erdevs

This stood out to me too. It's harsh, but true. I love that Apple is making computing devices more accessible to people, and I think that's a good thing. But I wish they weren't also making those very same devices more closed and controlled. Imagine if all of the original personal computers were as locked down as the iPhone is, in terms of being able to tweak/customize it, create and distribute software for it, or find other people's software for it. It's definitely a regressive step and I don't see why we can't have beautiful industrial design, slick software interfaces and more easy, open-access under the hood for users that want to get in there.

Here is an example of the sort of press reaction I'm referring to (this isn't a particularly egregious example, but it demonstrates the point): https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/0...

Look at the language there. Scientists "pinpointed 15 locations in our DNA that are associated with depression..." [emphases added]. There is no sense of nuance or any caution in conclusion here. Even reading the whole article, which perhaps most people won't even bother with, you don't get much sense that there's any degree of uncertainty here. There is no indication that the field at large is still wrestling with how best to analyze SNP studies at all, despite publishing studies "practically ever week". There is little qualification around the data set here (it only briefly mentions that 23andme's data is based on saliva, not blood or other cells... which may be problematic. But also it should be noted that disease outcomes in this study were self-reported and from a self-selected subset of the general population who sought professional help... and there are many, many other nuances to consider). Instead, we get the fairly flat-out impression that this is a definitive discovery and, not only that, but it is of huge significance in the field as well.

It may well be. But caution is warranted until time and replication hopefully do their work. Unfortunately, this is a pattern in GWAS studies and their public relations. And while the underlying methodology in the field has improved tremendously over the past 5 years, there is still a lot of debate within the field about how much more improvement needs to be made (on data sources, on analytic techniques, on review standards), and how to adapt to forthcoming changes in available study data.

I think this study appears to be more robust than many others. So, I'm not picking on it. In fact I gave it particular praise for being relatively robust compared to some other GWASs. But I do think generally people should be more cautious about interpreting GWA studies or over-generalizing them.

I did not mean to imply that this paper was due extra skepticism in particular. Indeed, I tried to give the paper due praise for seeming to be more rigorous than many other GWASs.

And, yes indeed, false discovery rate has been a huge issue which the field has highlighted... that is my point. Caution has been warranted here historically, and it continues to be warranted even today.

Thanks for the reply, and my turn to apologize for misinterpreting your tone.

You asked initially what exactly I was saying, and here again how to square what I'm saying with my original comment. So, let me try to explain, and I would hope we're not on different sides of this as I think what I'm saying is reasonable, given the context.

I originally said: "GWA studies general should be treated with great caution. The way they work generally is based on a simple p-value test of association among outcome (in this case, depression) and all genes based on SNPs. There is a high degree of mere chance association and false positives. Most GWA studies leave a lot to be desired."

For context: genome-association studies have had a history of being blown out of proportion in the press. And often for outcomes which greatly affect people's lives. Depression is one such issue and it'd be a shame if people were led into thinking there is necessarily a great breakthrough here in understanding possible gene-linkages to depression outcomes. It'd also be a shame if the result was ignored. I tried to provide some praise to this paper for being fairly rigorous, but also note that GWAS studies should be treated with caution generally.

Why should GWAS studies be treated with caution generally? (Besides that results of any study should be treated with some degree of caution.)

Well, firstly, GWAS is a fairly nascent field. Unlike physics or even particle physics, it hasn't had that much time to mature. This is doubly so when applying GWAS to mental health. I'm sure the paper covers some of these risks (or at least it hopefully does)... but relying on self-reporting introduces potential selection bias in the population sample, as does using people seeking help vs a general population study. Quickly reading the paper, it looks like it relied on self-reports and analyzed only people who'd been diagnosed with major depression (meaning they'd sought help). We should be cautious in over-generalizing based on this.

Secondly, GWAS has had a rough history of overstating results and misapplying analyses. It's much better today than it was even, say, 5 years ago. Ioannidis and others made some heroic efforts to convince the field to clean up it's act, in effect starting ~7-8 years ago.

Thirdly, there is a historical pattern of results in this field being overhyped in the press.

Finally, there are active and sometimes heated debates in the field about how best to do GWAS. This is getting worse as a high-throughput, low-cost full-genome sequencing comes online to a greater and greater degree and SNP-based data sets fall by the wayside. Some question taking a frequentist approach at all in the face of such a huge degree of multiple testing. Others call for much, much higher requirements for holdout data sets, cross-validation, and replication before a study is published or considered final, especially when dealing with things like mental health (and their likely application to the field of pharmacology).

This is serious stuff that could end up affecting people's mental health treatments and lives, so caution is warranted. Especially given the field's relative nascence, self-admitted history of publishing low-quality results, the rapidly changing techniques, and the fact that there are ongoing debates within the field of how best to do GWAS analysis and how to effectively replicate results.

> There are 3 datasets here...

Yes, understood. Part of the reason I dug up the actual paper was so that others could see it, as the news source linked didn't go into much detail. I didn't read the entire paper, and appreciate the additional explanation here. I'm sure it's helpful for others as a condensed summary as well.

> > Many GWASs report much less stringent p-value and many don't run sub-replications.

> This isn't true.

What is not true? Do all GWAS studies do similar holdout replications and compare to other results? No. Have all GWAS studies over time always adjusted appropriately for multiple testing and held to a high significance standard? No. That is a more recent development and set of standards in the field over the past few years. I didn't make an outrageous claim; I simply noted that many GWASs have used much lower significance thresholds (especially in the past) and many don't do thorough holdout replications nor replicate in other ways.

> Most GWASes use the standard genome-wide significance level of 10-8.

Indeed. I see that you are aware of this push in the field for greater degrees of significance and that this is now fairly standardized... yet in another comment you appear to be debating me when I stated that this has been the case.

> > and, believe me, many GWA studies have been published with much less significant p-values

> I don't think they have. Ever since Ioannidis and others demonstrated what a total debacle the early candidate-gene studies were around 2009-2011

Yes, pre-Ioannidis is the period I was referring to. Things cleaned up a lot in 2012+. What you said does not conflict with what I said... the field, especially early on, has published some spurious results. It seems like you're simultaneously saying "I don't think they have [published low-quality results]" and then immediately admitting what a "debacle" early studies sometimes were.

> That doesn't show anything relevant. Failure to replicate at 10-8 is a ludicrous way to define non-replication

This is a silly statement. Doesn't the significance level being "ludicrous" depend on things like the degree of multiple testing happening? Obviously, yes. The reason why the field (not just this one paper) has pushed for significance in the 10^-7 to 10^-8 range is partially for this reason. So... are you questioning the entire field's movement over the past few years? If so, on what basis?

As high-throughput, low-cost full genome sequencing begins to replace SNP-based techniques, GWAS will have to wrestle with this issue even more.

I'm not sure what exactly you're debating me on here. I'm not saying anything controversial in the field. Again, even the wikipedia article cites well-known studies and quotations from respected sources in the literature, including "Particularly the statistical issue of multiple testing wherein it has been noted that "the GWA approach can be problematic because the massive number of statistical tests performed presents an unprecedented potential for false-positive results"... which is what I originally pointed out. This is an issue the field has struggled with from the get go. It's matured and is much better now (as I've noted), but the field still struggles with the issue. And there are still low-quality papers being published. I also gave this particular paper praise for holding to a higher standard than some other GWA studies.

There are already plenty of VCs and other influencers who, knowingly or not and intentionally or not, demonstrate sexist behaviors and attitudes. You see it over and over and over.

If you're already prone to some degree of sexism, observing Theranos, Yahoo, and maybe uBeam recently might result in confirmation bias kicking in.

If you try to be rational and as self-aware as you can though, you realize these are just a handful of examples with coincident timing and there are many, many, many times as many female CEOs who are doing just fine. You also recall all the male CEOs who have been fuckups or caused tremendous damage, not only in startupland but elsewhere like Wall St, and realize that sex is probably not a significant contributor to outcome. Mindset and ethics are among the far more likely indicators.

So, will this affect things on the margin? Maybe... with people predisposed to look for negative signals about fitness of women as CEOs. Not for anyone trying to be as objective as possible.

You should try reading up on the subject before being blithely dismissive.

False discovery rates, false positive rates, and family-wise error rates and how best to control for them are ongoing areas of interest and research in GWAS. There are calls for p-value requirements in the 10^-8 range to help avoid this. There are calls to address stratification (which can affect both type I and type II errors). A lot of research and debate on this topic over the past several years. Who are you exactly to dismiss all of this scientific inquiry? It's great if you have expertise in another field, but it seems odd to dismiss scientific questions and ongoing research in this particular field.

You'll find plenty of information if you actually seek it out rather than simply making a knee-jerk, snarky comment, but here is one example article which articulates some of the issues that have been under consideration in recent years: http://m.ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/41/1/273.full

Note, there, how the level of significance is discussed. A p-value of 10^-7 to 10^-8 is suggested (as compared to this study's 10^-5 level of significance... and, believe me, many GWA studies have been published with much less significant p-values).

This is an ongoing and active area of discussion in the field. I'm not an expert, but some of my colleagues are, and it's a topic they sometimes discuss and brainstorm over lunch, etc.

Actually, even the wikipedia page on GWAS mentions some of this inquiry and debate, as well as the erroneous publication that has plagued this nascent field. It'll all be worked out over time and great discussions are happening here. Vast improvement in processes and standards has been made over the past few years in particular. But we don't move the ball forward by dismissing questions or incorrectly assuming all must simply be right and well.

I believe this is the underlying paper: http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/ng.3623....

GWA studies general should be treated with great caution. The way they work generally is based on a simple p-value test of association among outcome (in this case, depression) and all genes based on SNPs. There is a high degree of mere chance association and false positives. Most GWA studies leave a lot to be desired.

This one looks more solid than most. The p-value appears to be 10^-5 and they ran a replication data set as well. Many GWASs report much less stringent p-value and many don't run sub-replications.

One interesting aside about GWA studies: this may have changed recently, but I believe it used to be that any GWA study involving funding from the NIH was requires to post its data to a public, freely available database. That always seemed a good practice to me and one that should be emulated in other sorts of studies involving government funding. I wonder if this study is subject to that requirement.

Mobile device fingerprinting has been a big deal for a long time. Multiple startups have been created to do it and some have been acquired. And many adtech companies incorporate this functionality.

I hope some day soon your mobile OS let's you choose to restrict the device information available to sites and apps. It really ought to be a user's choice whether to make the tradeoff between providing more info in exchange for supposedly better functionality or not.

What "correction" was there, exactly? I replied to an over-generalization and misstatement. What exactly do you see being actually corrected?

If this is true, then it's a big tacit admission of guilt, or the expectation if being found liable, at least. Where did you hear?

Yes, that for sure is mentioned as a distinct possibility. Sometimes in such matters the city can also be sued for approving plans if they are subsequently found to be faulty or inadequate as well. And if there is any other construction going on nearby besides this Transbay Terminal that was mentioned, that could be called into question as well.

It seems that you need to read more carefully and perhaps with more generosity.

> A few examples: - Foundations of tall building must go to bedrock - not true.

I see few if any comments here asserting, let alone asserting without qualification, that buildings must be built to bedrock. Further, heeding your own advice that expertise should be bidden, note that the apparently expert sources in the article said themselves that not building to bedrock can be a problem.

I see people here noting and reflecting that expert opinion. Few if anyone going beyond it. And you're not reading the source material carefully enough if you miss the take that not building to bedrock can carry some risk.

> - Large buildings settling is unusual - not true.

Again, I see no one or very few people here saying this. Of course buildings settle over time. And here in this thread, contrary to your blithe and dismissive assertion, we even have people pointing out that settling happens not just in towers but in buildings of most any kind.

Note as well, again, that the very experts you appeal to say that this tower's settling is both comparatively fast and that its magnitude is unexpected. These are the experts talking, so you come off as hypocritical at best here. The nature and particulars of the settling in this particular case appears noteworthy and to be a reasonable cause for concern.

> - Earthquake safety has been compromised in this case - not true.

Ahh... so, now you are the expert and capable of refuting this possibility so entirely-- upon merely a cursory examination of second- or third-hand information, rather than a primary analysis, no less-- that it is somehow faulty for people to question whether this might have an impact on earthquake safety? My, my; odd that you called for caution in drawing conclusions until experts had weighed in, then turned around and flatly conclude that which I doubt even experts would leave completely unqualified, and certainly not universally and unanimously so.

The comments here so far are not much of the chicken-little or even rabble-rousing type. Try being more respectful toward your fellow community members.

How much stock should one put in that declaration of safety? It is from an "independent" analysis... but who paid the analysts? Or, suppose absolute freedom from bias... how many times have expert opinions of safety been wrong in the face of mother nature. Picture Fukushima.

The risks in a tilting building are many. From a market value standpoint, homeowner value has already been destroyed simply by perception. If remediation is necessary here, homeowner fees could dramatically increase. Tilting buildings often see cracks in walls, malfunctioning elevators and other ills which also lower value. There will be lawsuits here-- you can see all sides rattling sabers with legalistic language and positioning already just from these articles -- and those will carry costs as well. Taxpayers may well be pulled into the fray and suffer as well in these situations.

From a pure safety standpoint, experience dictates that we should discount expert declarations of safety in many such matters. Residents of the tower and the towers' neighbors may do well to heed caution. At the end of the day, it is hubris to expect to predict with any high degree of confidence what might happen here. After all, none of the experts from any side involved foresaw even the current predicament, where no grand act of nature is even involved. The building simply stands there, yet already reacts in unpredicted ways. How likely are the experts then to foresee predicaments in even more complex situations?

Probably not good. According to this and other articles, the building's concrete slab foundation sits roughly 80 ft below street level upon sand, while bedrock lies 200 ft down. That means there is 120 ft of sand, possibly susceptible to liquefaction, between the buildings foundation and solid bedrock. That sounds bad enough. But now imagine the building is tipping over slightly. The already potentially worrisome problem compounds dramatically.

I imagine there is some long-game here. A ploy of some kind. Though I'm not sure how effective or probable it could be.

I can imagine a "burn it down" strategem at play. By electing Trump, bet that no outright epic-level disaster will be created, but that ridiculous problems will manifest under such a Presidency so as to bring in to stark relief the maladies of our enormous government and the almost comical inefficacy of our democracy today. Try to springboard from there to the change you hope to create, in being able to say "clearly, our systems are broken. We need a new way forward."

Alternatively, can see a plan to dismantle one flailing party as a first step, with a follow-on plan to dismantle the other party subsequently, and thereby open the gate for a third (Libertarian?) party.

Alternatively, could see this as a means of stymying to some degree the criticism that SV tech companies and veterans attempt to distort political discourse toward liberalism. "You think Facebook distorts reality in favor of liberalism, and that most tech companies do the same, inadvertently or not? Well, look here! One of the most famous and influential of SV's modern Titans, and a Facebook board member no less, outrightly supporting Trump."

Or, perhaps this is a legitimate swing against liberalism, and against established parties and established political candidates, which would align with Thiel's stated political philosophy.

Or, perhaps the move is based on the sum of all of these partial probabilities, and others. But I suspect subtlety here in some form, and perhaps at least the delusion of a grand plan.

I wonder how much this will actually affect Denton. Often people file bankruptcy as a means of protecting their assets, as opposed to accepting that they have none.

I think Denton/Gawker were and are a net disservice to society. But they're also far from the worst or most egregious examples of the archetype of a say-anything-for-money tabloid.

What do others think of Thiel's hand in all this? On one hand, I respect it. Well-played, thus far. On the other hand, it isn't good that a select few (the extremely wealthy) can wield so much influence when other less wealthy people who may have been similarly wronged simply cannot. Equal opportunity and equal justice, etc. That lack of equality is likely a symptom of our costly and cumbersome legal system, though. Also, anyone think this will blow back on Thiel? Perhaps Denton can countersue? Perhaps behaving this way will have costly knock-on effects elsewhere in life or business?

I'm not sure if it's pettiness. Perhaps think of it as a societal or economic immunological response. Such actors seek to punish, in whatever ways they can, entities viewed as "bad actors". This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and may actually be a good thing. As in creating social or economic consequences for those who fail to reciprocate resource sharing, these sorts of punitive actions can be net-wins for economy and society. This point goes beyond Uber itself; a conclusion might be that it's great to create a valuable and disruptive service like Uber... but one could be even more successful in doing so if they weren't a jerk about it (or were more savvy about avoiding the perception that they're a jerk).

It may be petty, as you say. Or it may not be. Regardless, it's sad that journalists today don't consistently go after all bad actors, if they're going to do this. Uber seems fairly inept and heavy-handed in managing their leadership brand, but many other companies have proven how simple it is to placate perception while behaving very destructively behind the scenes.

A simple way to look at micropayments for content such as on websites:

If micropayments are used in addition to ads-- perhaps for premium content or premium sidebar sister content -- then micropayments are acretive to publishers and the only problem is convenience of payment.

If microtrans are to replace ads (or be offered as a choice to users instead of watching ads), then In order to embrace micropayments, publishers would need to see themselves making nearly as much from micropayments as from ads.

Say a typical publisher gets a $10 eCPM aggregate across all the ads they show on a page. That is 1c per pageview. So, would some users pay 1c per article? Say users read 100 articles a day across many sites: would they be fine paying $1/day to access all this content?

The actual range might be anywhere from a fraction of a penny to several cents per article/page, but we're in the ballpark.

To me, this sort of system could work. As a user, I'd go for it. But payment needs to be automatic and frictionless (after I authorize a site to charge me for views).

Those best positioned to enable such a microtransaction payments are browser makers. Next up are as blockers. Maybe Facebook as they aggregate so much content now, though this conflicts with their model. Google AdWords+Double-click could also introduce a user-facing option to disable ads in favor of micropayments which users could purchase in-bulk and then spend through over time by viewing pages, but this too would conflict with Google Ads' model and network effects in many ways. A third-party new entrant could also do this. Perhaps you'd subscribe or fill a wallet with a service which content publishers integrate and get authorized to deduct fractional-pennies per view from.

This sort of model would be a welcome change, from my POV. And the economics seem workable from a publisher's POV as well.

I'd missed this article. Very interesting to contrast the (stated) strategies and philosophies of each company. Taking Didi's stated approach at face value, it's easy to see why they chose a beneficial partnership with a company like Lyft which seems to share their ethos while seeking to eliminate Uber (and now succeeding at that).

Such schadenfreude and enmity are natural responses to people or entities which seem overconfident and braggadocios, or which play dirty, or which bully. Uber has created the perception that they are or do all of those things.

Perhaps I missed it and the article already covered these, but a few other major tips that I doubt anyone would disagree with:

-Eliminate distractions. Any external stimuli subtract from concentration and "processing power" for your task. Even the possibility of distraction can put your brain on alert for them when they're not present, so best if you can create an environment which is free of distraction generally. This relates not only to your office/work environment, but things like going into DND on your phone and IMs.

-Work in large, contiguous time chunks (and then take breaks; see next). For complex tasks, it takes a while to "spin up". To load all the context, to explore possibility branches of solutions, to implement possible solutions and test them. As with distractions, very short work windows break this problem solving time up and require a re-spin-up period.

-Take breaks between longer work sessions. Taking breaks-- and in particular moving around while on break-- helps prevent fatigue, sustaining efficacy and productivity for longer windows of the day. Taking a break, especially wherein you change your environment (eg walking outside), can also help invigorate problem-solving. Finally, moving around is healthy for both your body and your mind.

I don't think you can make full use of your brain without following all of these as well.

Maybe it's bad for Lyft, or maybe it's good. Has it been confirmed that the partnership is void or defunct?

If the partnership remains in place, then this is likely a good thing for Lyft. Recall that, unlike Uber, Lyft wasn't trying to storm China and establish itself as a direct player there. Rather, they established a collaboration with Did whereby each company's customers could benefit from the other company's services in their respective countries. As such, assuming the partnership remains alive, this would mean Lyft has an even stronger partner now in China.

Wow. I'm a pretty big MvC fan, but never knew about this guy.

http://marvelvscapcom.wikia.com/wiki/Norimaro

Thanks for sharing!

Well played by Didi. This was a years-long chess game with enormous stakes and Didi came out winning. Make no mistake, Uber's goal was absolutely to dominate in China, if they could. That was a big part of their pitch to investors over the past two years. This deal is an admission of defeat and a retreat from competition, salvaging what value they could in the process.

I would imagine this speaks to mounting pressure on Uber to begin producing real profits. If so, expect many changes in the coming year+ as the company's unit economics (outside its usurious car leases) are clearly still abysmal in almost all markets.

I'm so happy to see the a good deal of skepticism of Gladwell here. What a change from ~10 years ago when he was near-universally lauded.

Gladwell is an amazinglh eloquent and convincing writer. I only wish I had his talents there. But oh how I wish he were more intellectually honest with his subject matter.

Do others have examples of writers with similar prowess of the pen, but greater merit in seeking truth? Always on the hunt for more good thinkers to read and all the better when their writing is entertaining and of admirable skill to boot.

Thanks for your kindly and thoughtful reply.

I'm glad you learned through your experiences and it's nice of you to want to share what you can.

Regarding "Skynet" and automation at Amazon, I think this is fertile ground for metaphor and for science fiction parable. Some great works of imagination have been created in this vein already. So, I'm onboard with that, personally. I get lost at calling Obama an AI of some kind or Romney a time traveler, but I understand you were joking in a way. I just didn't get the joke, but that's probably on me.

4 years of interacting with several humans a day in one-time or small groups in a fairly closed, intimate environments will almost certainly lead to interesting stories. And to many, many opportunities to demonstrate compassion and care. So, I believe that, certainly. I am skeptical about the stories you described of holding people's heads in just such a way so as to relieve pressure and bring emotional balance in the same way that I am skeptical about ads that proclaim a simple pill can grow the size of a man's genitals or that "one weird trick" causes dramatic and rapid weight loss. But, as I said, that skepticism is part of my questioning and curious nature, so it's nothing personal or specific and I hope it didn't come across as such. (By the way... I may well have missed it, but do you have a more detailed description of this technique and some knowledge or theories on the pathways by which it works? If this works, it should be taught and popularized!)

Thanks again for your reply and I wish you well. It's great that you take a compassionate point of view and apparently try to help people whenever possible. I wouldn't want my questions here to take anything away from that general principle.

I didn't read a lot of these. And I'm a naturally skeptical person, so forgive the following observation. In every story I read, you seem to offer sage advice which people are almost immediately receptive and responsive to, even in dire or exigent situations. In my experience, people are rarely so responsive when flooded emotionally. In other stories, you're saving the day by calling cops when needed, etc. It seems like you're painting the picture of yourself as a sort of heroic sage. That's alright, I suppose, but it smells funny to my (admittedly skeptical) nose.

I'm glad you checked with mods before posting and if this is cool with them, then it's cool with me. But this smacks of self-promotion to me.

Also... Mitt Romney as a freedom fighter from the future who can help us stop Amazon's Skynet? Okay. Maybe I skimmed too quickly by this point, or I missed the metaphor, but this seems a little whack.

It is stressful. But handling the stress effectively is a big part of the job and is a defining characteristic of success in such endeavors. Gotta know what you're signing up for, so it's good articles like this highlight it.