Why Are We Still So Fat? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/health/obesity-genetics-surgery-diet.html <comment><USER2> This article is disturbingly enthusiastic about bariatric surgery, an extreme procedure with limited success and serious side-effects.

The long and short of it is that we understand far too little about the human body and what drives weight gain and difficulty losing.

For instance, there are complex health and immune issues (e.g., mast cell disorders) that can drive weight gain and difficulty losing in spite of healthy diets and high levels of activity (and researchers think mast cell disorders alone may affect 10% or more of the population, but was named only 5 years ago and is still poorly understood. What else could be similar that we just don't understand yet?)

Beyond this, what we put in our bodies (various medicines, antibiotics, ingredients in processed foods, various pesticides etc, even artificial light) may have effects on our physiology that we don't yet have a strong understanding of.

Our microbiomes are still a complete mystery to us, deeply impacting how and what we absorb from our food. The same food does not impact every body in the same way, period.

Bariatric surgery is a band-aid over a gaping wound. Until we understand the complexities of human physiology at a more sophisticated level than a high- schooler in physics class (calories in, calories out just doesn't cut it) -- we are going to continue seeing public health impacts in the form of fat and disease -- which may often have underlying causes that the fat is simply the most visible symptom of.

Edit: Seriously guys, is there any other area of science where people are so convinced that anecdotal and small-sample (both in terms of n and longitudinality) observations are valid? There's a huge market for delusion about fat, we're fighting that as much as we're fighting to learn more about the human body.

<comment><USER3> I recently read The Obesity Code by Dr. Jason Fung and in it he states that bariatric surgery is little more than surgically enforced fasting. Most people can fast without doing the surgery.

I highly recommend the book. It's more like a science book about dieting than a diet book. Now that I understand that when I eat is as important as what I eat, I've been able to lose 20 pounds (and still going). And, yes, sugar (especially fructose) and refined carbs are bad.

<comment><USER4> > Most people can fast without doing the surgery.

Very few fat people have that level of self control. That's why they're fat in the first place.

<comment><USER5> I think a lot of people can fast, but are never told to try this. Most people are recommended to eat 5 meals 300kcal each - and this is hard to do. Tell them to fast for 18h and eat in 6h window without calorie counting (but no shit food) and I would guess more people can do it.

<comment><USER6> All that does is attach a ritual to the fasting process. People start to think that it's the ritual doing the work, but really it's the calorie restriction. Again and again, study after study proves that restricting calories to 700 calories reverses diabetes in obese people and in fact cures their obesity, too.

It's no surprise that people who put on 100+ pounds of extra weight once would tend to put on 100+ pounds of extra weight a second time. But it's silly to claim that there is an underlying medical reason it's happening.

The body gets used to whatever conditions you face. Human beings have thrived in the Arctic Circle, the North African deserts, and everywhere in between. Obese people have accustomed themselves to an obese lifestyle. If they can make a permanent break and embrace the lifestyle of a person with normal weight then they can stay skinny forever. In the end, most people just don't want to exercise 2+ times per day and limit their portion sizes. So they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The answer, in a word: "Sugar".

Obviously you can't take the word of one random commenter on HN. There's a lot of reporting around this in good news sources: [https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar- in...](https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-industry- shifted-blame-to-fat.html)

When I say "the answer" I should, instead, state that that's a large part of the reason. It's not the SOLE reason. Of course it's more nuanced than that.

<comment><USER8> It's more Grains than any type of sugar

<comment><USER9> Humans have been eating grains for 10,000 years, and sugar for a hundred.

<comment><USER10> humans were extracting sugar from sugarcane 8,000 years ago. It was consumed heavily in india 2000 years ago. BUt of course we've been eating free sugars in foods for as long as we've been around.

<comment><USER9> Sugar was a rare luxury until recently. Even fruit was a luxury historically. Yes people ate sugar more than a hundred years ago, but it was a few pounds per year. Modern intake is more than fifty times as much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People are fat because they eat too much, and they have almost no incentive to stop it. Sure, they are mostly eating the wrong things too, in the wrong amounts, but the bottom line is the number of calories going in the front door.

I lost 40 pounds all while drinking gallons of beer in college. I did it by eating less and moving more. It was not an optimal way to lose weight, but it was effective.

These days I keep thin by eating high protein/fat, easy-to-digest carbs, and vegetables, and keeping sugar to a minimum.

There's a million ways to lose weight, and some are easier than others. But I promise you, if you eat less than your body needs to survive, you will start losing weight.

Today it's culturally acceptable to be fat, and there is ready access to so-so quality food in large cheap quantities. I love sugar. I have a massive sweet tooth. I have to be disciplined to stop from consuming all the candy in the world. Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess.

<comment><USER12> > Some people choose not to be disciplined. Their choice I guess.

Empathy goes a long way. I think as a society we will get to the solution faster with the view that some people might have stronger urges to overeat then you. Congratulations you worked hard. Don't discount what others face.

<comment><USER11> Please, why do you think I needed to lose 40 pounds in the first place? Not because I was the paragon of willpower I can tell you. I still go off the rails and eat an entire package of Oreos in a single sitting sometimes. It's a constant struggle for me, but I don't make excuses and I keep persevering. Other people can do that too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There was a direct up-tick in obesity almost immediately after the government's Food Guide Pyramid was released.

[https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the- food-...](https://www.bellybelly.com.au/health-lifestyle/did-the-food-pyramid- cause-our-obesity-crisis/)

The Food Pyramid And The Food Industry Contributed To A Massive Increase In Sugar, Carbohydrate And Calorie Intake.

Humans simply aren't supposed to eat so many carbs and so much sugar.

Whenever you eat carbs and sugar, it triggers insulin production. Insulin causes your body to store fat instead of burning it as fuel.

I've been doing a ton of research on this topic lately, and the /r/keto forum on reddit has proven to be a very useful resource.

Another one of my favorite resources has been the Youtube channel, "What I've Learned", which does some pretty amazing breakdowns on the topic, if you are interested: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/vid...](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqYPhGiB9tkShZorfgcL2lA/videos)

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's some more evidence for the central conceit of this article:

Every legitimate long term study of major non surgical weight loss shows that it doesn't happen for the vast, vast majority of people. It's basically freakish when succesful in the long term.

1) ["In controlled settings, participants who remain in weight loss programs usually lose approximately 10% of their weight. However, one third to two thirds of the weight is regained within 1 year, and almost all is regained within 5 years. "]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1580453))

2) Giant meta study of long term weight loss: ["Five years after completing structured weight-loss programs, the average individual maintained a weight loss of >3% of initial body weight."]([http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full](http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.full))

3) Less Scientific: [Weight Watcher's Failure - "about two out of a thousand Weight Watchers participants who reached goal weight stayed there for more than five years."]([https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight- watchers/](https://fatfu.wordpress.com/2008/01/24/weight-watchers/))

4) [The reason why it's impossible seems to be that although calories in < calories out works, the body of a fat person makes it extremely difficult psychologically to eat less.]([http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker- pope-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/magazine/tara-parker-pope-...)) This is borne out by the above data.

5) [The only thing that does seem to work in the long term is gastric surgery.]([http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1421028/))

Moreover, you won't find any reputable study on the web where the average person lost 10%+ of their body weight and kept it off for five years. Not even one.

<comment><USER15> so if calories in < calories out does not work, what about increasing exercise?

<comment><USER16> Exercise is also not the easy answer. Your best bet is still to change what you eat.

But it's not "calories in < calories out" that you should focus on. It's the quality of what you eat. For instance it's super easy to overeat calories wise if you eat candy since it doesn't do anything for your hunger, or if it does it makes you crave even more. While it's much harder to overeat on steak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm down 83 lbs from 2017 and I'm at a healthy BMI for the first time in 15 years. I know I will not gain the weight back. Why? Because I finally figured out how to manage a routine, how to exercise regularly, how to plan out what I eat, and I learned to get enough sleep.

Don't want to be fat anymore? Stop eating at restaurants, cook all your own food, bring in a lunch to work, count your calories. Also exercise, lots. And get 7+ hours a sleep a night.

That's it, that's all it takes.

<comment><USER18> > count your calories

That's all it really is. Everything else just makes it easier to eat few enough calories, including any crazy diets.

<comment><USER5> I can't see myself counting calories for the rest of my life

<comment><USER19> Don't fall victim to all-or-nothing thinking. I actually did it for almost 8 months straight, and then stopped when I went on vacation. The nice thing is, unlike some forms of data, if you skip a week or three, it won't hurt you. You just hop on the scale and you know where you're at, you can start again any day.

But even if you only do it for a few weeks, you'll learn valuable lessons about your good and bad habits. You might not ever have to do it again. Or you might prefer to keep doing it. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It is pretty simple. Processed carbs that spike your glycemic index lead to a situation where your body has met its caloric needs for the day but your satiety mechanisms get wonked so you feel hungry when you should not be eating again. This is evidenced by things like white bread spiking your glycemic index higher than raw sugar.

This can be solved by not eating any foods that appreciably spike your glycemic index, which basically means no processed carbs. Vegetables for example are almost entirely carbohydrates but are encased in fiber so they do not get absorbed as fast into your system.

If you eat 'fast' carbs you have no choice but to starve yourself because listening to your natural instincts will automatically mean overeating.

<comment><USER6> _People_ don't have glycemic indices. _Foods_ have glycemic indices.

In a normal person with a functional pancreas, no amount of sugar or high- glycemic foods will cause hunger. It's just not possible. This is because the body naturally releases insulin and the hunger goes away (so does the blood sugar).

The reason people become insulin-resistant is because they eat too much, and put on weight. High-glycemic-index foods are implicated in weight gain because they are high-calorie foods. The added insulin means that the body is also absorbing them more readily. Insulin causes people to gain weight; in fact, one of the side-effects of insulin injections for diabetics is... weight gain! That's because insulin's sole purpose in the body is to make it absorb calories and deliver it to cells.

All that is to say that you're conflating effect for cause. Weight gain causes diabetes, which causes sugar cravings. Sugar doesn't cause diabetes, and it only causes weight gain if you eat too much of it. There are whole societies on earth that eat almost nothing but high glycemic index foods: the rice farmers of Bangladesh; the mango farmers of Central America; the rural people of Morocco who mostly eat dates; and so on.

Sugar doesn't cause diabetes or weight gain. Weight gain causes diabetes, which in turn causes sugar cravings.

<comment><USER20> I misspoke, replace glycemic index with insulin and I'm right.

For example if you eat 200 calories of ice cream vs broccoli. The ice cream will be absorbed so fast into your system that you will get hungry again before you actually need more calories. Every insulin spike is a notch towards metabolic syndrome. It is the crazy insulin spiking that leads to diabetes.

<comment><USER6> _" Every insulin spike is a notch towards metabolic syndrome."_

Completely disagree with this. The best available evidence suggests that it is visceral fat, not insulin itself, that causes insulin resistance. There is an underlying autoimmune malfunction at the heart of it. But because people with diabetes often crave sugar (because their bodies fail to absorb it), people have conflated cause and effect.

<comment><USER20> There is a growing body of research in this vein. You can find several recent studies like this if you are interested enough. This one in particular has 20% of the subjects no longer needing blood sugar medication after 10 weeks.

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/31/low-carb-diet- he...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/31/low-carb-diet-helps- control-diabetes-new-study-suggests/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Totally anecdotal, and I wasn't obese but only marginally overweight; but when I was in the USA, I couldn't seem to get any lighter than 165-170 pounds even when trying to diet and exercise heavily (like 3-4 times a week of strenuous exercise for 1-2 hours minimum, and keeping track of all the food I was eating); but then when I lived in Japan for a few months (probably one of the skinniest countries in the world), I didn't even try to diet and I lost 15 pounds (now I'm at 150 lbs).

Lifestyle is clearly a big influence here. My understanding is that generally speaking foods are not sweetened as much there, portions are smaller, and people walk a hell of a lot more. I've also heard that the quality of ingredients in general tends to be higher across the board.

The cheap food, which I ate a whole lot of, aren't even something I could consider "healthy"—lots of fried food like tempura and kara-age, along with lots of noodles—but even without restraint eating those, I still ended up losing weight without trying. Interestingly I think my diet got a lot higher in carbohydrate intake and my protein intake shrank. Probably some amount of my weight loss involved muscle loss, but my belly shrank considerably as well, so I don't think it was exclusively that.

I think I just gradually got used to eating less, stimulating myself with sugar less frequently and intensely (omg, even diet soft drinks and gum are so powerfully sweet), and being more active, and now that I'm back I realize just how much of a premium I have to pay to not get huge portions of food completely saturated with fat and sugar.

</comment><comment><USER22> As a 100% sedentary person (I sit for maybe 14-15 hours a day) I've had pretty good results with a combination of:

* 6 days of gym (4 lifting, 2 HIIT + cardio for 40 min)

* 2-3 days of water fasting every week, sometimes every other week

* reduced calories

* cutting out most foods that have added sugar, sweeteners or refined grains in them

* doing most of the cooking myself with non-processed ingredients (so vegetables and meats you could get at any market)

* 8-9 hours of sleep on a fixed schedule

It takes a significant amount of discipline and lifestyle changes, but it does lead to also significant results. You generally can't sit in front of a computer as much as I do and also expect to look a certain way without a fairly radical approach. 185lbs to about 160ish in ~6 months at 5'11".

I have a ridiculous amount of energy and for once I feel pretty good about how clothes look on me. Ultimately you have to experiment and see what works for you, most bodies are different and will react differently in subtle ways to diet and exercise.

<comment><USER23> You aren't 100% sedentary if you're in the gym six days a week!

<comment><USER24> A friend of mine puts it this way. If you don't want to die of a heart attack, figure out how only sit, sleep, stand or eat for 23 1/2 or fewer hours a day.

<comment><USER25> That's a great way to put it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> FWIW The few times I was in the US I noticed a couple of things different from my country: 1. We drink water/coffee/tea all day (mostly without sugar), in the US I see sodas constantly (ok, usually light). Also, US guests here always ask for the soda machine while we constantly offer black coffee and water. 2. Portions are huge! One cannot go home with even a trace of hunger. Whereas here, it's ok if it at least tasted nice. 3. Almost all food was sweet, have some Asian wok food? Extremely sweet chili sauce on top. 4. Unlimited refills of soda. It's nice but you drink a lot :) 5. 4 p.m. snack? Out come the pastries (sugar and flour glued together with butter)! Here we may have a cookie or some fruit among my colleagues at least. 6. Breakfast? We have yogurt with muesli or a sandwich (meaning we put a 2 micron thick slice of cheese on the bread) and perhaps a boiled egg. In the US: The smell of Fried potatoes fills the room! 7. Pizza: Have a good pizza here and the sauce is just tomatoes and some garlic. Have a US pizza (sure we also have them here) it's sugar and salt all the way. Better drink 5 glasses of water 1 hour after eating over 10 mg of salt or you will get a headache. 8. We usually cook ourselves, from fresh vegetables and meat or fish. In the US it's much more common to eat out. It's very unlikely to pile sugar and salt into a home cooked meal. 9. I haven't seen the situation in schools but one hears these "pizza is vegetable" stories from the US, here the kids only drink water in school (at least ours, it's not obligatory but parents provide the drinks and most of them get water) and a piece of fruit. During lunch they get about 2 slices of bread with meat or cheese or chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag).

At least that was my experience. Of course, I loved the burgers and after a few days of them you start to get that real craving for them. I love burgers and I love fries.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've gone from 255 (BMI 33) down to 185 (BMI 24), back to 205, had an illness and got up to 225, now back to 210. I resent the article acting like this long-term weight loss is somehow a freak occurrence.

I just watch what I eat and exercise. Many people with obesity just don't like to exercise, but I love it. This is a natural advantage I have. But I also go on days when I don't feel like going, skip office snacks, and so on. It's neither magical nor impractical.

Ultimately, obesity has been normalized and people don't really care. This is going to be hard to change, either hard on society in funding education and support resources, or hard on the obese in cutting them off from health care and other Draconian measures.

</comment><comment><USER28> Apparently even animals such as monkeys and rats kept in labs and fed the same calories under controlled conditions are fatter than the same animals fed the same decades ago. Xenoestrogens?

<comment><USER29> It might be climate change. [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate-...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/07/climate- change-food-crops-nutrition) details how high CO2 levels lead to food crops with more sugar and less nutrients. As a result, animals fed the same diet aren't getting the same calories as they used to.

<comment><USER30> Soil depletion and optimizing for size has also caused a drop in vitamin and mineral content

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment> WD-42 > "This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were > so simple," Dr. Hall said.

Of course pharma companies and the healthcare system don't want it to be that simple: better to sell drugs to people to fix the problem. Likewise, consumers would rather take a pill than do something difficult, like eat properly and exercise.

When you consider how prevalent this kind of attitude is the obesity levels stop being a mystery.

</comment><comment><USER31> >> "This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were so simple," Dr. Hall said.

Well, actually it is that simple.

The problem is: 1) sugar 2) long commutes 3) sitting all day

And the solution is pretty simple, too. 1) Turn sugar down to 0 2) Do 50 burpees per day

The big meta problem is that people talk about it and complain about it and hand wring about it rather than doing the simplest thing possible.

<comment> WD-42 This applies to way more than just diet. As I've gotten older I've realized how many people are totally adverse to doing things that are even marginally difficult or inconvenient. Eating healthy and exercising definitely fall into that category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> People in the 70s didn't all have bariatric surgery, or access to miracle drugs to control hunger hormones. Nor did we all develop some mutation that caused the current obesity epidemic. Clearly something in our environment has changed. Seems to me that it would be simpler to figure out what's changed between now and then, rather than try and invent new drugs. I.e. we need to do root cause analysis rather than flounder for workarounds.

Some have suggested that the carb-heavy government food guide pyramids are to blame. That seems to be a good place to start.

</comment><comment><USER33> It's the habits.

In the 1970s - people did not have a habit of eating 3 full blown high calorie meals. They were working physically intense jobs (agriculture, mines, metallurgy etc). Nowadays the hardest thing we do is think. They'd spent more time outdoors. They'd rather do sports and spend time in nature actively resting than binge watching tv-shows and movies on the weekends. People didn't have as much food available to them as today. They also had less commodity.

Why do people regain fat they lose? It's the habits.

They'll get the bariatric surgery done, but will never change the habits. They'll go through the 600 calorie liquid diet and will continue to eat the same things that made them fat initially.

They'll continue binge watching tv shows on the weekends, without lifting anything heavier than their spoon or the remote.

They'll continue undergoing the fad diets that don't do anything but make their metabolism slower and make their bodies over compensate due to starving. People are lazy and refuse to listen to their bodies, but will gladly listen to the brainbait titles of famous ads/instagram posts.

Why we're fat? We're fat because we look for immediate gratification that sugar produces rather than the gratification of being able to climb ten floors of stairs with ease. My dad recently told me that he wants to do bariatric surgery which will "jumpstart" his weight loss. He unfortunately can't walk 200 meters right now, without getting tired. Do you think something will change if he undergoes the surgery or will he continue eating the same :) ? I bet it's the latter, since he won't have an incentive to change something.

<comment><USER34> People regain weight because of the hunger hormone Grehlin, which gets high and stays high after losing weight.

<comment><USER33> I believe you can reduce Ghrelin by fasting - I'm not near a computer to fully support this claim, but can update later with proper links to studies.

<comment><USER34> If you go on a Very Low Calorie Diet(usually in the range of 400-700 calories or less a day), your body goes into starvation mode, thinks that there must not be enough food to go around so no need to feel hungry. That might be what you're referring to as fasting should have the same effect. I haven't heard of the effect continuing after starting to eat 1000+ calories a day again though, so I'd need to see some data on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Compare the serving sizes and caloric intakes at a USA restaurant with those in Japan, for example, and you'll see why. It's not hard to figure out, we put HFCS and sugar in everything now and people eat 2x as much as they used to.

I lost 30 pounds over 2 years by being hungry non-stop and walking about 3 miles per day to work, so losing weight isn't just a "pill disease" that we can solve with a pill, it requires a person to have the self-control to be hungry and exercise, and (from experience) over-eaters don't tend to have much self-control in that area.

I think obesity should be treated more as a mental health issue than physical (for most people, there are exceptions), because there is no better way to lose weight than diet and exercise and doing it at a slow rate.

Obesity is an example of a problem like climate change. We know how to solve it (less sugar, better food, less calories, more moving) but no one wants to take those steps. I feel like this will also fall back onto the food companies, who will probably be reviled in 50 years like the tobacco companies are today.

</comment><comment><USER36> The body (ie the brain) is amazing at adapting to its environment. One thing to keep in mind is that as unhealthy food becomes the norm for a person, their brain sets a new baseline for how much of this food it thinks the body can handle (side effect: more sweets are needed to release pleasure in the brain).

Speaking from my own experience, I eat pretty healthily, and cook most of my own meals. The few times I've had anything sweet in the last decade, I could only handle a small amount of it before my brain and stomach were telling me I've had enough. If I push myself, I began to feel ill. (Example: 4-5 Sweetish Fish is enough for me)

My own defense mechanism is because of my parents. They never bought soda and sweet snacks (e.g. gushers, fruit roll ups) at the grocery store, although a handful times a year I got to go to a candy store and pick out a couple items.

I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage that they will dance on for the rest of their life.

<comment><USER37> > I would guess (based on anecdotal experience though) that a child's diet is > the number one cause/preventative of obesity. It sets the culinary stage > that they will dance on for the rest of their life.

While this is only anecdotal data, this is not true for me. I was a skinny kid because I never got soda, I never got ice cream truck, I never got pizza or pasta, and if I spent more than an hour on the computer (note: I'm a programmer now) my mom would yell at me to go outside and bike, or drag me to the local beach or town pool for the day.

Well, all that forcing me to eat "proper" instead of _teaching_ me to eat "proper" built up quite a bit of resentment apparently, in my freshman year I gained 20 lbs and kept going (with swings up and down) and I have not seen 185 lbs since then.

I'm currently 6'3" and ~260lb @ 46 years old. Last week I worked out 4 times (all Orange Theory, which is no joke). I'm about to work out again in a few minutes. I'm trying to watch what I eat, considering going back to calorie tracking but IT IS SUCH A PAIN. The tracking is more of a pain than the eating less, lol. (I'm also ADHD, which might explain why.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's not forget that obesity is also socially contagious, and there is tremendous social pressure to conform to obesity, which is why if you're less fat than fatter people, they will publicly shame you for your lack of comparable obesity with comments like "you need to eat a cheese burger" or 'get some meat on those bones' etc.

</comment><comment><USER38> Because we can spend 1$ and get 400-1200 kcals out of a vending machine (that takes 10-30 seconds to consume), while we sit at a desk all day and evening, instead of having to plant/weed/harvest/process our food in a field.

 _he says as he eats candy_

We have ridiculously kcal dense food immediately available while we also have, on average, extremely sedentary lives.

I mean, looking at:

\- Starbucks menu you can get a beverage that comes in at 500 kcals without even getting fancy.

\- Symphony milk chocolate bar: 149 kcals/ounce.

\- White Castle chicken sandwich (about half the size of a deck of cards) 350 kcals

\- Wendy's Baconator 950 kcals

\- McDonald's double bacon smokehouse burger on artisan roll 1130 kcals (most of McDonald's value meals can actually easily get into the 1000+ kcal range without any special modifications)

\- Burger King Whopper 660 kcals

\- 32 ounce Coke 370 kcals

\- Papa Johns sausage pizza 260-410 kcals a slice (depending on the pizza size)

We can get insane amounts of kcals, with relative ease, in dense little packages while being largely inactive.

Edit: since this was downvoted to -2, HN is throttling my ability to reply to the individual that replied to me, in regards to 'first world countries':

[https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0060...](https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=006032)

Obesity percentages: US 36.2%, NZ 30.8%, CA 29.4%, AU 29%, UK 27.8% all 'first world countries' out of the top 10 and if you look at the complete list the bulk of the 'first world' countries, where convenience foods/fast foods are readily available, are above 20% obesity.

<comment><USER39> There aren't very many people in first-world countries who need to farm anymore, and all first-world countries have desk jobs and vending machines, yet the rate of obesity varies widely between first-world countries.

<comment><USER40> Likewise, Belize and Qatar have higher obesity rates than the USA, so it's not necessarily correlated with the development of a nation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Because we eat like royalty. I have access to exceedingly tasty food all the time.

If you look at food we eat every day, they used to be celebration foods: Ice Cream, Tamales, Cake, etc.

Additionally, if you have a sedentary job, you won't be burning off the carbs.

</comment><comment><USER42> There are so many things wrong with this article, here are some facts.

1\. More insulin causes the body to store fat. Less insulin causes the body to burn fat.

2\. A low-carb diet lowers insulin levels.

3\. Over the last few decades they started adding sugar (carbs) into almost every food product while the US government published a food pyramid with a heavy emphasis on carbs.

4\. As the article states, now we have an obesity problem which was not as severe in the last few decades.

</comment><comment><USER43> > _"This idea that people should eat less and exercise more — if only it were > so simple," Dr. Hall said._

For the majority of people, it _is_ that simple. That doesn't mean it's easy. To give most folks a hall pass on their poor eating habits with bariatric surgery or a special pill (which are for extreme outliers) is dishonest at best and harmful or dangerous at worst.

</comment><comment><USER44> Counter-acting the factors that made a person fat in the first place seems very difficult. Especially when compounded by an always-aging body.

Off the top of my head:

      - genetic pre-dispositions
      - Eating habits during childhood
      - Eating habits during early adulthood
      - the effects on metabolism and body chemistry of the above
      - Many more, I'm sure

</comment><comment><USER45> Mostly it comes from our diet and what we eat.

We've become accustomed to eat for our senses (taste) instead of our survival (nutrition).

We're addicted to the taste of 'good' food.

Then you have food companies who are engineering that addictive taste for your senses.

A habit develops and it's hard to shake that off.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've had success getting in shape by tracking what I eat and following a weight training routine (PPL). Counting macros gives you a flexible diet. Buy a food scale and eat enough food to hit your macro goals to be at a daily 250-500 calorie deficit.

That means you'll lose 0.5 - 1 pound per week. Once you're lean, eat at a slight surplus to gain some lean body mass.

Sorry everyone, there's no magic pill that burns all of your fat. There's steroids, but you'll still have to eat enough and go to the gym.

People want to get fit but don't put in the time nor effort.

</comment><comment><USER47> It takes time, delayed gratification in this era of instant gratification is tough.

</comment><comment><USER48> > No one really knows why bodies have changed so much

How can one claim this?

</comment><comment><USER49> Eating garbage and sitting aroind all day.

<comment><USER50> Reading HN. Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Health shouldn't have to be hard. It's so simple yet we have a hard time reaching it in a normal life:

1\. Eat real food (Cook it yourself) 2\. Sleep! 3\. Exercise 4\. Socialise 5\. Avoid stress

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm currently losing weight with a weight loss specialist. They had an intro presentation and went over some of the reasons we have such an obesity epidemic and why it's so hard to keep weight off. Some of the key points they mentioned:(I'm paraphrasing here because I don't have my notes on me.)

-

There is a hunger hormone called Ghrelin. The amount that your body produces is based on the highest weight attained that you kept for at least a year. When you're at that weight, your Ghrelin levels are at about the same as someone who is 150 pounds lighter that you who is also at their max weight ever attained. However, once you've lost weight your body starts producing more Ghrelin which makes you hungrier. This takes decades to reset from whatever your bodies weight target from 'highest weight held for at least a year' to your new lower weight so basically your Ghrelin levels will be higher than average for decades after losing weight(unless you gain it back). There is also another hormone that was recently discovered to has an effect on appetite but I can't remember its name and we didn't know much about it yet.

-

Regarding gaining weight, there are three satiety signals that are used to help you not overeat. One is a feeling of fullness that only lasts for ~15 minutes but kicks in within a bite or two of calories needed to maintain weight so if you have this signal you may only gain 3 pounds max in a year as long as you don't wait 20 minutes and then go back for seconds. The second satiety signal was loss of savor(food just stops tasting good) and lasts for a couple(~4?) hours. The last was feeling nauseous(not the same as eating so much you couldn't fit another bite and can't move, we can all get that), and was triggered by eating a couple bites past the fullness signal level(if you only have this signal you may gain ~15-20 lbs in a year if I'm remembering correctly). The problem is that most people only have one or two of these signals and many don't have any of them. If you've never had to diet to lose weight and have always had a good weight level then congratulations, you probably have at least 1 or 2 of these and maybe all three. If you've had several diets and have lost hundreds of pounds in aggregate over several diets over a decade plus then chances are you probably don't have any of the 3 signals. Everyone else probably falls in the middle where they only have 1 or maybe 2 satiety signals.

-

If we were able to determine what gene/set of genes or other processes determined if you had these signals and were able to give others who don't have them the ability to receive these same signals we would be able to keep new people from gaining weight. If we found a way to reset Grehlin levels for people who have lost weight(hopefully a pill, maybe through gene modification via crispr) then we'd be able to help people who have lost weight to keep it off long term. Regarding sugars, etc. yes, it makes it infinitely harder to diet when there are so many high calorie options out there, but there are deeper underlying medical reasons out there than just that.

-

Basically, the only people who have been able to be successful at keeping weight off long term are those who either exercise 2+ hours PER DAY(less time can help with strength, etc but not with weight loss/maintenance because you'll just be hungrier and end up eating more calories to make up for the ones you burned) or those who are perpetually on a diet for the rest of their lives and work hard to re-lose any pounds gained after a trip, etc. The good news is we're making some progress in weight loss research(but still have a long ways to go) and there are decent appetite suppressants, etc. that can help you lose weight and keep it off if you go to a Dr. that specializes in this and that this isn't an impossible to solve willpower problem, but a medical one that can be fixed. The bad news is you'll probably be on a diet for the rest of your life or until we solve the above questions on satiety signals and hunger hormones.

-

tldr: it's a medical problem, not a willpower problem, and won't be fully solved until we treat it like such and invest the resources into finding a cure. Until then we're just treating the symptoms.</comment>


Programmer Destroys Seven Billion Dollar Industry With A Single Software Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0410/063.html

<comment><USER3> The title is sort of a reverse-application of the broken window fallacy. The truth is that seven billion dollars is not being destroyed; it's now available for new innovation by smaller companies, instead of going to major players like Cisco.

<comment><USER4> Stories like this are kind of an entrepreneurism Rorschach test. To people who are excited about opportunities and want to build new things themselves, things like this look like opportunities. To people who just want to get a good job they don't have to stress over unduly so that they can put a roof over their heads and spend time with their wife and kids, they think of things like this in terms of wiping out existing businesses and in terms of the poor folks that get displaced from their jobs.

<comment><USER5> I don't want to read too much into what you said, but it sounds a little like you're writing-off the second kind of people.

Actually I've found that some of those people have simply grown up believing certain things about the world. When you suggest things don't work quite the way they believe, I've found they often become excited by the possibilities.

<comment><USER4> I didn't mean to imply anything bad about the second kind of people. My first cut swung too much the other way, so I revised it -- apparently a bit too far.

I _like_ those folks. Trying to be a really good parent and provide enough for your family are perfectly admirable goals in life.

<comment><USER6> _Trying to be a really good parent and provide enough for your family are perfectly admirable goals in life._

This is equally true for (eg.) the 2 billion people in India and China, many well-educated, many of whom are valiantly striving to match the Western standard of living (seen on Western teevee programs and in movies) by earning enough to provide it for their own families. Would you deny them their opportunity by foreclosing new markets?

Compete, adapt, or be swept aside in due course -- if you really care about your family, you will put a little thought into how best to support them as the world changes. Americans will experience a decline in average real income, but those who provide globally competitive value of interest to the rising middle class in other countries should do quite well.

I'm sure a great many stenographers, buggy-whip makers, and hand-launderers provided well for their families, in their day. But I submit to you that, overall, mankind is better off, even though change may have made their lives worse for a spell.

Someone else put it thus -- competition is a discovery process: discovering better ways to do things. If you do not participate, your value to society may decline as a result of that abstinence. It may not make you a bad person, but it will likely reduce your ability to comfortably support those you care about.

Do the right thing. ;-)

<comment><USER4> The fact that I like those people and think they shouldn't be written off doesn't mean I think they're right about protecting dying sectors of the economy at the expense of strangling growth. And yes, I believe strongly in free trade and love to see the growth in standard of living in (parts of) India and China.

I do, however, support free-market-compatible ways of softening the blow such as job retraining programs and enterprise zones for the hardest-hit areas. We can't stop the clock for people, but we can try and help those people get back on their feet when they get knocked over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The impact of what mark spencer has done single handedly ( afaik he hacked the original version in C by himself over a couple of months) is freaking huge. I would rank his to be the second biggest contribution to open source, just after linux.

I have been personally testament to the havoc that this disruptive piece of code has wreaked in the telecommunications business. I worked as an angel member in my previous startup, where we built software used to handle the call dialling and management in call centres. Also known as a 'dailer',the software has a huge market in India as it is central to operating any call centre. Before we got in, the space was dominated by players like Avaya, who used to lug around with their huge expensive pieces of hardware (used to manage the real time routing and call logging). Asterisk changed all of it and made possible for small startups to enter the fray.

Proprietary and expenseive hardware solutions are now all but extinct in the small to medium call centre space and softwares driven by Asterisk rule the roost. Distributed systems running on Astersisk are now slowly challenging the last bastion of expensive hardware telephony systems - the big call centre market.

Unlike the OS business, free and open source is definitely set on winning this game - and it all began by one hacker wanting to test the limits of some lean, mean and pointer-ridden C code..

</comment><comment><USER8> Mechanical Engineer Destroys Street Sweeping Industry with a single invention, the "trash-can"

Spencer is the inventor of the _trash-can_ , a free receptacle for garbage that establishes locations on the street where pedestrians can dispose of their waste. With trash-cans located on street corners, a decent-size municipality can rip out its traditional collection of brooms, and even some of its newfangled street-sweeping machines, and say good-bye to 80% of its garbage collection costs. Not good news for the Professional Union of Street Sweepers (PUSS - news - people) or Broom Supplier, Inc. (BS - news - people).

<comment><USER9> I like that version of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> [rant-on!]

Now, we need someone to package Asterisk in a form that democratizes telephony to people without Federal Excise Fees (taxed for the privilege of doing local communications), Transit Taxes (paying for mass transit despite the fact you're not using it because you're using the phone) and many other "Taxes" or "Non-governmental Taxes" (things that are called "taxes" but aren't mandated by any governmental organization. (See <http://www.cavtel.com/support/Taxes_and_Fees.shtml> for all the shenanigans.)

Get rid of "phone numbers" and just give everyone as many 160-bit "numbers" as they want for their phone numbers. Allow people to change these numbers whenever they want. If they experience harassment, make it easy to set up whitelists for conditional forwarding (if the originating call isn't on the whitelist, forward it, tell those on the whitelist what the new number is, etc.). These calls could be forwarded to the "Internet enforcers" that are so keen on outing Internet douchbags. Use DHT's for directory services/yellow pages and set up a gigantic overlay "network" on the Internet (using strong encryption where allowed).

Then you can start destroying the $~500B telecom industry with a "software application." $7B is nothing, go for the big fish. Don't attack hardware (in this case, PBXen), attack systems. Here, we're just going to cut out earmarked taxation and faux earmarks from your phone bills and corporate inefficiency (How much of your phone bill is going to all that marketing to convince people to use something they already know they want/need?) It's far more gratifying.

[/rant-off]

<comment><USER11> Here is one way to approach the transition, starting today.

If you can leave Asterisk running somewhere and you already have say a domain name that you use for a blog or personal website, then you can point iax.domain.com to your Asterisk and start telling people to contact you at for example: user:firstname.lastname@example.com/2000

To make it more readable just use your first name as the user, and your region or some other keyword as the password; its meant to be given out to the public anyway.

Client software to make and receive calls using this approach is called iaxComm. If you wanted your Asterisk installation to forward your calls to your cell phone at certain times of the day, or when your iaxComm wasn't signed in, then you'll have to subscribe for an outgoing voip service.

Eventually most people would be accessible through iax and you wouldn't have to subscribe to any service to reach the prior infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the Asterisk website found a link to the oreilly book, _"Asterisk - <USER2> Future of Telephony"_ in pdf format [14Mb] ~ <http://downloads.oreilly.com/books/9780596510480.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER13> Kind of puzzling that BadCyclopedia doesn't cite the original source (a Forbes article), or the original author (Quentin Hardy).

<http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2006/0410/063.html>

<comment><USER14> From the cursory look, BadCyclopedia doesn't cite anything. Looks like a spam site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Damn, more artificially low prices.

<comment><USER16> no comprendre

<comment><USER17> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=155286>

<comment><USER16> thx ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Asterisk isn't all that special. I used it extensively a few years back with my last business. Its still a bitch to use and get going right, especially for businesses with crappy IT going for them.

It goes back to that PG quote, that went something like: "Somebody can outhack an oracle database and make something comparable in open source, but can't out sell an oracle sales man..." It was basically that these enterprize software companies (pbx certainly is enterprize software), are used to buying terrible stuff for too much money.

<comment><USER19> Is the part about it being "a bitch to use and get going right" based on your extensive use of it a few years back? Linux was a bitch to use and to get going right when I first started using it back in the 1990's.

<comment><USER18> Hmmmm, I guess I wasn't posting to news.yc standards. My apologies.

My point was that I didn't see it destroying cisco/avaya any time soon, due to the nature of enterprise software and the sales distribution channel.

Linux is still not the ideal desktop replacement, even today. It has its place on the server rack, thats for sure, but I don't see it replacing windows any time soon for all uses. Something else might.

<comment><USER19> No standards and don't take it personally. I was simply asking if your opinion was based on recent use of Asterisk or your experience from a few years ago. Software evolves, sometimes in a good way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have to give a shoutout as this is based out of my home city: Huntsville, Al. Certainly no big deal for all of the valley startups, but it's not too often we get a Forbes-worthy startup here.

</comment><comment><USER21> in another news, adblock destroys online advertising business.

</comment><comment><USER22> good not great article, horrible title

<comment><USER23> and he's wearing a fantastic t-shirt

<comment><USER24> Yeah, where do you suppose I can find it?</comment></comment></comment>


Is there an Open Source state of mind in Montreal? - <AUTHOR> http://montrealtechwatch.com/2011/02/21/is-there-an-open-source-state-of-mind-in-montreal/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a follow-up to <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2245765></comment>


Dividing a bit in two for performance - <AUTHOR> http://indexoutofrange.com/Divide-and-conquer-bits-for-performance/ <comment><USER2> Author doesn't consider chunking from the other end. Split by fourths instead, starting at the root. If number are generated uniformly at random, checking the whole first half is probably always true.</comment>


Gnome Shell Sucks - <AUTHOR> https://gnomeshellsucks.wordpress.com/ <comment><USER2> I remember when KDE came out, it was was like "Wow! This is just like the Mac and Windows" and then Gnome came out and every version of Gnome and KDE has gotten worse over time.

It's completely unfair to compare Gnome to Windows because Windows comes with a desktop environment that actually works and for the most part gets better over time, not worse.

If anything, the new Linux personality for NT is the fault of the Linux vendors not coming out with a viable desktop environment. For years devs have enjoyed the POSIX personality of MacOS together with a workable desktop environment and soon they will do that on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER3> My, that was a bracing rant, compounded with a hefty dose of entitlement. I don't care for Gnome Shell either, and I can't really figure out who it's supposed to be for. I guess the Gnome devs must like it. But nobody is forcing it down my throat or the author's. And speaking of forcing things down throats, some of the acts the author suggested the Gnome devs should perform were quite unnecessary.

If you don't like it, don't use it. Don't complain that this thing you got for free isn't what you wanted.

</comment><comment><USER4> QUOTE: "I'm sick of these jumped up ego driven gnome developers that think there reinventing the wheel and its just as well they were never around when the wheel was being invented and they were in charge of the project because we would all be walking today"

If I spewed out prose as incompetently as that, when I was let loose near a keyboard, I'd be a bit more reticent when it came to criticising the competence of others.</comment>


Show HN: I added 2.5" drives to my price per TB tracker - <AUTHOR> http://edwardbetts.com/price_per_tb/laptop_hdd/

<comment><USER2> Still cool, dude. Now do RAM by GB, filtered by type!</comment>


Porcupine: A fast linearizability checker written in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/anishathalye/porcupine/blob/master/README.md <comment> dis-sys I used Porcupine in my project, it is in general much faster, but for some limited cases it is slower, sometimes it is much slower.

btw, the author anishathalye is the guy who tricked google AI into thinking his 3D-printed turtle is a rifle.

</comment><comment><USER2> Is that x1000 performance improvement over Jepsen algorithmic or Go over Clojure?

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like he/she's attributing the speedup to the paper cited in the readme[1].

Go shouldn't be much faster than clojure, the jvm is fast.

[1]:[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00204.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1504.00204.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Clojure is actually a bunch slower than Java with idiomatic code, i the Python ballpark. But you can speed it up and make it mostly emit Java-equivalent JVM bytecode with a bunch of optional annotations.

<comment><USER4> Yes, and you can set a flag to varn you if the annotations are not set somewhere. Using proper hints clojure is in the same magnitude as java and much faster than python

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone ELI5 what is a linearizability checker ?

<comment><AUTHOR> "If we assume that there is a single global state that each process talks to; if we assume that operations on that state take place atomically, without stepping on each other's toes; then we can rule out a great many histories indeed. We know that each operation appears to take effect atomically at some point between its invocation and completion.

We call this consistency model linearizability; because although operations are concurrent, and take time, there is some place–or the appearance of a place–where every operation happens in a nice linear order."

\--- cited from [https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency- models](https://aphyr.com/posts/313-strong-consistency-models)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Fastlane – Uber for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://fastlaneapp.co <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone,

I'm Pontus Abrahamsson, the creator of Fastlane. Fastlane makes it possible to book an Uber directly from your Mac.

I primarily built Fastlane because I love the process of developing products that I actually feel a need of in my own life but also because I love Uber. The project is fully open source on Github ([https://github.com/pontusab/Fastlane](https://github.com/pontusab/Fastlane)) and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or ideas.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Fastlane is Trending on Product Hunt [https://www.producthunt.com](https://www.producthunt.com), best day ever.

</comment><comment><USER2> I wish more companies built Mac menu bar apps. For companies who do it right like Fantastical it's incredible helpful. I assume this Fastlane while very helpful to the consumer won't last too long since Uber corporate will block it very soon presumably.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree! Uber will not block it due the fact that Fastlane using their public API. [https://developer.uber.com](https://developer.uber.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a naming clash here with [https://fastlane.tools](https://fastlane.tools) which is a really popular set of iOS development automation tools

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I noticed that too late.. but maybe change to UberBar ;)</comment></comment>


Microsoft Releases MS-DOS Source Code on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://news.softpedia.com/news/microsoft-releases-ms-dos-source-code-on-github-522998.shtml <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097661](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18097661)</comment>


Splitting water molecules for a renewable energy future - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-09-molecules-renewable-energy-future.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Phase segregation reversibility in mixed-metal hydroxide water oxidation catalysts

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-020-0496-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41929-020-0496-z)</comment>


Sentiment analysis of CEO faces predicts financial performance - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2016/02/17/software-detects-ceo-emotions-predicts-financial-performance/?mod=ST1 <comment><AUTHOR> Seems a bit fishy to me as it felt from the article that they only found correlations between negative emotions and positive performance and then came up with a rationale (vs testing for negative emotions first...)</comment>


Leave Pricing OFF your homepage - <AUTHOR>

If homepages are intended to convert users to sign up or get started on a trial, why do so many SaaS companies/products continue to put pricing on the homepage readily available to see when all pricing ever does is either confuse the visitor or even go as far as deter them from signing up or trying out your service.<p>*Yes if you and another service are literally EXACTLY the same and your only differentiator is price, then fine. Pricing then gets your visitor to convert but I'd be worried about your long term sustainability.<p>Discuss! :) <comment><USER2> Absolutely right-- always leave pricing off your home page. Also omit a product description and features list. And for god's sake, don't include a link to a live demo.

In order to build synergistic relationships with a customer where you enhance strategic value, it's essential to make a connection on a fundamental emotional nature-- not the kind of transactional decision based on an assessment of costs and benefits.

The first is lasting. The second is temporary. The difference is transformative.

<comment><USER3> Again, one solution doesn't work for everyone.

For example, in one case I found that removing a demo link from the homepage led to 2.5x more visits to the sign-up page, and those were 10x more likely to sign up.

Stop following your intuition and start testing instead.

<comment><USER4> rufusjones cannot possibly have typed that with a straight face

<comment><USER2> I worked as a management consultant for four years-- I can say or type anything with a straight face. Give me a decent bill rate and enough hours and I'll explain why SF startups should have outing where they kill homeless people with flamethrowers (builds team closeness if you all know the other guy can drop dime on you).

I did crack up when I saw someone agree with me.

The sad part is that I can point you to sites that don't tell you what they do or how much they cost-- they post a YouTube video and a signup for a free trial that requries a credit card.

<comment><USER5> How do I "like" the first paragraph of this one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nothing works always.

Instead of making assumptions ("all pricing ever does is confuse the visitor...") without any backing, you can spend 10-20 minutes setting up an A/B test and let the numbers speak for themselves.

Then, if you haven't already (and too many companies haven't), make sure your Google Analytics (or whatever solution you're using) is set up properly to track visitor flows, conversions, and segmenting visitor types. You can learn _a lot_ by looking at the sequence of pages your guest visitors (non-users) view before converting or exiting.

<comment><USER6> At the risk of stating the obvious, putting pricing on a dedicated page rather than on the home page is a much better way of testing whether it's the presentation of the product or the pricing that's putting people off...

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more. At least as an interim method to help test. Can I say that I hate super long scrolling home pages these days?

Just put them on separate pages. Easier to track with analytics too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I'm looking at a SaaS app and consider trying it out, I want to know the pricing before I start so I can evaluate if it's even in the ballpark of possibility. If I don't see a price I typically keep looking for an app that lists pricing up front.

<comment><USER8> I'm in the same boat here as shellab. If pricing is difficult to find or not available, I generally won't try the service

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> For enterprise software it makes sense to leave off the pricing since you usually want to structure the pricing based on their needs (AKA charge more for big clients).

But I don't agree with your premise regarding potential customers being confused or deterred from signing up. Granted, if you have a very complicated pricing plan it can be confusing. But if you have a straightforward pricing structure that's inline with what the market expects, then there will be no confusion. And forcing a sales call would actually lover conversions.

But in the end it all depends on the the specific market. And as usual, the ultimate answer is "A/B test it".

</comment><comment><USER10> If I have to 'call for pricing', then most likely I am not interested.

<comment><USER3> And most likely you are not the target demographic. The companies that ask you to call for pricing are fishing for enterprise clients, who are ready to spend thousands of dollars and absolutely do want to discuss pricing with a real human.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Because as a user often when I see a new SaaS product, the _first_ thing I'll do is look for a price. I'm annoyed when I have to jump through another hoop. If you're a git host, then tell me what price for what repos upfront.

</comment><comment><USER12> It makes sense to put pricing on your front page if and only if pricing is a feature.

<comment><AUTHOR> Completely agree.</comment></comment>


Flattr going social. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.flattr.net/2012/03/a-taste-of-things-to-come-from-exploring-to-curation/

<comment><USER2> This is very good because it is going to be very hard (read expensive) to spam. As was discussed here earlier this week, using links for ranking websites incites spammers to create intricate link farms and, in a sense, the web is rotting from it.

Typical behavior-driven ranking features (impression vs. click-through, length of time a user is on the site, number of times visited) can be simulated with clever enough bots, relatively inexpensively.

On the other hand, flattr has is not only a record of websites viewed, but an actual amount of money must change hands and is a powerful feature for the social proof of a website.

Granted, maybe there is a sense in which this makes it easier for spammers (just throw a bunch of money at it via flattr and you'll rank higher!) and they'll undoubtedly have to deal with spam like everyone else. But all in all I think this is a clever move and no one (in my knowledge) has tied social cash so directly to ranking.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be slightly inspired by kickstarter. Been in the same office as Flattr, has a lot of potential but I don't think they're going about fixing tips in the correct way yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why would I use a service that charges 10%: <http://flattr.com/support/faq>

This rate is way over nearly every service out there, including Paypal.

Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi claims to be a socialist on the page here: <http://flattr.com/team> . I guess the outrageous fee that they charge shouldn't come as a surprise...this is what socialist governments do.

<comment><USER5> Flattr is still a very new concept. Once they have more users I am sure it would be possible to lower the percentage. I wouldn't mind throwing in some extra money to cover the 10%, because this has the potential to change how content on the Internet gets paid for.

<comment><USER6> What I find annoying is that it's the incoming money that is taxed : if you give this money again it get taxed again, so this is actually 10%+9%+8.1% etc... It would be cleaner if the tax apply to withdrawed money or injected money or anything else not cumulative. Disclaimer : that's not my observation, I read it, but this is something that really kill the idea for me</comment></comment></comment>


UK Advertising Standards Authority Demands Amazon Stop "Dark UX" on Prime Trial - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/30/amazon_prime_payment_page_ux_badness/ <comment><AUTHOR> The actual article title is…

UK ads watchdog slaps Amazon for UX dark arts after folk bought Prime subs they didn't want

… which was too long for the submission page.</comment>


America's first bookless public library will look 'like an Apple Store' - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/13/3872478/americas-first-bookless-public-library-will-look-like-an-apple-store

<comment><USER2> If this is the future of 'libraries' I am very sad.

I fear it will be, though... so I have bought over a thousand books in the last year at used book stores and library sales. I plan to have enough real book to tide me through the next 4 decades at least.</comment>


Mac OS X isn't POSIX compliant - <AUTHOR> http://www.weirdnet.nl/apple/rename.html <comment><USER2> I agree that this bug is worth fixing, but I don't think appealing to POSIX authority is a good idea. As we saw in the ext4 fsync debacle, what matters is expected behavior. POSIX (and its cousin UNIX®) doesn't matter.

<comment><USER3> That was a case of "expected behavior" being a superset of POSIX, not a subset. POSIX's guarantee wasn't sufficient.

This is a case where the behavior _does not even live up to POSIX's guarantee_ , so I wouldn't say that it's comparable at all.

<comment><USER4> I'd say the main issue is that it doesn't match the documentation.

POSIX is severely out of date, and must be broken to do even simple things like handle filenames with spaces in them from a shell script.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link to the relevant portion of POSIX (IEEE 1003.1):

[http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/rena...](http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/functions/rename.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> This post should be titled "Mac OS X has a bug in it".

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this part of the Darwin portion of OSX, which is available? Has anybody checked the appropriate code to see how it differs from BSD/Linux?

</comment><comment><USER7> This matters as this is one of the things a lot of carefully coded applications need to work or the rest falls down like a house of cards.

<comment><USER8> Of course the counter point is that OS X passes the POSIX compliance tests, so this is apparently _not_ considered to be a big deal.

But instead of us debating hypotheticals, perhaps you could list some of the "a lot of carefully coded applications" that break without this. Facts are always preferable to hyperbole.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some programs that depend (specifically) on this behavior I'm aware of: qmail, postfix, dovecot

These programs derive their purported reliability from these rename() semantics.

By the way, _Windows_ passed the POSIX conformance tests, but only a salesman thinks this means that Windows is POSIX compliant.

<comment><USER9> Actually, I would believe that and I'm not a salesman: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Services_for_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows_Services_for_UNIX)

Microsoft actually has a UNIX emulation layer for Windows.

<comment><AUTHOR> Windows was listed as POSIX-compatible (passing the POSIX conformance test suite) as early as Windows NT 3.51, and perhaps earlier.

I was not referring to add-ons that can make Windows more POSIXish, but Windows itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's Bug ID 5,799,661 so they have a few to work through before getting to that one.

<comment><USER11> Actually, it's marked as duplicate of 5,398,777, so it jumped the queue ;)</comment></comment>


SpaceX Sues Government to Break US Air Force's National Security Launch Monopoly - <AUTHOR> http://www.universetoday.com/111535/spacex-ceo-elon-musk-sues-government-to-break-us-air-forces-national-security-launch-monopoly/#more-111535

<comment><USER2> A lawsuit with an announcement at the National Press Club? This is a man who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty.

Every time I think I couldn't love Elon Musk more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Everybody wins when there's real competition in space.

</comment><comment><USER4> SpaceX is a private sector success story-- as long as you ignore that they get most of their revenue from government contracts. For a libertarian, he sure likes taking tax money.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure how you think a person's political leanings are even a little relevant to this discussion.

<comment><USER6> A CEO's leanings are relevant when they are clearly stated, and inspire a large part of his strategy -- to take a similarly controversial subject in the US, imagine the CEO of a gun-maker "against weapons"; that would come off as hypocritical.

I don't think that there is such a thing as being "against weapons" though. Some people don't think that one should profit from the use of deadly force; in that case, not using a significant portion of that company's profits to repair damages from misused weapons would be callous. In most cases, weapons manufacturer are direly aware of the issue with what they sell, and try to make better quality devices to prevent them. Namely, a policeman friend told me that Glocks (could be another brand, I know very little about firearms) were appreciated by her colleagues who do a lot of pursuits because they don't tend to accidentally fire when they drop from their holster, a rare but potentially tragic event. Glock makes money from that fear, hopefully invest to mitigate it.

I know government processes better, and as someone who could be seen as a socialist, I agree with Musk on one thing: government is expensive. Unlike him, I think it's generally cheaper than private companies or charity. However, in the industries where Musk operates (transport), his entrepreneurial talent makes his contribution much cheaper. He doesn't like public money to be wasted — that's his publicly stated "political leanings" and one that has motivated SpaceX existence. I don't think it's very controversial, actually (no one likes to waste money) but it is relevant. What he asks for is to have the ability to lower it.

Therefore: yes, his leanings matter. In that case, and probably a majority of his projects that are government-funded, they are so because it is cheaper to have Musk's company do it. Which is good. I'm not a US tax payer, so I shouldn't care so much, but I would say: there isn't a contradiction with trying to improve what you think is broken. If he was asking to prevent competitors from entering the market for government-contract, there I could see an issue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This will likely be un popular: but surely we praise SpaceX when they are trying to sue the government to get some of that sweet launch contract business; but we will say nothing whn they are launching satellites designed to either kill or spy on anyone by launching more tentacles of the octopus!

<comment><USER8> "launching satellites designed to either kill or spy on anyone by launching more tentacles of the octopus!"

Satellite designed to kill? I think that's more a plot line to a movie. I don't think we've launched, or are planning to launch any killer satellites.

And, with regards to "spy on anyone" \- isn't it generally considered that transparency is a good thing for geopolitics? The physics of satellites/optics are such that you don't really need to worry about satellites personally spying on you beyond the resolution of a vehicle...

<comment><USER9> > you don't really need to worry about satellites personally spying on you > beyond the resolution of a vehicle..

"The IMPROVED CRYSTAL's sophisticated electronics provides sharper images than the KH-11, comparable in quality to the best of the film return satellites, with a resolution approaching ten centimeters. "

[http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-12.htm](http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/imint/kh-12.htm)

<comment><USER10> You have to be doing something _really_ wrong for satellites to catch you. They aren't overhead on demand so you only get snapshots, and they work on very large things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _In deference to comments made, I 've removed most of the information I originally posted. I included titles and web domains, but now I quote just the HN references._

There have been several previous posts of this story. Here are some.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648105) (some discussion)

Here are others, without significant comments:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648225](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648225) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648748](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7648748) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649108](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649108) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649218](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649218) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7649504) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7651066](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7651066) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652383](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7652383) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653026](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7653026) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654433](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654433) / [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7654821)

<comment><USER12> This story went to the HN top and then dissapeared, after few minutes. Earlier something very similar happened to at least one of the posts you listed. I wonder why?

<comment><USER13> Points and time determine the position of a story. But if a moderator decides that he wants to, he can flag the story for a certain amount of position, 20, 40( next page )... You will probably only find such story only if you dig quickly enough using _more_.

It is an effective way of removing content. Deleting it would cause uproar, but that way the story fades almost unnoticed even to the commenters who noticed it.

There are also similar methods employed for specific users.

<comment><USER12> But why would a moderator like to silence/censor this particular story? What was wrong with it? I thought it was rather interesting and important.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


500px will no longer allow photographers to license their photos under CC - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/1/17521456/500px-marketplace-creative-commons-getty-images-visual-china-group-photography-open-access <comment><USER2> > _500px says that it reached out to Creative Commons in May, and explained at > the time that the reason for the shift was that they weren't seeing a lot of > activity with Creative Commons images, that they still had a number of bugs > when it came to searching for such images, and they only had outdated > licenses for photographers. In short, there's not enough activity for 500px > to justify continuing it._

What? That doesn't make any sense. Creative Commons is not some kind of million page regulation that requires constant maintenance - it's just an option in a dropdown, or even just a note in the description. There has to be some hidden motivation behind disallowing it, although I can't imagine what that motivation could be.

<comment><USER3> > I can't imagine what that motivation could be.

Last time I checked, their revenue came from members. If they plan to act as middle-men, this move makes sense if they see CC as a no-profit scenario.

<comment><USER4> Yep. Same reason YouTube wanted to pull the Blender videos. Very popular content that's freely licensed costs them money. Hosting isn't free. We need more distributed platforms where everyone who views the content can help serve it to their neighbours as well.

<comment><USER5> Stripe just cut off Bitchute, so distributed platforms are facing some clear hostility from Silicon Valley insiders.

<comment><USER6> Decentralization is great for disrupting existing incumbents, and has the added benefit of creating an opportunity for a company to re-centralize the culture. GitHub is a great example of this, as are the many attempts to chip away at email

<comment><USER7> GitHub is a great example of decentralization? In what way? I view GitHub as a centralized service.

<comment><USER8> > has the added benefit of creating an opportunity for a company to re- > centralize the culture

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 500px has grown increasingly developer and community hostile recently. They abruptly shut down their API earlier this year: [https://support.500px.com/hc/en- us/articles/360002435653-API...](https://support.500px.com/hc/en- us/articles/360002435653-API-)

If people need alternatives to 500px, Flickr allows CC-licensed photos, and recently got sold to Smugmug. Hopefully they'll keep the licensing intact.

<comment><USER10> I remember everyone leaving flickr for some reason yeeears ago (I don't remember the reason)

As someone who is not a photographer, I only follow photographers on Instagram. FWIW.

<comment><USER11> Instagram is like a performance show; every shot a photographer posts there is expected to have a wow-factor and generate Likes.

Flickr is much more relaxed; it's not perfect ( you can't exclude photos fron the Photostream for example ) but there's less of an expectation of consistent performance. I'm happy to upload 'warranty shots' to Flickr, unexciting but interesting documentary photos.

<comment><USER12> More importantly, Instagram downscales your photos to poop and bans zooming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Getty is an awful company, I refuse to use any of their photos ever, ever again. They have sued multiple businesses that I know of when those businesses put photos _they PAID for_ on their sites and Getty threatened them.

Everyone needs to know about the "legal extortion" that Getty uses with their stock photography.

[https://www.extortionletterinfo.com/](https://www.extortionletterinfo.com/)

This business with 500px stinks of a massive takeover of any sources that will compete with Getty. Be warned, they smell like the Microsoft of the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER14> Props to the team at the Internet Archive led by Jason Scott who archived 3TB of images in 48 hours after the decision was announced with zero notice. [0]

[0]: [https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1013464718923718658](https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/1013464718923718658)

</comment><comment><USER15> These types of business decisions always mystify me. It's certainly their right to choose what content to host. And, I wouldn't expect them to host content that isn't serving their business. But, making such a change with basically no warning is a pretty clear sign that they will do so again. And, who wants to deal with a company that will make such drastic changes, basically overnight, if you have any other options.

<comment><USER16> > "if you have any other options."

This is always the key. What are you going to switch to? Shutterstock? Getty? They all do crap like this unilaterally and with no regard for what contributors or customers want. It's a calculated business choice that the people upset by the change won't materially impact business as usual. Unfortunate but omnipresent.

<comment><USER15> All very true. I'd just naively assume that the risk of some very negative PR isn't worth it when you can largely mitigate it by providing just a few weeks notice. Clearly, they didn't see it this way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pexels is another place to upload CC photos:

[https://www.pexels.com/](https://www.pexels.com/)

The Internet Archive also allows you to upload photos, and has a slideshow display for multiple photo collections

[https://archive.org](https://archive.org)

<comment><USER18> Another good one is:

[https://pixabay.com/](https://pixabay.com/)

I use both for reference photos when painting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My guess is that they are not even interested in taking new customers onboard. Before knowing all of this I was interested in purchasing their most expensive plan but I had a question, so I contacted them. I got an automatic reply saying that they were going to reply in 10 days. Well... after 12 days they hadn't replied yet. I contacted them again on Twitter and they just replied it takes 14 days for non customers. But again, they never replied to my questions, not even after 20 days. Not interested to buy anything anymore at this point.

</comment><comment><USER20> [Unsplash]([https://unsplash.com/](https://unsplash.com/)) is a site that offers photos licensed almost one-to-one with CC0. I'd strongly recommend giving it a shot.

\- Unsplash license: [https://unsplash.com/license](https://unsplash.com/license)

\- Compare with CC0: [https://medium.com/unsplash/the-unsplash- license-f6fb7de5c95...](https://medium.com/unsplash/the-unsplash- license-f6fb7de5c95a#083e)

<comment> Digital-Citizen The Unsplash license contains the following:

"This license does not include the right to compile photos from Unsplash to replicate a similar or competing service."

Therefore use "for commercial and noncommercial purposes" is quite restricted to whatever Unsplash considers "a similar or competing service", a vague definition that could change at any time. The medium.com article you pointed to has a bad pointer[1] when it comes to explaining what this means. Unsplash decides what that means ad hoc so you don't really know what your rights are. If what comes under "photos published on Unsplash" could also be considered a computer program, the above quoted clause would render such a program to be nonfree software (see [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html) for a definition of free software).

CC0 has no clause comparable to the above quoted clause in the Unsplash license. Also, CC0 is a more thorough abdication of copyright power in copyright regimes where the public domain exists. Unlike the Unsplash license, CC0 uses licensing under a lax, permissive license as a fallback, not a primary mechanism for giving up one's copyright power in the work. This point is not given its due in the medium.com article you pointed us to. Finally, according to [https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license- list.html#CC0](https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#CC0) CC0 is a non-copyleft free software license when applied to computer software.

[1] [https://community.unsplash.com/help-section/what-is-the- unsp...](https://community.unsplash.com/help-section/what-is-the-unsplash- license-and-where-can-i-find-it) didn't work when I tried it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> While I don't doubt that all of the reasons they give are strictly true, I wonder if they dropped CC and other public licenses because to host such an image still costs money but they don't get any revenue for it. So if the percentage of images that are holding non-revenue generating licenses is too high, their fixed costs cut too far into their revenue to sustain operations.

One could argue that the might work on being more efficient about their fixed costs but this seems a simpler fix.

</comment><comment><USER22> Just wondering, why can't you license your photos through whatever service/license they want, _and_ mention in your profile that all pictures are under Creative Commons and copying is authorised (plus mention a personal site with all the pictures in full resolution there)? As the original copyright holder you are allowed to grant this extra license in addition to whatever the platform says.

<comment><USER23> You could, but it won't help anyone find it. There used to be an option to filter searches by license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Photo hosting is not exactly rocket science, I think the community could invent something a distributed community using like IPFS+ActivityPub.

<comment><USER25> [https://pixelfed.org/](https://pixelfed.org/)

Not much yet but it's being worked on. Contribute?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Good incentive for photographers to ditch this service.

<comment><USER27> No way, this only affects remixers who can't be bothered to shoot their own references.

<comment><USER28> Not true, I release all my photos under a CC license out of principle.

<comment><USER29> What is that principle?

I'm a fan of CC, and I see how it is valuable to people, but what is the core principle involved with not being paid for your work?

Honest question. Creative Commons is a wonderful thing. I'm just wondering what you mean by stating that you have a principled reason for releasing everything under CC.

<comment><USER30> > but what is the core principle involved with not being paid for your work?

I doubt their core principle is to not be paid for their work, and they never said that it was - you've imagined that from a silly twist of what they've written. They said their core principle was to licence as CC.

Do you think charity volunteers have a core principle to work for free? Of course not - instead they have a core principle to contribute towards a cause and they accept not being paid for it in order to achieve that.

I would imagine this person's core principle is the same - they want to contribute their photographs for other people to use without licensing problems and they accept not being paid for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I guess we're all going back to Flickr: [https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/](https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/)</comment>


How Does Bruce Schneier Protect His Laptop Data? With His Fists -- and PGP - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/11/securitymatters_1129 <comment><USER2> I've been using TrueCrypt and I'm very happy with it. It's probably less secure than the PGP's solution, but my main concern is not really hackers, but some thief stealing my notebook and getting access to my scanned documents, Quicken files and so on.

</comment><comment><USER3> An answer to the "please enter your password" problem might be a fake shell there for the sake of pleasing stupid customs officials.

<comment><USER2> Another solution is to use a TrueCrypt hidden volume:

<http://www.truecrypt.org/hiddenvolume.php></comment></comment>


The New Heroku (Part 2 of 4): Node.js & New HTTP Capabilities - <AUTHOR> http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2011/6/22/the_new_heroku_2_node_js_new_http_routing_capabilities/ <comment><USER2> I deployed HN Trends to Heroku's new Cedar Stack and it was simply awesome!

It stayed on a single dyno the entire time (I tried scaling it to 2 at one point, but quickly realized that my use of an in-memory object that needed to persist between requests was not "shared-nothing") and it handled the rush of traffic with only 1 small hiccup.

I got a little nervous when Tim O'Reilly linked to the site from his Twitter account, but Heroku handled it with ease.

</comment><comment><USER3> Lack of websockets support is pretty crippling; at least it causes node.js to lose a lot of its value over alternate frameworks... the kind of app that node is perfect for is often also the kind of app that websockets are perfect for.

Nonetheless this is exciting news! Maybe websockets could be added as a Heroku add-on?

<comment><USER4> Does the lack of websockets in most users browsers also cripple the web? Node's plenty good at HTTP. In fact it's excellent at HTTP. In any case, they are pretty clear about what it will take to get them to add it.

<comment><USER3> Those are good points. Websockets are just so awesome that it's frustrating that I had to setup a vps to use them in a weekend app :)</comment></comment></comment>


IBM unveils microchip based on the human brain - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20810-ibm-unveils-microchip-based-on-the-human-brain.html

<comment><USER2> _"Eventually, by connecting many such chips, Dharmendra Modha of IBM Research Almaden, in San Jose, California, hopes to build a shoebox-sized supercomputer with 10 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses"

_ and for comparison:

 _"the ultra-efficient human brain is estimated to have 100 billion neurons and at least 100 trillion synapses"_

This is amazing. IBM is actually reaching towards the old dream of creating a computer that is as powerful as the human brain. I'm aware that hardware alone doesn't do it, but still damn impressive.

</comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting, but my question is, what are the speed of these chips compared to conventional ones. The main problem with the human brain is that while it is fantastic at parallel processing, the speed at what it processes information is only a few MHz i think. The reverse is true for computers, great speed, terrible parallel. If these chips solve the problem of parallel processing but keep speeds the same it would be a great step for computers.

<comment><USER4> > the speed at what it processes information is only a few MHz i think

More like Hz, actually. Neurons are slow - I am not sure how frequently can they fire, but I am sure it is not in the multi-thousand per second range.

<comment><USER5> Maximum firing rate differs between neuron types (i.e., cortical pyramidal neurons versus cerebellar Purkinje neurons) dependent upon cellular membrane properties (dendrite diameter and ion channel distributions, etc.), but a good rule-of-thumb to keep in mind is 1 kHz. That maximum "firing rate" is about as fast as a patch of membrane can generate an action potential (AP, or "spike"), reset, and fire another.

All that said, a relevant question to ask is, "What is the information content of a single action potential?" There is not an agreed-upon answer among neuroscientists. The metaphor linking brain and a personal computer is extremely strained: to start, it is not quite true that neurons can carry out logical functions. Neurons are firmly rooted in the analog domain and it is much more straightforward to infer polynomial-type computations from their physiology, the order and coefficients being dictated by the particulars of the scenario. Also, the current thinking is that information is encoded in bursts or repetitive APs, called "spike trains". But if we must, I'd throw out a range of 0.5 to 5 bits per spike [Rieke, et al.]. (If you want to go down a rabbit hole and explore one of _the_ pivotal topics among people studying neural computation, look up "rate coding" versus "temporal coding". Perhaps even phrasing the question that way is misleading.)

Here's a side note that may be of interest: during an AP, the trans-membrane voltage swings from approximately -100 mV to +100 mV (very rough figures). If you consider that this potential difference is applied across the 3 nano-meter thick cell membrane, the resulting electric field is very close to the dielectric breakdown voltage for phospholipid membranes. Our neurons are constantly operating within a factor or two of literally destroying themselves! (The preceding paragraph contains very back-of-the-envelope reasoning. To be more rigorous, I'd have to dig out my notes and reference materials, but the general point nonetheless holds.)

<comment><USER4> That was an impressive explanation. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A couple of other discussions on similar articles in the last few days:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2898229>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2899299>

</comment><comment><USER7> Can we please stop sucking IBM's cock?

-Their chip only has a superficial connection to biological neurons. Any characterization of this chip in terms of "brains" is frankly bullshit. This is like measuring Google's computing clusters in terms of human brainpower.

-Everything their new chip can do has been done in software / FPGAs. While moving ANN's to ASICs can improve training speed (and is important), it does not help with the unsolved algorithmic challenges they present. Furthermore, the hardware structure severely constrains the ways in which these ANNs can be applied.

-Last time this IBM lab made a misleading announcement to the press, it was appropriately ripped to shreds by a very respected individual in the neuroscience community ([http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/bl...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/blue-brain-project-leader-angry-about-cat-brain))

-Lastly, please refrain from drawing conclusions or extrapolating on science-related articles in the popular press. They are characterized by hyperbole and misinformation, and in many cases are flat-out wrong.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure you're quite right and the IEEE link makes oodles of sense, but for people examining notions of creativity in computational intelligence (for example), the idea of these chips is quite attractive.

In fact, I remember programming ANNs in horribly non-distributed C paradigms, and even PureData objects trying to come up with non-garbage computer music in the 90's and thinking we needed precisely the kind of chip they're trying to engineer.

This, and the advent of HTMs and other non-ANN ways of going about it, mean that chips that handle distributed processing for applications that model human creativity (which is necessarily about concurrent time-based activities), are a -good- thing no matter what the degree of success, IMHO.</comment></comment>


CloudMounter: Ultimate cloud manager. Available for preorder with 75% OFF - <AUTHOR> http://mac.eltima.com/mount-cloud-drive.html <comment><USER2> I've been using [http://www.expandrive.com/apps/expandrive/](http://www.expandrive.com/apps/expandrive/) for a while on OSX and Windows

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks exactly like what Mountain Duck from [https://mountainduck.io/](https://mountainduck.io/) already does.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly, as CloudMounter supports Dropbox and Microsoft OneDrive too. Also, iCloud compatibility is planned for the future upgrades.</comment>