Hacker News Reader

robgon Studies Link Marijuana Legalization to Positive Public Health Outcomes

Makes sense as a replacement for alcohol, one is a plant the other is a distilled poison.

robgon Lego violates GPL by keep Blender-based BrickLink Studio source closed (2021)

Been wanting to get my kids into this as they get older, I’d expect Lego to do better.

robgon Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

Why not upc codes into recipes and portions into reordering? Yes, end user has to scan stuff, but if reordering handled well, the initial set up isn’t hard. And solves one of the biggest family pain points: what do we have to eat?

robgon Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

Anyone know of a pantry and fridge management system that supports recipes and new ordering? Seems complicated until it’s done.

robgon Home food delivery’s questionable value, for consumers and investors

Would you pay more? Or support the natural evolution of recipe into grocery shopping cart as one click?

robgon Caricaturing Noam Chomsky

…these systems are useful technology…”

Vs.

Therefore they are telling us nothing about language, cognition, acquisition, anything.

As anything with Chomsky, the hyperbole misses the point. A useful piece of technology still has uses. An airplane still flies even if it tells us nothing about how birds learn to fly or think about flight or even navigate the globe during an annual migration.

robgon Meta rediscovers the cubicle

… the knowledge sector completely disregarded any realities about how human brains actually go about the difficult task of creating value through cogitation…

This, why are knowledge-based companies so bad at designing work for the brain’s best capabilities?

robgon Smartphones and social media are destroying children’s mental health

Couldn’t there be a common cause, like lost sleep? Considering the role of sleep in washing away the daily damage to the brain.

robgon How to brazenly steal $100B from Medicare and Medicaid

HCA is a huge health system. I’m no fan of Rick Scott, but hospitals are traditionally run independently. They have 180.

robgon On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

Jerry Fodor used to write of mentalese. It’s a fair criticism. And yet generative AI is showing that the models can be creative in ways that look like thinking outside of language.

robgon On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

These two cultures played out very early in neural networks, see Rumelhart and McClelland, for example [1]. For the language nativists like Chomsky the engineering will never appreciate all of the intricacies of language learning and uses. It’s a fair criticism that both forces the engineering to be better and misses the point. Engineering doesn’t need to replicate how the natural phenomenon “works” in order to provide a compelling set of uses for humanity. Choose a modality of sensing the world - vision, hearing, language, etc. If the engineering replicates and even improves upon the natural basis, we can continue to focus on improving the engineered solution. Nature is a wonderful source of inspiration but why be bound to its instantiation? The brain doesn’t record memories verbatim. Recording devices are better for that reason.

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262680530/parallel-distributed-...

robgon On Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning

I was in the audience during the panel and Chomsky was really trying to hold onto a view of science disconnected from the engineering needed to replicate the natural phenomenon. To take a simple example:

Suppose you’re the Wright Brothers and you built a flying machine.

Chomsky’s response would be: But you didn’t explain how birds fly.

On the one hand, sure. Birds fly differently. On the other, the machine flies. Why does it need to explain all of flight?

The same is true of language models. They don’t explain how we acquire language. But they replicate language uses in ways that look like language speakers.

robgon The perks workers want also make them more productive

Why don’t employers take seriously that for knowledge workers, brain health is brain performance? It’s like we never moved on from manual labor and factories with long grueling days. Professional athletes know they can’t train or perform for more than a few hours a day. Employers don’t recognize that learning, memory, and attention are finite biological resources.

robgon Amazon’s big dreams for Alexa fall short

I’m really cool with just music, weather, and a timer. Not everything needs to have a ton of features.

robgon I created an eBay account and bought an item, today I got indefinitely suspended

Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time. Does anyone here find eBay useful anymore?

robgon Amazon has approval from FTC to acquire One Medical primary-care clinics

If this makes telehealth easier to use and more widely adopted, sign me up. One click appointments should be the default for many medical needs.

robgon Early morning university classes linked to poor sleep and academic performance

Counterexample: Started going to bed at a good time in college, gave me a reason to skip going out, and my brain performance unlocked into better focus, learning, and memory. Bonus was the classes were smaller.

robgon The Untold Story of a Music Royalty's Tragic End

The lack of purpose seems a current plague on humanity, especially with rates of suicide. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankyl got through to me. Now with kids of my own - I can only help so much, their lives will have to be from their own will to live.

robgon IKEA made a smart air quality sensor to track indoor pollution

LG has a purifier and sensor combo that I used to learn we were likely aerosolizing heavy metals in our humidifiers.

robgon The Mysteries by Bill Watterson

Love this so much - that a cherished creator can detach for years then drop something they’ve been working on. And likely not a book tour in sight!

robgon Let Teenagers Sleep

Really amazing that two key bugs in schools work actively hurt the brain’s ability to learn, remember, focus, and make decisions:

1. Long school days mean brains are overworked and so don’t function well 2. Multi month summer breaks actively overwrite what was learned the prior year

When will schooling be built to best optimize brain power?

robgon Vitamin D supplementation associated with a reduced risk of suicide in veterans

1. Get tested for Vitamin D deficiency

2. Supplement with D3/K2 as necessary

3. Repeat testing to examine effects

4. Be vigilant at the change of seasons

robgon A Maine community comes together to save a candlepin bowling tradition

Have you considered a Kickstarter to test the market?

robgon How to Beat Stress and Anxiety

1. Establish good sleep habits. Sleep is how the body recovers from stress.

2. Exercise daily. Movement is how the body puts the stress hormones to work.

3. Eat well. The gut-brain connection drives how we feel as we digest.

robgon Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

1. Get tested 2. If low, start taking D3 with K 3. Keep taking D3 with K 4. Get tested again 5. Take more if no improvement

I take 5000 IU most days.

robgon Omega-3s: Are “Brain-Boosting” Effects Scientifically Backed?

I used to get crippling Seasonal Affective Disorder every year, got tested, was badly deficient, and now don’t anymore.

robgon Why VR/AR gets farther away as it comes into focus

I was skeptical on XR until I saw the health and care applications - typically short sessions 30-60 mins with high market value if solving a medical need. The long duration uses, like work or entertainment, seem unlikely any time soon, too many usability constraints.

robgon How to get new ideas

The autonomic nervous system and the glymphatic nervous system are both things I never really learned about in schools. ANS is taught as a textbook fact of homeostasis, not the constant fight-or-flight reflex that’s on every second of every day and the impacts that causes on health. The glymphatic system has only been discovered in the last 10 years but helps explain why sleep deficits explain cognitive performance decrements, mental health concerns, and age-related declines. And still so much we don’t know like gut-brain health and neuroelectronics as for implants!

robgon How to get new ideas

Neuroscientist here. Closer I got to the physiology of mental health - sleep, stress, exercise, and nutrition - realized it was another fractal for personal and population health. Problem remains navigating regulatory or reimbursement hurdles from wellness into professional care.

robgon Ask HN: Has anyone worked at the US National Labs before?

There’s a cool accelerator that is partnering with Oakridge and out of TN that might be a good middle ground:

https://www.techstars.com/accelerators/industries-of-the-fut...