Ask HN: Interesting iOS App Ideas? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for something fun to work on in the evenings these days. I figured I'd give iOS development a try but really have no idea what to build.
I'm not really too good at graphics so games are mostly out of the question. Other than that I'm open to pretty much anything.
So lets hear it. What ideas do you have? <comment><USER2> "Drink Diary" - give a rough calculation of the alcohol drunk over one week. Users input the strength (if known) of the drink, and the size (if known) of the drink.

The app returns a rough estimate of Units drunk over the week, and links to sensible drinking advice.

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19509434>)

([http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland- politics-1954...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland- politics-19549255))

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19554316>)

(<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-19512420>)

Safe drinking advice: ([http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/846.aspx?CategoryID=87&SubCa...](http://www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/846.aspx?CategoryID=87&SubCategoryID=871))

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really interesting idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Postal rate calculator. Calculate postage given a package dimensions / weight, tells you which carrier to use (USPS, UPS, FedEx, etc.). There is one app like this already in the store, but it's not very good (and USA only).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A 'Business Bull' or 'Overheard in the Elevator' app - a tongue-in-cheek buzzword generator for business folk. Here's your data: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/06/19/89-busine...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/06/19/89-business- cliches-that-will-get-any-mba-promoted-to-middle-management-and-make-them- totally-useless/#)

</comment><comment><USER5> The open source software we use for our magazine is always looking for people. If you want to learn Newsstand and create a new branch there might even be an opportunity to make money eventually. <http://bakerframework.com/>

</comment><comment><USER6> Clipboard... an iPad/iPhone app for inspections. All documents you need to go walk around a property or things to look over all in one place (ie Docs, Photos, Notes) but with the flow of actual paper & the ability to just type over or write over anything on the clipboard.

<comment><USER7> We've been working on something along those lines: <https://www.lettingcheck.com/>

There's a long awaited, universal, update coming soon too.

<comment><USER6> nice really like it... could one do something along the lines of hotel rooms?

<comment><USER8> Could you describe the use case? Do you walk in to the room and document the condition so that you don't get charged with fraudulent damage charges later on?

<comment><USER7> I think it would be more suited to hotel management. Not to be used per guest but on a periodic basis to keep track of the conditions of all rooms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For a viral quick-win...'Ryan Gosling Memes' - a meme generator friends can quickly create and share. Or 'Party with Ryan Gosling' - Ryan photobombs your pics (like a hilariously bad photoshop job). (Could be fun, and who am I kidding I'd buy it. Don't judge!)

</comment><comment><USER9> an app that analyzes someone's voice and tells you whether they're lying or not. Doesn't actually have to work, but use some mombo-jumbo scientific language to give it an air of legitimacy.</comment>


Is Shinichi Mochizuki (of ABC conjecture proof fame) behind Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/ted-nelson-claims-hes-figured-out-the-creator-of-bitcoin-shinichi-mochizuki-2013-5

<comment><USER2> Discussion: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733290>

Other sources:

* <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733499>

* <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733497>

* <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5733488>

</comment><comment><USER3> So this is the reasoning behind Ted Nelson's claim that Mochizuki is Nakamoto:

1\. Both are Japanese. Or say they are.

2\. Well, that's got to count for _something_ , right?

3\. Also, they're both smart. _What more do you want?_

LOL. Also, his impression of Sherlock Holmes and Watson is the shit. You know, for a comedic piece, it's a great achievement to have it published on Business Insider as serious. Mr. Nelson's a talented troll. Great laughs were had.</comment>


Show HN: Build data driven stories with drag and drop, SQL and Python - <AUTHOR> https://www.vizbi.com/ <comment><USER2> 1\. Minor 'typo': _Mix and match charts types and maps to tell beautiful_ data _with your data._

2\. I'm not sure what 'story' means in this context. While it sounds good, it makes me uncertain about what Vizbi is and the landing page doesn't really help pin it down. For example 'with or without code' doesn't clarify it.

3\. Don't misunderstand me, I love creative prose and the turn of the phrase. But when I look at a tool, I want to know what it does and why I should care.

4\. I hit the Vizbi page and the headline is two statements which are not clear about what it does and why I should care. Most of my screen is wasted on a picture of hands and a laptop on a desk: it's completely irrelevant to _my_ interests.

5\. Don't misunderstand me, I love graphic design. But here it seems to exist for it's own sake. Just tell me about the product.

6\. Since Vizbi tells stories, tell me the story with Vizbi...this is _showing_ me what it does. [http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05/show-dont- tell.html](http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/05/show-dont-tell.html)

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Vizbi is a tool we built recently. It is similar to Mode Analytics/Periscope Data, but we are proving two things which we hope will differentiate us

1\. Multi language support: We have Python 2 and Python 3 to start, but we are planning to add R and Julia 2\. We support on premise installs

Here are a few storyboards we have built which show what is possible:

* [https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/akshar2/bi-skills-and-job](https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/akshar2/bi-skills-and-job)

* [https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-immigration-201...](https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-immigration-2015)

* [https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-crime-rates](https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-crime-rates)

* [https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-crime-rates](https://app.vizbi.com/#!/public/demo_user/us-crime-rates)</comment>


Ask HN: Net worth of software engineer at retirement? - <AUTHOR> In the best case scenario, what net worth can a typical Google or Facebook engineer (not the highest paid, but the average engineer at Google or Facebook) expect to have if he/she retires at 55?
One estimate I have seen is $1 to $2 million USD, which I think is too low [1]. I would estimate it at at $7 to $14 million USD.
Here's the back-of-the-envelope calculation I used to come up with this number: Annual salary: $250K. Assume 25% tax, which leaves us with $187.5K, which is about $15K per month. Assume $5000 in monthly expenses, which leaves us with $10K per month investable money. (Note: since net worth includes house and 401(k) I have not deducted mortgage or 401(k) payments). So $10K includes those items.) Now use a compound interest calculator [2] to see what $10K per month at 8% interest (assume investment in S&P 500 and allow for some market crashes) will result in, at the end of 30 years. It is about $14 million, which would include your house and your 401(k).
[1] https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-good-software-engineer%E2%80%99s-e-g-working-at-Google-etc-usual-net-worth-by-the-age-of-55 [2] https://www.investor.gov/additional-resources/free-financial-planning-tools/compound-interest-calculator <comment><USER2> $1-2M is ridiculous. You can accumulate that much in 5 years without too much trouble.

The challenge with extrapolating this out to retirement is that tech changes very fast, and fortunes can fall just as rapidly as they rise. Particularly if they're held in stock compensation, which Google and Facebook rely on extensively.

Many Sun Microsystems engineers were worth > $10M at the peak of the dot-com boom. A couple years later and they were insolvent, with tax bills larger than their net worth. A decade after that and their employer didn't exist anymore. Of course, a significant number of them quit and joined Google when their employer's stock crashed, and those folks have net worths > $100M or so.

If you extend out to timescales of 35 years, you not only have to worry about your employer disappearing, but you also have to worry about your industry and municipality disappearing. Right now folks who own houses in the Bay Area are sitting pretty - but what if the Bay Area goes the way of Detroit, with the tech industry obsoleted by foreign competition and houses not sellable at any price? The question isn't quite academic: Detroit had its heyday in 1950, and 35 years later, by 1985, it had lost 40% of its population and its major companies were non-competitive.

<comment><USER3> Haha. I like how modest you are.

If I work my whole life as a software developer, I'll make around that figure. Then you remove the 42% taxes I pay and the fact that I'll likely be a renter my whole life(because buying apartments here is too expensive).

Basically that's the same for everybody in Europe.

<comment><USER4> Fortunately, your healthcare costs will be far lower than in the US (estimated to be at least $100k-200k between retirement and death).

[https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/30/retirement/retirement- healt...](https://money.cnn.com/2015/12/30/retirement/retirement-health-care- costs/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Your tax estimate seems low. Remember that on top of federal tax, there's California income tax, which could hit 10% if you're single[1] (assuming most Google and Facebook employees are in California), plus real estate tax if you own a house. If you have significant income/gains from your investments, that could push you into a higher tax bracket.

Also, your monthly expenses could be significantly higher if you have children (larger home, food, clothing, education, etc.), which most people probably end up having at some point.

Also, does your 8% growth rate on the S&P 500 account for taxes and inflation? (Unless 100% of your savings are in a 401(K), you'll be paying tax.)

[1] [http://www.tax-rates.org/California/income-tax](http://www.tax- rates.org/California/income-tax)

<comment><AUTHOR> S&P 500 actually returned 10% between 1988 and 2018. If you invested $10K in S&P 500 in 1988 it would be worth $205K today. If you use a compound interest calculator you can see this corresponds to 10% growth per year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Assume $5k in monthly expenses? The typical Google or Facebook engineer lives in the Bay area where rent goes for $5k. Tax is not 25%. California and Fed tax is more like 45%. Stop this rubbish. If you are going to answer this at least make it realistic.

<comment><USER2> Rent is only $5K in the Bay Area if you want to live in one of the "luxury" complexes or a single-family home. I pay $2600/month for a 2BR townhome that's about middle-of-the-road in quality. Single engineers can do a lot better by living with roommates; if you're willing to double-up in a 2BR or triple-up in a 3BR you can do about $1200/month. (Some of the units in our complex actually have 4 young men living in a 2BR; they pay $650/month in exchange for living like they're in college again.)

The capital-gains portion of your wealth (which can be appreciable; see below) is taxed at 15% Federally and 10% CA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> As others have mentioned your tax rate is way too low. And do not forget Social Security.

Secondly you have to consider that most peoples spending rises to the level of their income. It takes a lot of will power to cook dinner verses ordering out ... EVERY DAY.

Third are you planning to get married? Have kids? They will ensure your take home pay is about 5% less than what they can spend. Relatives in need? If you got money they have needs.

If you are making $250K a year (20K a month) before taxes, after taxes you are probably pulling in 12K a month. Do you want health insurance? Dental insurance .... If you are pulling in that kind of cash you probably live somewhere expensive - they do not pay that much in Mississippi or Mexico. Rent / mortgage 3K maybe even 4K.

So after rent / mortgage and insurance you are down to at most 7K. Cable? Power? Water? Internet? Game subscriptions? Are you going to drive that old car? Vacation anyone? Oh right you are saving for when you are 55, so you will stay at home for vacation. Add in a gym membership. If you are going to save your money for when you are older, then you will want to keep fit.

So what do you think about those old clothes you wear?

Finally as your investment egg grows, what about the taxes? Yes they charge you income tax on a lot of it. If not now then when you pull it out.

All of that said, you could make a great startup, or join a great start up. Which could make you rich, but that is like the lottery. But that is hope, and hope is not a plan.

To keep from overspending, which would put you in the minority, try to squirel your money away in a retirement fund. You will have to wait to 59.5 to start pulling it, but it has a better chance of being available.

</comment><comment><USER8> Your expenses seem highly optimistic.

As a number of other posters have mentioned, your estimate for tax liability seems pretty low.

You also mention that you included all of your tax mortgage payments as going toward your net worth. Your mortgage payment will include more than just the principle and would want to include that in your estimate for monthly expenses.

If you are not in an expensive city (i.e San Francisco, NYC, etc) 5K could be a very comfortable to live on. In a more expensive city it is still doable but likely won't have as much room for international vacations, luxury cars, etc.

Also, family planning will play a big role in this. Children are expensive, you will need to factor in child care, education etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> Your tax calculation is low I think - looks like $250k would put you in the 33% band, let alone any other regional tax calculations.

$60k/year spending for the rest of your life is very ambitious for a high CoL area. I don't think you're accounting for medical insurance, car ownership, home ownership fees, children, a spouse that earns less than you, etc etc. Costs go up as you get older.

I also don't think you've accounted for inflation.

Please also keep in mind that huge Google/Facebook/Bay Area salaries are a historical anomaly and will not persist throughout your entire career.

</comment><comment><USER10> The general rule of thumb for retirement is to take your expected retirement expenses/month time 25 and have that in your retirement portfolio (cash/stock/bonds/etc). You can then pull out 4% and the money should last you at least 30 years, generally forever. You can check FIRECalc for simulations.

My only thoughts on your situation is you are assuming high return rates, and not a realistic retirement amount. You need to remember, you must pay out of pocket for health care, so budget 1k per person for that.

</comment><comment><USER11> There are too many variables that will change this by as much as an order of magnitude. On the high side, say your timing was good and you made enough money to buy a house around 2012, after working for a few years. You buy a house in the peninsula. By 2018 your house value doubled. Maybe the house market doesn't crash anymore like back in 2009; and it goes up even more in the next few years. Your house went from $1m to $5m by 2022, and your net worth just went up by that much.

On the low side, maybe the economy crashes like in 2000 and 2008, and that takes both your stocks and house with it. Maybe your FAANG comp has mostly been in stocks and you've been keeping them. If you're not keeping everything in cash, you probably just lost 50% of your net worth.

Then there's other factors. Maybe you choose to start a family and have a kid or two. You're making $250k, would you resist the temptation to spend money to make your life easier? It's easy to think you have the discipline to to keep your budget. When you're getting 4 hours of sleep a day, waking up every 3 hours to feed and change diapers, you might think differently and spending $5000/mo on baby care, home care helpers suddenly seem worth it, especially since you can afford it.

Lastly, how many FAANG engineers you know plan to stay in their company for 30 years -- heck, how many even stay more than 5 years? Almost every single FAANG engineer I know don't stay that long. Most are ambitious and try to start a startup after 5-8 years. Maybe a FAANG job is just that boring and no one can take it for very long? They take a hit with low salary for a few years, and then 90% startups fail.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I noticed many people have found flaws in my assumptions and estimates, but nobody wants to post an alternative estimate?

Even if you increase taxes to 40% (in reality even in CA the effective tax rate as opposed to marginal is not that high) and increase expenses to $7K per month (excluding housing), the final net worth still falls in the range I estimated, i.e., north of $7 Million.

Any Facebook or Google engineer reading this, how much do you expect to have when you retire?

</comment><comment><USER12> There is a lot of pessimism here, and some of your estimates (such as taxes) may (or may not!) be a little off.. but achieving something well north of $2 million by 55 is very attainable based on an income of $250k/year. This is why early retirement blogs have grown in popularity in the last 10 years -- many of us in these kinds of situations are more interested in living frugally (I spend much less than $5k/month), saving and investing a huge percentage of income and then retiring after perhaps 10-15 years of work.

</comment><comment><USER13> Here's a networth estimator spreadsheet. Plug in your own numbers to see how much you will have when you retire. (Note: use File > Download as .xlsx to download the spreadsheet)

[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ryu_- mVYxSdJbW8lmf1z...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Ryu_- mVYxSdJbW8lmf1z6tiOdNSYP3HaLu0YnW5-fCo/edit#gid=0)

</comment><comment><USER14> Even if the question is legitimate, I find it a bit sad because it implies you find your current life boring and you expect to be happy with enough money at retirement.</comment>


How Bezo's dick pics might've been exposed - <AUTHOR> https://blog.erratasec.com/2019/02/how-bezos-dick-pics-mightve-been-exposed.html <comment><USER2> I haven't seen anyone talking much lately about the alleged "nude selfie" that Mueller filed under wraps as part of the indictment again the Russian hackers. That was interesting in itself in that disclosing it would have been detrimental to the inquiry/national security, etc.

Who did Mueller get it from? Both Manafort and Cohen's electronic devices were seized, and AMI may have handed stuff over to the investigation as well as part of their immunity deal.

Was this the one and same nude selfie of Jeff Bezo, who seems to be claiming that it was leaked by a Government entity?</comment>


Covid-19: death rate is 0.66% and increases with age, study estimates - <AUTHOR> https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1327 <comment><USER2> Based on Diamond Princess data, where almost everyone was tested, the lower bound of COVID19's IFR (Infection Fatality Rate) should be > 0.5% for many/most countries.

This uses a data source independent from what the paper uses. Here's the calculation...

Current Diamond Princess' CFR (Case Fatality Rate) is at 11 deaths / 712 infected = ~1.54%. Ten more are in serious/critical conditions, so it could increase.

Since testing in DP was almost universal, IFR ~= CFR.

DP's demographics is representative of > 30% of population of many/most countries. (See figure 1 here: [https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess- myst...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2020/03/16/diamond-princess-mysteries/))

Assuming no one in other age groups/health conditions in a country of interest dies (unrealistic) and everyone from Diamond Princess who is in severe/critical condition recovers (optimistic), population's IFR would be = 1.54%/0.3 = ~0.51%.

Also, cases from Diamond Princess have received good care. If the healthcare system gets overwhelmed as has happened in many places, population's IFR would shoot up to multiple times as high.

Thus, 0.5% is a lower bound for COVID19's IFR, unless a better treatment protocol/medication is invented. Alternatively, if there are successful measures to shield the elderly from getting infected, a region's overall IFR could be lowered.

<comment><USER3> DP excludes the extreme elderly and sick. Remember, people in nursing care don't go on cruse ships. Further, it's expected to see additional deaths. So, such simplistic estimates are completely worthless from their data.

What it does do is provide estimates of the rate of infection vs obvious and extreme symptoms. China's CFR is over 4% and rising, but it's known that they missed a huge portion of the total case load.

PS: Further to estimate for the US population you need further adjustments. China has a younger population than the US with only 10.8% of the population being 65 and older, but they also have more air pollution etc.

<comment><USER4> Obesity plays a big role in Covid-19 deaths. 33% of Americans are obese, and 65% are overweight. There's a possibility that more obese people take cruises --it fits their lifestyles (unlimited food availability, and they don't have to move much). So the DP data may be tempered by more obesity even though it has less extreme elderly.

Also many of the crew got infected. So the amount of viral exposure may play a big part. People who had to come in contact with dozens of infected individuals every day may be the most vulnerable. This doesn't bode well for retail grocery workers.

<comment><USER5> > Many obese people take cruises--it fits their lifestyles (unlimited food > availability, and they don't have to move much).

Do you have actual data on that or is this just your prejudice speaking?

<comment><USER6> Anecdata: I've taken three cruises over the last twenty years, and the obesity rate on those was an order of magnitude higher than what I see in my everyday life as a coastal yuppie -- the only other place I've seen that many people who are that fat was at Disney in Orlando. But America as a whole has a way higher obesity rate than what I see normally, so cruises might just be representative of the country in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Let's presume this death rate is accurate to within an order of 2- 1.33% to 0.33%. We can use that to do some interesting estimates on the true infection rate.

[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) (trust it if you like) says that the USA has (as of 2020-04-05T15:13:00Z) had 9,119 deaths- and I was going to say 8,486 but I refreshed the page and it jumped to 9,119 because of course it did.

9,119 / 0.33% = 2,763,333 infections.

9,119 / 1.33% = 685,639 infections.

But, we also have to consider that death isn't instant- so add in everyone who became infected in the last 5-10 days. That'll be a bigger number. The reported number of infections because of limited testing is 320,828.

I think it's not unreasonable to say that probably 1m Americans have now been infected by this virus. And the longer ago this comment was made, the more likely that estimate is correct.

Edit to add: I trust the number of deaths more than the number of infections because it's easy to say "don't come to the hospital to get tested if you don't need to" but it's hard to say "let's pretend that dead body died of something else".

<comment><USER8> I believed we were at the 1M level about 3 weeks ago. I think we're at the 50 - 100M level at this point, but we won't see those numbers, ever. We will probably see about 5-10M US infections in 3 weeks, which account for the extremely small percentage of people getting tested, and at that point (in 3 weeks) the number of actually infected people will be at least 40% of the US population. I think at that point it will also have waned quite a lot, but we're just playing catch up with the vast numbers of people that are already infected. For a lot of people there's easily hideable symptoms and people are likely going to their grocery store jobs anyway.

<comment><USER9> That's ridiculous. We're only testing people with severe symptoms and telling everyone with minor symptoms to stay home. We're not testing anyone without symptoms. And the positive test rate is 18.6%.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why is anyone interested in age independent of comorbidities? Yes - age and comorbidities are correlated. But wouldn't it be more helpful as an actionable guide to have statistics for death rate vs. comorbidity rather than, or in addition to, age?

<comment><USER11> Age is probably an excellent proxy for comorbidities.

<comment><USER10> Yes but that's not very helpful for a healthy 60 year old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fatality rate with treatment is basically irrelevant at this point. We need to know the hospitalisation rate, the ventilation rate and R0 under different levels of lockdown. The actual rare of deaths will depend on these numbers, 0.66% is just the baseline.

</comment><comment><USER13> It worries me that this study is relying on Chinese data.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that seems foolish at this point.

Italy is doing a reasonable amount of testing and has more like 10% death rate. Could there be 15X more infected in Italy than detected? Or is it that they have mostly old people catching it? Seems like a large discrepancy either way.

<comment><USER15> Meanwhile Germany has a 1.5% cfr, how did that happen. Did Germany underreport deaths or Italy underreport cases

<comment><USER16> Germany's CFR has been steadily rising.

<comment><USER17> Indeed, today it is 1.5%. 7 days ago it was 0.75%. 14 days ago it was 0.375%. It has literally doubled each week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Assuming good coverage of ICU care. What is it if there's ~zero equipment available, at least when compared to the number of patients?

</comment><comment><USER19> Another lower bound on death rate estimated from Bergamo (of total population): 0.44%

4500/1112187

[https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=https:/...](https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=it&u=https://www.agi.it/cronaca/news/2020-04-01/coronavirus- eco-bergamo-stima-morti-8070220/&prev=search)

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

</comment><comment><USER20> Your death rate is roughly double your 10 year mortality. So if you're in your mid 30s and your risk of dying at any time over the next 10 years is 0.2%, then your risk of dying if you get Covid-19 is 0.4%.

</comment><comment><USER21> I would love to see the numbers for people with pre-existing conditions, smokers, alcoholics, etc.

<comment><USER22> That doesn't really matter when the underlying problem is that your healthcare system went offline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > It reported that 0.04% of 10-19 year olds would probably require hospital > care—as would 1.0% of people in their 20s, 3.4% of people aged 30-39, 4.3% > aged 40-49, 8.2% aged 50-59, 11.8% in their 60s, 16.6% in their 70s, and > 18.4% of those over 80.

This is quite a bit lower than the 20% number that people have been using for while.

</comment><comment><USER24> Link to the actual paper:

[https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820...](https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S1473-3099%2820%2930243-7)

Estimates are in the last column of Table 1 (page 5).

These seem roughly in line with CDC estimates for the US, see e.g. the first chart in this article from 6 days ago which compares flu mortality rates with COVID-19 per age bracket:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared- seasona...](https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-compared-seasonal-flu- in-the-us-death-rates-2020-3)

To the (many) commenters here dismissive of the paper -- because in a "foolish" way it relies on "doubtful" "suspect" "junk" "Communist" Chinese data making it "not worth the paper it's written on" (all quotes from other comments here) -- the authors specifically address "adjusting for demography _and under-ascertainment_ ". The fact that they came to results similar to US data, as long as their methodology wasn't cherry-picked, would seem to be a good sign.

And remember -- _The Lancet_ is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world. They're not going to publish something "junk".

<comment><USER25> > And remember -- The Lancet is one of the most prestigious medical journals > in the world. They're not going to publish something "junk".

Let's not resort to arguments of authority. They have, quite recently, published junk.

[https://retractionwatch.com/2020/02/27/lancet-journal- retrac...](https://retractionwatch.com/2020/02/27/lancet-journal-retracts- letter-on-coronavirus-because-authors-say-it-was-not-a-first-hand-account- after-all/)

<comment><USER26> That appears to be a letter to the editor, not a paper though.

<comment><USER17> This isn't a peer reviewed paper. It's an extremely brief summary piece based upon a complete absence of evidence and then suppositions.

And to what the guy above said, the Lancet infamously published Wakefield's since debunked repeatedly claim that MMR vaccines cause autism. A paper that has literally led to many deaths.

<comment><USER27> That was a one-off that made international headlines because it was a rare event. You'd generally trust stuff published in the Lancet; it gets thoroughly checked.

This is work done by leading researchers in the field, in a top-class journal. I'm going to trust it over random allegations on HN.

<comment><USER17> It was an incredibly damaging one-off that has killed children. Clearly the vast majority of their work is worlds better than that, but I was replying to the appeal to authority that demands respect and belief for a work that itself purports to be nothing more than a very rough estimate.

Nonetheless, this piece isn't "thoroughly checked" because there is nothing to check. They took the deficient data from China and added suppositions to it. It's neat, I guess, but meaningless.

This paper is not being taken as authoritative anywhere. No one is making policy decisions on it. Zero ground-truth is changing because of it. Because it's a cursory, superficial guesstimate (that is literally the most accurate word) just to appease curiosity.

<comment><USER27> > They took the deficient data from China and added suppositions to it.

I have more confidence in the Chinese data than that. They have no motive to supply false data, and lots of reasons to make it accurate.

The data also seem to be consistent with the data emerging in the rest of the world as judged by the experts who wrote the paper.

> This paper is not being taken as authoritative anywhere. No one is making > policy decisions on it.

I doubt that. Some of the authors of this paper are also authors of the Imperial study that has significantly influenced the UK government response.

<comment><USER17> "They have no motive to supply false data, and lots of reasons to make it accurate."

They are working with garbage data. They know this. They admit it. Then they rationalize that they can invent real data out of it. And as an exercise that is okay -- they state exactly what they are doing with very limited, poor data. They haven't claimed it was more than it is.

This is not _the_ canonical statement on death rates, and compared to actual emerging data is completely irrelevant.

"are also authors of the Imperial study that has significantly influenced the UK government response"

The catastrophic and flippant UK response? The one that thought they would obtain some "herd immunity" by doing nothing, and then realizing cases were skyrocketing mimicked what other countries were doing? That UK?

This is not a compelling claim.

<comment><USER27> > The one that thought they would obtain some "herd immunity" by doing > nothing, and then realizing cases were skyrocketing mimicked what other > countries were doing?

Yes, that one. This was the study that convinced the UK government to change course from the original unrestrained herd immunity strategy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It relies critically on estimating the number of asymptomatic cases. To do this accurately you need either the PCR test to report a positive for a long time after contraction, or you need a serology-based test.

They are basing the asymptomatic case % from the Diamond Princess data and assuming that all people who tested positive where the only ones who had cornavirus. Is this warranted?

Has anyone seen any data on the period of time after contraction during which the standard PCR test will return positive?

</comment><comment><USER29> For reference seasonal flu is around 0.1% and also increases with age, so Covid-19 is at least 6X as deadly as the flu.

This article also doesn't mention lasting effects. I have seen reports of people with bad cases being left with lung damage but I have seen no statistics on this. Everyone is focusing on mortality so I wonder if they're bothering to collect this info. If it leaves a lot of people with pulmonary scar tissue that's a big deal.

<comment><USER30> It will likely fall to a lesser amount as testing rolls out to a larger sample size of the population.

<comment><USER30> Here's a source backing my assertion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22787076](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22787076)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> They haven't done any widespread testing, they need to do complete antibodies tests. how is it possible to know it

</comment><comment><USER32> I wonder how much the death rate for other diseases will rise due to an overwhelmed heath care system.

</comment><comment><USER33> These numbers seem much more realistic versus the previous doomsday predictions of 3%. To compare this to base rates, the age adjusted base rate for deaths in the US in 2018 was about 0.7%[0]. Depending on how you look at it, this is either really bad (i.e., 6x worse than the flu) or not that bad (i.e., less deadly than death by any cause).

3% would have been really bad, that's more than 3x higher than the normal death base rate.

[0]: [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db355.htm)

Edit: fixed wording for correctness.

<comment><USER34> The comparison is meaningless and maybe anti-productive. What you're saying harkens back to political fights about what are the numbers. The first sentence of the article is:

The overall death rate from covid-19 has been estimated at 0.66%, rising sharply to 7.8% in people aged over 80 and declining to 0.0016% in children aged 9 and under.1

Nearly 8% death rate for folks over 80 is pretty remarkable. If people out there start saying "it's just 0.7%! Less than the flu!" old people will not take the precautions they need to. Because of the contagiousness of this virus, it should be treated as the huge monster that it is by old folks.

<comment><USER22> There should be a rule that anyone publishing percentages is required to also publish the absolute number for their country. Based on comments I've read on social media, many people simply can't reason about percentages: they post about how the death rate is "only 1%" but are horrified when told that implies 2 million dead in the USA. One of those numbers seems very small to them while the other seems unbelievably large. They're the same!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> FYI COVID-19 Cases by Age Grouping for Oklahoma State:

[https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/](https://coronavirus.health.ok.gov/)

</comment><comment><USER36> For medical professionals, do they suffer worse because they come in contact with many variations / mutations of the same virus?

<comment><USER37> At the cellular level it's a numbers game. The more enemy combatants, the sicker you will be. The more exposure to the virus, the more viruses you'll have in your body, the more intense the symptoms.

Hospitals don't have great access to fresh flowing outside air. So as they fill up with infected people the air just becomes a cesspool of virus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This is somewhat at odds with 21% of recorded outcomes so far having been deaths. There would have to be a hell of a lot of undiagnosed cases to bring that down to 0.66%.

<comment><USER11> Iceland tested their entire populace and found several people who tested positive but remained asymptotic while infected. Given that testing in most countries is limited to people who can get into their doctor's office the people who get tested and who test positive have more severe symptoms. There are probably a lot of people who have it and are spreading it unawares.

<comment><USER39> It wasn't "several people", it was an estimated 50% asymptomatic (based on sampling at least 5% of their population):

[https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing- corona...](https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/europe/iceland-testing-coronavirus- intl/index.html)

<comment><USER40> I'm always sceptical with people said to be asymptomatic. It might be asymptomatic for 3-28+ days. The existence of antibodies will be a better measure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Great who gives a fuck. The R0 is high 2-3. And the case fatality rate is 21% in the world, and 65% in the US.

</comment><comment><USER42> From the abstract: "The estimates, calculated by researchers in the UK, used aggregate data on cases and deaths in mainland China."

\- Sadly this makes the paper not worth the paper it's written on (or whatever the data traffic fees are to serve it)

<comment><USER43> The paper uses data from expatriated foreigners from mainland China, so likely a reasonable dataset.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm no statistician, but I'm very doubtful of the numbers coming out of China. I'd be interested to see how this changes with any given countries data excluded. My suspicion is removing China's would move the needle more than any other country.

</comment><comment><USER45> I have seen many articles with similar thoughts - that the death rate of Covid is < 1%, similar or less than the flu and other well known viruses.

But, anecdotally, two close associates have died of Covid, and a neighbor is now on life support. May he get better soon!

I (fortunately) have not heard of anyone even being put into a life- threatening position by Flu. Asking a few friends, their experiences match mine, though the victims differ.

Can someone with more understanding explain - are we just the exceptions, or is there some reason that the anecdotal evidence is so far different from the numbers?

<comment><USER46> Under 1% is still far above the flu.

And note that parts of Italy have excess mortality of 1% of the population even though most of them aren't listed as Covid-19 deaths.

<comment><USER47> Do you have links to data for excess mortality? I'm struggling to find any localised data.

Here is country wide mortality data: [https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html](https://www.euromomo.eu/index.html)</comment></comment></comment>


Notional Framework for Monetization Web2010 - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2009/06/23/notional-framework-for-monetization-web2010/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a continuation of an idea I first posted while commenting on AVC (Fred Wilson's) blog. Players from several different areas can contribute, Hackers needed to make it real of course.</comment>


What made Bell Labs special? (2012) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/bell.pdf <comment><USER2> That brought back memories for me, I worked there from 1978 - 1984. It was special and I agree with a lot of what the author said, but I would also highlight the people that ran the place. My boss was amazing, too long to list all the reasons but never forgot him. It takes a special type of person to manage highly skilled technical people effectively. I think there are some places like that today (maybe Google, I don't know first hand only from friends that work there). But in my view, that is the key, creating an environment that those types special people are able to thrive in. Bell Labs did that, maybe it was because they were a monopoly that they had that luxury, but I think there was more to it than that.

<comment><USER3> If it's not too late, reach out to your old boss and let him know. It will make a world of difference to him.

<comment><USER4> I called the guy who gave me my start in telecom up a good 4-5 years ago, and spent two hours on the phone with him thanking him for giving me a chance at it, without him I never would have made it as far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "At Bell, the financial motive was not grants but contributing to the company's product lines. This seems reasonable to me, both because telephone service is a public good and because, as Gertner notes, the challenges of improving phone service motivated technical advances that benefited other areas as well."

The thing is AT&T was the monopoly of telecommunication service in the US back then. When Paul Baran went to present his "packet switching" (which is also independently studied and proposed by UK's Donlad Davies, and both combined with Leonard Kleinrock's theoretical analysis became packet switching in the development of the "Internet") to AT&T, AT&T laughed it off and said no, mainly because AT&T did not want to adopt the digital communication and wanted to maintain its monopoly. The engineers at AT&T (not Bell Labs) pretty much said to Baran he lacked the fundamental understanding of how communication system works. Just to be fair, at work, in the beginning RAND Corp engineers were also not convinced, but nonetheless Baran was able to get enough support and appreciation from his fellow coworkers and the company's management that he demoed to AT&T.

This is a story of a classic corporate engineer who has the "know-it-all" mindset vs the classic researcher/engineer who appreciate challenges and differences.

I recommend reading "When Wizards Stay Up Late".

I think companies which allow some degree of hacker/research culture really do benefit from the openness and innovation. Google's 20% (although I read most engineers don't get any free time at all and 20% was not a formal policy, and 20% was just a spontaneous thing in the early stage of Google), FB's internal Hackathon crated some of the most-used features/products at the respective company. I think another modern example is Stripe, I consistently heard something great about its culture.

<comment><USER4> AT&T was responsible for much of the base technology that made packet switching even possible. They did however stuck (largely for good technological reasons) with circuit switching all the way thru, even if it was largely digital by 1984.

<comment><USER6> Even today there are considerations whether packet switching is really better than circuit switching in particular if reliability is a concern: For circuit switching one can (often) guarantee, say, the bandwidth of the service offered over wire, for packet switching this is between hard and impossible.

So while I can accept that for many applications packet switching is the better choice, I can understand AT&T at least with respect to why they still wanted to offer a circuit-switched service.

<comment><USER7> > for packet switching this is between hard and impossible.

Isn't that what Virtual Circuits[1] are for?

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Someone asked the head of Bell Labs that question once. He answered "Consistent funding".

<comment><USER9> I think having a fountain of money is certainly a good thing, but other companies today enjoy consistent funding and they're nothing like Bell Labs.

For example, Verizon and Comcast. Both rake in vast sums, but where is the fundamental research and contributions?? It appears that mostly gets folded into boring vertical business initiatives.

I suspect a key difference is that the old Bell Labs wasn't beholden to excessive Professional Project Management running the show and making sure everyone has their nose to the grindstone at all times.

<comment><USER10> _I suspect a key difference is that the old Bell Labs wasn 't beholden to excessive Professional Project Management running the show and making sure everyone has their nose to the grindstone at all times._

I think that's true, and was also true to a greater or lesser extent in many of the other hotbeds of 20th century research -- perhaps including those embedded in more conventional companies (IBM Research and Xerox PARC both come to mind).

Short of being wealth enough to self-fund, are there any truly low- managerialism research places left today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a little off topic but maybe it highlights the sort of people that worked there.

When I was an undergrad I had some Unix question so I emailed Dennis Ritchie (...!research!dmr) and asked him about it, we went back and forth a bit. Finally I asked him for his phone number and he sent it, I called him and we quickly sorted out my question. Over the years, I've called him a number of times. I suspect that if he were still with us he'd remember me, he seemed to enjoy chatting and passing on his knowledge.

I had to think about to remember if it was just email or if we talked live. My phone database put that straight:

        $ call ritchie
        Dennis Ritchie                  908-582-3770 (W/bell labs)

I was just a kid in college, nobody important, I hadn't contributed anything of significance to the field. Yet he was happy to take time out of his day and share his knowledge. I've had the same experience with bwk, I had some ideas I wanted to hack into awk, emailed him and told him what I was thinking, not too long later I open up my mailbox and there is a tarball of ~bwk/awk, all the source, the docs, and the book in english and french.

Bell Labs was something special, pretty much everyone that I've met/talked to who worked there were really nice people and more than happy to share their knowledge. They only cared that you wanted to learn (and that you had a clue). Smart (enough) guy who wants to learn more? Sure, here's my phone number.

BTW, there is mailing list for old Unix hackers that I enjoy, if you like that sort of thing you might check out [http://www.tuhs.org/](http://www.tuhs.org/) \- it's got former Bell Labs people who comment on stuff pretty regularly. It's pretty nerdy, there is a long thread going right now about old Unix vulnerabilities (eg, passing the right negative number to kill(2) would get you root) but I find it fascinating. Another thread that's going on is why C choose to pass arrays by reference but everything else by value; another is a discussion of C's type syntax (not a lot of love for the pointer binding to the variable, people wish that "char* p1, p2" got you two pointers, not a pointer and a char.)

</comment><comment><USER4> The breakup of AT&T likely made the world we live in today possible, but it also killed the innovation engine that came up with much of the underlying technology that the world we live in today was built on.

<comment><USER12> AT&T being forbidden from patenting it's inventions was the innovation engine...

<comment><USER4> No, AT&T did patent much of their inventions, they were prohibited from doing something other than phone service and related equipment, so they licensed or gave away their IP. They also had broad cross-licensing agreements with their competitors in the industry (ITT/Kellog and Automatic Electric). AT&T however was prohibited from selling computers until the 1956 consent decree was vacated in 1984.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Our local chapter of Papers We Love has been looking for articles sort of like this one but a little longer (maybe 3-10 pages), on either Bell Labs or Xerox PARC. Any suggestions?

(We had a lively discussion on the 1945 Vannevar Bush essay, _As We May Think_ [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as- we-m...](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may- think/303881/) and see this as a continuation.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I think that everyone should read _The Idea Factory_ , for a reason similar to the reason that everyone should learn Lisp. Bell Labs no longer exists, and you will never get to work there; but you can learn how research and supervision could be done, and that will help you route around whatever damage keeps the handbrake on at the place where you do work.

</comment><comment><USER15> Many years ago I recall seeing an image of the office layout where it showed Dennis Ritchie's office being located near Ken Thompson's office (I believe). I'm unable to locate it now, though.

That must've been an interesting work environment.

<comment><USER16> [http://spinroot.com/gerard/img/5th_floor.gif](http://spinroot.com/gerard/img/5th_floor.gif)

I had the pleasure of taking over Al Aho/Brian Kerhighan's office for a summer as an intern. Although, this was while Bell Labs was finishing dying -- both of the long term residents had moved on long ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those interested in learning more about Bell Labs, I highly recommend "The Idea Factory". It's a history of Bell Labs, focusing both on the biographies of the engineers and also a meta story about how you create an organization that consistently produces impactful innovation.

[https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American- Innovatio...](https://www.amazon.com/Idea-Factory-Great-American- Innovation/dp/0143122797)

<comment><USER18> i assume you're on mobile and that's why you commented before even opening the article. it's a review of that book!

<comment><USER17> Correct. Apologies!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Post divestiture i thought I was hot stuff with my cps and math degree. Only to find out I was the dumbest in my BL group.

I remember people's email was their first name. I had to use first initial and last name.

Eventually I moved to sales/marketing for consumer side. Consumer was fighting MCI and share loss, looking for help from the Labs.

They created something that virtually eliminated all background noise (Feldspar??) but it was not used/promoted afaik.

Then someone suggested that all AT&T long distance customers be given an emai account: their number @ att.com (firstname.lastname@example.com eg) aol was still mailing 3.5 floppies

There was really no vehicle to speed up the product side....

</comment><comment><USER20> They got to spent 2% of company revenue on research. In modern times shareholders would probably get furious at doing research.

</comment><comment><USER21> There was the thread here not so long ago about XEROX Park, and it had pretty detailed discussion. In the end it came down to funding.</comment>


A Brief and Brisk Overview of Compiler Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://blog.felixangell.com/compilers-brief-and-brisk <comment><USER2> Compiler architecture is also a good metaphor for understanding what Common Lisp is all about.

Common Lisp = the programmable compiler & runtime all in one. Most CL implementations compile before calling eval. Read–eval–print loop is actually parse-compile-execute-print loop.

      * (defun foo (x) (+ x 1))
      FOO
      * (disassemble 'foo)

      ; disassembly for FOO
      ; Size: 38 bytes. Origin: #x1003A7DD1C
      ; 1C:       498B4C2460       MOV RCX, [R12+96] ; thread.binding-stack-pointer
                                                     ; no-arg-parsing entry point
      ; 21:       48894DF8         MOV [RBP-8], RCX
      ; 25:       BF02000000       MOV EDI, 2
      ; 2A:       488BD3           MOV RDX, RBX
      ; 2D:       41BBC0010020     MOV R11D, 536871360  ; GENERIC-+
      ; 33:       41FFD3           CALL R11
      ; 36:       488B5DF0         MOV RBX, [RBP-16]
      ; 3A:       488BE5           MOV RSP, RBP
      ; 3D:       F8               CLC
      ; 3E:       5D               POP RBP
      ; 3F:       C3               RET
      ; 40:       CC10             BREAK 16   ; Invalid argument count trap
      NIL

Front end = Read function does the lexical analysis. CL syntax is almost one- to-one with the AST, so lexer-parser part is simple. You can reprogram the lexer with reader macros if you want. This is the last place where CL code is text. After it's reader is done with it, the code is represented with CL data structures.

Middle End = CL has multiple passes with AST. First normal macros, then compiler macros operate here. They deal with CL data. Lists, symbols, structs, objects, arrays, numbers, etc. CL packages are symbol tables. AST and IR are all CL data structures.

Back End = finally the function 'compile' function compiles the end result into into native code. Saving the image and exiting the runtime is like compiling in normal languages.

<comment><USER3> Compiling will not change READ into PARSE. READ is still there.

> Most CL implementations compile before calling eval

Many or a lot, but I'm not sure actually most.

There are quite a lot which use an Interpreter in the REPL, but where one can compile on demand. SBCL by default compiles. LispWorks for example does not.

> After it's reader is done with it, the code is represented with CL data > structures.

Right, but the data structures carry no syntactic information. If you write (1 2 +) the reader accepts it and does not know that this is invalid syntax.

> AST and IR are all CL data structures.

True, but not necessarily like s-expressions...

See for example data structures the SBCL compiler uses:

[https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/src/compiler/node.l...](https://github.com/sbcl/sbcl/blob/master/src/compiler/node.lisp)

> Saving the image and exiting the runtime is like compiling in normal > languages.

Working with images is optional - the Common Lisp standard says nothing about images at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you would like a heartwarming tale of an engineers first compiler, this is the article for you.

There is either nothing to learn here, or a spectacular insight into compilation, depending on where you are in your career.

Compilers are fun. It's an invaluable experience having written one. There is no magic left in a computer once you've written a compiler.

If you have written a compiler, this article is amusing. You get to see a programmers eyes open.

If you have not written a compiler, you get some insight about how they work- but perhaps you get more insight about how you work.

Also, the author should constant fold his arithmetic example. It slows down compile time, but makes the program faster.

<comment><USER5> I love these articles as they are a big 'magical' to me. They make me wish I had gotten a CS degree.

<comment><USER6> You don't need a CS degree to enjoy this stuff or learn more! I do not have a CS degree, or any degree at all. It took me a few years before I built up the courage to write an interpreter or compiler but I was compelled by peers who had built their own (and didn't attend college either).

There are numerous bloggers who dig deeper into the implementation of things and explain them. You just have to start asking "how do I build X from scratch".

<comment><USER7> This is very much the case! I started tinkering with compilers around 4 years ago when I was 16. If it was possible for me to do then, I'm sure it's possible for anyone else to learn too.

When I write articles like these, I think of what I would have liked to have read when I was first getting into the topic at hand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Are there resources to learn compilers in general?̊̈ It's hard to find resources that are

* In text * Free and accessible in the web * Not lengthy (not a 1000 page book) * Points to resources to read after.

Any suggestions?̊̈ I have read the unfinished [http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/](http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/) , but I would like to know more about compilers (that emit machine code).

<comment><USER9> For the majority of use cases a simple rule suffices: Write a parser which generates LLVM IR and feed the IR into LLVM. You only need to research two topics: parser generators and LLVM IR, and both are pretty simple skills to pick up.

There are a lot of cases where that doesn't work (eg. writing a functional language or a JIT or doing programming language research) but those are edge cases. In those cases you probably want to read one of Appel's books ("Modern compiler implementation in ML" for example), or the Dragon Book.

<comment><USER10> These books are kind of old. Are they still state of the art or is there something newer?

I had a compiler class at university but that was a while ago, so I would like to update my knowledge because there seems to be a lot of exiting stuff going on with compilers and transpilers.

<comment><USER9> The basics don't change. There was this rather fun talk on HN 2 weeks ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19657983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19657983) where he asserts that only 8 optimizations are necessary to get about 80% of best case performance, and all of those were catalogued in _1971_.

<comment><USER7> Wow, that's a really interesting fact. I hope you don't mind but I updated the article to reference this and credited you accordingly :^)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> nv-vn The funny thing about compilers is that one architecture has been established as the dominant architecture (the one described here) for probably the past 50 years. Almost without exception, every compiler is structured just about exactly the same. If you're interested in an alternative architecture, it's worth reading up about Nanopass compilers. While largely the same basic ideas, Nanopass tries to distill each discrete action into its own pass -- think of it like composing a bunch of programs using shell pipes. So rather than just Frontend=>Middle End=>Backend you end up with something like Lex=>Parse=>Remove Lambdas=>Remove Loops=>Remove Conditionals=>SSA=>Allocate Registers=>Eliminate Dead Code=>.....

<comment><USER11> When I worked on GPU compiler backends the middle and backend passes basically were a collection of more basic passes that did one thing, in sequence. I wouldn't call this an alternative architecture. I think it's just an implementation detail of the dominant architecture.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you want out of the next big social utility? - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I am a bit over a year into developing 2 different sites I feel  (hope) will fill in some gaps not covered by facebook/twitter/reddit/HN/craigslist and will make for a great way to communicate with each other. Now I'm looking for some input and would like to know:<p>What features do you think are missing from the big sites of today? How could features of one be combined with features of another to make it uber? What features are essential to have in the next great social utility? <comment><USER2> I personally would like a "real time" social utility (website/app whatever) that lets me directly interact with experts in particular areas including accountants, plumbers, mechanics and being able to get simple questions answered _in real time_. I know there are websites like ask.com etc. but not good enough for me.

Once I have an answer or response, it could be viewable or sharable by others who are looking for similar stuff.

</comment><comment><USER3> An interface like pulse and flipboard.

An architecture like tent.

And a monetization strategy like app.net.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm always interested in knowing exactly _how_ posts and articles spread and eventually reach aggregators like HN. Maybe that's been done to death but some sort of timeline showing exactly how an article popped would be cool.

<comment><USER5> You mean having a localized crawler going through a set collection of pages, then updating a field on a server whenever some new content is created, and then finally creating a timeline of where the URL of the new content appears by comparing when the different localized crawlers bumped into it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> increased relevance to what I'm doing. Like Foursquare shows me tips from friends, or google shows me google + posts related to my search, but better somehow.</comment>


Toni Morrison Has Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/nobel-laureate-toni-morrison-has-died-11565099219?mod=rsswn <comment><USER2> I majored in English lit at university and one of my early requirements was a single author course. Having little general knowledge of famous authors, I chose the Toni Morrison class at random. I remember on the first day being surprised to find our that Toni Morrison was a woman and that her writing had such a strong focus on race and slavery. I was rather intimidated.

Turned out to be one of the best classes I had during those years. It was a very small group (I feel like only ten people or something) and there was a lot of really excellent discussion about the books. Jazz stood out to me as one of her best works, the focus shift in narrators throughout the novel was, I think, my first real exposure to the "unreliable narrator" concept and it made the story so powerful.

<comment><USER3> I had a similar experience growing up in the mostly white suburbs of Baltimore. We read Beloved junior year and it was absolutely devastating. It opened my eyes to the deep, unhealed wounds of slavery and that sort of tumultuous, all-consuming pain. It was a difficult book to read at that age—I can't imagine any age when it would be easy to read—and I appreciate that we were asked to sit with it.

Another book that had a similar effect on me was Yukio Mishima's "Confessions of a Mask" about a boy growing up gay in 1930–50s Japan. I don't know that he ever actually says he's gay and you get this feeling that he doesn't even have the language to describe himself, let alone any kind of framework or support network. It was described to me by the friend who recommended it as "devastatingly sad" and I agree. He was absolutely, completely, and utterly fucked from the moment he was born and there's nothing he could do about it. The book threw me off for weeks. I highly recommend it.

<comment><USER4> Yukio Mishima's biography is a depressingly vivid example of the dangers of repressing your identity, with his repressed gay identity seemingly spilling out into far-right nationalism and then terrorism.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love reading, but only a handful of books have really changed the way I look at the world. The Bluest Eye was one of them.

Minor spoiler: in the bluest eye a young black girl obsesses over a white female doll with blue eyes. Before I read it, I never considered the impact that the idealization of white beauty could have on minorities. After reading that book, I realized how important it was for children to be able to look up to role models (fictional or otherwise) that look like them.

In my own life, I have had my own share of fantasy role models (I am a huge Tolkien fan, and when I was younger I loved all things fantasy) that shaped my own identity, and after reading The Bluest Eye I had to consider the idea: how would those books have affected me if all characters looked nothing like me? I do not think the effect would have been positive.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, Tolkien explicitly set out to create a Northern European pre- history or mythology. I am not sure if he even considered non-European readers as his audience.

A good parallel might be the love many Westerners have for anime.

<comment><USER7> To be fair - I don't think the comment was criticizing Tolkien. It was just making an observation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> (Disclaimer: I have not read any "actual" work by Toni Morrison, so my knowledge is limited to the following, which I wanted to share.)

There's a great profile of the editor Robert Gottlieb who worked with her, including a few wonderful quotes from Toni Morrison revealing how she worked (search the page for "Morrison"; there are about 10 quotes), from 1994: [https://web.archive.org/web/20161227170954/http://www.thepar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20161227170954/http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/1760/robert- gottlieb-the-art-of-editing-no-1-robert-gottlieb) — the whole thing is a great read even if you don't care about Toni Morrison (every lover of reading is likely to enjoy it), but if you do, it may just be a few snippets that you might have otherwise missed as it's not "about" Toni Morrison.

> [Morrison] Writing my first two books, _The Bluest Eye_ and _Sula_ , I had > the anxiety of a new writer who needs to make sure every sentence is exactly > the right one. Sometimes that produces a kind of precious, jeweled quality—a > tightness, which I particularly wanted in _Sula_. Then after I finished > _Sula_ and was working on the third book, _Song of Solomon_ , Bob said to > me, You can loosen, open up. Your writing doesn't have to be so contained; > it can be _wider_. I'm not sure these were his exact words, but I know that > the consequence of the remarks was that I _did_ relax and begin to open up > to possibilities. It was because I was able to open up to those > possibilities that I began to think things like, What would happen if indeed > I followed this strange notion or image or picture I had in my mind of this > woman who had no navel . . . whereas normally I would have dismissed such an > idea as recklessness. It was as if he had said, Be reckless in your > imagination.

> [Gottlieb] I remember the discussion with Toni as she was beginning _Song of > Solomon_ , because although we always did some marginal cosmetic work on her > manuscripts, obviously a writer of her powers and discrimination doesn't > need a lot of help with her prose. I think I served Toni best by encouraging > her—helping to free her to be herself. The only other real help I gave to > her was noneditorial: I encouraged her to stop editing and to write full- > time, something I knew she wanted to do. As I remember it, I reassured her > about her finances—but what I was really saying was, You're not an editor > who does some writing, you're a _writer_ —acknowledge it; there's nothing to > be scared of. We always understood each other—two editors, two lovers of > reading, and exactly the same age.

[…]

> [Morrison] Writing for me is just a very sustained process of reading. The > only difference is that writing a book might take three or four years, and > _I'm_ doing it. I never wrote a line until after I became an editor, and > only then because I wanted to read something that I couldn't find. That was > the first book I wrote.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is my favorite line of hers:

"How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves."

</comment><comment><USER10> As a student of scholar and literature and a former professor of the same, this is a sad day for me. I've taught many of Morrison's novels and learned more with every reading.

Morrison is a giant among writers, and the world is poorer for her passing.

The NYTimes obituary titled "Toni Morrison, Towering Novelist of the Black Experience, Dies at 88" is unavoidably narrow. Toni Morrison's novels contain universes. [0]

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison- dead....](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/books/toni-morrison-dead.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> Like several others in this thread, I read Beloved at an 11th grade student in literature class.

It was the most humbling thing I remember reading. Moving, despite no personal context for the characters' experiences. Written beautifully without feeling over written.

It made me realize how far I was, and probably would ever be, from proper writing talent.

</comment><comment><USER12> My first intro to Morrison was thru 'The Bluest Eye'. Afterwards I read many of her books incl 'Beloved'. I loved all of them.

One thing I could however never understand was how a person with such deep insights into the African American experience could call Bill Clinton, 'the first Black President'. I thought at first maybe there was something I didn't understand. But as years passed, I've been increasingly feeling that perhaps that wasn't the case.

<comment><USER13> I still don't understand why she called Clinton the first black president. I think people confused his charm for respect and understanding. I believer Bill Clinton was the first presidential candidate to get Black voters. Until then most candidates would rely on black celebrity and community leaders to meet black voters. Not only would he meet them in churches and community centers, he was really comfortable doing it. Most white politicians would do an awkward stump speech in a church or center with an eye on the exit. And that wasn't the case with Clinton. He was a natural shmoozer.

<comment><USER14> She later clarified what she meant, in her 2008 interview with Time magazine by saying: "People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race."

In her original comment it is more limited even than that - it refers to hearing _other people_ "murmuring" of Clinton as "the first Black president" in the context of his impeachment, rather than giving some sort of unqualified endorsement of the idea herself; but people do love an inflammatory sound byte.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had to read The Bluest Eye in college. That is one book I'll never read again, and that's _because_ it's so brutally honest about the characters' experiences. It's _too_ real.

Great book. Highly recommended. I'm afraid to read any more of her books, but I probably should.

It contrasts with The Awakening, also required reading. It's like the other side of The Bluest Eye. What did Edna Pontellier's awakening cost the black servants who enabled it?

<comment><USER5> A lot of African-American fiction can have that effect. Corregidora by Gayl Jones is a book that blew me away and made me really upset. It took me almost twenty years to read it a second time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We read her book Song of Solomon in my senior high school English class. It was one of my favorites of the class, along with Catch-22. I don't think I really got even close to 100% of what it was about, but her writing was just so gripping and beautiful, I still enjoyed the ride.

Years later I read Beloved and I was able to appreciate it much more. I should really read more of her work.

</comment><comment><USER17> I read Beloved when I was in high school. I was so entranced in the world she created, that time passed without me noticing. Truly a visionary author.

Unrelated, but it's kind of scary how many comments have, if not an undertone, just straight up racism.

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't often feel a strong emotion when a famous person dies, but this one got me. The beauty in her books is staggering, I read them with no preconceptions (which is often hard to do with famous books) and was completely blown away. As pure literature divorced from any reality they'd still be all-time great works, and their connection to the real experience of black people in America raises them to even greater heights.

From everything I have read she was a wonderful person aside from her writing. Thoughtful and careful, influential without being loud.

I think the world will miss her, and we will always have her words.

</comment><comment> o-__-o I met Toni Morrison when I was 12. She was kinda rude to me, I wonder if it's because I didn't see her as anything but an accomplished author. I've always wondered about that moment if she intentionally was rude or was just anxious from being in the spotlight at the time. I don't know why I thought during all these years that I would get to meet her again.. I was planning to be more adept at conversation with her. Correlate coding to historic writings.. but this post is a sobering wake up call.

Phone your mum, tell her you love her. My mom was inspired by Toni Morrison.

</comment><comment><USER19> My heart is breaking. Toni Morrison was one of the greatest writers of our time. I loved Beloved, but The Bluest Eye is my favorite.

</comment><comment><USER20> Beloved is one of my all-time favorites .

</comment><comment><USER21> From Lorain, Ohio to NYC. Nice work and rest in peace.

</comment><comment><USER22> One of those silly toxic grievance ideas, that you should only enjoy fiction when the protagonist looks like you, has the same gender and so on.

Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes? It was just a work of fiction, after all. Do white girls obsess over black dolls? We have a black doll, that my white wife grew up with. I don't think it disturbed her in any way.

<comment><USER5> If it doesn't matter, then why are fantasy characters (even today, even in Harry Potter which is extremely recent) overwhelmingly white? If people enjoyed protagonists regardless of their ethnicity or gender, then why isn't fiction more diverse? Why are almost all DC and Marvel superheroes white males? Etc.

> Do real world PoC even ever obsess over white female dolls with blue eyes?

Apparently, yes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark#Doll_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_and_Mamie_Clark#Doll_experiments)

<comment><AUTHOR> > why are fantasy characters (even today, even in Harry Potter which is > extremely recent) overwhelmingly white?

I can't speak to every single case, but Harry Potter is a British franchise by origin. England is over 92% white. It does stand to reason that a fantasy novel set in England would feature mostly white characters.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingd...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Ethnicity)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > I had to consider the idea: how would those books have affected me if all > characters looked nothing like me?

FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, people I've only read about - are not white males.

I guess in my case it was more important to relate to their background and their skills (or lack of ;-) than who their parents were, and where they grew up.

<comment><USER24> > FWIW: Several of my role models - if you include people who are not alive, > people I've only read about - are not white males.

But you didn't and don't lack for options.

I'm a straight white man from America. No matter what personal, family, and economic difficulties I've faced:

\- I have literal decades of seeing other white men in a variety of roles. I can pick and choose from the stereotypes I want to put in high regard, emulate, or dismiss, not 3 or 4.

\- growing up, there was no blanket treatment of me or people others decided I was like outside of choices I made. I could adopt "redneck" habits/dress, or "frat boy", or "nerd", or "jock", but I had control over whether I was identified as a "thug", or " aggressive", or "professional".

\- Because "my" culture was broadcast everywhere (TV/movies/books/magazines), I was never regarded as "weird" or "threatening" because people weren't accustomed to anything I'd do or say or how I'd dress.

As a kid, I was freaked out by the first black person I met, because his palms were a lighter color than the rest of his skin. That's a stupid thing to be freaked out by, but it was _different_ to me because I didn't see it anywhere. It wasn't "normal" My skin color, in return, was very "normal" looking to him, because fish-belly-pale is hardly a skin color that is hard to see in any community - just turn on the TV. Growing up in a more diverse area I would have seen more and wouldn't have had that reaction - but turn on the TV and it was still monochromatic.

As a kid I regularly teased a girl in my grade (a friend!) for her hairstyle, because it wasn't "normal". Of course, it was quite normal - if you have those genes, or see anyone that does. Again, put me in a more diverse world and I'd have seen it...but what did she see on TV? in movies? on magazine covers?

And there were "black" TV shows, and "black" magazines...but everything else wasn't "white" \- it was "normal". Which meant "not black".

I had, and have, the liberty of choice because "normal" includes me, and I can choose if I want to include it. But if "normal" was defined to exclude me, what kinds of choices would I have? I might become a "well-spoken" and "clean" black man!

<comment><USER25> My grandmother cries when describing the poverty they lived in when she was a child (1930s) in Newcastle (Northern England). Nobody had it easy in the past.

Well done for falling for the propaganda that racially divides people and is frequently sold by activists to people like yourself who seem to have bought it.

People of all colours and creeds will try to garner sympathy from the other group by claiming how disadvantaged they are. The reality is that there are plenty of people from all races that have made it to the top of society.

These people constantly bring up slavery that happened during the colonial period but they _never_ mention what is currently happening in Qatar where foreign workers building the world cup stadium are effectively slaves. This is happening today not over a hundred years in the past, if they feel so strongly about slavery why aren't they shouting from the rooftops about this?

That is why I know this is done because these actors (quite rightly I believe) think it will give them political power because they will claim they have no representation while being broadcast on the very media they claim to have no representation in.

<comment><USER24> > Nobody had it easy in the past.

Clearly everyone has had it equally difficult and there is no grouping of peoples that get systemic mistreatment, evidence and statistics be damned.

Yes, people can have it hard. And people can have it hard out of proportion with their peers. This doesn't alter provable facts about sweeping populations.

> The reality is that there are plenty of people from all races that have made > it to the top of society.

And just like your grandmother disproves any systemic problem by difficulty, any success by any individual does the same, proving that they cannot be an exception to the rule.

> while being broadcast on the very media they claim to have no representation > in

I think if you dig a bit you'll find a lot of things you aren't seeing. And surely just one case will prove the whole, right?

<comment><USER25> > Clearly everyone has had it equally difficult and there is no grouping of > peoples that get systemic mistreatment, evidence and statistics be damned.

Never claimed that.

> Yes, people can have it hard. And people can have it hard out of proportion > with their peers. This doesn't alter provable facts about sweeping > populations.

I didn't claim it disproved anything. I was pointing out that life wasn't fair and there was poverty that you and I can't possibly fathom and it affected everyone no matter what the colour of their skin.

> And just like your grandmother disproves any systemic problem by difficulty, > any success by any individual does the same, proving that they cannot be an > exception to the rule.

Never claimed that.

It is really astounding that someone can spend so much time logic chopping and fail to understand what I was actually saying.

This lie of people having to be represented by someone of their own skin in a nonsense that is sold by activists to students to make them feel bad because of the colour of their skin. The person I was replying to had bought this nonsense.

The fact is unfortunately that racists (both white and black ones) will use this to further racially divide people about what happened in the past.

<comment><USER24> > It is really astounding that someone can spend so much time logic chopping > and fail to understand what I was actually saying.

Perhaps because I was interpreting it in the context of the comment you were replying to (mine).

Poverty is devastating. True...and not related at all to what I said. I didn't mention economics or finances AT ALL save to mention that my comments were true regardless of my financial background. So if your comment wasn't in relation to what I said...but it was. There's an implied connection that I gave a rebuttal to, and in the face of that rebuttal, you deny the connection. That implodes my rebuttal...but leaves your comment without contextual purpose.

> I was pointing out that life wasn't fair and there was poverty that you and > I can't possibly fathom and it affected everyone no matter what the colour > of their skin.

Another true statement. And also unrelated to what you were replying to, unless you were trying put in the implied connection.

> This lie of people having to be represented by someone of their own skin in > a nonsense that is sold by activists to students to make them feel bad > because of the colour of their skin

Citation needed - at this point you're denying misrepresentation of minorities in popular media, which is such a well-documented problem and so obviously observable that your unsupported assertions would be laughable if the issue wasn't related to tragedy. Also - I don't feel bad for the color of my skin. At all. (Except when I get a sunburn) I _do_ feel bad for supporting a system that is systemically unfair, but the solution to that is not to deny the problem, nor to assume a vast burden of guilt that you assume I (and others) have taken on. The solution is to improve the system. To modify my support.

<comment><USER25> > Citation needed - at this point you're denying misrepresentation of > minorities in popular media, which is such a well-documented problem and so > obviously observable that your unsupported assertions would be laughable if > the issue wasn't related to tragedy.

Sorry I don't see it. All through my life (I am almost 40 years old) there has been plenty of black people on the television and in films and most of the time it has been everything from Gangstars to Action Heroes.

> I _do_ feel bad for supporting a system that is systemically unfair, but the > solution to that is not to deny the problem, nor to assume a vast burden of > guilt that you assume I (and others) have taken on. The solution is to > improve the system. To modify my support.

It isn't systemically unfair. You keep on asserting it is.

We live in a society that only really cares about your ability to make money i.e. produce. That is capitalism.

In the UK we had a black rapper head up the largest outdoor festival in England.

<comment><USER26> It's not hard to find actual numbers on representation of minorities in the media. Our anecdotes have more to do with our own blind spots than actual real life and don't prove anything.

"In the UK we had a black rapper head up the largest outdoor festival in England."

Again, anecdotes don't prove anything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I could never get into her work, personally. I was forced to read 'Beloved' in high school, and found it dense, poorly written, and just unpleasant to read. I know she's won a ton of awards, so it's probably just me. Sorry to hear she passed though.

<comment><USER28> I had never heard of her, or any of her books - I went to primary school in the 80's, though. Is she somebody that's only recently been included in the curriculum in the past few decades?

<comment><USER29> Well, _Beloved_ for instance was published in 1987, and Jazz, also mentioned in this thread, in 1992. Her first novel, _The Bluest Eye_, in 1970.

But yeah, I would say she has continued to increase in popularity (popularly and in school curriculums) since the 1980s, although some high schoolers were probably reading her works in the 80s. I graduated from high school in 1983, and read Beloved in a class.

<comment><USER29> I meant to say graduated from high school in 1993, typo!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you avoid distractions like HN? - <AUTHOR>

I am a student and work part time on my own projects. Because I am self-employed and have no real schedule, I sometimes find it hard to concentrate on my work. I sit down with the intention of programming, but very soon end up with tabs open on Hacker News, StackOverflow, and Planet Django. Even when I am concentrated on my programming, I sometimes regress and start reading interesting articles if they are related to my current project or programming language. In part, this is due to the fact that I spend a lot of time on Google looking up programming questions.
In order to overcome my distraction, I use "mediums" to trick myself into focusing. I have found that having a cup of coffee on the desk will put me in the right mindset, because I always use coffee when working. This works well, but I don't enjoy being dependent on hacks like this.
Do you have any tips for becoming and remaining productive? <comment><USER2> I set it up as an RSS feed and read it on my iPhone in idle times in Google Reader.

I've also found that I seem to need at least one distraction, so if I play some good music (I seem to work best to Queensryche or Eminem) that keeps the "I want a distraction" part of my brain happy and the rest of it can focus on getting things done.</comment>


Scientists reverse aging-associated skin wrinkles and hair loss in a mouse model - <AUTHOR> https://www.uab.edu/news/research/item/9607-scientists-reverse-aging-associated-skin-wrinkles-and-hair-loss-in-a-mouse-model <comment><USER3> Another case of "fixing the problem we created in the mice in the first place". While good for reproducability and analyzing possible root causes it is frustratingly disappointing.

I would really want to see is the process on actual senior lab mice - <USER2> would highlight other factors untreated and how transferrable it is to the general case for mice - let alone humans. If open-ended trial mice reach unprecedented ages that would have major implications.

<comment><USER4> I could not disagree more. As the article states, and this meshes with my layperson's understanding, mitochondrial malfunction is a key facet of aging. While we strongly suspected the role of mitochondria, being able to turn them on and off and observe their effect really cements our understanding that, yes, they are involved in the ways we think they are. Further cause for optimism is that toggling the mitochondria toggled other age-associated behaviors in the mice.

One of the pillars of SENS is allotropic expression of a subset of mitochondrial genes in the nucleus, to get those genes away from the mitochondrial furnace. We can speculate that other mitochondrial gene therapies may emerge from work like this.

I can't be disappointed by this progress!

<comment><USER5> No, this really is breaking the mice, not inducing something that looks like SENS-relevant damage in mitochondria. The details matter.

Many means of breaking cell biology can produce things that look superficially like accelerated aging in at least some ways. That doesn't mean it is aging: given that aging is widespread tissue dysfunction, anything that causes widespread tissue dysfunction can have overlapping phenotypes, but that doesn't mean it has anything to do with normal aging. DNA repair deficiency is the usual example - something that isn't all that apparent in normal aging, in comparison to the models in which DNA repair machinery is missing or broken.

So, similarly, pulling the rug out from under mitochondrial function can be done in countless ways that have very little to do with what happens in aging. I think the onus is still on these researchers to demonstrate that the method they have chosen has much of anything to do with aging per se.

<comment><USER4> To me, this is akin to finding out what happens to airplanes when their pilots die. If we're wondering about this because they have been dying of asphyxiation at altitude, we'd still learn something if we ran the experiment of shooting them dead at altitude. The conditions aren't exactly the same, but we'll still figure out that pilots are important to airplanes.

The other thing worth noting is that there could be some confusion from the title. It has "aging-associated" in it. The charitable understanding is along the lines of my analogy. The uncharitable, and seemingly popular one, is along the lines of your counterargument, and I think interprets "aging-associated" as "due to or consequent of aging," rather than "due to a cause that is similar on one level to causes that come about by aging."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article title should read, "Scientists able to temporarily induce some symptoms of aging in young mice". If they could have reversed symptoms of aging in actual old mice they would have done it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Hair loss cure has been around for a while, at least for MPB. Been taking finasteride for almost a decade and haven't lost any hair. Most guys are scared away by rare but serious side effects. But most of the problem seems to be getting guys to take pills regularly at all

<comment><USER8> Finasterade supposedly doesn't reverse hair loss, it prevents it.

<comment><USER9> That's what seems to be the case with any existing hair loss products; if you have nearly invisible wisps of hair left, minoxidil and finasteride will rejuvenate those and prevent further hair loss. Not really a cure. If too much hair loss has occurred, you're kinda screwed unless you go the transplant route, which has its own problems.

I do hope for an actual hair loss cure, and I'd pay thousands for it. People treat bald people really different and don't even realize it. Not in necessarily a "bad" way, not like a second-class citizen, but I think bald guys are slightly scarier to the average person, especially if the guy shaves it or keeps it short. Obviously they are also less attractive on average unless they've got the muscle proportion and the jawline to go with it.

It's not all bad since it also means that I'm no longer treated like a "young man" by anyone. But when I wear a hat or a beanie and people don't know that I'm bald, they're a much nicer and women come up to me a lot more. It's like night and day. At least that means there's nothing wrong with my face! :)

<comment><USER10> There is a experimental drug called setipiprant. Theoretically, setipiprant's DP2 receptor antagonism may counteract the activity of PGD2 in hair follicles, thereby stimulating hair growth.

<comment><USER9> Very interesting. I'll definitely have to keep track of that one since it says no serious side effects have been discovered yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a time to be a mouse

<comment><USER12> I think we have pretty much cured every disease a mouse could possibly have including aging...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Look at the picture of the mouse - it's not aging, it's dying. Yes, they "reverse" the condition, but only by the cessation of giving these little guys poison (doxycycline, a harsh antibiotic). This could have been called "high doses of doxycycline almost kills mice."

<comment><USER14> >doxycycline, a harsh antibiotic

Do you have any sources for it being harsh? I'm curious because I've been on antibiotics for 2 years (yes really) and this is the one I tolerate the best.

<comment><USER15> I was also on doxycycline for over 2 years, and barring a slightly dodgy tummy for the first 48 hours (fairly typical for antibiotics), I didn't notice any adverse affects. It did transpire that my doctor had 'forgotten' I was still on it though (I was only meant to be on it for 6 months!), so I did wonder if there were any adverse affects of taking it for that long!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Ray Peat proven right once again.

<comment><USER17> He's the one doctor whose stuff I've read that I think make most sense. You get a lot of people saying he's crazy, though. Wonder if anyone on HN has ever had any success reversing hair loss? The ultimate hack, if you ask me.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, lots of stuff on Quackwatch about him. Not exactly flattering. I'll pass after reading that stuff. Broken clocks being right twice a day and all.

<comment><USER16> It's just absurd to call him a quack. The man is 80 years old, a renowned biologist, several books published. He has ZERO interest in monetizing his ideas -- he charges a ridiculously small amount for his bimonthly newsletter, which is hardly making him richer.

Ray Peat is a true scholar and a gentlemen, he just wants to untangle the mysteries of our metabolism and sees through what the media and government try to shove down our throats.

His pieces on the vegetable oil industry are just the start of his many revelations. I've never looked at the food and drug industry the same way after knowing his work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We hear of these kind of studies time and time again yet never see anything materialise for humans.</comment>