A Mathematical Challenge to Obesity - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/science/a-mathematical-challenge-to-obesity.html <comment><USER2> "Well, what do people do when there is extra food around? They eat it! This, of course, is a tremendously controversial idea. However, the model shows that increase in food more than explains the increase in weight."

This doesn't actually follow logically. I know Mr Chow is implying that there's a lot of data that this interview obviously doesn't present, but there are serious problems with this thesis on the face of it. For one thing, if obesity correlates directly with the availability of food, then the _most_ obese people ought to be those to whom food is most available. But the rich in our society are proportionally not as obese as those who face periodic food shortages; and low-income children are proportionally shown to be at much higher risk of suffering from obesity. [1]

Not only that, but the statement that food production has _simply_ gone up and therefore food prices have _simply_ gone down is incredibly... simplistic. There have been arguments for years [2] about _what_ food prices have gone down or up and how that may or may not have affected obesity.

I want to believe that there's data behind this fellow's claims, but I can't help but feel as though, no matter what the data is, summarizing it in the way he does is deceptive.

[1] [http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=303&issu...](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?volume=303&issue=1&page=2)

[2] For example, [http://www.good.is/post/the-inconvenient-truth-about- cheap-f...](http://www.good.is/post/the-inconvenient-truth-about-cheap-food- and-obesity-it-s-not-farm-subsidies/)

<comment><USER3> The rich can _afford_ to eat at restaurants with routines that simulate a robust meal without truly ingesting too many calories, and because it's healthy to do so, this is precisely what the rich do. This is why portions are so tiny at gourmet restaurants so the middle class balks at them as a total rip-off. In a sense you pay to be given pomp and circumstance and less food!

<comment><USER4> With a degustation you'll probably have quite a few courses. 9, 10 maybe more. Maybe matching wines.

If you are just fine dining you will get larger portions but will still go starter, entree, main course, dessert.

The portions are small because you cannot eat that much. The prices are high because at a good restaurant they are serving food that is hard to make and they do it well.

A lot of fine food can be very rich. So I am not sure about not ingesting too many calories. Perhaps relative to eating an entire pizza on my own. But not to eating a regular balanced meal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Math alone is the wrong tool to solve a problem that is biochemical and behavioral in nature. On an individual level, the fix is straight-forward: eat more "good" fats, and little or no grains and sugars. I have yet to encounter someone who has done this and not seen dramatic results.

It's a trickier problem on a broad sociological level, though. The sugar peddlers have an incentive to create and maintain the addiction, and yet they're also just giving people what they want, and at the end of the day, it's still a free country. We can't ever expect all people to abandon sugar any more than all people have abandoned smoking.

As much as I hate to agree with libertarian dogma, I think the USDA is a big part of the problem. They've been been promoting high-carb diets and "moderate" sugar consumption for decades, and it certainly smells like yet another government-industrial complex protecting existing profits.

<comment><USER6> We shouldn't get so worked up about exactly what we eat. When we look around the world, we see that people who eat a modest diet and are physically active every day live long, healthy lives.

If we go back to what we would think of as the dark ages of nutritional knowledge, there were lean, healthy, athletic people back then. And it wasn't just people who ignored all the nutritional dogma of the day, either. The people who swallowed it most conscientiously were lean as well. It seems like so much has changed since then, but has it? Go to the gym today and you'll see a bunch of people who work out, eat paleo, and have low body fat. Thirty years ago they'd still be lean and in great shape, but they'd believe an entirely different dogma about nutrition.

If _what_ we ate was anywhere near as important as _how much,_ then the people who were most disciplined about following the old low-fat, relatively-high- carb diets would have been at a disadvantage compared to people who paid no attention and half-assed it. Or, if the low-fat guys were right, they should have been leaner than the guys who thought milk and eggs were the secret. But consistently, decade after decade, people who are disciplined about diet and exercise are lean and fit no matter what they believe. When people let their discipline slip, most of them end up overweight to some degree. The entire sum of our nutritional knowledge has yet to change that.

<comment><USER7> > But consistently, decade after decade, people who are disciplined about diet > and exercise are lean and fit no matter what they believe.

Proof?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _"What caused the obesity epidemic?"_

      "And it's something very simple, very obvious,
      something that few want to hear: The epidemic was
      caused by the overproduction of food in the United
      States. ...This, of course, is a tremendously
      controversial idea. However, the model shows that
      increase in food more than explains the increase
      in weight."

This is analogous to saying: _"What caused the increase in car accidents?"_

      "And it's something very simple, very obvious,
      something that few want to hear: The car accident
      epidemic was caused by the overproduction of cars
      in the United States. ...This, of course, is a
      tremendously controversial idea. However, the model
      shows that increase in cars more than explains the
      increase in car accidents."

By using the phrase "overproduction of food" he is using too broad of a statement that doesn't describe the problem in an addressable way.

It makes it sound like we could just cut food production across the board and prevent obesity.

.

I would argue the problem isn't the quantity, rather the quality. Quality in regards to:

\- Nutrients vs Fat and sugars

\- Number of meals a day and the time we eat those meals

\- Sugary drinks vs Water

\- Appropriate meal size

\- Fast food vs home made meals

The solution for the 21st century is going to take more than cutting food production. Just as curbing injuries from car accidents will take a different approach than limiting US car production.

<comment><USER9> > I would argue the problem isn't the quantity, rather the quality

But you didn't, argue. You simply asserted. You threw out the article's theory by constructing a straw-man you didn't even bother tearing down, then proceeded to inform us of your views.

<comment><USER10> You are right, but he didn't say he was arguing in his comment, he said he would. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "An extra 10 calories a day puts more weight onto an obese person than on a thinner one."

It needs to be explained how he determined that this isn't related to _why_ they are obese in the first place, i.e. whether these are purely correlational facts. It would be nice if the New York Times wasn't susceptible to elementary statistical fallacies like this but... well this is nutrition after all.

<comment><USER12> An interview in the New York Times is not an academic research paper. In this context, it's reasonable for the interviewer to take the mathematician's word for it rather than hammering away at a pedantic detail that may or may not be relevant.

<comment><USER11> This would be reasonable if people who ought to know better didn't commit this kind of elementary error constantly, particularly in nutrition. It is your attitude, that it's reasonable to publish a scientific article in a major publication without independent thought and fact checking, that I am challenging.

<comment><USER13> _it's reasonable to publish a scientific article in a major publication without independent thought and fact checking_

The person you are replying to did not say or imply that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's nice to see that people are developing new models and ways of thinking about weight loss but I wonder how effective this research is going to be. The conclusion of the article is the same old "eat less and eat healthier" which is fantastic advice ... and advice that a great many people don't bother to follow.

As a culture we're eating ourselves to death while worrying that low probability events like terrorist attacks are going to kill us. We're killing us and we're doing it slowly.

<comment><USER15> > _"which is fantastic advice ... and advice that a great many people don't > bother to follow"_

At least a large part of this is due to lack of education. For all the time we spend on math and science in public schools, we spend _none_ of it on some basic principles like nutrition.

I was rather obese in high school, and the (Canadian) government foot the bill for nutrition courses and consultations with a dietitian (this is a big can 'o worms too: preventative programs like this are way easier in a single-payer system).

I now have the ability to judge what's good for me, and what isn't, as well as effective alternatives to existing choices. That knowledge has been instrumental in my weight loss.

The problem with that "fantastic advice" is that it's rarely coupled with real constructive suggestions. "Eat less and eat healthier, fatass" is unproductive when the person lacks the knowledge to make effective choices, and alternatives to break entrenched habits aren't presented. Sure, a Big Mac is universally unhealthy, but what do you replace it with? A grilled cheese sandwich isn't much better, nor are a lot of "healthier looking" alternatives (anything with mayo slathered in it is dietary suicide, regardless of how much greens you stick in it also). How do you curb hunger when in the process of downsizing your portions? Curling up in a corner isn't super effective. Blood sugar management throughout the day to get you through the rough patches? None of this is trivial knowledge.

Of course, the factor making all of this substantially worse is that the signal to noise ratio in dietary literature is horrific. For every real, researched book on effective diets, you have 3 more fad diets backed up by voodoo and pseudoscience.

<comment><USER16> Actually, I was taught a lot about basic nutrition in school. Low fat was good, complex carbohydrates were good. 4 food groups. Now apparently that is all wrong?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Omnivore's Dilemma (Michael Pollan) goes into more detail on the history of the food boom in the 1970s and its link to obesity. Its a great read for anyone interested. Essentially we got hit with a one-two punch of food price paranoia and the high fructose corn syrup innovation.

<comment><USER18> I'd also recommend The End of Overeating (David Kessler) which posits that the obesity explosion is due to recent advances in food science re: foods engineered (precise ratios of fat, sugar and salt) to make you want to eat more ("conditioned hypereating").

If you want to lose weight, stop eating packaged food, cut out fast-food and cut back on restaurants/take-out.

Make your own food (like everyone did 40 years ago for most meals) and you'll find yourself controlling your portion intake by default.

<comment><USER19> I second that. In April I tried an experiment: home-cooked meals at least twice a day, and nothing with a human-boosted glycemic load. E.g., nothing with added sugar, no refined carbs, no fruit juice.

Portion control was much, much easier. I still ate until I felt full; I just felt full a lot sooner, and experienced a big drop in between-meal cravings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> paul-woolcock The "calories in/calories out" argument is based on the assumption that the human body is a closed system. This is simply not the case, and touting it as a diet strategy is irresponsible. You might lose weight if you lower your caloric intake by only eating 1 McDonalds cheeseburger a day instead of 2, but in the end you are still eating crap food "product", and you won't be as healthy as you could be by focusing on the _quality_ of your food as opposed to the _quantity_.

<comment><USER20> There's a few National Institute of Health studies that back the calories in vs calories out argument. Keep your calorie intake below your BMR (basal metabolic rate) + what you burn during the day if you want to lose weight. Very simple. You don't have to "balance saturated and unsatured fats", get ten hours of sleep per day, or whatever other ridiculous microoptimisations people come up with.

Eat 500 calories below your MBR + burn rate and you lose one pound per week.

You can do it while eating garbage food (fast food, heavily processed food products) or you could do it while eating a totally vegan diet. It doesn't matter for _weight loss_.

<comment><USER21> Look up "compliance" and how it relates to self-applied medical care for nutrition, acne, exercise, birth control, etc. Vasectomy is more effective than pill is more effective than condom, not because of chemistry or biology or physics, but because of psychology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was unable to find original source material by the researcher (only finding the abstract for his presentation at <http://aaas.confex.com/aaas/2012/webprogram/Paper6155.html>)

If anyone can find the author's slides or related article, I'd appreciate a link to them.

<comment><USER23> This is the obesity section of the author's website: <http://sciencehouse.wordpress.com/category/medicine/obesity/>

He links to the slides from that conference: <http://sciencehouse.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/aaas122.pdf>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> You are an M.I.T.-trained mathematician and physicist. How did you come to work on obesity?

 _...I didn't even know what a calorie was._

I call bullshit.

<comment><USER25> We tell lies to children because the truth is too hard for them to understand at their level of knowledge. (See, for example, models of atoms that have a nucleus and protons and electrons buzzing round it.)

So, with that in mind, children learn that one calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise 1 g of water by 1 degree c.

But what does that actually mean for a human body? How is a calorie in fat worked out? How is a calorie in sugar worked out? How do we know they're equivalent?

<comment><USER26> > So, with that in mind, children learn that one calorie is the amount of > energy needed to raise 1 g of water by 1 degree c.

I find this to be wonderfully ironic, because the nutritional calorie is 1000x larger than the physics calorie. In nutrition, one calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise 1kg of water by 1 degree C. So yes, it's entirely possible that this fellow didn't know what a "calorie" was in the realm of nutrition.

<comment><USER25> Wait, what? That would be one kilocalorie. And that's what's listed on most food?

<comment><USER26> Yep. When you see "calorie" on US food labels, that's actually a big-C Calorie, or food calorie, which is equal to a kilocalorie from regular physics.

If it were regular physics calories, the energy content of food would be nowhere near enough to sustain us. A typical human body at rest will consume around 8 megajoules per day, or about 2 million calories. But that's only about 2 thousand big-C food Calories.

Forgetting or ignoring this difference results in amusing things like the beer and ice cream diet: [http://training.fitness.com/weight-loss/beer-ice-cream- diet-...](http://training.fitness.com/weight-loss/beer-ice-cream- diet-1243.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> sugary drinks. I've never known someone to drop these and not lose weight. It is SO EASY to consume an extra 500 calories a day of liquid sugar. It has close to zero satiety. A 500 calorie surplus is a pound of weight gain a week.

<comment><USER28> I gave up sugar a few years ago and there was pretty much no effect. I didn't have much sugar before, and there are plenty of other sources of calories.

<comment><USER29> Yeah likewise. I almost never have a sugary drink (maybe a softdrink can once every 3 months) and it's made zero difference to weight. Stress on the other hand is highly correlated personally with weight (I've lost ~10kg in 3 months every time I've quit a job).

<comment><USER27> wtf guys obviously if you didn't drink a lot of this stuff before then losing it will have a correspondingly small effect.

Calories in calories out.

<comment><USER30> > Calories in calories out.

Every time someone says that, the people with a hobby-horse to ride come out and beat on the person for a bit. Especially if they imply that honey (no, sorry, the correct term now is HFCS) isn't the Devil's own temptation sent to corrupt and impurify our precious bodily fluids.

<comment><USER28> Indeed. The reason why _I_ don't like HFCS is because its presence in a product says, "to make our profit margin as large as possible, we used a bunch of artifical ingredients that are slightly cheaper than the real things. that's just how much we care about you, the consumer." Have you ever heard anyone say, "we use HFCS because it tastes better than cane sugar?" Nope. So why use it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> if someone else is having problems launching their Java Applet, but you have Java installed, download the jar from: [http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/WeightAppletv10.4.6.signed....](http://bwsimulator.niddk.nih.gov/WeightAppletv10.4.6.signed.jar)

then run the following command:

      java -cp WeightAppletv10.4.6.signed.jar weightapplet.MainPanel

</comment><comment><USER32>
      "And it's something very simple, very obvious,
      something that few want to hear: The epidemic was
      caused by the overproduction of food in the United
      States."

Overproduction? Does a factory intentionally produce more cars than it can sell? Probably not. How about a baker? Does a baker produce more cookies than she can sell? Not for long. Maybe a farmer? No. Not really. That is not an economically sustainable position to take.

If we take the "overproduction" assertion as fact, this begs the question: Why is this happening?

One answer is that consumers have more money to spend and they are choosing to spend some of it buying (and consuming) more food. Fair enough.

Another answer could be that, in certain segments, government geniuses decided they know better than to let free market work. They go in and throw money around to make producers do what they would not under normal circumstances. That triggers over-production of certain goods. Which triggers lower prices. Which triggers higher consumption. And so on.

Another possible answer is a combination of the above. I am, admittedly, against government meddling in our lives. I want them out of nearly everything. Go throw parties for foreign dignitaries and balance our books. Maybe do a few more things. Oh, yes, those borders. Deal with them will ya? Any time these guys dip their ignorant toes into the water of our lives they invariably create a mess that our children and our children's children will have to pay for.

Of course, this philosophy extends to self-responsibility. In my family we might have a soft drink or two at parties here and there. Just like having ice-cream, in moderation it is an occasional treat. Aside from that, water only. What the hell is wrong with people that go into a gas station and order a 64 ounce soft drink? That's like consuming a cup full of sugar while you drive to work.

This is where another angle in this equation comes into play: A third-payer system of health does not penalize bad behavior. Someone who is a complete moron when it comes to how they take care of their bodies and what they put into it should suffer the financial consequence of having to pay a lot more for healthcare. Today, those of us who try to be sensible are paying for the idiots who are not. That is fundamentally wrong.

If you want a healthy and slim population, again, get government the hell out of the way. Yes, it can be that simple. Don't manipulate markets and don't get involved in healthcare. People should buy and pay for their own health insurance, just like they do car insurance. If you drive like a mad-man and get tickets and accidents your insurance goes up or it could be cancelled. The end result is that people modify their behavior to what is a financially sensible state.

The same would happen with healthcare if people were directly responsible for their own insurance and suffered the consequences of their dumb decisions. Smoke and destroyed your lungs? Your insurance should cost you $50K per year. Enjoy. Drink alcohol like an animal and turned your liver into mush? $75K a year. Have fun. The rest of us would have sensible policies which would reward us for being responsible while covering us in the case of catastrophic events or serious illness outside of our control.

To be clear, I don't have a problem contributing to the pot to help out those afflicted with cancer or similar horrible diseases. A portion of everyone's premiums would cover these out-of-the-norm cases. Then there's the case of obesity caused by diseases like Cushings Syndrome (pituitary gland tumor) that's potentially deadly and has nothing to do with over-eating. We need to collectively help those people. Nothing wrong with that.

I do have a problem supporting the moron who has a Double Big-Gulp every day chased by a large pizza and no exercise other than playing XBox for hours every day.

That said, the app for the model looks interesting. I had my basal metabolic rate measured last year before I started a Master's Swimming program. I like numbers and wanted to have some data. It was 1850 kcal/day. According to the Human Weight Simulator I have to consume 2576 kcal/day to maintain my weight. That, for some reason, feels way too high. I haven't counted calories in a long time, but might do it for a few weeks just to get a sense of what this model is doing. I doubt that I am consuming much more than 1700 kcal/day on average. But, I could be wrong.

I'd be nice if they released a paper with this equation the article mentions. Is that published anywhere?

<comment><USER21> Http://begthequestion.info

<comment><USER32> I know. I went back to edit that but it was too late. I meant to say "raises the question" but fell into an all-too-common trap. This is easy to do in English if you are not on your toes because the word "question" has two meanings and "beg", in my opinion, makes it even more confusing. In other languages, for example, Spanish, the equivalent phrase is not ambiguous at all: petición de principio

I actually studied Logic in Spanish while my family was living abroad. Sometimes that does a number with my brain because I actually think about the fallacies in Spanish!

Thanks for pointing that out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I disagree with the article, and don't believe mathematics has the answer to obesity.

However, if someone would like to start a diet-centered startup with me, I believe I have an insight that invalidates every diet book on the planet.

Every diet book on the planet makes one very false assumption. Before we get to the assumption, let's review something uncontroversial:

\- You put on fat by eating more calories than you use; and you lose fat by using more calories than you eat.

In other words, losing fat (beating obesity) would seem to be a combination of "diet and fitness". If you like, you can view every diet book on the planet as a combination of strategies that fall into those two categories (eat less or use more of the calories).

So how can ALL those strategies be wrong?

Let's turn the equation "net fat gain = calories in - calories out" into something more familiar. "net bank account gain = money in - money out."

is it really so simple? Yes. Everyone who weighs more than they want has more money in their bank account (more Calories on their body, ready to burn off) than they want.

Now to get to the big diet books' fallacy, let's turn this around. You're a multimillionaire and want to lose half of your money. What's the easiest way to do it? The easiest way to do it, if you're a millionaire, is to call up your accountant and say, "I would like to donate half of my money to Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, please arrange this."

That's a strategy. You can write it down on a piece of paper and fax it to your accountant with your signature on the bottom, after a few more signatures it's done.

So, what is the difference between THIS strategy and a DIET strategy? Simple: When you wrote that down to fax your your accountant (or booked a hotel room by email, or booked an appointment with a repairperson, contractor, whatever, basically anything like that) then the strategy you wrote down and faxed, in that fax, had the effect that the person it addresses WILL OBEY YOUR COMMAND. They will follow your strategy.

Whereas, if you decide "every morning 5 pushups" and write it down, even if you fax it to yourself that does NOT mean that its recipient (you) will do 5 pushups the next morning.

In other words, every diet book on the planet thinks that you are the boss of the person doing the dieting and exercising, and simply have to micromanage what they do.

But you are NOT the boss of you. Let's recap.

Writing:

"Dear ---, After careful deliberation I have decided that I will immediately be donating 1/2 of all of my wealth to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. Please liquidate an appropriate portion of my investments in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds (in equal measure) for me to to be able to donate half of my net worth, and then prepare the donation for my signature. Yours truly,"

now it will start to happen, and another signature or two and it's done. (Even if this was considerable work for the accountant!!!)

Now write down: "Starting tomorrow morning, as soon as you wake up please ensure your first action is to do 5 pushups and 5 situps. For seven days do so, then for the next week do 10 of each, the next week 15 of each, then 20, and os on, until you reach 50 of each (after 10 weeks), which you should keep doing indefinitely. Yours truly, yours truly."

Simple strategy, right? Only problem is, if you fax it to yourself, I can almost guarantee you that the recipient of the fax will not do what you want. Even if you sign it. Even if you really, really want you recipient to follow through. They won't.

Every single diet book makes the SINGULAR mistake of thinking that its reader is free to choose a strategy of consumption and of exercise. Not so: the reader can agree with every word. Unlike agreeing with every word of investment advice that a rich person can order an accountant to follow through on, the reader of any diet book has no such power to order that a strategy (of either diet or of exercise) be executed.

\- read about Tahiti, decide you want to see it, call your travel agent and have them book a room in Tahiti, and a room will be booked in Tahiti.

\- read a fad diet, decide you want to see the results, and... no guarantee you will have a chance to see them.

In sum, if you see what is wrong with the present offering, please email me for collobaring on an interesting alternative.

<comment><USER21> You aren't wrong, but you could cut 70% of the words from your post without losing the point. Trim the fat.

<comment><USER33> Sorry, I've waited a day before this reply since I think the mods didn't like that I seemed a bit like an infomercial. see sister post, you may also be interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> tl;dr - eat less

</comment><comment><USER35> These articles are so amusing. As a regular cyclist eating too much has never been a problem for me. If people really wanted to be thin they would get their ass out on the bike trail with the rest of us ridiculously fit people instead of sitting in front of the television. Since its pretty lonely out there most of the time its clear what choice people are making and I don't feel one bit sorry for you when you have to live with it. Fatty.</comment>


U.S. Is a Low-Tax Nation Unless You Earn a Lot - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-15/taxes-in-u-s-are-low-overall-but-not-for-high-earners <comment><USER2> The article says taxes on the rich in the us are a fairly high 37%. But that's quite misleading, because the rich have all sorts of ways to cut those taxes, like tax shelters, that are unavailable to everyone else. The actual rates the pay are far lower, as low as zero.

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems discussion of capital gains taxation was omitted?

</comment><comment><USER4> And once again we ignore regressive payroll taxes?</comment>


Ticketmaster (.es) stores passwords in plain text - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/a/4oZWP

<comment><USER2> While they probably do not store in plain text and are just encrypting/decrypting, they still are not following the best practices of hashing the password in a one-way method.

Of course, they also shouldn't be sending any password, even a newly generated one clear text in an email like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> You win an extra internet just for using 'HUNTER2' as the example password.</comment>


Why SDRs Need to Care About Sand Hill Road - <AUTHOR> https://mattermark.com/sdrs-need-care-sand-hill-road/ <comment><USER2> What's an SDR?

I am familiar with SWEs, SWDs, SREs, etc., but the only prominent SDR definition seems to be "Software Defined Radio".</comment>


What is the most secure and ethical messaging/broadcast platform? - <AUTHOR> I've left facebook, and so I've also said goodbye to Messenger.  I already use Telegram and Discord (I know nothing about it's privacy/ethicality), but I'm open to alternatives that are even better that I can encourage my friends and family to use with me.  What do you use and why HN?<p>Big thanks. <comment><USER2> Keybase is an awesome platform. Open-source, focused on security, and gaining traction in the messaging space. Check them out [https://keybase.io/](https://keybase.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will.</comment></comment>


Gravitational Waves: The Silent Disaster - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/swlh/gravitational-waves-the-silent-disaster-ab18857c68f8 <comment><USER2> [https://www.quantamagazine.org/studies-rescue-ligos- gravitat...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/studies-rescue-ligos- gravitational-wave-signal-from-the-noise-20181213/)

<comment><USER3> From the article:

> But Green and Moffat inferred that the Copenhagen physicists had not > "windowed" the two sets of noise data.

If that is true, that would be a rookie mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article does not come across as especially credible. I'm not a physicist, but my bullshit detector is indicating that the main thing desired here is attention

There's a nice photo of the author on his website: [http://alexander- unzicker.com/](http://alexander-unzicker.com/)

</comment><comment><USER5> As far as I can see Unzicker seems like a crank.

He seems to have the mentality of physics as a community backwards - it would be extremely productive if LIGO came back with a negative result - not a disaster. Wave equations drop out of general relativity (and general relativity works almost everywhere else), if they weren't there what gives?</comment>


Europe's robots to become 'electronic persons' under draft plan - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-robotics-lawmaking-idUSKCN0Z72AY <comment><USER2> A person doing X is taxed, while robot doing X is not. That, of course, gives unfair advantage to robots and shrinks the amount of taxes collected. I get it. But wouldn't abandoning taxing of people and taxing the flow of goods and services instead be a better way to address that?</comment>


Show HN: Team Leaderboard – Slack Reactions Leaderboard for Your Slack Team - <AUTHOR> https://www.teamleaderboard.us <comment><AUTHOR> I just finished up the first version of a side project I have been working on and I'm looking for any feedback, please let me know if you have any positive or critical thoughts :)</comment>


Why Conspiracy Theorists Will Never Believe the 'Official' Epstein Story - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/08/epstein-suicide-conspiracies/595906/ <comment><USER2> Specific conspiracy theories aside, it's unsurprising that a lot of people - hell, even I! - find the course of events surprising.

The man had a dubious source of income, was offered an incredibly irregular plea deal, all sorts of theories abounded about his having information on other connected people, attempted suicide in jail, was (surprisingly) taken _off_ suicide watch, and then died conveniently. Seems like quite the chain of coincidences.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also why reasonable people won't believe it either. i.e. high level pedophile who is known to attempt suicide is allowed to commit suicide. I mean there are many ways to keep people from committing suicide including straight jackets, various drugs, watching them continuously. Most "conspiracy theorists" already theorized this was going to happen when he was arrested, why was it allowed to happen?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Second_crimina...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Epstein#Second_criminal_case)

Even this looks highly suspicious :

> On July 23, Epstein was found injured and semiconscious at 1:30 a.m. on the > floor of his cell, with marks around his neck that were suspected to be from > a suicide attempt or an assault. His cellmate, former New York City police > officer Nicholas Tartaglione, who is charged with four counts of murder, was > questioned about Epstein's condition. He denied knowledge of what happened. > Epstein said he recollected nothing.[134][142][143][144] According to NBC > News, two sources said that Epstein might have tried to hang himself, a > third said the injuries were not serious and could have been staged, while a > fourth source said that an assault by his cellmate had not been ruled > out.[68]

<comment><USER4> You would think they would have a camera on such a high profile perp.

<comment><USER5> Given the ubiquity of surveillance in our society I have reached the conclusion that any time there is a high profile case where there's a conspicuous lack of surveillance evidence I operate under the assumption that it was intentional.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Top reasons anyone with more than three brain cells to rub together will never believe an "Epstein killed himself entirely of his own volition and with no outside help or encouragement" story:

1.) We'll never be given a satisfactory explanation for why Epstein was not under redundant 24/7 surveillance (because there can't _be_ one).

2.) The trail will go cold in the ongoing SDNY conspiracy investigation, and even if more details come out from the victims or court documents, none of the high profile people who were implicated in his sex trafficking ring like Prince Andrew, Bill Clinton, or Alan Dershowitz, will see any consequences or be held accountable in any way for their crimes.

3.) Point 2.) notwithstanding, the release of an unending series of bizarre and inexplicable details about Epstein and his life will probably continue, in which power-worshipping news outlets like _The Atlantic_ will show no interest whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Why won't they believe everything we shove in their face?" The article.

I don't think the notion of official account is even possible? Generally accepted account? Sure.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just saw an ad on youtube promoting a conspiracy theory about Epstein. From epoch times

</comment><comment><USER8> I just saw an ad on google promoting a conspiracy theory about Epstein. From epoch times</comment>


Busted: How to deal with Police Encounters - <AUTHOR> http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/busted/

<comment><USER2> This is surprisingly good.

<comment><AUTHOR> HAHA. As corny as it is presented, it is very informative.</comment></comment>


Made the front page of reddit: 60x traffic, only 8x revenue - <AUTHOR>

Last month one of my niche sites made it to the front page of reddit (in the TIL subreddit). Thought it was interesting that I got a huge influx of traffic (20k visitors), but only an additional $12 in ad revenue.<p>Lesson learned: Not all traffic is created equal! <comment><USER2> Did you adjust for time spent on site and/or bounce rates?

I've found this kind of temporary traffic burst from high-profile sites is often very transient traffic, people clicking on a link out of curiosity because they saw it somewhere, with a very high bounce rate. It's the kind of traffic from people who open 30 tabs and then briefly visit each one. Doesn't matter (at least for my sites) whether it's Reddit, Slashdot, HN, an NYT Blog, etc.—almost never has the same CPM as "regular" traffic, regardless of the burst source. Visitors who come via organic search or bookmarks are much more likely to spend more than 1 second on the page and read/interact with something.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would bet (no citation) that a lot of Reddit users use AdBlock compared to the average web user

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great point, completely agree

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That implies about $1-2/CPM. Which is not an unusual value.

20k visitors for the front page of Reddit sounds low, though. I've hit the front page (with [http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2ac8ba/who_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2ac8ba/who_performs_the_best_in_online_classes_by_age/) , also a default subreddit) and I received 150k visitors.

<comment><AUTHOR> 150k wow! Maybe the subreddit subscribers perform differently, or I wasn't on the front for that long. It did have over 1800 votes though

<comment><USER5> You'll see quite a bit more traffic if you get over 3,000 votes. Seeing the 3k or the 4k threshold is a quality signal for reddit's more casual browsers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Getting on the front page of these communities is great but I wouldn't solely look at them as a source of customers. Sometimes you have to create awareness before you have enough credibility for people to sign up. This is especially true for developers. Devs are more difficult to sell.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's the monthly report that has my detailed numbers, if you're curious: [http://www.sideprojectprofit.com/july-2014-profit- report/](http://www.sideprojectprofit.com/july-2014-profit-report/)

<comment><USER7> What kind of bounce rate do your normally get from organic traffic vs the Reddit traffic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Bounce rate is pretty similar (actually better), 55% organic, 50% from reddit.

<comment><USER7> Interesting, was expecting a higher number. Did it translate in a higher time on site as well?

On the 20k, it's actually low for Reddit, but it's so volatile and random, i've had posts generating 185k+ views for around the same amount of points in active sub reddits.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Inside the Chinese Bitcoin Mine That's Making $1.5M a Month - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/chinas-biggest-secret-bitcoin-mine

<comment><USER2> Why use the profits from October in the headline of an article published in February? The cost of bitcoins has nearly halved in the meanwhile. Hope they had a healthy profit margin before.

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember reading somewhere that some Chinese miners will mine at a loss because they can purchase the equipment/energy/cooling/etc in RMB but convert the BTC into USD, circumventing the country's capital controls.

Does anyone have any more information about this?</comment>


This is what AI sees and hears when it watches 'The Joy of Painting' - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/06/ai-on-joy-of-painting-on-LSD/ <comment><USER2> Wow, like something from Jim Henson's nightmares</comment>


Three ReactJS and Flux commandments - <AUTHOR> http://kriswallsmith.net/post/113538449364/three-reactjs-flux-commandments

<comment><USER2> Update: I was probably wrong in disagreeing; actions from actions works if they are on different stores, but to stay away from trouble you're probably better off creating "followup async actions" from stores rather than other actions.

Original comment:

I'm not sure I agree with the first point. Let's say your store's HTTP requests fails and you want to inform the user (through the view component). You want to listen to yet another event from the same store to catch this? An alternative is to do exactly what you say you shouldn't do in step 1; basically have a "loadDataAction" that you fire off when your component gets mounted, using some unique id or something. Prior to this action, the store will return whatever it has (synchronously, similar to what you describe). The action then handles the HTTP request. If it succeeds, it updates the store, and the listener will get the updated data (yes, I agree, the component should always have a listener to the store). If it fails, the same "loadDataAction" will fire off a "showMessageAction" which also alters some store that your component listens to that will display the error message. Typically this would be caught by some higher-up global "show message" component. Like most people, I'm pretty new to a lot of this as well, but I have found that trying to keep most async stuff in the actions works a lot better than async everywhere. YMMV.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to show an error when an AJAX request fails, that failure constitutes a change in application state, which should be reflected in a server action. This action would end up in an ErrorStore, which a DisplayErrors component would be listening to somewhere. If you show an alert dialog (for example), the user closing that dialog would also constitute a change in application state, as the error has been dismissed, which would be reflected in a view action, which would eventually get to the ErrorStore and remove that error.

<comment><USER2> This we agree on. But if you're doing your async stuff in your store, is this where you want to create your "setErrorAction", essentially creating actions inside your stores? The times I've done this it has ended painfully, and that pain went away if I kept these kind of state updates in actions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the error action creator would be called from inside the store, which would in turn call handleServerAction. You may have been attempting to dispatch an action inside of an action, which isn't allowed. I hit that wall a few times.

<comment><USER2> You're right, I'm wrong. An cycle needs to complete before another action can be dispatched (against the same store I believe). I think I need some rest. :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mosh (mobile shell) - <AUTHOR> http://mosh.mit.edu/

<comment><USER2> I've been using Mosh for a few weeks now and my impression is positive overall. My biggest criticism is that Mosh doesn't support mouse integration. I use a bash script that sets up mouse integration and then launches Mosh for me, but even then it's still a little glitchy.

Otherwise, it's pretty transparent and does its job well.

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016745](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5016745)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3819382](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3819382)

<comment><USER4> so, we can look forward to another one of these posts in ~250 days

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still no working scrollback buffer. That's the big stickler for me. They said it would be fixed in v1.3 but that was a while back.

</comment><comment><USER6> i remembered this shell has been featured several times on HN homepage. What's changed?

<comment><USER7> It seems easier to install than it was last time I looked at it. I remember trying briefly and giving up, on both Linux and Cygwin.

I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect it will go much easier now. Since I happen to be doing a lot of interactive work on high latency 3G connections right now, this is a good time to give it another shot.</comment></comment>


Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? - <AUTHOR> http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/do-we-need-a-37-cent-coin/ <comment><USER2> The story (picked up from Daniel Davies at <http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com>) goes that the way one argued with Milton Friedman was to listen until he got to the part of his argument where he said "let's assume x" and then say "no, let's not!" That is, the part of the argument doing all the work tended to be hiding in some premise that economists consider innocuous but is in no way representative of the world.

So here, premise (2): "probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform." No! Not true! In reality, people price a disproportionate number of transactions to make easy change with the coins we have, be easily divisible, be .01 less than a larger number of dollars, and so on. The discovery that cash transactions had a uniform distribution of change would actually be quite weird.

But worse is the smuggling in of an unconsidered definition of the good in the form of the efficiency metric -- fewest coins per transaction. Even granting the uniform distribution, making change out of your pocket is still solving the subset-sum problem in your head, which is of course NP-complete. The existing setup of coins, including the first three powers of 5, makes this problem very easy while almost all the proposed "better" solutions actually make this aspect of the problem harder rather than easier. Who cares if I have to handle a few extra tenths of a coin per transaction if it means I don't have to spend two minutes puzzling out how to make change?

I suppose the lesson, as usual, is that business logic is lived experience, not theory.

<comment><USER3> Not quite in the USA you buy three items that end in 99c, but two of them have state sales tax, one of those has local sales tax and the other has a liquor tax.

SO you can work out the change IF you know the random extra amount that will be added at the checkout

<comment><USER4> I've actually started using $2 bills for this reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I rather suspect that if we consider "the ability for most of the population to correctly and reliably perform mental math using the tokens provided" that while our current system still doesn't _win_ it has a much better showing. And yes, I'm willing to ignore the fact that people are already familiar with the current system, but I can't come up with a much better one off the top of my head.

By that metric, 37-cent pieces are just about the worst coinage possible, 11-cent pieces are a joke, and even 15-cent pieces which don't evenly add up to a dollar are a suboptimal.

Even by economist standards, ignoring this aspect of the system is rather a disappointment.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps a good measure of whether or not the general populous can perform mental math based on the value of the coins is to check and see whether or not a single dollar is divisible by the value of the coins (as you hinted with the 15 cent coin). It allows for many mental paths to arrive at the correct answer for what amount of coins are needed to make a certain sum. Take the nickel for example, to make 50 cents you might think to yourself, "I just need to divide 50 by 5, which is obviously 10." Alternately one might think, "I know there are 20 nickels in a dollar, if I halve this I'll have half a dollar, which is 50 cents. That means I need 10 nickels."

I'd say that the pool of coin values we can choose from then are 50, 25, 20, 10, 5, 2, 1. The two cent piece is already in use in Europe, and many economists have suggested adding it to the coinage in the united states (usually in replacement for the penny altogether). It'd be interesting to see if the 20 cent coin would be a viable addition though.

<comment><USER7> I very much agree that's the practical pool of possible coin values.

Seems to me if one wanted to simplify the system, a good solution would be (1, 5, 10, 50). This would really make the math simple.

But I don't think people would give up quarters happily; nor do I think fifty cent pieces would go over well; and I think it's high time to lose pennies. So if I was the evil overlord in charge, I think I'd just drop to (5, 25). Cash transactions would round to the nearest nickel instead of penny. Getting back four nickels instead of two dimes would be gotten used to quickly, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jeez, the 37signals worshipping around here is getting a bit out of hand.

In all seriousness, how about vendors start pricing products with tax included, rounding to the nearest quarter dollar? Say what you will about movie theatre concession pricing, at least you're not going to walk out of there needing a tub for your change as well as your popcorn.

<comment><USER9> At least here in Australia, prices at the shops will include taxes. So getting the correct change out while waiting in line is pretty simple.

<comment><USER10> Same in the UK.

Sales tax in the US is just ridiculous. I've never understood why they would prefer things that way.

<comment><USER11> As mentioned elsewhere, it's because sales tax varies from state to state and from county to county. So if you're going to advertise something for a given price, you either have to exclude sales tax or accept that you'll be making significantly less profit selling it in California than in Oregon.

It's a crazy system, but state and local governments are dependent on sales tax revenue so it's impossible to dislodge.

The system in the UK isn't exactly sane either though, as I recall from the fact that everything at Pret is advertised with an "eat in" and "take away" price since the two scenarios are taxed differently. If you say you'll take it away but then change your mind and eat it in, you're presumably in serious (theoretical) trouble.

And then you've got the Australian system which is at least invisible to the consumer but is still annoying and inconsistent to the merchant. It _was_ going to be a consistent 10% applied to everything, but the minor left-wing parties insisted at the last minute that it needed to exclude some but not all forms of food. Meanwhile feminists have been agitating for years to get tampons excluded as well... not because any analogous male or unisex product (toilet paper?) is excluded but because they have apparently run out of any serious problems to complain about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Actually, the search for "the most efficient coin system" is kinda pointless -- if you are as advanced to discover and implement such a system, you are certainly advanced enough to implement and use a cashless system based on digital payment transactions...

<comment><USER13> The cash system will be hard to get rid of in the US. Many people want to be able to hold their real money, not just have it on a bank statement. With these same people - for fun - have a few drinks with them and try to explain to them that the dollar bill they are holding is also not 'real' in the sense that it is only a piece of paper and has no intrinsic value of its own.

<comment><USER14> Cash is also useful for anonymous transactions. The anonymous cashless protocols are very complicated compared to cash, and I don't even know if anyone implements them at all.

<comment><USER15> It would be awesome to track every transaction in an economy, though. We'd finally be able to tell exactly what our taxes are used for, and who's paying the CEO's bonus. Not to mention the benefits when combating organized crime..! I can see how some people might think it's worth sacrificing anonymity :)

<comment><USER16> You'd still not know which of the incoming payments to an account is causally connected to which outgoing payment.

<comment><USER15> You could, if the system is designed for it. Lots of little digital "coins" that are shuffled around between different accounts, with traceable history.

<comment><USER17> Dollar bills have serial numbers, so it is already possible to track incoming and outgoing transactions to an extent.

The problem would come in assigning a static serial number to a pool of bits. If I spent an electronic dollar, did that dollar come from the few bucks my neighbor gave me for gas after he borrowed my lawn mower, or from my paycheck? It's not like I care which one gets spent, since they are the same, but how would you determine which one get priority. I guess the same argument applies to dollars sitting in my wallet, but its something one would have to consider designing such a system.

<comment><USER14> >The problem would come in assigning a static serial number to a pool of bits.

I don't really see it. There are cryptographic protocols designed just for this kind of things. The real thing is it would be more awkward than just cash.

<comment><USER16> If for every dollar you spend, you have to be aware of its history ("Oh, sorry, I can't buy cigarettes now, I only have two research-grant-dollars and three from my non-smoking mom, neither of which may be used for tobacco"), then the money ceases to be money (in the meaning of uniform tokens of value) and you're back at some later stage of bartering economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I quite like the idea of 1/3/10/30 cent denominations. The even more efficient combinations would be mainly a social experiment: would people adapt with better mental arithmetic, would they revolt or would they rely on automation (cash tills, computers) even more?

The Euro/cent has far too many denominations with 1/2/5 at each power of 10 up to €500 (split between 8 coins and 7 notes). Combining 2s & 5s into 3s would reduce that to 10 denominations total, and I think it would be reasonable to drop single-digit cents from cash transactions entirely. IIRC Finland has "banned" 1 & 2 cent coins already. (they're in circulation obviously, but no prices require anything below the 5 cent coin)

<comment><USER19> I like the idea of a ternary currency: redefine the dollar¹ to be worth 81 pennies², and then issue 1p, 3p, 9p, and 27p coins. (cf. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary>)

Of course no country other than Geekistan would actually do this, so I would settle for a 1/3/10/30 system.

¹Or pound or euro, of course.

²We couldn't call them "cents" any more, could we?

<comment><USER18> _Of course no country other than Geekistan would actually do this_

You do know about pre-decimal Pound Sterling, right? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound_sterling#Pre-decimal>

I particularly like the insanity of the Guinea denomination (1 Pound + 1 Shilling = 21 Shillings). My girlfriend's mother apparently was still nominally paid in Guineas as a legal secretary in the early 70s. Reminds me of volume controls that go to 11.

<comment><USER19> If I were a British subject I would _totally_ get behind a campaign to un- decimalise the currency.

<comment><USER18> I wonder if anyone would notice - in the UK everyone but kids and old people seems to use credit cards these days. And old people frequently still use the pre-decimal terminology anyway.

Part of the reason for the widespread use of cashless payment might be that for larger amounts cash is totally impractical; the largest de facto denomination is £20, the £50 note gets you nowhere.

That said, I do really like the current design of the coins.

But weird currency experiments _would_ be cool.

<comment><USER20> I rarely use cash these days - maybe once a month or so.

Edit: I'm in the UK - I use a chip-n-pin debit card for most things.

<comment><USER18> I don't know where you're from, but I can only compare to various other parts of Europe as well as South Africa. The UK is definitely the most card-happy of that lot.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Actually, in the Soviet Union you used to have 3-kopek and 15-kopek coins, as well as 3-ruble notes.

<comment><USER22> Clarification: late Soviet ruble (1961-1991) had the following coins: 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 50 copecks and 1 ruble <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_ruble>

I think if you really want to minimize the number of coins per transaction, you can always add more (than four) denominations of coins, up to some reasonable number.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Abolish the penny, use a uniform rounding rule to make the nickel the smallest denomination. I hate pennies.

<comment><USER9> Read somewhere that $1 notes account for almost 50% of paper money in the US. To me it also makes sense to get rid of them (replace them with $1 coins).

<comment><USER24> Not holding my breath, but:

The Japanese solution works very very well. the 100 yen coin (their system's $1 equivalent) is smaller than a US quarter and much lighter than a british pound coin. The 500 yen coin is about as big as a Susan B. Dollar coin, yet is still quite light. I often have as much as 2000 yen in coins in my pocket at a time, and it doesn't feel particularly heavy. Paying a transaction under 1000 yen is generally quick and pleasant.

Contrast with US $1 dollar bills, that are for some reason almost always falling apart, crumpled rags, and with the Quarter being the largest coin in _common_ circulation, paying for something under $10 inevitably means fishing out a mix of disintegrating bills and small change.

<comment><USER25> I know what you mean. I cleaned out my sofa and found 5000 yen worth of 100 and 500 yen coins.

My friend had a 500 yen coin bank, which when full held over 50,000. It was not a large coin bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can i suggest splitting the $ into 20 equal parts and then each of those parts into 12cents.

Then you could have 1,2,3,6 cent coins and 1,2,10 part coins.

For anyone that can manage the calculations for feet/inches/yards/miles, drams/ounces/pounds/tons it should be simple.

<comment><USER26> Brilliant! But perhaps we could go with a 2.5 part coin instead? There's just something that feels right about that.

<comment><USER3> A sterling suggestion - I award you half-a-crown

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The negPenny! Anyone want to write a quick script to check combinations that include negative values?

<comment><USER16> Joking of which, complex currency would also be an interesting toy.

The imaginary part could represent some orthogonal aspect of worth, e.g. consumption of scarce resources.

<comment><USER5> Interesting, but since there's no reason to multiply two money values together (what use is a square dollar?), it doesn't really do anything. It ends up trivially degenerating into two currencies with some exchange rate between them.

<comment><USER28> I already consider food to have costs in two currencies: one in dollars and one in calories. There is no conversion between them; I must meet both budgets.

<comment><USER5> What on Earth are you talking about "there's no conversion between them"?!? You can't trade dollars for food? You can't trade food for dollars? What are dollars good for if there's no conversion between them and food?

The lack of an abstract market selling and buying abstract "calories" at some price doesn't mean there isn't a conversion between them, just that it isn't clean and has a lot of other moving parts, just like everything else in the real world.

Hie thee hence to a microeconomics textbook forthwith, I've been enjoying [http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC...](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_ToC.html) but heck anything would do.

<comment><USER28> I don't mean that I can't buy food. I mean that I can't trade between dollars and calories. For example, a scoop of premium ice cream costs me $1.25 and 250 calories. The currencies are independant and inexchangeable; if there was an exchange rate between them, I could get that same food for $5.00 and 50 calories.

Any food I contemplate has a cost somewhere in dollar-calorie space, so the currency with which I buy food can be accurately modeled as a two dimensional vector space (or perhaps as the complex numbers, though I guess I don't really use the field properties...).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe he should take into account that in the real world most prices are xy.99, this might change stipulation 2.

<comment><USER30> Except there is sales tax, so your $xx.99 purchases usually don't end up that way. For a $1.99 purchase in my city I end up paying $2.13 which would be helped nicely by the $.37 cent coin.

I see your point, I doubt the distribution is completely uniform. But it's probably not as clustered as you'd think (different taxation levels helps).

<comment><USER29> Ok, I see. I live in germany, where the tax is already included (a 99 cent coin would be really efficient here).

<comment><USER31> The problem as others have stated with including the tax is that if you have a multi-state presence, the tax rates for different cities, counties, and states are different, and sometimes are a huge difference (2-3%). I don't think it should be up to the retailer to foot the difference. But I do think rounding is an easier solution than a 37-cent piece.

<comment><USER32> Things are complicated when considering applying this to an online price list for example, but applying to individual brick and mortar retail locations, I don't see what the problem with the in store displayed price to be different in different tax jurisdictions.

<comment><USER33> And online merchants don't take coins anyway.

<comment><USER32> I was thinking something more of large chain operations that have websites referencing physical stores, like Walmart or Best Buy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm willing to use 0.60 more coins during transactions if it saves people from actually learning how to count.

</comment><comment><USER35> Say what you will, at least the article has a sense of humor.

 _"How can you tell that Patrick is a young economist from the preceding discussion? Because he finds that the current government solution for the coins we use is 98 percent efficient and thinks this is inefficient."_

</comment><comment><USER36> 10 years ago, when I visited Australia, their currency was similar in value to the US (I think an aussie dollar was worth roughly 65 cents US), and they had no pennies OR nickles. It started at 10 cents.

They also had 1 and 2 dollar coins.

The best part was that the change in your pocket was worth enough to actually allow you to buy things with it. Not like we have now, where people only use it to avoid getting more change back.

</comment><comment><USER37> The novelist Anthony Burgess once wrote about the convenience of the old British system of pence, shillings, pounds, and guineas: the pound was evenly divisible to a value in pence if not shillings by 2, 3, 5, and guinea also by 7.

</comment><comment><USER38> Who uses coins to pay exact change? I use bills, pocket the change (or leave it in the dish), it piles up in jars at home.

Make the coins lighter! So my pocket doesn't wear out from carrying half a pound of worthless metal.

</comment><comment><USER39> frankly I don't see why we even need coins at all. Talk about your waste of resources minting all of those. It was fine when a can of coke was 25 cents or when you could get a new car for 2 grand. But in this day and age? It's just a waste.

should just switch to a digital currency already...disposable credit cards that can transfer funds between each other.

<comment><USER40> Well, some people really like cash, and I still run into places, particularly in rural areas, where credit cards are only allowed on purchases over $20. The credit card fees are a great incentive to keep cash / coins.

<comment><USER41> Visa and MasterCard don't allow merchants to impose a minimum purchase requirement.

<comment><USER32> It may be against the terms of the merchant's agreement, but locally in eastern Canada it's quite common (for both debit and credit transactions), and (although I don't follow the issue closely) I've never heard of a lawsuit brought forth over it. I'm sure the CC companies would be up in arms if it were a national chain of some kind, but the little Mom'n'Pop restaurants and convenience stores seem to fly under the radar, even if that category may be large in aggregate.

<comment><USER41> I've heard of places that lost the ability to accept VISA/MC payment for imposing their own minimum.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> it would be a lot more efficient if we went to only 1 decimal place and got rid of everything but the dime.

</comment><comment><USER43> Yes!

</comment><comment><USER44> I hate economists.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm more concerned about other aspects of the U.S. economy. Such as inflation. That's what made pennies worth so little in the first place.

These numbers are also more interesting than pennies: <http://usdebtclock.org/></comment>


Git User Survey 2010 Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://git.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/GitSurvey2010

<comment><USER2> Wow, over 77% of surveyed Git users use Github! What incredible traction! Congrats!

<comment><USER3> It's worth pointing out (as the linked page does) that the survey was announced prominently on GitHub (and wasn't on some other Git hosting sites), so those results might be skewed.

(Either way though, they clearly do have a ton of very well-deserved mindshare. GitHub one of the very few services I find to be worth paying for. I wouldn't be nearly as attached to Git as I am if GitHub didn't exist.)

<comment><USER4> Why not?

Hosting your own Git repository is not an overly complicated affair, and even if GitHub did not exist, what would be the lure of an alternate content repository mechanism?

<comment><USER5> True, you can host your own repo with just `git init`!

But, Github really handles the social element of code well. I really like how they encourage forking & collaboration.

They also provide an issue tracker, wiki, and some webpage functionality. All easy to duplicate, but it's even more trivial to sign up for a github account.

<comment><USER6> This is they key point. Github has made contributing to opensource projects as simple as following someone on twitter.

Think about that for a minute. Forget which dvcs tool they're using. You want to know why launchpad and bitbucket don't have the same uptake? It's not the tool. It's the fact that, as a maintainer, I can easily accept contributions from anyone who wants to submit a pull request. As an end user, I can IMMEDIATELY start hacking on some project with a simple click of the "fork" button.

THAT is the power of Github.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Only half of surveyed users use "shell completion of commands". It's useful (e.g. autocompletion of branch names), but doesn't come with the default Git distribution (at least on OS X). I expect this to change as a result of this survey.</comment>


Scikit-learn: machine learning in Python - <AUTHOR> http://scikit-learn.org/

<comment><USER2> This has been around for a long time. Is there something new about the website that I'm missing?

<comment><USER3> This was my first reaction too, I've been using it for over a year and I had assumed patrons of HN knew all about it. For anyone who isn't familiar, this is a great library for getting machine learning code up and running quickly!

<comment><USER2> Same. I've known about it for quite a while, used it a bit for a small side project. Highly recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't see anything new here, but for any practioners like myself Scikit- learn and Spyder were the Python tools which finally moved me from a die hard MATLAB junkie.

I grabbed the handy Anaconda package from here: [https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/](https://store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/)

Within about two weeks, and with a little bit of discipline, I became a MATLAB->Python convert. Spyder is a solid IDE, and Anaconda comes with all the packages you need (i.e. Matplotlib...).

All that's left now is to find a solution to MATLAB's excellent debugging. You can break to pydb in Spyder but the debug environment is nowhere near as functional as iPython.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried ipdb?

[https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ipdb](https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ipdb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Fwiw, Deeplearning4j.org is a modest attempt to bring sci-kit learn's semantics to the Java and Scala communities.

</comment><comment><USER7> scikit learn is a great package, but it's bizarre that people haven't heard of it before?

</comment><comment><USER8> Out of curiosity, do they have any functionality for dealing with larger than memory datasets?

<comment><USER9> Sort of. There are out-of-core learning algorithms (e.g. SGD) that work on data that doesn't entirely fit in main memory. Please see: [http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/applications/pl...](http://scikit- learn.org/stable/auto_examples/applications/plot_out_of_core_classification.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems to be offline to me?

<comment><USER11> Working fine for me.

<comment><USER10> Okay, now it also works for me :)</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Algorithmic Factory: Immaterial Labour and Data Harvesting - <AUTHOR> https://labs.rs/en/facebook-algorithmic-factory-immaterial-labour-and-data-harvesting/ <comment><USER2> I knew that FB was collecting all website interactions and loads of data from the mobile phone, but I didn't realize there was such a big second market of companies selling and analyzing our personal data.

I'm wondering what kind of abuse can this kind of system enable to people who have direct access to such rich information about anyone.</comment>


WhatsApp for Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/whatsapp-for-chrome/bgkodfmeijboinjdegggmkbkjfiagaan

<comment><USER2> I find this the best way to use WhatsApp on my computer. I no longer forget the WhatsApp tab open somewhere in the browser, because, this extension does not even require me to have the browser open. Plus, I can add it to the dock on Mac, which allows be to quickly get to it. Definitely a must have for WhatApp users.

</comment><comment><USER3> This extension is bringing to my computer the flexibility of keeping in touch with family, friends and colleagues that are on whatasapp while keeping the focus on just one device (my computer). AMAZING IDEA!!!

</comment><comment><USER4> This is _not_ the official WhatsApp app that was released last week: [https://web.whatsapp.com/](https://web.whatsapp.com/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, this application packages the official WhatsApp into a Chrome Application, this way it "feels" like a Desktop Application.

<comment><USER5> The average user won't understand the difference. Since you're using the WhatsApp brand name it's better to add a disclaimer that you're not affiliated with WhatsApp/Facebook Inc. Heck, I would worry a Whatapp lawyer contacts you for misleading users.

I know, from an engineering point of view it's like opening a document in an iframe, but again I think the average user searching for 'WhatsApp' in the Chrome store will think it's the official app.

Current description contains their official logo and "WhatsApp is the most popular messenger application for mobile, and now it is available for FREE at the Chrome Web Store!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't want to keep a tab open just for the whatsapp web page. This makes a world of difference, great job!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is just brilliant. Super convinient when I'm working at my desk. No need to be juggling with two devices.

</comment><comment><USER8> Excelent addon for chrome. 5 Stars.</comment>


GCP is Down - <AUTHOR> Our stuff, Pivotal Tracker, GCP Status, GCP Management, etc.. Any other sites you see? <comment><USER2> Are you in the Bay/Valley area? We have servers hosted there that cannot reach services in Google. We can reach those services fine from Vancouver however.

The traffic out of San Jose to Google is all being routed to China first and we are dropping a lot of packets when trying to get to Google from there.

<comment><USER3> I'm having the same issue from Los Angeles to us-central.

<comment><USER2> I have friends in LA and New York all reporting access to Google going through China first and lots of packet loss.

<comment><USER4> Can confirm, I am on the East Coast in Florida and seeing the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is GCP under-reporting their downtimes on [https://status.cloud.google.com/](https://status.cloud.google.com/) ? I thought the Kube issue went on for 2-3 days, as well...

</comment><comment><USER6> In San Diego, and Spotify seems down for me (and for others, according to Twitter). Some other smaller sites too.

</comment><comment><USER7> Los Angeles here, Google.com and Spotify have been intermittent/down all morning.

</comment><comment><USER8> Facebook apparently was down earlier as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not just GCP - looks to be a big BGP hijack of large sets of prefixes. All pointing to ChinaTelecom .... fishy</comment>


NameJack: display your website visitor's name - <AUTHOR> http://www.ysoheil.com/2013/12/namejack-display-your-website-visitors.html

<comment><USER2> Well I followed the link and it did not display my name or seem to make any attempt</comment>


Google Emerges as Early Winner from Europe's New Data Privacy Law - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/eus-strict-new-privacy-law-is-sending-more-ad-money-to-google-1527759001 <comment><USER2> While GDPR in itself has accomplished the goal of raising awareness on data security and transparency, probably only temporarily, the mind numbingly idiotic push-button based consent model is an utter failure.

99% of people don't read anything before they push yes. Most people get increasingly annoyed at the mountain of e-mails, and the hundreds of pages they in principle have to read through.

It's an extension of the already existing kafkaesque "press yes to allow cookies" that everyday has to be pressed multiple times with no real benefits other than wasting peoples time (at least in the EU).

People are already completely over encumbered with information. The more people have to do the same thing the less they give-a-f.

This carpet bombing of legal jargon makes people hate services, especially the smaller ones i am sure. "oh i don't want to deal with lots of legal contracts again".

I completely agree that something has to be done about the data-mining and fingerprinting monster, but the way all of this is implemented only further exacerbates the mega-corp gardens because they can afford to hire armies of lawyers, and because people get tired of clicking "i consent" after the bare minimum has been done - which off course means only saying yes to companies highest on the Alexa ranking.

Ironically these global conglomorates are the worst offenders and the original data-disaster culprit.

<comment><USER3> _99% of people don 't read anything before they push yes. Most people get increasingly annoyed at the mountain of e-mails, and the hundreds of pages they in principle has to read through._

No offense, but this feels like a "99%" and "most" that is something less than rigorous. I don't think sound arguments for or against GDPR can come from the "Ah Reckon" space. Throwing out made-up numbers that just represent personal assumptions and anecdote is an impediment to real discussion of these issues.

I'd add that GDPR explicitly forbids just the kind of "press yes to forfeit all of your rights" crap we've seen before. I realize that some sites are still trying to get away with it, it it's non-compliant.

<comment><USER4> >No offense, but this feels like a "99%" and "most" that is something less than rigorous.

I've read the contracts I have to sign, and generally this throws people off drastically. When I ask, they tell me I'm the first to read them. Things like leases at a place that has been around decades and I'm the first to sit down and read before signing. While it isn't rigorous, from my experience with wet ink legal documents, saying 1% do read EULAs and privacy policies is a very optimistic over estimation by magnitudes.

<comment><USER5> I think that indicates that the legal documents weren't written to be read, more than people are too lazy to read them. They were written for a lawyer and for use in court, and it's not realistic to bring in a lawyer for every EULA and contract we encounter.

And just as honestly, what are we going to do - say no? Saying no is more and more simply not allowed if you want to use a service. I've had job offers who would rather have me walk than change the terms of employment. There's not a website out there which allows you to use it if you do not consent to their EULA. Hell, I've encountered a EULA when starting my (purchased, not leased) car.

You can't even post on Hacker News without consenting to 39 pages worth of privacy policy and TOS.

<comment><USER4> And that is why I think the core of the issue is consent. The power difference between the lawyers who understand the legal system and write these documents and the users who are forced to agree to use the service is so great that consent cannot exist between the two parties. We legally allow it, much like some countries will legally let a 9 year old sign some document and then hold them to it, but that is a legal fiction that needs to be done away with. Of course this would be a massive shock to how we do things (how would you sign up for a loan), but that alone doesn't justify allowing such abuse of consent to continue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> GDPR is yet another moat for established companies. It may take them some time to adapt their data models and engineer systems for data deletion, but once they have done so, it becomes something every startup will have to implement in order to compete.

I'm not saying GDPR isn't good for privacy (we need it); it just makes competition harder.

<comment><USER7> I think of it like outlawing chemical pollution of rivers.

Yes, a Corporation that manages not to dump toxic waste in rivers is going to have a moat against smaller companies that do dump toxic waste in rivers.

But I'd rather it be illegal than have companies competing for who can externalize their costs more effectively by passing their problem of waste management to the state / local area.

<comment><USER8> The only difference is that dumping toxic waste in rivers does actual, concrete harm. Targeted advertising? The worst I've heard about it is that it makes some people feel a little icky. I suppose that's a concrete harm in a sense but it seems a much less serious one, at least to me.

<comment><USER9> > The worst I've heard about it is that it makes some people feel a little > icky.

Yeah sure, all that privacy, who needs it anyway?

/s

<comment><USER10> Its interesting how one of the most frequent uses of the right to be forgotten is used by politicians cleaning up their search history.

Who would have thought that legislators had something to gain from a proposal they push?

<comment><USER11> Who would have thought that legislators would be aware of legislation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Do you know that saying: "Don't ask me how I made my first million?"

Many of the wealthy people became rich at first through business practices that either were in a grey area from the beginning, outright illegal, or they were made illegal later on.

However, they got to _keep their money_ , either because laws tend not to be retroactive, or because nobody caught them, etc.

I agree there is an element true in "regulations will have the monopolists even more to entrench themselves in their markets," but mostly because they got their wealth through practices that are now made illegal, and they get to keep all of that wealth when nobody else can do the same anymore.

That's really the problem here.

<comment><USER13> There are 11 million millionaires in the US. You've got it exactly backwards: few of them did something illegal to earn that first million. There are not many grey areas in US law as it pertains to business, there are very few. Most millionaires derive their wealth from ordinary small businesses.

The US isn't the wild west of Capitalism. It's a very regulated economic system. It has been that way for a very long time now. At least 10m of those 11 million millionaires generated the bulk of their wealth in the last 30-40 years, a time in which the US economy was largely as regulated as it is today. They didn't get that wealth by not having to deal with regulations or laws that were imposed later - the US has more than doubled its millionaire count just since 1996.

I grew up in a very poor area of the US. I knew at least two dozen self-made millionaires. Every one of them did it via rather boring small businesses: insurance agencies, convenience stores, shops, franchises, publishing, real estate, car dealerships, etc. Not one of them operated in a legal grey area. There was no magic to it either, it was grinding year after year for multiple decades.

I've also spent my entire adult life researching business, business formation, finance, economics, and reading every book I can get my hands on for those areas. I've read dozens of books on the history of business in the US over the last 25 years. I spend hours per day reading every consequential financial figure and article that gets published about the US and global economies. The notion that a meaningful share of rich people get started via doing something illegal, is nothing more than propaganda, and entirely unsupported propaganda at that. You will _never_ see such claims supported with evidence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So how are video games handling this in regards to banning cheaters using IP bans or HW ID bans?

Can a cheater now ask to be forgotten and therefore the ban must be removed?

</comment><comment><USER15> On a side note, should we post a link on HN which most people cannot read without paying?

<comment><USER16> [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The perverse effect of these consent buttons is that people who configured their browsers to flush all cookies and session data on closing the session get harassed much more as websites do not remember their choice, even if they are the ones actually least likely to be tracked (save for browser fingerprinting).

<comment><USER2> Nail on head!

It's complete irony. I am seriously clicking through these ginormous modals like there is no tomorrow when i have to do research on many websites.

"Free surfing" or should we say old school internet surfing has become a chore now because of these idiotic modals.

I am sure people will flee to walled gardens pretty quickly if they have to constantly make extra clicks to access stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Both in how companies are complying and in the public discourse, I'm seeing a jumbling of 'consent' and 'notice' that doesn't align with my understanding of the intent and reading of the law. Under the transparency principle (Art. 5) and disclosure obligations (Arts 13 and 14), there are a variety of things that must be disclosed to a data subject at time of collection. See [https://gdpr-info.eu/](https://gdpr-info.eu/) for easy access to the law's text. That's what privacy polices (increasingly called privacy notices) are generally used for. Many companies are trying to either make you click something to prove they've notified you or add language to the notices saying "by using this site, you consent to this privacy policy", which is a form of 'consent' they are deciding to collect themselves. Separately, a controller is supposed to have a legal basis for processing personal data (Art. 6). Consent of the data subject is only one of six legal bases. Legitimate interests of the controller is the other common basis for a business and is expected to be relied up on increasingly since the GDPR makes collecting valid consent harder and it has the downside that it must be tracked and can be withdrawn (which also must be tracked). Consent as a basis is not allowed to be buried in a privacy policy. It must be called out separately with a separate consent for each purpose the data will be used for on an opt-in basis. The policies and these consents all are supposed to be presented in as simple and plain English as possible and it's encouraged to use layered notices/policies to convey quick summaries with an ability to drill down. To add to the complexity, email marketing is governed by the ePrivacy Directive (responsible for the cookie banners) and requires consent. Each country has its own enactment of ePrivacy so compliance is very complex. Also, under the GDPR, a data subject has an absolute right to object to direct marketing regardless of the basis being relied upon. Much of this flurry of email privacy policy updates and/or consents to marketing are conflating ePrivacy and the GDPR. What I see right now is a bit of a mess as companies try to figure out what compliance looks like and balance full disclosure (transparency) with simple, easy, plain English disclosure.

</comment><comment><USER19> Non-Paywall: [http://archive.is/qkRNS](http://archive.is/qkRNS)

archive.is were having issues

<comment><USER20> Edit: link removed, does not work

<comment><USER21> Mandates javascript though. Who knows what it's doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not surprised. These type of regulations tend to help the big players a lot and just cause further concentration.</comment>


Tell HN: my first android app - <AUTHOR>

built my first android app (from almost zero experience to some, in a day) and deployed it on the google market. It's a mobile take on about.me/threewords.me.
It's available on the market as "About Jose Moreira", but i don't have a droid phone to test it, anyone? ;)
Shots:
* http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3645517/device.png
* http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3645517/device_menu .png <comment><USER2> Works fine. Landscape cuts the picture, but, menu brings up the links, all of the bookmarks work and open the browser.

(g1 and g2)

In landscape on the G1, it appears that your face is clipped at the top of your mustache to the desk. The text is centered in landscape or portrait just fine. On the G2, it is clipped just above your upper lip to just above the desk.

So, if you wanted your face to be more prominent in landscape, you might want to pin it to the top of the viewport rather than centering the image under the current viewport.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of us don't have an Android phone either, so we won't be able to run it. It'd probably be useful if you elaborate some more about what's your "take on about.me/threewords.me", if you want some feedback about the idea and ways to improve it.

<comment><AUTHOR> it just displays a picture, a small bio and the app menu links to my e-mail and social accounts (twitter, facebook).

EDIT: that data is static (doesn't access the web)</comment></comment>


Why did I self-publish my research-level math book? - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.upenn.edu/~ghrist/whyselfpublish.html <comment><USER2> This post may be interesting to people not only for the author's motivations in using Amazon's CreateSpace but also for his description of what one needs to do -- and the tools he used -- to make a good looking math book. (And much of what he says about this is probably useful for creating other kinds of books).</comment>


Facebook asks users for email passwords, then "accidentally" uploads contacts - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/facebook-asked-some-users-for-their-email-passwords-th-1834129792 <comment><USER2> Other discussion here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19688460](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19688460)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We've moved the comments there.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are Facebook keeping data on deleted accounts? - <AUTHOR> I deleted my Facebook account some time ago,  maybe 2 years. I did it with the service where you ask them to delete everything.  Recently I had a need to use Facebook again. From a new computer I attempted to register an account, to find I got an immediate ban! I really did need to join this group, so I used my work computer to create an account from a work email. It worked ok, so I added it to my phone app,  and I got an immediate ban. I certainly never had this phone when I was on Facebook before. I was on 4g at the time,  so it was nothing to do with IP addresses. I don't understand how this is possible unless Facebook withheld data about me after deletion. I also don't understand why they banned me, do they ban people who leave and rejoin? Has anyone else had this. I also note that 'due to Coronavirus' you can't appeal. This raises the issue of how Facebook can become a service that society relies on whilst arbitrarily denying access to certain users with no right of appeal? <comment><USER2> There's nothing wrong with your thinking... you've just discovered the real world. Facebook can not be trusted and it will someday amaze you that you ever thought otherwise. For me, first principles guarantee predatory behaviour in most relationships... there are few who are motivated by anything other than self-interest. If you want to find someone you can trust, look within yourself.</comment>