Data Point of the Week: Are Creative Pros Embracing AR? - <AUTHOR> https://arinsider.co/2019/08/05/data-point-of-the-week-are-creative-pros-embracing-ar/ <comment><USER2> No.</comment>


Everyblock's Dilemma: How Do You Open Source Your Entire Site and Survive? - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/01/everyblocks-dilemna-how-do-you.html <comment><USER2> We have, and so has Reddit. For any site that could be described as a community, the people sitting round the table are probably more important than the shape of the table.

E.g. we don't even have our own search (I recommend <http://www.webmynd.com/html/hackernews.html> if you haven't tried it), but we do crack down pretty vigorously on trolls and spammers, because they hurt a site more than lack of features.

<comment><USER3> The difference between Hacker News and Everyblock is that Everyblock needs to pay six salaries. (I know they have a parent company with cash now, but does reddit even cover its own hosting and salaries? I honestly don't know.)

There's survive and then there's survive, right?

<comment><USER4> Everyblock was funded by a Knight Foundation grant, and I believe still are.

<comment><USER3> Regardless, the grant will end and they will have to generate at minimum six (decent) salaries worth of revenue. I don't think the grant will last them much longer. Don't get me wrong, I know most of them in one way or another, and wish them the best ... but like I said, it isn't exactly like Hacker News or reddit in the 'survive for the fun / publicity of it' sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The code is free, but the aggregated data might not :) And the knowledge about how to aggregate, and how to transform this data.

For example, approach Starbucks, and ask them where do they plan to open new stores (er... I know SB specifically is closing shops, but the point remains), and then SELL to them data about the area.

Sure, lots of information are already available on the website. What's to stop Starbucks to just enter the website and do their research? That's where intimate knowledge about the data comes in. SB won't ask what the website can answer. They'll expand the questions, and ask you to convert the data to Excel, and etc..

Know what business need! And put a line on the sand: Your people will do a lot of things that are free to consume and use and mashup and all that jazz. But some of them, you will charge, specially the one-time jobs, or for those rich enough to pay...

<comment><USER6> The data on EveryBlock is very nice because it gives the average consumer access to very useful information like the crime blotter for a ZIP code.

Starbucks' sophisticated demographic analysis most likely far exceeds any data that EveryBlock would ever offer.

"even searching out parking lots with many oil stains because that indicates heavy traffic."

Maybe, they even literally wrote the book on it. Arthur Rubinfeld is the person given credit for managing the expansion of the Starbucks chain from 100 to 4,000 worldwide. [http://www.amazon.com/Built-Growth-Expanding-Business- Around...](http://www.amazon.com/Built-Growth-Expanding-Business- Around/dp/0131465740)

<http://www.strategy-business.com/press/16635507/08211>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> You can charge a download fee for the source or binaries. I'd sure as hell pay $100+ to grab a copy of EveryBlock and host it for my neighbourhood or city.

Also, the neglect to mention the Affero GPL is sad. Check it out <http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/agpl-3.0.html>

Basically if you release your server-side software under that license, you can get others to release the changes they make so your own hosted copy will become better (hopefully):

"The GNU Affero General Public License is designed specifically to ensure that, in such cases, the modified source code becomes available to the community. It requires the operator of a network server to provide the source code of the modified version running there to the users of that server. _Therefore, public use of a modified version, on a publicly accessible server, gives the public access to the source code of the modified version._ "

</comment><comment><USER8> Well, as others have said, of course you can survive -- there's more to a site than its codebase.

And second, this isn't exactly a dilemma. They got a grant in exchange for a promise to open source. Seems like a pretty reasonable deal to me. If you want to keep it all to yourself, then you've got to pay for the development yourself.

</comment><comment><USER9> new product to me. My first impression is that many marketing and election campaigns might make use of these tools well. Such campaigns shouldn't be spending lavishly on IT departments and could make use of consulting and other custom usage by the experts that built the tools.

So the answer to "how to make money off open source?" seems to always lead back to "consulting and support". Not bad, its just not 100x returns on licensing, its "just good revenue".

good luck, would like to see tools like this continue to evolve!!

</comment><comment><USER10> We have enough examples now where a company open sources its product and still makes money, Redhat, Mysql to name few. You can always open up the base product and charge for additional features (the freemium model).

You have to create an ecosystem around the product it will be profitable. That ecosystem can be additional plugins or services around a free software product. Since free software is based on the concept of sharing the network effect will kick in, for good products.

If the product is good you will make money immaterial of open source or closed source nature. In my opinion free software has more stability and performance but most free softwares are packaged badly (or not packaged at all). When Free software hackers learn the art of packaging a product and start realizing that there are others who are going to use the product too, we can should lot more usable products from open source world.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the short term, no one will likely bother to copy the code and open a competing (or even related) site. So business-wise, opening the code doesn't have any short-term impact.

In the longer term, if they were to become hugely successful, then many people would love to copy them and having access to the code would make that very tempting. But "hugely successful" is a big if. By then, they probably would have enough of a community that copycats wouldn't hurt them too much.

We have been toying with similar ideas for our startup, especially since its concept lands itself very well to community-based development. No decision yet.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, it should be a paid iPhone app. And/or charge for per-query REST API access to a hosted Everyblock data access API.

Bonus points for the iPhone if we can do simple GIS mashups on the fly like 'Show all the schools in the area' or even better allow filters and drill- downs 'Show all the schools with a graduation rate greater than X%"

</comment><comment><USER12> 1\. If you focus on customers, you compete with yourself

2\. If you focus on competitors, you compete with competitors

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder how they could compete with, cooperate with, or complement craigslist?</comment>


Ask HN: Any admin / office jobs near Brisbane, QLD? Desperate - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone<p>Due to unfortunate circumstances, my parents are unemployed and about to lose their home - they are both very well educated (both have doctorates) and hard-working, but getting jobs is often more about who you know than what you know, and my parents don't know many people at all. They are two of the loveliest people you could ever know, and I am desperate to help them. They would be happy to do anything, including admin or office work. <comment><USER2> Sorry to hear that; that's terrible :-(

I'm from Brisbane, but am currently overseas (I'm going home soon!). My only contact who could (maybe) hire someone has just left the country for a few weeks.

What experience do they have? What are their doctorates in? Where in Brisbane are they?

Edit: you could try asking on /r/brisbane too: [https://pay.reddit.com/r/brisbane](https://pay.reddit.com/r/brisbane)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you so much for commenting.

My father has a PhD and my mother's doctorate is in educational management. My mother's experience includes office manager, finance officer, operations / communication officer and site manager. My father has done... everything - lecturer, social worker, program coordinator, truck driver (in his younger years).

I do want to emphasise that they would be happy to do anything that is not labour-intensive (both are in their 50s), and would certainly not consider any work "beneath them."

They are currently based near Ipswich but would not be averse to a long commute.

Thanks again!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Upwork. What am I missing? - <AUTHOR> Has anyone used Upwork for freelancing? Is it a legitimate service? I am curious since I managed to use up my connects with no response and now they immediately hit me to buy more of them. I am relatively new to all this. Services I offer are not that unique ( data entry, web scraping, research ). It is possible I am simply outbid or doing something else wrong. <comment><USER2> I hire from these sites semi regularly, so looking a bit from the other side plus peeps I talk with who work regularly on these platforms.

I suspect it is hard to start. I tend to go for proven performers and even then it's full of low quality.

Some peeps I use do very well, are full on work (full time) with ever increasing rates.

I think the best strategy is to bid low, like crazy low. Yeah it sux but it's like starting your career again. You need to build reputation and take whatever job you can to get in the door. Make sure you get 5 stars. If you get a bad rating first few jobs I'd kill the account and start again as these are damaging without quality references to offset.

Approach with the restart mindset. Experience people who think they can join and get their real life career rate off the bat are likely dreaming. It seems a multi year commitment to build a network, and in the same way I filter 5-10 freelancers to get a decent one I'll keep working with, you likely need to do the same with clients.

And if I was trying to hack it, I'd ask existing clients if they mind using me on said platform to help build reputation faster.

And if your truly looking to work for top dollar, it's the wrong environment.

</comment><comment><USER3> Upwork is a dumpster-fire. I have used it (to hire specifically-skilled software professionals) several times in the past six years and these are the problems: 1) too many people bid on your project even if they clearly do not have the desired experience. 2) "firms" that bid on your projects, again, without the experience. 3) vendors "having trouble with upwork...can we just switch to paypal?" 4) Upwork suddenly stopping vendors "for violating our terms of service" (almost certainly due to #3).

I hope to never use Upwork again to hire. The last three times i clearly put in the job posting: "Once you begin work: all work and payment will and must contine with the original upwork account! We will not switch accounts, we will not switch to paypal."

There MUST be better services!

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a legitimate service, and I owe them a lot. From allowing me to work with clients overseas up to finally bringing my family over to the states. Back then in bolivia, the only work available was PHP or C#/Java for offshore companies.

They were called odesk back then though.

One thing that's TERRIBLE about them though is that any contract that finishes, if your client forgets to leave any review or feedback, it'll count negative towards your score.

You could have worked a $25,000+ contract with a client, and if they just say thanks and forget to leave a review, it will impact you negatively. It's something I wish they would change.

<comment><USER5> You'll actually have to bug clients for a review. I think this is actually a best case because I've had one or two horrible contractors and the system punishes clients leaving low reviews.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> y, those market places make it tough to win work and find good clients. It's a race to the lowest price and those aren't the type of clients you want to work for.

Reach out to your network and let them know what services you are offering. You're going to find more success and better clients with in your network.

You can win jobs on Upwork, but it will take some money upfront and effort to build your history of work and you need to make sure clients are totally happy so you get good reviews to get more work.

The best clients and projects will come from people you know, reach out to your network.

</comment><comment><USER7> You're not missing anything.

Beyond the fact it's a rat race, the other problem is that there's zero moderation nor penalty to weed out the monkeys who will bid unsustainable rates to _every single job_ (regardless of their skillset - which is nonexistent btw but I digress), and then find a way to get a good rating despite delivering shit (if delivering anything at all). I've read stories of some freelancers withholding the deliverable until the client leaves a good rating.

It's difficult to compete by offering quality when every single task post is swarmed by these monkeys. For an unexperienced client they look like very good deals and the good rating makes them feel at ease. Of course, they'll end up disappointed, but at that point they'll either leave the platform for good, or not have any more time or money to pay someone better to try it again. In the end, everyone (but the monkeys) lose.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure when the last time you used it was, but now they allow limited applications per person. Someone swarming won't get very far. A lot of people are quite high quality, and I feel the rating system does the trick. Downside is they rate you back, so if someone did a shit job and you say so, they'll do the same on you. If anyone has lots of high ratings, it's likely that their bad work isn't being rated.

You can choose to withhold payment until the deliverables are delivered. IMO the bigger risk is that a lot of people on there are doing it part time and slow or absent. I've had a few people who also choose to back out. The system works great for small tasks (make me a map marker feature), not so great for bigger tasks (make me an app).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've used for both hiring/outsourcing simple parts and getting work. It's worked fine, but you have to really deal with the mess that is interviewing.

The downside is that there's some lock in with how they process payments and visibility. It's not terrible, but enough to put me off. I'd rather do something like Toptal to find work.

We always had about 30+ applicants for any posted jobs, with about 5+ of them really talented people. The only reason I stopped doing it was because I found it mentally tiring to reject all these nice people, and it feels a bit like a meat market.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's legitimate, I found my best client there, but I did some research on their job listing and emailed them directly and begun working with them, side- stepping upwork altogether. I don't feel bad about it since upwork's whole model seems to be squeezing and exploiting freelancers.

If you want to get noticed then you will need to fill out your profile completely, do the verification over video chat.

</comment><comment><USER9> Upwork is a race to the bottom.

<comment><USER5> I've seen people make a good living, like $150 an hour. I've got some good work from there too (one with a FAANG, that paid well above what I expected). But generally most listing sites are poor sources of work.

<comment><USER10> What type of work was it for the FAANG? Just curious why a company like that would go on Upwork.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Connect with few freelancers and then deal with them directly.</comment>


Show HN: Viewmaster.js - A tiny library for managing client-side views - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/notduncansmith/viewmaster.js

<comment><USER2> nice, feels interesting when doing static apps with view pages.</comment>


Picture of the Day: The Heaviest Black Hole Ever Recorded - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/01/picture-of-the-day-the-heaviest-black-hole-ever-recorded/69572/ <comment><AUTHOR> The picture of the day is not a picture today.</comment>


Overlooked No More: Karen Sparck Jones, Who Established Basis for Search Engines - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/02/obituaries/karen-sparck-jones-overlooked.html <comment><USER2> Great quote, and even more true today "There is an interaction between the context and the programming task itself," she said. "You don't need a fundamental philosophical discussion every time you put finger to keyboard, but as computing is spreading so far into people's lives, you need to think about these things."</comment>


Marrying Vega and Zen: The AMD Ryzen 5 2400G Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.anandtech.com/print/12425/marrying-vega-and-zen-the-amd-ryzen-5-2400g-review <comment><USER2> tl;dr: "With the Ryzen 5 2400G, AMD has completely shut down the sub-$100 graphics card market. As a choice for gamers on a budget, those building systems in the region of $500, it becomes the processor to pick."

<comment><USER3> > With the Ryzen 5 2400G, AMD has completely shut down the sub-$100 graphics > card market.

Well, almost. Integrated graphics generally take the place of additional CPU cores. For example, there is no 8-core Ryzen with integrated graphics. So if you need cores (like for compiling code) then you end up with a discrete graphics card even if you don't need fast graphics.

I actually wish Intel would make a cheap discrete graphics card for that purpose, because they have the most stable Linux graphics drivers.

<comment><USER4> To be fair, AMD's Linux drivers have been pretty solid for a while now. I don't have an objective comparison, but the general perception definitely has some catching up to do. For those Ryzens you'll probably need a very recent kernel, but that's to be expected with new hardware.

<comment><USER5> It depends. We got a few machines with AMD RX460s (Or similar, I can't remember exactly) and the users wanted Ubuntu on them.

So I install 16.04, the most recent LTS release available because I don't want these machines to turn into a pumpkin after less than 9 months but the graphics are a total fail. SVGA 800x600 only.

So the kernel on that release is too old and updating the kernel on Ubuntu is fraught with peril. So I look into third party drivers and find that their support was dropped entirely from even the third party Ubuntu support. So I go to ATI/AMD's website and find the driver package, but it turns out to be a tarball full of .debs with zero instructions on how to install or enable them. I was having flashbacks to working on Linux installs in the late 90s and having to hack everything to get it working.

In the end I had to install 17.10 and apply the hacks to make it work[1] just to get the graphics running, and now I'm going to have to revisit those machines in a couple of months to upgrade them to 18.04.

[1] Disabling the new systemd DNS resolver that crashes on literally every lookup attempt on our network. Also had to learn how to program the modeline equivalent for Weyland for when you're going through a KVM and don't have EDID. This was no picnic in later versions of X, but I had already figured it out and had earlier versions as reference. I still miss xconfig sometimes.

<comment><USER6> Yes, using the latest hardware is painful with Ubuntu.

It's gonna be a breeze in a few month though. And once that happens, the open source AMD drivers are going to be stabler than the Nvidia blob again.

<comment><USER5> Given that the nVidia blob apparently doesn't work with Weyland it's going to be a problem in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it would be amazing if there were also able to stick a GB or two of HBM onto the same chip as kind of a L4 cache / VRAM for the GPU. Performance would be amazing, especially considering that Zen's performance gets better with RAM speed and GPUs are almost entirely RAM starved.

<comment><USER8> I've never considered that as an idea before, but now am left wondering why it hasn't been done. Guessing the manufacturers make more money from full-unit upgrades than they'd expect to make from incremental memory unit purchases (even if they made the RAM slot proprietary).

<comment><USER9> Intel has a new chip coming out with AMD graphics and HBM memory: [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12220/how-to-make-8th-gen- mor...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12220/how-to-make-8th-gen-more-complex- intel-core-with-radeon-rx-vega-m-graphics-launched)

<comment><USER10> But that's not a desktop CPU. I would gladly buy it if it were.

<comment><USER11> With a 100W TDP it basically is a desktop CPU.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Pending good motherboard support for 2160p60 (4K 60Hz), the $169 CPU looks like a great choice for a 4K home theatre PC. Just a few months ago I built a Ryzen 1500X based HTPC with a geforce 1030 passively cooled card.

The geforce1030, based on a slower version but the same architecture as the 1050/1070/1080, gets me hardware accelerated H265/HEVC and the capability to play most MKV files without dropping frames at up to very high bitrates. Typical playback for something like a 2160p60 24GB copy of the original Blade Runner is at about 18% CPU usage on all four cores using a recent VLC beta.

But the total money spent was something like $89 motherboard + $89 video card + $165 CPU. It would be nice to not have to buy the video card.

<comment><USER13> Be aware for 4K that almost no motherboards exist at this time that can pair one of these APUs with a HDMI 2.0 output. Almost all AM4 motherboards come with HDMI 1.4 outputs that limit 4K output to 30Hz - probably fine for movies, noticable in the UI, and not great for games (even if rendered at lower than native res). Though there are some current gen AM4 boards with HDMI 2.0 and native 4K60 output, it's somehow a premium feature that is bizarrely reserved for high end gaming motherboards.

The next generation of motherboard chipsets from AMD should remediate this, but motherboards with these will not launch before April.

<comment><USER14> I'm a bit fuzzy on this, but I think any motherboard with DisplayPort 1.2 or better will do the job. DisplayPort has been ahead of HDMI on the 4K60Hz game.

Picking a random NewEgg motherboard with AM4 & DisplayPort, it looks like it would do the job (see Specs):

[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681313...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813132988)

So does the cheapest board:

[https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681314...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813144135)

<comment><USER12> I did some research on this before building my current system (see parent comment). At the time I bought the stuff about two months ago the A8 and A10 CPUs (pre-Ryzen generation) for AM4 looked like terrible options. Looking at CPUs, the whole series of currently shipping Ryzen don't have onboard video, and I wanted a 1500X because I knew I could overclock it by at least 200-300 MHz with little effort.

Almost went to an Intel 8th generation Core architecture and Intel's integrated video. But the performance difference between intel onboard and a $80 to $90 geforce1030 was significant. I wanted to build something that would still be able to play ridiculously high bitrate HEVC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was going to "I sort of wish I could get a Thinkpad or Latitude with one of these in it" then I googles and realized that both will be coming out this year.

<comment><USER16> Remember that this is the desktop APU, with 65W TDP. On the article they mentioned that AMD doesn't have any plan on the laptop APU.

Edit: oops, they released the laptop APU earlier, like ryzen 7 2700U.

<comment><USER17> cTDP down to 46W sounds about OK for a "workstation"-type laptop.

Unclear whether it will be BGA-packaged though.

<comment><USER18> I can imagine seeing it on a Thinkpad P model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have been waiting for this for a new HTPC built that can also do a good job as a gaming system. Now comes the fun of reading each motherboard spec in detail to figure out if it can output 4K@60 (HDMI2.0?) By fun, I mean pain as this info is hard to find on the boards I have looked at so far.

<comment><USER20> For 4K@60 or 1440p@144, you would need a motherboard with 'Display Port' not just HDMI. That should eliminate quite a few.

<comment><USER21> Wrong.

[https://www.hdmi.org/press/press_release.aspx?prid=133](https://www.hdmi.org/press/press_release.aspx?prid=133)

> _September 4, 2013_ – IFA 2013 – HDMI Forum, Inc., a non-profit, mutual > benefit corporation, today announced the release of Version 2.0 of the HDMI > Specification. This latest HDMI Specification, the first to be developed by > the HDMI Forum, offers a significant increase in bandwidth (up to 18Gbps) to > support new features such as 4K@50/60 (2160p),

<comment><USER20> Ah thanks for the check. I would still recommend getting a motherboard with Display Port(DP) to future proof the core components. I bought a gaming monitor 2 months back, and it came with only the DP cable. I see DP recommended by most game rig builders.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really like that AnandTech's print view is just the same layout but everything on a single page.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is such a breath of fresh air for PC gamers who have been waiting to build a budget gaming machine, ever since the crypto-mining frenzy messed up the GPU market. Most GPUs are selling at a 30%ish price hike right now!

<comment><USER23> PC building is a nightmare right now between RAM and GPU prices. It's clear that they are not a valued demographic to parts manufacturers.

Anyway, I would recommend a Ryzen 3 + GTX 1050 at a minimum for a gaming computer. The performance here on GTA V, a several years old game, is pretty poor.

<comment><USER24> Actually, they are. Arguably it's the cryptominer fools that the part manufacturers want nothing to do with, because chances are you ramp up manufacturing now (so 3-6 months until you actually see higher supply) and by then they are on to the next coin fad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> What are the chances that AMD will ever try to shut down the $200-$250 graphics card market?

<comment><USER26> If they can socket a Vega 16+ APU, they might be able to put a dent in the sub-$200 market. The Intel G platform uses Vega20 and Vega24 with HBM, but they aren't socketed.

<comment><USER27> Not gonna happen with DDR4. Clock for clock, the Vega8 and Vega11 go toe to toe when OC'd, pointing to bandwidth starvation.

Maybe with a bigger package they could throw HBM2 on there... Something like a Ryzen 7 2 CCX configuration (8c/16t) + Vega ~20 + 4GB HBM2 in a package that fits the Threadripper/Epyc socket.

At that point you're stuck paying a premium for the X399 platform, though, you should probably just buy a dGPU :)

<comment><USER28> Would u recommend over clocking memory for the best perf increase?

<comment><USER27> RAM speed is definitely important for CPU and GPU perf, but much like other Ryzen parts it hits a point where higher end kits provide little to no benefit. 3200MHz is about where you start hitting seriously diminishing returns, especially considering cost of high end RAM kits.

You can see a much larger gaming benefit by overclocking the IGP. In most tests I saw today, an overclocked Vega8(1100MHz) in the $99 part easily catches up to the stock Vega11(1250MHz) and can be pushed to ~1500MHz.

[https://www.kitguru.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/xRaven-3-...](https://www.kitguru.net/wp- content/uploads/2018/02/xRaven-3-Time-Spy- rev.png.pagespeed.ic.QuYRXcT33J.webp)

[https://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_5_2400G_Vega_11/images/...](https://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/Ryzen_5_2400G_Vega_11/images/memory_scaling2.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Are there any Dell laptops with Ryzen APUs?

<comment><USER30> Not that I know of so far, still only sell AMD A-XX laptops. Also looking forward to an AMD Ryzen Mobile (U) that can replace a XPS 13, since Intel is not an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The one news I'm hoping to hear from AMD is that they produce a deep learning TPU.

</comment><comment><USER32> I'm sorta surprised that AMD hasn't made a "smallest Zen with double the biggest Vega" to appeal to the cryptocoin crowd.

<comment><USER33> I think everyone is expecting mining to fall and they don't want to invest the R&D and create the manufacturing , build the hardware and in the end it won't sell. Mining seems like a gamble so I would personally not risk it, if they want the miners can buy the regular GPUs

<comment><USER34> I recently (yesterday) calculated[0] that Ethereum is roughly 64% of the GPU mining market by power. That's a lower bound - it's likely much higher, maybe 75+%. Hybrid POS/POW is expected in the fall and will likely come with a healthy drop in the block reward. Following that will be full POS (2019?) after which, at least on the main Ethereum chain, there will be no mining. I'd like to see the block reward dropped much sooner but that's a long shot request.

[0]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7wufiq/ethereum_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/7wufiq/ethereum_is_64_of_all_gpu_mining_by_power_09gw_of/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> What's the cryptocurrency mining efficiency vs price ratio like? Is this going to be the new Rx 580 in terms of popularity?

<comment><USER36> rubbish for crypto but good value for games hopefully

<comment><USER37> Why can't we just have Intel or AMD design the ultimate mining chip that works better with more of that one purpose chip :)

<comment><USER36> Or a free socket, or maybe an nvme mining chip?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Riemann for Anti-dummies: Introduction and Critique  - <AUTHOR> http://www.geniebusters.org/Riemann_intro.html <comment><USER2> What a strange site. It is very close to blowing my mind, but I'm not really sure where to begin. It seems like a wonderful journey of mathematics from a different perspective than the traditional pure vs. applied, geometry vs. analysis, etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is probably the most interesting site I've found here in a while. At first it seems very strange and crank-ish but there's definitely a lot of stuff for me to come back to.

FWIW, I just finished a math bachelor's at UC Davis and I would say "reports of mathematics education's death are greatly exaggerated." Certainly we did cover some of the "neglected" material, and my teachers presented things with an eye towards unification.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm flagging this, there's lot's of conflated ideas here as well as some real trash. My flags went up when I saw the comments about saints/devils in math relating them to Schoenberg's introduction of atonal music.

Yes there were and are deep philosophical issues in mathematics, .eg. between intuitionists and platonists, but this writer strikes me as somewhat of a conspiracy theorist. Lyndon LaRouche? Give me a break

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'm flagging this, there's lot's of conflated ideas here as well as some > real trash.

Almost everything submitted to this site is trash: get-rich-quick pablum, braindead web 2.0 wank-tech. And what's left over has plenty of conflated ideas.

> this writer strikes me as somewhat of a conspiracy theorist

Because conspiracies cannot exist? The laws of physics forbid them?

Admit it, the man's crime is: making you think.

<comment><USER4> I don't think so, I generally dismiss holocaust deniers without much thought. His only crime was wasting my time.

I'm curious, did you read the piece? In it's entirety?</comment></comment></comment>


Venezuela: The Price of Bitcoin Doubling Every 18 Days - <AUTHOR> https://247cryptonews.com/venezuela-the-price-of-bitcoin-doubling-every-18-days/ <comment><USER2> Venezuela can quit OPEC and sell Oil in Yuan/Rupee

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that'll help much. Their oil production has fallen roughly in half since 2000 so there isn't that much regardless of the currency.</comment></comment>


Increasing complexity: A day in the life of the president - <AUTHOR> http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2010/09/broken-washington-201009?printable=true

<comment><USER2> "Gridlock is not an American problem, it is an American achievement! When James Madison and 54 other geniuses went to Philadelphia in the sweltering summer of 1787, they did not go there to design an efficient government. That idea would have horrified them. They wanted a safe government, to which end they filled it with blocking mechanisms: three branches of government, two branches of the legislative branch, veto, veto override, supermajorities, and judicial review. And yet, I can think of nothing the American people have wanted intensely and protractedly that they did not eventually get. The world understands, a world most of whose people live under governments they wish were capable of gridlock, that we always have more to fear from government speed than government tardiness."

-George Will

<comment><USER3> This is only the case when you imagine your government is only capable of incompetence. A safe assumption in America but not everywhere.

<comment><USER4> They didn't design the government that way because they were afraid of government incompetence. They were afraid of replacing one tyrant with another tyrant or small group of them.

And also of majorities persecuting minorities. And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about.

<comment><USER3> Well, my point was that other governments weren't designed that way and do fine. I think it's safe to say that people in e.g. Sweden trust their government more since (a) there are so many government services and (b) Sweden is supposed to be the most democratic place on earth.

> And of the government getting caught up in "popular passions" and > overreacting to things that people briefly got very fired up about.

Well, the US government still does this to devastating effect (e.g. "war on terror", patriot act, etc.).

<comment><USER5> Sweden is a small[1] culturally and racially homogenous country. If you look at indices that try to measure good governance, they correlate very strongly with all of those factors [2]. It's amazing that the U.S. does as well as it does, considering its size, and the fact that it allows so many poor immigrants with heterogeneous backgrounds into the country.

[1] population ~ 9M. NYC alone has nearly 8M people and is much more diverse. [2] <http://info.worldbank.org/governance/wgi/mc_chart.asp>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If I have an issue with this article, it's that it reaches a crescendo of Obama-worship by the end (celebrating healthcare reform with a depiction of a White House martini-on-the-balcony scene worthy of a crap James Bond ending) - clearly, the price of access to Rahm Emanuel. Thus after painting a derogatory picture of 24/7 news media (not Vanity Fair's game) as a child badly in need of Ritalin, then playing down the general media's power (" The press may claim the vestigial title of Fourth Estate, but it is the lobbying industry that is now effectively the fourth branch of government"), Vanity Fair is actually trading its detachment and objectivity for access to the Oval Office; hardly demonstrative of the standards it bemoans the absence of in Washington... a poetic illustration of a different facet of Washington's ills, maybe, but really unimpressive.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have to wonder whether the increasing difficulty of the presidency may have been one of the reasons for Bush's and now Obama's poor performance and reputation. It may indeed be too much work for anyone to do well.

<comment><USER8> The article seems to suggest that it is rather the result of a press looking for short-term advantage over their competitors and an uneducated populace who listens to them. I think that it is true that increases in lobbying and decreases in bipartisanship have reduced the ability of much of the American government (not just the presidency) to get things done, but I think those issues would be mitigated if more of the voting population was willing to delve deeper into legislative issues. Soundbites might be easier to digest, but they are also less filling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That's an advantage of the Chinese system - you can run the system as a collaboration between a committee of Bureaucrats, and leave all the baby- kissing or earthquake-rubble-trapped-person-cheering-up to the premier.

Such complexity is too much for a single person - a group of technocrats is a better way to run such a huge and complicated machine.

<comment><USER10> Give it another 10-20 years to see if the Chinese economy doesn't pop, before claiming the Chinese model to be superior in some way. The endless rows of empty buildings in Shanghai tell a different story, despite the "group of technocrats"' desire to keep that hushed.

<comment><USER9> What a weak argument! Yes, let's wait 10-20 years to come back to this comment to say "I told you so."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The fundamental problem is the centralization of what should be distributed computation and decision making. The federal government busies itself with making rules that prohibit and distort voluntary exchanges between individuals and businesses. Many of the rules it considers or enacts in a fit of piqué or in response to the latest headline pose existential threats to businesses.

To survive, businesses have to lobby. The money is also nothing comparatively. Obama and co spent around 787 billion, just on the stimulus. That sort of money flying through the air can destroy you directly or flow into the pockets of your competitors. So against your better judgment and with a heavy heart you lobby. You would much rather that Washington geld itself so that you can get back to growing your business.</comment>


Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/4/28/11518804/weight-loss-exercise-myth-burn-calories?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits <comment><USER2> I've found online reaction to this article quite interesting. Normally data and study minded folks bring out the "anecdotally, this doesn't seem true" responses, and people seem think the article is attacking exercise as a concept.

It's not.

It's saying that if a person's goal is to lose weight, then adjusting to a good diet is far more important than (a reasonable amount of) exercise.

The article _does not_ claim that exercise is harmful. In fact, it explicitly states that there are very many health reasons why exercise is important, and that exercise+diet is still better than diet alone.

It also goes into the culture surrounding exercise, and how it tends to be misleading. The education in popular culture around exercising presents it as a magic pill, as being a major driving force behind weight loss. You see this on magazine covers and on tv, "belly fat exercises", "toning exercises", all sorts of exercises that serve to reinforce the idea that weight is primarily a result of physical activity rather than (for most people) food consumption.

Ultimately though, I think the studies referenced back up the conclusion pretty well: weight loss effectiveness goes diet+exercise > diet > exercise, given standard amounts of each.

<comment><USER3> I'm going to continue to posit that weight is a factor of genetics / epigenetics and / or body function first and foremost.

Why is it that some people, regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on weight? That, to me, is the elephant in the room.

What is going on in these peoples bodies that is kept out of popular science with regard to weight loss? We know that thyroid hormone function affects weight and metabolism. In women reproductive hormones also affect weight, oestrogen is a hormone present in both males and females, so there's some crossover there. We know that adrenal function can affect weight. We know that insulin resistance can affect weight.

There _has_ to be more to it that calories in - calories out = weigh gain or loss.

If you have an unaddressed thyroid, reproductive hormone, insulin, or adrenal issue you're going to be working _hard_ to address your weight.

It is my suspicion that fixing the diet first improves weight control better than exercise because _food_ is _medicine_. Anything you put in your body on a daily basis can be medicinal in that it can act to help your body restore homoeostasis or move further away from it.

<comment><USER4> > regardless of how much they eat and how little they exercise, never put on > weight?

If I had to choose between thermodynamics and medicine being wrong, and people not being able to accurately estimate how "much" they eat and how "little" they exercise, I'd bet all my money on the latter.

The simple reality is, people have _vastly_ different appetites. I eat fast and am always hungry. I have two coworkers, one eats quite a bit less than me (often struggles to finish a standard portion), the other eats mich more but quite slowly.

3 different people, 3 vastly different eating habits. The reason people gain different amounts of weight most likely isn't in the differences between our bodies, but the differences between our minds.

<comment><USER5> I never understand the thermodynamics argument in terms of weight gain. Surely you acknowledge that some solar cells and mechanical engines are more efficient than others?

Additionally, do you acknowledge that some drives are more irresistible than others? Can you hold your breath until you pass out?

Is it so hard to imagine these drives might differ from person to person? I fully acknowledge that, irrespective of your body's efficiency, if you could ignore your drive magically, you would lose weight with no problem, but that is far from a useful endpoint because _the drive matters_.

<comment><USER6> Some people's bodies just burn more calories in resting than others. Or their resting isn't as resting as they think - look at people who sit but their leg twitches up and down.

Ultimately it's still calories in vs out. But the out isn't just burning 500 calories running. It's what you burn doing your day to day too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went from 190 lbs. to 138 lbs. over 6 or 7 months. The only exercise I did was jogging for 45 min a day. What I noticed was that jogging made me feel better, which somehow got me to consistently eat better. After a days jogging I didn't want to put crap food in me and ruin what I had accomplished and by doing it everyday I felt good enough, often enough to stick with it.

So, based on my experience, I simply can not agree.

<comment><USER8> This is very true. Exercise has more of an effect than the calories burned. It improves your health and you feel much better than when you had a sedentary life. As always the answer is that decreasing calorie consumption with moderate exercise is key to maintaining weight loss.

Just as exercising cannot offset massive overconsumption of food, massive underconsumption of food will make one that is dieting feel terrible, and thus not as likely to continue.

In addition the amount of exercise done is never going to really offset a sedentary job. Someone walking on their feet all day vs me being at a desk is going to consume much more energy than me even if I workout after work intensely for an hour. So I am still going to need to consume less than them. But if I did not do the hour of exercise, my body would break down from not being used, and my overall feeling of health would decline.

<comment><USER7> From my experience: I didn't have a sedentary life, well at least lets just say I wasn't sitting at a computer all day. I was always out and about. My extra weight was from a mix of overconsumption and poor food choices.

I noticed there were unforseen changes in behaviour due to diet that I still find strange. Things like quitting pop. I used to grab McDonald's food more often, but since quitting pop I avoid the place. Sometimes I still grab a burger from there, like 5 times or so over the last 14 years, but I'll never get a pop and I don't have a desire to go there and still avoid it with ease.

I still think diet changes are the single most important thing, but I just don't think I could have gotten there without exercise.

<comment><USER9> I have also decided this past Jan 1 to stop Soda. And I've phased out sugar in my morning coffee. Not being a big juice drinker in the first place, I think I'm better off as a long term goal to limit the amount of sugar i "drink". I'll stick to just "eating" it, focus on cutting out more processed sugar and being smart about balanced diet in general.

I do crave it still tho, I have not found myself avoiding fast food either. With two kids under 2, it just kind of makes life easier when I make them good meals and can pick up something quick.

<comment><USER7> One trick I've learned is to not have pop in the house. My girlfriend hates me for it :). Honestly I couldn't have quit pop if I did have it there. At one point she would buy it for her, but somehow I found myself drinking it so we had to have a discussion; thankfully she accommodated me.

Ideally you and your family can get on the same page in terms of diet, but I imagine with kids that can be extremely challenging. It's worth it if you can do it.

<comment><USER10> This works, but then if you have a job with free soda...discipline is still needed.

<comment><USER11> I like water more than soda. If you'd like some flavour then try squeezing a few drop of lemon juice

<comment><USER10> Addiction doesn't really work like that. Surely water is better for you, and also "feels" better after a good work out. But put coke in front of people who are semi-addicted to it, they will choose coke.

BTW, almost all water served at restaurants in China is lemon flavored. The best halfway point I've seen is flavored soda water. Fizzy, slightly flavored, gives you some of the feeling of pop without the sugar. Still, put coke in the same fridge, and it requires some willpower to take the flavored soda water.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Anecdotal evidence from being a gym rat for 20 years, although I'm sure there are studies out there to prove this. Maybe :)

No doubt that diet+exercise is the way to go when it comes to long-term weight management. The thing is, "weight loss" in and of itself is a misleading metric. You're losing weight! Great! But hold on a minute - your gut is the same size but your biceps is smaller and your strength is way down. What happened? You lost weight alright but its muscle you're losing, not fat.

So where I'm going with this is exercise is very important to make sure you don't negatively impact your body composition by losing muscle weight when dieting.

<comment><USER13> Muscle requires a lot of energy to maintain, so when your calories drop your body starts shedding it to be more efficient _so long as you are also inactive_.

If you stay active you will lose _strength_ on a calorie deficit but you will not lose muscle mass. That's why you can do a cut, and your lifts will go down but you still look great at the lower body fat. The muscle mass is still there.

[http://fitnessblackbook.com/main/starvation-mode-why-you- pro...](http://fitnessblackbook.com/main/starvation-mode-why-you-probably- never-need-to-worry-about-it/)

<comment><USER12> Trained individual on a reasonable diet, taking an intelligent approach to cutting will lose 'some' strength and 'some' muscle when cutting body fat, yes.

Someone who is out of shape might actually be able to gain both muscle and strength while losing weight when starting out as long as they are lifting in addition to cleaning up their diet/reducing calories. The less fit they are the better the gains, which I guess is borderline captn obvious territory :)

<comment><USER13> I wouldn't say it's captain obvious territory. I don't think most people realize how fast muscle development drops off after a year of serious training.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> But, wait....

#10 - eat less fat? That runs counter to science too...

[http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar- con...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy- robert-lustig-john-yudkin)

<comment><USER14> Fat is very dense in calories, so if your goal is to reduce caloric intake, _reducing_ the fat will go a long ways towards that goal.

<comment><USER14> I'm regretting commenting now. Like a bikeshed next to a nuclear plant, anybody who has ever lost any amount of weight has an opinion on how it's done.

Reducing fat reduces caloric intake. Note the word reduce (I even emphasized it), instead of remove, or replace. Yes, fats are a healthy part of a good diet. No, you should not omit them.

Of course, don't take my word for it. RTFOP, _which made the recommendation in the first place._

<comment><USER15> _Reducing fat reduces caloric intake._

Looks like you're doubling down. Your statement is 100% correct. The problem is, fat calories are more satisfying than non-fat calories, so you are more likely to eat less if you eat protein + fat instead of protein + carbs + less fat. That's just the wait it works.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash One _should_ eat less fat and carbs, but in doing so one _will_ be less satisfied and be more likely to snack or eat larger portions later, negating the effect.

The problem is that while I am a good and level-headed person, my future self is a hungry bastard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What other people see when they look at you is determined almost entirely by your diet. Nobody can see your muscles if they're buried under blubber.

How you feel, on the other hand, is hugely impacted by your physical activities. Not only does exercise give you energy and focus, it has a huge impact on mood. Exercise is more effective at fighting depression than most medications.

There's more to being healthy than being a healthy weight. It's probably better to be active and a little bit overweight than it is to be skinny and inactive.

Note: I said a litle bit overweight, _not_ obese. Health risks add up quickly if you're obese. Being cut and defined like a fitness magazine model is not realistic for most people and confers few benefits beyond aesthetics. Getting out of the obese range is realistic for most people and does confer statistically significant health benefits.

<comment><USER17> An idea that carries some weight (heh) with me is that your weight consists of four 'compartments'

       Skeletal: Hard to argue that more skeletal mass is 'bad'
       Muscle: Also hard to argue more is bad
       Subcutaneous Fat: This is what people don't like.
       Visceral Fat: This is the stuff that kills you.

If you're judging the progress of your cunning diet and exercise plan using a bathroom scale, you're going to be disappointed because muscle/skeletal mass increases.

<comment><USER16> People who build up a lot of muscle sometimes fall into odd BMI classificiations.

e.g. Phil Heath, Mr. Olympia winner of 2015, is 5'9" and 250 lbs at competition weight, which would classify him as severely obese (BMI 36.9), even though at that weight his body fat is probably close to the minimum a human can tolerate.

For most people, there's simply no way to build up that amount of muscle without some form of chemical assistance (e.g. steroids). If your BMI falls into the obese range, it's exceedingly unlikely that you're just big-boned and muscular.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> FWIW, my experience disagrees with this. I was overweight, started running (starting around 9mi/wk, when I got bored and stopped I was up around 24mi/wk), and started losing weight quickly, lost a ton of it over a year, after which I was at a very good weight for me. Now, as the piece touches on, that exercise did change my eating, but the outcome of that isn't clear to me -- I stopped eating/snacking for a few hours before a run so I wouldn't cramp. But I also started eating a lot more outside of those exercise windows, as running so much made me quite ravenous at times. Ate anything and everything I wanted and I just kept dropping weight as long as I kept running.

Haven't looked at the data cited in the article, but my guess is that these studies are looking mostly at what's often defined as "moderate" exercisers, that is, people who walk an hour every day or something similarly unintensive. Which is vastly better than nothing, but it isn't exactly a hard workout like what I was engaging in, and I wouldn't expect to drop much weight if that's all I was doing.

<comment><USER19> It's just a bad title. The title should have been "Why you shouldn't exercise to lose weight without changing your diet". If you eat the same amount as you did before, assuming that was maintenance calories, you will lose weight if you begin exercising. The problem is when you're intaking 1500 more calories than necessary before you start exercising. You can't burn that off to the point of a deficit with exercise alone.

<comment><USER18> Except I didn't eat the same as before. I ate more, way, way more.

<comment><USER20> I bet you didn't, and this is the problem with anecdotal evidence. People are terrible at tracking their actual caloric intake and expenditures.

24 miles a week is a decent bit, but it isn't _that_ much. If you add 24 miles a week but eat a _lot_ more, you will gain weight.

<comment><USER18> No, it's not _that_ much. But they were very high intensity miles. My typical routine was to do a half mile walking warmup, then over the course of 5-8 minutes of running, gradually adjust my pace so my breathing was very close to my sustainable max. Then I'd continue adjusting my speed to keep my breathing there for the rest of the run. (All those running guides that say you should be able to carry on a conversation while you're running? Yeah, that wasn't me at all. I was huffing and puffing like mad the entire time.) I accumulated that mileage over 3 runs/week, no more than one hour total each time, so that distance was done in a 3 hour period.

And about the food? Umm, it wasn't even close. Before the running, my idea of a snack was a little piece of cheese or a yogurt. After I started running, a snack was a Carl's Jr. Famous Star cheeseburger. Sometimes I'd order two. I became notable among my football player brothers-in-law for my capacity, regularly demonstrated, for out-eating them. My wife still talks about a particularly memorable restaurant visit where I basically ate 3 large, complete entrees. My calorie intake was ridiiiiiculous. Eating like that was both enjoyable and entertaining, and it didn't seem to interfere with my fitness, so I did it all the time.

And still I lost weight. Crazy. The body is a strange machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Depends on how quickly you want to lose weight, and whether that's your only goal. If, as a 150 pound male, your RMR is about 1500 kcal/day, and you eat at least 1000 kcal/day (anything less probably isn't healthy - you do need to supply your body with nutrition, and also avoid going into starvation mode) - then you are running a 500kcal/day deficit - about 3500 kcal/week, or 1 pound of weight loss. If you want to lose any more than that, eating less, outside of a metabolic lab environment, is probably not going to be effective (you either have your RMR drop as your body goes into starvation mode, or you end up binge eating as your body reacts to the massive deficit of calories).

This only allows for increased caloric output - and it's relatively simple to do 500 kcal/additional aerobic exercise/day - an hour of brisk walking, with maybe 30 minutes of stair climbing does the trick. This gets you from 1 pound of weight loss a week, to 2 pounds, and has the additional benefit of increasing your VO2 Max.

This doesn't even touch on the importance of resistance strength training exercise, and how key that is to maintaining a healthy body while dropping weight - it's all to easy to turn into a lightweight flabby weak person by just not eating/exercising.

</comment><comment><USER22> The article claims that

>We have no control over our basal metabolic rate

and then links to a page[1] that explains

>Muscle cells require more energy to maintain than fat cells, so people with a higher muscle to fat ratio tend to have a higher BMR.

and

>Muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue, so increasing your muscle mass will help you lose weight.

It doesn't seem to address this discrepancy, though (that by exercising to build muscle mass one can affect their BMR and thus the lion's share of the calories burned).

[1] [http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/how-can-I- speed-...](http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/loseweight/Pages/how-can-I-speed-up-my- metabolism.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER23> HN threads on this topic tend to be repetitive and superficial, but this article appears to be so much more substantive than the usual media pieces that we've provisionally turned off user flags on the post.

</comment><comment><USER24> This article misses a key point: increased muscle mass correlates with increased calorie burn.

Not all exercise is created equal. Exercise that doesn't build muscle is indeed ineffective at burning fat. But exercise that DOES build muscle has a compounding effect on burning fat. Your muscles require more energy to maintain, so they will burn more calories just by existing.

<comment><USER25> This effect is pretty small. Like 10 calories a day for a pound of muscle (which is quite a bit of muscle to add).

It still matters, a few calories a day for a year ends up being pounds of weight, but adjusting calories out of the diet is going to be a better first strategy.

<comment><USER26> Where are you getting 10 calories per day per pound?

I find that surprisingly low, and that's even if we're talking 100% sedentary here.

<comment><USER27> This blog post cites 2 sources on the 6-10 calories per pound, haven't read through it myself though.

[http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/16/muscle-burn- calories/](http://www.builtlean.com/2013/04/16/muscle-burn-calories/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone actually still think that the extra energy consumption caused by exercise will cause you to lose weight and not just eat more?

A more contemporary discussion would include the idea that the different state of being caused by exercise causes less food intake ... which incidentally is true for me personally.

It is entirely possible that people that exercise regularly never have any trouble with their weight and thus never show up in these studies.

<comment><USER29> > Does anyone actually still think that the extra energy consumption caused by > exercise will cause you to lose weight and not just eat more?

Plenty of people on HN strongly think this.

The nutrition discussion on HN is normally fucking terrible. (See this thread where someone talks about "the science" and links to the Guardian as a reference).

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> At the beginning of this year I was easily 100 lbs overweight. Decided it was all coming off this year. Started counting every calorie with myfitnesspal, later started looking at macros as well.

Weight started coming off but it really accelerated when I got serious about exercising. Swimming a mile 3x per week. Weight training 3x per week, and I've been on the treadmill a lot in the evenings, probably another 15 miles per week fast walking. Down 60 lbs as of now and consistently losing around 3-4 pounds per week.

It's hard to keep calories at less than 1800 per day with all the exercise, but it's just a hard psychological limit I've set for myself and the myfitnesspal app (and a kitchen scale) make it doable.

It seems to me that the exercise has made me lose about 1-2 pounds per week more than just diet, but who knows.

I miss pizza.

<comment><USER31> re pizza: try making pizza with shredded cauliflower as base. depending how much cheese you add it's should have controllable calories.

it's nothing close to real pizza but maybe it works as placebo effect ;)

<comment><USER30> Yeah we do that about once a week and it helps.It's not really pizza but whatever it is is pretty good.

<comment><USER32> You can find 600 calorie pizzas easily enough, which fit into a 1800 calorie a day diet just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Often ignored aspects to exercising as an obese person are that it plain sucks, is difficult, and likely to result in injury; it's _harmful_.

Whenever I see obese people out running in public, obviously attempting to lose weight, these thoughts come to mind:

1\. Impressive; that's a lot of hard work, not to mention embarrassing. Nobody _fit_ I know could do the same carrying the equivalent weight in a backpack full of sand.

2\. Doomed; you're killing yourself, imagine the long-term effects of such stress on your lower joints.

3\. Futile; you're probably just going to eat too much of the wrong stuff now with all the appetite stimulated by the hard work, combined with the comfort sought in the immobilized and depressed days of joint and muscle pain.

Lose the extra baggage _before_ you start exercising! Your body will thank you.

I used to weigh ~225# in my mid 20s. That weight was dropped to ~170# in under a year by simply removing sugars and refined/processed carbohydrates from my diet, which is a good weight for my build and height of 5'9". My experience was the desire to be active and exercise simply emerged once my weight was down, because doing physical things became fun and easy again, which also meant it was perfectly safe.

In my mid 30s now and ever since that initial drop I've stayed around ~165#, but with more muscle now that I'm more physically active. I continue to diligently avoid sugars and processed carbs, processed foods in general really, and exercise every day for the fun and fitness, because it's easy and seems to combat many of the negative effects of aging.

Exercise seems optional to me. If you eat correctly, without even exercising you'll have a normal weight, and preserve the ability to be physically active. If you eat poorly, you trap yourself, and the only way out of the trap is a slow process of eating correctly, the duration being proportional to how far you've let yourself go.

It frustrates me how we've structured the food environment such that all the convenient/affordable options surrounding us are bad for us. It takes constant discipline to not eat poorly as a result.

Good luck.

<comment><USER34> You've hit the nail on the head with the exercise theories. Injuries can stop any program dead in its tracks. Avoiding injury is the key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> The best way to lose weight is to fast. People are so accustomed to not going without food for a few hours it becomes a phobia. Our ancestors did not live like this.

If you practice fasting long enough, you'll eventually get used to your stomach being empty, and it won't bother you anymore. Then it becomes trivial to lose weight.

I eat only one meal a day, and I don't even notice it when its been over 24 hours I have gone without food. As an added benefit, I can have an absolute feast everyday, including a large dessert, without gaining any weight.

</comment><comment><USER36> The title to this article is very manipulative and misleading.

Weight loss seems to be a mysterious science to the everyday man and woman, but is well known by most top athletes and has been for many years.

It is simple chemistry. The calories you eat are stored in fat, which is comprised of O, H and C. Roughly ~3500 calories will become one pound of bodyfat. By this logic, yes you can eat less calories and lose weight. If you are burning 2500 calories per day, and you opt to eat only 2000 calories per day you should lose aprox. 1 lb of body fat per week (500 * 7 = 3500).

On the other hand, exercise is very important in weight loss. Muscle mass is expensive to maintain, and every lb of muscle mass can take 30-50 cals per day just to maintain. This increases your daily calories burned, allowing you to eat more food w/o weight gain or keep the same food and lose weight.

Additionally, when you exercise and convert the fat to energy the fat is released in various forms of O, H and C. Most of it is breathed out, and some comes out in liquid form. This is literally weight you are losing. Each atom has a molecular weight, be it O, H or C. And if you want to do the math you can figure out how much weight you are losing per exercise per hour.

The reason some people believe low carb diets are the best for weight loss, is directly tied to exercise. Quickly avail. energy known as glycogen is stored in your muscles and used up before fat. It is created from carbohydrates. Without glycogen in your muscles, you will burn fat first.

<comment><USER37> While I appreciate the logic behind this, and agree in principle, it's an overly simplistic picture.

If you decrease your calorie intake your body compensates by lowering your metabolism. Between this and the decreased metabolic burden of carrying less fat and muscle, this is why many dieters find that their weight loss plateaus after a while of making progress.

As far as low-carb diets in particular, there are also additional factors. If you get the carbs down under about 20 carbs a day you can go into ketosis, which is a wasteful metabolism. You literally piss away some 10-20% of your calories.

But the biggest benefit of low-carb is you don't have those blasted carbs (and especially sugar!) adding calories to your diet without triggering the satiated response in your brain - you just eat less on a low-carb diet, without feeling hungry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of my trainers once said... I'm helping you for 1 hour a day, you have 23 other hours to ruin it all.

Healthy eating is super super important.

</comment><comment><USER39> > The calorie restriction groups lost more weight than the group the dieted > and exercised.

Yes, and anything else would have surprised me. Exercise leads to muscle build-up. Muscle is heavier than fat.

The right metric to use here would have been body fat, not body weight. Similarly, the fitness goal should not be to "lose weight" but to get into good shape overall and feel healthy.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've lost over 130 pounds in the last two years and I deliberately avoided high intensity exercise during that time. I find it very hard to moderate my hunger when doing regular high-intensity exercise. I would take long, slow walks a few times a week, and would rarely feel hungry while maintaining a very high daily caloric deficit. (In fact, I often felt quite full. I drank beer frequently, indulged in a pint of Ben and Jerrys a few times a month, ate out a lot, etc.)

In my experience it's most important to find a way to eat at a caloric deficit that feels natural, do-able, and fun. Even rapid weight loss takes a very long time, so you need to build it into your lifestyle. If you're like me and you like beer, ice cream, and dining out, then it's mainly a matter of portion control. I ate what I liked, but I learned to moderate portions and listen to my body. I ate until I was no longer hungry, and then no more.

</comment><comment><USER41> I've noticed in some cases that exercise can actually stave off hunger pangs - both while doing it and afterward for a while (you want water more than food) - and in this manner it can act as an appetite suppressant.

As long as you ignore the body's impulse to eat more than usual when you finally do sit down for a meal, it can very much work in your favor. There's also a phenomenon people refer to as "shrinking stomach" (that I've observed first hand) where your body adapts to feeling more full on less food. I don't know if your stomach actually shrinks, but it feels like it.

If you don't sufficiently often resist the urge to eat more than you need, your body will adapt to that intake level and there will most likely be a rough patch when you try to change the trend. I believe most people can push past this uncomfortable period and stop feeling deprived after a while.

<comment><USER42> I have seen exactly the opposite effect on myself. After exercise I can (and really want) to eat the world.

<comment><USER41> Certainly both responses happen. I've noticed I tend to have a delayed reaction and get hungrier later, then eat a whole day's calories in a sitting without even trying. Regardless, there are all kinds of ways to help suppress appetite, and if exercise is having this affect for you, alternating with other methods can allow you to delay and/or reduce eating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm surprised the ketogenic diet is not mentioned at all. It's becoming clearer and clearer that obese people are likely much more insulin resistant than the rest of the population and as a result much more carbohydrate intolerant than the rest of the population. The insulin response these people are experiencing is causing them to store much more of the energy that they consume, especially if it contains fat. However, if you get rid of the carbs but still consume the fat, your body instead becomes adapted to burning ketones for fuel instead of glucose. So as a result, any fat that you may ingest while in ketosis gets burned for fuel instead of becoming plasma. Just saunder over to reddit.com/r/keto and you can already see the amazing transformations taking place.

</comment><comment><USER44> Based on all the other comments in the thread, I wonder if we updated to language we used if our goals would be clearer.

Why not replace the phrase "lose weight" with "become slimmer"?

We're not actually concerned with losing weight, but in fact with losing a specific TYPE of weight.

It makes it a lot easier to come to terms with instructions like: "keep your insulin down and your fat cells will empty"

The scale is an imperfect measure for slimness and lose weight is the wrong phrase to describe what we're generally trying for.

Obviously these are sweeping generalizations, if you feel the need to poke holes, you're probably right. I'm going for brevity as opposed to a "think piece" \- please feel free to take the comment with a grain of salt.

</comment><comment><USER45> >Surely I had earned an extra margarita.

You can stop reading right there, that's the problem. You have to both eat well and exercise to lose weight. You don't get to eat extra things just because you exercised.

Focus on two things: First, portion control. I know it's wasteful for the environment but I get the single serving versions of (healthy) things (e.g. pre-sliced cheese, single cups of greek yogurt instead of the big tub, etc) so you know exactly how much you're eating. Get a kitchen scale and some measuring cups for everything else, the odds are excellent that you're a crappy estimator. And bring your lunch to work.

Second, blocking out time in your day for exercise, even if you don't work that hard. It's important to put on your workout clothes and at least go through the motions until it's an ingrained habit (1-3 months in my case but ymmv). Once it's an ingrained habit it's much easier to keep going. I start to feel gross and unclean if I go more than three or four days without some kind of strenuous exercise.

It's a lot of work and it's very difficult, but it's not complicated. With these two things I have lost 70 pounds and kept it off for seven years.

</comment><comment><USER46> Exercise didn't work for me until I stuck with it consistently, and progressively.

The problem is that what doesn't work is "strawman exercise": for instance, the kind of exercise that a sedentary volunteer test subject is able to handle in some study.

Before exercise works for fat loss, you have to train up to the intensity and volume that is required. That takes months. Consistent months during which you not only don't give up, but pile on the challenges. If you quit, you lose your progress and slide back to the start.

You can't measure exercise just by the time put in and the theoretical calories, by the way. There is a quality component to it.

Another thing is that once you have a decently low body fat, the remaining areas where fat accumulates on your body will show to be "exercise resistant". It's very hard to get rid of that centimeter of fat from the back of your thigh, calves, upper back and arms, or central abs. Or that pesky "love handle" area. That, I can attest, either can't be done with exercise, or requires exercise to be a full time job. But that's not what this article is about; the claim is that exercise isn't effective against _obesity_.

<comment><USER47> The other thing that the article doesn't address is how much weight you gain in muscle when you exercise. When I go from out-of-shape to back-in-shape, I know that I've increased my muscle mass as well as loosing fat. That doesn't show on the scale but it definitely is what I'm going for.

Also, increasing your muscle is going to increase your resting metabolic rate. So, as you exercise and get stronger, you'll burn more calories while resting. (this probably only holds for men who build muscle when they work out. if you're a marathon runner who's rail thin, I don't think you'll burn much fat at all while resting.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I started working out heavily to lose weight, but also to "feel better." I succeeded at both points, but it took an extremely long time to hit my goal weight. Looking back, it's clear I was eating too much to compensate for the additional work I was doing.

I gained half of that weight that I lost back pretty quick because I couldn't keep up the strenuous exercise routine. So, the next time I instead focused on my eating habits and skipped formal exercise entirely (mostly just went for walks instead). I had much more consistent and predictable weight loss week- over-week and now I'm about to surpass the goal I had the first time I tried in 1/3 of the time. It really came down to small portions -- I didn't have to give up many types of food, I just didn't eat nearly as much of it as I would have in the past.

This echoes experiences from people I know. They start out with a strenuous exercise routine and it's fun in the beginning to push yourself, but most people can't sustain it. Or they get injured and that sets them down a path of being lazy and gaining the weight back.

</comment><comment><USER49> You should exercise to prevent diabetes and a swath of other health problems, though.

</comment><comment><USER50> Our body's software is so hopelessly out of date. It's programmed to preserve fat at all cost: something quite useful, say 2 million years ago when famines were happening almost every day.

Medical and nutritional science needs to advance more quickly in this regard. Currently, it's going at a snail's pace. I mean, we understand the entire creation of the universe, but the most advanced nutritionists in the world are barely aware of the basic mechanisms which govern our fat production, not even understanding how it works. So far, all we have is theories, hypothesis, correlations and some compelling experimentations.

Personally, I'm waiting for the iBody app to come out. iBody, will allow us to control our metabolism at a cellular level, dialing it up or down at will. We'll be able to control our appetites and hungers at the push of a button too. But, at this rate, who knows how long it will take to get this off the ground: 100s of years, thousands? Come on investors, this is a multi-trillion dollar market.

<comment><USER51> It's utterly easier to just make and advertise addictive food, completely throwing nutritional quality out the window. What if you could even claim your addictive, mostly empty junk is healthy? Therefore funding and studies with the intention of obfuscation and the control of the progress of understanding.

The world would have to look very, very different than today's for something like an iBody app to come into being. Where's the money to be made in people having that much control over themselves? The goal is to sell more (eg) donuts, not less. To defect is the norm.

<comment><USER50> Yes. Consumers are mainly to blame for this. As long as consumers keep buying the garbage (solutions that don't work/never had any chance of working) they're pumping out, businesses don't have much incentive to create anything that works. It's appalling to me, how people can continue to spend so much money on gimmicks and appetite suppressants that clearly don't work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> This a harmful, eye-catching, title.

Whereas exercise is not required to lose weight, you still can use exercise to optimize the process.

<comment><USER53> About half of the article deals with why attempting to use exercise to optimize the process probably won't help much with it and for some people will completely derail it. The title is exactly aligned with the article

<comment><USER54> None of the article looks at weight training.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Of course this article focuses on cardio. It's almost become conventional fitness wisdom that cardio will not help you lose weight.

Weight lifting will also not help you lose "weight" but it will help you lose fat. Diet #1, lifestyle #2, weight lifting #3 (optional), cardio #infinity

</comment><comment><USER56> Anytime this comes up in conversation, I enjoy pointing people to John Walker's _Hacker 's Diet_ ([https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/](https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/)). I enjoy the bits of Autodesk trivia he tossed in as well (he was a co-founder and wrote much of AutoCAD, as he then thinks "So if I can do that, why can't I learn to lose weight?").

The most accurate critique of any of these "calories in minus calories out" arguments is that those vary from person to person and from food to food. So if you do have a particularly hard time losing (or gaining!) weight, it might be a bit of genetic variation.

</comment><comment><USER57> >The spinning instructor was echoing a message we've been getting for years: As long as you get on that bike or treadmill, you can keep indulging — and still lose weight

Who is saying this? Anyone who has spent an hour educating themselves on the subject knows that it's all about calories in v calories out. That can be accomplished via the gym and the kitchen, or the kitchen alone.

Exercise provides additional benefits; higher caloric deficit assuming the same diet, muscle tone (appearance and burns more calories when you're doing nothing), and general cardiovascular health.

</comment><comment><USER58> As a fatass who walks 2 to 3 miles a day for exercise, and is seeing little in the way of progress, I know this to be true. I know what must be done, but man, it's hard to break bad food habits.

</comment><comment><USER59> You diet to lose weight. You exercise to get in shape.

</comment><comment><USER60> So that's an interesting long read, I guess all the details end up making sense. Some physical activity in addition to calorie counting and other behavioral changes is the best way to go. The most important thing a person can do is to limit calories in a way they like and can sustain, and focus on eating more healthfully.

Don't expect to be able to exercise enough to lose much weight.

</comment><comment><USER61> You shouldn't exercise to lose weight, because for most people you shouldn't be aiming primarily to lose weight; weight loss should be a component of the broader goal of improving overall health. For which you probably should exercise, regardless of whether it's optimal for the narrower goal of weight loss.

</comment><comment><USER62> I'd like to see that last graph split out into "fat loss/gain" and "muscle loss/gain" \- because reducing food intake can also make your body break down _muscles_ , which is equally bad. Doing exercise to stimulate the body to make more muscles can counter that effect.

</comment><comment><USER63> I guess people go to the gym for different reasons. Me personally I don't care about losing weight. I want to convert my body fat into muscle. If I don't eat a lot I can lose tons of weight, but I also look and feel weaker. So for me, exercise is very important.

<comment><USER64> You can't convert body fat into muscle. You can choose to cut (lose fat), bulk (gain muscle), or lean gain (gain muscle without gaining any/little fat). Unfortunately, it is frustrating and futile to do any of the above 3 at once.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> You can't out-run the fork.

<comment><USER66> And--anecdotally--avoiding 300 calories of snack is much _much_ easier than finding time, opportunity, and inspiration for 300 calories of exercise.

<comment><USER67> Of course, eating that 300 calories of snack is easier than either of those options :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> When I started exercising, it made me hungrier. But my crappy eating habits made me sanna stuff my face with more crap. Developing better eating habits, then adding exercising, works better for me.

</comment><comment><USER69> "Despite going from being mostly sedentary to spending a couple of hours exercising almost every day, the participants only lost about 11 pounds on average"

I would love to lose 11 lbs

</comment><comment><USER70> I like the iterative method. Everyday look at a scale. If your weight has gone up, you did something bad the day before... don't do that again.

<comment><USER71> As someone who has tracked their weight on a daily basis for the better part of 8 months, I wouldn't suggest doing that alone. Your weight will fluctuate by a few pounds day to day and sometimes will trend up for a few days, then down for a few. What time of day you weight yourself and factors like your hydration level will play a part.

What I did was weigh myself every morning and record my weight and body fat %. Then calculate a rolling 10 day average. That was nice because if my weight went up for a day or two but overall was trending downwards it was visible. Graphing it and watching the graph go downwards was very motivating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> The best way to put this idea that I've heard is this: "you can't out run your fork"

</comment><comment><USER73> People get fat not because they eat too much. But because they eat junk food. That's it. The amount of calories is irrelavant here.

If you want to be a good shape, eat fruit. Without GMO and hemicals. That's simple. Yet most people go to McDonalds, drink Coca-Cola, eat different kinds of shit and wonder "What should I do to lose weight? Hmmmm, maybe I should work out more?"

</comment><comment><USER74> Biggest flaw in article: assuming all "weight" is fat.

<comment><USER75> Actually you'll lose muscle weight by cutting calories just fine

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> tl;dr: Why you shouldn't use exercise as an excuse to overeat, it doesn't burn enough calories.

</comment><comment><USER77> I feel that those who think that exercise is a solution for weightloss either have an absurdly good metabolic rate or have an unrealistic view of how much time people can devote to exercise.

I had tried to lose some weight a few years ago and everything O tried had failed, including exercise. At one point, I purchased a digital scale and performed multiple measurements a day of my weight. They confirmed that additional exercise (e.g. walking a few miles) had negligible impact on my weight.

Afterward, I decided to redesign my diet for weight loss. I was able to lose 50 lbs in roughly 3 months by that alone. The idea was that my body had an abundance of energy such that all I needed were nutrients to keep my body going and a certain volume in my stomach to trick it into signaling my brain that I was eating sufficiently. I ended up consuming a multivitamin pill, egg whites, tofu, brocolli and fruits each day for the better part of those 3 months. I calculated that doing that lowered my daily caloric intake 800 calories a day.

Sadly, I ended up regaining about 30 of them after pressure from certain relatives to eat more got to the point where being fatter was preferable to having to deal with it. The entire time, I had been considered overweight to obese by my BMI so the pressure to eat was in no way because I had gone overboard, although I had come within 5 lbs of attaining a "healthy" BMI before I regained some of the weight. My mistake was switching to Soylent after deciding that I did not want to lose weight so quickly. The idea that I was not eating food triggered my relatives' "lets try to feed him" reaction.

Lately, I have started to try doing this again by consuming a daily multivitamin pill, water, spinach, "beyond meat" fruits and a daily bag or two of popcorn (to clear the pantry). The popcorn will be eliminated as soon as I have finished the remaining supply, but even eating the popcorn, I am losing weight by doing this, although it is definitely not as fast as it would be had I not decided to finish off that popcorn.

The first time that I lost weight, I had a relative who attended weight watchers. The people at weight watchers were horrified when told how quickly I managed to do it and talked about studies about the dangers of rapid weight loss. My feeling was that they did not want to lose a source of revenue and that being as fat was worse for me. In hindsight, I think that they would have been right had I been anywhere close to a healthy weight at the time as what should matter is the percentage of weight lost rather than the raw numbers. The closer that I approached a "healthy" weight, the slower my weight loss became and when I was within 5 pounds of it, I had started to feel somewhat light headed, which is when I decided to try lose by weight more slowly rather than force it through a large deficit in my daily caloric intake.

</comment><comment><USER78> From the article: "If a hypothetical 200-pound man added 60 minutes of medium intensity running four days per week while keeping his calorie intake the same, and he did this for 30 days, he'd lose five pounds. 'If this person decided to increase food intake or relax more to recover from the added exercise, then even less weight would be lost,' Hall added. (More on these 'compensatory mechanisms' later.)

So if one is overweight or obese, and presumably trying to lose dozens of pounds, it would take an incredible amount of time, will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise."

OK. I exercise more than that every month and have for years. It's painless to do because it's the only time I spend watching TV shows like Game Of Thrones-- I look forward to my exercise sessions.

So, this article is telling me that (unless I exhibit compensatory mechanisms' such as eating more than I do), and if I started at 200 lbs, I'd lose 5 lbs a month, just doing what I actually want to do (because I enjoy watching entertaining TV shows like GoT). I'd go from 200 lbs to not being overweight in less than a year. The article's take on this is "it would take an incredible amount of time , will, and effort to make a real impact through exercise". That seems like an incredible amount of negative spin the authors are trying to put on it. To me, it sounds like a fantastic deal. And one I've taken advantage of.

My own weight loss path is pretty complicated, but I was at 225 and now my weight stays between 173 and 183, generally up and down depending on life events and whether I have temporarily keep more sodas in the fridge than I normally do.

EDIT: I just want to emphasize that the key for me is that I enjoy my exercise sessions, because I look forward to watching the most entertaining TV produced in the English language. So it takes almost no will power or effort. It's a matter of choosing not to watch that TV when not exercising, which gets to be a habit--similar to not picking up an apple pie every time I go to the grocery store so there's no such pie sitting around the house. If if DID take willpower and effort to do that exercise, I probably wouldn't do it! It helps enormously that I have an elliptical trainer in the house. But that's a small investment compared to the health benefits--not just weight loss and maintenance, but the fact that exercising is great for the brain, and many other benefits as well, including a reduction in cancer risk.

EDIT 2: I don't even know if I'd find that TV all that enjoyable if I wasn't exercising. I can imagining thinking "why am I wasting this time watching this crap when I could be doing something useful??" But when exercising, there are so many benefits that I give myself total permission to watch it, and I do enjoy it!

</comment><comment><USER79> This article, including the title, is a bit of a mess. Nothing in it refutes the commonly accepted principle that if you burn as many daily calories in exercise as you consume in food, you will not get fatter. The point of the article seems to be simply that the modern Western diet is so high in calories that it's difficult to do enough exercise to make up the difference. The survey study they cite talks about exercise in the range of only a couple of hundred calories a day, and even then, contrary to what the article implies, the study's conclusion clearly states that weight loss was proportional to the amount of exercise. So, sure, if you're eating 1000 calories/day more than you're burning, throwing in an extra 30-minute walk on the treadmill isn't going to do much. But try a real exercise regimen like P90X where you _are_ burning an extra 800 calories or so a day, and you absolutely will see results even if your diet remains unchanged.

<comment><USER80> The point of the article is that the relationship between "amount of exercise you do" and "calories you burn" is probably not linear, as has traditionally been believed.

According to the scientist's theory, you get diminishing returns, where you have to do ever more and more exercise to burn the same number of calories.

<comment><USER79> But the study they cite to support that view talks about very low levels of exercise (1100 calories a week) in the long term studies. If the diet calorie surplus was comparable in both long and short term, it's not surprising that the results were disproportionately low in the long term compared to the short-term studies: with such a low level of exercise, it wouldn't be surprising if the measurement error was significant. In a longer term study, it's tough to control for what people do the rest of the time.

And in their discussion of the Hadza tribe, they admit that the Hadza could be resting enough at other times of the day to offset the increased calories they expend for food gathering. All that does is tell us that given two populations that exercise about the same amount, the one that eats less will be leaner. That says nothing about whether the Hadza could remain lean on a Western diet if they also exercised more, which is the real question. Nowhere in the article is that question actually directly addressed. The study of marathoners they cite points out that the subjects increased their intake while they trained, which unsurprisingly limited their weight loss.

If you eat the same amount but exercise significantly more, you will lose weight. If you eat significantly less with no increase in exercise, you will lose weight. Nothing in this article supports with data the conclusion that the latter approach is better than the former.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> TLDR; Exercise alone won't help you lose weight, you need to combine exercise and diet changes.

<comment><USER82> True enough. You can't outrun a poor diet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> In certain Vedic traditions, physical exertion is seen as a form of meditation. The concept there is if you can discipline your body, you can discipline your mind.

That being said, I think the author of this article tries way too hard to be counterfactual. If you put an obese male or female on the treadmill with modest caloric restriction, over time they will lose weight on a log scale.

</comment><comment><USER84> Nice to see an article that explains common-sense ideas with some effort to collect data.

My theory about how the Biggest Loser contestants lose weight - get this - they're not allowed to snack during their all-day workouts.

</comment><comment><USER85> Exercise makes your face and overall aesthetics look better even if you don't lose weight.

</comment><comment><USER52> a

<comment><USER86> Cycling an hour each day is also hard for most people.

<comment><USER87> 400 calories is about half an hour at vigorous effort for most people, or maybe 40 mins at moderate effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I guess it's just a coincidence that most athletes aren't overweight. It doesn't have anything to do with them exercising?

<comment><USER89> Amusingly, if you go by BMI, quite a few pro athletes _are_ overweight, or even obese. (This is a good illustration of how idiotic BMI can be...).

For instance, Michael Jordan was slightlu overweight according to BMI. Shaquille O'Neal was past overweight and into obese. Wilt Chamberlin was overweight.

Leaving basketball for boxing, Muhammad Ali was well into overweight. Mike Tyson was obese.

How about American Football? I'm going to exclude line positions since a large part of their job is to be a wall and so we'd expect them to go for mass. Quarterbacks Dan Marino and Joe Montana: overweight. In fact, five of the last six Heisman Trophy winners (who were all quarterbacks) are overweight, and one is obese. The last four non-quarterback Heisman winners were running backs, and two were overweight and two were obese.

<comment><USER90> so true, I've never been in better shape in my life, I recently ran ultra- marathon and can easily bench press my own weight 10 times but my physician told me I am overweight and should loose 15 pounds because my BMI is over 25. I wanted to take his head off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER91> The title says "you shouldn't exercise to lose weight", which seems to suggest that exercise will negatively affect your ability to lose weight.

There isn't a single study here that proves this rather lofty hypothesis.

<comment><USER89> You are taking the title as meaning

      lose weight => ! exercise

or equivalently

      exercise => ! lose weight

That's not what the title is saying. What it is saying is

      ! (exercise => lose weight)

<comment><USER91> Well, the title was changed, which makes this somewhat silly.</comment></comment></comment>


Supreme court will decide if Apple's Appstore is a monopoly - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/pepper-v-apple-supreme-court-app-store-antitrust/ <comment><USER2> Just not sure how you would argue their a monopoly and not Walmart? or a mall for that matter? or Google in search?

<comment><USER3> You wouldn't. Despite the article title, the point isn't whether there's a monopoly, but if they're _using_ monopoly power in a prohibited way.</comment></comment>


Google's App Engine gets a firewall - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/24/googles-app-engine-gets-a-firewall/ <comment><USER2> Cool, now I want PHP 7.1</comment>


Lenovo Recalls Battery Packs for ThinkPad Notebook Computers Due to Fire Hazard - <AUTHOR> http://www.cpsc.gov/en/Recalls/2014/Lenovo-Recalls-Battery-Packs-for-ThinkPad-Notebook-Computers/

<comment><USER2> _Lenovo has received two reports of the battery packs overheating, resulting in damage to the computer, battery pack and nearby property. No injuries have been reported._

Given the ubiquity of social media today, I find it odd that whoever made these "two reports" didn't publicise them much. This is probably a very isolated and minor incident, so Lenovo are just trying to avoid a PR backlash.

 _Consumers can continue to use their ThinkPad notebook without the battery pack by plugging in the AC adapter and power cord._

If Apple tried to recall batteries for its computers these days, it would be quite a different story...

<comment><USER3> You're right if you live somewhere without a retail outlet, but if you live in a city with an Apple store it's a wonderful experience.

I took my laptop in at 6:30pm on a Friday night, the day before flying out to China when "service battery" started showing. I had my laptop back, with a new battery installed at 6:50pm same day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Two things: (1) Lenovo does provide a manual web interface, [https://lenovobattery2014.orderz.com/](https://lenovobattery2014.orderz.com/), to verify whether this affects any equipment you own...their default tool involves the end user downloading and installing a Microsoft Windows executable, which does not work if you have an alternate operating system installed; and (2) even though I have a Lenovo X201 laptop with a "42T4695" in the battery pack bar code, since Lenovo manufactured it in July 2010--outside the range of October 2010-April 2011--I am not eligible for replacement (a bit disappointing, but it seems reasonable, to me).</comment>