LDL-C Does Not Cause Cardiovascular Disease: A Comprehensive Review (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://doi.org/10.1080/17512433.2018.1519391 <comment><USER2> Cardiovascular geneticist/statistician and physician-in-training here: This is a completely bogus and scientifically illiterate review. This small group of people in Sweden keep publishing crap like this and it's frankly kind of annoying.

It's hard to even know where to start with the overwhelming amount of evidence that elevated levels of LDL cholesterol causes cardiovascular disease.

Since I'm a geneticist, I'll point out just a handful of strong genetics- guided experiments:

1) Familial hypercholesterolemia - Mutations in the LDLR Gene causing basically only elevated LDL lead to 10x increased odds for coronary artery disease

2) PCSK9 inhibitors - essentially only reduce LDL concentration, dramatically reduce risk

3) Mendelian randomization techniques - statistical causal inference in massive datasets shows pretty conclusively LDL increases CVD

Yes, LDL cholesterol causes CVD. Yes, there are other factors as well (especially hemodynamics and chronic inflammation).

<comment><USER3> No, everything you mentioned says that LDL-C levels correlates with cardiovascular disease rather than causes.

Mutation in LDLR gene is a cause. LDL-C level is a correlate. The mutation may or may not have additional repercussions other than just higher level of LDL-C. Like with many metabolic issues - the problem sometimes truly is the high level of (toxic) product, sometimes overload of the compensatory mechanism (competitive inhibition etc.), sometimes the product is innocent but the mutation has other effects.

PCSK9 inhibitors... I would be very careful. These might be just as inconsistent as statins with equivocal evidence. For now, Cochrane agrees. (Cochrane cancelled 2018 rereview of statins due to methodology update, the 2013 one is somewhat suspect. Later fluvastatin review shows it's not potent enough etc. But this is all tangential.)

At least they will shine more light on the LDL-C hypothesis than statins which have more complex effects. They are still not sensitive enough to rule out other mechanisms. The drugs only recently exited phase III trials.

To accurately conclude LDL-C causes cardiovascular disease you will have to figure out a way to increase LDL-C in absence of other relevant factors. Or perhaps strongly control for those factors. This is actually hard. (among them: obesity, smoking, diet and excercise, gene variants)

This should be quite possible to verify in animal model by pumping them with relevant lipids regularly. Not entirely sure how to extend this to human trials, but a way can be found.

If you have such results, I'd like to read them.

<comment><USER2> There are literally hundreds to thousands of papers where they have done exactly this: Feed animals a high-cholesterol diet and compare the results to control animals fed a normal diet. Usually they will also compare different drugs in separate experimental arms. The LDL diet is a positive control, the normal diet is a negative control, and the drug arms are usually the intervention being tested. How much evidence do you want? This (molecular imaging of atherosclerosis) is an entire subfield of medicine with tons of work.

I myself have done this in rabbits, followed by by molecular imaging (Tc-99m bound to various ligands) which __directly image __atherosclerosis in the animal. We use single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) as well as position emission tomography (PET) to quantitatively measure atherosclerotic burden. We also sacrifice the animals and remove their arteries–upon unmagnified visual inspection of the plaques in the arteries, I can tell you which animals get which diet.

I'm not going to debate all of your points. Sure, it's possible there are other potential explanations for FH or PCSK9. However, they are not likely. Also, mendelian randomization studies are use a __causal inference __strategy via instrumental variable analysis, getting around the idea that we are measuring only correlations. It 's a very nice technique which mimics a randomized controlled trial via the random assignment of genetic material during gametogenesis. So I don't agree with you.

Last thing: The equivocal evidence of statin therapy is only in primary prevention, not in secondary prevention. No one is really challenging that statins work, the question is what population is of high enough risk that they should get statins. This is widely misreported in the popular media and pretty harmful to patients who see a headline and stop taking their drugs.

<comment><USER3> High cholesterol diet is not the same as high blood level of lipids. There are many steps inbetween. It is additionally not the same as the high occurence of atheroma. Even more steps.

You've introduced an additional super complex variable (diet) where there should be none (blood level of LDL-C). I do not dispute accuracy of atheroma measurements at all. This is easy enough technicality.

What is this "LDL diet" anyway? Do you feed animals with lipids?

If you mean high saturated fat diet, then that's a different beast. It does many more things than just increase LDL-C levels - it also increases TG levels, LDL levels in total, places metabolic burden on liver and more interesting things.

Even there, the trials are rightly calling these levels _correlates_. Not causes. And it is not a pedantic point, it is critical and informs the way we should be dealing with related CVD.

Secondary prevention wrt statins, hmm, I see one good USPTF study. It includes primary prevention too and has well defined results which are mildly positive.

It actually says you're not allowed to attribute statin results to LDL-C levels as LDL-C dose/response strategies were not superior to plain fixed dose. More importantly, this area has not been evaluated with enough power.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2584057](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2584057)

Key point 1b. No dose response, likely no direct causation. Suspected mechanism is thus different from direct LDL-C levels. Most importantly: "Benefits of statins did not appear to be restricted to patients with severely elevated lipid levels, because similar effects were observed in subgroups stratified according to baseline levels."

We have barely enough statistical power to say they're superior, not even figure out the dosage in 3 levels.

Interesting fact there being that biggest trials reported smallest relative risk reduction. (~15% with pretty big error bars on this.) Absolute risk values are even more funny, like ~0.5% reduction... in high risk groups.

<comment><USER2> We feed the animals regular chow mixed with a percentage of pure cholesterol (0.5% by mass, if I recall, but I might be wrong). I do not mean a high saturated fat diet.

This is not the introduction of complex "diet" variables as in humans whatsoever. I am quite aware of the differences in various lipids. Feeding animals pure cholesterol is about as close as we can get. There might be studies that have literally infused LDL in animals, I am not exactly sure. It sounds like a huge pain to do experimentally since we would need to obtain vascular access at least each day and risk infection, stress and pain in the animals, etc.

We measure animal blood using the same machines used on humans and see primarily increases in total cholesterol and LDL cholesterol following the diet.

There is not "one good" study for secondary prevention of statins, there are dozens.

There is very good evidence for the effectiveness of dose-response in statins. Again, I don't even know where exactly to start with this body of literature. Look up "high intensity statin therapy." This review for primary prevention, which is probably why it was underpowered in this meta-analysis of 19 trials in primary prevention (where I said the evidence was more equivocal; this study actually shows pretty good evidence for the effectiveness of statins. in 1° prevention). A RR of 0.86 in only 1-6 years is pretty damn good for a chronic disease.

Finally, I think you misunderstand statistics when you say that this review (in which there were only three studies which could be used to analyze dose- response) implies there is no dose response.

When they analyze dose-response (which is done through increasing statin dosage until the LDL-C levels are low enough), I quote: "RR for cardiovascular mortality, 0.61 [95% CI, 0.37 to 1.02]" Yes, this is underpowered because the CI includes 1 but the point estimate of 0.6 is pretty impressive. This is a poor conclusion by the authors via incorrect application of the NHST framework, and not evidence that there is no dose-response effect. The best evidence is actually pretty strong (RR of 0.6 is big!). I personally doubt it's even that big.

Furthermore, RR for composite cardiovascular outcomes, 0.63 [95% CI, 0.53 to 0.76] was very statistically significant and again with a pretty strong signal. So I don't think this paper says what you say it does.

You didn't feel the need to address mendelian randomization studies in 500,000 plus people?

<comment><USER3> I'm not disputing effectiveness of statins one bit. They're effective, though not as hugely effective as we're led to believe by marketing. (15% RRR is probably worthwhile even if we don't know how these work.)

I'm disputing that the effect is related to LDL-C. There were no important differences in trials that titrated based on LDL-C or used fixed dose. Compare RR 0.63 vs 0.71 and full error bar overlap. There were also no relevant differences of outcome based on stratification by LDL-C levels.

I did not feel the need to address "genetic"/"metabolomic" studies. (Also known as data sifting.)

Standard MR is essentially n-D crosscorrelation of LDL-C levels with LDLR genetic variant and CHD occurences. We know that beforehand. It doesn't tell us anything of causation nor anything we don't know. The authors like to misuse R as "explains".

The stronger MR variant results suggest adiposity causes LDL-C levels. Which we already know, again, does not give us a clear treatment target.

The other advanced studies pinpoint specific lipids as the cause of CHD, but cannot say where they are from. And no, they're not quite LDL-C.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816855/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4816855/)

I'm not entirely sure how the authors got the rationale from what they're writing about.

The better MR-like methods as mentioned are like stepwise crosscorrelation and median clustering. Not entirely sure how they can actually show causality.

When the statistical guesswork method (MR is one kind of) does not match the observations... it is likely that either the method is incorrect or that our treatment is misapplied and reality does not match it. MR suggests RRR 3.5 for all LDL-C lowering drugs. We see 1.15 on statins and none on PCSK9 inhibitors vs CVD mortality.

I'd bet on MR being invalid/confused.

<comment><USER2> You misunderstand what mendelian randomization and instrumental variable estimation are.

I'm not even sure what the methods you propose are, they're definitely not popular ways to do causal inference in medicine or epidemiology.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, but I actually understand precisely what mendelian randomization and instrumental variable estimation are.

You apply nonlinear least squares estimation to every selected suspected variable which is a bunch of linearization/polynomial approximating cross correlations with normalized by estimated covariances. That is nonlinear IV method.

MR is this based on an assumption that genomes are random fields of genes with equal independent probabilities of occurence (known to be false, partly corrected by population statistics which is not enough) giving direct results on marker conditions/correlates but not on endpoints (known to be false, partial attempts to correct for it are made to check for pleiotropy but those checks are weak and linear) which markers are nonlinearly covariate with endpoints (hope you used the right mapping) and that highest magnitudes of the "correlations" say something about causation related to certain endpoints. (not in general) MR shines as a negative method to rule out genetic causation or susceptibility, not positive method to confirm it. It can be used to confirm internal validity of a marker - invariance of it vs genetics.

The choice of variables (dimensions) is an educated guess too.

The assumptions that are verified is that genetic sequence is not heterogenous, heteroskedastic, there are no hidden linkages etc.

The assumptions are not typically met or verified for complex system such as lipid metabolism alone, much less endpoints such as CVD. Polygenetic phenotypes are common and typical, not to say anything about epigenetics.

Nothing is said about the choice of the checked variables which is critical, and trying too many gives the problem of multiple measurement reducing power.

The strongest assumption is that the variables are not covariant with estimation error. This is not possible to check with MR statistics alone unless you can somehow check those variants experimentally directly. (e.g. via gene splicing or mutation) Good luck with that.

<comment><USER2> No, I don't think you have a clue.

You wrote a completely wrong thing, edited it when I pointed out it was incorrect, and then 4 hours later you read up about MR on wikipedia or something and came back here and posted a partially correct answer with a lot of buzzwords and nice-sounding phrases, but with even more straw-man arguments and outright errors.

Peace out, I'm done with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does this claim apply equally to the relationship of LDL-P measurements to CVD as well?

<comment><USER2> LDL particle size is less studied but probably an even better indicator for CVD than LDL-C serum concentration.</comment></comment>


Mac malware spies on infected users through video and audio capture - <AUTHOR> http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2012/07/26/mac-malware-spies-morcut-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Is it possible to turn on camera without green light?</comment>


How To Make a 23" Android Touchscreen - <AUTHOR> http://martin.drashkov.com/2012/02/how-to-make-23-android-megapad.html

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to read this article now, but I just had to note that the background pattern is very hostile to my weary eyes.</comment>


Ask HN: What is your solution to Micheal Seibel's thought? - <AUTHOR> "For many people, the longer they work at a big company making a large salary, the higher their personal expenses rise, and the lower their chances will be of starting a startup, even if that is their eventual goal."<p>How would you tackle this problem? I am in this exact scenario and indeed, Micheal is right.<p>(source: https://blog.ycombinator.com/why-should-i-start-a-startup/) <comment><USER2> I actually haven't observed this in my own life - I saved a pretty consistent 80% of my take-home compensation the whole time I was at Google, and my lifestyle now is basically the same as when I moved to California 8 years ago. I know a handful of other people in the same position, as well as a fair number of people whose expenses _did_ creep up to meet their income.

The common behavior among the people whose expenses didn't creep up: they _decided_ , at an early age and when they were still poor, what sort of lifestyle they needed to make themselves happy, and they didn't deviate from that, regardless of whatever other messages society sends them.

Or in slightly different terms: build your lifestyle up from zero and default to "No" when asking yourself "Do I need X?", rather than working you way down from your current income and defaulting to "Yes" when asking yourself "Can I afford X?"

Another side benefit of this approach is that it makes you immune to advertising & scams, and tends to result in a lot less clutter around the house. If your answer is always "No" unless you've sat on any decision for at least a month, then everything that involves convincing you to open up your wallet isn't going to get very far. (The downside is that you don't develop much of a trade sense of what people will pay for, because you personally won't pay for anything, which is a whole other sort of problem if you want to found a startup.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Living to work vs working to live. In your scenario I can see how you've dedicated 8 years of your life to your employer. Would we really value "time" in this case? 8 years is a lot of time living to work, getting all these perks not spending any money at all. Not investing in real estate, etc. I feel like you're living the entrepreneur life while being a full time employee at Google.

It's a great backup plan to invest in real estate, build a family and enjoy traveling once in a while. I don't want to wake up at 50y old single with a large bank account. Cash isn't worth anything today.

<comment><USER2> It was actually only 5.5 years, the remaining 2.5 I've been working on a startup (or 10). I agree that time is more important than money.

And for those 5.5 years, there wasn't anything more exciting than working at Google. Once there was, I left and did it instead. I wasn't living to work, I considered my work and my life to be part of the same inseparable whole.

(There's also a point here about not letting other peoples' definitions of what's exciting or worthwhile influence you. I'm sure there are many people who will say "How sad that the most exciting thing in your life is working for a gigantic megacorp!" That's fine - they aren't living my life. I actually thought that the scale of the computing power and complexity of algorithms available to me was fascinating, and I joined them because I wanted to peek under the hood and contribute to what they were doing, not because I needed money.)

[Edit: your comment was edited slightly after I replied, not sure if this makes any sense anymore. But responding to your edited version: if cash isn't worth anything and you don't want to wake up with a large bank account, then what's the problem? You _aren 't_ going to wake up with a large bank account when you're 50, which means that you're living exactly the life you want to live.]

<comment><AUTHOR> In that case, that makes total sense.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Andy Grove Essay Commentary by Tyler Cowen - <AUTHOR> http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2010/07/the-andy-grove-essay.html

<comment><USER2> The down-swing in a business cycle is the time for everyone to resurrect their pet anti-trade theories.

<comment><USER3> Defationary collapse of a massive debt bubble != down-swing of the business cycle.

Also, a quick look at just about every economic empire in history shows their decline was always associated with a massive negative trade balance. The theorists seem to ignore this though. If it's not codified in a dazzling formula, it's irrelevant.

Not that I'm for protectionism or anti-globalization, but it's certainly not beyond questioning, reconsidering, and/or re-engineering.

<comment><USER4> _Defationary collapse of a massive debt bubble != down-swing of the business cycle_

They look pretty much the same from the perspective of July 2010. What's the big difference?

<comment><USER3> Routine business cycle downswings don't require over a trillion dollars to prevent the economy from tailspinning into another Great Depression.

If you add up the TARP and all the alphabet soup lending support programs, the stimulus package/s, and Fed's quantitative easing intervention, you're talking well over a trillion dollars, and we're still not out of it yet.

This was a speculative debt bubble followed by the inevitable financial crisis. See Rogoff & Reinhardt. Definitely not part of the business cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The list of 9 over simplified points is not what I'd expect from somebody with Dr. Cowen's background. When I first read the blog I thought, "Really, is some 20 something programmer questioning Grove, cute."

I don't agree with everything Grove has to say either but to dismiss things without analysis is not justified either.

I'll pick on point #3 about "scale, scale, scale". Cowen states that Germany does not have the scale of the USA and is a big exporting success. Germany does have scale in the luxury auto market. See: [http://blog.polk.com/blog/new-vehicle-sales/0/0/audi- outpace...](http://blog.polk.com/blog/new-vehicle-sales/0/0/audi-outpaces- luxury-rivals-in-early-2010) Germany also has scale in many other industries it chooses to compete in.

I'd like to have a more in depth discussion with him on Grove's essay. He should at least give it the same amount of analysis and thought that Grove did. This blog post does not do it justice.

<comment><USER6> A bullet list of reactions/avenues-for-consideration is often Cowen's style. I appreciate the conciseness.

Grove has given this subject more words, _not_ more analysis and thought. And Grove's words are the same as from economic debates of decades ago. That's the real reason that Cowen is parsimonious with his response. Cowen concludes with:

 _Grove is writing from a time warp in which these debates never happened or never were settled or never something -- I don't know what._

<comment><USER3> 1\. Decades is not a long enough time period to know anything in Econ with certainty.

2\. Even if it were, the global economy is a highly complex system, subject to change. What was right decades ago may not be today.

3\. Economics has a pretty dismal recent record. Most of the theorists _cough_ Krugman _cough_ completely missed the buildup to the biggest economic event in recent history, the financial crisis.

Rather it was the historians like Rogoff & Reinhardt, crisis-experts like Roubini, and shrewd business people and money managers (who make their living putting their money where there mouth is) who foresaw it. Not the theorists.

There are a host of problems with the field of economics, from physics envy to sociology of science, that critics like Taleb and Wilmott have exposing. The field's understanding and credibility is highly suspect.

Grove knows what works, and has proven that his way actually does create jobs. And his point about scale enabling additional innovation beyond the original concept is exactly right. What has Cowen done but get good grades and write about it?

<comment><USER7> Krugman did in fact-along with other economists-predict the housing bubble: [http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E4D61039F...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9507E4D61039F934A15756C0A9639C8B63)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Isn't it strange that such a wide gap exists between business people and economists? Possibly the economists get lost in theory. For a business person, the reality of China under valuing its currency is the most important fact to consider when thinking about doing business in Asia. And yet, for an economist like Cowen, its as if the issue doesn't really exist. I also find it odd that Cowen, in different posts on his blog, will sometimes claim that America has a robust economy because its economy is free-market, but then in other posts he complains about the heaviness of government intrusion into the market. This strikes me as inconsistent - either the government is heavy-handed, or the economy is free-market. If he really believes that America is both free market and yet it has an intrusive government, then it seems to me his theories need to allow for the possibility that the economy has a robustness due to some of the intrusions that the government makes. That would be the argument I would make, regarding some of the investments in R&D that the government has made over the decades - not free-market, but good for the economy.

</comment><comment><USER9> The real problem with Grove's suggestions is that he ignores the issues which led to this economic downturn in the first place: rampant avarice, ignorance and corruption. There can be no meaningful improvement to US fortunes until those issues are substantially corrected.

<comment><USER2> You talk as if rampant avarice, ignorance and corruption were invented in 2005 and weren't with us during last 150 years of dazzling increases in prosperity.

<comment><USER3> Throw in systematic deregulation of all financial safeguards, massive speculation leading to a debt bubble, and then it's obviously a problem.</comment></comment></comment>


Small Groups Win Big in Bitcoin Donor's $56M Giving Spree - <AUTHOR> https://www.philanthropy.com/article/Anonymous-Bitcoin-Donor-Rains/242606/ <comment><USER2> > OpenMRS said Pine had contributed software patches to the effort previously.

I think they should be more careful not to dox him/her.</comment>


Efene now JSON friendly - introducing structs - <AUTHOR> http://efene.tumblr.com/post/1141659742/efene-now-json-friendly-introducing-structs

<comment><USER2> This is tne most interesting language in a long while. Sure maybe learning erlang directly might be better, but since so many are unwilling, you'd think an interest in real concurrency would push them to effete. I hope it is gaining momentum.</comment>


Zuckerberg defends Facebook users' right to be wrong – even Holocaust deniers - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/18/zuckerberg-facebook-holocaust-deniers-censorship <comment><USER2> How will the media and society deal with these sorts of situations if decentralised alternatives to these social media sites take off? There won't be any one place or person or company to blame, no? Did the media write about email being used negatively when it was taking off? (That's an honest question, I'm too young and a cursory search didn't turn up anything interesting).

<comment><USER3> I think the distinction is "reach". Emails are generally directed to dozens, maybe hundreds of individuals, whereas with modern social media, an individual can reach millions of people. It begins to enter the realm of traditional media organizations.

But unlike traditional media organizations, there are far fewer laws in place regulating the responsibility that comes with that reach.

It is an interesting problem, and I'm not sure there is a good solution, other than try to combat it head on with education (how to properly evaluate the information you accept), and possibly PSAs.

<comment><USER4> It's also a matter of "endorsement" which is what Facebook tacitly does when they they host this stuff.

You are free to say or feel whatever you want in your own living room, amongst your friends, private function, your head, email, decentralised hate-sites or even reddit or 4chan.

Precisely the problem with Facebook is that they are actively stirring the pot to sell ads. They are making money off this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't consider his position controversial at all...

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it far more interesting on how other content is dealt with. From what I can gather from the heise.de and this report, unless it's specifically against ethnic or religious groups, it stays up. "dirty muslims" is not okay, "dirty muslim immigrants" is. I fail to see the difference, in both cases the author is going against a group of people based on attributes of that group.

I hope that we can get federated facebook alternatives off the ground, FB is clearly not capable of solving these problems on their own without displeasing everyone. Want to see these comments? Go to an instance that permits them. Don't want to see them? Go to an instance that deletes them. Problem solved.

<comment><USER7> > Want to see these comments? Go to an instance that permits them. Don't want > to see them? Go to an instance that deletes them. Problem solved.

Maybe what people _really_ want is to be outraged...

<comment><USER6> Then that can be their choice too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The West European bans on holocaust denial must be seen in their historical context.

After WWII, there was a massive backlash against german collaborators. Everyone even slightly suspect of being pro german was at risk of being looted, tortured or killed by their furious neighbours.

Mob rule had to be replaced by lawfull governement, and this required appeasing the mob. Part of it were dishonest trials, a blind eye against some revenges. A very small price to pay was forbidding the denial of the crimes that the Nazis had done.

I am not proud of this part of our history but it was probably necessary.

However, we are a few generations further now and a lot of relevant people are dead now. Maybe the time is ready to review this rule. Discussing this stuf is especially important as we seem to remake some of the errors that led to the war

<comment><USER9> The holocaust deniers certainly aren't dead. The denial is the one of the early steps of facist subversion and should remain banned. It's time to review the rule when nobody is denying it anymore.

<comment><USER10> Can't you see that censoring an idea will lead people who are simply curious to think that there must be something in it, or else why would they ban it?

Far better that idiocy should be on public display where it can be mocked and destroyed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a perfectly good reason why it is against the law to deny the Holocaust in Germany. Can anyone guess what it is?

<comment><USER12> I honestly don't know why it's better to ban denial rather than trying to engage and educate. It's been very confusing to me. Could you please explain?

<comment><USER13> The entire school system is based on how bad they were, how many bad things they did and how how everyone in Germany should never repeat the same mistakes again. Ok, I'm exaggerating a bit, but that's the general idea. I think Germany was one of the only countries to actually deal, accept and discuss openly in society the atrocities they did in WWII. So it's not just banning and getting over denial.

<comment><USER14> The german school system is not about indoctrination or assigning guilt.

The post war german generations were not teached that they are guilty, but that they do carry responsibility for being aware of how easily facism and dehumanisation happens and escalates, and of keeping the memory of such evil present.

And yes, this includes the responsibility of being aware that similar things may happen again, clearly detecting extremism by the root, calling it out and hopefully averting it. Probably every country in the world should put such emphasis in their history lessons, but nobody else ever _really_ will for obvious reasons.

So this kind of became a responsibility of the people born in modern germany. This is why it is _one_ possible Abitur topic in politics, history and german lessons, why it is _one_ element of the curriculum in (3 to 4)+2 different middle school years + Abitur (saxony speaking) and why there are high school visits to concentration camps.

<comment><USER13> I just wrote it in the most simplistic way, but your explanation is the more accurate one.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Free Anonymous BitTorrent Becomes Reality With BitBlinder  - <AUTHOR> http://torrentfreak.com/free-anonymous-bittorrent-becomes-reality-with-bitblinder-090611/ <comment><USER2> Apparently the MPAA and RIAA never watched Star Wars:

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

(And yes, I know that Star Wars is not the original source of this sentiment.)

The most amusing part about all of this is that the MPAA and RIAA "crackdown" and prosecution of file sharers has forced them to develop technology that is nearly impossible to monitor. Terrorists and child pornographers (+) are infinitely grateful. If nobody got sued for downloading albums, this would probably have not been necessary. Ah, corporations and governments... always thinking about society's best interests...

(+) Yes, I chose these two so that I could sound like a politician. jrockway for President.

</comment><comment><USER3> _"Acting as an exit node provides the operator with plausible deniability, since they will have no idea what data is passing through."_

This is a weak defence at best and a huge risk to whoever acts as an end node. What if someone further up the chain is downloading child pornography? Do you really want to be protecting their IP, relaying their traffic and sending your own IP in the clear?

<comment><USER4> I suspect you would probably make the same argument about being a Tor endpoint.

Given that Tor has been available for a while, are there examples of maintainers of Tor end nodes being held accountable for the traffic they pass on behalf of others?

This seems bred the same philosophy as holding an ISP accountable for the traffic of its customers, or holding the administrator of 4chan accountable for what is posted on there. It seems tenuous.

Maybe I'm missing something. How many jurisdictions are there now where an unknowing facilitator can be held accountable for the criminal acts of those he is facilitating?

Either way, I'm not fond of this philosophy of scaring everyone into the clear simply to avoid gruesome labeling.

<comment><USER5> There was an example of one guy having the police come to his house and seize his computers, before eventually returning them. Needless to say, he was shit- scared that his neighbours would find out that he was suspected of child pornography (though of course he was not guilty). His account was posted here some 6 months ago or so.

I think it's a matter of numbers, though. If TOR (or equivalent) was as popular as BT, even the police would realise it is pointless.

<comment><USER6> This is the post you are talking about: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526140>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems this is just an ratio-enforced version of TOR, with the added downside of having a single point of failure (the ratio tracking company).

"it will also be possible to buy 'upload credit' to use BitBlinder"

</comment><comment><USER8> The guys behind this are from the Winter/Spring 2009 AlphaLab batch (as Innomi.net):

<http://www.alphalab.org/meet_our_companies.aspx>

Informative: [http://startuppittsburgh.com/2009/05/innominet-interview- abo...](http://startuppittsburgh.com/2009/05/innominet-interview-about- bitblinder/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Why would anyone want to use this?

FOr me it's 2009 and most the things I want digitally are available online legally to enjoy (music, tv shows, some movies). The only reason you would use this is so you can feel totally safe downloading things you would have otherwise had to pay for. Why do you need to feel safe are you worried about getting caught? Maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place!

I'm reformed as I stole, downloaded and horded everything via edonkey and bit torrent. Reformed after running my own startup and now having access to most things i want to enjoy freely and legally online to stream.

<comment><USER10> _Reformed after running my own startup and now having access to most things i want to enjoy freely and legally online to stream._

Is nice to hear you can afford to buy legally everything you like but I think those who endorse P2P and sharing they do that especially because they see it as a way for less wealthy people to access information.

I think your opinion is very similar to the one of the discographic industry when they say that every CD you download is a CD that you don't buy.

<comment><USER11> I don't think that's what he was saying. I think he's talking about services such as Grooveshark and Hulu.

 _having access to most things i want to enjoy freely and legally online to stream._</comment></comment></comment>


Injunction against Uber in Germany lifted - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/EntscheidungEN

<comment><AUTHOR> Court believes that the decision was materially correct, but oral arguments have convinced it that the supposed urgency isn't there.

Case to continue in regular court proceedings.</comment>


Human spatial memory is made up of numerous individual maps (2016) - <AUTHOR> http://maxplanck.nautil.us/article/351/orientation-without-a-master-plan <comment><USER2> I was told ages ago that humans divide our spatial memory into discrete spaces, and then store our memories of objects relative to the space in which we saw or thought about the object. That's why when you need to get something from another room, and you walk through a doorway to get there, so often you'll realise you've forgotten what it was that you needed to get. And then you walk back through the doorway and you'll remember.

I'd guess this is also why memory palaces work - you're basically allocating a data structure to store your facts in.

<comment><USER3> There's a psychotherapy approach called Internal Family Systems, IFS, that is the theory that we're all naturally made up of individual, multiple personalities. Each part of you having it's own anxieties, fears, goals.

It's why you could seemingly be one personality when you encounter love, hungry, horny, etc and seemingly different person while in a different context.

[https://youtu.be/LuJLv98ks-I](https://youtu.be/LuJLv98ks-I)

<comment><USER4> Is this psychotherapy approach generally respected among therapists, or is it kinda fringe?

Because from that description, it sounds like it would probably be a fringe thing, but I don't know the field in the slightest, so I can't be confident in that.

Also, that description at the end of the post, that you say it explains, doesn't seem to match my experience.

Also, I don't think I see how it relates to the parent comment?

<comment><USER5> I don't work in neuroscience, but I've taken a few courses in undergrad. I'll chime in until a professional can answer your question more definitively.

There's some evidence that the left and right brain hemispheres have their own desires and goals, based on some studies conducted by Roger Perry in the 1960's. Sperry received the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his split-brain research.

[https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain- exper...](https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/roger-sperrys-split-brain- experiments-1959-1968)

Aside from the left-right split, I think there's a large category of well- supported models that conceive of the mind-brain as modular, but with sub- units dedicated to basic processing tasks (memory retrieval, sensory integration, etc.) rather than being fully-formed, discrete "personalities" in themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "We find it easy to remember the position of many items as one unit when arranged in large open spaces. Hence, large corridors, roads, and entrance areas that provide a broad overall view enhance wayfinding."

I think this is something that web design has lost. Most modern web design is optimised for the mobile and as a result, navigation and menus are hidden behind hamburger menus, swipe left menus, or behind mysterious icons. Instead of a broad overall view, the user has to enter each corridor and room to find out what is in there. Where once websites were about having a broad overall view of the site perhaps now it's about getting the focus on a piece of content on it's own.

I suppose another example that comes to mind is API Documentation on one page, versus split up into many little pages in a structured hierarchy.

</comment><comment><USER7> Actual study: [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001002771...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027716301500?via%3Dihub)

Looks like they put people in two different types of VR environments. One was an open room ("vista space"), the other was more like a simple maze with a few corridors ("environmental space"). There were various objects throughout the environments that the subjects were asked to memorize and then "point" towards using a joystick.

The subjects were allowed to learn the locations of the objects in various ways such as from a few vantage points, or moving around along various paths through the space, whether the objects appeared one at a time or all at once, etc. They then measured how long it took the subjects to complete the "pointing" (latency in seconds) and the error in direction (degrees).

They predicted that in the open room condition, subjects would perform better when the object was 0, +/\- 90, and 180 degrees relative to the body orientation, but for the corridor case performance should be best when the object was +/-45 or +/-135 degrees from the body orientation. I didn't figure out why they predicted this.

They found that people in the "corridor" condition took longer to point at the object and made more errors, and this increased the more walls that were in between the subject and the item. They also found that the performance was largely as predicted according to the relative prediction of the object (better at +/\- 45/135 in the corridor condition, and vice versa for the open room condition).

They conclude: _" memory differences between vista and environmental space originated mainly from the spatial compartmentalization which was unique to environmental space learning."_

Seems like a pretty flimsy connection between data and theory to me. If anyone can figure out why they made that prediction about body orientation please comment.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've always thought that this was the case.

I have a very good memory for places. But I am terrible at remembering where places like relative to each other.

I grew up on a coastal town, where essentially every 'area' lay on a single highway. And after living there for ~15 years on and off, I could name almost every business in three towns, which ones had shut down and re-opened as something different, what had been swamp a few years before.

Everything.

But if I got in my car, and tried to drive to a specific location, I was completely useless.

I could tell you what the building looked like, what was accross the street, what was next to it on either side.

But I woukd be completely unable to tell you if it was north or south of me.

I often had to navigate by mentally walking from building to building.

<comment><USER9> > I often had to navigate by mentally walking from building to building.

That's similar to how I navigate if I have to find out if there's a certain kind of business in proximity. I quickly "fly" down the street in one direction, see if there's what I need – say, a convenience store – for about a bus stop or two, then the other way. I'm looking in the direction I'm scouting, but my mind is wandering way further.

I'm also quite capable of finding my way back to somewhere I'd been once, but I won't be able to tell you where it is on the map unless I find something memorable on it and orient myself similarly to above.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _In their study, the Max Planck researchers tested the spatial memory of > volunteers in a virtual environment using 3-D glasses._

Well, the photo at the top of the article shows them wearing an Oculus.

<comment><USER11> One assumes that "3D Glasses" was meant to mean a VR headset

<comment><USER9> Seems worth noting that they're not the same thing, given the geeky nature of the forum we find ourselves on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's a sheaf!

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheaf_(mathematics)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheaf_\(mathematics\))</comment>


Living with and building for the Amazon Echo - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@sicross/living-with-and-building-for-the-amazon-echo-525caea9f280#.fzbce5e7h <comment><USER2> Who wants to have a black box in their home (or bedroom!) that listens to every sound, connects to the internet and over which you have no control? Sure I believe Amazon when they say they only send clips of the actual commands, but how long before these things get rooted left and right?

I build my own version of this, which I can customize as I want. I can get the weather (my central home automation server pulls forecasts from wunderground.com, current temp from my own sensors, the voice control unit then pulls data from there), open/close curtains and turn lights on/off, and it says the time. I have a small list of other 'dialogues' (as they're called in my system) I'm going to add when I have some time, but I'm still figuring out what functionality is worthwhile.

My software is based on pocketsphinx on raspi, so it's easy to put one in each room (I have only one now myself). I'm using a mxl ac404 teleconf mic, which works ok; you do have to speak up for it to pick up the commands. I'd love to get an echo to see how much better it works. I have a primitive 'tts' system that plays back prerecorded messages, and falls back to festival for unknown words. I paid a voice actor a bit through fiverr to get the 100 or so words I need. Sounds better than full synthetic tts systems, although I need to work on improving the timing between words.

This is only a few days worth of work, too. It's not hard to make. I'm not claiming my systems works as well as an echo, but I prefer the control mine gives me.

<comment><USER3> > Sure I believe Amazon when they say they only send clips of the actual > commands

I worked on speech parsing software at Audible, where much of the data was originally gathered to make Alexa and the Echo possible.

They are not telling the truth when they say that they only send clips of the actual commands.

EDIT:

This is not to say that they constantly stream audio data, either. But they send much more than just the voice extractions of the commands themselves. They have to in order to build a profile of the users' voices, habits, etc., which aid in the quick processing of incoming speech data.

The service is not selective enough to only pick up on voice information proceeded by a correct utterance of "Alexa." Amazon is "customer-obsessed" \- and one of the product execs asked on a phone call:

> I am an Alexa user, and call out her name but stutter slightly. I still > intended to say "Alexa," so why shouldn't she respond to me? That's a bad > user experience. Customers want to be understood, not ignored.

This is paraphrased, but the consequences of this question were enormous. It basically ensured that Alexa users would not ever have privacy again.

<comment><USER2> Does the audible/amazon stt engine train its own language model and thus 'learn' the user's speech peculiarities? If so, how does it know what the user really meant and thus should train towards?

<comment><USER3> I can't speak to the training of the models. I'm not a data science guy, I specialize in signal processing and feature extraction.

What I can say, though, which may give good insight into your question is this: The "Hushpuppy" project, which became known as the WhisperSync and Immersion Reading technologies, were not self-trained or self-reinforced. QA engineers in India were contracted to ensure synchronization between the book and the audiobook. These technologies, though, were the building blocks upon which Alexa was developed. The data collected from these operations became essential knowledge for the engineering team that developed Alexa.

EDIT: As an aside, Amazon bases all of its services around that Amazon account that almost everyone in the civilized world now has. Alexa is not the first, and certainly not the last Amazon service that learns and improves based upon the user's Amazon account.

<comment><USER2> ", I specialize in signal processing and feature extraction."

In this context, do I speculate in the right direction when I think about isolating voice from background noise? Any tips to share that could help my diy tinkering?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is something I would both love to develop something for but could never allow into my house. I know I could do both but it feels kind of wrong to make anything that might encourage other people to have one given the terrifying privacy implications.

<comment><USER5> You might want to have a look at jasper: [http://jasperproject.github.io/](http://jasperproject.github.io/)

You can use an offline speech recognition engine in that.

<comment><USER6> How well does it work? I think recognition latency is pretty large.

<comment><USER7> I use this. Yes, latency is kind of big, but it's tolerable. The big difference for me is that you have to program every command. I've never used the Echo, but my understanding is that it has a ton of pre-built commands that you can use: set a timer, what is the weather, play somesong, etc.

For jasper (pocketsphinx) you have to manually program the action for all of these. So it's a lot more setup. I still like it and use it all the time though.

<comment><USER8> How do you find yourself using it?

<comment><USER7> I do a few things: control music (pause/play, volume up/down, etc), change my lights (dim, bright, color), read off the weather, ask what time it is.

I've got a few other ideas: control my roku, add milk to the grocery list, read emails, etc.

Nothing life-changing, but fun stuff that makes small parts of my day easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I find something worryingly Orwellian about an always on listener in your home that monitors for keywords via a remote server.

<comment><USER10> The monitoring for keywords is done in the hardware or firmware. Nothing ever gets sent to Amazon until "Alexa" or "Echo" is recognized.

Do you really think it would be easy to hide a persistent audio datastream to a central server?

<comment><USER11> > The monitoring for keywords is done in the hardware or firmware. Nothing > ever gets sent to Amazon until "Alexa" or "Echo" is recognized.

I think that what you _mean_ is that the monitoring is done in the hardware or firmware using closed-source code that can and will be regularly updated remotely and hopefully securely. And that Amazon told us that it would wait until it thought it heard "Alexa" or "Echo" or anything that sounds sort of like it, or whatever they decide to change the software on your particular device to listen for in the future.

<comment><USER10> Now would be a good time for a third-party audit of the Amazon Echo firmware updating process.

It would probably also be fodder for frontpage HN, in case anyone needed some attention out there.

<comment><USER12> An audit would be wonderful. I worked on the Echo, and the updating process was extensively tested and audited, both internally and by third parties.

<comment><USER10> That's great! (And I'm a fan of my [two] Echos!) Do you have a link to said third-party auditing?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've wanted something like this for years, I can easily see why this is awsome. I considered the Echo seriously when it came out. However, even as an Amazon Prime member, I'm hesitant to have amazon in my living room. I don't want to tie that deeply into a single ecosystem. Therefore, I am eagerly waiting for my Mycroft[1]... One for every room! If your are willing to muck about with hardware, the Jasper project does a lot of this already.

[1] [https://mycroft.ai/](https://mycroft.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER14> My main reason for not getting one is that it's tied to services that are not available in my country (Amazon Prime, Spotify...). It seems like the rest of services ("Skills") are third-party citizens on this device. Although I can appreciate the sleek design of Echo, I'd rather get an opensource variant (Jasper and Mycroft are ones I heard of).

</comment><comment><USER15> Ideally Echo would be able to control HomeKit devices. iPhone users now have no Nest integration, no Echo. Starting to kill the idea of an open ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER16> I bit the privacy bullet and got an Echo for my home theater. It's nice, but there is a mountain of unrecognized value because of Amazon's desire to control everything.

As a for instance, it would be nice if keyword enablement could mute the stereo. It'd be nice to Chromecast audio to it. It'd be nice if I could use it to play things on a fire stick.

If it really wanted to be a device of the future, it would link to other Echoes in the house, allowed for intercom, and localized audio tracking.

Some of these things will either come or never see the light of day because Amazon hates interacting with other companies (see: Android).

I'm waiting for an open source alternative...

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been trying to find a usb array mic/software combo that works better for far field sound capture than a single mic - to use with either OK Google on old android phones, or Jasper running on Rpi.. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER6> I would also love having something like this. I found the Playstation Eye camera for PS3 has an array of four mics, but there's no accompanying software, so it's not as useful. I'd buy a hardware/software combo that did far-field sound capture well.

Essentially, I want a better mic so I can run this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eiHO7uqccs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eiHO7uqccs)

<comment><USER17> Yeah, same here, PS3 Eye but no drivers/software for array mics or beamforming. I wanted to create something like in that video too. Looks promising with OK Google - a little laggy/glitchy but the idea definitely has legs.

I think in a couple of years this stuff will become ubiquitous

<comment><USER6> I hope so, and I certainly hope that we'll see hardware-only solutions with open software so I know where my sound is going.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, I'm pretty sure we'll have state-of-the-art open source deep learning based speech recognition libraries this year that will run on local hardware without significant latency.

Baidu open sourced their warp CTC a few weeks ago, give it another few months before someone will release a trained English network for it

[https://github.com/baidu-research/warp-ctc](https://github.com/baidu- research/warp-ctc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Judging from the questions listed in the article, I would assume that there's a way smaller ROI for an European homebody (fewer services that can be queried/integrated, usually worse language recognition, no need to constantly check the weather, public transport).

</comment><comment><USER19> I've got one, I find it mostly useless as I can't set my location to London. The speaker is fine - but I have a much better system in the same room with an apple tv (v2) connected with a dac. I guess it's just me, but I also like controlling what I'm listening to and having some agency over it, so just mindlessly listening to playlists or automated radio isn't really my thing.

I think it is cool that it's programmable, but I'm not that impressed thus far.

(I should add, the reason I have one is that it was a gift from AMZN after attending an event of theirs last year, I didn't buy it)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've had the Echo a bit longer (6 months? We were in the first batch that went out to Prime customers) and we love it as well. I also want to get one for the whole house instead of just currently the basement. In addition to music and trivia and timers, we also use our to control our lighting (via the Hue stuff from Phillips) and we love that as well. Overall it's amazing.

</comment><comment><USER21> I think the audio out isn't going to happen as Amazon would prefer the 3rd parties built their own integration to Alexa into their devices: [https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa- vo...](https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-voice- service)

</comment><comment><USER22> Sounds great.

audio jack: I like that it doesn't have an audio jack. I already have a Fire TV connected to my tv setup, it should play the audio there.

<comment><USER23> Honestly, do you leave your television on 24/7?

<comment><USER22> In standby. The TV supports CEC so would turn on when asked.

<comment><USER24> Yeah, but in practice CEC has been iffy on most TVs i've owned, and i've never seen a TV that can startup in less than 10 seconds.

Plus AFAIK CEC can't turn back off the TV, so after the first use it's just on forever until you manually turn it off.

<comment><USER25> My Apple TV definitely turns my TV off via CEC, it works great

<comment><USER26> New AppleTV 4th gen has an IR blaster that'll turn your TV on and off even if your TV doesn't support CEC. It seems to figure out the right IR codes automatically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Generally you're operating in one of two modes:

1) you don't believe anyone is listening, and even if they are, you don't care

2) you don't believe anyone is listening, but if they are, the consequences are worth avoiding

If you find yourself in the #2 mode, don't buy an Amazon Echo.

</comment><comment><USER28> I note that Siri on my iPhone does much of this, and is also always listening. Siri switches my lights on, tells me what time it is in London, makes calls, and sets timers for me, and with the newer phones, doesn't require the phone to be plugged in.

</comment><comment><USER29> Sounds like it would work better as a watch.

OTOH, having a platform that accepts questions (even in written form, i.e. an NLP google) on which we could build on would be great.

</comment><comment><USER30> 2001 A Space Odyssey: Hal</comment>


Media for Thinking the Unthinkable - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/67076984

<comment><USER2> This resonates with me deeply. The idea that representations of active things should be active themselves, in pursuit of building intuition and understanding, is a central motivation for my current project. I feel like some of my own thoughts were just expanded upon, clarified, and handed back to me. Real inspiration. Thanks for posting.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome.</comment></comment>


Show HN: DroneFinder – Web application to assist in the recovery of drones - <AUTHOR> http://www.dronefinder.co.uk <comment><AUTHOR> I've been a drone geek since 2011, flying model aircraft and quadcopters (or drones as the media likes to call them).

I fly them using a live video link to a set of VR goggles so I have a first person view from the aircraft. With that comes the ability to fly long distance.

Because "drones" are fairly pricey items, I wanted a way to help retrieve one should it crash and not be able to be found by the operator - by default noone would know who the drone belonged to even if they found it, and not everyone is confortable putting their contact details in public.

So I created DroneFinder which allows you to register and print off stickers for your aircraft with a scannable QR code. The QR code allows a finder to contact the owner of a lost aircraft and notify them of its whereabouts (via email and SMS) using the GPS capabilities of their phone - thus allowing the owner to retrieve their aircraft.

I'd welcome any feedback.

</comment><comment><USER2> My first question is: What happens if you don't pay the subscription and someone finds your drone and scans the sticker?

Nothing? A note about how the owner can't get his drone back because he didn't pay? Do they contact the owner and offer to make the connection for a larger/burdensome finder's fee as a penalty for not paying?

The old "service" I remember back in the day for stickers on your devices in case they got lost was a one-time fee: When you purchased the stickers. And then presumably as long as the company was operating, they'd help you get your stuff back.

This is probably a better model, and the business could be sustainable on the fact that people's new devices will generally need new stickers. (In addition to stickers being generally non-transferrable things, you could prevent the item description from being changed and the like.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea - If there is no subscription in place then the code scanning no longer shows the aircraft as being "known" until the subscription is reactivated.

I'm open to ideas on it though - but how else would I ensure people keep paying.

<comment><USER2> I was editing as you replied. Bit more thoughts on it there. But there's a potentially big concern to knowing who owns a multithousand dollar device and just pretending you don't know who owns it when you do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Possibly - but you don't necessarily know who owns it. The owner can choose how much information gets displayed to the finder via their settings.

The system will still act as a proxy though, sending a SMS and email to the owner if the finder submits that they've found it.

It's relying on honesty at the end of the day - I like to think most people are honest enough that given the opportunity to help someone get their property back they'll do so.

<comment><USER2> I am just thinking in your case, if someone looks up a device, you really shouldn't suggest you don't know who owns it: If they've ever subscribed, you do know.

But perhaps you should have a system where there's a recovery fee for a lapsed account. If your service costs 24 a year or so, perhaps it's 150 or 200 for you to connect up a recovery on a lapsed account. So the risk of not paying is having to pay a lot more if you lose your drone and aren't subbed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback - I think you're right about showing the aircraft is registered even if a subscription has lapsed - it's the right thing to do.

I'll think of a way to queue the notifications to the owner so that they get sent once a subscription has been set back up, and a warning to them that someone has their drone in the meantime.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Help HN : Why I think about people, what they think about me? - <AUTHOR>

Whatever I do in my day to day activity I always thinks what people think about me. I am too much worried about other people's though about me for every activity.
Certain time I do day dreaming for the same like I am doing public speaking and people/friends appreciating me.
Due to this I feel less confidence because I hate to make any mistakes and that's why I try less. I also waste lots of time in thinking about things which doesn't matter much.
It also reduce my focus point.
Am I normal or need some kind of treatment.
Please help... <comment><USER2> Hi Geek_silk,

You have the rare gift of having deep empathetic sensibilities. Having the capacity to think about what someone else is thinking and to get a read on what he/she is feeling is an invaluable skillset. You usually read about this "issue" in a negative light. Countless number of "self-improvement" advocates try to push you towards ignoring what other people think and do what you want to do.

Your issue isn't the fact that you are seeing these effects in other people. It's more what you decide to do with this additional information. It's tough when dealing with constant feedback as you go through your presentation, but it's a gold mine like no other. Push yourself to take advantage of this by performing a number of micro calibrations by reading body language / facial expressions.

Embrace your empathy. It's what makes you an incredible startup founder who has an uncanny understanding of his users.

.

It's a hard skillset to master, but boy, when you do, you feel like you have a superpower.

</comment><comment><USER3> I guarantee that you are not the only person on this site agonizing over this.

Humans are hard-wired to be obsessed with other humans. What we think and do is determined by what others think and do to a vastly higher extent than we like to admit. It's probably _the_ dominant factor. But most people who have the belief that we are (or ought to be) autonomous individuals tend to project a picture of independence, giving you the misleading impression that you're the abnormal one.

Here's what I have found to help:

1\. Realize you're probably not that different from everybody else.

2\. Be nice to the part of you that's worried about what other people think and let it have its place. When you notice it doing its thing, just chuckle and say, "There you go again."

3\. Focus on what truly interests you.

4\. Get older.

And remember what Hugh Macleod brilliantly said: Never compare your inside with somebody else's outside.</comment>


MongoDB is to NoSQL like MySQL to SQL - in the most harmful way - <AUTHOR> http://use-the-index-luke.com/blog/2013-10-01/mysql-is-to-sql-like-mongodb-to-nosql <comment><USER4> I think there's one other problem that affects most NoSQL systems - <USER2> perception that adopting a NoSQL means you don't have to think about your data. When designers and front-end developers want to develop a web application they can do one of two things; a) say "don't worry about the back- end, we'll just throw it in a NoSQL database" or b) learn to also be a back- end engineer.

The idea that you don't need to worry about your data structure is deadly. Every successful project I've been involved with thinks seriously about the data model. ER diagrams with 160 tables aren't uncommon and knowing the structure of your most common queries helps you make sure that your database isn't over-normalized. There's a science to data systems after all.

"Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious." \- Frederick P. Brooks from The Mythical Man-Month.

I quote or paraphrase this fairly frequently as I've come to believe it. If I understand your data structures, I can pretty easily tell what you might be doing with the system and I can read the code to see which parts you've implemented. But don't use this as an excuse to delay working on the rest of the application. There are Architecture Astronauts in the realm of database modeling too!

"Normalize until it hurts, denormalize until it works!" \- Unattributed adage.

The key is to understand your data (and it will provide an amazing boost to the rest of the project). If you're worried about having your data-model perfect before you start coding, you should have started coding already. There are practices you can adopt that make refactoring your database more tenable. I recommend you read the "Evolutionary Database Design" article by Martin Fowler and Pramod Sadalage ([http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html](http://www.martinfowler.com/articles/evodb.html)), then adopt a workable technique as a team.

<comment><USER5> I will go further on to say. The biggest problem is the perception that a particular tool will make up for bad practices, general indiscipline and many other small time problems.

If you start with such an assumption only bad can to the project.

MongoDB has its uses, but if you are making an assumption that its going to make up for SQL related use cases then you shouldn't be surprised if the consequences are going to be disastrous later on.

<comment><USER4> Well-said!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think the biggest lesson here for us engineers is that we should watch and brace ourselves for similar tech buzz offerings like MongoDB. A few years when I went for interviews for startups, it was shameful that I didn't have experience and wasn't using MongoDB in my own products. I was a 'rusty spoon' for using resilient SQL. Funny how even engineers, a whole industry, can get swept up in using a subpar data store because it's the new cool piece of tech that makes it easier to have json you throw to a wall stick. I will never feel shamed again for not using some hot shot popular offering only because it makes development a tad bit easier. As engineers the end result is most important and we shouldn't sacrifice our platform stability just to ease our code editors and some minor migration frustrations. /endrant

<comment><USER7> The key argument is that nobody knew the performance characteristics. While developers looked at the API they where enchanted by it's perceived simplicity, but knew nothing about the behaviors of the database under load. Understanding the various tweaking parameters and failure modes is an even more important part of any database than the API in production.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> MySQL was a great database that solved a problem. It did not solve it in a 100% complaint way, it did not have all the features that "dbms experts wanted", but in the early days it was very easy to started. In version 5+ they have fixed a lot of the issues and it is now on-par (or better) than most other databases. I also think they have focused on the right stuff: ease of use, easy way to fix performance issues, great ways to setup replication, great ways to take backups, not losing data, optimized to be used for the web etc. Also, most bigger properties (including Facebook and Google) use extensively MySQL.

If Mongo is going to be like MySQL, then great!

<comment><USER9> MySQL still isn't on par or better than its most comparable peer, Postgres. It's still nowhere near as terrible as Mongo, but let's not pretend it's amazing when it's merely serviceable.

<comment><USER8> Postgres got proper non-hackable replication in version 9... And it still isn't that great.

<comment><USER10> "Isn't that great" how? In that it imposes a bunch of limitations on you? Or that it frequently breaks and slaves have to be manually syned? Oh wait no, I was thinking of mysql.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If PHP is a fractal of bad design, then MongoDB is PHP of database world.)

As for MySQL, Mongo marketing guys have learned the lessons from MySQL very well - there are nothing but "satisfied users", "good documentation" and "quickness and easiness" (any thinking, leave alone understanding aren't required) on their site and paid content - well-done "product", designed to trigger an ignorant consumer snap-judgement, the same way MySQL did at its time. They use the same sales strategy.

[http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad- de...](http://me.veekun.com/blog/2012/04/09/php-a-fractal-of-bad-design/)

<comment><USER12> At least the MySQL guys eventually gave up trying to convince us that referential integrity is a crutch for sub-par programmers.

<comment><USER11> What referential integrity?) It is _My_ free SQL, everybody's using it. Table- level locking? Never heard of them.)

<comment><USER13> Not sure what you are referring to here, but MySQL definitely has referential integrity constraints, and InnoDB uses row level locking. Not sure what level of transaction isolation support is build in though.

<comment><USER11> The InnoDB was not the default storage engine for quite a long time and it wasn't stable-enough for years.

<comment><USER13> OK, I'm not a huge fan of MySQL, but InnoDB is what is used now. I'm only really interested in the latest releases of MySQL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, I see very few thought-out or backed-up arguments here. The server- level blocking, the unacknowledged writes, silly defaults, etc are not only old news but have been behind mongodb for a while.

You also get comments like 'it still has database level locking' but rarely is there an educated discussion about the work that's been done to yield locks as quickly as possible and the real-world impact of this design.

People seem intent on punishing the platform for old mistakes (or immaturity) rather than providing a balanced view of it today. And comments like "Absolutely no benefit to Mongo. It's even really slow, so there's really no advantage at all." are just misleading without context, because it's at all true as an outright statement.

I spent today at the MongoDB developers conference in Sydney, and heard the CEO speak about when they think mongodb is good vs when you should use RDBMS, heard them speak about their community and target market, and heard a lot of stories and strategies about how to prepare for scale, how to think about schema design, how to monitor and admin the database / clusters, etc.

I'll just say that from hearing them in person, and hearing what people say about both the platform and the "marketing guys", you'd never know they were talking about the same company or product.

My own company has had a lot of advantage from using MongoDB in recent projects over other technologies (we have a largely MSSQL background). No, we don't do 100GB+ "web scale" (yet). Yes, we build solutions to real world problems and make money. No, it's not a silver bullet. Yes, you should know what you're doing and read the docs.

To any hackers / entrepreneurs who are thinking that MongoDB might work for them I'd say do some research, talk to people who've actually used it, and understand the benefits / limitations for yourself.

But stay away from opinions not based in real experience (and anything that mentions problems from before version 2.4, it's nearly a year old people) or you might miss out on something good.

<comment><USER15> Not to mention that the authors only critique of MongoDB was global write locking from version 2.2. The rest of his article was empty text speaking NOSQL databases his friends think are cool and statements equating too "MongoDB is bad. Why? Cause it is."

All if this ends at his signature that mentions his scaling SQL book. Not like he has an axe to grind or anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Sheesh, what's with the MongoDB witch hunt? It seems like HN can't go 2 days without some disparaging of MongoDB. I get it. I'm an idiot for using MongoDB even though it suits my needs perfectly.

<comment><USER17> I'm a long time (3 years) MongoDB user. My experience of the current state of the art:

\- The official documentation is clearly written by someone who doesn't speak English as a first language.

\- Their official driver (Node.JS 1.3.13) silently throws away exceptions.

Both these have been acknowledged by MongoDB Inc (formerly 10Gen). I can't speak for you, but personally I do feel like an idiot for using MongoDB.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> From my experience, as soon as you need some kind of relation with Mongo, you end up writing more application logic to create and maintain your relations. This probably means you should move to a relational database.

For Mongo specifically, can anyone share a pragmatic use case where you did not run into problems with duplication?

<comment><USER19> One example is logs. People have logs, and lots of them. They're usually semi- structured (hopefully there is at least a timestamp and topic and severity in each record). You can put them in MongoDB, and relations are probably not a big concern.

<comment><USER20> Elasticsearch or Solr would be better than Mongodb for Logs.

Hell if you actually care about your log and want to search it use Solr or Elasticsearch NOT Mongodb.

If you want to store even more data just use Cassandra and index it with Solr or Elasticsearch.

Cassandra have faster write than read, it's perfect for logs.

You can decentralize logging system too, there are architecture layout out there with elasticsearch and such (example: [https://medium.com/what-i- learned-building/e855bc08975d](https://medium.com/what-i-learned- building/e855bc08975d)).

MongoDB is a poor choice, in general for anything in my personal opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Earlier discussion: [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6481526](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6481526)

</comment><comment><USER22> I have never really touched NoSQL for anything serious, yet i have worked with Riak, MongoDB and Redis. In the case of MongoDB i have worked with an ODM on top of it where i had to define a Schema and Object relations and was left wondering: What is the benefit of this anyway if i still define Schemas and relationsships ? Does it just make sense at a big scale when i would have to shard using MySQL ? Schema migrations arent that hard today in MySQL with a good framework, so i am not really sold on the benefits for smaller apps. If i can just save a JSON Object to it, thats cool (however Postgre is goot at that too), but in practice with server side validation and schemas i have to decode/encode anything anyway. Can anyone enlighten me on the real benefit ?

 _Edit_ I see many benefits in using Redis though, just for its sheer speed and more as a smart memcached replacement though.

<comment><USER9> Absolutely no benefit to Mongo. It's even really slow, so there's really no advantage at all.

Redis, Riak and the like are actually useful for a change.

<comment><USER23> MongoDB slow? Could you post a benchmark to support this claim?

<comment><USER13> He wasn't saying that MongoDB is slow...

<comment><USER23> Sure he was: "Absolutely no benefit to Mongo. It's even really slow,..."

<comment><USER13> He did indeed, but it was in response to the following questions:

"In the case of MongoDB i have worked with an ODM [by which he means ORM] on top of it where i had to define a Schema and Object relations and was left wondering: What is the benefit of this anyway if i still define Schemas and relationsships ?"

<comment><USER22> i actually meant ODM which refers to Object Document Mapping in contrast to ORM which refers to Object Relational Mapping

eg: [http://mongoosejs.com/](http://mongoosejs.com/) [http://docs.doctrine- project.org/projects/doctrine-mongodb-o...](http://docs.doctrine- project.org/projects/doctrine-mongodb-odm/en/latest/)

<comment><USER24> MongoDB stores JSON (in binary form) - serialized Javascript objects. That there is what looks to be a large and polished library for mapping between the two is a huge red flag to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What is this ? 'Lets bash mongodb' week ?

<comment><USER26> And 'make sweet love to Postgres' year

<comment><USER13> It's been a truly great year so far!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Come on, give MongoDB a break. I use MongoDB and I am proud of it. And I have used numerous SQL DBs (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL, SQlite) and HBase from noSQL camp, so I do have something to compare to.

Yes, it was overhyped (and is underhyped now, at least on HN). Yes, it has its problems. Yes, it is not correctly positioned in people's minds (web-scale? not really). MapReduce on top of MongoDB, in a single-threaded JS engine - <USER3> you kidding me??? But it is useful tool nevertheless; one I am happy to have in my arsenal.

MongoDB will NOT solve your scalability problems. Old news. It will even add some of its own problems on top of it. But man, is it nice to just fire that data into your database and forget about DB-level schemas... And when you need that data, it is just there. True, I have built an ORM on top of MongoDB so it manages the DB for me; but it was easy to do and is incredibly useful. I would have done it with MySQL too (actually, I did - and it was a PITA to build because of relational databases' rigidness).

So please, stop bashing MongoDB for wrong reasons. It is an excellent and easy to use storage - when used for the right kind of problems. Nothing more, nothing less.

<comment><USER13> How did you build an ORM on top of MongoDB? And why?

<comment><USER23> Sorry, poor choice of words... I have build an ORM on application level above MongoDB.

This level lets me specify data model in a simple JSON and the system then automatically performs all (high-level) data input validations, displays a proper web form to the user,... There are actually many similar systems to mine, I just couldn't find one that would offer all the functionalities I needed.

Note that DB is just a storage for me. It can't know enough to validate for example e-mails, because for DB they are just strings.

<comment><USER13> That's not an ORM, that's a data abstraction layer.

<comment><USER23> It's actually both. Term "data abstraction layer" describes its function while term "ORM" describes how it is done. Unless I am misunderstanding these terms?

But we are going a bit off-topic here. :)

<comment><USER13> An ORM maps a relational database to objects. Given MongoDB is most definitely not relational, you can't have implemented an ORM :-)

<comment><USER23> That's an excellent point! :)

I was so used to thinking of this system as an ORM that I never checked if the term still applies. So... I guess it is OnoRM now. ;)

<comment><USER13> What were you mapping?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This isn't really being fair to MySQL. It was pretty terrible when it started out (corrupted data, no joins, no transactions, silly locking, didn't support half of SQL, etc.), but we must not forget just how terrible Mongo was and still is. It shipped with unacknowledged writes as the default for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER27> > The article is about handling MongoDB if it grows above 100GB. It gives me > the impression that scaling MongoDB to that size is a serious issue.

I don't think so. It gives me the impression that 10gen (MongoDb Inc.) has made a mistake how to present "handling MongoDb over 100GB".

> example: global write lock up to release 2.2

Why are we still talking about this? It's not global write lock any more, okay? Stating previous inefficiencies doesn't bring much value to the table.

> At this point it was inevitable to see MongoDB as a popular, yet poor > representative of it's species.

Show me the real arguments! Show me the real arguments!

<comment><USER28> > Why are we still talking about this? It's not global write lock any more, > okay? Stating previous inefficiencies doesn't bring much value to the

It's now a db-level lock, which is an improvement but not optimal. And its locking system in general isn't as sophisticated as, say, a recent version of Postgres, MSSQL, or Oracle.

Neither is its query planner, where using an $or can cause it to scan all the documents in a collection despite the fact that you should technically be hitting indexed fields.

<comment><USER23> > ... despite the fact that you should technically be hitting indexed fields.

Never had that experience - could you elaborate? Indexes in MongoDB are a bit different from SQL indexes, so if you are comparing to that, you are in for a few surprises. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This discussion has happened before.

MySQL is to SQL like MongoDB to NoSQL - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6481526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6481526)

</comment><comment><USER30> My guess as to the rise of MongoDB usage is that the rapid application development needs of the startup world led to people deciding that representing application data as JSON across all tiers speeds up the early stages of development. Unfortunately, as soon as data needs to be used relationally, developers are finding themselves pigeonholed in an inappropriate persistence format.

In short, developers that skip studying how their data might need to be queried in the future are to blame, not MongoDB.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've heard that some people use the MongoDB syntax with postgresql using redis as caching, could someone comment on this idea ?

<comment><USER13> I question their sanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> So he's saying MySQL is bad, and MongoDB (because of a statement on their home page) is kind of like MySQL, so MongoDB is also bad. Also there was some article about scaling it to "only" 100GB which means it damages NoSQL as a whole in the "most harmful way".

Sorry but I don't really get the reasoning.

<comment><USER6> MySQL is an awful implementation of SQL. MongoDB is even more pitiful of an implementation of NoSQL. It's a Fischer price database that had a global write lock until version 2.2. What exactly don't you understand about the analogous nature of two crumby data stores?

<comment><USER32> So what exactly makes Mongo such a bad implementation (apart from things that were already fixed)?

I don't mean to defend MongoDB, i'm genuinely interested in finding a better NoSQL DB. I just usually get to hear the same "Fisher price" bashing without any real arguments.

<comment><USER13> The problem you have is that there are different types of NoSQL databases. Key value stores, document stores, graph databases, you name it they have their own specialty.

NoSQL's name shows just how nebulous the concept is. It was first coined by someone who built a relational database but without implementing SQL, then it was later used to describe distributed, non-relational databases that ignored, downgraded or discarded some form of ACID. Now it can be a retronym for "not only SQL".

In this space, work out what your actually needs are, then carefully research the technology and pick whatever is most appropriate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I never understood what Mongo brings to the table that ext4 doesn't.

</comment><comment><USER34> Does this offer absolutely anything new ? No.

Is this person objective and well respected ? No.

Does this person understand why MongoDB/MySQL is popular ? No.

Is anyone going to gain anything from this ? No.

<comment><USER35> > Is anyone going to gain anything from this ? No.

Well, if it stops someone from using MongoDB without _really_ thinking about whether they ought to, maybe it'll save someone some grief in the future.

<comment><USER34> If this was an intelligent piece analysing the pros/cons of MongoDB and when it would be an optimal choice then I could understand it. But this is the equivalent of blog spam from a guy who is selling a SQL Performance book.

<comment><USER6> Many articles regarding MongoDBs awful memory mapped simple b-tree data storage method have popped up on HN. Martin is merely talking about the politics of MongoDB; to call his links to polyglot methods and his information blog spam is dishonest to say the least. I thought it was a great post and I bet many other HNers who up voted it feel the same way.

<comment><USER23> > MongoDBs awful memory mapped simple b-tree data storage method

You realise that they are using default kernel implementation? Awful indeed. :)

If you are so anti-MongoDB, would you care to offer an alternative? It must support: \- document-like storage (I already have schema on application layer), \- simple use / administration, \- hot backup, \- single node operation.

While this list is mostly outlining why MongoDB is a great DB for my current use case, I am also genuinly interested in better solutions (for that case). So, fire away... :)

<comment><USER36> Let's see if I can make your day with a shameless plug.

First of all, using the kernel's paging algorithm for a database is awful. It has way less information about your access patterns than the database, so it's going to make a lot of bad decisions, and a bunch of MongoDB's problems with fragmentation and performance cliffs come from using mmap. It's quick and dirty.

Here's the alternative, and it supports the exact same document storage as MongoDB, the same administration interface, actually the same protocol everywhere, hot backup, and however many nodes you want: TokuMX[1]. It does all those things because it's actually mostly MongoDB, just with the storage engine replaced with an engine that works faster, compresses your data, and has more mature things like document-level locking for writers and better multi-document isolation semantics on a single node. Give it a whirl and let us know if you like it.

[1]: [http://www.tokutek.com/products/tokumx-for- mongodb](http://www.tokutek.com/products/tokumx-for-mongodb)

<comment><USER13> Why is it called a "fractal tree"?

<comment><USER36> Marketing. No technical reason.

<comment><USER13> From what I can tell, this has been patented, but was implemented in part by Postgres much earlier.

<comment><USER36> I promise it hasn't, but I'm curious to see what you're talking about. Link?

<comment><USER13> See this thread: [http://www.postgresql.org/message- id/511BDCAB.2080803@agliod...](http://www.postgresql.org/message- firstname.lastname@example.com)

<comment><USER36> That thread is talking about the possible inclusion of our indexing library inside Postgres, and was from before we had open sourced the code. IANAL but I think it would be possible to include the fractal tree library in Postgres now if someone wanted to do it, but none of it has ever been implemented by Postgres.

<comment><USER13> I stand corrected! Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Tired of this. I think MongoDB is the best thing ever!

</comment><comment><USER38> Not surprised that a person who gets his salary with SQL work is unhappy with a competitor that does not use his favourite word...</comment>


Ask HN: Idea for a new dating app - <AUTHOR> The issue with Tinder/OkCupid is that, in general, girls get too many likes and they need to spend a lot of time on the app evaluating/replying to people. Guys get very few likes and they need to spend a lot of time just to play the numbers game - i.e., like a 100 people hoping that at least 10 would like you back. The time and effort spent in converting a 'like' to an actual date is significant. This is also the case with people who appear good (in a traditional sense)/have good photos vs people who don't appear good/have good photos. I'm thinking of an app where you enter your details, details of what you're looking for in a date, your interests, and hobbies. The app would set you up on a blind date with someone based on your interests and personality.
You'll have the ability to list out free time slots, and a budget range. Once the app decides that a particular set of people could be good together, it automatically reserves a table at a restaurant that works for both the parties, is in the said budget range, and inform either party. Every person on the platform needs to verify his phone number, social profile, and scan his driving license/passport for safety reasons. We'd also enforce a 1 date max a week policy so that the chances of spamming or fake profiles is lower.
Looking for thoughts and suggestions. <comment><USER2> You will have very low buy-in from women for an app like this because scanning IDs doesn't take care of the biggest trust issue: blind dating means you can't filter out sleazeballs (or bad matches that aren't picked up by algorithms). Harassment, stalking and assault are significant factors here. And then there's the redpill guys who will neg you, the casually sexist guys who will talk over and dehumanize you, the guys who can't deal with their feelings who want you to be their therapist, the dudes who feel you owe them something for going to dinner.. on and on. Likes will "convert" to dates at higher rates (and can we talk about how gross it is to talk about human connection that way?) when users feel safe and confident. It's about reducing harassment and low-quality messages on the platform.

Why don't you build a straight dating app that incentivizes women to send likes and incentivizes men to hold back messaging but perk up their profiles? Like a digital Sadie Hawkins? Maybe men aren't able to send the first message but can only reply, for example. If you reduce the number of high-quantity, low-quality messages men send, women won't have to filter so much. And if you free up women's time and empower them to send likes, they can share the burden of initiation. Everyone wins when we stop trying to "play numbers" and focus on genuine matches with people we hope we will truly enjoy spending time with.

<comment><AUTHOR> The things you mentioned completely makes sense. People won't be confident to go out on a dinner with a complete stranger. I think 'bumble' is more of a digital Saide Hawkins but that suffers from the problem of scouring through hundreds of profiles.

What if instead of a completely blind date, we just match two people based on parameters and let them talk? This is a bit like other apps where people talk to each other before meeting them in real life. (And you also get only 1 match a week to encourage people to take things seriously)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you seriously pursue this, I wish you the best. The issues you describe are definitely real and I'm sure a market exists if you can address them.

I've been tossing around another dating app idea for a while. Rather than focusing on matching in the app, I considered an app like Meetup which can propose activities in your area for like minded people. Maybe a game night at a local bar. 10 people show up and have a nice night. If you like someone, you could "swipe right" on that person after the event. If there's a match, you can talk.

As a shy guy, I would appreciate something like this. I can be social and meet people and when I'm too shy to ask someone out in person, I have some recourse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. There are a lot of speed dating/singles only meetup groups that do the same thing you've described. Did you try attending them? As the event is created to ask people out, you might be more comfortable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "scan his driving license/passport"

I don't think a lot of people are going to trust an unknown web site with this kind of information.

People have been managing to meet for dinner with strangers for a long time without having to swap IDs with each other, let alone registering their IDs with a third party.

Also, what exactly do you intend to do with this ID information?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to make sure we're thwarting off fraudsters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would add a "going Dutch" and a no "1st date sex" option on all profiles. I've known of women or men who just accept a date to get a free meal or just are trolling for quick sex. It's human nature but it brakes the whole model long term. If they want that tinder, does a good job for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> These things are not enforcible. The app can 'recommend' Going Dutch but 1st date sex is too personal and I don't think I have any right to dictate for/against it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a feature that an app at scale could build into it if they wanted to and I'm sure they've all thought about it.

My guess is that none have tried because they don't want the liability of facilitating harassment or worse if something goes wrong. I think you'd also have a lot of no shows.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure this idea would've crossed the minds of several people but it's the antithesis of several of their core values. It's not easy to incorporate this into tinder as an addon - it's because tinder's sole selling point is to make a quick decision based on looks. And this feature doesn't pay much heed to looks.

Regarding liability - I too thought of it but not sure if that's a minor/major issue. What if instead of a completely blind date, we just match two people based on parameters and let them talk? This is a bit like other apps where people talk to each other before meeting, but you don't have to scour through hundreds of profiles. (And you also get only 1 match a week to encourage people to take things seriously)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd say don't do it. All idealistic dating apps seem to fail. At the end of it, the mating game is vain, sexual, and primal. No way around it.

<comment><AUTHOR> OkCupid, CoffeMeetsBagel are a bit idealistic but they seem to be running well. It's just that different kinds of people are attracted to different kinds of things - flings, short term commitments, long term commitments etc.</comment></comment>


Amazon criticized for de-ranking 'adult' books - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10217715-93.html <comment><USER2> And by "adult", they mean LGBT -- straight targeted books of what would seem to be equivalent adultness have been left alone. Amazon claims a glitch in response to the twitter crowds, and you could see how this could be a glitch in a complex ML algorithm, but still, I'm filing this under things that make you say hmm...</comment>


Get a PhD—but leave academia as soon as you graduate - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/174811/enroll-in-a-phd-program-but-leave-academia-as-soon-as-you-graduate/

<comment><USER2> I agree. There are lots of good reasons to do a PhD, not all of them job- related, but getting outside of academia quickly afterwards can save a lot of grief and stress.</comment>