Sperm Count Zero - <AUTHOR> https://www.gq.com/story/sperm-count-zero <comment><USER2> I had heard that sperm counts are dropping. What was news to me was that the decline is continuing, even accelerating, and also the concomitant drop in testosterone levels, starting even in utero.

The bit about AGD was also pretty crazy — followed by the bit about men becoming _less male_. Some fear-mongering there no doubt, but a topic which in this era is more likely to be met with scoffs of "good riddance" rather than alarm bells.

<comment><USER3> _likely to be met with scoffs of "good riddance"_

My first thought was that this may also cast light on the rise of the trans rights movement. If men are becoming less male, surely this relates to so many people saying "I'm really a woman trapped in a man's body." or vice versa.

This may also help explain why trans people are so often met with open hostility as "freaks" etc. No, I am not defending their mistreatment.

But given how charged a topic that is, I imagine bringing it up will get my comment flagged to death, not taken seriously.

I'm a fairly traditionally feminine woman and spent a couple of decades as a homemaker and full-time mom. I am routinely met with open hostility from self proclaimed trans activists, feminists, etc.

I personally like "manly men" and that's also not a PC thing to admit to. So I will suggest it isn't just men the world is saying "good riddance" to. It's also women in some sense.

If you want to argue that, please stop and think before dismissively attacking me. People talk all the time about how gender is a social construct and is not merely the bits between your legs. I stayed home with my kids and that had a profound impact on how I think about many things. And the way I think is alien to that of career women and they are frequently openly hostile to it.

<comment><USER4> > I'm a fairly traditionally feminine woman and spent a couple of decades as a > homemaker and full-time mom. I am routinely met with open hostility from > self proclaimed trans activists, feminists, etc.

> I personally like "manly men" and that's also not a PC thing to admit to. So > I will suggest it isn't just men the world is saying "good riddance" to. > It's also women in some sense.

I think, in this context, we need better and likely newer vocabulary. I don't believe that others would despise you or any other woman or man or an intersex person or someone in transition for liking _certain characteristics_ (physical and/or behavioral) traditionally and historically associated with men.

The issue seems to be — while we're untangling all the discrimination, stereotyping and prejudices — that the current and older terms (like "manly man") reek of all these negative things that are being questioned (where newer ways are being sought to deal with). The impact of such broad terms is wider than what people may generally think of.

To make a comparison (which may be taken differently by different people), it's like using the "N" word and assuming that even a neutral or seemingly positive reference should be accepted by others.

Language is changing all the time and adapting to the times. In this particular case, I believe we should break down what something like "manly man" means into constituent parts and try to use decoupled (from the original term), yet concise and non-triggering, ways of expressing the same. It may not be easy. It may sound weird at first. But it's something we need as a society.

Lest this be dismissed as "oh, we just need new words to fix the world", I'd like to reiterate that the basis is to allow thoughts to change.

<comment><USER3> FWIW, after posting, I did contemplate adding:

Contrary to popular opinion, _manly man_ and _misogynistic asshole_ aren't actually synonyms.

<comment><USER4> I didn't even think of these two terms together in this context and I don't think of those as synonyms, and my usual thoughts in this case are about the characteristics and attributes that are used to discriminate against those who don't seem to be "manly men" or those who seem to be "manly men", while society (or parents or others) wants them to be and fulfill what they (the others) think is their traditional role. Tradition is not set in stone. Nothing is. The clash is sometimes with certain behaviors, but it's also many a times with prejudiced associations that discriminate and affect others.

P.S.: I also believe that short pieces of written words and sentences can be misinterpreted online, and probably malice attribute to where there is none.

<comment><USER3> I was agreeing with you. I am only saying so because my impression is that is not your takeaway here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My wife and I had one child. I know the time and date we conceived. We wanted more. Never happened. At 40 I asked her if she wanted to speak to a doctor to figure out why. We both did the math on it....cost and age of child at end of high school and said, no. I have friends that spent 100K on their offspring, and it was an emotional roller coaster. 2 kids later, happy, and a 3rd unexpected.

Fatherhood is the best startup I ever did.

</comment><comment><USER6> In mammals generally testosterone levels and photoperiod are very closely linked. It would be surprising if our increasing use (abuse) or artificial light didn't sharply drop our testosterone levels.

<comment><USER7> Testosterone also drops from high consumption of animal products.

<comment><USER8> Testosterone drops from high consumption of soy products too, so what are you going to do?

<comment><USER7> It actually doesn't [1] [2]. But if it did, then just avoid both.

[1] Clinical studies show no effects of soy protein or isoflavones on reproductive hormones in men: results of a meta-analysis.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19524224)

[2] Soybean isoflavone exposure does not have feminizing effects on men: a critical examination of the clinical evidence.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106)

<comment><USER9> It actually does, there is a documented event of it happening, but to be fair it is harmless for the majority of the population in resonable consumption : [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18558591](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18558591)

 _A 60-year-old man was referred to the endocrinology clinic for evaluation of bilateral gynecomastia of 6 months ' duration. He reported erectile dysfunction and decreased libido. On further review of systems, he reported no changes in testicular size, no history of testicular trauma, no sexually transmitted diseases, no headaches, no visual changes, and no change in muscular mass or strength. Initial laboratory assessment showed estrone and estradiol concentrations to be 4-fold increased above the upper limit of the reference range. Subsequent findings from testicular ultrasonography; computed tomography of the chest, abdomen, and pelvis; and positron emission tomography were normal. Because of the normal findings from the imaging evaluation, the patient was interviewed again, and he described a daily intake of 3 quarts of soy milk. After he discontinued drinking soy milk, his breast tenderness resolved and his estradiol concentration slowly returned to normal._

Also there is a clear explanation of why so much plant products have hormonal disruptors in it, to modulate the fertility of herbivore, but it's not a story NutritionFact would tell you

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474615/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1474615/)

 _Plants have physical and chemical mechanisms for defense from attack by animals. Phytochemical defenses that protect plants from attack by insects include antifeedants, insecticides, and insect growth regulators. Phytochemical options exist by which plants can modulate the fertility of the other major group of plant predators, vertebrate herbivores, and thereby reduce cumulative attacks by those herbivores. The success of such a defense depends upon phytochemical mimicry of vertebrate reproductive hormones. Phytoestrogens do mimic reproductive hormones and are proposed to be defensive substances produced by plants to modulate the fertility of herbivores._

<comment><USER7> So in huge quantities it rarely happens... soy is also completely optional and not necessary, so not a big concern. Avoiding animal products is laughably easy without soy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The chart of sperm count vs plastic production is pure BS. It shows nothing but a lack of journalistic integrity.

<comment><USER11> would you mind expanding?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how substantiated these numbers are but I can't deny that IVF facilities have been very very busy all over. In Canada, fertility treatment rate increased to 15.7% in 2011, up from 5.4% in 1984. It is a safe bet that 1 in 8 couples you know probably have visited fertility clinic[1].

Also, does this apply to China/India or just Western world? If no then I would worry about all the tech that has gotten in to our lives like plastic everywhere, RF radiation through wifi, chemical infested food and toys etc.

1\. [https://resolve.org/infertility-101/what-is- infertility/fast...](https://resolve.org/infertility-101/what-is- infertility/fast-facts/)

<comment><USER13> Those stats don't imply anything about fertility rates. IVF has gotten far more accessible and affordable since the early 1980s. The 1 in 8 stat was likely just as true in 1984, it just meant they'd been trying for a year without success. Now that gets you a referral to a clinic (and you're more likely to accept that referral).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is strong evidence fertility decreases if there is a lack of vitamin D, which would correlate with the thesis that fertility decreases for human kind in general (as we expose ourselves less and less to the sun): [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28667465](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28667465)

</comment><comment><USER15> Is it possible that sperm counts are lower simply because there is less selective pressure for producing lots of sperm?

Less sperm competition and increased fertility due to medicine would both do that.

<comment><USER16> There aren't really any good evolutionary explanations for the decrease in sperm count. Changes in the distribution and frequency of any given genotype/phenotype literally takes generations to occur, and would require some kind of selective pressure (as you say, competition and medically induced fertility are possibilities). This is happening too fast and too uniformly.

<comment><USER17> >> would require some kind of selective pressure

Not selective pressure, but lack of it.

When you take away selective pressure for a specific trait, organisms become weaker on average in respect to that trait; when a trait loses importance, populations divert their resources to different traits.

<comment><USER18> For a gene to decay without selective pressure takes a _very_ long time, especially when your population is not on the edge of starvation.

<comment><USER19> A selective pressure going away is as strong as a selective pressure appearing.

Eg. 100 years ago, 20% of children would die as infants. Imagine all of those children died of a mutation which causes half the usual sperm count, together with a lack of resistance to polio/cholora.

Now that polio/cholora don't exist, all those people survive, and within 3 generations, nearly everyone has at least a grandparent with that 'low sperm count' mutation.

<comment><USER18> > Eg. 100 years ago, 20% of children would die as infants. Imagine all of > those children died of a mutation which causes half the usual sperm count, > together with a lack of resistance to polio/cholora

That wouldn't be a steady state. A gene that powerfully negative, with no upsides, would decrease in prevalence by a significant amount every generation.

> Now that polio/cholora don't exist, all those people survive, and within 3 > generations, nearly everyone has at least a grandparent with that 'low sperm > count' mutation.

Everyone has an ancestor with the gene. But they only have a 1/8, 1/16, 1/32 chance of inheriting it from that specific ancestor. Generation to generation, the percentage of people with the gene will be almost identical. Just like eye and hair color.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Children of Men? [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Men)

<comment><USER3> There was an episode of Stargate where an alien race reduces human fertility by 98%. They do some shenanigans with time travel to tell themselves to not contact that world in order to prevent it.

May have auto-play audio:

[http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2001_(episode)](http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2001_\(episode\))

<comment><USER21> Your link is for the second appearance of the Aschen, when SG-1 meets with a different civilization they've already pacified. The episode with the time- travel shenanigans is the first of the two episodes: [https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_(episode)](https://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/2010_\(episode\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _studies with sample collection only after 1995—and the slope was even steeper. So that could not explain the decline we see after 1995."_

That's about the time high speed pornography became available en masse. Coincidence?

<comment><USER2> My initial thought when I read the "the problem is right in front of us" interlude was, oh they're gonna blame PornHub! Since masterbation decreases sperm count.

But when they got into the other physiological symptoms, that definitely isn't gonna explain it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Worth pointing out this trend is only unambiguously evident in the Western world, identified as U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Other parts of the world do not show a statistically significant trend, although the article suggests these data are not good enough to draw strong conclusions.

<comment><USER24> What's curious about that is if this is solely a first world problem, then it should be easy to compare our sperm counts to that of men in 2nd/3rd world countries. The lack of that data in this article is troubling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Any other reliable sources on this beyond GQ?

<comment><USER26> There are actually well over 100 studies on this from different regions and periods. Google scholar can help.

<comment><USER26> Why is this downvoted? Simply putting in "sperm count decline" into google scholar gives over 42,000 papers.

Lay people need to understand that this is not just some off-the-cuff casual theory, but a very-well-researched 30-year-trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Better title: Why Sperm Counts Are Dropping For Men Today

<comment><USER28> Which has been posted about on HN numerous times already.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16245784)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15061484)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15109328)

It's amazing that even gq is now spamming HN.

<comment><USER29> This submission was made by a 5-year HN user with 14000 karma. Although I don't know if you've been more active with a different handle, which is certainly very possible, the account whose submission you're complaining about has been active 27 times as long as yours and has 91 times as much karma as yours... suggesting a history of reasonably good-faith contribution to HN.

Edit: it's true that his submissions aren't primarily about IT topics, but people continue to find them interesting.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pmcpinto](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=pmcpinto)

<comment><USER30> It doesn't matter how much karma someone has. A repost is a repost, and it's ok to point it out.

<comment><USER29> I took this as somehow blaming _GQ_ itself. (I don't mind people pointing out reposts.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Figure from the article: [https://media.gq.com/photos/5b71dc69cc91ae0c5f57efdc/master/...](https://media.gq.com/photos/5b71dc69cc91ae0c5f57efdc/master/w_800/mean- sperm-count.jpg)

Oh wow. This suggested correlation is pulling your hair out. First, there are two data points for the "men total sperm count" dataset. I can hardly imagine there are no measurements bewtween 1970 and 2010. Analysis of this data: Sure, you can draw a line. An exponential decrease is much more likely, thought. This would look much less or much more dramatic. Never trust statistics you haven't counterfeited on your own.

Obviously, the "global plastic production" follows an exponential. And probably any other metric such as "global number of people" or "global number of cars" would exhibit a similar curve. You can correlate everything if you want...

</comment><comment><USER32> Okay, really naive question: Could it be that the measured sperm count per ejaculation is getting lower because men are ejaculating more frequently?

Or is this being considered in these studies?

</comment><comment><USER33> This article only mentions sperm count. However, as per what I recall from my visit to an IVF clinic, this is only 1 of the 3 important factors. The gamete's shape and motility are the other 2. The last one being the most important if I recall correctly.

</comment><comment><USER34> Has anyone checked to see if it's happening to animals too?

<comment><USER35> It's happening to dogs as well, apparently: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14857588)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This was a study that used data from circa 180 other studies; I wonder what the purpose of the other studies were and whether there's any selection bias here?

</comment><comment> village-idiot Admit it, you went and measured your AGD, didn't you?

</comment><comment><USER37> If we're reducing the count over time, do we know if the sperm are simply becoming more effective to counter-act?

<comment> village-idiot Probably depends on the time scale. It's typically very easy to disrupt an existing system, and it takes a very long time for evolution to respond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Makes me wonder: are there more girls being born than boys?

<comment><USER3> Probably not.

[https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/03/30/3963849...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/03/30/396384911/why-are-more-baby-boys-born-than-girls)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> No on can prove the specific reason, I'm sure any reason that is explored will get push back from businesses who have interests in that area, for example if it's because of sugar, mobile phones, pesticides or pollution, all those industries will fund counter claims. It's sad but that's the capitalist world we live in, the problem will get so bad even the owners of these businesses will be affected but foolish enough to continue for the pursuit of greed and profit, knowingly or unknowingly destroying the chance of future, healthy offspring.

</comment><comment><USER40> ...I'll just leave this here:

[https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....](https://molecularcytogenetics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13039-016-0224-1)

Stindl, Reinhard - The paradox of longer sperm telomeres in older men's testes: a birth-cohort effect caused by transgenerational telomere erosion in the female germline [2016]

Citations here: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1431836715271366014...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=14318367152713660147)

Which leads us, among other things, to the following papers:

[https://journals.lww.com/co- obgyn/Abstract/2018/06000/Should...](https://journals.lww.com/co- obgyn/Abstract/2018/06000/Should_we_consider_telomere_length_and_telomerase.11.aspx)

Balmori, Carlos; Varela, Elisa - Should we consider telomere length and telomerase activity in male factor infertility? [2018]

[https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276030](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2018/03/05/276030)

Delgado et al. [22 Authors in total!] - The contribution of parent-to- offspring transmission of telomeres to the heritability of telomere length in humans [2018]

And to this:

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1707337115.long](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/02/20/1707337115.long)

Xie et al. [28 authors in total!] - Epigenetic alterations in longevity regulators, reduced life span, and exacerbated aging-related pathology in old father offspring mice [2018]

Which itself has citations, here: [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=1010309427616177024...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=10103094276161770241)

Leading us, pardon the pun, to, among other things, this:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X1...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0161813X18301633)

Maloney et al. - Latent consequences of early-life lead (Pb) exposure and the future: Addressing the Pb crisis [2018]

As the first handful articles I've linked here now show, we have a hell of a lot more issues than just endocrine disruptors: evolution will mess with us, come hell or high water!

PLUS endocrine disruptors already causes a lot of problems, as the OP article outlines, AND as that last article I linked also shows us.

</comment><comment><USER41> What's some actionable advice about how to increase your T? If you google it you just find snake oil bullshit.

<comment><USER42> strength exercises... [https://mic.com/articles/61037/study-proves-that- lumberjacks...](https://mic.com/articles/61037/study-proves-that-lumberjacks- are-super-manly#.ULOrsAqDb)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> >"What you are seeing in a number of systems, other developmental systems, is that the sex differences are shrinking," Swan told me. Men are producing less sperm. They're also becoming less male.

Is it possible that these phenomena relate to the seemingly explosive rise in transgenderism? Particularly MtF, which is much more common than the reverse. Perhaps for those with already low male:female hormone ratios, if they are tipped further by these endocrine disruptors, especially during development, they might really have a brain that feels more female.

<comment><USER44> Makes me wonder if there are any "endocrine disruptors" that work in the opposite direction.

<comment> village-idiot All human Zygotes start out as female, and a burst of androgens makes some fetuses develop male sexual characteristics. If those androgens aren't released, the child retains female sexual presentation, even if they have XY chromosomes. As is commonly mentioned, this is why men have nipples even though they're not functional for men.

According to my very weak understanding, it's easier to prevent that from happening than it is to accidentally introduce enough xenoandrogens to cause a XX fetus to develop male sexual characteristics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How do they measure this? No one has taken my sample =\

</comment><comment><USER46> Lack of exercise, poor diet, extremely feminine culture, absolute taboo of violence, endocrine disruptors.

<comment><USER47> > extremely feminine culture

What's that meant to mean?

<comment><USER46> Perhaps feminine isn't the right word, perhaps what I mean is a devaluation of masculine traits. In my opinion we live in a time of extreme obedience to law, taboo and shaming of physical violence (with instead an emphasis on social shaming via television/media), and a general fear of social confrontation and disagreement. Our focus instead is on acceptance of absolutely everyone and everything.

<comment><USER48> You'd like to see _more_ physical violence in the world? Or that it be less taboo, less shameful? Exactly which physical violence are you talking about?

<comment><USER47> Words from my mouth.

<comment><USER46> See my response.

<comment><USER47> I'm not sure I feel like your response clarified anything.

When and where would you like to see more violence? I'd like to see less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> _But as it turns out, no surprise: men first. Second instance of no surprise: We 're going to take the women down with us._

Why. Why this self hate. What have we done to deserve this incredible vicious hatred?</comment>


iOS 9.3 Night Shift Is a Bust: Here's What You Can Do - <AUTHOR> https://jasonprall.com/2016/03/appleiosnightshift/ <comment><USER2> It's not a 'Bust'. You can clearly see that the blue light is twice as low. Of course, not as low as you can get if you use some other tools but good enough for the average user. I don't like extremes such as color temperature below 3000-Kelvin. I don't like them even below even 4500. Nightshift works perfectly fine for me.

<comment><USER3> I agree, the headline is a big exaggeration. Not having all the features of f.lux does not constitute a "bust".

I'd be curious how many people actually use the super low settings (1200K) anyway as at some point, things get so red that it's nearly impossible to use or get used to (at least in my experience)</comment></comment>


Oklahoma City's War on Obesity - <AUTHOR> http://mosaicscience.com/story/fat-city <comment><USER3> TLDR: more exercise, dramatically less junk food consumption (fast food, soda, snacks, etc), dramatically increased nutritional education

More importantly I find the focus on low-fat fast food menu items highly suspect -- significantly reducing carbohydrate consumption has been shown, empirically and anecdotally the world over, to have a greater impact (if not the greatest impact) on weight and health management.

The low-fat diet craze has hurt more than helped the fight against obesity.

The problem with restricting carbohydrate intake is that _it 's everywhere_ and it hurts the bottom line of pretty much all of the prepared food and drink industry.

That said, I'm not at all advocating that we all start eating sticks of butter, but a balance must be maintained -- 30/30/25/10 with 30% protein, 30% fat, 25% carbohydrates, and 10% dietary fiber.

This is back of the hand math but I think it works out. Most people trade out protein for carbs (because protein is expensive) and fat for carbs (because fat is apparently bad for you), which results in weight gain and diabetes risk.

Generally it can be assumed that the most common form of carbohydrate substituted is a sugar or grain, which usually have very high-glycemic indexes. This spikes the blood-sugar and beta-endorphin levels, the latter encouraging addictive habits (feeling good after eating high-glycemic food, going into withdrawal when not consuming frequently enough, etc).

<comment><USER4> What you're saying is scientifically untenable. For one, dietary fiber is not a macronutrient, so including that in your ratio is just incorrect. Secondly, carbohydrates are the preferred source of energy for your brain and body - <USER2> majority (80%+) of a healthy diet should consist of carbs - whole wheat like pasta, veggies, fruit, legumes, etc. Finally, even WHO recommends only 5% of caloric intake from protein. May I ask where you're sourcing your information? Every respectable medical and nutritional journal I've read recommends a whole plant-based diet, low in protein and fat, and high in carbohydrates, for optimal human health.

<comment><USER5> Just a few nit-picks:

Dietary fiber (at least fermentable poly/oligosaccharides), while technically a form of carbohydrate, is fermented to short chain fatty acids by the bacteria in your gut. These short chain fatty acids have some fairly special physiological effects that you can't get from other macronutrients. For this reason, from a health perspective it does make sense to treat fermentable fibers as a separate category of nutrient, and set an intake target for it.

Also, lactate is the preferred fuel for your brain; it has been shown that if lactate is available glucose uptake by the brain is _greatly_ diminished. In fact, a major role of astrocytes in the brain is the metabolism of glucose to lactate for primary neurons.

As for the 5% protein number, for starters that is meaningless without knowing the number of calories being consumed. If someone was somehow active enough to burn 10K calories a day 5% protein might be a reasonable amount. For your typical 2K cal/day diet, however, that number is woefully inadequate. 0.8g/Kg/day is the minimum anyone should reasonably be getting, and even non- exercising populations will tend to be leaner and feel better around 1.2g/Kg/day, not to mention athletes who will do best around 1.7g/Kg/day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I moved from OKC to SoCal, and noticed the weight difference immediately. When I traveled back to OKC a couple years later to visit some friends, I was actually disgusted by the people I saw there. It's easy to get accustomed to things...

<comment><USER7> I think this is one of the biggest challenges I see in terms of "fat shaming" It would appear there is a direct correlation between how much additional weight people carry and the general tolerance level for obesity in that community. If we remove fat shaming altogether it's likely more people will become sicker and die faster.

It's worth noting that my cousin also moved to SoCal. She's now in her 40's and snorts cocaine 2 or 3 times a week in the evening to skip eating to keep herself slim. Apparently it's a very common practise amongst her and her friends.

<comment><USER8> Your cousin is a coke head, and likely has an eating disorder. This is not the norm outside of her group of friends.

<comment><USER7> Right. Except she's not that different to the Guatemalan lady in the original story. None of those issues existed until she moved to a new location. That's why it was so shocking to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's with all the "stone" measurements? I'm used to seeing that in historical novels, but not in modern writing.

Is stone a regionally popular unit, or have I just been utterly oblivious to its modern commonality?

<comment><USER10> It is unused outside of the UK and Ireland where it is still the most commonly used unit for measuring the weight of a person.

<comment><USER9> Bizarre. They managed to adopt the metric system for weights, except when measuring humans. At least that mystery is solved, though- thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I grew up in Kansas, and my dad now lives in Oklahoma. Living in Seattle, I'm used to a variety of healthy choices. When I visit my parents, though, I struggle. If it's difficult to go out to dinner and eat healthy in Kansas, it's nearly impossible in Oklahoma.

Oklahoma is composed of three things: fast food, buffets, and gas stations.

As an example, on my most recent trip to Oklahoma, we went to a buffet and I decided to get a salad. At the large "salad" bar there were exactly three vegetables: iceberg lettuce, radishes, and carrots. Everything else was meat (mostly fried) or bread. I ordered a side of green beans; they were canned and fairly unappealing.

No wonder people don't eat healthier when the options are so limited and unattractive.

</comment><comment><USER12> > In Guatemala it is rare to see people who are very overweight, but it could > not be more different here

The woman quoted is correct, however Guatemala is semi-unique in Latin America for being lower on the obesity scale than most countries there. Obesity is generally just as big of a problem across Latin America as it is in the US, with Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela, El Salvador, Belize, Panama, Uruguay - all ranking either fairly high or very high on the obesity scale. I'd be very curious to know what separates Guatemala from its neighbors Belize / Mexico / El Salvador, which all have serious obesity problems.

<comment><USER13> Every country you listed (even El Salvador by a hair) has a higher HDI than Guatamala. I'mma just throw out that maybe (hint, no maybe about) "obesity" got defined when the world was poorer and maybe (this is the actual maybe) at least some of the rise is fewer malnourished children/adults.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> From Norman, about 20 min south of OKC. The strides here have been huge in terms of activities. It used to be the case that there was nothing to do outside, especially in the humid/hot summer months. Now there are tons of things to do. Food is still the big issue though, if you are on the go there are no healthy choices, in fact people tend to take pride in their cheesburgers and fries (local place in Norman advertised a 2K calorie burger).

OKC is a lot more walkable though now. It would be nice to get people from Norman, Moore, Edmond, etc to the city without their cars.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm from Oklahoma, and I always wonder how much of our social behavior is based on the fact that Oklahoma was, until recently, Indian Territory and land worked by farmers who came around the time of the land runs. If you're struggling to provide enough food for your family in 1889, there's no way you are letting your children not eat all of their food. I'm sure that is self- perpetuating in some way.

<comment><USER16> I grew up in Oklahoma. I think the first problem is the gallons of Coke people drink every day. People forget that you can actually drink water when you're thirsty.

<comment><USER17> I never understood people who proclaim they are thirsty and then grab a coke.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> >I was offered desert and chose a "roasted pecan ice cream ball... smothered in chocolate sauce". The waiter said that was a good choice, then asked if I wanted it "volleyball, softball or baseball sized"

A volleyball is about 20cm in diameter. Not even as a child could I have eaten that much ice cream. At least not without doing like the Ancient Romans.

<comment><USER19> ...golf ball sized sounds closer to my preference.

<comment><USER20> Golf ball seems a bit on the small size, but tennis ball is way too big. Maybe snooker balls? Looks about halfway between one and the other diameter-wise.

<comment><USER17> Racquetball sized would be perfect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Url changed from [http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/how-one- of...](http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/10/how-one-of-americas- fattest-cities-lost-a-million- pounds/410371/?utm_source=SFTwitter&single_page=true), which points to this.</comment>


Lulzsec leader outed with phone number published? - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/lulzsec/status/85474327239213056

<comment><AUTHOR> Appears to belong to Barret Brown. <http://pastebin.com/NGz4NFFL>

<comment><USER2> Twitter says the tweet doesn't exist, so scrot'd <http://i.imgur.com/5NhXq.png>

<comment><USER3> Never heard of Barret Brown prior to this, but I found a very interesting article on him here: [http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2011/April/How_Barr...](http://www.dmagazine.com/Home/D_Magazine/2011/April/How_Barrett_Brown_Helped_Overthrow_the_Government_of_Tunisia.aspx).</comment></comment></comment>


A Philosopher Argues That an AI Can Never Be an Artist - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612913/a-philosopher-argues-that-an-ai-can-never-be-an-artist/ <comment><USER2> An AI generates millions of random images. One of those images is artistically interesting. Is the person who points out that one image the artist?

<comment><USER3> That is like saying a person who randomly solves a symbolic integral by making a few lucky but logically invalid guesses is a great mathematician. It's not enough to be correct by accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> AI already demonstrates creativity, they just don't want to call it that because it's blatantly deterministic and the AI's motivating feedback loop/incentive structure is too inhuman for this philosopher to empathize with.

We have no idea how generalized intelligence emerges, but neutral nets have already confirmed that very simple nodes in an error-minimizing network can achieve very good approximations of specialized intelligence. We also know that our own brains are just networks of very simple nodes. Betting against the brain being nothing anything more than a computational network is a losing fight. I suspect that generalized intelligence is going to emerge from changes in the way neutral nets have their incentive/reward/error feedbacks handled, as well as improved generalizations a-la convolutional nn, but otherwise basically maintain the same premise. Then, the creativity that AI has _already_ demonstrated can be said to have arisen from the consequence of a generalized consciousness, optimally with motivating factors approximating a human's, and this philosopher can shut the fuck up.

<comment><USER5> There is something to be said about the creative process and how the body of work is expressed and interpreted. How can a machine be creative if it doesn't understand emotion? It may know how to provoke an emotional response but its doubtful it can comprehend and empathize without having true human emotions itself. And it is impossible for us to truly confirm how a machine might be feeling let alone what another human is feeling. These types of questions are thought provoking but often lead to no answers. We can't even confirm if we are real or not. Creativity in itself is hard to define. And when we try and answer these type of questions we are usually making assumptions which may be completely wrong.</comment></comment>


An Open Letter to the JCP Executive Committee - <AUTHOR> http://mreinhold.org/blog/to-the-jcp-ec <comment><USER2> JBI déjà vu. I see some parallelism between this JSR and the Java Business Integration (JBI, JSR-208) JSR back in 2005.

Instead of building a standard for integration, they ended up specifying a standard for interoperability between integration components from different vendors, i.e. a "meta"-integration system (using the same term as the author).

The result was a spec that allowed an (a) HTTP adapter from Oracle to exchange data with a (b) File adapter from IBM – through (c) an ESB implemented by TIBCO, for example. Essentially something that nobody would even think of deploying (in the era of proprietary, expensive and lock-in middleware).

Obviously the standard was DOA and had very little traction. Not even the JSR members implemented it. The only memorable implementation was Apache ServiceMix, which later transitioned to OSGi, spinning off its kernel as Apache Karaf.

In hindsight, the vendors might have acted like trojan horses with JBI, steering the spec into a territory that would be ultimately worthless.

The lesson to learn is that commercial vendors don't gain anything by standardising on those elements they consider strategic differentiators (like their module system).

EDIT: minor edits for clarity.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Should we further delay this JSR—possibly for years—in order to gain "closer > consensus" by pursuing a different goal that will likely result in a design > so bloated and complex that no working developer would ever use it

this. I don't see a reason to even delay Java 9 more. It's really really really silly. Yes no solution is perfect, but most of the time when somebody want to make something perfect and actually implement everything for everybody, they fail or it ends up in super complicated stuff. Java 10 and Java 11 looks promising, maybe more promising than 9 but 9 also has promising things and the module system might emerge into something super useful, if not - is that the end of the world? prolly not.

java has a extreme amount of bloat when it comes to releases, even more than the language itself. a lot of it are policits and still I hope that they change their "3-5 years till next release"-model soon! I mean there aren't many languages that are developed in the open and have such a aweful time frame. the best model is prolly used by rust. smaller iterations and some other channels a la chrome. it's really sad that the language gets so much hindered by akward polictics

<comment><USER4> It's especially obvious how broken the Java language improvement process is when you have the natural experiment of Microsoft's C# sitting next to it.

<comment><USER5> There's a big difference. MSFT may take outside opinion into consideration, but they can (in general) kind of just do as they wish.

Isn't it a minor miracle that the JCP gets anything released ever? That the likes of Oracle, IBM, and a number of other mega corps that actively compete against each other in various ways can steer a committee into any agreement whatsoever is more amazing to me than the language itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Years ago, I was part of the team trying to define CORBA. While CORBA would go on to be a cautionary tale for bloated, useless meta-specifications (we would blackly joke that it was the only specification that made things less specific), once upon a time it was a relatively simple, useful, and elegant concept. Watching the industry consensus process destroy it was heartbreaking and educational.

Lesson: There can be no consensus when members of a group are for-profit corporations with selfish interests and zero interest in the common good, there can only be lowest common denominator.

<comment><USER7> would love to see a blog post on this someday.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What worries me is that Red Hat and IBM are handing Oracle the perfect excuse to close up Java on a silver platter.

Java 9 is very late in development, it's scheduled for release in a month, and it would have already been released by now if Oracle hadn't held it back for additional polish. For Red Hat and IBM to pull this now is a violation of the JCP's spirit, and it makes the entire Java Community Process look bad. It's 100% in bad faith, and it's a huge black eye for the JCP.

I wouldn't be surprised one iota if Oracle uses this as an excuse to pull the plug on the JCP and declares that Java will solely be an Oracle product from now on developed solely by Oracle employees without any third-party contributions. Maybe they'll even use the death of the JCP to pull the plug on OpenJDK and make Java 100% proprietary again.

Honestly, if Oracle does kill the JCP, I'd be fine with that. I'm just afraid for the future of OpenJDK.

<comment><USER9> Could the OpenJDK folk just say, "fuck off" and do their own thing? Basically break Java into, I don't know, Fresh Press and Orcalse Brew? All of the old IP made available to OpenJDK and new stuff being their own.

<comment><USER10> Sure they could. But in the long run that fragmentation would be the death of the Java ecosystem. None of the application vendors and open source projects (including alternative JVM languages like Clojure and Scala) would have a viable platform to target anymore. Everything would be perpetually stuck at Java SE 8 or 9 until either one of the major players gains a dominant position, or (more likely) all of the developers and users just gradually migrate to other platforms.

<comment><USER11> Scala already has JS and native targets. JVM is no longer the only game in town.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Red Hat Middleware initially agreed to the goals and requirements of the > JSR, but then worked consistently to undermine them. They attempted to turn > this JSR into something other than it was intended to be. ... I can only > assume that they pursued this alternate goal in order to preserve and > protect their home-grown, non-standard module system, which is little used > outside of the JBoss/Wildfly ecosystem.

MR is not mincing words and I agree with his assessment.

</comment><comment><USER13> While I don't have good knowledge about modules, I can only say, that I don't want Java SE to turn into Java EE. Let complex things stay complex, but SE should stay simple if possible. If modules were enough to modularize JRE itself, they are good enough to ship, modularizing JRE is a huge feat right now. They need to leave enough points to extend later, of course, so eventually everyone will be happy. All decisions set in stone now should be good, and that's enough. Everything that could be changed later without breaking compatibility could be far from perfect, I can live with it.

<comment><USER10> Java SE is already extremely complex. I'll bet the total cyclomatic complexity metric for Open JDK is now higher than any Java EE implementation. So if you're looking for simplicity it's too late; that ship sailed years ago.

And complexity isn't necessarily a bad thing if we get real value out of it.

<comment><USER14> OOTH, part of the goal of modules is to allow you to discard those parts of Java SE that you don't need.

<comment><USER10> Discarding unneeded Java SE modules is just a minor optimization for packaging and deployment. It doesn't do anything to reduce platform complexity; rather the opposite in fact.

<comment><USER15> I guess that depends how you define complexity. Jigsaw modularised the Java platform itself, and so you can now write an app that uses only java.base and everything else will be discarded by jlink. Surely such a stripped image is in some real way less complex than a full JDK?

I'd say Jigsaw does simplify some things (though at the cost of additional complexity elsewhere) - for instance, classpath conflicts are a constant source of pain in large projects and the JVM will now detect them at startup. You can hide internal code from users now, which if nothing else will shrink the amount of stuff that appears in IDE autocompletion and javadocs. It's also a security improvement.

<comment><USER10> The stripped image will be slightly smaller and that makes it marginally easier to deploy to resource-limited devices. But adding that feature increased the overall complexity of the Java SE platform.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Funny, at first I thought this had something to do with JC Penny and I was thinking "why the heck are we talking about JCP on HN". I'm glad this was something more my style.

Having said that, can some ELI5 what the module hubbub is about? I've mostly been ignoring it but now I'm curious, but as a non-Java programmer I'm not up on the debate.

<comment><USER17> They've been working on a module system for Java for years (codename Jigsaw), one goal of which is to modularize Java itself, and the other goal is to have a module system that developers would use. It hasn't gone very well.

Today, to run a hello world app, you have to have the entire Java SE platform on disk, including GUI code, XML parsing, CORBA, a MIDI player, etc. A lot of that code is itself written in Java; you'll find there's a 64MB "rt.jar" file that provides a _lot_ of stuff. One goal of Jigsaw is to allow you to write smaller Java applications on memory-constrained devices.

Jigsaw does an OK job at modularizing Java, but has mostly failed at its other goal: to provide a standard module system that Java developers would use. I'm sure somebody's excited to use Jigsaw in their application code, but not many.

For example, Jigsaw's module system has no notion of libraries with versions. Imagine using Maven or Gradle without any version numbers. That's Jigsaw.

Jigsaw also set a bunch of other rules that get broken a lot in practice: no circular dependencies, immutable dependencies declared up front, resolve all modules eagerly, etc. These are good guidelines, but it may not be appropriate to make them iron clad rules.

In contrast, there's a hugely complicated monster module system implemented in Java userland, OSGi. OSGi has a ton of features, including letting you load multiple versions of the "same" jar at once, so one part of your app can use the old version while another part uses a newer version. (And then there's Maven, Gradle, etc.)

This certainly wouldn't be the first time Java tried to deliver a "standard" solution for a problem that we used to solve in userland that went ignored by Java's dev community. (Logging?!) If we all ignored Jigsaw and kept using Maven/Gradle/OSGi, but the Java platform became more modular, that's probably a win.

But Jigsaw includes another poisonous feature; it "improves security" by forbidding access to internal JDK APIs like sun.misc.Unsafe, which provides access to direct memory management. For better or worse, that internal API has been used and abused by a lot of popular Java infrastructure libraries, so they're now introducing a new Unsafe feature in Java 9, but it's not the same one, "breaking" compatibility. It's their reserved right to break that API, but but but.

And finally there's the fact that Java 9 has taken a hugely long time, and this is significantly due to Jigsaw. If Jigsaw misses Java 9, does it land in Java 10? Throw it out completely? (Does Java _ever_ get modularized?)

<comment><USER18> I haven't followed the process, but if they just wanted to break up rt.jar, why didn't they do just that and break it into smaller jars that you may/may not include on the classpath?

<comment><USER15> That's pretty much what they've done. Java modules are just JARs with an additional file in them that states what they depend on, along some other stuff like which packages are meant to be used and which are internal.

Look at this module graph:

[http://download.java.net/java/jdk9/docs/api/javafx.web- summa...](http://download.java.net/java/jdk9/docs/api/javafx.web-summary.html)

To figure out the set of JARs you need, you need to specify which JARs your program needs, and then follow the dependencies. Which is what the new jlink tool does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It is really sad that they focused on access control and not on distribution, respositories, versioning, compilation and runtime support like we wanted to do the first time around in JSR-277.

<comment><USER15> Those things are already handled pretty well by Maven and Gradle though. The thing those systems can't do / don't try to do is encapsulation, which ideally needs JVM support. OSGi tried to do it all with classloaders but it's hardly used and that doesn't help at compile time. Ditto for modularising the JDK itself.

Jigsaw doesn't try to compete with the existing build tools. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

<comment><USER19> I would have liked them to standardize the way Maven/Gradle works and have support in the compiler and source code for them. Kind of like how Joda time inspired the Java 8 time libraries. Encapsulation could have been handled by a Java agent. My guess is that it will have a bunch of bugs in it anyway that allows you to get around it just like the applet sandbox.

Build tools would still have a place in the world for things unrelated to dependencies and compilation. Being able to write code that uses dependent modules without using some third party tool would drastically simplify using Java. As it stands things like JShell are basically useless without support like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is it possible to just build it and, if widely adopted by the industry, force the hand of the JSR process to formalize it?

Why must every advancement go through committee?

<comment><USER8> I think that if this JSR doesn't get the requisite votes, Oracle will release it anyway and use their ownership of the Java trademark to terminate the JCP, disband the JCP Executive Committee, and make it just another Oracle product. Maybe it'll even be totally proprietary without an OpenJDK release.

Basically, Red Hat and IBM get to choose whether or not Java gets closed up again based on how they vote.

<comment><USER21> Go with Oracle or don't go at all. Yeah. That's community. NOT.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never understood the need for the JCP to build a whole new standard for modularization. Why didn't they rubber stamp the OSGi spec which is used everywhere, is extremely solid, has multiple great implementations and provides stuff that this standard not even has (like runtime updating of modules, versioning and more). Felt to me like politics/not invented here syndrome from the start, no wonder there is so much pushback from the community about this standard.

<comment><USER23> In my experience OSGi is horrible and unwieldy. Avoiding its complexity for this job is good.

<comment><USER24> Modularization itself is complex. No matter if OSGi, Jigsaw or whatever, modularization done right is non trivial. I wonder when ppl. start realizing that instead of blaming it on implementations.

<comment><USER25> Modularisation isn't complex at all. We have had it for years with JARs. They are simple and easy to use for everyone involved.

Sure modules of this kind are a bit more complicated but they shouldn't be significantly so. Often the JCP tends to over-engineer and over-complicate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Ultimately this is about who decides about Java. The community or Oracle. Is it an open process where the users have a say or are they just forced to obey authority? Red Hat and IBM, weird as it may seem, decided against ordre de Mufti.

<comment><USER25> You're talking nonsense.

It IS an open process which is why we are reading articles like this and have seen equivalents from Red Hat and Oracle. Everything has been transparent and open.

And you can name drop companies all you like but this is purely about the design and implementation. And frankly the meta module approach seams ludicrous to me.

<comment><USER26> Agree - the meta model idea is exactly the kind of nonsense that people make fun of Java for - complexity on top of complexity. That doesn't mean that Jigsaw doesn't have room for improvement though.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Going into product management? - <AUTHOR>

Can anyone speak on what it's like to transition from a dev role to a product manager role?
I'm a dev with a few years of experience and there may be an opportunity at my company to take on a product management role.
What does it do for your career prospects? Is it similar to moving into people management? Do you like it better? Worse? <comment><USER2> Your individual experience will vary with the company, but here's some generalities about product management.

First, product manager != people manager. Despite 'manager' in the title, a typical product manager is an 'individual contributor' with no direct reports, just like a typical developer. Every company's title structure is different and titles and reality are often disjoint, but you'll generally won't get to do people management until you're a 'director of product management' or at least a 'senior product manager'.

Being a product manager _is_ similar to being a people manager in that you won't be doing any coding any more. If you want to code, stay a dev.

Early-stage startups generally don't need product managers - one of the founders is almost always the de facto product manager. So by becoming a product manger, you're effectively saying 'I don't ever want to work for extremely small startups', because those guys just aren't going to hire you. Be aware of that before you jump into it.

Salaries are generally the same as developer salaries - in some places a little higher, in some places a little lower, depending on how respected product management is at that organization. In my opinion, if you're just looking to get to an executive role and maximize your salary (and hey, nothing wrong with that), it's usually a bit easier to climb the ranks in product management. Although I can think of a few large companies where the opposite is true, generally competition is lighter and if you're good you'll get to advance more quickly. Note that 'good developer' does not necessarily mean 'good product manager'.

In some places product management has a lot of power and influence and the ability to really make strategic decisions on behalf of the company, and in other places they're overpaid administrative assistants doing meeting scheduling and filling out TPS reports. Whether you like it better or worse depends a whole lot on that.

Any specific questions, feel free to email me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, thanks! I'll follow up with email!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Product management is definitely not people management. If anything, it is closest to UX, but also combines strategy and marketing.

In early-stage startups, the CEO is most often playing the product manager. 70% of a PM's job should be speaking to users, both new and existing (usability testing of built features).

In small startups, product management will likely be mixed with project management - you will probably have to manage the teams' Pivotal Tracker / Jira tickets. You will naturally work closely with UI/UX designers, filtering through user feedback. You're really the person that needs to know what your team should be building next and PM's generally head roadmap planning and releases.

You also really need to be across the data/SQL and understand exactly what features users are using, when and have a good idea of why. As a dev, this is where it would be to your advantage - being able to setup mixpanel/tracking events or even pull & analyze the raw data yourself is going to be a big advantage compared to other candidates.

</comment><comment><USER4> Product management is an interesting position and will depend a lot on what kind of authority you possess. In certain cases you will incredible authority, while other times you have no actual power and are just an overseer over a given group of people who has to report to higher ups. Overall, project management is a people job, the people you manage and your relationship with them will determine your success. Its good to have a technical know how in PM, but if your people skills are not up to par your going to have an incredibly difficult job, especially the less formal authority you have.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, pet peeve, but project management != product management.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I love about the product management role is that it exposes you to a much broader range of skills to learn (beyond product features and people management), including design, user behavior, as well as business aspects including go to market, sales strategy, pricing, etc. Just like a developer lead becomes the de-facto CTO for a product/start-up/business unit, the product manager becomes the de-facto CEO for the same.

</comment><comment><USER6> Depends on the company. There's a need for more people who actually understand more of the aspects of the roles across silos than just being good at your functional area and that's it. But it's horrifically company dependent and it's way different in enterprise where people still don't even know WTF product is outside of a few firms than in SF or NY startup land.

So define your target.</comment>


Show HN: Ruby gem to scrape a web page - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/davidesantangelo/webinspector

<comment><USER3> Good work, but you might not have heard about Mechanize: [https://github.com/sparklemotion/mechanize](https://github.com/sparklemotion/mechanize)

<comment><USER4> The chance that he never heard of Mechanize is approximately 0.

<comment><USER3> True, I checked his profile and he seems like a very experienced web developer. I guess he wanted to make something that was a little bit easier to use for simple web scraping.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was surprised there's no way to query the page beyond the small list of element accessors you provide (body, url, scheme, host, port, title, description, links, images, meta).

When you're putting together a tool like this, it's nice to give the user some way to "escape" your framework and get to lower level underlying data.

Why not offer something like

      page.selector('h2 p') #returns Nokogiri elements

      page.h1 #calls method_missing, returns Nokogiri elements

      page.p #ditto

      page.noko #returns underlying Nokogiri doc

Also, you forgot to include the body accessor in the "Accessing inpsected data" portion of the doc.

</comment><comment><USER6> Similar gem that scrapes OGP and oEmbed tags as well as HTML tags. Also configured using Faraday and allows for serialization/deserialization of underlying data: [https://github.com/socialcast/link_preview](https://github.com/socialcast/link_preview)

</comment><comment><USER7> Always nice to have alternative. Mechanize is certainly the big player in this space, but I like the use of faraday here.

Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER8> What does this use underneath? I wouldn't use it unless I know whether it uses libcurl or something else.

<comment><USER9> Looks like net:Http -> [https://github.com/davidesantangelo/webinspector/blob/master...](https://github.com/davidesantangelo/webinspector/blob/master/lib/web_inspector/page.rb#L95)

Would be easy enough to swap out if you prefer something else though - <USER2> supports a good number of connectors.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What password manager do you use? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Password managers are flawed by design. A master password grants access to all other passwords and creates a single point of failure. I also advise using separate email addresses to avoid having an additional single point of failure.

Have one email primarily for social interaction and create new emails when creating new accounts on new websites with new passwords.

I'll stick with using my own head. Even if that means I'm sending a password recovery request at least once a month from forgetting my passwords and then playing "Guess the Email that was just sent to" for the next 15 minutes.

Chances are if I forget my login, the site wasn't very important to me anyway and it's one less place I'll visit.

<comment><USER3> You're worried about the password for a website, so you create a new email account to handle its password recoveries. Now you have 2 passwords to worry about.

In cryptography, a single point of failure is what you want, because you can concentrate entropy at that point. Take 5 of the best passwords you can remember; concatenate them and use that as your master password. A 40+ character password from the full set of symbols will not be guessed anytime soon, even for astronomical values of "soon."

This is a net win because with a password manager, ALL your passwords can be 40+ characters if you want; you only have to remember one of those. Plus you can reduce the chance of needing to use email reset (which is itself incredibly insecure) to near zero.

<comment><USER2> A single point of failure means if they gain access to one account they have access to ALL of your accounts. For example, if someone breaks into your email and you use that email for all of your accounts (banking, amazon, facebook, etc.) they can use email recovery to gain access to ALL of your accounts.

If someone gains access to one of my accounts, every single other account is still secure because it uses an entirely different email & password that has no relation to any other email or password.

<comment><USER3> > If someone gains access to one of my accounts, every single other account is > still secure

All of your accounts are insecure from the start because a) you use passwords easy enough for you to remember, and b) you rely on email reset, which travels the public Internet in plain text.

<comment><USER2> Try checking your RCPT header next time. Create a throwaway Yahoo account and change the password. You'll find it's sent with 128 bit encryption over TLS. If using a Gmail account to recover, Gmail defaults to HTTPS. You'll find you're secure every step of the way. To call email insecure is to be rather outdated with advances in the past 4-5 years.

Furthermore, nice assumption under 'a'. Mnemonics are a powerful learning device for memorization, I advise you look into them. The human memory is a powerful thing and committing several randomly generated password consisting of 20-50 characters it not "impossible".

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

I do not remember my passwords. I remember mnemonics which help me remember my passwords. It's not entirely foolproof but it is far more secure than a single-failure-point system.

<comment><USER3> Your password reset email might or might not travel over SMTPS. As an end user you have no way of knowing in advance or forcing its use, so it's not very trustworthy.

I have no doubt you can memorize several very strong passwords, but there is a limit to how much randomness anyone can memorize. I've got over 100 passwords in my manager, counting both personal and professional accounts I need to keep track of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pass — the standard unix password manager ⌘ [http://www.passwordstore.org/](http://www.passwordstore.org/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I use a plaintext file on a LUKS partition.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1password

</comment><comment><USER7> 1Password

<comment><USER7> I hate the fact that it pollutes my Dropbox history though.</comment></comment>


The Vodka-Red-Bull Placebo Effect - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/06/caffeine-and-alcohol-placebo/529641/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> Placebo or not, my favourite bartender's opinion is that caffeinated drinks are the devil, the guests get all hopped up and into fights.</comment>


Ask HN: Good used $300-$500 Linux laptop for road warrior? - <AUTHOR> I travel a lot for work and I already have company-issued MacBook Pro for work purposes. For various reasons (mainly to keep work stuff and personal stuff separate) I would prefer to carry a second personal laptop. The main requirements would be:
Must run Linux or FreeBSD well. Preferably Manjaro, but XUbuntu would be OK, too
 Light weight. I'm lugging a ton of stuff around already and I'd prefer not having to bring a pack animal
* Compact enough to I can use it on the seatback tray in cattle class if I need to
* Decent battery life
* Expandable RAM and SSDs that can be replaced without using funky adapters would be really nice
What I don't need:
* A desktop replacement - I've got a nice collection of powerful desktops already. It does need to be powerful enough to run Emacs + C++ compiler and compiler for various JDK-based languages, but it's not a full-on development machine
Lenovo is usually my go-to when it comes to PC laptops, so I've been looking at 1st & 2nd gen X1 Carbons (fail on the expandable RAM and the SSD with no funky adapter, great otherwise) and X220/240/260s. I guess I should also at older Dell XPS 13s, but are there other laptops I should also look at? <comment><USER2> I have several Lenovo X220s running FreeBSD and am very happy with them. Inexpensive, good keyboard, sufficiently fast, good battery life, good expandability and availability of replacement parts.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anything thinkpad really. No nonsense and a sturdy build.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - I found a very reasonably priced X240 on ebay, let's see how well that works out for me.</comment>