Hacker News Reader

helloworldon Ask HN: What do you wear to work?

Skip the dress shirts. Try some plaids or stripes like the one below -- on sale for $15 at Old Navy. :-)

Good luck with your new job!

http://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/product.do?cid=1102404&pcid=10...

helloworldon How Hotmail changed Microsoft and email

In Hotmail's early days -- before the Microsoft acquisition -- that email tagline was the VC Tim Draper's idea:

https://techcrunch.com/2009/10/18/ps-i-love-you-get-your-fre...

helloworldon Radical diet can reverse type 2 diabetes, new study shows

"Raisins are one of the most commonly consumed dried fruits... Compared to non-consumers, raisin consumers had a lower body weight (-4.2%), body mass index (-5.2%), and waist circumference (-3.8%), were 39% less likely to be overweight or obese, and had a 54% reduced risk of metabolic syndrome. In conclusion, raisin consumption was associated with better nutrient intake, diet quality, and weight parameters, and with lower risk of being obese and having metabolic syndrome in US adults."

Association of raisin consumption with nutrient intake, diet quality, and health risk factors in US adults: National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2012. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29056890

helloworldon Cinema’s greatest scene: ‘Casablanca’ and ‘La Marseillaise’

Before a scene is shot, who figures out where the camera will focus? Is that primarily the director's job -- or the cinematographer's?

In this scene, I'm struck that there are so many crucial close-ups: of Renault, Ilsa, Rick, Yvonne, and Laszlo. I'm assuming that someone planned that. Maybe with storyboards?

helloworldon Sony Aibo

The Google Translate version is funny:

Born to be gazed at, it is an unbelievable pupil. Unexperienced love perseverance that I can not help touching unexpectedly.

But I also got this useful info:

Scheduled to be released on January 11, 2018.

helloworldon NTSB: Tesla’s Autopilot UX a “major role” in fatal Model S crash

Because the user is an integral part of Tesla's "Autopilot" system. The product name implies autonomy, but in fact, the vehicle requires a human in the loop for safe operation.

Unfortunately, a poorly designed user experience lulled the driver into behaving foolishly. That's why the headline mentions UX.

helloworldon Peter Thiel Is Bankrolling an Unapproved Offshore Herpes Vaccine Trial

Why wouldn't the FDA allow it? I didn't see anything about that in the article.

helloworldon Peter Thiel Is Bankrolling an Unapproved Offshore Herpes Vaccine Trial

I wish the reporter had clarified why Rational Vaccines pursued this unconventional approach.

The sentence below seems to imply that this was all they could afford:

After he failed to secure federal funding and an [institutional review board], Halford moved ahead with the trial offshore.

But with Peter Thiel as an investor, I assume that money (within reason) wasn't the primary motivator.

In general, I'm dismayed by the breathless, sensationalistic tone of this article. The people involved don't seem stupid or malevolent, so I'd like to understand better their rationale for what they're doing.

helloworldon Launch HN: Darmiyan (YC S17) – Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease

Here's one approach that seems to have achieved some success:

A 2 year multidomain intervention of diet, exercise, cognitive training, and vascular risk monitoring versus control to prevent cognitive decline in at-risk elderly people (FINGER): a randomised controlled trial

http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67...

helloworldon Launch HN: Darmiyan (YC S17) – Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease

This sounds awesome. How might it complement the "visual paired comparison" task of Zola et al. (2013) -- which has been commercialized by Neurotrack -- in helping to identify those at risk of dementia?

Zola, S.M., Manzanares, C.M, Clopton, P., Lah, J.J., and Levey, A.I. (2013). Am J Alzheimers Dis Other Demen. 28(2): 179–184. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3670591/

helloworldon HackerNews Grid

The visual memories of childhood can be powerful. For some reason -- I know it's a stretch! -- this reminds me of the Froebel blocks that Frank Lloyd Wright played with as a kid:

Wright, who died in 1959, often spoke and wrote eloquently about the influence of the blocks in his understanding of design. In his 1957 book, ''A Testament,'' he wrote: ''I sat at the little kindergarten table top and played with the cube, the sphere and the triangle. I soon became susceptible to constructive pattern evolving in everything I saw. I learned to see this way, and when I did, I did not care to draw casual incidentals of nature. I wanted to design.''

Some architecture observers have noted the similarities between the block structures Froebel designed and the eminent architect's buildings.

http://www.nytimes.com/1985/10/13/style/the-froebel-gift-tak...

helloworldon HackerNews Grid

Cool! From a 1904 Dutch cocoa package design, I've now learned:

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

helloworldon HackerNews Grid

P.S. I just Googled "recursion," and got this very witty reply:

    Did you mean: recursion

helloworldon HackerNews Grid

I'm hoping that this makes HN's front page just to see the fun recursion of the site displaying a screenshot of itself. (And I do appreciate the experiment in user experience design, too.)

helloworldon Show HN: The best time to visit any city

The best times to visit San Diego for ideal weather are February to November

Yeah, that's been my impression, too! :-)

helloworldon Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana? (1995)

Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

Yeah, that'll never happen.

helloworldon Founder Stories: Blake Scholl of Boom (YC W16)

This part was inspiring:

And so we went from what could have been the biggest laughingstock at demo day, to the team who showed up with five billion in LOIs, a record that probably won’t be broken soon.

helloworldon Teenager's sickle cell reversed using a treatment to change his DNA

It sounds like this research involves somatic gene transfer, in which the change to the genome is not passed on to children:

Gene transfer can be targeted to somatic (body) or germ (egg and sperm) cells. In somatic gene transfer the recipient's genome is changed, but the change is not passed on to the next generation. In germline gene transfer, the parents' egg and sperm cells are changed with the goal of passing on the changes to their offspring.

https://www.genome.gov/10004764/germline-gene-transfer/

helloworldon [dead]

I'm guessing that many people at Volkswagen participated in or were aware of this conspiracy. Will most of them be charged with crimes? Or is it a matter of whether they happen to be in the U.S. and can be arrested?

helloworldon Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?

Your comment made me curious about the design of New Zealand passports, which eventually led me to this atlas of passport covers:

https://www.passportindex.org/

Here's New Zealand's distinctive design:

https://www.passportindex.org/countries/nz.png

But I prefer the elegant minimalism from Switzerland:

https://www.passportindex.org/countries/ch.png

De gustibus non est disputandum. :-)

helloworldon U.S. Punishes Russia for Election Hacking

Mr. Obama decided to expand an executive order that he issued in April 2015, after the Sony hacking. He signed it in Hawaii on Thursday morning, specifically giving himself and his successor the authority to issue travel bans and asset freezes on those who “tamper with, alter, or cause a misappropriation of information, with a purpose or effect of interfering with or undermining election processes or institutions.”

Are there any lawyers here who might explain whether this kind of executive order is unusual? The "giving himself and his successor the authority" part seems, well, undemocratic. Isn't it the Congress (as constrained by the Constitution) that typically gives the executive branch authority to do new things?

helloworldon Chop Suey Nation: Road trip uncovers the lives behind Chinese-Canadian food

What an extraordinary work ethic:

Like any other day, she said, she’d work [on her 55th birthday]. In 15 years, the restaurant has only been closed five times: Once when she was sick and the other times to visit her children. Otherwise, it’s open 365 days a year. Like any other day, she’d close around midnight, prepare her own dinner, watch some television and go to bed.

helloworldon World War Three, by Mistake

This part gave me a chill:

The Royal Navy’s decision to save money by using Windows for Submarines, a version of Windows XP, as the operating system for its ballistic-missile subs seems especially shortsighted.

Indeed!

helloworldon World War Three, by Mistake

I hope you're right, but I fear that nuclear weapons might someday be available to fanatics who make very different moral calculations.

helloworldon Why time management is ruining our lives

Time management is difficult because work generally expands to fill the available time (Parkinson's Law), and it depends on the inherent, insoluble complexity of working with other people.

The author suggests that time-management schemes are a means of distracting ourselves from the briefness of our lives and the inevitability of death -- the central theme of Ernest Becker's 1973 book, "Denial of Death":

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

helloworldon High-speed Wi-Fi rolls into 100th railway station in India

I actually just mocked up the inverse, out of curiosity:

http://imgur.com/a/nPpsL

IMHO, at least, it does look better.

helloworldon High-speed Wi-Fi rolls into 100th railway station in India

It's odd, too, that the map's shades-of-blue color scheme makes the land look like water:

https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ima...

That map would be easier to parse, I think, if the water areas were the dark-blue shade, and the land areas were the light blue. (I guess I just realized that I have an implicit visual grammar of maps. I'm not sure whether it's universal.)

helloworldon A Simple Way to Reduce Suicides

In September 1998, Britain changed the packaging for paracetamol, the active ingredient in Tylenol, to require blister packs for packages of 16 pills when sold over the counter in places like convenience stores, and for packages of 32 pills in pharmacies. The result: a study by Oxford University researchers showed that over the subsequent 11 or so years, suicide deaths from Tylenol overdoses declined by 43 percent, and a similar decline was found in accidental deaths from medication poisonings. In addition, there was a 61 percent reduction in liver transplants attributed to Tylenol toxicities.

Definitely worth reading, but maybe edit the headline to include the publication date of 2013.

helloworldon Freelance Isn't Free Act Passes in NYC

Or maybe 11.111%, so you're back to where you started.