Ask HN: Favorite subreddit? - <AUTHOR> I read /r/programming and /r/golang and have found some really nice gems over the years.<p>What are your favorite subreddits that you have gained some really valuable insights from? <comment><USER2> [https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/](https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://reddit.com/r/SyrianCivilWar](https://reddit.com/r/SyrianCivilWar)

Takes a lot of lurking to really be able to _really_ read what's happening, but I honestly think that this sub is quite possibly the best war reporting of all time.

The sub has even been publishing its own high-quality journal/magazine, "The Week In Review", ex: [http://imgur.com/gallery/SdsG2](http://imgur.com/gallery/SdsG2)

<comment><USER4> I'll check it out, but can you give us a high level understanding of what you have learned about the war?

<comment><USER5> The whole truth is probably more fluid and multifaceted but these are some of the interesting claims I've seen on there.

1\. Al Nusra a branch of Al Qaeda is embedded amongst the moderate rebels and were the main fighting force in Aleppo.

2\. Allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia have been flooding Syria with weapons to anyone who will take them including radical groups. SA sees situation as opportunity to spread Wahhabism to the region.

3\. Early on the coalition had been using a funneling strategy that involved bombing locations peripheral to ISIS with the goal of forcing them to move into civilian regime territory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> /r/memeeconomy

People giving and asking for "investment advice" for memes. It's the kind of subculture where I was truly amazed how far the Internet has taken us in terms of social interaction and humour.

Funny thing is, the verge even reported on it [1].

[1] [http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14223264/meme-economy- redd...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/10/14223264/meme-economy-reddit-stock- market)

</comment><comment> J-dawg This is possibly controversial, but /r/TheRedPill has helped me a lot recently.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/theredpill](https://www.reddit.com/r/theredpill)

<comment><USER7> I'm attempting not to pass judgement. Can you explain why it's helped?

<comment> J-dawg It has helped me understand why my marriage failed and made me realise how I need to behave differently when I start dating again.

I must admit, a lot of the commenters there have extreme views and some of them come across as misogynists.

However, for some reason I persevered and started reading some of the theory. What I read aligned so accurately with my previous experiences and the way I've been treated by women that I couldn't ignore it, and I've been hooked since then.

Thank you for at least attempting not to pass judgement!

<comment><USER8> what are some of those extreme views you disagree with?

any you agree with?

<comment><USER8> Hello? Which ones do you disagree with?

<comment> J-dawg Because of the subject matter, there's a lot of anger and bitterness in that subreddit, and people make a lot of sweeping generalisations. There's not much point getting into my specific opinions, everyone has to make up their own mind.

All I know is the theory discussed there, and links to "manosphere" blogs have been useful to me. I mentioned it here in case it's useful to other people too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/](http://www.reddit.com/r/rational/) \- a community discussing rational fiction (sort of like hard SciFi). This is one of the best communities (aside from HN) that I am aware of, a lot of extremely intelligent people, I'm sure you guys will like it.

<comment><AUTHOR> would this include works like Sherlock Holmes?

<comment><USER10> To quote rationalist fiction author Eliezer Yudkowsky: > But when you look at what Sherlock Holmes does - you can't go out and do it at home. Sherlock Holmes is not really operating by any sort of reproducible method. He is operating by magically finding the right clues and carrying out magically correct complicated chains of deduction. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that reading Sherlock Holmes does not inspire you to go and do likewise. Holmes is a mutant superhero. And even if you did try to imitate him, it would never work in real life. [0]

A hallmark of rationalist fiction is that it invites the reader engage with the story by thinking rationally. A tactic employed by Yudkowsky is to pause just before the climax of the story and prompt online readers to use what they know to get the protagonist out of their current bind, or else, Yudkowsky promises, the protagonist will meet a less-than-ideal end.

Yudkowsky's stories [1] are a great introduction to the genre. I'm particularly fond of "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality", which makes a habit of preying on the reader's sentimentality.

[0] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m/rationalist_fiction/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/3m/rationalist_fiction/) [1] [http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/](http://yudkowsky.net/other/fiction/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perhaps surprisingly, /r/dndbehindthescreen. They're one of the few subreddits I've found that has a subscriber count in the tens of thousands, consistently high-quality content, and an active community of people that actually contribute.

/r/roguelikedev is a fun community, as well- I love the opportunity for cross- pollination of ideas, since everyone's doing a rather similar thing, but with different languages, libraries, and so forth.

</comment><comment><USER12> [https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/)

It's a curated list of in depth submissions(posts and replies) from many subreddits.

<comment><USER13> Not meaning to criticize your taste in subreddits, but I didn't have the reaction I thought it would. I was looking forward to it, but a lot of the posts seemed like links to megatrolling or something.

Maybe I picked the wrong ones to take a look at or something, but I found it disturbing more than anything else, sort of like "the best that reddit has to offer, by those who think they are offering it."

I have sort of a love-hate relationship with Reddit, though, so I think it's touching some deep buttons for me.

<comment><USER12> I generally agree with you.

To enjoy this subreddit, it's best to think of it more as a collection of in "depth" posts, than it is of "quality" posts. That means it often offers some really bad, but very long and detailed content. It's something I subscribe to and occasionally find gems in.

Most importantly, I enjoy that the content is all original discussion as opposed to articles I will probably find elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> /r/askhistorians is always a delightful read

<comment><USER15> The most strictly moderated community I've seen, and thanks to that it has the highest signal-to-noise ratio of any online forum.

You could _easily_ make a magazine out of the dozens of incredibly posts each week.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> /r/selfhosted - it contains several selfhosted gems of applications, a very interesting sub.

/r/netsec - to feel a bit paranoid

/r/homelab - for the homelab needs

/r/golang - overall friendly community and lots to learn

/r/programming - good sub for all needs

/r/polandball - I cannot come up with a good justification why this subreddit is one of my favorites.

</comment><comment><USER17> [https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/](https://www.reddit.com/r/wholesomememes/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I like [https://www.reddit.com/r/sixwordstories/](https://www.reddit.com/r/sixwordstories/). A good place to start with it is [https://www.reddit.com/r/sixwordstories/top/?sort=top&t=all](https://www.reddit.com/r/sixwordstories/top/?sort=top&t=all).

</comment><comment><USER19> For me, it's:

[https://reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews](https://reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews)

The media is too focused on sensationalized news nowadays, which often translates to negative news. It's hard not to be jaded and cynical. This sub helps give me perspective.

Also, as someone else already mentioned, /r/askhistorians is a truly delightful and interesting read.

</comment><comment><USER20> [https://reddit.com/r/unixporn](https://reddit.com/r/unixporn)

</comment><comment><USER21> I mostly use reddit for more non serious discussion so my favorite subreddits are primarily visual.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn/](https://www.reddit.com/r/cableporn/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Welding/)

And a user from HN introduced me to [https://www.reddit.com/r/conduitporn/](https://www.reddit.com/r/conduitporn/)

</comment><comment><USER22> A few of my favorites include:

/r/machinelearning

/r/artificial

/r/semanticweb

/r/electronics

<comment><USER23> Is semantic web just a branch of SEO? I don't really understand the point aside from making your site nicer for e.g. Google/Bing.

<comment><USER24> Semantic web is about making the meaning of your content easier for machines to extract. The idea is to have a single HTML document that is readable by people, but is also marked up with microformats or similar rich markup to enable easy acquisition of data by machine (i.e., without being dependent upon the structure of the HTML).

The BBC's Programmes web site was a good example of this for some time, but I think this seems to have fallen by the wayside somewhat. Here's an instance though, where the broadcast times are marked up with XSD datetime information in addition to the human readable times: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ljx7/broadcasts](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b016ljx7/broadcasts)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> /r/nofap - even if you don't believe in the "science", it's amusing to read the experiences of people attempting this.

</comment><comment><USER25> /r/onebag

/r/minimalism

/r/ultralight

/r/frugal

/r/keto

/r/zerocarb

/r/personalfinancecanada

<comment><USER26> I love PersonalFinanceCanada but Canadian subreddits are very hostile to newbies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> /r/TIL

/r/programming

/r/woodworking

</comment><comment><USER28> Haven't gained any insights from these subs, but love browsing them every once in a while.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/](https://www.reddit.com/r/aww/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/dogpictures](https://www.reddit.com/r/dogpictures)

</comment><comment><USER29> /r/skookum is a pretty great community of engineers & DIYers with a sense of humor. I particularly like their subreddit rule #3:

> Users are strongly encouraged to submit posts for technical assistance. > /u/datums personally guarantees that all possible resources will be > mobilized to provide assistance if necessary.

</comment><comment><USER30> /r/ArtefactPorn

/r/ArtisanVideos

/r/NYC

/r/SpaceX

/r/wikipedia

/r/DestructiveReaders

</comment><comment><USER31> [https://www.reddit.com/r/fitness](https://www.reddit.com/r/fitness)

</comment><comment><USER32> shameless plug for [https://www.reddit.com/r/moldedplywood](https://www.reddit.com/r/moldedplywood)

</comment><comment><USER33> /r/corgi

</comment><comment><USER34> r/dataisbeautiful r/EDC

</comment><comment><USER35> /r/CadenMoranDiary

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not quite sure what that is about. Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER35> The useful links on the sidebar explain it best I guess. Just a lot of in jokes between a handful of regular posters.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> rad_decentralization

permaculture

sustainability

ethereum

nim

futurology (quite a bit of spam though)

Not all of them are really insightful but still cool

foodporn

startups

conspiracy

shittykickstarters

proceduralgeneration

agi

mountaingoats

marshallbrain

DIY

simulate</comment>


Ask HN: Book Recommendations - <AUTHOR> Where do you get your book recommendations?
Do you subscribe any value to all these 'Must read books' lists or what Bill Gates (or other famous person) may say they read in a blog post? Do you assign any value to a list put together by some random person that says a famous person recommends a particular set of books?
In other words, do you feel more inclined to read a book that has been endorsed in a list by someone famous?
Do you just rely on reviews from Amazon, Goodreads etc?
Lately, some of the most interesting books I've found have actually been through HN threads where a user mentions a book relevant to the topic discussed, usually by including a summary or short excerpt from that book.
Your thoughts? <comment><USER2> Here are the sources I use:

1\. HackerNewsBooks.com subscription

2\. Amazon recommendations for books I've enjoyed

3\. Book on literature, such as The Literature Book from Big Ideas Simply Explained series</comment>


First Contact to Offer – Atomic's Developer Interview Process - <AUTHOR> https://spin.atomicobject.com/2015/05/13/developer-interview-process/#.VVNihPIfIcQ.hackernews <comment><USER2> I'm noticing an increasing number of employers wanting to do reference checks very early in the process, some even before any interview. As I don't wish to impose on my references more than I absolutely have to, I tend to exclude these employers from my consideration.</comment>


Manhattan DA: iPhone Crypto Locked Out Cops 74 Times - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/07/manhattan-da-iphone-crypto-foiled-cops-74-times/

<comment><USER2> I'm not a lawyer, but I guess I don't understand the problem:

1\. DA asks court for an iPhone search warrant because a crime may have been committed.

2\. If the evidence looks strong, court issues warrant to search phone.

3\. DA serves warrant to phone owner.

4\. If owner doesn't unlock phone voluntarily, owner is in contempt of court and subject to legal sanctions.

Why does Apple need to get involved?</comment>


Aaron Swartz music video tribute by Nerdcore rapper Dan Bull - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/01/18/dan-bull-song-tribute-to-aaron.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Was surprised to find it so moving. Well done.</comment>


Dark Mail Technical Alliance - <AUTHOR> http://darkmail.info/home.html <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816806)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8821847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8821847)

</comment><comment><USER3> The proposal for forward secrecy in the spec ([https://darkmail.info/downloads/dark-internet-mail- environme...](https://darkmail.info/downloads/dark-internet-mail-environment- december-2014.pdf)) is not great and does not reflect the current state of the art:

> PFS for message objects, as the description above suggests, is far more > difficult, and contrary to the nature of email.

It recommends just rotating public keys every few days with a paranoid mode. A much better solution is to implement the Axolotl Ratchet pioneered by Open Whisper Systems for TechSecure:

[https://www.whispersystems.org/blog/advanced- ratcheting/](https://www.whispersystems.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/)

[https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki](https://github.com/trevp/axolotl/wiki)

With Axolotl Ratchet, you get:

* forward secrecy - disclosure of private keys doesn't let an attacker in the future go back and read encrypted communication

* future secrecy - disclosure of ephemeral private keys doesn't disclose (much) future content

I also get the feeling from a glance reading the spec that way too much trust is being placed on service providers. That there is even such a category as "trustful" where the server has access to your private keys is a huge red flag and that was exactly the problem with lavabit: [http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit- critique/](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/lavabit-critique/)

<comment><USER4> Adam Langley's Pond uses it, but I don't know why there hasn't been any progress on that lately. Is the Pond design just too complex/difficult to implement with a good UI, or just because of his lack of time?

[https://pond.imperialviolet.org/](https://pond.imperialviolet.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is "Dark Mail" going to be the official name? I am no marketing expert, but I am pretty sure it's not a good name. People associate darkness with negative feelings, thus a lot of people might start thinking that encryption is for hiding "illegal" things, and not for keeping privacy.

And please, don't even try using the silly X.0 naming, as some tech-ignorant journalists started doing over a decade ago.

Besides the naming thing, I wish them the best, as I hope that this will spread and become a new standard, even with the masses.

<comment><USER4> No, I think DIME is. They should've changed the site name as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 3 of 5 comments so far mentioning that the name is a mistake. Allow me to make that 4 of 6. Come on guys, authoritarians are going to argue that this is just about defending criminals and terrorists, do you want to make that argument for them? Call it 'Liberty mail' or something.

<comment><USER7> Let me enhance the argument Joe Shmoe: "I recently read that dark net users are 90% pedophiles. So is this an email service for pedophiles only?"

<comment><USER8> Why are people downvoting this? He's not making the argument, just explaining that people will put up this strawman.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The spec is pretty intense, I think the first thing to work on is better high level documentation and overview. There is a lot going on with how this proposed system formats, encrypts, signs, routes, and validates.

I've only glanced over less than half of the spec so far, but I'm not convinced of the design just yet. For starters, I'm not sure I fully understand the trust model, or even the baseline limitations on things like one-to-many emails, key exchange, PFS. Before jumping straight into packet formats and field layouts, I want to read more about the basic operational model.

<comment><USER10> Why is it so complicated? Seems unnecessarily byzantine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Call it just email3, new version number can be hyped to regular Joe customers as being newer, therefore better.

<comment><USER12> This is a good one. Email3 sounds good. It shortens well - E3 message. The optics here are kind of important.

EDIT: Nanjing prices? Seriously Google autocorrect?

<comment><USER13> People are going to wonder what happened to "Email2" though.

<comment><USER14> Email2 was gmail :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I watched Citizenfour yesterday and one of the really disturbing parts of movie was Lavabit founder talking at European Parliament about why he had to shut it down. I am glad that something good is coming up.

But can we please change name from 'dark' to something like 'secure, encrypted etc'? Dark inherently sounds negative, at least in my part of the world.

<comment><USER16> He had to shut it down - but as far as I remember, they got the SSL key anyway. None can tell me that providing it in a font size of 4pt would have stopped them. I think that typing 2560 chars is not that hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't think email encryption will ever be more widespread than it is today. People simply don't care, and even those few that can be convinced to use it will invariably do something that invalidates the whole exercise like bring their key to a public library, use it on their phone, resend the entire conversation in plain text accidentally, lose the key and generate a new one with you having no way to verify that it's not actually mitm, etc. All of this has happened to me.

<comment><USER18> > People simply don't care

that's because they think email is _already_ private. They don't understand that it's the electronic equivalent of printing their conversations on billboards and hope nobody will actually look at them. As soon as you demonstrate with a simple sniffer, they are outraged.

We just need "Firesheep for email" and then demand for privacy will explode.

<comment><USER19> Even after the Sony hack, people don't realize things like their work email isn't really theirs, or email isn't private. If that wasn't a good enough catalyst, I can't imagine what it will take to cross this threshold.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> So who will be able to use this wonderful protocol? Because I don't think it will be available on gmail(or any other big provider). How it isn't going to end like a pgp right now, when I can sent encrypted emails only to myself, because no one in my circle uses encryption?

<comment><USER21> I think you are pretty close to getting it right. This spec is Dead on Arrival. This spec will never get traction in a large corporate environment. Primarily because the business has a need to monitor and archive employee emails. As a result no large corporation will ever adopt end to end encrypted email as a standard.

While in the consumer arena Gmail and other ad / user profile supported business' will never adopt this as it limits their access to valuable user data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'd love that e-mail encryption became widespread, but I'm doubtful that it'll ever happen. I think keeping private keys private may prove to be an impossible task. Systems are too insecure. Even security experts may fall victim to sophisticated attacks. Let alone the other 99.9% who are not security experts.

<comment><USER23> Any security measure you take can only make attacks harder. If you have a really determined adversary nothing will protect you forever. Compared to the current status quo e-mail encryption even if the private keys are only kept moderately private would be a huge improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I truly wish them all the best with this project. It would be a momentous win for privacy to have email encrypted by default and easy enough for the general public to use and that is no easy task. Will be interesting to see how this plays out and if they can get some quality email companies like Fastmail onboard early on.

</comment><comment><USER25> Stop calling privacy-conscious software "dark". You are hurting your cause.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd rename it 'Trustmail'

<comment><USER26> I wouldn't trust anything with the word 'trust' in it. My assumption is that if you have to put some quality in a name (like, say, QualityCircle), then the name is about all of that quality there is in the product.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As others have mentioned, I think a new name is necessary. It wouldn't be fair to the project to handicap it with such as name.

Name it after Voltaire, John Stuart Mill, Locke or similar.

Interestingly, a previous HN discussion also suggested a name change: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157922](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8157922)

(The abbreviation DIME, Dark Internet Mail Environment, sometimes mentioned is also terrible. Hiding 'dark' with an abbreviation isn't enough)

</comment><comment><USER28> .info domain, SSL cert but no HSTS, email list subscription posts to non-SSL endpoint, empty forums. Is this real? WHOIS info appears real and it's over a year old, but still...

</comment><comment> mike-cardwell Who cares what the name is? End users aren't going to see it anyway... Bittorrent has a completely neutral name, yet it didn't stop it from getting a bad rep with people who don't know better, and that bad rep hasn't stopped it from being hugely successful.

The chances of this project succeeding or failing has nothing to do with the name. There are much bigger barriers which they need to overcome.

</comment><comment><USER29> HTTPS appears available [1], interesting that they don't force a redirect.

[1] [http://darkmail.info](http://darkmail.info)

<comment><USER4> It seems EFF's HTTPS Everywhere is not picking it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I appreciate detailed spec, but it would be nice to have some TL;DR version of how is this supposed to work.

I do like putting names on the front page though.

</comment><comment><USER31> Freedom Mail.

<comment><USER32> Is that like 'Freedom Fries'?

<comment><USER31> Exactly like Freedom Fries. With less starch.

No reason not to use the same tactics the government uses. Patriot Act? Ha. This frames any attempts to thwart the security by the government as anti- freedom. The "liberty mail" recommendation in here was good too :D

<comment><USER33> In that case why not go big, "Counter-terrorism Mail", or "Homeland Security Mail".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Safe Mail

</comment><comment><USER35> For the love of all that is holy, please use _any_ forum software other than phpBB. We have Discourse, NodeBB and Vanilla forum now.

</comment><comment><USER36> Would be nice to publish the spec in HTML form instead of pdf, for ease of readability.</comment>


San Francisco announces next steps in regulating shared, powered scooters - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfcityattorney.org/2018/05/23/san-francisco-announces-next-steps-regulating-shared-motorized-scooters/ <comment><USER2> It astonishes me how rapidly San Francisco has mobilized to get the scooters off the street in comparison to how little they have been able to accomplish to get the poop, needles, and condoms off the same streets.

I know which I would choose, if I was told to pick one or the other to be removed from city streets.

<comment><USER3> One is a well defined company you can sue into oblivion, the other are homeless people with almost no assets who are probably in and out of jail all the time. See also the difference in fighting a well defined country in a war (which can be won) and fighting an insurgency (which is much harder to win).

<comment><USER2> On the surface yes. But to sue a company into oblivion you have to create statutes (legislation time cost) and create a process for identifying violations (do cops do this? meter maids? city workers?) establish a legal team task force to handle those prosecutions (more money for the DA? a new team? outside counsel?), follow through those prosecutions (court costs, sheriff costs), and finally collect judgements (collection costs)

As compared to putting accessible restrooms and disposal bins around the city and cleaning them weekly.

<comment><USER3> One could argue that putting out more street side bike racks would also help the problem if you are arguing that rule enforcement isn't the answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >For the first six months of the pilot, a total of 1,250 scooters may be permitted. If the first six months are successful, the total number of scooters may increase to 2,500 in months seven through 12.

While I support the city's efforts to balance the downsides, mainly the sidewalk parking issue, with the upsides of cheap, clean, and accessible mobility, I think there are two wrongheaded decisions the city is making.

1\. Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion system or similar? That failed tremendously as it was administered under the old Cab system. It also risks preempting new developments, e.g. at some point the scooters will be able to drive themselves to you. You do not want to give incumbents a legal mechanism to block that competitive challenge.

2\. Why limit the number of scooters? It is already difficult to find one of these for a ride to / home from work. Limiting the number just creates incentives for bad behavior by users. Ever seen someone 'guarding' an inactive scooter? I saw someone hiding one under his lunch table (it was 'available' in the app), presumably so that he could ride it home when done. Artificial scarcity is likely to create many more problems than it solves.

In both cases a better public policy proposal would be marginal taxes per unit on the scooters themselves with no cap on number. The community incurs an externality in allowing these operators to enjoy free on sidewalk parking, simply set a price to balance that and let commuters decide how many units should be around. Or to put it into econospeak: Pigovian taxes are better than quotas.

<comment><USER5> > _Why limit the number of operators? Is this an effort to create a medallion > system or similar?_

No. It's because this is a pilot program. At the end of the program, if the program is successful and a decision is made to allow this on a more permanent basis, then presumably the restrictions will be lifted.

For context, the bike share pilot programs (e.g. the Ford GoBikes and the JUMP bikes) also have similar restrictions.

Same answer goes for why limiting the number of scooters.

<comment><USER4> They may regulate it appropriately in the end, but it sets a bad framework as precedent.

Regardless, the deadweight loss from this decision is substantial. Imagine that the equilibrium number of scooters (the # the market will support, note that we are in the 'rapid adoption phase' right now) is 5000, instead of 2500. At 10 rides per day, times $3 per ride, times the duration of both levels of the quota, that's about $40M in lost economic value. You may fairly argue about those assumptions, but if the city were to propose a special $40M (or $5M or $10M) tax to pay for a study on the scooters, we would rightly be outraged. But they both have the same impact -- people in the city are $40M worse off with what, exactly, being gained in return?

Also note specifically that a big issue with the taxi medallion system was that the quotas prevented the discovery of the equilibrium # of taxis. If we do not allow a market equilibrium to be reached, it's very easy for regulators to endlessly argue over the 'right' number without ever getting close to what the market actually wants. Politics has a lot of inertia -- the medallion system perpetuated itself for generations -- so I do not think you can understate the importance of bad precedent.

<comment><USER5> > _it sets a bad framework as precedent_

Not really, this is how pilot programs generally always work. You limit the scope of the program for two reasons:

1\. It keeps the program manageable, and it keeps the data more consistent. If the number of operators or scooters are constantly changing it makes it hard to actually draw any conclusions from the program.

2\. The pilot program is being run because the SFMTA hasn't yet made the decision to allow this going forward (or they haven't finalized the rules governing it). Not having any restrictions on the program is basically the same thing as simply approving it, but the pilot program exists to determine if it should be approved and what rules it should be governed by.

> _Regardless, the deadweight loss from this decision is substantial._

The theoretical loss under certain assumptions, true. What if it turns out that the usage of scooters actually produces a net economic drain in the city?

The pilot program limits the potential benefit, but it also limits the potential downside too.

> _Also note specifically that a big issue with the taxi medallion system was > that the quotas prevented the discovery of the equilibrium # of taxis. If we > do not allow a market equilibrium to be reached, it 's very easy for > regulators to endlessly argue over the 'right' number without ever getting > close to what the market actually wants. Politics has a lot of inertia -- > the medallion system perpetuated itself for generations -- so I do not think > you can understate the importance of bad precedent._

It sounds to me like you don't understand what a pilot program is. The pilot program only lasts a year, so these restrictions are only in place for a year. After the pilot program ends, the SFMTA will determine the new rules to use (assuming they decide to allow the scooters to continue operating at all) and the rules that governed the pilot program won't apply anymore.

Presumably the SFMTA will continue to require companies operating in this space to obtain a permit, but they'll also likely drop the "only 5 companies can participate" rule because that rule exists to limit the scope of the pilot program and keep it manageable. As for restrictions on the total number of scooters allowed, I guess that depends on the outcome of the pilot program. However, if the outcome is "2,500 scooters is better, or at least not worse, than 1,250 scooters" then the SFMTA is unlikely to put a cap on the scooters (since, as you said, they won't know what the optimal number is at that point).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> >As part of the pilot, up to five qualified companies could be issued permits to operate shared, motorized scooters in San Francisco

So essentially if you're not fast or well connected enough to get one of those permits then you're shit out of luck? What happens if a company scooter- sharing hurts gets one of those permits to sit on? Why did this industry need a limited pilot in the first place??

<comment><USER2> We'll call them "Scooter Medallions" and they will be an investment property!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >offer a low-income plan

This one is odd to me. BMW doesn't have to offer low income cars. AFAIK Uber doesnt have to cut fares for low-income folks. Walking and the bus/train is the low income plan.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps some of the scooter companies are arguing that they provide a solution to overcrowded mass transit; SFMTA provides options like the Lifeline Pass ([https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline- pass](https://www.sfmta.com/fares/lifeline-pass)). Additionally, they are relying upon public streets and areas to sell their services (as I understand it, you don't go to a private depot to pick up a scooter you wish to rent), whereas BMW dealerships conduct their business on private property.

<comment><USER9> Ever look at where cars end up parked?

<comment><USER8> Generally those are privately owned, ostensibly by those paying taxes. A better analogy would be if Enterprise left rental cars parked on public streets for customers to pick up as part of the transaction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So you can pitch an unpermitted tent on a city sidewalk, full of stolen bicycle parts, but you cannot leave a scooter there?

<comment><USER11> The tents aren't owned by a company that rents them out, and the scooters aren't used as a last-resort shelter for homeless folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How about dealing with the human feces on the sidewalks and rampant homelessness instead of stifling innovation.

<comment><USER13> Strawman argument. The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians.

<comment><USER14> > The feces are not a safety threat for pedestrians.

John Snow would disagree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's actually pretty good that there are 5 spots. Bird, Lime, Spin are here now. Lyft has expressed interest. SkipScooters, from 2 of the founders of Boosted skateboards, seems like they might know how to make a great scooter. Maybe Uber/Jump would make 6?

The other interesting competition aspect is that each is limited to 250 scooters. Not enough to build a network. So you'll have to join a few of them to make it reliable. This will keep some less competitive companies alive a little longer.

Long term it would be crazy to prevent competition like this. And worth watching, cities are laughably poor at good licensing. There are supposed to be 45,000 licensed uber/lyft drivers vs 1,500 taxi medallions in SF. 30 times too few taxis! It's amazing that was the status quo for 40 years. [1]

The slow ramp is the huge bummer though. Three months of 1250, 6 months of 2500 would make more sense. Then 10-30 thousand for a couple years. You need a lot of vehicles to make a reliable network. Same goes for Jump style locking bikes.

Scooters are a little objectionable and probably need to be managed, but wow cars are so much worse. Any possible replacement for SF's 500,000 cars should get the fullest support and permissiveness from government. They take up huge amounts of space for parking, kill people, cause pollution, and sit in traffic jams. Tesla is cool but in cities cars are not the answer (go Boring company go!).

It's worth pointing out that in SF you can still buy and operate your own electric scooter or ebike. Unlike the baffling NYC situation. SF is actually ok at adapting, just really slowly.

Some numbers:

      500,000 cars registered in SF [2]
      20 traffic fatalities in 2017, killing
        14 pedestrians
        2 cyclists
        4 motorcycle drivers
        0 car drivers
      It sounds like they were all killed by cars.[3]

[1] [http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and- lyft...](http://www.ktvu.com/news/clogged-streets-45000-uber-and-lyft-drivers- in-san-francisco-grab-lawmakers-attention)

[2] [https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4...](https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/wcm/connect/add5eb07-c676-40b4-98b5-8011b059260a/est_fees_pd_by_county.pdf?MOD=AJPERES)

[3] [https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths- san-f...](https://sf.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16854592/traffic-deaths-san- francisco-2017)

<comment><USER16> Sometimes, bicyclists kill pedestrians.

[https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier- ross/article/Cyclist-p...](https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier- ross/article/Cyclist-pleads-guilty-in-Castro-crosswalk-death-4680814.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "share trip data with the city" sounds easily abused. I hope they mean in aggregate rather than individual trips.

</comment><comment><USER18> "Specifically, operators would need to...have a privacy policy that safeguards user information..."

That's pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER13> > San Francisco supports transportation innovation, but it cannot come at the > price of public safety," Herrera said. "This permit program represents a > thoughtful, coordinated and effective approach to ensure that San Francisco > strikes the right balance. We can have innovation, but it must keep our > sidewalks safe and accessible for all pedestrians.

This. Exactly. In the past week alone, I've been witness to, or victim in, 3 pedestrian safety incidents. In the first one, a dude and a lady companioned were riding the "Bird"s and turned into the sidewalk I was walking on (Fillmore Street) and crashed into me. They awkwardly apologized and were gone, didn't even bother to see if I was injured. In another incident on Market and 1st (going towards the bay bridge) a scooter "Parked" on the sidewalk was blown from the wind and had falled on the sidewalk ramp. Saw an old black lady in a wheel chair struggling to get around it to get on the sidewalk. The 3rd was a Muni driver honking at 2 riders who were bank in the middle of the road on Howard St going towards the Ferry Building. He almost crashed the bus into them.

While I'm all for innovation, it cannot come at the cost of pedestrian safety. Even if these startups meant for their scooters to be riden on the road, and not the sidewalk (It's ILLEGAL to ride a motorized vehicle on the sidewalk of San Francisco[1] ) only a small minority of the riders seem to be following it. I've seen so many riding it on the sidewalks.

[1] Source: Reminder: It Is Illegal to Ride Scooters On City Sidewalks => [https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters- sidewalks-i...](https://sf.curbed.com/2016/6/1/11831080/scooters-sidewalks- illegal-fines-transportation)

<comment><USER14> My main concern walking down market street is the drug traffickers having fights for the payday loans corner, human shit, needles and sick and mentally deranged people walking about.

I wish scooters made the top 5 public safety issues.

<comment><USER13> This is also a straw-man argument.

<comment><USER19> Why is it a strawman argument? A cent spent on this is a cent not spent on the top 5 issues, no?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Global Weirding: Visualizing Climate Change - <AUTHOR> http://globalweirding.is/here <comment><USER2> I love good visualizations, this one is neat. Unfortunately the visuals don't carry much data with it. That is, it didn't tell me anything that I didn't already know--climate change will provide more extreme (hot/cold) weather patterns.

Even worse, viewing this almost makes me less inclined to worry about climate change. That is in nearly a decade the leading headline is jellyfish closing down a power plant. Hmm, ok, let's spend trillions of dollars to fix climate change, or a few million to upgrade power plant water intake systems to protect against jellyfish swarms.

So, seeing this I sadly now understand why politicians and companies are greenwashing everything. Talk is cheap and will get you support, but the consequences of the problem won't be seen until you are well into retirement.

<comment><USER3> Do you have any reference for an IPCC claim that global warming will cause deeper cooling??? I've not seen it, though I've read all the IPCC summaries. Reference, please.

<comment><USER4> It is not deeper cooling in the global average temperature but periods of intense cold during the winter. There is debate in the scientific community with some arguing that melting sea ice causes an increase in frequency of polar vortex events while others think these events are controlled by pacific ssts.

<comment><USER5> Melting polar ice is really screwing with the jetstream and that's altering winter weather patterns pretty severely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Triangles! Triangles everywhere! And speculative headlines!

And a very important point trying to be made. But in this case the visualizations actually reduced value, making it more about the bells and whistles, and less about the actual message.

</comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like my MacBook just contributed some heat to global warming because of this visualization

<comment><USER8> My thoughts exactly. Wonder how much CO2 was emitted just to power the animations in the background :P

<comment><USER9> If you assume staying on the page for 15 minutes with an Mac Book power supply of 85w, it's about 0.05 kg to 11.3 kg depending on where in North America you are.

<comment><USER10> At 20 deg C, 1 atm, and using the high estimate of 11.3kg, PV = nRT, which is

V

        n = 11300 g / 44 g/mol = 256.82 mol
        R = 8.314 L kPa K−1 mol−1
        T = 293 K
        P = 101.3 kPA

     = (256.82 * 8.314 * 293 / 101.3) L

     = 6175.8 liters

     = 3087.9 uncapped coke bottles every 15 minutes (high estimate)

At the low estimate:

n = 50 / 44 = 1.13 mol

So:

V = 27.33 L

      = 13.7 uncapped coke bottles every 15 minutes (low estimate)

Where did you get the mass estimates from?

<comment><USER9> The EPA and Environment Canada.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I don't really see what's wrong with the climate changing. It has happened before. People just want to mantain the status quo.

<comment><USER2> Yes, you are right. There is nothing wrong with climate change, it has happened before, it will happen again. The problem is the timescale of the change. In the past changes occurred over centuries, we are causing the change in decades. That timescale risks catastrophe.

If you genuinely want to understand then I recommend reading Storms of My Grandchildren by James Hansen, or at least googling a few book reviews to get a sense.

<comment><USER10> [http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-...](http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/tssts-2-1-1.html)

It may be worse than that... Those charts show higher levels of several greenhouse gases than has occurred in hundreds of thousands of years, not centuries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the graphs, apparently there is no future in which I'm allowed to accept a lot of nuclear power into the mix.

<comment><USER13> Nuclear power is simply unaffordable. There are better, cheaper alternatives. (I am not even talking about the nuclear waste problem)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think the globe visualization would be more useful if it factored out the seasonal cycle of temperature changes and just showed the smooth change in average yearly temperature instead. As it is, everything cycles between hot and cold every year and it's difficult to tell if the amplitude is changing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Dear god. Who is it that thinks these crazy visualizations add any kind of value to whatever message they're trying to communicate?

<comment><USER16> Hm, me for one. Would you care to elaborate on your exasperation?

<comment><USER17> (Not the parent but) If I may,

The key point is that _communication is expensive_ [1]. And not just because bandwidth is physically expensive, or the opportunity costs of waiting about, or the usability nightmares that inevitably ensue; but also because decoding itself is mentally taxing. And _every_ panache adds up to it. So it better be worth to the recipient.

So when you double-down like you did, Flash-era intros and all; and it turns out all there is to it is a sparse bunch of unnavigable, decontextualized[2], tweet-sized digests of a policymakers' digest; and on top you can't even turn the damn globe on your own to explore the simulation results yourself (arguably the _sole_ reason to be using WebGL at all!); then... well, I hope you see why your site would be so exasperating.

[1] [http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pd...](http://cm.bell- labs.com/cm/ms/what/shannonday/shannon1948.pdf)

[2] Pro tip: leaving uncertainty terms to the 'for climate nerds' section is borderline unethical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Cool geodesic grid. [1] [1] [http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/pubs/CISE.pdf](http://kiwi.atmos.colostate.edu/pubs/CISE.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER19> It's all hunky dory, mostly, until you jump from 2090 to 2100. At that point the apocalypse hits, obviously.

</comment><comment><USER20> Crashed chrome on my mac! Also how are you suppose to scroll without a touchpad?!

<comment><USER16> Sorry about that, we had lots of trouble with WebGL in Chrome under Yosemite. It did seem to clear up with a new release from Google a few days ago.

The click-drag interaction on desktop is slightly goofy. We discussed adding cursor key and clickable arrows for previous and next, but concluded that it wasn't that bad. It's super nice on touchpads and touch.

<comment><USER21> It works awful in chrome under Windows too. Firefox is alright though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And what is the big picture? What is the effect on human beings? Fortunately, we have the data on this.

In the last 80 years, global deaths caused by climate (droughts, floods, hurricanes, cyclones, tornados, typhoons) have declined by 98%, all because people had cheap, reliable energy provided by fossil fuels.

Source: [http://www.emdat.be/advanced_search/index.html](http://www.emdat.be/advanced_search/index.html) \- click on "Natural," and add subgroups "Climatological," "Meteorological," "Hydrological."

Because I prefer being alive, I'd much rather live in a warmer world (or one with weather that has changed is some unnatural way) than to lose the cheap, plentiful sources of energy that serve to protect me from an inherently dangerous climate.

<comment><USER2> I don't appreciate your straw man attack. I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon fossil fuels outright. Instead what I hear from most people is a desire to increase research into alternative energy sources and evolve from fossil fuels to something new and better.

Keep in mind this energy transition has occurred before, back in the 16th century. The UK used to depend on wood for its energy. The US led in adopting coal, which was used only marginally for thousands of years. Coal was dirty, it stank, required new technologies to collect and distribute, while wood was cheap and plentiful. As it turns out coal was fundamental to the industrial revolution, the US as a leader in coal developed new industries and led in industrialization and leap frogged Britain.

I see human kind at the same crossroads, but with bigger stakes. Do we want to stick with fossil fuels until we potentially destroy our climate or can we discover new sources that will potentially introduce a new energy revolution, and who do we want leading this new energy revolution?

<comment><USER22> > I honestly don't recall ever hearing anyone argue that we should abandon > fossil fuels outright.

Bill McKibben (founder and leader of 350.org) endorses a 95% ban on fossil fuels. He says that oil companies are "Public Enemy Number One to the survival of our planetary civilization."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Fairly broken in Opera 12.

Edit: And in other browsers where it shows stuff, it's a visual clusterfuck. I wonder if the "heatmap" on that globe is based off any real data, or just a plasma function with a curve.

<comment><USER24> Sorry. It should work in the latest Opera. The heatmap on the globe are actual data stored in PNG-files. If you want to read more about how we did it, you can read more about the project on [http://bengler.no/global_weirding](http://bengler.no/global_weirding)

<comment><USER23> I'm sorry to see that the product communication of Opera ASA has confused you as well. Opera 15+ is not "the latest" Opera, but merely a clone of chrome that shares quite earnestly and literally zero code with Opera 12 (which is the latest of its respective line); and will likely never be a viable upgrade vector due to also sharing almost none of the features of Opera 12.

Also, thanks for the further reading link. :)

It's quite interesting already. And i note in the gif down the middle of the page that on mobile only one event is ever on screen, while in chrome i often had 5+ on screen, with very little space inbetween them. If you spaced it out more on desktop, it would become much more grokkable.

Edit: There's also the fact that i have a hard time distinguishing between land and see, between the globe rotating wildly and the colors washing across it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What would be great is if you could combine this with actions people can take to make reductions, and the results of that. Like one of those primer timeline visualizations.

</comment><comment><USER26> This caused the spinning wheel of death on my maxed out MBP...am I alone?</comment>


Liberation and modernization of government legacy data using Django - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4qCp_js2aA

<comment><USER2> In the video you mentioned that the project died, but the repository is still up, what's the story then?</comment>


Secure your Kubernetes networking in 9 easy steps - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/secure-kubernetes-internal-networking-5f2556f7efde <comment><AUTHOR> Feedback welcome!</comment>


Lychee identified as cause for mystery deadly childhood illness in India - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-02/lychee-identified-as-cause-for-mystery-indian-childhood-illness/8233964 <comment><USER3> For those similarly annoyed by its elision in the article, the causative substance appears (1) to be hypoglycin A (2).

(1) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412228/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4412228/)

(2) [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycin_A](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypoglycin_A)

<comment><USER4> The hypoglycin inhibits both gluconeogenesis and oxidation of fatty acids, preventing the body from using fat or protein for energy. So once their glycogen is used up they're screwed. It's fascinating.

<comment><USER5> Does that mean a person in nutritional ketosis could die... ?

Background for others: Most people in keto are running on mostly fatty acids and some ketones (for the things that can't use fatty acids) and a small amount of glucose from gluconeogenesis for the obligate glucose tissues (retina, small percentage of brain, etc).

If you take away the ability to use fatty acids then you have to run off ketones, which should work, but I don't know if the body can make enough (and maybe that is impacted too?). And if your body is using gluconeogenesis to make your essential glucose from protein, and that is inhibited, I would think those tissues would be in trouble (its called essential glucose for a reason).

<comment><USER6> Probably not. The study covers this in more detail than any of the articles, but malnutrition was the second biggest factor in the deaths.

In most cases of sickness (and nearly all cases of death), the lychee was the bulk of the food eaten by the child. The children were already somewhat hypoglycemic because they weren't eating much, and due to their diet weren't ketogenic (minimal fat or protein in their diet). When the hypoglycin blocked the oxidation of the minimal fatty acids and protein in these children, they eventually ran out of usable glucose, resulting in seizures.

For someone who is merely ketogenic, the hypoglycin would block _some but not all_ of the oxidation of fatty acids, and [edit] generally would not effect the liver production of glucose from glycogen. The amount of dietary fats/proteins in a ketogenic diet would overcome the effect of the hypoglycin, and someone on a normal non-ketogenic diet might not even feel any symptoms due to the body's heavier reliance on the liver-glucose pathway.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for this great reply, that makes sense. Do you know if hypoglycin interferes with the synthesis of beta hydroxybutyrate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can confirm as I am from Bihar, India, children eat lots of lychees in the season (also lots of mangoes), even many adults eat just lychee the whole day without any other meal. Seizures were considered as being possessed by demon which explains lack of research and delay in this discovery.

<comment><USER8> I'm from Jamaica, and grew up eating lots of lychees as well. Never had any problems. Only ate them ripe. I haven't had fresh lychees in years though, mostly now buying the canned ones in syrup from China.

The owners of lychee trees, however, had tons of issues. It's such a loved fruit that if you had such a tree, it was pretty much guaranteed that praedial thieves would strike. It got so bad that I remember one nurse in the community cutting down her tree when the sight of strange men roaming her yard became too much.

<comment><USER9> > _I 'm from Jamaica, and grew up eating lots of lychees as well. Never had > any problems._

What the parent says is about people eating mostly or just lychees -- out of poverty etc. Not the general "I eat lots of X".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Malnourished children eating a fruit (lychee) without any previous meal could get poisoned and have a intense decrease in blood sugar levels. That make me wonders on how many religious practices, superstitions, etc., still exists in modern cultures, transmitted mouth-to-mouth, due to some misunderstanding of the true mechanisms of some occurrence in the past? I can easily see that a "children can't eat fruits without eating some cereal" could have come as religious belief, from a long past. And it would be effective for hundreds of children.

<comment><USER11> Kosher food could be a pre-modern public health campaign. Trichinosis is a dangerous parasite found in pork ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trichinosis)) and shellfish have their own dangers.

<comment><USER12> PG wrote about how he considers many religions to have a culturally- evolutionarily useful bit ('don't eat tainted pork' over time will increase your economic growth) and a viral one, which perpetuates and reinforces the belief.

<comment><USER13> Is pork actually worse than eating other omnivores?

<comment><USER12> I don't know. But I don't think too many other omnivores were usually eaten: cows, chickens, sheep, even horses are all herbivores.

To a larger point, the imprecision of the rule would have been dictated both by customs and limitations in knowledge of the time: culture inasmuch as there would be no need to restrict eating omnivores that nobody ate anyway, and knowledge would dictate how precise you could be while still being safe: we now know that pork is ok to eat, but only because we have the tools to reliably determine whether pork is tainted, and build processes and supply chains that minimize that. For civilizations that didn't yet have that insight, much safer to avoid the whole thing.

<comment><USER14> Chickens are omnivores - they'll happily eat worms off the ground.

<comment><USER12> Good point... I forgot they'll eat just about anything, including eggs. You don't want to feed them brunch scraps, otherwise they may start poking at unharvested eggs sitting around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One of the saddest parts of this story is that decades of confusion could have been ended by checking glucose levels in these children at the hospital. This is a basic standard of care but seems like Bihar is so underprovisioned that even this simple step doesn't happen.

<comment><USER16> > One of the saddest parts of this story is that decades of confusion could > have been ended by checking glucose levels in these children at the > hospital. This is a basic standard of care but seems like Bihar is so > underprovisioned that even this simple step doesn't happen.

It probably did happen, but we're talking about children who are already malnourished to begin with. Establishing a specific food as the cause of their low glucose levels as opposed to the effects of malnutrition is not as easy as simply checking for their glucose levels.

<comment><USER15> This situation is easily distinguishable from hypoglycemia from starvation - the latter unlikely to happen in non-diabetic children who spent the day eating sweet fruit. Checking basic labs such as a blood glucose fingerstick - as would have happened at a properly provisioned hospital - would not identify the specific fruit but it may well have prevented these kids from dying, as the treatment is just to give sugar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's the link to the study published in The Lancet Global Health: [http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-10...](http://www.thelancet.com/journals/langlo/article/PIIS2214-109X\(17\)30035-9/fulltext?rss=yes)

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm amazed at the amount of learning that people have to do in order to survive off the flora in a new location. We're mostly spoiled in the modern world by how much the plants we eat are transparent in the preparation needed to eat them.

Being able to come into some new biome, figure out through trial and error what can be eaten when and how, and then transmitting that information reliably to the next generation is what let humans spread all over this planet.

I highly recommend the book _The Secret of Our Success_ covering this and several other topics.

<comment><USER19> This is mostly common sense though. You need other nutrients than just sweet fruits.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some interesting folk remedies prevalent in the south east asia:

1\. don't eat lychee, tamarind, unripe mango in empty stomach, always eat them after rice or bread.

2\. don't mix pineapple and milk, or don't take them one after the other, otherwise your stomach will get sick.

3\. eating the raw batter of palmyra palm causes fever and stomach pain.

Looks like these are factual knowledge that have been gathered and retained over thousands of years came from observed causal relationships.

</comment><comment><USER21> Looks like they were somewhat on the right track in 2011 [http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/toll-47-bihar-may- decl...](http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/toll-47-bihar-may-declare- mystery-disease-epidemic/809168/0):

> "A study by the Indian Council of Medical Research concluded that a toxin > from kasaundhi trees, being transmitted to humans through insects, caused > the disease. The trees were cut and the disease subsided. Litchi trees and > mosquitoes present in the region should be studied for this disease," > suggested Shah.

<comment><USER22> Growing up in another country where lychees are commonly eaten, most people were already informed about the fruit's ability to cause hypoglycemia. I remember being told off by parents and older relatives on having too many lychees between meals but again I never heard of any cases of death either.

A casual search on the causative agent (hypoglycin) suggest its presence and mode of action has been well studied since the 1970s, and I wonder why this connection has not been made sooner.

<comment><USER23> From the article :

How has this link not been made before?

The researchers said the lychee's potential toxic effects were noted in ancient literature from China, where the fruit originates, however the commercial lychee industry in India is relatively young and has expanded quickly.

"This knowledge has been slow to reach certain parts of Asia where the so- called mysterious lychee disease has been attributed to various causes (fruit colouring, heat stroke) in Bihar, India, to an unidentified pesticide in north-west Bangladesh and, after an exhaustive negative virological search, to a yet-to-be-discovered neurotropic virus in northeast Vietnam," Professor Peter Spencer and Dr Valerie Palmer wrote in a Lancet paper discussing the research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> _" Fortunately, the high cost of these imported fruits and the likelihood that would be eaten in small quantities by well-nourished consumers, suggests there is little reason for concern in the USA,"_

Interesting. As a kid my only experience with Lychees was the canned variety (often found as a desert at Chinese restaurants).

But now days, fresh ones are pretty common, and you can often buy them really cheaply at London fruit stalls: I bought a big 2kg box for £4 recently! Very tasty and we felt no ill-effects despite gorging ourselves on them.

</comment><comment><USER25> When I was young I was always told not to eat too much otherwise I'd get sick. I always thought it was some old folklore or old wives tale. I asked my dad tonight what he knows about eating too much lychee in regards of getting sick. Off that bat he told me it messed up your sugar level and you can die.

He said he knew it when he was young. I was amazed that my dad, as an impoverished and uneducated boy in China would know this. A lot of people easily discount Traditional Chinese Medicine as anecdote, but somethings should be investigated scientifically (I'm not going to get in an argument here about TCM, but those are my thoughts).

He also mentioned if you soak lychee in salt water you can eat more of it - <USER2> would be curious what the scientific backing is, if there is any at all.

<comment><USER10> And that's another good discussion, on how old knowledge attracts attention from pharma companies and some try to earn patents and all sort of protections from those "new products".

I read sometime ago about India (?) releasing lots of ancient documentation about old medicines, as a knowledge base, exactly to protect the population from those kind of problems.

<comment><USER25> Here is a recent one:

[http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/chinese-herbal- therapy-m...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/chinese-herbal-therapy- malaria-wins-part-nobel-prize-medicine/)

"Tu was appointed director of Project 523 in 1969, and rather than sift through modern chemicals for a treatment, she scanned ancient Chinese texts for possible herbal remedies for malaria. The earliest description for the parasitic blood disorder comes from Chinese medical texts dating to 2,700 BCE. She found one promising candidate in a 2,000-year-old document that described how sweet wormwood (Artemisia annua) could heal malaria."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Has anyone researched if this chemical would help diabetics or even dieters? Obviously in smaller doses.

<comment><USER27> At the end of the article linked:

> The researchers also said there were now studies looking at how to put the > lychee's glucose-lowering properties to good use in treating metabolic > syndrome.

<comment><USER6> It's a misunderstanding by the journalist, since other articles and the study itself expressly stated that the researchers concluded that lychee would probably not be useful for diabetics because it doesn't address the correct glucose pathway, i.e., the liver, from which most blood glucose is generated. Fatty acid oxidation is the secondary pathway for glucose generation in the body and generally isn't responsible for blood sugar spikes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> See also: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_vomiting_sickness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamaican_vomiting_sickness)

It was illegal to import canned ackee to the US for years, due to risk of hypoglycin poisoning.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sorry for being too Western. I think of Lychee's something as a rarity and a delicacy but I can find them in Chinatown.

When I was in mainland China, near Guangzhou, I remember a woman trying to sell me lychees by the pound -- or whatever unit of measure -- if only I could understand the price she had wanted.

If I understand correctly, these are children from impoverished regions, who only eat Lychees? and they get a type of food poisoning?

</comment><comment><USER30> Regardless of the poisoning, how does one eat nothing but a fruit the entire day? I feel like you'd be sick to your stomach / diarrhea from that?

<comment><USER31> When you have nothing else to eat. Also diarrhea beats dying of hunger.

I'm not the "check your white privilege" type but c'mon...

<comment><USER30> I'm not so sure diarrhea beats dying of hunger. That's a quick way to die faster.

<comment><USER32> That consideration will not be the first thing that occurs to a hungry child with access to fruit.

<comment><USER30> Thus the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r Anybody know why only children would be affected? Or is it that everyone is affected, but only children die from it?

<comment><USER33> Most likely it's a vulnerable population and also one that has trouble making it to adulthood for a variety of reasons. It may also be that the researchers were specifically looking at kids and didn't expand the study to cover adults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13537877](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13537877)

</comment><comment><USER34> Amazed to see this one hacker news....I would be interested to find the investigation behind this report.

"Hey are people sick at a hospital somewhere not in australia, like india ?"

"Is it the season for lychees ?"

"Was there once a scientific study where they found this fruit was not perfect?"

"Google says so"

"Thanks I have an article to write. This will be useful for australians, and other folks importing lychee from southeast asia"

<comment><USER35> Usually works like this:

"I did something, and it would be valuable to me if people knew about it (or –less frequently– it would be valuable to the world if people knew about it)."

"Let me see who I can spam about this."

"Oh look. Here are 100 people that have written something about health. Let me send them a pitch that makes this seem mysterious and newsworthy"

Overworked reporter: "Oh man. I need to get a story in or my editor will yell at me. I wonder what I should write about?"

Etc.</comment></comment>


Raleigh's Last Poem - <AUTHOR> https://thedrunkenodyssey.com/2019/02/21/old-poem-revue-2-raleighs-last-poem/ <comment><USER2> What a great site. Reminds me of the old small Internet where you could find interesting divisions and passion sites like this. It is also very modern, littered with one weird click style ads. On the substance of the topic: Raleigh's execution was unpopular and he was only very loosely related to the "Main Plot" ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Plot](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Plot)). It is quite an interesting period in England and the US.</comment>