iso1337

I have personally seen this in some airports. The problem was they were fixed in place in front of you and constantly blared ads.

At some restaurants near me, the waitstaff now hand you an iPad instead of a menu. Once we got over the clunky UI, it made ordering a lot more efficient.

I imagine you could embed a short 15s video to explain what the dish is (if needed).

I feel like restaurant culture could change to be more efficient. Some observations from visiting Asia or eating out in general:

In Korea, there is a button on every table you can press to get the attention of waitstaff. No more inefficient hoping to catch eye contact when they walk by.

A lot of places now make you walk up to a register and pay as you leave. No more having the waitstaff make 2-3 trips to your table just so you can sign.

Having iPads or something for ordering is another step, but may take longer to recoup those initial investments.

Focus only on a few speciality dishes, rather than offering 200 items.

Edit: there’s also the automat, which was in fashion in the early 1900s in America, I believe. There was the Eatsa chain but it folded, apparently due to “expanding too fast.”

23andme uses genotypimg and not sequencing, so you won’t be getting those rare mutations. That’s how they can keep the price so low.

I think your point still stands though, your genotype is still identifying information and should be safeguarded.

https://customercare.23andme.com/hc/en-us/articles/202904600...

Looking at the figures in the paper, cooking for 4 minutes (which is way overkill for spinach leaves) decreases lutein by 25-50% (with relatively large error bars).

I haven’t done the math in how much lutein is in spinach vs how much we need but to a first order of approximation that’s acceptable.

In the abstract they say they cooked spinach for up to something absurd like 60 minutes. Spinach leaves are cooked within a minute or so in my experience, so not sure why they performed the study that way.

That’s a good point. Unfortunately kiva doesn’t give you many tools to make those assessments. You get a picture of the person applying for the loan, and then about a paragraph describing what they will use it for. Very light on numbers and no follow up on how their business is doing post-loan. After a while it felt like the site was selling me the feeling of being a good person, above all else.

You can try out kiva.org

My problem with it was that most of the businesses were of the retail type (selling clothes on the streets). I’m not an economist but that seems to me to not have much potential for lifting many out of poverty.

If true, then this is the bigger story here. Meddling in other states via backdoor means.

I feel like Verily’s non-GMO approach of using a robotic system to sort out sterile males generated the old-fashioned (radioactive) way offers a compelling alternative.

I’m far from anti-GMO, but the fact that there could be an alternative and that Oxitec’s approach doesn’t offer compelling advantages over that would give me pause.

Oxitec uses tetracycline to supress expression of the self-limiting gene in the captive state. However, there will always be some genetic mutations and given a large enough population you will get mutants that inactivate the transgene and could potentially lead to those gene copies spreading in the wild

https://www.oxitec.com/our-technology/

Not sure why the gp is being downvoted so much specifically in regards to the DTC comment. There was just a decently-sized HN thread about how the current non-direct to customer model is not the best for either the car buyer or the manufacturer.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18790480

I think even these estimates of Toyotas battery capacity are too high. Here's my attempt:

Prius Prime PHEV: 8.8 kWh Regular Prius: I couldn't find recent numbers, but 1st gen was 1.2 kWh

All other hybrids seem to have between 1-2 kWh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Synergy_Drive#High_volt...

European PHEV sales were 0.3% of all sales and 0.65% of all hybrids [1]

US Prius Prime 2017 sales (I think their only PHEV model) were 21k units. [2] Note that 21k units just in the US out of 1.5m hybrids total gives us 1.4%, so maybe the PHEV prius is not selling as well in Europe.

Let's say we have the following scenarios of 2.5 or 5% of the total 1.5m number being PHEV to be conservative. Further assume that regular hybrids have 1.5 kWh. For the 2.5% scenario, if my math is correct, that yields 550,000 kWh. For the 5% PHEV scenario, that yields 874,000 kWh.

[1] https://insideevs.com/only-0-3-of-toyota-sales-in-europe-wer... [2] 2017 table from https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

So if there are any student drivers then they shouldn’t be allowed to beta test in that neighborhood?

Yeah it’s like - OK what systems are not like that? Pre written technology eras where one could lose knowledge if a tribe member died?

Maybe The Great Leap Forward when Mao killed a bunch of intellectuals?

My take was that he is using a slightly different definition of "chance" or "trial and error" than what is perhaps common. I don't quite grasp his definition enough to be able to do it justice.

I don't know enough about geology to be able to comment intelligently on your digging holes in the ground point. However, from my own background in biology research, a lot of what he writes strikes true with some caveats.

Biological systems are highly complex, and a lot of reductionist basic research work does seem to be driven by understanding along the forms of "I have a mental model of this subsystem, if I do X, then I expect Y." However, a lot is also discovered via his "convexity" principles (which I agree most laypeople would label as "trial and error"). Biologists often discover functions by randomly mutating billions or trillions of individual microbes, screening for interesting phenotypes, and then sequencing to discover the supposedly causal mutations.

Where the understanding approach really breaks down is in engineering systems -- which I believe requires an even higher level of understanding than the qualitative mental models bandied about in biology. We simply don't understand enough to be able to develop most drugs with that sort of rational approach, so reducing costs per attempt (while keeping all else equal, which is something often overlooked) would be beneficial. Unfortunately, things in the industry appear to be heading the other direction.

Sorry, I was on mobile and found the first link. But I think the stats aren't as bad as you think. For any given year, you will have some inventory disappear completely. There is also new inventory being built. So, the average house size of all houses is also increasing. Not as much as the average new house size, but definitely increasing. Most people don't live in old houses from the 60s.

I would actually ignore the average household size. We already know that that that decreasing over time.

Note that I didn't intend my comment to be a personal attack on you. I'm merely trying to point out this trend. Apologies if I came off that way. But your case also highlights another fact that was rare back in the day -- using your house as an office is increasingly becoming viable or necessary for those doing remote work.

Yes, once you are used to that kind of space, it’s hard to go back. Hedonistic treadmill and all (or some kind of treadmill). People in the 60s had larger families with smaller houses. However, to fulfill our expectations of progress, House sizes in America keep growing decade after decade.

I’m fully guilty of this myself too. But like all things it cannot keep growing indefinitely.

http://www.aei.org/publication/new-us-homes-today-are-1000-s...

Have any links to share?

What pathogens? If you have microbes that can use the plastic as a carbon source, they have a competitive advantage and will out-compete anything else.

Look up how ethanol fermentation is done -- it's actually not that sterile. The yeast secrete alcohol that effectively kills off competitors. A similar effect has been taken advantage of by engineering some yeasts to consume an unnatural source of phosphorus (phosphite).

So if you were to evolve a microbe that can eat certain types of plastic, it would readily outcompete everything else.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/583

Having a critical mass of people matters. Large, dense cities have economies of scale.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JUAx445ReU

Google hasn't extorted local governments for tax breaks in their recent San Jose deal.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/12/san-jose-deal-google-ca...

>Liccardo says, the city didn’t offer the company any tax incentives in exchange for its business. “More importantly,” he added in a Medium post, “Google never asked for a dime.”

Ah good to know :)

Let's legislate that all cars must attain 150 mpg and cost less than $10,000. The EU proposals are approaching that kind of absurdity.

No, it should refer to Asian Americans

Here’s another: Black females and asian males are less likely to be in interracial marriages [1]. Under the heading “For blacks and Asians, big gender gaps in intermarriage”

Of course this only paints part of the picture, since it sliced and diced the data differently. Ideally you’d have much more comprehensive statistics about people in relationships, and the statistics wouldn’t just be % of intermarriage, but all marriages. However you should be able to extrapolate, since all marriages = interracial + interracial marriages. So if asian females have higher rates of intermarriage and males don’t, then there presumably are a surplus of unmarried asian males (and black females for that matter).

http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/1-trends-and-patte...

Okcupid did some analyses on this. The big losers in the US sexual market are black females, black males, and asian males.

https://theblog.okcupid.com/race-and-attraction-2009-2014-10...

What is the lifestyle of the average person? It’s certainly not that of a USian

The average salary worldwide is 10k USD.

I agree that many people would like to live in some sort of idyllic rural or suburban setting. Indeed, that is what I prefer myself.

However, with 7 billion of us in this planet, we may have to rethink what is feasible.

Sadly the world isn't comprised of only HN smart people :)

What would have been even better is investment in a BART line that runs to Alameda. Getting on and off the island is horrible due to there being only 3-4 bridges/tunnels (IIRC). Of course, that would have been a larger up-front investment but one that they're now looking at.

http://www.oaklandmagazine.com/May-2018/BART-in-Alameda/

Per-capita emissions are the highest in the US, Canada, and Australia [1]. The US is also the second-largest emitter of CO2. There is much to be gained by focusing on emissions in the US. Unfortunately, most USians would like a large house with yard, 2+ large cars, etc.

Also think about cultural projections -- Hollywood often depicts wealthy people shuttling around in large, inefficient SUVs. These images and aspirations are then transmitted to the rest of the world.

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...

Most people I know don't know how to, or couldn't be bothered to, change a bicycle tire. You have to also bring around a spare tire, a portable air pump, etc... or face the prospect of walking your bike somewhere.

Perhaps we should differentiate here between bike ownership and these bike/scooter share approaches. Scooters also have flat tires.

Compare ownership to a shared scooter or bike service, where these costs are in effect shared amongst everyone. If your scooter breaks down, you can leave it and seek other forms of transportation.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not arguing that scooters are beyond reproach. I'm for development of scooter regulation in a way such that we as a society can harness the benefits from it. Being against them just because they don't work in the current regulatory + road system setup in my mind is at risk of forgoing potential massive benefits for us as a society.