Bitcoin sentiment analysis - <AUTHOR> http://www.bitcoinscope.com/

<comment><USER2> With everyone anticipating an even bigger crash and given all the bad news in May it's surprising bitcoin has remained relatively stable.

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/w...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/31/why- didnt-bitcoin-users-freak-out-in-may/)

<comment><USER3> What a surprisingly naive post from Timothy! The reason these events did not affect Bitcoin's price is simply because they are all (except 1) affecting mostly the US market, wich is a tiny fraction of the worldwide Bitcoin market.

As to the Coinlab vs. MtGox lawsuit, people know that these companies care about Bitcoin above anything else, so they won't let the lawsuit affect it. Eg. if people started panic-selling, you can bet they would work a settlement to stop the panic.

<comment><USER4> > the US market, wich is a tiny fraction of the worldwide Bitcoin market

How do you come to this conclusion? Take a look at the volume on bitcoincharts. mtgoxUSD is beating the pants off everything in terms of volume. It also loses tons of volume after the seizure on the 17th. This is pretty consistent with the idea that most BTCers are in the United States (most of the exchange volume is BTC<>USD) and their behavior changed drastically right when Dwolla was seized (the volume died after the 17th).

<comment><USER3> _"How do you come to this conclusion?"_

1\. Why do you equate mtgoxUSD to the US market? The majority of MtGox customers trading USD are non-americans.

2\. Only ~20% of the Bitcoin connected nodes are located in the USA: [http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-27/mapping-bitcoins- gl...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-27/mapping-bitcoins-global- adoption)

3\. Only ~9% of the world internet users are americans, making the USA a tiny market with respect to the potential future of Bitcoin.

4\. bitcoincharts exclude many foreign exchanges (metabank in Russia, where Bitcoin is HUGE), all private trades (eg. Avalon claimed they sold all the bitcoins they needed to sell to build their 110nm ASIC at TSMC, to private buyers in China; the fact they were able to do this with no pb just tells you how big private trading is in China), etc.

<comment><USER4> > The majority of MtGox customers trading USD are non-americans

So why does their volume drop off after the 17th? That's the reason why I brought that up - only Americans are effected by the Dwolla closure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome.

Is there a way to overlay the price? Also, it may be because it has just launched, but it would be cool to see a longer history with overlaid price.

Why stop at bitcoin? I'm sure the infrastructure you've developed can adapt to different keywords (company/product names).

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the founder of the site, but Patrick Min is (patrickmin.com). I'm sure he'll read this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aha! When this gets popular and people treat it as the go-to bitcoin oracle, all I'll need to do is make some Twitter accounts with negative sentiment, and buy low, and then tweet some positive sentiments, and sell high!

</comment><comment><USER7> This is cool. It would be nice to make it easier to browse positive and negative tweets/articles

</comment><comment><USER8> that's cool. so, how does it work?

<comment><USER9> I'm interested as-well. At least in sentiment analysis. Library name, anything~

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> needs normalisation so you can see meaningful changes in sentiment.</comment>


Top 100 words in News.YC titles - <AUTHOR> http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html?9jan08 <comment><USER3> I presume you're implementing search?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good guess.

<comment><USER4> Take a look at SOLR: <http://lucene.apache.org/solr/> that makes indexing very easy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dr. Seuss wrote 'Green Eggs and Ham' with only 50 words. Can these 100 be strung together (allowing repetition) into something remotely meaningful and grammatical?

<comment><USER6> It's hard without connecting words. I was able to come up with a few headlines though:

\- Google launches first big company platform using python where people make money over hacker life.

\- Lisp application time better vs. javascript, python, ruby.

\- Startup entrepreneur launches better open source ruby tech blog.

*edit, I just now saw the other headlines by readers, but I don't feel like submitting these as actual stories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting. I wonder what the results would look like if the popularity (in points) of the submissions were incorporated.

</comment><comment><USER8> So now that we have the most popular keywords, who can make a title with the most keywords in it?

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=96660>

<comment><USER9> Mine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=96753>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the end: "problem platform. next website need computer better."

</comment><comment><USER3> Note to self: like best hacker make way good (10) ruby application time future

</comment><comment><USER11> Is that listed by frequency? If news.yc existed in 2000 I wonder what the list would look like.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes; I changed the page to clarify. Though in fact it would be hard to generate such a list without it being in order of frequency.

<comment><USER12> Heh, this is algorithm bait.

The obvious algorithm is to sort all the words in order of increasing frequency, then print the 100 first. This algorithm is O(n log n) because of the sorting. It generates the list in order of frequency.

There is an O(n) algorithm that first picks some random item as pivot, then does a partioning like QuickSort where items with higher frequency than the pivot are moved to the front of the array and those with lower frequency to the back.

If the first partition has more than a 100 items, then the algorithm only has to recurse into that part. If it has fewer ( _k_ ), then it prints everything in the first partition, and recurses into the second to generate the 100 - <USER2> best items.

This is expected O( _n_ ) and will not generate the list in order of frequency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the only crowd where "money" comes almost last.

<comment><USER14> Granted its ambiguous, but million closer to the top than money. Its also easier to say :-).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> There is YC, thought I'd find PG also.

</comment><comment><USER16> (Apparently someone forgot to add 'remove #\|').</comment>


Secretive Surveillance Company Is Selling Cops Cameras Hidden in Gravestones - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qjdp95/this-secretive-surveillance-company-is-selling-cops-cameras-hidden-in-gravestones <comment><USER2> I often see people say that we don't have an expectation of privacy in public. However, it seems to me that ignores the nuance of actual social norms.

\- Eavesdropping is generally considered anti-social.

\- Taking up-skirt pictures in public is, I presume, illegal.

\- If someone buys their prescriptions at a public grocery store, would it be alright for someone in the store to photograph their medical data?

It seems to me that the law needs to differentiate between the general sense in which one doesn't have privacy in public (e.g. the public probably has the right to know if a "family values" politician goes to a strip club) and actively spying on someone.

This is particularly the case when technology makes spying possible in a way that it wasn't previously. For example, I imagine it's not uncommon for many people to carry confidential information openly (say carrying a prescription in your hand as you walk to the grocery store) because it's not realistically possible for someone to read it and connect it to you. However, that changes with high speed photography, OCR, and facial recognition.

<comment><USER3> > the public probably has the right to know if a "family values" politician > goes to a strip club

Why anymore so than if YOU go to a strip club?

I am a fervent supporter of recycling, should I expect a person to follow me around in public waiting for me to throw a soda can into the wrong bin?

Because one SUPPORTS a specific policy, does not mean one has to LIVE their life by that policy.

<comment><USER4> For politicians, authenticity of belief is a big concern. If you are someone who geniuenly believes strip clubs are a moral evil, why do you deserve to be manipulated by a politician who doesn't actually care about the issue and is only trying to steal your vote

<comment><USER3> Why is it manipulation, if they say they are going to shut down strip clubs, and actively work towards it, why should I care if they WANT to shut them down, vs doing it because it is a campaign promise.

Politicians actively working against their own interests to do what they feel is truly better the country should be held in high regard. You may agree with their policies or not, but you can't fault a person for enjoying something they are against.

I smoked pot as a teenager, and enjoyed it, and fondly look back on those days getting high with my friends. Your view point would mean I couldn't actively be against teenagers smoking pot, and if I were a politician, I should not back anti-smoking legislation for teenagers.

<comment><USER5> >Politicians actively working against their own interests to do what they feel is truly better the country should be held in high regard.

Please mention one politician who works against their own interest. Cos I don't know any.

<comment><USER6> Bernie Sanders is a millionaire who will absolutely raise his own tax rate for the good of the country.

<comment><USER7> Another way to interpret that is that he values getting elected to the presidency more than the cost of any tax hike he might sign into law as president.

<comment><USER6> He's been pretty consistent in those values for quite a long time before running for president. So I doubt that's why he holds those values specifically to become president.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This story is a bit weird. The company is trying to repress publication of their catalog that was obtained from a FOIA act request directed at a small police department. Well this company is emailing their catalog at police departments nationwide. Fair enough but the catalog is certainly not a matter of national security as they are abusively claiming.

Their items are fairly boring and things that anyone here with a modicum of competence could hack together easily. Camera and transponder in a gravestone, child car seat, etc. basic stuff. Nothing is a big secret, why are they acting like it is? I guess to get attention. If a police department needs any of their items, they can save money hiring a high school student with modest skills and awareness of what's available on aliexpress.

<comment><USER9> I suspect moreso if it becomes common knowledge exactly what the 'police baby seat' looks like, police investigatons might be compromised.

I'd like to see the risk assessment of whoever made that baby seat though - removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.

<comment><USER10> >I suspect moreso if it becomes common knowledge exactly what the 'police baby seat' looks like, police investigatons might be compromised.

I think it's more likely that they don't want to be forced to reduce their profit margin by having to embed their crap in a wider variety of baby seats, grave markets, alarm clocks, etc. If they can skate by with one or two models of each they will make more money.

>Removing a chunk of foam and replacing it with electronics doesn't sound good for the baby's health in case of an accident, and I doubt very much the manufacturer of police spy gear has the expertise to re-test it.

Call me cynical but they likely don't care about that because they almost certainly make the departments take responsibility for use of their products. The departments don't care about being liable because they can usually hand- wave that sort of thing away under qualified immunity and if a judge does make them take responsibility and the departments don't care because the lawsuits are paid with our money, not theirs.

<comment><USER11> Why is it assumed that the safety of the car seat is compromised because of installing a camera? There is plenty of void space inside of a car seat. The only foam sections of the seats I have are around the head-area. The rest is just plastic with a slightly padded cover.

<comment><USER12> Is not the void space important in that collapsing to absorb energy is necessary? Stuffing the voids can absolutely make it dangerous.

<comment><USER11> I'm fairly certain that car seats are not designed to have crumple zones. If you had enough pressure to cause the plastic of a car seat to collapse inwards, you most likely have way bigger problems on your hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022010](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22022010)

Copying my comments from there:

\---

> In warning the site not to disclose the brochure, SSG's attorney reportedly > claimed the document is protected under the International Traffic in Arms > Regulations (ITAR), though the notice did not point to any specific section > of the law, which was enacted to regulate arms exports at the height of the > Cold War.

We really need an overhaul of all these old laws that were enacted for a completely different era, which are now being misused. Another example is 200 year old laws being used to get companies to break encryption.

\---

I don't know how I feel about hidden surveillance cameras in public. I know I shouldn't have any expectation of privacy in public and all that, but CCTV cameras in plain view are a different matter.

Are we going to live in a world where we're constantly being recorded and analysed by hidden cameras? This makes me very uneasy. Whatever happened to the idea that democratic governments should be for the people?

I'm sure there's no way that this can ever possibly be misused /s.

If agencies are using these for surveillance on specific targets then that's maybe okay, but as far as I'm aware, there is not much regulation regarding hidden cameras in public - at least, not in many parts of the world.

<comment><USER14> They are nothinh but flaming corrupt hypocrites. They operate in the business of surveilance yet have the gall to complain about their non-existant right to privacy as an organization?

The fact they aren't even citing the subsections hints at specious legal intimidation. The complexity is too high, lawyers are too expensive, and abuses of the law go too unpunished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is there a price?

Taking a raspberrypi zero, a camera, 4g modem, a couple of batteries and a charge circuit can turn any large-enough object into a hidden camera, for <$100 + the price of object itself (+ some dremel-ing and superglue).

</comment><comment><USER16> I find it more interesting that they are threatening journalists with civil lawsuits and criminal penalties for disclosing the contents of their advertising brochure than the actual contents of that brochure.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I the only one who thinks that in the future we might have with us at all times some sort of complex infrared video-camera-blocking tech, together with a sound jammer?

<comment><USER18> No worries. If such surveillance devices become widespread, complex infrared video-camera-blocking tech will be outlawed - after all, they are there to provide security and prevent crime, hence anybody trying to thwart them is either against security or a criminal...

/s

<comment><USER17> > anybody trying to thwart them is either against security or a criminal

Please could you tell me what you read in this article?

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain- stole-45-t...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/britain- stole-45-trillion-india-181206124830851.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >The Tombstone Cam ...all inclusive system can be deployed for approximately two days with the include PB-180LiFePO4 battery."

Considering that the structure they have to work with has at least the appearance of hundreds of kilos of granite, so there's not a very tight constraint on weight or volume, I'd think they could at least provide for, even as an option, a battery that would last for a week or a month.

That, plus some of the prices quoted give me the impression that this company is one of those that charges silly money for mediocre engineering.

</comment><comment><USER16> A surveillance company can have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Methinks they doth protest too much.

</comment><comment><USER20> This in conjunction with 5G would make surveillance complete. I wouldn't be surprised if 5G got some free channel/band used specifically for "telemetry" from all 5G-capable devices around, transferring real-time audio etc.

<comment><USER21> there is nothing special about 5g vs current solutions. it's just faster and supports more clients per station with worse range.

<comment><USER20> It's just there is too much bandwidth there and some could be repurposed for "telemetry". Many things can be derived from parallel audio/video/IMU streams from multiple phones/devices around a certain spot of interest. Storing them for e.g. a month, automatically analyzing streams with Deep Learning, with suspected ones passed over for a human review. 5G could be a testing tech for that due to bandwidth capabilities.

<comment><USER21> sorry, does 5g magically give other people access to all the phone audio in an area?

<comment><USER20> Nope, but it could be used to R&D a new tech that would make mandatory connections to nearby 5G to some "telemetry" band where all sensory information would go, regardless of whether you like it or not. Similarly to how SMS type 0 is handled by baseband processor in every single cell phone already - you don't even know you received/sent hundreds of those. It's not like there isn't some precedent already most people don't know about...

<comment><USER21> yes, and i guess they could r&d a 5g standard that streams 4k video from your phone to the nsa at all times on a particular band. the standards bodies would still have to agree to it and consumers would have to want to buy it. i will reserve my concerns for things that actually happen.

<comment><USER20> Car manufacturers are already in talks with telcos to get dedicated 10MB/s links to transmit all the telemetry, including visual data. Once such infrastructures are in place and standardized in one domain, it doesn't make much effort to move them to other, "unthinkable" domains.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Modern light of other days.</comment>


A helium-resistant material could finally usher in the age of nuclear fusion - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/new-composite-material-reduces-helium-damage-fusion-reactors <comment><USER2> Perhaps more specifically, alpha radiation resistant. Alpha radiation is helium nuclei.

<comment><USER3> Right. Chemically, most things are helium-resistant. It's a noble element.

It's apparently just that someone came up with a way to allow the gas that forms inside the metal to escape by allowing nanocomposite phases to link up as He is generated.

<comment><USER4> Oh, your sentence explained to me something I had never understood. Alpha radiation is harmful because the helium nucleus acquires an electronic, becomes helium that tries to escape? I always thought it was just the impact of the particle that caused damage but now I understand better, thanks!

<comment><USER5> AFAIK, alpha radiation is not a big problem at all. But if it's that bad, you can put a layer of paper sheets (or metal film, or whatever) on the inside of the reactor to absorb it.

Again AFAIK, all the issues are caused by neutron radiation.

<comment><USER6> My understanding aligns with yours. These are probably highly energetic Alpha particles that embed in metals but I always thought they were of little concern compared to the problems of decay due to neutron bombardment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it very hard to believe in anything published originally by Futurism... can someone with more background on the topic comment if it's trustworthy stuff?

<comment><USER8> No idea about futurism, but someone that speaking about nuclear fusion writes something like this is not worth of any consideration:

Not only does the fusion process expose reactors to _extreme pressure_ and temperatures

Seriously? Extreme pressures in a tokamak? What am I missing?

<comment><USER9> Yes, that surprised me too. Are there any fusion designs without high vacuum?

But on the other hand, magnetic stresses in full-scale systems would be huge, right? And one could consider that to be pressure. In that it reflects confinement of the plasma. Or it could be an incoherent edit.

<comment><USER10> Technically a high vacuum is an extreme pressure, just a negative extreme.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but isn't 1 atmosphere pretty small?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even if true, and feasible, this does noting for spalling from fast neutrons, and half a dozen major bottlenecks with no daylight in sight. Helium impregnation is hardly the major hurdle, at least, not compared to atomic spalling, the breeder blanket, diverter design, magnetic containment, etc...

<comment><USER12> Sounds like you're focusing on the tokamak approach to nuclear fusion. There are fusion approaches that avoid some of those hurdles.

<comment><USER11> Some, but not all, especially not the issue of fast neutrons turning whatever your make your reactor out of, into crumbly crap. Now, I know that some people are placing bets on forms of aneutronic fusion, but realistic forms still produce enough neutrons to ruin metal, that's just not their primary means of transmitting energy. Worse, they require temperatures/pressures far in excess of what's realistic any time soon, except possibly for very brief bursts in the lab.

<comment><USER12> > "I know that some people are placing bets on forms of aneutronic fusion, but > realistic forms still produce enough neutrons to ruin metal"

What makes aneutronic fusion unrealistic?

[https://lppfusion.com/lppfusion-publishes-world-record- fusio...](https://lppfusion.com/lppfusion-publishes-world-record-fusion- results-leading-peer-reviewed-journal-physics-plasmas/)

"Hydrogen-boron fuel, also called pB11, is an ideal fuel, producing no neutrons, and no radioactive waste. Its energy can be converted directly into electricity, potentially greatly reducing energy costs below that from any existing source. Both hydrogen and boron are abundantly available. But the fuel needs extremely high ion energy—temperature—to burn. The new results demonstrate that FF-1 has achieved the energies needed to burn pB11 fuel."

<comment><USER11> _But the fuel needs extremely high ion energy—temperature—to burn._

That's the killer caveat.

<comment><USER12> The line that follows indicates why this may no longer be a problem (for the FF-1 at least):

"The new results demonstrate that FF-1 has achieved the energies needed to burn pB11 fuel."

<comment><USER11> _Worse, they require temperatures /pressures far in excess of what's realistic any time soon, except possibly for very brief bursts in the lab._

<comment><USER12> Are you familiar with the dense plasma focus approach to fusion (which is what the device I linked to is using)? It's built around brief bursts of plasma. Maintenance of a stable plasma is not required.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Homeless Next to Whole Foods: San Fran's Progressive Predicament - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/homeless-next-to-whole-foods-san-frans-progressive-predicament-1466806353 <comment><USER2> Why is this a surprise? The "progressive" left has always hated the bourgeoisie.

<comment><USER3> unless _they 're_ the ones being bourgeoisie... hence the term "Limousine Liberal"....

I don't see folks like Michael Moore lining up to help these people with all of _his_ money....</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How can I promote my opensource tool to hit broader audience? - <AUTHOR> Hello HN, I have built an opensource tool that I found useful in many occasions for different things. How can I help spread the word about it in hopes to help others that have similar issues like I did? I do not plan on monetizing it, but rather try to get it to broader audience in hopes to help others and get better feedback for future improvement... Or maybe the problem isn't there at all, or the people are not perceiving it as one? <comment><USER2> This may be a "marketing" issue. I know a little html and css, but I am not a serious programmer. I looked at your thing and I have no clue what it does.

It might help to have a better explanation of what it does and maybe move your examples link higher up the page. This is your current blurb at the top of the page:

 _webhook is a lightweight configurable tool written in Go, that allows you to easily create HTTP endpoints (hooks) on your server, which you can use to execute configured commands_

That means nothing to me. It should tell me how it enhances functionality of my site. "Execute configured comands" just means "and then it does the thing you told it tobdo." Yeah it better do that much. But what kinds of things can I tell it to do?

So, for examples I know:

Hyperlinks are code snippets that tell the browser to go to a particular page.

CSS is code that makes your page more lightweight by reducing how often you have to repeat instructions. You can have a master file that applies to all items in a particular class that only needs to be called once. This makes pages load faster and reduces coding bloat. It is also easier to maintain the site since you can change code across the entire site by editing one file instead of every individual page.

What the hell do hooks do? I don't know that and I have no reason to research it in order to determine if your tool has any relevance to my life. So I am just going to close the browser tab and move on. I have a busy life and you have not given me any reason to care about this tool.

That isn't intended to be mean. I got told for years my sites were too niche and no one cared. I have wrestled with this issue personally and I am sympathetic.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input. I agree the readme should be rewritten to offer more descriptive information, and give people real life examples and use cases that they couldn't figure out it could do for them...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Try Producthunt.You can get good audience from there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't get an invite to be able to post :-(

<comment><USER3> contact to active hunters who frequently post the product and request them to post your product they will surely do it because some hunters post around 2 to 3 products every day. They also admire good products and they will make you maker you will get your own invites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Show HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Already did that, submitted to Show HN, several subreddits, tweeted about it, got added to Slack's api list etc... It did yield hits and got my repository trending on github which increased the audience, again, but then the exposure stopped :)</comment></comment>


How to Configure JMX in Spring Boot Inside Docker? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.inspeerity.com/devops/Spring-Boot-and-JMX-inside-Docker-container/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Spring Boot framework provides the ability to monitor and manage your application by using Spring Boot Actuator. This module is intended to be used for auditing, health, and metrics gathering but it can also open a hidden door to your server when misconfigured (for example set a proper log level of your application at runtime).</comment>


What is a hacker? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html

<comment><USER2> The definition sounds like "scientist", but applied mainly to artifacts. Reminds me of this passage from ZatAoMM:

 _After a while you may find that the nibbles you get are more interesting than your original purpose of fixing the machine. When that happens you've reached a kind of point of arrival. Then you're no longer strictly a motorcycle mechanic, you're also a motorcycle scientist, and you've completely conquered the gumption trap of value rigidity._ [http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/Zen/Zen%20and%20the%20Art...](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper2/Zen/Zen%20and%20the%20Art%20of%20Motorcycle%20Maintenance%20Part%20III.htm)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes yes, hackers are just "young and immature", and just need to grow into "moral" adults.

The hacker aesthetic that he's talking about includes challenging preconceived notions. The result might be at odds with what is _currently_ thought of as ethical, but it's not precluded from having ethics.

Stallman most certainly has an ethical basis. _Torvalds_ is the free software pragmatist.

</comment><comment><USER4> Gee, it would be nice if this little essay had a date. Yeah, a bit off topic, but it always bothers me when there is some article, blog entry, or whatever and there is no date so I can put the author's words in a temporal context.

<comment><USER5> Guess you didn't read to the end:

"Note: This is an appendix to 'Computer Hacking and Ethics,' a position paper I wrote for the ACM Select Panel on Hacking in 1985."

<comment><USER4> Yes it is an appendix. We know the date of the original work. but it does not give a date for the appendix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it would be easier to make a list of things that a hacker is not.

</comment><comment><USER7>
      I'm a hacker and I'm okay
      I play all night and I sleep all day</comment>


The Unplanned Impact of Mathematics (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/475166a <comment><USER2> This is a duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735236](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23735236)

I'm guessing this post was put into the second chance system.

<comment><USER3> Looks like that, yes. It's on our list to fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is ironic coming from such a math-phobic publication that regards complex numbers and "higher degree polynomials" as too befuddling for its readership:

[http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendie...](http://www.dam.brown.edu/people/mumford/blog/2014/Grothendieck.html)

<comment><USER5> Speaking of math phobic, does it seem like people go into medical because they can make lots of money without having to do math?

I've gathered this set of ancedotal data from my experiences in high school, talking to my wife's co-doctors, and talking to my high school aged cousins.

It seems there's this expectation that they won't have to do math, but they will make money. Other professions that come up are lawyer and sales.

I guess my point, I'm not sure why people are math phobic. I imagine it's related to math related trauma in school. Even as an engineer, I find the hardest math I do is basic calc 1, and it's rare. Not to mention, doing algebra is a pretty rare event in general. Everything else we have calculators for.

It's also concerning to hear life saving jobs are primarily held by people who can't do math. If you can't do math, is it even science?

<comment><USER6> > I'm not sure why people are math phobic

Some people. There is a wide range of people's natural aptitudes. Some people are tone deaf, others can't wrap their mind around programming concepts like pointers, so no wonder some have trouble with math. Especially with abstract math.

> If you can't do math, is it even science?

Depends on your definition of math.

If you mean the difference between a quantitative field that deals with numbers and a qualitative field that doesn't, then doctors do plenty of math.

If you mean higher level math like number theory, there's plenty of science and engineering that can be done without it. I have an engineering book that avoids using calculus altogether.</comment></comment></comment>


Mary live-codes a JavaScript game from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/105955605

<comment><USER2> The final code from the OP: [https://github.com/maryrosecook/gamelivecode](https://github.com/maryrosecook/gamelivecode)

Having a little (but long forgotten) experience in game/graphics coding, it was really a delight to see the OP distill the concepts of the game loop, browser interaction, and graphics rendering...not only into something playable, but while talking in front of a crowd, and taking the time to show even via console.log the impact of each step. It was also just a great demo of why programming in the browser is so neat...Even without libraries, it doesn't take much code to have graphical elements in front of you, responding to user input.</comment>


Mining Wikipedia with Hadoop and Pig for Natural Language Processing - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.nuxeo.com/dev/2011/01/mining-wikipedia-with-hadoop-and-pig-for-natural-language-processing.html How to build multilingual training corpora for OpenNLP Named Entity Recognition using the Apache BigData tools. <comment><USER2> For others, a warning. There isn't any technical discussion, it is really just a demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have you scrolled down the page a bit? There are commented source code samples and links to the generated outputs, source code and instructions to run it yourself if you wish.</comment></comment>


Effective New Tool Created for Discerning Fake News – UT News - <AUTHOR> https://news.utexas.edu/2020/08/13/effective-new-tool-created-for-discerning-fake-news/ <comment><USER2> It's more about indicating fake news than discerning it. What's better, an icon, words, or both? (No surprise: it's both.)</comment>


Black Swan author urges: "Use cryptocurrencies " - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/25933/black-swan-author-urges-use-cryptocurrencies <comment><USER2> In theory someone in a country where their currency value is dropping goes and buys some cryptocurrency and stabilizes the value they own.

But crypto currency isn't some stable value right? Wouldn't the result be that that person who is already in a bad situation now has put their eggs in a sort of cryptocurrency speculation market?

Let alone all the security / liquidity questions.

Is that something vulnerable folks really need / should do?

<comment><USER3> The wildly speculative price of crypto is a feature of the transition period, not an innate feature of cryptocurrencies.

There are two steady-states of money, both described by the money supply equation PQ = MV from macroecon-101. If everybody uses dollars, Bitcoin is worth nothing and the value of dollars (1/P) = real GDP (Q) / MV, real GDP rises at ~1-3%, velocity of money is roughly constant, and so price levels go up at the ratio of money supply growth / real GDP growth. The same goes for crypto - if everyone uses Bitcoin, the dollar is worth nothing and prices of goods go up based on real GDP / Bitcoin money supply growth, with the value of Bitcoin (in goods, because nobody would be using dollars) as the reciprocal of that. Cryptocurrency inflation is actually a lot more stable than dollar inflation, because the supply of a cryptocurrency is algorithmically baked into the software itself at the time the crypto is launched. Short of forks and competing adoption, you can predict exactly how many Bitcoin there will be (21 million) when the last Bitcoin is mined (2140).

The wild price swings happen because you have two interacting user populations. If say 0.1% of the population uses Bitcoin and then a bunch of news stories come out about crypto that raise awareness to 1%, then you have 10x as many people fighting over the same supply of crypto. That'll drive the price up 10x (actually more, because people tend to hoard rather than sell when the price is growing up). Similarly, if half those people give up and go back to dollars, the price will fall by 50% (actually more, again because of the presence of Bitcoin hoarders).

In the end state, where everybody uses cryptocurrency, the price of crypto in dollars becomes meaningless, because nobody uses dollars anyway. That makes cryptocurrency a funny investment where its true fundamental value is either zero or infinite, and the price you're getting in the spot market at any given time is a reflection of _how likely_ the public at large thinks these two outcomes are.

<comment><USER4> Unless Cryptocurrency is as easy and safe to get & spend as traditional currency, "everybody uses cryptocurrency" ain't gonna happen. If someone steals from my online bank, I'm insured against loss. If someone steals from my online crypto wallet account, I'm out of luck (and a ton of money).

(insert "it's your fault for trusting other companies with your wallet!" comment from the crypto kiddies here)

Keeping your crypto wallet in off-network storage and having to dig it out to spend money or whatever is the digital equivalent of keeping stacks of cash under your mattress. Does it work for some people? Sure. But don't pretend it's what the average person wants to do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> His entreaty was in response to a post about the Bank of Lebanon ordering foreign currency remittances to paid out in the local currency.

<comment><AUTHOR> The Lebanese pound has lost half of its value since October after capital inflows dried up and protests erupted

<comment><USER5> Not officially. It's still pegged 1USD to 1500LBP. But on the blackmarket its 4000 or 5000LBP due to pretty strict capital controls

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For what? The are nearly unusable and definitely not currency by common understanding and usage

<comment><USER7> As a means of electronic transfer to avoid capital controls, presumably it is then immediately converted to LBP at the natural exchange rate rather than getting the small amount of LBP that the government has decided is the official exchange rate.</comment></comment>


Say goodbye to your productivity - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/rolly-candy/id925621970?l=fr&mt=8&baptiste

<comment><AUTHOR> It is! Thanks ;)

</comment><comment><USER2> Perfect for a friday!

<comment><USER3> No sockpuppets or astroturfing on Hacker News, please.</comment></comment>


Microsoft, TomTom Settle Patent Infringement Battle - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Windows/Microsoft-TomTom-Settle-Patent-Infringement-Battle-766706/ <comment><USER2> I suppose this outcome was inevitable. MS couldn't afford the bad publicity of an all-out litigation, and would have perhaps risked a ruling that would render all software patents worthless. TomTom was in a worse position though: if they'd lost the battle, MS might have demanded an agreement that wasn't GPL-compatible (see point 7 in GPLv2), and this would have meant the end of TomTom's business - full stop.

So it sounds like now there's a mostly undisclosed agreement, which is a great outcome for MS: they get friendly publicity for being soft on TomTom, but the case is still feeding the FUD on Linux' patent infringements...

</comment><comment><USER3> This is BS, utter and complete BS. This just allows Microsoft to perpetuate their myths and TomTom gets to violate the GPL without actually disclosing it.

Does anyone have the balls to actually stand up to Microsoft and finally invalidate their patent claims?

<comment><USER4> Yes it's called "the rest of the world" who believe that you can't patent the process of replacing a long word with "~1"</comment></comment>


Keep Distractions From Hijacking Your Time - <AUTHOR> http://www.carlapaton.com/2010/02/distractions/

<comment><USER2> Should you take advice on avoiding distraction from someone who punctuates their post with "You should follow me on Twitter"?

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is hijacking my time

<comment><USER4> Congratulations on entering the infinite procrastination loop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think that distractions can be productive.. a few moments away from a problem can clear my head.

For that reason I didn't read the article, but judging by the other comments, I'm glad I didn't :)

</comment><comment><USER6> When you are in the "Flow", you don't have to worry about distractions, because you don't want to be distracted. So the real issue is how to get into the flow.

</comment><comment><USER7> Totally generic article, does not really say anything.

</comment><comment><USER8> Stopped reading at gratuitous religious reference to "God-given" gifts.</comment>


Shall We Play a Market Timing Game? (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://engaging-data.com/market-timing-game/ <comment><USER3> > Update: Added a Monte Carlo mode which lets you play with data that is > randomly generated from the daily returns of the S&P500. The probability of > a daily return being picked is the same probability/frequency that it > occurred in the last 68 years.

This mode is rigged.

Any proposal for market timing requires correlated returns. "Technical" traders infer short-term trends form patterns like the shave-and-a-haircut and lovely-lady-humps that are ultimately based on a theory of market psychology, and "fundamental" traders usually make structural observations like price-to- earnings ratios being mean-reverting.

Both of these hypotheses are excluded _by construction_ when market results are constructed by a random draw of daily returns.

<comment><USER4> They could easily create a better simulation with a moving block bootstrap method. That is by sampling consecutive returns (for example for a whole week) and create a new time series with them.

<comment><USER5> Yep, I have a tool that is similar to this and this is what I did.

Unfortunately, if you are working with daily returns you need consecutive returns for way more than a week. You have correlated returns, in particular there are Friday-next Monday correlations that are important in the tails. You also have volatility clustering/asymmetries over daily periods (i.e. high volatility tends to be followed by higher volatility and the volatility responds differently to up vs down moves) and this tends to last way longer than a week.

It is very tricky stuff. In the real world, you will often find managers grouping based on their knowledge (i.e. X-Y was the 2008 crisis) and testing their portfolios against that. It is rather unscientific but it works (i.e. in this case, you might do something like a Markov model with a transition matrix of the daily probability of moving between volatility states, and then sample longer blocks from groups based on the state).

A simpler option (what I did) is to just look at yearly returns, and sample across countries (just using the US is horrible cherrypicking).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool but although I agree with the general message :

"The market returned 214.6% during this period or 21.05% annually."

This simple math statement is wrong and makes me wonder about this website accuracy.

edit : yes this was for a period of 9 years on the market which should be around 9% annual returns instead.

<comment><USER7> I don't see that text on the page. Was it a 6-year period? If so, the accuracy is basically perfect. (21.05% annual growth will return 214.6% after 5.9996 years.) Otherwise, weird.

> edit : yes this was for a period of 10 years on the market which should be > around 8% annual returns instead.

How did you get a period of 10 years? It runs in 3-year increments.

<comment><USER8> You get some text in the Results box after you finish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I predict that the market will see a handful of the largest single day point increases within the next six to ten months.

Just a prognostication on my part, it's worth exactly what you paid for it.

<comment><USER10> I'd expect percentage losses as deep as those seen in 2007/2008\. This isn't just paper money drying up, it's the inability to physically work. It's not just a matter of injecting a ton of capital into the economy, literally that capital cannot do anything if people can't work.

We'll also see hyperspecialization towards COVID-19 in the health sector, which could leave those industries vulnerable when COVID-19 finally runs its course(likely many months from now).

Some industries are already failing, and will need propped up. If not, then those industries will take awhile to recover after COVID-19 runs its course.

Also I'd be incredibly wary of huge single day gains. Consistent slower gains is a better sign of a healthier economy than the spiky behavior we've seen as of late indicating people are heavily speculating on the volatility.

<comment><USER9> The big difference is that 2008 was a systemic recession. This one will likely be situational.

<comment><USER11> > _The big difference is that 2008 was a systemic recession. This one will > likely be situational._

"Systemic"; what does that even mean? That the crisis was related to the financial system? Yes, it was one type of financial crisis.

We are now in another. If you believe that the unravelling we are seeing is simply because of the Coronavirus, I think you will be disappointed. While this may not be the same as 2008 (no two crises are the same), there are a number of "systemic" issues in the world that will come under pressure:

      - Privately held companies with ridiculous valuations (WeWork, SpaceX)
      - China having taken on more debt in 10 years than anyone, ever
      - Negative interest rates around the world going *into* recession
      - The shale industry blowing up
      - Housing bubbles that didn't implode in 2008 (Canada, Australia) coming under pressure
      - Fiscal and monetary stimulus in the US like we've never seen
      - Risk Parity unwinding

These are off the top of my head. Maybe they all mean nothing, but I doubt it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is such a nonsense being pandered by people who make money on it.

You, you can absolutely "time the market". You just can't do it exclusively based on the chart. The real world is still there, and it's important, you know? And Stock Market and savings accounts are not the only investment instruments available to people. And you don't have to be all in or all out.

Maybe if you don't have time and skills to think about it, etc. then this makes you feel better about your "investments" because "there was nothing you could have done better". But it's still load of rubbish.

<comment><USER13> Agreed. I read about the coronavirus and decided to pull some of my money out - that's probably earned me 10% so far.

<comment><USER14> I read about coronavirus and bought puts when the market kept making new highs. I'm currently up $100k, with $80k already booked profits and riding the last $20k as a hedge against my new long positions. I also bought Gilead and Moderna and am up $15k and $5k, respectively.

I believe we are near a short term bottom and will bounce in 1-2 weeks. Most of the bad news is out and I expect better news in the coming weeks (quarantine is working, remdesivir/chloroquine is effective). Then I predict after the short bounce that the economy is so damaged that we make new lows

I've been timing the markets for 20+'years now. Just because some people can't doesn't mean that everyone can't.

<comment><USER15> How is it possible that in 2 weeks we'll have news that quarantine is working? The general publicly isn't even taking it seriously yet.

It'll be at least 2 weeks evem before testing capacity is ramped up enough to measure population-level success at quarantine

<comment><USER14> Italy and the rest of Europe will be 4 weeks into their quarantine in 2 weeks. If we see results over the next week or two then the US markets will skyrocket because it means it will work here too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't have much experience in the market, but "invest in index funds" seems like a way to inflate the values of all the companies in the index fund, deserved or not, and I find it worrying that it's touted as an easy/simple way to make money. If there's a lot more index fund money than hedge fund / active money it would probably mess with prices, right? Is there any good analysis of when it would stop making sense to invest in an index fund? Or ways to weight certain companies higher or lower in a 'personal' index fund?

<comment><USER17> > If there's a lot more index fund money than hedge fund / active money it > would probably mess with prices, right?

No, assets under management is irrelevant to price discovery. Trading is what sets prices not holding stocks. According to a 2018 Vanguard paper index funds only made up around 5% of trading volume despite holding about 50% of assets. So active managers are still responsible for 95% of price discovery even if they hold only 50% of assets.

[https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGBEL.pdf](https://personal.vanguard.com/pdf/ISGBEL.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Interesting. Would be even better if it let you download data on returns at any point. For example, you might pause after Day 200, download data on the S&P 500 for Days 1-200, analyze the data, and then proceed accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER19> The "Buy and hold ETF" strategy of today is good advice until it isn't. Eventually, ETF holders will probably be exposed to a black swan like the NIKKEI 225 lost decade event (although it should probably be called the lost _decades_ ) [0].

My opinion is that buying and holding the index is better than picking stocks and timing the market unless you are a professional (you need to be doing it full time to gain a consistent edge, and even then it isn't guaranteed). However, even then, it is only good advice if equities is a small part of your overall portfolio. Blindly buying and holding the index is not smart if your net worth is 80% tied in equities -- you should diversify in bonds, real estate, precious metals, and other commodities.

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

<comment><USER20> You can already do this with ETFs, e.g. with Aggregate Bond Index ETFs, and the All Cap I invest in includes basic materials, oil & gas. The REIT ones can be more expensive.

Only going for equities is risky I agree, but I don't see this as an ETF problem.

<comment><USER19> That's a good point, I'm really referring to stock market indices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Generally, in markets that were part bearish (like the 80s), I made very good returns, between 10 % and 30 % above the index. As a very simple rule, after 2 days of a falling index, sell for exactly 1 day. This works mainly because there are enough consecutive 3 days of a falling index. However, if the market trend is overwhelmingly bullish, that does not work anymore, because there are not enough triplets of falling numbers. If it was possible to differentiate the two, I guess it would be possible to reliably beat the index. But of course that is the tricky part ... You cannot be better then the index in rising markets, but you could be better in falling markets.

<comment><USER7> > You cannot be better then the index in rising markets, but you could be > better in falling markets.

That's because the only actions you can take in the game are "buy the index" and "sell the index".

As soon as there's more than one price in the market (even, say, one index tracking DJIA and another one tracking S&P 500), it's possible to beat the market average while prices are rising.

<comment><USER21> Not saying you are wrong, but what algorithm would you use to achieve that?

<comment><USER7> Always invest in the one that's increasing faster than the other one.

I'm not saying you can do it without knowledge of the future. I'm responding to the (correct) observation above that it isn't possible to beat the market average while it's rising, no matter what you do, even if you do have knowledge of the future -- as long as the only options you have are "buy the index" and "sell the index".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I successfully played a market timing game with Apple stock for years. It stopped working after Steve got sick. But I've probably wiped out half of those gains with buying or selling some other stock right before things went sour.

</comment><comment><USER23> This just shows that so-called 'technical' analysis with no context is about as useful as trading based on horoscopes.

Add in some information like 'a new pandemic threatens to shut the world economy for months and kill tens of millions of people' and suddenly this changes.

<comment><USER24> Technical analysis has validity - it is just patterns and data. It isn't perfect, because outcomes are still variable, and also consist of independent human decisions.

A pandemic is an edge case... However, markets react much more quickly than in the past (algorithms, global data, instant analysis of that data) - <USER2> technical analysis short term timelines have compressed.

If you want statistical breakdowns of each pattern, their movements, and outcomes - this book is a great reference. [https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Chart-Patterns-Thomas- Bu...](https://www.amazon.com/Encyclopedia-Chart-Patterns-Thomas- Bulkowski/dp/0471668265)

<comment><USER25> That book is essentially a collection of newspaper horoscopes.

Trading off data and patterns is a valid strategy, but the book you referenced doesn't show you how to do that. (drawing pictures over charts and making subjective conclusions based on what you drew is not a data driven strategy).

Read the recent book on Rentech (the man who solved the market is the title I believe) to better understand how difficult it is to actually beat the market using data.

Once you read about a firm who _has_ consistently beat the market—-and how tiny their edge actually is—-you'll put the notion that you have the resources to do so on your own to bed.

<comment><USER26> I wonder how the firm did this year?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sure. It's a really bad idea to try to time the market on a day to day basis. There's two sides to every trade, so you're generally playing poker against professionals with armies of quants.

But this game really just proves that you can't time the market while knowing nothing about the outside world.

Headlines sometimes matter.

Not all the time. Talking heads generally overstate how much one random speech matters, "politician X says Y, therefore stocks are reacting" is generally just over-analyzing noise. It's annoying to see post hoc rationalizations the norm in financial... in all news. People claim causation for anything they happened to read.

But occasionally, once a decade, say? Headlines do send a strong signal. "Crisis on Wall Street as Lehman Totters" was a headline that came just before the biggest cliff in 2008.

In February 2020 we didn't know as much as we do now, but people already started talking about difficulties in containment. China--which likes itself some economic growth (if only to keep the Party going)--decided a near total economic shutdown was necessary. The virus was already in a few dozen countries and Singapore was surrounded by container ships that couldn't dock.

So let's split out two separate claims:

1) The weak efficient markets hypothesis: you can't time the market blind.

2) Strong EMH: you can't time the market, not even once in a while, with your eyes wide open.

In defense of (2), the housing crisis really started in October 2007, and ended in February 2009. You can delve for headlines for those moments, but they are way more specious. Here's the real test: what will be the best signal of the rally after the pandemic?

1) China hitting zero active cases, reassuring the world it can be done.

2) Global new case "growth rate" below 1 for two straight weeks? [Growth rate being the ratio of today's new cases to yesterday's new cases, with lower than 1 a tipping point away from exponential growth, and probably the halfway point in the crisis.]

3) China keeping no new local cases even after reopening its economy?

4) Some decision about how to keep airlines solvent?

5) Unemployment nearing historical normals after skyrocketing beyond anything we've ever seen?

Any of these seem plausible. But who knows which will be right? However, if we are attacking strong EMH, we don't really have to time things maximally, we just have to do slightly better than the index. So maybe just wait until the S&P 500 has recovered a quarter of its losses and get in then?

Maybe the general problem with active investing is the financial sector's approach: hire people to study market signals full time and generate algorithms that can trade more and more actively. Full time people are expensive, and tuning algorithms is expensive. So that means you burn through fees (on top of probably not outperforming the market, because you're competing against noise).

If you hire people to do something full time, they will find ways to justify their time. If you hire someone to play rock paper scissors full time, and give them some of the highest bonuses in the world, they will come up with some very nice models. And usually not outperform a random thrower, but give you lots of reports on why and how they'll do better next time.

But if all the daily signals are noise except for one really blaring foghorn once a decade, maybe the better solution would be to hire a part time market hobbyist on a contingency fee. "Hey, if you see a signal that the entire market should be shorted, maybe short the market. You get two trades per decade max. Otherwise, just index and hold."

Probably also wouldn't work, but I really like the idea of some plumber in Poughkeepsie controlling billions of dollars in hedge fund money, you know, just as a side hustle.

<comment><USER28> The Efficient Market Hypothesis is obviously, patently false. The markets cannot agree on the value of an asset from week to week, day, hour, minute or second. Equities in stable businesses with millions of shares traded daily see their prices fluctuate 5%, 10%, 20% intra-day. The tangible value of a company simply does not change that fast. It doesn't.

It's impossible to time the market perfectly every time because that would imply perfect knowledge of the moves of all the participants. By the same token, it's impossible to mis-time the market every time, because then you could just take all the opposite moves and you're back to winning. It is possible to win more than you lose, not by being the smartest, but simply by being smarter than the average participant. Which, thanks to companies like Robinhood putting trading capability into the hands of any naive smartphone owner, has become easier than ever.

<comment><USER29> You need to be smarter than volume-weighted average, not smarter than the average participant. The demographic you have in mind is trading relatively small amounts of capital.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there also a version with the Nikkei 225?

</comment><comment><USER31> Excellent game! I gave it a shot, failed miserably. Index investing is best for me.</comment>


Top UCLA Doctor Denounces HBO's "Chernobyl" as Wrong and "Dangerous" - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/11/top-ucla-doctor-denounces-depiction-of-radiation-in-hbos-chernobyl-as-wrong-and-dangerous/#6f1a0e491e07 <comment><USER2> The author of this piece is the President of Environmental Progress, a pro- nuclear lobbying group. He's posted multiple articles to Forbes to try to discredit the Chernobyl show....

... which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?

Anyhow, the people and their horrifying decision making processes are the real enemies presented in Chernobyl, in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> > The author of this piece is the President of Environmental Progress, a pro- > nuclear lobbying group. He's posted multiple articles to Forbes to try to > discredit the Chernobyl show....

I've seen this pseudo ad-hom rolled out every time one of his articles comes up on HN. Is he really a nuclear lobbyist? Does that make anything he is saying not factual? Can we engage with the facts of the article rather than just attack the author?

In this case it's an article about what a doctor who _treated_ some of the Chernobyl patients is saying. Is that a lie? Is he not a doctor who treated the Chernobyl patients?

> which is a TV show meant to entertain people. Since when did people get > their authoritative facts about science from a dramatized TV show?

That's probably how a majority of people learn things especially about topics they otherwise would never engage in or dig deeper on such as the true details of a nuclear accident.

<comment><USER4> > Is he really a nuclear lobbyist?

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

> Does that make anything he is saying not factual?

it's a smell test - burden of proof goes up

<comment><USER3> Is he paid by the nuclear industry is what I was wanting to know?

This label "lobbyist" gets used to malign people and cast aside anything they might have to say a lot. It's usually only used against those which are promoting an idea that someone already disagrees with. So for example an anti- nuclear but pro-wind power person will throw out a "he's a lobbyist" label to an article by this guy then ignore what he's saying. But without any irony completely lap up something written by a wind-power producer who makes money selling wind turbines or similar.

If the guy writing this is a lobbyist because he is making the case for nuclear, and thus we must disregard him, then anyone making the case for anything is de facto a lobbyist and we should disregard everything.

I would much rather see people actually try to refute or counter the facts and claims this author presents, but that almost never happens which leads me to believe the only way people have to rebut him is the ad-hom route as the person I replied to did: label him with that despised "lobbyist" word so people tune out.

<comment><USER4> > Is he paid by the nuclear industry is what I was wanting to know?

wrong question. right question: does he have a vested interest misrepresenting the position?

if i own a burger king franchise i'm not a beef lobbyist but i do have a vested interest in misrepresenting the facts on beef farming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Coal power stations produce around 5-10 tonnes of radioactive waste every year. This seems to be ignored for the most part when discussing nuclear energy.

<comment><USER6> It is not useful to use the many failings of coal as a fuel to promote nuclear power. Nuclear power does not compete against coal, it competes against wind/solar and natural gas.

The constant refrain of 'but coal ..' from nuclear advocates is just an admission that nuclear power is un-economic and unable to compete in the marketplace against the best options.

<comment><USER7> Nuclear power does not compete against wind and solar, as wind and solar are _intermittent_ power sources. Nuclear is a _firm_ energy source, in that we can use it to create steady-state power during periods that intermittent sources are not available. Coal is also a firm energy source, so coal and nuclear definitely compete.

For more, "There is No One Energy Solution", [https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/there-is-no- on...](https://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/there-is-no-one-energy- solution/)

<comment><USER6> This mis-states how electrical generation markets work and relies on the fallacy of "baseload", which is an artifact created by the past-grid domination of large thermal plants for generation.

In my market (Texas/ERCOT) there is no separate market for "firm" power. You either run or you don't on an every-15-minutes basis. You are either a price "taker", or a price "maker". In this market the NPPs are always, always, price "takers". They absolutely compete with the price makers, which are always either wind, solar, or most commonly, natural gas.

Coal is always a price "taker" in this market as well.

Whether a generator is a "taker" or "maker" in terms of pricing is a function of the economic impact to it of not running in a given bid segment, and its ability to compete in the bidding for the "last MW" of the bid-price stack.

Large thermal plants like NPPs rely very much on the economics of being able to get premium pricing for every single minute of the day and night. In a competetive market they can't do that, because gas/wind/solar can under-price them by very large margins. So the NPPs become un-economic to run (if already running), and very much un-fundable to build as new capacity. The same market force applies to coal.

<comment><USER7> Your rationale does not address the core argument of the piece, which is that as reliance on intermittent energy sources approaches 100%, their cost will rise steeply.

<comment><USER6> It's not necessary to do a piece by piece rebuttal of a professional "skeptic", who is a neuroscientist, and whose reasoning relies on someone who worked at Shellenberger's "breakthrough institute", which existed solely to provide pseudo-scientific buttressing for the message that renewable energy is bad, and the climate change, if it's happening, isn't really that bad.

You are essentially using Shellenberger-provided articles as proof that Shellenberger isn't a con artist. It's all bunk. Top to bottom, same game plan.

<comment><USER7> I refer to them because their arguments make sense to me - they seem measured and nuanced. I've encountered a lot of pseudo-science, and this has none of the hallmarks that I associate with it. The argument is not that renewables are bad, but they alone are not enough. Can you point to something that provides a counter-argument?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Al-Khwarizmi I'm not an expert, but this doesn't look too credible to me:

\- I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.

\- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.

\- If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented an there are photos.

\- Regarding the Ignatenko's claim that the foetus had somehow protected her from radiactivity by absorbing it, personally I never interpreted it as a statement that the show was claiming as true. I saw it as the character's own interpretation. The show portrays different characters with various degrees of ignorance, and no one in the show portrayed as knowledgeable defends that theory.

\- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): [https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5](https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5)

There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.

<comment><USER8> >> I know that many death estimates for Chernobyl are highly exaggerated, but sticking to the official Soviet death toll of 31 seems ludicrous.

That's the immediate death toll from radiation poisoning, not the total years lost as a result of radiation exposure. The article is correct to point out however that the total death toll must be much less than many other disasters and certainly not comparable to what people commonly believe about the death toll at chernobyl.

>>\- Lyudmilla Ignatenko existed in real life and there are interviews with her telling how they didn't let her hug her husband at the hospital due to radioactivity, and she had to hid her pregnancy to be let in. Of course she could be lying, but those would be strange lies to tell.

>> If victims could not be radioactive, why were they buried in metal caskets covered in concrete? This is well documented and there are photos.

Those were firefighters who ingested radioactive products in the air. Normal human tissue cannot be induced to be become radioactive. I'm not surprised that they would quarantine a firefighter and bury his body in a metal casket but that doesn't apply to the majority of the victims of radiation poising by Chernobyl. The show at one point shows such a burial for liquidators who wouldn't have radioactive material in their body and is almost certainly ahistorical. The show never makes this clear.

>>\- There are photos of radiation victims from various incidents and they look not unlike what is seen in the series. Here are some (trigger warning, very graphic images): [https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5](https://imgur.com/gallery/3x7RcLk#QrTJTm5)

He was literally standing over a tank of radioactive material when the accident occurred thus explaining the extent of his skin damage. The radiation exposure for the firefighters wouldn't have caused them to suffer skin damage to the same extent and not in the way portrayed in the film. The ingested fission products would have harmed internal tissue before reaching the surface of the body. The show's portrayal of the first responder firefighters is almost entirely completely wrong.

>>There may be things to criticize about the show but this person looks like he is telling a quite biased story.

I disagree and I'm quite concerned about how the show mistakenly portrays the effects of radiation. At the very least they could explained how radiation works and why the firefighters had to quarantined but they never do anything like that. Instead, we hear dramatic warnings of a thermonuclear blast unless our heroes take immediate action which is completely nonsensical.

<comment><USER9> You are perfectly right. This series was a good opportunity to actually show people how radiation works. They did make a good step by step of how the disaster unfolded though, which is great. Just above I made the point that most people don't understand how radioactivity works and they will probably mostly pick up the details of the series that are added for dramatic effect since they're mixed with real events. TV series have a strong influence on people's beliefs. My comment wasn't too appreciated.

Being irradiated does not really make human tissue radioactive. You absorb the radiation particles, not the radioactive material emitting it. But ingesting, inhaling, or absorbing the material through the skin will not only kill the person (from the inside), it will also make the remains dangerous enough to not want them seeping into the ground. Now the tissue carries around the radiation source. [0]

To use the bullet analogy from the series, what I said above is akin to being shot with bullets or ingesting a gun that's still firing. The first case might kill you, the second case will definitely kill you but it won't really kill others unless they plan on ingesting you, firing-gun and all.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The key point is that radiation victims of Chernobyl did not became radioactive themselves -and harmful to others- as depicted in the series.

Fear and panic caused more harm than the accident itself - including one million unnecessary abortions.

I think the danger implied is that it could happen again.

<comment><USER11> For someone concerned about facts he presents no actual facts to backup his claim of 1 million unnecessary abortions. What is this based upon? How did they identify which were abortions driven by bad medical advice and which were abortions which women claimed were based upon the medical advice but for which that was just a cover to avoid the social stigma often associated with abortion?

Of course this also assumes that an abortion is some kind of harm.

<comment><USER12> > Of course this also assumes that an abortion is some kind of harm.

How is a killing of a person not considered harm?

(Unless, of course, you're some sort of extreme psycopath.)

<comment><USER11> Abortion isn't killing a person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> People are taking the wrong takeaway from the show. The point of Chernobyl(HBO) was not to show the dangers of Nuclear reactors, It was to show, The Lies, Politics and other disgusting elements can and will ruin lives of thousands of people.

Chernobyl was the result of lies and deception. Soviet Russia's wanted to be number 1 everywhere while completely disregarding how they got there, That is what led to Chernobyl.

People, Including the Doctor have taken it incorrectly in my humble opinion.

They even had a separate podcast where they discussed exactly this and more details related to the series in great detail. Look it up on Pocketcast or whatever app you use to listen to podcasts and you'll find it.

<comment><USER14> > Soviet Russia's wanted to be number 1 everywhere while completely > disregarding how they got there, That is what led to Chernobyl.

What led to Chernobyl is a reactor design flaw (could happen to anyone), and irresponsible behavior of the plant staff, who run the experiment against "the book".

Only the later probably is because of the culture-wide trait. The rest of it could have happened to anyone.

Though I do agree, that the show displays the need for open information through the lack of it in Soviet Union like nothing else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The claim that external exposure to radiation does not make you radioactive is true in _most_ cases. However, Chernobyl is not most cases.

First, I'm not sure you can claim that people working during the disaster would only suffer external exposure. There was a reactor core on fire, there was probably plenty of isotopes in the air that would have been breathed in and possibly taken up by the body.

Second, neither alpha, beta nor gamma reaction will induce any significant amount of radioactive in materials that are exposed to them. And under normal circumstances, that is all you would be exposed to. But this was, again, an exposed reactor core. There might very well have been a significant amount of neutron radiation present, which does in fact induce radioactivity.

So the claims of the article are way too strong for this very, very exceptional situation.

</comment><comment><USER16> It's sad to see them use inflated numbers to criticize the numbers they claim are inflated:

"Although the 31 immediate Chernobyl-related deaths are sad," he concludes, "the number of fatalities is remarkably small compared with many energy- related accidents, such as the Benxihu coal mine disaster in China 1942, which killed about 1500 miners, and the 1975 Banqiao dam accident, also in China, which killed about 250,000 people."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam#Casualties)

The dam failure killed approx. 26,000 people, and 145,000 died as a result of subsequent epidemics and famine according to the official record.

While this was a very significant loss of life, inflating it to argue with other numbers you contest seems pretty shallow.

<comment><USER17> Sort of like how people try to conflate the problems of the earth quake and tsunami with those of Fukushima Daiichi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I lived in socialistic country in Eastern Europe and government DID try to cover it up. There were no new for at last several days. Then they said everything is fine, go outside, eat vegetables, drink mil, everything is OK.. it is just Western propaganda that there are problems. We trust our comrades in Soviet Union. While the news in Western Europe was: Minimize your stay outside. Do not drink mil. Do not eat vegetables (the farmers in West were actually destroying crops so it cannot be consumed).

<comment><USER19> Yeah, scientists in Poland were told to shut up and smart ones immediately took potassium iodide to protect thyroid.

The first news anyone got was from Sweden a few days later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Dear, YCombinator Admins!

Please, stop share fakes written by _Michael Shellenberger_ [0] on HN!

[0] [http://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear- monitor/853/exposin...](http://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear- monitor/853/exposing-misinformation-michael-shellenberger-and-environmental- progress)

<comment><USER21> > wiseinternational.org

This organization self-description[1] (emphasis added by me to highlight important phrases):

>> We publish the Nuclear Monitor, a unique international newsletter _serving the worldwide movement against nuclear power_. Produced 20 times per year, it _gives an anti-nuclear perspective_ on what is happening in the nuclear power industry and the _resistance against it_.

An anti-nuclear activist group is an interesting choice to use as a reference...

[1] [https://www.wiseinternational.org/what-we- do](https://www.wiseinternational.org/what-we-do)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Not to mention everyone in the show has a British accent, even Gorbachev. Hilarious

<comment><USER23> option A)

1\. Have people speak perfect English, thus letting the actors shine, and not have the viewers have to read subtitles.

2\. Have really good British/American actors do a fake (and probably bad) Russian accent, just for funsies

3\. Hire actual Ukrainian/Russian actors, and use subtitles all the way.

Option 2 just seems stupid to me, the characters didn't speak in a foreign accent, they spoke in their own. Between Option 1 and 3, I prefer 1.

<comment><USER24> Option 3 can work really well. Narcos had folks speaking in Spanish with most of the world reading subtitles. As someone not from South America, it felt more authentic than if Escobar was speaking English throughout.

Of course, I'm glossing over the fact that the actor playing Escobar didn't sound like he was from Colombia at all, but that's not apparent to most of us non-Spanish speakers.

<comment><USER25> Arguably, the artistic choice was a strong for one Narcos because the foreignness of the majority of the setting to the viewpoint characters was central to the theme; that's arguably the opposite of what Chernobyl was aiming for.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Developer Personality Test - <AUTHOR> https://minnatechnologies.com/developer-personality-test/ <comment><USER2> It would be great if you could link to the result. -- The Investigator</comment>