"Why I shunned the US and started up in London" - <AUTHOR> http://techcitynews.com/2014/12/09/why-i-shunned-the-us-and-started-up-in-london/

<comment><USER2> "my choice of location is partly driven by the fact that I live in London."

Misleading title.</comment>


How I will change the world at 14 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/bf898e7a91b6

<comment><USER2> You are right. And there's literally no limit onto what you can do. I know about a kid, who at 13 (in 1993) wrote some 300kb of C code that controlled medical equipment :-o which had been installed in a bunch of hospitals. It was a fun project for that kid (his father's company had built the hardware). And the equipment worked pretty well too. Did a lot of good. Also, before he had finished high school, some code that was derived from his code was launched into space. So you see, there's no limit!

Unlike many other professions, your age is not a limiting factor.

<comment><USER3> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law) strikes again.

</comment></comment><comment> 97-109-107 People who are finding this enjoyable would also get a good laugh from [https://twitter.com/FalseMedium](https://twitter.com/FalseMedium)</comment>


Why the U.S. Needs Federal Data Privacy Legislation - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/why-us-needs-federal-data-privacy-legislation <comment><USER2> So the lobbyists only have one place to go to buy the laws they want.</comment>


Elm 0.12 - <AUTHOR> http://elm-lang.org/blog/announce/0.12.elm

<comment><USER2> I absolutely love what Elm is doing for the web - it takes the next step in making FRP and pure functional programming accessible. Reading Elm is a pleasure.</comment>


How electricity doesn't work - <AUTHOR> http://amasci.com/miscon/elect.html

<comment><USER3> Disregarding the content of this work (the author's conception of electricity, or lack thereof), I found this passage in the preface to be striking:

> After my encounter with those books, I slowly realized that my own > understanding of basic electricity was flawed and incomplete. I sat down and > started re-teaching myself the subject. I became aware of the source of my > problem: I myself had learned a bunch of electricity misconceptions as a > child. Those early misconceptions gave me a faulty foundation on which to > build further knowledge. As a result, any accurate information learned later > became distorted in my mind even as I learned it. If the foundation is > distorted, then the "building" cannot be built. It was like trying to build > a brick wall on top of a garbage pile: the incoming bricks are perfectly > good, but they simply did not fit upon earlier concepts, and any structures > that I managed to build kept collapsing.

Many of the textbooks he was reading through (K-6 level books) were using the pedagogical technique of <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lie-to-children> , where one purposefully gives inaccurate-but-simple information, planning to supplant it later with more accurate accounts once a foundational knowledge of the terms and laws of the system have been built within the student's mind. Both the misconceptions he is addressing, and his own misconceptions, show that this technique is more dangerous than it is believed to be, because _people keep these inaccurate accounts_ , resisting learning the more complex but real accounts due to some bastardized version of Occam's razor.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you are arguing here. What would a world look like without simplification? You want people to remain in complete ignorance until they are judged at some point to be "ready" to learn the complete truth about something? That seems like an absurd viewpoint to me.

Besides, your comment ignores the fact that people, in the absence of explanations (right or wrong) will _make up their own model of how things work_. That model is just as hard to unlearn as an incorrect view they may have been taught by an instructor. In fact, they are probably harder to unlearn because they are based on the persons own experiences.

 _All_ learning involves correcting and building on earlier concepts, there are no " _tabula rasa_ ". What is important is that people confront and integrate their own preconceptions as part of learning.

The National Academies Press book "How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School" is a good, accessible introduction to these concepts. It's on the web at <http://www.nap.edu/html/howpeople1/>.

This is a relevant passage: "A logical extension of the view that new knowledge must be constructed from existing knowledge is that teachers need to pay attention to the incomplete understandings, the false beliefs, and the naive renditions of concepts that learners bring with them to a given subject. Teachers then need to build on these ideas in ways that help each student achieve a more mature understanding. If students' initial ideas and beliefs are ignored, the understandings that they develop can be very different from what the teacher intends."

<comment><USER3> I'm _not_ arguing that we should not simplify instruction at lower levels; I'm simply arguing that there are ways to simplify without creating _inaccuracies_ : to avoid using leaky analogies, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is quite discouraging to read - the author sets out to correct many common misconceptions but ends up introducing many more - (e.g. electrons don't "hop" from atom to atom (there are some quite useful models of metals based on hopping), metals bend because electrons "fill in" the gaps)

Reading this reminds me of the importance of mathematics for placing a hard edge on vague and potentially confusing terms like "flow" "current" "energy" "store" etc. etc.

I wonder if it is possible to give 6th graders correct intuition about electricity without math?

<comment><USER6> Are the models of metals /hopping you are referring to involving free outer electrons in a metal crystal lattice - as he was referring to?

<comment><USER5> Yeah - especially metals like Fe, Co, and Ni where the conduction electrons are derived from the atom's d-orbitals. The hopping is one of the key elements of the "hubbard" model. This viewpoint doesn't add very much if you want to calculate the conductivity or optical properties, but it is essential for understanding the magnetism of these materials.

What bugged me about this article was that without doing a quantitative analysis of a model and comparing it's predictions to experiments - <USER2> interpretations like whether the electrons are hopping or not are so ambiguous that they are effectively meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> He confuses his own internal mental model with the actual nature of electricity.

Mostly this is just arguments about semantics.

</comment><comment><USER8> With something like this it's hard to tell if the author is "dumbing it down" or just doesn't understand the material all that well. He does style himself an "amateur physicist".

</comment><comment><USER9> Really that entire site is wonderful, and quite varied. But note that it's largely _not_ solid reference material (aside from perhaps portions of the electricity stuff), it's more fun and interesting things to play with / think about, that often require some knowledge of science to understand or make work or show why they can't work. And a little bit of crackpottery, some of which is even explicitly labeled as such.

</comment><comment><USER10> As with electricity, the average person is also taught how fixed wings provide lift incorrectly: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_(force)#.22Popular.22_expl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lift_\(force\)#.22Popular.22_explanation_based_on_equal_transit- time) \- I've come across plenty of smart people (though with no formal physics knowledge) who blindly believed the transit time theory.

</comment><comment><USER11> Not accurate. Among many problems, when electrons move, they _do_ tend to move near the speed of light. (The low rest mass means that even tiny amounts of kinetic energy really get them zooming along.) However in Ohmic conductors they frequently crash into scatterers, bouncing off at a random angle and imparting heat to the material. In everyday materials like copper at room temperature, they spend so much time bouncing around that the _average_ velocity of a conduction electron is low.

EDIT: If you want to teach electricity, describe it as a fluid acted on by fast-moving pressure waves. Resistance can be reasonably described by analogy to a viscous fluid flowing through a sponge.

<comment><USER12> I figured he was going to explain how (free) electrons (at room temperature, in a metal) actually move around at around 0.5c, but alas.</comment></comment>


Practical tools to inspire your work - <AUTHOR> https://claritask.com/blog/ways-to-lead-an-inspired-life-and-work-better <comment><AUTHOR> I wrote this as a reminder for myself, more than anything.

This is a collection of doable _things_ I've picked up along the way — things that have truly helped me whenever the going got rough.

One caveat here is that, it's best to practice these habits when we're doing great. Even though they work when we're feeling down, it's best not to get there in the first place.

Hope you enjoy it.

Let me know if I missed something.

Here's the tweet if you want to RT [https://twitter.com/claritask_app/status/1096500529281290241](https://twitter.com/claritask_app/status/1096500529281290241)</comment>


FDA bowed to industry for decades as alarms were sounded over talc - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-health-fda-talc/ <comment><USER3> So if you are a small cosmetics company the FDA will prevent you from selling your product without thorough testing but if you are a large cosmetic company you can simply tell the FDA that everything is OK. This benefits the larger companies and therefore, monopolies. Strikingly similar to how the FAA seems to operate with Boeing and look how that turned out.

<comment><USER4> The real root of the problem is probably that the FDA is also a monopoly.

<comment><USER5> Do you _seriously_ think that we'd have fewer of these issues if companies could shop around for the cheapest & most lax regulator?

If you believe that, please explain to me why the BBB exists, and what positive social purpose it serves. It is the poster child for a toothless opt- in 'regulator', and it is worse than useless at dealing with malfeasance by its members. (But it's pretty good at collecting membership dues.)

<comment><USER6> Imagine if absolutely nothing changed about the BBB except that I forced you to fund them against your will.

<comment><USER5> Given that the FDA is a product of a democratically elected government that is ultimately accountable to the people, while the BBB is a 'non-profit' corporation, accountable to nobody, I think you missed one other important difference.

If I don't like the FDA, I can vote for someone who will fix it. I happen to think that they have, overall, done a far better job than most examples of industry self-regulation.

<comment><USER6> >Given that the FDA is a product of a democratically elected government that is ultimately accountable to the people

The head of the FDA is appointed by Donald Trump.

>If I don't like the FDA, I can vote for someone who will fix it.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

[https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/charles- wheelan/2014/04...](https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/charles- wheelan/2014/04/22/study-shows-wealthy-americans-and-businesses-control- politics-and-policy)

<comment><USER5> Donald Trump is an incredibly shitty person, but is democratically elected. The head of the BBB is not.

You're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.

<comment><USER6> The head of the BBB doesn't have a monopoly guaranteed by men with rifles and cages.

Do you have any evidence to back up your claim that if you dislike the FDA you can vote someone in who will fix it? I provided pretty compelling evidence that suggests you cannot.

We're all responding to a story of the FDA allowing a big megacorp give us all cancer for literally decades. I think we have a very different definition of the word "good." You can't vote in a better FDA, but you can fire the BBB by simply ignoring them. No system will be perfect, but a better system is one in which you can choose to ignore an unreliable source of information and aren't forced to fund their production of unreliable information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Someday, scholars will write the long, sordid history of how industrial chemicals have been virtually unregulated for many decades. Thousands of novel compounds have been introduced into the environment in enormous quantities without any serious clinical studies of their long-term effects on human health and the health of the natural world.

<comment><USER8> This has been happening for centuries.

I think of the mercury used in gold mining in the 1800's as well as this book from the 1960's:

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

I also read when the USSR came apart the world started to find out the scope of hidden environmental problems.

 _" Heavy metal pollution near Norilsk is so severe that it has now become economically feasible to mine surface soil, as the soil has acquired such high concentrations of platinum and palladium."_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk#Pollution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk#Pollution)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And we can't vote these regulators out nor boycott them.

Stories like this erode my faith in...everything.

<comment> cde-v Don't despair citizen, our corporate benefactors still allow us to Peacefully Protest™. Peaceful Protest™ solves everything!

<comment><USER10> I would link to that Safely Endangered Pooh meme where fighting fascism with violent means makes you a fascist but the difference between HN and reddit is Google and a brain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "Eleven days later, the company announced that tests by labs it hired had determined that there was no asbestos–other than some contamination it said came from an air conditioner – in samples from the one bottle tested by the FDA and the batch it came from."

Why the hell is there an AC system that is spewing out asbestos particles?

<comment><USER12> 1970s? Lucky if the ceiling wasn't coated with the stuff, in fairness.

Quantities / concentrations not specified in the article that I saw at a skim. Both sides talking past the other, sadly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It was over seventy years, after it was decided lead in fuel was a bad idea, before it was banned in road-going vehicles. [0] Keep that in mind when some politician or business owner goes on about "bureaucrats". Because "bureaucrats" to them means "someone who stands between me and more profits". "Bureaucrats" to _you_ should mean "people that make sure this shit gets enforced".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Controversy_and...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraethyllead#Controversy_and_phase- out)

<comment><USER14> When these regulators stop "retiring" to cushy jobs in the industry, I'll believe it's the politicians and not the regulators openly taking bribes in the form of future "jobs".

An easy fix would be for congress to pass a law preventing regulators from working in the industry they regulated, but then the politicians wouldn't also receive those same cushy "jobs".

<comment><USER15> While I agree with the sentiment, keep in mind it's a little more complicated than that. People who work on some category of regulations can only find relevant work in the government or in that sector of industry. Making it impossible to move from the government to an industry job effectively traps people for life in their one job unless they change careers.

As a concrete example, my fiance is a lawyer working in environmental policy. She's worked for the EPA and for various environmental justice groups because she went with whatever jobs were available in her field, and that wouldn't be possible with your proposed change.

<comment><USER16> > Making it impossible to move from the government to an industry job > effectively traps people for life in their one job unless they change > careers.

And?

<comment><USER17> And it'll be necessary to either a) pay exorbitant salaries for these jobs to compensate for what is effectively an incredibly broad non-compete or b) hire idiots that can't get jobs anywhere else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "J&J, the world's largest producer of talc powders, said in a statement that it recalled the 33,000 bottles of Baby Powder out of an "abundance of caution." Eleven days later, the company announced that tests by labs it hired had determined that there was no asbestos–other than some contamination it said came from an air conditioner – in samples from the one bottle tested by the FDA and the batch it came from.

Wow just wow

</comment><comment><USER19> Good interview with a lawyer working on this case: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-4ZoM2rv8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FM-4ZoM2rv8)

</comment><comment><USER20> So are those Johnson and Johnson Baby powder actually safe?

I remember reading J&J said only a batch in some years contains ultra small amount of some substance and less than certain % of it is safe.

<comment><USER21> One has to wonder about a lengthy article which refuses to cite any numbers and instead repeats endlessly that 'no level is known to be safe', which is irrelevant.

<comment><USER22> I'll probably get down voted to hell, but this seems to be quite overblown.

The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection.

The bigger issue is the link to ovarian cancer. The data is all over the place. This one paper [1] sums up the data nicely - when looking at talc use there was no correlation with ovarian cancer. Even outside of hygienic use (condoms, gloves), many women had high talc exposure and no ovarian cancer, while others had no talc exposure and ovarian cancer.

 _" It may be argued that the overall null findings associated with talc- dusted diaphragms and condom use is more convincing evidence for a lack of a carcinogenic effect, especially given the lack of an established correlation between perineal dusting frequency and ovarian tissue talc concentrations and the lack of a consistent dose-response relationship with ovarian cancer risk."_

[1]

<comment><USER23> "The FDA has posted their latest analysis of J&J talcum powder.[1] Of the 3 samples, 1 had "none detected" and 2 had 0.00002% or less by TEM (electron microscope). We're talking close to limit of detection."

I do a bunch of mining and know the dangers of talc and its contaminants - <USER2> only takes ONE PARTICLE of tremolite or actinolite to start you on the road to mesothelioma. You just don't know which specific particle will trigger it.

<comment><USER22> OSHA says....

Permissible Exposure Limit (PEL) for asbestos is 0.1 fiber per cubic centimeter of air as an eight-hour time-weighted average (TWA), with an excursion limit (EL) of 1.0 asbestos fibers per cubic centimeter over a 30-minute period. The employer must ensure that no one is exposed above these limits.

<comment><USER24> There's no such thing as 0.1 fiber. A small fiber is still one fiber.

<comment><USER23> This is correct. A single asbestiform fiber can trigger mesothelioma. There is NO SAFE EXPOSURE LEVEL.

Perhaps HN readers will understand that once they bother to get a career in surficial mineralogy.

<comment><USER24> A single butterfly can also trigger a hurricane. Therefore we must eliminate the Karner Blue[1] to save the planet.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> There's an entire chapter in An Air That Kills on talc.

</comment><comment><USER26> free market is not always consumer friendly, regulations can save lives

</comment><comment><USER27> so stop putting baby powder on my nuts during the summer? :(

<comment><USER13> Baby powder is fine, given that I don't know that one can even _buy_ talc powder anymore. It's all made with corn starch now. Go right ahead and bread those nuts (verifying that it's non-talc breading, just to be safe).

<comment><USER28> Talc is still very much commonplace. What is actually somewhat hard to find is pure talc with no fragrance at all. Not everyone wants to smell like baby powder.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for a different POV. Here in Redmond, WA I'm either not looking (which is quite possible), or corn starch dominates the shelves.

<comment><USER28> I've no doubt it varies considerably by store. Maybe by area, as well, though I'm not all that far from you, so that probably isn't a big factor.

To get actual unscented pure talc I had to find it on Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> To bring a new fight to the attention of more of the public: big pharma is attempting to have the FDA prevent people from using their own stem cells for healing via regenerative medicine - either fat or bone marrow derived. They want to force centralization and also for consumers to buy the stem cell products they're developing. Their arguments are fear mongering and non-sense, however they've so far been doing a good job manipulating the FDA.

<comment><USER30> Without citations, this is pegging my woo-meter.

A stem cell treatment provider recently lost a court case where they argued they're not subject to FDA approval, claiming it's not a medication, drug, or treatment. That seems like an untenable position to me.

<comment><USER29> Citations would require the doctors that I have had multiple of both fat and bone marrow derived stem cell treatments from over the last 3 years including last month.

The FDA has considered your own stem cells as a medication to bring it under their control - honestly that claim alone is pretty disingenuous, stem cells and properties of your blood are your body's natural healing mechanisms; with these treatments they're not changing or manipulating the stem cells, which you could more reasonably argue should be classified as a medication.

Another claim big pharma is trying to use is that injecting bone marrow into joints shouldn't be allowed because it's non-homologous - meaning that bone marrow isn't naturally in the joints, so it shouldn't be allowed to be injected - the reason they want to prevent it is because injecting stem cells into joints will clear up the pain caused by osteoarthritis.

<comment><USER30> So, no citations then? Just the say-so from the people selling you expensive treatments insurance won't cover?

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/health/stem-cells- fda.htm...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/health/stem-cells-fda.html)

> There is almost no regulatory oversight of orthopedic procedures using bone- > marrow extracts or platelets, which are regarded as low risk. While the Food > and Drug Administration insists that it does have the authority to regulate > stem cell treatments, it adopted an industry-friendly approach in 2017 by > giving companies a three-year grace period in which to describe their > products or treatments so the agency can determine whether they meet the > criteria of drugs that would require agency approval. So far, few companies > have submitted any information.

> In the meantime, rogue clinics offering other kinds of procedures have > flourished, accused of blinding people by injecting cells into their eyes, > mixing stem cells with smallpox vaccine to treat cancer or causing severe > infections by administering contaminated blood from umbilical cords into > patients' joints or spines. In some of the worst cases, patients had already > been harmed before the agency took any action, and the patients took legal > steps themselves, suing the clinics that injured them.

<comment><USER29> What's your point? Not having proper oversight is a different beast than big pharma trying to gain control.

I've spent nearly $100,000 over the last 3 years on stem cell treatments because they permanently heal injuries. I researched doctors and clinics first, felt them out along with their knowledge, and then have done plenty more than a single treatment with them because they proved to know what they were doing. Certainly that doesn't negate bad actors who will take advantage and don't have enough knowledge or proper protocol to maximize outcome, however once again, you shouldn't be so pessimistically dismissive nor confounding issues when trying to argue a point.

<comment><USER30> Who do you propose should do the oversight of stem cell treatments, if not the FDA?

One person's "proven" is an anecdote. Scientific clinical trials are how we _actually_ demonstrate efficacy (versus the very real placebo effect), safety, etc. Plus, there's the bonus of _actually_ proven procedures being easier to get insurance to cover, which should be appealing to someone who's shelled out six figures.

<comment><USER29> You're still confounding and not understanding what I'm saying.

Whatever organization has oversight of that doctors should have oversight - that doesn't negate the challenges of regulatory capture that is occurring.

That you're completely dismissing my own personal experience, that I'm willing to spend $100k of money I'd much rather spend elsewhere, shows just how dismissive you are. I didn't argue my own experience as part of the data that does exist relating to stem cell treatments either, like you're seeming to counter argue with.

You should probably dive into the existing research, and not depend on using whatever mainstream sources you've used to develop your narrative and arguments - seems you're falling into the narrative mainstream media wants you to follow.

<comment><USER30> > That you're completely dismissing my own personal experience, that I'm > willing to spend $100k of money I'd much rather spend elsewhere, shows just > how dismissive you are.

Look, people have "personal experience" that prayer cured their cancer, that essential oils fixed their bipolar disorder, that aliens anally probed them, etc.

Having invested large amounts of money can make one susceptible to sunk cost fallacies, too.

"I say it works" is worthless by itself. Sometimes, worse than worthless - actively harmful. The FDA approval process may not be perfect, but _some_ sort of scientifically rigorous "does this work and is it safe?" is necessary.

<comment><USER29> I'm not arguing against proper research being done.

You realize that there are, and you can see, before and after imagery - whether ultrasound, x-ray, or MRI - that is used to see the physical trauma of the area being treated, treating it, and then seeing the healing that's occurred with imagery afterward, right? I'm guessing your limited sources don't actually share that information with you based on your lack of investigating any of this while being so dismissive, and counter arguing points I've not been making.

What I was warning of is regulatory capture that I've learned about directly from the legitimate doctors (not all are I'm sure) that are at the forefront of regenerative medicine, some who have been doing research on using stem cell for 18+ years now already.

I understand your skepticism - maybe dive in deeper into different sources and have just a little bit of curiosity as to the legitimacy of what I'm saying.

<comment><USER30> Lots of aggressive statements about me having "limited sources" and "dive in deeper into different sources" and... _no sources_.

I asked you for sources at the very top of this thread. Instead I got a bunch of defensiveness, which is itself illuminating.

Surely this sort of imagery you're talking about is available somewhere, with clear examples from both the experimental group and the control group, demonstrating better results in the experimental? These clinics should present that to the FDA, get the procedures approved, and rake in enormous amounts of cash from health insurance from their arthritis cures.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reality Check (Part 1) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/d2ea143c7806

<comment><USER2> Is this the same Adioso post that has been on HN a few times before, but each time hosted on a different blog service? I feel like I've started reading this twice before.</comment>