US Supreme Court Will Hear Case Re: Standards for Software Patent Eligibility - <AUTHOR> http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/alice-corporation-pty-ltd-v-cls-bank-international/

<comment><USER2> can you imagine if every RFC had been turned into a patent where we would be today?

i think this alone should be telling of how every software patent rides on the goodwill of a culture of open source and standardization that has existed for decades (when true innovation was taking place).

it's complete insanity that patents can be granted for inventions which rely so fundamentally on an infrastructure which could have only been built so successfully - and explicitly - without them.

<comment><USER3> A substantial part of the work that resulted in the RFCs happened pursuant to federal funding before December 1980. This is significant because prior to December 1980, the enactment of the Bayh-Dole Act, inventions developed in federally funded programs had to be assigned to the government. Therefore, there was little incentive to patent those inventions.

If the developments had happened today, at MIT, BBN, etc, they would be patented.

<comment><USER4> Are there any studies that do a deep analysis of the impact of the Bayh-Dole Act? Were there any benefits? If not, is this an act that we should lobby to undo?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> IANAL, but I'm surprised by the EFF's amicus brief. A large portion of it is an enumeration of the deleterious effects of NPE "trolls", but from my understanding of the case, it's purely about establishing better guidance on what is or isn't patentable under section 101. SCOTUS seems unlikely to be moved by the pain caused by NPE's, when Congress could readily change how patent infringement or licensing works for PE's vs. NPE's if they considered it a serious problem.

Obviously they still got the cert, though not of the particular case they wanted.

I'm interested to hear how some of the much brighter legal minds on hn would handicap this case. My uneducated guess is that the patentability of software will largely survive, but the Court will try to formulate a test designed to exclude claims that would be clearly too abstract were they not "instantiated" on a computer. Something like the Amazon 1-click patent would probably survive, while the _Alice_ patents would not.

<comment><USER6> Last time the patentability of business methods came around was 2010's Bilski v. Kappos case [0]. Software was discussed as a related matter.

The Supreme Court rejected any specific test as dispositive for patentability. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit [1] had advanced a "machine or transformation" test as the standard for abstraction and unpatentability. That test would have required that a patent specify a specific machine or a transformation of a form or state of matter somehow in order to be sufficiently concrete. It was a vague test that would have allowed almost anything not as awful as Bilsky's application, which essentially claimed various century old hedging strategies whenever implemented on a computer.

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the test was an indicator of abstraction but not definitive. It also ruled 9-0 that Bilsky's patent was garbage.

The patentability of business methods in general was discussed in the opinions. The great John Paul Stevens [2] wrote the dissent in Diamond v. Diehr [3] thirty years prior explaining why and how software patents were terrible and should never be allowed, but only gained four votes. He wrote an opinion explaining again why software patents should not be allowed and gained four votes again in Bilsky in a court where every member but him had been replaced in the interim.

Unfortunately Stevens is retired (it's well earned -- he's 93) and the leading intellectual property expert on the court is now Breyer. Breyer wrote the dissent against effectively permanent copyright terms in Eldred v. Ashcroft. Sotomayor and Ginsberg have also been in the Stevens camp on patentability. New Justice Elena Kagan usually votes with those three. So we can hope for four votes for software freedom once again.

There were also four votes in Bilsky for patenting software, though not with any visible enthusiasm. They were Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas.

Finally Scalia refused to join just one opinion and split between the two without addressing the serious ongoing questions of patentable subject matter. So the final tally was 4-1-4.

The CAFC split 5-5 on the Alice [4] case the Supreme Court just decided to hear. The split was similar to the Supreme Court in Bilsky and did not resolve any simmering issues because of the even split.

Note that even the Google and EFF briefs on the Alice case didn't suggest outright abolition of software patents at the CAFC. Justice Stevens may have seemed like a lonely crusader by 2010. It may be that the enemies of our industry have gained so much power in Washington and the patent bar that the best we can hope for is a slow, slow rollback. Certainly there are a lot of people making billions without the trouble of actually building anything who can spend their efforts to keep the racket going. Without the need to make things, they can lobby full time to continue getting rich at the expense of innovators and startups and the public through software patents.

The most likely result here is a 4-1-4 split again, unless a new way to appeal to Scalia can be found. Real progress from the Supreme Court probably requires a new justice; the current pattern indicates that pragmatic Democratic appointee is much more likely to abolish software patents and a movement Republican appointee is most likely to definitively endorse them, but individual justices can always assert their own visions once appointed.

[0] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bilski_v._Kappos)

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Paul_Stevens)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Court_of_Appeals_for_the_Federal_Circuit)

[3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Diehr](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_v._Diehr)

[4] [http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CLS_Bank_v._Alice_(2012,_USA)](http://en.swpat.org/wiki/CLS_Bank_v._Alice_\(2012,_USA\))

<comment><USER5> From the tilt of your comment, I assume you think that a properly constituted, wise SCOTUS would rule software patents unconstitutional, or more likely in violation of statute. What's the short case for that? I don't see how my black box with some novel capability becomes un-patent-worthy as soon as I replace the gears and levers inside with a digital computer.

<comment><USER6> There are so many conclusive arguments against software patents that the result is overdetermined. Nevertheless, lining the pockets of the patent bar is likely to overcome any quality of argument as long as computer programmers have even less Washington influence than illegal alien terrorists.

I'll give a few arguments, but first let's consider yours. Black boxes are never patentable. The concept of patents is that you reveal exactly how your process works and you get a limited monopoly on the totally new and non- obvious bits of your process for the public benefit. It always matters how the process works inside. That's the theory anyway; the patent bar loves to rob the public by cheating the bargain.

1\. Computer programmers are overwhelmingly against software patents. For the first time in my life I see educated people advocating the abolition of the entire patent system, even at the cost of life saving drugs, just to get patents out of computer software (John Siracusa, to cite a public personality, but there are many, many more who agree). Programmers hate patents in their industry by something like ten or twenty to one.

2\. Software patents are harmful to innovation. They created almost all the modern patent trolling crisis. They shutdown startups and innovative projects and block open source. They promote vendor lock-in and empower giants over small companies with new ideas.

3\. Software is math and both math and mental processes are SCOTUS identified ineligible subject matter.

4\. The quality of software patents we see is uniformly bad. None of Apple's, Motorola's, Oracle's, Samsung's, or Microsoft's recent patents in litigation or threats thereof have contributed anything to the public. The billion dollar patents from Eolas and NTP were pure garbage. None of the troll patents we hear about all the time ever contributed anything to our art or even constitute inventions at all. Bilsky, Ultramercial, and Alice are all ludicrously abusive. Whole teams of programmers could work for decades searching without finding a single plausibly valid and useful patent in their field.

5\. When we bought our computers, ever since the first general purpose computers in the 1940s, we have done so expecting to run programs on them. Using a machine for its expected and customary use is not subject to any patents beyond the patents on the machine itself. Running any program at all is the expected use of a computer, at least for programmers who write their own programs, so any program running on a computer is automatically in the prior art. In fact, we already have a list of every program our computers are expected to run and it includes every program any computer can run. We haven't printed the list out (not enough paper), but we know exactly how to produce any part of the list for your pleasure on demand.

Now the patent bar wants to tell us that programs we expected to run, that are the conventional use of our machines, and that have been on our list since the 1940s are their brilliant inventions and they are going to prohibit us from running them. No thanks.

<comment><USER7> " lining the pockets of the patent bar is likely to overcome any quality of argument as long as computer programmers have even less Washington influence than illegal alien terrorists."

1\. The patent bar[1] itself has little to no influence in Washington. Nobody cares what they think. Congress cares about what the companies some of these folks work for think, but AIPLA, for example, has never had any real lobbying impact. They've complained about every rule change, every bill, every everything that has ever "hurt" their members. As far as i'm aware, there has never been any changes that have resulted from their comments.

2\. The influence of computer programmers in Washington is mostly due to the fact that they spend time posting here instead of doing anything about anything. This is an entirely self inflicted wound, and the sooner programmers stop convincing themselves this isn't true, the better off they will be. Watching this happen without fail since _1997_ is one of the reasons i became a lawyer.

I would wager a large amount of money if even 1% of the local user groups of programmers of various sorts that still exist, each appointed a representative, and had that person go to their local congressperson/senator, and said "I represent a concerned group of local small business people and programmers, and software patents are destroying our ability to make a living and causing us to lose jobs", that software patents would have been a solved problems years ago.

[1] I'm also not sure why you keep saying "the patent bar".

The patent bar itself is not of one mind, and there is no real, single organized patent bar that does anything, because the patent bar are those attorneys and agents licensed to practice before the PTO, and since being a lawyer is not a requirement, they come from a variety of walks of life, not just a bunch of attorneys. The actual patent bar (IE as run by the PTO) offers literally no opinions on anything, and certainly does not lobby, just like the bar of the 9th circuit court of appeals doesn't lobby.

There are a number of outside organized collections of patent attorneys, like AIPLA, but as mentioned, none are really "the patent bar". There is no single mind among these folks, either, Most of the inside and outside litigators I have met in the corporate realm rail against software patents. So even "the patent bar" is not consistent here, it's more like you have the criminal defense lawyers vs the prosecutors, rather than a single "criminal law bar".

<comment><USER8> _> ... and said "I represent a concerned group of local small business people and programmers, and software patents are destroying our ability to make a living and causing us to lose jobs", that software patents would have been a solved problems years ago._

That is very true, but my very strong hunch is that this hasn't happened because software patents are _not really a problem_ \-- at least not anymore. As I've said elsewhere, the vast majority of programmers barely even know what a patent is, and tons more consider them a good thing. Those are also overwhelmingly the people that don't spend time posting on places like this.

Another indirect piece of evidence is the current uproar in Congress about patent trolls: A handful of trolls (that I'm aware of) -- like the WiFi guys, the scan-to-email guys, the vehicle-tracking guys -- send out demand letters to mom & pop businesses, and suddenly Congress is up in arms. It's possible, but I find it unlikely that, if there are so many companies involved in software patent litigation, there are not even a few that would reach out to their representatives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Because it is not (yet) reflected on the SCOTUSblog page, here is the Order granting certiorari:

[http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120613.zr_4g1...](http://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/120613.zr_4g15.pdf)

The actual link above links to a number of amicus briefs urging the court to grant (or not grant) review, and would be good reading to understand the issues in the case.

Links to Coverage:

[http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/12/court-to-rule-on-patent- ri...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/12/court-to-rule-on-patent-rights/)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-usa-court- softw...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/06/us-usa-court-software- idUSBRE9B50QJ20131206)

</comment><comment><USER9> There needs to be more money spent on staff at the US Patent Office so they don't just rubber stamp patents and let the courts decide.

1) Something needs to be a true innovation to be a patent 2) The process should take a lot of man hours.

I don't feel either of those things happen due to shortage of staffing and a wild everything is possibly patentable.

<comment><USER3> > 2) The process should take a lot of man hours.

The intellectual property laws generally reject this "sweat of the brow" doctrine.[1] The idea is, that someone should be able to get a patent for something that results from a flash of insight rather than years of expensive R&D.

I think rejection of this doctrine is a grave mistake as applied to patents. Essentially, it fundamentally misunderstands the nature of innovation in the 21st century. A new invention does not happen because someone has a clever idea one day while mulling over a problem during lunch. That may have been true in the early 20th century and earlier, but it's not true today. Today, invention is driven by research labs staffed by expensive PhDs using even more expensive capital equipment. The purpose of patents in the 21st century is to protect and be able to transact in the results of this capital-intensive R&D.

E.g. Adonit has a new iPad stylus that's 1.9 mm versus the 6 mm typical for iPad styluses ([https://adonit.net/jot/script](https://adonit.net/jot/script)). The capacitive touch matrix on the iPad normally cannot pick up on such a narrow point, so they use some active sensing technology that relies on measuring the electronic field emitted by the capacitive matrix and feeding that back to special software over Bluetooth. For this they have a patent. This was not a flash of insight. This was the result of measuring EM field strength with expensive equipment, buying lots of iPads to test product variability, doing lots of experiments and iterating the design. The purpose of a patent here is to keep companies from free-riding on all that R&D, not to reward anyone for a flash of insight.

By rejecting sweat of the brow doctrine in the context of patents, patent law has become divorced from its underlying economic justification: the prevention of free-riding. The magnitude of the disincentive created by free-riding depends very much on the capital investment that went into the invention.

[1] Sweat of the brow doctrine is more typically used in the context of copyright, but is applicable to a degree for patents as well. The doctrine has opposite effects in the two contexts. In copyright, it has been used to reject copyright-ability for things like phone books that might take work to compile, but aren't "original works." However in patents, it has been used to justify granting patents for "inventions" that weren't a lot of work to invent.

<comment><USER10> > This was not a flash of insight. This was the result of measuring EM field > strength with expensive equipment, buying lots of iPads to test product > variability, doing lots of experiments and iterating the design.

So what do you think is going to happen if someone else takes the same flash of insight ("use active sensing technology to achieve a smaller stylus"), puts in their own brow sweat to work out the details, and deploys a competing product? Adonit isn't going to sue for infringement, right? And if they do, they won't win. Right?

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about a hypothetical change to the patent system, so your question about what would happen under the current system is pointless.

As for what _should_ happen, then under my proposal, proof of independent invention should be a defense to infringement. This falls out of the first principles (the economic concept of free-riding). The purpose of patent protection, economically, is to protect some $(big number) capital R&D investment from a competitor that trivially copies it for $(small number). If, instead of trivially copying it for $(small number), the competitor instead goes to the trouble of engaging in its own R&D for $(big number), then there is no free-riding and no reason to find infringement.

<comment><USER10> I see what you meant.

Your proposal sounds more like copyright-for-ideas than patents. In such a system, why would you need to apply for a patent? Samsung copied your phone design? Sue them for that, holistically, rather than finding some arbitrary set of "inventions" that they infringed on. It sounds like the jurors mostly looked at things this way, anyway, when deciding who's morally right. Zynga probably wouldn't like the change, though.

<comment><USER3> Useful articles do not fall under copyright, except for the separable portion that can be considered purely aesthetic.

E.g. if P&W disassembles a Rolls-Royce engine, and copies the shape of the turbine blades (which are the result of very expensive R&D), Rolls-Royce can't assert copyright because the shape of turbine blades is functional, not aesthetic.

<comment><USER10> Now you're the one who's ignored that this was hypothetical.

My point was that if we go ahead with your proposal, such that patent protection becomes about preventing copying work rather than (possibly accidentally) duplicating an idea, then what's the point of filing for patents? It could work just like copyright does now.

Rayiner: I can't respond to your next post for a while, but you didn't address the main point I was attempting to make in comparison to copyright: You don't need to file. There would be rules that you can't significantly copy someone else's hard work. If someone copies your hard work, it will be evident from the facts, just as it is evident with copyright violations, and you can sue them. No patent required.

<comment><USER3> It wouldn't work just like copyright does, even if you extended copyright to functional designs.

Consider how patents and copyrights interact with respect to software. Say you make a new audio encoder leveraging some psycho-acoustic property. Copyright protects the literal source code only. It doesn't prevent someone from doing a "clean room" reimplementation of your software, and in the process taking advantage of all of the expensive testing you did to validate your psycho- acoustic model.

Patents as they exist today might apply to any encoder leveraging that psycho- acoustic property. I.e. a competitor couldn't hold up the fact that it performed independent testing to build its own psycho-acoustic model as a defense to patent infringement.

My proposal falls in-between. You can prevent someone from reverse-engineering your program to copy the essential details, which is the fruit of your expensive R&D. However, you can't prevent someone from using the same basic idea when they go to the expense of deriving those essential details for themselves from the basic idea. What patents as they exist now protect, and what my proposal explicitly wouldn't, is the "flash of insight." The realization that multiple people may have in response to some journal paper that some newly-described psycho-acoustic phenomenon may be used to build better audio encoders.

<comment><USER10> Implicit in my characterization "copyright for ideas" is that this proposal will somehow _extend_ copyright, as it's currently understood, to cover ideas. I understand your point that copyright as it exists today does not cover more abstract ideas.

The main difference I was attempting to emphasize between copyrights and patents is that copyrights are automatic whereas patents must be filed and granted. And my point is that your proposal, which seems quite reasonable to me, would seem to work just fine with the copyright model of automatic rights: no patent filing required. And for that matter, the distinction between elaborate designs, which cannot be copied, and "flashes of insight", which can, looks a lot to me like a principle of fair use.

No?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So this is about functional claiming in patents?

</comment><comment><USER12> That class action lawsuit is horrible... 23andme is awesome and I love having it. I never felt cheated or any of that because I read it carefully.

<comment><USER13> Reading it carefully doesn't help if the information provided isn't accurate.</comment></comment>


I'm 35 and I may suddenly have lost the rest of my life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sgriddle/im-35-and-i-may-suddenly-have-lost-the-rest-of-my-life-i-m-panicking-just-a-bit-35d6a28dcbc <comment><USER2> My brother was diagnosed with a rare form of sarcoma (cancer) at age 35. Basically was given about a 10% to live. 180 servings of chemo/radiation later we started lining up hospice and he prepared to say goodbye to his 2 young kids and wife.

Last ditch effort was an experimental drug. Out of 150 people in the trial, he's the only one alive 12 years later. 6 years ago he started a company that is about to hit 8 figures in revenue and over 300 employees.

Life can definitely have a lot of swings.

<comment><USER3> > Last ditch effort was an experimental drug... he's the only one alive

I assume it wasn't the drug then but some other factor that was either missed or underestimated in his actual recovery. Wish more of these missing-pieces were known.

<comment><USER4> I might get downvoted for this, so please do your own research first before just dismissing it.

There is this cheap thing of Vitamin C injections staight into the blood. A cure that has been "well known" for centuries, but dismissed because oral intake studies weren't promising.

I love science, but in studies where a lot of money is made or can be lost, there is so much manipulation going on it makes you sick. I'm talking about pharmacy and food industry here.

Loads of money are made with chemo and cancer research. If Vitamin C injections really are better way to treat cancer, can you imagine how many billions will be lost?

<comment><USER5> My mother died of kidney cancer last year. Doctor said unfortunately modern medicine had nothing to offer her.

She turned to alternatives, tried everything from vegan diet to juicing to vitamin c (intravenous twice a week over 6 months). No salt diet. Stone heat mattress. Hydrogen rich water. She exercised daily getting as much sun because someone told her that's good.

That didn't stop the metastasis spreading all over her body. She passed away 8 months after her diagnosis, coincidentally exactly what the doctor guessed when pressed for her honest prognosis.

You accuse the pharma industry of preying on the desperate for money, but in my experience it was the opposite. Pharma told her sorry nothing we can do. In desperation she turned to alternatives. I was willing to believe anything if it cured my mum.

<comment><USER4> Hey, sorry to hear that. It is a nasty disease. I also have people close to me who died of cancer, including a 17 year old girl, and my friend who was 20 at the time.

But it upsets me that so little research is done on high doses of vitamin C, while the research that is done is actually positive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With much sensitivity to the physical and emotional turmoil the author must be experiencing right now, I disagree with his advice:

> Stop just assuming you have a full lifetime to do whatever it is you dream > of doing.

Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely shorten your life are ones you should not plan for. If they occur, that's very unfortunate, and maybe you'll still have a contingency plan that can rearrange your plans to fit the remainder of your life, but he was still right to have arranged his life from the start to maximize his expected (in the statistical sense) impact:

> Before this diagnosis I'd been thinking of my 1st 35 years — aside from > being a ton of fun and travel — as preparation. I felt like I was building a > platform (savings, networks, skills, experience) that I could then use in my > second act to make a real contribution, to "make my mark"

"Most of the time", he would have been right to use the early part of his life to make long-term investments in his development. It's just that this time it turned out to be the wrong choice.

<comment><USER7>
      Rare and catastrophic events like this that can severely
      shorten your life are ones you should not plan for.

If you have dependents one should at least think about purchasing term life insurance. It's relatively cheap because the risk is small.

OTOH, because medical science has become so good at extending life, it's an even better idea to purchase disability insurance. That's something I still keep meaning to do. But it is more expensive as a not insignificant number of people become disabled, at least temporarily, in middle age. For example, disability insurance will pay for the time you're getting chemotherapy and unable to draw your normal salary. It's basically an income guarantee.

Note that employer-sponsored policies--especially term life--are crap. They're structured as a tax dodge for the employer, the cap is usually much too low, and in any event the policy is only good for as long as you're with that employer. Basically, it's a bad deal. The sooner you buy a private policy the cheaper it will be; don't wait even if you already have an employer-sponsored policy!

Apropos HN, here's a good startup making it easier to buy these policies: [https://www.policygenius.com/](https://www.policygenius.com/)

I used them for my term life insurance policy and was very happy with their service. I plan on using their service again for disability insurance once I have the budget.

AFAIU term life insurance is much like auto insurance--the policies break even but the issuers profit from the float. I used to think these things were bad deals. Some are, like, arguably, State Farm, which charges a huge premium because they invest so heavily in advertisement and an army of insurance agents. Or those issuers that specialize in selling policies to the elderly. But most traditional issuers quote fair prices and the industry seems generally very reputable.

<comment><USER8> > Note that employer-sponsored policies--especially term life--are crap. > They're structured as a tax dodge for the employer, the cap is usually much > too low, and in any event the policy is only good for as long as you're with > that employer. Basically, it's a bad deal. The sooner you buy a private > policy the cheaper it will be; don't wait even if you already have an > employer-sponsored policy!

I had never considered this, and figured having my employer-sponsored GVUL plan was the responsible choice. Thank you for challenging that assumption! I'll run the numbers for my own situation.

<comment><USER7> When I did my own research and analysis, most advice I found online was that they weren't horrible; that private policies were preferable but employer- sponsored policies were okay. But IMO I really think that understates the cost-effectiveness in a way that misdirects people. That advice provides an excuse to just buy the employer-sponsored policy and move on.

Without being too long-winded, if you just consider the underlying economics of insurance, you'll get the best deal by purchasing and maintaining a policy for a longer period and with a payout that best matches your current and expected salary. If you're healthy, relatively young (<40), and confident you can keep paying premiums for the life of the policy, an employer-sponsored policy is just unequivocally a bad deal.

That last aspect is key--maintaining the policy for the entire term. Your risk increases significantly as you get older. If you don't maintain the policy for the entire term, you've basically thrown most of your money away. The fact that people are very likely to change jobs multiple times in middle-age (especially programmers!) means that you're not only introducing gaps in coverage, but increasing the likelihood that you either fail to buy a new employer-sponsored policy, have an employer that has a worse policy, or one that has no policy at all. That to my mind is a huge downside; difficult to quantify but so significant I don't think we need bother precisely quantifying.

Also, only small polices (<$350,000 or so, I think) will issue without a blood test. For someone making even only $50,000/year, $350,000 is much too low and not worth the money. The best premium/payout ratio will be a much higher multiple of your current salary. Think inflation. $350,000 20 years from now isn't going to go very far, and you're much more likely to die in year 19 than year 1. In my limited experience, those small employer-sponsored policies look like good deals compared to private policies, but those aren't the policies you should be comparing. When you look at proper policies (the ones that require a health check, like $750k or $2m), the private policies have more competitive premiums.

One final tidbit: employer-sponsored premiums are pre-tax, while private policies aren't. OTOH, payouts on the former are taxable, while (at least for term life) the latter are tax exempt. Normally pre-tax is a better deal, like with health insurance and retirement funds. And it _could_ be, theoretically. But it's not. A $1m employer-sponsored policy is really only going to payout about $750,000 or less, but the premiums aren't discounted to match even considering the pre-tax advantage. I don't remember how much time I spent crunching the numbers--most of my calculations were back-of-the-envelope--but I'd be surprised if my conclusions were wrong in this regard.

Basically, just buy a private policy. I purchased _less_ than policygenius.com (and standard financial advice) recommends based on my current compensation because I didn't want to end up in a situation where I allowed the policy to lapse because of the premiums. Again, that's just throwing money away. At some point you just have to pull the trigger because you can become paralyzed thinking about this too much. I probably erred to low, but I'm absolutely sure I didn't err in choosing to buy a private policy.

And remember, if the issuer isn't sending someone out to your house to draw blood[1], your policy is much, much too small. The questionnaire you fill-out for policygenius.com or anywhere isn't for naught, especially the compensation answers. IIRC, I had to send in proof of my compensation after I chose a policy and put things in motion. Unless you're actually getting a poverty wage, any cost-effective policy will require a health check, and the best premium/payout ratio will be in the range of something like 10x-15x your current annual salary, rounded up or down to match the nearest, most standard policy amount.

[1] They sent someone to me. At the time my employer-sponsored policy required me to go to a doctor. I don't know which is more common, but FWIW at least some issuers send someone to your door[2], which is very convenient. When I initially joined my then employer I did elect their sponsored policy. But I never got around to going to a doctor for the required health check so it never activated.

[2] The lady was nice and her job seemed like a pretty cool gig for a phlebotomist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> PSA for anyone reading this: Colorectal cancer for younger people seems to be on the rise. They don't seem to know why.

My father had colon cancer and was not expected to survive it. I think he was 69 when he was finally diagnosed. He had put off seeing a doctor because he thought it was "just old age" and it was quite advanced by the time he was diagnosed. He did survive it and died, iirc, just short of his 89th or 90th birthday.

A lot of my relatives have had cancer, some of them more than once. Few of them have died from it. So, I tend to be biased in assuming that it can be conquered, even when the doctors say the odds are long against.

I know I have seen quotes on HN about how the odds are long against startups and other things, but how you can work to overcome those odds. I think it is a bit like that.

Good luck in your journey. Best wishes on your outcome.

<comment><USER10> Oh we know why! It's just not acceptable to talk about it:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3311490/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3311490/)

Asking people to take responsibility for this one simple thing is taboo.

(I have a Colonoscopy just last week as part of a routine exam at my age. The procedure really isn't that bad. A couple hours on the toilet during the prep, and that's about the worst of it).

<comment><USER9> Obesity is merely one factor. I have read a number of articles on this and even written at least one (I get paid to ghost write health articles). My understanding is, no, they don't really know why.

Furthermore, how to not be obese is not really a solved problem. Suggesting that fat people are merely irresponsible is pretty lousy. Most fat people have tried to lose the weight. Some have tried incredibly hard and done rather crazy-sounding things, to no avail. We don't really understand that problem space either. Some people are able to lose the weight and keep it off. Others fail and fail and fail while trying like hell.

<comment><USER11> _Most fat people have tried to lose the weight. Some have tried incredibly hard and done rather crazy-sounding things, to no avail._

I half wish we didn't have these kinds of comments about weight loss; it comes from the Puritan-work-ethic-suffering-is-laudable style of thinking, and implicitly carries messages like: a) weight loss must include suffering, b) it must include hard work or you aren't earning it, c) 'quantity of trying' is something in and of itself which is praiseworthy, regardless of what is tried or how effective it was, d) crazyness is a proxy for trying hard by implication of exhausting all less-crazy options, regardless of whether that's actually true, e) defending 'why someone didn't lose weight' and whether they endured enough suffering to be allowed to live without criticism is more important than understanding, empathising, fixing, almost anything.

To quote from a blog about going the other way - muscling up:

 _Just because we're tired doesn't mean we had a good muscle-building workout, just that we had a tiring one. Depending on what you're doing, there's a good chance there's a workout that's less tiring but does a better job of stimulating muscle growth.

Similarly, being full doesn't mean we ate enough calories, just that we ate a filling meal. Maybe there's a less filling meal that provides more calories and nutrients._

And in the same idea, just because someone tried hard and suffered to lose weight, doesn't mean they did the most effective things to lose weight. Just because they felt starving doesn't mean they were sustaining long term calorie deficit, just because they tried for years doesn't mean they found a good way and it didn't work, but that they spent years doing things which didn't work. Just because they suffered while exercising doesn't mean it was an optimal calorie burning workout, just that it was unpleasant..

The two (effort/suffering and fat loss) aren't necessarily directly connected at all, yet we discuss as if one is a proxy for the other. It might well be that fat loss implies effort, but effort does not imply fat loss. Or it might be that effective fat loss doesn't necessarily imply effort although that's one way for it. I anecdotally note P.J. Eby's comment once that he'd tried an awful lot of weight loss attempts, but it wasn't until he found Vitamin K supplements that he started to see progress. Vitamin K supplements aren't hard work or major suffering (and undoubtedly they aren't a panacea for all obese people).

The wider context of the quote is:

 _we're going to slip, we're going to "fail". That's part of the process. A setback is just an opportunity for us to figure out what went wrong, what needs adjusting, and how to move forward more effectively. A setback shouldn't be seen as a failure, and it certainly has nothing to do with our ability to build muscle. The moment we stop thinking about change as binary—either as success or failure—but rather as a process that'll evolve, the more likely we are to actually reach our goals.

So when looking at our routines and our efforts, we need to look at them objectively. If our routine was failing, which part is holding us back? What piece is missing?

If our routine is working but is tough to maintain, what part was enjoyable and sustainable? What is wearing us down? What's the part that's actually responsible for our results? What's useless filler that just wears us down?

This is how we gradually develop lifestyles that work for us—making things more effective, more enjoyable, easier. This is how we get to consciously decide who we want to become. Then eventually those habits become what we do automatically—unconsciously._

In that context, of a life and a way to live, what benefit of talking about "I tried hard", in the past tense, at all?

It's almost tautological to say people who tried hard and are still fat, weren't trying the right things - and yet actually saying that is liable to bring about a reply describing in detail _how much effort and suffering and time was involved_ , as if the sentence was "you didn't try _hard enough_ ". Which it isn't.

Empathizing with disease, with medications, with psychological problems, with car-park focused urban sprawl, with disability, with thyroid problems and metabolic disorders and absorption disorders and poor education and stressful busy lives and constraints on money and food availability and susceptibility to peer pressure - these are all things that can usefully and helpfully be discussed. Praise of "they tried something and suffered for it, so if anything was going to work, suffering was going to work, and it didn't work", should fade from the world. It's unproductive, unhelpful, and focuses on all the wrong things.

( - quote source: [http://bonytobeastly.com/why-skinny-guys-fail-build- muscle-w...](http://bonytobeastly.com/why-skinny-guys-fail-build-muscle- willpower-habits-accountability/) )

<comment><USER9> My point was only that it is not a solved problem. That's it.

(In my first draft) I originally included the detail that I was quite heavy for some time and didn't manage to slim down any until I got the right diagnosis. I deleted that (before hitting "post") in part because I get a lot of flak for talking about myself for reasons I cannot really fathom. It seems I am damned if I do and damned if I don't.

For context: My medical condition predisposes me to retain fluids. I have lost multiple dress sizes and I still don't have the flat stomach I wish I had, though I walk more than 2 hours a day every day and I eat very carefully in accordance with what I have found works to not aggravate my underlying medical condition. Counting calories is contraindicated for my condition. My specialist never once suggested I should try to lose weight when I was 245 pounds and about a size 24-26, because the vast majority of people with my condition are horrifyingly underweight and the condition is quite deadly.

If just working your ass off was going to make you thin, I should be thin. I am not.

So, sorry to have hit some nerve for you, but my one and only point was that this is simply not a solved problem. There are people who simply cannot lose the weight, no matter how much they try, research it, etc ad nauseum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Any amount of unexplained rectal bleeding is reason enough to schedule an appointment with a doctor.

The doctor is likely to recommend a colonoscopy. Removal of polyps (a likely source of bleeding) reduces the chances of cancer developing and can only be done during a colonoscopy.

<comment><USER13> I'm almost ashamed to ask but what's "explained rectal bleeding"? An unusually large/solid movement causing direct damage?

<comment><USER14> It's possible to swallow something indigestible that then comes out in poop - sometimes this could cause bleeding. If you have anything inserted in your anus for any reason this could also cause bleeding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Remember that the anecdotes on here serve two purposes.

(i) to show that the aggregate does not inform the individual. As a species we are too influenced by aggregate stats. There is huge variation in individual responses.

(ii) history is written by the winners. Those people who did not survive cancer are not here to write about it and those surrounding them tend to want to forget and move on. Survivor bias is a real thing.

Not only is this story a reminder that life is short, but also that we must battle each day to keep perspective when the world and our human limitations are always trying to skew our views.

Given the tensions in the world, seeing things from the other points of view has never been more important.

</comment><comment><USER16> Had same thing at age 44. Stage 2.5, was given 60% chance. Had chemo and radiation. There's something I can share with you if you write to tatumizer at gmail dot com. I really hope I can help. I'm 60 now, still working as a programmer.

<comment><USER16> Forgot to mention most important tidbit I learned. Normally, you need to have your first colonoscopy at the age of 50. Mo matter if you have symptoms or not. But for certain ethnic groups, the probability is much higher. Your doctor may, or may not, tell you this (political correctness? Illiteracy? Not sure. In my case, family doctor was in denial even when he saw it), you need to do your own research. Find out where you belong, you may need it at age 30.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Last fall at the age of 32, I was diagnosed with leukemia (ALL). I went from a completely normal life to being in the ER in just a week (thought I just had the flu in between). My life has been completely on hold for the past 10 months while I deal with this and the resulting bone marrow transplant.

Thankfully ALL has a very high success rate for treatment and long term survival, but it has certainly made me realize how unpredictable life can be. I was putting things off that I wanted to do with my life and once I finish recovering, I certainly will work to correct that.

Don't wait until tomorrow.

</comment><comment><USER18> It's never too late to turn to the Dharma. I lost a child recently and the only hope I can find out of it has been to study what the Buddha taught.

> if we start thinking about impermanence now, while we still have time to > find skillful means to deal with it, then later we will not be caught > unaware. Even though in the short term the contemplation of death and > impermanence might cause discomfort, in the long term it will actually save > us from greater suffering. [1]

1\. [http://rinpoche.com/teachings/sevenpoints.htm](http://rinpoche.com/teachings/sevenpoints.htm)

<comment><USER19> This seems so predatory. Instead of proselytizing, why not just hold off and try to understand what this person is going through? Practicing your own human empathy on human terms is far more important than whatever list of teachings you might find out there.

<comment><USER18> Firstly I'm really sorry you felt I was being pushy. I don't feel I have anything to gain from what I shared, which is how I interpret proselytizing: my child died. Six weeks ago. So yeah, I'm on a lot of pain, and reading these texts are what have helped me through weeks of tears. Maybe it's inappropriate for me to share that so casually here, but I truly hoped it may help someone else going through death, or being around it. And you're right, I can continue to practice empathy. And for me, these texts point to how to do that... maybe someone else would find it helpful too.

<comment><USER20> From the perspective of this impartial atheist you didn't come off as pushy.

I am so sorry for your loss. I hope you find peace.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It took a case of endocarditis, a 30% chance of survival, two heart valves being replaced, a pacemaker installed, and another brush with death during the 6 month recovery, all at age 24, to wake me up. Ever since then, one thing I've really wanted, with all of my heart, is for people to wake up - see that this is not forever and tomorrow is not guaranteed. Listen to me, listen to the author - please, do what you need to do to enable yourself to pursue the dreams you really have, stop "just getting by".

</comment><comment><USER22> Good luck with that.

Shit happens; my wife was stabbed on the way back home at 29 and has been in a coma and now vegetative state since. If someone has a good way to deal with this crap, please do let me know.

<comment><USER23> Really sorry to read that. Hope things improve for you. My wife attempted suicide a few times last year. Thankfully things have stabilized since, but I had been contingency planning for life afterwards just to stay sane. I don't think there's a good way to deal with the crap...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Visited a GP about a year ago due to blood in my stool, and he said it was hemorrhoids, but it hasn't gone away since. Going to schedule another appointment this week thanks to this article.

</comment><comment><USER25> Every time I read a story like this it makes me angry that $700 million were wasted on Theranos instead of being invested in cancer research. Why isn't Elizabeth Holmes in prison yet?

</comment><comment><USER26> Do your research. I'm not an expert, not even close, but a buddy of mine pushed his wife's curve way, way out. Maybe you can too.

She has stage 4 lung cancer, it's spread to her brain. If she gone to Stanford, like she wanted, they would have done whole brain radiation to try and blast the brain tumors. The problem with brain tumors is that there is that barrier that keeps bad stuff out of the brain and it only lets small stuff through, chemo tends to be large.

My buddy started researching and asking questions (he's business/sales but I think he's an engineer). The 5 year survival rate is less than 1% for stage 4 lung cancer. So he started asking doctors and hospitals "what's your 5 year survival rate". Everyone pointed him to national stats and he said "no, I know those numbers, what are yours?". El Camino Hospital publishes their numbers because they are much, much better: 15%. I know, 15% isn't great but it is a boat load better than under 1%.

So they went there. El Camino has a different approach to this sort of situation, they use some chemo (avastin maybe?) that is small celled and gets through the brain barrier. They also did pin point radiation.

The results: it's 2 years out, I think 2 years and 1 month, and my buddy's wife isn't fine but she's damn close. She's on an every 3 week chemo cycle, she typically gets 11 good days and 10 crappy-bad days. They both retired (I still pay his health insurance which is a big deal) and bought a travel trailer, do 2-5 days trips up and down California. They are fully aware that they are trying to cram all of their retirement into a few years and so far are doing a great job, their doctor loves it (apparently a lot of cancer patients sit on their butt, just waiting for the next chemo session).

If she had gone to Stanford, while the radiation would have likely wiped out the tumors, it also has this little side effect called dementia, happens very quickly. So this outcome is much, much better and it only happened because my buddy did his homework.

And one sort of cool thing happened: this all started before my company imploded and I gathered the team and said "I want to send Bob on vacation. We've only got so much runway left so if you don't want to use some of that money on Bob, I get it, I won't judge, I'll pay for the vacation myself." It was unanimous, they wanted the vacation to be from the team (I was so proud of them, that's the team I wanted). So we sent them back east to see the fall colors, they had a great time.

It's worth stating that I've watched my mother-in-law and my father die of cancer (and while my love for my dad is pretty obvious, I loved my mother-in- law as well, we got along great). The thing that I've learned is the second you know you have something that is life threatening do whatever you want to do RIGHT NOW. I pushed for the vacation thing for Bob because my mother-in-law didn't want to have friends over "until she was better". I deeply regret not just arranging to have all her friends come in. She died pretty quickly.

So I don't want to be morbid, or show any lack of hope, but there is the possibility that OP is in the best shape he's gonna be. So use that time to have some fun, build some memories, whatever you think is good. If you kick cancer's ass you'll have some memories to look back on, if you don't, your family will have some to hold onto. Do not listen to the doctors, they tend to be overly hopeful and give you a false sense of hope (I get it, it's kind of all they can do, but we would have liked a more realistic view. They let my mother-in-law think she was going back to work).

Good luck, cancer sucks.

Edit: explain that lots of patients don't live between chemo sessions and a typo.

</comment><comment><USER27> Colonoscopy was a pretty fast and painless experience for me. The prep drink I had to take the day before was the worst part.

Being worried is definitely not a reason to put it off!

<comment><USER28> Did you ask to have a colonoscopy done? I had some bleeding but my doctor seems to just dismiss it as standard eat more fiber Hemorrhoids etc.

<comment><USER29> Everything I've read says that all bleeding should be checked out.

Even if you're not willing/able to get a colonoscopy, it's easy for a specialist to check for hemorrhoids. If the hemorrhoids are internal (not all are) they use a little fiberscope that only needs to go in for an inch or so. It takes a minute to do at the office.

I wound up having some internal hemorrhoids surgically repaired. Not a big deal at all. The bad news is that the prep for that surgery is pretty much the same as the prep for a colonoscopy. IIRC (it's been over 10 years) I think the doctor first did a colonoscopy and then repaired the hemorrhoids, all in the same operation.

Sheesh, the things we type on HN. Without a throwaway even.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> See significant change in 'going to toilet' procedure or blood in stool? Go to the doctor! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIHJmvnzwg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQIHJmvnzwg)

</comment><comment><USER31> It took a case of endocarditis, a 30% chance of survival, two heart valves being replaced, a pacemaker installed, and another brush with death during the 6 month recovery, all at age 24, to wake me up. Ever since then, one thing I've really wanted, with all of my heart, is for people to wake up - see that this is not forever and tomorrow is not guaranteed. Listen to me, listen to the author - please, do what you need to do to enable yourself to pursue the dreams you really have, stop "just getting by".

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm sorry about this, really hope you will get through it.

But this gets me thinking about a couple of bleedings I had a few months ago and totally dismissed. I will definitively see a doctor soon.

</comment><comment><USER33> Scott, I'm sorry about this.

Why isn't the medical community looking for early warnings? relatively cheap tests for hs-crp, IL-6, TNF-alpha could be helpful. Inflammation is the precursor to disease.

Do yourselves a favor & ask your doctor for the hs-crp test to measure inflammation.

<comment><USER34> OTHT, testing without reason will give you a lot of false positives that then have to be dealt with. It's a difficult thing to balance.

<comment><USER35> I feel like the cost of a false positive in medicine is lower than the cost of a false negative.

<comment><USER34> That entirely depends on, e.g., the false positive rate and the specificity of the test. Couple of quick examples of the top of my head:

* A false positive for a terminal condition or cancer may have a poor effect on the patient's mental well-being AND make them less likely to submit to testing in the future (see e.g. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540978](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23540978) \- "We conclude that the experience of having a false-positive screening mammogram can cause breast cancer-specific psychological distress that may endure for up to 3 years, and reduce the likelihood that women will return for their next round of mammography screening."). Depending on your false positive rate, that may result in worse outcomes overall.

* I had an MRI on my head a few years ago, and a _very_ small growth (<2mm IIRC, small enough that some future scans weren't even certain it was there) was identified. Everyone involved is certain that it is an irrelevant finding, but I'm now stuck with yearly MRIs - both a cost to the NHS and a nightmare for me (it sets off an anxiety disorder).

* Parent suggests getting a hsCRP test. Whilst potentially useful, it's also non-specific - it'll be raised by pretty much any recent illness/injury/general inflammation, and will always be raised if, e.g., you have arthritis. You would likely need further testing to determine the cause (not necessarily free of risk/cost), and your false positive rate is likely to be higher if you are testing without other reasons to suspect it will be useful.

That's not to say all preemptive tests are a bad idea -- that's clearly not the case -- but as I initially said, it's a balancing act. Blindly added more early testing will not necessarily improve patient outcomes overall; they may in fact have a detrimental effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'm praying for you, Scott.

</comment><comment><USER37> Just out of curiosity, what can an average Joe do to protect his legacy and ensure good outcome for his family? Cancer insurance, any other options?

<comment><USER29> _Cancer insurance_

I don't think it's cost effective to buy insurance for individual maladies. If you do, the perhaps logical conclusion is to include coverage against robot attacks:

[http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/old-glory- insur...](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/old-glory- insurance/n10766?snl=1)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> My grandmother had breast cancer about a decade ago and it was grueling for the whole family. She went into remission after aggressive chemo, but I pray every day no one else in my family will be afflicted with this terrible disease and that the hard working scientists and researchers out there will soon find a cure.

This puts my own trivial problems into perspective. I hope you make it. God bless.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Don't assume you have a lifetime to pursue your dreams.

But will this change our perception of people in their 20s-30s that do pursue their dreams and are behind in their careers and finances?

At what point is a quarter/mid-life crisis not just an acceptable adult YOLO?

The author has some initial regrets on building up their savings and network, and I wonder if additional perspectives will be made by me posting this

</comment><comment><USER40> Stop eating anything grown in the US or under the domain of corporate farming, anything grown with chemical (Monsanto/Bayer) pesticides, and look for as much communally, organic grown food as you can. Why has IBS exploded in recent decades? Miracle grow for cancer is literally being added to the food supply.

<comment><USER41> No surprise this has been downvoted. Apparently if you can't get a 50-year study to prove otherwise, we should assume any chemical added to our food is A-OK. Common sense be damned, we have money to make! That's America for you.

<comment><USER42> Reading this article make me seriously contemplate my own mortality. The last thing you want to do after doing this is get angry at someone. I downvoted because this isn't the time for a discussion like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> So sorry to read that. Good luck to the author. I'd love to read a happy follow-up in 10 years.

</comment><comment><USER44> Make yourself ready, before you die.

[http://youarehere.place](http://youarehere.place)

</comment><comment><USER45> Life is a strange thing. One day you can have everything and the next nothing. Then, answers are never enough. And you're left with the option to do the best with what you still have.

</comment><comment><USER46> That's so terribly sad.

That highlit bit should be tattooed on everybody's forehead at birth so you see it every day. Lots of wisdom in there.

</comment><comment><USER47> Best wishes. Be positive. Love your kids and family - the best legacy is what they keep in their hearts.

</comment><comment><USER48> Don't surrender, Scott.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm sorry, I hope you get through it.

</comment><comment><USER50> why did it bring so much attention? Some guy has been diagnosed with cancer, that happens every day.

<comment><USER51> I'm not sure you'd understand. The first time you realize your mortality, it can really throw perspective at you. Much more of a slap in the face than whatever hottest trending framework happens to be on Front Page HN.

<comment><USER50> Well, 1 month ago I hit a car on my bike[0] and was close to meet full consequences of it. Less experienced cyclist would be seriously injured or dead, I believe. Though it was kind of a slap in the face, I don't feel that I need to change anything.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUY7psClcbQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUY7psClcbQ)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Allow me to be profane for a moment:

FUCK CANCER

[https://clinicaltrials.gov](https://clinicaltrials.gov)

Start Here, please!

</comment><comment><USER53> My uncle was diagnosed with cancer last july and died 3 months later. Left behind a wife and two kids. The holidays was rather depressing last year.

He was an athlete who ran in marathons. Never smoked or drank. But cancer still took him. Such a terrible disease.

</comment><comment><USER54> Lie, cheat, and steal if you have to. I'd bribe medical staff just to get the best experimental treatments if you can't get there via legal means.

<comment><USER55> Often you can get your hands on the medical supply chain easier in other countries, eg. China / Thailand. I've seen hospital employees create fake patients to dole out medicine on the sly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I'm sorry to hear that; if you let them in there with their gadgets; they will find a reason to cut, medicate and radiate; that's unfortunately just the way things are. These are not the only options, not even the best options, for patients. Get a second opinion, and a third; preferably from outside of Big Pharma. You might have to make some tough lifestyle choices; like seriously cutting down on meat, alcohol, sugar and stress; but your body has an unlimited potential to heal itself when given the chance. Be well and don't panic; remember, mind over matter; how you feel will affect the outcome more than anything they could come up with.

<comment><USER57> Hey i hear the Steve Jobs fruit diet is fantastic. So is taking medical advice from hacker news.

<comment><USER58> Maybe he could eat only fruit while reading Hacker News Medical Doctors from a reading nook or abode. Mind over matter, bro.

<comment><USER56> Can't be that easy, right?

Has to involve nasty chemicals, radiation and flesh-cutting if it's going to work. Because, erm, that's what the profiteering psychos running this world are saying.

Is that the best you're capable of? Have you actually seen people in cancer "treatment"? What about your brain, what are you using it for instead?

<comment><USER58> Thank you for this amusing reply. You really believe all this :-)

<comment><USER56> Likewise, the fact that I've been you makes it even more so.

I believe in experience; and our ability and responsibility to draw conclusions from that experience and speak the truth that we see, especially when it's inconvenient.

I believe in the ability and need to have different, peacefully coexisting views and explanations; to stand up for who we are, and accept others for who they are.

I don't believe in blindly trusting authorities while ignoring experience and shaming others into silence to protect the insanity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Linux 3.3 released  - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/3/18/132

<comment><USER2> List of changes: <http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux_3.3>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The changes include the merge of kernel code from the Android project.

<comment><USER3> Does this mean that the entire Android userland will run on a vanilla 3.3 kernel?

<comment><USER4> Maybe at some point, but this is just updating the kernel itself, not the system Google distributes as Android. That basically means the stuff that the Android developers have created to make Linux run on Android devices is being added to the mainline kernel. In other words, for the first time, you should be able to compile the mainline Linux kernel and boot it on an Android device.

Here's a good overview of the change, why it took a while, and what shape it will take: <https://lwn.net/Articles/472984/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> An engineer after my own heart, shipping a final release then buggering off on holiday so he can ignore any issues :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yay! I think this includes the iMac headphone fix, so I can finally listen to my headphones at the office.

<comment><USER7> udev related? I'm having an udev issue on my Thinkpad T420s where udev doesn't detect the trackpoint if the touchpad is enabled in BIOS. The people that work on udev must have very little hair on their heads, I can only begin to imagine the frustrations of incompabilities and bugs they have to deal with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was egarly waiting for this release.At last it comes----

</comment><comment><USER9> If they keep releasing new versions so rapidly, I may have to switch to Chrome^H^H^H^H^HWindows.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The Linux release cycle has been essentially stable with time-based releases 2-3 months apart for the past 8 years or so. So this shouldn't be all that surprising.

<comment><USER10> They changed the numbering with the version 3 so while you are right, indygreg has a point too. We've lived with 2.6 for years and now they change the second most significant version pretty often. I've no feelings about it, just saying.

<comment> Tuna-Fish But that has no actual effect whatsoever, and absolutely shouldn't have any difference as to whether you use the kernel or not.

IMHO, they could have just as well dropped the 3. and just use a single integer to denominate new versions. What difference does it make whether it's kernel 3.3 or kernel 6?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Data Science from Scratch: First Principles with Python - <AUTHOR> http://joelgrus.com/2015/04/26/data-science-from-scratch-first-principles-with-python/ <comment><USER2> The book should add a subtitle "Includes 116 line implementation of an in memory database" [https://github.com/joelgrus/data-science-from- scratch/blob/m...](https://github.com/joelgrus/data-science-from- scratch/blob/master/code/databases.py) +90 line implementation of neural networks, wow that is some beautiful code

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! I worked very hard to make the book's code clear and beautiful.

<comment><USER3> Please add some summary comments in each file, like what it does.

<comment><USER4> he wrote a whole book of comments...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was going to ask, "Why Python 2.x"? But then I just bought the book. Hope you don't mind if I post this excerpt:

> _As I write this, the latest version of Python is 3.4. At DataSciencester, > however, we use old, reliable Python 2.7. Python 3 is not backward- > compatible with Python 2, and many important libraries only work well with > 2.7. The data science community is still firmly stuck on 2.7, which means we > will be, too. Make sure to get that version._

I use the more popular scientific libraries, e.g. numpy, scikit, nltk....and the bigger ones seem to have been ported over to 3.x. A few libs that haven't that come to mind: mechanize and opencv. Has anyone here had success with using 3.x as a data science professional, or is there some massive gaping hole that I'm missing? (I agree that, "Well, this is what the company has been using" is a decent enough excuse to stay on 2.x in most situations)

<comment><USER6> Even some projects that claim have been ported, will often have bugs in them because it is new code. Then it is a question of do I have time or want test the port on my production system? I just kind of look at the issue or commit stream and see when issues appearing related to Python 3 start to slow down a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I just finished the ML class from Georgia Tech as part of the OMSCS program. I used SciKit for most of the assignments as they involved NNs, DT, KNN, K-means, EM. This might be a naive question as I'm not a python guy but is there a reason this book is python based but doesn't cover scikit-learn? For example, what need did you see to write code for k-means[1] than to use an implementation already available [2]

[1] [https://github.com/joelgrus/data-science-from- scratch/blob/m...](https://github.com/joelgrus/data-science-from- scratch/blob/master/code/clustering.py) [2] [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.clu...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/modules/generated/sklearn.cluster.KMeans.html)

<comment><USER8> The title of the book includes "from scratch" for a reason -- it's from "first principles" where you learn about something by building it up from scratch rather than using an implementation. At the end of each chapter, Joel points out the existing resources you can use after learning about the topic.

<comment><USER7> makes sense. I took "from scratch" from an understanding perspective rather than implementation. Thanks for clarifying it. Looks like it'll be a great resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks great Joel! Definitely going to check this out and start working through it. I've noticed the huge bifurcation between extremely applied data science and almost entirely mathematical based. I was always wary of 'learning' data science through applications only, but as you alluded to, it's significantly more exciting. Likewise, most introductory statistics classes are so poorly delivered that many people have a deeply ingrained fear of the underlying concepts.

As a side note, do you attend any data events in Seattle? I'm moving there in June after graduation and would love to talk with somebody doing my dream job.

<comment><AUTHOR> I attend a lot of data events in Seattle. Especially Data Science Happy Hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Any chance there is a discount code to encourage early readers?

<comment><AUTHOR> AUTHD

(And I didn't know that until you asked, I'm going to edit the blog post.)

<comment><USER11> Thanks so much! Just got the ebook. 16 definitely beats 33, pushed me over the edge on my student budget. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Does anyone have any recommendations of books that might pair well with this one in the math/data/statistics space? Thought I might pick up a few books and score some free shipping.

<comment><USER13> Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications by Toby Segaran is a bit old now but is excellent, 4.5 stars on Amazon from 100+ reviews.[1] A bit of overlap with this one, but there are some great explanations.

[1][http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence- Bu...](http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Collective-Intelligence-Building- Applications/dp/0596529325/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Looks interesting, I'll probably pick this up.

Have you posted to DataTau?

</comment><comment><USER15> This book looks very close to what my girlfriend is looking for. She's interested in learning bioinformatics and it's been difficult to find a good book that introduces topics in data science in a digestible manner.

If anyone knows the book, can you give a quick overview of how much, math, stats, programming and comp sci. you'd need to read this book? Thank you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know the book, I wrote it!

Most of the math is vector space arithmetic. There are a few sections that use matrix multiplication. The probability and stats is stuff like understanding probability distributions and Bayes's Theorem. (It's all covered in the book, but you'd need to be comfortable picking it up and using it.)

In terms of programming, not much. Someone who's _never_ programmed before would probably have a tough time, but the goal is that someone who is bright and hardworking and who can write fairly simple Python programs should not have a problem. Very little CS background required. Maybe basic data structures like list vs dict and so on.

<comment><USER16> Reading this comment for some reason makes me curious how much time the book spends addressing computer science fundamentals like cpu and memory. My guess is that it's included in bits and pieces along the way but I didn't see anything explicit in the table of contents.

I'm thinking about it in terms of running computation in production environments where you may be constrained by available compute resources or budget. Some people have an intuitive grasp of cpu/memory/bandwidth and can do performance tuning as necessary, but those who don't can find themselves in situations where they waste a lot of resources, such as running a million parallel jobs that each have less than 1 second of CPU time, getting stuck after failing to request or provision nodes with sufficient memory, or performing unnecessary reads and writes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is a sampler for a taste of what's in there [http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9781491901...](http://cdn.oreillystatic.com/oreilly/booksamplers/9781491901427_sampler.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER18> Thanks Joel. I just purchased both the print and ebook copies from O'Reilly. This is exactly what I've been looking for.

</comment><comment><USER19> Could you please post this on /r/machinelearning as well with an AMA? Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER20> Good that it discusses overfitting.

I can't help but wonder about those recommender systems. With so little material on statistics I have to assume it's only about observational data, which is the best way to make the millionth+1 useless recommendation engine.

And why is it that the "data science" books never discuss DoE?

<comment><USER21> Most data scientists, particularly those coming from the cs department, lack most probability and statistics fundamentals. I doubt many of them have even heard of an anova, or sampling distributions, F tests, chi2, etc.

To be fair, ml tends to focus very heavily on prediction, not inference / interpretation of betas. In many tree models how to even understand coefs is an open question.

<comment><USER22> _anova, or sampling distributions, F tests, chi2_

Most of the big ML books are heavily Bayesians, and these subjects are less discussed (though IIRC Gelman's book has a "Bayesian ANOVA"). Even _Elements of Statistical Learning_ , which is very frequentist in its approach, only references ANOVA in passing. Do you have any book to recommend about these fundamentals?

<comment><USER21> basic level, very approachable, filled with case studies (and with R code to run them easily found), but stupidly expensive: _statistical sleuth_ by ramsey (but, you know, pdfs can be found on the internets)

intermediate level, covers some blocking IIRC: _Statistics for Experimenters_ by Box et al

advanced: I thought quite good, but classmates did not universally love. Unfortunately does not come with case studies or R code to run them; I have a bunch but (very unfortunately) printed instead of computerized and, in any case, probably copyrighted by my professors. _Experiments: Planning, Analysis, Operation_ by Wu and Hamada. The math is not complex but can be involved for various types of blocking designs.

<comment><USER22> Thanks a lot, _statistical sleuth_ looks very readable and interesting!

How do you feel about the Bayesian approach to these questions? (cf. Gelman's _Bayesian Data Analysis_ )</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Streamup, Share LIVE video chat rooms - <AUTHOR> http://streamup.com

<comment><USER2> Thank you for submitting Streamup! If any of you have feedback we'd love to hear your thoughts. We're planning to expand our feature set soon.</comment>


What is important that is underreported in the media and needs more discussion? - <AUTHOR>

I am curious. It should be compelling to our existence and/or future. Preferably technology related.<p>I am helping out with a big media company and they are interested in doing something in this arena. Would love you guys's input and if we make something based on your suggestions, I'll report back. <comment><USER2> "Hard news doesn't sell" \-- or, in the modern world, it doesn't get clicks or viewers.

So pretty much everything that _is_ important is under-reported. Climate change, government corruption, corporate crime, etc. etc. A lot of that stuff is very dry in the mind of the general public, and "young girl kidnapped" or "puppies or rollerskates" just make more money.

Since you asked for something technology related, I'd say the danger of AI, the debate between solar/nuclear energy for the future, the high human/environmental costs of low-price hardware (mobile phones mostly)... pretty much anything is getting under-covered.</comment>


All developers should drink more water - <AUTHOR> http://blog.developers.ba/how-much-water-should-i-drink-a-day/ <comment><USER2> Should? Are not developers intelligent enough to know how to look after themselves!? This could be the next interview question.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, haha, you can put 1l, 2l and 1.5l bottles in front of the candidate and tell him to pick and drink correct one :P</comment></comment>


ZetaVM, a platform for programming language innovation [video] - <AUTHOR> https://eventil.com/presentations/5dszyA <comment><USER2> For those that don't do videos, here's a text link:

[https://github.com/zetavm/zetavm/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/zetavm/zetavm/blob/master/README.md)

The Github owner's main page has a link to blog and other publications too.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me a little of Parrot - [http://parrot.org](http://parrot.org) \- I'm always interested in these sorts of projects. Will have to dive in and have a play, it looks promising!

<comment><USER4> AFAIK Perl6 was originally designed to run on Parrot, and then switched to MoarVM instead. Not sure what prompted the switch.</comment></comment>


Hilary Mason (Chief Scientist, Bitly) Uses This - <AUTHOR> http://hilary.mason.usesthis.com/

<comment><USER2> "Chief Scientist" always struck me as an odd title for a startup like this. What sort of science is being conducted in URL shortening? Is it one of those cute startup titles or is there some real meaning behind it?

<comment><USER3> Actually, based on things that she has written, she should probably have the title "Data Scientist" or "Chief Data Scientist." If you are into machine learning read some of her stuff.

<comment><USER4> I started this job before "data scientist" was in common usage. My title was scientist. Then we hired more scientists, so I got a promotion. :)

We build systems on top of the bitly data. This involves things like algorithms for identifying spam and malware, real-time content recommendations (which you can see in <http://news.me>), categorical analysis, etc.

We also do a few pure research studies, like this one: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_your_device_change...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_your_device_change_the_way_you_use_info.php)</comment></comment></comment>


New York City taxi trips - <AUTHOR> https://www.mapbox.com/blog/nyc-taxi/

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting to run something like [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/That_Shouldnt_Be_Possible](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/That_Shouldnt_Be_Possible) on the data, and aggregate the results to detect segments where OpenStreetMap data is likely to be wrong.

<comment><USER3> It certainly would. In this case we could detect missing roads but not incorrect tagging or connectivity, since we only have the start and end points of each trip, not the route in between.</comment></comment>


Google docs for android - <AUTHOR> https://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.docs

<comment><USER2> Installed. First impressions: Edit mode is quite sluggish and the document header refuses to stay at the top (compare with simple view mode). UI nitpicks: Logo does not work as "home", you need to use the hardware back button. The breadcrumb-as-filter while clever and aesthetically pleasing, is far too small.

Bonus points: You can print directly from the app via Google Cloud Print!

Overall it looks like quite solid, no complaints here. Looking forward to using it extensively.

Tests conducted on HTC Desire (Bravo) CM 7.0.2

</comment><comment><USER3> For some reason, searching the Market from my phone for "google docs" didn't list this app. Found out that their "install" button on the Market website actually works quite well. :)

<comment><USER4> I find myself hardly ever using the Market app on my phone anymore. (I'm a slow touch-screen typist.) Searching on my laptop and having apps install auto-magically is __killer __.

<comment><USER5> the "plan b" app was mentioned on reddit the other day when someone posted about his wife going missing.

it's pretty neat that you could remotely install an app like this after your phone is already lost:

<https://market.android.com/details?id=com.lookout.labs.planb>

<comment><USER6> Wow, that's neat! I didn't think of that.. But useful app anyway, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Appears to just be a wrapper around the mobile site.

<comment><USER8> You can click "Desktop" at the bottom. Then it becomes a wrapper for the desktop site. I don't...I don't really get this? Why did they release this? How is it in any way better than my docs.google.com bookmark?

I'm definitely disappointed.

<comment><USER9> Editing spreadsheets _really_ sucks. You have to reload the spreadsheet after every edit to see the new data. Yikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> QR Code for the link:

[http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=https%3A%2F%2Fmark...](http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=8&d=https%3A%2F%2Fmarket.android.com%2Fdetails%3Fid%3Dcom.google.android.apps.docs)

</comment><comment><USER11> Could they think of any more permissions to ask for? I think that's the first time the permissions list has needed me to scroll.

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been hoping they'd release an app like this forever. The app looks great, doesn't seem to cache the documents though.

</comment><comment><USER13> Works like a charm on my Nexus S, even with a relatively large spreadsheet (450 rows).

</comment><comment><USER14> Weird, it got into an infinite loop redirecting between the Docs app and the browser and back again when I tried to open a spreadsheet.

</comment><comment><USER15> Google will not allow it to be installed on my hacked Color Nook running CM7.

Arg.

<comment><USER16> I wonder if it requires some buttons or something that your nook doesn't have as it installed fine on my phone running cm7

<comment><USER17> It wants a camera so it can scan and ocr documents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Well, its not perfect, but its better than GDocs.

</comment><comment><USER19> Never noticed how much I used Google goggles until I reached for my phone to scan the (nonexisting) qr code from the page.

<comment><USER20> Why didn't you just click the 'Install' button and let it send it to your Android automatically?

<comment><USER19> I was not logged in to my Google account. Good to know it works that way too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> well it's about time

(looks pretty good on first impressions, anybody know how it works on a tablet?)

</comment><comment><USER22> Thanks.</comment>


Mickey Mouse on Speed: 'Mickey Mouse and the Medicine Man' - <AUTHOR> http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/mickey_mouse_medicine_man/mickey_mouse_medicine_man.shtml <comment><USER2> From the bottom of the page,

"During the 1950′s, a number of stimulant and sedative drugs were widely used and were promoted in the mainstream media. At the time, many amphetamines were available over the counter without a prescription, including Benzedrine."

I find this to be quite interesting, as this means that what are now illegal drugs had been legal for about 20 years before the Controlled Substances Act of 1970[1]. This means that there was a fairly established industry selling what are now controlled drugs, a fact that I hadn't really thought through before.

It makes me wonder whether if at the time if the Drug industry was simply not that important, or if the 1970 law was similar to the Farm Bills, where by accepting more regulation, the drug companies would receive less competition. If that's the case, there might be an interesting story to be told (probably mostly wrong) about how the Drug War brought about the current power of the Pharmaceutical Companies, unrelated to the patent laws involved. In any case, it looks like a part of history that I haven't paid too much attention to, that I should look at. Fun times!

[1][http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Substances_Act)

<comment><USER3> I am an unapologetic proponent of legalizing _all_ drugs, however, I'm not sure what the best way is to sell them.

The freedom to conduct business runs into the moral responsibility of selling compounds that can serious have potential for abuse. Should advertising be allowed at all?

<comment><USER4> Allow them to be sold but disallow advertising and discounting. This is already done with tobacco.

<comment><USER5> The UK has a pretty bad problem with alcohol. More people are dying of alcohol related illnesses, especially young people. Liver disease which used to be rare among young people is rising. Alcohol costs A&E units about £1bn per year. (1 ambulance is called every 14 seconds to deal with an alcohol related problem.) Alcohol costs hospitals about £2.3bn per year. We have 'drunk buses' \- paramedic vehicles that only deal with alcohol related illnesses in city centres at night times. Some hospitals have set up "drunk tanks" to ease the pressure on A&E units by giving drunks a cot to sober up on, with mild supervision, without taking up the resources of a real A&E bed.

We only have about 70m people in the country.

I strongly support legalising all drugs, but we failed pretty hard with alcohol.

<comment><USER6> If we take the recently publicized Rat Park addiction study as a guide, the problem isn't so much with the alcohol as with the social environment. If these people are abusing alcohol to seek refuge from excessive stress in their daily lives then it won't really matter all that much how the drugs are sold - we'll need to address the root problem of so many people feeling like "rats in a cage."

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130910-drug-addiction- the-...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130910-drug-addiction-the-complex- truth/all)

<comment><USER5> The social environment in the UK has evolved to create "vertical drinking environments".

You take tables and chairs out, so that you can get more people in. This also means that people are holding their drinks, which makes them drink quicker.

You play loud music. It's hard to talk. So people drink quicker.

You offer drink promotions, and stay open for long hours. This means that people drink more.

Sounds like hell, but people drink lots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The old Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse stories are quite amazing. I have a volume of reprints where Mickey gets jealous of another dude going after Minnie Mouse, and tries to kill himself with a gun, jumping off a bridge, drowning and with gas.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes this is interesting but isn't it more of a reddit post than a HN post?

</comment><comment><USER9> Mickey Mouse -> Walter White, Goofy -> Jesse, Peppo -> Meth

<comment><USER10> Did you create your account to make this silly comment?</comment></comment>