Ask HN: Why is there so much focus on deep learning and AI? - <AUTHOR> Deep learning has become very popular in the past few years.  To my understanding, to operate efficiently a lot of data needs to be fed to the deep learning module.  Therefore, bigger companies like Google or Facebook can efficiently use it to enhance some of their operations, e.g., search, image recognition, translation, etc.
What I do not understand is why people give deep learning a lot more credit beyond these applications?  Average and small sized companies do not have access to a large amount of data, so deep learning can do very little for them (?).  Not only that, for those companies, deep learning is a way out of understanding the problem they are facing; more than likely, the person that suggests using deep learning cannot explain why the network behaves in a specific way in the case of their problem.
I might be mislead in some of these aspects, so please feel free to correct my assumptions and views.  I feel like that my lack of understanding for the AI field in general is causing unnecessary doubts and questions for me. <comment><USER2> Here is quick history of the AI field.

We need to creating thinking machines, but we dont know what is thinking so lets take any human activity that requires thinking, oh chess is such a game, lets build algo to play chess, yeh it works and beats humans, but can we say it thinks? hmmm hmmm not really coz this algo can't play any other game .. dammit this is not AI. We are stuck.

We need to design algos that can do a lot of different tasks and not just one like playing chess also these algo should be able to extend their capability rather than redesigning them. Hmmm lets use general purpose "search" algos (LOGIC programming) and also feed lot of "knowledge" into the algo as input. Yay we got expert system and they almost looks like thinking. Let's see what else can we use them to do and someone shouts "lets see if they can recognize image", dammit that's so hard to "represent" using "knowledge bases". We are stuck.

Lot's of people kept working on how to "represent" the algo and inputs for the problem of image classification and similar problems. Came up with various "machine learning algos" including "deep learning" algos which seems to work really really well but of course they have their own demands like huge amount of data and computing power etc. But are they really "thinking" ??? They can be easily fooled, they are like black boxes nobody can extract some useful knowledge from trained network such that it can be used somewhere else just like general purpose knowledge we humans have. This is the latest shiny thing as of now. But we don't have general purpose AI yet.

We always want silver bullet and we always hope that we will get there by creating hype but in the end the hype dies and people move on to next hype.

</comment><comment><USER3> Silicon valley is faddish and has a goldfish-like attention span.</comment>


Let's stop beating up on the nerds of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.sun-sentinel.com/digitalunlimited/partners/bloomberg/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-valley-nerds-comment23-20140623,0,4881600.story

<comment><USER2> Nah, in a lot of ways they deserve it.

Consider the revenue streams most startups seem to explore, the ever-expanding maw of data-gathering required for revenue from ads, the constant work to displace and make more efficient historically safe "middle-class" administrative jobs, the aggressive contempt shown for middle America and Joe Sixpack and religion, and so forth.

SV isn't "wrong" about all of these things, but it shouldn't be surprised that it isn't being viewed as some sort of magical cabal that can do no wrong.</comment>


Sauropod Neck Posture - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropod_neck_posture <comment><USER2> It is unfortunate that the page is so mealy. There is a lot of good science going on around the topic.

For a while there had been a sort of consensus around the notion of "neutral posture", the joints held at about the middle of their range. By examination of extant animals that was shown to be absurd; hardly any animal maintains anything like such a posture, not even those you might expect to, like alligators. It is much more common for one or more joints to be "at the stop". From owls to rabbits, a deeply S-curved neck is the norm.

Another folly was sticking bones together to see how far they could bend between stops. That both under-and overestimated flex range. Under, because thick cartilage in joints often separated bones, providing more room; and overestimated, ignoring limits on extension of connective tissue.

Things would have been better if biologists used the notions of "least upper bound" and "greatest lower bound" on numbers, and sought to successively narrow them, as physicists do. But they're biologists.

Notions about practicality of extremes of blood pressure have been hard to investigate, because no living animal has any need for anything close to what they would have needed. It would not be unreasonable to hypothesize two- chambered helper hearts in the neck, but no evidence of any such thing has been interpreted from fossils, and it would be quite a novelty, so risky for a working paleontologist to suggest.

<comment><USER3> But do they have a two-chambered heart? Birds have a 4 chambered one and crocodiles have a 3 chambered one, which IIRC, is in some ways more complex that's very well suited to their current style of ambush hunting.

<comment><USER2> Apparently the current view is that crocs abandoned one of their chambers, which seems to me an astonishing thing to achieve.

We can probably assume that the croc relatives that lived in trees or thundered across the tundra had four-chambered hearts. I gather most of them were taken by the mass extinction early in Jurassic era that opened the way for the dinosaurs.

The crocs we have now must have all evolved from little caiman-like things, all their bigger relatives done in by the K-T event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A few weeks ago I spent an evening reading posts on svpow.com, and I have become a sauropod neck truther. If you just look at how necks actually work in living animals, you can immediately see how arguments based on the "osteological neutral pose" are complete bunk. Here's a place to start: [https://svpow.com/2014/11/03/necks-lie-the-complete- story/](https://svpow.com/2014/11/03/necks-lie-the-complete-story/)

</comment><comment><USER5> The horizontal posture seems favourable for Sauropod racing.

<comment><USER6> Agreed, the rider would be less likely to fall off, and would have better visibility.

<comment><USER7> Not if the rider is mounting the head. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't get why blood pressure is relevant for heart energy expenditure. Animal bodies are full of blood, it's not like hearts pump blood up there, they just pump it into movement.

I also can't imagine how that long neck evolved (and stayed there) without a huge competing advantage. The and usual advantage of large necks is feeding high, so I distrust the claim that an animal with a long neck couldn't keep his head up.

<comment><USER6> Blood vessels can expand and contract. That's why fighter pilots without legs can actually withstand higher-g maneuvers. That's also why compression socks can improve circulation and reduce swelling in your ankles if you have to stand all day.

<comment><USER9> > That's why fighter pilots without legs can actually withstand higher-g > maneuvers.

You just wrinkled my brain. Is there an actual group of fighter pilots without legs who are taking advantage of this?

<comment><USER10> I've often wondered if maybe sitting upright might not be the best position for a modern combat pilot. I can see pilot who is laying down pulling far more Gs than even a legless one sitting upright.

<comment><USER11> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor_F8_%22Prone_Pil...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloster_Meteor_F8_%22Prone_Pilot%22)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love stuff like this. It's awesome to think about all the things that were different than we imagine.</comment>


Unconventional way of learning a new programming language - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/unconventional-way-of-learning-a-new-programming-language-e4d1f600342c <comment><USER2> _Trust me, when you write code for your personal project which may be a weekend project or an overnight quick hack, you write code to get something done. All you care about is — "Does my code work?". You hardly care about the quality of the code._

Not in my experience. When I learn a new language by implementing a project in it, I do not consider the job done unless I have written idiomatic code in the new language and really understood every piece of code I took from Stackoverflow.

Not saying that contributing to open source projects for learning a new language isn't a good idea. Free code review in exchange for your contribution to the project is a win-win.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. If I'm trying to learn a language, my first concern will be the style that I write in. I'll pay special attention to elegant ways to express my intent in the new language, with special attention paid to features that differ strongest from languages that I already use. Having the project work is important, of course; it's the proof of having learned something. But the initial project needs to be clean and idiomatic first, and correct second.

Personal projects in languages that I'm already familiar with are the places that I allow myself some sloppiness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I note that if you pick the wrong project, you might not get code quality, reviews or appreciation. So it sounds like you need to go specifically searching for a project to learn with, rather than e.g. a tool you already use.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's an [1]interview with Richard Stallman and this article is the exact answer he gave when asked what the best way to learn programming: write a feature for an open source project with active users, then debug said feature, and repeat until you get better.

[1][https://youtu.be/dvwkaHBrDyI](https://youtu.be/dvwkaHBrDyI)

</comment><comment><USER6> Contributing to an open source project (coredns - who are super-helpful) was also one of the steps that I took to learn Go. It's a good early step but I still think you should do some tutorials before asking for a person's time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Free Code Camp has students build open-source projects for non-profits.

</comment><comment><USER8> So how does one go about finding open source projects with easy tasks?

<comment><USER9> You need to decide what you might be interested in first. Then search for a small project on Github, Bitbucket5, etc., that does something like that or related to that and see if they have any open bugs that need fixing or a list of features that they want implemented.

It's probably best to ignore any projects that have not had any recent contributions at this stage because the maintainer might have lost interest so you won't get any feedback about your contributions.</comment></comment>


Vermont man erects giant middle-finger sculpture, flipping off local government - <AUTHOR> https://globalnews.ca/news/4755110/giant-middle-finger-sculpture/ <comment><USER2> Idol.</comment>


Why Do Startups Fail? - <AUTHOR> http://newsletters.iafrikan.com/issues/iafrikan-daily-brief-why-do-startups-fail-185028 <comment><USER2> Product management is one reason but not the most important one.

The problem with startups is timing. Look at the S curve. Before mass adaption, most customers will say that they have no need for the product and the market will look small and not valuable

When the steep rise on the S curve starts, suddenly all of prev customers wants the product, and all of the startup that are READY at this point, will suddenly found "product market fit".

However, to be ready for the mass adoption, you need to start two years in advance, where the market looks small and not interesting. And when doing product management will tell you that there is no market.

The capital issue occur when the start of mass adaption takes too long (e.g. VR, Bitcoin). I.e. the startup is ready for the mass adaption but the market fail to pick up. So there is a capital issue.</comment>


Sacred beliefs likely arose out of prehistoric bonding and rituals - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/17/big-bangs/to-understand-religion-think-football

<comment><USER2> And not one mention of superstition?</comment>


Facebook Email Coming Monday with Office Web Apps Integration - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_email_coming_monday_with_office_web_apps.php

<comment><AUTHOR> The TechCrunch piece didn't mention the potential Office Web Apps integration, but it makes a lot of sense.

I wrote on the Facebook email thing here: <http://www.loopycode.com/facebook- is-killing-email/>.</comment>


Google Now's smartphone is the real deal  - <AUTHOR> http://winsupersite.com/mobile-devices/bad-news-windows-phone-fans-google-now-real-deal

<comment><USER2> > But Windows Phone is entering a dangerous time, one in which its competitors > are starting to catch up and even surpass the innovations of Microsoft's > mobile platform.

What alternate universe was this article written in? I've wanted to give Windows Phone a chance since they released the newer version, but it literally has nothing to offer other than a slightly more minimalistic default UI. Does no one remember the "Get Smoked by a Windows Phone" contest that Microsoft stacked in their favor only to get beaten by Android anyway? [1]

News flash: You can configure any Android phone to have the same interface and functionality of WP7, and you've been able to for years.

[1] [http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone- chall...](http://skattertech.com/2012/03/i-won-the-windows-phone-challenge- but-lost-just-because/)

</comment><comment><USER3> A killer feature of Google Now that was _actually_ helpful (no, baseball scores don't count) is when it detects you are traveling.

I had a receipt from EventBrite in my Gmail for a conference in Chicago. The day I drove up there, Google Now knew about the trip (I didn't even add it to my calendar) and had downloaded the trip directions. When I lost 4G on the way, it was pretty awesome to have the map available offline. I usually print off directions as a backup, but I had forgotten this time and Google Now really helped me.

Just one anecdote, but it completely sold me on Google Now.

</comment><comment><USER4> Google Now has a lot of promise, but I've been using it a bit since it was first released, and it's never actually provided me with any really useful information.

The promise behind Google Now is amazing, but it simply doesn't work well enough yet to be any kind of consideration. Here's hoping they manage to get the actual software in-line with the promise eventually!

<comment><USER5> The user experience with Google Now varies heavily depending on your usage habits and the type of phone you have. The only thing Google Now showed me for _months_ were outdated, inaccurate weather 'forecasts' that made absolutely no sense (and opening it took more than 30 seconds on my old Nexus S). Boy, was I disappointed.

But if you set your Settings to the right items, you enable all your Search History, and everything else, and you have a modern phone like a Nexus 4, Google Now _is amazing_. Really, really amazing. It's definitely there and it works fantastically well, if you care to set it up right.

<comment><USER6> > enable all your Search History

This is something I just can't bring myself to do. I disabled it years ago, along with all the other personalization options.

I don't mind giving them my location. I don't even mind them analyzing my mail. But I search for all kinds of crap, and I really really don't want anyone building a profile on me based on that.

The manual customization options in Google Now are sadly lacking. I've been able to add a few sports teams, but that's about it.

I suppose I could switch all my default searches to DuckDuckGo, then only use Google judiciously to deliberately train it. Hm, I think I will.

<comment><USER7> Just train yourself to use Incognito Mode when you're looking for porn.

<comment><USER8> This in wonderful advice. More broadly, use one browser and account for the stuff you'd like to train Google on, and another (in incognito mode) for the stuff you'd prefer not to add to your profile.

Of course, they'll probably still know its you, but one imagines the algorithms will respect your preferences (as it would make the service worse if they didn't).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I do not use Google Now that much but I've got to say that I am surprised how well it predicts what I am going to do based on patterns.

First it knew all by itself where my home and where my workplace is (it named both correctly) and when I am leaving the house - then it suggested that I give that new place I am visiting more and more often a name. (my girlfriend) And then it knew before I knew it myself that I will go to my girlfriend on a monday because I've apparently been there the last 3 or 4 mondays. It's not that hard to see such a pattern if you are actively looking for it, but I wasn't really thinking that much about when I visit someone and if there is some kind of pattern.

I am pretty sure that such a tool can be amazingly predictive and helpful given enough time and data.

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't always agree with Thurrott but I think he is spot on here.

Google Now is the killer app/feature for Android.

And from the 4 players in the mobile space right now, only Microsoft is really in a position to challenge something like Google Now.

And I don't hold out much hope that MS can get their act together to pull it off.

</comment><comment><USER11> "But Windows Phone is entering a dangerous time, one in which its competitors are starting to catch up"

Pffft. Really? ROFL.

<comment><USER12> It's Paul Thurrott. He's like the mirror-universe version of John Gruber who only boosts Microsoft stuff instead of Apple.

<comment><USER13> I haven't read Thurrott too often, but in the few times that I have, I've actually been somewhat relieved that he does maintain some degree of cynicism about how the company works. I am a former Microsoft employee and I get irritated about a lot of MS boosterism I see on the web in recent years; it's hard to read and more dogmatically pro-MS than most MS employees I know. But Thurrott doesn't strike me as one of those people. He knows where some of the bodies are buried and isn't shy to voice concerns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The submitted title is somewhat non-sensical. Google Now smartphone makes it sound like there is a company/team called Google Now building a smartphone.

<comment><USER15> I believe he forgot the word "app"

<comment><USER16> Not sure if you can call it an app if it is deeply integrated with the system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Between Google Now, the anti fragmentation stuff in the SDK agreement and learning about the way Google share names/addresses with app developers I'm really thinking that Google are actually becoming Android's largest liability.

The problem is the GMail and Maps apps (as distinct from purely the webapps) are used as gateway drugs to casual information leakage, and Maps in particular becomes almost unusable unless you agree to let them slurp extra info from your vicinity.

</comment><comment><USER18> Well, my three month old android phone says: Your device is not compatible with this version. I guess I'll check it out in one year and nine months when I get my next phone.

<comment><USER19> I actually have it running on my HP Touchpad running Ice Cream Sandwich. Isn't one of the benefits of Android that it's so open you can make it do just about anything? If I didn't want to hack my mobile device, I definitely would not have gotten invested in the Android platform. In my opinion, that ability is literally the only advantage it has over the competition. Without the hacker community supporting it, it's basically an iPhone with fewer apps.

What I'm saying is, you can either get Jelly Bean on your device via Cyanogenmod or you can get ICS and hack Google Now onto it with instructions found online.

<comment><USER18> I'm not rooting my phone. Not enough time to play with it. Need it to work when school calls and I have to go pick up my son.

<comment><USER19> I bought a Windows Phone because I wanted something that just works when it needs to work, and also is slick, modern, well-integrated, and protected by a walled-garden. I bought into the Android platform with a device that is not on contract and is not a phone, because I am willing to accept hacking around on and breaking a non-phone device.

Not that I'm denigrating your choice in any way, it has no bearing on my life at all, but I'm genuinely curious as to why anyone would buy an Android phone unless they're willing to hack it to bits. In my opinion, without root access on an Android phone, you're using an iPhone without great software support. The only draw of Android over the iPhone in the last three months that I can see is root access and a hacker community supporting it. Especially when it means buying an out-of-date and possibly out-of-support phone.

What drew you to the Android platform over the iPhone platform if you're not willing to update your software manually and are resigned to not getting a software upgrade until you buy a new phone? That seems ridiculous to me. Even on Windows Phone, every device that came with WP7 got WP7.5 and WP7.8.

<comment><USER18> On android: my phone does "just work" and it's got a good camera, and plays youtube videos. I prefer hacking on the raspberrypi, personally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a user, I'm not sure I'm impressed. On my WP8 phone, I pin a live tile to the home screen exactly where I want it, at the size I want it, and it displays the information I expect to get from it. But Google Now sounds like a live tile knockoff that's constantly changing because it's guessing what I want to see based on personal information that I agree to share with it. I don't recall this approach ever working, and it practically guarantees that it will only have information I want a _fraction_ of the time, so I'm unlikely to give it a prominent place on my home screen (or even use it if it affects battery life). If/when they start slipping in ads, it will be even less attractive.

But in the field of personal agents, it's definitely a significant milestone. At some point, we'll want to be able to ask what's on today's schedule when we wake up in the morning, or immediately check messages when we walk into our homes, or find out where a movie is playing and buy tickets when we hop into our self-driving cars that will take us right to the theater. Nobody's going to want to talk into a quaint little smartphone when all this becomes possible, but it's probably where personal agents start getting refined into a usable state.

<comment><USER21> >I don't recall this approach ever working

yes, failure in the past is definitely an indication that this concept will never work.

The linked article takes a very narrow view of google now, trying to shoehorn it into windows phone terms. It's way more than a live tile. It's a homescreen widget, a lockscreen widget, an app that is a scrollable list of cards, and it integrates with notifications. Essentially, it is predictive google search - instead of having to search for something, it provides you with the results you were about to search for.

The future that you talk about for personal assistants has already been surpassed by google now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I think this over-estimates the number of people who are OK with opening their lives to Google to this degree. Amazing - possibly, invasive - you bet your porn collection.

</comment><comment><USER23> It is disappointing unless you live in a large city. Even in areas of about 1 million it doesn't know the mass transit, etc. It ends up just displaying weather and being able to answer the age of Abraham Lincoln, but the latter could be found by Wiki in nearly the same amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's cute. I've been using it for the past couple of weeks on a Nexus 4.

My opinion on it currently is that it looks promising but it's quite useless until there are finer controls on when and how cards appear (the controls there are now are really simplistic), and more importantly the ability to create my own cards, which would give me a reason to get back into SL4A.

As an example, the commute card that shows your distance from work/home is nice, but I have two jobs and commute home->work->work->home. I'm not sure I expect Now to figure that out quite yet, though it wouldn't be hard, but I do expect to be able to teach it that, which I can't currently do.

<comment><USER19> It would also be nice to be able to tell it "I'm going to my girlfriends house after work". In that situation, telling me there's a traffic jam on my route home isn't useful information at all.

I also would love the ability (if it exists, I haven't seen it) to have it use geocoded reminders, like "remind me to get milk when I'm near the grocery store".

<comment><USER25> I'm actually surprised that location-based reminders aren't already part of Google Now. It seems like a really natural feature given everything else it already does.

<comment><USER26> I'd have to imagine that's something in the works. It likes to give me transit information heading to work or home, and seems to be fairly smart about it since I don't work a normal 9-5 schedule.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Small anecdote: I live in Finland, and in the 2 months I've had Google Now on, it has given me any barely any info at all. How well can this be localized worldwide and how long will that take?

</comment><comment><USER28> Hummm another app that will know where I go, what I eat, dress, with whom I speak, meet, have sex, what I read, what music I like, and where I am all the time, sweeet and free. A real killer app. I hope one day It can make choices for me, ow wait, It is already happening.

</comment><comment><USER29> I apologize ahead of time for my childish humor but...I appreciate the time the screenshot was taken for the Google Now widget on the phone

<comment><USER30> I don't recall the origin of this, but it's also true of most Apple screenshots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very misleading title. The predictive power of this sounds really impressive, but utterly useless. I don't have alternative routes if there's traffic, and if there is, I already know what my options are, because I drive it every day. (coincidentaly this morning I was followed by one of google's white lexus self driving cars, with its silly spinny thing on top making it look like an attempt at being a TARDIS, although it was self-driving (it said so on the rear bumper), the driver was clearly driving it.)

I feel like Google Now will just take much of the fun out of life. If I want to see a movie, it's not exactly hard to look it up or walk down to the theater. Buying a ticket on Fandango is pointless, my movie theater has people selling tickets and completely unused machines right next to them. I also use the machine because there's never a line. I don't want to go into a restaurant and have google pick what I should order!

The only useful integration technology I have found useful recently was Passbook. I bought a United ticket on my smartphone which issued a Passbook boarding card when I checked in. I walked through SFO in about 15 minutes from curb to sitting on the plane, waving my iPhone at scanners along the way. Even when I changed my return flight the Passbook info changed dynamically with information and my boarding 'card'.

I am happy to pick my own restaurants, I enjoy looking on Yelp and making my own mind up. I don't want to go to the place that has paid google the most for ads, or who has hired the most fake reviewers. I have my own mind and I'm happy to use it.

Maps, Email, Search, all wonderful innovations from google, they have revolutionized these areas, but I still want to think for myself once in a while.

<comment><USER32> It's not that you don't think for yourself. You just move up the ladder a notch - now you are in symbiosis with Google and instead of doing the low level work you do the high level work. You can still enjoy life just as much in different ways.

The same kind of argument has been brought by people against cars, telephones and recordings. "I like to walk on my own feet, or ride a horse." "I like to speak to people face to face, not on that contraption." "I prefer to play the song on the piano, no need to use recordings!"

And especially agains Google Search & Wikipedia - many have voiced that we have become generalists and don't remember anything anymore, instead relying on Google to bring information to us all day long. Well, instead of learning dates and places and APIs by heart, we learn to efficiently search for them on Google. It's like meta-learning vs direct-learning, it's not worse, just one level up on the abstraction ladder.

<comment><USER31> symbiosis with Google - no thanks

I do prefer to walk, and I do prefer face to face. I am not against technology, in fact quite the opposite, I am just against useless technology like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I used it for a while, it's cute but my life is not that complicated. And I don't want to sell my digital soul to a company in exchange for "suggestions" and tips. That's me though.

I predict that in a year or two, Google's top engineer Patrick Pichette, will ruin this by stuffing it with ads. Ads everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER34> The Windows Phone team had its hands full in the past couple of years with the Win CE to Win NT migration and porting the NT kernel to ARM.

While WP8 is still good, I am guessing/hoping that we'll see more user facing changes in the next version.</comment>


AppDomains Do Not Scale - <AUTHOR> http://www.fogcreek.com/blog/post/AppDomains%2c-AppDomains-Can%27t-live-with-%27em%2c-Can-live-with-fewer-of-them.aspx

<comment><USER2> I guess this is material for Microsoft haters? That's about the only actual technical information I could see other than "here are the stats" and "we screwed something up" ... Well, glad they fixed whatever it was!</comment>


This Video Is a Weapon - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOTYgcdNrXE <comment><USER2> This was a stunning video. I realized about 18 minutes in that this video itself was part of a multi domain human influence campaign. Then 23 minutes in, he asks it outright "is this video a weapon?".

As someone who spend a lot of time thinking about memetic propaganda and influence, this was insanely eye opening.

</comment><comment><USER2> Also, this didn't get much attention here, but this report on the use of memes in warfare is very relevant - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19272693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19272693)</comment>


Ask HN: Source for address data of event facilities? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a startup idea that needs access to address data (and ideally, though not absolutely necessary, GPS) for large concert halls/coliseums/college arenas/sporting complexes/etc. Essentially, anywhere a large event might be held, be it a football or basketball game, concert, and so on. I'd like to begin with US locations, but eventually expand globally if the US market proves the idea.
Is my only option for this sort of information to hire someone to manually track down and enter it, or is there somewhere I can go to perhaps purchase access?
Thanks guys. <comment><USER2> You can have the guys at mturk.com do the work for you. Offer them a decent compensation and they will return worthwile results. Maybe split it into a few different tasks, one for colleges, stadiums, concerts, etc. so they will be more focused.

For universities, you can get the list (although may not be complete) at ratemyprofessor.com. They all have websites over there that you can check out for more info.

Google Maps gives universities and stadiums a diff color in map view. Maybe there is a way to access that data and use it? I don't know.</comment>


Ask HN: How is that humans advanced so much in the past 100 yrs in all fields? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The Industrial Revolution made a lot of manufacturing processes much, much more efficient. Before the revolution, you had one manufacturer of everything in every region/village. One blacksmith, one seamstress, one cobbler, one baker, you name it. The Industrial Revolution made large-scale manufacturing possible, freeing up a lot of time for things like education and innovation.

Think of it. In today's society, there is almost nothing around you that hasn't been manufactured by one single person from a to z. The amount of collaboration and globalization in our society is mindboggling, something that was unthinkable before the Industrial Revolution.

So it's not just the past 100 years, it's more like the past 200 years. It's easy to look at someone from 1840 as ancient, simple even. Just keep in mind that things like the steam engine, photography or electrification were just as novel and influential then computers or the internet in our age.

<comment><USER3> Before the industrial revolution, almost all manufacturing of common goods, including food, was performed by human hands and feet. This limited output capacity to that of human strength and endurance; and it was exhausting for humans, preventing most humans from having time or energy for intellectual activities.

On the contrary, there were a handful of areas where humans had already begun to exploit motion and force outside of human muscle to carry out work. One long-time example is using horses, mules, and other animals to provide force for transporting goods over distances. Even humans were payloads transported upon animal backs. Another key advancement for humans was using water and wind to transport large amounts of goods from one place to another. Sailboats allowed for transporting of goods a very long distance. In today's age we may take self-driving transport for granted, but once upon a time humans actually had to transport goods by hand and foot.

Why the industrial revolution was a powerful next step in exploiting nature is because it allowed not only transport of goods, but also finer, more complex tasks to be carried out without requiring human muscle. Now sewing, grinding, cutting, molding, bending, digging, and drilling could be done by machine in large quantities with good reproducibility.

Hence, first humans exploited nature (and other animals) for transporting goods. Then humans began exploiting oil, coal, and electricity for carrying out more complex physical tasks that require large amounts of force. As machines grew finer, they were able to manufacture smaller, more precise goods.

The next stage was to allow humans to carry out not only large scale physical tasks without continuous human effort, but also to carry out intellectual tasks in mass without continuous human effort. This is where computers come in. They exploit nature to get information processed quickly and reliably.

At least a few areas remain where humans are doing the heavy lifting. One is reproduction. Humans are still required to take care of new humans while they are brought from incapacity to self sufficiency. This is still a difficult, time-consuming task, especially if the goal is having quality output. Another area where humans still do heavy lifting is learning. Unfortunately learning has not become much more efficient or quicker than it was in the past. Humans are very slow at learning, and a massive human effort is generally involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't a simple question, but I just wanted to mention that around the turn of the 20th century, there were a lot of changes in math.

A bunch of fields got reformulated and there was a rush of mathematicians coming up with new ways to express problems, which led to brand new fields. These ideas then filter into other sciences, allowing for those researchers to better describe and solve problems, etc.

That isn't to say this is the only reason, but it's a contributing factor.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's more of us. Specifically, there's more of us contributing to human advancement than ever before. "Luxuries" like literacy are a pretty new advancement.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. In 1900 there were 1.2 billion people on the planet, and it took over 100,000 years to get to that number.

In only 116 years we've added another 6 billion to that total. :(

...and people say we're not-overpopulating the planet...

<comment><USER7> I had a bowl with 1 cracker in it for 3 weeks. Over the last 24 hours it now has 7 crackers. And people say my cracker bowl is not overpopulated...

Look. Raw numbers mean nothing. What is the sustainable population of this planet. 1 billion? 10 billion? 100 billion?

I have no idea. As tech improves, our impact per person could be lower. So perhaps the limit today is 5 billion... But in 20 years it could be 20 billion.

<comment><USER6> Ultimately though, we WILL run out of habitable space.

<comment><USER8> Could live vertically, even above ocean if tech allows it (with instant transortation maybe.). Theoretically we have some good amount of room left.

<comment><USER7> At even midsize population density, I am pretty sure we have space for WAY over 100 billion people on this planet. Food production needs some more work, perhaps a bit of us eating lower on the food chain..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> grif-fin I guess it would be correct to say: Many reasons and very hard for me with my knowledge to judge which ones had the most effect. But since it is an interesting question I will throw a guess at it.

I think reading through the history we may owe a lot to WWII. One of the cruelest thing ever happened to humans may have redirected their global way of living together. As soon as the competition got redirected a bit towards tools which required more investment in science many miracles like medical, space and communication advancement happened.

One of my favorite yet most saddest quotes which may relate to above would be when Neil deGrasse Tyson said that (not exact word order): "Unfortunately no discoveries have ever been made for the sake of science all have been driven from war or other secondary factors.".

So to sum up, we have been going into the loop of advancement & war destruction for many centuries. I guess in last 100 (or 75) years we did it less, so the 'secret' is there.

<comment><USER8> While war certainly helped, even tortures and human exeriments advanced medical fields but I doubt electricity or capitalism came from war.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What are these advancement that you see that made you ask this question?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you go back 100 years and fast forward to today, this period is where humans have advanced most than all of the 5000 years

<comment><USER10> I think you're evading babyrainbow's question. Many new technologies have been developed, true. But we've also spent the last century conducting experiments in communism and genocide. So on the whole, are we (and I'm including the whole human race in "we") better off _in all respects_ or only in some?

<comment><USER11> Look at the Old Testament for descriptions of _too many_ genocides. . If graded on a curve, the 20th century comes out as a pretty nonviolent genocide- free century.

<comment><USER10> That would be _some_ curve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Literacy and education, starting to be seen as useful for all classes in the 19th century, following a long period of scientific progress among the higher classes during the 17th and 18th century.

Cheap manufacturing of more or less everything, including high quality food, newspapers and books.

More people, although there are many countries with a lot of people and no scientific advance, so you also need the above.

</comment><comment><USER13> It's because of the progress of agriculture in Europe at the end of the middle ages:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three- field_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-field_system)

</comment><comment><USER14> There's this thing called Accelerated Returns. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accelerating_change)

</comment><comment><USER15> Technology and human knowledge advanced. Human nature didn't.

<comment><USER8> Funny maybe in 200 years where there are so much more advancement in tech, people will stay as dumb as today. Same should've been said from people from 500 years ago. Maybe we are dumber even.

<comment><USER15> I wouldn't say we are dumb but humanly irrational.</comment></comment></comment>


Cellphones may damage male fertility - <AUTHOR> http://www.timesofisrael.com/cellphones-may-damage-male-fertility-israeli-study-finds/ <comment><AUTHOR> Actual study abstract: "Habits of cell phone usage and sperm quality – does it warrant attention?" [http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483(15)00300-4/abs...](http://www.rbmojournal.com/article/S1472-6483\(15\)00300-4/abstract?cc=y=)

</comment><comment><USER2> Meh, so does drinking alcohol but I aint gunna give that up either.</comment>


Software I Paid For But No Longer Use - <AUTHOR> http://al3x.net/2008/12/24/paid-dont-use-anymore.html

<comment><USER2> _Don't buy apps for things you only need to do once in a blue moon. Find a free/open solution._

As a general rule, this seems like the exact opposite of what you should do. If the free/open solution threatens to take two hours to set up, and the for- pay software will do the job in five minutes for $19, you should probably _buy_ the software -- _unless_ you intend to use the open solution over and over, which will amortize the setup time over many weeks or months.

I would certainly argue that this applies to VisualHub, for example. Not having to figure out the command-line options to ffmpeg is worth $24, _especially_ if you're only planning to use it once in a blue moon.

</comment><comment><USER3> I regret my purchase of many iPhone apps. I've spent at least $150 on apps and currently use $3-10 worth of them.

The other problem is that I won't delete them now either, it makes me feel guilty/stupid for buying them so I just keep them installed.

<comment><USER4> You can delete them off your iphone and you will still be able to re-install them off the itunes store for free.

itunes: _"You have already purchased this item. To download it again for free, select OK."_</comment></comment>


Estimates that mineral levels in vegetables have dropped by up to 90% since 1914 - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/ <comment><USER2> This happened due to extermination of soil life through modern farming practices of heavy tilling, fertilizing and monoculture crops. Dead soil is more susceptible to erosion and requires ever increasing amounts of synthetic fertilizer to grow anything. More soil has been lost from the US than the amount of food that has been produced. Soil fertility can be returned to historical levels by changing farming practices to make living soil. The benefits of treating the soil as a living organism include increased fertility, water infiltration, moisture retention, and nutrient availability as well as decreasing or eliminating synthetic fertilizer requirements.

[https://theweek.com/articles/554677/america-running- soil](https://theweek.com/articles/554677/america-running-soil)

This is a long video but it has completely changed my home gardening practices. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUmIdq0D6-A)

<comment><USER3> Not exactly disagreeing with you, but it seems like increasing yields and inadequate fertilization focusing on macronutrients would also explain the drop. If I grow crops that preferentially absorb certain minerals and then take away most of the vegetable matter from the plot, the soil content of the absorbed minerals is going to drop without something to replenish it. Now, I'm not saying soil bacteria and mychorrhizal networks can't pull minerals from the underlying bedrock and transport it to the top layer, but even assuming they did, I would think high-yield farming would tax their ability to keep up with mineral outflows.

<comment><USER4> Not even focusing on macronutrients. We're just focussing in mass.

I'm not looking forward to the end of tomato season and the inevitable disappointment when I buy them from the grocery store.

<comment><USER5> The worst is strawberries. The huge strawberries you can buy in the store have the same flavor content as the tiny ones you can grow in your yard, but it's completely diluted with water. They're disgusting.

<comment><USER6> Is it just because they are giant? I've had relatively big strawberries that are sweet and flavorful in China. But in the US, they taste like cucumber plus citrus, no sweetness, no aroma, just incredibly sour and watery.

<comment><USER5> I don't know what Chinese strawberries are like, but I always figured that American strawberries are watery and sour because they're not only big, but they're also grown too quickly for flavor to develop. I think they're engineered to artificially mature early and are basically still unripe.

<comment><USER7> I have had amazing and bland Strawberries from Safeway in the US. Not sure how to pick the good ones. Time of year?

<comment><USER8> Yes, local in season fruit is always tastier. I suspect because out of season fruit has to come from further away, meaning it has to be picked before it normally would be if it didn't have to travel so far.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The link got that actual paper is much better than a sentence or two on LinkedIn. The paper's title isn't as catchy to put in nicely.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/)

From my link:

>It is important to note that the USDA mineral content of vegetables and fruits has not been updated since 2000, and perhaps even longer, given that the data for 1992 was not able to be definitively confirmed for this review.

I'd like to see if it's improved recently. Healthy foods and organics are more readily available now.

<comment><USER10> If organic food actually had a noticeably higher mineral count than nonorganic, I would start eating it. But I don't see why organic food would actually have more minerals. Organic doesn't mean healthier it just means that it uses different kinds of pesticides, to my knowledge

<comment><USER11> Organic farming includes crop rotation, fertilizer, soil quality, and erosion control standards that would hypothetically affect mineral contents.

Monoculture (conventional corn or soybean for example) uses huge amounts of synthetic fertilizer to increase yields per acre far beyond what the soil can naturally sustain. Wide swaths of American farmland has lost literally feet of topsoil over the past 50 years. The soil is largely sterile, and depleted of minerals. Monoculture also means the ecosystem that can replenish the soil is absent.

<comment><USER9> Corn and soybeans are most definitely rotated. Peanuts are a common nitrogen fixer and Alfalfa is great too.

>This crop rotation benefits both alfalfa and wheat/barley/corn. On the one hand, cereals tend to decrease the development of weeds, leaving the field free for the alfalfa cultivation. On the other hand, there are findings suggesting that corn following alfalfa yields approximately 10% more than corn following corn.[1]

[1][https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop- rotation/](https://wikifarmer.com/alfalfa-crop-rotation/)

<comment><USER3> Peanuts increase nitrogen and probably no nothing for micronutrients. They may allow time for the underlying rock to transfer minerals to the soil which are consumed more heavily by the opposing crops, but they probably won't do anything for the issue reported in TFA.

Having more corn doesn't mean that the corn or soil has more micronutrients. Corn is nitrogen heavy, so rotation makes sense if yields are all you care about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been living in Ukraine for the past few months, trying to figure out why the food here, especially the vegetables, simply taste _so good_. The very same dishes (e.g. steak and veggies) from popular mid-range restaurants are far more enjoyable to me over here in Kiev than I ever ate in Canada. When I went back to Canada for a brief visit, my body was craving Ukrainian food. Now this study on vegetable mineral content may explain why. I'm very keen to see a comparison study on Eastern European agriculture and produce versus North American. Ukraine was once the "breadbasket" of the Soviet Union, so there must be an explanation. Ukrainians who migrate to other countries are often said to complain about a loss in food taste - previously I assumed that was just some form of homesickness, but this study lends some potential scientific ground to their complaints.

<comment><USER13> Wow, I wonder if this is why I thought the food was so bad in San Francisco after I moved there from New Zealand. We went to a lot great restaurants, but I remember thinking that the restaurants in New Zealand was 100x better. We have an amazing cafe/restaurant scene in NZ, and I never found anything in San Francisco that could come close to a nice brunch in Auckland. (I was trying almost every place that had a good Yelp review over a period of ~2 years.) Maybe this was mostly a subconscious thing related to the mineral content of the ingredients.

<comment><USER14> This is close to what I was looking for in this thread. Don't want to clutter with anecdotal chat, but:

I worked in Australia some years ago (2015) and I was amazed by the taste of vegetables (and meat, as well, just less so). The experience sounds banal I suppose, but I really felt that my quality of life had improved. In the U.S. I feel totally unexcited by vegetable shopping, and I sometimes feel that I am simulating cooking. In Australia two vegetables and a small piece of lamb or beef completely satisfied me.

This article led me to the same thought found in your conclusion, but I'm hoping someone on HN has expertise in Aussie/Kiwi farming and can offer some perspective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you solve it by investing the least possible resources into it. Whatever the consumer will buy and you can produce as cheaply as possible wins the day. Our tasteless vegetables are like cheap Bose (no highs, no lows, must be Bose) speakers or pressed paper furniture at Walmart. On the surface they look like a vegetable should look, but the taste, what's inside, is completely deficient.

<comment><USER16> > _Growing food has turned into an engineering problem where people think you > solve it by investing the least possible resources into it._

Our economic system optimizes for exactly this.

<comment><USER17> What if we had one world religion where everyone's goal in life was to become infinitely loving and utterly selfless?

Would we grow food for eachother differently? Would we be compensated differently for doing so?

<comment><USER16> No, it turns out that the adherents of the religion of "love thy neighbor" and "it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" have no problem with our economic system.

<comment><USER17> I'm talking about psychedelic induced direct experiences of the point of life as utter selflessness and infinite love.

<comment><USER18> Weird that it requires a special compound to give you a direct experience of this.

You'd think that if the point of life was selflessness and love, this would be more obvious.

Also, what do you think of the people whose medicine comes from the coca plant, who have direct experience that the point of life is greed and self- satisfaction?

<comment><USER17> It sounds like you have no experience with cocaine, and no experience with psychedelics ... I can understand this position coming from ignorance, so I don't blame you. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TazyFTavMyA)

<comment><USER18> Firstly you are just wrong.

I have experience of both, especially psychedelics, and I am familiar with and have been involved in research on the topic.

Secondly, your reasoning is clearly impaired because you drew a conclusion for which you obviously don't have any facts to support.

Thirdly, you lept to defend an ungrounded claim that a particular drug experience gives access to spiritual truth. Temporary distortions of experience can be valuable but to quote from a famous drug culture movie, "why trust one drug and not another?".

This is an extraordinary claim that requires serious examination.

Your reflexive defense suggests that you have lost sight of this.

These kinds of failures of reasoning are attributed to psychedelics by even the most optimistic of researchers.

See this article by one of the world's leading researcher in the field: [http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=Iw...](http://pharmrev.aspetjournals.org/content/71/3/316?fbclid=IwAR36UzFla5Lfx7-4LTr6R8N0XdUSOnbg3gnRPXn806cPKO7Zsas2EsJJhDs)

The section 'what about the woo' in particular talks about the problem.

I think psychedelics can be very positive, but they can also damage your ability to reason.

As a temporary tradeoff this may well be a reasonable price to pay for relief from trauma.

It's a red flag when you start proclaiming that psychedelics are the door to experienced of fundamental truth and you are unable to reason about it.

This kind of thinking is a symptom that you haven't addressed the side effects the psychedelics have had on you.

<comment><USER17> Like I said, this also appears to be the result of you not validating things in your direct experience and instead relying on dogma. This is an example of false skepticism, rather than True skepticism. More info if you're open- minded: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kzZdps9PG4)

<comment><USER18> Are you familiar with the research on psychedelics?

Here is another extremely respected commentator who expresses skepticism: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club- relax...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/09/10/ssc-journal-club-relaxed- beliefs-under-psychedelics-and-the-anarchic-brain/)

Do you dismiss Scott Alexander as a false skeptic also?

Also - that dude in your video is presenting a false dichotomy and no true Scotsman fallacy in order to market himself an authority on personal development. I'd be careful with that stuff because it's classic cult leader behavior. Having a ready dismissal for threatening ideas generally does not make us smarter.

Having looked at your bio I feel compassion for you, since I think you are sincere, and it seems like your desire for enlightenment and healing are being exploited.

<comment><USER17> You're obviously ignorant to the material, there are 2 videos that expound on what cults are and how cults work. You wont have a proper understanding until you can try on the content for more than just a few hours, with the attitude of open mindedness. Yes, I will dismiss any arguments that are obviously false skepticism. You have to validate psychedelics in your direct experience. I appreciate your compassion, but I implore you to examine the implicit metaphysics and default position you are coming from.

<comment><USER18> "You have to validate psychedelics in your direct experience"

Can you not consider the possibility that I have done so, and I have examined the implicit metaphysics and have come to the conclusion that the experience offers a valuable perspective but not one which is privileged in its truth?

You seem unable to consider this possibility, instead only being able to imagine that because my view is not what you think it should be, I must be ignorant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Has it really? I thought it would be useful to share a paper from the opposing viewpoint, which argues the opposite of the conclusions you might first arrive at from looking at this chart...

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088915751...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0889157516302113#tbl0005) (Mineral nutrient composition of vegetables, fruits and grains: The context of reports of apparent historical declines, published in the Journal of Food Composition and Analysis March 2017).

As a non-expert I have no opinion as to which viewpoint is correct. However, as usual the issue is more complex than that...

</comment><comment><USER20> Something that has puzzled me recently: how is anyone supposed to get the daily recommended amount of potassium? If you look at foods like bananas that are supposed to be good sources of it, you still need to eat something like eleven bananas a day to get enough (according to US recommended daily intakes, anyway). At least with the minerals mentioned in this posting, you can fall back on supplements if you need to...but if you try to buy potassium supplements, the max dosage you can get over the counter is 99mg, which is only about 3% of the daily recommended intake. WTF?

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I eat potassium chloride (usually sold as salt substitute for people on low sodium diets) on occasion, like when fasting or working out. It has this awful, stingy metallic taste, but I've noticed I tend to have less fatigue and soreness from strength training afterwards. Might be placebo but YMMV.

<comment><USER3> I have leftover potassium bicarbonate from when I was making wine. I use it as an antacid, mixing it with water. It tastes like absolute shit, a little less so if mixed with some baking soda, and does a pretty good job of helping my heartburn.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> These are normalized mass rates, ie grams per gram of plant mass. However, the mass yield per acre of cabbage has radically increased over that time period. Is it possible that a cabbage plant is capable of absorbing an absolute amount of minerals, and this is simply being diluted by ever-larger cabbages?

<comment><USER22> The explanation I've heard is that the total mineral content is about the same, but plants are producing more carbohydrates now due to an increase in atmospheric CO2, diluting the minerals.

Consequently, if humans eat according the amount of minerals in the food, the increase in carbohydrates could also explain the increase in obesity.

<comment><USER23> I don't think the lack of minerals in food explains obesity issues. In fact, I'm pretty sure we know what causes obesity. Significantly lower levels of activity and increased sugar consumption are two of the main culprits.

<comment><USER24> Obesity is increasing for animals - pets and even wildlife: [https://psmag.com/social-justice/just-people-getting- fatter-...](https://psmag.com/social-justice/just-people-getting-fatter-65342)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Soil depletion: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion- an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and- nutrition-loss/)

I have a friend who refers to vitamins as "expensive pee". He means taking vitamin pills when you eat a good diet containing fruits and veg is unnecessary because your body will excrete out the excess. I like to point out to him that fruits and veg are not what they used to be.

<comment><USER26> It's not only expensive pee, but also potentially damages your kidneys.

[https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and- preventi...](https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and- prevention/is-there-really-any-benefit-to-multivitamins)

You shouldn't take supplements unless your doctor advises you to due to some (actual and not perceived) deficiency.

<comment><USER27> Did you mean to link something else? That page doesn't appear to mention kidneys.

<comment><USER26> It was more supplemental than citation. Maybe they won't affect your kidneys. That's just something I heard when the NIH study broke in the news. Consult your doctor, etc.

<comment><USER28> The last time I saw my doctor she mentioned Calcium supplements can cause kidney stones(1). They can also be bad for your heart(2). Also, it often is not clear how pure supplements are. She advised me to get as many nutrients as I could from my regular food.

1 - [https://www.webmd.com/kidney-stones/news/20151013/calcium- su...](https://www.webmd.com/kidney-stones/news/20151013/calcium-supplements- tied-to-kidney-stone-risk-in-study#1) 2 - [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- attack/...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/heart- attack/expert-answers/calcium-supplements/faq-20058352)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't think this is new or that unexpected, but it should be talked about. We use to breed plants based on both taste and size, taste being altered significantly by mineral contents. Currently, we mostly only breed plants based on weight, taste doesn't factor into it, and increasing sugars and starches increases weight far better than any mineral count. Heirloom plants are generally considered luxury products and since they don't have as large of yields, aren't a good competition against commercial plants, despite the fact that most people agree heirloom plants taste better and usually have higher mineral counts.

Now I don't know how much the the growing medium effects this, our topsoil is getting thinner and is fed primarily on 'purified' artificial fertilizers, and heirloom plants are far more likely to be home garden or 'organically' grown, but im willing to bet plant genetics play a much bigger role in mineral contents than anyone wants to admit. It would be another hit to the idea that current farming practices are sustainable long term and nobody wants to admit that.

<comment><USER30> Plants are also bred so that they can be picked before they are fully ripe and survive a multi-day trip to the grocery shelves of a supermarket.

This may be less important for vegetables that go from field to cannery or freezers, so canned or frozen might be a better choice than fresh vegetables.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This isn't necessarily a bad thing. High iron consumption appears to be at the nexus of a vast array of diseases from colon cancer to Alzheimer's. As for Calcium there's really no evidence of it strengthening bones. And high consumption is probably causally increases CVD mortality.

[1] [http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new- cholesterol](http://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholesterol) [2] [https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4580](https://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h4580) [3] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3336363/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3336363/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Another reason to roll out Enhanced Olivine Weathering, get some minerals back into the dirt.

[http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/oli...](http://www.innovationconcepts.eu/res/literatuurSchuiling/olivineagainstclimatechange23.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER33> Derek from Vertasium on YouTbe has a nice explanation. Even showing how the nutrient levels in weed specimens are also falling. The weeds were collected by researchers over the last 100 or more years. The weeds were vital because it showed it wasn't limited to farming practices it's all plants.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl_K2Ata6XY)

</comment><comment><USER34> Wait until everyone learns about bioavailability of nutrients with respect to type of food -- ie. Animal-based nutrition is more bioavailable than plant- based nutrients. [1]

[1] - [https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#109811045)

<comment><USER35> I think it's important to consider the inputs. Carnivorism is just herbivorism with more overhead. Perhaps I do need to eat ~3 times the non-heme iron to get the same level of absorption, but plant crops usually win out over cattle when it comes to scalability.

Is plant iron more bioavailable to cattle animals than humans? That might tip things slightly in favor of carnivorism, however cattle does a lot more than just convert non-heme iron to heme iron and facilitating that excess resource usage may be more trouble than the heme iron is worth.

<comment><USER36> Heme iron is implicated with some cancers, main reason being bioavailability where our body cant regulate it as easy as non heme iron

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In India, Subhash Palekar is a name you often hear these days. He was awarded fourth highest civilian award the Padma Shri in 2016. He is a proponent of Zero Budget Natural Farming- (which some agri bodies have claimed does not work as the claims would indicate).

A few links, if interested. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Palekar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subhash_Palekar)

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

[http://www.palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org/home.aspx](http://www.palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org/home.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER38> I want to see the study. If we are saying that average mineral content of calcium, magnesium, and iron in cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, and spinach has dropped 80–90% between 1914 and 2018, where were the subject vegetables taken from? Are we needing to look at farming methods, large agriculture process such as early harvest, soil depletion, delivery method, sun exposure, etc?

And, if we are looking at findings from the USDA, Agricultural Research Service and USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, they really need to update their research. As stated by the study's author, " the USDA mineral content of vegetables and fruits has not been updated since 2000"

</comment><comment><USER39> Article seems suspicious. How were these measured 100 years ago? Same techniques as today? Can we verify the 100 year old data?

</comment><comment><USER40> In many countries in Eastern Europe the soil is poor in iodine, which historically meant a lot of thyroid problems. Good news is that governments mostly solved the issue by requiring table salt to contain iodine. In some countries you can still buy table salt that doesn't contain iodine ("Himalayan" and so on) but people still use the mandated kind indirectly by buying bread and cheeses made with iodine.

My point is the same can be done with magnesium and other minerals, which can solve the public health aspect while the soil is restored.

</comment><comment><USER41> Isn't a big part of the problem that for nearly all of duration of life, all animals had their own excretion patterns? If a monkey eats a banana, and 2 days later excretes nutrients in forms it cannot use... then typically the distance between plant and and dropping is not _that_ far. Plants also spread throughout the landscape.

Birds may perform a larger diffusion work part of the time (random droppings while flying), yet a large part of the time it would eat some fruits from one type of tree, then fly to another type of tree, and leave droppings that represent a mixture of the nutrients the different types of trees had access to, but for a large part what came from trees returns to trees even if it's different types of trees. So by producing one type of fruit the tree can trade it's nutrients through birds-as-traders with other trees. Humans ban birds from trees because we want to keep the fruits to ourselves.

Perhaps we are simply wasting too much of our faeces into rivers and the sea? and generally disturbing the natural transport patterns (hidden labour) performed by different types of animals.

Migratory birds might trade nutrients over huge distances, which may sound ridiculous since they can't hold their droppings that long, but their bodies in general also contain nutrients, and the bird could die at either end of the migratory path.

</comment><comment><USER42> Our increase in food production comes at the expense of fertilisers, pesticides, soil depletion and water poisoning. We are feeding the world alright, but on empty calories.

Was Malthus right after all?

</comment><comment><USER43> This is a side issue in the paper linked. The paper itself cites a more useful-seeming source: "Declining Fruit and Vegetable Nutrient Composition: What Is the Evidence?"

[https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1...](https://journals.ashs.org/hortsci/view/journals/hortsci/44/1/article-p15.xml)

Freely available too, nice one.

</comment><comment><USER44> The graph of male testosterone levels looks very similar to this one. I'm not suggesting there's necessarily a correlation between the two, but modern life is taking its toll on our health.

Life expectancy may be longer in present times, but quality of life is in some ways lower (a notable exception to that is the status of even relatively minor infections, which were frequently fatal in pre-modern life).

</comment><comment><USER45> I grew up on a farm in Norway. I love how people who have never even driven a tractor suddenly know how to save the planet because they have a garden. Oh please.

It's really simple: we consume more resources than the planet can reasonably sustain. And because we do not intend to stop procreating and consuming we're fucked. (No, really, we are)

</comment><comment><USER46> Isn't this at least easy to fix? Required amounts of dietary minerals are minuscule: 50 mg iron, 15 mg zinc and less than 2 mg of the other transition metals and P. Presumably fertilizer could include trace amounts of these elements without substantial cost increases? (Ca/K/Mg are already in fertilizer.)

<comment><USER47> I think plants may require symbiotic microbes to efficiently process some of these dietary minerals, and modern agroindustrial farming has damaged soil biodiversity and carrying capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> When crops are removed from the land, more complex fertilizers must be used to replace the minerals. A good example is sulfur. The sulfur removed had been replenished by acid rain. Once scrubbers were applied to remove sulfur from coal plant emissions, farmers needed to monitor and replenish sulfur levels by sulfur fertilizer.

"Seeking high yields, the reduction of acid rain and the need for sulfur" \- [https://www.farmprogress.com/management/seeking-high- yields-...](https://www.farmprogress.com/management/seeking-high-yields- reduction-acid-rain-and-need-sulfur)

The bottom line is that agriculture is mining, and any elements that are removed in crops must be replaced. Adequate sulfur levels are particularly important to cruciferous vegetables.

</comment><comment><USER48> The is the flip side of the green revolution, which basically bred plants to grow big and fast if you dump a lot of fertilizer made from fossil fuels on them. More carbs and less of everything else. I know people love Norman Borlaug but not everything is as nice as you'd like it to be.

</comment><comment><USER49> It'd be cool to see a comparison of common top-grade "organic produce" compared with produce from a farmers market and that grown from someone's own backyard. Granted, with a measure of time from harvest to measurement of mineral content.

</comment><comment><USER13> Would it be wise for most people to take a daily multivitamin or supplement? I believe we only need trace amounts of these vitamins and minerals, so even with a 90% decline in mineral levels, it sounds like most people are still getting plenty of minerals.

> 60% of adults do not achieve the average dietary intake (ADI) and 45% of > Americans are magnesium deficient.

I'm always a bit skeptical of claims like this, and those percentages are huge. I'm wondering why I've never heard about it before (although I'm very ignorant about a lot of things.) Are there any government efforts to make magnesium supplements widely available, or some other way to solve this problem?

</comment><comment><USER50> I worked on a bio-intensive organic farm in Washington State via [https://wwoofinternational.org/](https://wwoofinternational.org/). This was one of the articles that got passed around:

[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129629...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129629752)

Volunteering there was the first time I realized strawberries were red all the way through and incredibly dense with flavor, since they were allowed to ripen naturally and benefit from richly amended soil full of microbes.

</comment><comment><USER51> Almost impossible to eat healthy these days. Even if you think you're eating healthy you might not be. We aren't getting as many probiotics, minerals, and vitamins from fruits and vegetables. This is terribly unfortunate. We need to find a way to use land more effectively and give our soil and plants enough time to establish themselves so the nutrition content is sufficient and normalized.

A solution might be less land for herding cattle and more land for planting vegetables and fruits that might take more time to cultivate.

</comment><comment><USER52> Does anyone know how much we can absorb? Like if we can only take in 1 out of the 50, then I don't care if its down to 10. Anyone know the science on mineral absorption?

<comment><USER35> Someone posted a study which specifically compared bioavailability of heme iron from animals to non-heme iron from plants:

[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#1098...](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/633S/4690005#109811045)

Why would low bioavailability convince you to care less about the declining minerals? Surely declining mineral content would be exacerbated by low bioavailability? How does that make things better?

An 80% loss still means you have to quintuple consumption to maintain the same level of nutrients, and your agricultural resources have to scale beyond that to account for crop losses to pests and pathogens. Meat production becomes even more expensive and unsustainable. How does low bioavailability reduce the significance of this trend?

<comment><USER52> Well, but maybe an 80% loss doesn't matter as we only absorb x mg of minerals. You know?

This might not matter for humans if we don't know how much we can absorb, it might not be a percentile but rather than a cap and we pee or poop the rest out.

<comment><USER35> I see what you're saying now, thanks for clarifying. I'm not sure how much nutrition people need in general. Perhaps we're still getting a surplus of nutrients at the current volume of food consumption, despite the loss of minerals. I am fearful of food unsecurity and malnutrition.

<comment><USER52> Ya me too on malnutrition and food desserts. Americans eat so few veggies and we are still living for a long time. And for rich Americans who match Japanese longevity, this doesn't seen to be hurting us.

Like if we all had scurvy and were bleeding from the gums by age 19 I'd be worried more :)

Or maybe it is what is spiking auto immune diseases or something weird.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Here is a good resource on growing your own food with maximum nutrition.

[http://janabogs.com/](http://janabogs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER54> Old news?

Dirt Poor: Have Fruits and Vegetables Become Less Nutritious? - Because of soil depletion, crops grown decades ago were much richer in vitamins and minerals than the varieties most of us get today

April 27, 2011

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion- an...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/soil-depletion-and- nutrition-loss/)

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a good reason to eat organic food.

The overall strength of evidence is good or moderate that, for many parameters, organic produce is superior to conventional produce.[1]

[1] [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16546628.2017.1...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/16546628.2017.1287333)

</comment><comment><USER56> Fascinating discussion, just noticed the article is about magnesium deficiency.

Magnesium pills! I love those things. The only supplement I take, because it gives such a direct brain-fog lifting effect and makes me poo good. Real good. A must before international travel.

<comment><USER57> Magnesium is also essential for peristalsis. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Original article: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/)

</comment><comment><USER59> Probably cause there's a TON OF PEOPLE LIVING AND REPRODUCING. You can talk about soil depletion all you want, but you're ignoring the true problem.

</comment><comment><USER60> calcium and magnesium? that sounds familiar...the two main minerals that water softeners remove. could this be related to water filtration/softening that farmers may be using? (I don't know if they actually use filtration or not). I imagine they'd want to use softeners, as it would increase the lifespan of irrigation equipment.

</comment><comment><USER61> If you understand French, you can take a look at Claude and Lydia Bourguignon's work about soil health.

</comment><comment><USER62> Makes sense: we're getting like 5x the yields per area of land. Something has to give.

</comment><comment><USER63> Perhaps a silly question but doesn't a plant require all these minerals to grow?

</comment><comment><USER64> New health campaign message: remember to eat your 50 portions of fruit and veg a day.

</comment><comment><USER65> FYI: The iron within meat is much more bioavailable to your body

</comment><comment><USER66> Well there are some that say that minerals on vegetables are not bio-available for the human digestive system, so in the end doesn't make a lot of difference.

<comment><USER67> This is nonsense. Perhaps you mean something like "less bio-available compared to..."

<comment><USER66> I phrased it incorrectly, you are spot on "much less bio-available when compared with animal products"

<comment><USER35> We feed plant products to our animal products. If the plants are not nutritious, animal products become more expensive. I don't think animal products will prevent wealthier people from being priced out of their necessary nutrition.

<comment><USER68> It's better to think of the long-term cycle. Ruminants in regenerative management, for instance, increase the richness of the soil over time. Whereas it's very hard to do that with crops.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER70> Can we not have LinkedIn links on HN

<comment><USER71> Why do you not want to have LinkedIn links on HN?

<comment><USER70> Clicking on a LinkedIn link evokes the same "unpredictable behavior" paranoia/stress reaction as a url for a site that peddles game ROMs or guitar tabs.

<comment><USER72> Ever since I realized they will inform users directly of who's looking at their profile my trust in the platform plummeted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> weak soil makes weak food makes weak humans

</comment><comment><USER74> Read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Do it now.

<comment><USER75> not sure why this would get downvoted

<comment><USER76> It's not very helpful. Why do we need to read it? Why now? How is it related to this topic?

Those answers may be obvious to someone who's already read the book. To people not familiar with the book it's a cryptic imperative.

<comment><USER74> Ahhh, fair point.

The Omnivore's Dilemma zeros in on the diminishing quality of vegetables due to some (not all) modern farming practices. I realize not everyone agrees with Michael Pollan's viewpoints, but I believe the book forces the reader to confront the food they are consuming, the system that helps deliver it to their table, and the impact on the environment and the food itself.

<comment><USER76> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> My chiropractor warned me about this. He said everyone is deficient in vitamins and minerals because of our food. He suggested an extreme pill popping routine, which was difficult to do. Does anyone agree with this approach? I was taking so many vitamins it made me feel sick. I can't remember the name of the routine, but I researched it online. I think it was used to treat schizophrenia.

</comment><comment><USER78> As I said in a previous thread:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20799295)

\---

*-4 points by patientplatypus 18 days ago | parent | favorite | on: The Next Recession Will Be About Sovereign Debt

The next recession will be caused by poor crop yields due to environmental destruction. It will also cause famines and wars globally.

\---

We have maybe one or two years left, up to five maybe if we're lucky, until the entire social system collapses. It will be dark and sad and scary.

I'm sorry you guys.</comment>