway, in a year this will be old news, and in 10-20 years we will probably have another similar pandemic.</comment></comment></comment>


Did Google Duplex Just Pass the Turing Test? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@LanceUlanoff/did-google-duplex-just-pass-the-turing-test-ffcfe6868b02 <comment><USER2> For that to be true the salon attendant's goal should have been to test the humanness of the caller rather than book an appointment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another validation of Betteridge's law of headlines (if a headline ends with a question, the answer is no.) As much as I do not like Google Duplex, it was made very clear that the conversation can be "natural" if it is very domain specific.</comment>


AI potentially just one week away - <AUTHOR> http://en-us.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/z6fka/supercomputer_scale_deep_neural_nets_talk_by_jeff/

<comment><USER2> Looks like link bait to me

<comment><AUTHOR> why

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Flagged

<comment><AUTHOR> what?</comment></comment>