Ganges River: India's dying mother - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-aad46fca-734a-45f9-8721-61404cc12a39 <comment><USER2> Dirty is not dead for rivers. The water is still useful for irrigation and industry, and electricity, which is most of its economic use. And the source of the water doesn't die from downstream dirt...

</comment><comment><USER3> Indian regime has to build a 5000 km fence along Ganga river perimeter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wow, someone needs to talk to an interaction designer. That "scrolling" behavior gives me a headache.

<comment><USER5> This story actually showed me how I've been doing parallax scrolling effects wrong this whole time. Showing two fixed background images at once with a scrolling transition between them is kinda neat, and something not possible with my previously flawed understanding of how to implement the effect.

When done right, the effect provides an intuitive break to process one morsel of data before starting the next. It's like a web page's version of a chapter marker, allowing for compartmentalization while maintaining simple navigation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Hindus revere the Ganges as a god. They believe she came down from heaven to cleanse the Earth, and that bathing in her waters can wash away a person's sins."

What a bunch of bullshit by some random westerner who does not understand jack shit.

It is quite common knowledge that in the divine sense of Ganga, she originates from the dreadlocks of Lord Shiva and thus is a manifestation of purity in some sense. Mount Kailash is generally understood as the abode of The Destroyer (of evil).

Do write about the pathetic state in which the river is in. That is being factual. Don't bring in the religious angle. That is just stepping into territory that is very difficult to grasp from a western perspective.

<comment><USER7> ummmm no.

[http://www.ancient.eu/Ganges/](http://www.ancient.eu/Ganges/)

<comment><USER6> ummmm...yes. ancient.eu.

That is just one myth. I have heard atleast 2-3 from my paati. They are all stories. That is what the author/you doesn't/don't get.

edit: lol...someone butthurt and downvoting.</comment></comment></comment>


Unbelievable - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackerfactor.com/blog/index.php?/archives/549-Unbelievable.html

<comment><USER2> These children are dead, there is nothing fake about that, and there is also nothing fake in that they are victims of a variety of factors, including Paul Hansen who manipulated their funeral images to cheat his way to an award. There were over 100,000 photos up in the competition, and prizes were awarded to photographers of 33 nationalities (with a notable absence of Israelis). Other photos bringing other stories (and maybe even the same story) from Gaza and elsewhere in the world could have won instead. The whole point of a photography contest is to identify and recognize those photographers who can skillfully identify and catch dramatic moments and angles in split second, not those who take otherwise normal pictures and edit them later.

To give some balance, the day these two brothers and their father died, there were continuous rocket attacks on Israel. At around 7pm, a rocket hit a high school in Ashkelon. A student from the school told the reporter, "We were playing soccer near the school and suddenly there were sirens, and we saw the Iron Dome rocket fire above us, and then we heard a large explosion and we realized it fell just near us. The police came and we directed them." The rocket fell on the rooftop of a nearby school building unexploded and was disarmed by the police. The IDF later released a statement saying it attacked over 50 tunnels and tens of hidden rocket launchers. The Hamas often places the rocket launchers near civilian homes for protection and this might have been the cause of the attack. The civilians, as perhaps the Hejazi family in this case too, have no real say and are sometimes forced to remain near the weapons against their will.

[1] [http://www.worldpressphoto.org/content/swedish- photographer-...](http://www.worldpressphoto.org/content/swedish-photographer- paul-hansen-wins-premier-photo-contest-award)

[2] <http://news.walla.co.il/?w=/2689/2587705> (live blog from the day of the attack, Hebrew)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it is slightly unfortunate that the topic of the photo triggering this debate is a controversial political topic with many contradictory truths, claims and counterclaims of distortion and deceit. In this case there seems to be legitimate journalistic photography of the event that should be the focus of any debate about the event itself.

The real issue with this photograph are whether the digital processing applied exceeded that which is appropriate for a photography competition. Specifically there seems to be a suggestion that it may be composite of different photos from the same event although that seemed far from proven to me.

What do people feel are acceptable digital edits to be applied?

1) Global filters/brightness/contrast/sharpening

2) Similar filters applied to local areas to to ensure all wanted areas are properly lit and visible

3) Actually touching up/smudging or otherwise directly manipulating particular pixels.

4) Actually combining different photos (e.g. you have ten photos but someone (different) has their eyes shut in each one so you grab one face and merge it back onto the correct body).

Personally I don't see a single clear line where you should stop so I think that it should probably be spelled out in the competition rules.

<comment><USER4> _Personally I don't see a single clear line where you should stop so I think that it should probably be spelled out in the competition rules._

I think it's fairly easy to describe either side of the line even if the line itself is a little blurry.

When post-production edits of a _documentary photograph_ change the time and location of relevant people and objects, the journalist has some responsibility to disclose those edits to the viewer/judge.

When post-production edits merely enhance the clarity of the image, or the image is clearly not meant to be documentary, there is less need for such disclosure. Even though bias is present at all stages of the process, that includes even shot selection to begin with so presence of bias alone is not an indicator of which side of the line a particular image might be.

Obviously the first step is to determine whether an image is being passed off as a documentary photograph or an art photograph. Almost no one cares whether a photo of Sheryl Sandberg in TIME is heavily doctored (i.imgur.com/lFwMNia.png). Presumably, the photos in the contest were. This was a photographic report of a real and notable event.

Then the question is whether the modified elements of the photograph are relevant to the associated story. In most cases, filters and contrast are not relevant; although they could be in some edge cases. For touch-ups and smudging, the question is what are you touching up and smudging? A minor blemish on someone's face might not be relevant, but replacing a rifle with flowers could be substantial. A composite to eliminate someone's eyes being closed doesn't change the substance, but eliminating someone's presence entirely would be substantial.

Of course, a competition might have even stricter standards but from a consumer standpoint, that's where the line should be. An artistic collage photo meant to concisely tell the story of an event is fine, even if it LOOKS like it's almost real, but the nature of the photo should be disclosed. It shouldn't be passed off as a documentary photo.

<comment><USER5> > In most cases, filters and contrast are not relevant; although they could be > in some edge cases.

This makes me think of the infamous Time magazine cover featuring O.J. Simpson: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OJ_Simpson_Newsweek_TIME.p...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:OJ_Simpson_Newsweek_TIME.png)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The most striking thing about the Gaza photo is that it looks fake or staged. It's weird that this won a competition because it looks like someone set the whole thing up and positioned lighting to get the effect they wanted. This is particularly true of the guy on the left who looks artificially lit.

<comment><USER7> Congrats, you've done what most top HN comments do, contribute nothing but uninformed speculations and hearsay.

I think you misunderstood the point of te article, it's not trying to prove that the scene was fake nor staged, but the photo was digitally edited and not worthy of the award.

Digital editing aside, the scene seems to be quite real as it was covered by multiple news outlets and with different photos. Here is the link from the article to the time's photo (by the Reuters) : [http://world.time.com/2012/11/15/a-new-gaza-war-israel- and-p...](http://world.time.com/2012/11/15/a-new-gaza-war-israel-and- palestinian-militants-trade-fire/photo/palestinian-carry-the-bodies-of-two- boys-during-their-funeral-in-beit-lahiya-in-the-northern-gaza/)

<comment><USER8> Of course it was digitally edited. Since the advent of the digital photography, the very act of taking a photograph (i.e. digitalised version of it) is editing of sorts.

<comment><USER9> I think you're confused. An original digital photograph is no more intrinsically "edited" than a photograph taken on film. Would you say a film photo is edited just because of the limits of the film grain? Because the limitations of a digital sensor's pixels are really no different.

So no. Not all digital photos can accurately be said to be edited; there is such a thing as an original digital file, and a distinction to be drawn between that file and an edited version of the original.

<comment><USER8> You are the one confused. Do you understand the difference between analog and digital? Analog is a direct imprint of the photons that pass through the lense of the camera and have a chemical reaction with the film (simply put). A digital version is a COPY of the image that passes through the lens in the digital camera and by way of that it is already one time manipulated. In any case, I'm not saying I am the only one right here but that it's possible to look at it from different points of views. My overarching goal was to show that the whole claim of the edited photo not deserving a prize was irrelevant - photos are edited daily, every time and that does not take away from their aesthetic, documentary or other value if they are pulled off greatly. Short version: yes, even looking from your angle, the writer could have said the same about ANY photo, analog or digital, arguing that because the light in the photo looked different than what it would look in reality (and don't forget that a human eye is a sort of an imperfect camera itself) it isn't worthy of recognition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Now, you might be thinking "why are there two conversions on two dates"? This is what you typically see when a picture is spliced from two sources."

"The January 4th date is interesting because the deadline for submissions to the World Photo Awards was 17 January 2013. So although the base photo was taken in November 2012, it wasn't edited until about two weeks before the contest deadline."

This whole theory pretty much fails as it was published in "Dagens Nyheter" in November 2012. The lower image is what it looked like:

<http://m.flickr.com/#/photos/gunthert/8485283411/sizes/o/>

<comment><USER11> The photo that won the award (was physically available to the judges) may have been significantly different from the photo that was originally published.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, I can see several differences. The colors, obviously, but also the child in the foreground is dirtier, the men at the edges are darker, the men at the center are lighter, and all faces are clearer, and the sky is darker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Fake photos like these are called "terja" in Sweden after the Swedish wildlife photografer of the year was busted in 2011.

Verb: _Terja_ \- to manipulate photos Adj: _Terjat,Terjade_ \- fake photo,photos

[http://terjadefoton.wordpress.com/english/international- medi...](http://terjadefoton.wordpress.com/english/international-media/) and

[http://petapixel.com/2011/09/05/swedish-wildlife- photographe...](http://petapixel.com/2011/09/05/swedish-wildlife-photographer- of-the-year-admits-to-faking-photos/)

</comment><comment><USER14> To my eye, the Gaza photo appears to be illuminated by an off camera flash above and to the left of the camera. The man at the front on the left has a very bright left side of his face, and a very dark right side (also notice the shadow and light around his ear). Everything else in this photo seems consistent with this.

The reason for there appearing to be more dirt on the child's face is simply because it's a higher contrast image.

Maybe it has been manipulated more than is allowed, but I'm not seeing it.

EDIT: I'm not sure that there's only one artificial light source — notice how the front left man's visible ear is red? That's because it's being brightly illuminated from behind. Also notice that the top of his back (his left — photo right — shoulder) is illuminated, and that would be in shadow if the photo was only being lit by the flash that is lighting the left (his right) side of his face. Finally, there's another light source (maybe the sun?) that is causing the shine on the top right section of many of the heads (such as the bald man carrying the dead child).

<comment><USER15> The striking photographic detail about the photo is how the faces appear to be artificially lit. The arguments about the sun's position may actually explain that if you consider the possibility that the light on their faces is reflected light from the left wall plus the photographer's off camera flash.

<comment><USER16> The faces could be the result of some aggressive shadow recovery.

I find that being overaggressive with shadow recovery can result in fakey, HDR-like images where the lighting on the subjects' faces can seem... off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In college I lived with one of the greatest people I have ever met, and he was from Palestine. My late father was born and raised in Israel, so the roommate and I definitely had our share of conversations about the situation. Just as a note, his dad was a high ranking official in the Palestinian political movement. He once told me, "If you give the people food, water, shelter, and don't steal their opportunity for a better life, there will be no problems." That always stuck with me and I think it is resoundingly true.

When I went to Israel in 2008 for the 20th time in my 26year life, I learned that in Israel the average income is almost $30000, while in every neighboring country the average income is well below $5000, some under $1000. Palestine included. Israel is a completely different world than the countries that surround it. The situation over there is crazy and though it didn't end to well for my dad here(check my posts to figure that one out) I can see why he snuck out of the army 6 months early to get the f out.

</comment><comment><USER18> The image is 100% real in the thing that matters, that that the photographer captured this scene.

The photographer has played with levels, dodge & burn et al, so the aesthetic output is "fake", but those are actual people, holding their actually dead children.

The editing might mean he is not worth the prize.

But that's it -- nothing more to discuss. Not "where is the blood?", "why aren't they curled", "they're holding their eyes closed", etc. I do hope those are just the opinions of one disturbed individual.

Try reading some World News, from world sources (European, African, Arab, etc), outside the US media, and you would see tons of similar photos. Including tons of similar unedited photos from Gaza.

People would have defended more and have shown MORE respect for the moon landing photos.

<comment><USER19> No, you're missing the point of the article. According to the article the photographer didn't capture the scene. It says he took the people standing with their dead children from a photo and pasted them into a crowded street. E.g. merging pictures. A bit more dramatic than playing with lighting etc.

<comment><USER20> No, that's not what the article says. It says the image was probably based on more than one picture merged together, but it doesn't claim the specific things you say it does.

<comment><USER21> The HDR effect usually implies taking the same photo several times with different lighting and merging them all together. I wonder if this is the manipulation he's detecting, or if there's more as the parent suggests

<comment><USER18> Not necessarily, you can get the HDR with most image editors from a single image nowadays.

E.g:

[http://digital-photography-school.com/correcting-and- creatin...](http://digital-photography-school.com/correcting-and-creating-hdr- images-in-lightroom)

<http://www.topazlabs.com/adjust/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> When this was being debated on photography blogs, someone dug up the originally published version of Hansen's photo, published just the day after the event. Here's a side-by-side: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunthert/8485283411/sizes/o/in/...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/gunthert/8485283411/sizes/o/in/photostream/) .

While the earlier version could also have been edited (quickly) before publication, there's no doubt that it had much more believable lighting and coloration. For the WPP submission, Hansen desaturated the photo globally, particularly the blue and yellow. He also locally edited the luminance of the left wall to be consistent with the right. The effect of both changes was to isolate the marcher's angry red faces as the primary point of interest.

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't buy his argument about inconsistent left-right lighting in the Gaza photo.

Assuming the sun is really top-right, it is actually expected that people's faces are illuminated from the left, given the setup: the people are between two walls, the left one being illuminated, the right one in shadow. The light you see on their faces is reflected from the left wall.

<comment><USER14> The light isn't from sunlight reflecting off the wall. It's too... directional? It's also too bright, and the colour might be too warm. I'm not entirely sure how to explain it, but I've done enough photography to recognise that as an artificial light source.

But using an off-camera flash is not the same as Photoshopping three photos into one, and the OP not even mentioning a flash as a possibly explanation for the "inconsistent" lighting leaves me with significant doubts.

<comment><USER16> If it was a known "event" at the time (i.e., all the photojournalists knew the procession was coming and planted themselves in an "ideal" location), and you imagine a TMZ-like throng of photographers with their flashes firing from all angles, the inconsistency of the lighting might make sense.

Note: I don't have an opinion of whether the image is fake or real, but I am not sure the OP's analysis considers all possible lighting situations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I know little about image forensics, but am just old enough to have done some black and white film development. What would a skillful dodge-and-burn when making the "Eddie Murphy" print look like in an analysis like this? Or any other creative highlighting by the developer? It seems a bit of a stretch to go from "some regions of the photo are different than others" to "it's a fake". I'd be interested in seeing a similar analysis of some other photos known to be "authentic" for comparison.

I put "authentic" in quotes mostly in homage to an excellent series of Errol Morris' essays on nature of documentary truth and history of photographic manipulation. Worth reading. If you like it, you probably should watch some of his films too. [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which- came-f...](http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first- the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/)

<comment><USER25> The differences he's looking at are digital breadcrumbs left behind by editing software. It's not so much an analysis of the photo as it is of the JPEG file. JPEG is lossy, and repeatedly saving the same image changes the data in a predictable way, such that it's possible to identify regions of "newness" in a photo based on how their compression error differs from other parts of the same file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Could the title here be changed to something a bit more informative?

</comment><comment><USER27> The argument about peoples faces being illuminated on the wrong side is flawed. The light on their faces is reflected from the wall on the left or hits them from behind. It cannot illuminate the right side of their faces because the building on the right casts a large shadow and because the sun is in peoples back. There has been some serious dodging and burning going on this picture but you cannot conclude from light alone that it is a composite.

<comment><USER28> That is also my analysis.

The only character that looks odd to me is the one at the bottom left, and even then, it could be genuine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's funny how many people here latch onto the "fake" argument so quickly. I read through the whole piece, and the only thing that sounded plausible was the three sources thing in Photoshop. All other arguments I cannot really follow.

</comment><comment><USER30> Gaza looks like it follows GMT by about 3 hours, which would make this photo taken at about 11:40am solar time. I think that at least roughly fits with the angle.

</comment><comment><USER31> The thing that really bugs me about ELA is that while there is validity to the technique, and it can identify certain images as clear fakes, any asshole can plug any image into it, point at the bright points near some edges in the image (which will be there regardless of authenticity), and smugly act like they know what they're talking about.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I've seen various people use these types of methods to prove a point, and each of them were able to come to their own conclusions based on the results. Ultimately you can manipulate any photo to look like this in the end, and some photos even just naturally look this way when processed even if they are the real deal. I think we're putting too much credence into one-click web- based tools and unreliable Photoshop methodologies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm not going to express an opinion about the photo other than general surprise about how varied a concept of 'faked' appears across all commentators.

What really interested me was the article's description of Photoshop's XMP metadata block, giving a history of saves/exports/edits. I never knew this level of detail was stored with the images. It also makes me think, how long until there are tools to easily edit such metadata? The website takes the metadata as gospel truth. At some point in the future, this is not going to be a reliable position to take.

<comment><USER34> Well, to be honest, they really just use it as a starting point. I'm sure he wouldn't have just concluded it was totally genuine if he had seen a clean metadata block. Its a good starting point, but by far not the "gospel truth."

<comment><USER33> I've no problem with how they used it in the article. At the moment, the overlap of 'professional photographers' and 'people skilled in metadata forgery' is pretty slim and (IMO) the data is unlikely to have been altered in this case.

My point is, in the future, you won't be able to even use the metadata as a starting point because all of it could have been changed with easily-available and well-known tools.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> It 503s for me and I can't find it in Google's cache. Any mirror?

<comment><USER36> Coral Cache never fails

[http://www.hackerfactor.com.nyud.net/blog/index.php?/archive...](http://www.hackerfactor.com.nyud.net/blog/index.php?/archives/549-Unbelievable.html)

Edit: It's failing.

<comment><USER37> Failed for me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> 403, and the offered alternative location is not available either. Is this another salvo in the Middle East propaganda war? Please enlighten.

<comment><USER38> World Press Photo Award-winning picture is found to be significantly retouched, "cleaning" dirt from faces of dead kids and adding light and shadows in Photoshop. Picture happens to be of Gaza men mourning dead children in their arms, likely as result of some Israeli military action.

I believe the main argument is entirely about photography: clearly composition was great on its own, but lighting was heavily edited; _when is a picture still a picture_ , so to speak? It's an important question for photojournalists and their awards.

Whether this overlaps with the customary Israeli pushback on this sort of material, I honestly don't know.

<comment><USER39> Why no, the point of the article is that this is not one photo, it is a collage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The recent history of conflict photography in this region is worth digging into. I believe there was an HN discussion of the following documentary, but I can't find it:

[http://www.rubensalvadori.com/index.php/project/photojournal...](http://www.rubensalvadori.com/index.php/project/photojournalism- behind-the-scenes/)

"an auto-critical photo essay showing the paradoxes of conflict-image production and considering the role of the photographer in the events"

</comment><comment><USER41> Warning, graphic pictures of dead children in this post. Not safe for mind or work. It is horrifying. Posts like these are why I stopped using reddit, because "surprise! Here's a horrible picture, now feel like shit for the rest of the week/month/forever!"

If there were some place else to get programming or startup news like you can get here I would never come back. I wish there were such a place or that HN stopped allowing politics and NSFL stuff like this.

<comment><USER3> Now the link title and site don't give you any useful information about the topic it is fair but the photo is not a graphic one of the children. I fear that if you sanitise your life to the extent of avoiding such photos you risk a severe shock at some point and possibly in real life.

The graphic part is the visible emotions of those in the crowd.

Looking at your posting history you submitted a before and after [edit: Google Earth satellite] photo of the earthquake in Japan 2011. To me that is far more shocking as I can't help but imagine briefly at the impact on those there, hundreds of children lost and others orphaned.

<comment><USER41> Yes, that wasn't a good submission by me. I aim to do better in the future.

<comment><USER3> I wasn't really complaining about that but more commenting on the range of what people feel shocking. The photo in this case was not in my view problematic.

Death, pain and suffering happen all the time and while it shouldn't be fetishised it also doesn't seem a great idea to hide or deny it either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> How could they not see that this was fake/manipulated?

</comment><comment><USER43> getting 403 error :(

<comment><USER44> It's so unbelievable, even the server can't handle it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Oh, the side is blocked in Russia

<comment><USER46> The the site is blocked in Russia? Can anyone else confirm? It may just be poor connectivity. Hackerfactor would be an interesting addition to the known Russian blacklisted sites[1] though.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Internet_blacklist#Know...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Internet_blacklist#Known_sites_blocked_by_the_blacklist)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> So the photo someone took was later edited in order to look better? Shocking.

</comment><comment><USER47> hmmmmmmmm</comment>


A common feeling: Front End Dev Reactions - <AUTHOR> http://frontenddevreactions.tumblr.com/

<comment><USER2> That hit way too close to home!

<comment><AUTHOR> agreed. excellent selection of gifs as well</comment></comment>


Some programmers really are 10x more productive  - <AUTHOR> http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/01/10/some-programmers-really-are-10x-more-productive/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheEndeavour+%28The+Endeavour%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> 10x productivity between the average and best professional developers in an organization's software engineering organization is trivially demonstrable in almost all software development environments that I've been in.

Indeed, there are, in some scenarios, systems and software that have been developed by the best of breed developers in a matter of weeks, that would have taken the _lower performing_ (as opposed to average), years to develop to the same level of quality and efficiency.

I don't think it would be that much of a stretch to demonstrate on the order of 75-100x more efficiency between the best developers and the worst developers in most large software organizations - particularly in very specialized area's like PHY or MAC development.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'd be better off going to the Steve McConnel blog entry that this article links to: [http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09...](http://forums.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/archive/2011/01/09/origins- of-10x-how-valid-is-the-underlying-research.aspx)</comment>


Why 2018 Was the Best Year in Human History - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/05/opinion/sunday/2018-progress-poverty-health.html <comment><USER2> "I suspect that this misperception reflects in part how we in journalism cover news. We cover wars, massacres and famines but are less focused on progress."

Yup.</comment>


Ajaxian Featured Tutorial: Building a JavaScript table grid application with TaffyDB - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/ajaxian-featured-tutorial-building-a-javascript-table-grid-application-with-taffydb <comment><USER2> "Taffy DB does not have indexes." Indexes are a key component of a DB system. Until they add indexes and are able to support large amounts of data they should not call themselves DB system.

In the mean time Taffy DB can be viewed as a library that can process a list of maps. Nevertheless, it might be useful.</comment>


An 80-Year-Old Prank Revealed, Hiding in the Periodic Table - <AUTHOR> http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/23/an-80-year-old-prank-is-revealed-hiding-in-the-periodic-table/?sf15759139=1 <comment><USER2> If the codename for Plutonium on the bomb project was 'Copper' then I wouldn't be surprised if 'Pu' as an homage to 'Cu' also factored into his decision.

<comment><USER3> Cu comes from the Latin word for copper, _cuprum_. So, that had nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER4> _Where_ Cu comes from is irrelevant. It may still have inspired the Pu naming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember discussing this when I was a kid doing Chemistry. We concluded it was probably to make the symbol more visually distinct from Pt and also to avoid confusion, since Pl could reasonably be expected to stand for either Plutonium or Platinum. In fact thinking about it, calling it Pl would have been an extraordinarily bad idea.

<comment><USER6> I'd probably be forever thinking Pl is Polonium.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't consider this a prank, but instead a whimsy. It's a prank only if he intentionally broke convention from using the first two letters with the sole purpose of fucking with everyone.

</comment><comment><USER7> If he named it Pl it could be mistaken with Plumbum, i.e. lead that itself has element abbreviation as Pb.

<comment><USER8> Or equally, Pl_3 (3 atoms of Plutonium) would be very hard to distinguish from PI_3 (Phosphorus Triiodide), especially in a sans-serif font. Pu seems like a good call to me. If it also amuses 4-year olds, then so much the better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The comments on the story mentioned it - but my wife immediately pointed out that since they wee calling it "copper" as a code name during the war, that Cu for cuprus is easily transformed ( ha ha ) into Pu. (I love my wife)

</comment><comment><USER10> In French you would say 'ça pue' for 'that stinks'. Is there a link with this P-U business?

<comment><USER11> In English, we have several similar words that are derived from this French meaning (putrid is an example). Both words are related to Latin "putere" meaning "to stink". The ultimate root of these words is the Proto-Indo- European root word *pu- "to rot, stink" [1].

It is not clear if the current meaning of the term pee-yoo is derived from this Indo-European root. The first Oxford English Dictionary entry is in 1604, where it shows up with several different spellings: pue, peuh, peugh, pyoo, and pew [2]. The "stretching" of the word into two syllables must have happened sometime later.

[1] [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=putrid](http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=putrid)

[2] [http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/08/on-the- scent.html](http://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2010/08/on-the-scent.html)

<comment><USER12> This is a great read about such topic: [https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english- so-weirdly-different-f...](https://aeon.co/essays/why-is-english-so-weirdly- different-from-other-languages)

It contains also part about English-French-Latin connection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So how should one take a prank like this to the next level? Use abbreviations like Bs and Fu, or even outright spelling out dirty words by discovering and naming a bunch of elements with consecutive element numbers?

</comment><comment><USER14> Few of the other new ones follow the alledged standard, one other possible link, to go with the Cu one:

Np _N_ e _p_ tunium

Pu _P_ l _u_ tonium

<comment><USER15> Ne was already used for Neon. Plutonium is the only element that skipped the first available abbreviation.

<comment><USER16> Lead?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone know what is being displayed in the background of the picture of Seaborg in the article?

See [1]. It looks like variations of the periodic table but arranged along something other than atomic weight. I suppose if they were still discovering/creating elements, they would align their table differently than one where there have been no changes in years.

[1] [http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/11/GettyI...](http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/files/2015/11/GettyImages-50863862.jpg)

<comment><USER18> It looks like a table of the stable nuclei, the y-axis is the number of protons, the x-axis is the number of neutrons.

Each atom type has it's row with the different isotopes. See:

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

[http://www.hydroisotop.de/sites/default/files/bilder/Isotope...](http://www.hydroisotop.de/sites/default/files/bilder/Isotopes_en.jpg) ( [http://www.hydroisotop.de/en/isotopes-valuable-carriers- of-i...](http://www.hydroisotop.de/en/isotopes-valuable-carriers-of- information) )

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> One way that scientists on the Manhattan project would refer to fissile elements indirectly was by using the last digit of their atomic number and of their atomic mass. So Pu-239 would be called 49 and U-235 would be called 25.

Some examples: [http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/ManhattanProject/LosAlamos...](http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/ManhattanProject/LosAlamos.shtml)

</comment><comment><USER20> In line with the scatological references in the periodic table, according to "The Disapearing Spoon" By Sam Kean, Berkelium was intended to have the initals Bm, but eventually Bk was decided upon.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting that Robert Krulwich, from the Radiolab podcast, did the illustrations for this article. He even visited the comments section!

</comment><comment><USER22> Am I missing some critical source, or is this simply pure conjecture on the part of the author?

<comment><USER23> The sources are named and quoted in the article, so I don't know why you think it's pure conjecture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The ultimate dad joke. 10/10.</comment>


The year you were born predicts flu risk - <AUTHOR> https://directorsblog.nih.gov/2016/11/22/birth-year-predicts-bird-flu-risk/#more-7263 <comment><USER2> Was hoping I could enter my birth year and get back some risk prediction.

<comment><USER3> If the data is open, kickstart a webpage or heroku or githubio with js.

<comment><USER4> Not sure if it'd be that simple. The authors discuss only a few specific countries and admit that although the differences in the risk is "remarkably small, some noise arises from generalization across time and countries" [0].

And if you factor in that they were studying mostly Asian countries, Egypt, and Germany, there might be even more discrepancies to account for.

[0] [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/722.full](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/354/6313/722.full)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm wondering if this is also a factor in transplants and one area of complications that could be identified prior to transplant. A differing immune system and white blood cells would explain many failed transplants and also this might be one instance in which the immune systems of like blood types differ and effect outcomes. May be more case of not only matching blood type but also immune system compatibility, with this being once example of how they differ.

<comment><USER6> The understanding of compatibility is already factoring in a great deal more than blood type, it's just that there is so much variation that donors rarely match recipients. See the HLA Typing part of this:

[http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/transplant/livingdonation/donor...](http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/transplant/livingdonation/donor_compatible.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > [In 1968] a pandemic of H3N2 influenza, known as the Hong Kong flu, > completely replaced the H2N2 and H1N1 seasonal influenza strains that > circulated earlier.

I'm curious about the idea of flu viruses completely replacing each other. Do they interact or compete for resources in some way? Could we design a very mild flu which would replace other variants?

<comment><USER8> It's less like they're competing for resources and more like they're competing to see which one will survive the longest against the immune system. The human body is a nearly infinite source of food for pathogens but antibodies aren't always very precise in the strain they target. False positives are largely harmless so the B-cells that produce antibodies are even less discriminating.

When you have similar strains of a bacteria or virus, they can all cause the same immune reaction (which is how vaccines work) but tiny genetic variations in each strain can also drastically change how effective the reaction is against variant. Since bacteria/viruses reproduce very vast and the immune system is very good at its job, you essentially get an accelerated arms race that heavily favors the survival of the fittest. Even one part per million difference in probabilities is almost enough to guarantee the dominance of a single strain.

<comment><USER7> That explains tiny variations, but the article is talking about a shift to a new variant which requires a different immune response.

The question is why did this new variant "completely replace" the old ones in the population, instead of just operating in parallel?

The only thing I can think of is that the old flu variants were in decline already due to herd immunity, but the article seemed to imply there was more to it than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If it turns out that the very first fly virus you're exposed to has such a large effect on the immune system, it sounds like this could be great news for developing a better fly vaccine to give as a baby's first shot.

<comment><USER10> That fly virus can be nasty, just ask Jeff Goldblum.

<comment><USER9> I have no idea how I typed that twice in a row...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's almost too bad there isn't some way of manufacturing all 18 varieties of hemagglutinin, and wrapping them all into a single vaccine.

<comment><USER12> Do we want to not get the flu ?

I really hate getting the flu ... I hate feeling terrible for 12-24 hours, I hate missing multiple workouts ... hate hate hate.

However, in recent years I've stopped my (seemingly ineffective) efforts to avoid the flu at all costs and _further_ have started to appreciate the positive effects that getting the flu every 12-18 months might have.

In an otherwise healthy adult, what puts your immune system through it's paces - what gives your immune system a workout - like having the flu ?

What happens to my immune system if I don't give it that thorough workout every year for ... say ... 40 years ? What kind of immune system do I end up with at the other end of avoiding the flu for a large chunk of my life ?

Related to that, what else gets killed every 12 months when my temperature goes up to 102 or 104 for half a day ?

<comment><USER13> > In an otherwise healthy adult, what puts your immune system through it's > paces - what gives your immune system a workout - like having the flu ?

That's not how immune systems work. This isn't just a round of going to the gym. Getting a vaccine also gives your immune system a chance to learn and react, but without the severe degradation of your condition and the significant risk of secondary infection.

> What happens to my immune system if I don't give it that thorough workout > every year for ... say ... 40 years ?

First of all, you run less of a risk of getting secondary infection when your immune system is weakened. Secondly, you run a higher risk of transmitting the flu to people who can't be vaccinated (for example, babies or the elderly), putting their lives at risk.

[Herd immunity: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herd_immunity)]

> Related to that, what else gets killed every 12 months when my temperature > goes up to 102 or 104 for half a day ?

That's the opposite of how your immune system works. While your system is focussed on fighting off one infection, it's less able to deal with secondary infections. You can end up spreading your system too thin and your health can deteriorate much more rapidly.

[Secondary/opportunistic infection: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infection#Primary_versus_oppor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infection#Primary_versus_opportunistic)]

In other words, not getting a vaccine is unwise both for yourself and for other people.

<comment><USER14> > That's not how immune systems work. This isn't just a round of going to the > gym. Getting a vaccine also gives your immune system a chance to learn and > react, but without the severe degradation of your condition and the > significant risk of secondary infection.

Citation please. I'm somewhat skeptical about GP's viewpoint, but equally skeptical that you can so confidently dismiss him, given the number of things we still don't understand about the immune system. For example, doctors still haven't managed to cure any autoimmune illness, even though we've studied them for quite some time.

Full disclosure: I suffer from autoimmune illness, and every time I ask me doctor about my condition, the answer is often 'we still haven't figured it out'. The sheer complexity of all the different immune cell types, cytokine signaling, antibody production, etc. is mind-boggling, and is the product of millions of years of evolutionary arms race.

In particular, vaccines predispose your immune system towards an immediate Th2-type (humoral) response, while acute viral infection prompts first a Th1 (intracellular) response, then a Th2 response during recovery.

A strong Th1 immune response is generally more effective against viral illnesses, so it's possible that if you had a different concurrent viral infection, getting the flu could encourage your body to clear both at the same time.

Also, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis)

> you run less of a risk of getting secondary infection when your immune > system is weakened

That's true, but you haven't shown that getting the flu weakens your immune system.

> While your system is focussed on fighting off one infection, it's less able > to deal with secondary infections.

Your citation doesn't actually support your claim. Latent subclinical infections are real, and it's possible that acute febrile illness can stimulate the immune system to go after other bugs that have been hiding or dormant.

There is some evidence that ongoing viral infections can weaken your bodies defenses against bacterial illnesses and vice versa.

<comment><USER15> We may not have a complete picture of the immune system but one of these comments is square in the realm of "not science but sounds pretty good" and one at the very least in the ballpark of "conventional science we learn in school". Even if the former turns out to be correct several years from now it won't have been because of the revolutionary new hypothesis first put forth in an HN comment. They've done something we all do where we draw conclusions from our own experience which frequently turns out to be absolutely bullshit. Humans tease out patterns where there are none.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I feel like while this does open up a lot of new interesting questions, it could also just be happenstance.

It seems like there would be so many potential factors that could be causing a distribution like this. But I'm not a scientist, so dunno.

</comment><comment><USER17> From a bird flu perspective, 1970 doesn't look like a good year to be born. Has relatively high contraction rate for both H7N9 _and_ H5N1.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm a little confused. The figures show number of cases. Higher number of cases = greater risk?</comment>


TensorFlow101: A simple Convolutional Neural Network Using TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/nihit/TensorFlow101 <comment><USER2> The input sizes in the diagram appear to be wrong: [https://github.com/nihit/TensorFlow101/blob/master/fig/cnn_a...](https://github.com/nihit/TensorFlow101/blob/master/fig/cnn_architecture.png)

It should be 24x24 in the conv. layer, not 28x28, and so on.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually, spatial dimensions are maintained across convolution layers by adding appropriate padding - only the pooling layers change spatial dimensions. I believe "padding = SAME" argument takes care of this in Tensorflow(?)

<comment><USER2> Why would you want to maintain spatial dimensions? Padding here does not make any sense.</comment></comment></comment>


LinkedIn's Data Infrastructure - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2010/08/linkedin-data-infrastructure

<comment><USER2> I have a strong negative reaction every time I view the InfoQ site. I can't say exactly what is the problem thought... perhaps they should have somewhat bigger margins to separate content from menus and ads?

</comment><comment><USER3> I have one contact on LinkedIn whose profile takes significantly longer to load than that of anyone else I'm linked to. On days when the others are taking under a second to load, his takes anywhere from 5 seconds to half a minute.

There are two ways his differs from the others. (1) he has way more contacts than anyone else I know, and (2) he has a paid LinkedIn membership, whereas I and all my other contacts have free memberships.

Has anyone else noticed particular profiles always load slow, and if so, does this correlate with either them having a large number of contacts or with them having a paid membership?

</comment><comment><USER4> I expected more then two engineers to work on that aspect of their backend.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was similarly surprised to read "three people work on [Facebook] photos, the largest photo site on the internet." (<http://ow.ly/2k7ka>)

My theory is that they have good managers that take care of all the BS and free their minds to get tons of work done :-\

<comment><USER4> In someway it worries me that there are so little of these jobs apparently, bit of a lottery ticket to get such a challenge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Link to Slidedeck: [http://www.slideshare.net/ydn/6-data- applicationlinkedinhado...](http://www.slideshare.net/ydn/6-data- applicationlinkedinhadoopsummmit2010)

</comment><comment><USER6> Surprised to read LinkedIn's "People You May Know" MapReduce pipeline takes 82 jobs.

From what I've read Google's index runs in around 20 MapReduce jobs.

<comment><USER7> Pagerank is a like a markov chain - you iterate the same dataset over and over until you're happy with the result. If 20 is good enough, its good enough. Good explanation here: <http://www.iterativemapreduce.org/samples.html#Pagerank>

Whereas if you include signals from multiple sources, the joins are each one MR job, never mind the calculations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does anyone know where I could find out how Facebook does their suggestions? It'd be interesting to compare LinkedIn's method to Facebook's.

</comment><comment><USER9> Great team, nice reading about them</comment>


The Low Prices vs. Bargains Dilemma - <AUTHOR> https://creativesamba.substack.com/p/the-low-prices-vs-bargains-dilemma-20-01-27 <comment><USER2> This feels like an over-simplification, and not translatable to other examples.

JC Penney had an established group of customers who liked what it offered - and for many, this presumably included liking (even enjoying?) the coupons and sales approach that was offered. In changing the model, JC Penney totally disenfranchised the whole group of customers _who liked that approach_. (It doesn't matter why they liked it, or whether other people also like it... it just mattered to JC Penney at the time that lots of customers did get some sort of gratification from it.)

Does this mean that no business can therefore ever succeed without a coupons and sales model? Of course not - and there's plenty of successful businesses with a different model. They're just started with a different model, and therefore appeal to a different customer base from the start.

The message of this example _isn 't_ that "people don't want low prices, they want bargains". It should be that _" you change major aspects of your business model that your established customers like, at your peril"_.

</comment><comment><USER3> The discounting model works well for Steam, Amazon etc. There's a variant used by less reputable retailers where you pretend the product was being sold for a big price then offer a "discount". People absolutely do love being told they're getting something cheap.

The "always low prices" model is a bit more complicated to make work than it sounds, but works for e.g. the "discount supermarkets" of Aldi and Lidl.

I think the repetitiveness of a purchase matters: if you're buying a one-off, you want the biggest discount and you don't care what the price is at all other times. If you buy the same thing every week, you may be more interested in reducing the decision workload by going somewhere consistently cheap.

<comment><USER4> > There's a variant used by less reputable retailers where you pretend the > product was being sold for a big price then offer a "discount".

What's the difference? I don't follow Steam, but it used to be common knowledge that every month or so it would offer deep discounts and you should wait until then to buy and people joked about emptying their wallets due to it.

How about business to business sales where there is no listed price, even though the product is the same? Microsoft can sell Windows and Office at different prices to whoever it wants.

As long as the price is publicly available and transparent, I don't care what it was an hour before I buy it or an hour after I buy it.

I also think it's funny how people seem to relish clothing discounts as it seems to be causing the same dopamine hits that a scratch off lottery ticket does. Label the dress $200 crossed out, then put a red 50% off sticker on it $100, then put a nebulous sign on the rack saying 30% off clearance taken at register, and you have no idea what the thing costs until it gets scanned. And then the buyer acts pleasantly surprised at whatever price pops up.

I'd like to see a service that tracks price history for all goods and you can just look up how much something sold for and easily figure out it's below average or above average. Like google flight price history.

<comment><USER3> The difference is whether or not the product was actually being sold for a higher price. On Steam it is. As others point out, many places consumer law requires this to be true for a particular time period before something can be advertised as a discount.

> As long as the price is publicly available and transparent, I don't care > what it was an hour before I buy it or an hour after I buy it.

Most people don't agree with that, and in some places it's the law e.g. [https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/promotional-savings- cla...](https://www.asa.org.uk/advice-online/promotional-savings-claims.html)

> I'd like to see a service that tracks price history for all goods and you > can just look up how much something sold for and easily figure out it's > below average or above average. Like google flight price history.

"Camelcamelcamel" claims to do this for Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Every time this CEO is brought out and beaten up I feel compelled to come to his defense. I used to visit JCPenney when I lived in a small city and I was frustrated by the products that felt overpriced for the coupons to later mark down. I had to wait to buy a shirt until the sale went on, and sometimes it meant I searched and bought elsewhere. When this new method arrived I was excited to know that I never had to worry if the price was going to get better or be horrible from week to week, so I could buy on my own terms and not feel cheated.

After the CEO was fired and the prices went back to the seesawing coupon schedule, I quit going and moved on to something else. He had a good idea. I will miss the no-nonsense pricing.

<comment><USER6> I'm the complete opposite of my dad. He loves going to shops.He buys mainly on the basis that there's a discount ( real or made up, doesn't matter) on a product.I go to shop based on what I need and if there's a discount on a product I was planning to buy- well, that's great,but that's as much as I care about it.Never do price hunting, coupons,and etc. The problem is, my type is minority and my dad's is majority.

<comment><USER7> I'm like you with most things I buy. If I just want a shirt, or a bag of rice, or some other commodity, I just want to buy it. I've previously selected a brand with the quality I like, and I don't want to expend any more mental effort on this subject.

When it comes to computer parts, I _love_ to shop. I will read and analyze for _months_ , while keeping a close eye on prices.

For example, I'd been in the market for a new GPU for a while. And prices over the last couple of years due to crypto-mining have mostly sucked, with retail prices above MSRP for many cards in much of that timeframe.

However, in January, I was able to pick up an open-box RX 580 with 8GB RAM for $126, which is still a good deal a couple months later. I've been very pleased with that purchase, and hopefully the rest of my system can handle Baldur's Gate 3 at a decent quality (when the game comes out later this year).

I'm not sure what my point is... People are complicated?

<comment><USER8> I think part of the point here is that some commodities may have highly variable prices for discernible reasons - manufacturing costs, supply/ demand, etc. - and it makes sense to try and get a good deal. For other products, like groceries, prices are mostly stable so it doesn't make as much sense. If there were rice shortages and your brand of rice cost much more all of a sudden, though, I would expect you might shop around then

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Short, unsubstantiated, unintelligent post lacking much detail, that is better suited as a comment reply to a more detailed post.

They don't offer examples where their claim holds true, nor go into the (potentially interesting) detail of why this might be true psychologically, or link to any studies like these sorts of posts usually do. Even if those studies make vague claims, at least offer further reading.

</comment><comment><USER10> I hate discounts with special requirements (coupons, bonus cards, etc). Anyone _can_ get the discount, but has to jump through pointless hoops to actually get it. Just give everybody the discount.

And I would love a shop that always gave low prices instead of temporary discounts. At least, that's what I keep telling myself; I don't actually mind paying more for quality products. There are a couple of very successful Dutch chains specialising in low prices (Action, Lidl), and I never actually go there. Instead, I go to more expensive shops that have exactly what I want but require a bonus card to claim the discount, which I do while hating it.

We're utterly irrational creatures, and I'm no different, apparently.

On the other hand, when I bought my first dishwasher, I found a model that was discounted from €300 to €200. I shopped around a bit more and found the exact same model at another shop for €200 and no discount. I bought it at the second shop. So there I clearly did prefer cheap over discounted.

<comment><USER11> The hoops are the way such discounts are made affordable. If you're not willing to jump through those hoops you pay more which then subsidize those discounts for those who are willing to do so or otherwise unable to afford the product.

Price segmentation helps businesses extract maximum revenue.

<comment><USER10> Interesting point. So lazy rich people pay more. Although with the bonus cards, literally every regular customer has them, so it's the irregular customers that subsidize the regular ones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I prefer low prices, every time I see an ad like "Save $x" or "From $x to $y" I feel someone was ripped off. But most people may really like the "bargains". Even my wife. I like to tease her "from 3000 to 300 for something that is worth 3".

</comment><comment><USER13> That's depressing if true. I would much rather the price be the real thing all year round rather than waiting for a fake sale every second week.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would love to online grocery shop with a core selection of items in my basket.

The UK service Ocado provides this functionality, but due to its constantly rotating offers shopping in this manner is inefficient.

I would much rather lower prices than offers.

</comment><comment><USER15> Clothing is so overpriced. A name-brand button-up shirt or pair of jeans is not worth $55 to me. Buying the first shirt and getting the next for 50% off (so 25% off both shirts) is still insulting.

When I go to JCPenny, Macy's, or other stores at our dying mall (I think that might be all that's left), I head straight for the clearance rack. I'll buy those clothes for $10 or $15, or less.

It's a low price, and I feel like I'm getting a "$55 shirt" for $10.

<comment><USER16> The "real" full price of a lot of non-luxury clothes is more like 60-70% of "full price" and it's not a real sale until it dips under that. A lot of traditionally lower-edge-of-upscale brands have even gone that way.

Between that and vanity sizing buying clothes involves a lot of looking at and interpreting bullshit numbers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I know that the evidence in this case is very clear, and that consistent, low prices didn't work. In fact I think there are a few instances of other people attempting similar strategies like Brandless. But Intuitively I feel like there must be a place for the consistent low prices model. Maybe intuition is just dead wrong in this case, or maybe we're just waiting for some visionary to turn up and everyone will be talking about how crazy it is no one managed to do that strategy before.

<comment><USER18> I guess the standard discounting approach means that people who care a lot about low prices can get even lower prices, because to they are to an extent cross-subsidised by people that don't care.

In the always-low-prices model, no cross-subsidy is available, so you lose a lot of the people who care about low prices, and you don't gain many of the people who don't care because, well, they don't care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> My liberal TL;DR: JCPenney failed in switching from coupons to fair and transparent pricing, not because "people love bargains", but because _everyone else on the market is manipulating people with bargains_.

Honesty loses to dishonesty on the market.

</comment><comment><USER20> Again, as evidenced by this phenomenon, humans are not rational, they are emotional and rationalizing.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is barely worth reading. I thought there would be more in it, but just read the TLDR in the comments.

</comment><comment><USER22> TLDR:

> Low prices make us feel like we're tightwad bastards (Scrooge McDuck style). > But bargains make us feel special and smart. And they allow our brains to > change the narrative, "I didn't spend $60, I saved $45".

<comment><USER23> My TLDR ;-)

> People don't want low prices, they want bargains.

<comment><USER24> They also want to feel superior and special. That they've 'won'.

<comment><USER25> After spending quite some time on craigslist like websites, here's how I feel when buying or selling:

I want to reach parity. Most of the times these items were sitting in corners, sometimes even some were things I found. But I wanted to make the dance with the other person to find the middle ground where both of us would feel happy. Sometimes even if I gave him more than I should, to me it felt alright. The value is no more in the item, it's in making two people feel happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow. So much subjective.

They lost ~$1Billion in a year. The customer voted.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why people never bargain for branded products and mall shops ?</comment>


Luxon – A library for working with dates and times in JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/moment/luxon <comment><USER2> So it's a better moment made by the moment team:

[https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/moment.html](https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/moment.html)

Major differences:

      * Immutable
      * Months in Luxon are 1-indexed instead of 0-indexed like in Moment and the native Date type.
      * Localizations and time zones are implemented by the native Intl API (or a polyfill of it), instead of by the library itself.
      * Luxon has both a Duration type and an Interval type. The Interval type is like Twix.
      * Luxon lacks the relative time features of Moment and will until the required facilities are provided by the browser.

<comment><USER3> In what situation is immutable important?

<comment><USER4> I think there are lots of good reasons to make datetimes immutable (e.g. many of the same reasons most languages make strings immutable). But here's one specific to Moment and Luxon: chainable APIs should really always have immutable types because the return value is the thing you use next anyway. When each call returns an instance of the type it's both completely unnecessary and very often harmful for those calls to modify anything.

      var a = moment();
      console.log("the end of tomorrow is", a.add(1, 'day').endOf('day'));

      // do more stuff with a
      // oh crap, a is now set to tomorrow? wtf?

If you want a to be the end of tomorrow, all you needed to do was assign a to the whole chain, so this mutation didn't help you. That add() and endOf() return instances of Moment signals that they are Moment -> Moment functions, not mutators that also return the object. A mutable API should have void methods:

      var a = moment();
      a.add(1, 'day');
      a.endOf('day');

      // do stuff with a

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Luxon author here, happy to answer anything.

Edit: Here's a thing I wrote about why this exists: [https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/why.html](https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/why.html)

<comment><USER5> When can you make a Python version available? Datetime is by far my biggest gripe with Python. It takes many times the lines of code to do something "simple" with it vs other languages (e.g. parse remote time stamp in a specific format, apppend time zone info to that, get local time + zone, normalize both to UTC, compare, present difference in human-readable format).

Here's the python version of moment: [https://github.com/zachwill/moment/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/zachwill/moment/blob/master/README.md)

<comment><USER6> Have you tried arrow (my favorite), dolorean or a third one the name escapes me right now?

I use arrow whenever I need to process a date, no matter the usage. Having a consistent interface is golden.

EDIT I just realized that the author of moment in Python (you link to) also mentions arrow. I have to remember the name of the third package, it addressed some weaknesses in arrow (particularly issues with failed parsing which does not output an error)

<comment><USER7> Possibly [https://github.com/kennethreitz/maya](https://github.com/kennethreitz/maya)

<comment><USER6> I remember, it was Pendulum, [https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum/](https://github.com/sdispater/pendulum/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've migrated a lot of code from moment to date-fns because of moment's bulky size and vast, mutable API. Luxon seems to fix the API issue. date-fns is still great for simple operations, but I'll definitely consider this for new projects with nontrivial datetime handling.

<comment><USER9> Yes, mutation in Moment has burned me a few times before I realized that occurs.

Edit: wow, I just looked at the repo and realized its made by the Moment team. That might be pretty cool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How does this compare in file size to Moment? That's the only real issue I have with it.

<comment><USER11> After minification with Uglify:

27.3 KB compressed with `gzip -9`, 26.4KB with `zopfli -i1000` and 24.0KB with `brotli -q 11`.

(kilo, not kibi)

<comment><USER12> TIL they just completely redefined a kilobyte a while ago.

<comment><USER13> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER12> At some point, a kilobyte was 1024 bytes. Now, a kilobyte is 1000 bytes, and 1024 bytes is a kibibyte.

I mean, it does make sense. But it just sounds off to me.

<comment><USER5> Hard drive manufacturers have been doing this for decades. This is why the "80GB" drives were 74.5GB in Windows.

It's more complicated with SSDs: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/7](https://www.anandtech.com/show/2829/7)

EDIT: the official "kibibyte" was standardized in 1998: [https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html](https://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/binary.html) so almost 20 years ago. Blame Windows and HDD mfgs for sticking with the SI definitions.

<comment><USER14> Yea, bad bad windows for following standards.

The SI prefixes are well established before 1998 and the cause for this brainmelt.

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

<comment><USER15> Windows (at least up to 8) does not follow the SI standard. It uses KB, MB, GB but converts using 1024. Which has funny consequences, like 999MB being smaller 0.94GB.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> _Months in Luxon are 1-indexed instead of 0-indexed like in Moment and the native Date type._

This seems like a bold decision and terrifying source of errors for those of us with decades of experience thinking January is 0.

<comment><USER17> I think that moment.js was already built that way. For me it kinda makes sense: if days are calculated with a 1-index in mind, why make months different? As I said: it KINDA makes sense.

<comment><USER4> No, they're 0-indexed in Moment. But yes, the reason I made Luxon 1-index them is that days and years are 1-indexed. I also fielded a _lot_ of issues in Moment that were caused by newer programmers not knowing that months were 0-indexed.

<comment><USER17> Good stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not a direct js dev so forgive my ignorance. How does this compare to moment.js [0]? Any feature differences?

[0] [https://momentjs.com/](https://momentjs.com/)

<comment><USER19> There's a page explaining this: [https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/why.html](https://moment.github.io/luxon/docs/manual/faq/why.html)

<comment><USER18> Thanks. This link should be on the github page to be honest. For people like me who do not (always) click through if they don't see an immediate need. Only now notice the url contains moment and this is part of moment.

<comment><USER20> Well, perhaps the people who don't care to investigate just aren't a target of this library at the moment.

<comment><USER17> "at the moment"? No pun intended?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ah, immutable. Mutability is my biggest issue with Moment.js. It seems they have kept the API mostly the same, so this will be easy to replace.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. It looks like this is maintained by the maintainers of moment.

</comment><comment><USER23> How does it compare to date-fns?

<comment><USER24> Biggest remaining difference I can see is that Luxon still has it's own classes while date-fns operates on bare DateTime objects (AFAIK), which allows for a different kind of API. So it's mostly a matter of personal preferences now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Funny. All libraries/frameworks nowadays qualify themselves as 'modern'.

</comment><comment><USER26> * The Problem with Time & Timezones - Computerphile - YouTube || [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5wpm-gesOY)

</comment><comment><USER27> Sorry for the dumb questions, I haven't worked with js much, but what does this add to the standard library?

Going just by the one example there, I can see that timezone by location is probably extra, that's perfectly fine. The endOf modifier seems more like a helper to fix broken date/time model in js? But other parts should probably be in the standard library? I was under the impression js is improving fast nowadays, will stuff like this get into the language?

<comment><USER4> The standard library is really difficult to work with and does very little for you. There _are_ some improvements to Dates coming through the standards pipeline but it will be a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> 2017\. We have async, promises, classes, => functions in Javascript, but we still have abysmal date & time support and 100 libraries to solve it.

This library looks less bad than momentJS' tangled ball of mud. Good job

</comment><comment><USER29> PLEASE use joda-js on Javascript: [https://js-joda.github.io/js- joda/](https://js-joda.github.io/js-joda/)

It's a port of the java8 date/time API, which is the most correct date- handling library there is.

<comment><USER22> What if one does not want to use a port of Joda? Even looking at the documentation makes me run away. Where are all the examples?

date-fns seems good, moment works well too, despite its flaws, this new one is worth looking at.

Dismissing all other libraries isn't very helpful.

And yes, I realise all other libraries are wrappers around Date. It works well enough for 99% of cases.

<comment><USER30> Agree with your points, but I really thought joda-time's documentation was decent! Cheatsheet had plenty of examples: [https://js-joda.github.io/js- joda/cheat-sheet.html](https://js-joda.github.io/js-joda/cheat-sheet.html)

<comment><USER22> Thanks. I didn't find that last time. Examples should really be in the actual documentation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thoughts on Collision Conference - <AUTHOR> Wanted to see if anyone has any experience with the collision conference. It looks like a startup oriented conference with some huge names in the space attending.
My startup was offered their ALPHA package which gets us a booth and part of their startup programming for $600 CAD.
Was wondering if anyone had thoughts and experiences with the conference. Thank you in advanced!! <comment><AUTHOR> Link to conference site:

[https://collisionconf.com](https://collisionconf.com)</comment>


Judge throws out United Airlines lawsuit against Skiplagged.com founder - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/01/investing/united-airlines-lawsuit-skiplagged/?iid=TL_Popular

<comment><USER2> Shame on the airlines for such a gaping hole in their pricing model, but hacking the system like this isn't without its negative externalities...

When you buy that stopover ticket and ditch the connection, you're likely to have gate agents calling over the intercom for you repeatedly while a plane full of passengers could be waiting for you to show up.

I've been in plenty of planes which pushed back a few minutes early after a quick boarding, and it's always a nice change from the typical late departure. The idea of a full plane ready-to-go save for a passenger who had no intention of showing up in the first place doesn't sit well with me.

I've also had plenty of flights where I've timed it wrong and been sprinting to the gate with just under 5 minutes left on the clock. Sometimes you make it, sometimes you miss it. But the more common-place connection dropping becomes, the more likely the airlines are to close that gate at exactly 5 minutes pre-flight even with a checked in passenger unboarded, which makes flying overall just a little bit worse for everyone.

But on the whole, I despise the pricing games that airlines play a lot more than any hack a passenger can come up with to beat them at their own game. Trying to book a flight last week and it seemed like every single time I reran the search the prices were up again another $20. It's definite race-to-the- bottom pricing strategies. I understand that as seats sell the lowest available price changes, but it seems like even existing inventory is being repriced in real time. I think the price for a specific seat should not be changing more than once per 24 hours, or better yet, once per 7 days.

<comment><USER3> If airlines can't play pricing games there will be fewer flights and higher average prices. Airlines make an average of $7 per passenger, so those last minute $100 hikes to ticket prices or higher ticket prices for in-demand direct flights generally aren't buying private jets for airline executives, they're making the route actually viable to operate.

If an airline sells a large block of seats or its competitor sells out and is now 99% certain they'll fill the flight at a higher price, why should they be forced to hold the price at the same level just because it's still Tuesday?

<comment><USER2> The ability to freely set prices is no doubt a cornerstone of capitalism and there would certainly be significant inefficiencies introduced by any "fair pricing" regulations.

That said, we're just at the tip of the iceberg for variable service and variable pricing based on expected customer value and expected customer elasticity. As more of our purchases are made programmatically. and as our identities, purchase patterns, credit records, even personal environmental factors can be taken into account in real-time, free market economics will force companies to adapt pricing models that can effectively exploit each customer's individual maximum utility.

Sometimes the "optimal" economic outcome is not the moral outcome. I'm not sure I like the idea of a world where the price of a Big Mac changes as each personal steps up to the counter and their iris is scanned to determine what they can afford. I think there's some reasonable expectation of privacy to our purchasing history which will work itself out over the next couple decade as the technology gets more advanced, sees more widespread adoption, is rallied against, and eventually regulated to some extent.

Part of the problem is that bad behavior is't often punished by the market to the full extent of the damage it causes. For example, with credit cards, some cards started changing terms so that payments were applied to the lowest interest rate balance versus the highest. It's clearly an "unfair" practice but because most customers of credit card companies don't have a clue about how interest is specifically calculated, the companies that adopted the practice were rewarded with higher profit at the expense of uneducated customers. Soon it became practically necessary for all credit cards to apply payments to lowest interest rate balances first, because they couldn't compete in the market if they didn't. I think this is a great example where regulation can enforce good behavior aka "fair dealing" while ensuring there's a level playing field so good actors aren't at a disadvantage competing with bad actors.

I think so-called bad actors will take variable pricing a "step too far". At some point it crosses an ethical line and becomes predatory. We haven't exactly seen where that line is drawn, but certainly user-agent sniffing is just the beginning. The airlines can afford millions in R&D to develop the algorithms to exploit maximum utility, but who is there who can monetize the algorithms which _shield_ customers against these pricing attacks? When the most popular browser is made by an advertising company whose existence depends on collecting these metrics, it does make you wonder.

<comment><USER3> Sure, creative pricing strategies aren't always in the interest of the consumer, but purely hypothetical suggestions of possibilities to personalise prices to a maximal extent is not a justification for eviscerating marginal airline routes by forcing the airlines to price weekly.

As for user-agent sniffing, I suspect it's less prevalent in the airline industry than most other areas of e-commerce, since nearly everyone comparison shops, most airlines' tickets are available from multiple vendors at prices fixed at a given time by a purchaser-agnostic GDS, and the meta-search sites sometimes accused of agent-sniffing not only don't control the prices but often have to rely on outdated caches to actually display them at all...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The biggest problem I have with skiplagged is that I know the airlines WILL find a way to prevent this if people are doing it en masse. Make no mistake. And it's virtually guaranteed that whatever they do to stop it will not benefit passengers. In the best case, it will only hurt the people using these tricks, but I'd be willing to bet there will be some collateral damage.

That's the main reason I think it's shortsighted to massively publish loopholes like this. If just a few people are doing it, they'll ignore it. But when someone creates a highly visible service like this to encourage it, there's a good chance it will become too common for them to ignore. If the expected outcome of that would be that the loophole was closed in a way that makes pricing more fair for everyone, great. But I can't see how anyone who pays attention to how airlines operate could expect that to be the case.

In the short term, we win. In the long term, we lose.

</comment><comment><USER5> YES! This is awesome.

The founder posted a reddit post about it awhile back, that he was getting sue for gaming the system.

The website basically find cheapers deal by combining tickets with lay over. Ticket A get you from LA to CA to NY. But you want to go to TX. You can just get a second ticket and skip NY and use second ticket to go CA to TX and it'll be cheaper.

Good for the dude for winning. I thought it was crazy that he got sued for this.

<comment><USER6> He didn't "win" anything.

The suit was dismissed over a jurisdiction issue. In other words, the judge didn't say "United Airlines is terrible and can't ever sue this guy because what he did is 100% legal", the judge just said "if you're going to sue him, do it in a jurisdiction where he lives or operates his business". Which means, if they want to, United can simply file the suit in the correct geographic location and continue on.

Also, buying a hidden-city ticket is usually a bad idea since to use it you do have to violate the airline's terms, which can cost you any frequent-flier benefits you might ever have hoped to accrue, and you can't check any bags (since the bags may go on to the ticketed destination regardless of whether you hop off halfway there).

<comment><USER7> Or have a return ticket on the same reservation.

The bags will not go to the destination however. They should delay takeoff and pull them off the plane when you don't get on.

<comment><USER6> In theory, your bags aren't supposed to take a flight you didn't take unless they're catching up to you after being delayed/lost.

In practice, not so much. My favorite example: a couple years ago when I was regularly flying in and out of DCA (from Kansas City), sometimes I'd take the direct flight and sometimes I'd take a connection in Charlotte. But several times when I took the connection, I'd arrive in Kansas City to find my bags waiting in the airline baggage office, since they'd taken the direct flight and arrived a couple hours earlier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What API service does this person use to find these cheap tickets? Or are there any good API service providers to find ticket price?</comment>


How Do Plants Know Which Way Is Up And Which Way Is Down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/06/21/155508849/how-do-plants-know-which-way-is-up-and-which-way-is-down <comment><USER2> There was a bit of a non sequitur at the end, where they mention that the statolith theory has support from plants growing in space. That's no confirmation for the theory, we already knew they sensed gravity, the question is _how_ they sense it.

<comment><USER3> Right. The experiment does nothing to confirm the conjecture. A neat trick would be, say, to figure out how to line up the statholiths (sp?) in zero g and see what happens relative to a plant whose statholiths are randomly arranged.

Note that ultimately we would like to come up with ways to convince human bodies that they're in a gravitational field, so this is not entirely academic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I seem to remember learning the pecise reason why plants both respond to sunlight and to gravity during my Freshman year Biology class in high school. I remember that it is due to a single plant hormone that stunts the elongation of cells. I think it begins with an 'a'.

Aren't the mechanics of this well-known?

<comment><USER5> Auxin, I did a science project on this in 5th or 6th grade. My father helped me rig up a centrifuge-like apparatus that would spin seeds at what was supposed to simulate greater than earth gravity. I remember doing research (reading) about auxins and coming to the conclusion that higher gravity would stunt plant height.

<comment><USER6> And what happened to the seeds on your science project? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "...where the pull of gravity is nearly zero": No it's not! This is sloppy science journalism physics where there's a gravity shield around Earth. The pull is there but objects are in free fall.

<comment><USER8> "would the plants respond to the centrifugal pull of gravity"

Sometimes I have to reread sentences like this to get what the author is trying to convey. I don't understand why the author didn't leave it at "centrifugal pull. " It's already an adequate layman's term. A sentence like this only serves to confuse and make physics sound harder than it is. If a good teacher can open kids eyes to the wonders of the world, a bad teacher can easily fog the world in obscurity and inconsistencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Some bacteria know up and down by knowing magnetic north and south. They take advantage of the fact that magnetic north usually points slightly down or up.

By knowing up and down the bacteria can move to the area with optimal parameters like temperature/oxygen saturation - these usually change with depth.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm surprised that the plant was robust in space. It could just as well have stopped growing at all. Makes you wonder if there are any low gravity growth places on earth. If not, where has the plant learned this skill?

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure if you're joking, but you should know that I had a good laugh at this comment. :) In case you are indeed wondering, gravity has no effect on cell growth, or indeed on any of the cell's vital functions. More than anything, cellular processes rely on chemical diffusion, which at that scale is more strongly affected by temperature than by gravity.

Also, gravity is almost constant everywhere on the earth's surface.

<comment><USER10> Wow. Complete cognitive dissonance between us :) I was reasoning about the plant as a biological device which has adapted to life according to Darwin's theory of evolution. Since gravity, as you point out, is quite constant on earth, one could expect that a plant has come to rely on it for its existence. Unless trained otherwise. So I was contemplating that the ability to survive without gravity would have had to be a skill learned off the surface of the planet. And if it has never experienced such an environment before in its evolutionary development, one could consider it extreme luck that it kept on living without the previously nearly constant gravity parameter. If the plant manages to survive in spite of fundamental environmental changes without previous training, it must have a very robust design. It's like a computer program which would keep on running if you removed main memory. Not impossible, but very unlikely that it wouldn't be dependent on main memory by now. If it still works, must it not be designed in a very robust manner?

Are plants this robust? One could be lead to believe that this is indeed a useful property in a evolutionary sense. But it must surely also have high costs. So it is nonetheless a very interesting question in my opinion.

Addendum: Regarding cells not being dependent on gravity for growth: In the article is was mentioned that plant in fact _are_ dependent on gravity for their survival, in fact very much so. Without gravity the plant would not be able to physically locate its root system correctly or get its leaves above ground. It was, however, also mentioned that the plant survive in space just fine.

<comment><USER12> There's no reason to leap from the presence of an environmental factor to reliance on that factor for survival.

For instance, air is thick with nitrogen, something that most organisms need but are unable to extract from that air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think it's just a function of how the liquid in the plant's cells settled by gravity. The denser liquid is pulled to the bottom by gravity while thinner liquid floats to the top. The plant must grow toward the thinner liquid, away from gravity.

<comment><USER14> While this sounds plausible, it doesn't explain how roots grow downwards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> did not click cause of one obvious word: gravity

<comment><USER16> You would've been a bundle of excitement in school science when the teacher discussed humans knowing which way was up and which way down. Yelled "gravity" and then blocked your ears while the teacher explained the utricle and so on?</comment></comment>


Reinventing Explanation - <AUTHOR> http://michaelnielsen.org/reinventing_explanation/

<comment><USER2> This is an excellent essay which all EdTech people should read. We're all down with more Tech in the Ed, but more interesting is getting the Ed into Tech, i.e., not stupid arithmetic math and puzzles in computer games, but real math reasoning.

> _Over the long run, humanity will no doubt build more powerful new patterns > of explanation into our media platforms, permanently changing and expanding > what we mean by explanation. We 're only just beginning to explore these > possibilities, but it will be exciting to see what happens in the decades > ahead as we reinvent explanation._

this

> _A second problem with educational games lies in the word "educational". The > most important fact about compulsory schooling is that students do not -- > indeed, cannot -- choose to attend. Instead, they are required to attend, > for what society deems "their own good". This is true even in the most > enlightened schools. A student in such a coercive environment does not have > full responsibility for their own learning. And, in my opinion, it is not > possible to do serious intellectual work without full responsibility for > your own learning. Put another way, I believe that compulsory schools, by > their nature, are places where serious intellectual work cannot occur._

True. For many students, schools are prisons. Given this context, the quality of the teaching material is more important. If I were in prison, I'd wish for good books...

> _what would happen if we put the resources and talent of a major video game > or movie studio toward creating great explanations, rather than pure > entertainment products?_

It's called the Khan Academy ;)

______

My take on this is that we should aim for lowest common denominator: a system based around HTML (like standalone .html files or .epub) with JavaScript enabled (for MathJax and scripting canvas/svg interactives). Content written in this system will be renderable on most pixel-based devices (for interactive exploratory learning) and with a toLaTeX() method should also be printable (for analytical learning).

____

Here's my attempt at the kidney studies' Simpson paradox in text. For large kidney stones Treatment A helped 55 people out of 80, while Treatment B helped 192 out of 263, in two separate studies. For small kidney stones treatment A helped 234 people out of 270, while Treatment B helped 81 out of 87, in the same two studies.

We shouldn't really compare the statistics from the two trials since they were performed on different patients. Nevertheless, since both studies had 350 patients in total, we can say that Treatment A is better since it helped a total of 289 patients on that trial which is > than the 273 saved by Treatment B.

                            Treatment A       Treatment B
       Large kidney stones	69% (55 / 80)	  73% (192 / 263)
       Small kidney stones	87% (234 / 270)	  93% (81 / 87)
       All patients	        83% (289 / 350)	  78% (273 / 350)

<comment><USER3> I know this is mostly orthogonal, but I think that's the wrong takeaway from Simpson's paradox. As an illustration, let's translate into a situation we have better intuitions for:

    			Glass of Water    Tylenol
       Migraine		69% (55 / 80)	  73% (192 / 263)
       Headache		87% (234 / 270)	  93% (81 / 87)
       All patients	        83% (289 / 350)	  78% (273 / 350)

By the same reasoning above, 'glass of water' would be the better cure for all headaches, which is doesn't seem right. And yet all of the individual numbers seem plausible... Tylenol helps more in general, and the difference is bigger when the headache isn't that serious to begin with.

I think the handwavey explanation here is that the studies failed to run over a representative sample of the population, which is what makes the results difficult to compare between them. All other things being equal, Treatment B _really is_ better; but not all other things were equal between the two aggregates, so the overall percentage is misleading. When statisticians 'control' for some variable, it's this kind of wierdness that they're trying to squeeze out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting read. I don't think I agree with the argument that emotional involvement is the foundation for understanding. I see the author conflating memory and understanding where the emotional connection he discusses are just associative memory triggers. We can use associative memory tricks to recall many things we do not understand.

IMHO what unlocks understanding is use not emotion. I can "kind of" understand a mathematical or programming concept by reading or demonstration but only through active use in dozens of exercises or practical experience do I really come to understand it. This is what matters about the Brett Victor example he shows - it proposes environments for people to use and play with concepts which IMHO is much more significant factor in understanding.

Maybe the author is only talking about the motivation to understand. To take his example of topics with the depth of QM then such an investment of time and effort is just so vast that there has to be something self-motivating about the topic itself for someone to excel.

Its the reward of the topic in-itself that has sustained abstract topics like math and I find "ways to make the topic more appealing" almost always doomed to failure. If people are not inclined to substantial abstract thought then putting it in a frilly dress isn't going to change much. What makes these topics special to me is the loss of self as your mind becomes infused with abstract concepts. Its the elegance that becomes exciting and takes you deeper from curiosity and wonder. I don't need a game to understand a programming concept, programming itself is already my preferred game.

Finally, I would say that emotional connections are a distraction from achieving such flow mental states of understanding. If I feel I have something to lose by not understanding, if I might be shamed or under some other emotional pressure, it will interfere, not encourage my understanding.

<comment><USER5> I read Mindstorms after Bret Victor recommended a couple years ago, and find myself going back to it quite often as I research learning systems. In it, Seymour Papert mentions emotion and feeling as important concepts in mental model building[0]. You might find it an interesting viewpoint.

 _" What an individual can learn, and how he learns it, depends on what models he has available. This raises, recursively, the question of how he learned these models. Thus the "laws of learning" must be about how intellectual structures grow out of one another and about how, in the process, they acquire both logical and emotional form."_

It is also worth reading Papert's colleague Marvin Minsky's book, The Emotion Machine. It makes quite a more interesting study of emotion as the foundation of understanding[1].

[0] [http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf](http://llk.media.mit.edu/courses/readings/gears-v1.pdf)

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

<comment><USER4> Thank you. I have read the gears.pdf. I'd be interested to see some of your research if you have any links?

I can clarify that I don't doubt emotion is integral to cognition and I think its commonly understood the role of a good teacher is to help a student find a sense of wonder, fascination and excitement about a topic.

What I do doubt is that adding an unrelated emotional context like a gamified incentive or a movie plot around the explanation of an abstract topic will fundamentally improve understanding. I think its superficial and can even dilute the relationship one needs to build with the topic itself.

To interpret the author more generously, it would be a worthy goal for learning tools to build the right sort of emotional connections like the old St. Exupery quote:

> If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide > the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and > endless sea

<comment><USER5> I don't have any of my work related to this topic online yet, but I will post something, someday, maybe.

I agree that game-ification and tangential devices will not directly improve understanding of a topic, if at all.

I grew up playing many edutainment games which were nothing but boring classroom textbooks, with animated characters and sound effects. Strangely though, the fond memories of some of those characters has, I like to think, gave me positive associations with the actual subject matter, and has led to study of it later in life. More importantly, as you say, it could have diluted my interest or caused a negative association just as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wikipedia's picture is way more instantly intuitive (for non-americans who don't care much about parties, seinfeld or baseball)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simpson%27s_paradox_contin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Simpson%27s_paradox_continuous.svg)

</comment><comment><USER7> I didn't know what Simpson's Paradox was, but I didn't find it surprising at all. After all, the numbers showed that these were two different experiments with two different distributions of large and small kidney stones.

Stopped reading the article afterwards, because if it already overhypes greatly at this early point in the article, what am I to expect at later points?

<comment><USER8> Most people (smart people included) find Simpson's paradox very surprising when they first hear of it, so it's possible you missed something. It might be worth taking another look.

<comment><USER7> Well. Probably most people are not that smart.</comment></comment></comment>