Ask HN: "Startup Weekend" experiences? - <AUTHOR>

I searched through the archives a bit, and it seems like some people have participated in them, and enjoyed themselves.
Was it worth it?  How'd it go for you?  What sort of people were there?
I don't believe in this sort of thing for making an actual startup, but it might be a fun time and a good way to network. <comment><USER2> I organized and facilitated the Copenhagen Startup Weekend which just ran in April and it beat all my expectations. We had 112 participants (including a lot of high caliber people), 40 of whom made one-minute pitches. Of these 40 the crowd picked 12 around which teams were formed. The mentors and jury on Sunday evening jury blown away by the progress teams made. I know of at least 3 teams which are still working on their projects - keep an eye on <http://www.memolane.com> who won the cash prize and are about to launch. See <http://www.copenhagen.startupweekend.org> for a sample of the ideas and participant feedback. Also see <http://vimeo.com/10870013> to get a feeling for the vibe at the event.

We're definitely doing it again in the fall!

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, I participated in Paris Startup Weekend last december. It was amazing, I met very interesting and competent people that I still see today. And best of all I actually built a startup: <http://www.submate.com> we just launched the MVP 2weeks ago and it's a tremendous experience. I can assure you that we are now a real startup ! We have been selected at Plugg, The Next Web and Nonick and we are actually raising a seed round.

Startup Weekend is great !! And even better if you understand that everything actually start the next monday morning...

(in my experience, there were more marketing/biz guy than dev and very few designers)

<comment><USER4> Startup weekend ( by HEC business school) in Paris was last weekend I believe.Have you heard of any other similar events in France ?

<comment><USER5> If your in Paris why not jump on the eurostar and head over to the london one, if you're willing to travel out on the very early / very late trains you can get a ticket pretty cheaply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently went to one in Boulder (and full disclosure, I work for a sponsor, but I participated like any other non-sponsor there) and I thought it was a great time. You're probably not going to launch an actual startup by Sunday. You will meet interesting and smart people. It's also good practice for hashing out ideas, setting priorities, honing a pitch, presenting and doing other startup-y things in front of real people. And if you're a developer you have an excuse to try new things out with framework or language you've been wanting to try using.

</comment><comment><USER7> I attended the Copenhagen edition last month. While I was sceptical, the weekend turned out to be a lot of fun, and we are actually five people working full-time on what we created that weekend, with what looks like a bright future ahead of us. But even if it hadn't turned out that way, I would still have enjoyed it. The networking possibilities are huge, and my other startup has gained from it. YMMV, of course.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am not sure how they are out in your area but I have attended two here in Michigan; one in Ann Arbor and one in Detroit. The event can be hit or miss in terms of actually starting a start up but it is a great networking event for finding like minded individuals. Both times I have come away happy with how my time was spent.

<comment><AUTHOR> What sort of people were present?

<comment><USER8> Developers, designers and marketers made up the majority. There were even some lawyers and non-techies.

<comment><USER9> In my experience at the Detroit one marketers/social media people made up the majority. Also IMHO was one of the more poorly planned events that I have been to.

<comment><USER8> And I will second that, Startup Weekend Detroit 2009 turned me off from the event quite a bit, but I still met some good people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to the London one last year, it was a good experience. It was very good for networking and also for motivation.

For making a start-up less so, but there is the possibility.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The one I'm interested, of course, is this:

<http://venice.startupweekend.org/>

Anyone else happen to be going?

<comment><USER10> Hi David, I'll be there too. I also believe you can't really get something up and running in 2 days, but when I found out about this few days ago, it sounded fun and I mindlessly subscribed. The Venice event will be hosted at H-Farm, a very rare example of italian private VC/incubator, so it might even be a decent launchpad. I'm Francesco, a software engineer from Verona, hope to see you there!

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool - send me email, and maybe we'll see one another there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> PG-13 It's a great way to kick off a wantrepreneurial career.</comment>


Like Instapaper for video - <AUTHOR> http://wacchen.com/

<comment><USER2> We need a site like this that pulls the stream in to an HTML5 player so I can use it on my mobile devices that don't support Flash.

<comment><USER3> Yea I agree with you, and it supports HTML5 video, but its against many sites TOS to pull their flash into something like h264.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been wanting something like this since I got hooked on Instapaper. Now I just need time to watch all these videos.</comment>


Ask HN: Which types of apps are no longer accepted to the App Store? - <AUTHOR>

As a result of there already being too many in the store, I heard Apple rejects all flashlight apps, calculators, etc. What else? Is there an official list? <comment><USER2> Only what you see in their official guidelines:

 _Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra apps._

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, I see so there's no strict list. Thanks!</comment></comment>


How to Keep Your Apple AirPods from Slipping Out of Your Ears - <AUTHOR> https://www.pcmag.com/feature/366444/how-to-keep-your-apple-airpods-from-slipping-out-of-your-ear <comment><USER2> Basically an Amazon shopping list for them to make money off comissions.</comment>


The Stars Are a Comforting Constant - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/the-stars-are-a-comforting-constant <comment><USER2> The stars are not a constant though. In virtually any suburban area you have substantial amounts of light pollution. We are seeing a pale imitation of what every human living before us saw.

You really have to go quite far off the beaten path to reach a true dark-sky area. Unless you are living a 20 minute drive from the nearest town of 250 and an hour away from the nearest town of 100k+ then you have some degree of light pollution.

[https://www.lightpollutionmap.info](https://www.lightpollutionmap.info)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the link. Interesting map.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some good moments throughout, and 'How to search for aliens'is my favorite of the group. The comparison POV's between her and her mom and between the claustrophobic vigil and the vastness of space worked well for me. She projects more than I prefer with lines like, '. . .Four point five billion years / since genesis and the sky still hovers / like a veil between us and space, / _wanting to be lifted before the unintelligible . . ._ ' But, that's a matter of preference. And, with the 4.5 B years, she brings in another fun comparison - the shortness of human relative to the big-picture timeline - without being explicit or trite. Thanks for sharing!</comment>


Ask HN: Are we heading to a new Black Monday? - the-dude Stock markets have tanked since the FED rate hike, slowing/unclear growth in China, oil price collapse ( 5 - 6% a day ) and instability in the Middle East.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/15/investing/stocks-markets-dow-china-oil/index.html?iid=hp-stack-dom
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday_(1987)
Are we heading to a new Black Monday? <comment><AUTHOR> No.

US markets are closed on Monday: [http://www.marketwatch.com/story/which- markets-are-closed-on...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/which-markets-are- closed-on-martin-luther-king-day-2016-01-15)

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh, look, my crystal ball's on the blink again...</comment>


Ask HN: What interesting thought did you read on HN but couldn't find later? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> An article about some species of octopuses that have a relatively high IQ, but since the parents die before their offspring comes to life, every generation have to relearn everything from scratch.

IIRC, the lack of inter-generational communication deprived this species from developing to the level its IQ permits.

I wish I can find that piece again!

<comment><AUTHOR> Not about IQ but I read somewhere about how the properties of octopus bodies (squishiness, bonelessness) form a very different understanding of the world compared to those of primates. Can't find where it was.

<comment><USER3> This isn't at all what you're looking for, but the book _Vampyroteuthis Infernalis_ (Flusser, V. & Bec, L., 2012) might be a fun read for you.

[https://www.upress.umn.edu/book- division/books/vampyroteuthi...](https://www.upress.umn.edu/book- division/books/vampyroteuthis-infernalis)

<comment><AUTHOR> Vilem Flusser writing about vampire squids? Sounds like a great read! Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There was a thread about interviewing, someone talking about how hard interviewing was and failing dozens of them even as a senior engineer. (there is a thread about that once every month or two, indeed) A commenter responded saying something along the lines of, "When you find the right fit/role, the interview will seem suspiciously easy."

I thought it was interesting because it's such a huge anecdote without any ways of backing it up, but for some reasons it does match my own experience in the past decade+ for almost every job offer I've landed (a handful). For every interview where I felt like I struggled really hard (even though in the end I was able to solve the problems the interviewers asked), I did not get offers. For the ones I did land, it always seemed really easy and somewhat like "what? is that it?"

<comment><USER5> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16200322](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16200322)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> An article about EV vs. ICE was posted, written from the perspective of an EV being the natural way of building things (few moving parts, little heat loss, etc) and that this ICE was an intricate machine of thousands of parts channeling the spirit of fine watchmaking or Jules Verne.

I found the perspective refreshing but have never been able to find it since.

<comment><USER7> Try out [https://www.pagedash.com](https://www.pagedash.com) to help save pages you read for reference later! (Maker here)

<comment><USER8> All of these apps are essentially the same. I have to click some extra button or drag and drop some extra thing, and then when your service disappears I have to grab my export and figure out how to import it to the next one.

What does your product offer over the hundreds of other sites that do exactly the same thing? Have you innovated in this space?

<comment><USER7> I tried to offer a one-click solution (no additional drag and drop). It also tries to capture the page as you saw it in the browser, HTML and all (more faithfully than Evernote, at least).

See related thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653206](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15653206)

<comment><USER9> Does it have apps for mobile to share-save? Pretty important. The following would make me move from Pocket; Support for PDF, ppt, etc. Offline reading on Desktop (Pocket works fine on mobile but on Desktop it seems not very good). And yes, total export so when you close the doors, I do not have to start over.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the comment!

I can't promise an app right now. For now I am strongly mulling a Telegram bot that takes in links from you and saves it to PageDash backend for you. This is quite high up in my roadmap.

> Support for PDF, ppt, etc.

PDF is supported. PPT is a Todo.

> Offline reading on Desktop

Need to explore service workers for this. Admittedly not a priority yet.

> total export

Auto Google Drive export is available for paid users. Manual export (page by page) is available to all users. In any case, if I do shut, I will open mass export to all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Somebody was writing about a concept of negotiations that focuses on values of the other party, and asking the question "what if your value is met" instead of arguing for your positions. The example was about gun control: "what if there's no crime, would you be willing to give up guns?"

<comment><USER10> I suspect you're referring to this essay by Scott Alexander:

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of- argumentat...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/05/08/varieties-of- argumentative-experience/)

In the context of negotiation, the book _Getting To Yes_ describes a similar concept:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone mentioned a scifi short story with link to online version that I followed & read. The story was about a uploaded-human AI-spaceship that for a time worked as a asteroid miner. After a single overmind takes over 1st the inner planets, then the whole solar system, the protagonist to flee to insterstellar space, but is pursued by an overmind ship.

Been trying to find the story/title/author since, with no success.

<comment><USER12> "The Long Chase", [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12192254](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12192254)

That discussion has links to books with similar stories. Enjoy.

<comment><USER11> Thank you! I've often wanted to point others at it in discussions on topics ranging from blockchain forks to 'friendly AI'. I even posed a question on Quora to try to find it – [https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-scifi-short-story- name-autho...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-scifi-short-story-name-author- about-a-single-AI-ship-racing-to-escape-a-conquering-solar-system-wide- overmind/) – now updated with your pointer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Someone commented: "how things have changed, emacs and vim are partners and the enemy is Eclipse and Visual Studio"

A play on words of an episode in star trek the next generation, where someone from the past wakes up to realize that now humans and Klingons are friends and the enemy are the ferengi and the borg.

<comment><USER14> Ha, the Ferengi are never really an enemy. They just want that latinum.

<comment><USER15> The AI does not love you. Nor does it hate you. But you are made of atoms which it can use for something else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not sure if it was on HN but it was a short story about an old retired sys admin in an age where everything runs on the cloud. One day, something went wrong in a data center and he was called to fix it because robots manage everything now and nobody knows how to fix things anymore. He was accompanied by a younger sysadmin IT person as he fixed a server or something. By the end of it, the younger IT person wanted to learn about how computer works and be a sysadmin.

<comment><USER17> Reminds me of the sysadmin XKCD: [https://xkcd.com/705/](https://xkcd.com/705/)

<comment><USER16> Heh. That's always a good one. I'm not sure anymore if I found it here or on Nat Torkington's four short links.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Meta comment: there's a very active subreddit for finding lost information, [https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/](https://www.reddit.com/r/tipofmytongue/) .

<comment><USER19> Meta comment: I was trying to remember what the name of that subreddit was!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Someone once posted a short science fiction story about the animals that became the dominant intelligent species on earth after humans. First it was raccoons, then it was crows, traveling by air balloon. I loved it, and I've searched many subsequent times to no avail.

<comment><USER21> The piece was posted on The Archdruid Report ([https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com](https://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com)) and was called "The Next Ten Billion Years".

In a bit of an unconventional move, the author has closed down the blog and is now selling the previously free articles as ebooks. There are a lot of valuable perspectives in his writing, so it might very well be worth the purchase. Most of it is not in the "short story format" that you remember though. ([http://www.foundershousepublishing.com/](http://www.foundershousepublishing.com/)).

There might also be an free archive somewhere..

<comment><USER22> I found it on archive.is: [http://archive.today/2016.10.25-213332/http://thearchdruidre...](http://archive.today/2016.10.25-213332/http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.de/2013/09/the- next-ten-billion-years.html)

Funny thing - I was thinking about this post a few years ago but also couldn't remember where I'd read it; I ended up writing a program to download the pages I'd visited since 2012 (using a heuristic to discard unlikely entries and to promote likely ones). That's probably the most effort I've gone through to find something on the Internet!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> An article that provided a strong argument for why you should never stop reading, even if you forget most of what you read. There are a few articles I've found via Google on the same subject but they are not the one I saw on HN.

<comment><USER24> Maybe this is the article you are searching for -- It's Okay to "Forget" what you read ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15146715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15146715))

<comment><USER23> This was it, along with the accompanying PG article. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not a "interesting thought" really, but I thought someone posted a link to a site for "un-mangling" text. would fix all the formatting issues like &amp, and other various issues caused by copy/pasting text from place to place.

I forget what I was doing recently but I thought "I should use that site" and couldn't find it anywhere after lots of searching. I should have bookmarked it :-/

<comment><USER26> You probably mean this one:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16103356)

<comment><USER25> Ah, yes this was it! thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Someone shared an MIT or Stanford class titled Deep learning for Biology or for Bioinformatics can't remember. I thought I saved it but couldn't find it anywhere later. Edit: The lectures were on youtube.

<comment><USER28> Maybe in reference to this: [http://kundajelab.github.io/dragonn/](http://kundajelab.github.io/dragonn/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow, great timing. Around a week ago I spent an hour digging through my bookmarks for something I'd found via HN, and I must not have bookmarked.

I can't recall what the original post linked to, but in the comments someone discussed their preferred method of organizing their digital notes/journal. They linked to a forum post where someone described the system.

It involved using a single folder for all notes, with different categories, that were indicated in the file name. In fact the file name contained everything important. It also discussed never altering a file, but creating an index to refer to other related entries.

I think the person who wrote the forum post was a journalist of some sort? And they might have made reference to a Japanese system that was similar, but physical, which used lines on the top of index cards to indicate categories, and keeping the number of categories low (always 4?) was important.

I'd love to find that forum post again.

<comment><USER30> The index card version of that note-taking system sounds somewhat like Niklas Luhmann's zettelkasten or Pile of Index Cards, which have both had some posts describing them linked on HN previously:

[http://takingnotenow.blogspot.ca/2007/12/luhmanns- zettelkast...](http://takingnotenow.blogspot.ca/2007/12/luhmanns- zettelkasten.html)

[https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-improves- thinking...](https://zettelkasten.de/posts/zettelkasten-improves-thinking- writing/)

[http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page](http://pileofindexcards.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

[http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/cluster/](http://pileofindexcards.org/blog/cluster/)

Another HN post from the zettelkasten.de domain had a comment with a link to this project on Github, which sounds a lot like the filename-based system you mention, at least in terms of putting all the info into the filename:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16611413)

[https://github.com/galfarragem/superfolder](https://github.com/galfarragem/superfolder)

Maybe it's not the one you were looking for, but could be useful anyway?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recall reading a phenomenal blog(?) post about data science in history in which the author presented some historical data relating to the northern renaissance (iirc, shipping logs) and then presented two completely plausible but divergent analyses of the data.

I've spent hours trying to find it again on multiple occasions with no success. :(

<comment><USER24> Maybe this -- [https://sappingattention.blogspot.in/2012/11/reading- digital...](https://sappingattention.blogspot.in/2012/11/reading-digital- sources-case-study-in.html?m=1)

<comment><USER32> It sure sounds like it, thanks!

That blog's been posted often, but with little success: [https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sappingattention.blog...](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=sappingattention.blogspot.com)

This thread is quite amusing, I think I'll fav it.

<comment><USER33> Great blog. The author, incidentally, is a youngish historian named Ben Schmidt. I feel like it's a natural fit with an HN audience given how data- driven his work is, but as you say, it doesn't break through very much.

He also created (helped create?) a tool called Bookworm that might be of interest: [http://bookworm.culturomics.org](http://bookworm.culturomics.org)

<comment><USER32> Thanks! The Bookworm link doesn't work right now, but I found this demo video very interesting: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kAlwiXt0bY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kAlwiXt0bY)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> There was a guy who posted some comments explaining how the industry basically doesn't know exactly why some batteries work better than others, and that the research in this domain is a lot like "nobody know wtf they are doing".

There was also this one comment by a guy explaining that the components used in Apple devices are "premium" components coming from the first batches, and that they make Apple's hardware more reliable than another computer with the same components

</comment><comment><USER35> I read about it about a year ago. It was about a small program with 4 letters and someone posted 2 blog posts about it in a weeks time abusing the tool to see what it can come up with. The tool or program seemed to have an exploitative nature and seemed to be used in the security field. It worked with, I think binary files, but I recall it also allowed other programs to be ran on it. You provided an exit state and an input state and the program it needs to work with and tried all sorts of things within the provided program to reach the provided exit state. The blog post abused it to optimise to something interesting which I can't recall anymore. The writer of the blog post had more experience with it and already liked to toy around with it. It's not angr.

Iirc it 2as called something like nmap or jobn. Something with 4 letters and not the most straightforward name.

Please help me out.

<comment><USER36> Sounds like a fuzzer. Was it American Fuzzy Lop (afl-fuzz)? Doesn't quite meet your 4-letter criteria but sounds like a candidate.

<comment><USER35> Yes! Thank you. No wonder I wasn't able to find it as I strongly held my belief that it was 4 letters. Love this place.

<comment><USER37> It's odd how a word can feel "on the tip of your tongue" and intuitions about its number of sounds and their characteristics can be remarkably accurate, especially if you consider the interposition of linguistically similar sounds. And it can be totally misleading when your memories are incorrect, to the point for me at least of making it nearly impossible to recall a word until I have shifted focus to something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> A blog post by a pythics PHD (or may be biolog or chemistry, I don't remember.) about the sad state of utility software in his/her area of study. The software the author developed during the PhD program has become the acedemic standard.

</comment><comment><USER39> There was one motivational type article about how you should "go first" or "be first" when approaching problems in life. Like when making friends or just socially in general. I was looking for it again recently but couldn't find it.

<comment><USER40> I don't know about the link, but if you are interested in the subject I think that you would enjoy this lecture:

MIT Math for CS, Matching Problems: [https://youtu.be/5RSMLgy06Ew](https://youtu.be/5RSMLgy06Ew)

tldw: it can be mathematically proven that the best strategy is to take the initiative when looking for a partner/job/vacancy, starting with your prefered choice and working down from there, and let others shoot you down if need be

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> A post about a startup that was trying to create an open database of algorithmic ways to treat patients. I've tried and tried to find this with HN's search engine, but can't seem to pick the right search terms.

<comment><USER32> Wild guess: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5599134](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5599134)

Counsyl is Pioneering A New Bioinformatics Wave (113 points by daslee on Apr 24, 2013 | 47 comments)

[http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/counsyl/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/23/counsyl/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A service that converts PDF research papers into a clean readable webpage.

Their example paper was a research paper with two columns and diagrams to show their service actually works well.

I searched a couple of times but couldn't find them again...

<comment><USER43> perhaps [https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/](https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/)?

<comment><USER42> Yes that's the one! Thank you so much!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've been trying to find an email server which was mentioned in a comment a few months ago. I read through the setup instructions - the only point I remember is once it's setup one can add as many domains to it as one wants - if I remember correctly. There were several that popped up this past year, [https://mailinabox.email](https://mailinabox.email) this being one of them but I don't think it was the one I'm talking about. The setup instructions were clear.

<comment><USER45> Was it perhaps this? [https://github.com/nodemailer/wildduck#wild-duck-mail- server](https://github.com/nodemailer/wildduck#wild-duck-mail-server)

It's had a few submissions, but no discussion.[https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wildduck.email](https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=wildduck.email)

<comment><USER44> Thanks but it wasn't that one. The one I'm talking about wasn't in beta and I would like to say one could use any DB one wanted to but that might just be wrong :)

Edit: grammar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There was a comment about the theory, that emotions are not represented in the body but actually happen there. And we learn to interpret the bodily state as having an emotion. Can't find it.

<comment><USER46> There's some really interesting literature about this topic, I only discovered it recently. I'd recommend starting with 'The Good Gut' by Justin Sonnenburg.

An excerpt can be found here: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut- feelings-the-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-feelings-the- second-brain-in-our-gastrointestinal-systems-excerpt/)

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

I recently found the theory of Lynn Margulis interesting, that we are all holobionts, not just relying on symbiotic bacteria but critically dependent on them, for breaking down food just as well as for staying healty. In that sense, we are less individuals and more landscapes, gardens that foster life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Just a reminder to always upvote/favorite what you consider relevant, and you can find it later on your profile, in case you don't use an app like Pocket to consolidate everything.

<comment><USER48> I use Materialistic app for HN. Saved there many stories. Lost my mobile. Then I realized this app saves stories only locally.

<comment><USER49> Materialistic doesn't run any servers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Someone posted a comment mentioning that coffee shops are a good metric for cultural development when trying to look for a new city

<comment><USER32> There's this discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10391753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10391753)

How to know if where you live is "up and coming": fried chicken vs. coffee shops (medium.com) 326 points by edward on Oct 15, 2015 | 306 comments

[https://medium.com/@Sam_Floy/how-to-know-if-where-you- live-i...](https://medium.com/@Sam_Floy/how-to-know-if-where-you-live-is-up- and-coming-fried-chicken-vs-coffee-shops-546080119f98)

<comment><USER51> Completely disagree about the fried chicken part of the equation. The more fried chicken the better.

<comment><USER52> Its not making a judgment call, just a correlation.

<comment><USER51> I wasn't making a judgement call either. Just stating how much I like fried chicken.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Someone posted here a blog from a guy who had a plan to commit suicide at the age of 50. He wrote a lot of articles explaining the reasoning. It was mostly a fear of declining quality of life with age, and a fear of becoming incapacitated at some point and being unable to follow through with euthanasia if he was suffering. It stuck in my head and I'd like to find it again because I couldn't remember if this was something he went through with or if it was hypothetical.

<comment><USER54> We're you thinking of the author of zeromq?

[http://hintjens.com/blog:115](http://hintjens.com/blog:115) "A protocol for dying"

<comment><USER53> No, this was someone who was still in good health and wanted to be proactive about avoiding possible future sickness and even just aging. But thanks for posting that.

<comment><USER55> Are you talking about the guy who ended up killing himself, revealing a never ending manifesto-like site upon his suicide? I'd like to find that again myself.

EDIT: one google search and here it is: [http://www.businessinsider.com/ex- sports-writer-kills-himsel...](http://www.businessinsider.com/ex-sports- writer-kills-himself-and-leaves-massive-website-explaining-why-2013-8)

The site looks like it's down now though.

<comment><USER53> That's it, thank you! I didn't remember it was a sports writer, I assumed it was someone who worked in tech since I had found it here. And here's a working mirror: [http://martin-manley.eprci.com/](http://martin-manley.eprci.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> There was this blog post about how to form yearly goals, maybe for New Year's resolutions or something? I remember they were divided into 10-15 categories, dealing with all areas of life (career, health, family, etc.) and had probing but specific questions in each.

<comment><USER57> Maybe this?

[http://yearcompass.com](http://yearcompass.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Off topic, but browsers should be appending the referrer page in the history list when openning a new browser tab. Countless times i've lost an article because i opened a link and much later discovered i had somehow closed the opener page.

<comment><USER59> This saved me a lot of time for these cases

[https://github.com/program-in- chinese/HistoryInThreads_WebEx...](https://github.com/program-in- chinese/HistoryInThreads_WebExtension)

<comment><USER55> Saving this for later. Bookmark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I can't think of anything that I could not find but I just wanted to say that it is a great idea for a thread!

</comment><comment><USER61> It was a post or discussion, I think involving Peter Thiel talking about how innovation is in the world of bits not atoms now and that implies some unpleasant things about our society.

Closest I could find was: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6718654)

<comment><USER32> What about this? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5641799](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5641799)

In Tech We Trust? A Debate with Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen [video] (milkeninstitute.org) 74 points by jordn on May 2, 2013 | 39 comments

The original video link seems dead, I guess it's this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtZbWnIALeE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtZbWnIALeE)

<comment><USER61> I think this was probably it (just reached that point in the video where Thiel says the money quote). Thanks.

<comment><USER53> FYI if it's the bits/atoms treatment you're specifically interested in reading about, it goes back to at least 1995 from Nicholas Negroponte.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Dunno if this is management 101 but someone mentioned casually the relationship between responsibility and authority. A mismatch between those two creates tension (employee dissatisfaction).

I have not found the comment or literature on the subject. Experiences at my day job tell me this is key to org/role design and management in general.

<comment><USER5> There are several good articles discussing ARA:

[http://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/the-importance-of- aligning-...](http://blog.jbrains.ca/permalink/the-importance-of-aligning- authority-with-responsibility)

[https://ssbg.co.nz/about/media/words-with-meaning-the- import...](https://ssbg.co.nz/about/media/words-with-meaning-the-importance- of-definitions/)

[https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent- school/fall-2016/d...](https://www.nais.org/magazine/independent- school/fall-2016/decision-making-alignment/)

For HN comments specifically, you might have read one of these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2810365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2810365)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184472](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7184472)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9767231](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9767231)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5552107)

<comment><USER62> Thanks! Seems I still need a couple of 'Let me google that for you' sent my way hehe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> A paper some time back about performing large-scale host computations through (ab)using the TCP handshake for arithmetic.

<comment><USER64> Barbarasi et al., Parasitic computing, 2001 [1]

[1] [https://www.nature.com/articles/35091039](https://www.nature.com/articles/35091039)

<comment><USER63> Been looking for this on and off for over 5 years, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I don't know if it was on HN, but I remember reading about productivity research concerning the length of the workweek. IIRC 25h week improved productivity compared to 40h. The study may have been done in Germany. But I haven't been able to find it or similar studies of high quality since.

</comment><comment><USER66> Within the last year, a guy did a writeup on his DIY electrical panel circuit monitoring setup.

It allowed him to very accurately measure power consumption of everything in his house, and he was able to trace a sudden and mysterious rise in his monthly bill to a faulty pool pump.

</comment><comment><USER67> There was a good quote about commercial interests becoming entrenched, something about once a business gets accustom to making a profit in some way it stars to think of it as a right and argues in that fashion to defend it.

</comment><comment><USER68> An extraordinary long-form piece about a child who'd been born deaf (perhaps of Latino origin, growing up in the streets of a US city) and was then abandoned by his parents. He hadn't learned to speak. As an adult he was given help by a charity (or research group?) who, over the course of years, taught him to speak. There's a moment described in the article when he finally realises that all objects have names, and bursts into tears. When asked to recall how he thought about the world before he learned to speak, he could not describe his cognition.

<comment><USER69> That sounds like the story of Ildefonso. I originally heard the story on Radiolab [0] and it is also the subject of a book [1] by Susan Schaller called "A Man WithoutWords"

[0] [https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91725-words/](https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/91725-words/)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Something about someone smelling cake or a bakery in their neighborhood when there wasn't one, but it turned out to be chemicals leaching from the ground due to what was there years ago and buried.

<comment><USER71> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14566057](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14566057)

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> A slide deck on compatibility and incompatibility of various Lego bricks.

<comment><USER18> Would that be "Stressing The Elements"[1], an unofficial guide of what connections are considered "illegal" because they are unstable or stress the parts?

[1] [http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress- bf06.pd...](http://bramlambrecht.com/tmp/jamieberard-brickstress-bf06.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> There was a really interesting post against Elon Musk's argument that AI will destroy us all.

The article made lots of counter arguments about why AI _won't_ destroy us all.

I can't find it even after lots of searching.

<comment><USER74> This one? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807818](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807818)

<comment><USER73> Nope not that one unfortunately, but thank you! :)

I vaguely recall it being a pretty long blog post that walked through various scenarios. The formatting/design of the site was pretty plain/old school.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I got this one of reddit a long time ago[1], but maybe someone here knows where to find it.

A blog post laying out why Japan prefers "gadgets" over PCs, due to their complex writing system requiring more RAM, causing all early PCs to be more expensive. The post was really well written with pictures and price comparisons between US and Japanese versions of (if memory serves me right) Amigas and Commodores and other systems.

[1] Maybe before the release of the iPhone, but definitely before the release in Japan

</comment><comment><USER76> Someone posted a youtube talk about Game Design that's applicable to general product design...

I remember it was really good, but couldn't find it anymore

<comment><USER32> Perhaps this?

Learn product design from game designers: [http://www.1bytebeta.com/learn- product-design-fromgame-desig...](http://www.1bytebeta.com/learn-product- design-fromgame-designers/)

But the links seems dead. On the other hand, a DDG search with that title brings up some seemly links:

3 Things Software Product Designers Need To Learn From Game Designers: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/09/10/3-things- softw...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/09/10/3-things-software- product-designers-need-to-learn-from-game-designers/)

What Game UX Can Teach Designers about Product Design: [https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/game-ux-product- design](https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/game-ux-product-design)

edit: Duh, Youtube! Sorry, maybe this?

Designing emotions - what game creation teaches about design? | Piotr Milewski | TEDxGdynia: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYypN4JawY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fYypN4JawY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER77> I don't know if it was HN or not but it could have been here.

Anyway, I read about this concept of a 6 day week (with a 2 day weekend) without losing any productivity.

The key was that the society is going to be split in 3 groups so that every group would have 2 different days off. The overlap for any 2 groups is only 2 days. I find this highly interesting and have since tried to find out more about it.

</comment><comment><USER78> I was just doing this yesterday. Trying to find an article describing simple devices that use no external power to send a basic on/off signal (TX–only) over wireless (802.11 I think?).

Anyways, it was said to be used for simple applications that send a wireless signal to a receiver when the laundry detergent gets too low. Sort of like Amazon's push button thingies.

<comment><USER79> The term you want to Google is "backscatter" I think. I reckon this might have been what you were looking for: [https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/12/05/in- first-3-d-prin...](https://www.washington.edu/news/2017/12/05/in- first-3-d-printed-objects-connect-to-wifi-without-electronics/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> An explanation about grounding in our electricity system came to be. It went through the evolution of just having positive and negative to various ways of adding grounding until we get to the grounding we have today. I seem to remember it being a Reddit comment or something similar.

</comment><comment><USER81> I found a link to a SaaS product that provided full-document search across a variety of cloud app platforms, chiefly Google and Atlassian. I spent nearly an afternoon searching for it a few months later to no avail...

</comment><comment><USER82> An article about someone telling his experience of slowly growing a business (targeted at school teacher if I remember correctly) year after year eventually led to a sizeable lifestyle business.

<comment><USER83> I think you are looking for user patio11 on here...

<comment><USER84> I think this article specifically [https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/03/20/running-a-software- busi...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/03/20/running-a-software-business- on-5-hours-a-week/)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There was a blog post on the significance of crocodiles in Russian culture. Mainly, that they are used as 'sensitive, educated outsider' characters. Not sure if it was on HN, though.

</comment><comment><USER85> A comment about how we are entering a dark age in science. I can't quite remember the whole argument, nor the subject of the post it was on, but it was fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER86> There was a thread about sole founders who have experienced success. Notably, there was a someone who developed a resume software and was able to sell his company to the German government (if my memory serves right).

Anyways, as the sole founder of a resume company, I found the story inspirational, yet I was never able to find the thread again.

related, my company - [https://rezi.io](https://rezi.io)

<comment><USER32> Maybe this? [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073667)

<comment><USER86> Thank you so much this is exactly what I was looking for

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> When a metric is targeted, it fails to be a good metric.

<comment><USER88> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law)

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> Some article 2-3 years ago about discovering a new "code" inside the DNA code, with a comparison like writing in the fore edge of a book.

<comment><USER90> You may be thinking about some work that was done regarding mutational effects on conformation and expression. (Molecular biologists have known about it for a long time, but this was an interesting information-theoretical approach from a group of physicists.)

[https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-confirm-a-second- lay...](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-confirm-a-second-layer-of- information-hiding-in-dna)

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> This is less one that I read, but more one that I wrote. Sometime ~mid 2012 I wrote an Ask HN looking to meet people and find co-working space in the bay area, 6 years later I find myself living here (due to folks I met via that thread). Unfortunately, it was on a separate account and I've never been able to find it

<comment><USER92> This should be helpful to finding it. It's a search hacker news sorted by date with a few key terms. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bay%20area%20ask%20hn%20meet&s...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=bay%20area%20ask%20hn%20meet&sort=byDate&prefix&page=3&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER93> A month ago or so, a guy made an article about the fact that machine learning was not necessary everytime and go be replaced by some good old SQL queries. Spoke about it with a client of mine, but could not find the link to send him. Thanks in advance if you find it !

<comment><USER94> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16898827)

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> Related. I sometimes find a good recipe on Google, but next time I want to do it, it's nowhere to be seen. I often find lost HN posts via Google search though. And I always upvote or favorite post's that I might go back to later.

<comment><USER5> Have you tried searching your browser history?

<comment><USER95> Yes. Browser history in Firefox sucks. It's like they don't want you do use either bookmarks nor history. There is not even a search functionality more then on site title.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I have lost count of how many stories I'd read here and then wanted to reference it later but could not find it.

I'd started to think maybe I was going crazy, maybe the search feature sucks, maybe the links were removed for one reason or another.

</comment><comment><USER97> About 4 years ago, I saw a post about a startup, I think, that was going to revolutionise hiring top talent - or something similar. I think there was a Nigerian among the founders. I haven't been able to find the same again.

<comment><USER98> Was that the one with the Nigerian prince?

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> Someone created a site that compared flash memory storage prices (USB stick, SD card, SSD) and they posted the link in some comment, but I can't find the HN comment and a Google search doesn't find it either.

<comment><USER100> Was it this? [https://diskprices.com](https://diskprices.com)

<comment><USER99> Yes, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Something about an algorithm designing circuits that shouldn't have worked, but did. I might be mixing another story, but I think it was using electrical interference from an outside source to accomplish its task.

<comment><USER102> This was Adrian Thompson using genetic algorithms to design FPGAs: [https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of- circuits/](https://www.damninteresting.com/on-the-origin-of-circuits/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> There was an article with a slideshow embedded about how to make good presentations. It consisted of choosing fonts and stuffs. It was really interesting. I thought I had bookmarked it but I lost it somehow.

</comment><comment><USER104> There was an article about russian bots on aws clicking google ad words of sites also hosted by russians on aws.

they were basically hosted a fake net to generate google ad word money.

can't find the link anywhere anymore

</comment><comment><USER105> Quite sure I read a paper about graph/code sharing in functional languages and why it's harder than expected. The one paper I didn't save and catalogue... is the one I want to refer to

</comment><comment><USER106> Someone sent a link to a simple programming online game. Player had to provide isntruction for an character walking araound a square level, gathering stars. Never could find it again after a month...

<comment><USER107> Doesn't sound like this is what you're looking for, but LightBot ([http://lightbot.com/](http://lightbot.com/)) is a wonderful game with similar sounding game play.

<comment><USER106> Thanks :)

When I was looking for the forgotten game, I crawled through the internet and found almost any other available title (LightBot also). I'm teaching computer science and try to collect as many tools (e.g. games) to people with no programming experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> A synopsis of a short story where the protagonist writes -1 every day.

Can't find the story, nor the comment. My memory of this is also very fuzzy at this point so it might be a completely different idea.

</comment><comment><USER109> The post on why medium.com could have been profitable as a lifestyle business but since it took VC money, it should resort to spamming users with recommendations etc

</comment><comment><USER110> Bookmarked a post about Document OCR that recreates the whole tables with text. Lost to wanacry, cannot find it since. Backup is important, learned the hard way.

<comment><USER32> My guess:

Probabilistic Scraping of Plain Text Tables (edinburghhacklab.com) 92 points by tlarkworthy on Sept 5, 2013 | 12 comments

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6334178#6337769](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6334178#6337769)

[http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/09/probabalistic- scraping-o...](http://edinburghhacklab.com/2013/09/probabalistic-scraping-of- plain-text-tables/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> I think it was on HN. It was a quote to the effect that the world changes by just a handful of great people, not by the small contributions of billions.

<comment><USER112> An avalanche can be started by a single snowflake, but that doesn't mean a single snowflake is an avalanche.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Several, but the one that comes to mind at this moment is from a comment a couple years ago regarding their streaming setup to find movies, shows, etc.

<comment><USER32> Lol, could you be more unspecific? I'm trying to help!

</comment></comment><comment><USER113> A blog post about a guy trying out various ways of organizing his projects/filesystem. In the end the guy settles on chronological hierarchy.

<comment><USER114> This sounds very interesting! Anyone got it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> A blog post about specific advertisement targeting on facebook. Something along the lines of specifically making ads for some identified users.

<comment><USER116> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17110385](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17110385) ?

<comment><USER49> Should be this or the top comment

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> Someone recommending a podcast on the occult and other related topics by a guy associated with the Village Voice. Within the last month!

</comment><comment><USER118> An article about an MIT student and his friend who eventually committed suicide, talking about the n+1.

</comment><comment><USER119> I was looking for that startup that looks into research for your rare illness. Did they stop existing?

<comment><USER120> Apparently [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMed](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MetaMed)

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> This thread. I tried to find it a month later, but couldn't remember anything to search for.

Regards, future pcf

</comment><comment><USER122> An interactive fiction posted a few years ago with gothic black text against a white background

</comment><comment><USER123> I've actually been able to find everything with a little bit of work at most. The search engine is actually reasonably good. I also favorite everything even remotely interesting.

<comment> 52-6F-62 Haha I do the _exact_ same thing. My "favourites" list is a long one.

I started doing it because inside half an hour a post can disappear from the front pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER124> I read an article on SlateStarCodex that talked about how a local decision could not take into account the obvious global decision, i.e. it expanded on Game Theory by detailing how the omniscient decision isn't possible from a first-person perspective.

P.S. If anyone can help me find it, I'd appreciate it. I last spent an hour trying to find it :P

</comment><comment><USER5> Meta: I use [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) to search HN. It has a nice interface that shows full comments rather than snippets.

<comment><USER49> Hm I actually have a custom search in chrome that uses Google for hn. It's essentially %s%20site:news.ycombinator.com

I love algolia for record searching (lists of items) but find Googles indexing superior for general queries.</comment></comment>


Slides from Felix von Leitner's talk on C and compiler optimizations - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux-kongress.org/2009/slides/compiler_survey_felix_von_leitner.pdf

<comment><USER2> Hm, regarding the tail-optimization slides, the example used doesn't look like a tail-recursive call. I just tried compiling the function he provided using gcc's -O1, 2 and 3, and neither produced a tail optimized call. I rewrote it to match what my idea of a tail-recursive call is, and sure enough, under -O2 and -O3, gcc tail-optimized it. It didn't however with no optimization settings or -O1. I rewrote it as follows:

      long
      fact(long x, long acc)
      {
         if (x <= 0) return acc;
         return fact(x-1, acc*x);
      }

(edit: the whole slide deck is summarized well on the last slide: "If you do an optimization, test it on real world data. If it's not drastically faster but makes the code less readable: undo it.")

<comment><USER3> I think it depends on the version of gcc; I tried compiling his function with 3.4.5 and it didn't look tail-call-optimized, but with -Os on 4.2.3 it did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It appears that he's been updating this presentation over the years:

<http://www.fefe.de/know-your-compiler.pdf> <http://dl.fefe.de/optimizer- isec.pdf>

Regardless, it's a good read!

</comment><comment><USER5> Are video/audio recordings available too?

<comment><AUTHOR> ... not that I've been able to tell. At least, they aren't posted yet.</comment></comment>


The Russian vaccine for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30402-1/fulltext <comment><USER3> One interesting coronavirus metric I've been tracking is mobility indexes. I know it sounds tin-foil-hat-y but I don't trust western media coverage on Russia or China and so to gauge the situation in those countries I've tried looking at data rather than opinion.

The Citymapper app has a "CityMapper Mobility Index" which shows what percentage of a given city is moving compared to a pre-March peg. It's been interesting to see Moscow and St.Petersburg back to almost 100% capacity.

<comment><USER4> Do you mean this one? [https://citymapper.com/cmi](https://citymapper.com/cmi)

Because it shows Moscow and St P at 79 and 88%. Around the same as Brussels but lower than Paris and Lyon.

<comment><USER5> I think it must be. It's kind of interesting the data. You can see London shutting down around when I left and now can see Paris and Lyon as the most back to normal which maybe explains why there are a lot of new cases there now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, I could totally believe that this is mostly a political gesture, and Russia is doing this mostly for propaganda purposes. But, honestly, even given that, I found the tone of the article to be biased and speculative, in an anti-Russia way. FUD should not be the main component of an article in a medical journal. Give us some facts about the situation, or if you don't have any facts to give, write a shorter article.

<comment><USER7> The second paragraph contains a link to the phase 1/2 results that the vaccine creators published in the same journal. Because of unexpected patterns in the data in those results, there are doubts about their veracity, which is consistent with the idea that the institute is cutting corners in the trial. If it turns out that they did make up the results and the vaccine is more dangerous and/or less effective than expected, the journal will be known as complicit in the backlash that ensues not just against this vaccine, but against all others as well. So the journal wanted to temper their implicit endorsement made by publishing the original article, and this is the result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The choice of name is interesting. Is this a throwback to the space race as in, "we got there first"?

<comment><USER9> Sputnik means travel companion. In the context of COVID-19, its probably a bit more surreal than it ought to be, name-wise ..

<comment><USER10> It's a two-component vaccine using two different adenovirus vectors. Hence "traveling companion" and "v(irus/ector)". Plus, of course, the name is a reminder of Soviet space achievements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> From the article:

       "...the middle of a Pandemic is not the time to be cutting corners"

I wonder when is the time

<comment><USER12> In reality an emergency is of course exactly the time to take more risks.

<comment><USER13> There are some risks wroth taking and some that are not. The problem with risks in an emergency is they can make things worse. Emergency officers are often killed when they choose to risk going faster than the speed limit - <USER2> though they have sirens on to warn everyone they are taking extra risk for an emergency.

<comment><USER12> Part of the _definition_ of risk is that it can make things worse!

My point is that in emergencies, stakes are higher, so the potential benefit from taking a risk is higher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There were questions [0] to phase 1/2 results published data, which AFAIK has not been answered yet.

0\. [https://cattiviscienziati.com/2020/09/07/note-of- concern/](https://cattiviscienziati.com/2020/09/07/note-of-concern/)

</comment><comment><USER15> > On the other hand, it is entirely possible that Russia will hold off > vaccinating its general population until it has received favourable results > from the phase 3 trial. In which case, the announcement of the approval of > Sputnik V might amount to a political gesture, rather than a serious attempt > to circumvent the standard process of vaccine development.

Yes, it really was mostly a political gesture. General inoculation isn't planned for until Jan 1st, 2021.

<comment><USER16> Jan 1st is still way earlier than any other country could feasibly do it.

<comment><USER17> Expect that to be pushed back if there are any hitches in what is, in reality a phase 3 trial. Which there probably will be; there generally are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are two vaccines on the final stages of development in Russia. One from Gamaleya center (Moscow), another from «VECTOR» facility (Novosibirsk). From my (layman's) point of view, Gamalaeya's vaccine is somewhat hurried in development. Also, Gamaleya is known for its lobbying power. In the past, it approved and popularized a number of controversial drugs like Kagocel and a few of «-feron» drugs. VECTOR's vaccine, on other hand, looks more trustworthy.

<comment><USER19> Vector is an established facility with a long history.

I'd wait until Vector's stuff is ready if I were living in Russia.

<comment><USER20> Yes, as someone who lives in ex-USSR, I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > Post-registration clinical trials involving more than 40,000 people in > Russia will be launched in a week starting from August, 24. ... The vaccine > has received a registration certificate from the Russian Ministry of Health > on August 11 and under emergency rules adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic > can be used to vaccinate the population in Russia. Mass production of the > vaccine is expected to start in September 2020.

It feels like it's "under emergency" marketing and it is still ongoing phase 3 trials. I hope they have enough sense to not mass vaccinate everyone in a month or two.

<comment><USER22> No one has production capacity to vaccinate everyone in a month or two. So yes of course, they said only healthcare workers and teachers are going to get it this month, and not all of them. Will it be actually voluntary, as promised, or some new absurd process? You never can tell with Russian government.

<comment><USER23> Yeah, it could easily be mandatory. You must get the vaccination to work in health care. You must get the vaccination to be a teacher. You get the gist. We have this here with hepatitis B vaccine. Why not with this vaccine? They definitely could do this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I would take it if it was available to me. The risk of a side effect seems much lower than the risk of catching or spreading the disease to others.

<comment><USER25> You have absolutely no basis on which to make that statement. There is no data about the vaccine (and about the virus) to reasonably assert that the risk of the vaccine is lower than the (low) risk of infection if you take mitigation measures such as wearing masks and limiting interaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> There is a Polish joke video about Russian vaccine [https://youtu.be/vN2eQ_CKZT8](https://youtu.be/vN2eQ_CKZT8)

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems like you can gain some hunting skills after using this vaccine: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2eQ_CKZT8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vN2eQ_CKZT8)

</comment><comment><USER28> You can get 'vaccines' on the dark markets (ie Agartha). Hard to say if they are real. They say they are from animal and human trails. $500

No Russian vaccine yet I can see.

But if it is being produced in India, which this is, along with permission for the Indians to produce it for internal use, then I'd guess it'll be available on the clearnet.

Do you let your 80 year+ male family and friends risk death from Covid or buy it online... Plus of course to do it for fun.

<comment><USER29> Do you mean this agartha, reviews seem to indicate it is a scam? [https://www.darknetstats.com/agartha- market/](https://www.darknetstats.com/agartha-market/)

<comment><USER28> Good point. You definitely seem correct.

Most of the big ones were being DOSed when I was checking.

I found this which suggested Agartha, but they do actually mention it's not 'approved' by Darknetlive.

[https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3581387](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3581387)

I wouldn't expect the Russian vaccine yet, and I'd google around before buying it. I'm already on a trial vaccine so I'm not supposed to get any other vaccines. But I might buy a non-animal vaccine for family when it comes out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I was just in a call with somebody who is working in the medical industry on COVID vaccine and he explained to me that GDPR puts many of their efforts in jeopardy because if any patient issues a deletion request they have to delete the data which is very ward for them. It is interesting to see how legislation can slow down progress.

<comment><USER31> What do you mean by puts in jeopardy? So they realistically expect that a large portion of the tested people will request to delete their data? Is there any basis for that? As I understand it's a very uncommon occurrence even in companies people really should be requesting it from.

<comment><USER30> It is enough that one requests it if the data system is not prepared for that.

<comment><USER32> Did this anecdotal conversation actually happen? I'm highly skeptical for several reasons. The first being that GDPR's "right to be forgotten"[1] absolutely, unequivocally, without a shadow of doubt would not apply to a patient in a medical trial. Even if the patient withdrew consent for data processing _and_ objected to the continued processing of their data under GDPR they _still_ would not have the right to have the data deleted for several reasons:

1\. The data isn't being processed on the data subject's consent alone. It's also being processed because it's necessary to perform a public task which is a legal basis for processing data under GDPR. It's also probably being processed under the "legitimate interests" of a third party (the pharmaceutical company) whose interests in the data, in this case, override the individual's interests in having the data deleted which is another legal basis for processing. So the medical trial has _two_ (of only six) lawful bases for data processing should the patient withdraw consent. Only one lawful basis is necessary.

2\. Article 17(3) _specifically exempts_ compliance with the right to be forgotten when data processing is necessary "for reasons of public interest in the area of public health" (paragraph c) _OR_ for record-keeping purposes "in the public interest, scientific or historical research purposes or statistical purposes" (paragraph d).

3\. Article 17(1)c and Article 21(1) would allow continued processing of the data due to "compelling legitimate grounds for the processing which override the interests".

4\. Article 21(6) would allow continued processing of the data for reasons of public interest.

Surely someone in the EU conducting medical research would be well aware that GDPR is not at all a barrier to medical trial data processing.

[1][https://gdpr.eu/article-17-right-to-be- forgotten/](https://gdpr.eu/article-17-right-to-be-forgotten/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good for Russia: taking steps towards allowing free & consenting adults the ability to use an experimental vaccine at their own risk, should they consent to do so, and with the potential to generate _massive_ positive externalities for the rest of the world in the process.

How cringe is it that Russia (of all places) has beat the U.S. in allowing their population the right to access new technology?

Literally hundreds of thousands of people have died during this pandemic, and our regulatory agencies have -- in the name of "protecting us" \-- literally blocked off people from being able to experiment (on their own property) with ways to prevent the spread of more mass death. Unbelievable.

Not to mention the tail risk of bottlenecking a life-saving vaccine until a government agency deems it "safe", and then suddenly releasing it all at once to massive portions of the population. If instead you let early risk-takers experiment on their own watch, you get orders of magnitude more data to work with gradually as opposed to suddenly unleashing a single vaccine (deemed "safe" by the FDA) to tends of millions of people at once.

<comment><USER34> Eh, if this turns out to be the next Theranos, then we'll be glad that the government stopped our innocent civilians from being duped by this trickery. It's kind of a double-edged sword.

<comment><USER35> What happens if I no longer trust our government to protect me from predatory business practices? I ask that, because I no longer trust the CDC after their series of recent scandals.

Ironically, it's largely due to successful Russian efforts that I no longer know who to trust for advice on vaccines.

From what we're hearing so far [1], it seems that POTUS will promise a vaccine is on its way just before the election, but then never deliver it. What I'm worried about, though, is that a vaccine will simply show up and start being rolled out by a compromised CDC, or FEMA, or Army, or whoever the administration can force to do it.

[1] [https://www.axios.com/trump-cdc-redfield- vaccine-d266121c-88...](https://www.axios.com/trump-cdc-redfield- vaccine-d266121c-88f0-4b82-bd97-4a4125089f93.html)

<comment><USER36> > I no longer trust the CDC after their series of recent scandals

Care to link? Feel I must have missed some news, as I'm not aware of any scandals around the CDC?

<comment><USER35> Sure, most of it comes down to the administration putting unqualified people with poor financial incentives in positions of high power.

There was this particularly transparent example by the _Director_ of the CDC a couple of years ago, about buying tobacco stocks when put in charge of programs for reducing tobacco usage: [https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/30/cdc-director- tobac...](https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/30/cdc-director-tobacco- stocks-after-appointment-316245)

Also this story about how FDA appeared to bend to political pressure to greenlight an experimental treatment due to political pressure, bypassing the normal guidelines for demonstrating efficacy: [https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-did-fda- autho...](https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/why-did-fda-authorize- convalescent-plasma-potential-treatment-covid-19-n1237848)

There's also been a general failure to respond appropriately to the pandemic. We're so many months in and PPE is still an issue: [https://www.msn.com/en- us/news/world/8-months-into-pandemic-...](https://www.msn.com/en- us/news/world/8-months-into-pandemic-largest-n95-producer-ceo-says-ppe-demand- still-greater-than-entire-industry-capacity/ar-BB1975yY)

And that's not even counting what the White House is doing, which is not good. Especially with the recently leaked audio tapes from Woodward from the same time POTUS was publicly downplaying it: [https://youtu.be/-cfd_pJVYiM?t=179](https://youtu.be/-cfd_pJVYiM?t=179)

Plus the hydroxychloroquine thing...

There's a lot of buzz lately about how the administration is trying to influence the CDC, but most of it is journalism/politics blue twitter insider type chatter:

* [https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trum...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trump-aides-demand-that-cdc-publication-be-more-optimistic/)

* [https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/trump-e2-80-99s-att...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/trump-e2-80-99s-attempts-to-corrupt-the-cdc-explained/ar-BB192e7i)

* [https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trum...](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2020/09/politico-trump-aides-demand-that-cdc-publication-be-more-optimistic/)

* [https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-appointees-sou...](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-appointees-sought-to-alter-cdc-scientific-reports-so-they-dont-contradict-or-undermine-the-president/ar-BB18X6nO)

But there is a lot of it, and that's pretty unusual for an organization like the CDC. Maybe it's all disinformation, but keep in mind it's the President's job to appoint the Director of the CDC: [https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/trumps-cdc- dire...](https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/03/trumps-cdc-director-has- a-history-of-controversial-opinions-on-controlling-viruses/)

I'm not saying every smear against the man is true. But after the last director had to resign over the tobacco thing, and the current director is now clearly affiliated with the President, so I'm skeptical if he has the public interest at heart.

I've never had less faith in American institutions, and I think it's for good reason. There's a lot of corruption at the top, and it's clearly infiltrating the institutions.

If they say a vaccine is safe to get, I don't think I can trust it. I'm going to need to dive deeper into opinions of professionals when it becomes available before I get it.

<comment><USER36> Hum, okay I see what you mean. I think maybe it's premiditated to conclude that it's untrusworthy yet, but I wouldn't blame anyone from being a bit skeptical and double checking with say the Canadian and European health institutions to see if the advice is similar, and if not that might need to trigger some investigation into why they'd differ so much? And I don't know, throw in China and South Korea and Russia in there as well, in theory, all country should advise pretty similar things, medical science is mostly universal so any major discrepancy would be disconcerting a bit I admit.

That said, I also don't want to fall into some fallacy of nirvana, I don't believe any governement ever existed in a perfect state with zero bias and total absence of corruption, sometime all we have is good enough to go by.

And I also wouldn't want to fall in the fallacy of inflation of conflict, where because there are scientific disagreement in the medical community, especially given a very new very unknown problem such as Covid, that no conclusion can be reached or that the legitimacy of that field of knowledge is questionable.

<comment><USER35> I agree with you entirely, and I think that will be my plan. It could be a problem though if US society is back to "normal" with a "vaccine" that ends up rushed through some how, and I'm one of a few crazy holdouts that don't trust it.

Would any of our Russian comrades reading along care to weigh in on how they're feeling about getting the vaccine on release day?

<comment> orbital-decay eugene3306 summarized it best: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24512974). As someone fairly familiar with Gamaleya I agree completely, they are known to be responsible for some "bullshit-micyn" drugs as we call it here, so I'd hesitate to be an early adopter for their vaccine. (also you'd get funny looks if you called someone comrade in Russia, just saying)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Dyson Saw Feynman - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/59/connections/another-side-of-feynman <comment><USER2> > On the Sunday Feynman was up at his usual hour (nine a.m.), and we went down > to the physics building, where he gave me another two-hour lecture of > miscellaneous discoveries of his. One of these was a deduction of Maxwell's > equations of the electromagnetic field from the basic principles of quantum > theory, a thing which baffles everybody including Feynman, because it ought > not to be possible.

Physics stackexchange discussion of this [1].

That includes a link to a 2001 paper, "Feynman's derivation of Maxwell equations and extra dimensions" [2].

Here's a paper Dyson wrote about it in 1989 [3].

That was discussed here on HN [4].

[1] [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/391744/does- feyn...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/391744/does-feynmans- derivation-of-maxwells-equations-have-a-physical-interpretation)

[2] [https://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0106235](https://arxiv.org/abs/hep- ph/0106235)

[3] [http://fermatslibrary.com/s/feynmans-proof-of-the-maxwell- eq...](http://fermatslibrary.com/s/feynmans-proof-of-the-maxwell-equations)

[4] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11067435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11067435)

<comment><USER3> What I'd really like to hear about is Feynman's thought process for arriving at this...

<comment><USER4> Murray Gell-Mann described it completely: first, he wrote down the question, then he thought very hard, then he wrote down the answer. Feynman was acutely aware of the very different ways in which people internally model things - something that was, no doubt, heavily reinforced by the initial reception of Feynman diagrams at the Shelter Island Conference - so he didn't place any special importance on his own internal "sketching" models when describing things to others. (If anything, he probably viewed them about the same way he viewed Maxwell's mechanical model of electromagnetism - a useful thinking tool for someone who happened to think best in a particular mode, but ultimately nonsensical.) If he couldn't think of at least a couple of alternative ways of coming to the same answer, he usually left it as a sort of exercise for the student.

<comment><USER5> "first, he wrote down the question, then he thought very hard, then he wrote down the answer."

this is like:

Step 1: Start

Step 2: ???

Step 3: PROFIT!

" he didn't place any special importance on his own internal "sketching" models when describing things to others."

So the answer was more like: Feynman's priority was to show the most concise derivation, not to show the path he stumbled around to arrive at a result.

Indeed I believe most people once they have a rough path to a result, immediately try to simplify it to the crux of the argument before presentation, all the unnecessary assumptions are trimmed off, just like a mathematician tries to find a proof that relies on the least axioms.

Sometimes I see people explain how they came up with their result, but I suspect even these detours are often substantially cleaned up before presentation. Others simply no longer remember the original thought process, due to time passing, or because while working out the longwinded original path the simpler shortcut simply hits them. That instant high of a realization also tends to pollute your memory of stumbling towards it.

Another problem is that big problems were often in the back of a persons mind for a long time, and before a solution materializes, small insights or even vague associations -that may be seperated by years- ultimately combine, so a sudden insight is often just the last piece, with some of the supporting lemmas never disclosed before (as of seemingly no value when the smaller supporting insights were conceived)

Perhaps there is a text somewhere, where Feynman explains how he originally arrived at it, but if so I haven't seen it. I too would like to see it if it is known or ever turns up...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In the evening I mentioned that there were just two problems for which the > finiteness of the theory remained to be established; both problems are well- > known and feared by physicists, since many long and difficult papers running > to fifty pages and more have been written about them, trying unsuccessfully > to make the older theories give sensible answers to them. When I mentioned > this fact, Feynman said, "We'll see about this," and proceeded to sit down > and in two hours, before our eyes, obtain finite and sensible answers to > both problems. It was the most amazing piece of lightning calculation I have > ever witnessed, and the results prove, apart from some unforeseen > complication, the consistency of the whole theory. The two problems were the > scattering of light by an electric field, and the scattering of light by > light.

<comment><USER5> I'm familiar with the scattering of light by light, but I am not familiar with the scattering of light by a electric field, where can I learn more?

<comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compton_scattering) and the famous low energy limit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson_scattering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomson_scattering)

<comment><USER5> I'm familiar with Compton scattering (I did the experiment), but that is scattering from a charge(d particle). I would have expected Dyson to write "light scattering from an electric charge" or perhaps "from an electron" if he meant Compton scattering.

I still read Dyson's sentence as light scattering from an electrostatic field (not clear if it would scatter from a homogenous field, or only gradients in electric field).

Could others please chime in, and confirm SiempreViernes response, or enlighten us both?

EDIT:

Could this refer to pair production?

The electric field of the highly positive nucleus affecting the virtual electron positron pair before it collapses and re-emits the scattered photon?

<comment><USER7> I don't think pair production makes more sense, it's probably Compton scattering because all QFT interactions using Feynman diagrams are expressed as particle interactions.

<comment><USER5> why would such interactions not be expressible to express as a particle interaction?

first draw a Feynman diagram of an incoming photon the splits into electron and positron which recombine into an outgoing photon (an electron loop in the middle of the diagram)

then on the bottom add an incoming proton which interact with a photon to either the electron or the positron of the electron loop...

<comment><USER7> I'm not saying pair production can't be expressed as a particle interaction; I'm saying all interactions with fields in QFT are expressed as particle interactions, so photon electron scattering is a perfectly valid interpretation of

"light scattering from an electric charge"

thinking of it more, I have a hard time seeing the conversion of a photon into two "electrons" fairly being termed "scattering".

<comment><USER5> "

so photon electron scattering is a perfectly valid interpretation of

"light scattering from an electric charge"

"

But look up, you misquote Dyson: Dyson didn't write "light scattering from an electric charge" but wrote "light scattering by an electric _field_ " .

You also misread me:

1) a photon can not be converted into two "electrons" and I did not write this (but in the past positrons were called positive electrons).

2) the electron positron pair (from a single photon, _internal to the feynman diagram_ ) is only intermediate but as charges are influenced by a strong electric field (say a nucleus), before annihilating back into a single photon.

3) the incoming particles are a photon and a nucleus, and the outcoming particles are again a photon and a nucleus, this is obviously scattering

This is different from Compton scattering (scattering of light from a practically free electron) or its low energy limit Thomson scattering, but in the case of scattering from atoms still high enough energy to eject an electron.

This is different from Coherent Compton scattering, which is scattering of light from an atom, or rather from an electron that remains bound to the atom, such that instead of the compton wavelength of the electron, the compton wavelength of the atom is used: "Compton found that some X-rays experienced no wavelength shift despite being scattered through large angles; in each of these cases the photon failed to eject an electron.[5] Thus the magnitude of the shift is related not to the Compton wavelength of the electron, but to the Compton wavelength of the entire atom, which can be upwards of 10000 times smaller. This is known as "coherent" scattering off the entire atom since the atom remains intact, gaining no internal excitation." (From Wikipedia page on Compton scattering)

I still interpret Dyson's "light scattering from an electric field" as probably referring to the Meitner-Hupfeld effect:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitner%E2%80%93Hupfeld_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitner%E2%80%93Hupfeld_effect)

Here's the Feynman diagram I have in my head:

[https://www.overleaf.com/read/dszzcbcqdqtk](https://www.overleaf.com/read/dszzcbcqdqtk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > On the third day of the journey a remarkable thing happened; going into a > sort of semistupor as one does after forty-eight hours of bus riding, I > began to think very hard about physics, and particularly about the rival > radiation theories of Schwinger and Feynman. Gradually my thoughts grew more > coherent, and before I knew where I was, I had solved the problem that had > been in the back of my mind all this year, which was to prove the > equivalence of the two theories. Moreover, since each of the two theories is > superior in certain features, the proof of equivalence furnished a new form > of the Schwinger theory which combines the advantages of both. This piece of > work is neither difficult nor particularly clever, but it is undeniably > important if nobody else has done it in the meantime. I became quite excited > over it when I reached Chicago and sent off a letter to Bethe announcing the > triumph. I have not had time yet to write it down properly, but I am > intending as soon as possible to write a formal paper and get it published. > This is a tremendous piece of luck for me, coming at the time it does. I > shall now encounter Oppenheimer with something to say which will interest > him, and so I shall hope to gain at once some share of his attention. It is > strange the way ideas come when they are needed. I remember it was the same > with the idea for my Trinity Fellowship thesis.

> My tremendous luck was to be the only person who had spent six months > listening to Feynman expounding his new ideas at Cornell and then spent six > weeks listening to Schwinger expounding his new ideas in Ann Arbor. They > were both explaining the same experiments, which measure radiation > interacting with atoms and electrons. But the two ways of explaining the > experiments looked totally different, Feynman drawing little pictures and > Schwinger writing down complicated equations. The flash of illumination on > the Greyhound bus gave me the connection between the two explanations, > allowing me to translate one into the other.

Dyson is obviously brilliant, and I'm sure he's being humble to a fault here, but it's amazing how valuable being in the right place at the right time is. This piece of work brought Dyson to fame:

> Oppenheimer rewarded Dyson with a lifetime appointment at the Institute for > Advanced Study, "for proving me wrong", in Oppenheimer's words.[0]

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

<comment><USER7> Yeah, Dyson is like 85 % of the reason we have Feynman diagrams and not some other way of calculating QFT processes.

See this for more: [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo353...](http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo3534300.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am always amazed by the sheer brainpower at the Manhattan Project. Has that level of talent ever been assembled before or since?

<comment> racer-v Try the 1927 Solvay Conference on Electrons and Photons:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/87a8ea/1927_group_pho...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/87a8ea/1927_group_photograph_from_the_solvay_conference/)

Schrödinger, Pauli, Heisenberg, Dirac, de Broglie, Bohr, Planck, Curie, Lorentz, Einstein... the number of Nobel Prizes here is left as an exercise.

<comment><USER3> Those are a lot of the same people from the Manhattan project though, no?

Has something on that scale happened since, with an unrelated set of people?

<comment> racer-v Actually this conference was largely from a previous generation of scientific thinkers. According to their Wikipedia bios, Niels Bohr was the only one of those 10 names involved in the Manhattan Project. Einstein wrote a letter alerting President Roosevelt to the possibility of a German atomic bomb which may have helped inspire the project. Heisenberg was also involved in the war effort but "knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans".

<comment><USER10> Wow.

You quote -- without attribution -- wikipedia, and you get the antecedent wrong.

I'll italicize the exact words you quote after their preceding sentence in the Werner Heisenberg article on wikipedia:

"Godusmit was selected for this task because he had physics knowledge, he spoke German, and he personally knew a number of the german scientists working on the German nuclear energy project. He also _knew little of the Manhattan Project, so, if he were captured, he would have little intelligence value to the Germans_."

Note that the "he" in the second sentence is _Godusmit_ , not Heisenberg.

Heisenberg was, according to Meitner, straightforwardly a supporter of the Nazi regime. Whether or not he was ideologically committed to the party, Heisenberg _was_ most definitely involved in the war effort -- on the German side! [ [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/us/letter-may-solve- nazi-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/07/us/letter-may-solve-nazi-a-bomb- mystery.html) \-- first sentence, "The leader of the Nazi atomic bomb program, Werner Heisenberg, revealed its existence ..." a paragraph later: "Heisenberg never expressed moral qualms about building a bomb for Hitler or hinted that he might be willing to sabotage the project, the documents reveal" with a follow-up here [https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/world/new-twist-on- physic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/07/world/new-twist-on-physicist-s- role-in-nazi-bomb.html) ].

Further (and much more detailed) discussion from 2016 at APS Physics: [https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201607/heisenberg....](https://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/201607/heisenberg.cfm)

<comment> racer-v Thanks for this correction! I had hurriedly checked Wikipedia bios for each participant and completely missed the main point of Heisenberg's wartime activities.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#1945:_Alsos_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_Heisenberg#1945:_Alsos_Mission_and_Operation_Epsilon)

It makes the story even more interesting to see Bohr and Heisenberg participating on opposite sides.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What a marvelous series of letter. I would sure love to have dinner with these people!

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't know what it is about this website but it constantly makes its Chrome tab freeze up and so scrolling is as painful as walking on LEGOs.

<comment><USER13> Same. I don't know if they're trying to mine bitcoin on my browser or what, but it inspired me to block JS entirely for all of nautil.us.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is fantastic.</comment>


TED Talks Pranav Mistry: The thrilling potential of SixthSense technology - <AUTHOR> http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

<comment><USER2> I was simply amazed... This is a must watch.</comment>


Pivoting back to industry from grad school - <AUTHOR> I had hoped that graduate school would introduce me to interesting engineering and analysis problems, and help me hone my C++ skills, but my experience has been more focused on wrangling undergraduates, grant writing, and doing very unintellectual work with basic simulation software. In short, I would like to return to being a C++ developer, but my skills have gotten a bit rusty over the past year away from industry. Does anyone have any recommendations? Should I apply to internships that have the possibility of fulltime work? Shirk my current responsibilities and work through Scott Meyers and hack on some projects? I'm sorry if this seems like a dumb thing to ask. I made the mistake of going to graduate school against the advice of just about everyone, and I learned that I shouldn't be so intellectually stubborn. I can send my resume and code samples to anyone interested if that will help with advice. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Dude, just apply for full-time jobs. The market is super hot. Tell them you thought you'd learn from grad school, but you didn't learn as much as you hoped, so you decided to go back to industry.</comment>


Incentivized Guardianship - <AUTHOR> https://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/07/incentivized-guardians.html <comment><USER2> Auctioning guardianship responsibilities seems like it will attract people or organizations who are primarily financially driven and looking to do the bare minimum, or who have to bid so low to compete that they don't have margin to do more than bare minimum. I would compare it to for-profit prisons in terms of incentives.

Just as with the foster care system, it seems like kinship is best, and next best is people who aren't doing it primarily for the money. Next best after that is arguably mission-driven nonprofits. Bottom of the barrel should be financially driven guardians.

<comment><USER3> Tbf, it's not as bad as the author's linked proposal for 'health vouchers', in which profit driven _de facto_ health insurers have absolute discretion on whether to pay for treatment based on whether it'll be exceeded by the bonuses the government pays them for that patient continuing to be alive...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Read "How the elderly lose their rights" in the New Yorker.

Guardianship in the US is a travesty.

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the- elderl...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose- their-rights)

</comment><comment><USER5> > In the United States, a million and a half adults are under the care of > guardians, either family members or professionals, who control some 273 > billion dollars in assets.

Wow, had no idea of the magnitude of this aspect of American life. (I live in San Francisco since 2012).

<comment><USER6> There was an article or a documentary (cant find it now for some reason) about a corrupt "professional" guardian and a judge. She would find older people or couples with some assets and no or remote relatives, come up with some bullshit story and take over guardianship in court with the help of the judge.

She'd then charge $7 / min if ward calls her for anything, would do unnecessary repairs, move them from their house into a tiny studio, and then to nursing home shortly after, etc. Basically everything she can to drain the assets as soon as possible.

What was really striking, that in some cases there were relatives who'd find out about what is going on - and even one couple's daughter could not take guardianship back from that professional guardian in court.

I don't know how widespread such abuse really is, but with the sheer amount of power that guardian has and the fact that wards are usually old, sick or disabled people, i can imagine the abuse is rampant.

<comment><USER7> Possibly this?

[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the- elderl...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/how-the-elderly-lose- their-rights)</comment></comment></comment>


The "Shield" Bill, A Clear Danger to Free Speech - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/opinion/04stone.html

<comment><USER2> This is quite dangerous -- imagine an agent giving someone a document with security markings removed. That person then publishes the document and can now be prosecuted...

<comment><USER3> This is just a prediction, but notice how Congress will suddenly be able to work together when it comes to passing this bill. I hope the cynic in me is proven wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If Bob buys a beer and hands it to Larry who then gives it to underage Tommy, we still say you can't do that. But if I leak confidential documents to one person who then goes on to publish them, it's not wrong to publish them?

It's still wrong, and should be against the law, no matter how many times removed the action is. Just because people don't like or trust the government does not make it okay to go around publishing documents in the name of free speech.

<comment><USER5> So we should round up most of the reporters in the US, and everyone that's talked about the leaked wires, and prosecute them? Doesn't matter how many times removed they are, right?

The crime is the breaching of an agreement between a cleared government worker and the government. Someone without an agreement with the government is under no obligation to keep anything secret.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why this is so difficult to understand. How is it that breaking the law by the first person makes it okay for the next person? Even if there is no law about the second persons actions, it's still wrong. Do you simply not see it as being wrong? The whole idea is to keep the documents private so why would it matter if the 1st or 3rd person published them? It's still wrong, each and every time down the line.

<comment><USER6> The whole idea is to make the people who should be keeping the documents private legally responsible, with severe consequences, for taking a specific set of precautions to keep the documents private.

I dislike reasoning by analogy, but if you must have one, it's more like a 16 year old buying beer and then giving it to a 23 year old, who consumes it or gives it to other people over 21.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


All programming is bookkeeping - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/all-programming-is-bookkeeping

<comment><USER2> Yep. I attribute more than a bit of my programming success to adsorbing this ethos from my small business-people parents. When they explained why they'd spent the evening or more to track a sub-dollar discrepancy, because it signaled *trouble, could be hiding something much bigger, well, it all clicks.</comment>