Europe's central banks are starting to replace dollar reserves with the yuan - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1180434/europes-central-banks-are-starting-to-replace-us-dollar-reserves-with-the-chinese-yuan/ <comment><USER2> >>In June, the European Central Bank announced that it had exchanged €500 million ($611 million) worth of US dollar reserves into yuan securities. This was a small shift—the ECB has €44 billion in foreign exchange reserves

Before declaring fall of USA, blaming Trump for apocalypse and anointing Xi as the new Emperor, lets take step and really see the numbers.

$611 million is a marginal amount when we are talking about foreign reserves, its sure not nothing, the Germans are basically telling Americans hey look what we can do here. Its a passive aggressive move but mostly symbolic.

If they buy more Yuan, and Yuan to Dollar exchange rate gets effected. Walmart needs to shop somewhere else because Chinese goods are not cheap any more.

<comment><USER3> Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won't have any effect.

The exchange rate between the dollar and the yuan is set by the rate at which China is buying US debt not by the global markets.

China prints money to buy US debt it allows China to devalue its own currency without devaluing its assets and this deal allowed the US to pretty much generate as much currency as they want through cheap debt without devaluing it.

The only thing that would affect Walmart is a tariff war with China, Europe can huff and puff all it wants but it isn't a relevant player in this specific scenario.

<comment><USER4> > Europe can buy all the yuan in the world and it won't have any effect.

That is entirely wrong.

There is only a limited amount of Yuan, so by definition the supply of Yuan is affected, no matter in which currency it is bought. Therefore, the price is affected as well.

Will wheat in USD get more expensive if I buy all your wheat with Ruble? You bet it will.

<comment><USER5> The amount of Yuan isn't literally infinite but China can print new Yuan a lot faster than Europe can buy it up and, in practice, would absolutely need to in response to extra European demand so as to not suffer from a deflation induced depression.

<comment><USER6> the amount EU can buy increases as they print more Yaun. not the other way around as you suggested on the first sentence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A few years ago I couldn't tell you the name of a Chinese company off the top of my head, now I can not only rattle of a list, they're companies I've worked with or have significant investments in companies in the US. I also have a roster of WeChat contacts.

I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong), and laugh at how freaked people are about an insignificant Trump compared to a truly vicious government.

<comment><USER8> >about an insignificant Trump compared to a truly vicious government

Which is true. But most US citizen doesn't realize how their system, while extremely bureaucratic in nature, protect real bad things from happening.

There both have upside and downside. Only History will tell.

<comment><USER9> I dearly thought he bureaucratic system would have ejected current president though. It didn't protect much IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think people have to understand the origin of the dollar reserves before imagining the implication. In the cases of Chinese and Japan (and most other export-oriented economies), the accumulations of dollar reserves are the by- product of the exchange rate manipulations, which are to make their currencies undervalued to maintain the export competitiveness.

The US dollar has been the 'target' of such exchange rate manipulation is mostly because of its role as the largest import economy. As a result, if China becomes the next big importer, other export-oriented countries will probably do the same trick like it has been doing to the US.

<comment><USER11> It's not really a trick. If you're an exporting country and you sell a lot to the US, you're going to end up with a lot of Dollars. Either that or you're doing something very wrong.

In any case, China hasn't been significantly manipulating its currency at least for the last decade. Such charges had some validity in the early 2000s, but that's old news. Since then China has largely diversified its currency holdings and it's not really an issue, see link below, but there are stil votes in China bashing.

[https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/2171799...](https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21717997-government-has-been-pushing-price-yuan-up-not-down-china- and)

The article below from 2 years ago on this also sheds some useful light. At the time the dollar had recently rapidly appreciated against most other currencies, but the Yuan was at that point fairly strong and then stayed stable rejecting an opportunity to depreciate along with everyone else. In hindsight the articles analysis has proved to be remarkably prescient. The European banks accumulation of Yuan is testament to the increasing credibility of the Yuan, as it predicted.

[https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/2164420...](https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21644205-devaluing-yuan-would-do-china-more-harm-good-currency- peace)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like Japan --I think for a mid-sized country they have done well for themselves... but their representation in foreign reserves is a bit outsized.

The Yuan, given China's economic strength, has nowhere to go but up. We'll have to see how European Central banks like that in 10-20 years when they exert more influence on policy.

<comment><USER13> The yuan is not convertible, like the yen, dollar, and euro are. It doesn't float, it's exchange rate is set by fiat.

When the yuan is actually traded in the wild, then it will move a few steps closer. I don't think the government will ever let it get stronger than 6 rmb/usd, it would absolutely ruin their exports.

<comment><USER14> >it's exchange rate is set by fiat.

Trade might be controlled, but definitely not flat [http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=10Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CNY&view=10Y)

<comment><USER13> They directly adjust the exchange rate each day, it is not set by the market. There is a market based rate in Hong Kong for RMB (referred to as CNH), but it necessarily closely follows the government rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Well China's now the world's largest economy by PPP GDP [1] so it makes some kind of sense. I'm not sure how freely convertible the Yuan is though.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\))

<comment><USER16> This is not based on GDP. A big part of the USD's stability has been based on an indirect oil backing. Going back to the 70s the US in which we offered substantial benefits to oil producing nations in exchange for little more than them only selling their oil in USD, and then investing excess revenues in US securities. The petrodollar in another word. This has numerous positive effects other than what I'm mentioning here, but I want to keep this brief.

Haven't you ever wondered how it is that the US is going deeper and deeper into debt, how we increased the US Monetary Base 400% since 2008 [1] with no economic consequences, how we 'printed' (not really) trillions of dollars in quantitative easing, or more generally how now we're only paying off old debts by taking on even greater levels of new debt with no reversal anywhere in sight? If a private organization was doing that, it'd be called a Ponzi Scheme. Yet we engage in all of this with minimal to no economic consequences.

But none of this matters because the USD represents access to oil. Oil is the most in demand resource in the world. And when the price of oil is pegged to the dollar, it makes USD the most in demand currency in the world. But China recently has been making huge strides in getting nations to swap to the yuan for oil. Rather than give any links go search for 'china oil yuan' and you'll get countless articles all within the past couple of months about what China has been doing. In particular China is attempting to even get Saudi Arabia to start pegging their oil to the Yuan, which would be an enormous blow to the US. If they succeed here, it may mean that the USD will need to stand on its own weight. And at that point, we may have to answer for our own economic decisions.

[1] - [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BASE](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BASE)

<comment><USER15> I not convinced oil is that big a deal these days. The US kind of owns huge swathes of the world economy - tech - facebook, google apple etc, fast food and drink - coke, pepsi, McD, places to stay - Hilton, Sheraton, airbnb and so on. Typed in Bangkok on an Apple while drinking coffee paid for on MasterCard while waiting to fly on a Boeing.

So people will lend to the US as it had a lot of income, assets and a reputation for paying. Compare that to the country with the world largest oil reserves, Venezuela.

<comment><USER16> Oddly enough in society the relevance of a resource and its cost are often quite detached. Imagine Facebook/Google/Apple/Coke/etc all shut their doors, never to open again, tomorrow. There'd be no particularly dramatic change in society.

By contrast, imagine all oil producing nations suddenly stopped exporting any oil tomorrow. Once domestic reserves of countries ran out the entire world would grind to an incredibly rapid halt. Electricity, transportation, shipping, and everything would stutter and then come to a near complete stop. And society itself would likely break down in very short order. It's not about the dollar value of oil, but about its relevance to society. You'd think those two would be strongly correlated, but they're not.

This is why oil and the petro-dollar have so much inherent value. Without oil society collapses, and USD is the gateway to oil. That 'is' may be changing to 'was.'

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> this is also an effect of US isolationism and America first rhetoric which also means abandoning other states, eg. Ukraine, when the US loses its influence/importance so does the dollar, meaning you can't print like crazy and export your inflation in the world.

<comment><USER18> It's only a shame that it has to be a country like China that rises up at US' expense, rather than say Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, etc. What happens to global human rights when it's China that has an oversized influence on world politics and when countries start easily accepting extraditions to China (say for criticizing the Chinese leader, which could be a crime there), and many other outcomes like that?

US' track record isn't stellar, especially over the past 2 decades, and in the past decade the US has also taken a backseat in terms of actually protecting humans rights, even during Obama's time, but at least if you discount US' human rights violations in the Middle East, the US has been rather neutral on human rights (read: not positive) elsewhere. China may actually turn things to a negative trend for human rights everywhere else.

The UK under David Cameron had already started to use China as a role model for domestic censorship and surveillance. If China's influence grows, I imagine many other countries will follow UK's lead.

<comment><USER19> We only have ourselves to blame for that. Had we actually created a federal Europe, we would have been the ones profiting off of this.

Now, instead, it's China, and we're still not getting anywhere.

<comment><USER20> You cannot just "create" a federal Europe. This naive view is why the Middle East is in a constant state of looming (civil) war. British and French colonists drew state lines without considering tribes and cultures and now those tribes are fighting over control in countries they don't even want to be a part of.

<comment><USER19> The alternative is China controlling everything, and us being delegated to the back benches.

I'd rather fight with the other european countries over such small details than live in a world ruled by an autocratic China.

<comment><USER21> The Balkan wars were fought over such small details. It could easiliy go badly in Europe at large (again...) and then China would gain from that situation too. Do you think they would be too shy to help some warring faction or other? They tried in Yugoslavia and that was back in the 90s!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> China's exchange controls limit the external use of yuan. China's leadership and the PBOC go back and forth on this. If the yuan is to be used widely outside China, China will have to relax their exchange controls. But that means more exposure to external financial events like recessions. A few years ago, reduced exchange controls seemed likely, but now, things seem to be tightening up.

</comment><comment><USER23> >I also work with multiple ex-pats that fled fearing for their life due to persecution based on their religion (Falung Gong) \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

Hi,I don`t think so.

I come from China, when "Falung Gong" come out I am at college, after so many years I still believe what the GOV define the movement right, it is "cults and religious extremists".

Why I believe that?

1\. The "Falung Gong" is alt kind of "qi gong", I did have seen some people practice "qi gong" to keep healthy, basically, it is unscientific and ignorant.

2\. "qi gong", "gong fu", "tai ji" has no leader, but "Falung Gong" has a leader. And the leader can't sacrifice himself but lead some other kind people sacrificed.

3.Now I am a more fan of the old lead "Jiang Ze Min".(Like many others in Chinese social networks, lol). I think He may make the right decision.

At last I don't think the GOV have the ability to stop and kill any movement is a good phenomenon, But there is still a line which clearly divides the cult movement from ordinary movement.

Scientific, liberal and democracy may be the most valuable thing to pursue by China people in the future. But the "Falung Gong" like cult which fool good people did not worth any remembering.

</comment><comment><USER24> To avoid confusion, those reserves are used for technical forex operations and are not a way to guarantee the value of euro. Relevant ecb web page : [https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/tasks/reserves/html/index.en.h...](https://www.ecb.europa.eu/ecb/tasks/reserves/html/index.en.html)

</comment><comment><USER25> I need HN's help... What benefits do countries/governments/politicians get when their currency becomes internationally accepted?

<comment><USER26> Some points (probably not complete):

a) You can ask your trading partners to trade with you in your own currency, which eliminates currency risk for your companies. E.g. an American company can just sell their stuff for a fixed USD price, and their trading partners will have to take (or hedge) the risk of their currencies fluctuating against the USD.

b) You will have lower borrowing costs for your government debt. If your currency is a reserve currency, that means that many foreign central banks will hold your currency as currency reserves. And they won't stash cash in their cellars, they will buy your government debt (e.g. Treasuries). More people buying your debt means lower borrowing costs (and thus interest payments) for your government.

c) If you control a currency that is used for international transactions, this gives you extra-terrestial legal leverage over the parties of these transactions. The U.S., for example, uses its "ownership" of the USD to enforce their sanctions regime and other laws: many banks e.g. in Europe will not process your payments to Cuba (particularly not in USD!), even though there are no European sanctions against Cuba, just because they can't afford to lose access to USD clearing in the US and thus don't want to risk antagonizing the US.

d) You can borrow internationally in your own currency. This is not an important thing for China, which has huge reserves, but it will be for other countries. If people don't trust your currency, you will have to borrow in USD or another foreign currency. This means your country can go bankrupt: If you are running out of USD / EUR / etc. you can't service your debt anymore. If you borrow in your own currency, you cannot really go bankrupt: you can always just print more money to service your debt (this will have negative effects such as inflation, of course, but it might be less catastrophic than a default).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is this shift in any way related to Trump, or would it be happening right about now anyways?

<comment><USER28> I think that how we perceive/admire? America has greatly declined since Trump.

America has been unable to even talk with America's business, internally in the white house, within Republicans, others (eg. who has the biggest button, NATO, Paris Climate, ...), ... I'm pretty sure he's guilty to everything that is said ( Eg. Russians, money-laundering, paying zero taxes, ...) How do you think such idiocracy is perceived throughout "more serious grown-up" world? There is only one word for it: incompetence.

Worst of all, he really believes he's a genius.

<comment><USER29> The continuity with Trump is a lot more significant than a lot of takes would have us believe, though. He's just a symbol of deeper systemic issues which aren't even confined to the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Doesn't China still artificially control the exchange rate of the Yuan?

</comment><comment><USER31> We really should up the place of Chinese in our school systems as well. Especially with Brexit in mind. There is really no reason for it to be native > English > German/French > Chinese anymore.

<comment><USER32> Chinese is many times harder to learn than the other languages you mentioned for Native English speakers.

It takes about 4 times as long as French and Spanish to become proficient.

Given the amount of time kids spend on foreign languages in school, there's no way they're learning enough Mandarin to be useful.

I took Mandarin as an undergrad, and I can understand more Spanish despite having never studied it.

<comment><USER31> We're not native English speakers, English is our second/third language.

Chinese is also already available in our schools. It's just not a high priority. It's on par with Spanish, Greek, Russian, Japanese and some such. This doesn't correlate to the importance Chinese has on our society these days though.

English used to be the most important language, these days it's German and Chinese and I see nothing on the horizon to change that outlook, so it's kind of silly to weigh it's importance in our school system as low as Korean or Greek.

I realize it's harder to learn, but that's what schools are for. I mean, when I was young we didn't teach English until the 4th grade, these days we start teaching English by age 6 and everyone learns 3-4 languages.

<comment><USER32> You've not mentioned where you're from.

You're on an American site, and you talked about Brexit, so I assumed British or American.

>English used to be the most important language, these days it's German and Chinese

I'm having a _very_ hard time thinking of a country where both German and Chinese are more important than English. Where is this?

<comment><USER31> I'm Danish. I did specify "native > English > ..," though, so I figured that gave the non-English native thing away.

Our most utilized languages in business and tourism used to be English, German and French.

It's now German, Chinese and English, in that order.

In everyday usage English is still important and will remain so for years to come. But if you're looking for languages with professional application Chinese is at the top.

<comment><USER33> >It's now German, Chinese and English, in that order.

>business and tourism

A search of the number of tourists from different countries visiting Denmark shows that the number of tourists from the UK and America still dwarf the number of visitors from China. So I'm not sure why you'd say that Chinese is more important than English for tourism.

It also looks like Germans have always been the largest group visiting Denmark --that hasn't changed.

As for business in general, China makes up about 4% of exports and 7% of Danish imports. So I'm not really sure by what metric you're putting Chinese above English.

> But if you're looking for languages with professional application Chinese is > at the top.

If that's true, it's more likely because 86% of Danes speak English so it's not really much of an advantage within Denmark.

China is a growing economy, but English is still the language of world commerce, science, and entertainment.

I think that you're mistaking growth rates with absolute values.

<comment><USER31> We've had 300.000 Chinese tourists since August. I'm not sure how many Americans have been by in the same period, but in a typical year we get maybe 10.000.

<comment><USER33> Where are you getting these numbers from? The CIA factbook says over 300k Americans visit Denmark every year, and the information I can find on Chinese tourists says Denmark was estimated to get less than 300k Chinese tourists in all of 2017 (it was updated in Nov 2017).

Also Denmark gets close to a million British visitors per year. And then add to that the number of visitors from countries who are very likely to speak English as a second language, and the people from countries like Ireland, Canada, and Australia.

I think the problem here is that you don't notice all of the English speakers because they just don't stick out as much as Chinese tourists do. Sure you can notice the obvious tourists, but there are plenty of them that you wouldn't know were tourists unless you talked them. Chinese culture is also much different, so they are even more likely to stick out.

In addition, I'm going to guess that Chinese tourists are a common topic of conversation and news coverage, at least more so than English speaking tourists are because it's a change from the norm--you have to change if you want to accommodate them. This can lead to you over-representing Chinese tourists in your mental model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Dear USA, can we please have our gold back? Sincerely, Europe

<comment><USER35> Dear Europe, It wasn't your gold to begin with. Sincerely, the erstwhile colonies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Do yourself a favour and call it by it's name: the curreny is called Renminbi

<comment><USER37> Do you also get annoyed at people calling pound sterling pound?

<comment><USER38> Yes, I'm sure he or she is exactly that kind of person.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> A lot of the Dollars value are due to trade of oil being conducted with US dollars. Thus the Federal reserve has had a special privilege of being to able to print new US dollars through debt which a large commodity oil are being traded in.

However with the rise of electric cars in the future there may be less demand for the Petro dollar. How will a new world currency be formed, will it be a Petro Yuan or will it be a global crypto currency like Bitcoin? Doesnt a new global crypto currency need to have around 2% inflation new coins per year to stop hoarding from occurring?

US produces a lot of IT-services for example Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Uber, Netflix, Arbbnb Dropbox but nowadays less physical goods.

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

Rise of the Petro Yuan [https://dailyreckoning.com/rise-petro-yuan-slow- erosion-doll...](https://dailyreckoning.com/rise-petro-yuan-slow-erosion- dollar-hegemony/)

Historically reserve currencies has lasted around 100 hundred years. [https://philosophyofmetrics.com/history-of-world-reserve- cur...](https://philosophyofmetrics.com/history-of-world-reserve- currencies/http://www.pragcap.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/gundlach1.png)</comment>


Show HN: My Personal News Reader - <AUTHOR> http://newsreader.hackrdojo.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Source Code: <https://github.com/clockwork189/NewsReader>

Any feedback is appreciated. I know the scrollbars ruin the beauty on Windows so I am still looking into that.

I also want to make it more UI beauty. Gonna throw in a preview feature in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER2> It doesn't seem to work on firefox with the google disconnect plugin enabled. It might be worth adding a warning about that.</comment>


Dash Crypto Currency - <AUTHOR> https://www.dash.org/ <comment><USER2> I'm very familiar with Bitcoin and Ethereum, but can someone explain what Dash's value proposition is?

<comment><USER3> The fact that their website fails to clearly explain anything that I would say is particularly new to the world of cryptocurrencies I'd guess the value proposition is the marketing strategy...

Or even just a better pump & dump strategy - take a look at the historical price chart here: [http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dash/](http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dash/)</comment></comment>


The most important programming languages for the web? - <AUTHOR>

What would you pick if you could only learn / know three programming languages? <comment><USER2> PHP, Ruby, Python. All of these translate into other languages, and with multiple ways of interpreting/compiling them, you get both the flexibility of an interpreted language and the speed of a compiled language.

</comment><comment><USER3> For "the web"? HTML, CSS, and Javascript. If HTML doesn't count as a real programming language, add SQL. You might be looking for an answer along the lines of a backend language like PHP, ASP, or JSP, but they all fill the same need of producing HTML code based on whatever data you have in the system.

If I could only know three languages in general, I would choose Python for a high-level structured language, C for a low-level structured language, and Lisp for a different way of thinking about problems.

<comment><AUTHOR> I should of phrased the question better - I was thinking backend languages - my list is Python, C, and ? Was thinking of another language to learn ...</comment></comment>


Spotify – your 2018 in review - <AUTHOR> https://spotifywrapped.com <comment><AUTHOR> I was wondering why they chose to put this under a different domain? If I understand correctly this made them require you to connect through OAuth2 and grant permissions which initially made me think twice and check if this truly a Spotify website and not something that wants to harvest my data.

Any ideas for why they'd choose not to put it on the Spotify domain?</comment>


Crypto portfolio management website – making crypto investing easy - <AUTHOR> https://distributedfunds.com/ <comment><USER2> Seems interesting. Does this allow me to use different currencies for he same investment?

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you expand on this question? What do you mean?</comment></comment>


Black Holes + Wormholes = Quantum Answers - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/07/29/206652461/black-holes-wormholes-quantum-answers <comment><USER2> The links to the original papers:

older one: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3035v1](http://arxiv.org/abs/1005.3035v1)

recent one: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533](http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533)

Very cool. The paper suggests a connection between the non-local properties of EPR pairs and the non-local properties of wormholes that connect distant regions of space time.

EPR pair = Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen pair, e.g.

        |Phi〉 = |0〉⊗|0〉+ |1〉⊗ |1〉.               (1)

The vectors to the left of ⊗ represent the state of Alice, the vectors to the right of the ⊗ represent Bob's state. The + in the equation refers to the notion of quantum superposition.

There is nothing mysterious about quantum superposition. You know how y=sin(x) and y=cos(x) are both solutions to y''+y=0? Well then any linear combination of sin and cos is also a solution:

        y  = a*sin(x)  +  b*cos(x).

Similarly, in QM, a quantum states |v〉is described by linear combinations of some reference vectors |0〉and |1〉

        |v〉 = a|0〉+ b|1〉.

For example, the vector |+〉=|0〉+ |1〉 points half-way between the direction |0〉and |1〉. However, we cannot describe |Phi〉as the tensor product of two local descriptions:

        |0〉⊗|0〉+ |1〉⊗ |1〉 ≠ (a|0〉+ b|1〉) ⊗ (c|0〉+ d|1〉)  for any a,b,c,d \in C.

Because |Phi〉, the quantum state of an EPR pair cannot be written in terms of local descriptions. We say EPR pairs are non-local. The equation of the state |Phi〉(see equation (1) above) is a description of the combined state of Alice and Bob.

Their states are entangled. If upon measuring Alice's state we find it to be |0>, then we know immediately that Bob's state is also |0>. Because of the entanglement, the collapse in the superposition on Alice's side immediately causes a collapse of the superposition on Bob's side. Note that Bob's collapse will occur IMMEDIATELY, and no matter how far Bob's system is from Alice's. This is what the authors Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen called "spooky action at a distance."

Now imagine you have have a whole bunch of physical systems prepared so their state is an EPR pair. Alice has the left halfs of the EPR pairs, Bob has all the right halfs. Now Alice's systems collapse into a black hole and Bob's systems collapse into their own black hole. The connection that will exist between these black holes appears to be similar to the wormholes connecting black holes ("Einstein-Rosen bridge"s), which have been studied in general relativity.

</comment><comment><USER2> A comment on the idea by John Preskill: [http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/06/07/entanglement- wormhole...](http://quantumfrontiers.com/2013/06/07/entanglement-wormholes/)</comment>


The Same User Interface Mistakes Over and Over - <AUTHOR> http://prog21.dadgum.com/214.html <comment><USER2> After 40 years since PARC, perhaps the issue is a weakness in the abstractions of WIMP. The base assumption for WIMP is that the user cannot type...the reference hardware at PARC was a tablet like device for children, the first Apple GUI's were on the business executive targeted Lisa platform.

The ubiquity of computers has rendered that assumption to the midden alongside buggy whips and typing pools. Using networks requires typing: even appstore apps require usernames and passwords even when typing web addresses isn't required. WIMP was designed for a time when to a first approximation all new users were new computer users. That's just not the case anymore.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the author is wrong to dismiss platform HIGs (or equivalents) so quickly. I'd argue that even the fundamentals are platform specific.

I also think that the situation is not as dire as the author posits wrt tooling. The world is kinda moving away from classic widget based UIs, Qt is moving to QML, on Windows there is XAML, and generally Electron-style solutions seem to increase in popularity and capability (personally I have hopes that Servo could fill a hole there).

</comment><comment><USER4> posted 3 more times later ( _no irony there!_ )

most comments on this one: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10823735)

</comment><comment><USER5> Mehh, I'd rather have an article that details solutions, not just scream that there's a problem.</comment>


Ask HN: Hash in url identifier? - <AUTHOR> I noticed on links to Medium and other posts like Backchannel  they have some form of hash with an identifier at the suffix portion of the url
example  #.3vyus8660
Why did they choose a hash and how is it used? <comment><USER2> Its only Medium, Backchannel uses Medium

The bit is the anchor of the URL and seems to be there purely for tracking purposes, according to [https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3uyd9e/why_does_med...](https://www.reddit.com/r/webdev/comments/3uyd9e/why_does_medium_add_a_hash_to_the_end_of_its_urls/)</comment>


Cost Effectiveness of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction - <AUTHOR> https://acesounderglass.com/2017/11/20/cost-effectiveness-of-mindfulness-based-stress-reduction/ <comment><USER2> My sister is a mental health professional and she has recommended meditation and headspace (an app) to me a year ago. I've found it to be a great help and to the exercises to have a measurable impact on my life.

It provides techniques (reflection, visualization, noting etc) that offer tools to deal with day to day stress related information.

There are a lot of studies about meditation's effectiveness:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29110263](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29110263) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29126747](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29126747)

I'm always surprised that when people discuss it with me they're surprised I do it. Somehow it has a reputation for pseudoscience but there are easily a hundred articles supporting the benefits.

<comment><USER3> I think it has a reputation as a pseudo science because it's derived from religious practice. While religious practice isn't always bunk (as is the case here) assuming that religious practices are bunk is a pretty damn effective heuristic.

<comment><USER4> In our Western post-Enlightenment society, most of the beneficial aspects of Christian practice were adopted into secular practice. Consider: charity for the needy, monogamous marriage, burial of the dead, a 7th day of rest.

We haven't adopted as many practices from other religions. We eventually (1800s) adopted regular washing from Islam, but adoption was slowed by its taint of foreignness, much to the chagrin of millions of people who died of disease. The stretching aspects of yoga became mainstream within the last 50 years. Meditation and yoga breathing are still exotic. Perhaps some day they won't be, and our descendants will wonder how people from our era stayed sane without daily meditation.

The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Living_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_of_Living_Foundation) teaches meditation and yoga breathing worldwide, including regular classes in the Bay Area, if you want to try it yourself.

<comment><USER5> Another example: if you don't want worms or salmonella, don't eat poorly cooked white meat. No doubt the meat was considered cursed after people consistently fell ill after eating it.

When it comes to eastern practices (yoga, meditation and so forth) my bullshit barometer is calibrated much, much higher. I'm far more likely to approach their practices with an open mind. Take spirit guides as an example; while I certainly don't agree that there are spirit guides, it is a religious explanation for the subconscious - your autopilot that guides you through small decisions every day. I can't see why you wouldn't try to wield it to your advantage (obviously with the appropriate care that eastern religions have unwittingly formulated).

Even the core of Christianity can be helpful. Life is far less stressful if you are generous in the most insignificant ways. Simple acts like letting traffic enter in front of you, over time, drastically erodes the stress that you feel in those situations.

From my perspective, religious texts have at least a few pragmatic observations - even if they lack scientific explanations.

<comment><USER6> > Even the core of Christianity can be helpful. Life is far less stressful if > you are generous in the most insignificant ways. Simple acts like letting > traffic enter in front of you, over time, drastically erodes the stress that > you feel in those situations.

I believe James May (of Top Gear fame) specifically calls this "Christian driving". It's amazing how much more relaxed you are after a drive, if you simply stop thinking of traffic as a race or a competition. You're not going to change your arrival time by any significant amount anyway, so you might as well just relax.

In traffic, the only winning move is to not play.

<comment><USER5> > thinking of traffic as a race or a competition

People behaving like traffic is a race still raises my blood pressure. At the end of the day I still need to get into the toll lane, but I can't because there's 20 cars trying to get back into traffic at 75mph and I'm far too damned courteous to butt in at 60mph. It's far more of a blessing than a curse (I'm getting far more out of my habits), but the downsides do certainly exist.

It's not at all consistent, but my behavior is sometimes viral. I'll see the vehicle behind me keeping a generous following distance, or letting someone in. Almost every time that I've tried to resolve a traffic jam in Seattle, the person behind me has caught on - they will keep their distance and keep rolling in order to compensate for the tailgating person in front of me.

> competition

My favorite competition is to improve the commute of those behind me. There's always the guy who cuts in front of me, forcing me to stop, but there's also always the guy behind me who has caught on. Getting everyone home quickly is a far more interesting, and far less pointless, than the game of trying to beat everyone else home.

<comment><USER6> I do my best to keep a decent following distance, and try to match the average speed of traffic in rush hour. Sure, some people will merge in front of me, but there's usually enough buffer space that I don't have to adjust my speed by a lot. And when traffic inevitably clumps up, I slack off the speed a little instead of having to brake. I've notice that some people are perfectly happy to stay behind me and match my speed, to avoid stop-and-go.

I also try to position myself to make my merging intentions clear. I try to find a reasonable space to match speed and merge in, instead of trying to force myself in front. If traffic is completely blocked up, I will drive closer to the car in front if it's necessary to encourage a proper zipper merge. I sometimes see people getting really pissed off at that, usually the people who seem to be glued to the rear bumper of the car in front of them.

The basic rule I adhere to is that whoever's front bumper is the furthest forward gets to merge in front. It should be so self-evident and obvious, put people just don't want to let other people "win".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The World Health Organization (WHO) is a specialized agency of the United > Nations that is concerned with international public health.

> The disability-adjusted life year (DALY) is a measure of overall disease > burden, expressed as the number of years lost due to ill-health, disability > or early death

I knew the first, but thought that someone else might not. I didn't remember the second abbreviation offhand, and thought someone else might appreciate a short explanation too.

</comment><comment><USER8> We should work on actually reducing stress instead of abusing mindfulness to handle stress better.

<comment><USER9> I agree with you to a degree, but I think you might be missing a major benefit mindfulness meditation. In particular, mindfulness meditation helps you to reprogram the way you relate to experiences and thoughts in a way that, in my experience, does eliminate stress.

In other words, my relationship with experiences and thoughts can tend to be either more objective or more subjective (perhaps reactive is a better word). The more objectively I view things, the less those things elicit a stress response. Again, this is in my experience and might not be universally true.

Sure there are stimuli that, for most people, will always elicit a stressful response. I would guess (emphasis on the word guess) this comprises at most ~10% of a person's thoughts and experiences which is likely much less than most people think.

Anyways, just my two cents.

<comment><USER10> You also realize when someone is trying to appeal to your insecurities to extract something from you. You start avoiding those situations and the kinds of stress that they embody.

<comment><USER11> You just named a very specific thing that I've been wondering how to fortify myself against. Thank you for the succinct endorsement, this is very helpful for me</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unlocked phones are the way to go - <AUTHOR> http://interchangeproject.org/2013/10/30/unlocked-phones-are-the-way-to-go/ <comment><USER2> I have tried lots of different prepaid and no contract services and here's where I landed. Virgin Mobile is ok if you like the Sprint network. Net10/Tracfone are both fantastic if you don't want/need a smartphone and just want voice and text. Straight Talk is awesome if you want a smartphone.

I do Straight Talk SIM with an iPhone 4 on AT&T's network and the only problem I've had is no media messaging, which is not a huge deal. Also, iMessage is great for that. If you care about MMS, buy a phone from Straight Talk directly. The iPhone on Straight Talk is on the Verizon network, but since it's a VZW phone, you can use SIM as well.

Straight Talk SIM now supports LTE on AT&T if you want to go that route.

The point is, for phone service, you don't need to spend more than $45 a month and off contract phones can be had for $400 or less for top end phones (like iPhone 5 or Galaxy S3). If you don't want data, you can drop down to $25 a month or less.

There is no reason to be on contract, it no longer makes financial sense.

<comment><USER3> I'm still trying to find my pre-paid provider. I have two AT&T phones, a Lumia 920 and a Nexus 4. On both phones with Net10/AT&T, I ran into an issue where, like you had mentioned, MMS was flaky to non-existent. Also, a 1.5GB cap on data for AT&T.

I switched to T-Mobile prepaid on their 5GB "unlimited" plan, but there are even worse drawbacks there. For one, I struggle to get service. My apartment is half underground, and neither VZW or TMo have coverage, even though I'm in the city. AT&T does, but they don't deserve my money. The second issue is that it only comes with 100 minutes, and I can't figure out how to activate the 10c per minute overage (my phone just tells me I'm out of minutes and I should upgrade the plan).

My SO gets frustrated when I'm out of contact, and is seriously pushing for me to get back on a contract. Maybe Google Voice and a SIP gateway would be a better option? I really don't know.

<comment><USER4> The Net10/Straight Talk data cap on AT&T SIM cards has actually been lifted,[0] now it's just 2.5GB at full speed and then throttled until the month is over.

I find that the BYOP offerings of Net10 and Straight Talk don't differ that much: both offer LTE, similar APN settings, same throttling limits, etc., as both companies are owned by TracFone. The only difference is that Straight Talk costs $45/month while Net10 costs $50/month, although if one sets up recurring payments on Net10's website the cost will be reduced to $45/month as well.

[0]: [http://androidforums.com/net10/763501-net10-t-sim-card- data-...](http://androidforums.com/net10/763501-net10-t-sim-card-data-plans- now-back-unlimited-1-5gb-cap-removed.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> One of the things about going with an unlocked phone in the U.S. that often doesn't get discussed is that you can realistically own multiple phones. We miss out on this experience because we are so tied to contracts and only using one phone with a sim card.

The biggest regret I have as someone who has been on phone contracts for years is that it is very prohibitive to experiment with different phones. If we treated phones more like computers, we could have more than one phone at a time. When you're on a contract with a locked phone, it's really difficult to experiment with different phones in any meaningful way.

That doesn't mean I would be buying new phones all the time. Perhaps I get used ones off of Ebay, and I probably only buy a new phone every two years or so. Phones are starting to hit an inflection point where they will run well beyond two years.

If we can get better unlocked options in this country with data and voice plans that are priced better, geeks like us can experiment with different phones and OSes. I use OS X and Windows every week (and Chrome OS, but that depends on the week).

I hardly ever use Android, Windows Phone or Blackberry OS. And I think that's a shame.

<comment><USER5> Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, but long before T-Mobile did away with their contracts, I was SIM swapping between Android devices (and even flip phones) with no problems.

I still do this occasionally since I keep hoarding my old phones as development devices, and even with phones T-Mobile doesn't actually support (i.e. you can't select it as your current device if you use their web portal), I have not had problems.

Perhaps this is different between providers?

<comment><USER6> >Perhaps this is different between providers?

On the CDMA side (i.e. Verizon, Sprint), yes.

On the GSM side (T-mobile and AT&T), if your phone is locked to a carrier it will still accept _any_ SIM from that carrier and your carrier provided SIM will work on any GSM unlocked phone with compatible frequencies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've done this and the math already. We had 3 of us on a shared family plan on contract with Sprint at around $200/month. We broke contract and ate some large fees and sold our Sprint phones. We bought 3 nexus4 phones and switched to T-mobile that came around $100/month. Even after paying for breaking our contract with Sprint it was cheaper than to wait the contract out.

As a bonus, we all got unlocked phones with Wifi tethering (free) and better data service. Keep in mind though, T-mobile signal might suck for your location.

</comment><comment><USER8> Another advantage: an unlocked phone can really help for international travel. I'm heading from the US to Hong Kong and my friends with unlocked phones can get local, prepaid SIM cards for very good voice + data rates.

AT&T has told me that "standard" rates for international roaming in Asia is $2.50/minute (!!) and even the biggest package they have only brings it down to $1.50. It's completely insane. Plus you need to purchase voice roaming, data roaming, and text roaming all separately. Believe it or not, it will actually be slightly cheaper to cancel my AT&T plan, pay the cancellation fee, and switch to TMobile than it would be to purchase all of their punitive roaming services.

<comment><USER9> To be fair, Verizon at least, will unlock your phone for international SIM cards if you call them before traveling abroad. Thus allowing you the same advantages. I'd be surprised if AT&T wouldn't do the same.

<comment><USER6> With newer LTE phones, Verizon "world phones" (i.e. phones with a GSM SIM slot alongwith the CDMA stuff - For eg. iPhone 5, 5c and 5s) already come GSM "unlocked". This is apparently not out of the goodness of their hearts but because of some LTE spectrum agreements with the FCC. The kicker though is that the phones will favor the Verizon network while in the US.

<comment><USER9> Oh, so this really is a Verizon specific thing, huh?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> * I can tell you we just switched from AT&T to T-Mobile and it's been flawless.*

That's because you haven't actually had to start using T-Mobile's horrendous service. When I tried to do this (admittedly a couple years ago) they told me with a straight face, after I had gone through all the effort of changing "You can't use data on your smartphone because you didn't get it from us." Why would I have changed over if I couldn't use data!?!? (It would have been edge or something ridiculous as well, as only people on certain contracts could use 3g!)

<comment><USER11> I've used T-Mobile for over 13 years. Can you tell me what this horrendous service is? Its worked fine for me in Chicago, Tampa, Miami, Key West, New York, San Francisco, LA, and last but not least, on the playa at Burning Man (in the middle of the desert).

<comment><USER12> Non-major cities can have terrible coverage. You might only get 2G speeds or have trouble using the phone indoors. It seems the more remote you are, the more you are forced to go with Verizon.

<comment><USER11> I admit, yes, if you are in the middle of nowhere, you may have a problem. I myself encountered some blackholes between Chicago and middle of nowhere Nevada, and on my way back through Yellowstone to Chicago.

No carrier is going to have perfect coverage. This is something I'm willing to live with for unlimited connectivity @ $50/month.

I mean, seriously! I get coverage in the Virgin Islands! Included! And with their new rates for International travel, I'm willing to let A LOT slide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I don't even upgrade my phone through my carrier anymore. I just go on ebay and get a used phone for around $200. Case in point: The new Nokia 928 which was released in May of 2013 is selling on ebay for $250.00. To upgrade its $99 and I get my unlimited data plan yanked and re-up for another two years? No thank you.

Also, the only company to actually reduce their price plans to account for not subsidizing their phones is T-Mobile and I figure they're going to get more customers as people start to realize the upgrades from AT&T and Verizon are a total crime.

<comment><USER13> > reduce their price plans to account for not subsidizing their phones

When I brought my own phone to sprint and they forced me to sign a 2 year agreement, I knew that business was on the way out. I'm on straight talk now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kind of bizarre he goes to such lengths to save a little money and then still buys upgrades regularly. If he cares about money so much, he should be skipping upgrades as well. His plan is not reasonable for me since AT&T and Verizon are the only decent LTE carriers here in the US, so he's permanently crippled his bandwidth. LTE means I don't need a home internet connection any more, so it saves much more than he does by going T-mobile.

So anyway, he's sacrificing network speed to save money, but won't sacrifice upgrades, which seems illogical. Also he writes off skipping upgrades while on a decent network, because he says that is costing him money for free, but it still saves him the cost of the upgrade handset itself, typically $200 for a premium phone. He would be stuck paying the increased amount no matter what on the only good network options there are right now, so it doesn't matter. Saving 200 is saving 200.

</comment><comment><USER15> I just switched from Sprint to T-mobile. I financed my T-mobile 5S through the Apple store, then activated a T-mobile SIM card online, and got the $30 per month deal for 5GB 4g data and 100 minutes per month, with 10 cents per minute beyond that (prepaid). $30 per month is by far the least I've ever paid for an iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hm, I always assumed this stuff was transparent.

In the UK you have the well-known "Sim-Only" and "Rolling Month" contracts, which are almost, not like contracts in the traditional sense given you can cancel any time.

my Sim-Only contract that last's for 12 months is £15/m I paid £750 or so for the iPhone 5s with 64GB of space which is: £31 (over 2 years) £46 total a month for two years.

a contract with my provider for my phone is: £99 upfront cost. £51 a month (over 24 months).

so, I'd be paying £5 for the privilege of _not_ having cash in hand for my phone.

there are other downsides; like requiring carrier support instead of apple support, which, honestly makes a large difference to how you're treated.

although the UK is under EU jurisdiction about the locking of mobile phones so, it's now prohibited.

</comment><comment><USER17> One thing none of these articles mention: on AT&T, you don't use minutes to call other AT&T customers. If your entire extended family is on AT&T (as mine is), this provides a horribly effective incentive to stay.

<comment><USER18> If you're in a family of 2 or more, AT&T's new MobileShare plans don't charge you for minutes, period. On-net or off-net, it doesn't matter. Data is the new metering point.

Reference (you have to provide your zip code, boo!):

[http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/mobileshare.html](http://www.att.com/shop/wireless/plans/mobileshare.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the equivalent to buying a house or car with cash to save on interest. Of course you save money by paying full-price up front instead of financing. It only works if you have that much cash available though.

<comment><USER20> Common sense dictates that if you can't afford a $800 phone, you shouldn't buy one, doesn't it?

Consumers have forgotten.

<comment><USER18> No, it doesn't dictate that. Common sense dictates that:

A) Your expenses shouldn't exceed your income.

B) You should carefully evaluate the price you pay for financing.

There is nothing wrong with amortizing an expense, provided it doesn't break your income/expense ratio and you aren't overpaying on the financing.

<comment><USER21> True, except the financing is shockingly expensive and comes with unknown but substantial opportunity costs (i.e., negotiating for a better price when you're not on a contract).

Ultimately the best way to minimize your costs is retaining the ability to say "sod off, I'm going to [competitor]".

<comment><USER18> While a GSM unlocked phone sounds attractive, there are market problems. Not all wireless carriers are created equal. AT&T and Verizon have the largest networks, but they use incompatible wireless technologies, so an unlocked device grants you no mobility. Yes, you can move to providers like T-Mobile, but that's not a 100% equivalent comparison. Depending on your needs, you may still be locked in to AT&T or Verizon, at which point an unlocked GSM phone nets you zero savings.

My point is that it's still not a "common sense" evaluation. It's a nuanced decision that must consider all variables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The cost-benefit analysis is elementary.

Given:

-A phone is designed to physically break in 2 years (with or without contract)

-A cellular contract last 2 years

-Purchase cost of a new unlocked, contract-free iPhone 16g 5c is $600 after taxes

-Purchase cost of a new locked, contractual iPhone 16g 5c is $120 after taxes

-Monthly bill for iPhone contract is around $100 after taxes(unlimited everything)

-Monthly bill for iPhone without contract is $60 after taxes(unlimited everything)

Total cost of contractual iPhone over 2 Year period:

100+100 _24=2500

600+50_24=1800

((2500-1800)/2500)*100 = 28% more for contract. Factor in the cost-benefit of peripherals you receive with a contract or non-contract phone and make your decision.

Done.

</comment><comment><USER23> That's a lot of math, and it might work for most of the top-notch phones. I go google.com/nexus all the way because I know that I'll be able to use my phone anywhere (I'm french and live in the US). I've got a $30 no-contract sim-card only plan on T-mobile, with unlimited data and use Google voice for my calls. I don't think it's beatable (price wise. Quality wise it is.) it you want a last-gen smartphone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Confirms what I thought. I was once locked, it was hell. Now I am free. I can switch or haggle the bastards for the things I want. And it's way cheaper. I rather pay up front and pick what provider I want every 6 months pay a fee for a card that renews itself ever 6 month without CC or bank account involved so they can't overcharge as they are used to.

</comment><comment><USER25> My family is definitely going to be doing this next month when our Sprint contract is over. I'm also going to port our phone numbers over to Google Voice to avoid any future porting fees.

The abysmal world of mobile phone carriers seems to be making some good improvements.

<comment><USER26> Be careful with Google voice as your mobile number. Your texts won't be texts but will come in via an app. And it doesn't support MMS. You may not care about receiving photos but MMS is used to send multi-recipient text messages as well.

The net effect is that if anyone, ever tried to send a text message to you and several other people at the same time you will not receive it. You will not receive a notice or anything, it will just silently fail and the sender will assume you are ignore them.

<comment><USER27> I've used GV as my only number for a few years now.

> The net effect is that if anyone, ever tried to send a text message to you > and several other people at the same time you will not receive it.

I do receive these. I haven't ever heard from anyone "Hey, you didn't come to my <birthday party, other event>!?!?!

I cannot send them. YMMV?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I don't think this applies in Canada. For example on Telus, as soon as your contract expires, all the free bundled stuff you got like voicemail or texting plans are now $6 or so a month, so your usual $60 bill jumps to $75.

</comment><comment><USER29> In Canada, one of the big 3 telcos, TELUS unlocks your phone for $35 if your account is in good standing after 90 days without having to finish your contract. So you can maintain your contract and have it unlocked for travel.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm in the process of moving from ATT to Tmobile.

<comment><USER31> I just made the switch myself. The only thing is; it cost me the iPhone. Only Android phones have the WiFi calling on them. As a result, I had to give up my iPhone and switch to an S4. I have to say though it has been useful as I made crystal clear calls in the middle of nowhere (through hotel wifi) where att nor tmobile get good reception.

In the process with the cost of the new device included in the monthly payments I ended up saving about $80/month for a family plan of 3 phones.

I wish iPhone supported the WiFi calling! Maybe a google voice solution is under way.

If you travel internationally the fact that you can use your data connection (albeit on 2g) internationally without any roaming fees is superb. I would say make sure to get the right phone based on your needs but switch soon!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone here use pay as you go services like AirVoice?

<comment><USER33> Yup. I feel like they could go belly-up at any point they're so tiny, but you can't beat $10/mo for voice + text on an unlocked phone in the US.

<comment><USER32> Right. And on the ATT network. And only 6cents per MB. Just flip on your phone's data when you need a map or to check your email in an emergency and you could pay < $15/month. Also they have $10 for 100min for 90 days. So if you get a Voip service at home and make all your long calls there + over wifi on your smartphone, you could even pay less for cell minutes, perhaps only $3/month.

I do not work for them, just checking out the options.</comment></comment></comment>


U.S. Obesity Trends (Maps/Infographics) - <AUTHOR> http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

<comment><USER2> An unintentionally good example of why choosing colors for choropleth maps can be tricky in terms of making sure the data you are conveying matches visual perception. UT, for example stands out (in later years), even though it has less obesity than states around it. In this case, a single hue changing from light to dark would be more effective.

Choropleth maps are an interesting problem because they can be unintentionally quite misleading. In particular, the modifiable areal unit problem is a frequent issue with US maps of population-related data. This is due to the use county boundaries and since counties vary drastically by both size and population, values averaged over a county are sometimes almost meaningless (the classic example is San Bernadino County in CA).

<comment><USER3> You mean Colorado, not Utah, right? Colorado appears to stand along in the west side of the country starting in 2005. In 2004 and 2005, Utah and Colorado are both the dark blue indicating 15%-19%. In general, Colorado seems to lag behind the indicated measurements of the states around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd like to see this displayed alongside a map showing the consumption levels of high fructose corn syrup.

<comment><USER5> Amen to that! And add some data regarding the dates of regulatory policy changes involving the High Fructose Corn Syrup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> A question that these statistics raise: both obesity and the number of hispanics have been increasing. Hispanics are more obese than average.

Is it possible that the increase in obesity is partially/completely explained by demographics?

<comment><USER7> I guess it's easy to assume that. To my Hispanic eyes it's different though. Somewhat recently I read that Mexico was now No.2 in obesity. Behind the US (No.1). But this is a recent development, even newer that the US's obesity I believe, and it came about starting in the 90's, when Mexico opened up with the North American Free Trade Agreement and finally (I still consider it a good thing, for Mexico at least) allowed freer importing, and exporting of among other things, fast-food american chains. We gave up the torta for the burger.

But another interesting observation is that here in the US, the trend not only coincides with the "Low-fat" assault (see Taubes' GCBC), it also does with the embargo imposed on Mexican cane sugar in the late 70's, and the subsequent adoption of High-fructose corn syrup as the sweetener of choice for Americans. And then you see some longing for "mexican coca-cola".

In short, I believe that Hispanic obesity has been growing alongside everyone else's here, not causing it. Back in the day there were only the "fat gringos".

<comment><USER6> I am not assuming, I am asking.

The right way to answer the question, I think, would be to look at obesity rates restricted to whites/Hispanics, or alternatively to calculate obesity rates pretending Hispanics exist in the us at their 1960 proportions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can pretty much pick out where the reservations are in the western US on the county map of combined obesity and diabetes. The big one in NM/AZ is the main Navajo reservation.

Native American tend to have some of the worst health stats in the US (although better in some categories).

</comment><comment><USER9> So the stereotype of the granola-eating outdoorsy Coloradian must be true...

<comment><USER10> _hangs head_ ... check, check, and check.

Although I prefer gorp (good old raisins and peanuts). ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Begs for ClearMaps [http://www.sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/clearmaps-mapping- fram...](http://www.sunlightlabs.com/blog/2010/clearmaps-mapping-framework/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Interesting data and depressing when you think of the health care costs we'll be seeing as a nation as our population ages.

I have one quibble with the presentation; white is represented as "no data", but perception wise, it makes it look like those states had 0 percent obesity rates.

</comment><comment><USER13> The county level maps look suspect, as if some normalization or bias at the state level were happening. Do people really get more obese when you cross the state line from Illinois to Missouri?

<comment><USER14> Illinois and Missouri border states other than each other. And the population is not concentrated on the borders, let alone a single one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This why we need a tax on unhealthy, processed foods and drinks and subsidies on healthy foods. The Dollar Menu should be the Five Dollar Menu and Subway should have the Two Dollar Footlong.

</comment><comment><USER16> Wow, that's scary. The epidemic just exploded within our lifetimes, and it started with the poor in states like Mississippi and Alabama and spread outward to middle-class America.

</comment><comment><USER17> It would be nice if links to the data used for the visualizations was available. It would be interesting to play with.

<comment><USER18> Shazam: <http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/index.html>

<comment><USER17> That's still not the raw data. I'd probably have to pick thru the papers and such before I'd have the full dataset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> read Good Calories, Bad Calories for a well researched book on why this is ([http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial- Scienc...](http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Controversial- Science/dp/1400033462))

<comment><USER20> From the Amazon page's editorial reviews, by Publishers Weekly:

 _Taubes says that the current U.S. obesity epidemic actually consists of a very small increase in the average body mass index._

Interesting, considering the data in the top link implies otherwise. (I haven't read the book, can't comment on the editorial review's statement's accuracy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's interesting to see the seemingly strong correlation between the highest obesity rates and the highest diabetes rates. I would have guessed, sure, but this looks like fairly strong evidence there's a correlation

<comment><USER22> When I moved to Georgia, I was surprised by how many dialysis clinics there are. Like, half the strip malls in my current town have one.

Obesity is the main risk factor for adult-onset diabetes; diabetes and high blood pressure are the main risk factors for chronic kidney disease, and when your kidneys finally fail (whether it's under the strain of sweet tea and biscuits & gravy, or Pepsi and Big Macs), you need dialysis.

It's getting so bad now that we're seeing adult-onset diabetes, the diet- inflicted kind, appearing in kids -- not to be confused with juvenile-onset diabetes, the kind that's normally genetic.</comment></comment>


Review of The Players Ball by David Kushner - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-11/david-kushner-the-players-ball-review-sex-com-and-internet-rules <comment><USER2>
      Most of us think of the business leaders behind the modern
      internet as clean-cut, scientifically minded overachievers,
      such as Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Facebook's
      Mark Zuckerberg, and Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

Err, no?

<comment><USER3> I do, all those gentlemen went to elite universities. Jack is probably the least clean cut of the major tech CEOs that get press.

<comment><USER4> Given that most of them were there for exactly long enough to decide it wasn't worth staying and left, how exactly does that matter? Being clean cut isn't just about pedigree.

<comment><USER5> Page and Brin were PhD students, so very much not just there long enough to decide it's not worth it, as they had at least graduated from a bachelor's, and had likely been there for more than a year after. Bezos graduated from his bachelor's degree.

So really only Zuckerberg</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How are you taking notes - <AUTHOR> Right now there is an article article on the frontpage about note taking, Study: Students who take notes by hand outperform students who type [1].
So I wanted to see how are you taking your notes, not just related to college classes but generally when learning new things?
Currently I'm using a different notebook for each subject.I write down notes randomly (whatever I think is important), for math I'm leaving out the formulas if it's on the slides. At the end of the lecture I write down the key points at the top right corner of the first page.
I came across Cornell Notes but I'm not using it. I didn't find the optimal system for me right now, so it would be helpful to hear from other people.
Thanks
1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11459710 <comment><USER2> There is no optimal system.

What works for you is what works for you. And what works for you well in one subject might not be as optimal for you in another subject. We all love the idea of one-size fits all (in fact, this is marketed to all of us all the time).

In fact, I am going to go off on a tangent here and expand to not just taking notes - but how you learn new things.

I am assuming that you are optimizing for short-term usage and recall. For rote memorization, if you have not already encountered it, try Anki ([http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)). To simulate a test (for those tests requiring essay answers), get a group of study friends together and just do what Toastmasters does - ask them a question related to the subject and have them speak for 1-2 minutes off the cuff about it. This closely approximates a short (or longer) essay question. For subjects like physics, optimize your method of problem solving. For example, don't solve problems line by line in the textbook. But on a whiteboard or a blank sheet of paper, ideally with friends, solve that problem at a high level. What is the process that you will need to do to solve it? Where can you get lost? (VERY IMPORTANT)

As for longer-term recall and usage, it is all about day by day actions, not binging. Just an hour or two a day consistently. Active not passive. I'm currently studying a new language (Spanish). I used to have a giant Google doc where I just copied and pasted in in translations of single words. Later, it evolved to include example sentences. Finally, it became blocks of writing from native speakers.

It didn't do anything for studying. What works is actively trying to use the words/phrases. I can only handle maybe 5 or 10 a day. And by actively using them all day (even if just in my head, sometimes with headphones in public - no one knows you aren't talking to someone but yourself) they become gradually more medium-term and eventually permanent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment.

I'm not trying to optimize for short term usage, in the beginning it is short term obviously, but I would like to be able to use the notes to repeat the topics and move them to my long term memory. That's my problem my notes aren't that clear to use them as a reference.

And for Anki/Flashcards I didn't find a good way to use them for CS topics, and more importantly for math.

<comment><USER2> You're welcome. Have you considered visual note taking? [http://www.amazon.com/The-Back-Napkin-Problems- Pictures/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Back-Napkin-Problems- Pictures/dp/1591841992)

It's not dissimilar to mind maps, and it exercises your brain more because _you_ are making the connections more than the software.

Don't worry about drawing skills, those info visualizations from TedX talks are usually from professionals. Like these - [http://blog.ted.com/tag/sketchnotes/](http://blog.ted.com/tag/sketchnotes/)

Your notes won't ever be clear enough to use as a direct reference unless you write a literal book. Perhaps just use it as a prompt for what challenged you (at the time of writing the note). Also, look at memory palaces. I don't like the technique myself but it has uses for more complicated memorizations that defy rote memorization (e.g. irregular conjugations of verbs that diverge from the standard patterns).

In case you missed it, there was a recent HN post about using Anki for CS topics (not Math). The basic concept is that the Anki cards can be used to pose questions on topics or subtopics that may be on the verge of slipping from working memory. It is different from a vocabulary card where you know the answer right away. The Anki card solely exists as a random-access method to challenge your ability to solve a particular problem of a topic or subtopic.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11408447](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11408447)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like mindmapping because it helps me to remember relationships between ideas. But I don't always use it.

I use a red pen to mark things: A star for action items. More stars = more urgent. A ! for points of interest, important facts. A ? for questions.

As I go over my notes, I cross out the stars, !s and ?s as I address them. That way I'm not confused later.

I do the marking regardless of whether I mindmap. One thing about mindmaps is that they take up a lot of paper real estate, and 8.5x11 quickly gets used up. So it depends on the nature of session.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mindmaps never worked for me, like you said they take up a lot of space and I quickly lose the overview. Maybe I should work on it.

I'm also using ? if something is unclear during my lectures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have tried and thought about many things until finally writing my own tool that is extremely fast, powerful, and flexible. Currently it could be seen as org-mode replacement that addresses some of the key challenges (hard to learn, awkward) while keeping some key benefits (efficient from keyboard, extremely flexible), and adding huge flexibility in what can be done: [http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (AGPL).

It is a personal organizer, is something like really fast mind maps but (currently) keyboard-driven and handles very large amounts of interlinked data, different topics at once or mixed etc: the beginning of a platform to change how individuals (or mankind) manage knowledge overall. Future features involve much more than note-taking, but exploiting the internals for collaboration, anki-like repetition, to-do reminders, and more.

For current org-mode or evernote users: The app has export (& import) features to convert anything to (or from) an indented plain-text outline. The FAQs have links to a discussion of a more detailed comparison with org-mode that seemed somewhat well-received at the time (link is on this page which discusses evernote: [http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854614741.html](http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854614741.html) ).

Feedback would be much appreciated. If one has any interest at all, I suggest signing up for the (~monthly?) announcements list, and participating in discussions on the general list, for suggestions & input on things going forward.

(Ps: in the next week or less I hope to have a demo version available to play with easily, without having to install anything first but the .jar.)

</comment><comment><USER5> emacs org-mode.

I've seen a few of these ask HN's and have payed very close attention.

I like workflowy [0] but dislike that is is cloud based. I wanted to host whatever I use.

after giving org-mode [1] a a few hours of tinkering, I am now completely in love. I host it from an ssh server and manage it from a terminal and can honestly say ythe few hours of tinkering were completely worth it. try it out. I typically use lists/todo's and tables.

[0] [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/) [1] [http://orgmode.org/manual/](http://orgmode.org/manual/)

</comment><comment><USER6> In college I tended to annotate some existing document/book rather than writing notes from scratch. That tended to save time and energy, and meant I had to write a lot less than if I was starting from a blank sheet (since the textbook provided all the context for my annotation).

The goal would be to make my textbooks/articles the single source of study- material when midterms/finals came around. Rather than sift through stacks of notes, I'd just have to re-read the textbook including my annotations, and I'd usually be fine.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm an obsessive notetaker. It helps me improve comprehension and memory.

Having tried a lot of tools including paper notebooks, mapping, personal wikis (ex. TiddlyWiki), tagged note-taking apps (ex. Evernote, Day One journal), blogging platforms, ... I've come to the conclusion that nothing does everything that I want as well as good old markdown.

My solution is a simple but flexible git repo [0]. So far I've logged notes on 50+ items over about a year, including books, courses, videos, magazines, podcasts, etc.

Some of the best examples are Show Your Work! [1] and Cities and Ambition [2].

P.S. One recent development is GitBook ([https://www.gitbook.com/](https://www.gitbook.com/)). It's a little more than I need personally, but incredibly cool software nonetheless.

[0]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/notes](https://github.com/tedmiston/notes)

[1]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20...](https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/books/Show%20Your%20Work!.md)

[2]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/essays/Cities...](https://github.com/tedmiston/notes/blob/master/essays/Cities%20and%20Ambition.md)

<comment><AUTHOR> I see a lot of todos for your books, did you already read these books and just didn't write down the notes or are you planing on reading these books and writing the notes "live"?

<comment><USER7> Mostly the latter. If I read one chapter of a book I'll leave a TODO in every other chapter to show that the whole book isn't complete, though most of the time I'll never read the entire book anyway...

That approach worked better in the early days. Now it's a bit demoralizing to have hundreds of TODOs. I'm open to better ideas for handling that case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have one notebook for all my subjects. This only works because I never really look back at my notes (I refer to online lecture notes, the textbook etc. for that). I only write notes down because it helps me remember. my style is similar to OP's I just sort of randomly write down whatever I think is important, I'll use lot's of arrows and pictures.

I started doing this sometime in like middle school and have stuck with it, it's perfect for me but ymmv.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used also just one notebook and wrote everything down randomly with a lot of arrows and numbers/symbols referencing each other, but it was impossible to use the notes for learning. So I switched to multiple notebooks, it helped somewhat.

Our way of notetaking is just write-only.

But I'm trying to improve it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There was a lecture by Marty Lobdell[1] where he talks about a note taking system that separates facts and concepts that I really like. Concepts are easy to get a handle on because it doesn't take much effort to think of a real word example to relate it to. Facts on the other hand are very difficult because they aren't easily related to knowledge you already have so for facts you use a mnemonic device.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU- zDU6aQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlU-zDU6aQ0)

</comment><comment> a-saleh I don't take notes anymore, because I no longer have any need to. In rare occasion I do, usually on longer meetings with colleagues, we have an etherpad/google doc and edit collaboratively.

And even in college I usually didn't take notes at all. I learned by borrowing notes from several people, and then meticulously created a cheat-sheet.

</comment><comment><USER10> Markdown stored in git with script auto-pushing changes/new files to github. Just:

$ git clone [https://github.com/rofrol/m1ndmap](https://github.com/rofrol/m1ndmap)

$ cd m1ndmap

$ npm i

$ npm run watch

</comment><comment><USER11> Post-Its for rawidea phrases.

Scrap paper, big post its for longer ideas, phone calls, notes while reading.

Both of those create physical baggage for me forcing the next function: drop, file, delegate, share, etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> evernote + moleskine notepad. draw.io for charts / drawings / mindmaps</comment>


World's Total Computational Power = One Human - <AUTHOR> http://www.mikestachowiak.com/post/3237249269/worlds-total-computational-power-one-human

<comment><USER2> > Equally intriguing, the total world-wide storage capacity is roughly the > same as a single adult human's DNA.

No.

      wget ftp://ftp-trace.ncbi.nih.gov/1000genomes/ftp/technical/reference/human_g1k_v37.fasta.gz
      ...
      ==> RETR human_g1k_v37.fasta.gz ... done.
      Length: 892331003 (851M)
                         ^^^^

<comment><USER3> Perhaps this alludes to all copies of DNA in a human body, which is much larger than 851MB.

<comment><USER2> > Perhaps this alludes to all copies of DNA in a human body, which is much > larger than 851MB.

I think you're being overly generous -- the OP clearly says "human DNA", and that fits the context of the rest of the post, which is talking about a single human. DNA that isn't human isn't human DNA.

The remarkable thing about DNA is that even though we have brain cells and nerve cells and liver cells and so on, they all have exactly the same DNA inside their cells, so there's no extra information there either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> And so it begins (or continues, rather): you've got 45 years to come to terms with your laptop being smarter than you are.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hey, you found me.</comment>