BillSims

Do any other old people here remember getting bitten by mosquitos seems like multiple times a day as a child and realize now that they don't remember having a mosquito bite in the last decade or more? Any plausible idea why that might have happened? I was outside then and I'm still outside now. I tromped through roadside grass for miles this morning and don't seem to have a single insect bite, no ticks, no fleas, no unwelcome passengers. Perhaps related, does anyone know of a cheap little gadget I could buy or build and which would attract and catch the majority of all flying insects here? I don't mean to kill them. I'm wondering what the population is like here. Thanks

I can't make a case for AI versus not AI versus bad human. I am not counting comments or flagged. I'm only counting the number of new articles in the last 24 hours that remain visible at about 4p.m. west coast time in news.ycombinator.com/newest when not logged in to yc. Those numbers had been consistently about 900 each weekday and about 600 each weekend day and had been stable for a long time. In the last ten weeks those numbers look a lot like a parabola and have increased about 50%. That data is a little bit dirty, either because I missed a day or started a little late on a day. Harder to exactly quantify, the number of those articles that I think enough of, either from the title alone or sometimes from peeking at the first screen or two of the article, to bookmark for future reading and consideration has decreased by substantially more than 50% in the last ten weeks, some days that number is now zero or one or sometimes two. I have thought about this for a while and I have not been able to identify anything that happened starting about ten weeks ago that might be responsible for this, AI and politics and the economy started changing long before this.

Did anybody let https://haveibeenpwned.com/ know about this before the file was taken down?

All the temporary or uncertain or impractical wishes are discarded because of your constraint. One satisfying wish would be when adults recognize that some 15 year olds do not have and likely never will have any interpersonal skills or emotional intelligence that the adults then push the kid up against the wall and tell the kid that this person standing next to them is their new life coach, that the kid is to tell this coach everyting they are thinking and/or about to do or not do and the coach will tell them whether to do that or modify that or never ever do that for the following reasons... The kid needs to do exactly what the coach tells them to do. And the kid needs to find themself a part time job because they are going to be paying for that coach now and for the rest of their life. For some people reading this, try to imagine how different our lives would have been if we had been put in the hands of a really really highly skilled coach when we were 15. I think lots more people really need expert coaches than have them.

A year or more ago some poor guy asked a simple SO or SE question. I studied that for a while, tried multiple carefully crafted Google queries until I found one that gave a good correct AI result, posted a reply NOT POSTING THE AI RESPONSE, that would break their rules, ONLY telling the person what query to do to get an answer and urged them to study and test this carefully, and I posted that. Moments later I got a stern warning that my post had been torn down, likely because their AI hunter bots had seen the word AI in it, almost certainly before the original poster ever saw this. Nobody else ever even tried to help the person. Later, only slightly related, I realized it had been most of a year since anyone posted a question in the little SO and SE corners that I used to watch and so I scanned my last five years of posting little mostly trivial attempts to help users, many of those were "I think you've made a very simple mistake here..", some of those probably resulted in trivial fixes, usually the person didn't even respond to me. SO I thought I'd raise the average quality of posts slightly by going through and deleting my trivial posts. On both SO and SE their hunter bots immediately flagged me for doing this and I got messages from both telling me that all the stuff I had tried to help people by putting up over the last 5-30 years WAS THEIRS (SO and SE) AND BELONGED TO THEM!!! And I believe they put back some or all of my trivial stuff. And I stopped watching SO and SE.

Does anyone know of a moderately cheap gadget that I could strap onto my head at night which would detect REM/non-REM sleep and that would trigger short bits of audio that I had previously recorded? Is anybody out there doing anything like this which I could try to copy and see if this might work? Any references to anything related would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

Different issue in Chrome scroll, probably not related. Win 10,32 bit,any of last dozens of updates to chrome if that matters. Open chrome. Left mouse click All Bookmarks. Tap up arrow key to scroll to the bottom of long list. Begin to slide mouse down off All Bookmarks into that list to get to the bottom of that list. And the list of bookmarks vertically scrolls a few or half a dozen lines so the last few or half dozen lines are now hidden. But, giving them credit, they did fix an introduced behavior where deleting a bookmark or moving a bookmark into a bookmark folder would repaint the whole bookmark list and scroll you back to the top of the list. That has now been fixed and the list of bookmarks no longer scrolls when I move or delete a bookmark. Thank you for that.

Be careful what you wish for.

Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_insensitivity_to_pa...

Wow! Vinegar, either 2 tblsp raw or diluted 2 tblsp/cup, is vile.

Which makes me wonder: 2 tblsp = 30 grams @ 5% = 1.5 grams acetic acid = 2 grams sodium acetate. Assuming sodium acetate instantly dissociates when it hits stomach acid, what are the chances that would do the same as pouring acid down my throat? That might make LOTS more people compliant. Anyone find any information related to this? I think I have some vague memory of a pharmacist telling me something like this for a completely different compound many many years ago.

Could there be something like this, not a therapist, perhaps a live coach or mentor or an ai app, not directed at just the smaller task of dating, but directed at life and work and everything else. This could be aimed at the autistic and the introverted and those who are just woefully lacking in the skills of interpersonal wrestling with other people that makes up so much of what people do to each other every day? Maybe this could even be used by perfectly ordinary people just worn down with life struggles and about to make terrible interpersonal choices that may damage or ruin their lives. If this could actually work well then think how much it might change lives and the world.

I am guessing if you ask the people around you why they formed a group against you that they will likely not give you an honest helpful answer.

Is there any chance that you could find someone outside the group with great social skills who could gently insert themselves into contact with the group and after a suitable amount of time gently politely honestly ask some or all of the group "What is it about rajabhau?" and get the group to mostly honestly tell this person what nobody in the group will likely honestly tell you? And this person could think about what they were told and decide what they should tell you. That information might help. If it isn't possible to get a person to do this then are there any other ideas on how to get the information needed to understand this situation and then decide what to do?

Another completely different idea, I have been thinking that some individuals might greatly benefit from having a personal manager or possibly mentor. This person would not be a friend, therapist, co-worker, boss, family member. This person would be an excellent manager. That means this person knows much more about things at a higher level and uses information to decide when to tell you what information they need you to watch for and collect for them and what you should do and not do and when to walk away and when to run fast and far away from a situation, hopefully before it becomes a disaster. It is very clear now that I really needed one of those a lifetime ago. If anyone has any information or resources or ideas relevant to this idea then I would greatly appreciate hearing about this. I am going to fund some people to look into ideas like this and any information on what to try and what not to try will hopefully make that project more successful.

This "The team found that noise-induced hearing loss, which affects millions of Americans, stems from cellular damage in the inner ear that is associated with an excess of free-floating zinc — a mineral that is essential for proper cellular function and hearing." seems to say that it is too much, not too little zinc and it is the zinc that is free floating in the hearing system, not bound to other molecules. The potential treatment is some molecule that can get into the inner ear without causing damage and which will bind with the free zinc. They wonder whether this might reduce or eliminate the symptoms. My question is what are some of the candidate molecules that seem of low risk and which might do this? The full paper is here: https://www.pitt.edu/pittwire/features-articles/hearing-loss....

Is there any chance someone at Microsoft is going to insert a CPU compatibility check before bug-patch-Tuesday force installs these on millions of machines? WindowsReport.com cautions about KB5034203 on older CPUS and I have some older machines currently showing "Optional quality update available 2024-01 Cumulative Update Preview for Windows 10 Version 22H2 for x86-based Systems (KB5034203)" I wouldn't be surprised if those are no longer optional come Tuesday.

Many many many years ago I believe a very elderly friend of mine actually told me, or maybe they were told this by very elderly friends of theirs, that they and a couple of their friends had attended a nazi rally where Hitler spoke and this went on for the entire day. They explained that they did not agree with any of the ideas of Hitler, they knew that all this was not going to be good for them or for the things that they wanted or believed in, but after the rally they realized the effect that this rally had had on their minds and it took time and effort to try to undo some of the effects of that exposure.

Far more recently, someone wrote a web page describing how their father had to do several long haul commutes and to pass the time he listened to a paranormal radio program, or maybe it was an ultra conservative radio program. After this the family realized how this radio program had convinced their father that all this stuff was absolutely true. That might have been mentioned on HN in the last few years.

I suppose the punch line is: Millions of years of history have made each of us want to REALLY convince those around us of what WE believe and we sometimes seem prone to believe things that people who are REALLY convinced tell us. That has tended to keep us alive for all these years. Carefully choose what what you put in there because it isn't going to easily be removed. If I had an editor that worked and I could easily visualize all the stuff that I've put in there then I would give almost anything to use that editor to scrub a decent fraction of that.

I do see some results from a fairly long list of Google Alerts every day, some good, some not, so I don't think that Google Alerts have completely failed, at least not for me. I do ask to see All Results, not just Best Results, and I check off all the boxes for sources to check, and I have a fairly long list and a fair number of those almost never report any results, as expected. I have it report at most once a day.

But, having watched that list of Alerts for a fairly long time, I am guessing that search and search engine optimization have evolved over time and my list of Alerts and my skill at writing excellent Alerts has not kept up. I will now and then see an Alert mail which consists of a long list of hits where the title of each web page pretty clearly shows that page has little or nothing to do with what I'm monitoring for, instead likely someone has stuffed a few keywords somewhere in the page to get their page to show up in Google searches. I don't know whether limiting my Alerts to Best Results might help overcome this or not.

Having thought about this, I think I see that I need to hone my skills and find an excellent resource which will train me to craft much better Alerts. I think skill at writing excellent Alerts is somewhat different from the skill at writing excellent Google searches. There should be an excellent resource out there somewhere to train people to do this. If there was any way to get good feedback on the quality of an Alert that would be very valuable.

If anyone is aware of something like this then please leave a note here. I had intended to post a question exactly like this to HN, but had not yet done so. Thanks for any assistance.

"How to tell that You know and a few don't and what you really need to do about that." The opening paragraph is "Likely you and your friends have a much better idea what the future is going to be for a few people that you know than those few do, even though you can't imagine that this can be. This book will show you how to identify those people and and how and why you really need to pound that knowledge into them, really get them to understand what their future will likely be. Doing this will make the world a far better place for them and maybe even for you and others who will be in contact with them." Not exactly a book for me but I would buy it and read it and might even get a tiny bit out of it. Much more for the people who were around me. This isn't asking for superhuman precognition, they knew and they didn't say a word, at least not to me. Any enhancements for this idea and especially how to make this happen a lifetime ago will be greatly appreciated.

I continually get emails "thanks for signing up" where someone gave a fakename@gmail.com and they happened to pick my email id. Ah, the stories I could tell. I've spent years trying to convince some places that I didn't sign up. I don't know how common this, but I suspect it isn't rare. It doesn't sound like your service can avoid that problem. Please think if you could find a way to overcome that too. Thank you

You might take at the book "Limitless Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster, and Unlock Your Exceptional Life" by Jim Kwik. Read the 18 pages of chapter 1 and see whether you think it is worth reading more. You can peek at a sample of the book on Amazon, or perhaps get a copy in a local library. He thinks he is onto something and you can try to decide whether that might work for you. Whether that works for you or not, please come back later and leave a note about how that went for you.

> An earlier version of this article misstated the unit of measurement used in the collection of tears.

> and collected seven microlitres of my tears.

Perhaps milliliters was a typo later corrected

First I take responsibility for most of the failings listed here. Second self-help is a broad subject and I only pursue scrubbing some memories, getting a few frustrating tasks done and increasing some focus/concentration.

I've tried reading Amazon sample portions, borrowing library books, buying cheap used copies, reading summaries, trying to read the book from the beginning and skimming through the book hoping to find the relevant paragraph or page. All seem to be roughly equally unsatisfying and unproductive for me.

Some books, from the title and description, seem like they would be applied self-help, but on reading turn out to be more abstract popularized general descriptions than intense applied instruction. Other books are more applied, but then turn out to describe a daily process that they say must be practiced for months to accomplish what they claim and it isn't even clear to me exactly what specific concrete benefit I would get if I invested that time. I don't have, and I suspect many or most people don't have, the motivation to practice something for months with no immediate demonstration that there will be actual benefit that I want after that investment. Example: think "mindfulness." What specific concrete benefit that you need and want NOW are you certain to get out of that after how much time you invest in that?

There are lots of little surprising example effects in psychology that can be clearly demonstrated in a minute. I'm not talking about turning your life upside down, I'm talking about spending a minute or two followed by "WOW! I actually SAW that happen!" If there were self-help books, particularly on the areas that I am interested in, that would begin with such a relevant exercise and follow that with a bit more explanation, followed by a slightly larger and slightly more impressive exercise, followed by ... repeat until end of book ... then I think that would give me the motivation, and I suspect give others the motivation, to buy the book and read every sentence and do every exercise and see every effect and maybe even by the end of the book be motivated to spend months doing the prescription and get the complete benefit promised by the book and see if the author has done this in any other books and buy all those books and tell everyone I know about these books and urge them to buy the books...

If anyone is aware of anything like that for the areas that I'm interested in then please find a way to let me know about that. Thanks

If someone with some experience would take a few moments to describe a "persona" and a behavior that would only take someone a few minutes every day to find and report a small random collection of these scams AND that this would almost certainly NOT result in getting restricted or banned for doing this this... then this might result in a modest collection of people willing to contribute a little effort to try to help combat a bit of fraud and spam on the net. In my case, I don't spend time on Facebook so this may need to adjust the described the behavior. This idea might even be more widely applied. If it could be even partly automated that might be even better.

The book "The 5 Second Rule" by Mel Robbins has one single idea in it. Some of the example people she describes sound like they are in almost exactly your spot. The author has a couple of past mentions on YC and she has done a Ted talk and some other videos that are on the net. I am guessing that the book might be the best introduction. It seems like a very low investment idea to try. Please report back letting me know if you thought it seemed to match your situation, if you tried it and if it worked for you. Thanks.

I cannot remember who should get credit for this: rats=bad hair day in sewers and run down buildings versus squirrels=good hair day in the parks and trees, and the squirrels hired a very good public relations firm. See how much of a difference that makes?

Trying to get perspective, Google says BofA assets are 2.52T and 44B is 1.75% of that, but with money at that scale the simple percentage may not mean that.

Perhaps https://www.google.com/search?q=covid+nitric+oxide Some are reporting this can be an effective preventative.

Two things that you might look into

1: Pinhole glasses. Those are ordinary frames with opaque "lenses" with a uniform grid of small holes. Some people having problem with the lens in their eye sometimes report that these help. One person I know who had some deformity in their lens found these to be helpful. They seem to work by, instead of trying to converge the entire image across the diameter of the pupil, tries to converge the image across the diameter of one pinhole. And they are cheap, if they don't work then you just throw them away and there seems little risk of more extreme treatments. You might try to judge the diameter of the holes before you buy. I have seen negative reviews which claimed that they received something more like nail holes than pin holes. There will be a tradeoff in ease of manufacture, amount of light you get and amount of focusing, all dependent on the hole diameter. Note: I do not for a moment pretend to support the claims that these things cure eye problems.

2. Do a Google search for drug to shrink iris to correct vision without glasses and see if this sounds like it might apply to you. This might simulate the pinhole effect of those glasses in the previous item and might reduce the need for corrective lenses. The drug sounds like it has minimal side effects and discontinuing the drug should clear your system fairly promptly.

Both these seem similar to "pushing the f-stop on a camera", where the need for precise focus becomes less important.

If you get someone to diagnose exactly what your condition is and it has a specific name and you find which things seem to work and which don't then please report back so that someone else might know what to try or not try. Thanks

I read an academic paper, perhaps a dozen years ago, I've lost that and can't find it now, I REALLY wish I could find that again.

They took a group of intellectually "challenged" students and ran them past a panel of judges to evaluate them. Then they put the kids through an acting class, not Shakespearean acting, but "acting normal", and again ran them past the panel of judges. The increases in scores was amazing. And that is exactly the sort of judgement that kids like those are going to have made on them every day of their lives. And this is exactly what is not going to be a part of almost any usual school.

I do not know where you could find a class like that, perhaps the authors of that paper could help. I think something like this might make as big, or bigger, difference than almost anything else. There is what you are able to do and then there is what those people around you will let you do.

If anyone can find anything like that then I have an idea for a project that might make use of exactly this.

I should have done a search. Looks like someone else put this title on the list a while back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23823159 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25860131 I have the 2nd edition that I'd swap you for I don't know what or how we might be able to arrange that. The author does seem driven.