JacobJans

It should be noted that Facebook is pushing very hard for more meaningful interactions in the form of Groups. These groups are taking an increasingly large amount of the newsfeed. Facebook's stated goal with these groups is to create meaningful communities. I think, at least to some extent, they are succeeding with this goal.

Anecdotally, I know several people who say groups are the only thing keeping them on the network.

Interestingly, the groups also dovetail well into the continued growth of their ad platform; they tend to be interest based, so they help with ad targeting.

I don't make any health claims; however, un-processed salts, such as Celtic Sea Salt contain much more than just sodium. They contain many other minerals.

In other words, Celtic Sea Salt is more than just NaCl.

My favorite salt, and relatively affordable, is Celtic Sea Salt. There are so many varieties of salt out there!

I wouldn't draw very many conclusions from that study.

The study itself says:

> This was an observational study where people chose whether or not they wanted to run; therefore there is always the possibility that people stopped running because they had knee pain.

That's a pretty big flaw in their study.

Actually, he was saying blatant lies are not going to be removed from Facebook. His reason, that you can't tell "intent" is rather bizarre, in my opinion.

Instead of removing blatantly false posts, their plan is to exercise control over their news-feed distribution -- choosing how often these posts are being seen. The assumption is they'll do the right thing, and not distribute posts they know are blatantly false, such as denials of the Sandy Hook shooting.

However, that is a choice they can make. They could, in fact, choose to optimize distribution of false information based on their political needs. Who's to say they haven't done this already?

As a publisher, I really hate Outline.

There is no paywall on this Thelogic.co Asking for an email address is a modest request.

I am sure whoever posted the article on Outline.com did it without permission; that is copyright infringement. Though, I doubt theLogic.co will find out, and if they do, there is a real cost to filing DMCA complaints.

I got a baby car seat for half off, which saved a lot of money, actually.

> We used to spend significantly on Facebook for several businesses I'm involved in, but now that most clicks are garbage/fake, we don't.

It seems to me that the rational reason to stop an ad campaign is because it stopped enough making money.

It's not fake clicks that should be stopping you -- it should be a lack of ROI.

I wonder how many people spend huge sums of money on Facebook without tracking their return on investment. I seriously think that is the source of many of these complaints about Facebook's ad program.

I spend a few thousand a month of Facebook. I have no idea if there are fake clicks or not. But, it's not a metric that seems to matter in my business.

I regularly see comments like this about Facebook's ad program. Personally, it strikes me that there was no tracking of ROI in the first place -- and if you can't reliably track ROI, why were you spending $1500?

If you're spending $1500, but getting great ROI, then fake engagement would be no reason to stop the ads.

Your comment makes me think of an interesting idea.

One of the problems with Siri/Google/Alexa is they try to be everything and do everything at once.

What if they split the expertise/domains they're capable of into different names?

For example, there could be a "mind" that is really good at playing music.

So you'd say, "Hey MusicBot, pause the song."

Or, you could say "Hey, InfoBot, what's the weather?"

Over time, you could get to know more "minds" that live in the cloud, and develop a theory of mind for each of them.

The bloating is caused by the production of gas by the bacteria in your gut. If you add a lot of fiber at once, the bacteria will overpopulate, and produce too much gas, causing bloating/distension. One way to avoid this is to gradually increase the amount of fiber, so your microbiome will adjust slowly, allowing you to avoid the excess gas/bloating. Not sure what to say about the constipation, though it could be a similar issue.

These things are not simple, are they?

One strategy is to focus on the healthy veggies that your genetic ancestors likely ate; your body is more likely to be adapted to those foods.

I don't know what you've tried, in terms of home preparation of food. One strategy is to switch to two meals a day, plus one snack. Another is to focus on high-volume, low calorie density foods, such as vegetables and beans, while limiting high-calorie dense foods such as bread, cheese, and meat. This allows you to feel full from fewer calories. Another way to think about this is to dramatically increase your fiber intake (and not just from hard fruits, but from a variety of sources). For example, if you were to make a pasta dish, use half the regular amount of pasta, and greatly increase the amount of veggies in it, so the pasta is just a small component of the dish.

Nuts, cheese, boiled eggs, and fruit are all widely available, pre-made, snacks.

It should be noted that The Longevity Diet, promoted by Valter Longo, recommends nuts as the "go-to" snack. Super easy, and healthy too.

> In a normal year, demand for electric power in Chelan County grows by perhaps 4 megawatts ­­— enough for around 2,250 homes — as new residents arrive and as businesses start or expand. But since January 2017, as Bitcoin enthusiasts bid up the price of the currency, eager miners have requested a staggering 210 megawatts for mines they want to build in Chelan County. That’s nearly as much as the county and its 73,000 residents were already using.

Source: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/business/article212008409...

I make my living running ad-supported websites/newsletters. I always like the idea of getting away from ads, and relying on direct support from my audience. I am good at building email lists.

My business model currently depends on the predictability I've developed with the ads on my site. Do you have any advice for transitioning away from an ad based newsletter to a subscription service?

It's not just wrapping it in a package. There should be a level of investment in research proving the effectiveness of such alternative treatments, including large studies similar to the types of studies that drugs are required to have. However, this is yet another huge barrier, and our cost incentives simply do not align.

Those numbers are from 2007.

The prices have increased dramatically. (Because, why not? They can get away with it.) Of course, it varies, depending on "a number of factors"

> Drug cost was $19,727.34. Total for 1 infusion is $22,278.02.

https://www.howmuchisit.org/remicade-infusion-cost/

I know that more than most, from very personal experience.

However, think about it this way:

Imagine investing $20,000 a month in supporting compliance, instead of Remicade. For dietary interventions, this could mean a nutritionist with weekly meetings, occasional meal-prep provided by a personal chef, and even weekly therapy sessions. This would still likely be cheaper than $20,00 a month.

We're willing to make this kind of investment with drugs, often without batting an eye.

Why not with other interventions?

Bowel disease is becoming a widespread problem in the United States, and is a big factor behind the increasing popularity of specialized diets such as The Whole 30 Diet, Keto, Paleo, gluten free, etc.

Many people's bowels are not happy, and they're looking for answers by modifying their diets.

The increase is colon cancer among younger people is likely a result of the increased bowel disease among younger people.

The medical establishment is not really equipped for handle this rise in disease; much of the focus is on the development of expensive drugs that are basically cash-cows for pharmaceutical companies. For example, Remicade costs up to $20,000 a month -- and the market of potential users of it is many millions of people.

The financial math for researching non-drug treatments simply pales in comparison to the potential payoff for successfully developing a drug, even if the results are far-inferior to alternative approaches.

I have a client who is a freelance writer. She has basically ZERO technical knowledge. It was a struggle for her to get Wordpress set up. She is absolutely terrified of GDPR, to the point that she's scared to log in to her website.

To her, what does being "mindful of their user's privacy" even mean?

She probably has analytics installed. Maybe she collects some emails.

There is zero chance she is going to be abusing her user's privacy. All GDPR has done for her is cause stress -- and caused her to spend more money on basically useless "GDPR plugins" for Wordpress.

There are countless people like her, who are spending money effectively on nothing. Because of GDPR. It's horrible. In my opinion.

> Avoiding GMO doesn't do much in avoiding glyphosate.

Here's some facts.

Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybean seeds are designed to be sprayed with glyphosate.

> Monsanto projects that acreage will double this year, accounting for about 44 percent of all planted acres. (1)

If you're not buying organic, it seems incredibly likely you're getting glyphosate in your soybeans, and by extension, many numerous products that the beans are processed into.

Of course, if you are buying organic, it doesn't mean your food wasn't treated with a natural chemical. As I said before, it would nice to know which ones/

1: https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1FD0G2-OC...

My objection to GMOs is not the gene modifications; it is that in practice they're modified to allow an increased use of pesticides/herbicides such as glysophate. I'd rather not have glysophate in my food. However, this is difficult to quantify, and often disputed by industry groups.

Ideally, the use of pesticides/herbicides would be tracked throughout the entire supply chain, so that consumers could have an accurate accounting of the use of pesticides on the food they're consuming. Sadly, the odds of this happening are nil, so we're left with the choice of buying organic and hoping the pesticides/herbicides they used aren't too bad for us. Of course, we can also buy directly from farmers, but that is not practical for most of us, and certainly not for all of our foods.

I just want to be able to choose my poison ;)

Added to that, I like Valter Longo's recommendation of focusing on (healthy) foods that your ancestors ate; your body is more likely to be adapted to doing well on those foods.

My Asus Zenfone 3 has a lot of flaws, but the battery life is awesome. After a day of very heavy usage, I'll still have over 50% battery life. Light usage usually leaves me with 80 to 85%. It makes up for the flawed custom android they put on it. If only it was stock android, as you say.

As someone with Crohn's disease, I follow a diet specifically designed to alter the microbiome. It is very effective in eliminating symptoms, though it does require very strict adherence, which can be very difficult.

The amazing thing is this diet (The Specific Carbohydrate Diet) has been successfully used by people for several decades. Unfortunately, despite recent progress in terms of scientific studies validating its effectiveness, many gastroenterologists still say that diet has little to no effect on Crohn's disease.

Fortunately, not everyone is in denial, and it is finally starting to gain acceptance in the medical and the research community.

John Carmack's reminiscences about Steve Jobs: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=2146412825593223...

I know a Canadian who had a retina detach while in the States.

She went to a Dr. in the states. They determined she needed surgery immediately.

Unfortunately, the local hospital would not let her have the surgery. Why? The billing department was closed for the weekend. She offered to pay cash. Still, the answer was no. The surgery was delayed for 3 days. In that time, she her situation severely worsened, causing permanent damage that would have been prevented by surgery.

She immediately made an emergency trip the Vancouver -- and was treated the same day, surgery and everything. No cost.

I think that gets to the core of it --

It follows standards that you need to know if you want to be able to easily hack it.

Which means learning standards.

Ruby On Rails is really powerful, but it is not easy to start hacking on without a fair amount of base knowledge. In addition, discourse uses a lot of javascript, which makes it even more difficult to modify. The barrier to entry, in terms of creating a custom template, is quite high. You need to learn quite a few things before getting started.

On the other hand, hacking something like a Wordpress template takes almost zero knowledge. You can just start poking at things.

The lack of a relatively simple templating system is a big drawback in Discourse. Especially if you're not a rails developer, and you're running a community forum as a hobby.

I know how to program because of software such as phpbb and Wordpress, which are pretty much hacked together. Maybe because they're hacks, they have easier entry points.

I do think the Discourse people have different goals than I'm talking about here, however. If their goal was to make software that was easy to modify, hack, and deploy, they would have made different choices.

I run a popular forum in a certain niche -- and have played around with discourse as an alternative. It doesn't seem to solve any important issues with growing a community. Additionally, it is rather difficult to customize, making it even harder to solve problems specific to my community. I am not a professional coder, but I can hack pretty much anything I need into my php based forum.

Though, maybe discourse has gotten better since I tried it a couple of years ago.