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medymed

715 karma · joined October 14, 2015

Epic by day, slurm by night
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medymed··on Vitamin D3 During Pregnancy and Cognitive Performance at 10 Years
And if the 1 ok-ish candidate study turns out to have significant results, publication bias has to be considered: that dozens or more other studies of vitamin D (or whatever) may have not found significant results of previously ok-ish hypothesis candidates and those negative studies are often not published.

I think this is quite the case for vitamin D which has multiple physiologic roles and is studied extensively for relation to many categories of health issues. One more reason why it can be stunningly impressive when something/anything health-related is eventually proven.

medymed··on What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?
I live in NYC and in terms of music I have spare space in my apartment for AirPods.
medymed··on What is the nicest thing a stranger has ever done for you?
I was gifted an ivory keyed Steinway grand piano in high school by someone who heard me play a couple of simple pieces in a retirement home. I did not know him but a family member was an occasional acquaintance of his. It is a stunning instrument.
medymed··on The Biology of B-Movie Monsters (2003)
Zombie physiology also seems a stretch—-how do organisms with so many open and often bleeding dirt-covered wounds maintain hemodynamic stability in the face of inevitable septic shock and/or blood loss? A movie where a virus just makes infected people seem normal and very friendly but want to furtively bite other people to spread disease and then have delayed onset terminal sickness, like a subtle version of rabies, would be terrifying and more plausible.
medymed··on Study shows 'alarming' level of trust in AI for life and death decisions
‘Artificial intelligence’ is a term of academic branding genius, because the name presumes successful creation of intelligence. Not surprising people trust it.

‘Decision-bots’ would have fewer fans.

medymed··on How to beg/borrow/steal your way to a cross platform Bluetooth LE library (2023)
Getting two imperfectly compatible BLE libraries from different OSs to work together involves guesses, prayers, and lots of hand waving of devices in the air. It’s like trying to learn Hogwarts spell casting with a wizard textbook missing half of every page.
medymed··on Pongamia trees grow where citrus once flourished
Many oils are bogeymen.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/the-false-promis...

Optimizing among edible fats sometimes seems like optimizing among which brand’s cotton sock design makes us run faster. The sock companies and sock researchers are very confident there are critical differences.

medymed··on Public toilets are vanishing and that's a civic catastrophe
This was the argument that let NYC to ban coin based toilets in decades past, with the assumption that people should not need to pay and businesses/govt should provide restrooms for free. But no replacement was ever provided.

Come to NYC, walk around busy areas for a while you will not infrequently see less fortunate people urinating in the subway stations, on the sidewalk, on walls and buildings, by trash cans, and sometimes (if the mood strikes them) right in the middle of the street.

medymed··on Why Nothing Can Grow on Mars
No matter how much we conspire to destroy the environment on earth, by burning fuel or nuclear war or otherwise, the earth (or parts of it) will likely be more hospitable to humans than any other alternative. We can shoot some vials of DNA towards Alpha Centauri etc, but so much for the interplanetary humanistic escapists.
medymed··on Ask HN: What was your most humbling learning moment?
I wonder if super-people like this balance their various activities so that doing each charges them up for some of the others, and then they can hit a resonance like state of being in-the-zone excelling at each one in turn. And not letting small interruptions derail the system. It would be the opposite of being stuck in a soul-sucking rut between unsatisfying work and unsatisfying non-work life.
medymed··on Fastest sailboat: Two wild designs
Perhaps by riding other super-fast sailboats and surviving so far.

Analogously that is the only way I could rationalize the Wright brothers attempting an airplane flight (after surviving many glider flights), which otherwise would seem an insane proposition.

medymed··on Study: Running for Depression
Also raises question of whether sedentary lifestyle can unmask/worsen depression
medymed··on Harvard ethics professor allegedly fabricated multiple studies
I wonder if *she fabricated the data or if desperate graduate students did. In which case the ethical considerations are perhaps(?) slightly different and may be worth writing a paper about, with survey data of course, only slightly modified to support the field’s party line.
medymed··on If We’re Not Careful, the AI Revolution Could Become the ‘Great Homogenization’
There could be a metric for rated activities/products that penalizes high ratings if given by ‘pro-homogenous’ raters i.e. who tend to be diehard follower-mindset people who avoid anything really novel.

I don’t think this kind of metric is useful for most people though. You can go anywhere in the world and for example the highest rated TripAdvisor lunch place is likely to have eggs benedict (with a sprinkle of local spices!), and most people find that a feature not a bug.

medymed··on Reasons not to become famous (2020)
This is probably the fate of honest politicians.
medymed··on Archaeologists uncover early evidence of brain surgery in Ancient Near East
I fear that for every ancient recipient of trephination to evacuate a hematoma in a timely manner there were probably legions of these procedures used to ‘get the demons out’ and so forth with less optimal results…
medymed··on Couples who meet on dating apps are more likely to divorce (2021)
Agree, one easy additional control would be for whether someone has ever used an online dating platform (may be a meaningful difference within the non-online couples group).
medymed··on Ask HN: What are you grateful for?
The stability of modern economies, public safety, services, and legal systems. If someone told me that in 8 months I would have to make my own food, fight off bandits, have no running water, and live under a capricious theocratic ruler I would be worried. It’s hard to thank one person for these things, but it’s helpful to pay basic taxes.
medymed··on The Space Force unveiled it's official song
Surprising this is a typical military march tune with a marching band background. The space force personnel certainly won’t be matching around space any time soon. An EDM song with lyrics might be more fitting.
medymed··on Ask HN: I've never released an app before – any must do's to protect myself?
One is software licensing of any software components you are using.
medymed··on Midlife: A Philosophical Guide
I like 2m ballpark as well. Pays off standard school debts, can purchase apartment or modest house, car, other middle class expenses, live with less fear of healthcare-expense induced bankruptcy, and have flexibility to work less. All without a dime spent on opulent living.
medymed··on Ask HN: How do you justify your existence?
I would only feel a need to justify my existence if my baseline activities gave a net burden on the world, like if I wrote robocalling software for a living. Or maybe if my activities were inconsequential to anyone at all.
medymed··on Why sentencing people to life in prison makes no kind of sense
“Of course, some offenders may have to stay locked up for life because they remain dangerous. How to assess and manage their sentences is an important question I will ignore here.”

Great idea, just ignore considering the violent people for whom a life sentence make most sense and then claim for the rest it make no sense.

medymed··on Ask HN: What is the most complex topic you understand?
How avoid making my wife unhappy (…most of the time)
medymed··on LeCun's 2022 paper on autonomous machine intelligence does not cite prior work
There are 7 pages of citations. Not every somewhat related thought anyone has ever had or published will be cited. But incidentally, it is nerdily interesting to think of the bibliography section as a place to display contempt by omission that is subtle to most but glaring to few.
medymed··on Why does iron deficiency cause fatigue, even in the absence of anemia?
Right idea generally but in that scenario it would be like making a diagnosis of alopecia which just means hair loss. In any case some diagnoses don’t have clear explanations or subdivisions for decades or centuries until explanatory medical science catches up with the descriptive diagnoses like anemia or alopecia.
medymed··on Newer, better sunscreens have not been approved by the FDA
One explanation is a time delay.

Most typical skin cancers (BCCs and SCCs), like other features of sun damaged skin, tend to arise decades after high levels of chronic or accumulated intermittent sun exposure at a younger age. (However that be less true for melanoma.)

medymed··on Airbnb May 2022 Release
And yet somehow many electronic door locks exist as commercially viable products. If Airbnb wants a turnkey solution, then a product that works like turning a key would be a big step.
medymed··on Airbnb May 2022 Release
A redesign is nice but please consider a secure Airbnb app-controlled electronic door lock. Hardware is hard but it could reduce entry/exit and check-in friction and confusion.
medymed··on Ask HN: Has social media reached its saturation point?
Mainstream social media may be close but niche interests probably have miles to go. HN and stack overflow have some overlap in user niche but are miles apart in intent/design/usage. Any subset of communication between people or groups has potential to have a niche optimized platform.
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