Paribus Can Save You Money When Online Prices Drop - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/05/paribus-can-save-you-money-when-online-prices-drop/ <comment><USER2> Love the idea but feel uncomfortable giving such a young company the ability to read all my email _and_ also send messages on my behalf.

Would much prefer if they supported the option to forward relevant messages to them, TripIt style. One can always create auto-forwarding filters for, say, all Amazon order confirmations.

<comment><USER3> Great seeing Paribus on HN! I really appreciate the feedback. This is definitely the biggest challenge that we're facing but we hope that as the user base grows we will gain legitimacy and convince people that we're out there to defend their interests. Obviously, we're taking all the precautions necessary, following security best practices, and collaborating with Context.io to keep everyone's mailbox secure.

On your second point, we could (and probably will) enable the feature of forwarding receipts eventually and but the reason we haven't done it is to keep the whole experience as seamless as possible - We want our users to do ZERO work - and we would still need to send the automated claims on their behalf. Sending users price drop alerts is just like giving them work to do (camelcamelcamel.com and plenty of other services do this).

<comment> ryan-c What about providing people with a pass through email address to use on shopping sites? A nice value add there would be having the option to give a unique email address to each site to track who's fault spam is (I've been paying sneakemail for that for at least a decade).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slice ([https://www.slice.com/](https://www.slice.com/)) is a more mature startup that does the same thing. It was recently acquired by Rakuten.

<comment><USER5> Hi calcsam!

Eric w/ Paribus here. Slice does some similar things (track purchases via email, promise to send price drop alerts, etc.).

I wanted to love their product when I first used it, but found myself dissatisfied for a few reasons: 1\. I personally have never actually received a price drop alert. (Could just be me, but many items that I've bought since being a member have dropped in price) 2\. Just receiving a price drop alert leaves a lot of user pain. You still have to take the time to go back/forth with customer service for unclear benefit (not all price drop claims work), and for most price drops it simply isn't worth the hassle. 3\. Most importantly, their actual revenue-driving business is fundamentally different: [http://intelligence.slice.com/](http://intelligence.slice.com/) Your data is the product that they sell to advertisers (and likely use for Rakuten, a major Asian eCommerce player and owner of Buy.com).

We designed our business to make money only when we make you money first. Its a small but important difference, but we think that aligning our interests fully with our users will make all the difference in making our product far more useful for consumers in the long run.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> *>"The startup has a small, undisclosed amount of friends and family funding and isn't actively fundraising."

Read: "we are open to accepting money at a very favorable valuation now that you've read this on TC." They're obviously in a position of strength here, but this seems pretty transparent.

</comment><comment><USER7> We've been working with these guys for several months now and the savings are pretty massive. On Amazon, in our experience, about 5-10% of purchases will qualify for a refund. It's a set-and-forget type service, so you literally don't have to do anything after signing up.

</comment><comment><USER8> The service is brilliant. It's a set it and forget it app which has already sent me four refunds. I recommend it to all my friends, especially those that frequently shop online or use Amazon Prime.

</comment><comment><USER9> Links seriously need to be able to be flagged specifically as advertisements.</comment>


Australia: Coming soon, Travel Card That Tracks Your Moves - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/coming-soon-travel-card-that-tracks-moves-20110716-1hiyd.html

<comment><USER2> They already have this in QLD and I don't really see what the problem is with it. Police still need a warrant to access the data and tracking analytics could be very useful to Translink to see where bottlenecks are occurring and plan future upgrades better.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the data didn't exist to begin with there wouldn't be a need for a warrant. As the data will now exist, they will be able to justify the need to access it on demand.[1]

What's the difference between this program or one that pushes "Everyone is now required to keep a device on them that records everything they say. The purpose of this device is to improve the quality of X, Y and Z services based on real-world conversational feedback."

The data was then also accessible to the Government, with a warrant, when needed.

I don't believe you can justify uninvited invasion of privacy to improve a service when the data collected can also be used against you.

[1] <http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10451518-38.html>

<comment><USER3> I think your example is a bit of a straw man. Yes, they should limit the data they need to keep, but if you are really concerned about your privacy (and I wish more people were!), you can choose not to use the card. Pay for your privacy with a bit of inconvenience.

<comment><USER4> Well, that's an interesting comment because last time I was in London I noticed they've really jacked up the cash price of single tickets on the tube, to the point where you'd be an idiot not to get an Oyster card because using one makes multiple trips much cheaper. Differential pricing like this could be used to effectively buy people's location information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this optional? If it is optional, what is the problem? Lots of people voluntarily disclose their location on, oh, Twitter...

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you. There are benefits to me as a user to having access to the information (how much is my travel costing me, when did I go visit that shop out in the suburbs, etc), so you can't blankly say there is no reason to store the data.

However, I agree the data should be kept private. Unfortunately, in the US, you know it wouldn't be; I can't imagine Australia will be, either.

If you do want the privacy, anonymity and cash are still your friends.</comment></comment>


Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/ <comment><USER2> Some of the conclusions seem a little quacky here to me - like "avoid ingredients you can't pronounce" and a lot of "avoid processed anything".

While I'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". What the heck does that mean anyway? All our food is processed in one form or another and nothing about something being more processed necessitates any loss.

Maybe I just have no sense for quality, but I've tried paying double for "organic" products and similar - only to be repeatedly disappointed with products that taste worse or equal and spoil quicker - I'll never buy them again, it just doesn't make sense to pay more for it.

<comment><USER3> > _While I 'm sure there's some arguable benefits to these things, I think > it's paranoid or stupid to dismiss something just for being "processed". > What the heck does that mean anyway?_

It mostly means, "a whole industry of greedy scum that added all kinds of useless and often harmful crap to the food it sells to make it last longer -- and increase their margins--, be more addictive --and increase their margins--, be prettier looking --and increase it's margins--, be more sugary and/or salty --and increase their margins. People that will outright lie about what they sell you all the time [1]. People that would add melamine to infant milk if it made a profit and they could get away with it [2]. People that would sponsor fake science [3].

Unfortunately a lot of people are so naive as to think that corporations are basically ethical and would never do those things, or that if something involves technology (e.g. food chemistry) it is necessarily good, even if said technology is used against them to pad profits.

[1] [https://priceonomics.com/the-truffle-oil- shuffle/](https://priceonomics.com/the-truffle-oil-shuffle/) ("Despite the name, most truffle oil does not contain even trace amounts of truffle; it is olive oil mixed with 2,4-dithiapentane").

[2] [https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/why-is- melami...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/news-blog/why-is-melamine-in- baby-formula-you-2008-09-24/)

[3] [https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/the-food-industry- is...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/12/the-food-industry-is- gaslighting-us-on-the-harms-of-sugar/)

<comment><USER4> >Unfortunately a lot of people are so naive as to think that corporations are basically ethical and would never do those things, or that if something involves technology (e.g. food chemistry) it is necessarily good, even if said technology is used against them to pad profits.

I've never actually seen people like this, in fact I've only seen people who are the exact opposite - and you seem to give off such vibe - where something is "evil by default" because it's not "natural/organic/whatever buzzword here".

You can get crap from your "organic local natural farmer", just from the top of my head a few years back here in EU people were dying from ecoli caused kidney failure because the organic farm manure contained the bacteria.

Corporations will do unethical things for money but individuals will not ? Who do you think spends more on quality control - people who shipping millions of units of something and have billions invested in capital to produce said thing or some random farm ? Who do you think gets more regulatory oversight ?

And about the biased sponsored science - so we just discard science and go for something because of how it feels ?

I mean I'm all for eating quality and fresh stuff if you can get it but the arguments like this are just nonsense paranoia.

<comment><USER3> > _in fact I 've only seen people who are the exact opposite - and you seem to > give off such vibe - where something is "evil by default" because it's not > "natural/organic/whatever buzzword here"._

I don't speak for organic, Whole Foods etc BS. That's another racket. You can buy perfectly fine non-organic vegetables, meat, cheese in Walmart if you go and look for it.

But american popular mass produced food is of the worst standards compared to what people eat in Western Europe (and I presume Japan). And the food industry there is crappier than average. That said, it's pretty bad in Europe too: a packet of chips or some mass market ice-cream is the same shit everywhere.

> _I mean I 'm all for eating quality and fresh stuff if you can get it but > the arguments like this are just nonsense paranoia._

What part of what I wrote looks like "paranoia" to you? That big manufactures like Nestle, etc. are greedy and would sell any kind of crap?

> _Corporations will do unethical things for money but individuals will not ?_

Individuals will too. But people don't buy much food from individuals, they buy it (most of it) from corporations. Plus individuals don't do mass production and the kind of food people buy from them (from some farmer's market for example) is not that amenable to adding all kinds of food chemistry crap.

So the distinction I made between individuals and corporations is not that individuals can't also be greedy, but that individuals don't manufacture mass produced food -- corporations do.

A piece of meat is a piece of meat (at worse it will be fed crap, given hormones). Vegetables the same. A bread bought on the supermarket on the other hand, can have all kinds of BS in, excessive sodium, tons of sugar, BS preservatives, etc. And there's all kinds of "microwave dishes" etc with the lowest quality of materials and tons of added flavorings, preservatives, things to give them specific texture, and other crap that doesn't occur or belong to a "Salisbury steak" for example.

> _You can get crap from your "organic local natural farmer", just from the > top of my head a few years back here in EU people were dying from ecoli > caused kidney failure because the organic farm manure contained the > bacteria._

Those things are orthogonal. You can also die from ecoli in food sold by large corporations, e.g:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/business/14nestle.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/business/14nestle.html)

<comment><USER4> >What part of what I wrote looks like "paranoia" to you? That big manufactures like Nestle, etc. are greedy and would sell any kind of crap?

Citing isolated instances in an industry that provides services to billions and saying you should be scared because of that is paranoia - on such a large scale you are guaranteed to have bad outcomes. Meanwhile most people eat processed food and are still walking around.

>excessive sodium, tons of sugar, BS preservatives

Preservatives have legally regulated ranges and there's nothing wrong with high sugar/salt if you're healthy and are within your calorie limit.

>Those things are orthogonal

Of course they are - that's kind of my point.

<comment><USER3> > _Citing isolated instances in an industry that provides services to billions > and saying you should be scared because of that is paranoia - on such a > large scale you are guaranteed to have bad outcomes. Meanwhile most people > eat processed food and are still walking around._

That would be relevant if I had said that they wouldn't be walking around (that they'd die immediately, etc.).

But what I said is that they are sold unhealthy crap to eat, not just openly but also misleadingly and covertly, because it makes production cheaper (not necessarily price, the margins are more often than not pocketed) and the product more addictive to consumers (more sugars, artificial coloring to entice the eye, etc).

Whether the industry "provides services to billions" is also irrelevant, as it is possible to sell crap to billions, or at least, millions. Billions consume corn syrup in all kinds of food stuff because it's cheaper than sugar and has all the subsidies, for example. It's still crap.

> _there 's nothing wrong with high sugar/salt if you're healthy and are > within your calorie limit._

There's nothing wrong with anything if you don't eat it too. And yet a whole country, or half of it, is less than healthy, to the point of talking about an "obesity epidemic".

<comment><USER4> I just think the tone of your overall argument is too alarmist. I eat processed foods from time to time - cookies, potato chips, hot dogs, ice cream, McDonald's etc. They aren't in my regular diet but if the situation is right I'll eat it, I don't think they are unhealthy because my body can probably cope with whatever is unhealthy in them, just like I drink alcohol from time to time but I don't do it on a daily basis.

I don't think anyone is advertising cookies, potato chips or ice cream as healthy diet choices. McDonald's has some actually balanced things on their menus (from macro nutrient perspective) like their breakfast egg burger was ~25g of protein/carb/fat - but if you order 3 + 1/2 liter of cola and fries along with that then yeah it's not going to be good for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a great article, and should be widely read beyond that piece of succinct eating advice. For example, this is a great paragraph:

> In many cases, long familiarity between foods and their eaters leads to > elaborate systems of communications up and down the food chain, so that a > creature's senses come to recognize foods as suitable by taste and smell and > color, and our bodies learn what to do with these foods after they pass the > test of the senses, producing in anticipation the chemicals necessary to > break them down. Health depends on knowing how to read these biological > signals: this smells spoiled; this looks ripe; that's one good-looking cow. > This is easier to do when a creature has long experience of a food, and much > harder when a food has been designed expressly to deceive its senses — with > artificial flavors, say, or synthetic sweeteners.

In fact, I recently read a book, _The Dorito Effect_ which goes into this in much, much more detail, and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. I bought it thinking it would be a light read, based on the title and cover, but it was more engaging, better researched, and more informative than I expected.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I eat carbs, I put on weight. When I don't, I lose weight. However, other people I know are the opposite. Quite honestly, I think you can't generalise 'diets' or eating advice as, frankly, it would appear that different people's bodies work in slightly different ways. This could explain the vast array of different advice that, often times, seems contradictory.

<comment><USER7> I can generalise diets pretty easy. Eat less calories than you burn and loose weight. Eat whatever you want if you can abide by this rule you will loose the weight. But to be healthy. Well you have to eat healthy to be healthy. And that means getting all the fat, carbs and protein your body needs. And what your body needs I agree you can't generalise.

<comment><USER8> Not exactly true. For the same amount of calories, the quality of food may or may not impact your weight. You can eat 4000 calories/day in banana and loose weight, but eat 2500 in cheese burger and gain.

I tested that on myself. The body does not blindnessly store excess in absorbed energy. It stores fat for many other reasons. One of them is to regulate the blood PH: if you saturate your organism with too much toxic food, you won't process it fast enough. To avoid crossing the unfamous 7.40 PH threshold, one strategy is to use fat to wrap toxic molecules and put them aside on your belly so you can deal with it later. Unfortunately with our current life style, this "later" never comes.

<comment><USER9> "You can eat 4000 calories/day in banana and loose weight, but eat 2500 in cheese burger and gain."

This my friend, is not true. Not true in like...completely false.

(source: Bodybuilding for a long long time...dieting 6 months every year...bulking up the other 6 months of the year...been counting every calorie for years)

<comment><USER8> Again I tested it on myself. I tried so many diets it's not funny:

\- full prot diet;

\- mono-diet;

\- fasting;

\- raw food diet;

\- veggie;

\- vegan;

\- classic 'balanced diet';

\- body-building diet where you weight your chicken;

\- and of course the good old "student-fast-food" diet.

I usually take blood samples before and after and graph my weight and IMC.

<comment><USER3> > _Again I tested it on myself._

It doesn't matter, it's still not true. And there are tons of ways the measuring can go wrong or be misleading.

<comment><USER8> In the bottom comment I provided links to resources dealing with food toxicity. Part of them deal with toxicity and weight.

Would you provide the resources to counter examples ? It's only fair to have literature to compare the 2 point of views.

<comment><USER3> > _In the bottom comment I provided links to resources dealing with food > toxicity._

You just provided general resources about food and nutrition (based on the links I'm familiar with -- others could be pseudo-science). Give some specific excerpts about "toxins" and we can discuss them.

All food has side effects (e.g. too much sugar and diabetes, micro-allergies, cured meat and cancer, etc). This is not the same as some unspecified BS "toxins".

It also has nothing to do with "I eat less calories and I get fatter compared to eating more" which was the original claim we disputed -- which is absolutely incorrect.

[http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-detox- scam/](http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-detox-scam/)

[http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/colon...](http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/colon- detoxification-myth-vs-science/)

[https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/the- de...](https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2013/01/04/the-detox- delusion/)

[http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/12/sorry-but-theres-no- such...](http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2014/12/sorry-but-theres-no-such-thing- as-a-detox)

[http://www.livescience.com/34845-detox-cleansing-facts- falla...](http://www.livescience.com/34845-detox-cleansing-facts- fallacies.html)

[https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-detox-scam-how-to- spot-...](https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-detox-scam-how-to-spot-it-and- how-to-avoid-it/)

[http://skepdic.com/detox.html](http://skepdic.com/detox.html)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detoxification_(alternative_me...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detoxification_\(alternative_medicine\))

<comment><USER8> > You just provided general resources about food and nutrition

Well of course, why would I not ? They include the knowledge I'm using right now.

However I can't help but notice you provide blog posts with opinions, not studies or books.

Again I agree that using the word "toxin" was not a good choice. I'm not a native English speaker, I don't know any proper term for "things the body can't process, and that harms it".

> I eat less calories and I get fatter compared to eating more

Yes it has. A calorie is always in a context. It's extracted it and from this context. During this process, molecules that can harm the body can enter it, or be produced in it. Since using fat to wrap molecules is one of the ways the body cope with it, it has an impact on it.

I'm not saying eating only banana is healthy, but it has few chances of triggering the late mechanism.

<comment><USER3> > _Yes it has. A calorie is always in a context._

No, the context only applies to health. You will always lose weight if you eat less calories, period.

> _During this process, molecules that can harm the body can enter it, or be > produced in it. Since using fat to wrap molecules is one of the ways the > body cope with it, it has an impact on it._

That's not what happens. There is no such procedure that uses fat to "cope with it". Some substances just get accumulated in fat, with no bearing as to wether you can lose that weight by eating less calories. That's a common pseudo-scientific misconception on the "detox" circles.

<comment><USER8> Example of a context:

\- eat a little protein and lots of fructose from an apple from your garden;

\- eat the same amount of calories as proteins + fat in industrial meat.

The second amount will create vastly more waste, such as urea, to be processed by the body. It will also require more energy to processed because the fructose is almost usable as-is. Because the second source of calories brings less minerals, it will also bring your PH down, forcing the body to deal with it. Because it's industrial meat, it will contains synthetic products such as antibiotic than will make your livers works a lot more and impact your digestive system flora.

But will not trigger the same insulin response.

Same amount of calories, very different context, and impact on the body.

Again, I notice a trend in those responses: you are just saying I'm wrong harshly but don't make demonstrations. If you know I'm wrong, please use arguments.

<comment><USER10> You're wrong because you provided a list of diets, but didn't provide how many calories you were eating on each one.

You're being deliberately obtuse and omitting half of the facts to suit your narrative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Gary Taubes "What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?" [1] is worth reading. Previously he wrote about bad science.

[1] [https://nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all- bee...](https://nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big- fat-lie.html)

<comment><USER12> Not much benefit in reading old stuff like that. Some of it has been validated, some not. Insulin as the great cause for fat gain hasn't really panned out. On the other hand now we've had some large studies that give an inkling that eating a lot of fat can be healthy for the heart and on the other hand replacing saturated fats with carbs(instead of unsaturated fats) is basically status quo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Nutrition, as a field, is mostly quackery and bullshit. There's a reason the advice changes drastically every few years, and at any time there are 10 competing fad diets, each apparently supported by some number of reputable scientific authorities.

We do not have the predictive power at this time to make authoritative recommendations about what each and every person should eat, except for fairly straightforward things like "eat vitamin C or you will get scurvy".

Check again 50 years or so. Maybe by then you can walk into a medical clinic, get a DNA and gut ecosystem analysis, and walk out with a useful dietary recommendation.

<comment><USER14> I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food pyramids and four food groups and what have you. I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page, but those selling diets keep changing their opinions. Sure, there has been flip-flopping recently on fats and sugars, but the edict "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" doesn't concern itself with those. I can't recall anyone ever promoting a diet with less vegetables (even the Atkins fad diet known for it's meat and dairy included vegetables) and make sure to overeat at every meal and I highly doubt either of those will ever be considered a good idea (provided the vegetables aren't tainted by radiation or chemicals or the diet's authors aren't overly politicizing GMO or some other arbitrary thing about production). Fad diets are all about selling supplements and books and are indeed snake oil. The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff and that's what this article is really about.

<comment><USER13> > I'm 42 and this is what the USDA has been saying all along with their food > pyramids and four food groups and what have you.

You are not remembering correctly.

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

> I think as a whole, nutritionists have always been on the same page,

No, they certainly haven't. "Best practices" change all the time. This happened quite recently; [http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/06/1...](http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2015/06/15/2015-dietary- guidelines.aspx)

> but the edict "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants" doesn't concern itself > with those

It also contradicts the recently popularized "keto" diet, which has roughly as much evidence behind it as any other popular dietary recommendation (i.e. not much).

Really the only things we can say authoritatively is "if you miss out on certain nutrients, you get sick". Beyond that, we're not really very sure.

> The problem is separating the wheat from the chaff

Your mistake is in thinking that there's a definitive difference. Almost ever piece of nutritional research available today has an extremely low predictive power. Where you draw the wheat/chaff line is more or less arbitrary. Even what should, ideally, be the most staunchly scientific food-related organizations, the FDA and FNS, change the recommendations all the time because they're not actually using hard science.

<comment><USER15> > It also contradicts the recently popularized "keto" diet, which has roughly > as much evidence behind it as any other popular dietary recommendation (i.e. > not much).

Keto recommends avoiding plants? I suppose you're right about fruit, but those are disallowed because of the sugar content, not because they're plant based.

EDIT: I suppose while I'm at it I should take exception with the notion "if there is no evidence, then therefore it is wrong" line of thought. Which you may note you didn't say _explicitly_ , so then I would ask well what did you really mean. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those interested: Nassim Taleb extends this kind of epistemological conservatism to other complex domains, such as economics, finance, religion and psychology.

"You would not have read this far into this article if your food culture were intact and healthy; you would simply eat the way your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents taught you to eat. The question is, Are we better off with these new authorities than we were with the traditional authorities they supplanted? The answer by now should be clear."

<comment><USER17> Can you post a link to some of his work where he discusses those topics?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "When William Prout isolated the big three macronutrients, scientists figured they now understood food and what the body needs from it; when the vitamins were isolated a few decades later, scientists thought, O.K., now we really understand food and what the body needs to be healthy; today it's the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important. But who knows what the hell else is going on deep in the soul of a carrot?"

Ha, I'd love to hear what the soylent folks would say about this passage.

<comment><USER19> > today it's the polyphenols and carotenoids that seem all-important

What a joke, the only thing that's known _for sure_ about "polyphenols" (and practically all non-vitamin "antioxidants", that was the previous hype) is that a healthy human body rapidly excretes them, as well it should.

The rest is hype, speculation, and the everlasting quest for the next "superfood"..

Carotenoids, okay, anything that's in egg yolks gets my stamp of approval. Of course the much-loved beta-carotin is drastically useless and pales in comparison to any source of (nonsynthetic) preformed Vitamin A from non- carnivore sources.. (and who the heck eats carnivores!)

<comment><USER20> Carnivore meat you can eat: cat, crocodile, alligator. I'm sure there are others. Not very common in the west - if nothing else, herbivores and omnivores are easier to factory farm - but people do eat them.

What about fish? Tuna, salmon, shark - they all eat meat.

<comment><USER21> Come on. Who eats cats? Dogs yes, but cats?

Crocodile and alligator I can imagine that that's a thing.

<comment><USER22> Cat meat is popular in Asia, especially in Vietnam.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nutrition, medicine, psychology are beset by _empiricism_ : trying to find facts without having theories to support them. Journalists then make hay with the results, hinting at conclusions and advice for the public, using the authority of Science, but really bringing it into disrepute. An awful lot of research money has been wasted in this way and of course much of the work is not reproducible.

<comment><USER24> >> Nutrition, medicine, psychology are beset by empiricism: trying to find facts without having theories to support them.

Really? Seems to me there are a ton of theories but precious few facts.

Atkins, low carb, high carb, gluten free, etc. Theories everywhere. But science simply cannot tell us what foods to eat and what to avoid. It's very frustrating to me how limited our knowledge of the human body is.

<comment><USER23> The 'facts' that I referred to are the results of correlation studies as published in science journals. The diets you mention are mainstream fads.

You're right, though, it _is_ frustrating! My personal opinion is that it is the way we use food for pleasure and comfort that it is to blame. We are literally getting high on what we eat, which is deleterious for health if performed without break for long periods. But there's no obvious way for a scientist to address this idea at present; it would be considered too subjective and thus ignored by the majority.

<comment><USER25> You can get high on carbs or alcohol sure enough. Try getting high on protein or fat though.

Telling carboholics they need to eat less food is like telling alcoholics they need to drink less liquid. It doesn't work - you've got to be more specific.

<comment><USER23> It's complicated. If I gave an obese person a bag of sugar or a kilo of lard she probably wouldn't enjoy these things. On the other hand some folk can eat luxury foods regularly without ill effect. It depends on personality and intent as much as upon specific foodstuffs and substances.

And are you sure about protein? Personally I experience a strong desire for meat if I haven't had any for a few days. The fulfillment of that desire creates a visceral pleasure. Furthermore I can't imagine giving up apparently innocuous items like tomatoes, either. For a few months perhaps but after a few years I'm sure I would pine at the memory of fresh juicy tomatoes.

<comment><USER26> If you go keto/atkins/etc for a while you get sick of meat. At least I have. It becomes tedious to eat and my portion sizes have dropped. I end up eating more vegetables than I ever did before, and take more pleasure from them.

<comment><USER27> There's certainly some combination of psychology and physiology at play here. There are many nutrients we need that we can't get without a suitably diverse diet, so we're hardwired to seek out variety. Even people who are starving or constantly on the edge will get tired of having a diet that doesn't include much variety.

My father loves to talk about how he can eat the same thing every day, but whenever I visit, he's very quick to suggest going out to eat. He obviously gets tired of eating the same thing over and over, but he doesn't want to deviate too much from his routine since it helps keep him from regaining weight.

I know I'm starting to crave a steak - it's been a few weeks, and normally I would have steak and potatoes on Sundays as a treat after an extra-long workout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tangentially related, to the fans of Fidel Castro: there's an interesting line of thinking that Cubans became healthy not because of Cuba's phenomenal health care system, but because they had to simplify their diet considerably in the wake of the Soviet Union's implosion. They had to eat homegrown veggies because they had no other choice.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I like the simplicity of the approach presented in this essay.

> _And at the end of it all, the answer to the question "Can we say what diet > is best for health?" and by health, we mean longevity, vitality, weight > control. All the good stuff that we all want. The answer is absolutely no, > if what we mean is a very specific, prescriptive — my diet can beat your > diet. So, you know, can we say whether the best Mediterranean diet is better > than the best vegan diet or that's better than the best paleo diet for human > health? The answer is no. If what we mean, though, by "Can we say what diet > is best for health?" is a basic theme of optimal living. Then the answer is > a categorical yes. It's incredibly clear from incredibly voluminous, > incredibly consistent literature all around the world, diverse populations, > diverse methods, observational epidemiology where you just watch and see > what happens. Intervention trials where you assign people to diets. > Randomized control trials and real-world experience with large populations > like The Blue Zones. And frankly Michael Pollan pretty much nailed this one. > Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. That really captures the essence of > all of the world's diets that are associated with good health outcomes._

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8C1W1Iefk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW8C1W1Iefk)

</comment><comment><USER28> The first time I saw this quote was at our local Mod Market which has become our goto for a quick, healthyish meal. I wish there were more chains that shared a similar philosophy.

<comment><USER29> Looks like a lot of processed meat and cheese to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I read this book in 2007 when it came out and loosely followed its advice. It changed my life. I dropped 30 pounds, 2 shirt sizes and several inches off of my waist.

His "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." mantra is about the easiest diet to follow in the real world.

</comment><comment><USER31> I remember reading this in the Sunday Magazine when it was first published. It has really stood up to the test of time.

</comment><comment><USER32> To skip the boring wall of text scroll to the end and read the 9 points of advice (if you are interested).

</comment><comment><USER33> Pollan's famous "maxim" manages to be condescending, unhelpful and inaccurate - all at the same time.

Eat food: duh

Not too much: again, thanks?

Mostly plants: Oh you mean like, sugars and starches - the most toxic constituents of the modern diet.

Pollan is the prototypical Bay-Area insufferable foodie. His documentary was a cringe-fest of pseudo-spiritual fawning.

Rene Girard talks about how food has become a new status symbol as people compete for bragging rights about how good they eat; Pollan is their patron saint.

<comment><USER34> _Oh you mean like, sugars and starches - the most toxic constituents of the modern diet._

You jump pretty readily to a conclusion that isn't in what's said. "Plants" covers a diverse group of foods, some of which are the most nutrient rich available to us.

You can eat nothing but potatoes, which are filled with starch, but a diet filled with plants is much more likely to involve a rich variety of very healthy foods. Some of these foods would be things like spinach, kale, carrots, beetroot, beans, sweet potatoes, blueberries, apples, bananas, strawberries, buckwheat, avocados, courgettes, onions and peppers.

There's definitely starch and sugars in these, but you'd be hard pressed to eat them to anything like a toxic degree. To get them to a toxic degree, you'd need to eat processed food in quantity, which isn't what the maxim, which is undoubtably glib, is suggesting you do.

I agree with your comment about food being used as yet another status symbol, and I generally find that a particularly unpleasant and tiresome way to treat something as essential as eating. I'd disagree that Pollan is the patron saint of foodies, though. He's perhaps the patron saint of plant-eating, slightly ascetic or vegan foodies. He's certainly not the patron saint of the paleo or keto crowd, both of which are very vocal and often produce very obnoxious members of the "food as status symbol" group.

Out of interest, what would you recommend as a good, healthful diet? As you can probably guess from my reply, I think Pollan's maxim, which is certainly glib, offers a good working basis for a healthy diet.

<comment><USER19> > "Plants" covers a diverse group of foods, some of which are the most > nutrient rich available to us.

That's some meme. Which ones exactly? The most nutrient- _dense_ foods (per gram / per kcal) available to us are livers, other organs, eggs and ruminant meat --- _even before accounting for the latters ' vastly superior digestability and bio-availability_, and even _before accounting for the formers ' countless antinutrients_. Fresh not processed/salted/cured/etc. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpxqGa1PQc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpxqGa1PQc8)

The widespread micro-nutrient-power fantasies about vegetation come mostly from back when they discovered ascorbic acid (aka "vitamin C") and how meat doesn't have it but plants do. Quite the feast for marketers! By the time they found out we don't need ascorbic _acid_ per-se, just generally "a sufficient source of ascorbate" (which fresh meat _is_ but preserved isn't --- hence the frequent scurvy back in the day with the 'limeys'/sailors/arctic explorers who insisted on their biscuits and canned meats rather than the game/fish around them), nobody cared for such pesky details..

<comment><USER34> At no point did I state that any of the foods you mentioned were nutrient poor -- I just said that some plants are among the most nutrient dense foods available. This can be true without dismissing other foods as nutrient poor. That even fits in with Pollan's maxim, which simply states _most_ of the food you eat should be plants.

Since you asked, here are some nutrient rich plants from memory: kale, spinach, blueberries, garlic, lead, raspberries, asparagus, lentils.

All of these make great additions to any diet, aren't loaded with toxic levels of sugar and starch. They go great with liver, eggs, fish, or meat. I don't really understand where your hostility comes from, or why you simultaneously try to downplay the nutrients available in plants as some kind of conspiracy against other forms of food.

<comment><USER33> > I just said that some plants are _among_ the most nutrient dense foods > available.

To be honest, that's not what you said. You clearly stated that _the most_ nutrient rich foods are plants, which is false.

> "Plants" covers a diverse group of foods, some of which are the most > nutrient rich available to us.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Proficiency of Black Students Is Found to Be Far Lower Than Expected - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/education/09gap.html?_r=2&src=twt&twt=nytimesnational

<comment><USER2> I suspect that home and community culture is the main reason, and race is somewhere off in the noise.

I'd like to see research on different home cultures. I'd especially like to see a way to assign a metric to a family to rate how "scholarly" the environment is for the children.

You couldn't ask people directly, because pretty much every parent will agree with the statement: "We think education is important." It's just that a lot of them don't translate that into action. E.g. "What, why would you read to a 1 year old? They can't understand it."

Instead, go to substantive things like:

1) How often did you read to your child at age 0-3 months

2) When did your child first start watching TV?

3) Do you have books or magazines in the house?

4) Do you read with your kids every day?

...

<comment><AUTHOR> Reading to your kids doesn't seem to help them read more proficiently, at least not on average. The 1994 Scarborough & Dobrich paper on this is one of the most famous in education literature, and there are a bunch of good responses to it as well.

<comment><USER3> I think this is wrong.

Reading does help, but it has to done in the correct way, like much else to do with education in general.

The Success For All study done in 2006:

"Conclusion The quantity and quality of research on Success for All, and the positive outcomes found in almost all studies by more than fi fty investigators in eighteen different research institutions worldwide, clearly establish that Success for All is highly effective in increasing student reading. The effects can be quite substantial, averaging more than half of the national white-minority achievement gap and almost a full grade equivalent by second grade (see Slavin et al., 2006). In a time when educators are increasingly being asked to use proven programs, Success for All is the best demonstration in existence of the idea that rigorous research on practical programs can be done and can show substantial positive effects. Every child should have a right to participate in a program with this level of evidence."

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, that's why I said 'at least not on average'. If you are asking your kids questions while you read that are phrased in the proper way then there is benefit, but most people wouldn't do that unless they were trained to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started to develop a little skepticism when I came across this quote:

"In college, black men represented just 5 percent of students in 2008."

Isn't that exactly how many you would expect based on the demographics of the US?

<comment><USER5> Wikipedia says they're 14% of US population - I'm not sure how the age distribution is, but that's plenty high enough to show a problem.

<comment><USER6> But the stat is about black men only--excluding women. So 7% then.

Is 5% actual vs 7% desired a big enough gap to cause alarm? I don't know.

<comment><USER7> I suppose it depends on the way you're framing it. If it gets to 7% as desired, it is 40% more!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The more excuses any given demographic has available to it, the worse it will fare.

<comment><USER9> That's a terribly dismissive thing to say about people who are just one generation away from not being able to vote because they were born darker than others.

<comment><USER8> It should be noted that it matters not whether those excuses are valid. When an entire group buys into the idea, correctly or incorrectly, that their lack of success is someone else's fault, the group as a whole stops trying at all. "What's the point in trying? _They_ won't let us succeed."

edit 1: A strong, telling corollary is that forced immigrant groups always fare poorer than willful immigrant groups. Always.

edit 2: How many generations removed from communist tyranny are America's Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants? How're they doing?

<comment><USER9> 'Communist tyranny' as you term it, is very different from systematic racism. I doubt that the attitude of 'they won't let us' is really without merit - just 20 years ago, MTV would not play music by black artists.

Black America has come vey far, and is one of the most dominant cultural forces on the planet. That's for the peak of the society. The bottom of the society still has to deal with a lot of legacy problems, and attitudes like yours don't help the problem.

I doubt that the majority of problems comes from a sense of entitlement, like you strangely enough, seem to believe.

<comment><USER8> _I doubt that the majority of problems comes from a sense of entitlement, like you strangely enough, seem to believe._

What? I'm not making value judgments.

This is absurdly simple. If people have reason to believe that their efforts will be in vain, then they make no effort. But it's worse than that with socio-economic groups. Some members come to rely on the group's official explanation for lack of success, in order to maintain self-dignity. Those members hold back the others in their group to the best of their ability, else the official defense of mediocrity be disproven.

A great example is the Irish Catholics in America. "No Irish Need Apply" signs? Never happened (in America). <http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no- irish.htm> The myth of The Other keeping them down was necessary for them as a group. Even up through the first half of the 20th century, they insisted they were being held down as the explanation for their much lower income levels relative to white Protestants. Then came 1960. JFK was elected. If one of your group can get elected president, there's no more need for excuses. Since 1960, Irish Catholics have grown more and more like white Protestants. Both have almost the exact same income distribution now. Catholic church attendance has plummeted since 1960, asymptotically approaching Protestant church attendance. The group stopped reaching for excuses, and things got better for them. Fast.

<comment><USER9> Catholics and protestants are indistinguishable from one another.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, they are _now_. That's the freaking point. Two groups who slaughtered each other for centuries are now indistinguishable to observers.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Advanced civilizations could be communicating with neutrino beams - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-05-advanced-civilizations-neutrino.html <comment><USER2> Interesting view. The author writes:

 _"To summarize things with another quote from one of Dyson 's famous essays: "When we look into the universe for signs of artificial activities, it is technology and not intelligence that we must search for. It would be much more rewarding to search directly for intelligence, but technology is the only thing we have any chance of seeing.""_

This sounds like empiricism. I'm curious if the consensus these days is searching for technology?

<comment><USER3> What does it even mean to "search directly for intelligence"? Intelligence isn't visible stuff. You can see things that are done or made through intelligent action, and in this context that would constitute technology.

<comment><USER4> The distinction is somewhat ill-defined, I agree

But how would you classify something like SETI. Looking for radio waves that show a pattern. To me, that would be "searching directly for intelligence".</comment></comment></comment>


Missed opportunity: Penny Arcade's Robert Khoo reviews Your business plan - <AUTHOR>

Penny Arcade is one of the oldest and largest webcomics.  Years ago, they were on-and-off destitute, lost the rights to their own comic, and other sorts of disasters.
Robert Khoo single-handedly turned them into the empire they are today, with multiple IPs, games, conferences, charities and more.  Details in this Wired article, halfway down, starting at "Back at the office":
http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/mf_pennyarcade?currentPage=all
One of the rewards in their Kickstarter is that Robert Khoo does a comprehensive review of your business plan, for a backing at the $2500 level.  This is ridiculously cheap for the time and experience of someone like Khoo.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade-sells-out
There's five hours left to back it as of this post. <comment><AUTHOR> And clickable:

[http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/mf_...](http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/magazine/15-09/mf_pennyarcade?currentPage=all)

[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny- arcade...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pennyarcade/penny-arcade-sells- out)</comment>


Ask HN: What is the best published paper you read in 2016? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> So far, it's _" Deep Networks with Stochastic Depth"_:

[https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.09382](https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.09382)

</comment><comment><USER3> The essay writing service paper i published in 20l6.</comment>


Show HN: How much will your shares be worth when your company sells? - <AUTHOR> https://whenwesell.com/ <comment><USER2> Cool initiative! Once in a while I find myself pondering this question, kind of like I ponder the nature of the universe, in the sense that I know my answer will always be wrong. :)

Seriously though, I have absolutely no idea about this stuff, so much so that I can't even answer the four questions that this website asks me. One might think this financially irresponsible, but I've learned from both HN discussions, and the empathically painful experience watching others in past companies thinking they were going to get rich in an exit, just to see all the money vanish to already-rich outside investors. That is, I've learned to just negotiate a good salary/bonus/work-life-balance and treat the shares as a mystery box that will probably never be opened, or at most have some trinkets inside when it is opened.

That said, I think it would be cool if your website could help guide me on how to answer the four questions you pose. Like what forms to look at, maybe who to email in the company (and how) to get some of this info, how to estimate what the company will sell for, stuff like that.

Another way to look at this, is that anyone who could answer these four questions can probably already estimate their take-home themselves. So perhaps target this more at completely clueless people like myself.

Anyway I hope that's helpful. I definitely want there to be more tools like this out there.</comment>


The sci-fi cities of Bezos's Blue Origin derive from his teacher Gerard O'Neill - <AUTHOR> https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/05/space-colony-design-jeff-bezos-blue-origin-oneill-colonies/589294/ <comment><USER2> The idea feels out of date because optimism about the future is out of date. More people are willing to believe that humanity should go extinct than believe that humanity should colonize space. The author's foil for Gerard O'Neill is none other than Rachel Carson, whose advocacy against pesticides has directly led to countless human deaths from otherwise-preventable diseases like malaria. Instead of someone like O'Neill who tries to figure out how humanity can grow and flourish throughout the solar system, our hero is the savior of the mosquito.

<comment><USER3> The funny/stupid/ironic thing is, the reasons people think humanity should just "go extinct" are all the reasons we should move to space instead. There's no story of "ecosystem damage" where there is no ecosystem in the first place.

Though based on my experiences on HN, even some people here need this really bashed into their heads, that _we can 't hurt ecosystems that don't exist_. ("What if some do?" Then by all means worry about them, but by resources, they are a fraction of a fraction of a percent of what the universe has.) There is a major unexamined assumption that people have that life exists everywhere, and therefore we can't put a toe outside our planet without stomping on something, simply because that's our Earth-based experience. Once brought to the conscious level it's obvious that it's false, but it's hard to get it up to that level for some people.

<comment><USER4> >There's no story of "ecosystem damage" where there is no ecosystem in the first place.

There's also no story of humanity where there is no ecosystem in the first place.

I think the hazard isn't in stomping on an exo-Earth ecosystem.

I think it's that if we can't avoid damage to multi-billion year evolved, robust ecosystems on our home planet, we might not successfully craft off- planet ecosystems that will sustain us indefinitely.

<comment><USER2> Even Earth's ecosystem is as much "crafted" by human hands as it is "natural" in the first place, and that's been the case for millennia. It's not merely a question of "avoiding damage". It's a question of how we deliberately choose to craft the Earth's ecosystem in the future.

<comment><USER5> Just because the natural system has tolerated meddling and abuse does not amount to crafting. In fact the exercises of trying to create an artificial system failed miserably... and will likely again. And that's a great reason to try to go to space, to learn about how incompetent we are with our tech despite being full of ourselves by taking all the things provided freely by the earth for us to abuse and exploit while giving back virtually nothing. I mean humans often don't bury their dead naturally they burn them or embalm them... we give back nothing, we take everything: THIS IS SPARTA!

<comment><USER2> The "natural system" has tolerated _millennia_ of "meddling and abuse", and that "meddling and abuse" has largely served to make the ecosystem more habitable to humanity. We don't even know what an un-"meddled" nature would even be like. Even the Amazon rainforest is in large part a product of human cultivation starting 11,000 years ago. The transformation of aurochs from a wild megafauna to a technology to transform inedible grass into edible milk and beef is also over 10,000 years old. The artificial evolution of our hunting and working companion, the dog, is millennia older still.

<comment><USER5> It's telling a millennia is 1,000 years. 10,000 years is a blink of an eye. The dinosaurs were around for over 160 million years, that is sixteen thousand times longer -- talk about a millennia. More habitable for humanity, deadly for pretty much every other living thing. Heck we were even doing all that much until 300 year ago -- that's 160 million divided by 533,333. So let's see the damage we did in 300 years multiplied by 533,333 times, yeah we're going the way of the dinosaurs almost half a million times faster than the dinosaurs.

We need maybe like 100 million or less people total on the planet. And 7 or 70 or heck 700 billion littered through the rest of the solar system. The chances of the survival of our species and life in general on the planet the would be infinitely greater than what we have done in the past 300 years. Population growth outside the planet raises absolutely no questions about the survival of the planet or species. The rest of the solar system is already completely and utterly dead as far as we know. No arguments about pollution or stability or sustainability or survival apply to it.

The rest of the universe as far as we know is our canvas, but please spare the damn planet from where we came. It's rare and nearly impossible to replace.

<comment><USER6> "tolerated" nothing like we've thrown at it in exponentially increasing form every year since 1900... and by all accounts it's not "tolerating" it very well at the moment. Fisheries? Sea water contamination? Air pollution? Groundwater contamination (fracking? agricultural runoff?) Rainforest loss (The Amazon! how many hectares lost per day? Palm oil plantations supplanting Indonesian rainforest, etc...) all on top of human caused climate change...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's see...

Getting resources from the moon seems out-of-date these days because the moon is far away in terms of energy even if it is close in distance. Getting resources from asteroids makes more sense.

As for Reagan and Thatcher I don't see either one as oriented toward growth, but rather oriented towards a "war against inflation" that involved higher interest rates, austerity, and tolerance for a lower rate of GDP growth so long as the pain was felt by the middle and below. Reagan might have had sharper rhetoric against environmentalism, but the movement did not collapse until the Clinton years.

When I've been envisioning space colonies lately it has been really large structures; I am fascinated by the idea that you can build a "small ringworld" where the rotation holds in the air with a scale size of a megameter or so, particularly if you can keep the upper atmosphere cold.

The rotation speeds of such a thing are close to orbital velocity and the material requirements are similar to that of a space elevator... Unless you can construct an orbital-velocity bearing in which case you can build a belt around it to reinforce it.

Even then it is hard to build room for any vertical relief into the budget, no high mountains, no deep oceans, probably you get a rather uncomfortable hydrological cycle.

It would probably look different from one of those O'Neil colonies since you'd have a very blue sky and most of the things that look different from a planet would be far away and would look small. A lot depends on if the z-axis of the colony is long or short.

<comment><USER2> Ringworlds and orbitals are significantly bigger and harder to build than O'Neill cylinders. O'Neill cylinders are potentially feasible within a century or two; ringworlds and orbitals would take much longer.

<comment><USER8> >O'Neill cylinders are potentially feasible within a century or two

Is there anything fundamentally holding us back from building one _right now_? I mean there's the obvious problem that nobody has a good reason to build one, and only a hand full of entities have the funding to do so. But the engineering challenges seem to be on the level of building LHC or ITER: not nessesarily easy, but very doable.

<comment><USER9> SpaceX is claiming in the neighborhood of $1500/kg to put something into LEO. If you want to put a structure on the order of billions of kilograms into orbit it would make more sense to get that mass from something already out there and park it in high orbit instead - and space-based mining technology doesn't exist yet.

<comment><USER10> Closer to $1100 per kg for Falcon Heavy.

<comment><USER11> And something like $300 per kg for Starship (on the assumption of roughly $30M for a fully reusable launch - Musk says it should be cheaper than F9 per launch - and 100 tonnes to LEO) if they're successful in minimizing refurbishment between launches, and there's enough business to spread the development costs over enough launches.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How efficient of us to be already bored of something that can't exist any sooner than 50 years from now.

</comment><comment><USER12> Issac Arthur has covered more modern near-future rotating habitat designs: (As well as much larger, further future designs.)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JAU3w9mB8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JAU3w9mB8)

There are more recent designs which use solar panels and LEDs for lighting, which allows for the use of entirely stationary radiation shielding.

<comment><USER13> Big shoutout to SFIA for covering such 'out of the world' futuristic matters!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Those NASA pictures from from a 1975 government document entitled "Space Settlements, a Design Study". I have a copy right here.

It has been scanned ( [https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/s.s.doc.html](https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/75SummerStudy/s.s.doc.html) ) but a quick click around didn't show any of the cool paintings.

<comment><USER15> There's some cool paintings here

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colon...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space)

<comment> T-A Another good one:

[https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/art.html](https://space.nss.org/settlement/nasa/70sArt/art.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Looking at these huge open spaces, I can't help but wonder what would happen after a single crack from oncoming debris. To avoid failing all at once a space habitat should be divided into a bunch of smaller sub-compartments -- like the Titanic!

<comment><USER17> Something that is sometimes pointed out about holes in spacecraft is that you don't lose air as fast as movies would imply. After all, the pressure difference between inside and outside is only 1 atmosphere.

For instance, if a micro-meteor created a bullet-sized hole in the International Space Station, it would take 5-10 minutes for the air pressure to drop to 0.5 atmospheres. The kilometers-scale space colonies described here would take much longer. More than enough time for some drone to patch it, or for the inhabitants to get to "life boats" or some sort of shelter.

I think the important part, then, would be to design the shell such that damage in one part can't spread too far.

<comment><USER18> Exactly - these thing as designed by ONeil are HUGE - 30 km long on the "default" island three type.

The solid walls would be meters thick, so the projectile would have to be very masive and/or very fast. And even then it would take a long time for pressure to reach dangerously low levels.

<comment><USER19> I would expect lots of double and triple hulls. Especially on the glassy parts. Micrometorite smashes through a pane and it only opens up the compartmentalized space between the walls. It doesn't even depressurize anything because the secondary hull can be left unpressurized. These can then be repaired by technicians.

A big emergency plug can be designed for large impacts, and as a last resort everybody can be trained in the use of emergency depressurization shelters. It's not without its risks, but at the same time it's not like the Earth is totally safe either. O'Neill colonies don't have to worry about natural disasters.

<comment><USER20> There are already proposals for resin-filled self-healing polymers and epoxies. This would provide a high amount of resilience to small impacts.

<comment><USER18> I've seen a clever concept with special has filled baloons covered with a sticky resin layer from the inside.

If there is a hull breach the baloons are automatically released, get sucked into the hole, break apart and seal it with the resin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here's the thing: it is probably possible, given enough investment, to get a self sustaining civilization in space started. But it wouldn't necessarily help the people still on earth very much.

Take any island nation: Iceland for example. They have a small population so they can't make everything they need; they import lumber, cars, food, etc. And they always have, right from day 1 that the island was settled.

In space however the cost of constantly lifting goods from earth is too high to do that forever. So they have to be totally self sufficient. That means manufacturing, energy, extraction of minerals from asteroids, everything has to be in place. I'd say minimum 10 million population before they can assemble the diversity of industries to do that.

Once they are at that point though, what are they going to trade with earth? Any minerals they obtain will be better used in space then parachuting them down to the surface for processing. So they wouldn't need us at all. So it's possible but politically very difficult to justify.

<comment><USER21> Oh, and I forgot the obvious danger: any people in space always have the "high ground" militarily since they can drop a rock on us whenever they want. So we'll be in no position to make demands either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My first though is who would populate these cities. Secular society does not seem capable of reproducing at above replacement rate and global population is expected to peak and start declining this century. Would people start having more children again if housing was plentiful?

</comment><comment><USER23> It has been decades since I read the High Frontier, but as I recall on of the ideas was that the stations were initially there (in simplified form) to allow for Orbital Power Satellites to be deployed and serviced.

It would be nice if we could deploy such, assuming we manage to avoid them being used as microwave weapons.

</comment><comment><USER24> Bezos is in PR and sales pitch mode for his sight-seeing trips. Watching a launch involves listening to an endless marketing and sales pitch from that woman who speaks like she's going to hock a loogie.

</comment><comment><USER25> I thought the whole presentation was pretty cool. Those colonies are just visions of what might be built by future generations. He has new ideas about the future of industry and that's exciting. But I have a hard time seeing the scales he's talking about. Those colonies would not be able to hold billions of people. I'm not sure if moving industry off of Earth, especially for environmental reasons, makes a lot of sense. But when people imagine the future as being exactly like the present it's just tiring and stupid. I don't think he was acting like he knew all the answers but he's moving forward.

<comment><USER2> > But I have a hard time seeing the scales he's talking about. Those colonies > would not be able to hold billions of people.

It entirely depends on how many of them you build. You could also achieve much higher densities than Earth with no real loss of quality of life, since you wouldn't necessarily build massive oceans or deserts or mountains. (Though I would really love to live on an O'Neill cylinder that was laid out as an archipelago!)

<comment><USER26> Also, if we get to a point where we can build them from carbon nanotubes, we could make them the size of continents.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The whole presentation is made to emotionally engage an audience of one. One nostalgic non-reader who cares fuck-all about science but who probably remembers those 70's vintage color plates and is all about big ego-driven projects - i.e. Mr. Space Force.

I don't believe for a second that Bezos thinks significant numbers of people living in floating habitats is happening any time soon if ever, but I do think he wants a bite at a contract to go to the moon, and everything about this media push down to the 2024 timeline (call me, mr president) is about pushing those buttons in one particular man's lizard brain.

<comment><USER28> Could you please stop creating accounts for each few comments you post? That's against the site guidelines, and we ban accounts that do it. HN is a community, and it's important for community that users have an identity that others can relate to.

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

I've written about this many times here: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20community%20identity&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

Also, this comment is much too much of a flamewar rant to be a good comment for HN. If you have a substantive point, please make it without stooping to that.

<comment><USER24> HN is not a community when drive-by down-voters are allowed. If they provided a comment with their down-vote that would be community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Given Amazon want to automate humans out of their logistics process here, why would they do anything with humans on the moon?

<comment><USER8> The same reason oil rigs aren't fully automated: Humans are very versatile and agile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Anyone who spends more on escaping Earth than on saving it is saying f*ck you to most of our 7.7 bio. people.

<comment><USER31> Excepting the fact that technology developed for space (1957-present) has made huge improvements in ground based life.

At its absolute peak the Apollo program consumed 4.4% of the US federal government budget.

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?i...](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/infographics/infographic.view.php?id=11358)

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

<comment><USER8> Even technologies that are not direct spinoffs often benefit greatly. For example the Apollo onboard computers created demand for smaller computers, accelerating development of integrated circuits and dropping their price. Some credit Apollo with singlehandedly dropping IC prices from $1000 to $20 [1]. If it wasn't for Apollo we likely wouldn't be on this forum.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_ci...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_circuit#First_semiconductor_ICs)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just watch Prometheus. This is the same hubris and greed, even if well intentioned.

As the other commentator said, they are too fragile to serve as humanity's "back-up". As theme parks or transit vessels, sure. But not as our back-up.

Second, and in my humble opinion more importantly, these will tend to be built and owned by entities and thus everyone in them will be serfs. I honestly can't say that a similar scenario wouldn't play out for a planet, claimed as owned by the first flag planted. But, when the structure is wholly built and owned by a profit driven entity such as Amazon... Perhaps they can be owned by consortiums or non for profit entities, there is still issue #1.

Finally. Why build one of these (gravity levels or for transit, I guess being the valid reason I can see, but maybe there is a planet-based solution for the gravity issue, idk) instead of utilizing the planets that are already right there for the using??? And instead of using all the resources to build a habitat, build something else.

Edit: These are hotels, not homes.

<comment><USER17> Bezos addresses your final question in the presentation. The livable planetary surfaces other than earth (Moon, Mars, maybe Ganymede or something) aren't that big. In total they sum up to somewhere in the realm of Earth's land surface. So inhabiting them is "only" going to enable doubling the human capacity. Whereas space itself will increase human capacity by many orders of magnitude.

<comment><USER33> These statements are always fantastical. When we talk about humanity exceeding Earth's resource footprint, the issue isn't land in itself. All of our immediate issues come from balancing:

a) How do we harvest energy b) How much non-human components do we want to leave, and in what configuration, given that significant non-human components are currently required to give us a livable environment c) How do we distribute resources

Yes ultimately all of those are constrained by land area, but we have so many other things to solve first before land area is THE problem. And hilariously, it's more or less the same problems we need to solve before we need to colonize anything. How do we efficiently (measured in materials, surface area, maintenance, capital, operating cost) collect energy. How do we create and maintain true closed systems that are reasonably conducive to non-shitty human lives. How do we spread the wealth so we don't burn it all down.

<comment><USER17> Bezos brings land area into it because assuming a 3% growth in energy usage per year, as has been the historical trend, we will need to cover the earth in solar panels in 200 years.

Something he doesn't touch on is fission/fusion instead of solar, so I am curious about how that changes the calculus.

<comment><USER34> 3% energy growth is unsustainable in the long run; at that rate we are about 1000 years from using more energy per year than the sun emits in totality:

2015 energy usage 110PWh for the entire year[1]

That works out to ~1.8e13 W average power.

Total output for the sun is about 4e26 W[2]

This works out to about 44 doublings, and 3% growth is a doubling every 24 years which means we need to surpass Kardashev II in 1000 years.

1: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption) 2: [https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml](https://hypertextbook.com/facts/1999/MatthewTsang.shtml)

<comment><USER2> 1000 years is a long time. Might help to have more people around to help figure out interstellar travel.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are most people complacent? - <AUTHOR>

I've seen a lot of wisdom on HN and so am posting this in search of some of it:
I spend a lot of time thinking of ways I can improve this world and the people in it.  The catalyst for most of this drive is the fact that most people I meet don't seem happy or satisfied with life.  I want to help them find purpose.  However, I am starting to wonder if such an effort is futile in the end, or if it my thinking is off.
We all strive to find purpose in this world until we give up or find it. I believe I have found mine for the moment (by whatever somewhat-unknown means) and have found it incredibly rewarding and satisfying, and seeing others be apathetic/lifeless/careless towards most things is becoming increasingly disturbing to me.  I can't count the number of times my co-workers mention that they hate their job and are doing nothing to solve the issue.  A lot of people don't seem to care about much beyond remaining in comfort and having fun once in a long while.  While in school (and college) people invest huge amounts of time and money into these massive self-development schemes (school) without focus or purpose.  It screams confusion and mindlessness!
I wonder if I'm fighting unchangeable human nature.
Are people changeable?
Is purpose something that can be found by all, or only some?
Does clear purpose always lead to joy as it has for me?
Is general inaction and having a risk-free and comfortable life perfectly good, or can it always be considered "settling" and irrational aversion to change?  Is it just a different personality type?
Or is it complacency and confusion?  I'm banking on this. <comment><USER2> These are the questions that make us human. I, all to frequently, feel like everyone around me is simply a machine for turning O2 into CO2. Reminds me of this xkcd -- <http://xkcd.com/610/>

I believe that everyone _can_ find their purpose (or purposes). Most people won't. I don't know why; perhaps it's easier? Maybe we should look to the Wizard of Oz -- Dorothy was purposeless, until she found one. If you interpret the story as an allegory, her trip down the yellow brick road was her search for purpose. It's even possible to say that the whole thing was in her mind, which made her adventure the manifestation of her confusion (chaos manifested in a tornado, nonetheless).

General inaction might be "settling" for you, while it might be perfectly fine for another. That other person may be focused on having children and a family -- not necessarily a waste of their time.

OTOH, I alternate between inaction and motivation on a weekly basis. So even an individual is not as consistent as you might assume.

But I do see the world as something only consciously inhabited by about 1% of its inhabitants. No moral objection; the red pill isn't for everyone -- it can be scary down the rabbit hole.</comment>