boothead

Here's the other link I mentioned:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/commercialhaskell...

I have a write up about the start up stuff here:

https://www.fpcomplete.com/business/blog/utilizing-haskell-f...

There's also a more in depth version on the commercial haskell mailing list (I can't find it from work I'm afraid).

Feel free to fire any more questions at me :-)

If you need anyone to back you up, I would be happy to share my experience building a team of Haskellers, putting it into production at a start up and how Haskell scales to a large enterprise.

It would also be interesting to see that as a rough $$$/user. It would be very interesting to see how much you need to be making from each user to cover hosting.

I think one big use of blockchain like tech will be in XVA [1], specifically CVA. The faster you settle, the lower the counterparty risk and funding requirements. There's good article (admittedly from a biased party) covering this in ibtimes [2]

[1] http://www.risk.net/risk-magazine/opinion/2422606/-smart-der... (not sure if this is paywalled or not)

[2] http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/setls-peter-randall-says-banks-bloc...

Interesting point on the CIMT test, I hadn't considered that. I'm not sure I've ever had a cholesterol test before, so that might be why it wasn't picked up. :-)

My GP seems to be saying the because I'm fit and healthy, there's no other possible diagnosis than FH given the high numbers. I was kind of hoping for a bit more investigation and perhaps some corroboration. I'm not sure what form that should take though - genetic screen perhaps?

Nobody did, I just phoned my GP and asked him if he could, but he said that's a question I'd have to put to the specialist. My reasoning was that I want to assess whether I already have arterial damage or not, as that will have a significant bearing on how I asses my risk of not taking statins.

Regarding your earlier question, my LDL was 7.8 mmol/l and total serum cholesterol was 10.3 mmol/L (I make that and 301 and 398 in US money)

Yeah, I'm aware of this and it's pretty scary! That's why I'm certainly not ruling out the drugs. What I want to do it figure out if I do have any damage with a CIMT test. If that shows I'm taking damage then it's a done deal, but If I can change my LDL through diet I think I owe myself a couple of months at least to try.

Yes, when I demured on the statin it occurred to my doc to check thyroid function (seems the wrong way round to me). My levels were fine.

Absolutely, agree with all of that. What I'm moaning about is the absence of desire to explore further. I don't know if I've had high cholesterol for a long time or not or whether it's lifestyle or not, or whether I do actually have a 1 in 500 genetic mutation that means that my liver doesn't process cholesterol correctly or not. I want to look into some of those possibilities a bit more before I take drugs for the rest of my life is all :-)

Trigs were fine. Overconsumption is certainly one more thing for me to look at.

I don't find him biased because he's balanced, when he doesn't know he says so and he backs up everything he says with rigorous literature. Peter is also the president of NUSI (http://nusi.org/solving-the-problem/), and as such dedicated to objective dietary science. In addition he's well respected by others whose work I also admire.

Thank you for your perspective. I am very wary of treading the "mainstream medicine doesn't know shit and drugs are bad" path, and for that reason I very much appreciate a contrary view. My plan is to give it a few months and see if fixing some of my sub optimal lifestyle makes a difference or not.

I figure if I fix my sleep, cut the sugar and other crap and if necessary change my SFA to PUFA ratio and it doesn't get much better in 6 months then I'll have to take the pills. But I owe it to myself to try first.

I just had a click round that website. It's just the kind of place that I avoid like the plague. It seems hopelessly biased, as does the author. I didn't come across one link to an scientific study, and it was immediately obvious that there's a serious anti animal products agenda going on and no disclaimer.

Avoid.

I had a long reply to your previous comment written out but you deleted before I could post and it got lost. But I guess what I was saying does boil down to this. I don't have a great deal of faith in the shallow, one size fits all, drug based approach I was offered. I do intend to look at wider options, and you're right that there's a lot of information available. However, I don't intend to do a Steve Jobs. If it looks like I've sustained damage to my arteries already or I can't find an intervention that works then I'll revert to the suggested route.

Yes you're absolutely correct, I'm waiting for a referral to a specialist at the moment.

WRT to my examination though: it didn't go beyond having bloods done. There was no other investigation other than, wow your LDL is really high.

My go to source for understanding this stuff is Peter Attia [1], and a few other independent researchers.

[1] http://eatingacademy.com/nutrition/the-straight-dope-on-chol...

I'd give Peter Attia a look: http://eatingacademy.com/start-here

His writing is incredibly in depth, and he's covered cholesterol extensively.

I think this is a bit unkind:

> dismissed in a pseudo-intellectual manner by people who know a lot (just not about the subject at hand).

I'm the one who's potentially sick here, and this (perhaps wrongly) smacks of appeal to authority. What I absolutely don't want to do is disregard medical opinion, but neither am I inclined to abdicate all responsibility for my own health and well being.

> The genetic data currently supports very little role for inflammation in important diseases like coronary artery disease, whereas there is crystalline evidence supporting the connection between LDL-cholesterol levels and mortality

I'd be very interested in learning more about this, do you have anything you could recommend? I'm fully aware that the majority of what I read on the internet is likely to be along the lines of "don't sweat it, eat natural and you'll be fine" and I'd very much appreciate some exposure to the opposite point of view too.

It would seem so:

http://eatingacademy.com/cholesterol-2/random-finding-plus-p...

I think that's essentially what a diagnosis of familial hypercholesterolemia means.

Likewise people seem to vary widely in their ability to handle high carb diets. I guess a cookie cutter approach doesn't really work across the board.

Yes, this is a very good point that I try to keep uppermost in my mind. The thing is though that I'm not sure that having a medical degree and several years as a GP actually gives you much more of a grounding in non-drug therapies than someone who can read the original research (or in my case well referenced and balanced synopses of said research by people who's opinion I trust). Which is where my vague sense of disappointment comes in: the only intervention that a doctor within mainstream medicine seems to countenance is a prescription.

Thanks for sharing. I've taken a similar approach: cut all crap out of my diet and now in ketosis (according to urine strips). Ultimately this might not be the fix for me, and I might have to add some other interventions (like replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat if I turn out to metabolize SFA poorly) but I'm also convinced that the primary fix must be dietary/lifestyle with some limited support from medication if necessary.

Having skimmed over, one indication that my GP isn't up to date is that the lipid test is no longer required to be a fasted test, whereas mine was. Interestingly the specialist lipid clinic has also asked for a fasting test.

The problem is now that I'm not even sure whether I should agree with what a "good" or "bad" number is for LDL or TC. The recommended number seems to fall every few years, and I'm unsure how much of that is based on good research or industry pressure or what.

Indeed, that's what I've done. I've completely eliminated sugar and I've increased my veg intake. As of the end of last week urine strips indicate that I'm in ketosis. I'll have another set of bloods done this week before I go to see a specialist probably after xmas. I intend to take a very self experimental approach with this. At the same time, if it does turn out that I'm one of those people who doesn't metabolize saturated fat well, or I do in fact have a genetic mutation then I'll also have to consider the drug route I suppose.

Thank you for those links!

I should have been clearer: what bugged me about my interaction with the GP was that he didn't ask about anything to do with lifestyle/diet. When I went looking on my own - everything I seemed to find from the NHS/Heart UK suggested that cutting saturated fat was essential, leading to my conclusion that this is what the mainstream medical establishment still believes.

It's great to read things like this... I wish my GP would do the same.

I recently had a really high cholesterol reading (both total cholesterol and LDL). Everything else (blood pressure, blood glucose etc) seems fine. I'm 38, fit and healthy and nothing that suspect in my family history. I found the attitude of my doctor in all this quite surprising. It amounted basically to "You definitely have familial hypercholesterolemia. There is no other possible option here other than statins". No further questions about what I eat, my stress levels, lifestyle - nothing.

What disappoints me the most here is now that I feel like it's all on me to determine what my real risk levels are and what's appropriate to treat this. I don't subscribe to the mainstream NHS view still heavily pushed that eating saturated fat -> high cholesterol == unhealthy as I think it's a lot more complicated (as this article shows). I don't like being is this situation as I'm as susceptible to human bias as the next person, and I'm not a doctor, however almost all of the high quality, science based writing I've read indicates that the mainstream healthcare system's view on cholesterol is wrong.

Thanks. I've looked at etherium and it's an intriguing idea. How do you think it stacks up vs something like ripple or hyperledger, which are based on the byzantine fault tolerance idea?

I've seen a lot of noise that blockchain is going to be a huge disruption for everything recently (yeah I know people have been saying it for a while - I may have been asleep). What would people recommend as the best resource for a) evaluating whether the hype is valid and b) as a technical overview?

I'm a former Marine myself (Royal Marine, not USMC). I never heard explicitly of it during my service, but reaction to events is integral to frontline military ops.

The whole point of the commander's intent, and everyone knowing it is to be able to react to localized change but still move towards the desired end state.

Commanders already have ample opportunity to micro manage. As Stan McChrystal mentions in his book Team of Teams, he was often watching real time video and had real time comms with troops on the ground carrying out ops. He resisted the desire to interject, citing a desire to push as many decisions to the edges of the network.

I don't see AI (at least in it's current form) in a position to make strategic decisions. I see AI increasing the fidelity of and extracting patterns from information flowing through the battle space (or boardroom). So I see the greatest contribution that AI can make at the moment in the OO (Observe, Orient - what do I see and what does it mean) of OODA, with the Decide and Act still firmly the remit of humans.