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pchiverson Making a record is just one way a band can make money

Best comment from the comments on the 37signals site:

It’s ironic that this post is about all the ways a band can make money, but the trailer for the documentary focuses largely on the fact that Luna makes no money and barely breaks even on tours.

pchiverson Several disruptive innovations will soon make life harder for health care’s established giants

The big study on vitamin D that got everyone's attention was this one from the summer of 2007:

Vitamin D and Calcium Supplementation Reduces Cancer Risk: Results of a Randomized Trial (http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/85/6/1586)

There is also a lot of information about vitamin D research at the Vitamin D Council website (http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/).

That being said, I don't know if taking a vitamin D supplement would have any noticeable effect on your sense of well-being. I think it's probably a good idea to take one even if you don't notice a difference.

pchiverson Several disruptive innovations will soon make life harder for health care’s established giants

I would love to have primary care for cash here in Canada. Given the current system, you can't receive a given medical treatment unless you can convince a doctor to authorize it. Even if you are willing to pay out of pocket, you are out of luck unless you can find a doctor who is on the same page as you.

Right now, I'm trying to get a blood test for Vitamin D, but all the doctors I've gone to see are ignorant of the latest Vitamin D research, and don't see the value of doing the test. If I can't find a doctor who will authorize it in the next year or so, then I'm probably going to drive down to the US and pay cash using Direct Labs (http://www.directlabs.com/) or the Life Extension Foundation (http://www.lef.org/). It's terribly inefficient but I don't see any way around it.

pchiverson 19 year old from Florida commits suicide on Justin.tv

I downvoted this comment, thinking it was just a silly remark, but now I realize that it's a reference to the Brandon Vedas death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Vedas

pchiverson Python 2.6 Released

Windows 2000 still has extended support for another 21 months, so I would definitely be disappointed if it wasn't supported in Python 2.6.

http://support.microsoft.com/lifecycle/?LN=en-ca&x=24...

pchiverson Writing a compiler in Ruby, bottom up

If anybody is looking for the Niklaus Wirth book, you can find a copy here: http://www.dbnet.ece.ntua.gr/~adamo/csbooksonline/CBEAll.pdf

The link on the author's homepage seems to be broken.

pchiverson Ask HN: Hack a healthy, yet not expensive, meal.

I just read your article, and it's a really great idea and very well written. Maybe you should try posting it to HN.

pchiverson My Startup project: ErrorKey.com, a tool for hackers.

http://www.errorkey.com/Search/Index.aspx?q=NoSuchError&...

Ugh, this error message is filled with errors and definitely needs copy editing. My best attempt:

  The search for "NoSuchError" did not match any documents in the system.

  For best results:

    * Type fewer words
    * Make sure you are using the correct spelling
    * Try different word combinations
    * Search the internet (???)

pchiverson Ask HN: why do we have less science related posts now that in the past?

Believe it or not, mistakenly substituting the word "less" when the correct word would be "fewer" is a mistake that a lot of native English speakers make.

pchiverson Ask HN: Professional Python IDEs?

I've been using Wing 101 for the last couple of months (after reading the Python IDE reviews on Jonathan Ellis' blog), and I've been fairly happy with it.

Links to the reviews:

http://spyced.blogspot.com/2005/09/review-of-6-python-ides.h...

http://spyced.blogspot.com/2006/02/pycon-python-ide-review.h...

pchiverson Thank you, Adobe Reader 9

Is it safe to get it for free through the TrialPay offer, or am I going to get spammed/abused for going this route?

pchiverson Ask YC: What are some of the Python blogs you read?

Spyced (Jonathan Ellis): http://spyced.blogspot.com/

pchiverson Ask YC: Nonprofit funding

I just used ChipIn for the first time last week. A friend was sick and a bunch of us chipped in to help cover medical bills.

It's really a great service. I'm surprised that they've been around for over two years without getting more attention.

pchiverson Peter Thiel Makes Down Payment on Libertarian Ocean Colonies

Check out the "Review of Similar Projects" section in the Seasteading book:

http://seasteading.org/seastead.org/book_alpha/review.html#S...

pchiverson Everything I want to do is Illegal

+1 for the recommendation of The Omnivore's Dilemma. It's one of the best books about food and nutrition that I've ever read.

pchiverson Ask YC: What's the most hacker-friendly keyboard?

IMHO the Kinesis Advantage is the Rolls Royce of keyboards. After having used it for over a year, I can't imagine going back to anything else.

http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/contoured_usb.htm

pchiverson Good book for economics

The book that got me started was Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (http://www.amazon.com/Economics-One-Lesson-Shortest-Understa...). Published in 1946, and still considered a classic.

pchiverson Top 10 Memory Hacks

If anyone is interested in spaced repetition software (SRS) like SuperMemo, there are two open source projects that are very similar:

-Mnemosyne (http://www.mnemosyne-proj.org/)

-Anki (http://www.ichi2.net/anki/)

I've been using Mnemosyne for a week now, ever since the article in Wired about SRS (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=170542). I've found Mnemosyne to be easy to use and very effective at helping to memorize things. I use it primarily for language learning (Spanish), but I've also used it for learning the syntax of programming commands, dates of important historical events, and identifying the countries in Europe and Africa on a map.

pchiverson Why Africa may never produce a Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, or Facebook

I think your downmodding has more to do with your snarky tone then the content of your argument.

pchiverson One Response to Rejection

One thing I don't understand: why is building applications for people interested in local events a "perennial tarpit"? Does it have to do with having a limited market of potential users?

pchiverson Opentick: free real-time and historical market data for trading systems and trading platforms

> It does seem like a stretch to call it open if they charge money and only provide an API.

I agree. It doesn't look like much of the data is available for free:

http://www.opentick.com/index.php?app=content&event=mark...

pchiverson Ask HN: Choosing a Python framework for web development?

Some additional opinions...

Ask Hacker News: What Python web framework should I use?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=129121

pchiverson Percent of population with a college degree, by country

In Canada, a college degree (generally referred to as a "diploma") is a two year course, usually in an applied area such as graphic design or radio broadcasting. A university degree is a four year course in an academic area like philosophy or chemistry.

pchiverson I'd buy that for a dollar

with that title, I half expected to see a video of Robocop...

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093870/quotes

pchiverson Inside the Bizarre World of Japanese Pickup Schools

It's strange that the Wired article is implying that these types of pickup workshops are a "crazy Japanese thing", when the reality is that this stuff has been happening in the States for 10 or 15 years now.

pchiverson Ask YC: I just quit Microsoft to work on this product full-time. What's your brutal feedback?

Yep, I agree with the suggestion to remove the term "cash money". Makes me think of a bad hip hop video--remember the Cash Money Millionaires? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_Money_Millionaires)

pchiverson YC Startup Going into Beta: Reble.FM Music Sharing

> Did the FAQ come across as arrogant to anyone else?

Yes. It doesn't inspire a lot of trust in its current form.

pchiverson Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?

Here a link to a previous discussion of existential depression on Hacker News:

Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=78594

pchiverson Two AI Pioneers. Two Bizarre Suicides. What Really Happened?

It seems that Dangerous Knowledge was taken down from Google Video. Here is a link to the BBC page:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/documentaries/features/dangerou...

"In this one-off documentary, David Malone looks at four brilliant mathematicians - Georg Cantor, Ludwig Boltzmann, Kurt Godel and Alan Turing - whose genius has profoundly affected us, but which tragically drove them insane and eventually led to them all committing suicide."