Hacker News Reader

thotpoiznon Coffee sold in California must carry cancer warning, judge rules

At this point, there should probably just be a generic "THIS PRODUCT IS KNOWN TO THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA TO CAUSE CANCER" sticker that companies can stick on pretty much anything they sell there. <eyeroll>

thotpoiznon Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

See my other question below. If there were a 10% chance that children who were exposed to your presence might sicken and die from a toxic reaction to your sweat, would you take steps to avoid any such contact? Would it be wrong to prevent you from working in schools?

thotpoiznon Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

The hypothetical "pedo gene" is probably too emotionally charged; some may find it difficult to engage rationally as a result.

Suppose instead there were a gene found which caused a toxic reaction in some children. Some, but not all, children exposed to these substances might sicken or even die.

I suspect that in such a scenario, if the evidence showing correlation was compelling - you would be OK with mandating testing, and separating children from contact with known carriers of the gene - at least until it could be better understood and/or treated, cured, the harm mitigated, or what have you.

I would further suggest that if YOU were discovered to be a carrier of the gene, that you yourself would probably feel an obligation to self-report and avoid any contact with children, so as to prevent any accidental exposure and harm.

thotpoiznon Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

I dunno, there are still places in the US where you can buy decent land, outside of any city limits, for under $1,000 an acre. And there are absolutely scads of places you can buy NICE parcels (including tree lines, water, etc.) for around $2K / acre or less.

This just doesn't seem too completely unattainable to me. The average able-bodied person, properly motivated and living frugally, should be able to secure a few acres over one or two summers, easily.

... Unless you're talking about true "Swiss Family Robinson" style independence from any and all societal benefit or influence. Because then, yeah, that is pretty much not possible any more. Finding someplace a little out of the way, and "living off the land" in relative peace, however - that remains quite attainable.

thotpoiznon Employees who decline genetic testing could face penalties under proposed bill

Just for argument's sake... Do you think the greater good would be served by protecting that politician's privacy, and that of several dozen school teachers who also carried that set of genes? Or would society be better off if the politician and the teachers were subjected to greater scrutiny, leading to some percentage of them being removed when discovered to be actual pedophiles?

This isn't meant as rhetorical, and I'm not trying to score some point. I'm honestly not sure where I land on this. Part of me wants to say "tough noogies, it's worth it to stop those kiddie diddlers" and another part is going, "whoa nellie, what if most of those people are completely innocent but will now forever live with this awful stigma?"

I think there's a multi-track drifting joke in here somewhere too, but I haven't had my coffee yet.

thotpoiznon Vacant Homes Are a Global Epidemic, and Paris Is Fighting It with a 60% Tax

Your question was reasonable. I wondered the same thing. Perhaps it was misinterpreted as signalling some sort of defense of conspicuous consumption / flaunting of wealth. To be clear, that would be an irrational and unfounded interpretation, but such are the hazards of wading into emotionally charged issues (even if you aren't really wading in, just asking an honest question).

thotpoiznon DNA reveals a hybrid Ice Age bison species depicted in ancient cave art

I thought the same, but according to the article the Bison was actually named as sort of tongue-in-cheek reference to the particle.

thotpoiznon A molecule called ‘Sandman’ could help solve the ‘mystery of sleep’

FYI, I'm a chronic insomnia sufferer, and I also found melatonin was a "miracle cure". Even if/when it didn't help me get to sleep on time, I would still wake up feeling mostly rested and able to function the next day.

Flash forward a couple of years, and it started to catch up to me. In retrospect, I guess it was NOT working a lot more often than it WAS, but I was still able to get up at my normal time and slog through another day... until all of a sudden I wasn't.

I started having a really hard time concentrating, remembering things, etc. I went from being proud I had memorized the first 40 digits of pi, to not being able to remember my own damned zip code.

Frankly, I thought it was early onset Alzheimer's, and I started putting my affairs in order. Initial tests were inconclusive, but that's not necessarily surprising: the simple cognitive tests are only useful for spotting advanced decline if you are even remotely non- "neuro-typical". Fancier (and noisier) brain scans showed nothing unusual.

Anyway, long story short: on medical advice I threw away the melatonin, and practically overnight my symptoms evaporated.

This is all highly anecdotal, I know - and you would be foolish not to be skeptical. But I would suggest that if you are using melatonin regularly, and especially if you have been for a long time... You might want to casually start tracking your actual sleeping hours, and verify that you are really getting enough - and not just "compensating."

thotpoiznon [dead]

I think some of the most interesting (and hard!) problems are behavioral, centering around "spotting the bad apple." Which employee is most likely to steal, and why? What sorts of activities may be deemed suspicious, and merit closer investigation? There's a dangerous place in that direction, shades of 1984 - but there's also some pretty fascinating stuff too, i.e. "this guy just deviated from his routine in a significant way right after a big fight with his significant other, and now he's buying large quantities of ammunition; flag for increased surveillance."

I don't know where the proper line lies, exactly, between protecting privacy and building the magic "bad apple detector." But the geek in me desperately wants to see more time and cleverness invested in human heuristics...

thotpoiznon Microsoft Finds Cancer Clues in Search Queries

Well, I admit that does sound like a promising concept, but it's not quite the same one described in the article. By my reading, this project seems oriented more towards correlating some number of searches and connecting the dots in a present-tense, Clippy "Your search patterns indicate you might have pancreatic cancer. Can I show you patient reviews of several good Oncologists in your area?" - sort of way.

That seems rather different than "Hey, 10 years ago you searched on some stuff that indicated you might have had pancreatic cancer. Sorry we didn't catch it sooner, since the 10 year survival rate is below 5%..."

To be clear, either one seems potentially quite cool and interesting. But if someone else besides me and Clippy are privy to these results - unless I explicitly shared them - then it seems a little creepy.

In retrospect, I suppose I wouldn't be too terribly offended if I died already, but my results were later able to help prevent someone else's untimely demise...

thotpoiznon Microsoft Finds Cancer Clues in Search Queries

I don't understand why this function is needed if the search engine performs its purpose. Shouldn't searching on any of those symptoms return results that suggest the possibility of pancreatic cancer? As designed, it returns those results to the very person with the most vested interest in both the results and their own privacy.

How is this project anything more than "other people snooping around in my search queries," or any better than simply tuning the search engine to highlight those results more if they are believed under-represented?

thotpoiznon Have you had the “AI talk” with your kids?

What strikes me as odd about apocalyptic "the perils of the singularity" navel-gazing is that we automatically assume that machines, and ONLY the machines, will improve far beyond our capabilities - perhaps even infinitely.

Why shouldn't we improve as well? Every day it seems there is a new story about further advances in amazing / fast / cheap / etc. gene splicing technology, or some new breakthrough in understanding how cancers work, or how longevity may be achieved, or how to correct color-blindness, etc.

Is it any less presumptive to assert that humans will make ourselves more and more amazing, as it is to assert that machines inevitably will?

thotpoiznon The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

I wish I could provide such an example in good conscience, but a (very broad) NDA with a former employer precludes me from doing so. They might not mind, and he might not mind - but I would have gone back on my word, which I definitely would mind.

I know that this reduces the strength of my argument to essentially "nuh-uh!" ... sorry. But I will tell you that, when he says (in that keynote address) that he is willing to explore the possibility that he could be wrong - I believe that he is being completely honest.

As to your description of his "singular focus and unwillingness to consider the validity of alternative perspectives" - that just doesn't seem accurate at all; it describes neither this speech nor his observable approach at large. It does, however, remind me of a funny pinterest picture/quote:

"Once you hate someone, everything they do is offensive. 'Look at this bitch, eating those crackers like she owns the place'. "

thotpoiznon The FBI Director Puts Tape Over His Webcam

I am hesitant to engage at this level, but - you just couldn't be more wrong about Comey. I know him to be every bit as thoughtful and reasonable as your glowing description of Hayden. That doesn't mean I agree with all of his positions, but he is one of the smarter people I've met, and I do not believe that is an indication of how sheltered my life has been. I also know him to be perfectly capable of acknowledging when he's gotten it wrong, and generally willing to admit it, change course, and move on. That leaves me fairly optimistic about how this whole mess will turn out. In any case, you taking this instance, and something you obviously feel strongly about, and using it to craft barbs about "the worst kinds of cops" - well, frankly that's exactly the kind of emotional hyperbole that will continue to make rational discourse here difficult. This sort of frothy angst distracts from otherwise potentially reasonable arguments, and probably makes dismissing them seem more reasonable. Can you see how that might be happening here?

thotpoiznon Ask HN: What can I do to turn things around and make my 30's “good”?

I'm sorry, but no. "Ironically, the only real way to achieve this" - is to achieve this. I met my wife almost 25 years ago. We were both homeless at the time. We found each other, loved each other, and despite ridiculous odds against us, found a happy and successful life together. A big part of that was me pulling my head out of my ass and doing things for "us" instead of doing things for "me".

The trajectory I was on before I met her was juvenile, selfish, and stupid. Then all of that changed rather dramatically: I met the woman who would become my wife, and she made me want to grow up and step up. My situation changed, when my mind changed.

thotpoiznon TreeRover: Tree-planting robot project

  This project immediately reminded me of the 1972 movie "Silent Running," which featured a couple of robots that tended plants on a greenhouse in space.
  Kind of a sad movie, now that I think of it.  Hopefully this project achieves a happier ending...  ;-)

thotpoiznon I've been scrubbed

It's too bad that you had to say that in a public venue, but at least it's a niche like HN - where it's all tech geeks, and virtually certain that no one here actually knows or interacts with you on any regular basis. Expect a knock at your door in 3... 2...

thotpoiznon “I'm wiping this repository away”

Just to play the devil's advocate, one might just as easily argue that the self-selecting of you and your like-minded peers actually made the NSA's recruiting tasks easier. If you have some moral / ethical / rational belief systems that are inherently incompatible with their organizational DNA, a perfectly efficient recruiting machine would have sorted you into the "NO" pile anyway. Likewise, people more well-suited (for the sake of making ourselves feel better, we'll call them morally challenged) - might now be more inclined to sort themselves "in." So, they might have merely saved themselves some additional interview analysis and (assuming a less than perfect screening process) perhaps even prevented another Snowden Affair. To be clear, I am not asserting that any of this is true, but I suspect that my unfounded speculation using incomplete data is no less reasonable than yours.

thotpoiznon Google Maps Has Forsaken Us

I am a little annoyed that I have to keep going through clickrobatics every time I change back to old Google Maps, and explain why each time. I've already explained a dozen times, quit pestering me. Also, get off my damned lawn.

thotpoiznon The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies

...

"But when we've practiced quite a while How vastly we improve our style!"

( - J. R. Pope, A Word of Encouragement. Collected in The New Oxford Book of English Light Verse, 1978.)

thotpoiznon The Surprisingly Large Cost of Telling Small Lies

Perhaps you really are just that atypical corner case, I don't really know. But if you study some of the techniques for detecting "tells" and subtle cues that someone is lying (basically the works and/or derivatives of Dr. Paul Ekman) - and if you follow up on instances where suspected "hits" can be investigated discreetly and without a huge confrontation - you may come to realize just how depressingly common and widespread casual lying is.

Actually, while it might sound cool - I don't really recommend this course of study. It would almost certainly NOT make you a happier person. "For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow." (- Eccl. 1:18)

thotpoiznon Take Buffett's Billion

This is exactly what I was thinking. What's to stop someone from pulling a "Oh, hey, thanks for the winning lotto ticket..."

If the answer is "personal integrity and honor" then, well, call me a skeptic - but some people may just come up a little short after a billion-dollar soul searching.

thotpoiznon First animals may have lived with almost no oxygen

Is the "oxygen-rich environment" universally true, though? It's not as though oxygen saturation in the ocean is perfectly homogeneous. There are plenty of naturally occurring areas of hypoxia, and one could easily imagine an adaptation which allowed better survival in or near these "dead zones" could be quite useful, at least to localized populations. Is there some obvious reason that dramatically reduces the likelihood that one or more pockets of sponges might have capitalized on such a mutation more recently?

thotpoiznon How I Ended Up In Solitary After Calling 911 For Help

> "...Cops improving a situation? Never seen it." I suspect that's really just an emotional lashing-out at a pervasive problem. But if it's not, I assure you - I have seen cops improve a situation, and I'm certain that others have too. I might be biased from watching cops running into the chaos of 9/11, while I was running away from it. Or from having my family protected from crazy, violent people while I was busy and oblivious at work. To be clear, I'm no police-state apologist, and I know there are vile sociopaths attracted to positions of power and authority - but I've also met some pretty OK cops who really mean to help people, and often do. I'm just saying.

thotpoiznon Maryland Lawmakers Push to Cut Water, Electricity to Spy Agency Headquarters

In today's political climate, there's more than a passing chance that a politician who is not at the end of his or her career could survive the average scandal more or less unscathed, while the damage to the NSA would be catastrophic.

I could easily imagine someone coming out with "Yes, I was banging the intern, and her sister - that's totally true. What I did was wrong, and my wife may never trust me again - we're going to work through that. However, check out the incredible ramifications of this dossier being held over my head in order to coerce me into silence!" - dude might pull off the scandal, or he might not - that's a D20 roll on his charisma mainly, but definitely a non-zero chance. Over in the blue corner, on the other hand, you've got basically no saving throw.

thotpoiznon Searching the Internet for evidence of time travelers

"Hand-picked phrases are not be enough to discover this," "... are not be..." - AHA! We've GOT YOU! Now, tell me my future! ;-)

thotpoiznon They're Taking Over - jellyfish bloom and the future of the ocean.

This would make for an interesting experiment. Anaerobic digesters would presumably make short work of any toxin proteins, and you could probably get a fairly high jellyfish to "other" feedstocks [ratio] while retaining a commercially viable fertilizer (plus plenty of usable methane) as end products.

That said, I doubt that the cost to harvest and transport would be competitive with more conventional feedstocks such as slaughterhouse leavings, crop wastes / stalks, and plain old manure.

Food for thought, anyway. Floating digester platforms, maybe?

[edit: added missing word 'ratio']

thotpoiznon London student reported to police: “Enchanted by anarchism and individualism”

Well, the anarchy could have been forgiven, but individualism? Put him up against the wall!

I've looked at the blog in question ( http://hampsteadtrash.blogspot.co.uk/ ) - and it's obvious that the real problem was about his being critical of the school administration.

His petty thug of a headteacher seems perfectly deserving of every bit of the attention he is about to receive.

thotpoiznon A chimp-pig hybrid origin for humans?

This. It seems pointless to me to proceed with so much hand wringing and "my science-peen is bigger than yours" posturing, when we have ample opportunities (and plenty of pigs and bonobos) to test the hypothesis via experiment. Isn't that sort of the next step in a fairly tried-and-true method many here are usually quite fond of?

Personally I think the odds of any meaningful success are extremely low, but the cost to explore and experiment are also quite low. I'd rather trust "we attempted insemination of {x} bonobos with {y} varieties of pig sperm, but failed to achieve impregnation" (... or succeeded, or whatever) - over "I'm really smart, and trust me - this couldn't possibly work."

thotpoiznon French homeland intelligence threatens a sysop into deleting a Wikipedia Article

Suddenly I cannot think of a single thing QUITE so intoxicatingly interesting as what the French might be up to with this radio station on Pierre sur Haute!

Surely it must be just sinfully rich with secret sauce, mystery, and espionage! If only there were thousands of like-minded, curious individuals with the wherewithal to investigate and help bring these wonderful mysteries to light...