More Universities Should Shut Down Their Computer Science Programs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jeffreymcmanus.com/1924/more-universities-should-shut-down-their-computer-science-programs/ <comment><USER2> This kind of reasoning actually led to the establishment of "Java schools" in the late 90s, and I hope we've all read Joel Spolsky's classic piece about them:

[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchool...](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/ThePerilsofJavaSchools.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you're missing the entire point of what a Computer Science program is.

It's not to teach programming. It's to teach computing theory, algorithm design, etc. That's the reason that the top-level university programs are so heavy on theory. That just happens to fit with systems programmers(who somehow aren't software engineers... curious). It also fits with game programmers, which is where I think a lot of CS students want to go after they graduate.

I also disagree that there is any real good way to teach software engineering at this point in time. Unlike other disciplines such as Mechanical or even Electrical engineering with decades, even centuries of practical knowledge that has resulted in a lot of very strict best practices. Software engineering doesn't have that. Everything in the domain is extraordinarily fluid. Processes are changing rapidly. Tools as well. Even the end product we produce is vastly different from what it was 10 years ago. There simply isn't any good way to teach this subject in this environment short of on the job training. It's compounded with the fact that every software development house is different. Nobody has the exact same process, or uses the exact same tools. So teaching SE as a discipline really doesn't make much sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> did you actually read the post? i actually pre-rebutted both of your arguments.

i understand quite well what a CS program is, since (as i pointed out in the post) i've been a student in three university CS programs and taught coding at a fourth.

i'm saying that most of what goes on in academic CS departments is not what we need as a society and it's not what most undergrads hope to get into when they enroll. most undergrads get into CS to write software, not to learn "theory" or "compiler design" (although, again, as i pointed out in the post, if this happens to be your bag, more power to you -- but this isn't really about you, it's about the mismatch between what university CS programs do and what people and society really want or need.)

software engineering is obviously teachable (i've been doing it for 20 years) and that's true even if you personally didn't have any good software engineering instructors or mentors. it looks like you and i are in agreement that rapid change in software engineering makes universities not the optimal place to teach software engineering (that was the point of my post). but it doesn't follow that because universities are bad at this, that software engineering is "not teachable".

<comment><USER4> Interesting side discussion.

I do thing cube123 read your post, and I do think a valid conclusion from reading your post is that you have missed the point of what a CS program is.

I suspect that this comes from your own history, and part from the way in which CS 'grew up' as a discipline.

The point of your posting is that being employed as a programmer, and learning programming is not what a Computer Science degree is about. Try getting an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering, its similar in that you have lots of theory on lots of things but little practical experience.

The leap you make which causes me to discard your argument is this one, _"but this isn't really about you, it's about the mismatch between what university CS programs do and what people and society really want or need."_ You have taken on the role of speaking for society and yet you haven't successfully made a case that you can accurately represent what society wants.

You can make an argument that there is a need for a training program between high school and employment that teaches people how to write programs to solve problems. You can call that Computer Engineering, Applied Programming, Programming Technology, what ever. Such programs exist, both in the 'for profit' University world and elsewhere. You can argue that such programs should be structured more along the various processes for producing reliable, testable code, and you do some of that in your education project (always great to put your money where your mouth is like that).

But the opportunity to teach folks who 'just want to code' does not disqualify CS as being a valid course of study, just like 'Accounting' doesn't disqualify 'Mathematics' as a course of study. So your central thesis that 'more universities should shut down their CS programs' fails the 'sniff' test.

Now if you said 'More universities should offer applied programming type degrees' and used your points about how it is what many people want to do. That is a reasonable conversation to have, do we want to elevate what have been things like ITT Technical College programs into a more general purpose degree program? Something between 'JavaSchool' and 'CS' ? I can see arguments for and against.

But if you are going to blurt out things like "Most undergraduates and professional actually want to learn applied software engineering, not 'computer science'" you really should try to develop some foundation for that claim. What evidence do you offer that this claim is valid? Some study on college exit exams, some survey of recent CS graduates? A self selecting poll on Reddit? Its all well and good to wonder if most folks just want to code, but to use it as a claim in your argument that Universities should restructure their CS programs, and expecting your readers to 'buy in' to that requires that you provide some basis for making that claim.

Your post makes a bunch of claims, four of them in big bold font, for which your provide no supporting evidence or structure at all around why the reader should believe them. Because of that your message is lost.

I agree with you that it is an interesting topic and as we've moved 'programming' into a more general skill requirement based on the explosion of 'programmable' devices, you might be more successful making the argument that we need to offer a better high school programming class. (much like Typing was offered in the 70's as a way to provide a generally useful skill to High School students).

<comment><USER5> Just a terminology note: 'Computer Engineering' is already existing term for the discipline of making computers -- designing CPUs and building hardware in general (our CE has strong security focus, so they do lot of RFID ASIC stuff, and some FPGA crypto stuff) and low level programming like compiler backends (SPARC register windows are pretty!), microcontrollers and interfacing with other hardware too. And whatever Hennessy and Patterson are doing.

So you shouldn't name gutted code monkey courses Computer Engineering :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have a CS degree, and worse than that, it's a double major in CS and applied math. I had to study things that seem really pointless for an "applied software engineer", like differential equations or numerical methods (ok, maybe the latter is not so pointless). We also studied a considerable chunk of other, more "CS-esque" stuff, like introduction to mathematical logic, computability theory, lambda calculus. Does this stuff pay off? Well, my actual job never required me to implement any complex algorithms, because everything has already been written in the standard libraries. It does help to have at least an approximate picture of what's really going on under the hood.

But what really helps me is that 4 years of being exposed to all this crazy theory has affected my brain in a certain way: it has altered my perception of problems.

Before going into CS I was programming by chance: slap some code together (without really understanding the problem domain) and poke it with a stick until it somehow works the you want it to. I think most kids who are just learning to program do that. However, that approach changed radically after I spent some time at the university. In that sense, CS has been really useful, at least in my case. Btw, I'm not saying those skills could not have been obtained elsewhere.

And learning theory really broadens your horizons. Things like computability theory, I have no use for them in my day job, but they're just interesting. Back at the uni, I had a blast writing a turing machine "emulator" and programming it instead of manually writing the assignment on paper :) And yes, you _could_ study them in your spare time, but the truth is, the job eats up so much of your time, and makes you so exhausted that you barely have the resources to follow an online lecture after a long day at work. So why not spend some time learning while you still free from most of the responsibilities of adult life?

<comment><AUTHOR> No argument there. Like I say in the post, I'm all in favor of the goodness of the basics. I just think that giving undergrads all theory and very little practice is not optimal, and they should have the opportunity to go minimal on theory if it makes sense for them. Very few universities offer such a choice today.

<comment><USER6> I know. We lacked practice at the university too. I don't think you can blame the university for that, though. Practical things are better taught by people who actually use them on the job, not by PhDs who write scientific papers. That's why I went to long-term internship at an actual company during my second year, which later turned into a full-time job.

<comment><AUTHOR> if the university purports to teach this stuff, they should hire people who actually know how to teach it. if their tenured PhDs aren't cutting it, they should look elsewhere. (this is how i got my university teaching job.)

<comment><USER6> > if the university purports to teach this stuff,

It doesn't. The major purpose of a university is to produce scientists who do research, not software engineers who write crud apps. We, the software engineers, are just a byproduct.

> they should hire people who actually know how to teach it

They can't and they shouldn't. Why would one want to teach at a university when (s)he has enough skills to work at a company for a big fat compensation, and, possibly, equity? The only way to attract those people to the universities would be for the universities to offer much higher salaries, which would consequently drive up the cost of education (in my own country it wouldn't even work, because education is "free", i.e. mostly paid for by the government). And for what - to teach the students something they could have easily picked up on their own by poking around the internets or participating in internships? That is not optimal. If you study formal grammars in class and don't try writing your own little lexer/parser at home, it's your own fault, don't blame the university. It has taught you everything you need to know to write a parser, and it's your job to put it to use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> UK-AL Hint: pointer arithmetic is a pretty practical, not theory. It's easy to understand, and is usually first year stuff. Program in c and you are likely to use it. pointer arithmetic should be taught for software engineers anyway... Compiler design again is a pretty pratical subject, except for formal grammars. It has tons of practical uses, especially for dsl's.

Theory for me is more like machine learning(Bayesian theory, probability latent semantic analysis and way more advanced stuff). However with the age of big data upon us, we are going to need this for your average programmer more and more. Stuff like that happens to be what interests me, I also find it the difficult much to detriment of consistently high grades..

I think your what your proposing would lower the barrier entry so much, your average software dev won't be very good, and they will be cheap. Is that what you want for the proffesion?

</comment><comment><USER7> This post is spot-on.

During the boom cycles of software development, its not neccessary for someone to go back to university for the skills - online is good enough, more specialized, and much more cost-effective.

Why get in crushing debt to become an app developer? Or to program a startup's back-end, or to administer a cloud infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cherry picking applied software engineering (and glancing over your curriculum, specifically web programming/app development) as the only modern relevant subset of computer science seems a bit dramatic. I personally don't really care how/where people learn how to code, and like you, I don't care much for the "priesthood of the technologist" I see so often in our industry.

But so confidently suggesting that ".. academic CS departments is not what we need as a society" is no different "cargo-cult" thinking than the poster who suggested that many don't take vocational training seriously. You are blogging about and representing a vocational training service, obviously the readers on HN are going to be skeptical.

Choosing the path of academia in education and as a career is a perfectly valid and respectable choice. Suggesting that the works of groups like the ACM, IEEE are not addressing real societal problem is pretty harsh, regardless of how elitist they may or may not be, and regardless of whether those individuals are making a significant contribution to society or not. There's no need to shit on smart and passionate people in specialized / esoteric fields in computer science simply because their work can't be easily app'ified or conjured into an mvp (<http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/>, <http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~ravin/> ...)

I studied computer science in my undergrad. I didn't go to learn how to code nor did I expect my university to teach me how to code, I already knew how to do that. Many of my friends discovered a passion for CS because of their overlapping math/logic/theory breadth courses, not despite it. Assuming the typical CS student is someone who only enrolls to learn things like applied programming grossly oversimplifies and generalizes a person's intentions and motivations for learning, even though I'm sure there are many with that primary motivation.

Online/alternative learning programs, like your company, are a great approach on education which have lived happily in parallel with universities for years. It's not a replacement though, it is an alternative. I don't think the shortcomings in some universities warrant the "academic butchering" as suggested so boldly in the post's title. To suggest that we should start systematically shutting down CS departments simply because their current curriculum doesn't produce good programmers in a way that aligns with your model/curriculum, is a scary and dangerous thought. When you take away university departments, you chop the legs off entire disciplines.

</comment><comment><USER9> >one of the most pressing problems that humanity has today is obtaining clean drinking water. Yet no university has a Department of Water.

He made some interesting points, but this just sounds crazy.

<comment><USER10> Also, the University of Arizona does have a Department of Hydrology and Water Resources: <http://www.hwr.arizona.edu/about-department>

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Looks like ye olde blog is a bit slammed at the moment, apologies. (If only my university CS program taught me how to be a Wordpress sysadmin!)

<comment><USER11> Maybe try this introduction to web publishing with wordpress [1].

Google cache of the blog post: Also, [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://blog.jeffreymcmanus.com/1924/more- universities-should-shut-down-their-computer-science- programs/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

[1] [http://codelesson.com/courses/view/introduction-to-web- publi...](http://codelesson.com/courses/view/introduction-to-web-publishing)

<comment><AUTHOR> the issue has to do with apache and my cheap-ass underpowered personal server, not wordpress. but gracias for the link!

<comment><AUTHOR> Server has been migrated to WPEngine, which I am now deeply in love with.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How should a startup founder value her time? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.asmartbear.com/value-time.html <comment><USER2> It's never mentioned in the article, but this only applies to the "Get Big Fast" flavor of Startup. Where you're hoping for a big payout in 4 years time if you sacrifice every waking hour between now and then building as fast as possible.

So when it concludes that you can't build something small and profitable, and that you can't do anything other than work yourself into the ground, it's just restating its assumptions as conclusions.

If, on the other hand you're looking for something to replace your $150/hr consultant gig, you absolutely _can_ build something small that brings in a little profit. And you absolutely can build that thing without working "harder than is healthy".

I keep a spreadsheet that tracks the hours I've worked on my startup alongside the profits it has made. It tells me exactly how much my time has been worth for the hours I've spent working on the thing in the last 4 years. And it's creeping up to look like a respectable consulting rate.

<comment><USER3> Bootstrapping solo founder here. It's kind of overwhelming if all you do needs to be valued at $1000/hour. It sounds more like it could be used as an excuse not to do anything: "I can't figure something I can do that would be valued $1000/hour" => better to keep going at the current job.

I've been doing the startup thing for 5 months now, but as it's my first experiment, I don't think I've created $1000/hour stuff so far.

Still, I don't see it as a problem. The idea is to value your time, yes, but you should also value intangible things like what you're learning doing this startup for example (which give you an edge for this one or the next startup).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This argument considers the downside risk (85% chance of not getting paid anything) but does NOT consider the upside risk (small chance of getting filthy rich but still much bigger than the chance if you work as a $150/hr consultant). That makes the math wrong, even if the idea has merit.

<comment><USER5> Furthermore, even if the premise is right, the strategies suggested are wrong. 'Working more than is healthy' never makes sense (except in short, >healthy < doses) and hiring support staff only makes sense if you have the cashflow or the increased productivity is worth the increasd burn rate - you haven't made that money yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Why is 'her' used here, if the author is male?

<comment><USER7> Because the subject of the sentence is "a startup founder", not "Jason Cohen".

<comment><USER8> It's always irritated me to see the use of the word "her" because of the blatant political-correctness of it. If you want to be PC, use "their".

<comment><USER9> You don't like implied political correctness. OP doesn't like implied gender bias. I don't like grammatical convolutions like using "their". What's to be done?

How about focusing on the message?

<comment><USER8> > what's to be done?

use "their"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting tidbit for those debating the correctness of he/she/they in the title: at one (very brief) period of time, there was a school of English writers that believed 'it' was the correct gender-neutral term for living human beings of either gender.

The argument being that 'they' was plural, and therefore blatantly incorrect as a he/she replacement, whereas it was singular and gender-less (though gender-less != gender-neutral (at least, not necessarily)).

Anyone that's read E. Nesbit's _The Five Children and It_ (the 'It' in the title is completely unrelated, as it refers to a mythical being and not any human) would have experienced this oddity of the English language, and <strike>they</strike> it would have probably paused and wondered about the usage of 'it' as a gender-neutral pronoun.

According to Nesbit, saying something like 'A lover and its crush' or, more confusingly, 'The life of a founder, and its priorities' with 'it' here referring to the founder and not his/her's ( _its <smirk>_) life.

Sounds weird? How many times have you said a sentence along the lines of "Was _it_ your _father_ or your _mother_ that was in the Army?" Nesbit's approach was the same, taken a few orders of magnitude further :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually, this reasoning is completely wrong.

"""

Your time is $1000/hour, and you need to act accordingly. Here's why:

Let's say as a consultant who normally charges $150/hour you stumble upon a weird client who asks for the following terms:

        "We agree your time is worth $150/hour. However, we can't pay you for four years, at which time we will pay you in one lump sum."

How much should you increase your hourly rate to make these terms worthwhile?

But "lost interest" and a premium doesn't solve the biggest problem with these terms. The problem is: What if this company goes out of business in four years and doesn't pay you at all?

Supposing this client is an early-stage startup — even if funded — the most likely event is that they stiff you! Because they're dead. Let's suppose for the sake of rhetoric there's a 15% chance the company will exist in four years and pay their bill.

"""

The article then goes on to reason that, therefore, you should value your time at $1000 per hour with this company.

But there's a problem.

 _IF_ the company goes bankrupt, then _EVERY_ hour of time you spend with them is worthless, and you should reduce to to 0.

 _IF_ the company doesn't go bankrupt, then any number of hours at, say, $300/hour, is worth it for you.

In the first case, if you bill at $1000, the company is just as willing to use lots of your time. If it makes it, it takes off; if it doesn't make it, it's not stuck with the bill.

Absent all other market conditions, if you are a monopolist in what they want to do with you, and they NEED 40 hours of your time to survive, that is how much they will take at $40, $80, $120, and $150 or $1000 per hour. If they believe they can use those forty hours to raise $15million in the next 4 years, they might even "agree" to $150,000 per hour. It doesn't matter. No matter what your price, in this scenario you are out the same 40 hours if you play ball with them.

It's like winning the lottery. It doesn't matter if the expected value is over $1 per $1 ticket, if the chance of winning is the same. Your utility is massive if you win, you're out $1 if you lose.

False reasoning.

<comment><USER12> (I avoid reposting/relinking, but it seems that this theme has been coming up a lot on HN recently.)

What you're getting at is the concept of risk-benefit analysis, which is a bit more subtle than just the expected (dollar) value of the result. I describe it in more (academic) detail here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3432356>

<comment><USER11> it's not just that. when there's a big jackpot at a casino at the slot machines (i.e. the jackpot hasn't been paid for a long, long time) and it is so large that the expected value of each drop of a quarter actually has positive expected value, by enough of a margin, someone with a huge bankroll comes along and hires teams of people to monopolize the slot machines until one wins, paying them by the hour.

you can't do that.

so, when you're faced with depositing a quarter, does it really matter if the expected value is positive or negative? No, due to the variance - not due to how risk-averse you are, simply due to the variance.

Likewise at a startup: you only have one life, in which you can only do so many. The more you can do, the less the variance and the more the expected value comes into play.

Of course Microsoft or Warren Buffett would never 'invest' in lottery tickets when these have a negative expected value; they can buy hundreds of thousands or millions of them. When I buy one lottery ticket, I can buy one, or ten, but basically I have just one. Only the variance matters.

it's not about risk-averse or -tolerant. it's about utility.

people who say "math is a tax on people who are bad at math" simply don't know what they're talking about. People who are stuck in a hopeless life that would be changed by $1 million have just as rational a reason to play the lottery given a negative or positive expected return.

one wonders if the lottery had to be subsidized by corporations, and everyone could only buy one to five tickets (if they wanted) each with an expected value slightly above one, then would mathematicians start buying 5 lottery tickets each?

It has nothing to do with risk-benefit ratio. Even if God could somehow guarantee you access to googolplex googolplex googolplex dollars, but there was only a one in googolplex googolplex chance of your winning it, it would not even be worth the breath to say 'ok' -- try saying that googolplex times -- let alone a penny. Yet the expected value of that proposition is googolplex dollars! So, it's a false 'rationally' to claim that it is worth far more than a penny (given God's guarantee). it's worth nothing.

it's not about risk-averse or whatever. it's simple rationality as an agent who experiences utility here on Earth.

God's proposition is worthless.</comment></comment></comment>


What Does Steve Jobs Think of Email? - <AUTHOR> http://brooksreview.net/2010/11/sj-email/ <comment><USER2>
      Still to this day there is a lot of miscommunication
      happening due to the lack of intonation in communication
      mediums such as text messages and emails. People think
      I am 'mad' all the time because I send brief emails,
      or they think I am joking when I am anything but joking.
      Is that why Apple decided that FaceTime needs to be
      an "open" protocol?

I feel like I'm biting bait. No, the openness of the protocol is not related to miscommunication.</comment>


Live video chat show with other HN readers today at 5PST - <AUTHOR> http://www.vokle.com/lineups/7861-hacker-chat

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll be discussing the HN front page, live, and taking both text and video questions as well!

Since the event is hosted on vokle.com any viewer can ask questions live via their webcam, as text, or speak in a chat room.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all who joined! That same link will work for our next broadcast later this week as well.

</comment><comment><USER2> will there be recordings?</comment>


Alexander Aitken, the Human Computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.nzedge.com/alexander-aitken/

<comment><USER2> "Aitken could recite Pi to 707 decimal places", and how about 22.514? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z22H89rIMHk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z22H89rIMHk) @ 8:00 (although the entire documentary is great)

<comment><USER3> When people say recite Pi is there some calculation involved or are they just memorising a large string of numbers?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a remarkable guy. But, and not to nitpick, but calling him "the greatest mathematician of his era" is a bit ridiculous. This was the era of Hilbert, von Neumann, Gödel, Turing, Einstein, Ramanujan...

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the mainstream will probably never get the distinction between mathematics and arithmetics straight.</comment></comment>


Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10068/1041225-28.stm

<comment><USER2> Are they counting welfare and government subsidies as income? I think not.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would be surprised if this result holds up on review.</comment>


The Source of Chinese Savings - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2009/11/24/the-source-of-chinese-savings/

<comment><USER2> I find it amusing that the IMF and economists for decades pushed emerging countries to "pay the interest on their debt, or else..." in order to keep rich countries growing, but now that the tables are turned they want the emerging countries to "stop growing"... ????

</comment><comment><USER3> Forget it, As a Chinese I can tell you the real source: It's a practice in China to save company money in a private account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also being in China a great deal, I would anecdotally say that the posting seems fairly accurate though I would add that a lot of funds saved by those in the city or at factories are sent home and spent there. There has also been a massive amount of consumption in the form of fixed assets that a lot Chinese would call "investments" like real estate where pricing seems unsustainable. It really isn't the households that have the money to spend (particularly given that they also experience shocks like healthcare expenses from time to time), but the SOE's and large industrial firms (at least in my experience).</comment></comment>


Show HN: A custom PHP cycling news aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://bikene.ws

<comment><AUTHOR> Threw this together over a couple of weekends for fun. It's kind of a cross between HN and /. - I'm trying for more of an editorial voice and some eye candy. I'd love some feedback if anybody has a minute :)</comment>


Why IQ matters more than grit - <AUTHOR> http://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11683192/iq-testing-intelligence <comment><USER2> The frustrating thing for me with IQ as a measure is that realistically, it conflates a couple of factors. Specifically, it is testing both the efficiency of your thought process (which is _extremely_ trainable) and the speed and error rate with which your brain executes that thought process (which is probably somewhat less trainable). The IQ test should really be re-designed into separate extremely challenging un-timed problems, and extremely simple timed problems. Problems should also be timed separately rather than as a group, and we should look at the average deviation from mean solution time; this would avoid penalizing people with poor test-taking strategies (i.e. spending an inordinate amount of time on one problem in a timed test, resulting in less time for other problems).

As for IQ being more important than grit, IQ probably explains more variance in success for the average person. On the other hand, if you look at the extreme outliers in terms of success, I would confidently wager than extreme grit is much more common than extreme intelligence.

<comment><USER3> Isn't efficiency one of the things that allows you to go faster (at the same effort level) ?

<comment><USER2> Yes and no. A useful analogy is to think of software and hardware. You have a general purpose CPU that runs software designed to solve a particular type of problem. The CPU (your brain) probably has a fixed frequency (you might be able to "overclock" it slightly, but not much). On the other hand, you can completely rewrite the software (your thought process) using better algorithms and get a MASSIVE speed increase.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > [in response to the idea that IQ doesn't change over time] Think about how > it would it be if it was the other way around; there might actually be some > bad outcomes. Because then parents would be able to totally control their > kids with bad parenting, and wreck kids' IQs for the rest of their lives. > Governments could have big influences on people's IQs by enacting different > policies toward different sets of people in the country.

I can't quite put my finger on why I find this assertion so loathsome. As though having autonomy over your intelligence is somehow a betrayal to what I imagine is the interviewee's sense of societal "fairness" or "equality".

<comment><USER5> One thing that put my eyebrows up is that the claim seems so contradictory to what we actually observe. Governments and parents do have big influences on IQ. Unleaded gasoline is the obvious winner, but there's fairly solid evidence that iodized salt, childhood nutrition, acute childhood stress, and traumatic brain damage all cause substantial changes in IQ.

Far from seeing some kind of discriminatory eugenics from all of this (anywhere, even in dictatorships), we see the Flynn effect. Things have gotten better across the board, and continue to whenever we track down a new way to modify IQ.

The suggestion that "controlling IQ would be horrifying" seems so unsupported that it's purely ideological.

<comment><USER6> One of the most horrifying things I ever read was the first(second?) chapter of A Brave New World. The thought of not helping a person is bad. Fysically stunting someones growth makes me sick. To just do it to escape the ethical debate at a later point is horrifying.

<comment><USER5> I've always held with the claim that BNW is far more interesting and applicable to our world than _1984_. Totalitarianism is out there, but it's not absolute and it's largely understood as evil. The sort of glib, "everyone is happy" moralism of BNW presents much deeper questions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is really surprising to me. It seems the popular narrative is much different from that found by actual researchers. I do have some reservations though. Do all of these correlations (happiness, job success, EQ, general intelligence, etc.) hold up at the higher and lower end of IQ (e.g. 130 -> 150 or 60 -> 80) Does the vast amount of data near the middle cloud what's happening at the ends?

Also, on the age 11 versus age 90 distribution, there appears to be a lot of funneling of the residuals. Lower age 11 IQs seem to have a lot less correlation with later life than higher age 11 IQs. I wonder if this has to do with late development or behavioral problems that cause artificially low IQs.

Either way very interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER8> That guy seems to put an awful lot of stock in a test that can only correctly identify whether or not you're developmentally disabled.

"Congratulations on your high IQ! You're _REALLY REALLY NOT_ developmentally disabled!"

Outside of identifying developmental disabilities, IQ testing is pretty useless. What's more loathsome is all of the pseudoscience that's crept up through overinterpretation.

<comment><USER9> That's the kind of thing laymen always say. Whenever I read reports of what the social scientists say it sounds like intelligence testing is one of the few sub fields with consistently reproducible and meaningful results. Even in this short article they contradict your point by stating the military finds it correlates with success. The military filters out those with developmental disabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I thought you can improve reaction times, performance on sats, other iq tests using adrenaline or other stimulants. I have never taken them, but so I read in another hacker news discussion on drugs recently.

Seems to me, you can control intelligence within a day. Get better rest, take some coffee be smarter. Be tired, drink some beer, get dumber.

read all of hacker news, get smarter. Follow links from hacker news to youtube, Reddit, wikipedia, github, etc for more goodness.

Watch lifetime, the shopping network, 5 day cricket match, get dumber (or atleast no smarter during that time).

You give me an iq test, I will show you improvements on it over time in myself and any trainee. You give me someone too dumb. I will give them a computer peripheral brain / hardware to help them.

You can write a program to get good at iq tests, go, image classification. I don't see why I can't train people to get smarter. I do it with my kids all the time.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have an higher than average IQ and I can't say that it helped me more than grit.

When I was lazy, I failed.

On the other hand, I don't know if I would have failed with a low IQ and not being lazy.

<comment><USER11> I think a high IQ leads you to know what to quit when and when to persist. In my experience, smart people quit bad things sooner, and persist through good things longer. Stupid people quit the job of a lifetime or break up with a great person when they should have endured, and/or stick with the same horrible job/person through everything even though giving up would have improved their life. Or so the thinking goes.

<comment><USER12> This is interesting and helpful. Trying not to beat myself up for quickly realizing certain opportunities aren't for me long term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why people assume accepting IQ implies a dystopian eugenics future. I see it as an argument for a lot of progressive policies. If everyone is in control of their mental abilities then it follows that lack of success is down to personal laziness and success is all about how diligent a person is. People "deserve" their fates.

On the other hand if some people are born with an advantage, they won the genetic lottery, it seems to me more justifiable to have government policies which prevent the clever from taking advantage of the dim. Today in the US the principle is if you are clever enough you deserve all the money and screw the people who didn;t have the good sense to be born smart.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Intelligence is actually linked to short-sightedness, apparently. I thought that was an urban myth.

<comment><USER14> I figured it was related to reading, which might also be correlated with intelligence.

<comment><USER13> Or acts of self-pollution? (that is an urban myth, right?)</comment></comment></comment>


You can't predict who will change the world (or why we need more tinkerers) - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2007/05/23/nicholas-taleb-innovation-tech-cz_07rev_nt_0524taleb_print.html <comment><USER2> _unlike European schooling, American education is not based on equation drills and memorization_

Erm... My education hasn't been based on drills and memorisation despite being 'European'. I wish journalists wouldn't just make stuff up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes there are a few inaccurate generalizations here. Another gem is: "Only a disproportionately minute number of discoveries traditionally came from directed academic research. "

Having said that the essence of the article is quite interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I have always been amazed at how few people end up creating a new product where there is a need.

What must it be, 1 in 100,000?

<comment><USER4> By reading some of the entries in the Startup news section. one gets the feeling that these people are self-centered and have a limited viewpoint of what the masses really wanted.</comment></comment>


How to create a star rater with Cappuccino - <AUTHOR> http://journal.moritzangermann.com/2009/03/04/how-to-create-a-star-rater-with-cappuccino

<comment><USER2> Is it just me, or does Cappuccino over-complicate things a bit? I'm sure if I fluently knew Objective-C better it'd look easier, but it still looks like a ton of code...</comment>


PluotSorbet – A J2ME-Compatible VM Written in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/pluotsorbet

<comment><USER2> I've always been interested in this sort of thing - with webassembly standardizing, they may become realistically usable soon, too.

Another implementation from a few years ago:

[https://github.com/nurv/BicaVM](https://github.com/nurv/BicaVM)

</comment><comment><USER3> > It is recommended that a dedicated Firefox profile is used with the > about:config preference of > security.turn_off_all_security_so_that_viruses_can_take_over_this_computer > set to true so garbage collection and cycle collection can be run in between > test rounds.

Sounds legit. :p

<comment><USER4> This is used only for development. The preference allows you to access privileged browser APIs, like triggering a GC at exact points in time. This is useful when running benchmarks to reduce the noise causes by a previous run.

The preference is named as such to prevent people from being tricked into turning it on.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Andreas Gal: j2me.js - a multi-threaded Java VM in JavaScript | JSConf.ar 2014

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7hZ8I9G5KA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7hZ8I9G5KA)

</comment><comment><USER5> circle: complete.</comment>


Try Micromastery - <AUTHOR> https://elemental.medium.com/why-you-should-try-micromastery-90b080b3befa <comment><USER2> So we're just giving a new name to "learning skills"? What?

<comment><USER3> There is a wide spectrum of the amount of time, effort, and money it takes to learn various skills. This seems like a celebration of those skills on the small end of the spectrum that anyone can learn, whether they are practical or not.

Seems like a good idea to me, in an age where everything is either treated as disposable or outsourced.

<comment><USER4> I think the OP was saying it's a fancy term for nothing new. I agree with him (I note the term 'life hack' being used in the media for trivialities now). I'd agree with you too, learning new stuff is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Two of the skills mentioned are ones I've failed at. Making a great omelet and folding fitted sheets.

I've never made an omelet that is very good and I've tried a bunch of variations. I've had lots of omelets in restaurants that are great.

For the fitted sheet skill, I've watched the videos on people doing it and it feels a little like the old how-to-draw-an-owl meme. Step one and two make sense, but then step 3 is magic.

<comment><USER6> What's wrong with your omelets? I've made hundreds of ugly omelets but now I can make a pretty one about 3 out of 5 times.

<comment><USER5> They are bland and it's not due to lack of salt. I've had slightly better luck lately pre-sauteing the stuff I want to add to the eggs, but nothing that I'm terribly happy with so far.

What are you putting in yours?

<comment><USER7> What kind of eggs do you use? Regardless of your opinions on animal rights, etc, I strongly recommend buying the fanciest free-range, etc. eggs you can find. A healthy diet for the chickens makes a huge impact on egg quality & taste. I doubt this will solve your entire problem, but it helps.

I assume you're already using fresh garlic & onions, but those are also musts in my opinion.

<comment><USER5> I do buy they best eggs I can find.

I'm not a huge fan of garlic in eggs, but I do like onions and scallions.

<comment><USER8> Have you tried Tarragon? It's not for everyone, but I love it as a flavour to go with eggs. I'm with you on the garlic, I just end up with garlic-egg burps all day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Genuine question.. does everyone on HN read so few Medium articles that they can actually load most of these, or are you paying the membership fee? Because I can't read these stories most of the time.

<comment><USER10> Incognito or private browsing. Depebding on your browser choice

<comment><USER9> Haha, I'm an idiot, good idea :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A while ago I saw this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgBikgcWnY) is about "The first 20 hours" and there is a book as well. It's surprising how much could you can learn in just 20 hours. You can't be an expert by doing so little but you can learn some tricks for fun.

</comment><comment><USER12> Although not a millennial, when I graduated with my engineering degree, I also felt lacking in practical skills. So, my wife(also an engineer) and I enrolled in community college vocational education classes. We learned to weld, sculpt, cast, blacksmith. Had a great time and would now have the confidence to buy a welder and know I could use it... if only I had the free time.

</comment><comment><USER13> I've been thinking about origami lately. Has an aesthetic purpose, but very analog and doesn't involve looking at a screen.

<comment><USER14> being able to fold a simple origami crane at any given moment is a very satisfying skill, unfortunately, it fades if you don't practice it enough. I learned how to fold origami cranes at least 3 times in my life

<comment><USER15> So it's like riding a bike, except you forget how to do it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Mihaly Csikszmentmihalyi is Hungarian, not Czech. And the "flow experience is analogous to meditating" statement is very questionable - I'd say it's [a good] kind of opposite: meditation is meant to be a 100% conscious experience, people rarely maintain mindfulness in the flow mode.

</comment><comment><USER17> Some of these skills mentioned - sewing, cooking decent meals, driving a stick are life skills. But please don't try to cut your own hair unless you're in dire straits!

<comment><USER18> Operating a manual car is as much as a life skill as operating a manual loom. It'll be relegated to specialist hobby eventually. Some things are destined to be replaced by fully automatic systems, for the gain of productivity and convenience. An auto-loom can do the work of many, many people, so using a manual loom is now a craft show and museum pastime.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Apprise – A lightweight all-in-one notification solution (update) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/caronc/apprise/#showhn-one-last-time <comment><AUTHOR> 6 months ago [I posted about Apprise here]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19023196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19023196)) and got a lot of amazing and encouraging feedback! I since took just about everyone's comments and ideas at the time and implemented most of them.

Apprise now supports over 40+ different notification services, including configuration files that can be read from disk and the cloud! The library remains incredible light weight and easy to use.

I just wanted to share an almost completed solution and hope to hit you all up for more of your thoughts and advice!

<comment><USER2> This looks great, good job! I notice that you don't support Signal, maybe you want to add support via pysignald? ([https://pypi.org/project/pysignald/](https://pypi.org/project/pysignald/))

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into it! Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Worked about 10 years for a company named Appriss - [https://appriss.com](https://appriss.com) \- no real comment there other than to share the founding CEO used to say the board was presented with a bunch of names " _and picked the worst one_ ".

No real comment other than that, but nostalgia alone will make me play with this, so thanks for sharing.

<comment><USER4> To germans this name phonetically sounds like 'demolition'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks amazing! Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a reasonable salary for a teenager to have during an internship? - <AUTHOR>

I won't give the exact field, but it is in the area of product design, graphic design, and programming. <comment><USER2> Is the teenager in high school? University? Does the teenager have any working experience? What country is this in? What city?

Not nearly enough information to give any kind of estimate, and even with that information, the answer would probably be "it varies" or "whatever you can negotiate".

Edit: Here is some data from University of Waterloo you might find useful - <http://www.cecs.uwaterloo.ca/employers/salary.php>

Students alternate between school and work terms, so as you slide up the work term levels it will be for students with more academic and internship experiences.

<comment><AUTHOR> Highschooler with previous internship experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Free. An internship is used to prove one's self. If it's remote relocation, then you should offer to pay their moving expenses (if any). Usually, however, internships in development are time-limited, and you may need to check IRS regulations recently passed regarding internships.

<comment><AUTHOR> You should note that there exist paid internships in addition to free internships, and that there are strict federal legal criteria of both. See page 8 of the following PDF: [http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pd...](http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf)

Statistics have shown that many employers may illegally be using interns as free labor. A while back, the New York Times published an article on the topic: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html>

My point is that I don't understand why you assumed that the internship I talk of should be free. You didn't hear enough of the details to make a proper legal stance on the issue, and more often than not employers are not paying interns when they should be.

I see your point, but please reconsider what you wrote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My first job was in IT and would have been an internship if the company regularly hired people (it didn't, this was a special case because of family connections). It was during the summer in high school and paid $10/hour.

In college I had a part-time job doing computer repair/maintenance for a small office at $12.50 an hour, and later had a formal internship at a Fortune 500 company that paid $19.50 an hour

All this took place in the greater Seattle area.

Unless there is a compelling reason to work for free (e.g., difficult industry to break in to, extreme desire to work for said company) I would advocate never working for free if you can get paid. Everyone I've known who worked free as an intern (3 people, perhaps not a large enough sample) were treated unacceptably relative to the atmosphere of a professional office. One basically became 12 people's gopher, filling out uninteresting paperwork and rarely learning anything that added value to their ability to work.

In addition, being paid to work puts one in a position to learn to manage their own finances, if only in part. For me this was easily more important than all the technical skills I picked up.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is an insulting question. The intern's age does not matter. What are his or her skills, and how much would you pay an adult to do the same thing?

</comment><comment><USER6> I was making just over $30/hr my freshmen year of college doing engineering/design work. It went up from there until my senior year when I switched to helping start-ups.

Had one friend who his senior year was making an average of $50+/hr. He was doing 80+ hrs/wk so the overtime, double-time, and weekend-time really added up.

</comment><comment><USER7> The reasonable salary is what the market can bear. If you receive an offer for X, then you need to evaluate if you can make more money elsewhere or if your time is worth more. Make your decision accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER8> Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of $10/hr, but that depends on area, exact duties of the internship, etc. But, basically, something that covers gas money and incidentals.

<comment><USER9> My school requires internships. I don't know anyone being paid under $15/hr, and I know a few that are $25+/hr

Edit: Also, Boston area.</comment></comment>


Watchdog says DHS still hasn't got a 2020 election security plan - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/06/dhs-cybersecurity-watchdog-2020-election/ <comment><USER2> Here is a link to the original report summary, along with the full pdf of the report: [https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-267?mobile_opt_out=1#sum...](https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-20-267?mobile_opt_out=1#summary_recommend) and [https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/704314.pdf](https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/704314.pdf)

Specifically the watchdog is the Government Accountability Office, reporting on the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22259683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22259683)

</comment><comment><USER4> Russia interfered on Trump's behalf in 2016 and they'll doubtless attempt to do so again in 2020. Why would his administration go out of its way to stop that from happening?</comment>


SC Police Chief: DrugWar WrongThink Creates Reasonable Suspicion To "Find You" - <AUTHOR> http://www.popehat.com/2013/11/01/columbia-sc-police-chief-drugwar-wrongthink-creates-reasonable-suspicion-to-find-you/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm posting this here for 2 reasons:

1) The idiocy of employees posting really stupid things to social media.

2) Creepiness of law enforcement tracking people over Facebook and other social media.</comment>


In your brain, a tug of war with every purchase - <AUTHOR> http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/points/stories/DN-lehrer_01edi.State.Edition1.152824f.html <comment><USER2> I am not really looking forward to the day when neural marketing is perfected.

If remote brain-scanning ever becomes possible, then we are doomed. (Said only a little tongue-in-cheek.)

It means the tinfoil hats truly will be needed.

</comment><comment><USER3> Scientific evidence that our economy troubles of today stem from people's fearful minds and not some great imbalance or wrong path.</comment>


Ask HN: Idea Propagation through Social Networks? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to learn about how ideas propagate through ordinary social networks via word of mouth. It seems like a very rich problem that could combine theories from graph theory, game theory, psychology, and epidemiological modeling. Are there any rigorous treatments of this problem?
Bonus points if they discuss requirements for widespread diffusion or possibly have a marketing-based skew.
Apologies if I break any HN rules, spoken or unspoken; I have not posted very often. <comment><USER2> You basically should read all of [https://arxiv.org/list/physics.soc- ph/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/physics.soc-ph/recent) Physics and Society

[https://arxiv.org/list/cs.SI/recent](https://arxiv.org/list/cs.SI/recent) Social and Information Networks

Two random samplings look to be right on topic, search for survey papers in both disciplines.

Spreading of Memes on Multiplex Networks [https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12630](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.12630)

A model for meme popularity growth in social networking systems based on biological principle and human interest dynamics [https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.00533](https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.00533)

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoa thanks!! I'll definitely take a look! Have you happened to come across anything dealing with optimal initial conditions that was particularly noteworthy?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You might be interested in this paper: "The Majority Illusion in Social Networks", [https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022](https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.03022)

Abstract:

Social behaviors are often contagious, spreading through a population as individuals imitate the decisions and choices of others. A variety of global phenomena, from innovation adoption to the emergence of social norms and political movements, arise as a result of people following a simple local rule, such as copy what others are doing. However, individuals often lack global knowledge of the behaviors of others and must estimate them from the observations of their friends' behaviors. In some cases, the structure of the underlying social network can dramatically skew an individual's local observations, making a behavior appear far more common locally than it is globally. We trace the origins of this phenomenon, which we call "the majority illusion," to the friendship paradox in social networks. As a result of this paradox, a behavior that is globally rare may be systematically overrepresented in the local neighborhoods of many people, i.e., among their friends. Thus, the "majority illusion" may facilitate the spread of social contagions in networks and also explain why systematic biases in social perceptions, for example, of risky behavior, arise. Using synthetic and real- world networks, we explore how the "majority illusion" depends on network structure and develop a statistical model to calculate its magnitude in a network.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In case anyone's interested, mindcrime's comment lead me down a series of links, and I found this: [https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks- book/](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/)

Seems to be exactly what I'm looking for! If anyone knows anything at all in this area, no matter how small, please share!

</comment><comment><USER4> The closest thing I'm aware of is the work on "diffusion of innovations".

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

If you look at this stuff, and you're familiar with the Crossing the Chasm idea, you may be struck immediately by the similarity of some of the charts. There was definitely some influence by the former, on the latter.

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

Also, there is an interdisciplinary field called "Network Science" that heavily builds on graph theory, but includes elements from sociology, economics, complex adaptive systems, statistical mechanics, etc, yadda yadda.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> Oooh very interesting, thanks! From what I've skimmed, it's so surprising how well his ideas transfer over to the present era!

Edit: Did not read the second half of your comment, absolutely!!

<comment><USER4> _Edit: Did not read the second half of your comment, absolutely!!_

I've been editing stuff in kinda piecemeal. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Forgot to mention this earlier, but two other related areas that you might find worth studying are:

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

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Look into network science. Albert-László Barabási does cool work in the space.

Don't get too dazzled by proxies.

Ideas propagate through people. If you want to get people, read some fiction, some history, and some philosophy.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is gold to me, thank you.

I apologize, what do you mean by proxies?

Do you have any recommendations for a less-abstracted view of history (focusing on individuals rather than their emergent structures)? Or branches of philosophy that are particularly illuminating in this context?

<comment><USER5> People have tackled this stuff for millennia. By all means focus on the emergent structures, as that's the only way to learn about that structure. If you only study the modern proxies for these structures ("network theory") you miss out on great stuff.

An Aesop's Fable from 2000+ years ago about influence in a network:

"A trumpeter being taken prisoner in a battle, begged hard for quarter. "Spare me, good sirs, I beseech you," said he, "and put me not to death without cause, for I have killed no one myself, nor have I any arms but this trumpet only." "For that very reason," said they who had seized him, "shall you the sooner die, for without the spirit to fight, yourself, you stir up others to warfare and bloodshed."

He who incites strife is worse than he who takes part in it."</comment></comment></comment>


Embed Lua in C (very easy examples) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gtkforums.com/about1995.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I've taken the liberty of collecting source for all of the examples from that page, wrote some simple make files for them, and uploaded them here:

<http://www.wikifortio.com/485712/lua_embedding_examples.tar>

Another copy (you'll need to uudecode it) is here:

<http://paste.pocoo.org/show/306763/>

<comment><USER2> I doubt that most people even remember uuencode, or what it was used for, or, where the name originates from... But: very oldschool.

Maybe there should be a smartphone app to import tiny apps by snapping pictures of uu/base64/ascii85 encoded archive files?

<comment><AUTHOR> If you know enough about software to even attempt embedding Lua in C, I trust you'll be smart enough to type "uudecode" in to google and install/use the requisite software (if you don't already have it).

Anyway, I think uuencode is perfect for posting small binaries (and tar files) up on paste code sites. More people should become familiar with it.

As for snapping pics with your phone and decoding the image in to an app, you could always try QR Code:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QRcode>

Or optar:

<http://ronja.twibright.com/optar>

Or various other barcodes.</comment></comment></comment>


Handwriting Generation with Recurrent Neural Networks - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.html <comment><USER2> In both this demonstration and the demonstration by Google of image generation by neural networks ([http://www.popsci.com/these-are-what-google-artificial- intel...](http://www.popsci.com/these-are-what-google-artificial- intelligences-dreams-look)) you can see hints of organic, naturalistic behavior emerging from artificial networks. Is there any doubt that such networks can simulate even more complex aspects of our cognition? Isn't the writing on the wall (no joke intended) with regard to the Strong AI hypothesis? Or at least a stronger weak hypothesis.

<comment> why-el Are we sure what is being simulated here is cognitive? It seems to me merely mechanical. Not to deride the achievement of course.

<comment><USER3> I think we may be reaching a point where the line between mechanical and cognitive get blurred slightly. While I feel that this falls into the mechanical end of the spectrum because I understand how the model was created, RNN's demonstrate some very fascinating emergent behaviors that will become more complex as computational power increases.

I wouldn't say that this is cognitive but it definitely learns to perform a skill in a similar fashion to intelligent beings which is remarkable. Extrapolating that behavior to self-awareness isn't likely however (of course this could lead to a philosophical debate)

<comment><USER2> Wouldn't this be an example of motor cognition ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_cognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_cognition))? Isn't this essentially what motor cognition does when we write?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's cute. At last, the forgery app.

The killer app in this space will be when someone figures out how to extract a vocal model from existing recordings of singers. Vocaloid already synthesizes singing quite well, but a human singer has to go into a studio and sing a long list of standard phrases to build the singer model. The next step will be to feed existing singing into a system that extracts a model usable for synthesis.

The RIAA is so going to hate this.

<comment><USER5> I can imagine a near future whereby an RNN is trained to have an especially lovely reading voice. A large number of people might actually become convinced that the RNN is a person and develop empathy towards it.

<comment><USER6> haha combine that voice with some Markov chains, and you have the perfect friend replacement app!

<comment><USER7> This is starting to sound a lot like Her([http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/)). It'll likely be the case one day.

<comment><USER8> It leads me to wonder why we haven't seen (or at least heard about the development of) an operating system with purely voice "UI" based on an RNN... Especially after Her came out.

I understand it's hard but it also sounds like a fun project for people with the relevant know-how.

<comment><USER5> Andrew Ng gave a keynote at GTC in which he talked about bringing Baidu's Deep Speech technology to phones (for accessibility). You betcha they're working on it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's interesting that the network will sometimes misspell words:

[http://i.imgur.com/cFrlyy8.png](http://i.imgur.com/cFrlyy8.png)

The input was copied from the instructions - "Type a message into the text box, and the network will try to write it out longhand". But you can see it skipped the "e" in "Type" and added an "h" after the "w" in "network", and pretty clearly spelled "to" as "du".

It also tried to cross the first vertical line of the "w" in "network" in lieu of adding an actual "t" beforehand (which is arguably an idiosyncrasy a human's handwriting might have, if a rather odd one); and stuck a big phantom stroke/letter between "T" and "y".

<comment><USER10> It has no idea what it's doing. :)

<comment><USER11> That or it's due to human error! Just like self-driving cars haha

<comment><USER8> Ha! What do you mean by human error though? An analogy with the self-driving cars example could be the human inadvertently made a typo when inputting the text sample in the above link...whereas if the dataset used in "teaching" this network to create handwritten text contained errors (e.g. the handwriting samples had "to" instead of "the" and many instances of "The" were missing the 'e').

Unless I misunderstood how this was developed...that could be the case ha!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's interesting because handwritten notes are seen as one of the last symbols of human authenticity. The unique drawing of each letter seems to prove that a human invested time and thought in directly communicating with you. There was no copy-paste. There was no form letter. This was not a bot. And, based on the length of the note, there was provable effort involved. Both a Turing test and a proof of work problem. The world's oldest Captcha.

And so begins the devaluing of that proof. Just like when marketers started reproducing the "signature" on every sales letter with blue-colored toner, mimicking the authenticity of a hand signature.

I don't write handwritten letters, and I don't romanticize the past. But our dwindling ability to assess the authenticity of incoming communication is slightly unsettling.

</comment><comment><USER13> Very strange results with rare Unicode characters (I used "𝕳𝖔𝖜 𝖜𝖊𝖑𝖑 𝖉𝖔𝖊𝖘 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖔𝖗𝖐")

[https://imgur.com/a/Li8OZ](https://imgur.com/a/Li8OZ)

<comment><USER14> Likewise: [http://imgur.com/ux3xfL5](http://imgur.com/ux3xfL5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I implemented this system for the final project of my computer vision class. Couldn't get it to work by the deadline, but I'm very familiar with this paper. Happy to answer any questions.

<comment><USER16> I'm slightly alarmed by urls such as: [http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.cgi?text=Hej&s...](http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~graves/handwriting.cgi?text=Hej&style=..%2Fdata%2Ftrainset_diff_no_start_all_labels.nc%2C973%2B905&bias=0.15&samples=3)

Relative paths allowed from user input is usually a HUGE warning sign. Are you sure I can't make it open arbitrary files? What happens to your cgi script if it reads a file in the wrong format?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm curious as to what happened here:

Text entered: this is a test of handwriting generation

Style sample #1 selected.

All other settings at default.

[http://imgur.com/6b1G5Tj](http://imgur.com/6b1G5Tj)

Edit: I've tried a couple other styles and haven't duplicated this craziness.

<comment><USER18> It obviously gets bored sometimes and decides it'd rather draw pretty pictures of mountain ranges or something.

[http://imgur.com/uz60af1](http://imgur.com/uz60af1)

<comment><USER17> Humans doodle, so it does too, I guess :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Does anyone know what happened here[0]? The input text was "This is a test. Reeeeeeeeeeeeee!", and I chose the third style.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/6B9JkjC.png](http://i.imgur.com/6B9JkjC.png)

<comment><USER20> Symbols seem to do strange things as well. The input was :

      !@#$%^&*()_+

here's 3 runs of it with bias all the way down:

[http://paste.click/KNIJov](http://paste.click/KNIJov)

[http://paste.click/PPjKXC](http://paste.click/PPjKXC)

[http://paste.click/RtZCtG](http://paste.click/RtZCtG)

As I turned up the bias, it seems to trend to the letter g:

[http://paste.click/hJrVlX](http://paste.click/hJrVlX)

Some symbols seem to just fail, I'm guessing that's a bug in the serializing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> VERY impressive demo but I find it kind of funny the extra effort it takes to produce a "worse font".

</comment><comment><USER22> Creepy: [http://i.imgur.com/jvbK94t.png](http://i.imgur.com/jvbK94t.png)

</comment><comment><USER23> You could use this in conjunction with something like Cleverbot to create a virtual pen-pal who sends you snail mail letters.

<comment><USER8> And combine it with holographic technology to have 3D Skype calls with them too?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is really cool!

I could see it being used in games to generate hand written notes from data files.

<comment><USER25> For games you could get far more readable results by far simpler means. For example, add slight randomization of vectors to an existing font.

<comment><USER26> Has that been used in a game already? I'm curious.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook forces @facebook.com email address on users - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/06/25/facebooks-lame-attempt-to-force-its-email-service-on-you/

<comment><USER2> Earlier discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433>

Here's some discussion and a link describing how to fix it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4157589></comment>


Sperm Count in Western Men Has Dropped Over 50 Percent Since 1973, Paper Finds - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/health/male-sperm-count-problem.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0 <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14855796)

As I said in that thread, this is another statistic that had a rapid and precipitous change starting in the early 1970s. I've stated this elsewhere, but it's like something(s) happened the late 60s/early 70s that totally transformed our world and I have no clue what they were nor can I find anyone who has written about it.

Wealth inequality [1], Real Wage stagnation [2], Obesity Rates [3], Divorce Rates [4]

[1] [http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-...](http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways- SOTU-2016-Wealth-Inequality-3.pdf)

[2] [http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage- stagnation/](http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/)

[3] [http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2015/11/20/6358359882436...](http://az616578.vo.msecnd.net/files/2015/11/20/6358359882436216361965175721_obese.gif)

[4] [http://www.stateofourunions.org/2009/si- divorce.php](http://www.stateofourunions.org/2009/si-divorce.php)

<comment><USER3> As to (3) obesity, one of the most obvious contributing factors is the increased refined sugar consumption. People are poisoning their mind and bodies.

And I know it's controversial and since everyone consumes sugar, everyone gets sensitive and defensive. However, in the 60's/70's nonalcoholic fatty liver disease did not exist in children nor did childhood type 2 diabeties, as to the former the first case in children wasn't diagnosed until 1983 and now 10% of US children have the disease.

And to preempt anyone from attacking my comment, as I said above sugar is an obvious _contributing_ factor.

<comment><USER4> This is the common theory but it doesn't really hold up. The weight of lab animals is also increasing. Even though we have records showing they haven't changed their diets or routines significantly. Chimpanzees in particular, the animal most closely related to humans, have increased in weight drastically each decade.

EDIT: Source [https://aeon.co/essays/blaming-individuals-for-obesity- may-b...](https://aeon.co/essays/blaming-individuals-for-obesity-may-be- altogether-wrong)

>As were laboratory macaques, chimpanzees, vervet monkeys and mice, as well as domestic dogs, domestic cats, and domestic and feral rats from both rural and urban areas. In fact, the researchers examined records on those eight species and found that average weight for every one had increased. The marmosets gained an average of nine per cent per decade. Lab mice gained about 11 per cent per decade. Chimps, for some reason, are doing especially badly: their average body weight had risen 35 per cent per decade.

>In fact, lab animals' lives are so precisely watched and measured that the researchers can rule out accidental human influence: records show those creatures gained weight over decades without any significant change in their diet or activities.

<comment><USER5> > This is the common theory but it doesn't really hold up.

It's not really a 'theory' per sey. 2 independent scientists in UK and US ( I don't remember their names, see the documentary mentioned below) in the 70s came to conclude that Sugar is Toxic and causes fatty liver disease and Cancer. The Sugar Industry in US hired a PR firm comprised of a couple of well known Scientists in the US, and made these scientists who found out that Sugar is Toxic and causes diseases, looks like fools in the media. Then they (Sugar Industry) went 1 step further. The CEO of the Sugar Industry Association (or whatever that entity is called) got onto the FDA committee that was doing research into the toxicity of Sugar at that time, since it was all over the media that Sugar is deemed toxic and causes all kinds of diseases. And surprise, surprise, the committee declared that Sugar is 'GRAS approved by FDA'. GRAS = Generally Recommended as Safe, a label that makes the average consumer feel safe that Sugar is not bad. They (Sugar Industry) also simultaneously transferred the blamed for weight gain on excess consumption of fat * .

This is documented at length in the "Sugar Coated" documentary (available on Netflix) - [http://sugarcoateddoc.com/](http://sugarcoateddoc.com/)

* Source: NPR: "50 Years Ago, Sugar Industry Quietly Paid Scientists To Point Blame At Fat" [http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074/50-years-ago-sugar-industry-quietly-paid-scientists-to-point-blame-at-fat)

<comment><USER3> The most famous line from the special interest groups, "sugar is a healthy and inexpensive source of energy."

It's laughable it's even debated or requires modern study. Humans have been force feeding animals grains since at least ancient Egypt for the purpose of fattening animals, but specifically their liver. After a few thousand years of perfecting the practice the most famous dish is goose liver or foie gras, literally French for fat liver, and after thousands of years of best practice what is used to fatten the goose liver...corn, the same thing we concentrate to sweeten softdrinks (and about everything else).

Still I'm happy to say it's just a contributing factor for obesity, but certainly there is also correlation between obesity and sedentary life style, and coming full circle to the article there is correlation between sedentary lifestyle and lack of testosterone production (in part created/released to repair muscle As a result of physical activity). But hey, even big tobacco is marketing there product as healthy in many parts of the world, as it used to be promoted in the US, it's just where we are with sugar, "it's a healthy and inexpensive source of energy."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Quote from article (meant as response to AndrewKemendo): "Phthalates are a group of chemicals used to make plastics more flexible and harder to break. In several studies over the last two decades, they have been shown to disrupt the operation of male hormones like testosterone and have been linked to genital birth defects in male infants.

Dr. Swan, who conducted a 2008 study about phthalate exposure, said that scientists have had the ability to measure exposure to plasticizers only since about 2000, via urine. That has led to a 20-year lag in the process since researchers cannot enroll men to produce sperm until they are in their 20s.

That evidence is the "missing piece of the puzzle," she said."

Here in the Netherlands several partie are trying ot get hormone disturbing substances on the political agenda but even BPA is apparently not even illegal here. There was even a show where they measured BPA in the urine of politicians and still, very little attention is given to such substances. [0]

[[https://radar.avrotros.nl/uitzendingen/gemist/14-11-2016/hor...](https://radar.avrotros.nl/uitzendingen/gemist/14-11-2016/hormoonverstorende- stoffen-in-urine-kamerleden/)]

<comment><USER7> Another problem is that if you ban BPA you have to replace it with something else that makes plastics less brittle. It's completely unclear whether the replacement chemical will be better or worse. Almost all chemicals we use industrially are untested.

<comment><USER8> Albeit if you do not need durability or huge oil resistance you can go very far with silicone tubing which does not need plasticizers. Nobody likes the expense or maintenance though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it's pretty clear that Phthalates are a big piece of the puzzle. Here's the chain of evidence: I just picked one study for every link, but there are many for each.

People have significant levels of Phthalates in their blood: [http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/phthal...](http://www.ourstolenfuture.org/NewScience/oncompounds/phthalates/2003/2003-0101kochetal.htm)

People who have higher levels of Phthalates in their blood tend to have lower testosterone: [http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/830137](http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/830137)

There are several pathways how Phthalates might cause this to happen in the human body, including: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26385792](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26385792)

Testosterone levels in Men have been dropping about 1% per year for at least the past 20 years, about the same rate as sperm counts: [https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone- therapy/news/pr...](https://www.healio.com/endocrinology/hormone- therapy/news/print/endocrine- today/%7Bac23497d-f1ed-4278-bbd2-92bb1e552e3a%7D/generational-decline-in- testosterone-levels-observed)

Low Testosterone causes low sperm count: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6772497](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6772497)

<comment><USER10> Have there been any studies on how to reduce phthalate levels in humans? Does limiting exposure help? Can the body expell the stuff?

<comment><USER9> I know of one, fairly questionable study that showed that you could reduce Phthalates in your blood by about 50% by eliminating processed food, never storing or heating food in plastic, and switching to Phthalate free personal care products. There have been a few studies that have shown that the main route of exposure is through ingestion. Processed foods are more likely to contain Phthalates, probably because the ingredients may have flowed through PVC tubing that leaches them. It's really impossible to know, but the fewer processing steps your food has gone through, the less chance that this has happened. The biggest industrial use of Phthalates is as a plasticizer, and they are present in several types of plastic, in large quantities. Heating food in plastic containers has the potential to volatilize Phthalates and leach them into your food. This is a particular risk in prepared frozen food that you microwave. Many personal care products, such as soaps, shampoos, deodorants, and perfumes, contain Phthalates. Try to find ones that don't.

One particularly bad source of exposure is certain enteric coated medicines and supplements. I would strongly advise anyone to not take anything that is enteric coated unless you know what the coating is made of. Some pills can spike Phthalate levels by 50x in a single dose.

Almost all foods that contain animal fat will contain Phthalates, and this is a big source of exposure. Milk, meat, cheese, etc, all contain them, as they are fat soluble. The good news is that your body seems to clear these chemicals fairly quickly, but the problem is that you're constantly exposed to them.

Ultimately, these are chemicals that we've produced over a billion tons of. It's just not possible to avoid them entirely. If you have a baby on the way though, make sure that the new mom does everything she can to minimize exposure, as what happens during that time really can never be taken back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I was surprised to see Brazil, Chile and Mexico categorized as 'Non-Western countries'.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I saw that too... I don't understand. Is Western a political definition?

<comment><USER13> The term 'west' outdates the discovery of America and no longer has anything to do with Geography. It used to mean western Europe. Now it essentially means western Europe, canada, australia, and america. All of which have cultural roots in Western europe and liberalism etc.

<comment><USER14> Yep, and "South" is a somewhat archaic term to refer to developing countries. Australia is not of the "South" despite being in the southern hemisphere.[1]

It's also weird to refer to the Asian countries north-west of Australia as "Far East"; though that usage is also fading.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North%E2%80%93South_divide)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this result beyond dispute? No chance it's just a problem with the measurements/methodology?

<comment><USER16> Not beyond dispute at all. There's a huge number of confounding factors involved in comparing all the different datasets used over the time period concerned. One example is that older tests famously overestimated sperm counts. Additionally, many of the older data is from observational studies of people presenting at early fertility clinics. This paper attempts to control those factors and while I haven't seen any particular criticism of their methods it's an incredibly difficult problem to deal with. Especially when sperm count appears to be so responsive to small environmental variations to begin with.

It'll be interesting to see more research in the field, probably spurred on by this study. Questions that need to be answered include, why only Western countries? Does that imply a correlation between technological development and fertility? What are the trends in Korea and Japan looking like considering they modernised a while before many of their neighbours? Halving counts sounds like a lot, but it isn't really and teasing out the ultimate causes is probably going to be incredibly difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> My theory goes like this;

> In the recently released research, no significant decline in sperm quality > was seen in men from non-Western countries, but this segment made up only > about a quarter of the results.

There is something in developed countries that the male do not experience during his lifetime. It can be lack of fear, adrenalin, less activity, or something else. I think statistics hold up with the historic wars as well. As WW2 ends and people starts living without any fear of life, male sperm quality drops.

I think it is about what male experiences and which hormons are triggered in his lifetime.

<comment><USER18> that sounds magical.

<comment><USER8> It is easily testable. Take samples of war veterans.

<comment><USER17> Not sure if it helps though. It has been so long since they have experienced a tough life, levels may already gone back to same levels as others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Something in the water or the milk? Something basic enough that a significant majority is in contact, but culturally distinct enough that a significant minority elsewhere are not in contact.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are we headed into a "Children of Men" scenario?

<comment><USER21> Children of men was infertility of women.

<comment><USER22> The novel the movie was based upon used male infertility. Movie switched that and pinned the infertility on females.

That said, infertility on the man or woman doesn't matter much in a "we want to make babies scenario." The end result is the same: a world like that in The Children of Men.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> could we be simply better at doing these tests? eg more accuracy today vs ~44yrs ago?

</comment><comment><USER24> Man that's messed up about the plastic. Everytime I heat up food in plastic now at my job I will think some guy out there I'm killing his sperm. Ahh the sugar too man... Alright will try to keep that in mind when eating/shopping.

Soda though, it's what keeps me awake/engaged at work, coke it's nasty as hell but... There is also unsweetened tea, I don't know if it's too strong, seems to have the opposite effect of feeling more alert. Often I go to work without sleep but that's my own problem, that's why I look forward to being self employed haha.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.

</comment><comment><USER26> The phathalates hypothesis sounds plausible to me. However, it will be a combination of factors social, economical and biological. One hypothesis, I have been thinking of is about relation between the age of the father when the child was conceived and it's correlation with sperm count of the child when he grows up.

I am not sure if this data was collected in the study. Does anyone know about any such study?

</comment><comment><USER27> Can anyone summarize the various theories developed to explain this decline?

<comment><USER28> The ones I have read while scrolling to this comment:

1\. Jet fuel

2\. Sugar

3\. Plastics

4\. Space Rockets

5\. The gays

<comment><USER29> Thanks, you can add changes in body's probiotics and water contamination.

Water contamination is my favorite, animals share water with us and it is treated with obsolete technologies (and people fantasize about springs and pure aquiferes when it is mostly about recycling used water or polluted water from rivers and swamps)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> What does Western Men means exactly? (I am from India so asking.) As every country has their own west. Does this mean West of US? Or West of whole world?

<comment><USER31> EU + USA

<comment><USER32> ... + Canada + Australia

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I find this fascinating. It's an important biological phenomenon and we don't know if it's due to culture or to chemistry.

</comment><comment><USER34> Could this be from progress in pornography?

<comment><USER35> It's sad that perhaps the most plausible (of the discussed reasons so far in this thread) is being downvoted. I guess people believe what they want to believe.

Anecdotally, I have felt (and sounded) a whole better ever since I stopped consuming porn. There is also a very real drive and stubbornness that I feel in myself, markedly higher than before.

I would chalk (without evidence but as a hypothesis) decreased levels of T to: - not working out (and having a desk job), - increased consumption of porn, - harmful substances in mass produced food that we don't understand fully.

<comment><USER24> I mean... If you stopped for a week would you have more? Or is it the same everyday haha.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> In other news, population still rising.

<comment><USER37> Decellerating worldwide and decreasing within a couple of decades.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Atrazine.... And all the other endicrine disruptors.

Packaged food is literally toxic at this point.

</comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps the Nature is starting to fight back against explosion of human population and associated damage.

</comment><comment><USER40> One word: stress.

</comment><comment><USER41> BPA, birth control/estrogen in water, and increased obesity rates would be my guess.

<comment><USER42> >birth control/estrogen in water

Is that actually a thing? I didn't find any sources definitively showing it was enough to warrant a concern.

<comment><USER43> women take birth control

they pee and flush

this water gets processed and re injected back into the pipes

if you make the mistake to drink the tap water where they re purpose it from the canalisations, you just drink birth control water.

<comment><USER44> Sounds like you have a local water supply problem if they serve you recycled sewage (or a regretful plumbing problem).

<comment><USER45> This is common among communities living on the Mississippi River, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Anxiously awaiting the first comment on the feminizing effects of soy...

<comment><USER27> Here you go:

[http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative- effects](http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects)

<comment><USER47> In particular, the article says:

"In a Harvard study published last year in the journal Human Reproduction, Jorge E. Chavarro, M.D., Sc.D., and his colleagues found a strong association between men's consumption of soy foods and decreased sperm counts."

The study in question seems to be this:

[https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/S...](https://academic.oup.com/humrep/article/23/11/2584/2913898/Soy- food-and-isoflavone-intake-in-relation-to)

"The intake of 15 soy-based foods in the previous 3 months was assessed for 99 male partners of subfertile couples who presented for semen analyses to the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center. ... There was an inverse association between soy food intake and sperm concentration that remained significant after accounting for age, abstinence time, body mass index, caffeine and alcohol intake and smoking. In the multivariate-adjusted analyses, men in the highest category of soy food intake had 41 million sperm/ml less than men who did not consume soy foods." (For reference, various sources say anywhere from 20 to 150 million sperm/ml is average.)

Contrariwise, the Wiki article on soy points to this meta-study (from four years before the above):

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20378106)

"Clinical evidence also indicates that isoflavones have no effect on sperm or semen parameters, although only three intervention studies were identified and none were longer than 3 months in duration."

Here's another from a few months after the meta-study:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19819436](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19819436)

That last one seems to be a randomized controlled study, where they gave a bunch of college men either milk protein or one of two variants of soy protein.

I don't know if there's anything in soy that isn't in the "soy protein isolates" from the last study. If there isn't, then the last study seems like strong evidence. The first one could conceivably come down to some sort of selection bias.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've noticed over the last 20 or so years that men in the West, in general, appear increasingly effeminate.

I've also noticed that a lot of male pop stars have really high voices.

I've long suspected these observations are more than cultural. Recent studies seem to back this intuition.

<comment> brian-armstrong Is this sort of pseudoscientific anecdata what passes for discourse on HN now? Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence - where's yours?

<comment><USER49> This is only the most egregious comment in here, not the only one in general. Someone above is talking about gut microbiome (which we know vanishingly little about) as being a primary causer, diet is apparently 100% the issue (colinear effects in other populations throw water on this theory pretty hard), plastics are a real problem (no evidence supports this, though there is a significant lag), etc.

Basically no one wants to just say "No one knows, let's keep researching." Everyone has to chime in. That'd be one thing if it was relegated to HN or forums, but it's true in the "scientific" community [1] and the media as well; perhaps moreso.

[1] Of which I am sadly a part of, so don't think I am an anti-science person, just anti-parts of this ridiculous industry.

<comment><USER16> I think the thing that's worth remembering about HN is that it's far more of a forum for engineers than scientists. The user base here is very well read, very interesting, a pleasure to interact with, and a lot of the time very obviously technically skilled. They are not, as a general rule, particularly scientifically literate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The volatile era that gave rise to Jane Austen and Lord Byron - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/the-wildest-decade-in-britains-history-it-doesnt-involve-the-beatles/2019/05/29/bb361246-818f-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20062441](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20062441)</comment>


Don't burn CurrentC at the Apple Pay heresy stake just yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/2844400/opensource-subnet/dont-burn-currentc-at-the-apple-pay-heresy-stake-just-yet.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Barely hatched and condemned as the Anti-Apple Pay, CurrentC could improve shopping experiences in the microcosm of a retailer's brand in ways that Apple Pay's brand macrocosm can't. It's premature to burn CurrentC at the Apple heresy stake.

<comment><USER2> How exactly does shifting 100% liability for fraud to the user make for a "better shopping experience"? No matter how many coupons they offer, this is a deal breaker.

My grocery added an extra tap for their CC/loyalty card at checkout - tap once for points, then again for NFC payment - and it so infuriated me that I changed grocers until they changed it back to a single tap.

It cannot be overstated how important _reducing_ payment friction is to a buying experience.</comment></comment>