Why I Won't Be Using BetaPunch for User Testing - <AUTHOR> http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/01/why-i-wont-be-using-betapunch-for-user-testing/ <comment><USER2> Sadly Danielle's site is down so I can't read the original post. I also had the pleasure of interacting with BetaPunch's Twitter account a while back: they posted several tweets advertising that they were doing user testing for our service. I thought my co-founder had signed up for them but I still felt it was unethical to post details about clients publicly and asked them to tone down the tweets. The result was that they called me a "silicon valley douche"[1] which I can't help to find entertaining even still today. Only afterwards I learned that nobody from our company had signed up for them and they were using our name just to give the impression that we were using them.

[1]: <https://twitter.com/jorilallo/status/261977607757778944>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm really sorry about the site, it went down so hard that I can't even get a cached version for Cloudflare to serve. Time to upgrade some things... personal blog is so neglected.

Update: Google cached version: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&tbo=d&biw=1116&bih=603&sclient=psy- ab&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.daniellemorrill.com%2F2013%2F01%2Fwhy-i-wont-be- using-betapunch-for-user- testing%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.daniellemorrill.com%2F2013%2F01%2Fwhy- i-wont-be-using-betapunch-for-user- testing%2F&gs_l=hp.3..0l4.2394.8245.0.84188.8.131.52.0.0.0.228.798.2j3j1.6.0.les%3B..0.3...1c.1j2.uocrMlHI_x4&pbx=1)

<comment><USER2> I highly recommend Jekyll and other static generated blog engines as they can handle high traffic and don't suffer from security problems. Hit me with an email if you need any advice, happy to help out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I'll drop you a note, I think it is time. I've been on the same Dreamhost box for 8 years!

<comment><USER3> Another great solution that doesn't involved changing anything in how you run your blog (or even moving off of Dreamhost), is a front-end cache like <http://www.fastly.com/>.

It's really affordable for personal sites, and for static sites like yours you'll be getting 98%+ cache hits – almost no traffic will ever hit your Dreamhost box, it will all come from their highly optimized Varnish caches around the world.

Learndot's blog is hosted on a ec2 small instance fronted by fastly, our launch article was on HN/Techcrunch/etc... simultenously and we never went over 10% cpu.

tl;dr: Use fastly.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't CloudFlare's free plan be just as good here?

Edit: Looks like Danielle thinks so... she signed up with them a few hours ago. [https://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/28918229241967411...](https://twitter.com/DanielleMorrill/status/289182292419674112)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, actually I have been a CloudFlare user for awhile but had paused it on my blog while dealing with a vulnerability. By the time traffic spiked and I turned it back on there was no way to reach the site to cache a copy. I also use the paid version for the Referly site and blog, and love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Personally, when I see a blog post like this I make a mental note about the author and the accused. I generally avoid both of them in the future. Yes, it says all of the bad things about the accused that the author lays out, but it also tells me the the author likes to stir up drama. When I do business, I like to do business with those companies that you often don't here about, positive or negative. The ones that just "do work". Companies like Mixpanel, for example. You only hear about them when they're offering some new feature. They don't blog about how somebody on Twitter did something dumb. And I just realized that this was dmor's personal blog, but hey guess what, I only have ever seen her picture on her blog associated with her company, so those are now linked and that's enough for me.

<comment><USER6> I couldn't disagree with this more. When people do something you find shady, you should complain! Loudly! This "keep your head down and don't stir up trouble" attitude is a huge part of why so many things never get fixed. And pointing out that a business has poor practices isn't drama; it's more like a review.

<comment><USER7> I agree with you, but I think it's more about the tone. The naming and point does give a bad impression for both sides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fascinating. A bit of digging suggests the founder, Ross Nochumowitz[1], has a second business as well: Big Boyz Bail Bonds[2] (note the identical avatars). He was CEO of the latter as recently as October[3].

Never having utilized the services of a bondsperson, I'm not qualified to comment on the similarity of the two businesses. Perhaps Ross can comment here!

[1] <http://www.facebook.com/ross.nochumowitz>

[2] <http://klout.com/#/BigBoyzBail>

[3] [http://citypaper.com/news/big-boyz-bail-bonds-banned-from- ce...](http://citypaper.com/news/big-boyz-bail-bonds-banned-from-central- booking-1.1392414)

<comment><USER9> Ouch, from your third link: "Paul Nochumowitz used a racial slur during the confrontation and, at one point, asked if Stansbury, who is African-American, 'wanted a banana.'"

<comment><USER10> Same family, but different person - BetaPunch is lead by Ross Nochumowitz. Same tree, but the apple might not fall in the same place.

<comment><USER9> They were both involved in the altercation I mentioned, and that was a family business.

<comment><USER10> You're right, just saying that the particular offensive quote was attributed to another member of that family. Still, I see what you are saying about birds of a feather.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was like both of them. I was unable to solve a single problem without arguing. Emotions were the main motive behind every single exchange of arguments.

But I wasn't a CEO. I was just a teenager programmer unable to resolve disputes and prone to let ego guide my actions. I got better by maturing, studying and I even took a mediation course.

That said. Danielle, this is NOT how a CEO solve problems. Betapunch, what happened? I'm a client and never had a problem, I actually have been recommending your service to a lot of people.

Danielle and the betapunch employee who replied to her are unable to run serious businesses right now. God, I remember being called SOB by customers over the phone and replying 'Please, I'm sorry' even when the fault was not even close to ours.

You guys really could use a mediation course.

<comment><USER12> > That said. Danielle, this is NOT how a CEO solve problems.

I'm obviously missing something here... what exactly did the author of the blog post do wrong?

A person who trialled a free service was asked why she no longer used the service, and she provided free feedback on why. They didn't like the answer and got mean (publicly).

In what universe is she even remotely in the wrong here?

<comment><USER11> Conflict can always be avoided and, when you lead people, this is your daily job. The blog post serves no purpose to Danielle. It might kill betapunch, but it will die the same. Why would you do that? You just found an opportunity to make something better!!! How great it would be if Danielle used her skills as a CEO to make betapunch understand how f'up their twitter tactics are.

As a CTO/COO (not a startup, large company) it actually makes me HAPPY when I turn _bad_ into something better. Changes do not come from sheer force, influence or conflict, it usually comes from understanding.

There is pure evil, where changes are impossible and there is nothing you can do, but this is not the case.

Edit: Read how jorde reacted to betapunch wrongdoing and, after that, a direct insult. That's a CEO.

<comment><AUTHOR> A CEO's job is not to avoid conflict. In fact, I think it is probably quite the opposite. The startups that avoid conflict are usually full of yes men and they usually end up dead, from my experience. Writing this post was probably 10x more helpful to BetaPunch than anything else I could have done, although they seem so belligerent and willfully ignorant of their mistake that I am not sure it will have any impact.

<comment><USER5> Just some advice. It's not about "not being a yes man". It's about just laying low. There's no reason not to, and all you've done with your responses is make me want to avoid whatever you do, as well. No good can come from this type of crap.

<comment><USER13> >all you've done with your responses is make me want to avoid whatever you do

I guess you're going to avoid me for wanting to have a dialog about this. But you're right, only your opinion is valid, everyone is equally guilty and no one is allowed to dispute it, else they fear the wrath of Skywing avoiding them.

<comment><USER14> There's nothing to be gained from following him around and badgering him because he won't talk to you. You're stooping to his level, which is satisfyingly ironic given the topic.

He disengaged you pretty unabashedly, so do the rest of us a favor and stop beating him up over something mindlessly stupid. It reflects more on you than him. Remember how I called you a troll in the past? Bingo.

<comment><USER13> I was wondering if I knew the rest of your username. Nice of you to continue to stalk and harass me and call me names.

I made two whole comments in this thread (I didn't even realize they were the same person until you said something. I don't keep a black book of users to berate as you do). You just saw an opportunity to harass me some more. Leave me alone. For the third or fourth time. Maybe you wouldn't need so many accounts.

You literally contributed _nothing_ except for to try to harass me more. How childish can you continue to be? Your little episode was like _7 months ago_ before you rage quit HN, it's time to let it go and get over your petty grudge, jsprinkles.

<comment><USER15> I'm assuming this whole thread is performance art to tie in with the whole "don't take grudges public" point.

<comment><USER13> I have no way of contacting him out of band and he follows me around calling me names about something that upset him months ago. I guess I should be turn the cheek and ignore him.

<comment><USER14> You know my identity but not my e-mail? email@example.com. Fire away.

I'm realizing I might regret this, but if you want to contact me out of band, I'm offering the opportunity. I also don't expect that you will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, 'ungrateful'? What do they expect exactly if I were to use their one free test today? A thank-you card, or just attribution somewhere if I were to release the product one day? Could they put that up front please, so I don't get surprised later on by a grudge held by their social media intern?

<comment><USER16> Actually, having now gone through some twitter history, @betapunch says "The public test was posted for less than 1 hour then deleted / apologized and sent 2 additional tests as a make-up and not a single thanks.."

So they actually wanted her to say thanks for trying to make up for the way they screwed up in the first place. I guess at least I'm clear if I were to just use their service and they don't screw up?

<comment><USER17> As icing on the cake, it appears that their tweets discussing the results of Danielle's user test are still public: <https://twitter.com/BetaPunch/status/256384610529857536>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Rule number 1 of business: No matter what, regardless of who is right or wrong, never, ever antagonize or nurture a conflict with anyone. Especially not a potential customer.

If you can't get someone onboard as a customer, work on figuring out why and building a relationship so maybe you can get them onboard later.

Edit: Also wanted to add that if someone uses your beta product you should be thanking them for taking the time to try out your new product (and hopefully giving you feedback) rather than expecting them to thank you.

<comment><USER19> That is rule number 1 of business like "be nice" is rule number 1 of dating.

Many great personal brands and businesses are launched and made with antagonism. Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Larry Flynt, Steve Ballmer, Rush Limbaugh, George W Bush, ... the list goes on of characters who have used antagonism successfully for personal and corporate marketing, and to divide the world between strong followers and detractors instead of a sea of disinterest.

If you are right or interesting, there is nothing wrong with being a little antagonistic. Intelligently picking a fight can bring much needed attention.

That said, this is not a case of being right or interesting - only immature and asinine. They did successfully get a major influencer to write about them, and if the old adage about any press applies, then it was a success. This is not the way I would want to appear or conduct business, but it may actually be better than being ignored.

<comment><USER20> "They did successfully get a major influencer to write about them, and if the old adage about any press applies, then it was a success."

Exactly. It's like WD40. The carrier wears off and the active ingredient remains and does the work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone see the irony here? The whole point of the BetaPunch service is to elicit critical feedback.

I kid you not, the quote below is taken directly from their site as instructions for site testers:

"Be as critical as possible when reviewing a website. It's ok to be positive but don't just talk about how great you think their site is. These websites sign up for BetaPunch because they know they have things that can be improved upon. They want you to be as honest as possible with them as to your feelings about their website. Figure out what makes sense to you and what doesn't. And be sure to VOICE your opinions as you navigate the site."

<comment><USER22> It doesn't sound like they really understand the point of user testing.

User testing is not about being critical/positive, it's about if the user can complete the and if not why?

I don't care what my user testers think; I care what they are thinking. A very important distinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Cached link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.daniellemorrill.com%2F2013%2F01%2Fwhy- i-wont-be-using-betapunch-for-user- testing%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.daniellemorrill.com%2F2013%2F01%2Fwhy- i-wont-be-using-betapunch-for-user- testing%2F&aqs=chrome.0.57j58j61j60l2.1349&sugexp=chrome,mod=0&ie=UTF-8)

</comment><comment><USER24> BetaPunch is a funny company. They have web recording software they've licensed and find 'testers' exclusively from reddit.com/r/beermoney. Danielle mentions that she 'hopes this is a social media intern' - BetaPunch is certainly a one-man shop, and you can see some of the guy's postings here: <http://www.reddit.com/user/betapunch>

<comment><USER10> You can see for yourself Ross Nochumowitz pitching BetaPunch at the Baltimore TechBreakfast: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAdI5mhpKsA>. This is from just a month and a half ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wow. BetaPunch really doesn't know when to quit and apologize: <https://twitter.com/BetaPunch/status/289178660366348288>

<comment><USER13> This is soooo cringe worthy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I am going to play devils advocate here, as I loved the book, "Trust Me, Im Lying", and a lot of what is written in there pertains to this "drama". The person controlling that twitter account is probably a little too emotionally invested, and probably a little immature. I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing, its passion, just misdirected (not everyone is passionate about their product, no matter what gets said on these types of forums). I would be curious about the internet habits of people who do not want their tests shared (a TOS/Disclaimer should have been listed on the site), but I would guess between gmail/facebook etc, betapunch is the least of their worries. I just assumed that a tech-savvy audience assumes that anything they put online is fair game...because...well, it is. On the other hand, its better to be emotionally invested in something you have built, but never reveal those emotions I would think.

tldr; if you can raise ANY doubt about who is in the right, and who is in the wrong, and get a shit load of hits, controversy may not be such a bad thing.

</comment><comment><USER27> I have mixed feelings on this. One the free video test revealed a gaping bug that I was only made aware of through the video. And I'm thankful for that. But I didn't know these tests were promoted to the public! Not cool Betapunch. And anyways, checkout <http://criticue.com> for their free service. I'm getting 3-5 helpful reviews a nite. They only reqiuire you to test other sites for a one to one return.

<comment><USER28> Critcue sounds a bit like feedback roulette.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I found it interesting when an unrelated twitter user posted that they shouldn't insult a "influencer" as it would just hurt their reputation. For some reason this struck a wrong chord with me, while the BetaPunch guys handled this entirely the wrong way, if they were in the right and a "influencer" didn't like what they had to say I wonder what would happen.

<comment><USER30> I think it strikes the wrong chord because it shouldn't matter whether the person is an "influencer" or not — that's just not the way to talk to anybody when you're trying to build a brand, unless your brand is built on public spats

<comment><USER31> Exactly, treat every one of your customers with respect and if they choose a competing product, attempt to understand why instead of demanding, in a very passive aggressive way, that they become your customer or are grateful/thank you for some free service which you unilaterally provided.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> BetaPunch needs to revoke the access of whoever is responsible for writing tweets and have a PR focused person handle tweeting. They were too emotionally invested, and it just made them look petty. Definitely not the sort of discussion you want potential customers to read when researching about you.

<comment><USER33> It's probably a one-man-show...

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow... speechless. I was geared up for an unfair dismissal of a very–early–stage product, but this made me cringe. Saved with a hint of irony in my _Social Media Ideas_ folder

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't blame you for shining a light on them. A top post on Hacker News is a tough way, but if they are to have any future success, this is a lesson they need to learn.

<comment><USER35> I think it is kind of amazing that "don't be mean to customers" is a lesson that would ever need to be learned. I guess nothing is obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think everyone agrees - never say anything nasty to any potential customer, but if you do this mistake, at least don't do that publicly on a social network or anything that can be recorded.

On the other hand, there is no such thing as bad publicity, maybe it's their weird way to get recognition, by treating their customers like they owe them something.

After all I'm sure most of the readers will go to their website, just to see what it is, and even try their service.

So in the end, the bad customer service led to a blog post by the customer that was being badly treated, which might give them more traffic than if they were just nice, ironic.

<comment><USER37> They're not in a position of power. They're offering a commodity service, and they're positioning themselves as "the option with poor customer service."

I don't think that's going to attract much in the way of customers, or investment.

I don't wish them ill; but they really need to stop digging, and they haven't figured that out yet.

<comment><USER38> I'm not disagreeing with you, but I'm curious: if this is a "commodity service", what competitors of BP would you recommend? I don't mean just some consultant: where can I go where the process will be similar, in that I don't have to talk to anyone and I don't have to hire anyone but I just have to enter my particulars and pay for what I want?

<comment><USER39> User Testing was mentioned in the OP <http://usertesting.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> That was some serious WTF factor. However, I'm not so sure I agree that public shaming is the correct response.

<comment><USER41> IMHO it reflects poorly on both parties involved.

<comment><USER12> How so?

Are we only supposed to share positive experiences on our blogs and social media accounts?

User testing is a service I see myself using quite often over the next year. I'm always grateful for reviews or comments on the services that exist out there.

<comment><USER41> No, sharing negative experiences is ok. But reading the exchange between them I see some snarky comments back and forth. Its not the reporting that irks me but the choice of language.

"i'm annoyed" "that's something you should think but probably not actually say" "And BetaPunch, you're welcome for the traffic… enjoy the SEO, too."

It feels a bit too vindictive and that isn't a flattering quality. Some people like that image and it works for them professionally. Personally, it turns me away.

I don't think its a stretch to say that it could have been handled more professionally. Dmor took an opportunity to showcase her professionalism and instead sunk to their level. That's my impression at least.

<comment><USER12> > I don't think its a stretch to say that it could have been handled more > professionally. Dmor took an opportunity to showcase her professionalism and > instead sunk to their level. That's my impression at least.

Of course it could be handled more 'professionally', but I much prefer an honest, human expression of annoyance than putting some bullshit corporate 'professional' facade on things.

This wasn't a press release by a department of some faceless corp, this is a blog post by a human being.

<comment><USER41> Well, I suppose this is where we respectfully disagree.

To the person who flagged my response--if I'm asked to clarify my position and I take the time to do so respectfully then a flag is inappropriate. Flags are not downvotes.

<comment><USER12> > I suppose this is where we respectfully disagree.

The best form of disagreement :)

FYI, I didn't and wouldn't flag your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Now when you google "betapunch", the blog post ranks high for the keyword. People might forget, but Google won't. They've made their life very difficult. It never pays to be a righteous __*hole.

</comment><comment><USER28> We used BetaPunch extensively whilst testing our latest Decal CMS tour/on- boarding process[1] and I have nothing but good things to say about the service and Ross himself who was very pleasant and responsive. I've recommended the service to everyone I've met since. For the type of user testing you get, you just can't beat the price.

Although some of the testers weren't exactly in the "target market", by having some people that weren't designers or developers muddle through our demo, we were able to fix some really critical bugs.

I even met some people through the service (testers) that were willing to jump on Skype with me to discuss the product and who were interested in taking the beta process further.

I'd highly recommend you try them out. The social strategy Ross is going for here may be a little misguided, but the product itself, and indeed Ross (as far as I've dealt with him) are hard to fault.

[1]<http://www.decalcms.com/>

<comment><USER43> Sorry, but come on, "social strategy?" What is that, exactly? Antagonizing your potential customers?

<comment><USER28> I dunno, could just be that he's antagonistic by nature but also could just be that he wanted to get a lot of publicity for betapunch. I'd assume a lot of people who have never heard of betapunch, have heard of it now and he'll probably get a few users out of it.

<comment><USER20> You're getting downvoted but you are correct and he could very possibly have used this as a strategy. Anyone who doesn't recognize or even consider that possibility doesn't fully understand the nuances of PR.

<comment><USER44> Using PR to lose customers is some mighty nuanced PR!

<comment><USER20> "Using PR to lose customers"

The idea is that there is a net gain. People will remember the name and forget the bad rep. The amount of people who remember or stop doing business is less than the amount gained by the bad publicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> You guys must have seen something other than I did, all I saw was childish bickering from both sides in public for all to see. Here's what I saw:

D: Company A is awesome.

B: Company B is better and cheaper, use us! (Spam)

(Could have ended here!! I can not emphasize this enough!!)

D: You suck Company B, go away and die!

B: Wut?? You used our service FOR FREE to improve your product, you ungrateful nincompoop.

D: Correct, you suck and now everyone knows you suck because I said so, hahaha. Now I will write blog post, everyone else will agree with me and Google search will say you suck too. lol, I F'd your public image yo. BAM!

Hacker news: Yay! Go D, B sucks ass, thanks for letting us know.

<comment><USER46> Actually, it seemed to be more like this: D: Company A is awesome. B: Why not use our product? It's cheaper! [Spam] [Certainly, it could have ended here. But they asked the question - why is it wrong to answer them why you don't use it? Perhaps they don't realize their public posts are alienating customers, and the feedback would be helpful. Perhaps she might want to give them another chance if they 'fess up and apologize (Perhaps not, she has no obligation to do so). At this point, she is not being mean at all (not that she is later, either). At this point, _there is no argument to end_. It's still just a conversation.] D: I _did_ use your product. You inappropriately and publicly broadcast private information. [Answering the question they _asked_ , honestly and without pulling punches - something advocated constantly by popular and applauded posts on HN, I might add.] B: Yeah? Well you didn't _thank_ us for the _free trial_ of a service we were trying to _sell you_. _whine whine whine_ [Completely inappropriate and rude. This is the first sign of actual _hostility_ , as opposed to _honesty_.] D: This is why I'm not using you [Again, answering their question. Rhetorical or not, they asked it.] You probably should not say that publicly. [Helpful and useful criticism. Again, something recommended by HN on a public basis.]

Now, I'm not saying she wasn't pissed by the end. She probably was (I would be). But she never said anything rude or explicitly hostile. In addition, she didn't escalate it to public status. Twitter is a _public forum_ , and they started accusing her of... not thanking them for their sales pitch? Her response on Twitter was entirely appropriate.

As to the blog post, this is the exact same thing that something like Amazon reviews does - publicly states the quality (in this case, in regards to courtesy) of a company or product. She is the _customer_. This has no bearing on her relationship with her customers (which I will not comment on, having never experienced it). This only affects her relationship with someone trying to sell her something - and the onus of making the interaction positive is entirely on the salesman, who completely screwed up.

She was never _rude_. Since she is not the seller in this situation, common courtesy (as you'd give a stranger you were talking to) is the only obligation she has, and she meets it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I remember a thread on 2+2 where the founder of BetaPunch were getting sued by BetaBait for copying their site.

</comment><comment><USER48> A great man once said:

> _be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others._

The TCP Robustness Principle from Jon Postel applies nicely to a lot more than TCP.

</comment><comment><USER49> Oh the irony: I went to the homepage of betapunch.com, where they proudly promote their "raw unbiased user" testing, and some text on their home page renders incorrectly. Even more ironically, the problematic rendering includes this text: "Receive feedback and discover problems."

Even if the "all publicity is good publicity" concept applies here, they are wasting that publicity, at least on me, with their site problems.

</comment><comment><USER50> FWIW, the founder has informally responded here: [http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=36587703...](http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=36587703&postcount=33)

</comment><comment><USER51> Wonder how this is relevant for Hacker News. Is this soap-opera tuesday?

<comment><USER21> A little colorful drama never hurts. You can only read so many articles about Lisp...

<comment><USER52> Well I dunno about that .____.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Maybe this is off topic, but Referly looks suspiciously similar in design to Fab. Even down to similar image overlays. Perhaps I could write a blog explaining why I won't be using Referly due to a pretty unoriginal design and equally uninspiring concept. But, I've been up all night with a crying baby, so perhaps I'm being unnecessarily hostile.

</comment><comment><USER54> The unfortunate tragedy of this is that BetaPunch is getting attention out of this, for better or for worse. I would err to say they likely got at least a few parties to test them out. It's definitely undeserved attention. Professionalism is everything when it comes to social networks.

</comment><comment><USER55> I did some work for BetaPunch last year.

It's sad to see such an error of judgement (a big one, but nonetheless) which will really hurt after slowly gaining steam.

</comment><comment><USER56> I always thought BetaPunch was some sort of scam. I see them posting on r/forhire every week hiring people to record vids for $5.

</comment><comment><USER57> ah, public shaming. the easiest and most low-brow way to sway opinions on the interent.

</comment><comment><USER58> lol sigh

</comment><comment><USER59> This poster is using bad service she received into SEO juice for herself, while robbing another company of further business. Because I find this practise distasteful, I won't be using refer.ly. On the other hand, I would wait and see if Betapunch learned their lesson, and will use them. The person who posted this is too clever for her own good.</comment>


XLA: linear algebra library for TensorFlow - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/03/xla-tensorflow-compiled.html <comment><USER2> >>> Softmax can be implemented as a composition of primitive TensorFlow ops (exponent, reduction, elementwise division, etc.): softmax = exp(logits) / reduce_sum(exp(logits), dim)

No, it can not be implemented this way, it is numerically unstable, and will produce NaNs if any input is greater than ~88.7. Luckily, it is also not how its implemented in Tensorflow: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/2c8d0dca978a24...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/blob/2c8d0dca978a246f54c506aae4587dbce5d3bcf0/tensorflow/core/kernels/softmax_op_functor.h#L43)

For a clean (and more efficient) C version of this algorithm, take a look at NNPACK reference implementation: [https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/ref/so...](https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/ref/softmax- output.c#L30)

<comment><USER3> In the nnpack implementation, the same exponential (i.e. expf) is computed twice for each element, which is a waste of time. A faster implementation should save each expf result to output[sample][channel] first, compute the sum and then rescale output[sample][channel] by the sum.

<comment><USER2> If you have an efficient vectorized implementation of expf (NNPACK does), softmax is a memory/cache bandwidth-bound kernel, and storing data is less efficient than recomputing.

<comment><USER3> Where is this vectorized expf implemented? I am only seeing softmax is calling the standard expf. Let's suppose expf from libm is vectorized. Is there any benchmark showing nnpack's implementation is really faster? I doubt, actually. Exp is quite expensive even if vectorized.

<comment><USER2> This is the reference implementation of softmax, i.e. implementation used as a reference in unit tests. It is designed to be simple, readable, and correct, which is why I linked it here.

Optimized implementation is in assembly (PeachPy). See [https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64...](https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64-fma/exp.py) for the vectorized expf

<comment><USER2> Oops, here is the actually used vectorized expf (similar to the one I linked, but with optional unrolling): [https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64...](https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64-fma/vecmath/exp.py)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the pointer. The full softmax implementation is here [1]. I have not read the code, but I can trust the developer to have a very fast implementation. Nonetheless, I don't think the reference implementation in your original link is optimal. Exp is expensive and should not be called twice (EDIT: unless you can show a benchmark to prove me wrong).

[1]: [https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64...](https://github.com/Maratyszcza/NNPACK/blob/master/src/x86_64-fma/softmax.py)

<comment><USER4> FWIW, you're replying to the developer of the file you linked to.

<comment><USER3> I later realized he is the developer, but this does not change this discussion. Here is a micro benchmark, computing softmax 1 million times over a random vector of size 1000. On an old Linux server, calling the libm expf once takes 11.76 CPU seconds; calling it twice takes 25.15s. The implementation for calling expf once:

      void softmax1(int n, const float *x, float *y)
      {
          int i;
          float s, max = -FLT_MAX;
          for (i = 0; i < n; ++i) max = max > x[i]? max : x[i];
          for (i = 0, s = 0.0f; i < n; ++i) s += (y[i] = expf(x[i] - max));
          for (i = 0, s = 1.0f / s; i < n; ++i) y[i] *= s;
      }

This micro benchmark proves my point: using expf from libm, the reference implementation in nnpack is suboptimal. It is possible that a vectorized expf may change the fact, but the developer needs to prove it with numbers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chris Leary, a compiler engineer at Google gave a talk about XLA at the recent Tensorflow Dev Summit:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOanJczHA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAOanJczHA0)

</comment><comment><USER6> Thank you OP, this is really helpful. :)

If you need to install TensorFlow on Windows 10 you can follow this

[http://saintlad.com/install-tensorflow-on- windows/](http://saintlad.com/install-tensorflow-on-windows/)

<comment> alok-g I would like to see the guide for the GPU version. Is it coming anytime soon? :-) Thanks.

<comment><USER7> anaconda has gpu and non gpu packages, if that helps.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would seem Torch/PyTorch are faster than TF. TF uses static optimizations on the computation graph while Torch has a dynamic computation graph. Logically, static optimizations should be faster because they know the data size beforehand.

So, why is TF slower?

<comment><USER9> Tensorflow is getting dynamic jit optimization too. I think part of the reason that some dynamic optimizations might perform better is that the results of the optimization can be cached for most other batches and they can specialize to utilize batch/shape/input specific properties

<comment><USER10> I'm kind of getting the sense that TF is presently being optimized for its own massive development: that is, the engineers are yanking out chunks of code and replacing them, quickly, and at varying scales.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been looking around in a few places but I can't find a way to use XLA to compile tensorflow models for mobile devices. Is there a tutorial/blogpost by google(or anyone for that matter) talking about it? Thanks!

<comment><USER12> Did you see the "using tfcompile" section of the docs? [https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/experimental/xla/...](https://www.tensorflow.org/versions/master/experimental/xla/tfcompile#using_tfcompile)

If you're looking for more detailed information that's missing from the docs, please do file a Github issue about it. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Even if you're not interested in machine learning or ai, XLA and particularly it's Python bindings are a great and easy way to do GPGPU programming.

</comment><comment><USER14> Why does this support JIT but not AOT for NVIDIA GPUs?

<comment><USER12> AOT for GPUs is doable. Do you have a killer use case?

For CPU, mobile code footprint reduction was the driving force.

<comment><USER15> Not having to ship a toolchain (nvcc, gpucc or whatever equivalent linked as a library)?

<comment><USER12> It's gpucc, so it builds from LLVM when you enable XLA in the TF configure step.

Trying to understand: you don't want to ship a compiler library on principle, or is it some kind of product requirement, or ? There's lots of cool work to be done in the compiler space so use cases help to prioritize. :-) Thanks!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Desentra – Learn crypto in 15 minutes or less – Newbie to Pro - roman-v https://desentra.com <comment> roman-v Desentra is a crypto education platform with bite-size courses (<15 min) divided into categories based on knowledge levels.

Take the first course for free. I would be glad to give a free access to one or two more courses for the valuable feedback!</comment>


Why is www deprecated and unnecessary - <AUTHOR> http://no-www.org/ <comment><USER2> I'll never forget having to hear the npr announcer pronounce all nine syllables of dou-ble-you, dou-ble-you, dou-ble-you, before every sponsor's domain. I winced each time. I also remember telling my friends over and over that they didn't have to type www.</comment>


Ask HN: As a software engineer, how do you leverage your knowledge in stats? - <AUTHOR> I spend most of my spare time learning statistics since I found that jumping straight into ML left a big gap in my understanding of how inferences and predictions are made.
I would like to use what I'm learning in statistics (confidence intervals, inference, linear regression, sampling, classification, etc.) at work where I am tasked with designing, building, reviewing and maintaining highly scalable and available systems that aren't solving problems using ML or statistics. I find myself thinking really hard about where I could use these concepts in my day job.
As a software engineer, how do you leverage your knowledge in statistics?
Sorry for the vague nature of the question. <comment><USER2> I think having a stats background helps a lot in the design of systems, but to be perfectly honest you don't need much to be effective as an average software engineer.

The place I seem to use it the most is arguing against premature optimization or let's-just-hack-it-together mentalities.

Two examples:

1\. We had a new hire want to go through all of our database queries and optimize them. The only problem? The database in question was only a handful of megabytes large and saw very little usage. Even planning for inordinate success this fact would not have changed.

2\. We had an upload feature that we were going to enable for our customers that people just want to quick and dirty hack together. The only problem is that it was going to be handling very large files right away. Even with "low" customer utilization it would be handling gigabytes per day.

As you can see these examples are more about statistical common sense than applying really rigorous statistical modeling to a situation.

If you're really interested in applying math to your programming, I would recommend looking into getting into finance or science based programming fields.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use knowledge of Stats and experiment design to work on A/B testing websites (Website Optimization).

It comes in handy to think through use cases to ensure you can actually learn from the experiment, and you can develop it in ways to avoid confounding variables, such as cell jumping.</comment>


The Anatomy of Sales or How Andrew Warner Became Our First Paying Customer - <AUTHOR> https://zapier.com/blog/2012/06/25/anatomy-of-sale-or-how-andrew-warner-became-our-first-paying-user/

<comment><USER2> This is one of the most informative sales articles I've read on Hacker News. Great job Wade! I love hearing the nitty gritty of the early sales process. I mentioned this on the comments section of the blog, but I'd love to hear about how you guys are planning on creating a scalable and repeatable sales process as well.</comment>


Ask HN: how to develop a status page for a Rails app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone,
I have a huge Rails app with many usage points: web interface, 2 APIs, etc. and I want to show a status page for this app, decoupled from the app itself, of course, like GitHub, Bitbucket, Basecamp and so many others have.
How do you make this service know that the main services are running? How do they communicate? If the main service is on Rails, what do you use to develop the monitoring/status website? <comment><USER2> It really shouldn't have anything to do with your tech stack being Rails. You can just have some status page site or your own status site (see below) check a certain page/port/endpoint for each of your "usage points".

\- Twilio open sourced theirs though it's Python: [https://www.twilio.com/blog/2010/07/twilio-open-sources- stas...](https://www.twilio.com/blog/2010/07/twilio-open-sources-stashboard- the-status-dashboard.html)

\- [https://www.statuspage.io/](https://www.statuspage.io/) is a hosted version as are the following

\- [http://www.uptime.ly/](http://www.uptime.ly/)

\- [https://statushub.io/](https://statushub.io/)

\- [https://status.io/](https://status.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks

<comment><USER3> Hi there.

Heres another hosted version for you to try out. [http://www.sorryapp.com/](http://www.sorryapp.com/)

We have some open source status page themes too if your after a fully custom design.

All the best

Robin</comment></comment></comment>


MLflow: An Open Source Machine Learning Platform - <AUTHOR> https://databricks.com/blog/2018/06/05/introducing-mlflow-an-open-source-machine-learning-platform.html <comment><USER2> If you are looking for a dependable, scalable, closed-source option, check out [http://www.comet.ml](http://www.comet.ml) (the thing I work on).

The focus with Comet.ml is more on experiment tracking and hyperparameter optimization rather than model deployment. We make it very easy to compare your experiments results, code, and hashed datasets for better reproducibility.

We have a one-line integration with your existing machine learning code and make it stupid simple to start tracking your experiments.

All you do is:

      > import comet_ml
      > experiment = Experiment(api_key="MY_API_KEY")

_ __boom ___

Comet.ml supports many libraries (keras, tensorflow, scikit-learn, custom- built code spaghetti, and everything else that makes you a ML wizard/unicorn/armored flaming hippopotamus).

      ++ Its free for public projects and academics.

</comment><comment><USER3> What are the current open source alternatives to MLflow?

<comment><USER4> Sacred ([https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred](https://github.com/IDSIA/sacred))

FGLab ([https://kaixhin.github.io/FGLab/](https://kaixhin.github.io/FGLab/))

Metricmachine ([https://github.com/danielwaterworth/metricmachine](https://github.com/danielwaterworth/metricmachine))

Non-open source:

Neptune ([http://neptune.ml](http://neptune.ml))

Aetros ([https://aetros.com/trainer](https://aetros.com/trainer))

<comment><USER5> How about SageMaker, Can we include it in this list. I played with SageMaker sometime ago and it helps you build a whole pipeline to host your models, in addition to host your notebook and bridge the gap between data scientists and data engineers.

<comment><USER6> Anecdotally, we considered using the hosted versions of Jupyter and Apache Zeppelin that are part of AWS SageMaker and EMR. We couldn't figure out a simple/familiar workflow for keeping the notebooks under version control. So, we agreed to run the notebooks locally, use a familiar Git-based workflow, and interact with the AWS infrastructure through the local notebook instances.

<comment><USER7> Does Zeppelin work naturally with git? I've been struggling to get the right setup with just Jupyter

<comment><USER6> Well, good question. The file format for Jupyter is not ideal for 'code craftsmanship', as pointed out by another comment. There are utilities to strip out some of the metadata from the Jupyter files, such as rendered output and run counters, but that is a trade-off to be decided by your team:

[https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout](https://github.com/kynan/nbstripout)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is also Orange, although I am not sure it is 100% related to MLFlow. Orange is a joy to use though, so even if it doesn't solve all the problems solved by MLflow, it's worth to be mentioned in this context.

</comment><comment><USER9> So, what MLflow can do more efficiently, than Tensorflow?

<comment><USER10> I can't tell if you didn't read the article or are asking for a comparison between this and, say, TF's Experiment class.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> FYI typo: mlflow.log_atrifact("roc.png")</comment>


How to Make Your Boss Angry — Bad Linux Sysadmin Practices - <AUTHOR> http://tuts.pinehead.tv/2012/10/10/how-to-make-your-boss-angry-bad-linux-sysadmin-practices/

<comment><USER2> This actually included something I do: eat over the keyboard. I always keep a spare keyboard available, given that I first spilled tea into a keyboard around 1990, and have ruined many since then.

But here's a challenge: pickup up your keyboard, hold it over your desk (black surface works best), shake and tap. Count the number of eyelashes that fall out. I bet you're surprised.</comment>


VoltDB: 1.2 released, Enterprise Edition introduced - <AUTHOR> http://voltdb.com/content/voltdb-releases-version-12-high-performance-oltp-database

<comment><USER2> Is anyone here using this in production?</comment>


Don't Let Trump – Or Any President – Take Credit for Strong Jobs Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/dont-let-trump-or-any-president-take-credit-for-strong-jobs-numbers/ <comment><USER2> Where was this article the previous 8 years?

<comment><USER3> It's been around for a long time. Freakonomics did a podcast on it in 2010 ([http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-radio-how- much-...](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/freakonomics-radio-how-much-does- the-president-really-matter/)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Even if the economy does start to change direction in coming months, it's > unlikely Trump or his policies will be the primary cause. Presidents in any > case have little control over the economy, especially in the short-term. The > government can (probably) help ease the impact of a recession, and bad > policies can (definitely) slow down growth. And presidential policies on > things like education, infrastructure and tax policy can have long-term > effects, for good or ill. But presidents have little influence over the > month-to-month ups and downs of hiring or inflation.

Perhaps this is true under prevailing conditions, where politicians are quite hesitant to take an activist role in reducing unemployment (except massive handouts to businesses, seemingly). I am less than convinced that there isn't anything governments could do to promote employment.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd love to know the history of the (misleading) unemployment indicator. I feel that the true indicator of employment should be very simple: the amount of people who have full time jobs divided by the amount of people, period. The amount of people who are "not looked" or "dropped out" can be gamed so badly, not to mention that it's irrelevant.

<comment><USER6> > not to mention that it's irrelevant.

For the longest time, married women had extremely low participation in the labor market. Even still, many women choose to work part-time or not at all. This represents a very large portion of the adult population.

> the amount of people who have full time jobs divided by the amount of > people, period.

300 million / 150 million employed = ~50% [1], so that's roughly half the country not working. The retired, the disabled, the minors, and others all take away from this number. When it swings by 100,000 either way, then the resulting percentage is less than one tenth of a percentage point. Sure, this is okay we just have to get used to dealing with small numbers, right? Well, lots of people have a lot of trouble comprehending numbers like this IMO.

It's not political for statisticians to want to normalize a raw stat like this in order to show what seems like the "true" number that matters. How many constituents out there want a job and can't find one? That's a very different stat from "how many humans in this geographical region are have jobs?"

[1] Raw stat from BLS [https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS12000000) raw US pop is a wild guess that's probably within 100 million or so

<comment><USER5> > It's not political for statisticians to want to normalize a raw stat like > this in order to show what seems like the "true" number that matters. How > many constituents out there want a job and can't find one? That's a very > different stat from "how many humans in this geographical region are have > jobs?"

I disagree. The definitions themselves are political.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The job numbers are in some ways inflated as most of the jobs are temp jobs which in the US is extra problematic, furthermore since Bush the definition of havving a job have been expanded.

95% of the jobs created under obama was tem jobs, dont think that have changed.

All in all structural unemployment in the west is growing and we onlyy seen the surface.

</comment><comment><USER8> Or oil prices. Or economy.</comment>


Ask HN: Are there any professionally valuable MOOCs on data science? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone, a bit of a context here: I am in my mid-thirties, living in France and I have the  equivalent of Higher National Diploma (2 years in college) in Computer Science with a few years of coding experience (mostly Python, Ruby and SQL). For the last couple of years, I have been working as an IT coordinator in an educational institution, which ended up being an administrative position and not very stimulating to me. Today, I want my career to be more intellectually-challenging and I aim to have a job related to Data Science: the problem is I don't have a lot of knowledge neither in R nor in the statistical methods. Obviously, there are A LOT of offerings, but are there any certifications well-regarded by international employers available online? Thanks in advance for your feedback! <comment><USER2> There are a few courses and HNers will make a list for sure (Andrew Ng's, fast.ai, kaggle competitions and so on) but no magic wand, you will still need convincing someone to hire you. Therefore, your best shot imho is to have a good look locally and tailor your learning experience on the needs of your local job market, with the clear advantage of face-to-face relationships and local networking putting you ahead of unknown quantities in the employers' eye. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey DrNuke, thanks for your message! So do you think that it doesn't matter to an employer if you got a certificate created by Johns Hopkins on Coursera or another one from DataCamp at the end? I don't mean to discredit DataCamp, but it's not the same brand as Johns Hopkins. And do you think that these certificates add value at all in today's job market?

<comment><USER2> You are hired to add value, not because of a certification, and no employer cares about the provider if you can't solve their problem. Knowing the employer and his problem is more important than knowing data science.

<comment><AUTHOR> Crystal-clear, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can take the real Masters of Data Science from Johns Hopkins online if you want [https://ep.jhu.edu/admissions-and-financial- aid/admissions/i...](https://ep.jhu.edu/admissions-and-financial- aid/admissions/international-students) it's about $24k, and your diploma + work exp likely satisfies entry requirements as they look at both.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey hackermailman, is that 24K/year or for the whole Master's Degree? Definitely going to take a look indeed!

<comment><USER3> I got that figure from here [https://ep.jhu.edu/files/ge-ds- pmc.html](https://ep.jhu.edu/files/ge-ds-pmc.html) it is apparently for the whole 3 yr degree (plus book fees) for the 6 core req courses at $4,055 ea for graduate (400-level and higher) tuition though it seems there's also optional electives not included. You would obviously have to contact them and verify this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds interesting – will do – thank you!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The death and rebirth of Duke Nukem Forever: a history - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2010/09/the-death-and-rebirth-of-duke-nukem-forever-a-history.ars

<comment><USER2> It is too bad that no matter how great this game is, it will never be able to the expectations created by the 12 year delay.</comment>


I built my first app in lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://awkwardparty.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone I was recently took redundancy from my job and decided to spend my time building [https://awkwardparty.com](https://awkwardparty.com) (yes retro look intended ).

This is my first app and I built it using React Native, Typescript and used Firebase.

Also if you have any questions regarding the development let me know!

I'm super happy as it's now available on iOS and Android.

Awkward Party is a social gaming app where friends mess with each other by providing hilarious fake answers to questions and then trying to figure out what the actual answer is. The app contains 5 different games, each with it's own unique theme and questions designed to get the funniest answers.

It's not all about getting answers right it's more about bringing out the awkward humour you and your friends have and having a good laugh together. Not to mention, annoying your friends with the perks you get as the winner.

I would be really appreciative if you could play a game or two with a friend (or the more the better) and let me know your thoughts!

Thanks</comment>


Ask HN: Marketing benefits not features, is it really the right way? - <AUTHOR>

I am rewriting the copy of our startup's front page and going by the now de facto advice of marketing the benefit not features, I found myself reading the following on our homepage >
1. Makes you happier! (new commenting features)
2. Saves you time!  (fast, easy, cross-posting)
3. Show more meaning! (annotate photos, read+show EXIF, big pictures).
My gut keeps sounding its alarm over me touting benefits vs features. Do visitors really convert better if the headlines are benefits vs features?
NOTE: i know i can A/B test this but i am curious to what HN folks think... <comment><USER2> The benefits need to be very specific, otherwise they are meaningless. If your product gives me happiness, time and meaning, you could be selling a book on meditation or a digital watch.

Make it more specific, without jumping into a list of features. An excellent example: <http://basecamphq.com>.

<comment><USER3> Interesting.

When I look at the homepage for Basecamp, I see a somewhat-vague benefit ('projects manage themselves'), followed by a whole lot of argument by consensus ('millions use', 'over five million people worldwide'), some appeals to authority (the customer blurbs, the logos), a bit on pricing, reassurance that the product is simple, and then some things that look very much like features rather than benefits - for example, "Keep all your project files in one place." That's followed by some vague benefits that could apply to a lot of products - "Basecamp's focus on simplicity, clarity, and ease of use make it truly unique."

There's no denying that Basecamp's a huge success and a great product, but when looking at Basecamp's main landing page, I see way more appeals to emotion than features _or_ benefits.

Hmmm. _Very_ interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine you have a paying customer who really loves your product and who is riding the elevator with a friend. What would your customer tell his friend during this brief ride to convince him to try out your product? Write down the stuff and use it as a foundation for your copy writing.

Pretend you are a consumer who is doing a comparison between you and your competitors. Write down the qualities that all the products share and qualities that your competitors boost about in a comparison table. Use this as an the groundwork for writing your landing page copy.

Take a look at what your competitors are saying. Chances are that they have already done a lot of the research work for you, this especially true if they have deeper pockets than you.

Use Google adwords to figure out which words or phrases interest people the most.

Start a/b testing right now. Google's Website Optimizer is free, Visual Website Optimizer is a praised alternative.

Demonstrate it, showcase it. If you suspect that your customers might have trouble understanding your product, clearly demonstrate its basic usage in a video that you display on the landing page. If possible, showcase how other customers are using your product.

</comment><comment><USER5> You should rather be communicating what "value" is being provided with help of XYZ feature. E.g., "Add meaningful and interesting information on top of your pics" with our Annotation feature.

Value = sum of benefits/sum of costs.

</comment><comment><USER6> _NOTE: i know i can A/B test this but i am curious to what HN folks think_

What are you waiting for? This is a perfect opportunity to A/B test.

I understand the marketing perspective but I don't see why you can't strike a fine balance of both.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will. This query is a parallel process. :)</comment></comment>


Spinal Tap vs. Hollywood - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/story/spinal-tap-vs-hollywood <comment><USER2> The video game has a parallel.

Voice actors or visual actors in the ever-increasing hollywood-ized titles get a royalty paycheck every time a box of software is sold at retail or on Steam. They may be paid royalties for a decade or more, with a successful A title.

Meanwhile the artists who generate content are paid only while doing their work, and the programmers who bring that content to life are paid a salary only while doing their work. There is typically no lasting financial commitment after the weekly paycheck. The could be laid off the week after release, and when the $$$ rolls into the studio, the team is home sleeping, fixing bugs, or looking for a new job. Starting anew.

The difference? Unionization.

<comment><USER3> That and voice actors are usually famous already and have bargaining power individually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Relevant quote: "The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."

<comment><USER5> Perhaps unsurprisingly, various songs have been recorded about how soulless and money-grubbing the music industry is. Examples include Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar", Billy Squier's "The Stroke", and Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Workin' for MCA".

<comment><USER6> Billy Joel - "The Entertainer", Recently Sylvan Esso - "Radio" (Exactly 3m:30s long).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of my favorite movies, and favorite one of the genre by far. If anyone who loves this movie hasn't seen the commentary track on the DVD, get it immediately. The actors present on the commentary are all in character so it sort of feels like a second movie.

<comment><USER8> I've heard rumours that, in contrast, the laserdisc release had the actors' commentary au naturale -- it's almost worth trying to hunt down a player and a copy, as I've never seen a rip published.

<comment><USER9> I have a copy of all three commentaries, including the in-character, as actors, and also the commentary with Rob Reiner, producer Karen Murphy, and editors Robert Leighton and Kent Beyda.

Feel free to email me if you'd like an MP3 you can mux in. It's a shame they didn't include this with the Criterion release.

<comment><USER10> Which one would you recommend? I don't have time to hunt down and watch all 3 haha.

<comment><USER9> Spinal Tap doing the commentary on Spinal Tap is by far the best.

<comment><USER10> Thanks, I'll check it out

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> See also:

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

</comment><comment><USER12> The irony is the same media conglomerates that were criticizing Wall Street are doing the same thing on their own books. Sadly, young actors accept just about any terms to get on a film.

<comment><USER13> young musicians and even young developers will accept any terms to get in the business.

The difference is the developer can wakeup and immediately change jobs but the musician that is signed is basically held hostage.

<comment><USER14> A close friend was actually a judge on one of those "find the next star" shows, for singers. He says they pulled some really shady shit over on the kids - handed them a massive contract and two days to "review it" or they'd be dropped from the show; and this was after they'd made it past the first round of culling.

The contract was also very unfavorable to the kids, basically putting them completely at the mercy of the record label, for way too many years (and probably a lot more - not my circus, and it's been awhile).

I don't remember how it all turned out, except that the specific kid my friend was mentoring through all this went on to win.

That same friend has his own troubles with his original label. After making it big, he started to change direction, and the label just stopped putting his stuff out. Really put a damper on his career, since he basically dropped of the map until he got out from under them.

<comment><USER15> > After making it big, he started to change direction, and the label just > stopped putting his stuff out.

This could describe a lot of people, but makes me think of George Michael. A lot of people followed the turn, and felt like it had enormous impact, even if the label wasn't pumping it to the top of the charts. Sales are great, but not all sales have equal impact on people's lives. Michael's later work really connected deeply with the people who followed it, I hope he knew that. If by any chance he was your friend, deeply sorry for your loss.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Not for nothing did David Mamet include these lines in Speed-the-Plow, his > satirical dissection of the American movie business: "Two things I've > learned, 25 years in the entertainment industry.… The first one is: There is > no 'net.'… And I forgot the second one."

This is why I discount "profit sharing" and heavily discount equity when evaluating job offers.

</comment><comment><USER17> Recently watched District 9 and it has a lot of the same charm. Life is really messy and chaotic, full of exploits and idiots, there are a lot of colossal fxckups and nobody really cares.

<comment><USER18> A lot of the lines were unscripted (particularly for Wikus). I suspect this is what you were noticing.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips/Guide for thinking like a physicist? - <AUTHOR>

The title says it all, I'm having a hard time in a physics class (studying electricity)... and I just have a hard time wrapping my head around the application of formulas and how to "attack" the problems.
It's pretty much just felt like a dead weight for me, and usually I love problem/puzzle solving... but I guess not this time.
Thanks <comment><USER2> The approach I used is called physical intuition. Specifically, you try to envision using _some_ sort or set of metaphors of what's going on. For electricity (what level? DC, AC, AC with calculus?), e.g. moving electrons, for AC add the propagation of current. Try to connect visual plots of voltage and so on to that.

Then see how the formula apply to your visualizations. And/or use the formula to help produce them ... i.e. the formula says "at this point, voltage will be X and rising" ... how does that translate into current and electrons moving? Or try to visualize fields.

Also seek out other explications of this. If you have trouble with the calculus as it's taught today, look into infinitesimal calculus (one free on- line book, one Dover reprint of a good MIT Press book). Maybe _The Manga Guide to Electricity_ would help. Or Purcell's _Electricity and Magnetism_ ; yeah, it's an advanced, "honors physics" treatment (e.g. it derives magnetism from electricity using Special Relativity: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativistic_electromagnetism>), but maybe it'll give you some useful approaches. (If you can't find a copy to look at, try to get the Tata McGraw-Hill Indian edition ISBN-10 0-07-066729-2), it's not in print elsewhere and copies are $$$).

Talk to other people and see if they can wave their hands in ways that make sense. Etc.

Good luck.</comment>


Guys, if you really need an investor try centralway holding, you can apply at anytime. Good Luck! - <AUTHOR> http://www.centralway.com/ <comment><USER2> Thanks, but...

"Geographical focus Germany, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria, Poland and Hungary."

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but not everyone is living in the US here, and you can try it ... you can't lose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> does this group invest in US businesses?</comment>


Characteristics of Great Software Design - <AUTHOR> http://bie.no/blog/computers/software-engineering/pragmatic-programming/2006/03/characteristics-of-great-software-designtm/

<comment><USER2> "When I am working on a problem I never think about beauty. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong." -R. Buckminster Fuller</comment>


How to avoid the quant/developer black hole (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://quantjob.blogspot.com/2011/12/how-to-avoid-quantdeveloper-black-hole.html <comment><USER2> For something like algo quants the distinction is a bit harder since there is a lot of programming involved for algos. I think a good question to ask is about R, Matlab and Python. They aren't really used in IT but they are used more by quants so would be a pretty good indicator.

</comment><comment><USER3> > If your first interview is with HR then it's a crap job with 95% certainty

That holds for non-quant jobs as well, of course.</comment>


The deadly toll of street racing in Los Angeles - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-street-racing/ <comment><USER2> The National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) was founded to get racing off the California streets in 1951. Virtually all the drag strips this sanctioning body promoted races at in urban areas have closed (Lions was a famous track in Long Beach sponsored by the Lions club to get racers off the streets for example).

Today youtube is full of street racing for money videos and there is a whole genre of fake reality TV shows about street racing glamorizing it. Examples

[https://youtu.be/Lf9wlvQuxGA](https://youtu.be/Lf9wlvQuxGA)

[https://youtu.be/Ltc7e9IIPVc](https://youtu.be/Ltc7e9IIPVc)

The NHRA needs to get back to their core remit and support more legitimate racing venues and local authorities need to help this to happen. There is a thriving electric street drag racing scene too as traction control on Teslas makes it much easier to launch and go fast with no talent, winning races.

<comment><USER3> The NHRA is effectively on life-support, or at least on galantamine.

I grew up in the Nor-Cal racing scene and my family owned 2 dragsters (Only 1 of which worked at a time). Many many Wednesday nights were spent at Sears Point [0] racing our beaters against each other and chewing on those god-awful hot-dogs. Hot August Nights were one of the few vacations my Dad took, mostly to go place '9ers bets in Reno, but still.

The NHRA scene is just too 'rich' and old for the teens. I don't mean in terms of just money, but also in terms of intelligence and experience. The teens can't compete with the older Boomer and the Boomers think they are just idiots. Fact is, they _are_ ; but it's only because they are young and inexperienced. If the Boomers would find the wherewithal to just invite the kids over and talk, they'd find a lot of common ground. Also, the teens all speak Spanish and the white Boomers tend to be Trumpy.

But their cars are also not as easy to muck with. A 2005 Scooby has a ton of computers and other crud in them. Yes, the aftermarket ODBII cards can help, but it's almost a cheat. This goes for all the regs California has now (smog, etc). There is a lot to learn about modern cars and not a lot of teachers (WyoTech at Las Modanas is pretty good, actually, but rare). Again, the Boomers neglected to teach the next generation.

Still, NHRA events and the SCCA are just too old. They have 'dances' on the weekends, but they play _The Supremes_ and _The Beatles_. If you tried to play anything off the charts today, you'd get screamed at and have a gun waved in your face. I doubt they even know about Spotify. Then the pit fees and the tire fees start adding up, let alone race-gas and the Nomex suits (SCCA here). The weekend to weekend costs are just too much for working at BestBuy, especially if you don't have the tools already. The upfront capital is insane.

So, what do they do? Sideshows and the like. They go out on the street, where else? Tracks are not welcoming.

Are they dangerous as all get out? Yes.

Do the girls pay attention?

...

Well, then, who cares how dangerous it is!

What choice do they have?

[0] Sonoma/Infinion Raceway my ass. It will _always_ be Sears Point.

<comment><USER4> I think the part about cars being less approachable these days is huge. Sure, you can get your ECU chipped or whatever and magically get full, non- environmentally-friendly power out of your car. But past that, you're looking at serious money to install and tune some aftermarket MOTEC ECU or something.

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. A Fox body mustang beater, a few trips to pick n pull for turbochargers etc and a couple of thousand dollars spent at a speedparts vendor such as [https://www.summitracing.com](https://www.summitracing.com) [http://www.jegs.com](http://www.jegs.com)

will furnish you with an extremely fast race car. Things get spendy when you start getting into electronics, to go seriously fast previous era engineering is arguably cheaper and faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked on the data analysis for this story, which was published at a Jupyter Notebook of Python code.

[https://github.com/datadesk/street-racing- analysis/blob/mast...](https://github.com/datadesk/street-racing- analysis/blob/master/notebook.ipynb)

If you have any questions, shoot.

<comment><USER6> Do you have suggestions on how I might find information about the _total_ numbers of traffic related fatalities in LA during similar times? (I'm interesting in knowing what fraction of car-related deaths are due to street racing.)

For example, 2016 had 260 deaths from car accidents from one source [0], and only 11 of those were from street racing, less than 5%. (It's possible that the article I linked counted deaths differently than the data you were working with, though, so it's hard to compare the two.) Street racing related deaths are tragic (especially as half of them are _not the drivers_), but I wonder if we are spending proportionally similar amounts to prevent the larger pie-slice of automotive deaths.

Good grief, I feel so callous even asking this kind of question. :-/

0: [http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-2016-traffic- dea...](http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-2016-traffic- deaths-20170403-story.html)

<comment><USER7> I don't think it's callous at all. In fact, it's a sort of higher order empathy. If the goal is to save as many lives as possible, then this is exactly the right way to think about these things.

It's like how most Americans are more likely to die from obesity related diseases than terrorism, but we spend orders of magnitude more resources trying to prevent terrorism.

<comment><USER8> I think it is highly unlikely to be true, but it could be that the money spent fighting terrorism saves millions of lives every year. That would make it a bargain.

Similarly, if there were no attempt to stop street racing (not even speed limits), we _might_ see thousands more deads due to street racing every year.

<comment><USER9> If that were true you can compare back to when we didn't spend money on fighting terrorism. Has it changed much? No not really. Terrorism is not a (major) problem in the world if looking at major causes of human loss of life.

<comment><USER8> Neither is street racing.

Also, I didn't argue that; I just pointed out that "few people die today, _so we shouldn't spend much money fighting it_ " isn't a valid argument because the truth could be "few people die today _because we spend so much money fighting it_ ".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There are more legitimate outlets. SCCA Autocross / Solo II events are a fun way to race in a controlled environment. Most courses are one car at a time, in parking lots set up to keep people under 40mph and are more about skill than speed.

People who really get hardcore into Autocross sometimes move on to road courses, buying roll cages and paying fees (or if you're lucky, finding a sponsor) to race against others on a closed track.

At some SCCA events you'll see all the legit autocrosses lined up and all the kids with their fast/furious wanna be shit rides around the outside. Once when we were going over the rules, one such car pulled in and the organizer said, "Looks like there's another one for the cardboard wing class." and we all laughed.

So at least some of these racers know about these events and just don't participate, but really these kids should be encourage to join more legit events, take on Solo II or drag racing or rally cross, and yea .. it will take some more money and time, but you'll get involved with a group of people who aren't idiots and who are responsible about their motorsports. If you do something stupid and wreck, at least you only hurt yourself and not some kid on the street.

<comment><USER11> Street racing is akin to a Drag race. Autocross type circuit events are more technical with tight corners and I suspect many street racers won't be interested in them. A better solution is to increase access to drag strips. I believe many PD's in Nevada and Florida already do events like this [https://jalopnik.com/5236317/drag-race-a-cop-in-beat-the- hea...](https://jalopnik.com/5236317/drag-race-a-cop-in-beat-the-heat- challenge)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> 179 people over 17 years? In a major metropolitan city? That doesn't seem like much of a problem at all.

<comment><USER13> In the same vein, just imagine how much money we could save if we get to say "300 people this year? More people died this month in car accidents. There's no need to do anything." every time a plane crashes.

<comment><USER14> I suspect the death toll from aviation might be a bit higher if that's how we responded to plane crashes...

<comment><USER15> The death toll from aviation is high, just not the death toll when you only look at major passenger lines. Add in GA, and the numbers stop looking so sweet.

[https://www.aopa.org/about/general-aviation- statistics/gener...](https://www.aopa.org/about/general-aviation- statistics/general-aviation-safety-record-current-and-historic)

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/12/lies-c...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/06/12/lies- coverups-mask-roots-small-aircraft-carnage-unfit-for-flight-part-1/10405323/)

<comment><USER16> I would imagine buses compare favourably to small cars also. GA pilots have less monitoring, and are more likely to be involved in many of the same activities that cause car crashes, but in the air. And more likely to be manually flying also.

The argument was never "planes are inherently safer than cars" but rather "commercial passenger flights are safer than cars because of all the precautions (human and technical) we take"

<comment><USER15> I suspected that you were right, and doing a bit of research, you definitely are. The rate of fatalities in busses is quite low compared to cars and light trucks.

[https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transpor...](https://journalistsresource.org/studies/environment/transportation/comparing- fatality-risks-united-states-transportation-across-modes-time)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> You will notice that the police, on the one hand say that street racing is incredibly dangerous and puts innocent lives at risk (not just the racers), and at the same time, justify high speed chases, risking pedestrians lives for the sake of catching petty criminals.

Young people don't make the best decisions. But televised high speed chases (fictional and real) sure look cool and exciting to me.

Finally, San Diego has reduced street racing by providing a cheap, legal outlet for it. [1] But we used to have more drag strips and tracks. They get closed down as real-estate needs expand. If I want to road race, the nearest tracks require driving through LA.

To be clear, I'm not making excuses for kids. I'm not saying "well they should be allowed to race because they can't elsewhere" or "we should be lenient on them". I'm absolutely against street racing.

So, in conclusion, give racers more legal opportunities on the one hand, and stop glorifying/titilating/excusing car chases on the other.

[1] [https://www.sandiego.gov/stadium/event/tenants/racelegal](https://www.sandiego.gov/stadium/event/tenants/racelegal)

<comment><USER18> > You will notice that the police, on the one hand say that street racing is > incredibly dangerous and puts innocent lives at risk (not just the racers), > and at the same time, justify high speed chases, risking pedestrians lives > for the sake of catching petty criminals.

Well, except that over the last few decades, high speed chases have fallen out of favor, and most police agencies have adopted very restrictive pursuit policies.

<comment><USER19> Doesn't appear to be the case in Southern California - I see one on TV pretty much every time I'm down there...

<comment><USER18> > Doesn't appear to be the case in Southern California

It definitely is for every non-federal LE agency in Southern California.

> I see one on TV pretty much every time I'm down there...

Yes, SoCal is a region with close to 25 million people; things that are done on extremely limited circumstances with tight controls still do happen somewhere in that region with some frequency, and are note worthy enoguh that they get covered by TV news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 179 people since 2000 is not a lot for LA? That's ~10 annually, or 0.00025% of the population. The total traffic fatality rate is about 240-260/year[0], or ~25x that. It seems remarkable that street racing is only ~4% of the total.

I guess the idea is that these deaths are preventable? So are the rest of the traffic fatalities. These deaths are caused by adolescents making irrational choices? That's probably not unique to this type of collision either.

I don't understand the goal of the focus piece other than to shift blame off the majority of traffic fatalities onto some unlikable population (street racers) that isn't actually responsible for a large portion of the deaths.

[0]: [https://www.dailynews.com/2018/01/30/traffic-deaths-in-la- ar...](https://www.dailynews.com/2018/01/30/traffic-deaths-in-la-are-down-but- well-short-of-citys-goal-whats-next-for-vision-zero/)

</comment><comment><USER21> as an Angeleno myself, i have to say the statistic seem par for a city of more than five million.

street racing is an easy demon to hunt in Los Angeles as its a rule that only a few people break but that has a high profile due to its nature. Its flashy and comes with its own set of blockbuster movies and spinoffs. Cops would enjoy a bit of high speed sports car chase I suspect...not so much cranking out tickets for low speed fender benders though perhaps.

Target something like distracted driving and you'll find far fewer of us are willing to tolerate the kind of crackdown required to reduce the number of injuries and fatalities related to it. We love to text and drive, talk on our cellphones, and even read our e-books while stuck in traffic. Then again who knows. Many of us would appreciate seeing the CHP print up a few fresh ones for the classic and clueless luxury sedan drivers mashing away at their iphones and ignoring the green light.

<comment><USER22> Are you a local (like grew up in LA) or just live there now? I grew up there (5th generation) - I remember street racing being a big deal in my teen years and I think some investment in educating the youth would be worthwhile. 3 kids from my school I grew up with were killed in a street race in 11th grade. Sure, if it's this or that sort of thing, invest in the distracted drivers, but I think the county can work on both...

<comment><USER23> You're right of course. We have the resources to solve multiple problems at once. This is the problem with people who say Elon Musk is wasting his energy trying to get to Mars. That isn't happening at the expense of cancer research. We're doing both.

Real change happens when people get involved. Yes, cancer or obesity kill more people in LA than street racing. Saying that doesn't do anything to help victims of street racing crashes, cancer or obesity.

If we see a problem we should make an individual value judgement and get involved in fixing it if we think it is important and we can help. It doesn't have to be the biggest problem to be worthwhile effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > 17 years. 179 victims.

260 total deaths from all car crashes in 2016 alone. If street racing is out of control, just plain driving is off the charts.

Who is downvoting this and why?

<comment><USER25> I think if you compare crash-per-mile-driven or crash-per-hour those figures won't even be in the same universe.

<comment><USER26> Transportation is not the point of street racing, so of what possible significance would that comparison be?

<comment><USER25> They both involve the same activity--operating a motor vehicle in a city environment. Besides, the _original comparison_ was between transportation and street racing!

<comment><USER26> The _original comparison_ was between two dangerous activities, not between two dangerous modes of transportation the danger of which might be informatively amortized across the quantity of transportation provided.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The part I hate most about these stories is it's a waste of life for everyone involved. Assuming the driver isnt a psychopath of some sort they will probably be regretting this every moment for the rest of their life which may be mostly in prison. Manslaughter is manslaughter but I wish we had an ethical way to reform these criminals. In terms of society impact its as if more people died that night than actually did.

</comment><comment><USER28> 179 people in 17-18 years...basically no one.</comment>


Association of Type 2 Diabetes with Titanium Dioxide Crystals in the Pancreas - <AUTHOR> https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemrestox.8b00047 <comment><USER2> Since non-diabetics accumulate close to zero Titanium Dioxide and it is ubiquitous in our 'modern' environment, it seems more likely that diabetics have for some reason difficulties clearing these crystals?

<comment><USER3> My first thought -- diabetes affects kidney function. The question is whether the same is found in type I diabetics.

<comment><USER4> Type I diabetes is an inability of the pancreas to produce insulin. In typical type II diabetes it is not a problem of production, but rather the uptake of the insulin is inhibited. Basically the body becomes resistant to the insulin signal.

<comment><USER3> My point was that high blood sugar damages the kidneys, so if TiO2 in kidneys is an effect rather than cause of diabetes, we would see it in both type I and type II.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't find the article, but wasn't there also a doctor that was recently curing people (permanently) of type 2 by essentially having them fast for a dangerously long time and thus purging all the fat from their pancreas?

The theory they were proving out was that the fat built up in the pancreas was tricking their body into seeing the wrong amounts of insulin.

[ edit ] Adding link for Dr. Fung's research [1] as mentioned in a reply by<USER6>
[1] - [https://idmprogram.com/fatty- pancreas-t2d-9/](https://idmprogram.com/fatty-pancreas-t2d-9/)

<comment><USER6> Dr Fung has been doing this for a long time, and it's not dangerous at all. My longest fast was for 14 days just water, though I wasn't diabetic.

Fung has lots of articles on Medium and /r/fasting is a great resource. Fung and also Taubes books are great and point out he maddening simplicity, that diabetes is high insulin is high sugar intake and that we treat it with... higher insulin. It's insanity, and because we can't see the wood for the trees we have smart people go study things like how much titanium you have in your body rather than solving the actual problem of carb intake.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for jogging my memory. The only reason I mention dangerous is that fasting can in fact be very dangerous depending on a persons physiology and preexisting conditions. That said, it is much less dangerous than having T2D. So the benefits may outweigh the risks in this case.

<comment><USER7> Everything has a risk though, not even an exaggeration, actions or inactions. The problem with disucssing fasting is that it's not widely supported in modern western health, so there's little discussion or common knowledge about how to recognize problems during fasting.

What is great about problems during fasting though, generally speaking, to solve them is as easy as breaking the fast.

There are fasting clinics where doctors monitor the urine output from patients to determine if their body is expelling too many toxins at one time, and help control the fast.

<comment><USER5> I completely agree and having your blood and stool checked by a doctor or a lab is certainly a good mitigating control, especially for people that have preexisting issues such as; but not limited to, kidney or liver diseases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks it's a common ingredient for candy: [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/scienceandfood/2016/04/12/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/scienceandfood/2016/04/12/titanium- dioxide-in-food/#.Wyt6ZlOFN60) \- "Titanium dioxide nanoparticles (TiO2) are widely used as a food additive and are consumed by millions of consumers on a daily basis, as manufacturers incorporate it into their food products. "

<comment><USER9> Worse, it's in most toothpaste.

> Titanium dioxide found to cause pre-cancerous growths in 40% of mice

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/toothpaste- additi...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/toothpaste- additive-e171-titanium-dioxide-food-products-cancer-cause- scientists-a7541956.html)

<comment><USER10> > It is unclear whether the product might have a similar effect in people, and > the scientists said their findings "cannot be extrapolated to humans".

Cinnamon caused some kind of liver dysfunction (cancer, IIRC) in mice. I turns out that mice lacked a metabolic pathway for processing a byproduct of the breakdown of Cinnamon, a pathway that humans possess. Mouse models aren't perfect, so it's probably premature to use the value-laden word "worse" in relation to TiO2 in toothpaste.

<comment><USER11> Ceylon or Cassia cinnamon?

<comment><USER12> He's talking about cassia, and the specific substance is coumarin which has a fairly high fatal dosage for humans. Note that cinnamaldehyde tastes really good and has nothing to do with coumarin if the chemical processing is done correctly.

Anyway in rodents at very low doses their liver converts it to some nasty epoxide which slowly gives rodents liver cancer; not an issue for primates who an only die from acute liver toxicity.

This was a "thing" generations ago, leading to endless old wives tale type advice about cinnamon "repelling and killing mice" which actually doesn't work because its too bitter if dusted around in pure form.

If you're bored its interesting to research cinnamon-flavored liquors, the more "natural and organic", at least if it uses cassia for flavor, the higher the poisonous coumarin content and in contrast the more processed refined pure cinnamaldehyde is essentially non-poisonous (lethal dose for a human would be about half a liter of the concentrated oil, extrapolating from animal studies, figure a percent or two of total body mass). From memory the LD50 of common table salt is about 10% lower than the LD50 of cinnamaldehyde, of course in a cinnamon flavored liquor the ethanol would kill a consumer long before the cinnamaldehyde would be an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's relevant that France just set a ban for Titanium Dioxide in food products: [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/18/france- ban-e171-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/05/18/france- ban-e171-additive-found-sweets-pastries-may-pose-cancer/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Sample size: 8

<comment><USER15> The authors acknowledge this.

From the conclusion:-

"Being a pilot study, it requires sufficient expansion of sample sizes for statistical analysis as well as blinded studies."

<comment><USER16> Yeah, it's probably worthy of further research, but (nonprofessional opinion) my view is that obesity trends are much more likely the driver for increases in type II diabetes.

<comment><USER17> This is ignoring that there could be a feedback link between them. If there is a chemical imbalance that could lead to type 2, it probably does so by tricking the body to consume more. Such that the two problems could easily be linked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A friend tested me a while back and my bloog sugar was over 400.

I changed my life habbits completely.

I just got back from the doctor and my A1Cs are now 4.8!

I'm so excited!

<comment><USER19> What sort of changes? I was under the impression that you know when your blood sugar levels are so high. Did you lose any weight?

<comment><USER20> I've never been able to tell when my blood sugar was high or normal just by how I feel alone.

<comment><USER21> To a certain level you might not feel if your blood sugar is high or normal. But after 250 mg/dl, especially at 400 mg/dl you'll feel it. The most obvious symptom is fatigue and thirst, no matter how much you sleep you will feel exhausted all the time. You will want to drink a lot of water, you will urinate frequently. Your eyes will start to hurt. After being high for some time, your vision might get blurry, your eyes dry, you'll start vomiting.

Also you could smell your urine, if it stinks like ammonia, your blood sugar levels are high.

If your blood sugar levels are normal you feel healthy.

I've been a T1 since I was 10 and this is my experience. The real problem is not noticing highs but noticing lows. Because low blood sugar is much more threatening than highs for the short term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I might be remembering things wrong, but doesn't a lot of chewing gum have Titanium Dioxide as its whitening agent for teeth?

<comment><USER23> Titanium Dioxide is used practically everywhere. Its the "white coloring" in paint, food,skincare, medicine,plastics,paper, coatings,inks,etc. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_dioxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanium_dioxide)

<comment><USER24> It's also widely used in milk, to cover up the blue color of milk from industrial milk production facilities where thousands of animals are locked up in big metal sheds with poor quality food.

Strangely, they don't have to list the titanium dioxide in the ingredients.

<comment><USER25> Milk is naturally blue. It's the fat emulsion that covers it up. That's why skim milk has a blue tinge.

<comment><USER26> Milk is in fact white. Source: grew up on a farm.

<comment><USER27> Actually, raw milk has an ivory / yellow tint (depending how much grass the cows have eaten vs hay). Grain and soy feeding tends to produce white milk however.

Holding up a glass of grass fed cow milk to store bought milk really shows the difference. The store bought milk suddenly looks bleached white, like liquid paper.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > it constitutes the dominant light-scattering, that is, "white" component of > indoor wall paints, drinks, foods, toothpastes, medications, cosmetics, > paper, and plastics.

I understand why TiO2 is used in paint and even in cosmetics but why should it be in anything that is eaten or in medicines? None of that needs to be shining white.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just saw this, may be relevant:

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/diabetes-defeated-by-diet- ne...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/20/diabetes-defeated-by-diet-new-fresh- food-prescriptions-beat-drugs.html)

</comment><comment><USER29> They should try testing NASA employees. NASA loves titanium dioxide white paint.

<comment><USER30> Isn't nearly all paint mostly titanium dioxide?

<comment><USER31> Any opaque, non-black (or very dark) paint, yes. You can add other pigments to paint, but if you want that paint to be opaque rather than translucent, you need to add titanium dioxide (or something that'll have the same effect).

<comment><USER16> Right -- previously lead carbonate was used, until the problems with that were understood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> this would only account for one form of Type II diabetes.

It doesnt account for insulin resistance or the other issues found with it - many people who are type II have normal insulin levels

<comment><USER33> I'm a doctor and would say I'm quite familiar with T2DM, but I'm confused about what you're saying.

<comment><USER34> I think the OP is trying to argue that if TiO2 causes T2DM (by modulating production of insulin in the beta cells), it does not account for peripheral insulin resistance that is also present in T2DM.

So, it could be that T2DM patients simply don't clear TiO2 from their pancreas as well as non T2DM patients (perhaps impaired kidney function).

On another hand TiO2 is a "magnet" for other heavy metals. Researches are proposing using it in water filters to filter out other heavy metals because it attracts them so much. Consequently, having it accumulate in your tissue can't be good for long term health.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool early stage work, but why is it noteworthy enough to be here? Has it even been replicated?</comment>


Better Hello, World - Trabb Pardo–Knuth algorithm - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trabb_Pardo-Knuth_algorithm

<comment><USER2> I would like to see a Go language implementation by someone versed in it ...</comment>