nathannecro

Uh, those numbers are more than three/five years old at this point. Beyond comments on the test bench not being properly set up, Ryzen has improved significantly since then.

AMD's latest consumer-level chips significantly outperform Intel's chips in both price and performance. When talking about prosumer video editing performance, the Ryzen 9 5900x, the second most expensive "new" chip from AMD is a 3.4% performance improvement over Intel's most expensive "new" chip 10980XE. Additionally, the 5900x retails for $549 USD while the 10980XE retails for about $1,000 USD.

https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Adobe-Premiere-Pr...

That's awesome! Line rider reminds me of a past internet where things were a bit more creative and joyful.

I'm so glad to see that people like you are still spreading that love of the creation.

I quite like DoodleChaos' work on Line Rider. It's less of a visual masterpiece and more of an audio one.

Line Rider in general just puts a smile on my face.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmLh6UvLo14

>I am sure we are going to disagree on most public policy, including COVID Response...information was limited

Uh, I also didn't talk about state vs federal responsibility regarding COVID. I merely pointed out that Germany (and pretty much every other developed country) was doing significantly better than the US. Sure, states have their own rights and their own mechanisms for doing their own things, but we are Americans. As our president, as our leader, as the highest officer in the land, it is his responsibility to take care of his people and Donald Trump did not do that.

Also, do you really believe that somewhere between 238k and 324k people (6) who have died due to COVID were mostly elderly people who were forced to live with other sick elderly people? Do you have reputable analysis that shows that this claim has any merit?

>However none of that was the point of my comment, the claim was that only Republicans / Trump Supporters are "completely unable and often unwilling to consider any argument or information that conflicts with their views"

I feel like the response to the OP was that looking to find a center was problematic fundamentally because one side (Trump and his band) are willing to constantly subvert ethical, moral, pro forma, and per se rules so you cannot treat them in a good-faith sort of way. I generally disagree with their assertion because if you don't come to the table, then you have no agreement ever. So I rather explain my logic, point out flaws, and see if we can agree on some shared ideal.

>That further devolved into claims that Trump supporters want to kill Biden supports, with a link to some wack job.

Well again, I don't think this "wack job" is inconsistent with their representation. In the past few weeks alone, you have had people arrested for planning to kill the Gov of MI, to kill Biden, and to attack voting counting centers. In fact, before these things even took off, right-wing terrorists were linked to the majority (67% of domestic terror plots and activities in the United States (7). So we should call a spade a spade, no?

>Now you have charged that is false equivalency the point...proves my point

Well yes, creating lists of people who have done morally repugnant things is very different to making a list of people to shoot! And refusing to work with people who are unethical is just good business sense and is likely personally healthier for yourself. Do you see what the difference is here? It's not a crime for me to say that someone is immoral and that I wouldn't work with them nor should any of my friends hire this person who might be a liar, cheater, and potential murderer. What is a crime is for me to plan, buy weapons, and execute a domestic terror plot. Can you see where I might be coming from in this case?

You set a person who declared murderous intent equal to someone who wanted to make sure that those who participated in potentially unethical actions were publically on record. Can you see where perhaps there is a false equivalence that you have made?

1: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/26/fac...

2: https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a27813648/concentratio...

4: https://www.businessinsider.com/biden-apologizes-for-pushing...

5: https://apnews.com/article/d1a9a629ade8ba444da6d31b997baef5

6: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

7: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/22/white-supremac...

I see that I may have been a bit snarky to start off my response and in an effort to be clear, I'll see if I can refrain from coming across as an asshole.

>Goodness me, it seems you love to talk politics and a decided one side view of them as well.

I mean, not really. If you look at my (sparse) comment history on HN, I mostly don't even comment. I'll also point out that in my previous reply to you, I avoided making any assumptions about your belief systems or any conclusions (as I don't know you from Adam) -- I find that arguing the argument is typically a better way to come to a clear conclusion.

>There is alot to unpack here most of it twisted and filled with incomplete or out right false information from a liberal bias that completely ignores a lot of recent history

Sure, I'm happy to go through your response line by line and see what I have perhaps presented incompletely or falsely. I'd also like to remind you that I had three factual points about the Trump administration: that they did not cause economic growth beyond baseline average, that they increased our nation's debt by 36%, and that they caused or participated in immoral and inhumane treatment of humans. It was specifically on this last point which I drew my line in the sand to say that I would have problems working with people who to this very day continue to behave in an unethical manner.

>lets start with the most obvious, child separation...

First off, I'm glad that you outright state that you are against child separation and oppose fencing people in cages. I agree too!

Let's be clear. I never alleged that Trump's administration created these detention centers from thin air. According to USA Today, the cages were built during the Obama-era to temporarily house children so that they could be relocated to safe child-care within the United States. They were not built to house people for any extended length of time and they were not used as such (1). There's also an interesting discussion as to the Trump Administration's role to inflame an existing situation (a lot of migrants want to come to the US) and making it inhumane and worse (2). So there were policies in place before (which might have been not great), but Trump's administration turned the knob up to 11 here and crossed over to immorality.

But hey, I never even talked about cages or whatever, but what I did link to was specifically speaking about forced family separation and forcibly turning children into orphans (and remember, these are decidedly "non-combatants" -- as far as I'm aware, we are not at war with any of the countries to the south of the US). That is something no president has done in recent memory, but please correct me if I'm wrong here.

>If you want to proclaim some kind of moral superiority, do you really want to point to Drug warriors Biden and Harris as people of moral fortitude.

I mean, if claiming that orphaning children is bad somehow makes me more morally superior to everyone else, then...then I don't quite know where the baseline is. I feel like I'm just being rather rational in my assessment of the situation. I also don't really want to engage in strawman arguments because like ad hominem, they don't actually provide a clear argument for us to agree/disagree upon. But hey, you brought it up, so I'll respond.

I not once claimed that Biden/Harris/anyone else were morally superior or more ethical. I, in fact, never even mentioned them by name so I don't see how you can claim that I pointed to "Drug warriors Biden and Harris".

>The War on Drugs has cost the lives, directly and indirectly, of many many millions of people...for those victims?

Hey, I agree with you too! I think that Nixon's War on Drugs is likely one of the stupidest policy moves in recent American history. Several economics professors I know start Econ 101 by talking about supply and demand in the context of the War on Drugs. Essentially, attacking the supply side (DEA, invading South America, etc) has been shown to have no real effect on demand and therefore, should cease because it's a giant money sink (3). The real way to "fight" drugs is reduce the demand (through education, rehabilitation, etc). Beyond just being a dumb idea, the War on Drugs was a popular idea and unfortunately, many people tied their political success to funding/expanding a popular idea.

If you had asked, I would have absolutely criticized anyone who continued to promote the ridiculous War on Drugs -- especially after the awful ethical knock-on effects became well known. Yes, this includes Biden and Harris.

Here's the thing. Both Biden and Harris today have learned and understood that perhaps, they did make mistakes and though it was considered widely to be the right move twenty or forty years ago, today, we know better! In fact, Biden publicly apologized, and expressed remorse for his mistake (4). To connect your strawman back to Trump's administration. Trump and his crew are still doing awful, unethical things. They cannot claim to be doing the "popular" thing or "ignorance" because literally the majority of the country, journalists worldwide, leaders of countries and religions, and even his former cabinet members publicly and vociferously tell him and anyone who will listen that doing obviously unethical things is...unethical. This is how I know that Trump and people who may agree with the unethical policies he has put into place, are...unethical.

>To be clear, I am not a Trump supporter, but I am also not a Biden supporter. Though I would have preferred Trump over Biden for about 11 Trillion Reasons... My politics are libertarian, I am Anti-War, Pro-Gun, Pro-Free Markets, Pro-Free Trade, Open Borders, Anti-Social Welfare and Pro-Legalize Drugs... Biden is bad on all them, Trump is bad only a few of them.

Cool! I am an independent voter and have voted for Republicans and Democrats historically. I try to stay away from generalized "buzzwords" because I prefer to deal in specific policy. For instance, I'm for the legalization of drugs, but believe that they should be regulated very tightly because like anything addictive (gambling, alcohol, etc) the societal impact on others can be highly detrimental. I don't mind if you want to get wasted every night, but if you get wasted and drive a car into my wife, I'll be pretty pissed.

While also not on topic, I disagree with your statement that "Biden is bad on all [policies]" and "Trump is only bad on [a few policies]". I at least know that Biden has seriously considered many questions and has publically written very thoughtful policies out for people to read and think about. One such policy favors the federal decriminalization of marijuana and I also know that Trump is staunchly against decriminalization of marijuana. So, since you write that you are "pro-legalize drugs" I don't quite understand why you claimed to agree with nothing Biden presented.

Goodness me. I hate talking politics but let's not make the mistake of getting into false equivalency.

The Trump presidency has gathered a cesspool of supporters and sycophants who:

1. Have at best maintained prosperity and growth (mostly by keeping interest rates low and patching economic holes with deregulations and/or short-term protectionist policies). The BBC(1) had a nice collection of charts showing -- essentially -- that the rate of change in the well-being of the economy did not deviate when Trump took office.

2. Have increased spending and absolutely ballooned our national debt (see "short-term" policies) (2). While I do not mind spending money to solve structural economic problems (automation removing jobs, the transition from polluting industries to cleaner ones), much of the funding went to solve problems the Trump administration created themselves!

3. Have absolutely demonstrated a complete dearth of moral and ethical values. This is an absolute killer in my book. From forcibly creating orphans (3) or allowing an enemy state to promote the hunting of American soldiers, it's clear that the administration has no moral qualms regarding their actions.

When it comes to COVID, the United States has a per capita COVID death rate that is insanely disproportionate when compared with other developed countries. The US has a per capita COVID death rate that is 66x Japan, 18x Australia, and almost 6x Germany. While the rallying cry has been, "But saving the economy is more important than saving lives!", this is absolutely unsupported by data. The delta in GDP between the end of Q1 and the end of Q3 is roughly a loss of 9% in the United States (5). In Germany, that same period of time resulted only in a loss of 2.5% (6). The willful spread of lies and misinformation have caused much death not only in the United States, but in many other countries which historically have looked towards the United States as being a bastion of truth and information. Trump and his cronies have enabled many other leaders around the world by normalizing an unethical and immoral response to a crisis.

Beyond the reduction of some federal taxes (which has admittedly saved me some money) and a stronger stance against IP theft (which I think is better for the United States but perhaps worse for the world), I struggle to come up with cases in which the Trump administration has improved America, the American people, or society as a whole in any meaningful manner.

For four years, Trump and his assembled cohort causing a regression in American ethics, integrity, world standing, and education. They have done this intentionally. From the beginning, they've approached the governance of America like a popularity contest where the end goal was to satisfy sycophants and fill their own pockets. I am not calling all who support Trump racist or evil, but Trump and many of those he associates with have absolutely promoted hate, demonstrated unethical behavior, and upheld the highest levels of greed and degeneracy.

If these people were my acquaintances in my personal or business life, you would not fault me for "ejecting" them from my life. I would imagine that if you had a friend who cheered when five hundred children were not only ripped from their families, but then kept in fear and isolation away from anyone they knew, and then were told that they would never see their parents again...you would not want to be associated with them at all. The fact of the matter is that there were people who did cheer this type of degenerate behavior and there were people that actively enabled the destruction of American integrity. Those people should absolutely be excised from "polite society" as pariahs to set an example so that others do not tread on the path of wickedness. Becoming socially undesirable is not even in the same realm as enabling the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans, allowing American soldiers to be killed, accepting foreign bribes to influence the American government, creating concentration camps where children are made to be orphans, fanning the flames of racial tensions, and so on.

Sources:

1: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-45827430

2: https://www.thebalance.com/trump-plans-to-reduce-national-de...

3: https://coppercourier.com/story/545-children-trump/

4: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-pandemics-effe...

5: https://www.bea.gov/news/2020/gross-domestic-product-third-q....

6: https://tradingeconomics.com/germany/gdp-growth#:~:text=GDP%....

Hey, I appreciate that you have an opinion on this matter, but your opinion is directly opposed with scientific evidence on the matter.

It turns out that wearing a simple surgical face mask dramatically reduces the detection of coronavirus in a closed laboratory setting over a period of 30 minutes (1). It also turns out that social distancing alone works too (2). Both reduce the R0 (reproduction number) of a disease. Masks reduce the "contagiousness" because fewer infectious droplets make it out into the open. Social distancing and quarantine measures reduce the likelihood of infectious transmission between infected and healthy individuals.

This is multiplicative.

For the sake of easy numbers, let's assume that wearing a mask captures 90% of infectious droplets and that every meter of distance results in 60% of the droplets in the air to fall to the ground. If a sick individual wearing a mask coughs out 100 starting droplets and is 2 meters away from a healthy individual, the healthy individual will be breathing in 2.5 infectious droplets (100 * 0.10 * 0.50^2).

This is multiplicative.

For what it's worth, in real-world studies, when the use of face masks and/or social distancing became enforced, the rate at which infectious transmission occurred saw a measurable drop. The introduction of mandates requiring face masks (with social distancing already in effect) saw a 2% decline in the daily growth rate of COVID (3). If you'd like to read more, there is a recent meta-paper that surveys 172 different studies and concludes that:

"The findings of this systematic review of 172 studies (44 comparative studies; n=25 697 patients) on COVID-19, SARS, and MERS provide the best available evidence that current policies of at least 1 m physical distancing are associated with a large reduction in infection, and distances of 2 m might be more effective. These data also suggest that wearing face masks protects people (both health-care workers and the general public) against infection by these coronaviruses, and that eye protection could confer additional benefit. However, none of these interventions afforded complete protection from infection, and their optimum role might need risk assessment and several contextual considerations. No randomised trials were identified for these interventions in COVID-19, SARS, or MERS." (4)

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2

2: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3...

3: https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hlthaff.2020.00818

4: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

I'm not one to touch politics, but wearing a mask is absolutely not a political statement. It's a sentiment that has been politicized, but the scientific argument for wearing a mask is very strong.

See the study published in Nature (1), or recommendations from reputable medical institutions like the Cleveland Clinic (2) and the Mayo Clinic (3) for better explanations than I could give.

I own several businesses in the hospitality and service sector and every single one of my employees are required to wear a mask for the protection of themselves and our guests. It's absolutely ridiculous that something as easy as wearing a mask is suddenly, "The Worst Thing in the World" and/or, "The Most Uncomfortable Thing I've Ever Done". I have awful seasonal allergies and asthma and when I'm at the office or out and about in public, I will wear my surgical mask the entire time. The only time my mask is off is when I'm in my car or at home.

I just can't get past the entitlement that some people have when they can't be bothered with sacrificing a tiny little bit of personal comfort to help slow the spread of a pandemic.

1: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0843-2

2: https://health.clevelandclinic.org/heres-how-wearing-a-cloth...

3: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/i...

/rantover

I apologize, but I'm just shocked. I expect better from my fellow HNers. Also, It's not entirely clear to me if you don't believe in wearing masks or if you're just making the comment that a mask is a political object (and by extension, websites should not display politically charged images). Either way, your comments in this thread have really thrown me for a loop.

I've read the executive order and I feel comfortable saying that I'm happy to commit my properties to housing quarantined folks with four caveats.

1. That they buy out the entire hotel and do not expect my staff to work. Essentially, I'd be turning the hotel into an apartment. I will not otherwise increase the risk of exposure for my employees or my guests.

2. That I am compensated fairly for the rooms. The government per diem rates for rooms ranges between roughly $200-300 per night in the Bay Area. I don't even want those rate to be honest -- there are likely better uses for that money. But I'd need enough to make sure that I could cover the cost of payroll, utilities, etc. This would roughly be in the range of $100 per room per night.

3. That I am allowed to keep at least one property myself. We have long-term guests and contracted business that are still staying with us now. I'd consolidate all of these guests into one property so that they could still receive the services they paid for. I have an obligation to try to provide service to them.

4. That the hotel is returned to me in the same condition as they received it in.

I feel like if these four items are satisfied, I'd gladly sign any contract. As far as I'm aware, this would be a win-win-win. The state would be able to secure cheap accommodations that are fully furnished and ready to go. Patients that need a place to stay are afforded a comfortable place of residence in quarantine. I would be able to protect my staff by sending them home and continue to pay them.

Edit: Also, I'm aware that they could just "commandeer" my hotels, but I hope that doesn't happen. That would make things far tougher than they are now.

I'm just trying to do the right thing.

Your intuition is correct. To contextualize this, I own and operate hotels and restaurants in the US and internationally.

In this particular case, my cluster of hotels in the Bay Area have seen our revenues drop by roughly 50-60% in the first week of March and it's only going to get worse. I've seen the numbers for Seattle, and it looks like the Bay Area is about 3-4 days behind on the revenue drop.

I also own several restaurants in San Francisco and on average, revenue is down by 70-80% this past week. Along with many large restaurants in San Francisco, we're planning on closing permanently (or perhaps offering only one service per day) for the next two to four weeks.

Even though my top line revenue is falling through the floor, my expenses are largely unchanged. In the SF market, labor is my most significant cost and with our restaurants, rent is close behind. Without people to service, my direction has been to prepare for the future -- deep cleaning rooms, scrubbing kitchens spotless, constantly patrolling public spaces with cleaning solution and wiping everything down, and performing as many renovation/repairs as possible.

The worst part about all of this is that at some point, with no revenue, I won't be able to afford to keep paying my employees even if they're busy cleaning. I'll furlough them, but I know that this may cause some (many) of them to not be able to pay for housing, food, or transport in the near future. I'm currently working on contingency plans to make sure that my employees are properly taken care of, but it's been rough.

As other commenters have mentioned, Harvard has also enacted a similar policy.

I'm currently not in Boston, but I received an email this morning essentially instructing me to not return to campus for the foreseeable future. A family member of mine is also a graduate student at UCLA and they were also informed that all coursework would be conducted online for the next month.

From the article directly:

Could the disease spread further? The WHO says the risk to neighbouring countries is "very high".

Folks, one of the devs — artavazdm — has commented below and has stated:

"It's only free during beta. Although we haven't decided on the exact monetization strategy yet."

How do they make money?

All audio is processed on device, but is the goal to use the public training/learning to tailor a more robust model which they can sell commercially/integrate into apps/phones/etc?

First off: thanks for the reply. Secondly, how could I forget about the LHC...doh!

So it does seem like it is possible to get a spacecraft spinning up to speed. It'll just require a lot of effort and even more capital.

The idea of launching objects into space using a catapult interests me if only because my physics profs in high school and university all have at one point or another shot down the idea of space catapults. Since I don't remember exactly what their beef with space catapults was about, I figured I'd have a go and see if I could get an estimation of feasibility myself.

I am also not an aeronautical engineer (or even close to being one), but I do have some free time and I have a notepad.

According to Wiki[1], ∆V to LEO is ~8km/s plus 1.5km/s to account for drag (so a total of 9.5km/s total). The article claims that the craft exits the launch device at ~1.3km/s which leaves 8.2km/s to be accounted for. For the purposes of our math, let us assume that the craft has an alternate way to get up to speed. We'll note that SpinLaunch is not throwing their spacecraft into space at all; in fact, they're barely getting their spacecraft off the ground (relative to LEO).

Even with the significantly reduced launch speed, getting the craft spun up to speed is no small task. The equation for relating linear speed to angular speed is:

   [Linear Speed] = [Rotational Speed]*[Radius]

Since we have a linear speed in mind, we can make assumptions for rotational speed or for the radius of the launching arm and solve for the other. I think revolutions per second is easier to imagine, so we'll just Fermi this out.

If your maximum angular speed is one revolution per second (~6.3rad/s), then your launching arm will need to be ~213m long. To put that in perspective, the centrifuge would need to be about four football fields in diameter. Not only that, but it would be hurling a spacecraft around the circumference once every second! Because the relationship is linear, if you want to halve the angular speed, then you'd have to double the radius. Just building a structure that can not only support the weight of a spacecraft at the tip, have a diameter of 450m, and complete full revolution every second seems like a challenge already.

Additionally, unlike a regular centrifuge, this launch structure would likely not be parallel to the ground either; you want to launch your craft into space after all. Which means that you'll have to deal with unequal forces and accelerations as you spin.

To really put things into perspective, the largest centrifuge in the world is the TsF-18 in Russia and it has a radius of 18m and can only manage 0.65 rotations per second at maximum speed[2].

But hey, I'm no mechanical engineer either, so maybe that's no big deal. Maybe introducing a vacuum in the launch structure makes such a huge difference that getting up to speed is easy enough.

How does one exactly create such a big vacuum chamber though? Even if the height of the chamber is only 5m tall, the total volume is ~710,000m3. The largest vacuum chamber is the Space Power Center and it has a maximum volume of 22,653 m3[3].

You'll need to build something that outspins the largest centrifuge in the world (by more than an order of magnitude) and outsucks the largest vacuum in the world (by more than an order of magnitude). If somehow SpinLaunch can build the most spinniest and suckiest structure ever built, you're still only 13% of the way into space.

Really puts into perspective how outrageous SpinLaunch's claims are.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget

2: http://www.rusadventures.com/tour35.shtml

3: https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/spf/

A favorite of mine:

  There once was a young lady named bright
  Whose speed was much faster than light
  She set out one day
  In a relative way
  And returned on the previous night.

I am a nationally registered paramedic and EMT in the United States.

I have a reasonable understanding of the rules and training in both the US and in Canada (because I've worked with many Canadians).

While I haven't had the (mis)fortune of working in a rig full time due to my other work, I have spent quite a bit of time working as a medic in large cities (San Francisco), abroad in other countries (Cambodia and Vietnam), and in the ED.

This is a fairly basic subject for most first responders.

I want to add to my first post:

The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is:

1-800-273-8255

24/7, your call will be answered.

Also, if you head to their website, you can chat via text with them if you don't feel like talking:

http://chat.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/GetHelp/LifelineCh...

On that website, there are some great resources.

With great certainty, I can say that most all police and first responders in the US and Canada have been trained on how to handle a suicide.

Whether or not they recall and follow through on their training, that is another story.

Please, if you think a friend or family member is on the verge of suicide, do seek the assistance of the police. They considered to be on the edge of suicide if the answer to the questions below are "yes".

1. Do you have thoughts about killing yourself?

2. Do you have a plan to kill yourself?

3. Do you have a means to kill yourself? (Purchasing a knife or gun for example)

If the answer to all three questions are in the affirmative (or even if it's one or two out of three), seek help. Do not leave them alone unless your safety is threatened. Call a suicide prevention line, call the local authorities, call a family member; do all three.

Hotels have to comply with other regulatory mandates like health insurance for the workers, worker's comp, pension/retirement plans, in some cities - unions, etc.

You may also be forgetting the other amenities that hotels may provide: the additional cost of common area facilities (exercise rooms, breakfast areas, pool, etc) the hotel provides for the guest. Room service, turndown service, and daily cleaning also play a huge role.

There's also a huge amount of space that's used for things like lobbies, front desks, back of the house offices for the accounting/managerial/etc staff that keep not only your one room operating, but provides the flexibility to rent 100, 200, 300, 400 rooms.

Then of course, you have the construction + regulation that goes into a hotel. Guestroom entry doors must meet a specific fire-rated standard (greater than those normally found in residential homes). In the United States and in Europe, each guestroom is designed to maximize the protection of the occupant from environmental threats. Fire alarms and sprinklers are regularly tested, every entry door has a lock whose key is tightly controlled. HVAC systems are constantly maintained so that dust and mold don't build up inside.

And so on, and so forth.

I don't quite trust a digital BP cuff. Airplanes aren't really loud at all. I've done vitals in the middle of louder crowds or in the back of a rig.

Anaphylaxis is only treatable with epi and fluids.

What if the clients are wrong? What if they think they need something, but it turns out that they have a bad interaction with the drug?

There is a reason doctors undergo training and are held legally liable for mis-prescription.

The service may not have been illegal when only looking at the patients being served (I have no idea) but it was certainly illegal from the doctor's side. Not to mention...highly unethical from the medical side. All the doctors involved should have had their licences revoked.

A couple of comments here:

1. I don't agree with the general premise of the author.

a) I'm of the opinion that successful people are successful. Regardless of their background, if they have an idea, a goal, a desire, they'll make it happen. They make the leap from, "Want to go skydiving tomorrow?" to, "We're going skydiving tomorrow. Obviously this can't be true for everything they do, but they always demand success from themselves.

b) I can speak from personal experience going in the opposite direction. I started out technical, ended up biased towards the business side of the work when we sold. Business is tricky because the knowledge required (and applied) runs the full gamut of being so boringly easy (payroll and accounting) to mind-numbingly tricky (payroll and accounting). Jokes aside, the author seems to be herding all business students into the "marketing and sales role". There, you can only be good at your job if you have the guts to go out and get experience. For those who don't have the guts, networking is the alternative. It's much easier to pitch an idea to a group of friends than it is to pitch to an audience of strangers. As such, an MBA from Stanford makes perfect sense. Half of your friends from B-school are already VCs or Angels, why would you have to cold-sell to anyone else? (The converse is true also, an MBA from Stanford lets you get in on tech deals earlier.)

2. "The almost obligatory ‘I have a great idea, where can I find a developer to build it for me for X% equity?’ Facebook post."

The fourth option, not listed, is convincing the technical side that the idea is wonderful and that both sides are willing to sacrifice to get the job done. If the non-technical side is any good, that should be one of their primo skills. I've interacted with lots of amazing salespeople and by-golly they are amazing at making anything sound fun.

3. Writing a business plan.

Oh god. Please do it. There is nothing worse than seeing a promising company wander around in circles with no idea what's going on.

Not having a business plan may work out if:

a) You already have a secure source of funding and you don't care how long it's going to take to get to market.

b) Working on your idea has no opportunity cost (instead of playing video games, you're working on your idea).

4. Applying to startup competitions

I actually agree with the sentiment by the author here. I think that applying (or just working on an application) to a single, established competition/incubator is really useful (see business plan) because it forces the team to know their stuff. Applying to 50 just for publicity's sake is useless.

5. Hiring too quickly.

This may be different in Europe because laws there are very biased against the business when it comes to employment, but in the United States, debt is not a bad thing at all. In fact, using debt correctly allows for a win-win-win (business - investment - customer) situation. The business wins because it can bring product "x" to market 1 year earlier. It then uses revenue generated by "x" to fund "y". Repeat. The bank wins because interest collection is a thing. The customer wins because product "x" -- something which helps their life -- makes it to market a year earlier.

So yes, hiring too quickly is bad. Hiring quickly is really, really important. What's the difference between the two? I have no clue.

6. Your wage.

Most founders I know don't really care what they're being paid. They just want to see their idea take root. This applies to both technical and non-technical. You don't need school to teach you that: "Me need money to get food to eat". There are people from both sides who value a $400,000 luxury car over the success of the company, but those folks don't make it too far.

7. Lack of perseverance.

This applies to everyone.

The author's example of "scientists working for 3 years on research...without feedback" is certainly wrong. Along the way, their RA moderates their thinking, they publish papers and grants, they present at conferences. If that's not constant feedback, I have no idea what counts.

I didn't respond to all the points, but I didn't agree with most of them, the ones I named were just the most wrong in my opinion.

I just want to point to a post by Eric which essentially captures what it's like to hear that a loved one is chronically sick.

http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2013/08/19/77-hours/

Perhaps just: "someone significant to the community".

I've had the opportunity to play around with turmeric in a medical/biological setting. Turns out, the compound most likely responsible for a lot of turmeric's biologically active properties (basically inflammation reduction/anti-tumor effects) is curcumin[1].

A lot of the spices used for cooking (especially ones sold cheaply and in bulk) may contain less curcumin[absolutely no citation here] because:

1. Spices and herbs grown for bulk may be grown in poorer conditions with higher stressors in the environment and growth accelerants added to the feed. This may result in a (non-processed) spice with a lower amount of nutrition relative to a spice grown with TLC. Empirically, there is a fairly significant gulf between the flavor (to me) of plants grown organically vs agriindustrial techniques. However, the community seems to be divided as to if the nutritional content significantly differs[2].

2. Industrial processing techniques may destroy or modify many of the taste-inactive compounds in an attempt to optimize for maximum flavor. It's interesting to note here that curcumin's coloration is what gives turmeric it's golden sheen. At home, my Safeway turmeric contains dyes. I sort of assume that the processing that the spice goes though removes/destroys some of the coloration compounds (curcumin likely included).

In conclusion, it's possible that the imported turmeric has come from a location where the plant is grown with more TLC, processed less harshly, and is more fresh.

However, to be perfectly honest, it's likely far more efficient to consume curcumin pills. Like most alternative medication (unregulated pills), it's fairly difficult to actually get any sort of guarantee. And though you can purchase lab-grade curcumin from Sigma Aldrich, it's fairly pricey (approximately 6 $/g). Also...it's lab grade so I'm very unsure if I'd be bold enough to try eating it. As a pure powder, it's also a pretty severe irritant. When was working with it, I worked with it wearing a full mask on.

Also, I'd also like to point out that while the compound itself has been shown to do a bunch of neat things, it's biologically tricky for it to actually become absorbed by the human body. (Side note, since my research, there has been apparently further work done documenting delivery mechanisms and bioavailibility of curcumin. It's actually pretty neat.[3])

1: http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2014/186864/ Also, see the entire class of diarylheptanoids.

2: http://ucanr.edu/datastoreFiles/608-787.pdf

3: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3918523/

What you're referring to is classed as EB5 immigrants. It's been around since the 1990s and for fairly good reasons, up until recently, few people actually took advantage of it. What changed was the introduction of a group of people who would gladly pay a lot of money even after understanding the downsides.

Typically, today what happens is that you sign up with a regional center -- an American development company, certified by both State and Federal agencies (in California at least) who promises to build things with your money. They take that money, spend it on development. It's crap shoot as to whether you'll get even a return on that investment because many developers/managers see that money as being "free". Their clients don't care if they get a return, they care about a US citizenship.

What a lot of people don't realize is that the EB5 program doesn't give those foreign investors "real citizenship". EB1 through EB4 are different programs which allow immigration via "Extraordinary ability". Whether you're a famous professor coming from Germany, a highly valued programmer from Indonesia, or a well-known TV personality, those programs allow you to apply for immigration. EB5, similarly, allows investors who have already invested 0.5-1 mil USD to seek the right to immigrate into the United States. What that translates to is this: if you are successful in your bid (which, like most TV stars or famous professors, you will be) you will get a 2-year green card which gives you the right to hold residence in the United States.

What that green card also gives you is the ability to sign all of your assets over to the US government. When you take that green card, the US states that they have the right to tax you and any of your assets...worldwide. Those taxes include income taxes, capital gains taxes, and estate taxes. For the average person who can afford to pay half a million dollars for this sort of thing, they likely fall into a very high tax bracket. On average, that's around 40-50% (federal+state) of their total income/gains/assets paid to the US government. On top of that, if the government decides to not renew your green card (due to the business failing or for other reasons), you will still be taxed for at least 10 more years. Of course, you could refuse to pay, but that just means you'll never be able to do business with an American-owned bank or set foot in American territory again.

Like I mentioned at the beginning, the limitations are well known and that has deterred many people from seeking entry into the US via the EB5 program. The reason why it's becoming fairly popular now is twofold:

1. Regional centers are finally becoming more and more prevalent (they take 3-5 years to set up properly because of regulations and permits and reviews)

2. Many of the EB5 participants are immigrating from China where American education (in general) is perceived to be of high value. You are guaranteed entry into a very good public high school (Gunn, Paly, etc) as long as you live in that district. Not only that, but the UC system is far easier to get into as a "resident" of California.

Anyways, I really wouldn't call it "selling citizenship". It's not a full citizenship. It comes with an asston of strings attached.

Source: I helped set up a regional center in California.

When I have free time, I spend some time working on ALS ambulances to maintain my certification level.

How EMS works in the US generally follows this path:

You get sick.

You then dial 911.

A dispatcher talks with you, routes your call to an ambulance company, and provides us with some information on what's going on. If the environment is no danger to you, they should generally tell you to stay put. Depending on the nature of the emergency, they'll have some first-responder/stopgap measures they'll want you (or bystanders) to do. If you have crushing chest pain for example, they'll explain how to place yourself into a recovery position (in case you vomit while unconscious), they'll ask for a nearby bystander (in case they have to instruct them how to perform CPR), and they'll do their best to keep you calm and aware of your situation. What they don't want you to do (even if you're 10 minutes away from a hospital) is try to move yourself there because:

If you become unconscious on the way to the hospital, it becomes so much harder to find you (rather than if you had stayed in a static location that you've described).

By moving, you might move from a safe environment to a more dangerous environment (sidewalk to middle of the street).

When the ambulance arrives, the medic will perform their own assessment of your condition. If you're alert, they'll ask you questions, ask you to chew some aspirin, place you on a heart monitor. If you've become unresponsive at this point, then slightly more drastic measures are taken.

When they load you into the ambulance, they'll make a determination (based upon their assessment) of where to take you. The nearest ER may not have the proper resources to deal with or handle your condition.

I'm unsure how emergency departments in hospitals outside of the US work, but here, not all EDs can provide the same level of care. If you're having an MI (heart attack), and you need cardiac care (a facility that can crack your chest open), it's far faster for the medic to assess you then immediately take you to the correct place.

As a contrary example:

If you happen to make it into an ED on your own foot-power and manage to explain what's going on to the triage nurse, then they still have to call in an ambulance to transport you to a hospital which can provide an adequate level of care. In some hospitals, they won't even begin to treat you (because of liability issues...it's horrible).

TL;DR. Some ERs cannot provide a certain level of care (Trauma Centers, Cardiac Centers, Psych, etc) and thus the closest ER may not be the correct ER to go to.

Ah, that's unfortunate. It wasn't earlier.

I cannot edit my OP, but apologies, that link now leads to a paywall.