Blogger in Draft: Introducing Google Scribe in Blogger - <AUTHOR> http://bloggerindraft.blogspot.com/2011/08/introducing-google-scribe-in-blogger.html <comment><USER2> I turned off Chrome's prediction service once I found myself relying upon it—it was becoming difficult for me to perform searches on DuckDuckGo without it! Google was making my mind dishearteningly lethargic.

For decades, affluent humans have gone out of their way to work _physically_ harder than they need to (weight lifting, running, standing rather than sitting, etc.). Our technology is rapidly approaching a level that'll force people _not_ to use it in order to stay mentally fit!

This is really cool technology, but I _really_ don't want to rely on Google's engineers to tell me which words to write next.

</comment><comment><USER3> For a language I know well, this is not appealing, but it could be very useful at the level of (non-native) language proficiency where I can write well enough to make my meaning clear, but can't avoid sounding stilted.

</comment><comment><USER4> We'll tell you what to write. Don't worry your pretty little head.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wish they had chosen a different name. I develop ScribeFire (a blogging client that is compatible with Blogger, among many others), and this is undoubtedly going to increase my workload as confused users email questions to me regarding Scribe.</comment>


Ask YC: How to prevent social news sites from devolving? - <AUTHOR>

The thought occured to me this morning while perusing the headlines on Reddit.  Many of the headlines are starting to read a lot like a tabloid.  A few examples from today:<p>
Surprise, Surprise: Dozens of CIA Officials Privately State That Tapes Were Destroyed to Avoid Legal Consequences and Public Outcry<p> RIAA sues man for ripping his own CD's!<p>Culinary Shocker: Cooking Can Preserve, Boost Nutrient Content Of Vegetables<p> Top Ten Female Streakers-NSFW <p> It occured to me why this might occur. It seems that letting a democratic process completely replace an editorial process dooms a site to devlolving towards the lowest common denomenator.  Why are tabloids successful?  Because they appeal to the lowest common denomenator.  Whatever copy sells magazines at the newstand is what the editors are going to put in a tabloid.  <p> What do you think?  Are social news sites destined to devolve?  Should we be expecting to see articles on the Bat Child and clips of "Ow my balls!" posted on social news sites?  How does one keep social news sites from sliding down that slope? <comment><USER2> Not necessarily. I thought about this from the beginning with News.YC, because I didn't want that to happen here. The solution I came up with is to pick a group of smart people as editors and weight everyone else's votes based on how much they overlap with the editors'. Then as long as the editors don't vote for dumb stories, they won't take over the front page.

I don't have this turned on, but I do have something in the code that shows me where stories would rank if I did. The good news is that, as of right now, the front page wouldn't look significantly different if vote weighting were turned on.

<comment><USER3> As I've thought more about it, it sticks in my head: Have you tried weighting votes by the voter's karma? Use some floor for overall karma, or a logistic function, and you let the community be the editors. It could drift over time, but it would take a while to move significantly if at all. I'm willing to bet that the community principles would continue to drive submissions and votes. That inertia creates a stable orbit.

The editors seem like great training wheels and a good sanity check over time. But I'm really curious if they become irrelevant as the community takes on life. Seems like you could test this hypothesis by using karma-votes to predict edited-votes. Drift could then be measured as that prediction varies from the edited standard.

<comment><USER4> No, the tabloid posters' karma would go up (presumably) and so their postings would get stronger. (I reason that if tabloid stuff got voted down, people would post less of it, so it must be finding an audience.)

My personal tactic is to be nasty to posters of crap. It has more impact than some mere 'point', and gives them guidance as to what's wrong.

<comment><USER3> Only to the extent that the community appreciates (and up-votes) what you think of as tabloid postings. Karma is a function of every submission (and comment). If the submissions aren't appreciated, neither will be the user. If a community mind has already set in, it should, in theory, be hard to shake free of that standard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Rob Malda and the Slashdot crowd deserve kudos for blazing a trail and for sticking to their guns. they seem to have weathered Digg and the like just fine and will most likely outlast them all. I still stop by Slashdot regularly, but haven't visited reddit for almost a year now.

Slashdot seems to have found at least a local minima in balancing editorial selection and audience participation. Firehose, a nod to Digg, is an interesting spin on democratized story selection.

<comment><USER6> The difference as I see it is that the important things that appeal to the Slashdot crowd appear there about a day after it shows up on Reddit. On the social aggregators, you get stories a day early, but you have to filter through so much more stuff to get at interesting articles. Of the interesting stuff on social news sites like reddit, you tend to find more interesting things that never would make it onto slashdot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Are social news sites destined to devolve? ... How does one keep social news > sites from sliding down that slope?

With moderators/editors who are responsible for the quality of content?

It seems that a social news site only stays relevant as long as the people in charge are interested in maintaining it. As it is, reddit's problem is that they put "everyone" in charge, and, as it gained popularity, "everyone" was therefore free to change their mind about what content is acceptable.

To use a successful example besides Slashdot/mefi, look at the n-sider forums (discussion community focused around Nintendo products). Although membership is free and content is provided by the community, the quality of the site has remained generally high for the 6-7 years I've been visiting it. Why? Simply because the moderators are quick to warn (and ban) members that don't contribute interesting discussion.

Basically, idealized sites such as reddit misunderstand where democracy exists regarding the internet--since the ability to found competing communities is cheap and unrestricted, it shouldn't be reddit's responsibility to give everyone a voice.

</comment><comment><USER8> The problem isn't people who are actively trying to break the site, the problem is people who think they are making valuable contributions but aren't. It's really easy to ban someone who is being malicious. It's much harder to ban someone who is well-intentioned but useless.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1> Early adopters come in

2> Because they are early adopters, they tend to know about lots of cool things

3> The site becomes popular

4> Late adopters join

5> Site gets diluted, irritating

6> Early adopters move on

7> Site is a large, popular wasteland

I'd point to Metafilter as a site with unusual longevity due to a closed subscription process. They recently covered the Hexayurt Project, however, and I was not impressed - a bunch of braying jackals who hadn't RTFA screaming their ignorance in public. So even Mefi is on the decline, apparently, at least in the comments. The front page is still pretty decent.

But that, really, is the key: you need to stop adding posters when the site is cool and hip, to draw out the period in which the site is providing early- adopter content.

Moderation systems won't do it: they get swamped by bad moderators over time, witness slashdot's meta-moderation corrective.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the problem at a digg or reddit is that everyone's vote is considered equal. Yet, why should someone who's just arrived have as much say as someone who's been there for over a year? In real-life communities, voices take a while to accumulate. Why should online communities be any different?

I'd argue we expect that implicit hierarchy to provide a trustworthiness. If someone's submissions aren't being up-voted, they have the choice to either conform or find a community better suited to their interests. To the extent they match the community principles is the extent to which their own voice becomes heard and amplified.

<comment><USER4> But you might frustrate newbies ("I can't get links onto the front page! Too snobby for me, I'm going elsewhere!"). And users are ultimately ad-bait at places like Reddit. If Reddit could get Digg's traffic by losing whatever quality they have, they would in a heartbeat (or Conde-Nast would make them), whatever regret the original developers might feel about it.

<comment><USER3> All the newbie has to do is submit content that resonates with the community. Think of it as a game that they can play by choice. Sooner or later they'll figure out what fits. And I'd venture that people do this anyways. It's just that the power of the original community voice got watered down by treating every vote equally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You hit the nail on the head. The next "big thing" for social news will be an implementation of an "editors" concept. Social sites don't have the lock-in they like to think. Users moved from friendster to my space and now from my space to facebook.

Social news is where search was before Google came along. A social news site that solves the editing problem (designed to naturally implement "star editors", perhaps) can still win big here by virtue of having better content, being less game-able, and not degrading over time. Someone do this, and send me an invite, please!

</comment><comment><USER11> Social sites which use a democratic process are just that - democratic. You may not agree with the masses but these are the stories they like. I don't see this as a problem. The problem I really see is that 'we' only consider what we think appropriate/intellectual content as acceptable content. These sites are designed to promote what the masses vote and they do a darn effective job of it.

"Whatever copy sells magazines at the newsstand is what the editors are going to put in a tabloid"...isn't this what every startup hopes for - serving the users need?

PS: I do see spamming as a problem but that can be tackled separately.

<comment><USER12> Both digg and reddit have karma systems so that each vote is not equal. I think that as a social news site grows (or any community), you have to subdivide the community somehow - essentially create a collection of niche sites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I personally believe that this is where the data you collect about a persons voting should be used to recommend articles for them specifically. Then you can go to the main page to see what the community votes up, or you can go to a personalized page that is designed for you based on your voting and what other similar users vote for.

Its a mix between democracy and personalization and it allows for the users who really do want to be the lowest common denominator.

</comment><comment><USER14> In ancient greece, voting was mandatory. If everyone on reddit were FORCED to vote, I wager that the quality of stories would be vastly improved. I believe that reddit is currently being run by a small minority of the users.

<comment><USER15> But how would you force people to vote?

<comment><USER16> Instead of a "comment" link, have an "upmod and comment" link and a "downmod and comment" link, so that in order to comment on a story, you have to express an opinion on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sturgeon's Law applies to people. This must be accepted and dealt with. Choose between dictatorship (omnipotent, zealous editors) or ease of compartmentalization (a la Usenet.)

</comment><comment><USER18> This has been asked before, a lot of the comments seem to revolve around the idea that it is unpreventable.

As sites grow in popularity, they attract more "typical" users. These new users represent the common interests moreso than what a bunch of early adopter tech-geeks want to see :)

It can sometimes be shocking to remember that the large majority of people on the Internet are not logical and rational.

<comment><USER19> > This has been asked before, a lot of the comments seem to revolve around the > idea that it is unpreventable.

It's a hard problem, but not impossible. The structure and function of the site itself plays a large part in governing group behavior.

Reddit worked for a long time because it had smart people, and a voting system that responded to whatever its userbase wanted. Now it's in rapid decline because it has a growing majority of not-so-smart people, and the voting system still responds to whatever the userbase wants. Reddit also suffered from being known as the site where smart people hang out, which brought lots of Digg refugees over to it (thereby destroying the quality they were looking for).

I'd be very interested in seeing a list of reddit headlines with votes weighted by seniority on the site. It might resemble classic reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I don't think you would want to as the site gets bigger. I think the solution is to give the end user a way to filter this stuff out.

take digg for example if you filter out all the stuff you are not interested in or just look at what your friends are digging it works.

</comment><comment><USER21> One dimension of the problem is that misleading, attention-whoring headlines work. (Maybe the sites even like these, because they generate traffic in discussion threads.)

Headlines could be rated separately from the link; perhaps a smaller group of trusted editors, or a random panel of unassociated readers, could approve/edit headlines. Further, votes without having visited the target article could be deweighted.

Another dimension is vote-gaming, including outright fraud. Increasing the cost of votes, with captchas or even registration/poll fees, might help.

Actually making vote-mobs explicit, as in the 'Uberfact' idea [+], I also think has potential. That is, rather than making recommendations/correlations for every user account, let users create their own named cliques. (Let the founders of such cliques have ultimate say on who else can join as voters.) Then, every article gets a different score per clique, and you can view the 'top' items from any clique's (or combination of cliques') perspective, whether you share their views or not.

Some cliques could be ideological, others by membership in some external community, others purely automated (perhaps mirroring some external scoring, like PageRank or Digg-score). Then you channel a lot of the gaming into a more productive and filterable expression of passion; the default view of the site might degrade, but even slightly savvy users can extract a elite, useful view.

[+] [http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfac...](http://unqualified- reservations.blogspot.com/2007/08/uberfact-ultimate-social-verifier.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> digg, reddit and any other socially influenced news site will always "devolve" into the mainstream and people living closer to the edge will always seek out more focused and intellectually stimulating sources for news and discussion.

the networks that understand social influence and are brave enough to see where it can take them are the ones who will survive. Not the ones looking to control and guide the process with 'editors'.

</comment><comment><USER23> When I first saw the headline, I thought it read "How to prevent social news sites from developing."

'Cuz that might work, too.

</comment><comment><USER24> Shouldn't it be the highest common denominator? In the metaphor, I prefer a number compatible with me first, and a higher one second. The highest common denominator is the highest number compatible with everyone.</comment>


Hydroxychloroquine working well against Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> 600 mg HCQ per day after 6 days, 90% of patients tested COVID-19 negative.  96% of control group tested positive after 6 days. https://twitter.com/RiganoESQ/status/1239780304082124800 <comment><USER2> What about this?

[https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp- content/uploads/20...](https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf)</comment>


DIY Scanning Electron Microscope - <AUTHOR> http://benkrasnow.blogspot.com/2011/03/diy-scanning-electron-microscope.html <comment><USER2> The funny thing is that I actually understood what he was talking about. Very well explained and undeniably one of the coolest things you could have in a garage.</comment>


Building the atom bomb: the full story of the Nevada Test Site - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2015/sep/21/building-the-atom-bomb-the-full-story-of-the-nevada-test-site <comment><USER2> Excellent article</comment>


Introducing MigCoin - <AUTHOR> http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2013/Apr-12.html

<comment><USER2> What a waste of time.

If the author had something to said he should have done it straight to the point, or at least with elegance.

<comment><USER2> I see that some of you disagree with me for the downvotes, so please leave a comment on why, I'm not trolling and I still don't see the point of the post. Thanks.</comment></comment>


Telegram: new secure, anonymous chat/messenger - <AUTHOR> https://telegram.org/

<comment><USER2> It's actually an app with no clear business model based on archaic security primitives chosen by recent math grads who "know best" even though virtually every crypto engineer or cryptographer that has looked at the code has advised them to not make a custom protocol, but just use something that works.

[http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto- challenge/](http://www.thoughtcrime.org/blog/telegram-crypto-challenge/)</comment>


Post-Covid heart damage in some children: study - <AUTHOR> https://news.uthscsa.edu/post-covid-syndrome-severely-damages-childrens-hearts-immense-inflammation-causing-cardiac-blood-vessel-dilation/ <comment><USER3> _The team reviewed 662 MIS-C cases reported worldwide between Jan. 1 and July 25_

So does that mean there are only a total of 662 cases reported worldwide? Because if so, this doesn't seem to be a significant issue.

Edit: yes, it seems like there are only a few hundred cases in the US [0], not a significant risk. I've seen this article in a few places and everyone seems to interpret it as saying a significant portion of children have a damaged heart after COVID, which just isn't true. Not a problem with the article, just peoples critical thinking skills.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid- data/infogra...](https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid- data/infographic-mis-c.html)

<comment><USER4> I don't think anyone is systematically screening positive COVID cases for this kind of damage. The 662 is the severely affected ones that end up in the ICU, but how many others have inflammatory damage?

<comment><USER5> Correct, 15% of athletes who shows some or no symptoms ended up with myocarditis:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/sports/ncaafootball/colle...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/sports/ncaafootball/college- football-myocarditis-coronavirus.html)

If we screened kids who merely tested positive and found 15% had serious longer term reprecussions, how would this change opinion surrounding policy?

<comment><USER6> Careful, Myocarditis isn't necessarily indicative of long-term heart damage. Mild myocarditis is not uncommon with any viral infection.

Myocarditis should be watched for, but it's critically important that we discuss severity and relative occurrence rather than reducing the discussion to a binary yes/no.

Sadly, whenever you see a news article that omits specific statistics it's prudent to check the facts. It's easy to drive clicks by removing critical details to make side effects sound more permanent or more common than they are.

<comment><USER7> Is it common for Athletes to have to sit out the year because they caught the flu? Flu is so pervasive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is one of those titles that pull on the heartstrings ... "oh think of the children" then it turns out it is a complication that affects a vanishingly small segment of the population.

Then we use the fear to impose rules that severely affect 100% of the children: for example not letting people go outside or go to school.

All part of the relentless propaganda of scaremongering where the weak want everyone to be equally afraid.

<comment><USER9> I don't understand this attitude. It's not about fear it's about precaution. Why does everything have to be so extreme?

<comment> just-juan-post If it's truly about precaution and the greater safety of others then you would agree that we should ban alcohol.

<comment><USER9> No. Alcohol doesn't possess viral properties.

<comment><USER10> Your freedom to buy alcohol results in kids getting beaten and killed by their alcoholic parents. Are you really so selfish that you think beer is more important than kids?

/s

See, the argument is the same.

<comment><USER9> I don't know if you're being serious or not with your final sentence (the positioning of the /s is throwing me off) but for the people who don't get it there has never been an alcoholic beating or drunk driver that resulted in millions of innocent people dying around the world in such a short period time with millions more suffering from potential long term health problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When I checked before, it seemed that Kawasaki incidence dropped to 0, and MIS-C cases had the expected prevalence of Kawasaki - meaning that basically, it was a change in classification and not a new disease (and not necessarily a new condition).

But I haven't been keeping track recently.

<comment><USER12> So you consider their differential diagnosis to be wrong. They clearly considered Kawasaki as a comparison too.

Could you indicate your source and credentials?

Is Kawasaki syndrome already considered a post-viral problem?

Are you saying these children had Kawasaki already, or that Covid19 infection causes Kawasaki?

<comment><USER11> As I mentioned, I'm no longer keeping track; last I checked was in early May, and at the time the disease was not yet called MIS-C. My sources were google searches.

My credentials are in math and engineering, not medicine.

However, due to unfortunate personal and family issues, I've read tens of medical papers and found statistical errors in many, maybe most of them -- I have literally saved at least one person from a life of misery based on finding these errors (and got apologies from department heads in two of the world's 10 top hospitals)

I don't know if Kawasaki is considered a post viral problem - <USER2> officially or unofficially. I did not look at the disease mechanics, only at disease prevalence. Symptoms are close enough (and the disease having a clinical description, NO direct biomarkers) that mis-identification is a real problem and known issue with these kinds of rare diseases.

The disease I'm very familiar with, unfortunately, shares a lot with kawasaki - including in how often it is misidentified as some benign condition. It was considered, though never proved, a post-viral autoimmune disease for years -- and likely still is by many doctors -- even though the "post viral" aspect is overwhelmingly a secondary aspect (something has to trigger the immune system, it's sometimes a viral episode, sometimes a vaccine, sometimes spontaneously)

> They clearly considered Kawasaki as a comparison too.

Kawasaki is a clinically identified disease, as is MIS-C. There's no specific biomarker to say "this is one and not the other". Right now, everything COVID-19 is shiny and well funded, whereas older things are not.

> Is Kawasaki syndrome already considered a post-viral problem?

As of a few months ago, at least half of the MIS-C cases were, to the best of everyone's knowledge, unrelated to COVID-19. see e.g. [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(20\)31129-6/fulltext) which summarizes the state-of-the-art of knowledge as of May (The lancet is written in a confusing way, but [https://www.dicardiology.com/article/kawasaki- inflammatory-d...](https://www.dicardiology.com/article/kawasaki-inflammatory- disease-affects-children-covid-19) is more clear - the relation to COVID-19 is not clear cut)

Here's a similar point: Last I checked, a few weeks ago, death from the flu all over the world has gone to zero, though in european countries and most of the US since June, death is as expected (statistically indistinguishable from expected rate of death). Flu death has gone to zero; COVID death exists when non did before. What's more likely - that FLU disappeared overnight but COVID has exactly the same rate of death? Or that both COVID and flu take a toll on the weaker and immune suppresed population (whose size didn't really change), but that the deaths are all attributed to COVID even though part (perhaps a third or half) as attributable to the flu? See e.g. [https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus- missing-deaths.html) \- despite the April time, it IS up-to-date as of 22-aug, and you can definitely see the COVID death toll in europe on Mar-Jun -- but not anymore.

> Are you saying these children had Kawasaki already, or that Covid19 > infection causes Kawasaki?

It is my belief based on knowledge of diseases OTHER than Kawasaki was that the predisposition was there, just waiting for the trigger, and would likely have erupted sooner or later, because of a flu, another virus, or some vaccine -- autoimmune diseases are often triggered when the immune system goes into high gear but them something goes wrong and they start attacking the body instead.

I am not saying they had Kawasaki already -- they obviously did not, because -- by definition -- Kawasaki is a set of symptoms (they did not have). However, I'm hypothesizing that everything was ready for Kawasaki, and something just caused it to erupt. It's also possible that COVID-19 was that trigger, and that it causes a slightly different disease progression than "standard" Kawasaki, although there's no such thing either- these diseases are never textbook cases of "These 10 symptoms == kawasaki", but rather "If we have more than 4 out of this list of 14 then we will label it Kawasaki unless we have a better explanation".

I am being vague with specific details of the diseases I am familiar with, so as not to out myself - it's rare enough that everyone involved knows everyone else on a first name basis. (Though as far as anyone's concerned, I might as well be a dog on the internet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The paper _Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children: A systematic review_ [1]:

> The literature reports that MIS-C typically manifests 3-4 weeks after SARS- > CoV-2 infection. This may explain why many children had positive antibodies > to SARS- CoV-2, but negative RT-PCR at the time of MIS-C evaluation.

> While children with COVID-19 present with upper respiratory symptoms, MIS-C > is distinguishable by fever (100%), vomiting (68.2%), and abdominal > pain/diarrhea (73.8%). The abdominal pain in MIS-C can be so severe that in > several cases patients were presumed to have appendicitis.

Young children seem to be protected from lower respiratory manifestations of COVID-19. My reading of this meta-analysis is that MIS-C is primarily a gastrointestinal manifestation of COVID-19 that has progressed to vascular and other tissues that express ACE2 receptors.

Perhaps we are placing too much emphasis on nasopharyngeal swab PCR tests and should consider anal swabs for children with gastrointestinal symptoms.

[1] [https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370\(20\)30271-6/fulltext)

</comment><comment><USER14> Or

We are talking about the human body a lot more now the media can make a headline.

 _If_ this is from C19 one imagines many other things we don't care about kids getting also can do it.

</comment><comment><USER15> The title should be changed to reflect the fact that this is an _incredibly rare_ complication. As of late July, only 570 MIS patients total had been reported in the US, per the CDC:

[https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6932e2-H.pdf](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/pdfs/mm6932e2-H.pdf)

<comment><USER16> It's a title, not a summary or a value judgment. The conclusions are in the article.

<comment><USER15> It is a hacker news rule that titles cannot be clickbait or inflammatory.

This title unquestionably is missing critical context, and arguably crosses the line into clickbait.

<comment><USER17> Ok, we've edited the title to try to make it more accurate and neutral.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't want to play this down or anything but:

> Another finding from the case studies: Almost half of patients who had MIS-C > had an underlying medical condition, and of those, half of the individuals > were obese or overweight.

<comment><USER19> >were obese or overweight.

Like 60% of America is obese or overweight, that is way over 200 Million Americans [1]. I don't understand why people try to use this to downplay (I'm not saying you are) COVID.

[1][https://www.healthline.com/health/obesity- facts#1](https://www.healthline.com/health/obesity-facts#1)

<comment><USER20> People downplay it because even when presented with these stats, they picture "overweight/obese" as a stereotypical "fat person" wearing size 55 pants and using a scooter to get around the grocery store. And they think "well _I 'm_ not fat, so I don't have anything to worry about."

In reality, a significant portion of the people reading this comment probably are "overweight" without even realizing it. "Overweight" is classified by your BMI, and the threshold for "overweight" is much lower than most expect.

If you are 5'6" and weigh 155 lbs, you are medically overweight. That's someone who wears size 31 pants and size small t-shirts. Not even close to your stereotypical "fat" person, but according to the statistics: overweight.

edit to clarify: I intentionally put "overweight" in quotes to indicate that I am using the medical definition of "overweight", and I am _not_ saying that someone who is 5'6" and 155 lbs is unhealthy, fat, or needs to lose weight. Someone who is 5'6" and 155 lbs is, IMO, on the fitter side of the spectrum, but according to the statistics, still "overweight".

<comment><USER21> Edit: I read OP's argument the wrong way. So my comment below is based on a misapprehension.

———-

This is foolish. BMI is used to estimate population averages. But waist measure is vastly better. Someone with a waist of 31 at 5'6" actually has close to ideal portions, if you're talking about a man. (For women you need the hip measure too).

That's a waist to height ratio of about .47. A person with that waist probably has a high muscle mass + low body fat.

Now, if the same person was 155, 5'6" and had a 34 inch waist, they are almost certainly overweight.

[https://trustyspotter.com/blog/perfect-male-body- measurement...](https://trustyspotter.com/blog/perfect-male-body- measurements/) [https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/Waist_Height](https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/Waist_Height)

Both people will show up as "overweight" in population averages, which isn't an issue as edge cases balance out over the whole population. But you're talking as though such a person with a 31 inch waist should actually lose weight.

<comment><USER20> >But you're talking as though such a person with a 31 inch waist should actually lose weight.

No, I'm not. I never said such a thing and I have no idea why you're building such a strawman.

Waist measure has nothing to do with this story. This story is about COVID-19 comorbidities, of which being overweight (which is medically measured using BMI, not waist measures) is one. BMI is all that matters in this context.

If you are 5'6" and 155 lbs, _you are classified as overweight and thus are considered a high-risk person for COVID-19_. That has nothing to do with "you should/should not lose weight".

And the broader point is this: if you see any stats saying "most COVID-19 deaths were overweight people", you shouldn't feel any sense of "safety" because you think "well _I 'm_ not overweight, I wear size small!", because there's a good chance that a lot of those COVID deaths wore smalls, too.

<comment><USER21> > If you are 5'6" and 155 lbs, you are classified as overweight and thus are a > high-risk person for COVID-19. That has nothing to do with "you > should/should not lose weight".

This is absolutely false. It is the adiposity that raises risk. High muscle mass is not a risk factor. You're got an erratic view of what we mean by overweight: we mean excessively adipose.

I took it as implied that you thought overweight people should lose weight for health reasons, but that isn't the central point.

BMI approximates population averages and is useful as such, but for an individual the correct question to ask is whether they are excessively adipose. Someone at 5'6" with a 31 inch waist and a weight of 155 is almost certainly not excessively adipose.

<comment><USER20> You're completely missing the point. These studies don't give a damn about your adipose, or how much weight you need to lose. These studies are about whether or not you are classified as overwight, _which is based solely on BMI, and nothing else_.

Someone 5'6" and 155 lbs is overweight and thus is considered a high risk COVID individual, regardless of their waist size. If that person were to die of COVID, they would be reported as "had high-risk underlying health conditions".

That's what we're talking about in this context. Everything else you are talking about is completely irrelevant.

Responding to your above edit (which you now have removed):

>I agree many people underestimate their own adiposity, but the given example of 31 inch waist at 5'6" and 155 pounds indicates a trim, fit person.

This statement just highlights the entire point. You think it means "trim, fit person", as do most others. _But the medical definitions do not agree with you_. According to the medical definition, that person is overweight. That's the bottom line.

<comment><USER21> Ah I misread OP as saying people downplay obesity and don't consider themselves fat. I took you to be giving an example of someone who thought they were not fat but were in fact fat.

Rereading OP's comment I see they're instead talking about people downplaying covid because they think it only affects people who are morbidly obese. My mistake.

Though, I suspect probably at least 80% of the people in the overweight/obese category legitimately have too much fat. Especially in america. Compared to the rest of the oecd, america has a much larger portion of "morbidly obese" within the obese category.

BMI does also underestimate obesity in some. On average it's a reasonable definition of overweight/obese. The example you gave is an edge case, but the studies concern themselves with averages.

<comment><USER20> I understand what you're saying and I see the confusion. To be more clear, I agree with you and BMI is a terrible measure of "overweight"/"obesity".

As someone who is 5'7" and 160 pounds, I'm considered "overweight", but if you saw me in person I'm almost certain you wouldn't think of me that way because I look quite fit. In reality, I have a decent amount of muscle mass from being physically active, but the BMI measure doesn't take into consideration muscle vs fat, and thus I am technically "overweight".

My point was not that everyone who is technically "overweight" is "fat" or "unhealthy", but rather that the COVID-19 reporting statistics that use those words are also using that "terrible measure" of BMI, and according to BMI, even typically-seen-as-healthy people fall under that "high risk" category, and people should be aware of that rather than assuming they are safe from COVID just because they are "fit".

<comment><USER21> I think you may be going a little far with this still though. Overweight is a risk factor, and someone who is overadipose absolutely is at higher risk.

For yourself, you would make the sensible adjustment of "well I'm not overadipose and therefore do not have higher risk from that factor". That doesn't mean you'd have no effects, it merely means you lack one risk factor.

But overadiposity absolutely is a risk factor and those in that group should be even more careful: the more overadipose, the more so.

BMI is used that way for studies because it's a useful measure over groups. The exceptions run both ways and balance out. It just shouldn't be applied blindly to individuals.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


SF Hackerhouse needs to be filled - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/roo/4910918938.html

<comment><AUTHOR> inb4 sorry if this borders on spam

Trying to get some good technical (hw/sw/physics/+) together in our SF pad. Will be 8-10 people and 1-2 dogs in all. If you're down and looking to move , send an email. If you just want to be on the email list for our hackathons and other events of awesome , send an email. Mention hackernews for bonus points</comment>


TLDR: simplified and community-driven man pages - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr <comment><USER2> Great projects for everyone. I have one suggestion though.

TLDR can also make use of usage analytics in general to only extract those command from original man page and put them in noob friendly documentation. It can be done for every command or just those which doesn't have community contribution.</comment>


New bill would crack down on border phone searches without warrants - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/4/15180244/protecting-data-border-act-wyden-paul-device-security-bill <comment><USER2> I sincerely hope this passes, however small a chance it has. I want to be able to explore the world but I have strong reservations about international travel at this point.

<comment><USER3> Why would the rules of one country stop you ? There are 194 other countries in this world.

[http://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries- ar...](http://www.worldometers.info/geography/how-many-countries-are-there-in- the-world/)

<comment><USER2> It's not the outbound trip I'm concerned about.

<comment><USER4> Are you a US citizen? If so, just don't bring any devices when you travel. Pick up a burner in your destination country and toss it before you return. As a US citizen returning, they can't legally bar you from the country and there'll be nothing for them to search.

<comment><USER5> So each time I travel to Canada/Mexico, I have to leave my computer and tablet at home and spend an additional $50+ for a disposable phone that must remain free of all my personal data... You're proposing that as an acceptable solution to US law enforcement _stealing_ my keychain and all my private data simply because they're standing a few feet outside US soil, which they claim entitles them to most certainly violate the intent of the US Constitution, which every customs officer has sworn an oath to defend? So NOT.

<comment><USER2> I agree, it's not that I can't, I'd just rather not have to go through all the James Bond shit required to not be treated like a criminal coming into my own country...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is inhumane, we are gonna fix it! (but for Citizens only - screw the rest)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was under the impression the administration was moving in the opposite direction. [https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration- considers-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-considers- far-reaching-steps-for-extreme-vetting-1491303602)

I have to say that whilst I suspect that most airport security theatre actually _does_ have the effect of acting as a terrorist deterrent, if only by encouraging terrorists to pick softer targets, publicly announcing the idea of _more_ routine random phone searches is much more likely to be actively counterproductive (i.e. encourage potential terrorist to improve their opsec)

<comment><USER8> Of course... but first we need to actually catch A single terrorist who been proven to be one based on his phone search.

Uhm no I forgot.. that information would be top secret classified :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Business opportunity for phone makers to make phone keep _all_ non-OS data on a removable nano SD card.

This way person could just flip "real" nano SD card with "dummy" on a device before crossing the border.

<comment><USER10> So then instead of just searching your phone they want to go through all nano SD cards you are trying to take across the border too?

<comment><USER9> Searching for nano cards for every traveller is impractical. It's so tiny and yet high-capacity that it's very easy to hide.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Graph Convolutional Networks – Intro to neural networks on graphs - <AUTHOR> http://tkipf.github.io/graph-convolutional-networks/ <comment><USER2> This is really powerful. As a use case I'm considering the graph of streets in a city. A task would be to make predictions on the next nodes visited by a vehicle given the history of the recent nodes. I'm not sure how you deal with mini batches. Since you need the Adj matrix of the whole graph?

<comment><AUTHOR> Mini-batching is indeed tricky, as you need the information of the complete local neighborhood for all nodes in a mini-batch. Let's say you select N nodes for a mini-batch, then you would also have to provide all nodes of the k-th order neighborhood for a neural net with k layers (if you want an exact procedure). I'd recommend to do some subsampling in this case, although this is not trivial. We're currently looking into this. Otherwise full-batch gradient descent tends to work very well on most datasets. Datasets up to ~1 million nodes should fit into memory and the training updates should still be quite fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Does this classify whole graphs, or nodes into communities/classes?

<comment><AUTHOR> Both graph-level and node-level classification are possible. Graph-level classification requires some from of pooling operation (simplest case: mean- pooling over all nodes, but there are more elaborate things one can do)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this differ from graphical models like factor graphs ?

<comment><AUTHOR> In a graphical model, you'd explicitly model the probabilistic assumptions that you make with respect to the data. In this neural network-based approach the goal can be thought of more like learning a function that maps from some input to some desired output. But indeed the form of the propagation rule resembles mean field inference in graphical models.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks really interesting, but I'm struggling to think of a practical application. Any ideas?

<comment><USER3> I know little, but how about classification of neuro–developmental disorders from network graphs derived from resting state fMRI?

<comment><USER6> Stupid question: can bayesian networks (graphs) be a useful input?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently the framework only supports undirected graphs, so directed graphical models wouldn't be supported as input. I can't really judge how useful it would be to take a Bayesian net as input, sounds a bit hacky to me. But in principle you could train a neural net on any kind of graph, someone recently suggested to take the connection graph of another neural net as input and try to learn some function on that. But again, it's really hard to judge in advance how useful such approaches would be ;)

<comment><USER6> "take the connection graph..." That is a brilliant idea!

Training such a net to learn and output(!) superior tensorflow graphs etc!</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ancient human ancestors carved handaxe from a hippo femur 1.4M years ago: study - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/17/world/ancient-tool-hippo-handaxe-scn-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> Back of the napkin estimation: a million years is 40,000 Homo generations, you might get a valuable mental mutation maybe every 500 generations, that's only 80 mental mutations between us and the Homo species that made this axe. So these guys were just about as smart as us.

On the other hand, modern human's super-intelligence might have come from a lucky admixture of Neanderthral and Denisovan genes rather than slow mutation. There's evidence from cultural artifacts that even 100,000 years ago humans were less intelligent then us.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps not less intelligent, but just possessed of a mental framework that was less capable.

From a paper describing "the Romulus and Remus hypothesis"[1],

"the leap from rich-vocabulary non-recursive communication system to recursive language 70,000 years ago was associated with acquisition of a novel component of imagination, called Prefrontal Synthesis, enabled by a mutation that slowed down the prefrontal cortex maturation simultaneously in two or more children"

1 [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/166520v9.full](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/166520v9.full)

And here's a summary: [https://neurosciencenews.com/language-imagination- evolution-...](https://neurosciencenews.com/language-imagination- evolution-14656/)

<comment><USER4> The idea that recursion was the key mutation that led to language is not doing so well lately. It turns out that non-human animals already can produce sequences with recursive structure [1]. It's also not clear that all languages have nested recursive structures.

[1] [https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/26/eaaz1002.full](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/26/eaaz1002.full)

<comment><USER5> The hypothesis here is quite a bit more nuanced and specific than that. As a laymam, I found it worthwhile to read the whole article. In the course of making its case it touches on many fascinating topics. I found the case quite compelling, though I can't rule out that someone more familiar with the facts can poke holes in it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What was published about the Kalahari Bushmen by the Marshall family (Laurence Marshall, co-founder of Raytheon) provides some of the best real connections we have to early human life.

If you're interested in this stuff, I really enjoyed Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's "The Old Way" and recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder if they were hunting hippos, or if they scavenged the bone from a carcass. Hunting hippos must either be an act of extreme confidence, or extreme desperation.

<comment><USER8> Humans have hunted mammoths and other dangerous animals with low tech weapons and a lot of ingenuity, planning and teamwork.

So I would not be surprised if it was extreme confidence.

<comment><USER7> They often used things like cliffs to help hunt mammoths though, right? Seems a trickier thing to accomplish with hippos, although I suppose you could lure them away from the water. Planning and teamwork must have been key.

<comment><USER9> Dig a pit, fill it with sharp sticks, and cover with branches and brush. Then all you have to do is taunt a hippo into charging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Curious fact: the hippos that were imported to Colombia by the infamous narco Pablo Escobar are now an invasive species.

\- 4 hippos were introduced to Escobar's private zoo in 1981.

\- The animals escaped in 1993.

\- By 2007, they were approximately 16.

\- In 2020, they're at least 80.

\- By the end of next decade it is estimated they will be at least 150.

Those hippos are reported to have increased fertility. African hippos begin reproduction at age 7, while Colombian hippos begin at age 3.

</comment><comment><USER11> > The craftsmanship of the tools at the Konso site, as well as other sites, > "suggest that Homo erectus technology was more sophisticated and versatile > than we had thought. And the bone handaxe occurrence fits in nicely," Suwa > said.

H. erectus used advanced flaking techniques to create the hand axe. Tools, fire, advanced social organization, and migration through a large part of Eurasia; all without spoken language.

I don't think the name H. erectus is meaningful to the general population. I wonder if we shouldn't associate Turkana Boy as a stand-in much the way Lucy is well known in popular culture. This is a unique and important Homo species; "ancient human ancestor" is too nebulous for my liking.

<comment><USER12> How do we know they didn't have spoken language? I haven't heard that before.

<comment><USER11> According to Wikipedia [1] the science is not as settled as I thought but my understanding is that from the nerves needed for breath control to various vocal apparatus, erectus' speech would have been primitive at best. Speech, however, is not the only way to express language.

An innovation in spoken language is one of the theories used to explain the Great Leap in modern sapiens.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Language](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_erectus#Language)

<comment><USER13> I'm trying to come up with alternative ways to convey meaning as precise and detailed as to carve handaxes from bone without using spoken language, primitive or not.

Maybe some mix of sign language, sound and pantomime?

<comment><USER14> Hand axes would be easy to convey: demonstrate creation and use, repeatedly, and help learners do both. Homo Erectus made hand axes the same way for a million years, without much innovation, to the point that it's been hypothesised they were more like bird song or bird nests than cultural artefacts. See e.g. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066817/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5066817/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is a complete joke. probably a bone fragment sheered off from the hippo fighting with a saber tooth tiger. these "discoveries" from so long ago are at best theories. maybe a since extinct giant beaver, carnivore rodent species was chewing into the femur to create a notch to secure it to another bone while framing out it's bone, beaver den.

<comment> yobi-ponti Academics, under pressure to produce new studies, rushing to conclusions and making lofty claims on limited evidence? No way! Not these people! /s</comment></comment>


Google brings SVG support to IE - <AUTHOR> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/08/22/1246248/Google-Brings-SVG-Support-To-IE?from=rss

<comment><USER2> The project page: <http://code.google.com/p/svgweb/> No need to link to Slashdot.

<comment><USER3> The videos are very interesting:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCk22AaRxiE>

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctuUrvReOIQ>

Also, the discussions on /. are always... entertaining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title is a bit misleading. This is a project hosted on google code. Also this requires flash to do the rendering.

<comment><USER5> It only requires flash for rendering on browsers which don't have native SVG support - i.e. everyone except IE gets native rendering, and on IE it uses a flash object to do the rendering. There's really not much alternative to this - people forget how backward IE is, in many respects. The only other way to do this really, is to use IE's VML 'support' to do the SVG rendering, which is what Dojo.GFX ([http://www.dojotoolkit.org/book/dojo- book-0-9/part-3-program...](http://www.dojotoolkit.org/book/dojo- book-0-9/part-3-programmatic-dijit-and-dojo/drawing-gfx)) currently does. The drawback to doing that, is that MS has been successively sabotaging their VML support with each IE release, degrading it each time, presumably on purpose.</comment></comment>


Getting Banned from Google Play - <AUTHOR> http://www.adriancourreges.com/blog/2016/05/19/getting-banned-from-google-play/ <comment><USER2> Tldr; got banned, got reinstated. Don't put reviews in your app description. Don't say this app is "like [popular app]!"</comment>


Spacelocker, A Social Network To Avoid Like The Plague - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/07/spacelocker-a-social-network-youll-want-to-avoid-like-the-plague/

<comment><USER4> It seemed clear as day to me which would do what from just looking at the registration form. It is however reprehensible to ask a user to divulge their email password for any reason, and this is not the only site to do so by a long shot. The only difference that I can see between this and (facebook? twitter?) is that they actively spam your contact list and send you a rude (but personalized!) service email when you complain. Stupid user, for giving up her email password.

<comment><USER5> Facebook & LinkedIn also ask for your email password, and they use it to spam. Whats interesting is that techcrunch never complains about it. Perhaps it is not wise to write harsh support letters to them ;-). stupid user though.

<comment><USER6> Facebook and LinkedIn display a list of contacts from your email and allow you to select which ones to send invites (spam) to. And it is usually an optional step that can be skipped.

In my eyes, this is OK because it the page is clear about what they want and that it will email your contacts that you select.

Of course this is what I recall from when I signed up a while ago, so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER7> However, Facebook is reportedly storing contacts imported but not selected, and using them for friend suggestions - <USER2> [http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/06/12/facebook-now- sugges...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/06/12/facebook-now-suggesting- friends-found-in-imported-contact-lists/)

Personally, I'd never give an email password to a third party, no matter what they claim they'll do with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's ironic that they questioned Lee's grasp of English while their own tagline says 'one place to all your online stuff'.

<comment><USER9> The whole online stuff?

<comment><USER10> And all of your base!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Repeat after me: I WILL NOT ABUSE MY CUSTOMERS, EVEN IF THEY DO SOMETHING STUPID.

You'd think some of these companies are paying you, instead of the other way around.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another really unhappy camper: [http://nospinpr.com/2009/06/09/spacelocker- the-social-media-...](http://nospinpr.com/2009/06/09/spacelocker-the-social- media-train-wreck/) \- I think what gets people even more is the level of arrogance in the customer support replies.

It's a downside of using your email and password to log into sites - <USER3> obviously spacelocker does this deliberately given the number of complaints you can find on the net and their unwillingness to make their sign up clearer (or separate). Being a bit lazy, if it's a trusted site, I'm almost afraid to admit I've done it myself since it's convenient - I use my email and password to log into HN.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think the news here is that this company sent that support email to a user. It's pretty unbelievable. In fact, I'm not sure I do believe that it's real. Would someone really write that?

<comment><USER13> I have no problem believing the same people who would design a purposefully confusing interface to spam people's contact lists would also abuse their uses through customer service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have no clue about law, but I think there should be a law that doesn't allow "PS" and "footers" or "*" in a different font size, whether it is a website or a printed form or billboard. Their font size should be at least as big as the least other font size used in the page.

The lawyers that frame these footers don't want us to read, and so do everything possible to "help" us "ignore" these.

<comment><USER15> Yes, I too find that irritating. They do it on radio commercials too, by either using software or actors who can speak fast to rattle off the T&C. Restrictions on this tend to be regarded as an intrusion on free speech, but I'm not sure that commercial solicitations should enjoy the same protection as other kinds.

<comment><USER14> how is it intrusion? All I am saying is, if the lowest font size (other than the fineprint) in a page is 10, then the fineprint font size should be a minimum of 10.

That said, nothing stops them from adding a single line of useless info, slap the font size at 8, and add the fineprint too as 8 font size.

Something better can be thought of, but there _needs_ to be some law. Those fineprints are read by only those damn lawyers who write them.

<comment><USER15> Oh I think your idea is entirely reasonable - but reason doesn't stop lawyers from making illogical or counterfactual arguments on behalf of their clients. You might find this very interesting - a (serious) discussion of bullshit promises in legal contracts: <http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1262477></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should my SaaS be pay-per-day? - <AUTHOR> I'm developing a SaaS product for the first time. (I just released https://thoughtwriter.org, which is the first component.) Since the product is meant to be used daily, I'm considering a model where users pay 10-100 cents for each day they use the app.
I could offer 10 days of use for free, as well.
Good things about it: 1. Use the product less, pay less 2. Stop using the product, stop paying (automatically) 3. Love the app & use it daily, then pay 0.50/day x 365 days = ~$180/year
Bad things:
1. Tracking payments is harder, more error-prone, and maybe contentious 2. Users think about cost every day, rather than monthly, which might be a pain
What do you think? Pay-per-day or something else? <comment><USER2> Pay per day as in charging a credit card each day?

It is likely the credit card will flag your company as a scam. No one wants to see their credit cards charged on a day-by-day basis, either, and I think you'd be covering those fees (2.5% + 0.30 for Paypal and Stripe).

I've gone into Walmart, forgotten to buy something, had to go back, and while the second time usually goes through, I get declined after that. I've driven across the country and instead of filling my gas tank up half way or when it gets to E, I've attempted to fill it up every 20 miles or so, even every time I saw a gas station, and my credit card got flagged and I had to wait 24 hours to for them to unblock it.

I know we're talking in terms of minutes to hours here, but "day-by-day" with a charge for the same company may get flagged.

I've been charging on a monthly basis (which Stripe can do automatically) and I've even seen people doing 3-6-9-12 month basis, but there is another method that I'm planning to use, which I haven't seen much. While Stripe doesn't officially support it, there are methods to actually get it to work which allows you to "pay as you go." (PayGo)

In this way, at the end of the month (simply grab the 1st day of the month and subtract by 1 or grab the last day of the month at 11:59:59 PM) and you calculate how much a person used for the entire month. Then you would just change the invoice to reflect the new charges. In my future projects, I will probably start going this route.

I'd think people wouldn't mind putting in their credit card and then just getting charged for what they used (once per month). It is more peace of mind too...

Saas is like: use it or lose it.

Pay as you go is... use it or don't.

As far as my method of building web apps go: I offer X amount of something for free. After that a month, it returns back to the original X and as the person uses it, it counts down until there are no more, and then you have to wait a month to use more of it. If you want more, I offer 2 solutions: subscribe for more or refill your X on the "free" plan which just gives you more without the added benefits of the higher plans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Users won't think of the cost every day but they'll notice different monthly charges on their credit card statement and wonder how they can save money then. Worse for B2B when changing amounts raise questions from other departments and need to be re-approved or justified.

How about plans that cover 15 transactions, 30, 100 and users can take over any unused transactions to the next month? I've seen services where you pre- pay packages of 100 or 500 (text message sending, Skype minutes) even which will lead to irregular payments on your end.

I think for tax purposes you need to set aside income from unused transactions. That's why often in the fine-print it says they can expire or loose value over time.

Personally I'd do monthly plans though. Some users will overpay or even forget they signed up. In that case offer generous free refunds or even email them if they haven't used the service a certain amount of days/months and offer to cancel for them.

</comment><comment><USER4> I personally would not pay-per-day if its 1 transaction/day.

Now, that being said, you could set up monthly transactions which are calculated on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related: Tarsnap has a weird pricing scheme. You can follow the advice of patio11 in [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy- tarsnap/](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/04/03/fantasy-tarsnap/) HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7523953) (801 points, 1202 days ago, 311 comments) or you can follow the example of cperciva and ignore patio11.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do with cash savings in your business bank account? - <AUTHOR> We're a small business, not really a start-up anymore, but we've been accumulating cash over the years by paying ourselves way less dividends than yearly profit. Its reached $500k and it is starting to be a concern that we're not leveraging this amount. We are happy to have cash available in case of a bad year, it would keep us going 2-3 years in case of no income at all, but we wonder that the bank is not the place to have it, especially in U.S. banks with 0.5% interest.
We would be happy to put a large chunk of this somewhere where we couldn't access it immediately (say, within 30 days) as we all agreed to keep enough personal cash available from dividends in case of emergencies. We don't really have much outgoing to worry about.
Given the low business tax rate it is much better to keep it with the LLC, than distribute as dividends, is that correct?
We are all happy with our modest incomes as we don't work very much and we have a great work/life balance. So investing in more business, that would make us work more hours, isn't really our interest.
What do other small LLCs do? <comment><USER2> Open a brokerage account under your LLC and do 40% bond, 40% S&P 500 index funds, leave max 20% cash in the savings. If you're running a business in the US, that means you believe in the US economy. So betting on the US industry being successful in the future makes total sense. And it could bring up to on 8% average, while bonds would cover for potential losses.

<comment><USER3> Your advising the opposite of hedging? Let's say US economy turns, you have now multiplied your risk.

<comment><USER2> Index funds go well with a dollar cost averaging strategy. If it goes down, keep buying the same amount every month so you endup acquiring more at a lower cost... which means when (and not if) it goes back up, you amplify your original gains.

Honestly within the next 20-30 years, if the US economy goes down, it'll most likely recover. If not, we're talking asteroid or major natural disasters.

<comment><USER3> The OP said 30 days not years.

<comment><USER2> What do you mean by years? OP is looking for money accessible within 30 days max. You can take your money out of any of the investments I mentioned instantly. Sure, the "investment strategy" is the long term thing here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (speaking from the perspective of an individual, not a small business)

you could consider putting it into some kind of investment, owned by the company.

given that you talk about putting it somewhere where you cannot access it immediately (30 days) it doesn't sound like putting it into the stock market would be appropriate -- if there is a large unexpected drop in the market you might not be able to withdraw the amount for years or a decade without taking a large capital loss.

there might be some middle ground (e.g. diversified bonds) with a rate of return of a percent or two with less risk than stock.

another option might be to look for unusual investment opportunities (e.g. buying out other small businesses). this is likely a terrible idea unless there is a niche where you think you have a particularly strong competitive advantage. this might end up in the "work more hours" bucket too.

</comment><comment><USER5> You really need to talk to a good accountant that understands the nature of your business, your goals and the tax implications.

I don't know about US law, but in Canada there are distinct disadvantages to keeping large amounts of cash inside a operating small business corporation and you would potentially be better off distributing the cash or setting up a separate holding company for it (or rather having your lawyer & accountant handle that).

You can then invest within the holding company but keep your operating business and investments separate.

</comment><comment><USER6> Ask your bank about money market or brokerage CDs. Short term cash investments that can yield upwards of 2% interest. But typically need to be held for longer time frames, say 12-36 months. No risk. Can be withdrawn at any time. FDIC insured. And you get the preferred rate.

Otherwise consider capex investments in your own company. These don't necessarily have to be aimed at growth. But little things can make your workers more happy, loyal and productive ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> If you don't have opportunities to reinvest the money to grow the business (which you should...), I'd start paying yourselves higher dividends. Why not try to grow the business though?

</comment><comment><USER8> Put it in Treasury Bills (ticker BIL for example). Safe as cash if you believe the US government isn't going bankrupt. 1% yield at the moment.</comment>


Show HN: Local Dish Discount and Discoverability Startup Munch On Me - <AUTHOR>

Wanted to share with everyone my new startup, Munch On Me. Looking for feedback! We have many features coming in the pipeline. Berkeley, CA is our soft launch to learn what works and what doesn't.<p>http://www.munchonme.com <comment><AUTHOR> We target dishes or meals at local restaurants. We take a split of the selling price. Early feedback from merchants tell us that they like what we're doing. Instead of offering $10 for $20 worth of food, we target specific things. Our goal is to answer: "What am I going to eat today?"

The deal structure for users is between 30% - 100% off. When we first launched, we had four 100% offers including an asian taco, thai iced tea, mocha, and fresh brewed coffee. You'll eventually see plenty of items in the Dish Feed that merchants upload themselves (subject to our approval of course) and users will be able to sort this feed.

</comment><comment><USER2> how did you work out deals with local restaurants. Whats the deal structure ?</comment>


Two Google searches 'produce same CO2 as boiling a kettle' - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/google/4217055/Two-Google-searches-produce-same-CO2-as-boiling-a-kettle.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like rubbish to me, but naively speaking:

If a 2000w kettle takes 2 minutes to boil it uses 2000w x (2/60) hrs = 66.67 watt-hours.

If a google search requires my laptop at 150w, 10 network appliances at 200w and 10 google servers at 200w and front to back a query takes 1 second then a query uses 4150w x (1/60/60) hrs = 1.16 watt-hours.

Or have I got that wrong?

</comment><comment><USER3> So what? Cycling to work produces more CO2 than boiling a few L of water, too.

</comment><comment><USER4> Those figures sound suspect to me, given the immense volume of searches performed on Google. I would guess that there's some double-counting going on.

All else aside, figures like those are all derived on the assumption that electricity is produced in a CO2 generating fashion. If we can figure out a better means of power generation, then all of these contributors get better at once.

</comment><comment><USER5> Discussion of Google's response, here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=430272>

</comment><comment><USER5> This is basically a dup.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428606></comment>


Border Collie Trained to Recognize 1,022 Nouns Dies - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/27/science/chaser-border-collie-dies.html <comment><USER2> "Chaser was taught to understand sentences containing a prepositional object, verb and direct object."

I would have never believed this if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. A friend has a golden retriever that I was playing with one day, and I asked him to get me a stick. He did, but it wasn't the stick I was thinking of, so I just off hand said, "no, not that stick, the one by the rock." and damn if that dog didn't drop it and go get the one by the rock. So I said, "put that stick with the other stick." Bam, done. I was stunned. I told my friend and he said, "oh, yeah, not surprised. He's smart." Now, maybe he didn't fully understand the sentences, and was simply understanding my body language and watching my eyes, movements, etc for clues, but even if so... dang.

Now, my dimwitted sweetheart of a pup often gets confused just between "sit" and "down", but I love her anyway :)

<comment><USER3> I wonder what would happen if we selectively bred dogs for that type of intelligence rather than for appearance and temperment? What are the upper limits of canine intelligence?

<comment><USER4> We've been doing that. However, we have been selecting particularly for obedience which limited their intelligence.

We don't want actually a dog that is super-intelligent but just one that is funny, protective and smart-enough.

<comment><USER5> We adopted some dogs that have been abandoned; those you don't pick for any traits besides them not being completely crazy/vicious. We had (and have) ones that no-one wants because they are too smart; they are escape artists and very good thieves. They know how to trick you. They are absolutely not obedient, even after training (they seem to train easy, but they are just doing what gives them the quickest treat; if that ends they immediately stop again). I like them more than the obedient ones really.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read a book about Chaser shortly before I got my pup. And I followed much a what I read, naming everything he came in contact with, talking to him using familiar nouns and verbs, not wasting words. At almost 3, he's not Chaser smart, but he has developed an ear that can recognize the most subtle variations in words, and he can figure out novel combinations of nouns/verbs sometimes with a direct obect. For example right after he learned the word window, he could generalize it to any glass that you look out through, and then I could tell him to "take the [object name] to the window" and he would find the nearest window (or glass door) and bring the given object there.

He was way ahead of a human child in terms of linguistic cognition up until maybe the age of about 1 and a half, then he maxed out. Having a dog with the verbal understanding of a toddler comes in handy sometimes...but rarely, mostly I just wish he could learn to walk on leash.

<comment><USER7> I have a puppy collie/Shepard mix that is about a year old. Do you have any tips/suggestions? Do you regret getting such a smart dog in general?

<comment><USER8> Genuinely curious - is there any reason why person would potentially prefer a less smart dog? I always thought that, the smarter they are, the better companions they can be, so your comment got me wondering.

<comment><USER9> The smarter they are, the more they observe and learn. This means they also learn bad or annoying things and it can be very difficult to then train them out of it. A good example is a border collie I know that accidentally broke a screen door, then suddenly learned that all screens can be opened at will and no window was safe.

Smart breeds also need to be kept busy and entertained or they get anxious and angry. They'll start destroying property or fighting with others. If you don't have the time and energy, it's much better to get a less intelligent and mellow dog instead.

<comment><USER10> On the other hand my toy dog ate through a timber door. (And tried on every door subsequently until we trained him out of it).

The anxiety is enough, it certainly doesn't take (much) brains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you hit the NYT paywall, at the very least watch the YouTube video that is linked on the page: [https://youtu.be/J982KYWohT8](https://youtu.be/J982KYWohT8) (it's from 2013)

Yeah, there's some science. But mostly, just an incredibly sweet story. Dr. Pilly, Chaser's owner, died last year at 89. Chaser also lived a long, happy life.

<comment><USER12> The paywall is easily circumvented by opening a private window.

<comment><USER13> NYT started blocking incognito windows: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275283](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19275283)

<comment><USER14> Is also easily circumvented by deleting all cookies from the site, then reloading, if at end of articles.

<comment><USER15> I think it's time for HN to replace the now useless 'web' link with one that lets me hide submissions from inaccessible domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Chaser also has a Wikipedia page [0]. There are also innumerable videos about her on Youtube. Beautiful and intelligent animal that, as her trainer Dr. John Pilley has said, certainly should cause us to view dogs as emotional and intelligent with their own world view.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_(dog)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaser_\(dog\))

</comment><comment><USER9> Sad to hear. I have a border collie and it's amazing how much he trained himself. What's especially interesting is selective obedience (also common in trained dogs like service animals). He almost always knows what you're saying, but only listens when he wants too.

<comment><USER16> Selective disobedience in service animals is different than what you're describing. That's when a dog chooses to ignore commands it knows are dangerous - not just when it feels like it.

<comment><USER9> You're right, I'm talking about the general concept of the dog making the decision to follow or not. For example, my dog will ignore me completely if he knows it's going to lead to a bath.

He clearly has determined what the outcome will be and decided not to do it, which is really interesting to watch, and very surprising the first time it happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope the publicity surrounding Chaser's passing doesn't inspire unprepared individuals to go out and get a border collie. They are arguably the smartest dog breed and that intelligence is accompanied with a continual need for stimulation that being locked up in a house or, worse yet, an apartment can't provide [0]. A toy lap breed they are not.

[0] [http://www.vetstreet.com/dogs/border- collie#1_izc4ixoo](http://www.vetstreet.com/dogs/border-collie#1_izc4ixoo)

<comment><USER17> I hope people consider even deeper that animals with less intelligence have motivation, fear and a variety of feelings in their consciousness. And that they deserve respect simply by virtue of their existence.

<comment><USER18> I don't see anyone arguing otherwise? pseudolus' point is that Border Collies are mostly not good pets, and terrible first dogs. If you want to do agility or flyball or something active for an hour a day, they excel, and you'll both be very happy...

It's having an animal bred for this in your house: [https://youtu.be/hxMsVbFr1Bc?t=15](https://youtu.be/hxMsVbFr1Bc?t=15)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Had a Scottish Border Collie, was a fantastic dog. I remember the first week after I got my dog we took him near a field and the instinct immediately kicked in when he saw the sheep. Straight to the ground, eyes giving the wolf stare and ears alert.

Taught my dog to count to 4 with visual cues (fingers or chews).

Would love another Collie but sadly most work places in the UK aren't dog friendly.

<comment><USER20> I have both a BC and a dog friendly workplace (Google). But I wouldn't dream of bringing her to work. Workplaces are for sedate dogs that are fine with lying around and doing nothing while the owner works.

Our BC spends all her waking hours looking for a job, and her wakefulness and energy is so much more intense than any other dog I've had. Makes sense for a breed that had to walk/run for effectively dozens of miles a day while herding.

<comment><USER21> I have a 15yo Aussie. I think he's finally at the point where I can bring him into an office. He's mostly blind and going deaf so his eternal vigilance isn't too disruptive anymore.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Dogs have been bred for everything else - I wonder how breeding dogs for intelligence would work out.

<comment><USER23> Others mentioned a couple of breeds that are generally known as smarter than usual; I'd add Catahoula to that list too. They're not as concerned about human's opinions of how they're doing their jobs as some others; they're doing the job, not waiting for the human's approval for having done it.

One of ours can reliably tell time from analog wall clocks. It's her job to put our daughter to bed on time, and she does, understanding school nights, weekends, and summer vacation all make circumstances different. We figure she's reading the clock because she's not confident about the DST change if we miss resetting those.

<comment><USER24> Can you explain more about this? What does putting your daughter to bed look like??

It sounds crazy!

<comment><USER23> She was a puppy when our daughter was younger, her bed was beside the little girls bed, with a ritual of reading a story. Settle in hound, give her blanket, settle in child, give her blanket, read a bit, goodnight. Wonderful to see.

Little hound grew and is polite but insistent on the fact that there is still a bedtime, even though it is later now and daughter no longer needs someone to sleep beside her all night.

[https://knitowl.blogspot.com/2016/12/our-catahoula- schedule-...](https://knitowl.blogspot.com/2016/12/our-catahoula-schedule- keepers-lucy.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's a video of the dog with Neil Degrasse where she's fetching objects he asks her.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omaHv5sxiFI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omaHv5sxiFI)

</comment><comment><USER26> A stray border collie came home with me one day while I was biking around the woods. She was easily the smartest dog I've ever owned and I've owned many.

She knew when to be emotionally available, she understood body language and speech so well. A fantastic riding companion that knew how to pace herself for miles.

Not a very good mother, though. Her entire brood was eaten by coyotes over a couple of weeks.

I'm highly considering getting another border collie when the time comes for a new dog... if so I'll definitely be trying to push her like Chaser.

</comment><comment><USER27> 60 minutes did a news piece on Chaser. It's worth the time to view.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/video/chaser-smartest-dog-in- world-6...](https://www.cbsnews.com/video/chaser-smartest-dog-in- world-60-minutes-2019-07-27/)

I've had a couple of dogs as pets in my lifetime and I think they are way smarter than what we give them credit for.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have two Australian shepherds - One of them was a puppy when I read the book about Chaser. So I decide to try to sort-of reproduce some of the author's experiments with my dog - and I'll be damned if it didn't work.

I didn't go to near the extent of the training John Pilley did with Chaser, but I did do the verbal only approach and put the toys in another room - and I was able to teach him to retrieve probably 5 or 10 toys by name. I was really amazed. I didn't do nearly as much training with the second Aussie - but she picked up on the whole game even quicker than the first dog (because she had a role model?).

Another thing I learned about this game/training : it really wears the dog out. After 20 or so minutes of playing "go find the toy" they dogs lay down for a nap.

(ps. doing "nose-work" games with dogs also wears them out)

</comment><comment><USER20> Aw, that's sad, we watched videos of this dog not long after we got our own border collie puppy some months ago.

Then we tried in vain to get our dog to make word/object associations like this dog. No luck.

Yes, BCs are smart. But that particular BC was really really smart. I hope its genetics live on in some lineage somewhere.

<comment><USER29> YOu can't stereotype by breed as much as people think.

I remember seeing some study about a dog IQ test (something like an oversized obstacle course in a barn -- but a legitimate study) and iirc Border Collies were the main subjects, and the IQ curve was basically a standard distribution, there were lots of dumb and average Border Collies, and only a handful of "highly intelligent" ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'll try not come off as snide but I have to wonder what types of ailments Border Collies are prone to due to the inevitable inbreeding that every AKC dog has--hey they gotta look pretty in the ring.

* Our German Short Hair Pointer had seizures which in time led to him having to be put down; despite having him treated at the Animal Medical Center in NYC amongst other places.

* Our English Cocker Spaniel (a found dog that was living on the street) had terrible dermatitis which caused him to lose much fur and I'm pretty sure was no fun him.

* Our Yorkshire Terrier had kidney disease, also with seizures, though much less common than the Pointer's until later in his life; he too eventually had to be put down due to kidney disease.

That was it for the pure breeds, I told my partner next dog get a mutt. Indeed she did, and he seems like a good dog so far--smart and happy.

<comment><USER31> Your attempt to not come across as snide unfortunately didn't land. What on Earth does your little soapbox rant on purebreds have to do with the article? The dog was smart as fuck and lived a long life to 15.

<comment><USER30> > your little soapbox rant on purebreds

I'm soo sorry if my obvious point was over your fucking head. Here's an article for the more enlightened members who might actually be interested in alleviating the suffering of dogs--which are freakin awesome animals.

[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/although- purebred...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/although-purebred- dogs-can-be-best-in-show-are-they-worst-in-health/)

<comment><USER32> Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how provocative another comment was. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and using HN as intended? We'd be grateful.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> [http://archive.is/en2SL](http://archive.is/en2SL)

</comment><comment><USER34> 15 years is the upper threshold for border collies. RIP.

<comment><USER35> 15 years is on the high side of average, but not an upper limit by any means. 20-year-old Border Collies aren't unheard of, and the world record is nearly 28 years.

<comment><USER36> world record of 28 years, documented where?

<comment><USER37> 27 years old, actually, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. See "Bramble" at [0].

[0]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_dogs](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_oldest_dogs)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Non-paywalled article

[https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/chaser-border- coll...](https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/chaser-border-collie- trained-to-recognize-1022-nouns-dies-at-15/)

<comment><USER39> Also paywalled, but useful because a lot of people who have maxed out their NYT limit won't have hit it here.</comment></comment>


You Aren't Allowed to Commit Suicide While Making iPads - <AUTHOR> http://en.techorange.com/memo-to-foxconn-workers-you-arent-allowed-to-commit-suicide-while-making-ipads/

<comment><USER2> You're free to commit suicide while making Android devices, however. That's the power of open.

Wait, no, that's terrible. Working conditions in Chinese factories are a serious issue. So serious, in fact, that it's disappointing that the press (e.g. the Daily Mail article that this blog post is based on) seems to only cover it when it gives them a chance to snipe at Apple.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should we chalk that one on the press or the readership?</comment></comment>


Swift: new programming language from Apple - <AUTHOR> http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--iO181faI--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/zt3yf7qvw0lspiwkumqu.png

<comment><USER2> Can't wait to get an email from a recruiter in the next 2 months asking if have 3+ years experience in swift.</comment>


Russia to replace proprietary software with open source - <AUTHOR> https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/russia-replace-proprietary-software-open-source

<comment><USER2> And the devastation the NSA cast upon the American tech sector continues. Let's see how long it takes for France to cast off American technology companies.</comment>


Turning the iPhone 6s into a Digital Scale - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@warpling/turning-the-iphone-6s-into-a-digital-scale-f2197dc2b6e7 <comment><USER2> The version of the Mate S with Force Touch that Huawei is delivering in China in early 2016 has the ability to use the technology to weight stuff. I saw the introduction live in Berlin and the marketing device was the picture of an orange being weighted directly on the phone. Too bad that the version of the Mate S with Force Touch is not meant to be distributed globally. Plus, who the hell would use a phone to weight an orange?

</comment><comment><USER3> Except I saw a scale demo on TV the day the iphone 6s was launched.

They weighed an orange.

May have been on Quest Means Business on CNN

</comment><comment><USER4> Hm banned by Apple? What a shame...</comment>


You can now download Google Chrome beta and start muting autoplay videos - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/15/16783144/download-google-chrome-beta-mute-autoplay-videos <comment><AUTHOR> How generous!

[https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay-p...](https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/09/autoplay- policy-changes)

It's lunacy that autoplay is still forced.

Does anyone else but me have a terrible feeling that the Internet is turning into network television? Now, stuff comes to YOU while previously you had to go to stuff.

There's a forced engagement.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Oh, and also:

"The setting to have autoplay content automatically muted is in Chrome 64's permissions bar. Unfortunately, this isn't a one-and-done setting — it has to be done for every website you want it applied to — but it will mute sound for any content that is navigated to under the parent domain."

</comment><comment><USER2> If it just mutes videos without stopping them, you still eat bandwidth.

</comment><comment><USER3> fortunately there are disable autoplay extensions -- a must have, along with an adblocker ;)</comment>


Should we let wunderkinds drop out of high school? - <AUTHOR> http://bigstory.ap.org/article/should-we-let-wunderkinds-drop-out-high-school-0

<comment><USER2> There's actually a third path: put smart kids in college early.

I went to a program at a state school in Southern California. It was pretty amazing. I was with about 120 peers (20-30 students per class year), who ranged from 12 to 18. We had a common room to go to between classes, so it ended up as a hybrid between high school and university – the more challenging courses of university, but with the peer group and social experience of a (very small) high school.

</comment><comment><USER3> > But the tech community may be different from other industries. Degrees are > not necessarily seen as a hallmark of achievement and programmers are judged > on their ability to type lines of code. You are what you create.

That is the key here. It is reasonable to not focus on education if you wish to pursue a lucrative, high-demand career in an industry that tends to care about actual skill a lot more than education.

<comment><USER4> But as the article mentions, the odds are still much better for high school grads (and even better for college grads), so _on average_ keeping kids in school makes more sense.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> God Bless America, is what I say. If you can make your fortune without years of study, why not.

And the title argument is ridiculous. Nobody 'lets' somebody else choose their life.

<comment><USER6> I think the key here is that school is actually obstructing, not aiding, the "years of study". Extraordinarily gifted people can often be autodidactic - very good self-directed learners. When that hunger for knowledge exhausts the ability of the public school teet to supply, it becomes either a matter of starvation or fending for oneself. Staying in school in these cases can actually hamper learning via distraction and peer pressure to conform to the "norm".

<comment><USER7> I dropped out of high school after completing the advanced, senior-level math in my sophomore year. The school had interesting classes, but there were no more classes to intellectually challenge me. It was the right choice, and I immediately enrolled in college. You are right on track, exarch.

<comment><USER8> If I may ask, how did you manage to enroll in college without a HS diploma?

<comment><USER6> More than one university tried to recruit me before I'd even _started_ high school, based on the results of an SAT test I was asked to take in 6th grade. I didn't go, but mostly because no one offered a full-ride, and my family was poor and couldn't afford to pay tuition and put me up in another state.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> From someone who has tried to pursue this path: The answer is no. If your parents have it ingrained in their minds that college == success, and the idea that there are no alternative routes has set in, enjoy your mental starvation with a side of busywork.

The situation is even worse when one wants to work with computers. Minors plus computers OBVIOUSLY equals someone staying online every hour of their life, playing video games where you violently kill kittens. </sarcasm>

</comment><comment><USER10> High schools are like prisons to smart kids.</comment>


San Diego startup On-Ramp develops 45 mile "WiF-i" - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37881/?p1=A3&a=f

<comment><AUTHOR> "He is targeting devices that use less than 50 bits per second"

^^ not quite the white space utilization i was hoping</comment>


Surprising Honesty in Facebook's Javelin JavaScript Library? - <AUTHOR> http://javelinjs.com/

<comment><USER2> It's a sendup of mootools, I believe. Evan is an interesting character and a master troll. Last week he added the "hacked by Chinese" banner to see if anyone would notice.

<comment><USER3> I was wondering about that banner!</comment></comment>