arjn

1,175 karma · joined October 15, 2010

arjn··on The Chinese Lingerie Venders of Egypt

I feel Egypt's "Zabbaleen" should be mentioned here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabbaleen

There was an excellent documentary on them a few years ago :

http://www.garbagedreams.com/

arjn··on I am shutting down my bookstore in New Delhi

This makes me sad. It feels like the slow passing of a loved age. I had the same feeling when an old bookstore called "Premier" closed in Bangalore may years ago.

I doubt algorithms and AI can replace the feel of a quiet bookstore where you can browse old, new and unrelated books. Maybe meet someone else with a passion for reading and strike up a conversation, perhaps a friendship.

Bookstores are much more than merely bookstores.

arjn··on I am an 18-year-old techie/student. I have leukemia and need your help

Hi Mehr, I'll be happy to sign up. I hope you find a match soon.

arjn··on Match Group Buys PlentyOfFish for $575M

How does such a site generate money ?

arjn··on Match Group Buys PlentyOfFish for $575M

Could you elaborate a bit ? what does "republish email content" mean ?

arjn··on Digital Bodleian Library

Very nice, thanks for posting.

arjn··on Novgorod: The Archaeology of Medieval Russia

A list of Birch Bark texts : http://gramoty.ru/index.php?key=bb&date%5B%5D=all&city%5B%5D...

arjn··on Supercharged Tuberculosis, Made in India

Part of the problem is how easily antibiotics are available over the counter in India. No prescription required.

A large number of people self-prescribe or take the advice of non-medical people when looking for a cure.

I've seen folk take some pretty serious stuff (Tetracycline, Streptomycin etc.) on advice from the sales-staff at their local pharmacy.

The government has done little or nothing to stop this behaviour.

arjn··on The Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Human and Animal Health

I wonder if anyone has done a study of the health positive/negative effects of fasting on observant Copts and Ethiopian Orthodox Christians. Respectively their fasting days are approx. 220 and 250 days per year :-

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Orthodox_Tewahedo_Ch... and beliefs

arjn··on Animated History of the Atlantic Slave Trade

Thank you for posting those resources.

Yes,it would be very interesting to see changing countries and borders during the Atlantic slave-trade era. we may learn or understand something new from that.

arjn··on Animated History of the Atlantic Slave Trade

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

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

arjn··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (July 2015)

No pay/salary ?

arjn··on 16 Free Data Science Books

Thanks for posting. Some good books here including some very new ones.

Note that some of these are pay-what-you-want.

arjn··on Microscopic footage of a needle moving across the grooves of a record

Yeah, I love his channel. Many hours of fun, interesting information and techniques.

arjn··on Atmos Clock

Its brilliant. I wonder if we can use this effect to power a small (very low power) microchip for an indefinite period of time.

arjn··on How US students get a university degree for free in Germany

Research Assistant, Teaching Assistant. Thats usually how. (its not really for free)

arjn··on The Medieval Fragments Project: when crowdsourcing doesn’t work

Surely this can be "open sourced". Release all data including texts, images etc and turn it into something like a software project. It may be a good experiment instead of shutting it down.

arjn··on Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate

I'm skeptical of the Hans Rosling talk that many people will bring up. For one, there is no indication that the poorer countries with higher birthrates will be educated in time. Secondly, just because we can calculate the world can support more people doesn't mean that's a good thing to have. We're already losing our flora and fauna at an alarming rate. This is going to get worse with a higher population.

I think sometimes people are blinded by TED talks and fail to question them.

arjn··on Germany passes Japan to have world's lowest birth rate

You haven't travelled to India, China or Bangladesh have you ? The world is already heavily overpopulated. If we estimate the amount of people the world can support and that's higher than the current number, it does not mean we should have that higher number.

If we keep going higher, we will not be able to stop the destruction of flora and fauna that is currently underway. The world may be able to "support" more people, but it is unlikely to be a world worth living in.

arjn··on Python bug: Can assign [] = (), but not () = []

Waaa! ... I just did that using 2.7 idle and it worked. This is new for me.

I got stuck for a while trying to back out. Finally figured the way to reverse is to use del(): del(True) del(False).

arjn··on NASA's Radar Found 4 Men Trapped in Rubble in Nepal by Their Heartbeats

This is both fantastic and frightening. Imagine what capabilities the US military has for finding people.

arjn··on Vast Underground City Found in Turkey May Be One of the World’s Largest

Interesting history, somewhat sad that the inhabitants were expelled (according to the wiki article).

arjn··on Google sends reporter a GIF instead of a 'no comment'

I dont understand how that GIF represents "no comment". To me it looks more like an "I don't know" or "I've no idea" statement.

Also, I don't see why this is news. GIFs have been used like this for several years now. Reddit is replete with such usage.

arjn··on The Hacker Who Drank Ayahuasca

>> Please don't judge a tradition that's thousands of years old

Somewhat off topic question but I'd like to ask anyway - How exactly do you know its thousands of years old ?

I'm not saying it isn't, but how do you know for sure ?

arjn··on Massimo Banzi: Fighting for Arduino

Wow! I had no idea all this was going on behind the scenes. Hate to see such a good thing be spoiled by greed and deceit.

arjn··on An Evaluation of Concurrency Control with One Thousand Cores [pdf]

Direct link to the VLDB paper : http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p209-yu.pdf

arjn··on Ring brings Viking, Islamic civilizations closer together

I recall reading about some Buddhist artefacts found at Viking sites. That could put their travels much older than whats mentioned here.

http://irisharchaeology.ie/2013/12/the-helgo-treasure-a-viki...

The Vikings sure travelled far and wide.

arjn··on Microsoft's new foldable keyboard

Meh .... one more thing to carry around.

arjn··on The Firebombing of Tokyo

Thank you for saying this. I am continually surprised by some of these articles attempting to use their 20/20 hindsight to pretend they know what was the right thing to do at the time.

arjn··on Ask HN: Can you help me understand why I am so tired?

Something like this happened to me last year. I used to feel tired, almost constantly. My doctor eventually recommended a full screen blood test which showed my Vitamin-D level to be severely deficient and testosterone was on the low end.

Get yourself checked, and soon.

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