The epidemiologist behind Sweden's controversial coronavirus strategy - vanilla-almond https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01098-x <comment><AUTHOR> One thing is missing from this discussion that needs to be understood: the Swedish government and related agencies generally _do not do things based on common sense_.

This may sound ridiculous, but in most cases, it's not. Common sense is wrong so often. The view of the Swedish government is that they are not more intelligent than the citizens. Unless things can be scientifically proved, the individual rights of citizens should not be restricted.

This permeates a lot of public policy in Sweden; I recently had reason to investigate to what extent maternal/neonatal care followed the best of our scientific knowledge and it was extremely close. If you think that's a given, think again. Many countries base their maternal/neonatal care on common sense and old wives' tales instead.

Both approaches are valid, but they are different. With policy based on common sense, you accept that you occasionally (often?) force something wrong on the public, potentially against their better knowledge. With policy based on strong evidence, you are more rarely wrong, but you also get way fewer opportunities to force things on the public, simply because there are so few things we truly know to be true. Doubly so during a novel pandemic.

<comment><USER2> There is a dark side to this. Scientific consensus follows certain rituals and heuristics. Even if you can assume that the scientific consensus is the closest to truth you can get (this is debatable), the approach will fail in some situations.

In particular, in war-like situations where there is little published science, data is scarce, data changes fast and there are policy considerations to be made across a multitude of disparate fields - fields that can not all be quickly evaluated with the scientific method.

IMHO, as I've been saying throughout this crisis, many institutions that do well in peace-time are in a terribly dangerous situation when they follow their normal heuristics and routines today. Strong top leadership (political or otherwise) can mitigate this danger.

<comment><USER3> Given that Scientific consensus has limitations, what do you propose is better in situations where data is scarce?

How does a strong leader mitigate this danger? Is the leader making choices by following their intuition? Does the leader make choices based on public sentiment?

<comment><USER4> One possible mechanism by which strong leadership could be more effective is that inaction and uncoordinated action can be less effective than any coordinated decision, regardless of whether that decision happened to be optimal.

I don't know how often this happens in a pandemic or in a political setting, but as an example from software engineering bikeshedding seems somewhat common -- it probably doesn't matter whether curly braces get a new line, but there's probably a benefit to only doing it one way in a codebase. Not that strong leadership is the only path to resolution either, even accepting that some cohesive decision needs to be made, but it does solve that class of problems.

<comment><USER5> Strong leadership and science are orthogonal dimensions. You can have strong leadership that makes decisions based on evidence and scientific arguments, or not. I would argue the first is always better than the second.

Again in the current crisis the decisions based on scientific evidence (pandemic models developed previously) was to act early and quickly with lots of testing. Most countries did not follow this, but I would say this had nothing to do with what the "scientific approach" was.

Somehow people here conflate scientific with need to wait/establish all information.

However in the end science is a method to establish truth/knowledge about the world around us. It can guide our decisions, but it's not a decision making method.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's notable as well when evaluating Sweden's number is that they are far more trustworthy than most countries. One interesting metric is excess mortality. Some places have wild unexplained excess mortality from the statistical expectation, that isn't fully explained by reported Covid-19 deaths. This suggests that Sweden is reporting deaths far more accurately than other countries, so when we evaluate the relative success of their strategy, we should keep that in mind.

A chart published by the NYT:

        Location | % extra | excess death# | official C19 d# | unexplained difference
        Spain    |  66%    | 19,700        | 12,401          | ~ 7,300
        England  |  33%    | 16,700        | 10,335          | ~ 6,300
        NYC      | 298%    | 17,200        | 13,240          | ~ 4,000
        France   |  21%    | 10,500        |  8,059          | ~ 2,500
        Holland  |  33%    |  4,000        |  2,116          | ~ 1,900
        Istambul |  29%    |  2,100        |  1,006          | ~ 1,100
        Jakarta  |  36%    |  1,000        |     84          | ~   900
        Belgium  |  25%    |  2,300        |  1,632          | ~   700
        Switzer. |  21%    |  1,000        |    712          | ~   300
        Sweden   |  12%    |  1,100        |  1,160          | ~   -50

<comment><USER7> This table is missing Norway, Denmark, and Finland which would be the most interesting to compare Sweden to.

<comment><USER8> Sweden has a higher rate. The theory is that the bulge in death rate is bigger up front vs a prolonged one that continues for months. It will be interesting to see long term results. Sweden also seems to have the same problem with long term care homes that many other nations (France, Canada, etc) are having.

<comment><USER2> Sad to say, I'm completely unsurprised that countries with rampant Covid19 spread have a lot of deaths in their retirement homes. It's practically deterministic.

People are contagious in the pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic case. So all that's needed is that _one_ employee of the retirement home gets sick and goes to work before they know, and the game is up. Dead patients everywhere.

I'm sure this is discussed and considered on the highest levels of policy in the jurisdictions that have been the most proactive in getting a handle on the epidemic early, and missed in most others.

I'm sure a strict face mask policy could have helped slow things down, but that's sadly been a hotly contested topic.

<comment><USER9> Many retirement homes here in Czech Republic have had the care takers voluntarily locking themselves up together with the people living there. Some have been there like this for many weeks, only taking in supplies in a safe way & communicating electronically.

Thats some serious dedication & very prudent one, give all the tragic cases elsewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There is a lengthier interview by UnHeard with Professor Johan Giesecke (another experienced epidemiologist) of Sweden on YouTube [0]. It's worthwhile listening to their perspective.

One of the comments he made was that no lockdown would work in democratic countries and the real test will be fatality rates between Sweden and others in 1 year. He believed it'll be very little difference between those countries that have implement the lockdown and those that haven't

I had watched the simulation of covid19 infection by 1blue3brown[1] and some of his modeling appeared to me (maybe I misunderstood them) to confirm Swede's point of view.

Ultimately the same number of people got infected albeit in a "flatter" rate. However one counter point by Johan Giesecke was that these flattening the curve is motivated by the assumption of a static capacity of ER rooms to deal with this pandemic and he pointed out they have increased capacity. Overall I found listening to his side very informative, at least it gave me a different view of looking at from their view.

[0] [https://youtu.be/bfN2JWifLCY](https://youtu.be/bfN2JWifLCY)

[1] [https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs](https://youtu.be/gxAaO2rsdIs)

<comment><USER11> well when I look at Sweden [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries) it has 16,004 total cases, 13,517 active cases, 550 total recovered, 515 serious/critical, total deaths 1,937

and Denmark has 7,912 total cases, 2,441 active cases, 5,087 recovered, 80 serious critical, total death 384

So what does that tell me?

1\. They have slightly over 12% death rate currently and Denmark has slightly over 4%.

2\. They have very many active cases and no recovered cases yet so this makes me think like all these people that have it right have just barely gotten it. So it is a little bit early to talk about how successful it is (otherwise it is time to talk about why is it taking so long to recover in Sweden if they have had it a long time)

If indeed my supposition that they have just barely gotten all these cases and have not had the time to let anyone recover so that means they don't know how many of the people they have right now will actually recover or how many will get critical and have life long complications or die and they are already at a 12% death rate with another 3.2% currently critical === HOLY HELL WTF!!

on edit: of course percentage death rate only for symptomatic cases we know have it, there should be much larger portion of population that has it.

<comment><USER12> >They have very many active cases and no recovered cases yet so this makes me think like all these people that have it right have just barely gotten it. So it is a little bit early to talk about how successful it is (otherwise it is time to talk about why is it taking so long to recover in Sweden if they have had it a long time)

I'm struggling to find a good source on this, ([1] is the best I could find, though it's in Swedish) but Sweden doesn't track recovered cases so that number is meaningless.

[1] [https://www.mabra.com/halsa/friskforklarad-fran- coronavirus/](https://www.mabra.com/halsa/friskforklarad-fran-coronavirus/)

<comment><USER11> Ok, then less holy hell wtf. Although I think though most of the cases they have are still relatively recent because I could swear I remember Sweden having less numbers of people than Denmark with it about a month ago.

When I look at this chart of death rates they had 451 dead on April 2 [https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105753/cumulative- coron...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1105753/cumulative-coronavirus- deaths-in-sweden/)

which argues a much lower number of cases back then (haven't been able to find how many active cases they had then though, so I may be wrong)

I think this article is right on target

[https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swedish- coronav...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swedish-coronavirus- no-lockdown-model-proves-lethal-by-hans-bergstrom-2020-04)

on edit: added "then Denmark"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The whole thing is clearly an attempt at a graceful exit.

The original strategy was herd immunity. The argument being made was that Sweden was gonna get infected anyways, so better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later, while protecting the at risk. And this would reduce economic harm as well.

However, the Swedish decision makers seemed completely unaware of asymptomatic carriers, which led to the at risk (largely old people) being heavily exposed anyways due to the asymptomatic younger workers around them infecting them.

Further, the Swedish people, reflecting normal human behavior, shut down economic activity anyways.

The result was a slight linear short term economic benefit but an exponential, potentially long term, downwards public health situation whose economic effects itself will likely dwarf the direct economic benefit anyways.

So now that their plan has failed both in concept and execution they are changing their story saying that it was a Swedish cultural thing, where they trusted individual Swedes to take personal responsibility, because of the exceptional Swedish character.

<comment><USER14> This is pretty much the opposite of what's happening. The herd immunity strategy is working, antibody testing shows around 30% of Stockholm is already immune, with their mortality rate comparable to many other countries and lower than a few too.

The media that wants to paint this strategy as terrible and ineffective (despite all evidence to the contrary) is now scrambling to come up with an alternative explanation that allows them to say "but it wouldn't have worked here". A special culture is the perfect explanation.

<comment><USER12> >The herd immunity strategy is working, antibody testing shows around 30% of Stockholm is already immune

This isn't true (or, at least, isn't supported by studies). There was indeed a report [1] published that claimed that 30% of Stockholm has been infected, but it was a mathematical model and not antibody testing.

A study was recently published that showed that 11% of people in Stockholm had antibodies, but that was retracted [2] (only have Swedish sources for this, sorry) because the researchers didn't think that it was good enough.

[1] [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066050v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.15.20066050v1) [2] [https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nya-antikroppstestet- base...](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/nya-antikroppstestet-baserat-pa- osakert-underlag)

<comment><USER15> It was 11 out of 100 people, using an antibody test that's known to have some false positives. So the error bars are huge. (The fact that this result has metastasized into obvious nonsense is exactly why people should be careful publishing incomplete scientific results.)

<comment><USER16> This new test from Karolinska Institute cannot have false positives, only false negatives. However, the way the test was conducted was indeed incorrect (they accidentally included people who gave blood because they were infected so it was not random). They will conduct a new test so let's see what that says.

<comment><USER17> There is no such thing as test without false positives so that's your clue. Especially antibody tests typically have 4% false positive, just a day ago there was news that revealed 4% false positive for a test claimed to have 0.5%.

<comment><USER16> My clue for what? I'm not the one who is saying this, it's Karolinska Institute saying their new antibody test has no false positives: [https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/11-procent-av- stockholmar...](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/11-procent-av- stockholmarna-har-antikroppar-mot-covid-19)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm an American, so the usual caveats apply, but I think more should be made of this statement from the interview:

"The Swedish laws on communicable diseases are mostly based on voluntary measures — on individual responsibility. It clearly states that the citizen has the responsibility not to spread a disease. This is the core we started from, because there is not much legal possibility to close down cities in Sweden using the present laws. Quarantine can be contemplated for people or small areas, such as a school or a hotel. But [legally] we cannot lock down a geographical area."

If we take that as a given then the approach used in, say, Italy isn't doable. Why not put that out there and let there be a public debate about the issue? Is there a sense that this isn't the time?

Maybe there is a debate. I'm not exactly in touch with Swedish politics, so if someone knows, I'd love to hear about it.

<comment><USER19> Isn't this whole process of debate and individual responsibility basically irrevocably tainted in the age of mass misinformation? I don't know where we get if we walk down this train of thought, probably nowhere good, but when a not inconsiderable portion of the population has been directly targeted to cause them to believe the whole thing is just Bill Gates fault, who magically caused the Coronavirus and is holding back a cure, does debate have value?

This might be a good time when a representative democracy, composed of people who are willing to listen to experts and make the hard, unpopular, decisions, would be the best choice.

<comment><USER20> Misinformation is nothing new and just as the amount of misinformation has increased, the amount of information has increased too. I would bet that the average citizen is better informed overall today than say 50 years ago.

<comment><USER21> Probably, but the core issue (at least in the US) is that a large fraction of informed citizens have moved to coastal cities, leaving the less informed citizens with more voting power. This means that misinformed citizens are gaining _more_ influence over time, not less.

<comment><USER22> > but the core issue (at least in the US) is that a large fraction of informed > citizens have moved to coastal cities, leaving the less informed citizens > with more voting power

Every person imagines they are better informed than those they disagree with, especially when it comes to politics.

There are exceptions to this rule. For example, I am better informed than those who disagree with me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> go here and scroll down to Cases by Country, normalized by country population then highlight Sweden. Across the different metrics Sweden seems to be doing about average.

[http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid- visualization/](http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)

here's projections for Sweden but given how wildly these projections have fluctuated i'm not sure how valuable it is

[https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden](https://covid19.healthdata.org/sweden)

<comment><USER24> Cases are a poor metric because they're a function of per-capita testing, which is variable across nations. You have to go by deaths. In that case you can see that they're much worse than their neighbors Norway and Finland, and that they're closer to regions with catastrophic death rates like Switzerland.

The earlier lockdown measures are imposed, the greater the impact, hence the comparatively excellent numbers from Finland. Sweden has long held denial of asymptomatic transmission (especially by Tegnell, even in this article), which we've learned is categorically wrong. The IHME model has been considered notoriously optimistic, as the US number of deaths has been rising but the US peak is reported as 1 week ago. The IHME model assumes a full lockdown in the US until August, which has already been violated by a number of US states this week.

<comment><USER25> To back this up with some data, this article has information about tests per capita: [https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens- figur...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-figures-on- the-coronavirus)

If Sweeden had been testing at the rate of Norway or Germany, they would not be in the middle of that cases per capita graph. This is despite Sweeden's infection growth being ~15 days behind Italy's, e.g. enough time for a lockdown to have almost entirely prevented it.

So it seems clear that Sweeden's policies have made infections worse. The questions that remain are: 1) Will their peak infection rate go over hospital capacity? 2) Will they have economic benefits from having population immunity faster?

<comment><USER26> As Tegnell points out, the relevant comparison is death rates after the epidemic has run its course, say after a year or so. Lockdown just delays some of the infections to buy time for additional mitigations which will hopefully decrease the total number of deaths. The virus will still eventually spread through the population until herd immunity is reached.

<comment><USER27> This ignores hospital capacity, which is the most important consideration when projecting out fatality rates. Lockdowns are not just about buying time for additional mitigations.

<comment><USER28> And the ICU load has hovered around 80% the last couple of weeks. Which was the goal of the chosen strategy. Current goal is to keep things below that while things develop

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Some countries in martial law some shut down a massive portion of their economy. The controversial approach is relying on individual citizen responsibility. Fascinating times

<comment><USER30> If it was something that affected only those individuals, noone would care. The problem is, that someone else can be irresponsible, and you die because of that.

<comment><USER31> Why is that suddenly a problem? We always had it. Most people posing danger to others in one or the other way. Driving a car is the most obvious example but there are countless other

<comment><USER15> That's why we have drivers' licenses and manslaughter charges for negligent homicide. We don't just shrug our shoulders at the risks.

<comment><USER32> We take reasonable, targeted measures to mitigate the risks. What we don't do is embark on a grand social program to eradicate freeway crashes, because such a program would involve banning or heavily restricting cars and we feel cars are too important for that.

<comment><USER33> The car/cancer/heart-disease analogies are inherently flawed because they're not communicable. If my road rage started a chain reaction across the Interstate causing 45K people to die in a month, I think we'd stop driving until we figured out what was going on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> My money is within a month Sweden going into full lockdown, and regretting their decision.

If it weren't for the states closing down here, Australia's death toll could have been much worse given the Federal wanted to keep everything open.

<comment><USER35> People have been saying that about Sweden for a long time. My money is on all other countries doing something closer to the swedish model when the next wave hits in winter.

<comment><USER36> I think this is accurate. Fears of medical systems being overrun are generally overstated. The threat to doctors is already maximal, and by extending the length of the epidemic we're just extending the time they're at maximal risk. There's an argument towards buying time for more PPE availability but I think that's a bad bet. Lockdowns lifted before something like herd immunity is reached isn't going to help. If less than 10% of the population is immune, then you're in the same boat when the lockdown is lifted and you've achieved basically nothing but buying time. I don't think anybody would say we can endure a lockdown FOREVER. I think it's naive to think we can endure a lockdown for even one year without economic devastation causing far more harm than the virus, let alone the ambiguous timeline towards a vaccine.

A lot of people are going to die. More people will die if the lockdown is lifted, and many of those who would have died anyway will die sooner. But famine, crime, war, and authoritarianism will cost more. On a global scale I have no doubt that disease is less harmful than poverty in terms of happiness or lives lost. The same for any given country as a whole. For wealthy communities perhaps not.

It is frustrating to me that saying such things comes off as right wing or anti-science. I feel the calls to keep the lockdown going are a thing of entitlement from those who can afford to do so. There's a middleground where you lockdown those at risk, reduce travel, and encourage sanitation practices but open things up.

<comment><USER33> I live in a small Midwestern state. A friend's mother is going through oncology, and is having complications due to the treatment regimen. Yesterday she had to be put in ICU for a day because every other bed in the facility was being used for COVID-19.

This isn't in the local news, nor regional news. It's almost like it's a dirty secret.

You may not consider this "overrun" but I do. I sure hope I don't have appendicitis or a stroke because it'll be an issue...

<comment><USER36> That is an issue, but its a separate issue. The concern that COVID is going to drastically overrun hospitals to the point at which we simply cannot take in more people and cause even the young to die is mostly not an accurate depiction of how hospitals and their capacity works.

It's true, a prolonged lockdown could potentially keep hospital usage low enough that things like this aren't happening, but only temporarily, and not in a way that meaningfully diminishes the threat of the virus and similar hospital burdens occurring later. You can't slowly let everyone acquire immunity. The disease either exponentially spreads to a sufficient scale or it spreads too slowly to build up a community resistance that permits a lockdown to end without consequence.

I really do empathize with people who are suffering, but what do you do if 6 months from now the disease is still here, we don't have a vaccine, and the economic situation is worse? You either release it, and put us back at the beginning with these same woes we're encountering now, or we keep holding the lockdown for short term loss of life avoidance at significant economic cost.

<comment><USER37> The hospitals were overloaded in Lombardy, in exactly the way you're saying will not happen.

<comment><USER36> From everything I've read, the hospitals in Lombardy could have surged even higher. Hospitals, in general, can expand care to many more people than they're scoped to handle. It means that each person gets worse quality care, but for an untreatable disease, there's little you can do to treat it anyway. Ventilator mortality is extremely high. My sense is ballpark 80% mortality rate, and that's just an average. With ventilator + age + pre-existing conditions assessment there's a large number of people that have extremely low chances of survival. At the level of triage decisions being made, I'd expect very few additional lives to have been lost.

I get that this is tragic. I get that people are dying. I get that this is an enormous mental and emotional toll on doctors. I get that we should be cautious and avoid needless exposure, especially to vulnerable populations or with unnecessary large social gatherings. But the lockdown is not saving lives. It's delaying inevitable deaths, at an economic cost which could kill even more people!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It sounds exactly what the UK was going to do until Imperial released a report that said it wouldn't work.

<comment><USER39> And Anders "debunked" imperials study because it was not yet peer reviewed[0]. While continuing with his "Scientific" gut feeling.

(No, I'm not making any of what I said up or being hyperbolic[1])

The serious lack of testing and fact that many doctors are saying they cannot attach COVID-19 as a cause of death unless it is a direct cause and has been tested for, give me pause to the numbers Sweden is putting out.[2] Since if you arrive to the hospital already dead then they will not "waste a test" on you confirming cause of death. I would much rather look at the Swedish death rate comparative to last year instead[3]

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/as-the-rest- of...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/28/as-the-rest-of-europe- lives-under-lockdown-sweden-keeps-calm-and-carries-on)

[1]: [https://twitter.com/bjornsing/status/1252888065959436288](https://twitter.com/bjornsing/status/1252888065959436288)

[2]: [https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens- figur...](https://www.thelocal.se/20200414/understanding-swedens-figures-on- the-coronavirus)

[3]: [https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by- subje...](https://www.scb.se/en/finding-statistics/statistics-by-subject- area/population/population-composition/population-statistics/)

<comment><USER26> Agree, excess deaths over a suitably long period is the only metric I trust at this point, and the only one that will be able to settle the debate over the effectiveness of lockdowns.

<comment><USER40> Although very early data (as it is everywhere) does it not look like the stats for excess deaths and the reported COVID-19 deaths for sweden line up pretty well?

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus- missing-deaths.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> On the face of it, the numbers don't look too good for Sweden. Compared to the Los Angeles area (LA county and Orange County) we see 1937 deaths in Sweden vs 697 in the LA Area. The population is also about 18% higher in the LA area vs all of Sweden. We are assuming the numbers reported in the LA area are accurate, which they may not be.

<comment><USER42> I don't think these kind of comparisons are meaningful until we are out of it. It all depends on exactly when the outbreaks started at the different places and what the long term infection rate will be.

<comment><USER43> These uncoordinated set of strategies by different countries seem to me like battles in RPGs; Sweden's probably opting to take less economic damage and instead take a x2 damage on health points.

The Netherlands is switching strategies, thinking that Sweden's strategy is cool, but they're dipping their toes first by sending in teachers and children to see if they take a great amount of damage.

<comment><USER44> > Sweden's probably opting to take less economic damage

In all the discussion so far, I haven't seen any documentation of just how much "economic damage" the various countries are taking. I suppose there is little such data at sufficiently fine granularity to compare internationally.

It's entirely plausible that Sweden's voluntary measures vs other countries' stricter approach don't make as much economic difference as many people seem to take for granted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> > We are in the middle of the epidemic and, in my view, the science shows that > closing schools at this stage does not make sense. You have to shut down > schools fairly early in the epidemic to get an effect.

Could anyone shed some light on why Sweden chooses not to close down schools fairly early?

</comment><comment><USER46> I live in Stockholm, Sweden, so while I acknowledge my bias I'd bet my money on the fact that other countries will change their approach rather than Sweden starting to follow others.

While there are some undeniable social (think multiple generations in a household), geographical and cultural (swedes are notorious in keeping their distance from other swedes) differences at play here, other European countries have gone for a "people can't be trusted so we must restrict individual freedom". While there is certainly some good reasons to think that this will work the means used to implement this have some really sad consequences. Look at France, people are getting fined and in some cases brutalized; protests are sparking in places where strict measures have been implemented, not because they are unfair but because they affect people unfairly! Easy for well-off people to "leave early, far and for a long time" but far from everyone has that luxury (oh if you understand French, check out Twitter on the "lockdown diaries" parodies and compare that to how people in the suburbs of Paris are being treated!). This is without even starting to talk about how the economic impacts will be spread amongst social classes. To me Sweden has chosen the most socially (in this case as opposed to morally) fair route to handle this crisis.

That being said, it's morally very difficult to defend this strategy in the face of a higher death toll amongst seniors in care homes. I cannot come up with a single argument that I don't know will get shot down immediately and that is a good sign that it's probably not morally optimal. We live in a time of humanism and human life comes first, rightly so but even with that said, it shouldn't hide the picture and justify every consequence out there. The approaches in many countries are incredibly reactive and short sighted in that regard.

<comment><USER47> To be honest, I'd like somebody to explain to me how a lockdown would have prevented more deaths in elder care facilities in Sweden.

<comment><USER48> I'd expect that better working conditions would have been a much bigger help.

These workers would like to follow the general guidelines and stay home if they have any symptoms, but they generally work hours, not salary jobs, and can't miss too much work.

If they had the flexibility and leisure a lot of the swedish middle class experience at their office jobs, being able to call in sick, then more of the care workers could have obeyed the recommendation by the health authority.

But for now it's a low-wage, high pressure sector with less than ideal working conditions.

To add to that, the same patients meet very many different caregivers during a week due to the same working conditions, and this is also not good for preventing transmission.

<comment><USER28> I suspect that in the aftermath of this. There's are the things that will have had the biggest impact on outcomes. The pre-conditions at the start. Not differences in response strategies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I do like the reliance on the high trust society in Sweden, but I also feel like a wider circle of experts could be consulted for such a decision.

Even if it may not be a good model of human behavior, it's sometimes useful to consider "rational behavior" \- if only to judge the resilience of certain mechanisms.

In this case, "social" behavior is in a sense very altruistic. If I am young and healthy, recent media reports (accurate or not) would suggest that limiting myself to staying inside, practicing more hygiene and such, is costly but doesn't significantly reduce my own risk. At the same time, isolating risk-groups may not be sufficient, and younger people may genuinely be at risk. So, it would be desirable if everyone practices social isolation.

If that is true, social behavior is a collective good: The more people stay inside, the easier it is for myself to go outside and, say, enjoy the sun in a park or have fun in a club. Thus, my incentives are not aligned with the goals of these recommendations. And if everyone thinks that way, social distancing will not be achieved in a "decentralized" fashion. Indeed if everyone is that rational, such a decentralized but workable "recommendation" does not exist.

Now, I stress that people do not fit this model, especially in Sweden. But in situations of anonymity, e.g. with many people involved, it has sometimes proven useful to check the robustness of one's decisions against the case where people act rationally. In that case, laws and regulation do make sense.

</comment><comment><USER50> Is there a pronounced difference between coronavirus cases in Sweden vs neighboring countries? On a per population basis I'm seeing very similar numbers (links below). Anecdotal evidence is one thing, but these charts don't seem to tell that story. That being said, it's unclear to me the degree to which coronavirus statistics provided by different countries can be compared meaningfully, or if this is an apples and oranges situation (for any number of reasons).

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/sweden/) [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/norway/) [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/finland/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/finland/) [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/denmark/)

Population numbers:

Sweden: 10.2 million

Norway: 5.4 million

Finland: 5.5 million

Denmark: 5.8 million

<comment><USER51> Cases are an unreliable metric because Sweden has done less testing per capita than Norway/Finland/Denmark. However, its deaths per capita is notably higher (and rising - from 14th global rank to 10th in the last couple weeks)

Sweden: 192 per million

Denmark: 66 per million

Norway: 34 per million

Finland: 27 per million

<comment><USER50> That does not look good for Sweden. I was just thinking that it would be interesting to compare total deaths per year for 2020 at years end to eliminate differences in methodology. It's a crude measurement, but if the coronavirus death toll becomes large enough compared to total population then it should give us a general idea considering how slowly death rates change in general. That could at least point us to who did things right, and hopefully some guidance for future policy.

<comment><USER50> Hold that thought. They probably have deaths by week already.

<comment><USER52> [https://euromomo.eu/](https://euromomo.eu/)

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronav...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/21/world/coronavirus- missing-deaths.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> It will be interesting checking back in 2-3 years and evaluating the efficacy of approaches by different countries. As referenced in the interview, each country has to eventually reach herd immunity. For the majority of the world this will be when 60-80% of the population has antibodies through the natural spread of the virus.

Assuming healthcare systems are not at overcapacity, our resources will best be spent protecting at risk groups. These are mainly old people, given that the average life expectancy of those who have died is just over a decade.

I'm confused why so many people are extraordinarily emotional and passionate about shelter-in-place. We should be focused on increasing healthcare capacity, and more importantly securing the safety of at-risk populations which are primarily composed of old people.

This is where honest and effective communication over the objective risks for different groups is essential. If you are under 30 with no pre-existing conditions, the odds of dying are < 1/100,000. The numbers are commensurately promising for those without underlying health conditions in their 30s, 40s, and even 50s.

It is silly to prioritize shelter-in-place going forward, across most of the developed and developing world. The costs are tremendously high, as we actually want most relatively young and healthy people to be exposed to the virus to protect at-risk populations.

There was even a recent study published that revealed if we intentionally infected young and healthy people, death rates from C-19 would nearly halve. A solution could turn out to be staggering payments to very low risk groups to get infected, taking into account people's various living situations. Unfortunately, I think most governments would prefer 2x,3x,4x, etc. death rates over paying people to infect themselves.

I believe many people will look back and admire the Swedish model for their practical and effective approach. Excessive shelter-in-place has tremendous costs, with minimal benefits once healthcare systems are stabilized. Hopefully nations around the world accept this reality and act accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER54> Is it just me or his answers are super vague and uncertain?

I've expected some irrefutable arguments and unshakable confidence, but it's mostly "I think", "I [don't] believe" and "hard to know". Zero proofs or data, mostly his opinions.

<comment><USER55> everything is an opinion and estimate at this point -

the transmission rates in the population with respect of their way of living,

the sensibility to infection of different ages, races etc

I salute Sweden for not giving in to the lockdown hysteria and trusting that people can and will act cautiously without the threats and mandates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I don't understand why certain media are lauding Sweden's strategy. It's not succeeding by any objective standard.

For example, if you filter out tiny countries like Andorra (which result in statistical aberrations), Sweden has the 5th highest death rate in the world (per million population). And it's increasing, having gained several spots in the past 5 days.

It may turn out be that Sweden's right in that closing borders, schools, and businesses doesn't have much of an effect, although there's significant evidence for the effectiveness of closing schools in respiratory illnesses. But Sweden's strategy is not working as a public health strategy.

<comment><USER57> If they had sufficient testing and encouraged the use of face masks to slow the spread, it would probably have worked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Some southern states are about to try the same strategy so we'll see how it works out.

</comment><comment><USER59> It was a cynical decision, disguised as "we don't want to impact people's freedoms" and "we follow the scientific truth".

Sweden's progressive government hates older people which they perceive as more conservative. So they decided to let them die.

If the epidemy would affect younger people as much as older people, Sweden would take the same actions other countries had and limit the number of deaths.

<comment><USER40> Are you seriously saying that the government is on purpose making their strategy kill old people?

Because that is some grade-a conspiracy paranoia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This is one of those cases where a single day in the media cycle makes for a very big difference:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/22/sweden- he...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidnikel/2020/04/22/sweden-health- agency-withdraws-controversial-coronavirus-report/#6b6795114349)

</comment><comment><USER59> I think Sweden did it wrong, valuing the economy more than the lives of people. I think there are some political ideologies at work, but I don't want to get into these.

In my country we have 3x less cases and 8x less deaths per million people. I do think that quarantine payed off. We can recover the economy but we can't recover lives.

</comment><comment><USER61> Each nation's strategy seems to come about due to its very specific circumstances. Leaders will defend (to death) their bullshit ideologies and false securities, and stick to a plan made in the heat of the moment.

Perhaps this mechanism is the great randomizer that ensures that every combination is tested, some risk distribution strategy.

</comment><comment><USER62> Sweden is starting to see sharp increase in daily deaths - 172 yesterday and 185 the day before - which for a country of 10 million is a lot. For instance Czechia with roughly same population introduced lock down very early on and now their total is 210 - while Sweden's is 1937...

<comment><USER63> Where are you getting those numbers from? They're much higher than suggested by this graph:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_coronavirus_pandemic_in_Sweden#History)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> So far the net result of Sweden's strategy is that they have 2,021 coronaviris deaths, more than 4x more than Poland, which also has almost 4x bigger population - so Sweden has 16x more deaths per 1M of citizens than Poland.

</comment><comment><USER65> There is no controversy. They just messed up and are now saving their faces blabbing about herd immunity and hoping that the spread will stop magically. I do not have hopes up yet.

</comment><comment><USER66> This was the most sane and reasonable thing I've read about handling the pandemic, and I'm super bummed it's not regarding my home country.

</comment><comment><USER67> Sweden's approach is an optimization of how to respond to the epidemic and how to respond to the general life disruption.

The optimal response to the epidemic is everyone stays in their house for 1 month with no human contact. In that scenario, the virus is stopped and everyone dies because no one works the food chain, etc.

The world's current response is heavily weighed towards optimizing the response toward the epidemic, but the potentially fatal assumption to this approach is that a vaccine will soon be developed. If a vaccine is not soon developed, the same amount of people will still get sick, people will still die, but additional people will die due to life disruption.

</comment><comment><USER68> While their strategy seems to not have led to disaster, it's not certain whether one would call it success. Shutdowns clearly didnt work well in some countries (france,spain,italy,uk) but they seem to work well in most eastern europe countries and germany. People are not being infected at large .

Some of his remarks are generally questionable and worth a second thoughts

> Closing borders, in my opinion, is ridiculous, because COVID-19 is in every > European country now.

There are many countries with very few COVID cases, and some of them are summertime destinations for swedes (like greece). It's certainly dangerous to open borders with a highly infected country like sweden without rigorous checks. Europe is big.

> Each country has to reach 'herd immunity' in one way or another

Not all countries are looking to get there fast. In fact countries that delay the spread are hoping for a potential cure/treatment that will make herd immunity much less painful. Herd immunity isnt even necessary - plenty of diseases don't need immunity/vaccines.

Also, while it's nice that sweden chose a relaxed, voluntary approach, the lockdown measures have wide support in many countries.

He s right that governments should be measuring the impact of measures though. Sweden should be doing so too, it would be very useful to know which are the most important infection routes, now that other countries are opening up

</comment><comment><USER69> Even if you assume 100% of the population will eventually be infected, the final percentage will have a much easier time and chance of recovery than the first ones because of what we've learned as time goes on, even without a vaccine. In fact, they're _already_ learning better ways to treat the disease.

The stupidity of saying, "We really can't do much right now, so fuck it" is unbelievably irresponsible. If you knew you were definitely going to get the virus, when would you rather it happen, right now or a year from now? Sweden is essentially saying it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER70> > We really can't do much right now, so fuck it"

For many people it's more of "I can take my chances relying on the government when I'm not allowed to work" or "I can take my chances catching a virus that is probably coming for me anyway"

Locking down doesn't terribly help vulnerable populations. It's only advantage is that it keeps people who were less likely to catch it to begin with from catching it, and as a result reduces the hospital load.

Here in Iowa the majority of outbreaks are either in nursing homes or meat packing plants. Locking down does nothing to help them. We could shut down the meat packing plants, but then we kill the food supply chain, which is a disaster for everyone. Nursing homes are basically sitting ducks no matter what.

If it's a fire we can't put out except by letting it burn through, then our best choice is to open up to the point that we are burning at maximum capacity. Hospitals here are laying off workers because they aren't allowed to do anything except wait for a crash of Covid-19 patients that so far hasn't come.

If the bottleneck is the hospitals like people have been saying all along, then hospitals being so empty they can't even pay their staff means we have gone to far.

<comment><USER33> Do you have any links to reports of hospital layoffs? I too live in the Midwest and haven't seen any, though midwestern news sites are atrocious unless it has to do with football.

<comment><USER70> There have been several stories, including one just yesterday where one of the main hospital groups in the state (Unity Point Health) is laying off / furloughing employees.

Here is a story directly related to it though [1].

"""

"The loss of revenue over the last few weeks due to the inability to provide non-emergency care is destabilizing core health services in rural America," the NRHA said.

"""

[1] [https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/small-town-hospitals- ar...](https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/small-town-hospitals-are-closing- just-coronavirus-arrives-rural-america)

Edit:

Here [2] is a link to a "live blog" post, so it's sort of a moving target, but under "11:00 am Tuesday" there is this headline:

"UnityPoint Health announces cuts to staff hours and pay"

[2] [https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/liveblog-tyson-foods- su...](https://www.iowapublicradio.org/post/liveblog-tyson-foods-suspends- waterloo-operations-iowa-bars-and-restaurants-project-closures)

<comment><USER33> Okay, you said "Hospitals here are laying off workers because they aren't allowed to do anything except wait for a crash of Covid-19 patients that so far hasn't come." You're in Iowa, yet the first link is an extremely small hospital in Tennessee. The second link refers to a Unitypoint Health which has operations in several states.

Hospitals are losing revenue for elective surgery. UP Health is cutting doctors pay 15%, and furloughing some other employees. Not sure if those are medical providers or administrative staff.

And saying that we're waiting for "a crash of Covid-19 patients that so far hasn't come." is not factually accurate, even in the Midwest. I can name several hospitals in Nebraska that are so full, they're using the ER for non- COVID patients since the COVID patients have filled entire wings.

Here's an article about Grand Island, one of Nebraska's hotspots. The article is 8 days old, and the situation has become worse.

[https://www.omaha.com/livewellnebraska/our-resources-are- bei...](https://www.omaha.com/livewellnebraska/our-resources-are-being-tested- grand-island-hospitals-icu-is-filling-up- fast/article_b2d1cf40-c2b1-5688-8059-af65a0cdd330.html)

For Omaha/Bellevue, Bellevue Medical Center is using the ER due to a lack of rooms.

<comment><USER70> Here is another article about hospital layoffs [1]

As to the number of patients, it is highly regional. This is the official state of Iowa Coronavirus info page [2].

My coworker's wife is a doctor here in Story county. My neighbor is a nurse at the clinic across the street from my house. Both have said business is way down and they are having trouble finding enough work to fill their time.

My mom is recently retired from the hospital in Mitchell county. She fills in for people in her old department when they are short staffed. She said last week what would normally have been a ten hour day for her took two hours to complete.

We are strangling the majority of hospitals because the minority are overrun. That isn't sustainable.

[1] [https://www.vox.com/2020/4/8/21213995/coronavirus-us- layoffs...](https://www.vox.com/2020/4/8/21213995/coronavirus-us-layoffs- furloughs-hospitals)

[2] [https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/](https://coronavirus.iowa.gov/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really think this is a case of It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his not feeling responsible for the deaths of thousands of his country people depends on him refusing to understand it.

</comment><comment><USER71> "We are in the middle of the epidemic"

I'd love to know what metric he's basing that statement on

<comment><USER72> The day with the most COVID-19 deaths [so far] in Sweden was yesterday. Sounds like the middle to me. Or maybe the upswing.

<comment><USER12> Where are you getting that from? FHM's Covid-19 tracker [1] shows the most deaths occurring on 8/4\. Of course, because there's a lag in the reporting that is likely to change over time. Either way, the data for yesterday is too incomplete to make any statements about yet.

[1] [https://fohm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/6...](https://fohm.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/68d4537bf2714e63b646c37f152f1392)

<comment><USER48> Two different ways to present the deaths: attributed to the date of death, or attributed to the date they were reported by FHM.

<comment><USER12> That makes sense, though I would advice against the latter way since it will show massive dips and spikes due to variation in reporting. Notably, the reports dip every weekend and there was a huge dip over Easter that took ages to get caught up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> When a future article is written about the dangers of being contrarian to get attention, that same picture of Anders Tegnell will be just below the headline. His parents should have spent more time with him.

<comment><USER74> Please don't post nasty, empty things to HN. We've already had to ask you not to do this kind of thing.

Maybe you don't owe Swedish epidemiologists in Nature any better, but you owe this community better when you're posting here. Please stick to [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

<comment><USER73> > We've already had to ask you not to do this kind of thing.

When did it become HN policy to cherry-pick long ago examples from among a plethora of highly-regarded comments like that? Pretty clearly other users think I've paid any debt to this community since whatever incident you're referring to (and I don't remember any) many times over. Bringing it up like this seems pretty empty and nasty in itself.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is HSBCNET down for you now? - <AUTHOR>

i find this a bit odd and unfortunate for a bank of this stature to be " temporarily unavailable due to a scheduled system maintenance, regular service will resume shortly. We regret any inconvenience caused."<p>[ Update ] strangely enough.. when i tried it on FFox it worked. On Chrome no dice. <comment><USER2> Useful site for testing things like this: [http://isup.me](http://isup.me)

<comment><AUTHOR> yep but not for banking since the failure happens after you login. HSBCNET is probably the worst online experience ive ever had hands down. Their UI is from 1994</comment></comment>


Radioactivity in Tobacco - <AUTHOR> https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactivity-tobacco <comment><USER2> > Tobacco farmers use fertilizer to help their crops grow. These fertilizers > contain a naturally-occurring radionuclide, radium. Radium radioactively > decays to release radon gas, which then rises from the soil around the > plants. As the plant grows, the radon from fertilizer, along with naturally- > occurring radon in surrounding soil and rocks, cling to the sticky hairs on > the bottom of tobacco leaves, called trichomes. Radon later decays into the > radioactive elements lead-210 and polonium-210. Rain does not wash them > away. Polonium-210 is an alpha emitter and carries the most risk.

Isn't this true of every plant we cultivate and put into our bodies? Or is there something particular about tobacco trichromes and Radon? Or tobacco- specific fertilizers? Inhalation vs. ingestion? This is all coming on the heels of learning yesterday that everyone has like 20-60 lbs of lead in their back yard: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23039020)

<comment><USER3> Tobacco leaves have sticky hairs on their underside, which is what makes them different from other crops: it's these hairs that absorb the radon and prevent it from being washed away with water. Also, the type of fertilizer used for Tobacco might be different than fertilizers used for other crops.

<comment><USER4> No, many plants have these AFAIK. Tomato leaves are pretty sticky. Potatoes too IIRC. Happens that both of these are in the same family as tobacco though.

I just realised your point that tobacco is a leaf crop unlike spuds and toms, so ok, point taken.

<comment><USER5> Tobacco is a lot more sticky than most other crops, to the point that it has been hypothesised to be a semi-carnivorous plant. Insects actually get caught in them, it's just unknown of the plant actually actively digests them. That's also why harvesting tobacco is not very pleasant, with all the stuff stuck on their leaves.

<comment><USER4> Actually I've heard exactly the same - including the conclusion of vegetal carnivory - for tomatoes too.

Surprising number of links here: [https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=tomatoes%20carnivorous%20stick...](https://duckduckgo.com/html?q=tomatoes%20carnivorous%20sticky)

If you pick on, this [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/attack-of- the-kil...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/attack-of-the-killer- tomatoes-1834638.html)

<comment><USER6> Bean leaves also have sharp protrusions, I understand. Probably for defense against insects more than carnivory. Freshly picked bean leaves placed on the floor are supposed to be a defense against bedbugs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very nearly useless because it doesn't give the range of dose rates they see in tobacco (am I missing them!?). Low radiation doses are normal and natural and have been part of life forever. High doses from concentrated stuff can cause trouble. So what range are we dealing with here!?

When you have detectors capable of seeing a single atom decaying, quantitative dose rates are always required to have a meaningful and useful conversation.

<comment><USER8> Incorrect. There is no such thing as safe dose with Radon. You're thinking of gamma rays and 50mSv/year safe limit. You won't find safe limit for Radon. There are guidelines when you should be very concerned, but there is no safe limit.

It decays into radioactive lead, and once we breath it in, it's hard to get rid of, and stays in our bodies.

<comment><USER9> I have a hard time making sense of this. Would it mean 1 atom of Rn is always fatal for any individual? The fact that it accumulates in the body doesn't mean it is fatal at any dose.

<comment><USER10> No, of course not, but Radon is highly radioactive and extremely small amounts are enough to measurably elevate your risk of cancer. We're talking numbers like a few million molecules in a room.

<comment><USER11> We need to be more specific: Radon is a gas that goes through alpha decay. It is this specific combination that makes it dangerous. The gaseous form enables easy ingestion by breathing and alpha particles are extremely damaging at short ranges - sub-mm in solid matter. The dead outer skin layer is normally able to perfectly absorb alpha particles which make most emitters effectively harmless. Ingested alpha emitters are different as the emitted alpha particle enters living cells immediately. At that point it is a game of chance whether something gets destroyed or altered that is important for cell reproduction. Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human body.

<comment><USER10> > Also, ingested radioactive emitters are impossible to remove from the human > body.

I think that's only true for things we don't metabolize?

<comment><USER11> Right. I should have rather said that there are no medical treatments that can remove ingested radioactive emitters in any meaningful way.

<comment><USER6> Chelation has been used to remove ingested Am, Pu, and Cm. It takes a while, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Every year 8 million people die because of tobacco. In the US alone, the number of deaths (due to tobacco) per year is close to half a million. Similarly between 4-7 million people die due to air pollution. Ironically, that does not alarm anyone, that does not cause lockdowns, that does not require flattening the curve. The numbers don't lie - global lockdowns that led to significant drop in air pollution may have coincidentally saved more lives and helped mother nature heal.

<comment><USER13> Smoking is a choice.

<comment><USER14> Secondhand (passive) smoking often isn't. :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is radium only present in tobacco fertilizers? What separates tobacco fertilizers from other plant fertilizers? Am I at risk for eating tomatoes grown with normal off-the-shelf fertilizer?

<comment><USER16> Radium is also present in Brazil Nuts. Some plants aggregate chemical elements more than others.

We use them to linearize the energy scale in lower-background germanium detectors. Grocery-store potassium chloride sets our energy calibration.

The bad thing about radium in tobacco, I am told, is that the alpha-emitting radium (or the daughters) tends to aggregate in the lungs. Alphas do a lot of nearby damage, hence a mechanism for lung cancer.

I still eat Brazil nuts without a second thought, even though I've measured the gammas...

<comment><USER17> > Grocery-store potassium chloride sets our energy calibration.

I'm guessing this gives a new meaning for the phrase "banana for scale"

<comment><USER16> Could be, though the KCl is a better standard. We know how much KCl we have, and the natural abundance of K40 is well-known.

You'd need a dedicated campaign to assess the potassium abundance in the "standard" banana before you could use it at better than ~100+% errorbars.

The salt-substitute shaker is probably a <5% standard, and we've been using the same one for years.... :).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hate to be that person but... does the cannabis plant have similar properties?

<comment><USER18> I believe it would since cannabis also has sticky trichromes on its bud and surrounding leaves.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Toxic chemicals in tobacco smoke are the main reason cigarettes cause cancer, but radiation also may play a part." That's the best that EPA can do here? Is there really no data?

<comment><USER7> No one has conclusively shown that radiation causes or does not cause cancer at low doses, on the order of the world's variation of the natural background radiation dose. There are lots of data. It is noisy.

<comment><USER20> It may even be healthy[1]. It stands to reason that organisms that evolved in a radioactive environment would have some physiological ability to compensate and that it would follow the general adaptation pattern. Mithridatism is very real after all.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis)

<comment><USER6> Or, it may be even more dangerous at low doses than LNT implies. The data are too noisy to tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Also polonium. [https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/radiation/smoking.htm)

</comment><comment> mark-r Bananas are radioactive too, due to their potassium content. Nobody worries much about those.

<comment><USER21> Radioactivity derived from tobacco is significantly higher than from bananas.

There is a very nice episode of Veritasium (science divulgation YouTube channel) which shows exactly this together with other "well known" radioactive sources (e.g. Chernobyl, Fukushima, Marie Curie's office etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Radioactivity in Meth. The devices and instrument used in the production of Meth have been seen to contain a lot of unclean particles and may be the cause for users to get sick

</comment><comment><USER23> Has this been measured in tobacco-based vape liquid?

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this applicable to vape salts as well?

<comment><USER17> I'm guessing they're mostly synthetic so, probably not.</comment></comment>


Ask: Anyone else annoyed with digital software downloads? - <AUTHOR>

As someone who formats their laptop 1-2 times per year I am completely frustrated with digital software downloads. I want the actual disk so I can reload the software without worrying that I will not be able to reinstall the purchased software without a hassle. Have you seen the price of photoshop? ouch! With digital software downloads, do activation keys have a life span? Three times? Anyone else want to bring back the physical disk? <comment><USER2> Nope, sorry. When I download software install packages, I tend to back them up myself. First it was to CDs, then DVDs and now on my Drobo and Dropbox.

The activation keys generally do not expire as long as the activation servers exists. Older software that never activated online works so long as you have the correct key.

I've been in a no-clutter kick for the last few years. In fact, I just moved & emptied out my storage unit into my new garage. I'll be spending the next few months selling off a wall of boxes of books, CDs and movies. The less physical media around the better.</comment>


Bayesianism - <AUTHOR> http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=4127 <comment><USER2> This really doesn't make sense. He's treating all possible theories as if they're disjoint events in a single random variable, but most of them would be better modeled jointly as separate variables, most pairs of which would be considered either independent or conditionally independent. It seems to me like this leads the math in a very different direction, one where even infinite theories don't drive any probabilities toward an asymptotic zero.

So, what was the author's point? That Bayesian statistics are irrational? Or that they can be misinterpreted and misapplied in ridiculous ways?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why should all events have non-zero probability? So that you don't divide by zero when applying Bayes theorem? Why would you condition on a zero probability event to start with? I find all the arguments between bayesianism/frequentist quite boring. If you want to use a prior go ahead, if not, good for you. Whatever.

PD: I actually love SMBC

<comment><USER4> I'm assuming it's simple common sense. After all, a Boltzmann brain is always a possibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amusing, but if you add up an infinite number of infinitely small quantities what do you get?

<comment><USER6> I know this one! An integral!

<comment><USER5> Haha. Good point. Of course, integration requires a continuous function. I expect it would be very difficult to validate that assumption over the field of hypothesis probabilities.

An integral is the _function_ of doing that. Whether or not you can get a valid answer depends on the domain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's OK he's just taking a nap.</comment>


Are the new elevators bad design? (Norman) - <AUTHOR> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/are_the_new_elevators_bad_design.html

<comment><USER2> We have these in the 33 story building where I work. They can be frustrating, and fantastic. Hopefully one of these days I'll figure out the "cheat" codes to skip the bidding system that occurs to determine which elevator to summon first.</comment>


Student Debt Giant Navient to Borrowers: You're on Your Own - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-03/student-debt-giant-navient-to-borrowers-you-re-on-your-own <comment><USER2> > There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the > consumer... Navient says its public statements encouraging borrowers to > contact the company didn't mean it would act in their best interest.

So, pardon in advance for the vulgar language, but why the fuck is this OK? From _any_ company?

I'm getting real damn sick and tired of "what the big print gives, the spidery print takes away" and how we're all just supposed to be OK with this, as if this is how the world works or some crap.

If your public advertising--especially, but not limited to, when administering a service on behalf of the government--explicitly says "call us and we will help you," your company should not then be able to turn around and say "well, caveat emptor for calling us, sucker." Meanwhile, the handful of agencies devoted to trying to help the individual get any kind of a fair shake from the company "provider" that _massively outguns_ any one individual customer, are all under attack from all sides as being "too heavy handed." (I love the CFPB, in case you can't tell.)

Oh, and this whole "consumer" crap? I'm not a "consumer," I'm a _customer_. I'm not consuming anything from a financial services provider, I'm using their services. Stop with the idea that all of us are just mindless drones, eating our Pac Man-like dots on the way to a swift end, and maybe get back to the idea that real people are on the other end of those faceless account numbers.

(FWIW, this applies to every company with mandatory, binding arbitration clauses, including the oh-so-enlightened participants in Y Combinator. Don't restrict my ability to hold you to your side of the agreement while reserving all rights to pound me into the sand at your leisure.)

<comment><USER3> >I'm getting real damn sick and tired of "what the big print gives, the spidery print takes away"

I propose "the bigger the print, the stronger the statement". Therefore, if you make one claim in 24 point and then attempt to rescind or modify it in 8 point, the 24 is legally binding because it was larger and so nullified the smaller. This also means that if you want to place limitations (like 'one per customer' etc) on an offer you make in print, those will have to be printed in an equal font in order to be valid.

<comment><USER4> I was thinking about this the other day looking at a billboard, talking about how Alive/Bob/Carol wasa winner! at the local casino, with a tiny 'play responsibly' box huddled in the corner. I don't have a strong opinion about gambling but I do care about externalities, and I was amused by the idea that some percentage of billboards (reflective of the incidence of problematic gambling) should feature Alive, Bob and Carol losing everything to their great despair, but with the same logo and typesetting choices as the positive advertising.

More seriously, I think first amendment protections for commercial speech are too generous. Game theory tells us that perverse incentives will often win out, and while it's tempting to fall back on _caveat emptor_ it's also a cop out. The reality is that the huge and increasing information asymmetry between organizations and individuals leads inevitably to inequitable outcomes; further, it's _entirely predictable_ that by swamping the recipient of a contract with reading material they'll just go ahead and agree to it because it's not obvious that it will be worth the effort of analysis. I can't remember the last time I read a EULA, and I _like_ reading contracts and legal documents.

Free business idea: a fiduciary AI that parses contracts, simplifies contractual terms for maximum clarity, and rates contracts on their adherence to/deviation from industry norms.

<comment><USER5> For casinos make the odds of winning play a part in the adverts.

99.9% of the casino adds have to show people sad about losing - before we get 1 winning ad

<comment><USER6> Nah, just require them to disclose the odds for any games of chance.

"Visit Golden Palace _photo of a roulette wheel_ for a 46% chance of breaking even!"

<comment><USER7> Wouldn't help. Lottery tickets have the odds of winning printed right on them, and people still buy them.

<comment><USER8> Spending ten bucks on a lottery ticket doesn't hurt most people while winning the lottery can have a live-changing impact. Every action is rational for a properly chosen value function.

<comment><USER9> Yep. I'll spend 8-16 bucks a month on lottery tickets. It's what I use spare cash left in my wallet for. It's not going to break the bank and I'm likely not going to win, but it's a nice pipe dream and where I live a decent amount of the money goes to the environment.

<comment><USER10> Playing the lottery is more paying for the fantasy of winning than actually expecting to. It makes for some fun office chats, and worth a couple of extra bucks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's mind-blowing how the majority of high school students are lied to each year about the ROI of college. The internet has re-written the rules, and high school educators don't know how to teach that.

I would have benefited so much more from a program that taught how to be self- sufficient and the major, major benefits of living debt free.

Context: $150k in student loans - lucky enough to have an electrical engineering corporate job to (minimally) pay the bills.

EDIT: More Context: I went to an engineering focused private university, borrowed my way through the whole thing (housing, food, everything), parents didn't pay a dime. Stupid? Yes.

<comment><USER12> College degrees still mostly have a good ROI. The huge lie is the ROI on pedigree, prestige, whatever you want to call it. Kids are still being told to apply to expensive small private schools and to worry about the financial aid process later. Kids are told to find the right fit.

None of that really matters. The big ROI is just getting a degree or the type of degree. There are few elite schools that have a much better ROI but they tend to be very generous with financial aid anyway.

Also, community colleges are a great resource. As long as community colleges exist, we shouldn't even allow student loans for the freshman and junior year. You can do your first two years while working part time to pay the very minor tuition. Then you can transfer to another school. Every flagship state school takes tons of transfers. My buddy transferred from a podunk community college to Stanford.

And when you transfer you should go to a cheap school. Unless you get a great college scholarship, it should be your state's flaghship public school.

Nortwestern is a great school, but not 150k better than UIUC (and for engineering its not better period). If you get a nice financial aid award, great, but otherwise don't go. My college counselor in high school was telling people to pay full price for DePaul instead of UIUC just because they wanted a "city experience." No, that's not worth it.

<comment><USER13> Depends on the job. If you want to get on the US Supreme Court, you have to go to Yale or Harvard.

But in general yes, it's a good idea to shop around. It also depends on the field you want. CSU Northridge is a pretty marginal school, but it's great at geology.

<comment><USER12> Law is a big outlier in general. There the degree doesn't matter at all, only the prestige. But I still wouldn't recommend paying 200k to go to Yale if Northwestern offered you a full ride. There is one SCOTUS job every 4-5 years.

For law, I'd say get a scholarship or aid at a great school or don't go at all.

In many ways grad school is an outlier in general. It's often just not worth it to get a PhD from a less respected institution. The difference is that most PhD programs pay you, not nice versa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "[Navient pointed out]...more than 40 percent of loan balances it services for the Education Department are enrolled in income-based repayment plans."

 __Over 40% __of people with US Government-sponsored student loans--which were presumably taken out in order to advance the career prospects of the borrower --are not being paid sufficiently to repay their loans on the basis of their original issuance, _and this is presented as a good thing_.

Unbelievable.

<comment><USER15> I don't think you understood the article.

Navient is a debt collector. They were sold loans owned by the US Dept of Ed (or hired by the department of ed maybe?)

"more than 40 percent of loan balances it services...." means that out of the loans that the US Dept of Ed decided it can't collect on anymore -- many of those are using the option that would benefit them the most.

The article talks about Navient saying one thing: "we want to help all of the borrowers because they are actually not just borrowers but citizen/constituents"; while doing another: "thanks for calling Navient, having trouble paying your loan? Just hit the loan-pause-button and we will pause your loan for 24 months. No, we will not tell you this but you could have asked for the 'smaller loan payments because you're not earning much' button'."

<comment><USER16> > out of the loans that the US Dept of Ed decided it can't collect on anymore

Nope - Navient isn't a collector, it's a servicing company.

<comment><USER17> It's both[0]. But what it's not doing is duping aspiring college graduates to take out these loans in the first place. As detestable as their predation on the delinquent may be, they're not pumping up the loan bubble.

[https://www.navient.com/about/who-we- are/services/](https://www.navient.com/about/who-we-are/services/)

<comment><USER18> On the other hand, my loan servicer was changed to some unbelievably poorly managed servicing company years after I had graduated (not one of the big 3-4 companies): think login without ssl, mailing me paper with my SSN printed on it, couldn't get a person on the phone after waiting on hold for hours.

I never choose to make any financial deal with that company and I never would have given any choice. The net result was just that I made it my absolute top priority to pay off the rest of my loans held by them (which was also a very frustrating process, with several rounds of extra interest and surprise tiny fees and more inability to get someone on the phone) but other people wouldn't have that luxury.

<comment><USER19> This sounds like ACS

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> While I appreciate that people are sour about student debt, I don't think Navient, qua big business, should behave in any other way.

I personally think public universities should be free and highly selective, rather than the opposite. But I also think taking out loans with no plan to repay them is criminally stupid. If the education product being sold is fraudulent, go after the fraudulent institution (as has been done). But the bank? They're just a bank. And no, I don't think it's good that we have banks financing student debt, but I sure as hell don't blame banks for doing it.

This is a fabulous example of why privatizing what should be a public service is a terrible idea, yes, and this is the ridiculous game we get to play as a result... blaming the bank for playing hardball over money. Really?

<comment> white-flame _> privatizing_

The core of the issue is still the university tuition rates, and universities involved are usually not privatized. These public institutions have become profit centers, benefiting from the captive audience of young career seekers, and cranking up administration overhead costs in their budgets to absorb the increased amounts of loan money available to prospective students.

Loans are always hardball business, and student loans are no different (although this case is clearly false advertising). The fact that the government sought to get more university degrees into the hands of citizens by increasing loan availability and size is the short-sighted idiocy that helped bootstrap this mess.

<comment><USER20> It's a vicious cycle imo. (cheap money -> higher tuition -> political pressure for more cheaper money -> ...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> My wife and I have dealt with these goons before. Their favorite trick is missing a payment, leaving it on a desk and then despoiting it weeks later, after charging fees. Or, if you have 2 loans, they are sure you never pay any of them down, even if you literally tell them (pay loan #1 all of this months payments, ending it). They purposefully screw up...

All roads lead to money in politics allowing them to do whatever they want and not have repercussions.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why is a student loan servicer any different from a mortgage servicer? I don't go to my mortgage servicer for leniency or charity; why should my student loan servicer be any different?

If we want student loan servicer behavior to change, we need to legislate it. Just like we did (or didn't, depending on your point of view) for mortgage servicers.

<comment><USER23> Not to actually argue for or against, but mortgage holders don't hand 5 or 6 figures of unsecured debt to an 18 year old without any due diligence on if the loan has a chance of being repaid.

<comment><USER22> Student loan servicers are guaranteed repayment by statute. They are in a much easier business than mortgage lenders.

That said, Navient is in the business of collecting on debts, and they have every right to do so within the bounds of the law. They don't owe borrowers anything.

<comment><USER23> And those statues are the only reason student loans exist. It's a laughable idea, at the scale they are now anyway, otherwise.

I don't personally expect Navient to do anything better than follow the law; I don't expect any help or counseling from them. In fact, I'd be suspect of any such counsellings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> when they took over my loans from salliemae they told us (in writing) that auto-pay would transition.... then it didn't transition, and they tried to ding me for a missed payment. what a nightmare. ultimately my issue was resolved, but only after i filed a complaint with a team at the federal student aid office that handles disputes that cannot be resolved through the lender:

[https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay- loans/disputes/prepare/co...](https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay- loans/disputes/prepare/contact-ombudsman)

then a navient person in that department reached out to me almost immediately.

Edit:

You can also file complaints for general consumer financial help here:

[https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Navient is consistently the worst company I've ever dealt with, including Comcast.

<comment><USER26> I always pay the minimum due balance on time. Haven't explored any other features. Right now it seems ok to me.

<comment><USER25> I meant specifically in dealing with their customer service being knowledgeable and honest. Of course their online payment tools work properly, that's how they make money :). Suggestion- depending on your loan details, you may be able to pay down debt faster by paying the 1/2 the minimum twice a month. You're spending the same amount, but cutting down some of the interest every time which will reduce the principle faster over time and hence also reduce future interest accrued.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe this is tangential but this is a theme that seems to have infected schools themselves as well. I was recently swindled (yes, straight up swindled) by my university. I go to a uc (not riverside or merced) and the student health and wellness center literally swindled me out of almost a hundred dollars by using fine print. To protect my anonyminity i wont go into details but rest assured a called every authority i could and nothing was done. Consider that and then look at the swelling administration, lack of class availability, the sheer cost of attending and finally and most importantly the lack of meaningful learning. Its all a huge scam. But you need a degree if you want to have a high quality of life (unless youre exceptional in some way which the average dude is of course not) so nobody can do a damn thing about it. Fuck this shitty sytem.

</comment><comment><USER28> >"What this means for the Education Department is that it needs to fire Navient," Bergeron said. "Damn the costs."

This is literally how costs go up. "OMG we need this, damn the costs" "OMG why does everything cost so much, why is the debt so high?"

</comment><comment><USER29> Everyone, if you are with any major big loan lender, please consider refinancing under So-Fi or others.

<comment><USER30> I've heard you lose a lot of rights refinancing that way.

<comment><USER29> Really? Any links/citations/posts? Curious about this.

Also debatable as to whether you had those rights in the first place (see: this thread)

<comment><USER12> You lose the ability to use the (very generous) income based repayment plans.

<comment><USER29> Ah interesting. Didn't know that. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Honestly, this is a private corp acting in its own best interests under the law. Everyone here complaining that Navient is horrible... this is what capitalism is. If you don't like the law, talk to your congressman/senators and get the law changed.

IMHO the schools are the bad guys here.. they are taking advantage of a situation where the government will just hand loans to everyone and there is no way they can lose. Why not just make an undergraduate degree a public good at this point. Taxpayers are already paying to bail all these people out, it is partially a public good already except the students who hold all the debt have to go through hell and Navient gets a cut of the taxpayer money in the process.

<comment><USER17> Exactly. This is blaming the vultures who pick at the carcasses for the predators who set the traps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Government launches a mass amount of federal student loans, demand skyrockets, offer does not, prices skyrocket. Basic economical interference.

</comment><comment><USER33> So does anyone know where to find stats on student debt amounts outstanding, the maturity schedules, and the proportion of variable rate to fixed rate debt? I'm curious to see how vulnerable the country is to default risk should interest rates move upward or some other shock to the economy take place.

</comment><comment><USER34> Anyone here know if this whole mess is going to end badly?This is something I google a lot as I kind of don't want to pay, but I suffer from selection bias and HN usually has good insight on things.

<comment><USER35> Why not focus on prospering instead of avoiding dues?

</comment></comment><comment> koga-ninja The way I see it, maybe there is a misunderstanding going on, Or maybe Navient's publicity materials are too touchy-feely.

According to the article, Navient is a private company, So shouldn't they have an expectation of return on Investment. This is not the U.S. government, which may Forgive debt.

Another point is why the hunger for expensive education, Which may be a Marxist critique, but since when did A credential make you a better software designer.

People are dying all over the globe, and we are worried About the top 20 percent wage earners of the superpower USA.

</comment><comment><USER36> Institutionalized debt slavery.

</comment><comment><USER37> When public agencies push for more than kickback money, they always run the risk of being declared unconstitutional in a costly court battle that at best case undermines the agencies' budget.

The CFPB is young and they might have bat higher than they should have.

Take a page out of the SEC playback and settle for kickbacks.

</comment><comment><USER38> Calling Anonymous. Retrain your targets.

</comment><comment><USER39> So we shouldn't believe something an enormous corporation says? Shocking.

<comment><USER40> I take it you have no student debt?

<comment><USER39> No, I don't. But why would that matter? This is yet another story about yet another enormous business lying about putting the interests of their "customers" first.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Student loan money is awesome. Go to a state school, pay for school with PELL grants and working. Take the loan money and bank/invest/refinance stuff with it. The interest doesn't start accruing until after graduation so until then it's free money. The worst thing you can do with it is actually pay for school with it, especially an expensive private school for a degree with uncertain job prospects.

<comment><USER42> Investing with borrowed money that you legally cannot default on is not a good plan...</comment></comment>


Risk management tool for project teams - <AUTHOR> https://teamsuccess.io/demodashboard <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here, happy to discuss project risk management! :)</comment>


HTC Already Working Around Apple's Smartphone Ban - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/htc_already_working_around_apples_smartphone_ban/ <comment><USER2> The original articles announcing that there was a ban noted that it would be easy to remove the feature well before the deadline, and turning off a feature doesn't exactly seem hard, so this isn't much of a surprise.

But the article I read also said that it was a Google Android feature that Google would also be removing from Android. I wonder which article is correct?

Since I haven't seen any of this auto-linking in my Nexus One, I'm going to guess this was an HTC feature, but if anyone knows, now I'm curious.

<comment><USER3> FTA:

> Apple targeted HTC instead of Google because the data detector feature isn't > a standard part of Android OS. Instead, HTC modified Android to include the > feature with its phones.

So it's probably an HTC Sense feature, as I've only seen it on their customised apps.

Given it's something I used on featurephones 5 years ago I think the whole thing is rather absurd, yet sadly it's one of the more insignificant patent battles that has been happening recently. It's madness.

<comment><USER2> >FTA

I saw that. The other article I read claimed the exact opposite was true. I do tend to believe this one, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Haven't link regexs existed for over a decade with clickable email addresses and URLs? What's so distict about phone #s?</comment>


Webdev Auto-Reload in 12 Kilobytes, Zero Dependencies - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/AugustNagro/serve <comment><AUTHOR> I was served terminal advertisements on a recent Javascript project because its auto-reload dev-dependency pulled in a compromised package. So in retaliation I made my own implementation in Java, with 0 dependencies and low memory usage, using NIO Buffers and FileChannels.

PS: Shameless plug, I'm graduating college late December, and am looking for a job!</comment>


Why isn't hacker news a subreddit on reddit.com? - <AUTHOR>

I mean, Reddit came out of Y Combinator... <comment><USER2> There was an intent on pg's part to set a different forum culture. See the original announcement of this site's founding

<http://ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html>

and discussion of that here.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=189>

See

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

for the welcome message to new participants on HN and

<http://news.ycombinator.com/news>

for the Hacker News guidelines.

See

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1648199>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1049720>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=196751>

for some comments by pg on the history of this site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, that was really informative!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> That's what I wanted originally: a startup subreddit. But (a) Steve took a long time to implement subreddits and (b) I needed an application to test Arc on. So I wrote what was originally called "Startup News."

</comment><comment><USER4> Really? Reddit has lost all integrity with me, since digg imploded all the problems that digg had migrated there way over and the voting system has drawn out the very worst in the digg crowd. I used Reddit from 2006 till later this year where I reached a level of disgust I feel no need to associate myself with it.

Theres a terrible sense of group think there and the karma system creates a sense of validation for bad behavior (especially considering its known for bad moderation). And as many people use multiple sub-reddits this bad behavior has just spilled over everywhere. Reading the comments is like a diary of a mad man, just a pile of sycophants trying so hard to be funny (and generally failing).

Even Something Awful and 4Chan have taken moral high ground against the decadence going on there. I'm not sure if anyone here saw the media recently when SA users decided to hunt out pedos in reddit and took it to the main stream media. There is a great thread on SA covering it step by step and Reddit really doesn't come out looking that great.

Its a site which needs a seriously clean out and serious moderation, but I suspect it to late for that, they have created a tone and it will stick. Just like every other community has a tone its known for.

</comment><comment><USER5> I came to Hacker News to get away from Reddit. I'm not even a programmer, I just got sick of the deviation to the norm. Also, what would really be the point. It would be akin to having a slashdot or digg subreddit.

There's no harm in creating a Hacker News subbreddit. I just don't think it would be too popular.

<comment><AUTHOR> The real point for me is that Reddit is a far better website - it's just nicer to use.

If not a subreddit, is there any reason why Hacker News couldn't use a forked version of the open source Reddit code?

<comment><USER6> Is it really better to use? HN is incredibly simple, and everything works as expected. There's a few UI quirks with reddit that I don't particularly like. For example: I don't think it's obvious to a new user how to submit a story. Second (and this might be a personal preference) clicking the reddit logo in the header should take you to the main page for that subreddit, not reddit.com. Particularly when said subreddit has a customized logo.

<comment><USER7> [Unknown or expired link.]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I die a little inside every time I see:

       Unknown or expired link.

My only issue with HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> There actually IS a subreddit, of sorts, for some of these kinds of posts. /r/startup(s) - I can't quite recall if it was singular or plural.

It's a pretty barren subreddit, however. I never noticed a whole lot of new material going through there, so I stopped checking it.

Also, completely makes sense to do this outside of something like a Reddit, which already has an established community and sense of policy. Doing his own project, his stated reasons aside, gives PG the ability to set whatever tone he thinks is appropriate for the direction of the site. While that may not have been his original intention, I'm sure it's come in handy for him more than once.

Plus, it's fun to build new things from scratch and see if they "stick"

<comment><USER10> There was also a hacker news subreddit[1], but people seem to have abandoned it.

[1] <http://www.reddit.com/r/hackernews>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love hacker news as well as reddit. I have noticed a trend though, and I'm unsure if it's intentional, or just a result of how both sites are used: 1.) The stories on Hacker News are mainly about start ups (not all, but most). 2.) The users of /r/javascript, or /r/programming (and other programming related subreddits) are very helpful when it comes to finding answers to programming related questions.

I find myself pursuing reddit more often because I am not involved in a start up, or have any interest in starting a start up. I just like to code, and reddit fuels my interest more than hacker news does in that regard. I'm sure I'll get "downvoted" to hell for saying that.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a valid idea. There's many times where there's things I'd like to discuss that is similar to, or related to, topics covered by Hacker News, but that I don't post here because I don't want to dilute the topics here with things that some people might not want.

A HN subreddit (or a subreddit with this purpose, not necessarily tied to the Hacker News name; maybe there is one already?) could solve this.

</comment><comment><USER12> #startups is the most popular subreddit for HNers. You'll find some dislike for HN though. Moderation/YC rejection issues mostly.</comment>


What Will It Take to Make Finance More Gender-Balanced? - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/12/what-will-it-take-to-make-finance-more-gender-balanced <comment><USER2> If feminism means being fair to both men and women, then I am a feminist -- though I don't like the bias of the term.

But what actually happens? Every role where men seem to be doing well, an effort is made to promote women, using "outcome based" metric. On the other hand, where women are at an advantage, nothing is done. Eventually, the work environment becomes toxic for men, just as primary schools are already becoming for boys.

I love women and girls. But let's just treat each human being as a unique individual, not as part of a census category.

</comment><comment><USER3> I moved from a software engineer position in the games industry to a similar one in finance.

My current environment has a better gender balance than my old environment. However, reading CVs of potential candidates for roles on my team, my overall experience is the same as it has been throughout my career: the proportion applying for software engineering positions is low.

Few women apply to join or lead software engineering teams in finance. Few women applied to join or lead software engineering teams in the games industry (the balance on the art team swung the other way, however, and QA was about 50/50). Few women applied to the embedded company I had my first job at. In college, there were over a hundred male students studying the same major in my year, and one (sic) female student. In high school, the computer lab was filled with boys. You have to go all the way back to middle school age to see anything like gender parity.

This is all anecdote, and it's software engineering - I'm sure the situation in other parts of finance will be different.

But I suggest at least part of what is happening happens much earlier in life than the finance institution, and effort must be applied there if we genuinely want to help.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the article misses one major factor. What investors want.

I can't see the majority of investors going for a fund headed by a woman over a man. That puts a hard limit on how far they can rise within the organisation.

To be clear I'm not saying its a conscious choice, just that if presented with 2 identical funds, investors will gravitate to the male led one.

I wonder how passive investing will change this though. As the humans increasingly become salesmen rather than actually investing money, will gender become less important?</comment>