Ask HN: Can Aspartame cause diabetes - <AUTHOR> Do drinks that utilize aspartame as their sweetener instead of sugar also cause diabetes, or do they have bad side effects.<p>I stopped taking sugary drinks months ago but recently was introduced to drinks with aspartame as a good substitute to sugary drink and I will like to know if they really are a healthy substitute for sugary drinks. <comment><USER2> It is considered as a safe supplement. However, I have an awkward experience with artificially sweetened gum during my oral glucose tolerance test. I had pregnancy diabetes during maternity and my father had Type-II diabetes, so I did this as a check-up following child-birth. Before this test I fasted overnight, than went to the lab and drank a very sugary liquid. My blood sugar measured for at the beginning and hourly for 3 hours. I wasn't allowed to eat anything, or drink too much water. After the third measurement, I got very thirsty, also was feeling nauseated and asked if I am allowed to chew a gum to help moisten my mouth, and they said no problem. Gum not only helped moistened my mouth also helped me feel much better. I taught that was help of menthol. Than I got my results and there was a rapid increase in my blood sugar at the fourth measurement. Lab did not worry about the results because all my measurements was in acceptable limits. But how that measurement had risen became a mystery for me. I'm not sure which sweeteners that gum included, but it was a well-known gum brand with a clear non-sugar label.

In any means, I myself try to stay away from sugary drinks, and any kind of sweeteners as much as possible. If it's a special occasion, or a meal that I really like with a certain sugary drink as a side, I drink. But I don't replace with an artificially sweetened version. You will get used to live without them, and will not crave after a while.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've read about research that suggests that tasting sweet things causes your body to release insulin in anticipation of a boost in blood glucose.

With artificial sweeteners, that glucose boost never occurs, but the insulin is in your bloodstream anyway. That helps contribute to insulin resistance - which is a key feature of type II diabetes.

I don't know if there have been studies explicitly making this link, but it's certainly plausible.

</comment><comment><USER4> Anecdotal evidence from my personal experience. I am diabetic. After watching my body's response to aspartame, I dropped eating or drinking anything with it in it. It also caused a brain fuzziness where I had trouble recalling words and memories. This affect was also reported by a friend who was drinking lots of aspartame. Try to focus on non-sweetened or naturally sweetened. If you go for artificial, spread your consumption around to the various types to keep the negative effects minimized.[1]

[1] [http://vqrn.com/Sugar-Free-Foods.html](http://vqrn.com/Sugar-Free- Foods.html)</comment>


Flash on Android is shockingly bad - <AUTHOR> http://newteevee.com/2010/08/31/video-flash-on-android-is-startlingly-bad/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gigaomnetwork+%28The+GigaOM+Network%29

<comment><USER2> I've had no problems watching on-demand video content from my local TV station on my Nexus One: <http://www.tvnz.co.nz/video>

I would say the devil is in the implementations not the flash player....

<comment><USER3> Are you sure it is not using HTML5? tvnz have all their stuff in html5 as well, to work on the iPhone and iPad. They are actually very trend setting in this area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Since the video review requires flash to view it, I decided to fire up my nexus one to watch it. The video started at 10 fps and jumped to ~25 after 5 seconds of decoding. This seems completely contrary to what the author is claiming.

</comment><comment><USER5> I've watched quite a lot of videos around the web without any particular problem. I suspect the ones he is trying are all very high quality streams, or using an encoding that Android doesn't support well.

I regularly watch iView (<http://www.abc.net.au/iview/>) here in Australia and Flash playback is flawless on the Nexus One across the board. I'm really glad I have it even if there are situations where it doesn't work well.

</comment><comment><USER6> there are a large number of sites that also demo html5 sucking just as bad. video=FUDcrap. 230+ points for this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1646430> really? ...when it sent smoke rings out my dual core with 4GB of RAM? i most certainly don't work for adobe, but crap like this is what made me stop reading slashdot. btw: i like arcade fire a lot.

<comment><USER7> Well all things being equal, wouldn't it be better for the open-source solution to win out in the end?

<comment><USER8> html 5 is not a replacement for flash, not even close.

<comment><USER9> HTML5 doesn't need to have all capabilities of Flash. The Flash plugin might very well be relegated to Java plugin status (i.e. hardly ever used) while still being a lot more capable than HTML5.

All HTML5 has to capture are the most common use cases Flash is currently used for. Video? Sure deal. Audio? Looks like it will work. Animations? No problem. Infographics with light interactivity (like the stuff you find on nytimes.com)? Will work. Games? Hm, not so great. Audio and video capture? Let's not talk about that. Oh, and restaurant websites? Shouldn't have used Flash in the first place.

What's important is what's widely used, not what something is theoretically capable of. You are right that HTML5 is far from being able to match all the features of Flash. It doesn't have to.

<comment><USER10> ... and the platform won't survive long-term on free games and audio/video capture alone.

<comment><USER11> Video has been a relatively recent use for Flash, where it pushed out QuickTime (which Steve stills stews over), MediaPlayer, Real Media Player, and others. It's always been an odd purpose for it, given that it's an ultra thin wrapper around a standard stream, so extracting that stream seems to be an obvious choice. Many "flash videos" are simply a h264 video consumed by an SWF, so decoupling that seems like a big advantage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Articles that equate Flash with Flash Video are shockingly bad.

<comment><USER13> This point needs to be emphasized more. All these articles just deal with video and then come to the conclusion that HTML5 is better than Flash because the video playback is smoother. What no one seems to mention is the much more complex applications that are built in Flash.

There is basically no existing tooling to build complex things in HTML5. A designer I know is working on a massive graphical timeline. It has tons of different layers and all sorts of user interaction points. It's a pretty big undertaking with the tooling that Adobe provides for working with Flash. It would take an order of magnitude more effort to do the same project with HTML5 and there would probably need to be someone involved with significant programming knowledge.

Someday maybe the tooling will exist but at the moment HTML5 just isn't a reasonable replacement for everything that Flash can do.

<comment><USER14> Did I miss the part where they said HTML5 was better? I took it to be more of a slam of the Android fanboys who insist that Android is better than iOS because look! we have Flash and you don't! Reality is, video just plain sucks on mobile, period and until the various lunatics quit pimping which platform is cooler and actually work on fixing it, it's all going to suck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Flash on my N1 hasn't quite lived up to my expectations, but my experience has been better than the reviewer's. I have flash set to 'on demand' to avoid all of the superfluous flash banner/video content fed from ad CDNs. Use firebug or resource tracker on abc.go.com or fox.com to get an idea of how many swfs and javascript files are loaded and queued and you'll understand why performance will be sub par whether playing video via flash or <video>.

That said, in testing mp4s on my site, the same video (480x360 or 640x360 h.264 baseline) served with <video> seems to play with less stuttering and better scaling than when using a flash wrapper.

I just wish I could play more orisinal games on the N1. The games run well, but drag mouse events seem limited to a second or two.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's interesting how differently we sometimes treat "release early, release often" depending on how big the company is that's doing it. With headlines like these on the front page, I can see why so many people feel like they need their product to be absolutely perfect before they release it.

I for one have been enjoying flash on my droid, but I guess my expectations weren't set nearly high enough.

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't understand why there's such a polarization regarding Flash vs. HTML5. A well-designed platform should take advantage of the technology that applies best for its intended market -- whether it's using a single technology or multiple technologies working harmoniously together.

As an example, we're working on CRM/Help Desk/CMS platform that uses a Flex/Air management interface in combination with mobile app versions and an HTML5-based customer frontend -- a decision we've made due to the complexities of the project and our intended market.

</comment><comment><USER18> s/shockingly/predictably/

There is a _lot_ more involved in "horsepower" than clock rate. Taking a power-optimized processor and running a program that is notoriously resource hungry (i.e. written very inefficiently) will result in a poor "user experience." Predictably.

<comment><USER19> Don't put blame on Flash, when trying to decode 720p/1080p video on Snapdragon. This CPU simply doesn't have the power to do that, no matter what the clock rate is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> For what it's worth, I've had a similar experience on my Motorola Droid.

The worst part about having Flash, though, is all the Flash advertising that I now see.

<comment><USER5> Why don't you just turn it off and have it run only on request?

<comment><USER20> Ah, didn't know that setting existed, much better now :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been surprised how often Flash has come in handy on my Evo. From the WordPress Audio player, to random FunnyOrDie videos, to NYTimes infographics, even for watching embedded YouTube without having to leave the context of a web page.

It's not perfect but it seems to work pretty well 9/10 times. It is very useful and nice to have, no matter how much the diehard Apple fanboys want to believe otherwise.

<comment><USER22> I would like it on my iPhone and iPad but I can live without it for the most part. I like the fact that a lot of video sites are doing the html5 video route and the iPhone and iPad popularity is pushing that adoption. funny or die works fine on my iPad. There are the ocasional restaurant websites and some other sites that don't work correctly without flash but they are a small minority of the sites that I visit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The daily show video works quite well. Can't watch that for free on any apple product, so I'll stick with flash

</comment><comment><USER24> Yes Adobe should just abandon the technology that pioneered many of the things in HTML5 because everything's invented now!

</comment><comment><USER25> I didn't rtfa because it looks like flamewar linkbait, but to me anything would be better than a blank rectangle.

</comment><comment><USER26> Not shocked : )

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's a video response.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cb9jfdltkUU>

It doesn't at all dismiss the observations made by newteevee, but I'm just trying to bring some balance in for people who might be considering a device and contemplating how much Flash really matters: A lot of these sites are picking the absolute worst cases and parading them as the standard, when they're anything but.

</comment><comment><USER27> HTC Desire here. I watched the flash video in the newteevee site, and it played well. But when I wanted to pause it I found I couldn't, as the UI relies on mouse hover! I have flash disabled on my phone as it kills webpage performance.

</comment><comment><USER28> Shockingly for flash fan-boys or for guys who can understand at least the basics of a system's engineering? ^_^</comment>


"Our Marketing Is Up Fog Creek" And What We Did About It - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fogcreek.com/our-marketing-is-up-fog-creek-and-what-we-did-about-it/ <comment><USER2> I'll be interested to see a longitudinal study in 6-12 months.

FogBugz is a complex B2B product fueled by recurring revenue (either subscriptions or maintenance).

It's not diet pills or a self-help book.

Most (all?) companies find that the long-form, "Tim-Ferris-style" landing page converts better for impulse sales. But does that work well for non-consumer products?

My fear would be that if you 2x or 3x the top of the funnel with landing page optimizations, you run the risk of attracting _the wrong kind_ of customers. Customers who initially signup and pay, but don't become long-term repeat customers at the same ratio as those who converted on the old landing page.

I would be curious, Patrick, if you're planning on looking at the lifetime value of these conversions, or if the scope of your project with Fog Creek was limited to lifting the number of initial installs.

(Oh, and like everyone else said: great job, great writeup, and thanks for sharing!)

<comment><USER3> It would seem pretty counterproductive for a web business that counts on repeat revenues--and even more so for a company with a monthly recurring revenue model--to not optimize CLV in favor of optimizing for short-term gains. Even if Patrick's work was a one-off deal, I'd hope FogCreek will be measuring lifetime value of these conversions vs. old customers.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hideho everybody. I hope you like it. If you have any questions, I'm happy to answer anything that doesn't breach a confidence with them.

We're also going to be publishing a lot of good stuff in the coming months, so if there is a particular topic you'd love to see covered, we'd love your feedback.

<comment><USER4> Today I learned patio11 does design consulting, and is not just the bingo card guy.

Interesting article. Thanks (to both you and Fog Creek) for writing it up!

<comment><USER5> I respect patio11, but his bingo card earnings are far from impressive. What's impressive is the process he developed to optimize his earnings in a relatively small B2C market. That knowledge and expertise, along with the fame he earned by sharing them, is his most valuable asset. It just makes sense to capitalize on it with consulting gigs.

<comment><USER6> If you can earn 25k a year from a simple bingo app, put together a few more similar apps, then you have a decent salary. And so what if you think if his bingo earnings are far from impressive. That first sentence was unnecessary.

<comment><USER5> I understand where you are coming from, but I can assure you that my first sentence is not meant to be ill-spirited. Rather, it servers the purpose of setting up the second part of my comment which reinforces how much "patio11 is not just the bingo card guy".

I think that Patrick did an awesome job with Bingo Card Creator, but Joel didn't hire the guy because he manages to make $30K in software sales a year. That's not an impressive number for software sales in itself. Plain and simple. Patrick is however an impressive guy when it comes to the specific set of skills he has, so it just makes sense for him to capitalize (possibly far more than Bingo Card ever could) on that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "You can also see that the See Pricing link attracts more people than the free trial button, possibly because the free trial isn't identified as being free."

Or possibly because the free trial is pointless if you can't afford to pay for the real thing after it ends.

I absolutely will not start a free trial for a product I don't know the price of.

<comment><USER8> I'll add the data point that I think this way too; the pricing is more important than the free trial, to me, as part of the process for acquiring software.

This may be one of those things though where normal people see the word "free", go "oooh lollipops!" and click.

<comment><USER9> This is so true, software sites that invite you to call, just so you can get some idiot to tell you about their "value proposition" and discuss your "licensing estate" really get my goat.

<comment><USER8> Well. Goat or no goat, for many software companies, this is the right decision; a salesperson will do a better job of closing an enterprise sale than a web page will, especially when the web page invites prospects to disqualify themselves because of their immediate reaction to pricing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Do you _generally_ think --- gut take --- that a video of the founder on the front page (kind of costly to make, timewise) will perform well? Or is Spolsky just that kind of magnetic?

<comment><AUTHOR> Gut take? If you had told me "We're an enterprise software company and a 3 minute video on our front page did really well, outperforming text and static images.", I'd say "I'll buy that." The hour long video killing it? That surprises me. This was one of a couple results where data said everything I know is wrong.

We'll iterate further on it. One of the challenges is that you can swap out text as quickly as I can write it and you can get an image crafted in a day, but doing a new video is a Project with a capital P.

<comment><USER10> Do you measure how far people get in the video? People might click to hear Spolsky, but not for the whole hour.

<comment><AUTHOR> My understanding: we measure it (Michael Pryor posted a link below), at least some people really do stay glued to the tube for a long time, and then they convert like crazy.

<comment><USER11> Here's a link to Michael's post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2588718>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Fog Creek's marketing has always seemed to me to center on Joelonsoftware.com, and then Stack Overflow, and also posts like this one. Unless I'm missing something we are part of the target market. Now, I don't have a problem with that, but it makes me read posts like this one (and this one: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/11/16.html>) a bit differently.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're missing something, but it's subtle.

If you're reading this, you probably will never give FogCreek a dollar. That's the hard truth of the matter. We literally give the product away to startups (Student and Startup Edition, free forever for 2 users) because a) in aggregate startups demonstrably don't spend appreciable amounts of money on this, often preferring OSS or "we can totally duplicate that 100 man-years of development in a weekend" and b) dedicated effort at making sales to you doesn't make any sense relative to dedicated effort at selling 20 seats to an insurance company in Idaho.

But do we care about the community liking us? Oh heck yes. The average reader of HN is very link rich relative to e.g. the project manager for the IT team at an insurance company in Idaho. Producing stuff which you like enough to link to gets us higher on the Googles and thus into the line of vision of people who can spend more money on bug tracking than many startups spend on everything. Similarly, if you feel good things about us, you might recommend us internally to someone who has ability to make decisions about which product to purchase.

<comment><USER13> Wait what? There's a free Startup Edition?!? I've been looking all over for free issue management software that doesn't suck and here Fogbugz and Kiln are free for little 1-man software shops.

What great news! I've been using the EpicWin iPhone app for issue management and DropBox for source control up to now. Every time I thought about it for any length of time, I'd get really nervous. :)

Signing up right now.

Edit: Also, this made me so happy, I signed up for HN, after lurking for over a year, just so I could say so. Now that's great marketing.

<comment><USER14> Jira with Greenhopper is almost free: $20 for up to 10 users. It beats the pants off of any open source solution. For us it won out over Fogbugz in the trials. When we pass 10 users (there's currently 5 of us), we'll pay their regular price.

Anecdotal evidence against the assertion that people reading this will never give FogCreek/Atlassian a dollar: we will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The funny thing is that they just ripped off 37 signals' marketing page. Not to say that this strategy won't work - just that the "redesign" involved some heavy borrowing. I recognized it because I just used 37 signals' page as the basis for a marketing page on my own site.

</comment><comment><USER16> "Trusted by 20,000 organizations" - seriously? That is staggeringly amazing. Does that really mean 20,000 are using FogBugz daily?

Edit: I guess it could also be 'trusted' in the past tense.

<comment><USER17> It isn't really as compelling in the past tense - e.g. 'Sony: Trusted by 70,000,000 users'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think Patrick is an amazing argument for bootstrapped entrepreneurship in a way that I haven't really heard mentioned enough... The freshness of perspective that comes from an incredibly bright person of one field (in this case development) thrust into other roles (marketing, sales, web production) seems awesome fuel for innovation and new thinking.

Thrilled with the article, and I think like many on HN thrilled to see patio11 killing it. Cheers, Patrick.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great write up Patrick!

I know that you are a rails guy and they use an MS stack. Any friction there? Were they able to use your A/B framework or did they have something on their own stack?

Edit: Nevermind: [http://blog.fogcreek.com/how-to-do-ab-testing-using- google-w...](http://blog.fogcreek.com/how-to-do-ab-testing-using-google- website-optimizer/)

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't use Google Website Optimizer, which I won't recommend to anyone. We're using a .NET framework that I won't name because we're probably going to transition off of it.

I enjoy Rails a lot more than I enjoy .NET, but give me some credit: looking at new languages doesn't cause my brain to throw a WTFCodeIsCamelCasedException.

By the way, Fog Creek isn't strictly a MS shop. There is a lot of "best tool for the job" going on, including e.g. Python being used as utility glue.

<comment><USER19> Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow. So much practical advice in there. I'd heard much of it before, of course, but seeing it in action really helps cement it. I may have to read it again to make sure I caught everything.

</comment><comment><USER21> "Our Page Load Speed Is Up Fog Creek" And How HN Has A Slashdot Effect

<comment><AUTHOR> The cause was... wait for it... Apache KeepAlive. For more details, searchyc.com for [patio11 keepalive]. It kills more blogs than cancer.

I should start a How To Make Sure Your Blog Does Not Die Horribly consulting business. And it will consist of disabling Apache KeepAlive, and then chanting arcane incantations in Latin about caching for the next hour to make people feel like they were really getting their money's worth.

<comment><USER22> ...or just don't use apache unless you have a specific need otherwise. NginX handles tons and tons of alive but idle connections gracefully, and will still be snappier for users that want additional pages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is that Balsamiq you're using for mockups?

<comment><USER24> Yep: <http://balsamiq.com/products/mockups/fogbugz>

<comment><USER23> Ah, naturally.

I keep waiting for Balsamiq to move their web product out of beta. I've seriously been waiting a long time! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1161642>

<comment><USER25> email me: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I think there is a spelling mistake in the article:

"That worked very well for many years, but recently it hasn't been the slam dunk it has been in the best."

Should this be, "it hasn't been the slam dunk it has been in the past"?

</comment><comment><USER27> Results coming soon I hope?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a couple of specific results mentioned in that post. If you're wondering about specific "Did it make them money and, if so, how much?", the answers are "Yes" and "Fog Creek is owned by the Creekers, and like most privately held companies they don't share revenue numbers."

But if you're trying to guess how sore the marketing team's hands are from high-fives at the moment, here's an easy math exercise: make a guess as to how many digits of sales FogBugz makes in a year. Pick a number for a single successful A/B test -- I suggest 5% for this one. Multiply.

<comment><USER27> Wasn't looking for revenue, but relative figures. Converting 2x over previous site, 30% longer sessions, 50% less bounce visits etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Longer sessions and less bounces don't really matter to us. (They strike me as easy to measure but of limited business utility. I can do a lot of things to make your session longer -- re-bork navigation, for example. That won't make folks terribly happy, either our customers or other Creekers.)

Conversions are much more interesting. Unfortunately, that gets into the sensitive territory. There's at least three levels, right: how many more trials are we getting? How many more trials are we converting into paying customers at the end of day 45? How many users do those customers add (FB is priced on a per-user basis, so an account with 50 users is worth 10 accounts with 5)? Then of course there is the churn/LTV question.

We're obviously quite interested in these numbers. I don't know how much I can tell you about them specifically. How's about this: I wanted to increase trials by 90%. FC would have been happy with 10%. Actual results as of now are somewhere between those two numbers. Please don't binary search me in that range. The subsequent actions are also up, and we won't know about LTV/churn for quite a while yet, but early indications are good.

<comment><USER27> I am interested in lesser popular stats like session time and bounces because it sheds some light on conversion differences. If you increase conversion and decrease session time that means you have succeeded in getting out of the way of people who want to give you money. If you increase conversion and increase session time it's for a different reason (maybe you weren't providing enough info before). Same for bounces--is the new higher conversion figure due to enticing people who previously bounced or are you doing a better job at hooking in people who were already more interested? I could go on, but I'm already rambling.

Regardless, great write up. I found it interesting and useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> In my opinion software homepages should look somewhat like wikipedia pages. Any software that tells me how awesome it is before explaining _what_ it is quickly loses my interest. And using a grid with images in place of a list really annoys me.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've used fogbugz, can't say I was very impressed with the product. Maybe they need to spend more time on that and the product will market itself. Seriously, this is a great example of the wrong way to view a product.

</comment><comment><USER30> Not sure if know/care but the fonts you use look really bad when ClearType is not enabled: <http://i.imgur.com/VmCR0.png> Looks OK in IE though.

</comment><comment> brown9-2 Does anyone know in what capacity Microsoft is using FogBugz?

</comment><comment><USER31> i thought this was a pretty mediocre post, it just had a few tips about how to improve your landing pages (pretty well-known ones too).

I'm calling shenanigans on the 352 votes, but I'm all ears to anyone who can explain why i'm wrong and what I missed.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's amazing that a one hour video performed best. I get that people want to click on it more, and it IS obvious that putting a big play button would lead to more views... but how far do they get and how does it impact conversion etc?

<comment><USER24> Here's the hotspot info. It's kind of interesting. It is above average for longer than I thought it would be: <http://i.imgur.com/KGPg0.png>

<comment><USER33> I saw that same graph on Khan's FAQ today. He was explaining that if there's a lull in the video, then he works to make it more interesting at that point, until the lull goes away.

How do you get that data?

<comment><USER24> Youtube gives it to you for free but you have to have enough views. It's under "Insights" on the video and then "Hotspots".

<comment><USER34> We're working on a product that will be able to give you this data regardless of number of views. Ping me if you'd like more info or an early access account!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Looking at the heatmap, "Pricing" and "Features" are your most clickable menu items. For some reason you completely ignored it and put "Pricing" all the way to the right, where 10% of the visitors can't even see it.

You don't need a "home" link in the menu, that's what the logo is for.

Your menu should look like this:

Pricing | Features | Plugins | Support | other crap nobody ever sees

Then your most important money-making link-button "Try FogBugs" is below the fold for at least 30% of your visitors.

I think you really need to look at this and understand what it means:

<http://browsersize.googlelabs.com/>

You might even want to display pricing right there on the main page.

<comment><USER36> A very quick, no-research, gut reaction I just had to your comment was that the numbers you throw out -- "30% of your visitors" -- assume that the demographics of their visitors are inline with the demographics of the internet as a whole.

They're selling developer tools, that changes things. And all that is part of your suggestion of "understanding what it means."

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are there recommended books for web design? "Funnel" is a foreign concept to me.

<comment><USER38> Funnel refers to the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sales_process>

<comment><USER39> Drat, beaten to it. This is what I get for replying to 20-minute old copies of a page.</comment></comment></comment>


You Might Also Like This Merger: Israel's Taboola, Outbrain to Join Forces - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-you-might-also-like-this-merger-israel-s-taboola-outbrain-to-join-forces-1.7941500 <comment><USER2> My personal experience with mergers is that prices usually go up (never down, might stay the same), customer service becomes less useful, and useful or unique products go away.

I applaud the merger of Taboola and Outbrain. Maybe you should do some domain name consolidation, too? You know, synergetically combine things, simplify them? Make them easier to block for my house with dnsmasq?</comment>


Canadian citizen denied entry to U.S. told she needed visa to get in - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/canadian-citizen-denied-entry-to-united-states-told-she-needed-visa-to-get-in/article34228089/ <comment><USER2> Sounds like run of the mill incompetence here rather than anything political. Border guards are, in my experience, incredibly stupid and not at all knowledgeable about the laws they are tasked with enforcement. One idiot at JFK, after he couldn't find my stamp (how stupid do you have to be to not find one out of about 4 stamps in a very lightly travelled US passport?) asked me if I had other passports and proceeded to tell me that my other passport (and dual citizenship) was illegal and that I needed to get rid of it as soon as possible. Needless to say, I agreed with him until I got out of there but he was and is wrong. Not to mention a complete asshole. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case here.

</comment><comment><USER3> Was this shadowbanned? I saw it on the front page a minute ago and now it's not on the first 10 pages?

</comment><comment><USER4> As much as we'd like to blame this on Trump. This is just border officers being dicks, and they pretty much always have been.</comment>


Mozilla Labs' Jetpack: add features to Firefox using only the tech of the Web - <AUTHOR> http://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/ <comment><USER2> I'm impressed by Mozilla choosing to integrate jQuery and the Firebug Console: <https://jetpack.mozillalabs.com/api.html>

<comment><USER3> John Resig works at Mozilla.

<comment><USER4> It actually had nothing to do with it - I only found out about this the other week. I'm not complaining, though!

As I understand it, it was more a logical extension of Ubiquity's functionality and API (Ubiquity uses jQuery to simplify a number of interactions).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a beautiful API for Chrome manipulation! Can't wait for it to be part of the browser. More generally, it's really exciting to see how seriously Mozilla takes extensions as an integral part of the web experience. It's cutting edge in a way Chrome and IE haven't really begun to explore.

One piece that's missing for me, however, is the lack of innovation in sharing/discoverability of extensions. For example, I'd love to be able to write a quick script for news.YC, be able to share it, and let others discover it with <5 clicks...

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't see how this is different than Greasemonkey (other than addition of HTML/CSS). Is this more of a control issue due to Greasemonkey ported to Chrome?

<comment><USER2> I may be wrong but this extension shows more API's than Greasemonkey does. You're able to use Firefox's statusbar, tabs and notifications.

<comment><USER7> It has some extra functionality, but it also looks like it has less. There doesn't appear to be a way to execute cross-domain XHRs yet.

<comment><USER8> Use jquery for cross-domain xhr.

<comment><USER7> That's passable, but Greasemonkey does it in a more secure way than script tags, and it supports more features, like setting headers.

<http://wiki.greasespot.net/GM_xmlhttpRequest>

<comment><USER4> This isn't using "script tags," it's using the (relatively) new Cross-Site XMLHttpRequest: <http://ejohn.org/blog/cross-site-xmlhttprequest/>

<comment><USER7> Oh, that's nifty. I vaguely remember hearing about that, but I guess I'm so used to having to avoid using shiny new things that when the opportunity actually arises with extension code, it's hard to recall. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A rival to Google's Chrome Extension API?

[http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/extensio...](http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design- documents/extensions/howto)

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks cool, but of course you would need to get potential users of your addon to install jetpack first. Will be great when/if this becomes a core part of the browser.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but it will eventually become part of the browser once the API is mature. Most Mozilla Labs projects have the goal of integrating with Firefox whenever possible (like Ubiquity).

<comment><USER11> Has there been any word on the slated time for Taskfox? Furthermore, has any real work been done on the work with command name collisions?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find it ironic that they're targeting "anyone who can build a Web site" & their first demo is ad blocking!</comment>


Using GoDaddy SSL Certificates with NGINX - <AUTHOR> http://onehub.com/past/2009/10/2/using_godaddy_ssl_certificates_with/

<comment><USER2> Another garbage 5 minute tech tutorial on the front page. If you can't figure this out on your own you shouldn't be responsible for your site's SSL cert, or anything else related to security.

</comment><comment><USER3> You do the same thing with Apache-Verisign as an example ships all their certs requiring an intermediate certificate. I run into a lot of websites in Firefox and Safari that cause SSL errors because they're not passing along the proper intermediate cert.</comment>


Nintendo acquires "troll's" patent portfolio after legal victory - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamespot.com/articles/nintendo-acquires-troll-s-patent-portfolio-after-legal-victory/1100-6417060/

<comment><USER2> Come on! IA Labs built similar tech and met with Nintendo before the wii remote was announced, if I was in their shoes I would sue too.

Unfortunately Nintendo had already created the tech and had evidence, so IA Labs run themselves into the ground.

I would not label IA Labs a troll, thats not fair and misrepresents what was going on.

</comment><comment><USER3> IA labs developed their own technology and weren't just suing because they owned a patent, but because they thought their competitive advantage gained from development was being infringed upon. So they aren't a patent troll.

This case does, however, seem to be a solid win for reasonable patent law enforcement. The precedence from this appears to be: if you over-step or over attack using your patent portfolio, you'll pay a big price. Hopefully this will help those defending legal disputes with real patent trolls moving forward.

<comment><USER4> This will merely make trolls create shell companies for each individual lawsuit. If a shell loses a lawsuit (i.e. patent found invalid), the winner can just pick up a lot of nothing.

<comment><USER5> Don't some do this already? However, the corporate veil can be pierced - it's not a get-out-of-jail-free card.

<comment><USER6> Yep, and I think that if NPE's annoy the courts too much, that's exactly what you'll see happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A patent troll is a company with the sole purpose of, well, patent trolling (Collecting patents, waiting for a successful target and suing them for profit, not for keeping competitive advantage)

In this case, I don't see that. They may be called over-aggressive, evil even but not patent trolls.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's pretty bad that this whole patents are evil moniker/sentiment has risen in the past few years. Seems to be great for page views!

Not everyone with a patent is a troll, rather many are the little guy who were not able to win the race because A) they don't have enough resources or B) they couldn't rally enough troops to get behind them.

Thus a patent is a way to stake a claim and protect their invention. If it's worth something then others will copy it and due to sheer luck make it a success. While you the inventor are left with an empty bag and oh a patent that you can try and use to be rewarded for your invention.

<comment><USER9> > Not everyone with a patent is a troll, rather many are the little guy who > were not able to win the race because A) they don't have enough resources or > B) they couldn't rally enough troops to get behind them

In other words, the patent system benefits big companies with big lawyer armies and trolls with nothing to lose, and is useless for the little inventor who doesn't have the muscle to fight the legal war if someone copies his precious invention but now also have to worry to be the one being sued because of some obvious patent one can infringe just by breathing.

But let's keep the fantasy that patents protect the little guy after all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the patent troll moniker appropriate in this case? Wasn't IA Labs actually building and trying to sell similar products?

<comment><USER11> Not really a patent troll. Too aggressive in defending their patents, yes, but will within their rights to try. Especially as it appeared to them that their ideas had been ripped off after they pitched them to Nintendo.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Reducing the size of PCSA to that of HyperLogLog - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/seiflotfy/pcsa <comment><AUTHOR> Author here...

Initial runs give me the following results: [https://github.com/seiflotfy/pcsa#example- results](https://github.com/seiflotfy/pcsa#example-results)

Its almost as good as HyperLogLog but I need more help verifying this :D

</comment><comment><USER2> What is PCSA?

<comment><USER3> Probabilistic Counting with Stochastic Averaging : [https://research.neustar.biz/2013/04/02/sketch-of-the-day- pr...](https://research.neustar.biz/2013/04/02/sketch-of-the-day- probabilistic-counting-with-stochastic-averaging-pcsa/)</comment></comment>


British woman revived after six-hour cardiac arrest - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-50681489 <comment><USER2> > In a race against time, doctors treating Mrs Schoeman turned to a > specialised machine capable of removing blood, infusing it with oxygen and > reintroducing it to the patient.

> Once her body temperature had reached 30C, they used a defibrillator to > jump-start her heart some six hours after emergency services were contacted.

> Mrs Schoeman was released from hospital 12 days later, with only some > lingering issues with the mobility and sensitivity of her hands due to the > hypothermia.

> How long her heart stopped for is not clear - she may still have had some > circulation, although not detectable.

<comment><USER3> Just out of curiosity - would one (say like a soldier) be able to effectively 'pre-emptively' wear a device in a backpack which has a permanent-ish lead to the circulatory system which does multiple things:

Provides a constant flow of oxygenated blood which allows for higher endurance, longer "holding of breath", and in the case of severe injury, oxygenated blood circulation to prevent death (unless there is catastrophic blood loss which moots the machine's ability)....

Recall all the famous designs of Cyborgs [and The Borg] with the tubes running into their face/head/nose - the tubes could be pumping externally oxygenated blood to the vitals which would suffer most in catastrophic physical unplanned destruction events.

<comment><USER4> Where would the oxygenated blood come from? How much would the soldier have to carry? How do you protect this mechanism so that it's not also damaged in whatever unplanned destruction event broke the soldier?

<comment><USER3> I asked if it was possible, you are asking me for an RFP.

<comment><USER5> You made me chuckle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There's a nice research article from 2016 by doctors in northern Norway about resuscitation of frozen patients:

"Nobody is dead until warm and dead": Prolonged resuscitation is warranted in arrested hypothermic victims also in remote areas – A retrospective study from northern Norway

J. Hilmo, T. Naesheim, M. Gilbert [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030095721...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0300957214005243) (open access, CC licence)

Same hospital and team that treated Anna Bågenholm (mentioned in other comments, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_B%C3%A5genholm)), and I guess that case is part of the study.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's amazing how this phenomenon has been adapted into medical technology. When my son was born he wasn't breathing properly and his blood oxygen levels dropped to critical levels. He was rushed to hospital and the first thing they did was cool him to 34c to reduce the risk of brain damage. He made a full recovery. I dread to think what would have happened without the cooling.

<comment><USER8> Why not cool the patient _before_ rushing them to hospital, if the technique is so widely applicable? It could easily be made a standard feature of emergency medical services.

<comment><USER9> Because it's hard. I helped out at a company among many that are trying to develop a system that would allow you to do this in ambulance and they started testing prototypes 10 years ago and have yet to progress from that stage.

<comment><USER10> It's not that hard... you just throw some ice packs in the groin and armpits. You won't get them fully into the TTM range in a 20 minute transport, but you can start the process.

<comment><USER11> Sticking ice in proximity to major arteries is going to be a lot less effective without a beating heart to circulate all that newly cold blood.

<comment><USER12> the cold won't distribute at all ?

<comment><USER11> It will but much more slowly. Think of cooling the blood as using the surface area of the arteries and veins as a heat sink to cool the body. Without that blood moving your next best heat sink is the skin so start piling on the ice.

<comment><USER10> The body itself is the heat sink. The skin is a radiator. The blood is the liquid in a liquid cooling system (moving heat from the sink to the radiator). To your point, liquid cooling systems become _much_ less effective when the liquid stops pumping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some notes:

\- The headline is clickbait/false really. The six-hour cardiac arrest is pretty much made up/guessed. In fact, they don't know how long she was in cardiac arrest. The article actually goes on to state "how long her heart stopped for is not clear", so it's a bit odd to say she had a six-hour cardiac arrest.

\- The six hours timeframe actually refers to the fact that a defibrillator was used 6 hours after the emergency services were called.

\- It mentions that doctors are stating it's the longest cardiac arrest ever recorded in Spain. This is a very odd thing for a professional doctor to do, when they have no evidence to back that up. As a doctor, you can't just guess she was in cardiac arrest for 6 hours and record it down as being what happend. That's misleading information.

<comment><USER14> Yep agreed they're going for sensationalism. I was in cardiac arrest for 191 minutes before they got me onto the ECMO machine which was standing in for my heart and lungs. Those times though are pretty accurate because my husband was in contact with friends and emergency services so they have a lot of data about it.

<comment><USER15> Username checks out (also congratulations on making it!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> ECMO is an amazing technology that's often used in futile situations. I don't know who the ideal candidate is for it, but a young, fit, hypothermic cardiac arrest victim is pretty high up on the list

<comment><USER17> I don't know about ideal, but it saved my 6 day old son so yeah, "amazing" is totally warranted. Years later I sometimes take a look at some of the pictures we took (cameras would be forbidden in ICU soon after) and stare in awe.

<comment><USER18> This sounds like a great story - would you be willing to share it?

<comment><USER17> As a long time game developer, I have the desire to tell it in my medium. The story is still ongoing 5 years later, but unfortunately so is the struggle, so it is very rare to find the combination of spare time, energy, and confidence to go past drafts and ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I read somewhere "you are not dead until you're warm and dead". Data point in favor.

<comment><USER20> Correct. Hypothermia and drowning (particulartly in cold water) the patient is not pronounced dead until the body has been warmed, this can be 12+ hours after the event.

Children do better.

The mammalian diving reflex prepares the body for long periods of immersion. Not to be relied upon.

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

<comment><USER21> It is a true reflex I practice breath holds due to the fact that I spearfish, when I started I could hold my breath for about a minute out of water and less than 2 in water. Funny part is usually you second or third hold is the longest as your body due to the reflex tends to adapt to the higher CO2 levels in it, on the second and third breath hold. I can now hold my breath in water for over 5 minutes due to CO2 desensitization. The average person with training can hold for 8 minutes without loosing consciousness if they are calm and and resist the urge to breath. I have never tried to push past 5 as it leaves a decent window and 5 minutes is a really long time underwater. I can spend 2 minutes at 100 ft with a 5 minute breath hold. I am 45 and am in average to just slightly above average shape for a 45 year old.

<comment><USER22> How cold is the water? It has to be cold, right?

<comment><USER21> No the reflex does not depend on temperature. The immersion in water is what initiates the reflex. Though it is true that cooler water prolongs the reflex. I spearfish in the Caribbean so average water temps are 70s-80s.

It is the struggling and adrenaline that causes rapid loss of consciousnesses in water, as it rapidly depletes oxygen and works against the reflex. If one calms themselves and uses deliberate movement 5 minutes is achievable in 2-3 months of training in tropical waters, by an individual in average health.

When we spearfish we don't race to the bottom or rocket to the top, we use a lazy peddling motion to slowly decent and ascend. It helps in preservation of oxygen, once on bottom we usually hover in one spot, and try to remain still while almost meditating. We only move while actively hunting a particular fish once spotted. While the reflex is active your mind can work with the reflex to help it shut systems down and focus blood to the brain which is what it is doing. Each movement reactivates a system, eating before a dive activates a system, not using the restroom before a dive can leave a system active (though the reflex generally tries to shut that down by increasing the urge as soon as you enter the water, hence the have to pee when you get in the pool reflex).

<comment><USER23> Spear fishing sounds really nice. Too bad I am VERY afraid of sharks. Yes I saw Jaws when I was a kid.

<comment><USER21> When you have been in the water long enough sharks are a natural encounter. After a while they just become part of the landscape to you. They are attracted to the struggling fish and will try to bully you for your fish but rarely are you their main attraction. When you realize that they are a lot like dogs is when your attitude starts to change with about them being around. You realize if you stand your ground give them a nudge with your spear, they generally loose interest really quickly. They avoid fighting for or with their meal. They always say it is the shark that you don't see that will get you and it is true. As long as your keep them in your sight, and confront them they will loose interest. I am no more afraid of a shark nowadays than I am a dog. You give them respect but you stand firm. I have only ever been in one really hairy situation and that was with a persistent 14 ft Tiger shark. Long story short after several nudges with my spear, and it just circling back around, I used what we call a blowfish defense on it, where you ball up and as they are coming in you stretch out your body, arms and legs quickly. That was enough to startle it and cause it to loose interest. That was the first and last time I have ever had to blowfish, All of the rest where easily persuaded that I was going to fight for my meal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When I began volunteer firefighting, curiosity led me to research the longest known CPR survival cases. Here are a few more rare and incredible tales:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191206164443/http://www.leapbe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191206164443/http://www.leapbeyond.com/Ric/CPR/CPRArticles.pdf)

If you've never taken a CPR course, sign up for one! It could save a life one day.

</comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me about a quote I heard, don't remember where, about Napoleons main medic.

Apparently he noticed that equally injured soldiers would die at different times based upon how close they were to the camp fire with those closest expiring way before those laid out the farthest from the fire.

Could be a bs story, I never actually looked into it.

<comment><USER26> So then he had badly injured soldiers sit really close to the fire?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Does this suggest that humans can be put into 'hibernation' to extend their lifespan? (Edit: I mean would be possible in future if we had a better understanding of the process?)

If I was rich enough I'd host a competition to extend the life of rats: Each year, whoever could demonstrate a technique to reliably extend the lifespan of a rat by at least 10% over the previous year's record would win a million dollars. I expect that the wining entry would involve putting the rats into controlled hypothermia.

Over the years the maximum lifespan will grow and we may even find that we can put rats into hibernation indefinitely. It would then be a question of whether we can apply the same techniques to humans.

<comment><USER8> > If I was rich enough I'd host a competition to extend the life of rats: Each > year, whoever could demonstrate a technique to reliably extend the lifespan > of a rat by at least 10% over the previous year's record would win a million > dollars.

Something quite close to this is being done for mice. The Methuselah Foundation awards cash prizes for (1) 'the longest-living mouse' and (2) the longest-living 'rejuvenated' mouse, i.e. you have to design a treatment that works for 'old' mice, extending their life as much as possible.

<comment><USER27> Interesting - thanks. But it seems to be focused on _active_ lifespan so maybe they would view hybernation as cheating.

Here's an article about Aubrey de Grey, the guy behind the Methuselah Foundation award: [https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/09/19/aubrey-de- gre...](https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2018/09/19/aubrey-de-grey- interview/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Related:

[https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/child- survive...](https://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/child-survived- almost-2-hours-cpr-after-falling-icy-stream-how/)

There are a few such known examples, also some that looked good for a while but ended with a tragedy as much as a day later. I can see some parallels with the drowning case due to the hypothermia, the onset of which must have been relatively fast.

<comment><USER29> Also this cat:

[https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/cat-thawed-out- after-...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-08/cat-thawed-out-after-being- stuck-in-snow/10792816)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I occasionally run into people that want to deter even thinking about the idea of life saving options because of the universe/god's plan

I met the most spiritual woman who was also in a crusade against Abrahamic religions say that

What a completely unfalsifiable version of logic when the "plan" could just as easily be the treatment

I got through the impasse by saying it just gives people choices even if the choice is already written in stone

Schrodinger's free will

</comment><comment><USER31> On the other hand, cooling people after return of spontaneous circulation (ROSC) does NOT seem to help in any clinically significant way:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31778636](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31778636)

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm very proud of Spanish healthcare at this moment. We have a terrific team here.

Another recent example of one of our rock star doctors involving the successful reattachment of a severed hand without blood flow for 10 hours.

[https://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/30483/super-surgeon- dr...](https://www.thinkspain.com/news-spain/30483/super-surgeon-dr-cavadas- reattaches-us-marine-s-severed-hand)

</comment><comment><USER33> A fascinating book to read is "King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open Heart Surgery" by G. Wayne Miller.

Early open heart surgery was pioneered with TWO patients whose circulatory systems were connected together so that patient two could could breathe and pump blood for patient one while the heart was stopped.

Amazing (in a sort of blank-faced-blink-blink sort of way)

</comment><comment><USER34> This article is all flash with little substance. They used a "specialized machine" and never once named it. As others have mentioned this sounds exactly like ecmo. Its obvious to me that they are really simplifying the situation for their readers.

</comment><comment><USER35> Outside has a good narrative of hypothermia. [https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing- death](https://www.outsideonline.com/2152131/freezing-death)

</comment><comment><USER36> So, I still don't know if you are irreversibly dead if your brain stops all activity.

I.e. is the state of your brain preserved just by the connections of the neurons? Or is the "RAM" also critical?

<comment><USER37> Lightning strikes don't wipe people's personalities. Also during epileptic seizures people's neurons fire in abnormal ways, but then return to normal afterwards. So I'd say that the RAM isn't critical; humans can boot from disk.

<comment><USER38> > humans can boot from disk

wow, this is so intriguing. i like this analogy even if i don't know how accurate it is.

we indeed have things that we forget (running out of space?) and things that take time to remember (disk latency).

<comment><USER2> We also probably have things that we forget/block/deny but are still there somewhere underneath, reachable only if we are put in the correct psychological conditions.

Like how deleting files doesn't properly wipe out the bits and with the right tools you can still recover deleted info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> As someone who was once an NREMT-B in the US, we were taught that someone isn't dead, until they're cold dead. I haven't read the article yet, but I assume they kept her warm.

<comment><USER40> Not sure about that. People whose heart and lungs have stopped may survive longer if they're cold. At least that's what I heard relating to a case of a boy who was revived after spending a long time under the ice of a frozen lake/river.

<comment><USER39> You're absolutely right and I corrected myself with a comment. I don't know why but I can't delete my original comment nor can I edit it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Many Tier 1 regional trauma centers now have the equipment to induce hypothermia on hand. Hopefully, this will become standard gear in all trauma departments

</comment><comment><USER42> Good job it wasn't in america, she'd have woken up, seen the bill, and had another heart attack!

<comment><USER43> This is a great joke but I feel I should point out that cardiac arrests != heart attacks

<comment><USER42> Wasn't a joke.

I went to the US on business - our corporate insurance means there's a $1000 excess that we pay up front.

Went to a hospital for a minor issue. At no point was there any price list shown, at the end I was asked for $390 before been given my prescription. That was the end of it I thought, sickeningly high charge for 2 minutes with a doctor, a 10p tablet, and hours of waiting around. I asked for an itemised bill, but they couldn't give me one.

A few weeks later I get another bill through the post for another $390 (slightly different amount), complete with the entire bill. The whole bill was about $2k. The 10p tablet? $250. In fact they originally gave me a 50mg one for $9, then took it off the bill, then gave me 2x25mg ones for $250. I then had a $1100 "uninsured discount" which brought the total price down to just before $800.

The bulk of the bill was a single line that was fairly incomprehensible but seemed to cover pointless taking my blood pressure 3 times and the 2 minute consultation with a Doctor who barely spoke to me, and renting the chair for a few hours I guess.

edit: see [http://imgur.com/ERjjQBil.png](http://imgur.com/ERjjQBil.png)

The U.S. is seriously broken.

<comment><USER44> In the US, patients should go to urgent care for minor health issues that are unlikely to require a fully outfitted trauma and surgical unit. Conveniently, they're also much easier to get to in urban areas.

Urgent care would have had something closer to a $100 markup than $2,000, because you're only paying for a few nurses and doctors to be on call, not for having used the resources that are meant for trauma and acute crises.

That hospitals are required make up fictitious itemized explanations for their very real costs is indeed broken, but it's a very small part of the overall issue.

If you called the hospital billing department and offered 20% of the overall bill, they would likely have immediately accepted; uninsured hospital billing has expected value on the order of 10% of outstanding balances, so if you give them more than they can get from sending you to collections, they're usually happy to compromise much more steeply than the 60% "discount" they offered you.

<comment><USER45> You mean how the Bay Area, which is fairly urban, has precious few urgent care clinics open until 10 pm and, I believe, literally none open after 10pm? I went to one of these urgent care clinics once and got charged $650 for about 5 minutes of doctor time and a single DermaBond stick. The latter costs something like $20.

Oh yeah, I asked how much I would be charged before the doc saw me and they refused to answer.

$100 markup my arse.

<comment><USER46> You went to the doctor for a bandaid? Seriously? Could you not apply said bandaid yourself? Why would you waste a doctors time and your money for that?

<comment><USER28> I don't like the tone of your comment at all. It's very well possible for a person to end up in the hospital where the right treatment is to 'stick a bandaid on' on one end of the treatment spectrum and a much more invasive or complex procedure on the other when going in with roughly the same symptoms.

For instance, if you work a lot with tools and dirt then there is a fine line between blood poisoning and a mere scratch, they will both start out the same but you won't be able to tell what's in your bloodstream until it is too late if you're going by symptoms alone. By the time the choice is amputation above or below the knee or you've gone into septic shock you've lost the window where you might have been ok. More people die from this stuff than from heart attacks or strokes.

So in some cases, when the exact contaminant is not known it can be a good decision to go to the hospital to have something looked at, and it shouldn't cost an arm and a leg (pun unfortunately not intended) to do so.

Nobody goes to the hospital for fun except for a very few individuals that have something wrong with their heads rather than with their bodies, and that's before we get into things like people with compromised immune systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> How did her brain survive with seemingly no oxygen being replenished thru circulation?

<comment><USER48> If you read the article, she was hiking in a snowy area and they believe hypothermia helped preserve her while her heart was stopped</comment></comment>


Coronavirus pandemic leading to drop in air pollution - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/23/coronavirus-pandemic-leading-to-huge-drop-in-air-pollution <comment><USER2> We're probably breathing the cleanest air we have in quite a while all around the world. And that's only after a month of total shutdown. Imagine what we could achieve longer term if we had the will.

<comment><USER3> This clean air comes at a big price.

<comment><USER2> So does the dirty air we normally have.

<comment><USER3> Fair point.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Recovering commit after Git reset --hard - <AUTHOR> https://blog.shanky.xyz/recovering-commit-after-git-reset--hard.html <comment><USER2> I prefer [http://ohshitgit.com](http://ohshitgit.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> (Syntax highlighting for the git patch is broken.)

</comment><comment><USER4> tl;dr git caches your state after every command, use git reflog to try it.

Why is this front page with 3 votes?

This is weird and I've flagged it.

<comment><USER3> From the HN guidelines:

 _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it._ […] _If you flag something, please don 't also comment that you did._

<comment><USER4> To clarify, I was asking in case I missed something, not complaining in a passive-aggressive way.</comment></comment></comment>


"Significant" NRO/ICANN announcement regarding IPv4 on Thursday - <AUTHOR> http://www.nro.net/news/icann-nro-live-stream

<comment><AUTHOR> This is anticipated to be the allocation of the final five IPv4 /8s.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another step to the new Internet (what ever that is)</comment>


Brain changes are associated with casual marijuana use in young adults - <AUTHOR> http://www.sfn.org/Press-Room/News-Release-Archives/2014/Brain-Changes-Are-Associated-with-Casual-Marijuana-Use-in-Young-Adults

<comment><USER2> The research that is the subject of this article[1] made the rounds a few months ago in the anti-cannabis movement. Here are some excerpts worth repeating:

"Marijuana participants were not excluded if they had used other illegal drugs in the past"

Also, in the 2nd to last paragraph (emphasis mine):

"This preliminary study has several caveats. First, the sample size does not provide power to examine complex interactions such as sex differences. _Because this is a cross-sectional study, causation cannot be determined, although marijuana exposure parametrically correlated with structural differences, which suggests the possibility of causation._ Longitudinal studies are needed to determine whether marijuana exposure explicitly leads to the differences observed in this study."

Checking out some of the players where the research money came from (National Institute on Drug Abuse, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center), it is no wonder the various news articles and the paper itself tried so hard to illustrate some causation. They ended up with a handful of people and some correlative results.

[1] - [http://jn.sfn.org/press/April-16-2014-Issue/zns01614005529.p...](http://jn.sfn.org/press/April-16-2014-Issue/zns01614005529.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Its fairly apparent in the way they write and structure the article too. It starts from an assumption, "marijuana = bad". Although they honestly may not be aware of it. They make sentences like:

"Marijuana use is often associated with motivation, attention, learning, and memory impairments. Previous studies exposing animals to THC show that repeated exposure to the drug causes structural changes in brain regions involved with these functions"

Which implies, but doesn't actually state, that marijuana use makes you "less motivated, less attentive, unable to learn, and memory impaired" in the long term (ie, not just when smoking) and then finish with:

"This study raises a strong challenge to the idea that casual marijuana use isn't associated with bad consequences"

Without actually showing "bad" in any of the results, just "change".

Admittedly, anecdotal evidence of the "stoner" stereotype from most folks on the street might say that (while smoking) those are probably true. I'm all for folks knowing the risks of things they choose to ingest. But I'd rather we can choose, and most of the people smoking might also say they don't mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the problems with the illegality of cannabis is that research is terrible because of the laws.

I strongly favour legalisation of all drugs. This would allow much better research.

Having said that the knee-jerk denialism that cannabis could possibly cause any harm at all is weird to see on HN.

<comment><USER5> Where do you draw the line in legalizing drugs, though? It's a question I often ask myself and others when we start discussing legalization and decriminalization. For example, should everyone be able to buy antibiotics and antivirals OTC without a prescription?

<comment><USER6> > _should everyone be able to buy antibiotics and antivirals OTC without a > prescription?_

Of course not. But what does this have to do with legalization? Antibiotics and antivirals are legal and controlled, just like marijuana should be.

<comment><USER7> In the current legalization debate "legal" generally means legal without a prescription. Those who want it to be legal but only with a prescription generally use the term "medical marijuana" instead of "legalization".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Playing Super Mario is also associated with brain changes [1]. Perhaps the answer is simply that as humans, our brains change quite a lot in response to our habits, and that such changes are unremarkable.

1\. [http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v19/n2/full/mp2013120a.html](http://www.nature.com/mp/journal/v19/n2/full/mp2013120a.html)

<comment><USER9> I'm with you all the way up to "unremarkable". We're still trying to understand the brain, so any observation of change is probably interesting and helpful to our understanding.

I for one would love to see a long term study on the effects of learning to program on your brain. After long coding sessions I often find it challenging to communicate effectively with friends or to follow complex social interactions. It's clear to me that focusing on abstract ideas for extended periods has a short term effect, and I would have to guess it has a long term one as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm naive here, but won't some brain changes have to happen when becoming addicted to nicotine when smoking cigarettes?

Would it be safe to say that, any drug that alters your state of mind will cause a brain change? (Legal or illegal)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing to me that medical journals print results based on 20 control and 20 test subjects.

</comment><comment><USER12> I remember sitting at a table with some neuroscientists in Berlin, and it turned out that they all smoked from time to time. They were really casual about it. Sure, marijuana is bad but alcohol is worse and we all do that.

This study presents an extraordinary claim but, if the comments mentioning of 20 subjects are correct, does not present extraordinary evidence.

</comment><comment><USER13> |In the current study, Jodi Gilman, PhD, Anne Blood, PhD, and Hans Breiter, MD, of Northwestern University and Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to compare the brains of 18- to 25-year olds who reported smoking marijuana at least once per week with those with little to no history of marijuana use.

Most people who consume marijuana regularly would not admit that information. This is not and cannot be a representative sample. Also correlation causation problems and tiny (20 people) sample size.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, 20 people doesn't make a study, it makes a basis for forming a hypothesis for potentially going after a grant to actually do a study.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The biggest problem with this study is a huge selection effect. The users of marijuana are very different then non users, and heavy users are very different from light light users. This by itself would show large correlations across a large swath of measurements.

</comment><comment><USER16> Anybody over 50 here that uses marijuana regularly and is still sharp?

That's an honest question, my own connections do not include programmers over 50 that smoke marijuana regularly so I'm curious how many people would bill themselves as such.

<comment><USER17> I've known several. "Sharp" isn't necessarily the right adjective for them, but they have all been excellent problem solvers. Sharpness is for young programmers, with or without weed.

I must say that I do not know any programmers who have lasted into their 50's without being regular stoners. Something about cannabis seems to protect them from the dementia that is so prevalent among people in this field 20 or more years.

Relative to this article, though- even though I'm a big advocate of the herb I'm familiar with the research done in Israel, Spain, and elsewhere, and one common thread is that cannabis alters the growing brain in ways that may not be desirable. I wish we could talk to our kids intelligently about it. Whether it's legal or not, it is not a good idea for a teenager to smoke a lot of weed. One puff isn't going to kill you, but once a week might impact your brain, and give you less psychic space to explore when you get high later in life.

Patience, children!

I've always used a company's drug-testing policy as a litmus test. If they test for cannabis, I know that they are limiting their pool severely, and that they will not get a number of the best programmers.

<comment><USER18> Is dementia common among programmers? I'd never heard that before

<comment><USER17> Well, maybe it's just seasonal affective disorder, or Portlanders being weird, but every programmer I've known who's been in the field longer than maybe 15 years is a little bonkers.

I wish there was a good study on mental health in aging programmers, to validate what has always been obvious from experience. We have a shelf life. This work is challenging and affects your brain chemistry if you spend your career constantly immersed in difficult programming tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Are brain changes an inherently bad thing?

</comment><comment><USER20> btw, didn't the US pass a law to defund research on marijuana?

</comment><comment><USER21> tl;dr: "The scientists found that the more the marijuana users reported consuming, the greater the abnormalities in the nucleus accumbens and amygdala. The shape and density of both of these regions also differed between marijuana users and non-users."

Nucleus accumbens: responsible for pleasure & reinforcement, maternal behavior. Direct stimulation has been shown to successfully decrease the effects of depression.

Amygdala: Responsible for emotional learning, memories of emotional experiences, memory consolidation, and emotional regulation.

All sources Wikipedia. I am not a neuroscientist, just trying to get a better understanding.

<comment><USER9> It's important to note that the study itself seems to make no mention of negative effects. Change yes, but not all change is negative. The article casts this as proof that marijuana is bad for you, but the study itself only notes evidence of an effect on brain structure... Not what the change means in real world terms.

<comment><USER22> Exactly. This was my first response to the study. Came to the comments to see if anyone could shed any light on the real world implications of this study.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "was larger and altered in its shape" that makes sense because when i'm high i can feel much more emotion... with small animals.</comment>


Long term Firefox support for corporate users is still possible - <AUTHOR> http://www.browsomatic.com/2011/06/long-term-firefox-support-for-corporate.html

<comment><USER2> This is exactly what Debian and Ubuntu do (and presumably other distributions too). They provide a stable release, and security updates are backported.

If you wanted to do something similar with Windows desktops for Firefox, you might base your release on the same source version as the Firefox source from a Ubuntu LTS release. This may make your job easier, although there would probably still be plenty of OS- and platform- specific backports to deal with.</comment>


Leading Economists Wrong to Claim Tax Havens Serve No Useful Economic Purpose - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2016/05/09/leading-economists-wrong-to-claim-tax-havens-serve-no-useful-economic-purpose/#5f1cf6534c81 <comment><AUTHOR> For orignal argument, reference: [https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-05-09/...](https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2016-05-09/tax- havens-serve-no-useful-economic-purpose-300-economists-tell)</comment>


What do you get when you cross a Mosquito with a Mountaineer? (explained) - <AUTHOR> http://www.solipsys.co.uk/images/Mosquito.png <comment><AUTHOR> Advice requested ...

This is _one_ ordering of the information, but I'm not sure it serves the intended purpose, which is to help people understand the joke (well, technically the riddle).

I'm interested to know how the HN community would suggest the information be re-ordered. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER2> There is a box on the outside talking about scalars that is part of the line of reasoning for vectors. It probably should be moved. It looks logically out of place.

I had substantial math in high school. I am usually the mathiest person in the room in meat space. I don't bother to identify as mathy on HN because I'm not impressive for this crowd.

I have never before seen the terms vector and scalar for math. The explanation for what they are is insufficient for my needs and there is no explanation as to why you can't cross the two.

The layout places the word play part awkwardly. It would make more sense and be easier to follow if you grouped the vector (wordplay) and vector (math) explanations together instead of having them each on the far outside of the piece. They should possibly go under a single heading that splits or separate headings that are properly labeled to indicate (vector: math) and (vector: wordplay).

Your explanations have a history of assuming a high level of base knowledge while apparently being aimed at a lay audience. As noted above, I have a relatively strong math background. If I don't get it, you are shooting way above the heads of your (presumed) target audience. You need to provide more math background while keeping it succinct and conceptually accessible.

I know that's a challenge. I've done plenty of that while homeschooling my twice exceptional sons who had multiple years difference in ability in different subjects. And, hey, this seems to be your hobby (or whatever) for whatever reason. So if you really want to speak to a lay audience and not just other math majors, you need to up your game in that department, a thing I think I have more or less said to you previously.

I realize you can be sincerely working at it and not making much progress if you aren't getting meaty feedback. So there's some feedback for you.

(Okay, I have admittedly seen vector and scalar in GIS. That knowledge is rusty and I never felt I really adequately understood it for my needs, which may be why I am claiming I don't know these terms. They have always been essentially empty words to me.)

The title also needs work. It's a lousy title, especially for something you are submitting to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the substantial reply - there's a lot to unpick here, but there are some bits I don't understand, so I'll ask here, although I might follow up by email to cover some things in greater depth. However ...

> _There is a box on the outside talking about scalars that is part of the > line of reasoning for vectors. It probably should be moved. It looks > logically out of place._

I'm not sure which box you mean - they appear to be in a logical order to me, so I'm wondering if you see something I'm not seeing, or have somehow been misled by something into making a connection that's not actually there.

> _I had substantial math in high school. I am usually the mathiest person in > the room in meat space ... I have never before seen the terms vector and > scalar for math._

Now that surprises me, and I wonder if it's a difference between the Australian, English (UK), and American curricula. Certainly when I was doing math in Australia vectors were covered in years 10 through 12 (ages 14/15 to 16/17), and now in the UK they're covered at a similar age. I'll have to get in touch with some of my American colleagues to see when vectors are covered in their schools.

> _The explanation for what they are is insufficient for my needs ..._

A diagram like this is not really the right place to give tutorials on the basics of vectors, although your comment makes me wonder if there is a place for a tutorial targeted at an audience other than those already catered for by the existing on-line material.

> _... and there is no explanation as to why you can 't cross the two._

The "cross product" is defined between vectors. That's it, really. I'm not sure what more can be added about that, so I'd welcome suggestions. Maybe I can add that comment in a box somewhere.

Hmm.

> _The layout places the word play part awkwardly. It would make more sense > and be easier to follow if you grouped the vector (wordplay) and vector > (math) explanations together instead of having them each on the far outside > of the piece. They should possibly go under a single heading that splits or > separate headings that are properly labeled to indicate (vector: math) and > (vector: wordplay)._

That's useful. It's not quite was I was thinking, but it reinforces the thoughts I had about the groupings and the flow. Thank you.

> _Your explanations have a history of assuming a high level of base knowledge > while apparently being aimed at a lay audience._

The strong evidence here in the UK is that my explanations are well-targeted and at an appropriate level for the audiences here, so this really might be a difference in the knowledge one can assume from the different school systems.

> _And, hey, this seems to be your hobby (or whatever) for whatever reason._

Actually, I make my living doing this, that's why I can say I have strong evidence that the material I produce here in the UK is appropriate for my audiences here in the UK. I have feedback forms, repeat engagements, letters of recommendation, _etc._

But having said all that, the fact that you didn't follow it tells me that perhaps I'm _not_ hitting the right level for an American audience, and that's _really_ valuable information.

> _So there 's some feedback for you._

Again, thank you.

<comment><USER2> _I 'm not sure which box you mean - they appear to be in a logical order to me, so I'm wondering if you see something I'm not seeing, or have somehow been misled by something into making a connection that's not actually there._

With looking again, I think I misunderstood the box. It says _The so-called 'scalar product' or 'dot product' gives a scalar as a result._ And I think now it is in the right place, but I just didn't understand it. It wasn't obvious to me that it was still talking about vectors. Not sure if it can be improved.

 _The "cross product" is defined between vectors. That's it, really. I'm not sure what more can be added about that, so I'd welcome suggestions. Maybe I can add that comment in a box somewhere._

You may not need an explanation. That just may be me. Lots of other people seem happy to hear "You can't do x." It seems to be a personal quirk that I always want to know "But, _why_ can't you do x??"

 _That 's useful._

Glad something I said was useful.

 _But having said all that, the fact that you didn 't follow it tells me that perhaps I'm not hitting the right level for an American audience, and that's really valuable information._

Maybe. Maybe not.

I mean it is a clue that perhaps there is a difference and you can ask around and all that. But I don't appear to be some kind of _typical American_ by any stretch of the imagination, so I would be very hesitant to make broad inferences based on me as a single data point. Though, certainly, it's a line of thinking worth investigating.

FWIW, I attended K-12 in Columbus, GA. The Deep South has a long history as being a bastion of poverty and not great education. So you might find regional differences within the US.

(The Deep South is variably defined. It sometimes includes Texas and sometimes not. It sometimes includes Florida and sometimes not. It sometimes includes some of the more northerly edge states. It always includes Georgia and Alabama and a few other states of the American Southeast. These were slave states and they tried to secede, leading to the Civil War. The end of slavery absolutely gutted the local economy and destroyed the government system as the states only taxed slaveholders. The entire system had to be rebuilt and has, arguably, not fully recovered from all that. So this is an area significantly impacted by a long and burdensome history.)

I was one of the top students in my school and, based on my merit scholarship (that I turned down) and placing as "alternate" (third place for the entire state for the subject in question) for the Governor's Honors Program (a residential summer enrichment program for gifted students), there is evidence that I was a strong student, even at the state or national level (the scholarship was a National Merit Scholarship). But the school system I attended likely wasn't a great school system.

Also, I basically memorized my way through a lot of math in high school. I was in my 30s when I began getting explanations that were meaningful and useful to me for some of what I had memorized. For that and other reasons, it is possible that it was covered, I didn't really understand it and I simply don't remember.

Those last few paragraphs are intended to give you some context and inform your follow-up research (should there be any) concerning the American education system.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Our collective privacy problem is not your fault - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/90447583/our-collective-privacy-problem-is-not-your-fault <comment><USER2> I guess the Fourth Amendment doesn't protect you from capitalism.</comment>


Usability and Human–computer interaction example - <AUTHOR> http://antonradev.net/usability/usability-and-human-computer-interaction-example/

<comment><USER2> Wow man, you wrote a lot :) I saw just the example looks nice.. but it seems I have to read the post after all..</comment>


AI is still several breakthroughs away from reality - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/23/ai-is-still-several-breakthroughs-away-from-reality/ <comment><USER2> In my opinion, we still have a long way to go to quantify and program emotion. We know that humans make choices based on reason and emotion. While computers excel at the former, humans more often than not depend on the latter to make the final call. Now obviously our emotions are based upon previous experiences so machine learning should be able teach emotion. However, in addition fine tuning the weights and biases of a typical machine learning algorithm, I conjecture that an 3rd element in Time is also needed. The reason I say this is because humans will make different choices depending on their current state of emotion. Before we can have true AI, a system needs to consider both the logical and the emotional outcomes of its actions. Without both, AI systems will always be naive because they won't have the "fool me once" mentality.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most useful object you carry around with you? - <AUTHOR> (Not counting your phone) <comment><USER2> Potentially my Mighty Wallet - [https://mightywallet.shop/collections/classic- mighty-wallet/...](https://mightywallet.shop/collections/classic-mighty- wallet/products/wealth-of-knowledge)

The rulers on the edge have come in handy the most.

<comment><USER3> Also, in case you need the law of cosines in your pocket. ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pocket knife. Clip one in your pocket for a week and you will be amazed how much you use it. I always have a cheap Gerber or nice Kershaw on me.

<comment><USER5> Yep. Depending on if I'm going into the office or staying home, I have two Victorinox pocket knives of which I always carry one. Slicing apples, cleaning dirty nails, (un)screwing stuff, prying out a battery, cutting open packages, uncapping a bottle. All from a package-of-gum sized aluminium tool in my pocket

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My planner. My whole life is there.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a specific planner that you prefer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> my greyman/lil'basterd kit

<comment><USER9> What is this?

<comment><USER8> a small tin or belt pouch with multi tools and odds and ends to use as a macguyver solution to your problems

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhXEScR9b8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhXEScR9b8M)

[https://www.edcforums.com/threads/grey-maning-a-tactical- bag...](https://www.edcforums.com/threads/grey-maning-a-tactical-bag.140224/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> iPhone.

Oh, my Leatherman (Skeletool/Wave, depending on the day).

</comment><comment><USER11> tight fitting cloth work gloves that don't obstruct writing

</comment><comment><USER12> Pencil and paper

</comment><comment><USER13> Pen

</comment><comment><USER14> My soul :)</comment>


World Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease - <AUTHOR> http://myscienceacademy.org/2012/08/19/world-renown-heart-surgeon-speaks-out-on-what-really-causes-heart-disease/

<comment><USER2> Dwight C. Lundell, M.D. lost medical license in 2008. Since that time he has been promoting books that clash with established scientific knowledge of heart disease prevention and treatment. His book, The Great Cholesterol Lie, invites people to "forget about everything you have been told about low-fat diets, saturated fats, cholesterol and the causes of heart disease."

[http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html](http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/lundell.html)

<comment><USER3> That's a nice ad hominem collection there. Not one point I could find about his actual claims. He didn't file his taxes properly? Bad patient review history? These things are not relevant to the scientific claims he puts forth.

<comment><USER4> Ad hominem isn't always a bad thing. The fact that someone lost their medical license is good information when evaluating professional credibility. Professional credibility is absolutely important when evaluating someone's claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is pure quackery. The cholesterol -> heart disease framework was developed by the Framingham studies ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham_Heart_Study](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Framingham_Heart_Study)) that showed a strong correlation between cholesterol and heart attacks and strokes. Now correlation does not equal causation but decades of subsequent studies have shown that cardiac event rates drop linearly with decrease in LDL (a form of cholesterol) ([http://www.nature.com/nrcardio/journal/v8/n12/fig_tab/nrcard...](http://www.nature.com/nrcardio/journal/v8/n12/fig_tab/nrcardio.2011.158_F1.html)). It has culminated so far in the JUPITER trial ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUPITER_trial](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JUPITER_trial)) where people with "normal" LDL levels and no history of heart disease were able to decrease their heart attack risk with statins by driving their LDL even lower. The whole inflammation stuff came into play because JUPITER also looked at an inflammatory marker called CRP. Now, that angle is still controversial but could play a role. However, it does not invalidate the dozens of studies linking cholesterol to heart disease. Plus there is nothing linking this guy's quack theories on nutrition to inflammation/CRP or ultimately to heart attacks.

I'm surprised that it made it this high on HN. Maybe people just love feeling that "freakanomics" feeling of mental superiority that they're willing to swallow any alternative hypothesis that challenges the norm. Maybe people just don't trust medical science.

<comment><USER6> _Maybe people just love feeling that "freakanomics" feeling of mental superiority that they're willing to swallow any alternative hypothesis that challenges the norm. Maybe people just don't trust medical science._

I hope it's the case.

It was fat, then it was cholesterol, then it was LDL, now it's pattern B LDL that shows a correlation. The ratio of HDL/LDL still factors in as well as triglyceride levels. The jury is still out there as to whether that specific type of LDL is what causes damage or is a sign of damage being caused.

To act as if we can say "cut out all cholesterol because it's bad for you" is wrongheaded. We know there is a correlation with these factors as we measure them in the blood. We can't say with a high degree of certainty that eating a certain way will cause a certain effect on people. But when people are taking in over 20% of their caloric intake as saturated fat and showing incredibly healthy cardiovascular health readings, you've got to wonder if the common wisdom is something we should be comfortable with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That reads too much like baloney.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another slam against overconsumption of sugar and processed foods. This guy may not have the best reputation but the advice doesn't seem all that bad.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm glad that there will be that 1% or so of people who pick up this article and have it change their minds. :)

That dietary cholesterol necessarily causes heart damage is taken as a matter of faith. :(

</comment><comment><USER8> tl;dr cholesterol is not the problem, things that inflame the arteries, e.g. high processed carbs and over consumption of certain oils

</comment><comment><USER9> "Well,smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully." He knows very little about smoking.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In hindsight I wish I had done more than just read this article before I submitted it.

A lesson learnt.</comment>