Hacker News Reader

Not_a_pizzaon I have vulvodynia – but countless gynaecologists dismissed my agony (2017)

There really are too many "I know you better than you do" doctors out there. There should be a consumer panel that rates doctors according to their efforts towards a successful treatment.

Not_a_pizzaon The Flaw at the Heart of Democracy

Randomness could easily be more fraudulent than voting, because who could possibly prove that it failed?

Not_a_pizzaon Morgan Freeman Converts His 124-Acre Ranch into a Giant Bee Sanctuary

Is there some real figure which would give truth to the amount other insects would pollinate, if not honey bees? It seems like we have way too many insects in the world for the honey bee to be the only reliable pollinator.

Besides, aren't solitary bees supposed to be better pollinators?

As much as I like honey, I can't help but thinking there is a huge gap in logic with all of these people waving and screaming we aren't going to have food because of dwindling honey bee populations.

Not_a_pizzaon More Than 90% of Americans Have Pesticides or Their Byproducts in Their Bodies

I don't think the final question is how much do we need to avoid. We are protecting ourselves and the things we want to keep alive in the future. We have to then ask, "Will this permanently destroy us or our living space?".

Also, science determines LD50 all the time. What they often do not check is what amount of pesticide needs to be consumed before your health or intelligence drop by 10%. Those would be excellent numbers to have available.

Not_a_pizzaon U.S. workers hate ‘open’ office spaces

It's not a conspiracy - removing privacy looks nice on the surface, until you realize that every conversation you have at work is now in public corp space. Any jokes you might have told, any friendship type things are now scrutinized at the highest levels by managers who are only "cells" away - in the same big room.

Open offices feel like a real dick move by any company that uses it to corral employees as close together as possible.

Maybe if they have reasonable break rooms it's not so bad, but how many companies give you more than the bare minimum space you need to work?

Not_a_pizzaon Bitcoin ETF research finds that 95% of Bitcoin volume is fake

Those match my extremely anecdotal observations in this arena.

Not_a_pizzaon Bitcoin ETF research finds that 95% of Bitcoin volume is fake

It's a shady industry to be sure, but not hearing of something doesn't mean it doesn't exist or isn't functional in some context.

Not_a_pizzaon GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation

Endangering health happens on both sides. Big pharma pushes pain meds. They also push vaccines. The difference being vaccines don't normally harm people, but when they do, it's impossible to get compensation.

Pain meds can cause addiction and harm much more easily.

Not_a_pizzaon GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation

Saying that people are wrong without talking to them is a great way to destroy societies. There objectively are things they are wrong about and things they are right about, just like you.

Not_a_pizzaon GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation

None of your rebuke is actually accurate.

The CDC acknowledges that batches of bad vaccines do occur. How can a vaccine be bad except that (1) it doesn't work or (2) it actually hurts the patient?

Also, people from the CDC do leave to work for pharma companies. That is true...so a revolving door exists. Decide for yourself if that could produce unwanted collusion.

The other links support my claims that Vaccine companies send shoddy vaccines to other countries even if they are rejected here. World health should be about more than profit. Vaccines can be helpful, but not without honest discussions which Vaccine suppliers seem unwilling to have.

Not_a_pizzaon GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/recalls.html

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/23/asia/faulty-vaccine-china-int...

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/18/world/middleeast/syrian-c...

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-merck-gerberding/former-c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Childhood_Vaccine_Inj...

Not_a_pizzaon GoFundMe Bans Anti-Vaxxers Who Raise Money to Spread Misinformation

I get that anti-vaxers are considered dangerous. Equally dangerous is the revolving door between the CDC and vaccination companies which prevent correct levels of scrutinization when batches of vaccinations or specific vaccines are deemed unsafe. Without this comfortable level of accountability, vaccine companies can move forward indefinitely without supplying realistic testing which could prevent detrimental affects that very rarely occur, but can happen. Furthermore, sending bad batches of vaccines downstream to poorer countries should be illegal. Certainly things like this have happened historically.

Additionally, the way the government has cozied up to vaccination companies to prevent nearly any lawsuit from taking place related to vaccines seems ridiculous. Vaccines do represent a public good, and as such some protection seems appropriate, but to make it seem like the best possible thing we could ever do to protect populations? I think that's a touch overreaching.

People should use vaccines, absolutely. However, vaccine tech has not progressed much in 50 years and part of this may be attributed to the protection of vaccine companies.

Not_a_pizzaon At $75K, housing a prisoner in California now costs more than a year at Harvard

I totally think banishment should be an option for your first order semi-serious offenses. If you disagree with the laws of a place enough to get into that level of trouble, they should give you at the very least the "consent to be governed" somewhere else. That's assuming that you committed a crime which is not universally punishable everywhere.

What's also funny about this is that it used to be that the colleges that cost the most money were the most prestigious. Now an inmate can claim that same level of prestige tongue in cheek.

Not_a_pizzaon This Resume Does Not Exist

Too easy. Someone do search engines, but actually prop them up upon creation.

Not_a_pizzaon Lyft’s Employees Could Buy Every Single Home for Sale in SF with Post IPO Cash

Tree fitty.

Not_a_pizzaon College admissions scandal fallout: Stanford students sue UCLA, USC and Yale

"The first golden rule in these programs is never go after nor accept any student that is not qualified for the program."

At this point, you should define "qualified". When affirmative action programs start accepting scores that are much lower than for other races, it begins to really call into question your argument.

Not_a_pizzaon Rudder issue that plagued the Boeing 737 throughout the 1990s

I'm expecting Boeing to do everything in their power to spin news from "they were at fault" to "poor little US company is being attacked by incompetent gang of pilots".

Not_a_pizzaon Researchers find trapdoor in SwissVote election system

I think the general assumption that you have is that all voters have equal access to financial gain, free time, and other things that in any society known are heavily deviated towards the rich. Add to that the fact that the most heavily monied campaigns normally turn out to be the winners, and it becomes very difficult to claim the idea of fair elections has any real merit except as a nice theory we want to believe is true.

Not_a_pizzaon Microsoft proves the critics right: We’re heading toward a Chrome-only Web

Forgive me, but I dislike all this pandering. Obviously Chrome is good at what it does, but it still not the privacy-oriented browser of choice. A browser fueled by huge amounts of corporate money is generally going to look and act better, but at the end of the day, you're still corporately controlled, open source or not. If you want yourself (and the rest of society) not to be like that, then you have to step out a bit.

Not_a_pizzaon Researchers find trapdoor in SwissVote election system

Ballot stuffing is a thing, and ballot disposal is a thing.

Elections are one of the few games in town where the people that control things get to count up the vote and tell you who should control things in the future. If government was really ethical, you would expect independent auditors to be checking processes before and after.

Not_a_pizzaon Could an Eye Doctor Diagnose Alzheimer’s Before You Have Symptoms?

People have tried spoofing with dogs, but dogs aren't even that close genetically compared to other animals. Makes one wonder if they'd be able to detect a chimpanzee.

https://www.thedodo.com/animals-you-had-no-idea-were-so-clos...

The real test should be sending in your own genes twice. They might not detect exactly the same because of minor mutagenic differentiation that has taken place (or because you're a chimera!), but they should easily place you into the same family tree as yourself.

Not_a_pizzaon Russia blocks ProtonMail

So there are email addresses, that if properly used, will keep my email from being read within the confines of Russia? You might label that a bug, but I'll call that a feature.

Not_a_pizzaon Could an Eye Doctor Diagnose Alzheimer’s Before You Have Symptoms?

But then maybe she's onto something.

Some Genetic Tests Apparently Can’t Tell If You’re Dog Or Human https://futurism.com/home-genetics-test-dog-human

How DNA Testing Botched My Family's Heritage, and Probably Yours, Too https://gizmodo.com/how-dna-testing-botched-my-familys-herit...

I Took 9 Different Commercial DNA Tests and Got 6 Different Results https://www.livescience.com/63997-dna-ancestry-test-results-...

How Accurate Are Online DNA Tests? (Betteridge's Law of Headlines might still somewhat play into this one.) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-accurate-are-...

Consumer DNA Tests Are Wrong 40 Percent of the Time https://www.geek.com/science/study-consumer-dna-tests-are-wr...

Consumer Affairs' 23 and me rating (1.5/5 stars) https://www.consumeraffairs.com/health/23andme.html

The words "Fly By Night" definitely come to mind.

Combine that with ongoing privacy murkiness, and 23andme is basically the medical version of Facebook. https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/16/5-biggest-risks-of-sharing-d...