spangry

- World Health Organisation

- US FDA

- British Food Standards Agency

- European Food Safety Authority

- Health Canada

- Australia and New Zealand Food Standards Authority

- And a whole bunch of peer reviewed, double-blind RCTs

Although, I should disclose that the Aspartame Illuminati pay me a commission whenever I make a positive mention of the additive :)

Economists generally claim this outcome to be "unrealistic" but it helps us understand the more traditional outcome

I agree with this. Just to add, pretty much every simplified market model you would find in an undergraduate-level textbook won't correspond to any market in reality. As you suggest, they're just very simplified models designed to 'kinda point you in the right direction', rather than be taken as a description of reality. The most dangerous people tend to be those who took micro 101 but were never told the latter :)

However, there is one situation where monopolies achieve market-efficiency: when the monopolist can perfectly price-discriminate. This eliminates the dead-weight loss. But, crucially, this also means that all of the gains from trade accrue entirely to the monopolist, as consumers are all paying their own individual 'indifference' prices.

It's a value judgement, but I don't see this as a socially optimal outcome even if it is the market efficient one.

Force is tilting the balance of power to your side by gathering advantages. Warfare is the Way of deception. Therefore, if able, appear unable; if active, appear inactive; if near, appear far; if far, appear near.

If your enemies have advantage, bait them; if they are confused, capture them; if they are numerous, prepare for them; if they are strong, avoid them; if they are angry, disturb them; if they are humble, make them haughty; if they are relaxed, toil them; if they are united, separate them. Attack where your enemies are not prepared; go to where they do not expect.

This strategy leads to victory in warfare, so do not let the enemy see it. - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Relatively speaking, I'd say 'our enemies' are extremely strong. Probably best avoided (for the moment) if the overall objective is victory.

hash_fn(concat(IV, time)) -> func(somehash) -> [code seq. 1]

Then on the next round the IV is discarded and it becomes:

hash_fn(concat([code seq. 1], time)) -> func(somehash) -> [code seq. 2]

That's almost certainly an over-simplification / wrong; it doesn't seem very secure to just use the previous output as the IV for the next round. Maybe it chains all previous outputs together somehow, IDK. I should probably research this, given how much I rely on 2FA for security.

EDIT: The Wikipedia article on TOTP seems to suggest that you're right; the initial shared secret looks indistinguishable from a password (although the article is a bit vague): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-based_One-time_Password_A...

With air filters, although there's a lot of 'magic beans' out there, it really just comes down to having good quality physical filters (usually multiple ones in sequence, like particle, hepa and carbon) and a decent 'clean air delivery rate' (CADR) given the size of the room.

Heck, you can make a reasonable homemade air filter (that has measurable effects on air quality) by strapping a large HEPA filter to a box fan (although be aware that this could have safety issues re: fire hazard). Steer clear of anything that puts O2 into the air that's anywhere near EPA approved 'safe' levels (which are probably still too high).

Some folks use O2 generators for mould remediation when the house is unoccupied and subsequently ventilated (known as 'ozone shock treatment'). However, I think even this is a potentially dangerous practice as O2 will react with other things in the room as well (e.g. furniture varnish), potentially releasing volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) into the air.

When I get back from work I'll try and dig up a really good review site I stumbled across. It's one of those gems where the author is clearly just really really into air quality, and who has a very good nose for BS 'science'.

EDIT: Oh, also, another good option to deal with some VOCs (like benzene) are certain kinds of houseplants. NASA studied this so there's a fairly credible list of plants to choose from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Clean_Air_Study

EDIT2: Also, assuming you don't live near a major highway or something, one of the best things you can do to improve your indoor air quality is open a few windows and blinds. EPA studies suggest indoor air quality is usually far worse than outdoor air quality. And opening blinds lets more sunlight in, which will retard mould growth. And it's all free. Free!

Do you use a reverse osmosis system? Any recommendations?

Is this such a bad thing? Maybe I'm just trying to justify my own lack of motivation, but I've never been able to learn anything related to programming, or computers in general, unless I had a reason to. The times that I've learned something have been when there was a tangible goal, or I was working on some personal project that I was interested in.

So I guess if you want that boiled down into a (highly inelegant) technique, it would be: have some personal project that you want to do and stumble through it; by the end you'll have learned a bunch of new stuff. Note: I wouldn't recommend doing this in a professional or safety-critical context...

Is pandas the wrong kind of tool for this type of thing? Going off what rdorgueil has said, I'm beginning to suspect so. Is there a data-wrangling 'gold standard' library for python?

If this also turns out to be inscrutable I may be forced to conclude that I'm stupid...

- Positive vs. Negative

- Same-side vs. cross-side

Network effects can be negative: if more people dine at your favourite restaurant you have to wait longer for a table. That's a negative same-side network effect. The reverse is true for facebook: more people signing up means more people to socialise with.

When you add in app developers, then cross-side effects come in to play. More people using facebook is a positive cross-side network effect, because more users == bigger market for developer apps. It's mutually positive too: more developers means more apps, more choice etc. For advertisers, the cross-side network externality is only positive from their perspective: they like having a larger audience to advertise to, whereas users generally don't like ads.

All of these combine to make facebook one hell of a sticky, and lucrative platform.

What I find harder to understand is how they ended up in that position in the first place. Their comments aren't exactly in lock-step with the general HN view of the world, but they're not that far out either. If anyone thinks I'm being OTT here, go and see for yourself. Diversity of opinion is a good thing. I'd hate to see HN turn into another mindless echo-chamber.

  function (someinput):
      output = do_stuff
      return output

Whereas integration of OAuth 1.0a and OpenID 2.0 required an extension, in OpenID Connect, OAuth 2.0 capabilities are integrated with the protocol itself. (http://openid.net/connect/)

I can't find any direct assurance on the OpenID Connect website that a conformant OIDC implementation will by definition be compatible with a compliant OAuth2 implementation, although I suspect this is due to the open-ended nature of the OAuth 2 standard (i.e. I'm not sure if you could confidently say any particular implementation of OAuth2 would be compatible with another implementation). FWIW, you can implement an OIDC 'relying-party' directly on top of google's social auth OAuth 2 endpoint, if I'm reading this correctly: https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/OpenIDConne...

Unless much has changed in the past year or so, it's also very easy to do a relying-party implementation, which I think matches your scenario. For example, I wrote a (probably insecure) relying-party implementation straight from the spec in a bit less than a day, and I'm not a programmer by trade.

It worked when tested against one of the django OIDC libraries floating around out there, which came as a bit of a shock. This might suggest the standard is 'tight' enough to ensure interoperability between independent implementations. Then again, it's only one data point so YMMV.

Other than the options you have suggested to deal with the regressive nature of consumption tax (which seem sensible to me), I thought the Republican tax proposal is essentially to: lower tax on returns to capital (by reducing the corporate tax rate) and institute a value-add consumption tax (in the form of a cash-flow tax).

If this is the true (that high income earners pay very little personal income tax), what you're suggesting would remove all tax on foreign capital and shift nearly the entire Federal tax burden on to middle and low income earners. And I thought the Republican proposal was to halve corporate tax rates and make up the revenue by taxing domestic consumption (in the form of a CFT).

And now I feel ill.

At the time, I was struck by how many of the rituals and traditions had very pragmatic reasons behind them. For instance, after the 'open-casket' viewing and the 'service' (sorta), the casket and basically every material possession belonging to or associated with the deceased are removed from the house and the casket is carried in procession to the crematorium. I think the 'house stripping' and casket removal are more than just symbolic traditions; they serve the very practical purposes of (a) forcing everyone to confront the fact that this person is dead, and so grieve while surrounded by friends and family and (b) reduce the possibility of close family members (who might actually live in said house) from 'getting stuck in the past' once the whole ordeal is over (living in a house of memories, if that makes sense).

The other part that stands out in my memory was when we went to collect the ashes a day or two after the above. And the bone fragments. Again, the whole family (~40-50 people) is there. In order of closest kin (i.e. eldest son first), each one of you picks up one of the bone fragments and places it in the urn, amongst the ashes. Again, while one could view this as some sort of spiritual ritual, I think the real purpose behind it is, again, to really force you to acknowledge that the person is dead and is never coming back. And so you grieve intensely, but fortunately you do so with your entire family there, all sharing your grief. They really wring it out of you and it's exhausting, but I think it's also very healthy. Although it's difficult at the time, once the entire ordeal is over you're in a much better position to get on with your life.

There's a bunch more stuff, but those are the two that stood out the most for me.