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ceolon MIT student applies predictive modeling to improve emergency-room wait times

At least a few thousand people die from the flu each year.[0] I've just been responding to your original post. You said "delirious", which is an actual, serious medical condition associated with high fever and dehydration.[1] Then you told people to "sweat it out", which is a myth.[2] I'm just trying to correct some of these misconceptions so someone doesn't read it and think that being delirious is completely normal and you should try to lose even more fluids.

[0]: http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/disease/us_flu-related_deaths.h...

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delirium

[2]: http://www.insweb.com/health-insurance/5-common-flu-season-h...

ceolon MIT student applies predictive modeling to improve emergency-room wait times

An IV drip can mean the difference between life and death by dehydration. Seriously, it's why doctors tell you to go to the ER if you can't keep any liquids down when you have food poisoning or the flu. Couple that with the fluid loss you're already experiencing from being sick, and it can turn deadly fast. Not to be rude, but you have to be completely ignorant to say, "an IV drip usually doesn't help that much." Unless you're talking about someone who isn't dehydrated in the first place, in which case I'd agree, but most ERs don't hook someone up to an IV for shits; if you're getting a bag, you're probably dehydrated. (They don't want to waste their bags, IVs, nurses' time, and risk infection on someone who doesn't need it.)

Even if you have a healthy immune system, if you're delirious from a fever, you should call your doctor ASAP.

Note: I'm not a doctor, this is not medical advice, yadda yadda. I've just been living with Crohn's disease long enough to learn some of this from my own visits to the ER.

ceolon MIT student applies predictive modeling to improve emergency-room wait times

> sweat it out (disclaimer: I'm not that kind of doctor).

Yeah, if you're delirious from a flu (assuming you mean the fever), you need to go to either your primary care physician or the ER. Do not try to "sweat it out."

The ER will be more than happy to have you there even if you could have stayed home. They know what they're doing; they're not going to let someone else die to treat your sniffles.

ceolon Vim 7.4 is released

The one that doesn't require months of training to get at a productive level.

/ducks

All editor-fanboyism aside, who cares? I spent $59 on ST2 and it was, by far, the best $59 I've ever spent. But if someone is more comfortable with vim or emacs or nano or gedit, I don't care. It doesn't bother me, as long as you're making something.

ceolon Bootstrap-switch

It's easy to tell when a light switch has been turned on or off. Not quite as easy when the switch is on a settings option called "email me a digest every week" or similar.

ceolon Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

What I'm saying is that rarely anyone is treated like that, and the OP sounds like he was just reading all of his insecurities into everyone he was assisting.

But what do I know? It's not like there are loads of other people in this very thread saying the... same... Oh.

ceolon Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

> If you told a doctor "my body hurts" and refused to clarify, you would almost certainly get some sort of snark.

Actually, no. Very few people tell doctors, "My body hurts!" It's more like... "My leg hurts," or, "My back hurts," etc. Which is just as unhelpful, but doctors never pull out their cellphone and call an imaginary President or give them any snark like that; you would lose a crazy amount of patients.

What doctors do is ask, "How does it hurt? When does it hurt? Is it constant? When did it start hurting?" When I ask someone, "When did this computer problem start happening?" they almost always give more information. I've never had someone refuse to clarify; sometimes, they just don't know.

ceolon Kids can't use computers, and why it should worry you

I thought the author made a bunch of assumptions about her, too. Things like:

    She handed me her MacBook silently and the look on her
    face said it all. *Fix my computer geek, and hurry up 
    about it.*

That's quite a leap from merely the look on her face that you saw for all of 2 seconds before taking her laptop.

    To people like her, technicians are a necessary 
    annoyance. She’d be quite happy to ignore them all, joke 
    about them behind their backs, snigger at them to their 
    faces, but she knows that when she can’t display her 
    PowerPoint on the IWB she’ll need a technician, and so 
    she maintains a facade of politeness around them, while 
    inwardly dismissing them as too geeky to interact with.

Hooooly cow, that's quite a lot of bitterness. I'm surprised this was written for a website called "coding 2 learn" and not "people, who should never be in a position to teach, talk about why they hate others for no good reason."

    I’ve heard this sentence so many times now from students 
    and staff, that I have a stock reaction. Normally I pull 
    out my mobile phone and pretend to tap in a few numbers. 
    Holding the handset to my ear I say ‘Yes, give me the 
    office of the President of the United States… NO I WILL 
    NOT HOLD, this is an emergency… Hello, Mister President, 
    I’m afraid I have some bad news. I’ve just been informed 
    that The Internet is not working.’

It just keeps getting worse and worse. That's probably the most painfully unfunny thing I've ever heard. I feel sorry for the people at his school; they got the stereotypical "caustic geek who thinks he's so much better than the plebes who don't know computers" as their network support.

He treats everyone who approaches him for help like shit and then wonders why no one knows about computers? Real head-scratcher there.

ceolon Why I Changed My Mind On Weed

Schizophrenia is another one that can become exacerbated by marijuana use.

ceolon Chrome's insane password security strategy

Surely you see the difference between someone copying all of your passwords without your knowledge, and someone resetting your password for a single website that you would immediately notice when you check your email? They are two completely different types of attacks.

ceolon Slashdot founder Rob Malda on why there won’t be another Hacker News

Like Malda said in the submission article: That doesn't make the graph go up and right.

It would be interesting to try that approach out, though. I would think a $5 fee would cap it for you — naturally raising the cap only when the industry your site focuses on grows as well.

ceolon Cyberscare: Ex-NSA chief calls transparency groups, hackers next terrorists

Once they get on this "corporations are evil, government is evil, everything is evil!" tangent, there's no talking to them.

ceolon Taken

> But for some reason this isn't good enough - and I don't know why.

The same reason "separate but equal" wasn't good enough for black people in the mid 20th century: It isn't equal at all.

It's not about redefining a term or forcing people to think a certain way. It's about being recognized on a legal level as being equal.

> why do gay couples get to marry and not polyamorous people? Seems like there is a double standard here.

There's a stigma against polygamy due to it being used almost entirely as a way to abuse and imprison women and children. That's also ignoring the legal hurdles; for example, power of attorney gets tricky when there is more than one spouse. Same with inheritance.

> What bothers me the most is that so much time, effort and money is spent on something that is a rather insignificant issue.

You think it's insignificant because it doesn't affect you. However, for a lot of gay and lesbian couples, it's a huge issue in their lives for many reasons. The fact that you can't even imagine this being a serious issue for someone else is quite telling, and it's something all too common amongst people who argue against gay marriage.

You should take some time and look into yourself to see why you have such trouble empathizing with others.

ceolon Taken

Exactly. Most officers aren't out to screw you over, but there are some who don't care how much they mess up your day/month/year/life. Lying to them, in any way, does not help you.

ceolon Taken

Everyone should donate to the ACLU, but try to give them a PO Box or something; their donation calls have crossed the line into "frustratingly annoying" more than once.

ceolon HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

If you're fine with more general topics and about a day's delay in "breaking" internet news (re: stuff that doesn't matter), I've found MetaFilter to be good. The pay wall filters out bottom-barrel trolls and the community is mostly nice enough to shame bigoted and extremist bullshit.

ceolon HN is Becoming 2005 Slashdot

The problem is that many HN users think that because they are qualified to talk about tech, they are also qualified to talk about everything else. In reality, they're often not qualified to talk about anything.

ceolon Founder of Tor Freedom Hosting arrested in Ireland, awaiting extradition to USA

Agreed. Not even considering the opposing sides, this debate always comes down to a bunch of people arguing a point they have absolutely no experience with.

ceolon How does Trello access the user's clipboard?

Certainly not on Hacker News, where people always vote based on how something relates to the discussion and not their own personal biases.

ceolon Now That It’s in the Broadband Game, Google Flip-Flops on Network Neutrality

I think some of the anger might come from the fact that any normal person, or any normal group of people, don't have the clout to influence those kinds of laws — Google does. However, they chose to bow to those laws (and charge the government for the privilege.) If Google, the one company tech enthusiasts would trust to be on their side, doesn't want to change those laws, what chance do you think any of us have?

ceolon Heart Surgery in India for $1,583 Costs $106,385 in U.S.

It really is such a shame your comment was almost halfway down the page while the top comments continue to be towing the "US healthcare is awful and greedy!" line.

Thanks for combing through that data for us.

ceolon Identical Droplets in the DigitalOcean: Regenerate your Ubuntu SSH Host Keys now

Except I don't see an email from DO or a notification when I log in to the admin panel. So if I didn't check HN at this exact time and saw this article, I would have no idea.

It's not a huge deal to me, but if Linode did the same thing, you all would be foaming at the mouth. Just thought I would point this out.

ceolon Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives

Yes, Fish has said some shitty things. Back when that happened, I was one of the people who argued against him and said he was a huge dick. But that doesn't mean he deserves a flurry of abusive and hateful speech; it means people should tell him to shut up and learn some manners.

Surely you agree there's a difference between "being disliked" and "being on the receiving end of a torrent of abuse"?

ceolon Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives

That's really not true. Almost all of his caustic responses were to people sending him shit. His post on the Steam forums was in response to trolls trashing his game. Just take a look at his forum posts.[0] Most are completely normal, while one or two are replying to jerks.

Fish isn't exactly a saint, and I'd venture to say he's quite a jerk (I'm not a fan of the shit he said about Japanese games.[1]) But the number of times Fish has dished it out is vastly outweighed by the number of times he's taken it.

[0]: http://steamcommunity.com/app/224760/discussions/search/?aut...

[1]: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2012-03-07-fez-creator-phi...

ceolon Phil Fish and the Internet’s war against creatives

Fish responding to trolls in no way excuses the trolls harassing him. That's textbook victim blaming, and it's disgusting for it to come up here.

ceolon Tox: secure messaging for everyone

I think their point was that the person who made the icon is anonymous, so it's harder to blame and therefor benefits you. Not that you had that goal in mind to begin with.

ceolon Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is

It's not an off topic remark, because acabal brought it up himself. He's the one who talked about born-here Americans not knowing the beginnings of totalitarian states, and if you can't see the problem with a born-here American talking about totalitarian states without actually having experienced it, and using it to back his argument, there really is no point in furthering this conversation.

ceolon FBI admits to flying drones over US without warrants

There are two (maybe three) articles on the front page right now unrelated to technology or "hacking." HN has long been an aggregator of all things interesting to SV, not just tech — and that's my point. You guys are bouncing around in your own little bubble (admittedly a bit faster now) but you're still just in your bubble. Meanwhile, you stay ignorant to the rest of the country and what it actually cares about, which means you will never have any far-reaching effect. People here are literally saying that we're in a dictatorship or a tyranny because the FBI asked for the use of unmanned drones 10 times in the past 10 years.

Obviously I'm not talking about using unmanned drones when I talk about conspiracy theories. I'm talking about Helianthus' entire argument and the arguments I see being perpetuated here. He walks you through it (in true conspiracy-theorist style), asking questions you would never really ask and then answering them as though he makes some big revelation.

They are taking this fact, that the government is flying unmanned blimps around DC as a more cost-efficient way to patrol DC's skies than having manned fighter jets, and using it as proof that the government is spying on civilians with absolutely no evidence. You see these types of folks pop up in news articles like this all the time, because they think they finally have the proof they need to convince the unwashed masses that there's something deeper going on. It just happens that HN is on an anti-government crusade, so they're passing out upvotes like candy to anyone who posts something remotely angry about the NSA.

ceolon Edward Snowden's not the story. The fate of the internet is

> generations of born-here Americans have never lived in a totalitarian state, and thus don't have the frame of reference to understand why the NSA's power could lead to grave harm.

Are you sure it's not just that the only people currently talking about this issue are white, college-aged, middle-to-upper class American men?

And for you to whip that out, I really hope you aren't one of the born-here Americans you talk about, because you would be just as bad as the people who supposedly don't care: you would be appropriating the experiences of the underprivileged to back your own, unrelated endeavor.

ceolon FBI admits to flying drones over US without warrants

It's good that he's being contrarian, because the general opinion here stems from a bunch of tech enthusiasts being riled up at an imaginary boogeyman that's supposedly an affront to their internet rights — because in the end, they really only care about their ability to be jerkoffs online. When the NYPD started frisking every other black person, where was HN? What about when the right for women to have affordable birth control was being oppressed? But suddenly the government is peeking at your search history and it's "tyranny!" and "the government is out of control!" on the front page each day.

All of these arguments are looking increasingly like conspiracy theories.