Hacker News Reader

yung234on A lifetime of social ties adds up to healthy aging

If you are confident in the quality of birth records from rural Sardinia in the 1920s there shouldn't be a problem.

yung234on Trichloroethylene: An invisible cause of Parkinson’s disease?

More generally there is way too much crap in the environment and it is past time for people to start protesting this. We are likely paying a price for this in rising rates of obesity and deteriorating mental health. It's time for cleaner outdoor air, better indoor air quality and ventilation and a tighter rein on the proliferating number of chemicals that surround us. As the item notes, Parkinson's rates have been increasing for some time and are expected to continue to increase in the coming decades.

yung234on The Reason Why Are Trucks Getting Bigger

The headline on the page is "The Real Reason Why Trucks Are Getting Bigger" - and it is not supported by the item. The assertion is that Obama-era fuel restrictions on cars and small trucks incentivized manufacturers to make bigger trucks which conformed to a less onerous standard.

At the same time, though, we can all agree that there is at least some consumer preference for large trucks. The question is how do these compare? Is the state of play now 95% due to consumer preference and 5% to manufacturers trying to push larger trucks. Or is it the other way round, or some other mix? Todd offers no evidence either way.

yung234on Ask HN: How would you bootstrap a telco?

Worked for a large corp for many years. Lots of incompetence. If middle mgmt were properly incentivized they could probably have reduced head count by half or more. But if all large companies did this there would be mass unemployment.

Not surprised to see Rogers blow up. Looks good on them.

yung234on Picasso's self portrait evolution from age 15 to age 90

Picasso - aren'tcha sick of him??

yung234on Deep learning on electronic medical records is doomed to fail

A rational strategy would be for America to fund ML medical research in France.

yung234on 'Children of Men' is happening

A problem that will solve itself. Since parental preference is now the primary determinant of family size it will come under Nature's lens. There will be huge negative selection pressure exerted against non-breeders and their genes will be swept out of the gene pool en masse. Fertility will recover, likely within less than 10 generations or 300 years and we will be back to growth - and to ravaging the planet like never before.