Notifications are Evil - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationdiet.com/blog/read/notifications-are-evil <comment><USER3> The author is absolutely right.

It's a fundamental rule of human computer interaction—the user should be in control of the relationship, not the computer.

If we spoke to people the way computers speak to us, we'd be considered rude beyond belief. Whether it's our operating systems or web sites, they're constantly haranguing us to stop what we're doing and pay attention to them.

Let me be clear. There is NOTHING a computer needs your attention for that can't either be handled on its own or that can't wait until you're ready to pay attention to it.

If you're interested in being notified about an event, whether it's a new message coming in, a process completing, or an error that's happened in the background, you should be able to have that notification appear when the event occurs. But that should be your choice.

The distinction between "important" and "unimportant" notifications should be made by the user, not the machine.

<comment><USER4> _Let me be clear. There is NOTHING a computer needs your attention for that can't either be handled on its own or that can't wait until you're ready to pay attention to it._

I think hardware failures are probably the only class of notifications I'd want to be told of immediately. I had a HD start to go bad that was in a striped RAID array, I suspect it's been in that state for awhile and only learned of it when the RAID firmware had red in it when I restarted the PC and happened to be sitting there. I don't know why Windows never complained (I've seen "HD is bad" notification messages before in XP, but not this time - <USER2> the RAID controller abstracted the failure away?).

Similarly, I would also like to know if there were critical thermal problems in my laptop.

In the case of imminent hardware damage or data loss, I'd like to know.

<comment><USER5> _maybe the RAID controller abstracted the failure away_

Typically, it will. You need the RAID card manufacturer's software to talk to the card to find out when a disk is going bad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _If we don't control the notifications we're receiving, we're forced to react to them_

No, you're not. Yes, notifications should be configurable and easy to turn off, but there's nothing that _forces_ you to react to them. You can simply ignore them. It's a little red square in the corner, not a popup.

The author is blowing the issue completely out of proportions, in my opinion. Not to mention the completely ridiculous title. No, notifications aren't "evil". They're a tool, and an extremely useful one when you need it: if my laptop is about to run out of energy, you can bet I want a big in-my-face notification.

What's annoying (not "evil") is the lack of configurability of many systems, particularly websites/webapps. But that's an old discussion, and many people will argue for its benefits too.

<comment><USER7> "Ignore" is a reaction. Notifications are a distraction whether you ignore them or not.

<comment><USER8> So right. Not deciding what to do is deciding to do nothing in my book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I completely disagree. Notifications are awesome because I can forget about the event until it occurs.

I can send an email to you asking for information, and then push it from my mind until I get a notification saying that you've responded. Without notifications I'd have to go and check repeatedly to find out if you'd got back to me yet.

The important thing is to keep important notifications and unimportant ones separate, so that you're only notified of things you actually care about.

<comment><USER3> Yes, and that should be your choice, not the system's choice. If you decide that some notifications are important enough to be displayed, then you should see them.

Sometimes, a person doesn't want any notifications at all—for example, when they're working and "in the zone," or watching a movie, or playing a game.

Sometimes, you want to be notified about pretty much everything.

The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's.

<comment><USER10> _The decision about when to be notified or not, and what's important vs. unimportant, should be your decision, not your computer's._

But isn't that the status quo?

I can't think of any piece of software I use that doesn't give me a fairly easy way to temporarily turn off the notifications. I don't want to get notified by Facebook? No problem, I shut it down. Don't want to be interrupted by my telephone? I put it in silent mode. Etc., etc.

<comment><USER3> Both MacOS and Windows.

The OSX dock bounces when an application thinks it has something important to tell you. Windows grab focus away from the user when a process completes. MS Outlook throws email notifications up at you, even when you're presenting to an audience on a large screen—always fun to see the subject lines of emails showing up while a presenter is trying to talk.

On your iPhone, you are forced to dig into the preferences to find and turn off the "Automatically ask to join networks" option if you don't want wi-fi notifications popping up all over the place any time you are on the move.

Off should be the default for notifications, not on.

<comment><USER6> Frankly, is the default that important? Change it once and it's off. Even if you do that for 40 applications, it's still a very small amount of time in total.

Maybe I'm biased, though; exploring the Settings/Options is usually the first thing I do when I run a new application.

<comment><USER3> I think you're mistaking "what an advanced user can put up with" for what the best experience should be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think it's nowhere near as bad as the article sounds. The red square from Google+ is small and hidden in the place I usually don't even look, so I find myself not realizing for days that got a notification from Google+. On Facebook, notifications are one of the most useful features of the whole service - they tell me about the more important[1] events that I could otherwise miss (Facebook walls are heavily filtered; otherwise you'd be flooded by updates). And they don't even appear on your e-mail, unless I ask for it (Facebook has now disabled almost all e-mail notifications by default).

So I'm sorry, but I'm not convinced by this article. On the contrary, I find notifications to be one of the best UI solutions out there. They are completely noninvasive[2] and make sure you don't miss anything, so you don't have to constantly check what is going on. It boils down to what alexchamberlain said in the thread - event-based architecture beats polling in almost all cases.

[1] - if we can call anything on Facebook "important". But things like comments to my updates, or activities of my closest friends are things I don't want to miss.

[2] - Twitter, G+ and Facebook notifications are generally numbers on the webpage title / notification bar. They do not play sounds, they do not pop windows up. If one gets distracted by that, I recommend not keeping FB/Twitter/G+ tabs open in the browser during work.

<comment><USER12> But on Google Plus, you can't easily make that red square go away. You can't just right click "clear". You can't even open it open and click "clear". It forces you to go down the list and manually click on each action, before it makes it go away. It's extraordinarily annoying.

<comment><USER13> You can click on the notifier and then click away. It won't clear out the notifications, but it will mark them as read and unhighlight them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> To understand why the social web is so noisy, simply follow the money.

Salespeople need marketers to sell products, marketers rely on Facebook and Google to buy targeted advertising slots, who in turn optimize their social networking tools to encourage everyone to share even more, all the time.

Frictionless sharing, as Zuck puts it, because the more you share, the more keywords they can accumulate and sell as ad slots to marketers and sales people.

For the rest of us, we have our work to do and there's only a small window of our day when we're most productive.

Understand that the social web, as we know it, isn't designed in a way optimized for our productivity and happiness. It serves the tripartite of salespeople, marketers and social networking companies.

Sure it's free to use, but if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.

I've since weaned myself from Facebook for more than a year with a little tool I made that helps me, my wife, family, friends and colleagues be more selective about what they share in a attention-respectful and considerate pace.

It's called Handpick, which helps you collect links for different groups of people and send a single email digest daily or weekly, totally cutting out pesky notifications in our lives.

<http://handpick.me>

Let me know what you think.

<comment><USER15> Cool idea, is it opt-in for the receiver though? Otherwise it sounds like another unwanted notification.

<comment><USER14> Well, your recipients should be friends, family or colleagues you care about, so you'd be sharing very specific things that you know they will like.

Bundling all the links into a daily or weekly email digest would be less disruptive than sharing via facebook, imo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interruptions are the enemy of productivity.

I don't have issue with notifications that wait for me to review them but I do absolutely abhor notifications that think I exist to serve them.

This is fundamentally about respect. It's my currency and respect for others and their time is something I do my best to abide by.

When an app doesn't respect me, or my time, and interrupts me, it's indirectly saying it's more important than anything I'm working on. It might not mean to, but it's like someone showing up at your desk demanding attention for their question without any regard for what you're working on.

Example: I just switched to a Galaxy Android phone from an older iOS phone. This isn't Android's fault, I'm sure I'll find it elsewhere too.

My punishment for adding my accounts to a modern mobile OS? My notification center blinks like a Christmas tree.

I am a person that barely tolerates SMS or voicemail notifications. No problem is rarely that big that it can't wait an hour. Or two. Being the path of least resistance and being available to the whims of others simply leaves you drowned in more information than is humane. It's better to reward people who make requests as far in advance as possible, and reward them with those quickest, preferred emails.

I run a consulting business that primarily develops products. I am, by the way of having good systems and processes, able to work with this rule. I can reply to emails every few hours. Emergencies, still get dealt with as emergencies. Just put a Priority 1 in the subject of the email, or call the emergency voicemail, and it's a fire drill, with the minimum hour(s) we agree to every fire drill.

I don't care to receive a notification that a new meetup has been created. I don't care I received an instant message right this second. I wish Gtalk would stop harassing me for signing in with. I'm scared to hook up my other IM accounts.

I don't care what a single app has to tell me right this instant. Sorry, but it won't improve there quality of my life this instant, or the next 5 years. It's just noise, 99% of the time.

If it's a new attention economy, I'm not going to let others decide the rules of how I spend my most valuable currency -- my attention so easily. When I did, it robbed me of focus, productivity and momentum, and let others set the priorities in my life. Theres no imagining how users who aren't aware of how they're being distracted and overwhelmed might overcome this.

I personally feel that part of this is the fault of the Blackberry culture that I watched in total horror: Blackberries made people feel like they were being more productive.

The too oft reality? blackberries are great for the people asking the questions. For the overwhelming majority that answer the questions for a living, they are now busy doing other peoples work. They are busy dealing with the poor planning of others now disguised as an emergency.

Only one thing. Poor planning on your part doesn't make am emergency on my part. I now have to deal with this culture of interruption, packaged as notifications but it's just really lazy. It's not a new economy, it's not a new world. It's someone wanting to micromanage my time that doesn't understand my time. Thanks, but no thanks.

Sorry apps, but you aren't the center of my life, just because I installed you. You're not that important. I'm not that important, but I value my time and like feeling good about what I accomplish every day.

If I need your notifications I can turn them on. Otherwise, quit being an attention seeker. I find it pretty disrespectful that you think I exist to serve you, app; it's the other way around.

Instead of improving the signal to noise ratio in my life you are polluting my life with more nose.

What have I spent the last 3 days doing? Learning to turn off every single notification and only find apps where I can control them.

<comment><USER9> So turn the notifications off. All of the apps on my phone are customisable, all of them have settings which allow me to say "I don't want you to tell me when things happen."

<comment><USER16> I am.. slowly.

I'm speaking to where the assumption that notifications should be on by default is coming from and how selfish it is on the part of the developers.

Anything I love I want it to occupy my true attention. I'm at the point where I wish I could filter only certain email addresses, SMS' and phone calls to ring, and let the rest fall to a central policy...

Do you know of anything that does this? It's on my list of researching as I'm making the switch.

<comment><USER17> > how selfish it is on the part of the developers

What makes you think it's the developers in this case being selfish and not you? The numbers might be on either side, or on nobody's side depending on how the problem gets framed.

I may not be thinking about this correctly, but _some_ assumption has to be made:

(1) Notifications on by default. (2) Notifications off by default.

Either (1) or (2) can of course be presented to the user as being the default case and the user can be made aware that the default can be modified. Which seems optimal, until you remember that default choices developers make about notifications are not the only choices they make regarding defaults. _Lots_... _most_ settings are given default states.

So then it's a question of which settings are explicitly presented to the user as having defaults and being modifiable. Are they all important enough? Of course not. Are notifications? Maybe.

But if notifications are important enough, then it's very likely that others will be important enough as well. And this means that upon installing a program, the user is in for a real choice making treat.

Most users are simply not capable of reasoning about such choices. And if they _are_ capable, then they'll likely either know how to find and change the setting or know how to find out how to find and change the setting.

In all other cases, it only makes sense to make assumptions about what users want when they probably don't know what they want, or can't really reason about the situation due to lack of language-tools or context or background or whatever.

The most _irresponsible_ and _selfish_ thing for developers to do to such users is say, "Here are a bunch of choices. Figure it out yourself." Most can't figure it out themselves, would make the wrong choices with regard to themselves, and would be less happy for it. Developers can sometimes make horrible and damaging assumptions about users, yes, but I don't think this is one of those times.

In the case of notifications, most people I know _want_ to be notified 9 times out of 10 about facebook mentions, google+ circle adds, SMS, etc. etc. Mostly these people love the interactions, it's why they have smartphones in the first place. Call it vanity, vacuous egotism or what have you. I am very, very suspicious of it myself.

(There is an excellent philosophical discussion to be had about the responsibility one has for ones own attention and the attention one demands of others -- and that discussion would probably end in a denunciation of all things notification-like, but I'm setting that discussion aside here for a pragmatic one instead.)

But the fact remains developers are probably making the _right_ choice and assumptions about the default-is-on state of notifications when it comes to most users. Now, I understand you do not like the notifications. In that, you are not alone. My guess is that the set of people who despise notifications is probably not too divergent with the set of people who know how to turn them off. Granted, I've got no data on that. And maybe somebody else does (it would be a very interesting data to reason about!).

So all this is to ask about the question of responsibility on the part of the developers. And at the bottom of my reasoning here is the idea that (1) developers _must_ make assumptions about defaults, because (2) users can't in most cases be trusted to make those assumptions themselves, and (3) if assumptions must be made they better be made with the majority in mind.

<comment><USER16> First, I'm not speaking to creating a ton of settings that can be customized any which way. I'm simply starting with the belief that interruptions are disrespectful.

iOS has had in it the form of "This application would like to use notification", the first time you start an app, for ages. Maybe it's one of the things I'm very visibly noticing in switching to Android.

It's not a complicated setting.

"Do you want to be notified when there's an update to be had?" The first time the app runs. It's when the attention to that app is the highest, we've just picked it and installed it and want to try it.

It could be a system wide setting; that filters down into all mobile apps, or just be unchecked, or you decide not to.

If notifications are on by default, it's often selfish motive in the design to get higher uptake and stickiness of the app. We all know that most apps overwhelmingly are rarely used after installation despite the notifications defaulting to be on.

I was also, specifically, speaking about apps with notifications, on mobile devices. If you wish to extend that generally to software in general that's fine, fair and your decision, but it's not what I'm speaking to.

Its entirely pragmatic to be able to have a say in how your focus, productivity and attention is interrupted. It's not philosophical. I like getting stuff done, and separating the signal from the noise of what to pay attention to is integral to that.

Most users have enough of an issue handling the information overload they're facing. Instead of technology being an empowering tool it's become quite the opposite when they're not given good examples of not proactively being to make one basic decision, "should I bother you".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this really more about OCD-ish behaviors than notifications? There's no good reason you have to act on every notification you receive unless you want to. In most cases you have a choice to even receive the notifications in the first place. Notifications are great if they are used responsibility. To me this is just part of a bigger trend where it seems to be socially acceptable to use technology as an excuse to justify bad behaviors.

<comment><USER19> Possible, though personally, I have to turn off sounds to my instant messages; and, if I'm anywhere near my up-turned phone, just the sight of a blinking message is enough to completely derail me. My response? no sounds on IMs, minimal flashing if I can control it (sometimes even just having the window go into the not-flash,-but-constant-on mode when it gets a message); and, for my phone, flipping it over so I can't see the notification blinker.

But yes, I obsessively need to help people by responding to those notifications, so I can understand the struggle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a qualitative comparison of polling verses an event based design. We all know that event based systems are harder to design, but use far less resources.

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the many things I love about using next to no GUI programs and a minimalist window manager is the lack of notifications.

The only time I get a notification is when I receive an email (assuming I have a terminal running mutt for that address) or a PM/IM (assuming I have a terminal running irssi). And the notification? The color of a 30x10 pixel block changes from black to red.

I can turn off this notification on a service-by-service basis with a simple hotkey that disables the visual bell in my terminal.

That's it! No growl-like service telling me when anything happens anywhere in the world. No badged icons reminding me I still have 17 unread items. If I want to be distracted, I switch desktops to see what alerted me; if I don't, I can ignore that one for hours.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interruptions are evil. I'm lucky (I guess) in being oblivious and able to tune stuff out (as long as it doesn't make sound, steal focus). I didn't notice that g+ red box or knew what it meant for awhile. I used reddit for months before someone told me I had "replies" and I asked what he meant and he said the orange letter icon, means someone has replied to you. I said "oh", and carried on with whatever I was doing. Which brings me to the point of my comment. Not being distracted is a self-discipline. By letting yourself be distracted you are as much to blame as notifications.

</comment><comment><USER23> Really timely. Thanks to cjoh for posting this as it chimes in with what I've been feeling recently.

I've relentlessly turned off all notifications from any app. Goes the same for email as well. I'll only check for updates when I feel I need to. Going so far as deleting Twitter and Facebook apps. Foodspotting, Yelp, Path etc etc, notifications are all off. I value my time ferociously and snuff out anything that comes between me and focusing on the important.

</comment><comment><USER24> question: is there an app/would there be a market for an app that i can download it to my phone and then go online and setup custom alerts when a notification should popup on my mobile dev screen?

example. on my webserver at work i setup simple php page with JSON output: { monitor_param: 1 } when everything OK, or { monitor_param: 0 } when there is an issue. then i go online and setup custom alert that can reach my php script every couple minutes/seconds and check the status. IF monitor_param == 0 then push an alert on my mobile dev screen.

can see multitude of places you could use it!

<comment><USER25> Might be easier to use an sms api like twilio to alert you when the monitoring api shows a notable event. barring that there are mobile notification brokers out there, I think urban airship is one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is something that GNOME3 does right: if you set yourself as "busy", then you won't be bothered by notifications.

</comment><comment><USER27> This is why in our platform we let you manage your subscriptions and notifications to every stream :)

</comment><comment><USER28> Everything that gives you notifications should give you the option to get them in digest form :-)

</comment><comment><USER29> "Evil" ain't what it used to be.

</comment><comment><USER30> 1\. Turn them off. Mute your phone, use one of half a dozen ways in Android to mute/hide/ignore notifications. Install a Greasemonkey script to hide the G+ notification count.

2\. Get some self control. My phone beeps at me all the time and I'll go 45 minutes without even considering looking at it.

This seems like the epitome of a first world problem. "My phone notifies me when something is happening and I just can't help getting distracted by it".

<comment><USER31> I agree — yet at the same time we have to recognize that most people (maybe _all_ people, from time to time?) have trouble with this, so it's perhaps an opportunity for designers to help regardless of whether they "should" have to or not.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Turn quotes from reviews into social proof notifications - <AUTHOR> https://onvoard.com/popboxes <comment><USER2> Looks promising. Can you confirm this is not some dark pattern infused nonsense?

I am only asking because I'm aware that a lot of sites use similar widgets to show these 'trust-inducing' signals without actually having a way to prove that someone bought a product or left a review. In fact, a lot of the products that offer this functionality, blatantly advertise it as a means to get more sales.

<comment><AUTHOR> Founder of OnVoard here. Yes I can confirm that only verified data will be used. In general, we only support extracting quotes from Facebook and Google because reviews from these sources can be fetched in an authenticated manner.</comment></comment>


What was your SAT score? - <AUTHOR> I suspect one reason people submit things on Hacker News is to get high quality feedback from a a reasonably intelligent audience since comments on articles from other sources of news tend to be low quality. I'd like to test this assumption, hence my curiosity about your SAT score.
Be sure to include whether it's out of 1600 or 2400.
1330/1600 and later 1520/1600 and 2200/2400
Use the comments for discussion and / or providing your score, but do provide your score using the survey link below since it will be anonymous. Another user pointed out that there would be material selection bias without anonymity.
http://goo.gl/forms/w67armMFB5peUYGJ2 <comment><USER2> Selection bias will skew your results here, even within the HN audience: people posting in this thread will have a different score distribution (likely biased towards higher scores).

You'll probably get somewhat better results with a poll, since that allows anonymous responses. You'll still have selection bias, but perhaps a bit less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. I'm adding a poll - [http://goo.gl/forms/w67armMFB5peUYGJ2](http://goo.gl/forms/w67armMFB5peUYGJ2)

<comment><USER3> Is the poll locked to your organization's domain? I can't access it. Do you have enough karma for [https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll](https://news.ycombinator.com/newpoll) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Dammit. Thanks. Fixed, I think...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pre-1995 adjustment 1520/1600 (99+%ile) Post-1995 1600/1600 in the modern test

<comment><USER5> Yeah, and there have been other minor adjustments along the way (and I didn't even take the SAT - I took the ACT, which has a similar story). With the dramatic uptick in people going to University, even during and after the 90s, it was in College Board's and ACT's interest to inflate the scores.

For sure if you took the test(s) in the 90s* they were harder than they are now, but I suspect there has been some additional inflation creep along the way.

*citation:[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#1995_re-centering_controve...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT#1995_re-centering_controversy)

Edit:

Holy Cow! This table shows that the percentage of students taking the ACT who achieved a perfect score increased by two orders of magnitude from 1997 to 2014: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_(test)#Highest_score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACT_\(test\)#Highest_score)

Edit2:

Man, I really had no idea how right I was. They took away the guessing penalty from the SAT and reduced the choices from 5 to 4: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade- point/wp/2016/05/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade- point/wp/2016/05/11/why-your-new-sat-score-is-not-as-strong-as-you-think-it- is/)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> 1330/1600 and later 1520/1600 and 2200/2400

</comment><comment><USER3> 1520/1600 and 2280/2400</comment>


Surviving the coronavirus, then testing positive again - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-13/china-japan-korea-coronavirus-reinfection-test-positive <comment><USER2> There are some questions I haven't been able to find good answers to in addition to the one posed in the article:

1\. Is it possible to get COVID-19 twice?

2\. If (1) is true, are the symptoms the same (if applicable)?

3\. If (1) is true are you still contagious?

4\. There's evidence that there are multiple strains, can you get both strains?

5\. What's the likelihood that a mutation will occur once treatment is more widespread?

6\. Does the heat make it significantly less likely for you to get COVID-19?

My impression so far is that we'll never get rid of this thing, and at _best_ this will be something like the seasonal flu, where we'll just have to live with it and great shots yearly.

<comment><USER3> 1\. Is it possible to get COVID-19 twice?

No, doesn't seem to be, but you might still have "viral shedding" for a bit even after you are "recovered". meaning you could still be contagious.

4\. There's evidence that there are multiple strains, can you get both strains?

You shouldn't think about them as multiple strains, as of now it is 1 disease.

5\. What's the likelihood that a mutation will occur once treatment is more widespread?

Mutations occur all the time, there are already 10's of known mutations of virus, it doesn't mean there are 10 separate diseases.

6\. Does the heat make it significantly less likely for you to get COVID-19?

There's some evidence warm weather slows spread for viruses like this, but we can't assume that about this virus yet. A good counterpoint is Qatar adding 258 cases in one day, it's hot there.

<comment><USER4> Flu viruses don't spread less when it's warm. They spread less when it's more humid.

For the northern hemisphere it's much less humid in winter, but that's not true everywhere.

[https://www.livescience.com/27533-flu-transmission- humidity....](https://www.livescience.com/27533-flu-transmission- humidity.html)

We really should be increasing humidity in hospitals and offices in the winter. Newer planes have already been moving in that direction (to increase comfort).

<comment><USER5> Also, spreading of flu during "flu season" is marked by holidays when long distance travel happens. This causes slightly different strains of the flu to be brought into regions where people do not have a natural defense to that strain.

<comment><USER6> Interesting tidbit I learned at a Town Meeting (streamed) yesterday. Winter Break in Massachusetts was instituted to halt the rapid spread of flu during the winter months. Kids would take it into school, spread it among themselves and bring it home to adults, who would get hit harder by it.

The winter break put an an incidental isolation in place that slowed the person-to-person spread down.

This is why schools have to close now to control the spread of COVID-19.

<comment><USER7> I think you mean February break.

Winter break usually refers to the break that includes Christmas and New Years Day.

In Massachusetts they instituted a second break in February, in addition to spring break in April, in order to cut the flu season.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Dr. Vincent Racaniello was a guest on a Twitch.tv podcast hosted by Ethan Evans (Amazon VP) and Devin Nash (CMO @N3RDFUSION)

They talked for 2 hours and pretty much covered a bunch of questions about this subject, there is so much misinformation and panic going around

Here is a youtube link if anyone is interested @ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWNuDT4t-TM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWNuDT4t-TM)

Also a Pastebin with the highlights [https://pastebin.com/8juyjNFq](https://pastebin.com/8juyjNFq)

\---

Dr. Vincent Racaniello, Ph.D. (@profvrr on twitter) is Higgins Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University Medical Center. He has been studying viruses for over 40 years.

<comment><USER9> Dr Racaniello is also the host of the _This Week in Virology_ podcast, which I highly recommend.

They've had a series of episodes on COVID-19 recently, all highly informative. Episode 590, the most recent one, debunked the "two strains" rumor that's been going around.

You can hear the episode here: [1] and read a transcript of the portion of the episode where the rumor was debunked here: [2]

[1] - [http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/](http://www.microbe.tv/twiv/twiv-590/)

[2] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22564199](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22564199)

<comment><USER8> Yep

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I did some reading on coronaviruses and learned these viruses do not have reverse transcriptase, which would allow an RNA virus, like a coronavirus, to incorporate into the host genome, becoming a permanent resident. In other words, the viruses lack the machinery necessary to convert themselves into DNA and cannot cause a chronic infection.

That said, it is possible that people co-infected with another RNA virus expressing reverse transcriptase would allow the coronavirus to incorporate into the host genome

<comment><USER11> Some DNA viruses, such as the Herpesviridae, integrate into the host genome by injecting a circular plasmid into the nuclear membrane.

This is why you can always have HSV, chicken pox (singles), Epstein-Bar...

Granted, Coronavirus is an RNA virus, and RNA is much shorter lived and more susceptible to mutation than DNA.

<comment><USER12> A plasmid does not 'integrate into the host genome'. The entire genome for human cells is stored inside the nucleus packaged as chromosomes. The plasmid exists outside of this, and just hijacks our replication machinery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> These tests test for the presence of viral nucleic acid. You can still have detectable levels of viral nucleic acid in you after the infection has ended.

What actually matters is whether or not you have virus replicating in you. The presence of viral nucleic acid is an imperfect proxy for that.

</comment><comment><USER14> I warned you a week ago we would "waste of resources" and here we are:

"Health officials are struggling with a complicated message — more people can get tested, but those with mild symptoms should stay home and practice social distancing. Some go so far as to warn that widespread testing at this point could threaten the U.S. response by burning through precious supplies just as a tidal wave of sick people descend on the system — a message at odds with administration announcements that millions of test kits are finally becoming available."

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/21/coronavirus...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/21/coronavirus- testing-strategyshift/)

</comment><comment><USER15> There are many cases of "false negative" with current testing kit. Most probably, patient who almost recovered, received false negative result and has been released from quarantine still being contagious. Partying with neighbors definitely was a bad idea.

<comment><USER16> There are case(s) in India where potential patient(s) got around thermal scans by consuming paracetamol that suppressed their fevers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really hope it's simply poor diagnosis. It appears to be, so it's not yet time to be scared.

But, if the virus is capable of mutating at the rate of the common cold and reinfect - I see no way out from under this other than a new way of life.

<comment><USER18> Seeing as China's condition seems to be improving, instead of having cases just keep burning indefinitely, I doubt that's the case.

<comment><USER19> China's still in lockdown, though, which would be that "new way of life" (until a vaccine) if re-infection is common.

<comment><USER20> I'm wondering if China is shooting itself in the foot by being on lockdown because they may just be delaying the inevitable now that it's pandemic and at risk of becoming endemic.

If we assume this will become endemic and a vaccine is a ways off, it would seem like the best approach is to flatten the curve just under the healthcare system capacity and get it to "pass through" most of society quickly (i.e. everyone who is at lower risk gets infected and quarantines until viral shedding stops).

Doing this would allow us to return the economy back to normal as quickly as possible and prevent all the fallout from an indefinitely stopped economy. Once most people have had it, we'll essentially end up in a state of herd immunity and it becomes statistically less likely than other health concerns at-risk populations had before COVID-19 was even a thing.

Meanwhile China, being on lockdown the entire time is still susceptible to having it become a pandemic within their own population as soon as they lift the lockdown and try to return to normal because they citizens haven't had the opportunity to develop antibodies as broadly.

<comment><USER21> That seems to be what England is planning on doing.

[https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312](https://twitter.com/wtgowers/status/1238395750360461312)

<comment><USER22> But see this thread for some discussion of the risks of the strategy: [https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/12385183716516495...](https://twitter.com/iandonald_psych/status/1238518371651649538?s=20)

<comment><USER23> Thanks for posting this. I was initially very negative about the UK strategy yesterday, but on reflection today I think they may have a very sensible long term approach to the situation, although highly risky to balance correctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Can someone tell me if the virus could be persistent? The virus is related to chickenpox according to [0]. And according to [1] "Once _chickenpox_ has resolved, the virus may remain inactive in nerve cells." Risk factors for _shingles_ are: "Old age, poor immune function, having had chickenpox before 18 months of age".

[0] [https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/medicalinformation.html](https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/covid-19/medicalinformation.html) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shingles)

</comment><comment><USER25> A slightly more informed article on huffpost:

"Can You Get Coronavirus Again After You've Already Had It?"

[https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/can-you-get- coronavir...](https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/can-you-get-coronavirus- again-after_l_5e6a8e2fc5b6dda30fc57d7d)

Edit: Also, Fortune:

"Why are patients who recover from coronavirus testing positive again?"

[https://fortune.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-recover-test- posi...](https://fortune.com/2020/03/06/coronavirus-recover-test-positive- twice/)

</comment><comment><USER26> The article doesn't say whether the status of survivors are declining or not, only that they remain positive.

<comment><USER27> _some_ , not all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Heard something about this on one of Sam Harris' two podcasts on the subject this week - that this is typically because of a false negative test (indicating recovery from the virus) during what in reality is a longer, uninterrupted period of infection.

<comment><USER29> Please be crisp on this. That is one hypothesis, but do we have the data yet to make sure it is the answer? I'm doubtful. Could also be unknown recall rates on the test. Could be plenty of things.

<comment><USER30> What does crisp mean in this context.

<comment><USER29> I am just meaning to be clear and not to stretch claims beyond what we know.

So, for example, I have a hypothesis that this is mainly baseline lung damage causing severe cases. That said, I cannot claim that is what it is.

I'm sure I have been sloppy and pushed this idea some without being clear it is just a hypothesis of mine. That said, I try and be clear with that message.

<comment><USER31> "mainly baseline lung damage" could you expand on what you mean there?

<comment><USER29> Copying from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22562362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22562362)

The part of Italy hit also has air quality, per aqi searches, that is comparable to the region in China that was hit hard.

Have people looked that it is not age, but baseline damage to your lungs that is the main factor in serious cases? Older people will have more exposure to local air pollution, just from having lived longer. That existing damage can be what contributes to complications, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> If there is a 20+% false positive/negative rate, then there are many people this will happen to.

</comment><comment><USER33> My understanding is PCR doesn't actually test for the virus itself. It tests for antibodies. Such that, once you get a virus and have antibodies, you have them for life. The idea of getting it twice seems odd.

<comment><USER34> No, PCR is not an antibody test. It amplifies DNA or RNA sequences which are known to exist in the virus. If enough unique sequences are found the test is positive.

<comment><USER33> Right. Thanks for clarifying.

To clarify further, it doesn't actually test for the virus. It tests for DNA / RNA presence. It's a proxy.

Not being critical, etc. Simply nailing down loose ends.

<comment><USER34> > it doesn't actually test for the virus. It tests for DNA / RNA presence

The virus is nothing but DNA or RNA.

The snippet testing establishes a statistical baseline that rules in the presence of the specific dna/rna of the virus to within the required certainty.

In other words, you don't have to feel every inch of an elephant to know for sure you've got a hold of one. Just enough features to make it unique to just elephants.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> If you can get reinfected, there's a good chance that the second infection will have a particularly high mortality rate, because this virus likely has a property known as antibody dependent enhancement[1]. Long story short, your normally protective antibodies actually work for the infection. This was a property of past coronaviruses like SARS and is likely why no vaccine was successfully developed.

1.[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S128645792...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1286457920300344)

<comment><USER36> That means the population overall may build immunity to it?

<comment><USER35> Well, not exactly, it means that "immunity" may actually be dangerous or fatal. Because immunity implies release of antibodies on re-exposure, except in this case the antibodies bind to the virus, as normal, but then the virus infects much more readily, prompting the body to produce more antibodies and mount an ever greater immune response in a dangerous cycle.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Maybe because the false-positive rate for asymptomatic patients is estimated at 80%?

<comment><USER26> False _positive_? I've heard although false _negatives_ (contracted but asymptomatic) can be up to 40-60%, but RT-PCR is reliable at declaring positives.

<comment><USER38> There's a possibility for false-positives. I think there's a type of test that looks for an enzyme that you could have without contracting the virus. I saw an article in HN this morning, but I can't find it anymore.

Also, false positives could happen as a result of bad logistics and management of the specimens.

Some useful sources that seem to validate the occurrence of false positives:

\- This research on testing specifically calls out the fact that their method didn't yield false positives in trials: [https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.E...](https://www.eurosurveillance.org/content/10.2807/1560-7917.ES.2020.25.3.2000045), which seems to indicate that it's common for false positives to occur when developing testing methods for new viruses.

\- This research talks about false positives in asymptomatic patients: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832). "In the close contacts of COVID-19 patients, nearly half or even more of the 'asymptomatic infected individuals' reported in the active nucleic acid test screening might be false positives."

\- This guy in Egypt is apparently a false-positive, likely due to a mismanaged testing protocol: [https://www.livescience.com/matt-swider-stuck- in-egypt-coron...](https://www.livescience.com/matt-swider-stuck-in-egypt- coronavirus-quarantine.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is a very weird article. I'm not sure if its just an old article that got recently republished.

Because the latest research shows that there are two strains of COVID and reinfections are happening because of the other strain infecting you.

[https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance- article/doi/10.1093/nsr...](https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance- article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwaa036/5775463)

[https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-chinese- scientis...](https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/04/coronavirus-chinese-scientists- identify-two-types-covid-19.html)

<comment><USER40> I can't find where in those links it supports the claim that "reinfections are happening because of the other strain infecting you"

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The tests are not accurate. [1] We are running around like chickens freaking out about tests. The only thing to do at this point is Social Distancing so the growth curve flattens out. Testing is NOT a solution. Testing will not make a sick person better. We have limited resources. Testing is being advocated by those trying to trace the community spread. I have news for you, if you think you have it you got it! Everyone will get it. Tracking this is a waste of resources at this point as the false positives mean additional limited Frontline Health Care workers treating actually sick individuals. We need to minimize the community spread, that means stay away from events. Work from home.

Individuals should self quarantine at any sign of illness. Critical patients should be admitted to hospitals. Everyone else should do everything in their power to slow the spread. You got a cough? Stay home. You feel tired or run down? Stay home. You have a fever and it went away? Stay home for the next 14 days. If your employer will not let you work from home, email them that you believe you are an asymptotic carrier of the COVID-19 virus and if they will not let you take paid sick leave or work from home you will be in the office immediately. Tell all your coworkers you requested to stay home and management wouldn't let you... Let the lawyers sort it out with HR.

[1]: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32133832)

<comment><USER41> >I have news for you, if you think you have it you got it! Everyone will get it. Tracking this is a waste of resources at this point as the false positives mean additional limited Frontline Health Care workers treating actually sick individuals.

I'm glad to see someone say this. The over reaction is causing more problems than the actual virus. With every other recent potential pandemic, there was a reasonable response, the severity of the diseases were responded to accordingly, panic was at a minimum, especially considering more recent scares have been with viruses that cause far more serious diseases than this latest one.

This time, there's been an extreme focus on infection rates and zero focus on actual symptoms, which from every account i've seen so far, do not seem to be very terrifying for 99% of the population, yet the reaction has been just over the top everywhere.

This is going to spread around the world, we'll either get it or we won't, it's not going anywhere, it's out in the world, as soon as the first person got sick and spread it, it was inevitable. There's so much effort globally going into trying to stop or hide from this and I still don't really understand why.

When I was a kid, it was a regular thing to expose kids to chickenpox because it was just better to get it and get it over with, chickenpox sucked a whole lot. A whole lot more than having covid-19 would be from what I can tell.

It's the symptoms of a disease that scare me, not whether i'll get it. Personally, I was a lot more worried about the recent flu virus from a few years back that was killing young healthy people, than this disease that's not much more than a bad cold unless you're knocking on death's door already or in your 80's.

If people that get it, don't even realize they have it and nothing bad is really happening to them, then why should I be losing my shit and freaking out? Why should I be scared of getting a disease that's about the same as something I get nearly every year anyway?

<comment><USER42> > do not seem to be very terrifying for 99% of the population

This is a dangerously bad take. The death rate is in the 2-3% range. Hospitalization in China was 15%, with 5% in critical care.

Even if you are not personally vulnerable, please understand that those who are also actual humans, and have actual humans as family members. And if you can't manage to care about that, recognize that a pandemic of this magnitude could easily overwhelm the US hospital system: [https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming- ans...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/10/simple-math-alarming-answers- covid-19/)

As we're seeing in Italy, an overwhelmed hospital system leads to increase death rates from many other causes, because suddenly the level of care goes down. If all the ICU beds are full and you, say, get hit by a truck, you'll be triaged along with all the other people needing ICU. If a COVID-19 patient looks more likely to recover than you, well, you'll be left out in the hallway.</comment></comment></comment>


What's your Work-From-Home Score? Take this test to find out - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdBf66j2WJoLaDkUJeJ12OTRwSAegoIWnrIQw9WUfDwsCZyag/viewform <comment><AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News,

I've created this assessment to help people that have been asked to work from home due to the coronavirus outbreak.

The assessment is divided into three parts: 1. Workspace, 2. Tools & Systems, and 3. Habits.

Take the assessment here: [https://grumo.com/wfhtool](https://grumo.com/wfhtool)

You'll be asked to check "Yes/No" to 52 statements and, based on our answers, you'll receive a Work-From-Home readiness score from 1 to 100 along with a series of recommendations to improve your score.

So far, The average score after 200+ submissions is 65%. Mine was 75% as my habits need a bit of improvement. Specifically, drinking more water and exercising more since all my soccer games got canceled!

To help you implement these recommendations, I've also created a PDF checklist that you can download at [https://grumo.com/wfhpdf](https://grumo.com/wfhpdf)

The full list of recommendations is on my blog at [https://grumo.com/work- from-home-guide/](https://grumo.com/work-from-home-guide/)

Feedback for improving the assessment is welcome.

I hope this helps someone.

Thanks and good luck working from home!

Miguel

Founder at Grumo.com

P.S: What's your score?

-

(for the geeks out there, I used Google Sheets and some Javascript magic to process the results)</comment>


Funding: Go in browsers Chromium and Firefox - <AUTHOR>

What would do you if you have a technology that allows run Go in browsers Chromium and Firefox?
I've finished the initial development and it works like a charm. In addition, there is also a translation compiler from Go (a sub-set) to JavaScript which is about 70% of to be finished. But there is also to build a library to handle DOM in Go.
Would you ask for funding to some big internet company or go diretly to angel investors?
Google: discarded because they've Dart and NaCl.
Microsoft and Apple: they would be my last option because I doubt that they accept that the technology remains free source.
Yahoo: they are not into a good moment, but this technology could be a help.
Facebook: maybe
For what I need funding? To finish the development but mainly for marketing. <comment><USER2> * to JavaScript compilers seem to be popping up everywhere. Perhaps this one would be useful to someone. Personally, I'd rather be able to do NaCl in Go.

<comment><AUTHOR> If there are many JavaScript compilers is because (1) it is a language that dislikes to a lot of people, and (2) it is the only option available in all browsers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> golang-nuts discussion: [https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/golang- nu...](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/golang- nuts/fyqM-6JYYFk)</comment>


Explore Magic Cap, a Smartphone OS from a Decade Before the iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://learn.adafruit.com/magic-cap-the-smartphone-os-from-the-90s?embeds=allow <comment><USER2> The iPhone is a progression of PDAs more than phones. There are plenty of interesting devices to look at including Apple's own Newton, the Sony Dynabook, the Palm Pilot and all its versions up through Sony Clie as well as Windows CE and its many devices. My 1998 Casio CE at some level is very similar to a modern iPhone. Both have a home screen with a gird of app icons to tap to launch them.

<comment><USER3> I think the Palm Treo, predating the iPhone by years, deserves the nod for the historic, mass market successor of PDAs. The first Treos were around 2002 and were horrible Palm devices duct taped to a cellphone, but they were enough to light the future. That integration got better and by 2004, the Treo 650 was a very capable machine. The iPhone hit the street in 2007.

<comment><USER4> I had first the Visor Phone, in 2001 or 2002, and it was a revelation. After that I had a series of Treos (270, 600, 650, 680) and finally a Pré Plus.

<comment><USER3> I had a Pre also, spectacular device, very usable. Super tiny by today's standards, with inductive charging, and running WebOS. One of the best apps was X-Plane, very smooth. In many ways, we have lost ground and not regained it.

<comment><USER5> the problem with the pre was a few fold

1) it was ahead of its time in terms of writing apps in javascript and having them run in a web browser context. The hardware was not up for it and the programming environment wasn't up for it (i.e. no webasm and the like)

2) no ability at the start to write apps in native code. This severely limited one's ability to have graphical games. people use their phones to casually game, and if those games don't exist, the phones wont sell.

3) as forward thinking as it was, they missed some things. It was just too small physically for what it was supposed to be. I was a big believer in it, but it was just too small for my fingers to use effectively to type and the like. It would have been interesting to see what a pre in a modern size phone form factor would have been like.

with all that said, I have fond memories of it, especially being part of the group of people the jailbroke (and I made it happen without even having physical access to one at the time. thanks god for its debian (or really ipkg) roots, made it easy to reverse engineer and get code onto it.

The touchpad, on the other hand, was way ahead of its time. I still used mine till about a year ago when it finally kicked the bucket.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I was going to mention the touchpad too, own two. Been meaning to repurpose them as small monitors.

I should probably thank you and the other jailbreakers and hackers for the two platforms for your contributions making them more useful machines.

Also worth pointing out WebOS lives on! [https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos- ose-2-1-0-rel...](https://www.webosose.org/blog/2019/11/20/webos- ose-2-1-0-release/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a similar vein, people should be aware of the Danger Hiptop/Sidekick. Its physical design might seem outdated, especially the affordance for a physical keyboard, but let's remember that this came out a full _five years_ before the iPhone. _For the time_ it offered an unparalleled convergence of PDA, phone, internet connectivity, and entertainment value. I had one for a while. It was far from perfect (writing the entire OS in Java is probably the dumbest idea that killed it) but I can't help but admire the innovation that went into it.

<comment><USER7> > especially the affordance for a physical keyboard,

I'm considering an Fxtec Pro1 or Blackberry Key2 exactly because they have hardware keyboards.

I still don't have muscle memory with on-screen keyboards, or if I do, it doesn't work properly due to the lack of physical cues.

<comment><USER8> I'm so pissed that didn't exist one year ago. Cheaper than I paid for my Pixel 2XL (damn name brand tax), physical keyboard, headphone jack, real features I could actually use.

The worst part is that I just dinged my Pixel's screen, so I could actually think about getting a new phone, but it's so wrong to me to buy a brand new phone one year later

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If you can, watch the documentary "General Magic". I got it off Showtime. Hadn't finished it yet, but what I've seen so far is great, if painful. By "painful", it's easy for a developer to put themselves in their shoes. Imagine putting your heart and soul into a product, knowing you're making something great and world-changing, being _right_ , then watching it fail. Then later be vindicated by other products on the market.

<comment><USER10> Was ignoring the Internet right? Was a Microsoft Bob style interface right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Impulse bought a Datarover from eBay a few years ago. The device itself is an ugly grey box, but Magic Cap is a delight. In fact, if the backlight hadn't have died I'd still be using it as a landline phone.

Full of delight, something that modern OSes are sorely missing.

Little touches like being able to drop a little animated worm in the hallway and watch it crawl about - and it still being there when you come back later.

It's a real shame that a decade ago, when incumbent phone makers were scrambling around trying to find a response to iOS, no one dusted it off and updated it for the modern world. Would have been such a contrast to the standard grid of boring icons.

</comment><comment><USER12> LGR has a great video about General Magic, the company behind Magic Cap. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opcuy-8VO64](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opcuy-8VO64)

</comment><comment><USER13> Kind of off topic, but "General Magic" is a really cool name for a company.

</comment><comment><USER14> I was a user of Maemo before the iPhone came out and it continued to be more capable than iOS and Android for years afterwards, and is arguably so today.

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

</comment><comment><USER15> The Internet Archive has classic Mac emulators, right? Someone should upload the image for the Magic Cap simulator there.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting the various visions that were out there at the time. I was keeping track of it as I was an enthusiastic user of my HP200LX, and could tell the general idea of a computer fitting in your pocket and talking to the internet was a very potent one, even though the internet at the time was email, usenet and ftp.

General Magic was a big one, as was the Newton, though both were obviously too expensive to achieve serious market penetration. Geos was another important one; it was a pretty slick OS that could have beaten Windows or been the birth of a palmtop OS.

One of the striking things; lots of people really believed the only way to use a pocket computer was with handwriting recognition. The Palm "graffiti" tool for achieving this was pretty obviously never going to work (aka teach people a new form of handwriting) compared to keyboards. The fold away keyboard of the HP OmniGo was kind of an admission of this.

</comment><comment><USER17> Also don't forget the Nokia Communicator Series, the 9000, 9110, 9210 series - you could even send _and_ receive faxes :D

</comment><comment><USER18> The documentary linked in the article is really good. I managed to grab a datarover in early 2000s from ebay and had a ton of fun with it but the newton was still my daily driver back then.

</comment><comment><USER19> A smartphone thirty six years before the iPhone.

[https://www.geek.com/apple/apples-first-touchscreen- phone-14...](https://www.geek.com/apple/apples-first-touchscreen- phone-1453963/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's kind of cute that whoever wrote the article even considers the possibility it was more than a foam model and that it ran real software.</comment></comment>


Nvidia Ups Parallel Processing Ante with Fermi  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nvidia.com/object/fermi_architecture.html

<comment><AUTHOR> And I just bought my C1060 Tesla four months ago...

<comment><USER2> Fermi Teslas may not be that close; I've been hearing Q1 so they could be seven months away.</comment></comment>


Cwtch: Privacy Preserving Infrastructure for Decentralized Applications - <AUTHOR> https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2018/06/28/announcing-cwtch/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original title truncated due to excessive length.</comment>


Show HN: An easy way to browse websites - <AUTHOR> http://www.addekt.com/ <comment><USER2> Love it ! Do they manually enter them or is it automated ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. Websites are submitted manually, or else the image and information wouldn't be as accurate and specific.</comment></comment>


US opioid abuse 'linked to jobs market' says Fed boss - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40603281 <comment><AUTHOR> Causal or a symptom the bottom line is opioids are available around every corner it seems. The proliferation of pain management clinics has made obtaining prescriptions easy. The ACA has also helped as more people have insurance and the repaid expansion of Medicaid has resulted in dramatic increases in the number of opioids prescriptions written in numerous states.

Additionally the economic downturn in 2007-2009 saw a huge increase in the number of people applying for disability rather than applying for unemployment. Although a large percentage of the applicants were denied many were awarded benefits and given the following this likely contributes as well:

1\. Since 2004, the number of individuals receiving SSDI has increased 42% to just shy of 11M individuals.

2\. In 2008 - 2010, the number of applications annually exceeded 2 million and hit 2.9 million in 2010. By 2013, the number of applications dropped to 2.3 million. On average, 45% of applications are approved and it can take as long as 600 days to get to an appeals hearing after an initial denial and reconsideration denial. By the time an application is awarded disability through a hearing the 27 month waiting period for Medicare has been met and the applicant has Medicare upon approval or shortly thereafter.

In short, those waiting for disability that could not afford care Erie generally treated with narcotics.

Opioids are certainly necessary for many people for the management of daily unrelenting pain but for others, they are a means of escape. Either way there is a "link to the job market" the question is are opioids the chicken or the egg?</comment>


Multitasking - <AUTHOR> http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/03/04/multitasking/

<comment><USER2> The important bits, IMO:

> _However, the argument that multitasking on computers is bad because humans > can't multitask is flawed. It uses the word «multitasking» in two different > ways, but implies that the two kinds of multitasking are somehow the same > thing. They're not: a task (or an app) on a computer, and a task performed > by a human don't map to each other one-to-one. In fact, a single task > performed by a human can easily make use of several applications running > concurrently on a computer.

...

The fact that the iPad only lets me see one app at a time often does not help me focus. Instead, it forces me to switch between apps constantly, thus preventing me from focusing on my task. Every time I have to deal with the iPad's task switching, I'm interrupted._

About time someone with some blog-clout said something like this. Full-screen application switching has a far _far_ greater mental-cost than having two windows open at the same time. And preventing two windows from being open at a time just cripples those who would benefit from it (and enforces application uber-silos).

<comment><USER3> _Full-screen application switching has a far far greater mental-cost than having two windows open at the same time._

As an XMonad user with a 15.4" screen, I disagree. For example, when programming, I find it quite easy/fast to alt+1 to my browser for documentation, and alt+8 to go to my 8th workspace, where I usually have a couple terminals open with vim. Or sometimes I'm switching between those two and Gimp on workspace 6.

This doesn't really require XMonad, just having workspaces and quick shortcuts for moving through them is good enough. Most applications are easier to use when you give them the whole screen (at least smaller screens). But yeah, if you're using some sort of taskbar/dock to switch between applications with your mouse, it's probably easier to just have both open together.

<comment><USER2> This is true, a very-fast screen switcher mitigates the cost heavily, maybe even negates it entirely. Alt-tab never did it for me, too unpredictable. On OSX, while developing with a single monitor, I pretty often split my things between 4 desktops, and it's great.

On Windows, on the other hand, _nothing_ switches quickly. Ever. And it takes a long time for applications to "wake up" after even short periods of non-use. Nothing but a second monitor has ever saved me.

On the iPad, currently, the situation is far worse than even Windows users suffer through. Double-tap the home button, and click the application (maybe scrolling between), which isn't in a static location. That's a non-screen action, followed by a change in the UI, followed by a touch, followed by a comparatively-slow transition. I liked someone-here's suggestion of gestures solving this, but single-tasking on anything without a separate keyboard is a total efficiency-crap-shoot everywhere, from what I've seen.

<comment><USER4> The issue that I have with desktop switching on my shiny new MacBook is that OS X switches focus between _applications_ , not _windows_.

Here I've got vim and Firefox open, with the focus on vim. I switch to another desktop to glance at some documentation (since the Firefox window on the first desktop is for the application I'm developing), switch back and begin typing. But alas! My key strokes are logged to Firefox, because that was the last application I had focused, rather than to the last window I was using on the desktop.

Aside from that, once I added some basic tiling functionality[0], it's not too bad working on it, even for a someone as used to a tiling wm as me.

[0]: <https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt>

<comment><USER2> An interesting point... I typically have an application per desktop, so I didn't encounter that.

I wonder if there's a simple-ish way to solve this? It seems like the sort of thing a daemon could resolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting that webOS keeps showing up on top -- notifications, multitasking, openness, overall polish and design -- when it has almost zero market share.

Hopefully HP can continue what Palm started and make the very nice a better competitor in other areas where Palm wasn't doing as well: hardware, availability, marketing.

<comment> sans-serif Sadly HP is probably just looking to push WebOS into printers.

<comment><USER5> I'd agree with you if they hadn't recently announced the Pre 3, Veer, and <http://www.palm.com/us/products/pads/touchpad/index.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Browsing Pad, a combination web browser and notes app, addresses the author's need to browse the web and take notes simultaneously: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/browsing-pad/id385931831?mt=8>

He has a great point about the distinction between user and OS multitasking. But if and until iOS changes, it means that there are more opportunities for developers to addresses those niches.

</comment><comment><USER7> Not sure how they could pull off a good windowed UI on a tablet sized device. 1024x768 with the requirement of finger friendly tap targets is a big hurdle. I suppose apps could have a compact UI mode of sorts so you could switch between full screen and windowed mode. Something like switching from the iPad version to the iPhone sized version. In that case you could fit 4 apps on the screen at once. I think it's more likely Apple will adopt the OSX Lion Mission Control feature on iOS5. A quick four finger swipe up to activate it with a live preview.

<comment><USER8> You know, with the new thunderbolt tech, maybe one day we can see the iPad complimented with an Apple display, using it like a drawing tablet or an extra screen as well.

I don't know how practical or good of an idea this is, but if it has any merit I'm sure someone more sober than I can put it eloquently.

<comment><USER2> Kinda like these, but with a hell of a lot more power: <http://www.thinkgeek.com/computing/usb-gadgets/bfa3/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that in some ways the general trend has been toward you working for your computer instead of your computer working for you. Personally, I get a lot done during the day that I don't even have to think about because I put a little bit of time into setting up some cron scripts a long time ago. I still count that toward things I'm getting done. Without being able to background apps, it's something that's seriously missing from iOS (please correct me if I'm wrong).

<comment><USER10> Any useful examples of the type of work that you "cron out"?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A great point in the article, but IMO this is a function of the screen size, not iOS.

The core problem is reducing the pain of switching apps. On a desktop, screen resolution and space allows you to position windows side-by-side or overlapping. On iOS you have to double-tap, and select an app from the bottom dock to switch to. Android has the same problem- you press the home button, and choose an app to switch to. Both forces the user to focus on managing apps, instead of focusing on the desired "task".

</comment><comment><USER12> Repeating "people can't multitask" as many times as possible doesn't make it true. People can multitask. Some can do it better than others, but everyone can.

<comment><USER13> People can multitask perfectly fine when the tasks they are doing are automatic (that's why you can usually drive and have a conversation [with a passenger] at the same time without any difficulty). When you're doing multiple things that require cognitive resources, your brain has to share its (surprisingly limited) short-term computational power/memory, resulting in decreased performance.

There aren't many things people do on computers that are automatic (at least not many things I do). But I'm typing this on a computer with three monitors, and I can say objectively that my efficiency is way higher than if I had one small screen with at least two clicks to get to my next app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone else think that the definition of multitasking got corrupted? Perhaps it became influenced by computer multitasking, where two or more things are done in seemingly real time. What I always took multitasking to mean was that over the course of a work day, week, month, a person would have a lot of different responsibilities and would need to switch among them.

Today, I designed an icon, provided customer service, wrote some technical documentation, did a little programming, and a few other disparate tasks. Each of these tasks required a different skill set, and there was a productivity hit every time I needed to get into a new frame of mind and, in some cases, figure out where I left off. So in this context, multitasking was activities done over the course of the day, not simultaneous ones.

<comment><USER15> I believe the computer term came first and so the "human" term only has meaning as analogy to the computer term.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Surprised no one has mentioned the Eden UI on Notion Ink's Adam. It allows you to run three apps side-by-side in compact view. Pretty slick, really. See: <http://notionink.com>

</comment><comment><USER17> I think the solution to this problem for tablets isn't having multiple apps running in the same screen. It's having multiple screens. Tablets are relatively cheap, what's missing (currently) is transparent communication between them. Once that happens, tablets will actually become _more_ humane than a single huge desktop. Just buy three... :-)

</comment><comment><USER18> This argument is my biggest issue with chrome os. Im all for the browser as the os, but I can't put two tabs side by side. A really common use case is writing an article where you're referencing other online sources. Really easy with a two screens or a split screen... really hard when you're switching back and forth.

</comment><comment><USER19> And this is why my favorite Mac shortcut is Cmd-Alt-H (hide all windows except the one in focus)

<comment><USER20> I use "Maximize window" for this purpose.

<comment><USER21> I use SizeUp for moving around my windows. It helps to keep terminals, code, browser and web inspector in their particular positions and if something needs focus I can make it maximized.

<comment><USER22> I use ratpoison for X11 (<http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/>) (1 Full screen program at a time. CTRL+T, # to switch, CTRL+T, w to get a list of running programs.

<comment><USER8> Wow! I know I've seen things like that in the past. Can you use it with multiple monitors?

<comment><USER22> Yes. Definitely. Ratpoison has another keybind for switching which monitor is the recipient of window change commands.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


PhpMyAdmin Mirror Distributing Backdoored App - mike-cardwell http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/security/PMASA-2012-5.php

<comment><AUTHOR> Looking at the ridiculously high number of security bulletins at <http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/security/> would seem to indicate PhpMyAdmin is _itself_ a backdoor.

PLEASE don't expose this app to the entire Internet if you use it... "Order Deny,Allow / Allow from m.y.i.p / Deny from all" is your friend.

</comment><comment><USER2> An exploit has been added to metasploit already

[https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/commit/3ade5a...](https://github.com/rapid7/metasploit- framework/commit/3ade5a07e7bb1b1f915a6421f3f1df0895e6f16d)

</comment><comment><USER3> Wot, no hash check?</comment>


Ask HN: What software helps you run your startup? - <AUTHOR>

What are the keys apps, services, or software that you depend on to run your company? <comment><USER2> Chrome

Google drive (a lot of stuff was done in it)

Google keep (really, I've deleted evernote as I like simple in use tools)

Pocket (not to forget a lot of helpful links)

Gmail

Buzzsumo (great tool but I've learned about lately. All stuff was done before)

Webflow (to create landing page)

Adobe Illustrator (to make all design)

It seems that my list is too short. But I think that you have to concentrate on your startup idea and not the searching of 'right' tools. If you really need them you can read here: [http://www.quora.com/Startup-Founders-and- Entrepreneurs/What...](http://www.quora.com/Startup-Founders-and- Entrepreneurs/What-are-the-best-productivity-tools-for- entrepreneurs?__snids__=665073047&__nsrc__=1&__filter__=all)

</comment><comment><USER3> To be honest, even in the age of web app and services that claim to be doing everything for you, MS Excel is still my best friend.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fedora Linux

Firefox, Chrome, Chromium, Konqueror, Links

Eclipse

GitHub

Rackspace Cloud / Linode (we'll be moving everything to Linode eventually... the Rackspace thing is a legacy of their Slicehost acquisition)

SugarCRM (self-hosted)

Mediawiki (self-hosted)

Bugzilla (self-hosted)

Hoovers.com

LinkedIn

Google Apps (mainly GMail)

Apache httpd

and some internal tools we developed ourselves, like our competitive intelligence tracker, codenamed FUCIT (Fogbeam Universal Competitive Intelligence Tool) and a product dashboard tool I'm working on now.

Groovy/Grails/JVM

Emacs

OpenOffice</comment>


Mental Overload Detection with Respiration Variability Spectrogram - <AUTHOR> http://aqibsaeed.github.io/2018-01-19-mental-overload-detection-with-respiration-variability-spectrogram/ <comment><USER2> This would be great for having automated interrogation stations where one attendant could oversee 20-50 individuals. Combine DL, TTS, STT, Eulerian Video and this, we could have end to end personalized data collection.

The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.

<comment><USER3> TTS, STT?

<comment><USER4> Text to speech, speech to text, is how I understand the two acronyms put together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Study: DeepBreath: Deep Learning of Breathing Patterns for Automatic Stress Recognition using Low-Cost Thermal Imaging in Unconstrained Settings

Citation: Youngjun Cho, Nadia Bianchi-Berthouze, Simon J. Julier. arXiv:1708.06026 [cs.HC]

Link: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.06026](https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.06026)

Abstract: We propose DeepBreath, a deep learning model which automatically recognises people's psychological stress level (mental overload) from their breathing patterns. Using a low cost thermal camera, we track a person's breathing patterns as temperature changes around his/her nostril. The paper's technical contribution is threefold. First of all, instead of creating hand- crafted features to capture aspects of the breathing patterns, we transform the uni-dimensional breathing signals into two dimensional respiration variability spectrogram (RVS) sequences. The spectrograms easily capture the complexity of the breathing dynamics. Second, a spatial pattern analysis based on a deep Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) is directly applied to the spectrogram sequences without the need of hand-crafting features. Finally, a data augmentation technique, inspired from solutions for over-fitting problems in deep learning, is applied to allow the CNN to learn with a small-scale dataset from short-term measurements (e.g., up to a few hours). The model is trained and tested with data collected from people exposed to two types of cognitive tasks (Stroop Colour Word Test, Mental Computation test) with sessions of different difficulty levels. Using normalised self-report as ground truth, the CNN reaches 84.59% accuracy in discriminating between two levels of stress and 56.52% in discriminating between three levels. In addition, the CNN outperformed powerful shallow learning methods based on a single layer neural network. Finally, the dataset of labelled thermal images will be open to the community.

</comment><comment><USER6> Huh? Isn't "hypertension" high blood pressure? I get that "extreme tension", as in "extreme stress", also makes sense. But is this recognized usage?

</comment><comment><USER7> From the linked study, those spectrograms seem to represent a frequency of nostril breathing versus... mouth breathing?

The automatic analysis of the source data's thermal video capture seems to look for hot nostril flares, from breathing through the nose only, as a reliable measure of relaxed respiratory rate? The respiratory rate is either assessed as a measurable number, ranked as a percentile, high or low, or indeterminate/chaotic which is then presumed as correlated with elevated mental activity?

Note that this spectrogram is not chemical analysis of respiratory exhaust from exhaled gases. It's not mass spectrometry, searching for CO2 and water vapor content as an indicator of metabolic respiration, which is what the title almost sounds like it could be about, without careful reading.

The study then goes on to state that other sensors (air flow meters, pressure sensitive chest straps) could be used to extract respiratory rate over time, and construct the same data interchangably. I'm not so sure that's true, but clearly the goal here is passive reads, probably for retrospective lie detector types of analysis. Seems like a presuptive effort at precrime.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to see if this could have a positive application for pilots and situations of loss of situational awareness or pilot load factor.

</comment><comment><USER9> Heart rate variability ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate_variability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate_variability)) may also be an interesting measure here.

<comment><USER10> When I did biofeedback therapy a couple of years ago, heart rate variability was the main proxy they used for relaxation. The goal for session was to obtain a steady heart rate.

<comment><USER9> Counterintuitively, it's actually the other way around -- at rest, _more_ variability in your heart rate (over a roughly 20 second period) is correlated with lower levels of stress. Deep, slow, regular breathing tends to increase HRV, since heart rate is linked to respiration -- your heart beats a little faster when you inhale, a little slower when you exhale. It's desirable to have big, regular swings in heart rate, synchronized with your respiration.

Thankfully, biofeedback protocols will typically hide these details, and just calculate a single metric for you to attempt to optimize.

<comment><USER10> No, I actually just remembered it wrong.

I remember what the chart looks like now, and yes the goal was in fact to have your heart rate vary with breath.

When I started the session, my heart rate would jump around almost arbitrarily. By the end, it would fall into a steady rhythm of rising and falling as I breathed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Why do you need a neural net for this? isn't it just a simple increase in variance?

</comment><comment><USER12> I've been looking for an excuse to get a FitBit or equivalent (hint: I'm not particularly active other than a lot of walking). This would be awesome. I think I'm one of those "hides it well" people when it comes to stress. Would love something like this on my phone.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of the professional gamers with collapsed lungs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425256](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15425256)

</comment><comment><USER14> Cool project.

BTW, is this line by line `x = Something()(x)` style of writing code common in Tensorflow?

<comment><USER15> For Keras, yes. It's known as the "functional model".

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Black Mirror episode idea: Luxury computer company starts including thermal front-facing cameras, as well as heartbeat monitors in laptop palm rest areas, in their hardware. Releases StressKit, an API which is promptly used by companies to optimize their experiences. At first, it's great: Slack silences notifications when someone's "in the zone," and Netflix has its greatest ever season of hyper-optimized horror movies.

But then our protagonist, a programmer at a large software company, is told to code a feature that subtly influences the behavior of users to drive them towards microtransactions in their moments of greatest stress. Protagonist finds this horrific and threatens to go public, at which point her colleagues, fearful for their own careers, start using the prototype system to manipulate her towards paranoia and madness. In true Black Mirror form, this escalates to neverending existential horror by the end.

*mic drop</comment>


NIST Guidance on Application Container Security - <AUTHOR> https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/itl-bulletin/2017/10/application-container-security/final <comment><AUTHOR> Direct PDF Link: [https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/Shared/documen...](https://csrc.nist.gov/CSRC/media/Publications/Shared/documents/itl- bulletin/itlbul2017-10.pdf)

NIST SP 800-190 and NISTIR 8176 provide information on the basics of application container technology, the potential security issues of implementing and using this technology, and the countermeasures that should be used and the security assurance requirements that should be met to address those issues. NIST SP 800-190 offers general guidance on the topic of application container technology security, while NISTIR 8176 complements NIST SP 800-190 by taking a more detailed look at Linux container security.</comment>


Google ad revenue surpasses all of print media - <AUTHOR> http://investing.covestor.com/2012/11/google-ad-revenue-surpasses-all-of-print-media <comment><USER2> _Global_ Google ad revenue surpasses all of _U.S._ print media, as acknowledged by the linked article but not by its title.</comment>


How to find clients and market your freelance business – The Ultimate Guide - <AUTHOR> http://yourfreelancecareer.com/how-to-find-clients-and-market-your-freelance-business/ <comment><USER2> My opinion might be irrelevant here, since I never made much money doing freelance work, but this seems like a great guide. am not sure I would agree with all of the promotion ideas. There are so many ways to promote a freelance business without spending money.</comment>


Heading Out on Your Own: 31 Life Skills in 31 Days - <AUTHOR> http://artofmanliness.com/2012/09/01/heading-out-on-your-own-31-life-skills-in-31-days-series-wrap-up/

<comment><USER2> I liked the section titled "Good manners are not stiff, formal, or awkward." It reminded me of a story I was told of a dinner party at which one of the guests suffered from cerebral palsy. The host seeing that the guest was having trouble with her knife and fork immediately put down her own cutlery and started eating with her hands. Once the guest noticed this she felt she had leave to do the same. The story's a good example of "people over process".

<comment><USER3> I remember a similar sort of story, though it's probably apocryphal. The Japanese ambassador was dining with Queen Victoria at a very formal dinner. Towards the end of the dinner, the guests were given a small bowl of warm water with which to wash their fingers. The Japanese ambassador, being unaware of what to do with it, drank the contents---a major faux pas. The Queen, seeing this, drank hers as well, and all the guests then did likewise.

<comment><USER4> In line with these stories, my parents always taught me that good manners are about making your guests (or host) feel comfortable. The rules are not the important bit of manners.

<comment><USER5> > _In line with these stories, my parents always taught me that good manners > are about making your guests (or host) feel comfortable. The rules are not > the important bit of manners._

This is so funny you should say this because in Germany good old "Knigge" is becoming more popular again but in a way of making yourself feel better about your good manners AND as a foundation to look down on and sneer at others for their clearly inferior manners. So quite the opposite of what you described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The advice about budgeting is good common sense. On the other hand I feel that sometimes people address personal finance as a simple arithmetic exercise (income - expense), whereas I think it is sometimes better treated in a more algebraic fashion.

In other words identify the variables in your balance sheet (Hint: everything is a variable) and try to anticipate what happens as things change. Your finances are affected by changes outside of your control, for example the government or local authority can decide to stick your taxes up, changes in the commodities market can affect the price of staples such as a food and fuel or your electric company might read your meter and then slap you with a bill of double your usual amount.

This is something that I find annoying about the UK, whilst all of the high street banks offer some form of online banking none of them to my knowledge will allow me to pull out the raw data and play with it. I'm sure that using some fairly rudimentary statistical analysis I could gain much more insight into the implications of my financial situation.

For example, let's say I get a pay rise. I might be inclined to celebrate by going out and buying a brand new iPad or whatever. But maybe if I sum the amount that I spend at the supermarket each month I notice an upward trend that will wipe out the pay increase within 6 months. Does this mean that I am acquiring "good taste" in a few too many areas or does it simply mean that "cost of living" is increasing faster than inflation and I need to account for that.

</comment><comment><USER7> Since this doesn't relate to 'manliness' at all but merely maturity as a person, it seems appropriate to post this translation:

[http://artofwomanliness.heroku.com/2012/09/01/heading-out- on...](http://artofwomanliness.heroku.com/2012/09/01/heading-out-on-your- own-31-life-skills-in-31-days-series-wrap-up/)

</comment><comment><USER8> this is great. i esp wish someone encouraged me to make an effort and "Day 22 - Learn how to small talk".

growing up i hated small talk and this translated very well into hobbies involving staying home and hacking things, and later doing that at work.

it wasn't until much later that i realized how important it is to make real human connections and be able to interact with strangers. This seems to be harder to get right the older one gets.

</comment><comment><USER9> For anyone that wants to read these posts in an RSS reader one day at a time, I suggest Feed Playback [1]. Just enter the feed URL [2] and a start date of 2012-08-01. Unfortunately, the feed is mixed in with every other update that gets put on the site, so it will take longer than a month to complete.

[1] <http://www.streamspigot.com/feed-playback/>

[2] <http://feeds2.feedburner.com/TheArtOfManliness>

</comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome — I just recently moved out of my parents' home for the first time and have been doing my best to adjust to life "on my own". Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><USER11> None of these articles seem to be about women or sex... interesting.

I got this book for my 18th birthday, and it was invaluable in shaping me into the person I am today. I don't quite understand why it costs £65 on Amazon though: [http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Be-Man-John- Birmingham/dp/187598...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Be-Man-John- Birmingham/dp/1875989285)

</comment><comment><USER12> AoM is one of the few blogs that I feel genuinely compelled to read. Very good writing, and about skills/knowledge that we all need in our life (regardless of profession).

</comment><comment><USER13> It's a sad state of men when day 15 is How to Change a Tire, when it ought to be how to fix one: <http://www.alpharubicon.com/bovstuff/tirepluguzi.htm>

<comment><USER14> Tires should be patched, not plugged (and only when the hole is nowhere near the sidewall). I've never had a tire plug hold, or a patch fail.

Patching them can still be done at home but I've always let the guy at the garage do it, because he sees a couple of cases a day instead of one every 3-4 years like I do.

<comment><USER13> Each of the tires on my old Chevy at one point had over a dozen plugs. Each plug lasted several years.

The beauty of a plug is the kit is five bucks, comes with about a dozen plugs and you can use it anywhere. Get a thirty five dollar compressor to run off your battery and you can fix a puncture by yourself in the middle of nowhere. Not so with a patch.

But then I also won't drive more than twenty miles from my house without a toolbox...so....

<comment><USER14> So you're driving around on a public road (presumably) on tires that have been damaged and repaired 12 or more times.

Oooooookay. Thanks for the heads-up.

<comment><USER13> That was in back country Alaska (note the past-perfect tense). Every man for himself and all that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The most relevant one I saw and read was the Networking one. I think a lot of people I meet (or see at networking events) need to read that.

</comment><comment><USER16> oh... how i wish i would have read "Living With Roommates Tips" beforehand.

</comment><comment><USER17> The article on stress management should be listed first. [http://artofmanliness.com/2012/08/30/heading-out-on-your- own...](http://artofmanliness.com/2012/08/30/heading-out-on-your-own- day-30-how-to-manage-stress/)

</comment><comment><USER18> In #13 Networking: >"If you're in San Francisco looking for a tech job, you'll want to be using the latest connection apps"

I've never seen this in the LA community. Is this the norm up north?

<comment><USER19> That's just SV navel gazing.</comment></comment>