New research: Dark Energy might not exist after all - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2019-11-evidence-anisotropy-cosmic.html <comment><USER2> Not to go into much detail, but these author's views are not shared broadly in the cosmology community. There was a recent paper [1] put on the arxiv that talked a bit about this. I'm not an expert on supernova cosmology (I work on cosmology using other methods) but people I know who are experts claim there are issues.

There are also a ton of other reasons to think that the universe is flat (see the CMB [2]) and to think that there is dark energy (large scale structure [3]).

We still have no idea what DE is and it might not be an "Energy" but rather some modification of gravity or something else. But we're pretty confident in the phenomenology - there is something there that appears to be pulling things apart.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.06456.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1911.06456.pdf) [2] [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/439535/why- does-...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/439535/why-does-the- first-peak-of-the-temperature-power-spectrum-of-cmb-imply-a-flat-un) [3] [https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/supporting-science/large- sc...](https://www.darkenergysurvey.org/supporting-science/large-scale- structure/)

<comment><USER3> So if the universe is flat does that make the earth flat as well? :-D

<comment><USER4> It's a matter of perspective. It is certainly not flat from the perspecticve of our 5 basic senses.

<comment><USER5> I'd say our 5 basic senses that have a very limited reach would claim the earth is flat. Of course it is not flat though (just to be clear).

<comment><USER4> Not if you're an astronaut or pay attention to the horizons curvature and other simple observations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> [https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-energy-debate-reignited- by-c...](https://physicsworld.com/a/dark-energy-debate-reignited-by- controversial-analysis-of-supernovae- data/?fbclid=IwAR2jTe1-7EHUyGUR51lGKs6o8cWuu9Ufzv7PVPTXYd5RLz0UVStPQaAASzU)

According to this article, using the model from this paper with more up to date data sets completely reverses their results.

<comment><USER7> Sorry, but the article you linked says nothing about "reversing the results" of the OP article, it is about the same research as the OP article... Which at best you might say reverses the results from the 90s which originally found acceleration of cosmic expansion.

<comment><USER6> According to Riess, however, the supernovae data used by Sarkar's group are out of date. He says that he and some colleagues, including D'Arcy Kenworthy of Johns Hopkins University, plugged data from a sample of about 1300 supernovae with lower systematic uncertainties into the model used in the latest work. The results, he says, were unambiguous, with the existence of a dipole rejected at more than 4σ and cosmic acceleration confirmed at over 6σ.

More importantly, says Riess, the objections against Sarkar and colleagues' original statistical analysis still stand, as do the criticisms of neglecting other data. "The evidence for cosmic acceleration and dark energy are much broader than only the supernovae Ia sample, and any scientific case against cosmic acceleration needs to take those into account," he says.

<comment><USER7> Oh yeah, toward the end of the article it _does_ mention that... but those results by Adam Riess are _unpublished_ , so it's just a spurious claim by a guy with a lot of vested interest for now.

<comment><USER6> Why do you think he has a vested interest? If he could get similar, convincing results on a larger data set, that would be a career-making paper. It's not like there is a dark energy industry trying to cover up a hoax.

<comment><USER7> "Vested interest" doesn't have to be financial. They are not going to take away his Nobel price if it turns out that the expansion of the Universe is not accelerating, but nobody wants to spend the rest of their life saying "I got a Nobel price for X, but it turns out X was wrong." That's some pretty heavy psychological "vested interest", I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OK, looking at the comments, I have to note that Dark Matter[1] and Dark Energy[2] are two different but related hypotheses. The basic existence of Dark Matter is on a fairly strong footing experimentally and afaik this article doesn't cast doubt on its existence (it has been observed, on the cosmic scale, as accurately as many form ordinary matter, for example). Again, this is the dark _energy_ issue. Just sayin'

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_energy)

<comment><USER9> 'Dark Matter' is physicist code for: _gravitating stuff that we cannot see_.

'Dark Energy' is physicist code for: _anti-gravitating non-stuff that we cannot see_.

(i.e. Dark Energy, aka Einstein's _Cosmological Constant_ , is a property of the vacuum.)

<comment><USER10> Another important difference is that:

Dark Matter is not uniformly distributed, for example if forms big blobs that surround the visible parts of the galaxies.

Dark Energy is uniformly distributed, but the (equivalent?) density is very small, so the effect is important in the very empty space between galaxies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As my physics lab teacher taught us, all breakthroughs in physics happen after new better measuring instruments become available. Modern cosmology is starved of such new equipment, hence devoid of any real progress, having to wallow in theoretical bogmires instead. I would suggest all those funds and scientists be instead diverted to researching nuclear fusion, which is the more pressing goal for humanity right now.

</comment><comment><USER12> So, "never mind" the supposed 70+% of the universe's mass-energy, now attributable entirely to local motion?

Who awards these Nobel Prizes, anyway?

(My first thought when I heard about this Dark Energy thing was, "which part of Occam's Razor don't you get?")

<comment><USER13> " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER12> This is not a dismissal. The work posted is important.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Before these people waste too much time trying to disprove dark energy, they ought to visit my ex.

<comment><USER15> Sorry, You have to go back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It might exist it might not exist.

Papers published anyway.

<comment><USER17> A paper containing only things we already knew for sure is not a real scientific paper at all.

It's easy to sit back and feel smug because physicists might be wrong -- but it's impossible to do anything worthwhile without taking on that risk.

<comment><USER18> > A paper containing only things we already knew for sure is not a real > scientific paper at all.

It could be. Confirming results is part of the scientific process.

<comment><USER19> Things that are "known for sure" don't need confirmation; they are already as confirmed as can be.

Of course, very little ever meets that description.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges - <AUTHOR> http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/19/thinking-of-starting-a-health-it-company-here-are-the-top-three-industry-challenges/ <comment><USER4> > 2\. Good enough is not good enough

I don't think this really sinks in until you work in the industry. As an example, I knew of a developer who accidentally forget to make a list page scrollable and it got through QA that way. I heard rumors that ultimately the bug resulted in a patient being given the same immunization twice since the user was unable to scroll down the list page.

And that's a relatively benign example...

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure the point the original article was trying to make -- in reality, a lot of HIT software is _terrible_. "Good enough" would be significantly better than a lot of the crap that is out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article understates the issues delivering software solutions to patients, providers, or payers. The lack of data standards has completely crippled the ability for new companies/products to innovate and break through. When I worked at a healthcare VC, we deemphasized IT in favor of medical devices because the path for success is much clearer and easier to trod.

The reason I can be so confident that it's the data standards, BTW, is because the DICOM data standard exists for medical imaging. IIRC, the founder of Heartlab invented the format, it somehow escaped a proprietary home, and dozens of companies innovated on top of it. The existing EMR vendors - GE, Cerner, Epic, etc - all have proprietary data standards for storage and interchange. My due diligence on this revealed that the companies would each have to spend three years re-writing their software against a common data standard. Of course, they should have to. It would help patients immensely and all sorts of innovations would spring forth, just like after DICOM.

<comment><USER7> What about HL7?

<comment><USER8> it's delimited by pipes... i mean, it is a standard, but it's far from ideal.

<comment><USER9> Technically it's delimited by whatever character is decided to be the delimiter, which is even better :)

Having said that, it still seems to get data between all sorts of systems in the hospital.

<comment><USER10> That I think is the key distinction: HL7 works okay for a group of tightly coupled systems, usually internal to a single organization. The biggest problems today are with data interchange between providers, networks of providers, 3rd party vendors (cloud based or whatever) and the like. The finance and insurance industry have, I think, figured this out. Healthcare has not.

<comment><USER9> That's a good point and to be honest, I didn't deal much with things outside of the hospital itself (I mainly worked in the ADT 'sphere') but I could see how the 3rd party stuff could get hairy... especially if they're trying to deal with different message formats within the same facility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 4th challenge: what's legal in one state may not be legal in another and may change with every legislative session.

If your customers are physicians and other practitioners, the state laws are even more complicated as to who any data belongs to. In some areas, any data about patients is technically owned by their physician.

If you're contacting patients, your attorneys will debate at length whether something is legal under the rules of HIPAA. In the end, it will be a much ado about nothing, because HIPAA is barely policed or litigated over. So you'll end up with a large legal consulting fee, a confusing legal opinion, and no clear direction on whether to move forward or not. The next attorney will have a wholly different opinion.

Healthcare law in the US is absolute shit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Some quite good points:

"For example, inside a hospital, operating rooms (OR) are often profit centers, and emergency departments (ED) are often cost centers. The hospital may be receiving subsidies to maintain its EDs based on its ratio of OR profits to ED losses, in which case a product that ultimately makes ORs more profitable may not be worthwhile to the hospital."

To an ambulance service (emergency and pre-hospital medicine is my area/passion), IFT (Inter-facility Transport) is a near guaranteed paycheck, 911 response is generally a cost center.

DrChrono has it good, because the government will pay their customers (the doctors and facilities) for the implementation.

But it's definitely an area that could do with some work in unseating some entrenched and ultimately complacent incumbents.

<comment><USER13> Is 911 response REALLY a cost center? Around here, to get an ambulance, it's $500 (IIRC) up front + $16(!!!!!) a mile. And the closest hospital might be 10 or 15 miles away. And I dont think this includes material costs (any drugs, etc.)

<comment><USER12> 911 response, unless ran very well, and / or miserly, is absolutely often a cost center. You have "frequent fliers" who you may see several times a week, without insurance. Billing sends them a bill, but there's no realistic expectation of payment.

You can't, even as a private agency (and should 't - for better or worse, I'm a proponent of "socialized" medicine, even in bastardized form) refuse a patient transport, though about the best you can do is advise a patient that their insurance is unlikely to pay if the ambulance transport does not have. "medical necessity", even with (especially with) Medicare (who requires us to get a document from the physician stating the necessity of "transport in a fully equipped BLS/ALS ambulance").

Add to that Maintenance, drug purchase (must be kept stocked and current, even if rarely used), fleet Maintenance (driving code in a truck carrying N extra 10-15000 lb at high speed places a lot of strain on a vehicle), insurance (likelihood of an accident), insurance (malpractice in this area is usually carried by the agency, not individual), regulatory and other costs, costs of maintaining sufficient crews on duty so you can respond even when others are out doing long distance transports (hospitals to nursing homes, home, or stabilized patients to bigger or more appropriate hospitals) or transporting your frequent fliers, and it begins to add up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Your customer's incentives are not straightforward."

So true.

Don't mean this to be cynical, but if you actually want to have a chance of upending the healthcare system, always clearly identify the flow of money (are costs paid by carriers? providers? Medicare? consumers? are the prices negotiated?), regulation (are fines built into the cost structure? what regulations are relevant? are they incentivized to be ignorant?) , and decision-making (e.g. how billing departments more often decide on the EMR to go with rather than the docs). Then check again, because it's likely you missed a huge underground river.

Then the tricky part is to align your business plan with your customers' incentives.

</comment><comment><USER8> i've been thinking about how to create something that can disrupt the medical industry for a long time, ever since beginning medical school. the sad truth is that medical industry doesn't welcome software disruptions. software adoption is usually a bureaucratic process due to the direct risk to human health, not to mention HIPAA and other regulations. quality of the software is not as important as selling the software while offering strong credibility and insurance, which makes it significantly harder for the typical small agile team to succeed. i am at the point where im wondering if i should sacrifice my time and efforts on a medical startup or just settle for other challenges that are not so messy. regardless, software will fix our healthcare system one way or the other. it's probably just going to take a long time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would recommend trying, especially if you have medical training and know the space. While it is difficult, with the appropriate go-to-market strategy and determination you can get a foothold and grow from there.

<comment><USER8> thanks! i will try, at least for a little while. honestly, at this point, i think a true disruption can only happen if diagnostic tests are put into the consumer's hands instead of being held hostage at the hospital, and we just aren't there yet.

<comment><USER15> Hi - As a fellow med student I'm interested in what you mean here.. Are you suggesting that patients should be able to order their own tests?

<comment><USER8> hey robbie, don't know what year you are in, but basically yeah. a physician in a hospital basically looks at data on a patient to assess the state and then make decisions on management to affect the state. the problem is that these tests are hard to find off-the-shelf and often costs an obscene amount of money as well. i would look into the efforts of companies like scanadu, alivecor, cellscope. once we can get data to the consumers, then us developers can immediately start creating knowledge based systems that utilize the data to give the patient a clearer picture of their internal state.

<comment><USER15> Im just entering my final year.

Like you I think there's plenty of room for disruption, not just on the medical devices side but also in terms of efficiencies.

So the three companies you reference are basically disrupting devices that cost thousands of dollars (ECG and otoscopes/dermatoscopes) - great for bringing down the costs of clinics or solo practitioners. A lot of these devices I think are probably being angled at the home user as well (particularly ECG) but the clinical relevance of giving a patient their own rhythm is pretty minimal... I mean if they have a dicky heart they likely have a pacemaker or ICD which will record suspect rhythms themselves.

I'd be fascinated to talk more to you and see where you are taking this because I think you are really saying is that if we give patients their results or order their own (bloods, EUC, any ELIZA etc studies) then we will be empowering them to make better health decisions. I have my own opinions on this based on what i've seen and if you're interested in discussing further my email is in my profile - although seems like you have a lot that would like to talk to you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> In my experience, one of the most significant hindrances has been access to and communication with medical personnel:

\- Medics, especially specialists / surgeons, have extremely busy schedules, often holding down both public & private patient responsibilities as well as performing duties for their specific colleges etc.

\- The level of IT-savvy amongst healthcare pros is generally low.

\- They seem to have a different logic to us IT folk, answers are nebulous for non-medics and hard rules are very difficult to pin down. Ask the same question n times and you will get n different answers, from the same respondent.

When you find a medic who is willing / able to help and towards the positive on all the above axes, you must hold onto them with a death grip.

<comment><USER17> Surprisingly I work with a lot of MDs who think communication and lack of professionalism and thoughtfulness in software engineers is a significant hindrance to success.

\- Medics have extremely busy schedules and so they don't want to have their time wasted by lack of data, lack of rigorous testing, and risk to their patients. Software pros work in cozy offices not splattered in patient fluids, from 11AM - whenever, and yet don't expend the extra effort to statistically test data, design efficient algorithms and user interfaces, etc., before throwing something over the wall as a MVP. \- The level of healthcare savvy among software pros is generally pretty low \- MDs seem to have a logic that focuses on quality, meticulous attention to detail, going the extra distance without added compensation, acceptance of hard and legally binding rules about ethics, data collection, privacy, security, efficacy, peer review, etc.. Run the same software program n times and you will get n different bugs, from the same software developer.

When you find a software pro who is willing / able to help on all the above, you do need to hold on to them (and pay a high market salary, with good health care benefits, and reward them for quality and precision vs. MVP attributes.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> As a health IT professional who did try, and will try again in 2013, this article is spot on.

There are differences between France and the US - especially in the mindset - but the payment system is very similar. In fact, the current french system (used for hospital billing since 2004, and tested for 10 years before that) was based on the US medicare DRG approach.

My job is to make patients pay as much as we can legally make them pay, using any mean necessary as long as it is legal.

In the past, my unit was the single most profitable in the whole hospital, by large. So I tried to sell things, and failed.

I would like to insist on the "incentives" topic with a quick example: I previously developed production analysis software to find and exploit the cases where an hospital could be more efficient and thus make more money (long story short, see one of my previous posts on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4826314> for more details)

As I like to say, this is as good as printing money - I can say precisely what should be changed in a billing statement, why, how much it will gain, and the probability to find matching evidence in the patient file.

I can calculate an expected return, so that on small cases you can use unqualified personnel, while it might be worth to have a doctor study every page of the patient file for high profile cases (since, if you don't have evidence to back your billing claim, you are legally liable - it's not unusual for a large hospital to be fined sums with 6 digits if during an audit mistakes are found)

I tried to sell the software, with a commercial partner. In a year, we could only find a single client in the whole french public hospital system!!

Want to know why? The improved productivity - short term financial gains - <USER2> be used to demonstrate that the civil servants in charge were not as efficient as they should have been, or that they should hold to that level of efficiency in the future.

That's just like the OR example in the article - they don't want to be more efficient because basically, making more money is a liability to the top management personal career.

I was quite disgusted by this twisted way of seeing things. Medical credentials did not help me. Efficiency was not welcome. Improving one's profile, even at the expense of whole hospitals profitability, was.

I did not explore that much, but there seemed to be a demand for a service to selectively reduce profits, to maximize government subsidies in some units - something utterly disgusting for a libertarian. I didn't think I could do that, so I stopped.

I will try again very soon, but now I will make sure to carefully study the incentives, and do something I can morally agree with.

<comment><USER19> > My job is to make patients pay as much as we can legally make them pay, > using any mean necessary as long as it is legal.

> I did not explore that much, but there seemed to be a demand for a service > to selectively reduce profits, to maximize government subsidies in some > units - something utterly disgusting for a libertarian.

So your morality teaches that it's OK to scam patients, but not OK to scam the government?

<comment><USER18> If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally possible is legal.

For ex, on preexisting conditions, the burden of proof is almost reversed. I'm simplifying, but more or less in an audit the opposite party has to _prove_ the charge could not have been caused by the preexisting condition. It is almost impossible (good luck if you are trying to prove say that the chest x-ray had absolutely nothing to do with a physician making sure a cancer did not relapse - so I'll add that preexisting condition to the bill. it has a multiplier effect on the whole bill after a threshold)

This is also moral, according to my beliefs, since it helps improving reliability (here, giving a financial incentive to always check for relapses) and efficiency.

Reducing profits by accounting trickery is illegal. Reducing profits is also immoral in the belief system I have.

You have different beliefs - good for you.

<comment><USER20> > If it is legal it is no scam. Making patients pay as much as legally > possible is legal.

Really.

M.D. in U.S. here. Your profile page says you're an M.D., too.

Please reassure me that you are not a licensed physician and that you have no patient care responsibilities.

However, if you do see patients (or ever have), please comment on your medical licensing board's "belief system" on unethical (but legal) practices (even "business practices") as they pertain to the practice of medicine.

Maybe we're just having a little language breakdown here. Your parent comment sounds like you advocate for the use of "unqualified personnel" if it improves the profit margin. You comment below about "massaging the bill". Just above you seem to be winking and nudging your way to the idea that it's ok "legally" exposing your patients to the risks of certain tests like chest x-rays even if they're driven more by your own pocketbook or client's pocketbook (or your own paternalism) than by what's best for the patient, or perhaps what the patient chooses.

Unless there's some misunderstanding here, your actions are taking place in the wrong field. Medicine isn't a business.

Trying to turn it into a shady profit center is driving your actions toward grave difficulties with ethics, if not "legality".

<comment><USER18> Really, it's legal in France. We have a mixed public and private for-profit system. And studies have revealed a tendency to underbill - ie forget codes.

FYI, I am licensed, board member, and I do see patients.

However I strike a line between patient care and billing analysis. And I love both.

For patient care, my consults are provided for something like $30/consult. Keep in mind these are lengthy consults (~30/45 min per patient) in a demanding specialty. I do them far below costs, in a public hospital, to help - because I know how much the only alternatives in town costs.

For billing analysis, however that's another story. If it is legal (as in allowed by the law and the code of deontology) it goes.

But given your message, there might in fact be a language difference. I'll try to clarify my terms.

Regarding "unqualified personnel", I call anyone who is not a nurse or a practicing physican "unqualified". Ex: a medical coder or medical secretary. They do not see patients, so they are "unqualified". I see it as a good thing if they can do this work, considering the alternative is putting someone "qualified" (ie who could be with a patient providing actual medical care) on an administrative job, something that worries me as a waste of rare resources. If it actually improves the profit margin, that is great : it will provide excellent arguments against wasting rare resources! Anyway, that doesn't make a lot of differences. The laws might be different in the US than in France, but here physicians are legally personally responsible for anything the law call their "subordinates" do. Your nurse leaks medical info about a patient? Your fault by default, unless you can prove otherwise.

Regarding "massaging the bill", that's not the language I use, but it seems to be what the other poster was using. I guess that's how it's called in the US. If it has a negative connotation, I'm sorry. I personally call that billing analysis. There is no need to do anything shady - it would be stupid to do so, given how profitable just following the law can be.

Regarding "tests", it is not about exposing patients to the risks of certain tests - however, if the tests have _already been performed_ and adding them to the bill results in a higher bill, it's about making sure they are not forgotten in the bill. Just like preexisting conditions.

The laws in the US might also be different, but here it's the prescribing physician responsibility to order tests and exams. Billing happens after the patient has left, and therefore can't directly influence the patient care ex post facto.

The medicare inspired system was adopted in France for a lot of reasons - including to help standardize care a little more.

I have had a patient I send to an hospital for chest pain _in an ambulance_ with a case highly suggestive of infarction leave the hospital without troponin, even while he had a antecedents. I've had a patient _I personally brought to the ER_ (we call that medical transfert) with a diagnosis of pulmonary embolism and a prescription for nuclear medicine returned after an echography and a written note saying 'there was no embolism' (how can you tell that with an echography???) - and subsequently dying of pulmonary embolism.

IMHO, this is totally unacceptable - I came to that conclusion, when as a patient I also experience such grave inefficiencies, with consequences. Some people will try to slither their way out of responsibility and consequences.

I take a great pride in bearing full consequences of my actions. I have seen patient wishes completely disregarded, something I decided to refuse - <USER3> therefore got more involved in the administrative side than the clinical side, even if I still do both.

There is a quality problem with some colleagues, one that only financial incentives or legal liability can solve. The US system is far from perfect, but it can give us some inspiration on these points.

<comment><USER21> I think there's a misunderstanding here. From what you said here:

> As I like to say, this is as good as printing money - I can say precisely > what should be changed in a billing statement, why, how much it will gain, > and the probability to find matching evidence in the patient file.

I understand that you, or your system, adds items to patients' bills for tests that either have never been performed, or that have been performed unnecessarily.

Is that the case, or does your system check what _probably_ was performed, and makes sure that it wasn't left out of the bill?

<comment><USER18> > I understand that you, or your system, adds items to patients' bills for > tests that either have never been performed, or that have been performed > unnecessarily.

The first one would be illegal. You can't bill for things that were not done.

The second one is a matter of interpretation : I do not judge whether it was necessary or not. If it was performed, I try to see how it logically could be argued, using the probability of finding matching evidence, that it was necessary given the case or preexisting conditions - and thus bill for it.

> Is that the case, or does your system check what probably was performed, and > makes sure that it wasn't left out of the bill?

The third one, making sure things that were performed were not left out of the bill, is most of the work. The files are incomplete and it requires a probabilistic and interpretative approach, before sending in a human for fact checking.

It's all about providing incentives. The billing rules are complex, but there is some logic in them, and physicians see that too - it change their behaviour. #3 and #2 will directly result in other physicians becoming very careful that everything which should have been performed was - because doing this is highly lucrative, "it is as good as printing money". No need to do anything but following the law and the billing rules.

Truly useless tests won't increase the bill, and therefore they will be weeded out.

I see that as a financial incentive to change behaviours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm in the 7th month of starting a Health IT company and would be happy to answer (some) questions if anyone has any.

<comment><USER17> I'm in the 41st month of a Health IT startup and I'd be happy to give you a preview of the questions you havent even thought of :)

Honestly if you can't fund full speed (dev, QA, support, sales, mktg, ops, clinical studies) for a _minimum_ three years before the first hospital _sale_ , assuming you are selling to hospitals, then get out now.

Happy to shar war stories over a pint!

<comment><USER23> Your HN profile says you're at CloudAmp, which doesn't seem to be a health IT startup at all. What am I missing?

<comment><USER17> I'll spare the HN community self promotion, but I am worker bee and other roles at a few startups. Interestingly enough, Salesforce (CloudAmp's specialty) is being used in hospitals! scary, eh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hi everyone, happy to chime in from an Asian perspective. I'm Ryan, based in Singapore and tried to co-found an online platform for procurement of medical supplies for private clinics. Faced many of the industry's frustrations as expressed in this discussion too. Would be happy to share my experience too.

<comment><USER25> Hi,

I'm curious, how big, do you think, is the medical IT market in Singapore?

<comment><USER26> I'd say it's pretty big. I'm somewhat familiar with a national project for exchange of clinical data and it's in the hundred million dollar range.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As a current developer for a health IT company, much of this is true. Even with the current incentives to go electronic, many doctors just simply prefer paper charts and are willing to forgo the $40k a year just to keep things the status quo. My particular company is growing by leaps and bounds because we started with a very simple Practice Management model and grew out from there whereas I see a lot of startups try to jump directly into EMR's which can be a tough market to crack.

But for anyone looking to get into Health IT, I highly recommend it. Healthcare is a multi-billion dollar industry that is in dire need of some disruption and the programming challenges are both interesting and rewarding (shameless plug: we're hiring).

<comment><USER12> You should also consider the pre-hospital field - a paramedic/EMT in the field with a Toughbook, etc (where they're not still with paper) is typically using horrible software, with little flexibility to what by nature can be a rapidly changing encounter. I see this every day, and hear the cursing that accompanies it, and think to myself that there is so much that could be done to improve this.

<comment><USER27> That's a really great idea and honestly, our biggest problem now isn't a lack of work but rather a lack of programmers. The entire health care industry from the EMT's up to the hospitals really needs an overhaul as some of the software used is decades old.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would add that "agile" development is a hard sell to institutional customers. They want one or two releases a year, tops. Certainly not monthly and absolutely not continuous. "Change management" committees will become your own little hell.

</comment><comment><USER29> For those saying they would like to chat, I have started a posterous group called Health IT:

<http://health-it.posterous.com/>

Consider yourself invited.

<comment><USER29> For those interested in joining, you may have to shoot me an email to be added. My gmail account: talithamichele.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> In the current environment, health care IT solutions will go further if they help professionals and patients do 'more with less' instead of 'more with more'. The dynamics in the article are real, but there are tons of way around the challenges posed. The article to me says that the market has yet to be cracked, but the opportunity is still pretty huge.

<comment><USER17> Unfortunately the entrenched attitude is do 'less with more'. There are ways through the challenges posed - but not 'around'. YMMV.

Until patients pay directly for their care and have transparent pricing, I don't anticipate real innovation. (of course examples exist of innovation within the current system: Athena Health, One Medical, PracticeFusion, ZocDoc - but all of these took quite a lot of time and effort and funding to punch through the barriers noted in the article...so yes, it is possible, you are correct).

That said the current (US) system rewards existing thinking and does not encourage efficiency and outcomes and patient satisfaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I got this pitched to me a couple of months back, but why not start a Yelp- like medical tourism service? Americans can save a ton of money going to S. Korea or anther country with similar healthcare standards at the fraction of the price. It would have to be elective surgery, but you can save a ton of money.

</comment><comment><USER32> OT: There are a lot of people in this thread thinking about starting or joining a Health IT company. I'm hiring (> 7) engineers, happy to help (answers questions, make introductions etc) or hire, email is in profile.

</comment><comment><USER33> This could really be for any enterprise IT company.

<comment><USER23> Eh. If you send out two shipments of Doritos, nobody dies. If you administer a med twice, a patient very well could die. Consequently, if you make it even 1% more likely that a med will be administered twice, patients will die.

<comment><USER17> Absolutely true. That said, software should never replace human thinking (until the singularity, Ray) and the clinician must be the final authority.

Same goes for pilots - the software can help, but as too many pilots have discovered, looking only at the instrument panel (especially one instrument) is a bad idea, speaking from experience ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Are Wheelchairs More Stigmatized Than Glasses? - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/34/adaptation/why-are-wheelchairs-more-stigmatized-than-glasses <comment><USER2> Glasses are such an amazing solution that their only drawback is being visible. How can you even compare wheelchairs to glasses? Because glasses used to be stigmatized and later became a fashion accessory? Surely this is primarily to do with the fact that they completely restore all normal function. Glasses do not preclude you from any social activities, in fact they sometimes enable them (sunglasses). Wheelchairs, on the other hand, carry massive limitations requiring extra accommodation. Have you ever called ahead to an event to notify them you will be wearing glasses? Have you ever had to convince a group of friends to change the event to take place somewhere that is glasses-friendly? Once we have a solution that is as good as glasses at fixing mobility issues you will quickly see the stigma disappear. But right now wheelchairs are an icon of all the things they preclude.</comment>


Zip archives as first-class citizens on the Web - <AUTHOR> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-whatwg-archive/2013Aug/0278.html

<comment><USER2> i'm not convinced that the benefits outweigh the risks. wouldn't browsers have to check for malicious decompression bombs? IIRC -- even without nested zip archives -- a smallish .zip of a few files full of 0s can decompress to many gigs</comment>


Ask YC:  Will I be be notified about unsuccessful application? - <AUTHOR>

HI I applied for YC , however i haven't heard back from YC yet. Will YC inform to unsuccessful candidates, or if i dont hear from YC i should consider myself not-selected. <comment><USER2> We'll email everyone on Oct 29.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks ! I have my fingers corssed :)</comment></comment>


Brisbane floods: before and after - <AUTHOR> http://www.abc.net.au/news/infographics/qld-floods/beforeafter.htm <comment><USER2> I live in Brisbane (I'm fine). I helped with the clean up - cooking about 200 hot dogs last Saturday for the volunteers. The sight was absolutely unbelievable. Houses were gutted. Garbage furniture all over the streets, piles taller than me.

One thing I will never forget though. The smell.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, 200 hot dogs would leave a stench that time can't erase.

(But congrats for getting out there - you have the support of those of us in the other states.)

<comment><USER2> There is so much to do. No doubt next week-end I'm at it again. there is an unbelievable solidarity though.

You can also help, interstate, by donating money. They will need it.

<comment><USER4> Anyone got any recommendations on where to best donate the money? Red Cross?

<comment><USER5> If you donate at Crown they will match your donation. Probably have to physically be here though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The 2011 linux.conf.au conference is going ahead next week in spite of the flood: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2112337>

"The team encourages everyone to still come to Brisbane and support local business and the community - we need your support!"

After having been through the after-effects of an earthquake where I live it's been clear to see the difference it makes for businesses that can open to have custom.

<comment><USER7> "But in the mud and scum of things, There always, something sings." ~Emerson

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There is an inherent conflict between using a dam for drinking water and using it for flood management. That the Wivenhoe was and is used for both is not a surprise, particularly after the droughts leading up to 2008, but the flooding raises serious questions about how sensible that would be in future.

That said, the Wivenhoe in this case did precisely what it was meant to do, and those who operated it did an admirable job under extremely trying circumstances, IMHO. It simply wasn't designed to cope with the volumes of rainfall that occurred, afaict.

I hope the forthcoming inquiry will not focus so much on the smaller-scale "tactical" decisions that led up to the flooding (it will be news to nobody if it turns out some mistakes were made: I'm sure there were), but more on the state's water management strategy as a whole. Unfortunately the news reporting I've seen so far has already tended towards the former.

It's water management strategy that has failed SE Queensland _twice_ in the last few years: first when the water nearly ran out after the drought, and now only two years later there's too much water by half. Neither drought nor flood are strangers to Australia, so half-arsed measures and excuses should not cut it for anybody. Increasingly unstable weather conditions caused by climate change make it even more urgent that we get this right.

</comment><comment><USER9> Also relevant to this is a submission I posted last week which didn't get any attention unfortunately: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2096644> about a site - <http://FightTheFloods.com> which my partner and I created to try and help those who are in need of assistance (volunteers, supplies whatever) to get the message out to people who may be able to help. Since I launched it last Wednesday, it's reached 350+ people registered, and I've personally seen a number of the requests for assistance be fulfilled, so I think it's made at least a bit of a difference to someone, so therefore it's been worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting there is no "outrage" yet in the media regarding this disaster. I was raised in New Orleans, LA, so I see these types of things differently. And on the surface, Brisbane looks eerily similar to NOLA.

Is this an event that could have been prevented or is this a 1000 year flood?

<comment><USER4> Differences between this and Katrina:

1\. The Australian media doesn't run on a 24-hour "outrage" cycle. We don't have any way to blame this on some targeted political figure (though certainly political figures have come in for some criticism). People _will_ get blamed (particularly those who were in charge of the dam that was supposed to prevent this from happening again) but it'll happen slowly and in a controlled manner, not in a rapid flurry of 24-hour-news-station activity. We have a procedure for finger-pointing, and it's called a Royal Commission... we'll spend a year investigating and holding hearings and then eventually find the correct people at whom to tut-tut.

2\. The death toll is relatively low. Very low in Brisbane itself (where the rise of the floodwaters was gentle) and a mere dozen or so in other parts of the state (where flash floods did occur). Sad and all that, but still on a relatively small scale.

3\. No breakdown of order. Partly because a river flood is nothing like a hurricane (the city itself wasn't cut off, and if you're in an affected area you can walk five blocks to an unaffected area) and partly because of the different quality of people in the two cities.

4\. New Orleans already had serious problems (poverty, race relations) which were only exacerbated. Brisbane was a pretty nice place, and it's still a pretty nice place (except for the parts which are now ruined).

In answer to your question, though, this isn't a once-in-1000-year flood... more a twice-a-century sort of flood... we had floods in the 1890s and again in 1974. The Wivenhoe Dam was constructed to prevent the 1974 flood from ever happening again. It didn't work, partly because the folks in charge of operating the dam didn't start releasing water until it was too late... which was itself partly because they've been worrying for most of the last decade about _running out_ of water and forgot that too much water is also a problem.

There's a reason why the architectural style known as a "Queenslander" is a house on stilts though -- Queensland is not a stranger to floods.

<comment><USER11> ... I would wait until the royal commission before I lay blame on dam operators.

I suspect, that much of the flood waters came from the Lockyer Creek (the waterway that was the source of those horrendous videos from Toowoomba) - which actually feed into the brisbane river _downstream_ of Wivenhoe dam, meaning that the dam couldn't stop a large chunk of the flood water from entering the Brisbane river. See this map here: [http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-27.409109,152.603...](http://maps.google.com.au/?ie=UTF8&ll=-27.409109,152.603145&spn=0.045984,0.093513&z=15)

So maybe part of the blame should be placed on the Dam designers... But perhaps other topological constraints prevented the Dam from being located further downstream?

Lots of pieces to the puzzle and I don't think it is as simple as just the dam operators waiting till it was too late..

<comment><USER4> You could very well be right.

I certainly hope that the answer to "Why was Brisbane flooded" turns out to be primarily "Mother Nature is a bitch" rather than "Random public servant Joe Bloggs screwed up big time".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This was done by @jimwhimpey. His (brief) write up: <http://log.valhallaisland.com/post/2785174890>

</comment><comment><USER13> I really don't like that slide effect. A simple mouseover would have sufficed.

<comment><USER14> Revealing the flood image from left to right probably would've worked better, too.

<comment><USER15> My first reaction was "is this because they drive on the left?"

<comment><USER3> No, LCD screens work upside-down here, just like our drains are the "wrong" direction.

(Tip for the sarcasm impaired: that's a bad joke.)

<comment><USER16> Proof:

[http://dump.robhoward.id.au/pics/photos/australian_monitor_o...](http://dump.robhoward.id.au/pics/photos/australian_monitor_orientation.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The "Rocklea (wide view)" one is particularly striking.

</comment><comment><USER18> It was strange driving down the road, looking down a side street, and seeing houses underwater.

</comment><comment><USER19> are there crocodiles in the water?

<comment><USER20> Not in Brisbane, but one of the other flooded towns: [http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/979/168030177790121739415...](http://img560.imageshack.us/img560/979/16803017779012173941535.jpg)

<comment><USER2> It's all fake. However that went on national TV and we all had a good laugh. We never saw that presenter girl again, after she insisted that was shot in Brisbane.

<comment><USER4> What do you mean it's fake? Is the croc photoshopped in, or is it a big rubber crocodile?

If it's photoshopped it's pretty convincing, and if it's a big rubber crocodile then... who has a big rubber crocodile anyway?

<comment><USER2> it's taken from way up north. Where there are actual crocs :)

No crocs in Brisbane. Every year is the same claims "I saw a croc!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> lessons from floods, reinforced for the 9,753rd time:

1\. __ _have home on high ground_ __

2\. see 1

3\. see 1

all else is bullshit and/or out of your control (eg. level of flooding, degree of local or government competence/planning/assistance, etc.)

<comment><USER22> that would be brilliant and uesful advice if we had a time machine...

<comment><USER9> Someone probably said that in 74 as well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The stunning imagery aside, these are satellite images, not aerial.

<comment><USER24> Actually, the photos are taken from a plane.

<http://twitter.com/#!/NearMap/status/26841599145156610>

<comment><USER23> Well I was fooled. It's hard to tell these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The government should have built the damn dam</comment>


Full.social – an idea in the works - <AUTHOR> https://full.social

<comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed) <\- just shut down

<comment><AUTHOR> So not a promising future, but at least I gained some knowledge about working with various APIs.

<comment><USER2> That experience with the APIs is very valuable, so your work was definitely worthwhile.

Very few solo, self-funded, consumer-focused SaaS products go anywhere. The number is very close to zero. So it may be a great idea, but it's very hard to get a user base and then monetize it enough to cover your costs.

For this particular concept, I just think most people are using only one social network. The people who are on many are probably power users, and they'll mostly be interested in publishing (e.g. HootSuite).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the advice, I'm currently building my portfolio to attract potential employers, So I'm hoping someone will see the value in my work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Vivaldi updates its browser on Android devices. More stability - <AUTHOR> https://vivaldi.com/blog/vivaldi-browser-updates-on-android/ <comment><USER2> Without a doubt the best browser available for Android, also with distance.</comment>


How a Hacker Allegedly Stole Millions by Hijacking Phone Numbers - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/a3q7mz/hacker-allegedly-stole-millions-bitcoin-sim-swapping <comment><AUTHOR> Another lesson in: Please stop supporting SMS as "2FA"</comment>


Ion's Book Saver personal scanner converts your books to digital - <AUTHOR> http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/01/at-ces-ions-booksaver-personal-scanner-converts-your-books-to-digital/1 <comment><USER2> The scanning process sounds sounds monotonous enough that it isn't worth it for most books. I'd just shell out the 10 bucks and get a perfect digital copy from the Amazon store.

However, textbook publishers should be terrified. Imagine if N classmates agreed to split the cost of one copy. For many college students, the savings is worth more than a couple hours of free time.

<comment><USER3> I have a large number of books that aren't available on Amazon, especially foreign-language books. If this can produce good-quality images, suitable for OCR/PDF, then it becomes a lot easier than building my own scanning machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There should never be any fair use concerns if you own the book.

This is like owning the CD version of an album and making mp3s for your own use. Despite what the RIAA says now, they once said it was fine and I agree with that logic for books as well.

However I want a book scanner like Google does it, where there is a laser that measures the bending of the pages and can flatten the image accordingly based on the measurements.

</comment><comment><USER5> Of course you can also hack your own: <http://www.diybookscanner.org/>

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the mention - we're watching the Ion with interest. It's pretty obvious that the Ion design is inspired by the DIY book scanner builders out there (DIYBookScanner, BKRPR).

I hope they do a good job of it. Honestly, I'll be shocked if they meet their claimed $149 price point and have quality beyond webcam-capture. If they do, it will be an awesome device, so I hope they do. Also, right now, they claim 7 seconds for two pages, which is a damned eternity.

If anyone has any pet projects that they need motivation or advice to do, we've got a really active community of book scanners, hackers, and builders developing new technology daily. If it involves a camera and a book, we've probably tried it and the locals are quite friendly.

<comment><USER7> I went to home depot yesterday to get everything I need (except the cameras which I got a few days ago), and am going to start building my new standard scanner today... I'm super excited.

<comment><USER6> Hey pontifier -- that's great! Congratulations! Be sure to check out clemd973's build thread -- he really worked out a lot of the problems with the New Standard. Link: [http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=...](http://www.diybookscanner.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=698&start=0)

Also, feel free to email/PM me. danreetz/gmail

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Does the software include good OCR? If it's just taking a bitmap picture then it's not very useful. But if it can produce text files with no DRM then I could read the content on any device.

<comment><USER9> You can pick up a copy of AABBYY FineReader from $50. If the software wasn't able to OCR and generated only images, you could run it through FineReader and spit out a PDF or text document.

Edit: The website[1] says _"Includes software that automatically detects text for further editing and archiving"_.

1\. <http://www.ionaudio.com/booksaver>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Google's book scanner apparently uses infrared to detect the orientation of the page and hence adjust for the position of the page: [http://www.npr.org/blogs/library/2009/04/the_granting_of_pat...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/library/2009/04/the_granting_of_patent_7508978.html)

It's unclear what the speed of the scanning device is though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I might be interested in this for some of my heavier books. I got an art history book for one of my courses earlier, picking it up is like picking up a gallon of milk. I'm not looking forward to lugging that around between classes.

I don't think I'll get this though. There is a problem with ebooks that makes me value paper books. Taking notes. It is so easy to take notes inline and connect ideas while reading a paper book, but the interface to do the same sort of thing with an ebook sucks.

<comment><USER9> What sort of DPI would be acceptable for an art history book? Their other document scanners can scan up to 600 DPI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Lift and turn makes this just this side of not useful. If they could only get it to autodetect when the page is turned (no button to press) without having to lift the entire device on each page turn, they'd really have something. People will page through a book for 10 or 15 minutes, but they won't lift, turn, press a button and repeat for an entire book, which will probably take an hour or more.

</comment><comment><USER13> This gives me an idea for a startup. A book scanning service. People mail you a book, you scan it, send them a mobi or PDF file and mail the book back.

You could even scan it for free if they elect to let you keep the book and resell it.

I'm sure you'd need a good copyright lawyer but maybe the company could start out under the radar?

<comment><USER14> Several book scanning services have already been available in Japan for months, though books are cut and trimmed so that they can be scanned using automatic feeders.

Usually you pay a dollar or so for ~300 pages, and another for OCR.

> I'm sure you'd need a good copyright lawyer but maybe the company could > start out under the radar?

Yeah their legality is dubious; I guess they make it in a hit-and-run way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I could see using this to take old Moleskine notebooks and digitizing them for long-term reference so I can junk the physical notebook. That kind of info might be invaluable.

For everything else shelling out $10 for a kindle book seems like a better use of time and money.

<comment><USER16> If you're going to junk the notebook anyway, you can remove the pages by cutting the spine and then use a standard scanner with a document feeder attachment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Now all that is needed is something that automatically flips pages :)

</comment><comment><USER18> It looks like a small integrated version of Daniel Reetz's scanner. <http://www.diybookscanner.org/></comment>


Stripe releases new design for API documentation - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/docs/api

<comment><USER2> It looks like a fairly standard design. Will PayPal follow suit? ;)</comment>


String Diagrams for Linear Algebra - <AUTHOR> https://graphicallinearalgebra.net/2015/06/09/matrices-diagrammatically/ <comment><USER2> _We have established that there is a homomorphism called θ from B, the PROP of diagrams, to Mat, the PROP of matrices._

I've never seen such a complex subject as linear algebra presented with such clarity and simplicity.

<comment><USER3> Are you being sarcastic?

<comment><USER4> Ya think? I like how Werner Heisenberg (re)invented matrix multiplication. If e_ij represents a transition from i -> j and e_ij e_kl = e_il if j == k and 0 otherwise, then A = sum_ij, a_ij e_ij represents the matrix A = [a_ij] and AB, using this rule, is matrix multiplication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why this episode OP? IMO the proof of fullness is quite belabored. In fact the very next episode gives a much better one-page proof in the section starting "Here's what we mean by this rather cryptic remark". It's faithfulness that's more interesting, ie. are the graphical rules sufficient to prove that any two diagrams that produce the same outputs given the same inputs are equal, ie. is the list of graphical rules complete?

A string diagram is also equivalent to a program in a generalized-stack language (in the stronger sense of equivalence up to difference in the topological arrangement of the wires, not up to the full graphical rules). Unlike a pure stack language, you can operate on values at any point in the stack, not just the top. The four operations are: drop an element from the stack, push a zero to the stack, remove two elements from the stack and push their sum to the stack, remove an element from the stack and push two copies of it to the stack. Obviously any program in this language computes a linear function of its initial stack (there is a full homomorphism to matrices). A stack language captures the same ability of an input to be consumed that a string diagram does.

<comment><USER6> > Unlike a pure stack language, you can operate on values at any point in the > stack, not just the top.

There's a language, Joy, that has combinators that allow you to work deeper in the stack, e.g. "dip":

           a b c [F] dip
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
              a b F c

        dipd == [dip] cons dip

        a b c [F] dipd
        a b c [F] [dip] cons dip
        a b c [[F] dip]      dip
        a b    [F] dip c
        a       F    b c

And so on...

I think it's a "Category Theory" paradigm language, whatever that might mean.

Joy resembles the point-free form of Haskell from Conal Elliott's "Compiling to categories" [http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to- categories/](http://conal.net/papers/compiling-to-categories/) )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Matrices, although great for computers, are often complicated and unintuitive. This blog was my first insight into an alternative symbolic interpretation for Linear Algebra. It has often led to problems and complicated equations being represented with far more simplicity. As well as teaching me to be more flexible and creative with my own notations.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. The graphical notation elegantly demonstrates that a lot of symbolic manipulation just boils down to pushing parts of a formula around until they fit a specific pattern, so that you can apply an identity and replace it with a different pattern.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related : Recent Paper (2019) from Google introducing TensorNetworks and the graphical notation : [https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01330](https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.01330)

Blog post from Google : [https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/06/introducing- tensornetwork-...](https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/06/introducing- tensornetwork-open-source.html?m=1)

and an official website about the diagrams : [https://tensornetwork.org/](https://tensornetwork.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Without an ad blocker, this page redirects to a malware landing page for me.

<comment><USER10> Ditto.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this (closely) related to Penrose tensor notation [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_graphical_notation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_graphical_notation)?

<comment><USER12> Yes. The difference is that here the operation represented by putting wires next to each other is the direct sum, whereas in the Penrose notation the operation is the tensor product. They're both examples of the string diagram notation for monoidal categories. ([https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/2335/lecture-73-...](https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/2335/lecture-73-chapter-4-string- diagrams-and-strictification))

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So,

I looked this page, the whole site and even slept on the questions involved. My experience with being student, doing a bit of math tutoring and doing a bit of math teaching is that linear algebra is one of the simplest "real" math courses a student encounters. Matrices are elaborate but they're just repeatedly doing pretty simple - and the geometric intuition of matrices as translation and rotation of linear spaces, is both useful and one of the easier intuitions to get, among "basic" higher math intuitions.

Now, this page comes along and overall message, "Wow, linear algebra is hard to understand, here's simpler way to approach it" and then [ _stream of stuff no undergraduate possibly get and that I struggle with having an MA in math_ ] (also a structure that's not at all related to the concrete geometric interpretation of linear algebra). And, after scanning the thing structure, I at least have come away with what I think the motivation involved is.

The thing that's "complicated" and "unintuitive" to our author is that the development of linear begin with operations on individual vectors, describing the mechanics in detail. It then jumps to the qualities of sets of vectors and how one subspace can be orthogonal to another subspace.

So, basically, it takes informal set theory as implicit scaffolding to the entire theory. And if you are a mathematician (or one kind of mathematician), set theory is a grunging, undesirable thing. The mechanics of computation is also grunging. I'm tempted to say everything is grunging until you reach a supreme level of abstraction. But the computation + set thing definitely is constructing the structure "bottom". So what the author is doing is constructing things top down. Combining algebraic operations as strings that's constructing the equivalent of subspaces at the same it's describing what addition "is". Everything gets constructed from one "piece".

I feel like I can see the appeal of this but I can't actually see it as producing a thing useful to me, at the levels of abstraction I like to work with.

It also makes think how set theory is a bit the object-orientation of mathematic. It's a messy, do-anything, constructive exercise. I can understand an urge of someone who like their basis to be enlightening, to base their structures on things of great apparent elegance. Perhaps I'm pessimistic enough to believe that one is always to going to face "grunge".

</comment><comment><USER14> Dunno. Matrix algebra seems perfectly intuitive to me. I don't get what this adds except making it harder to write things down. (The insights elsewhere that you can also do this as a n appropriately constructed functional programming language are more useful - at least you can write that down!)

</comment><comment><USER15> Would going through this course (if one can call it that) help me learn linear algebra, or is more of a "Here is a different angle for those who get it" type of thing?

<comment><USER5> The latter IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is poor man's Chu spaces [http://chu.stanford.edu](http://chu.stanford.edu)

<comment><USER17> Ok, but where are the string diagrams for Chu spaces?

<comment><USER16> [https://boxbase.org/entries/2019/jul/15/chu- construction/](https://boxbase.org/entries/2019/jul/15/chu-construction/)

Strings is the canonical example for Chu spaces.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> this page displays some malicious and dodgy ads</comment>


Free as in Health Care - <AUTHOR> http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2016/08/29/free-as-in-health-care <comment><USER2> The entire argument here seems to hinge on the idea that government regulation makes it easier to show liability, thus making an industry safer.

I think this is totally off base. It assumes that safety innovation is only achieved via regulation, and cannot be achieved in any other way.

It never ceases to amaze me that people still think roads wouldn't be built without the government, or that they would be sub-par. People think that without government, the world would be in complete anarchy, when the only examples we have close to that show the opposite([http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=80...](http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=803)).

<comment><USER3> I have a hard time reconciling this opinion with the horror stories friends who grew up in Mogadishu (and subsequently fled to Minneapolis) tell me.

I'm not sure that the wild west examples given in that article scale well to large cities.

<comment><USER4> The "Somalia is a comparable form of anarchy" argument is even worse than the "roads would not have been built" argument the OP was dismissing. This hardly needs a rebuttal because it's based on a false pretense that the goal is some form of stateless 'anarchy' without rule of law/courts rather than a minimalist government, particularly in the economic sense.

<comment><USER5> The original comment literally presented "without government, the world would be in complete anarchy" as a false belief. If "without government" is a false pretense and the actual case being explored is "minimalist government" then maybe they should have said so, but it hardly seems fair to blame the responder for replying to what was written.

<comment><USER6> Those places have governments, just ones that, relative to the governments of advanced economies, are extremely small and barbaric.

If we define a government as a party with a localized monopoly on force, even an armed robber is a government.

And if one doesn't define government this broadly, that still doesn't invalidate the libertarian argument, since it hinges on opposition to the initiation of force (aggression), as opposed to initiation of strictly government force.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So basically this article makes a Kant-ian argument that we need rules to actually get freedom. I think that there's nothing wrong with that argument, but the whole story to make open source about freedom is not the right way at all. I think if you release source code for other people to use is more akin to a present you make for the whole society of the world, which may be able to advance itself with it. Presents shouldn't be bound to conditions. We certainly need rules for our societies, but they need to be part of the law, not part of some conditions of presents. That's why I release the stuff I write under public domain/CC0.

<comment><USER8> When individuals given donations to disasters funds and hospitals, is it not reasonable that it has the condition that the organizer don't pocket the money themselves? One obvious condition to me is that the money should end up as advertised, and if not, I would claim fraud and hope that the justice system handles it.

Other forms of presents are public services "gifted" by the government to its citizens, like parks. A condition to that gift is that people don't vandalize the park, destroying it for everyone. Shouldn't presents like those should be bound to conditions, both informal and official.

I find that most gifts are given under an implicit or explicit condition, and it seems the norm rather than the exception.

<comment><USER9> It's not a "present" if you're forced to pay for it via coercion as we do when it comes to a public park. It is however a "present" when one spends their time and energy making, and then giving away something to others as was the example. Very different scenarios; one is a gift, one is coerced.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The problem with the concept of additive rights, is that they require unequal application to a populace. You cannot have an additive right that everyone gets. For every addition there must be a subtraction. If you think you have 'right' to a private jet; someone has to make that jet - and you don't have to give them anything back. This is the logic of the thugs that use their threats to take the apple in your hand.

Sorry, you are not better than any other human.

</comment><comment><USER11> _I think the critical insight here is that Stallman's vision of software freedom dates to a time when software was contained. You could walk away from that PDP-11 and the choices you made there didn't follow you home in your pocket or give a world full of bored assholes an attack surface for your entire life._

How practical could it be to have laws against trolling? There are online groups who have rules against doxxing, who seem to be able to enforce them. I don't think it would unduly contravene free speech, if public spaces on the internet assumed consent to communication between individuals, with the option of individuals revoking consent. This would be analogous to what people do in public spaces. Then the act of creating a throwaway account on Twitter to continue harassment would be analogous to continue to harass someone in real life. There would be exceptions, but generally, this would be definable and enforceable. (And I would also say, it would be more constructive than picking a figurehead like Milo Yiannopoulos and banning him as a scapegoat. Even if enforcement could only catch a few people.)

<comment><USER12> Name 1 technology law that actually fixed a problem.

<comment><USER13> Seatbelts?

<comment><USER12> Touché, I should have been more specific, I meant digital technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Security standards should be better but software is not like roads or cars. And thank the stars for that. Filling up books full of laws just freezes systems or makes it so you need to be a large company to participate.

If anything, roads and cars should be more like software. Which is not to say no laws. But the laws should not be so many volumes as to be unapproachable and prescriptive and there should be automated systems for testing and validation. This is certainly doable for software.

</comment><comment><USER15> Can anyone enlighten me: why is the article called "Free as in Health Care", but the word 'health' is never again mentioned in the article? I feel like I'm missing something...

</comment><comment><USER16> Seriously, this is the XXI century. You are _free_ to put those awful colors in your website if you choose so, but those white letters on a black background just burned my retinas and stopped me from reading the full text.

<comment><USER17> I've always found white letters on black background way easier to read. Isn't diversity wonderful?</comment></comment>


Boyfriend Required - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/norinori2222/boyfriend_require/blob/master/README-en.md <comment><USER2> I can't even fathom how awful it would be to date with someone that has such stringent "requirements". What happened to falling for someone awesome who you meet and get on like fire with?

Honestly, if she finds someone based on this, good on her, but she sounds extremely boring.

 _"Favorite Artists: Nickelback"_ *

Instant red flag.

I mean, this sounds like something I would have done as a desperate 14 year old (and IIRC probably did), so I guess if she's at that level of relationship-development, then she has a long journey (and ideally should have begun it earlier) but hopefully she'll realise how catastrophic this is.

It's not even the idea of putting a "dating request" on a website, but the way in which it's done. If you do go that way, you have to show people who _you_ are not who you expect _them_ to be.

Thinking about it, and I don't mean this in a derogatory way, but I wonder if she's on the autistic spectrum. If you look at the post, "personality" is reduced to a single line which is shorter than the list of "devices" she owns. It _could_ explain the whole nature of the post. Hmm. At the very least, she's an introvert.

</comment><comment><USER3> I love how some people think they're entitled to an outstanding partner simply by virtue of being them. This woman makes no attempt whatsoever at demonstrating her value yet demands the world of potential suitors. I don't care for this attitude.

<comment><USER4> Well a bit of mild narcissism isn't that bad, usually. Also, she's not demanding a great deal from a partner, it's just that the list is needlessly exclusive, if that makes sense.

I do find it sad that someone can make it to their late thirties and still be this clueless, though.

<comment><USER5> On one hand, some of the requirements are needlessly exclusive.

On the other, some of them are disturbingly low-bar, and is very suggestive that she's been with people who _don't_ meet them. (Only suggestive; I can think of alternate explanations for why they're on there.)

<comment><USER6> ?

I only see four requirements:

Someone who writes beautiful code--it makes me cry tears of joy. (Required) Someone who maintains their own server (Required, Linux preferred) Someone who will let me help them maintain their own server (Required) Someone with public repos on Github (Required)

The others are all "preferences", yes?

<comment><USER6> I missed a few:

No smokers. (Required) No one whose personality changes when they drink. (Required) Someone who does not, under any circumstances, become violent. (Required) Someone who does not, under any circumstances, become uncontrollably angry. (Required)

Still a pretty low bar, IMO.

<comment><USER4> Uh, you also missed:

> _If you've read the above preferences and feel you match at least 28/30 of > them (30/34 for software engineers), please contact me._

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't think HN is the right place for this. Am I right in thinking that the only reason this is receiving attention here is because it is on github? Please correct me if I am wrong.

<comment><USER3> I think this could be considered a 'hack' in the loosest sense of the word.

<comment><USER7> I see that, but I think this is more of a service misuse than a hack. There aren't really any advantages or 'cool' things about using github for this, bar the novelty.

<comment><USER3> I agree that's probably the case but this seems like a good place to have that discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had a list like this once, then I realized no one is perfect and now I'm happily married.

<comment><USER9> My wife is perfect. She tells me so all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Joke for the British readers: this brings a whole new meaning to "pull request".

</comment><comment><USER11> Github: It's not just for finding open source projects anymore

</comment><comment><USER12> Creating these lists as if humans are a bunch of attributes is something we're all probably guilty of at some point or another but when you apply it to finding a mate you inadvertently are just setting yourself up for a likely endless world of hurt. IMHO its honestly one of the worst things you can do to yourself in dating even though its extremely common. The chances of having an emotional connection with anyone is relatively rare and when you whittle down your pool of applicants you can pretty quickly inadvertently eliminate any real possibility of finding someone who fits the list and fits emotionally with you.

On top of all the attributes and the potential for an emotional connection that this fictional mate must meet - he also has to find and be willing to reply to a github repository personals "ad" - seems like a slim chance but what the hell do I know.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think a picture of you might help.

</comment><comment><USER14> She has one favorite book and it is "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People"?

I think I'll pass. Good luck to her though.

<comment><USER15> You are wrong here. "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" is by Steven Covey. However, she said her favorite writer of management books is Peter Drucker, who described "Seven Sources of Innovation" [http://snakecoffee.wordpress.com/2006/04/30/peter- druckers-s...](http://snakecoffee.wordpress.com/2006/04/30/peter-druckers- seven-sources-of-innovation/), praising Japanese companies

<comment><USER14> Straight from her profile:

"Favorite books: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Richards Covey"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I now understand why GitHub took a $100m investment from VC, they intend to turn it into a dating site.

More seriously, there is a trend here, where GitHub is not about sharing software only. It has become a blog, a wiki, a social network, etc.

And that's cool.

</comment><comment><USER17> F@ck. She listens to Nickelback. Count me out.

</comment><comment><USER18> Checked her profile pics on facebook. Better not to make any pull request, believe me :P

<comment><USER19> And some how I think you would have failed her checklist anyway.

<comment><USER18> Right. But I'm married, so I don't care :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> drop the list, socialize more!

</comment><comment><USER21> yeh ladki pagal ho gyi he..... chaalu ladki he

</comment><comment><USER22> Nickelback is a deal-breaker.

</comment><comment><USER23> I understand the mindset that this list is coming from. But in my experience, and my observations of others (had a female friend who had an even more extensive list- spoiler- she was atheist and the primary thing she insisted on, was she never wanted to even meet any christians-- but she ended up marrying one.)

You might find a guy who meets all of these criteria and is a total jerk. And you might end up marrying a guy who is wonderful, who happens to spend 16 hours on a weekend raiding in World of Warcraft.

Part of the process of dating is learning what is, and what is not important.

She's figured out that looks aren't important- that's great. I think she's probably reacting to a lot of things she's seeing in japanese culture- understandable.

But the real requirement -- find someone who makes your life better-- can't be easily quantified.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. She amusingly lists 34 preferences — of which at least 28 must match — before mentioning Nickelback as a favourite artist. Yet she wishes for "Someone who can play classic or jazz piano.", only humans of the female variety can come up with shit like that.

<comment><USER2> > only humans of the female variety can come up with shit like that

Cut that garbage out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hmmm, I meet > 30 of these criteria (I don't like natto, at all), and I'm in Tokyo. Sadly (for you), I'm taken.

My advice is to perhaps reconsider your approach to your romantic life. Confusing Github with a dating service is kind of an obvious clue, but perhaps it's not so obvious to the person so confused. Also, this list is too long. Condense it down to, at most, three must-haves, and then judge case-by-case from there.

</comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps this chap would be suitable?

<http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/tor/881177993.html></comment>


A baseball star funds a gaming company. What could possibly go wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.boston.com/business/technology/innoeco/2010/02/a_business_school_grilling_for.html <comment><USER2> I hate to say it, because I haven't played the game or read the case study, but maybe Schilling would be better as an angel as opposed to a startup founder.

As for spending his personal fortune, he has a lifetime of employment as an ad pitchman in the Boston area -- at least if he wants it. He broke the Curse for the Red Sox, and people here will never forget that.</comment>


Shields.io: Quality metadata badges for open source projects - <AUTHOR> https://shields.io/ <comment><USER2> One of the features that I really like about Gitlab after moving some of my personal projects over to it is how there is a dedicated section under the title to display your badges, without having to put them into the README.

I think that a very important feature of a good README is that the most important information is at the top of the README. Badges going in at the top of the README as images dilutes that somewhat imo, especially since most of the badges are about the __repo __and not necessarily about the project itself.

Also Shields.io is a fantastic service, and was super helpful to me while I was setting up some badges recently - very well done UX that really switches the challenge from setting up the badges to attempting not to include too many of them due to how easy it is.

<comment><USER3> Didn't realise Gitlab supported that. We've been putting some badges in our READMEs. Typically those from the Gitlab CI page.

What does annoy me is the classic Gitlab "MVP" approach. Under Gitlab CI -> General Pipelines is some badge code I can copy. There's no mention that I can add them to the badge section of the project, nor is there anything in General -> Badges section to say "Add Pipeline status". I have to copy the link/img URLs myself.

<comment><USER4> That's a great point, @tikkabhuna!

It seems like fixing that problem you describe could be a good way to improve the discoverability of the mentioned Badges area.

I've taken the liberty of documenting this in an issue [1] and putting forward a proposal. Would something like what I wrote there solve this problem for you?

If you have any more feedback to add, feel free to drop a comment.

I work as a Frontend Engineering Manager at GitLab and will raise the visibility of this issue to the right folks to get this on their radar.

Thanks for mentioning this.

\--

[1] [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab/issues/35771](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/35771)

<comment><USER3> Thanks andr3. That captures my thoughts perfectly. :-)

Its great to see such an open company. My boss and I frequently check Gitlab issues and look forward to release on the 22nd. :thumbsup:

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I created an equivalent project for people who wanted to create the same style of badges from Python (or from the command line): [https://github.com/google/pybadges](https://github.com/google/pybadges)

Python example:

      from pybadges import badge
      s = badge(left_text='coverage',
                right_text='23%',
               right_color='red')
      # s is a string that contains the badge data as an svg image.
      print(s[:40]) # => <svg height="20" width="191.0" xmlns="ht

Command line example:

      python -m pybadges \
        --left-text="coverage" \
        --right-text="23%" \
        --right-color="red"

But there are lots more formatting options documented on the project page.

<comment><USER6> I went more minimalistic and added SVG badge support in the form of a Django template and a couple small python functions.

The template: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/healthchecks/healthchecks/...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/healthchecks/healthchecks/master/templates/badge.svg)

And the function for rendering the template: [https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks/blob/master/hc/...](https://github.com/healthchecks/healthchecks/blob/master/hc/lib/badges.py#L83)

One funky thing there is the measurement of text width. The width of the badge depends of the width of the text you put into it. I simply measured the width of each individual alphabet letter, and use that to calculate the width of a string. It's not super accurate, but works fine in practice. It was a fun weekend project.

<comment><USER5> Nice! My approach is very similar except that I have width mappings for non- ASCII characters. Also, since DejaVu Sans (the font that shield.io, pybadges and healthchecks use) is heavily kerned, I have a table of kerning widths.

You can also opt to use precise text width measurements (important for Arabic, Chinese, etc.) but then you have to have the font file available on your system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The thing I find most interesting about this project is that it shows how a well co-ordinated open source effort can solve the problem of trying to keep integrations against hundreds of different APIs working.

I would have thought that running a project integrating against this many different APIs would be a completely insane idea - but it works great when 300+ people help you out! [https://github.com/badges/shields/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/badges/shields/graphs/contributors)</comment>


Longevity Linked to Proteins That Calm Overexcited Neurons - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/longevity-linked-to-proteins-that-calm-overexcited-neurons-20191126/ <comment><USER2> > In their new study, Yankner and his colleagues report that the brains of > long-lived humans have unusually low levels of proteins involved in > excitation, at least in comparison with the brains of people who died much > younger. This finding suggests that the exceptionally old people probably > had less neural firing. To investigate this association in more detail, > Yankner's team turned to C. elegans. They compared neural activity in the > splendidly long-lived daf-2 mutants with that of normal worms and saw that > firing levels in the daf-2 animals were indeed very different.

> "They were almost silent. They had very low neural activity compared to > normal worms," Yankner said, noting that neural activity usually increases > with age in worms. "This was very interesting, and sort of parallels the > gene expression pattern we saw in the extremely old humans."

Does the low neural activity correlate with a less _active_ experience of the world? Are you experiencing your state with the mute button on? I'm no neurosurgeon, but if this is the trade-off, perhaps living longer by using this REST gene might result in a less rich, dynamic, and textured experience? Might it mean living a life like this is less 'fun'?

<comment><USER3> Depends on the nature of activity. Pure stress will activate your brain but experience is mostly degraded.

<comment><USER4> What if stressful existance pushes for shorter lifespan with the effect of quickening the turnover of generations.

So stressful environment would speed up the evolutionary iteration of generations. While less stressful existance that has adopted to the environment would persist longer.

<comment><USER5> This analogy happens in some animals for sure. At the zoo they place the antelope near the cheetahs so that they breed more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does this relate in any way to the anti-aging drug cocktail that we saw a few months ago?

IIRC that one related to genetic aging markers, and stress can affect mitosis.

It seems like immortality has a lot of building blocks, and the research isn't far enough to combine them yet.

<comment><USER7> Anyone have a link to that? Sounds interesting.

<comment><USER8> You should watch Joe Rogan speak with David Sinclair, who researches aging at Harvard, about the latest developments in his field [https://youtu.be/ZGLL77wYxe8](https://youtu.be/ZGLL77wYxe8)

Aside from multivitamins and idiosyncratic drugs, Sinclair takes the following supplements every day:

\- Resveratrol – 1g in the morning (this is synergistic with NMN)

\- Nicotinamide Mononucleotide (NMN) – 1g in the morning

\- Metformin (prescription drug) – 1g in the evening – except on days when exercising, since metformin reduces muscle growth after exercising

(As an aside, he also engages in intermittent fasting, to reduce his total feeding hours. There's a theory that intermittent fasting triggers a beneficial stress response whereby your body becomes more "efficient" in a way that prolongs life. Intermittent fasting has been shown to prolong lifespan in mice. Interestingly, resveratrol is expressed in plants as a defense mechanism akin to what intermittent fasting does in humans, and that's one of the supplements that Sinclair recommends.)

Sinclair is very careful not to recommend that cocktail for anyone, since anti-aging research is still very preliminary. The relevant human trials are underway. However, NMN in particular has had astonishing effects on mice. Mice that took NMN lived significantly longer than other mice. Old mice that took it ran for so long that the measuring device on their running wheel timed out, because they weren't expected to ever run that long.

In old age, the NMN mice were conspicuously stronger, had more hair, saw better, and were more mentally intact. In short, NMN might reverse the underlying epigenetic causes of aging. Sinclair subscribes to the information theory of aging, where, over time, your epigenome accumulates damage and errors, and protective mechanisms die out. It's like scratches on an overplayed analog vinyl disc which slowly declines in function and eventually stops playing altogether. You lose a majority of your NAD+ as you get older (NAD+ is fed by NMN), which is problematic because NAD+ feeds biological mechanisms which mitigate informational damage. That's why supplementing with NMN is theorized to have anti-aging effects.

Sinclair wrote a great book synthesizing aging research if you want to read more about it. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501191977/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_awdo_...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501191977/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_awdo_CG04DbR0WP5WS)

<comment><USER9> Re reservatol:

The jury is out in terms of its efficacy, or lack thereof. [1,2]

[1] [https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/resveratrol-the-hype- con...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/resveratrol-the-hype- continues-201202034189)

[2] [https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-rich-resveratrol- of...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/diet-rich-resveratrol-offers- health-boost-201405157153)

Re. David Sinclair [3]:

"Despite his enthusiasm, published scientific research has not yet demonstrated the molecule works in humans as it does in mice. Sinclair, however, has a considerable financial stake in his claims being proven correct, and has lent his scientific prowess to commercializing possible life extension products such as molecules known as "NAD boosters."

His financial interests include being listed as an inventor on a patent licensed to Elysium Health, a supplement company that sells a NAD booster in pills for $60 a bottle. He's also an investor in InsideTracker, the company that he says measured his age."

[3] [https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if- youre-...](https://khn.org/news/a-fountain-of-youth-pill-sure-if-youre-a- mouse/)

<comment><USER8> Yep, resveratrol on its own doesn't seem to do much, which is puzzling given its effect on mice. That's why I added Sinclair's claim that it is a synergistic part of his drug cocktail. Let's hope NMN is different. As for Elysium, Sinclair is not affiliated with them and he said he doesn't make any money off of supplement sales.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The results may help explain the observation that some drugs used for > epilepsy extend life span in lab animals.

It would be interesting to find out if CBD (seizure control, calming effect) might be beneficial in increasing levels of REST and calming neural activity.

</comment><comment><USER11> Purely speculating, but perhaps this would place a positive evolutionary pressure on migraines, since they are associated with cortical spreading depression[1] which globally decreases neuronal activity for up to days at a time.

</comment><comment><USER12> Could this be related to the generally shorter lifespans of males?

<comment><USER13> Life expectancy was the same for both genders in 1900 (in Europe at least).

We've just made continually more progress for women than for men. Nowadays for example: lots of research on female cancer (twice more funding than male cancers, for the same incidence and mortality) and domestic violence, little budgets on suicide. Lots of money for equality at work where women are fewer, little money for boys massively dropping at school. Practically no help if you are a man facing a male-specific issue, which is why a lot of them engage in the army or in Daesh (depending which side they tilt towards), and practically all killers you know are boys victims of harassment, absent father syndrome and on the spectrum of autism, with no help from the social fabric.

Men live shorter not because it is nature, but because we've made less progress for them.

<comment><USER14> There are some interesting challenges to your premise, even though some of it very clearly plays a role in the gap.

There is a six year gap (81 vs 87 as of 2018-2019) between men and women in Japan. Arguably none of that gap is properly explained by the issues you've raised. The Japanese are the healthiest, longest living people of any large cohort on the planet and yet the gap persists.

Further, roughly twice as many girls (50.5%) born in 2019 in Japan will live to 90 as boys (26.5%).

None of that is explained by things like rates of cancer (low in Japan), school drop-out rates, domestic violence, murder rates, prison, crime, work equality, army / Daesh matters, or suicide rates. Japan's male suicide rate for example is below that of the US, Finland and only a few points above France.

Yet the life expectancy gap between men and women is smaller in the US than in Japan, which makes little sense if your raised issues were the leading cause agents.

<comment><USER8> There's a theory that longevity is lower in men because they need to be stronger in order to survive in a conflict. It's a trade off. Physical strength is the result of growth, but some of the same pathways for increased growth are also theorized to be the root cause of aging. Note that this is independent of strength training; it's the ability to get stronger, rather than actually getting stronger (among other related characteristics), that may affect longevity. Your intuition that accidental death and smoking do not explain the entirety of the gender gap in longevity is spot on. It's not all bad news for men though. If you manage to avoid obesity and diabetes, your increased strength and bone density may impart greater quality of life in old age, and that may be worth the 3 lost years at the end of life. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3034172/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3034172/)

<comment><USER15> The big killer among modern elderly people is the massive muscle wasting that accompanies most inpatient hospital procedures. Having a solid foundation of muscle can insulate a person from the dreaded point of no return after which it would be impossible to build one's body back after a procedure.

<comment><USER16> Even without being bedridden for days after an inpatient procedure, we have an epidemic of frailty among elderly people. This commonly causes serious falls and fractures, and after an incident like that most people fall into a rapid downward spiral. As a matter of public health policy we should be prescribing weight training and higher protein diets for elderly people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "The flame that burns Twice as bright burns half as long." ― Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching

<comment><USER18> Pretty sure that's from Blade Runner not Dao De Jing.

<comment><USER19> Why not both?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yay! Responsible journalism that includes debunks of obvious theories. More like this, please.

<comment><USER21> Is this the norm for Quanta Magazine? If so, I'll subscribe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm suspicious of the bacronym REST. Was it created to push the idea? I'd rather they coined a neutral acronym. This one reeks of marketing.

<comment><USER23> Everyone knows you come up with the cool acronym first and then figure out what the letters mean to fit the cool acronym.</comment></comment>


Gone Skiing - A strategy to develop a more independent business - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/952a39d3b0c4

<comment><USER2> Mine is coming up in 2014 :) Can't wait! This is a great piece about doing something like this: [http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time...](http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off.html)</comment>


Open ≠ Free ≠ Gratis - <AUTHOR> https://opensource.christmas/2019/18 <comment><USER2> Jesus almighty that is a lot of licenses. No wonder MIT has just become the unquestioned default.

<comment><USER3> > Jesus almighty that is a lot of licenses. No wonder MIT has just become the > unquestioned default.

This is a specific thing per ecosystem/community. Some use a lot of MIT, some Apache, some BSD, some LGPL, some Boost and so on.

I suspect a lot of this is due to the viral nature of licenses. What license is compatible with MIT? MIT obviously, so let's just choose that :)</comment></comment>


Japanese Wonder Weapons - <AUTHOR> https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/japanese-wonder-weapons <comment><USER2> World War II in its waning days was like some kind of Cambrian explosion of plane types for the Axis powers.</comment>