Ask HN: Do innate geniuses are more successful as entrepreneurs or inventors? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> > Do innate geniuses are more successful as entrepreneurs or inventors?

1\. Can you rephrase that?

2\. Can you unambiguously define "genius"? The term doesn't have a generally agreed meaning.

3\. It might have been more productive to ask this about entrepreneurs and investors separately, because they're very different activities and outcomes.</comment>


Ask HN: Online video streaming solutions? (Justin, Ustream...) - <AUTHOR>

We will setup a small studio from which we'd like to broadcast live video/audio to the net. Video should be embeddable on our page, and quality of transmission should be 'good' for a certain value of good (audio being of most importance - since we'll stream live music performances). Chat room along with stream would be a plus. We have no idea of the audience size, but we will stream often (probably 5-10 or more hours per day).
First I looked at justin.tv but I couldn't find ANY information apart from some vague partner page, no pricing, no additional info, no nothing. Maybe I missed something, because we would be a semi-pro setup, not a regular Joe streaming his cat online. So I'm not sure if I could do this at all through justin.tv or not.
Then I looked at ustream, it looks great - there is embedding, there is ustream producer pro, etc... but prices are definitely out of our range. This is something we would do without profit and I may have a budget for it about couple of hundred dollars per year. <comment><USER2> Hey Keyframe- so, interestingly, one big difference between JTV and some of the others is we don't have a big producer-outreach department, which would normally respond to questions like these- so sorry we missed it!

You may have already invested time into getting set up w/ ustream etc.- np, but since you mentioned this in the other thread I thought I'd respond real quick (:

* There is no pricing, no cost, even if you have tens of thousands of concurrent viewers (we have several broadcasters in that category) at maximum quality.

* We have fewer ads than the others.

* We're mostly oriented around making it a social experience- this helps you because it means the viewers have ways of pulling in other viewers.

* With JTV your stream will be higher quality (measurably) than others.

Check out <http://www.justin.tv/broadcast/advanced> for options on getting set up- the forums tend to be pretty helpful as well. We can't really help with cameras etc. (a strategic choice)- but once you manage to get set up you'll be absolutely giving the best experience to your viewers.

Hope that helps (:

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Joseph! We haven't set up anything, since we're waiting for the equipment to arrive (and judging by ETA it will be another month or so, sigh).

I'm doing this as a favor to my friends, since I have experience with live TV (I direct live TV and high profile reality shows), so I'll set them up with nice lighting, camera angles, etc. I was looking either vidblaster or wirecast and outputing through flash encoder - SD video, I don't think equipment will be good enough for HD (especially cameras).

I'll give Justin.tv a go first then - basically I was in a dark, since there is a LOT of FUD out there (obviously, since you say otherwise) - about low quality (probably bitrate) of justin.tv streams.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Dog the Bounty Hunter in pursuit of Edward Snowden - <AUTHOR> http://www.ryot.org/dog-the-bounty-hunter-is-in-hot-pursuit-of-edward-snowden/314329

<comment><USER2> > Dog the Bounty Hunter in pursuit of Edward Snowden

Correction: s/Edward Snowden/unearned publicity/

Quote: "Dog the Bounty Hunter, or Duane Chapman, held a press conference to announce his plans to enter Russia and illegally capture Edward Snowden."

Surreptitiously?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is so outrageous that I can't even laugh at it...

</comment><comment><USER4> "A dog of the NSA!"</comment>


Ransomware, Data Breaches at Hospitals Tied to Uptick in Fatal Heart Attacks - <AUTHOR> https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/11/study-ransomware-data-breaches-at-hospitals-tied-to-uptick-in-fatal-heart-attacks/ <comment><USER2> This study may be biased toward smaller/rural/poorer locales.

In big-city Canada, patients with heart attack symptoms will usually have an ECG done by paramedics before arriving.

In the US, this has quite survival advantage.

[https://heart.bmj.com/content/100/12/944](https://heart.bmj.com/content/100/12/944)

I don't know if it's standard practice to do another upon arrival, but it is redundant and should probably take a back seat to activating other processes that need to happen.

It also helps send them to the most appropriate facility.

<comment><USER3> So, don't ask me how I know this...

If you are having chest pain, call 911. If you mention "chest pain" to them, you hear a beep in the background, and everything else is a machine.

In my locale, the paramedics carry a portable EKG. If they decide to take you for a ride, they have an EKG machine in the ambulance that's networked to the hospital, and a cardiologist is now on your team. When you arrive, you get wheeled into a special room where an entire heart attack team is standing there, waiting for you.

At that point they do another EKG, and as I understand it, their machine has a larger number of electrodes, so they can get more detailed information from it. The patient is never off an EKG at this point, and it's not a discrete step, but is a continuous monitor.

A blood test will confirm the presence of an enzyme that's produced if the heart muscle is stressed. This is a rapid test, the lab is ready and waiting for the sample.

So, the second EKG isn't really consuming time, since other stuff is happening concurrently, and they need the EKG running continuously to make minute by minute decisions. Regardless of what happens, you're on the EKG until you go home.

I don't know if rural or poorer locations have less sophisticated processes.

If you are having chest pain, call 911.

<comment><USER4> Wow I had no idea they were linked in remotely. Thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it possible that increased security after breaches is actually what's slowing down medical staff?

<comment><USER6> I doubt it. Desktop pc's in hospitals are usually just thin clients. Ransomware targets the client pc and implementing security at this level is not cumbersome.

<comment><USER7> from the article...

 _"Breach remediation efforts were associated with deterioration in timeliness of care and patient outcomes," the authors found. "Remediation activity may introduce changes that delay, complicate or disrupt health IT and patient care processes."_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Without any arguments it's just data. Is a lack of spending on key infrastructure, tied to poorer outcomes something we can discuss? I'm not sure this is the best article to discuss the causes/mitigations.

There was one interesting data point, but no source of cause listed. >for care centers that experienced a breach, it took an additional 2.7 minutes for suspected heart attack patients to receive an electrocardiogram.

Is this while they were prevented from performing care? Thankfully PBS's article goes into more details

[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/ransomware-and-other- da...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/ransomware-and-other-data- breaches-linked-to-uptick-in-fatal-heart-attacks)

>hospitals that experienced a data breach, the death rate among heart attack patients increased in the months and years afterward. This increased mortality doesn't appear to be due to the perpetrators themselves — the hackers are not controlling the allocation of medications or doctors. Rather the issue may lie with how health care systems adjust their cybersecurity after an attack

Which makes a much different argument: the hospital response to a Cybersecurity incident increases mortality (thus: can we expect a similar uptick in negative outcomes amongst healthcare organizations who implement similar security polices?)

Research paper: [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-6773.1...](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1475-6773.13203)

The PBS article points out that security practices applied to clinicians led to this problem.

Do we have evidence that the hacking took advantage of the EMR's security issues?

>Time from door to ECG significantly increased after a breach and the elevated time to ECG persisted at 4 years after the breach. Security typically adds inconvenience by design—making it more inconvenient for the adversary. For example, stricter authentication methods, such as passwords with two‐factor authentication, are additional steps that slow down workflow in exchange for added security. Lost passwords and account lockouts are nuisances that may disrupt workflow. The persistence in the longer time to ECG suggests a permanent increase in time requirement due to stronger security measures.

So what compromise is possible to ensure fast login? Can two factor login be limited to new login devices? (Thus limiting impact to those working in new locations?)

Login devices which aren't recognized? (Ie: external servers)

Should EMR login be separated from local PC login within a hospital/emergency department? (Cold booting a PC and logging into windows would be the slowest response time).

Can we tie logins to employee badges to skip all password entry? (Lost badges would thus warrant reporting loss.)

<comment><USER9> > Can we tie logins to employee badges to skip all password entry? (Lost > badges would thus warrant reporting loss.)

You can, but typically you'd use a badge with a PIN. If you use something like this[1] with virtual desktops (VDI) that don't terminate your session when you disconnect, you can get the "time to login" down to a few seconds, since it's the same RDP session following the user around.

[1] [https://www.identityautomation.com/iam- platform/healthcare-c...](https://www.identityautomation.com/iam- platform/healthcare-clinical-workflow-solutions/qwickaccess/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Most hospital PC's allow this as an alternative, also thumbprints.

We use: [https://www.imprivata.com/](https://www.imprivata.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Another win for cryptocurrency! Truly, it has changed the world. We couldn't have this kind of progress without it.

<comment><USER11> Why do you think this is the fault of cryptocurrency?

<comment><USER12> Ransomware relies on there being safe ways to collect the ransom.

There were a few predecessors ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGPCoder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGPCoder)) using stuff like Liberty Reserve (long since shut down by the Feds), but Bitcoin made it pretty easy.

One tried "mail money to a PO box" back in the 80s. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_(Trojan_horse)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS_\(Trojan_horse\)) The downsides of that approach for a criminal should be fairly obvious.

<comment><USER2> Downside? Sounds like a great way to get anyone you want arrested by the FBI without them knowing who made this all happen.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Canadian software engineers paid peanuts - <AUTHOR> So, I've been looking at the differentials in pay for software engineers in the US and Canada. And I gotta tell you, it's just sad. Here are some figures from Vancouver's pitch[1] to Amazon for HQ2. Toronto pay is half of Seattle pay. No wonder half of each class from Waterloo heads south.
Market Average Annual Tech Wage Software Engineer (USD)

  Vancouver, BC — $60,107
  Toronto, ON — $62,365
  Atlanta, GA — $92,380
  Boston, MA — $103,979
  Washington, DC — $108,330
  New York, NY — $108,878
  Seattle, WA — $113,906
 The question is why the difference is so very broad. Off hand, I suspect the problem is demand. Seattle has two large top-tier tech companies based locally. Toronto has nothing of the sort. There are smaller tech companies, of course, and banks and one outpost of one of the majors. But the deep need to fight for talent just isn't there.
[1] http://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Vancouver-Amazon-HQ2-Proposal-Feb-2018.pdf <comment><USER2> It's all about supply and demand. The big tech companies want the best engineers in the world and they are willing to pay for them as their value and return on investment is what makes them the top revenue companies in the world. If the companies in Vancouver wanted top talent they would need to increase compensation in terms of salary, bonuses, stock options, etc. and insure the community around the business is modern and high tech.

As a top engineer you have the choice to go where ever the best challenges and compensation are. If you have over 10 years experience in a field and very good at what you do you should be paid exceptional well for it. As the value you bring to the company you work for makes the bottom line meter move upwards and you bring innovation and help move the company forward.

Mix a couple of teams of top quality and value engineers and you get products and services that the entire world wants to use. Talent also attracts talent, so if your company has very well known engineers working there that are very well known and respected in their fields other engineers will follow.

</comment><comment><USER3> Raw figures are worthless without taking into account cost of living, taxes and public services (social security, retirement plan).

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have more accurate figures, by all means post them. But it's going to take a lot to span a gap this broad.

For what it's worth, both Vancouver and Toronto were rated as "severely unaffordable" in the 14th Annual Demographia International Housing Affordability Survey: 2018.

[https://fcpp.org/wp-content/uploads/dhi2018-fcpp.pdf](https://fcpp.org/wp- content/uploads/dhi2018-fcpp.pdf)

<comment><USER4> You can consider things like the cost of health care (usually moot as big companies in the US will pay for all of your insurance costs), and education for your kids. What's the tuition difference between top tier schools in the US and Canada? What about primary school? I hear many people in the US pay to send their kids to private primary and secondary schools. If you are raising a family in the US those are lots of extra ancillary costs that are higher than in Canada.

<comment><USER5> There are no top tier schools in Canada. That's one of the problems. There's no Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, Brown, Duke, Chicago, Columbia, Penn, CIT, Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, et al.

Canada's few top tier schools, are second tier schools in the US, barely. Canada has only a few schools that compare to the University of Virginia, UNC or Michigan. The US has dozens of schools like that, eg: USC, UCLA, Florida, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Tulane, Pepperdine, Northeastern, Georgia, Boston, GIT, BC, NYU, Tufts, Wake Forest, Wisconsin Madison, Texas, Villanova, Penn State, Ohio State etc.

A bunch of those second tier schools cost $9k to $12k per year in-state tuition + fees. UNC is $9k, Florida is $6k. A four year degree will get you a $85k to $100k per year career as an engineer. You can pay for half of your tuition cost before you graduate with part-time work.

You can go to Berkely for $14k in-state. A degree from there in something of value in engineering, and you can write your ticket. You can easily pay off your education in a few years, and have an elite career that pays a top 3% income.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious how you define top-tier in this situation, especially tech- centric. I agree the U.S. has more "top" institutions from a reputation standpoint (partially due to us living in a US-centric western world), but they are also astronomically more expensive to attend than their Canadian counterparts. The University of Waterloo is probably not a "top-tier" school by any formal metric, but I would be surprised if it doesn't rival or beat the very top schools in the U.S. in terms of top engineers & tech entrepreneurs produced on a per-capita basis.

Waterloo, for example, has a co-op program that (at least when I attended it years ago) had me graduating debt-free, with built-up savings, and 2 years of tech. experience (including in SV). Many of my peers went to work for MS, Google, or Amazon (the big players at the time) right after graduation. Basically, if you wanted to go south of the border, you could, but of course many want to stay in Canada. I think similar opportunities are there for students from Toronto and other institutions. Accounting for population difference, I don't think the gap is that massive.

Also, Sam Altman is a big fan :)

 _While researching his piece Bruni spoke with Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator, one of the best-known providers of seed money for tech startups.

Bruni asked him if any one school stood out in terms of students and graduates whose ideas took off. "Yes," Altman responded. Bruni was prepared to hear Altman tout his alma mater Stanford. After all it's famous as a feeder of Silicon Valley success.

But Altman surprised him: "The University of Waterloo."_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The job is just not same.

In the big company where my bro worked had its best employees sent to HQ so that they could pay them more.

The guys who got employed at satellite offices could never directly get employed at the HQ.

Rest of the small companies have no choice but to pay more to get any talent.

I think big companies have their HQ in those expensive areas because their top guys prefer that for networking purpose. Most of the time a city is established as a hub for X and it's difficult to change that.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not unheard of for Senior Canadian Software engineer to get paid about 2x-4x times more in CA[lifornia].

Miserable salary? Miserably long depressing winters? Thanks, but no thanks.

</comment><comment><USER9> The measurement that really needs to be considered is "quality of life" and that is easy to overlook.

I wouldn't live in DC or New York for those wages but Vancouver might not be too bad for the pay there and I know of places where you could get by on less than 60k and live quite a bit better than any of those for the wages listed. I live in one.

<comment><USER10> Interesting POV

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hmm. I've seen these charts often but I have to say I've never met anyone get paid less than eighty. Myself and most of my peers at UBC start at about 90-110k for Google, Fb, Amazon and whatnot (only speaking for Vancouver).

My dad also worked in software back in the day in Toronto and he was also rarely less than 100k.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep in mind that these figures are in American dollars. Also, the companies you mention are the elite of this industry, and pay accordingly. Other places pay less.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Like everything it is a factor of supply and demand. On the demand side there is not as great a demand from employers for software engineers in Canada, on the supply side immigration is considerably easier into Canada for software engineers. Less demand and greater supply = lower wages.

We have the same issue here in Australia.

<comment><USER13> Not to refute you completely. Maybe it because there are not many companies that can be created with small populations as Canada and Australia? Which results in less companies.

US benefit far more from big large single market with high purchasing power than anything else. IMHO.

Let me know if I am missing something here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just took a quick look at average salaries and cost of living (specifically rent) [0].

WRT average salaries, none of these seem particularly out of kilter i.e. the ratios of the salaries you quote to the average salary of the respective areas are fairly consistent.

What's interesting is cost of living. Surprisingly (to me) Vancouver and Toronto have salary to rent ratios similar to New York. Boston and Washington are better i.e. higher ratios. Seattle and especially Atlanta are much better.

Not sure what to conclude from this but it's quite interesting, at least to me.

[0] [https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of- living](https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living) I have absolutely no idea how good this data is.

</comment><comment><USER15> Seems to be a combination of cost-of-living and demand. Consider the following cost-of-living comparison between Vancouver and Seattle:

Consumer Prices in Seattle, WA are 20.02% higher than in Vancouver

Consumer Prices Including Rent in Seattle, WA are 22.54% higher than in Vancouver

Rent Prices in Seattle, WA are 26.38% higher than in Vancouver

Restaurant Prices in Seattle, WA are 19.51% higher than in Vancouver

Groceries Prices in Seattle, WA are 21.84% higher than in Vancouver

([https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/comparison.jsp](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp))

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm Canadian and have definitely noticed a big difference. Though there also seems to be a strong demand for programmers, so I'm not sure why the wage isn't pushing further.

I'm remote. so I've found contracting to American companies to be best case scenario. Particularly when the our dollar is lower.

</comment><comment><USER17> Part of this difference is also the fluctuation in exchange rates.

Around 2014, 1 CAD was worth about 1 USD, but since then, the loonie has plummeted in value relative to the greenback.

That doesn't account for the entire difference, but it does account for some of it.</comment>


What have been the biggest stories or moments on HN this year? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> DOCKER!!!</comment>


Any Benelux hackers here? - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering if there are some people for Belgium or the Netherlands on this site. Would you like to do a meeting? <comment><USER2> Lol, when _I_ saw this post, I was left wondering how many people here even know what 'Benelux' is. I mean, I work in Paris, and if it wasn't for the fact that my company has a 'Benelux' office, I'd still be in the dark!

And besides, what have you got against the Luxembourgeois???

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, most people who live there know what it is. :-) Luxembourgeois: I met both of them, and they suck. Just kidding. It's true: our little brother is often forgotten..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, but not enough to get this post voted up enough to be visible, probably ;)

What would the meeting entail?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have no idea... Just wanted to check if there were some guys doing the same stuff we're doing. Maybe in the spirit of <http://freehackersunion.org/joining.html>

Actually I'm surprised the post got two comments.</comment></comment>


EU Agrees on `Blue Card' to Lure Qualified Migrants - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aUJwDpsrOzE4&refer=europe <comment><USER2> Sounds like this will cause problems similar to the H1B. The comments here have already shown this.

Programming is hard, and it's hard to get people to do it for you unless you pay them a lot. Even then, you don't necessarily get people to do it for you.

So you figure, well, there are a lot of people overseas who I could hire. So we need to create a program to hire them.

But then it turns out there is still a concept of citizenship, which is normally required to live and work unencumbered in a particular nation.

So they say, well, sure, let's just let them in as long as they promise to work in this profession for this employer.

But now, you have two people doing the same job next to each other at the same desk, and one of them can change fields, move to a new city, take a new job, and do all those things we normally associate with freedom. And if an employer doesn't allow him or her to do these things, they'll change fields, take a new job, or move to a new city.

So eventually the employer discovers that the restricted and unfree workers are easier to keep around, and you don't have to pay them as much. This starts to set the salary and working standards, so they people who are free start to avoid the field.

Which makes it harder to get the free citizens to do the work, which makes it hard to get people to do programming for you.

But then you figure, well, there are people overseas I could hire, so we need to expand the program so I can hire them...

It's totally broken. A traditional concept of citizenship and a global workforce don't really work all that well together. Something is going to have to give.

<comment><USER3> It was interesting experiencing that first hand. Not so much the exploitation, but the awkward position that you're put in when quitting your job could mean losing your entire life. I stuck it out at my last job for about a year longer than I was really comfortable with because I didn't want to take the chance of jeopardizing my permanent residence papers. I gave my notice within a couple weeks my permanent residence going though (and naturally, shifted over to working on my startup, another thing that was impossible for me to do previously :-) ).

<comment><USER2> I've experienced it only second-hand, but I sure have been close to the problem. I don't blame you for sticking it out, you'd be crazy not to.

I recently left a company that moved the office about 50 miles south through heavy traffic. It also decided, amazingly enough, that telecommuting was "bad", so they banned it (not even one day a week). Yep, everyone who lived 50 miles away is not obligated to drive in to work every day. They severely diluted everyone's stock, and implemented a bonus plan that was so weak it was embarrassing.

Almost all of the UC citizens have left. But the H1B's are still there. I don't blame them, they'd be crazy to leave and jeopardize their visas and green card applications. But it really makes me sick that my government essentially allowed private corporations to essentially control a worker's right to reside in the United States, along with hopes for becoming a citizen.

The funny thing is, I'm pretty libertarian. In my opinion, businesses should be free do do all that crap that my last company did if that's what they want to do. Nobody owes me a job on my terms, just as nobody owes my former company a talented employee on their terms.

That's how free markets work, but the H1B has proved to me that businesses are _not_ in favor of free markets, they're in favor of regulation that benefits them. When workers gain too much power - not through unions, not through government regulation, but through value - the corporate world will absolutely seek legal systems that give them control over things like visas and green card applications.

Makes me worried. I grew up in SF, so of course I've had plenty of socialists in my life saying things like "if democracy could change anything, it would be illegal..." but really, you have to say the same thing about free markets. It's pretty clear that when they threaten the establishment, the big corps will do everything they can to ensure that free markets are illegalized.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Or they could allow East Europeans like me to work. Then I would not have come to the US.

But ya' know what, you didn't want my poor over educated Eastern ass a few years ago, so I came to America, no regrets, fuck you people.

<comment><USER3> From everything that I've gathered, in Germany at least, the process is less brain-dead than in the US. It's still brain-dead, but there's less insult added to injury.

(Saying this as an American with permanent residence in Germany.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The competition for skilled migrants is going to heat up. I think in 10 years many european countries and US states will be desperate for workers - particularly countries like Italy where population is aging rapidly. <http://longevity-science.org/Population_Aging.htm>

</comment><comment><USER6> No path to citizenship? Not interested, sorry.

<comment><USER7> Most, if not all EU countries have provisions for obtaining citizenship after a certain number of years of residence. Or do you mean gaining citizenship after a certain number of years in _any_ EU country?

<comment><USER8> Yes. Like in germany, where it takes about 16 years of living there to get a citizenship, and since you were not born there, you will always be a second class citizen, always. Plus in a typical racist/ethnocentric way, you have to renounce your motherland's country's citizenship. No, thanks.

There is a real good reason USA attracts smart immigrants in droves. Even with the latest problems after 2001, this country will be able to attract more foreigner than any other country in europe.

<comment><USER9> Germany 8 years ( with an immigration course 7 years - very good knowledge of german 6 years) - US 5 years. If you don't like germany got to the UK.

<comment><USER3> Details are here:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Naturali...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_nationality_law#Naturalisation_as_a_German_citizen)

Permanent residence is a load of paperwork, but still fairly straightforward if you've been working in Germany for 5 years and as of the latest laws gives you the right to work and live anywhere in the EU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good. I'll get my post at CERN and then work on getting citizenship.</comment>


Apple Patents the MacBook Air's Wedge Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/06/apple-patents-the-macbook-airs-wedge-design-bad-news-for-ultrabook-makers/

<comment><USER2> That's a little stupid, isn't it?

<comment><USER3> I don't think so. Anybody else could have come up with that design and would have done the same thing. Ultrabooks, so far, seem to just be "It's an Air, but made by Dell/HP/etc with #{specs}."</comment></comment>


Homeless to hacker: How the Maker Movement changed one man's life - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/16/homeless-to-hacker-how-the-maker-movement-changed-one-mans-life/ <comment><USER2> This is a very feel good type article. A couple of things have glaring red flags for me:

"His ideas are in various stages of development and include a food delivery service, a laser company, and a hardware accelerator program."

This tells me that he has all of these "ideas" but no actual expertise in any of these areas. How often have you heard some "bro" say they have a great idea in some field which they don't know anything about.

"Whatever he does next, Roth intends to hire from within the homeless community, which he views as a hotbed of untapped talent."

I'm sure there are some very smart homeless people out there, but you need skills in relevant technologies to be a successful worker in the type of companies hes wants to start. Food delivery might be easy for the homeless to pick up, Optoelectronics on the other hand not so much.

Good on the guy for learning some valuable skills, turning his life around and helping the homeless. Lets just try and be a little bit realistic about whats going on here though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Fantastic piece! This should be required reading in all high school (or earlier) together with pg's essay "How to Make Wealth" (<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>):

Kids know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. If you need to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. But kids are so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a distinct, inferior, sort of thing to store-bought ones-- a mere expression of the proverbial thought that counts. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a resale market.

As he points out, most everyone loses this innate understanding of creating wealth, making stuff, as they grow older. This guy has rediscovered it.

Oc course, this would have been impossible without the enabler of shared space, so we should have more of these.

<comment><USER4> You are totally right on this. The world needs more wealth.

The problems of poverty or homelessness can be solved by acess to products at lower prices. We need more makers and hackers who can do that.

As we grow older, we like to conform to the societal ideals of whatever if safe and suppress our tendency to creative seek out solutions to problems by creating.</comment></comment>


Competing in a data science contest without reading the data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mrtz.org/2015/03/09/competition.html

<comment><USER2> This is actually a really, really good article. I like the way that the author both writes clearly and entertainingly about a reasonably complex topic.

The disconnect between static and interactive data analysis that is at the heart of the post is probably the most ignored issue in science.

To be honest, its hard not to ignore it given the implications of it (that we only get one shot at a set of test/validation/experimental data) and if we mess up, we're screwed.

</comment><comment><USER3> No theory (random classifiers) aggregated to optimize on a non representative hold out set form a theory on that set? I think this is expected. If you create classifiers that express some domain theory on the training set in step 1. and use the information in the hold out differently you'll do a lot better (I believe - well I think I saw that result when I did my Ph.D 17 years ago).

Here is a very bad, very bad, very old, very old, AAAI workshop paper that sums up the idea (the journal paper is behind a pay wall.

[http://aaaipress.org/Papers/Workshops/1999/WS-99-06/WS99-06-...](http://aaaipress.org/Papers/Workshops/1999/WS-99-06/WS99-06-005.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER4> This paper [1] by Bergstra, Cox is one of my favorites on competing without looking at the data. They were actually able to design the model before the data was even released (!)

[1] [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3476v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1306.3476v1.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> This article illustrates the problem with over-fitting a model even when some data is withheld for testing. This is a trap that one can fall into when using training and testing sets.</comment>


Shrinking 'Quant' Funds Struggle to Revive Boom - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/business/20quant.html?ref=business

<comment><USER3> There is kind of an odd tone to this article as if the shrinking of the quant economy is a tragedy when in fact it should be the natural course of this sector if it is not too corrupted. The efficient market hypothesis and information theory tells us that using probabilistic models to extract a competitive advantage can only give good returns when your method is better than all of your competitors'. When two firms have similarly optimized tactics, they bet against each other and the margin of money than can be skimmed off their betting market will shrink to almost nothing. I don't mean that the profits will be split between the two. I mean the bidding war will push the price towards its optimal value where no money can be extracted.

In a competitive quant market, as all the firms perfect their mathematical models, they should all move asymptotically towards the best probabilistic model possible given the available information and eventually erase each other's gains.

The boom in computing technology of the past thirty years was an immense opportunity for mathematicians to make money by racing to perfect their models before others. However, as this industry matures it should eventually take only a few very good systems to extract a thin margin that will barely cover the cost of running the systems themselves.

Moving towards that point of efficiency is a capitalist and libertarian victory that people (at least those who believe in capitalism) should celebrate. The conclusion is a market so efficient that little money can be extracted by betting in it. That means money going to the real economy instead of the wall street casino and more value for everyone. The fact that the sector is shrinking indicates the free market is actually working.

I don't believe in the free market everywhere but I think when it actually works well and create value we should be glad, not lament the loss of the casino profits.

This allegory illustrates the efficient market hypothesis nicely: <http://agoraphilia.blogspot.com/2005/03/doing-lines.html>

<comment><USER4> 1) There will always be non-professionals/non-quantitative people making trades that create potential profit for those who wish to arb them.

2) You can still make "good" returns even when you have the worst of the models because of 1).

3) It takes more than N>>2 firms to shrink the profit in a particular model to 0. For evidence, see the large number of high frequency funds that make great returns.

4) The market/world is always changing so the 'best' probabilistic model is always changing. As long as the professionals are moving faster than the non- professionals, they can still extract money.

Could you define what you mean by the real economy? Isn't the real economy whatever it is that solves other people's problems that they will pay you for? The fact that "the sector is shrinking" doesn't mean that its not going to grow still larger long term. I would say that we're just on the back side of a bubble. There are many many many people out there who call themselves quants that shouldn't.

You're waxing philosophic about a hyper efficient future but I don't think it matters because that future won't be here for a very long time.

See 1), 4) and the second to last setence of your allegory (Information only makes a difference if the number of people who have it is small.) for why professionals/someone will always be able to make good returns.

<comment><USER3> You make some valid points but don't forget that even the non professionals making mistakes will get less losses and a return closer to a long term index when better quant system are betting agains each other and keeping prices close to their optimum levels.

It is not certain at all that the worst professional models will make money just because there are non professionals that are even worst. If the better models are aggressive enough, they should be able to take most of what there is to take from the non professionals and also profit from betting against the lesser professional models (to a lesser extent).

I still maintain that as the models get better and better while they bet against each other, the margin for profit is reduced and the sector as a whole should shrink and that's a victory for capitalism.

<comment><USER4> "don't forget that even the non professionals making mistakes will get less losses and a return closer to a long term index when better quant system are betting agains each other and keeping prices close to their optimum levels."

Do you have an argument/explanation for this? Also, why are the quant systems necessarily betting against each other?

"It is not certain at all that the worst professional models will make money just because there are non professionals that are even worst."

I didn't mean to imply that its a certainty, only that its a possibility. I mean our whole argument is about some possible utopian future, right?

"I still maintain that as the models get better and better while they bet against each other, the margin for profit is reduced and the sector as a whole should shrink and that's a victory for capitalism."

Aren't you just saying capitalism works? Can't I say the same thing about all those darn internet startups extracting value from me because they're providing me information? Would you use the same argument to conclude that the space of internet startups will shrink?

<comment><USER5> In a completely efficient market, any stock is just as good as any other - <USER2> make or lose money solely due to chance. Nonprofessionals will only take trading losses if they are unlucky .

(Of course, a non-professional who wishes to treat eTrade as a casino may lose money on transaction costs.)

You absolutely can say the same thing about internet startups extracting value by providing you information - but you are incorrect to conclude that the _space_ of internet startups will shrink. In fact, what will shrink is _profit margins_ \- as more startups are created, all the easy alpha is off the table. Witness what is happening to newspapers right now.

<comment><USER4> re completely efficient markets, you're right. My eyes focused on the "making mistakes" part and missed the "closer to" part. I guess I could throw something in there about gambler's ruin, but that would be a little pedantic.

re the space of internet startups : To be clear, I wasn't concluding one way or the other, just asking him to apply the same logic to something he might have positive bias towards and see if he comes to the same conclusions. Also, rather than number of companies, I think the market cap/total profit of the companies is a better metric.

I'm not sure that company margins in internet startups or quant finance will shrink. I haven't thought too much about it but I think they might even grow as information/efficiency attains greater value. Margins per action done might shrink but number of actions will grow. Isn't this the whole story of HFT?

Further, old lines of business will have their margins shrink as the service becomes commoditized. But new high(er) margin lines of business will spring up in their place.

<comment><USER5> In the case of HFT the number of actions has grown only because there was alpha sitting on the table, but it wasn't worthwhile for human market makers to chase it.

Think about a strategy which generates $100/day trading OTSS (Obscure Thinly Traded Symbol), a security with a $0.25 bid/ask spread. No human will waste their time on this strategy, so $100/day of alpha is left sitting on the table. HFT allows a computer to chase after this $100, $50 on some other stock, etc. This is simply a case of 3 programmers + computers doing work which was unprofitable for humans to do.

Similarly, twitter didn't exist before the internet because no human would be willing to earn $0.0003/day hand-delivering short messages to anyone who cared to listen, being paid to verify that "yes, this message really came from Mallika Sherawat".

Once the market becomes saturated, the bid/ask on OTSS will shrink to $0.10 and the algorithm will only generate $40/day. We are already approaching that point in HFT.

As for margins, they may grow if demand increases. I was really speaking about a situation of increased competition with all else held equal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the article: "Still others say their models simply failed to predict how the markets would react to near-catastrophic, once-in-a-lifetime financial events like the credit crisis and the collapse of Lehman Brothers."

The fact that they still believe those events were "catastrophic," or "once- in-a-lifetime" means they still haven't grasped the fact that markets aren't Gaussian. As first Mandelbrot, then others showed, financial markets exhibit a much larger number of extreme events than a standard Gaussian distribution. Therefore, any trader that doesn't update his or her models to use a non- Gaussian model won't just be wiped out once. They'll be wiped out again and again as they get blindsided by the "once-in-a-lifetime" price swings that happen to happen every decade or so.

<comment><USER7> Indeed. For anyone that hasn't read it yet, Taleb's Edge essay on the nature of randomness in 'Fourth Quadrant' domains is a good read:

<http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html>

And a more technical discussion of Mandelbrotian market models from Wilmott magazine:

<http://arxiv.org/abs/cond-mat/0501292>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> does the analysis also includes HFT traders? Also I remember hearing that Goldman Sachs didn't have a single day of trading loss. Maybe the smaller Quant funds are loosing out on talent to the bigger firms?

<comment><USER9> As a former trader, I can assure you that's bollox. No desk trading anything has never had a losing day.

<comment><USER10> An individual desk might not, but it's not that unlikely for the firm as a whole to.

<comment><USER9> No, it's not. GS take big risk, they run large exposures as a bank. They'll have their down days.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Drag-and-drop library for 2D, resizable and responsive lists - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ubervu/grid

<comment><USER2> This is really nice. As someone who has worked with the competition libs masonry, packery, and gridster, I know why you built this and it looks great so far. All have their oddities or missing features.

Can you sort items on this programatically? If so very cool, its one feature packery is missing.

On feature I (need) think is missing is the ability to freely place an item in the bottom-right side with gaps in between it and other items - for example in the bottom right corner of the parent container. I could really see this being requested in a dashboard type use.

<comment><AUTHOR> > Can you sort items on this programatically?

Yes you can. The grid is generated left-to-right > top-to-bottom, based on a 1d index inside a list. So you can sort the unidimensional array of items however you want, and then regenerate 2d positions based on that.

> On feature I (need) think is missing is the ability to freely place an item > in the bottom-right side with gaps in between it and other items

You can't right now without a few tweaks, but once we start accommodating for more options this will definitely be included. We have a certain _force_ called "pull to left" that can be replaced with "pull to top" or just don't pull, let the items be where they are placed, etc.

This was just our use-case, waiting for others to surface and see where this can go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The demo link is a bit hidden, here it is for people who wandered like me: [http://ubervu.github.io/grid/](http://ubervu.github.io/grid/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I added a more explicit link in the README file. It appears people don't really look in the repo header for the appointed hompage

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is definitely cool, but I'm not quite seeing what the purpose or aim is.

Is the demo an accurate representation of the entire functionality?

If so, why do things "fall back" toward the left? Sometimes this jumbles the layout of other blocks quite a bit. I guess this brings me back to my original question: what's this for?

Finally, the UI component being a jquery plugin strikes me as being a downside. Though I use jquery all the time, components tend to be a little brittle when it comes to heavily dynamic sites (i.e. knockout/angular/react whatever), and given that jquery itself isn't trivial, adding lots of components to it makes me a little leery of the upgrade process (also something I've witnessed problems with).

<comment><AUTHOR> Well we're building a platform for Social Media Monitoring, with Dashboards made of resizable, responsive and composable Widgets. This grid offers you the possibility to generate customized dashboards populated with various types of data and visualizations. We wanted dashboards to be easy to create but also accommodate various screen sizes or device types. You can have one row for phones and 6 for status monitors in the lobby. etc.

The grid actually works on a principle called "pull to left." It was a UX decision in the end. "Left" is because the grid is designed horizontally (but should be made an option to use the other axis very easily), and "pull" is because we found (after much usability testing) that if you don't have any _force_ in a drag and drop system, items will involuntarily continue to move away from each other as you move them around and collisions occur.

I get where you come from with the jQuery plugin. However, due to many reasons (including time and reducing in-house complexity) jQuery was advantageous for its build-in drag and drop capabilities. But the good part is that we still separated most of our logic from the jQuery plugin, into abstract positioning. The jQuery plugin just transforms grid data into pixels and lays them around. There are many reasons why this is cool. 1. Very fast unit tests ran with Node, 2. Grid positions can be generated server side, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice, though not sure about utility...are you interested in working on a UI builder such as this : [http://crudzilla.com/assets/img/info-graphics/dnd- demo-clipp...](http://crudzilla.com/assets/img/info-graphics/dnd-demo- clipped.gif)

I would be happy to discuss :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Guys, how is this different from [http://gridster.net](http://gridster.net)? Or is Gridster done by you?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a very relevant question, added an elaborate answer directly in the project README: [https://github.com/uberVU/grid/blob/master/README.md#faq- why...](https://github.com/uberVU/grid/blob/master/README.md#faq-why-not- gridster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it supposed to be touch enabled? Tried the demo on a mobile device and didn't seem to drag...

<comment><AUTHOR> We use jQuery.draggable for drag and drop, which I don't think supports touch events. But there are more ways to add touch events to jQuery UI and in the end the drag and drop / plugin part is so decoupled that it can be replaced at any time. It's also the part we invested the least in so far, we wanted to have solid grid positioning and collision management first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> this is really nice. well done

</comment><comment><USER9> Very nice!

</comment><comment><USER10> This post got nailed by the voting ring detector, but I'm restoring it because we want to see original work on HN.

Please everybody, don't ring-vote your posts; just take your chances with HN's randomness. If a post is solid and hasn't gotten any attention yet, a couple of reposts is ok. Be careful not to abuse that, since we eventually penalize accounts for reposting too much. Send questions to email@example.com.

<comment><USER11> So many original content posts have been nailed by the voting ring detector. I can almost guarantee that many of those "friends asking friends for votes" usually have no connection to the original author at all. Maybe it's just friends sharing things with each other... I really wonder how accurate training / testing data could be gathered for this classification task. Maybe it needs to be refreshed.

Anyway thanks for bringing original content back to HN. Anyone know if there's a demo page for this library?

<comment><USER12> There is! [http://ubervu.github.io/grid/](http://ubervu.github.io/grid/)</comment></comment></comment>


The bitter truth about fructose alarmism - <AUTHOR> http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-about-fructose-alarmism/ <comment><USER2> This author doesn't read his own studies or check his numbers. Here's the most glaring example:

> One of Lustig's opening assertions is that The Atkins diet and the Japanese > diet share one thing in common: the absence of fructose. This is flat-out > false because it implies that the Japanese don't eat fruit. On the contrary, > bananas, grapefruits, Mandarin oranges, apples, grapes, watermelons, pears, > persimmons, peaches, and strawberries are significant staples of the > Japanese diet [17].

Except the Japanese DON'T eat much fruit compared to Americans. It's in his own citation:

Japan fruit consumption: 41.5 kg per person per year

USA fruit consumption: 126.5 kg per person per year

<http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/wrs0406/wrs0406h.pdf>

<http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf>

Americans eat over 300% more fruit than Japanese. I don't know what a "significant staple" is, but from my time in Tokyo, Osaka, the rest of Kansai, and Hokkaido, Japanese have a heck of a lot less fructose than Americans do. It's mostly rice, meat, fish, and vegetables, and the main desserts are only semi-sweet like mochi and red bean.

<comment><USER3> I also didn't think the problem was fruit, but rather things like HFCS- sweetened sodas. A banana or an apple has about 100 calories, but a 12 ounce can of soda has about 150. I know people (I was one) that will drink 32 ounces (about a liter) of soda just at lunch but won't have more than 2 pieces of fruit a day.

There's also the fact that the apple or banana have fiber and other nutrients the sodas are missing. The sodas (or often other HFCS-rich foods) don't have.

<comment><USER4> Actually, a banana has about 200 calories, 23g sugars, and a fairly high glycemic index:

[http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit- juices/1...](http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit- juices/1846/2)

That's why a lot of the paleo diet folks avoid them.

<comment><USER3> That's 1 cup, mashed. I looked up 1 medium banana:

<http://www.weightlossforall.com/calories-banana.htm>

Edit: To note that I still do see your point about why certain diets avoid them. I think of bananas as the 3 Musketeers Bar of fruit. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting article. I continue to be amazed at how primitive our nutrition science is but I guess that's what happens when you combine a tough problem with market distortions.

The tough problem: there are a million variables to control for, people's environment (work, health, happiness, etc.) confounds everything, accurate reporting is difficult, food quality varies (e.g., apple nutrients have changed over time), etc.

The market distortions: huge subsidies and entrenched interests for factory farming with a heavy emphasis on grains, cereals and legumes, particularly wheat, corn, and soybeans.

I've found that substituting lots of fat and protein for carbohydrates while emphasizing food quality (little processed foods) produces lots of satiety, and improvement in physical performance, a better lipid profile and loss of body fat. But YMMV.

<comment><USER6> The science of nutrition and biochemistry in general is anything but primitive. Unfortunately though, there is probably no single field that has a greater amount of psuedo-scientific nonsense published about it in the mainstream media (not to mention crackpot blogs, books etc). Anyone can publish a book or a blog and pretend to have expertise on the topic. For example, I remember seeing one that was proudly emblazoned with the author's name appended with "PhD". It was complete fluff. Turns out her PhD was in English literature.

Like all sensationalist issues, the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe. But where's the fun in that?

I've been considering starting some sort of site for publishing the real truth on this stuff, but I'm not sure how interesting it would be to other people. The truth just isn't link-baity and sensationalist enough, y'know?

<comment><USER7> _> the fructose thing is more nuanced than the fruitcakes on either side would have you believe_

Can you enlighten us on these nuances? By "fruitcakes" I assume you're referring to Aragon and Lustig?

<comment><USER6> In terms of fruitcakes, I was thinking more of the people that bring a political agenda or talk about "toxins" or what not.

Long story short: fructose is only problematic if you are consuming it without dietary fiber (e.g. as fruit) for glycemic control, as well as all the other modulating effects fiber has.

Fructose (and HFCS) sweetened foods are really just a sideshow to the the main issue: people making bad nutrition and lifestyle choices over the long term, e.g. drinking sodas every day. There's no easy, magic bullet that takes away one's responsibility for making good choices.

Magically eliminating fructose or HFCS from our diets won't reverse the obesity trend. It'll help a bit, of course, but ultimately humans will need to find a way to adapt to over-abundance of temping, high-calorie foods. Meanwhile, a modicum of education and self-discipline are the keys.

<comment><USER8> The Lestig talk offers some fairly convincing arguments that what you say is not the case. Fructose is inherently problematic. Fiber merely mitigates the effects, which are still there and wouldn't have happened at all had you eaten something without sugar at all.

Furthermore, while drinking sodas every day is perhaps a choice, what about the example of walking down the bread aisle and finding that something like 95% of the varieties listed HFCS as an ingredient? It's not just that sodas and juice drinks are ubiquitous, heavily-marketed, cheap, tasty, and designed to maximize consumption and therefore profit through use of diuretics and sodium and therefore people find themselves making the dietary choice to drink them with meals instead of water, but also the fact that HFCS is used in an enormous number of processed foods.

Bread, pizza dough, tomato sauce, cookies, candy bars, chocolate, yogurt, sports drinks, salad dressing, BBQ sauce, chocolate milk... HFCS is everywhere because it's cheap, because it makes food taste better, and because it doesn't fill you up so people will consume (and therefore buy) more of it.

On the one hand, fats are more calorie-dense, but sugar doesn't fill you up (and in my experience salt has a similar effect but I work out and sweat a lot so that could be why). So the combination of sugar and fat is the killer combination.

Try this experiment: for a single day, try to eat 4,000 calories of nothing but a simple starchy food (like white rice) with some fat, like olive oil. This is a low fiber, high calorie diet. My guess is that you'll feel incredibly full after all the rice and oil. You may not even be able to reach 4,000 calories in 16 hours. You'll have to force yourself to eat by the end.

Then, a few days later after you've sent some fiber through your digestive system to clear out any blockage you caused eating so much rice, try the same thing with soda and cookies. Get a couple boxes of your favorite HFCS- sweetened cookies and a couple of 2-liter bottles of your favorite soda or better yet, juice drink. See how hard it is to reach 4,000 calories now. My guess is that you'll have no trouble, although you may feel a bit ill by the end of the day.

<comment><USER9> You have to applaud Coca Cola. Over a mere 70 years they have managed to teach the entire planet to consume a dessert multiple times a day; for some people multiple times in one meal. Imagine trying to convince the entire planet to eat ice cream or chocolate cake with every meal. That is an impressive manipulation of human behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Taking a hard look at the data above, it appears that the rise in obesity is > due in large part to an increase in caloric intake across the board, rather > than an increase in carbohydrate in particular.

Ok, but the Calories in/out argument is a silly oversimplification. Pregnant women gain weight because they consume more calories than they expend, but this isn't the most interesting level of causation.

Let's say that one day I drink two cans of Coke in the morning, and measure how I feel for the next few hours. The next day I eat 320 calories worth of chicken breast. To say that an increase in caloric intake can be _caused_ by a change in the kinds of foods consumed is not a contradiction.

The author of this rant either completely misses, or tries to skate around this obvious point, as many do.

<comment><USER11> I think the author's 'rant' contains an answer to your post:

"I'm obviously not in favor of replacing anyone's daily fluid intake with soft drinks, but I can already see a number of straw man arguments headed my way. This is because people have a tendency to think in either-or terms that strictly involve extremes."

I think the main point of his post is that fructose is being demonized. He points out that we're taking in more calories while spending less. If anything is to be taken from the article is that moderation is the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> _aking a hard look at the data above, it appears that the rise in obesity is due in large part to an increase in caloric intake across the board, rather than an increase in carbohydrate in particular._

Doesn't Lustig propose that a change in the proportion of fructose to other sugars in the diet causes a decrease in satiety, leading to more overall caloric intake?

</comment><comment><USER13> Sort of tangentially to this (fairly good) article, I have noticed a number of people recently somehow conflating all fructose with high-fructose corn syrup and other refined variants. I am not sure if this is just symptomatic of ignorance or a concerted effort of some kind.

<comment><USER14> Could you be more specific? The two are not without similarities in how they are metabolized, so if we're to understand what you mean by "conflating" you should mention the way in which they should not be combined/confused. Since HFCS is a solution of fructose and glucose, there is overlap.

(edited to correct brain fart mentioned below)

<comment><USER15> There is no HFCS "molecule"- high fructose corn syrup is a solution containing a certain percentage of fructose and glucose molecules, which are not attached to each other.

You may be confusing it with sucrose (table sugar) which does consist of a fructose and glucose molecule with a glycosidic linkage.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-fructose_corn_syrup>

<comment><USER14> I must remember to become fully awake before posting. Thank you. I refined my question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've done my best to understand the data, but with my limited understanding of natural science, I trust the man with the M.D. and a focus in metabolism more than the one with an MS in nutrition.

<comment><USER7> Really? Can't we evaluate these claims properly? Both sides here are citing sources and starting a healthy debate. Why must we resort to choosing a side based solely on authority? I always assumed the HN audience would never fall back on that since we've seen success and intelligence where least expected.

<comment><USER16> On the contrary, I think it makes a lot of sense to accept the opinion of someone more educated on a topic than yourself. I'm a technologist, not a nutritionist. Likewise, if a doctor thought he knew more about software than me, he'd likely be mistaken.

<comment><USER7> If you know nothing about a topic, then yes, best to listen to someone that does. But both individuals here are at least knowledgeable enough to debate this without us automatically choosing a side. This isn't the case of a sales director arguing with a senior programmer. It's a junior programmer taking on a senior programmer.

 _> Likewise, if a doctor thought he knew more about software than me, he'd likely be mistaken._

Usually, but I would hope if a Con Kolivas offered an opinion on your code, you wouldn't brush him aside merely because he was a doctor :) Reminds me of this thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=930117></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thinning in brain regions important for memory linked to sedentary habits - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180412141014.htm <comment><USER2> > This study does not prove that too much sitting causes thinner brain > structures, but instead that more hours spent sitting are associated with > thinner regions, researchers said.

This is a bit of a non-story. The article doesn't go into what measures were taken to eliminate confounding factors, and it seems from the way it's worded that not many were taken. Maybe people who have a more sedentary lifestyle also tend to come from a lower social background, thus are more prone to physical and mental diseases. Or maybe people who sit more tend to be more obese, and it's really obesity that's associated here. It doesn't take a genius to think up more possible confounding variables. Also, a cohort of 35 people is tiny.

<comment><USER3> > Maybe people who have a more sedentary lifestyle also tend to come from a > lower social background

My favorite confound is when Pauling convinced many reasonably educated higher SES people that vitamins were a miracle cure-all. Suddenly multivitamins did correlate with higher health outcomes! (Until later studies untangled this and found little broad effect, aside from specific vitamins during pregnancy or specific deficiencies.)

Sort of a pop science self fulfilling prophecy. Or when we do things we think are smart, sometimes we pollute the evidence.

<comment><USER4> Pop Science. Nice...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In my early career I was a car seat engineer which gave me a life long interest in seats. If you look at historical chairs it is amazing how recently the comfortable chair was introduced. I peg it at around 1920, about 30 years after the Morris chair, which was the beginning. Think of the colonial era Windsor chairs. You can imagine great thinkers sitting in them pulled up to their desks creating and thinking. But no way could you sit for the 10-12 hours a day most HN readers do. Go back further to images of classic times. Sitting devices were definitely not capable of being used for extended periods. So yes, it is worth thinking about the impact of comfortable furniture on how much we sit. But later. I am getting up to get a cup of coffee.

<comment><USER6> What can we do to support healthy physical posture and movement whilst also maximising productivity when working with with electronic representations of textual and numeric data?

There are some obvious avenues to explore -- but it is not clear if anything is going to be available to consumers in the near future.

<comment><USER7> I'm really hoping VR headsets can provide a workspace where people can lay down or stand. The keyboard replacement in those positions might be hard to figure out.

<comment><USER8> That's one of the easier problems. I just bought a split wireless keyboard. It actually feels alright just laying it in my thighs to typ.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing about what people were actually doing while they were sitting? Watching TV? Staring into space? I don't know how to take something like this seriously (after reading this article in its entirety, not the linked paper)

<comment><USER10> Seems like a critical piece of information. You could say that people who take frequent brakes from their work to go outdoor and stand there for a while are likely to die younger. That's smokers behavior.

If it was random sample from general population then I'm betting on watching TV. Studies seem to suggest that if you are doing a lot of cognitive work it is good for your brain and memory. Apart from the somewhat new trend of standing desks, most jobs that are about thinking are done in a sitting position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "UCLA researchers recruited 35 people ages 45 to 75 and asked about their physical activity levels and the average number of hours per day they spent sitting over the previous week."

<comment><USER12> Isn't UCLA among the top universities in the world? How can they publish a research like this (asking a few questions to 35 people) and draw such formidable conclusions? The title sounds like they've discovered something new that applies to all humans...

<comment><USER13> It becomes quite evident in studies like this, but nearly all social science related studies are based on the exact same pattern. For instance the emotional intelligence study, which has been repeatedly cited and been reasonably influential, was based on putting people into groups, having them do tasks such as [literally] writing a shopping list, and then showing that the groups that did the tasks most efficiently were not strictly composed of those that had the highest IQ. So therefore it was implied that individual merit alone does not determine results of groups, but rather some 'emotional intelligence' does.

It's absolutely atrocious logic since B is in no way implied from A. For instance to show this then you would need to, at the minimum, put the people that all individually do the best at e.g. writing a shopping list, into a group, and then compare them against people that individually do worse but score well on the [again literally] 'Reading the Eyes in the Mind' test that was used to measure 'emotional intelligence'. Of course that was not done, and I don't think it's unreasonable to speculate because we know what the result would be - and that's not publishable. Yet bad science paired with an astounding headline and you are suddenly good to go.

Yeah, a bit of a rant but it's incredibly disappointing how awful the social sciences have become. And that decline pairs ironically with a massive increase in the reporting of their results, which become ever more grand and increasingly clickbaity, in the media.

<comment><USER14> Are you equating IQ with merit? If so, you need to broaden your perspective.

<comment><USER13> My opinion is not relevant one way or the other. I am describing the study.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A "sitting is killing you" article based on a _study of 35 people._

Is this going to launch another wave of conflicting articles published every- other-week saying how to minimize it?

"Eat fish 5 times a day while standing!"

"New study: fish 10 times while doing squats!"

"Latest: the fish does nothing! You need a 'weightless desk' in low earth orbit."

<comment><USER16> Man that last idea sounds sweet! I'm up for that whether it prolongs my life or not!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This seems to contradict another article posted on HN I read recently, which says memories are lost due to brain cell growth after physical activity!

[https://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5695500/why-cant-you- remember-b...](https://www.vox.com/2014/5/8/5695500/why-cant-you-remember- being-a-baby-science-explains)

[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-brain-deletes- old...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2014/05/how-brain-deletes-old-memories)

Which contradicts yet another article which says that growing new brain cells can improve memory:

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1244332/How- runnin...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1244332/How-running-jog- memory-creating-new-brain-cells.html)

So which is it? I think we need scientists to take two contradicting studies and try to find out the root cause of a discrepancy, instead of making a third study. To do that, they need to record as much as they can, and a meta-study needs to look at the actual discrepancies that can account for a change.

[https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem- prove...](https://slate.com/health-and-science/2017/06/daryl-bem-proved-esp- is-real-showed-science-is-broken.html)

<comment><USER18> > I think we need scientists to take two contradicting studies and try to find > out the root cause of a discrepancy, instead of making a third study.

Yes, the shorter form being ;-) :

I think we need scientists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I don't know if my brain has "thinned" but I do know that after sitting for years coding I started experiencing a pinched nerve in my back, and that ain't no fun.

I thought I was having a stroke the first time it happened about six months ago. I realized it was a pinched nerve after looking into it but it took several months to figure out exactly what stretches I needed to do to relieve and prevent them.

<comment><USER8> Where'd you track that info down?

<comment><USER20> Not OP, but I actually went to a physiotherapist. Well worth the investment if they know what they're doing.

<comment><USER8> Very very true. They've helped me immensely in the past.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "The researchers next hope to follow a group of people for a longer duration to determine if sitting causes the thinning and what role gender, race, and weight might play in brain health related to sitting."

This is just a preliminary study. It´s too soon to get any conclusions. But, it´s a good starting point for a hypothesis. I will like to see the results of the final study, even that is going to take a long time.

I have seen many times links between sedentary life and illness. But this one looks promising as tries to find a mechanism on why this happens at the brain level that may affect cognition.

And yes, before doing a more expensive study, they asked 35 people for a preliminary study. You don´t spend a lot of money to try to prove something without first trying to disprove it on the cheap. Translation for developers: before spending a lot of time to test something you first do a smoke test. If it passes you invest the time to test it fully. Otherwise, you go back to writing code.

</comment><comment><USER22> I wonder if this is true for physical inactivity in general? I suspect that using a standing desk instead of sitting down wouldn't change the situation.

</comment><comment><USER23> Interesting they do manual segmenting, who's working on image recognition to automate measuring of the various areas - presumably then all past scans [with patient acceptance] could be fed in to a system and the brain regions could be measured and classified.

The correlation graphs are awesome!

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/j...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195549.g002)

Not sure you could get a better randomisation if you tried with just 35 points??!

</comment><comment><USER24> Perhaps people who are either predisposed toward unhealthy outcomes, or are currently experiencing them (whether they realize it or not) are more sedentary. Correlation does not establish causation.

<comment><USER25> Um yes, the title should be more like:

"Sitting correlates to Thinning in certain brain regions"

<comment><USER26> Is it bad to have a "thin" brain and good to have a "fat" brain now?

Can't this brain region become too large? What if the area is enlarged due to inflammation/swelling and these people with "thinning" are those without that problem?

If the brain is too large it is considered a problem: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalencephaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megalencephaly)

This guy apparently has the second largest brain ever measured, and he was a serial killer: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Rulloff](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_H._Rulloff)

<comment><USER27> The study was regarding density, not size.

<comment><USER26> Where are you seeing that? Also, fine density/volume/mass, does it really change the argument?

There is some optimal size for this region when it comes to certain functions, probably relative to the size of other regions. That size is probably suboptimal when it comes to other functions and there are tradeoffs going on.

The press release seems to be assuming that thinner is bad automatically.

<comment><USER28> > The press release seems to be assuming that thinner is bad automatically.

Well, it's not unreasonable.

I don't know of any literature that says that a sedentary lifestyle is healthy for the brain, but a lot of it has found the opposite. I would like to avoid anything that reproduces the neurological effects of being sedentary.

<comment><USER26> >"I don't know of any literature that says that a sedentary lifestyle is healthy for the brain"

Here are two I found:

>"More sedentary behavior was strongly predictive of more depressive symptomatology and, unexpectedly, of better cognitive performance." [https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/pdf/10.1123/japa.13.3...](https://journals.humankinetics.com/doi/pdf/10.1123/japa.13.3.294)

>"Self-reported sedentary behavior was related to better performance on one cognitive task (trails A; p < .05)." [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861254/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4861254/)

Obviously these are "undesirable" results, so you have to look a little bit deeper to find them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Time and time again more evidence is propping up stating the benefits of exercise. I think Patio11 summed it up well, roughly stating that as we are all working with the same hardware(the body) then we should work to maintain it in top shape.

If you maintain your body in a weak state, it would seem that your body would have to maximize its output with a lesser performing system. Imagine trying to perform well when you have a heart that's got 1/4 the performance of a well maintained one.

Imagine the downstream effects of all this!

</comment><comment><USER30> Maybe people ages 45 through 75 are going through the period of life which we traditionally associate with both a lowering of physical activity and increasing difficulties in memory. Sure would be nice if they linked the study or seriously cared about critiquing it.

The real question should be whether both are also strongly associated with grey hair, number of grandchildren, and taste in film.

</comment><comment><USER31> Here is the actual paper, for your reference. I'm appalled that ScienceDaily did not link this in their article.

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0195549)

<comment><USER26> Here is the activity survey:

[http://www.sdp.univ.fvg.it/sites/default/files/IPAQ_English_...](http://www.sdp.univ.fvg.it/sites/default/files/IPAQ_English_self- admin_long.pdf)

The paper was confusing because they reported an average of 7 hours sitting each day and 1500 minutes per week of "physical activity" (3.5 hrs a day). So basically anything besides sitting and sleeping seems to be counted as physical activity.

It does sound like almost anything is counted as physical activity: "on how many days did you do moderate activities like carrying light loads, washing windows, scrubbing floors and sweeping inside your home"

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Maybe people with thinning in brain region associate with memory overestimate the amount of time sitting because they can't recall as accurately what they were doing in between sitting sessions...

</comment><comment><USER33> Not even 3 months ago it was "standing desk users less focused, less productive". Which might be more about the kind of person a standing desk user is than it's effect.

<comment><USER34> My anecdotal experience tells me that those who adopt many efficiency boosting methods (standing desks, optimized keyboard layouts, various lifehacks, extreme customization of their work environment…) tend to be less inclined to focus on the actual work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Yes. And television is bad for your eyes.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXCpYgd338U)

</comment><comment> FLUX-YOU I just want a study that tells me the intensity and frequency of exercise that counter-acts the sitting plague.

By now, all sitting studies sound like they're stating the obvious.

<comment><USER36> Apparently, there's no _true_ offset for extended hours of sitting[1]. There might be some science/studies behind smart watches urging you to stand for a couple of minutes every hour, however.

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/the- new-e...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/08/the-new-exercise- mantra/495908/)

<comment><USER37> A lot of people make a living sitting in a chair all day. What are we all supposed to do instead? The implications of this are pretty far-reaching.

<comment><USER28> > What are we all supposed to do instead?

Depends on how much you care and how able you are to compel yourself into action.

Almost every one of us reading this is in a position to abbreviate our work with physical activity at the very least. I just wager that most of us are too addicted to comfort to actually do anything about it in the face of the evidence. For example, we already know that a sedentary lifestyle is bad yet most people don't exercise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> what about the dual? moving, either walking, driving or longer always stimulates my brain. To the point that not moving I find myself very silent and believed I had a problem.

</comment><comment><USER39> That's why I'm laying down.

</comment><comment><USER40> Conclusion drawn from experiment on 35 samples? Must be kidding...

<comment><USER28> Taking issue with small sample sizes is a popular way for the layperson to chime in with criticism, but it is rather empty and uneducated criticism.

In statistics, sample size does not tell you if correlations are significant or not. Which is why it's amusing when someone thinks they are being a statistics pedant by pointing out a small sample size.

<comment><USER41> I think this is worth challenging. A small sample means there's a higher likelihood that the sample is not very random. It's often pulled from some easily available source, like a group of college students.

An idealized perfect random small sample might be just fine for statistics, but there's little reason to believe that's the sample we're getting. Small samples should be a cause for suspicion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Anti clickbait tldr: Too much sitting is ASSOCIATED with thinning brain structures.</comment>


Fired Fry's executive: 'Caught up in the game' in Vegas, Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.mercurynews.com/breakingnews/ci_11322297

<comment><USER2> What makes this a "classic" SV tale?</comment>


Ripple Consensus Whitepaper Released - <AUTHOR> https://ripple.com/dev-blog/consensus-whitepaper-released/

<comment><USER2> Haven't looked this paper in detail (yet), but hopefully the Stellar folks will respond. [1]

This long weekend will give me time to have a good look at the paper and organize my thoughts.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8239313](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8239313)</comment>


States Searching for the "Corona Beer Virus" [Analysis] - <AUTHOR> http://blog.embertribe.com/top-5-states-searching-for-the-corona-beer-virus-analysis <comment><USER2> Well it's no surprise and disappointing conclusions from the Milgram experiments and history, we already know ~40% of people are cowards, completely stupid/cruel and eager to believe con artist politicians, adopt fascism and genocide.</comment>


Instantly search Google+ from Google Chrome's URL bar - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/poaioakoejljgfbkdafhgdlhnpieabkj?hc=search&hcp=main

<comment><USER2> Alternatively you can go to Google+, right-click the search bar and select "Add As Search Engine..." You can then change the keyword to "+" or "plus", and do the same thing.

<comment><USER3> That won't live update with results as you type though. Search+ pulls in recent results from Plus and lists them in the drop down. If you select a result it will open that post directly instead of going to Google+ and showing results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doesn't work for me, and my Chrome is up to date.

<comment><USER3> If you enter "+" into your URL bar and hit tab does it say "Search+ for Google Chrome"?</comment></comment>


ShowHN: Hospital stays suck, so we made Bedside to help (and open sourced it) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bedsideapp.com

<comment><USER2> It's a great idea in theory, but in practice this app only targets a very specific demographic of hospital patients: those who own a smartphone and use it regularly, and those who are well enough to be using it in the first place. What about old people or people who are so ill that they're not even conscious?

<comment> jack-r-abbit I would think the person that is otherwise responsible for the well being of such a person would be able to set this up and run it for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's exactly our thought, Jack. This is targeted at the "primary caregiver" of the patient. The person who is doing the visitor organizing, disseminating information, and spending the most time there with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a nice app, but it's a very fine niche. Why wouldn't someone in hospital just use Facebook to let their family know how they're getting on/request items?

<comment><AUTHOR> Facebook certainly serves part of this need, but it's a very public place to be talking about what is often a private thing. We wanted to make a central, private, easy to use tool that friends and families can use to rally around someone and make their stay better.</comment></comment>


Yahoo Offers New Mobile Chat Service Featuring Silent Video - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/yahoo-offers-new-mobile-chat-service-featuring-silent-video/

<comment><USER2> To me it sounds like it combines the disadvantages of video calls (the attention required, transparency - no lying about your whereabouts, the intrusiveness - no video call at the office because you might reveal something confidential...) with the disadvantages of texting (typing is more difficult than speaking and it's a more difficult way to convey ideas and emotions).

<comment><USER3> This is a setup that works really well, amongst other things, for communication between people in long distance relationships (ie it is a form of telepresence). You get the visceral satisfaction of permanent visual feedback with the advantages of asynchronous communication.

<comment><USER4> > This is a setup that works really well, amongst other things, for > communication between people in long distance relationships

Having had a job that involved distant communication I don't think I'd have used this approach. It requires high data usage for the video, so why not just add the audio stream and be done with it?

My wife and I recoded little video snippets through the day and synced them each evening. Hearing all the background noise and clatter was part of experiencing 'home' for me.

<comment><USER5> With poor internet connections, the stuttering audio gets frustrating very quickly. "What did you say?" "I missed half that sentence." "Could you repeat that?"

We end up just typing it up on the 2nd or 3rd try because the audio keeps breaking up. There's only 1 more week of this, thank goodness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This app fills a much needed gap in the mobile messaging landscape.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a great idea!

Here is their official product demo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3Mw4Ilvl4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-3Mw4Ilvl4)

<comment><USER8> reminds me of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Labs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Quite a neat idea. It's a while since I've seen something from Yahoo that I would consider different or original. They also have a new Flickr app now which lets you back your phone's photos up to Flickr with 1TB free storage which is also pretty neat.

</comment><comment><USER10> It's weird. When people are texting, most of the faces remain wooden. Nobody wants to look at a wooden face.

Students wouldn't like to use it in the classroom because video is data- consuming.

</comment><comment><USER11> This sounds like just another sign of how Yahoo has lost their minds :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Any deaf HNers here? Would this work well for the deaf community?

<comment><USER13> Just as well as snapchat works...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems like the features and misfeatures were chosen completely at random. I don't care about video, but having access to chatlogs seems really important. So this app seems like a complete miss to me.

</comment><comment><USER15> Uhh, sorry Yahoo, Snapchat has been able to do video with text on it for a while now. Their video even has audio!</comment>