Snail_Commando

> He means drinking doesn't get better, so stop drinking. He doesn't mean "life itself."

I feel like you either didn't read my comment or you didn't read OP's comment history. It's not as easy as "...so stop drinking." Someone who has gotten to OP's stage in their addiction has a tough road ahead. It's a road that takes more than rote Hacker News pedantry to traverse.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium_tremens

It's reasonable to assume that anyone who would write the OP or the comments in their history, could use some perspective on stopping drinking and the machinery of recovery life.

You can't possibly know what the OP meant. But I strongly suspect that it wasn't a casual: "Hey everyone, drinking is not so hot down the line, so stop now!" It is a request for help. I could be wrong, but maybe someone else might realize that it is possible to recover from the point where you might think that "drinking doesn't get better."

> ... He doesn't mean "life itself."

I'm not smart enough to know what you mean by that or what the OP actually meant with their post. This leaves me wondering: Someone has a cry for help, and this is the best comment you can come up with? I hope we aren't going to argue whether or not it's a cry for help. Though, that's probably the real issue here. I can retract my comment if you find that it is not up to spec. Pedantry above all else.

I don't know if you'll see this, but I hope you do.

I've struggled with addiction and I've made decisions that I'm ashamed of and disgusted with. There was a period of my life when I was also hopeless. I thought that I had lost everything. In a sense, it was true. (Rather, I destroyed most of what I had and subsequently lost the remaining pieces.)

Despite all of that, it does get better. It took me far too long to accept that.

The fact that you are posting here tells me that on some level you are ready to get better. Recognition of the problem begets hope.

Maintaining an attitude of "it doesn't get better" turns out to be a recursive function. Since lives are finite, the base case turns out to be total self-destruction.

At each time step, each recursive call, sustained hopelessness only begets more hopelessness.

Not only do the effects of addiction and hopelessness compound, but you get a first row seat. You watch the function expand, you see every call. You literally destroy yourself in a slow, humiliating, dangerous, and deliberate fashion.

A friend of mine liked to quote a man named Albert J. LaChance, he wrote: "Addiction is a slow form of suicide- suicide on the installment plan."

Whichever metaphor you choose, one thing is clear: changing your attitude is a necessary (but not sufficient) prerequisite for recovery.

You are obviously intelligent, so it should go without saying, there is no avoiding the fact a chemical addiction is a uniquely difficult problem to solve. Fortunately, it is a problem that a great deal of science is expended upon. And there are many ways to receive medical treatment.

Tedious self-help meetings and hollow platitudes are NO substitute for scientifically validated medical treatment. In your case, it is essential that you have medical intervention while you detox.

(Self-help is very helpful to some, and it does have a reported effectiveness of (last I heard) 10 - 50% (surely, a study carried out with utmost statistical rigor!)

Self-help meetings aren't right for me, but I will vouch for their occasional effectiveness.

Should you choose to follow the self-help branch of your recovery timeline, be aware that the self-help phase comes after the detox branch. All future recovery branches of your recovery timeline form after the medical detox node.)

You need medicine and science right now!

Alcohol withdrawal can kill late stage addicts. You wrote six months ago that you attempted a cold turkey solo-detox and experienced DTs. Those suck. They are also a sign that you need to be extra cautious in your recovery.

When you go to detox, go to a licensed recovery center where a doctor can monitor you. Usually this means a hospital equipped with mental health facilities. An ER will suffice if you are out of other options or are having seizures. You can also go to a rehabilitation center (with a competent medical staff)! The last option might start your detox and then segue into a 28 day (or longer) program.

Alcohol is perhaps the most dangerous drug to detox from. (Perhaps surprising to some, you won't die from heroin withdrawals.)

You can (and should) get medical leave from your employer for treatment. I'm fairly certain it's illegal for them to deny that. (Since you are a competent developer, I'm assuming you work at a company with benefits.)

If you do not have health insurance, please contact your local medicaid office.

Please do this. For your the mother of your child, for your kids. For the person in the future who you will come across who needs help with their addiction. But most of all, for you.

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This last part is my favorite aspect of hacker news. I get to tell someone that they are wrong.

I used to have your attitude. I even attempted suicide. By the grace of faulty nylon, I'm still here.

"It doesn't get better." <- That quote is factually incorrect. I'm just one instance of its disproof.

Now, to break Hacker News guidelines with extreme prejudice:

IT DOES GET BETTER. PLEASE, PLEASE SEEK MEDICAL TREATMENT. IT DOES WORK. YOU ARE WRONG. NA NA NA NA NA.

If you don't post an email in your profile in the next few hours so that I can talk to you. Via email, skype, phone, whatever. I will reply to my comment with an email address so that you can contact me when you are ready to talk and/or seek treatment.

> To you and others - i didn't know it's not a drug. It was my opinion, apparently wrong. Thanks for clarifications! Will do beers only on fridays then!

But it's not an opinion, it was a factually incorrect statement. There is a distinction.

The only reasons people categorize the two as different are societal, cultural, and legal. Not by any empirical, scientific standard.

In the end it is a chemical that has an intoxicating, mind altering effect on the body. Which is, by definition, a drug.

Acting as though alcohol is somehow "not a drug" or that alcohol addiction is somehow distinct from "drug addiction" is unproductive at best, lethal at worst.

I just want to say, I jumped the gun a little with my original response to Dave earlier. I misunderstood what Harlem actually was. I realized you made a capital investment in lab space after I commented. Please see my second response to Dave for elaboration.

I stand by my original statement about "incubators", but now I'm weaseling out of calling you an "incubator". You definitely add essential early value.

Capital intensive companies definitely have different requirements than consumer internet companies at inception.

I'm really sorry about mis-characterizing you.

If it were up to me, I might consider re-branding as a sort of bio-coworking space or bio-collaborative space. For some reason, the word "incubator" makes me think 1999 Silicon Valley. But that's probably just me.

It would be really cool if you started investing, too.

Best of luck, I genuinely want you to succeed.

> I'd like to point out, however, that there several thriving biotech incubators around the country. Surely the demand must be coming from somewhere when tenants must be found to pay the bills. Indeed, I think the startups that enter an incubator space are well aware of the rent prices, and do so to to take advantage of the certified lab space provided which is impractical to build on one's own.

Yep, I was just about to update my answer with the following:

--[I want to emphasize that there isn't inherently wrong with co-working spaces. They just aren't in the same class as [YC, 500s, Techstars]

Also, I read up on Harlem, they claim that they are providing laboratory space. That's a pretty solid value add. So I can understand why they may be wary of losing their investment in capital.

I didn't consider this, but there is an argument to be made that things are different in more capital intensive industries. Unlike software, the incubator model may be more palatable in these industries.

Still, I think they should hypothetically re-price equity demands compared to software equity demands, not charge per unit. Just demand more equity.

Charging entrepreneurs is still bad signaling and can lead to adverse selection (if you market yourself as being equivalent to [YC 500s Techstars])--

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> A takeway from all this, for me, is that I'm wondering what one could do to make a biotech-focused YC a workable model. Unfortunately, the (comparatively) glacial pace of biotech startups dampens a lot of enthusiasm.

Honestly, I think it's a bit early for the YC model in biotech. Too many subsets of the market are just too capital intensive, time expensive, and subject to regulatory burden.

However, with exciting technologies like CRISPR and high throughput sequencing starting to come on to the scene, genetic engineering and DNA derived technologies may be much more viable as a low capital cost subset of the market. Also, DNA looks suspiciously like software embedded on extremely high density storage tape to me... :)

> Pricing aside, I disagree: YC is in part a startup incubator, no?

[Update: Before you read this wall 'o text, please consider the comment in the context of the update at the bottom.]

I disagree, YC is not an incubator. Well, to be fair, incubator is kind of a nebulous term.

I define incubator as: "entity that charges entrepreneurs for privileged access to ostensibly valuable [x y z]" or "entity that hires so called 'entrepreneurs in residence' to build companies under its roof in exchange for exorbitant equity."

YC is only superficially similar to whatever you would describe Harlem Biospace as.

The essential difference is in how the two types of entities derive value from their offering.

The distinction is that [YC, 500S, TechStars] invest in the upside of companies. Harlem [and its ilk] make money per unit of offering sold [units of monthly [x y z] access].

The reason "incubators" (the ones that charge entrepreneurs) are usually worse than the YC's of the world is because they adversely select for all the wrong things, as a side effect of their design.

Since an incubator ostensibly helps startups win big, why charge per unit [startup]? Why not invest in portfolio upside?

Per unit charges seem to be a good way of making money in the near term, at a constant rate (might not be sustainable if companies don't succeed in the long run.)

Upside investment seems like a good way to make money in the long run (assuming you are sufficiently able to (a) pick the right startups and/or (b) influence them to succeed.)

So investment seems to signal that you believe that you can do (a) and/or (b).

Sure, an investment portfolio may lose money on most of the companies. However, if it has a group of companies of sufficient expected success, one will likely reap massive returns.

If the value investors provide is worth enough to attract the right kinds of founders, the expected value of investing in entrepreneurs should exceed the expected value of charging entrepreneurs.

In the long run, charging per unit of offering, may signal that the long-term value of the seller's [x y z] offering is relatively low when compared to entities that are willing to invest in entrepreneurs.

Basically, if you value the unit cost higher than the investment return you are signaling that you (a) can't pick good startups and/or (b) you can't help a sufficient number succeed.

What kind of entrepreneur would want to go to that entity?

Since portfolio companies tend to return value later in their timeline, long-term value of offering is what matters. The YC's of the world are willing to eat the short-term costs and bet that they will influence some startups to return big.

The Harlem's of the world are making a constant per unit income, but are unwilling to bet on the long tail equity upside.

These incubators are not equivalent to [YC, 500S, TechStars], they are glorified co-working spaces.

[Update: If you've read this far, please see the discussion further on the thread. I unfairly characterized Harlem as an "incubator". Harlem Biospace certainly offers value. I do stand by my comment on "incubation" in the context of consumer internet companies. It's a different ball game for capital intensive industries. One aspect of Harlem is that it is affordable lab space that is group funded. Undeniably important.]

Hypothetically, if a person still had Bitcoin drawn from a btc faucet (by that person), would that count as a gift, treasure trove [+], or something else?

[+] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesarini_v._United_States

High end laptops are a good place to start when you are selling a ~$140 accessory.

I would be shocked if they didn't have plans to expand to other products/devices. My guess is that they are betting that Macbook owners are most likely to pay right now. I'm not certain, but I'm willing to bet that Macbooks have a majority chunk of the high end laptop market.

So if I were in their shoes, I'd probably start with macbooks in order to gain a foothold.

> How would you do that? Soundproofing? Delay on the mechanical action? What is the fingerprint that allows transcription of a sound sample?

Perhaps you could modify key levers in such a fashion that each stroke requires variable pressure?

Which dialect of Lisp are you studying? Common Lisp?

> Outside the body, DNA has a half-life of about 500 years.

Who said it had to be stored outside the body? :) You could create a modified copy of an organism's genome with the information inserted.

But let's assume we mean outside the body storage:

The ~500 year number is an estimate based on the half-lives of DNA found in paleontological discoveries. Of course, since these samples were discovered in nature- no effort was made to prevent degradation over the post-death timeline. Some estimates say that a DNA strand could still retain useful information for as much as 1.5 million years.[1] We have amplified and sequenced information preserved in nature for 80,000 years.[2]

That half-life estimate is based on samples that were not always in solid state, which is an empirically more stable preservation state for DNA.

Specifically, the samples were usually not protected from water and oxygen throughout the entire storage period.

It is important to keep in mind that despite the observed half-life of DNA (which is still far longer than any existing/practical high density storage medium), it still retains useful information as it degrades for thousands (theoretically, millions) of years.

Also, you won't be storing the information on just a single strand, but on billions of strands. This redundancy affords you the ability to reliably amplify and sequence different non-degraded segments after many half-lives.

Notice that I said "...if stored properly...", granted, I wasn't clear, but it is certainly theoretically possible to preserve information for millions of years in DNA.

DNA is already the highest density storage medium that we use to store human produced information, such as a book. [3] Right now with current storage methods (room temp, dehydrated) we have an archival storage medium reliable for thousands of years.

If we can crack two things: extremely high speed sequencing, and ultra-long term solid state storage of DNA; it will be the ultimate high density long term storage medium short of sculpting code into metal at the atomic scale.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2013/01/24/170082404/shall-i-encode-thee-...

[2] http://www.nature.com/news/dna-has-a-521-year-half-life-1.11...

[3] http://arep.med.harvard.edu/pdf/Church_Science_12.pdf

It might be a few years too early for this to be an easily accessible option, but if you are worried about mega-term storage you can encode your text in DNA. If stored properly, this method is far more persistent than magnetic plate or (current) solid state storage.

This will potentially preserve the information for millions of years. Plus, you'll save on hosting.

Thanks, I think need to gain a better understanding of Clojure and Haskell.

Do you mean nothing in the main Clojure distribution? Or nothing, period?

> ...Clojure even though it's less "pure."

How so? I was under the impression you had to explicitly go out of your way to break functional purity/ use mutable state in Clojure, just like Haskell.

Is it easier/harder/more-unwieldy to maintain functional purity in one of them over the other?

That sequence of tweets reads like something out of Snow Crash.

> Most Users Online: 27 (Jun 24, 2013 at 9:48pm)

What happened on Jun 24, 2013? Is that the day you found it again?

Check this out: http://www.asterank.com/3d

I'm pretty sure the creator of asterank is on HN.

For what it's worth, I think the OP JS is obfuscated/minified for load times; not for self-interested reasons.

Asking for a friend, what do you do if you don't have anyone to talk to? I feel like the answer should be obvious, but I have no idea what it is.

How could the UI be improved?

If you had to pick, say, three books (or the online equivalent) on quantum computing that are relatively accessible to an educated layman, which ones would you recommend?

Ok thanks, last question and I'll leave you alone.

Could you recommend some relatively accessible reading for the layman on how the security world would react to a sudden shift into the post-quantum world?

And, in your opinion, how concerned should average Joes and Janes, like me, be concerned about a sudden shift to a post-quantum world?

Edit: For example: Would my bank be safe? Would my health records be safe?

(On this hyperbolic fear legitimacy scale: Y2K <----> Cryptopocalypse)

I know next to nothing about quantum computing, is such a thing even possible with the current state of QC + billions of dollars?

Does the current state of quantum computing excite or keep security researchers awake at night?

What do you think would be the correct order of magnitude of cost to build "a quantum-theoretic machine that could break IFP (RSA) or DLP (DH, DSA) crypto"?

That's pretty harsh, although you may be entirely correct. I'm not smart enough to know. Please remember that the author did this for fun and despite whatever flaws it may have, it is still interesting to think about.

Is it impossible to overcome the flaws you pointed out? Is there a way to abstract away the risk from the end user? Are there other applications for this where trust is not an issue? At risk of sounding like an idiot, could some sort of distributed proof-of-work/proof-of-stake protocol alleviate some of the trust problem?

The only thing I disagree with in your comment is the "Which in this case is not true." portion.

We cannot make that inference based on the information in the article and the bio that has been linked exhaustively in this comment section. Please see the comment from 'tzs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994924

If someone has more information, I suppose they could step forward; but I really think we should hew in the direction of addressing arguments instead of dissecting qualifications. That's not to say you should never question qualifications, it's just that it's so much better to address arguments. And it was really weird that people short circuited to dissection mode, as though we should simply ignore the man and move on. (I'm not trying to imply this about your comment.)

The rest of this comment isn't really directed at you, I just want to append the rest of my thoughts here.

I was really surprised to see some of HN get so hung up on the formal training of an interviewee in an otherwise relatively benign article. It seems like the kind of thing that HN would usually embrace.

After all, are we really going to ignore the 115+ publications that Mr. Greely has either been an author or co-author of? Many of which are in leading journals of fields relative to this discussion. Are we going to discount the decades he has spent studying and interpreting this domain? Does the fact that, for whatever reason, Stanford has acknowledged his expertise in multiple areas relevant to this discussion not count for anything? How exactly do we weight this demonstrated experience vs. formal qualification?

What is frustrating to me about a couple comments here is that they got hung up on the wording of the venturebeat post and then short circuited to qualification sniping mode.

I think it would be more productive to address the interviewee's related opinions and stated facts.

> " But "by courtesy" plainly is used as some form of honorary title - if he had it "by merit" they would not use the term. "

You know why the Stanford School of Medicine gave him that title? It wasn't for merit? And Stanford is using the "by courtesy" term differently than how it is normally defined?

> "Given that the title of the article at least, implies that a person with deep knowledge of the science (not the ethics) of genetics is expressing an opinion, it seems fair to point out that there is no indication of deep math skills, or of chemistry, physics, biochemistry, etc. knowledge."

Just to be clear, are you saying that you see no indication that Greely has a deep knowledge of the science behind his field of study-- based on the title and content of a ~700 word Venturebeat post?

I'm not going to comment on this thread anymore. If you want, you can look through his publications. But I doubt that would change your mind.

> "not a genetics prof - a law prof.

http://www.law.stanford.edu/profile/hank-greely "

From the page you linked:

"Greely is also a professor (by courtesy) of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine."

It seems that he is a Professor (by courtesy) of Genetics, he is on the Steering Committee for Biomedical Ethics, and is a director at the Center of Law and the Biosciences.

Here is my other comment on the matter:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6994518

I'm honestly baffled by the reaction to this. You're absolutely right that it is extremely clear.

It says he is a director at the Center of Law and the Biomedical Sciences at the School of Law and that he is a Professor (by courtesy) of Genetics at the School of Medicine.

It literally says that in his bio.

Yet at least three people in this thread have felt the need to inform HN that "he's not a genetics prof" and then link to the bio of him that lists him as a Professor (by courtesy) of Genetics at the Stanford School of Medicine.

What does the education portion of your comment have to do with my comment? The comment I was responding to said he was not a Genetics professor, I responded by saying that he is a Genetics professor (according to his Stanford bio).

I wasn't saying that he was not a legal expert as well.

> "Hank Greely is not a "genetics prof", he is a bioethicist in Stanford's Law School. He doesn't develop new genetic technologies. This is like calling a film critic a director.

http://www.law.stanford.edu/profile/hank-greely "

I'm not sure your assessment is entirely correct.

Here's an excerpt from the same page you linked to:

"Greely is also a professor (by courtesy) of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine."

I don't know how professorships by courtesy work at Stanford.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professors_in_the_United_State...

Assuming that the content currently in that section of Wikipedia is correct and is congruent with how things work at Stanford, he is a "genetics prof".

Or we can just take his Stanford bio at face value.

Also, we should consider what the man has to say. Whether or not he "develop[s] new genetic technologies" is irrelevant if his opinions are valid and his facts are correct. If you take issue with the opinions he has or the facts he states, then address those head on.

The man's thoughts are being called upon because he is a domain expert in bioethics (and, as we've just found out, genetics). I think it would be a good bet that this man has a wealth of relevant domain knowledge with respect to state of the art genetics research, gene sequencing technologies, and genomics startups.

Qualification sniping tends to be a poor way of discounting what someone has to say.

There are already suggestions in this thread that are better than mine, but I'll still throw my hat in the ring.

That's great that she's interested in biology. I'd like to gently suggest that if she "isn't very enthusiastic about computers or technology", you should instead try to nurture her demonstrated interest in art, biology, and other science.

I know absolutely nothing about art, except that I apparently have no taste. So I'll refrain from making any suggestions on art books.

TL;DR: Skip down to the third section for the "technical book" suggestion.

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(1)

Here are some suggestions of books on general science, biology, and chemistry (in no particular order, these are some of the first ones that come to my mind):

"The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" By Thomas S. Kuhn

"The Diversity of Life" By Edward O. Wilson

"The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time" by Jonathan Weiner

"Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes: Further Reflections in Natural History" by Stephen Jay Gould

"Life on a Young Planet" By Andrew H. Knoll

"Galápagos" By Kurt Vonnegut (Fiction, but related) (I loved this book, but it's not for everyone I suppose. A couple of my friends didn't like it.)

"Napoleon's Buttons" By Penny Le Couteur and Jay Burreson

"The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher" By Lewis Thomas

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(2)

If she's interested in learning a lot about cellular biology in beautifully exhaustive detail, buy her this textbook:

"Molecular Biology of the Cell" By Bruce Alberts, Paul Walter, Alexander Johnson, Julian Lewis, Martin Raff, Keith Roberts

This book is huge. And it is wonderful.

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---Read this suggestion if my other suggestions aren't good---

(3)

So you want a technical book? And she's interested in biology?

Buy her a copy of:

"The Principles of Biomedical Informatics" By Ira J. Kalet

This textbook is incredible. It teaches you some fundamentals of many different flavors of bioinformatics. (Different flavors, because, as the author acknowledges, bioinformatics can mean many things.) You can learn how to work with amino acid sequences, protein modeling, medical imaging, probabilistic biomedical models, and more!

Since you have SICP and LoL on your bookshelf already, you might love the next part. The entire textbook is a cleverly accessible primer on how to build applications with Common Lisp. Whether you're a greybeard Lisp hacker or a repl-noob, you'll like this book if you are interested in learning about bioinformatics.

I've had the first edition for quite some time. Recently, I think in the past few months, a second edition was released. Someone gifted me the 2nd ed, :) but I haven't really compared the two.

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I was going to suggest Gödel, Escher, Bach when you mentioned she was interested in art, and were hoping to find a technical book for her. Then I saw that you already had tried that one. I'm going to leave the suggestion anyway because these types of threads are wonderful for finding great books.