todayiamme's comments

Hey do you have an email that I can reach you at?

I'm a woman, and this raises another point. People get really, really weird about this. Especially if you try to talk about it.

Also, women aren't just a target demographic. We're 50.5% of the population. And that's kinda the point. This isn't just inside baseball --- it's literally half of all humanity!

No, it can't. And you're missing the point of why we're doing this. Such kind of tracking is powerful not because it helps you keep track of what happened, but what could happen. There are patterns that humans can't easily discern that correlate with everything from ovarian cysts to endometriosis --- detecting the problem early on, gives people a better, longer life in the long run, and prevents potentially fatal complications in the case of pregnancy.

What you're saying is exactly like a logistics company saying - why should we enter our logs into this computer? What's the point? A pen and paper seem to work just fine... We all know how that story turned out. This story is playing out with women's lives instead of efficiency points/dollars in the global economy (though at some level it does map to do that as well), and real people are suffering as a result. They deserve better.

This article reminds me of the time when I told someone from the tech/rationality community that I was working for a consumer health tech startup that was focused on women's fertility and menstrual health. I was helping to design the UX of the product that had to do with the actual tracking of their cycles and their health. My friend had a reaction that was quite typical of most people I talked to, but it's one that I've kept around as an example of what not to do;

  is this, like, very, and truly, *the* best thing you can do with your time?   like, back-of-the-envelope: what is the amount of money women spend on keeping track of their periods?  like, the savy of them buys a $.5 notepad, and circles the dates?

At the time I was shocked that he didn't even realise that this was a problem, but it was actually that lack of empathy that made me realise that a lot of people in the tech community don't actually think about some of the more germane problems facing the lives of 50.5% of the population --- it was quite eye-opening for me. Our schemas were so different that I found it quite difficult to explain why this mattered. Sure, I could go over the normal talking points - a) everyone's periods are different and they are often different every time, b) there are tons of possible complications and you can get into a world of hurt over the slightest variations in the hormonal cycle, their genetics, and the health of their ovaries, uterus, or even vagina, and c) it wasn't that easy to catch these while they were happening and women most often discovered issues the hard way. Ergo, giving women a map to their bodies - no matter who they are or where or how they were born - would give them a greater sense of control over their lives. But he - and a lot of other folks - just wouldn't get it.

Maybe, finally, seeing the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will get more people interested in these problems and talk to the women around them about it?

It was on my iPhone though?

Clicking on "Balance Sheet" on that archive.is link took me to (what seems to be) a malicious website. Can you please double check and take it down just in case?

> As you say, all fixed without needing net neutrality.

They were enforcing their policy of net neutrality. After the courts struck these regulatory options down, the FCC adopted the Title II order to continue enforcing net neutrality.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-netneutrality/u...

> I have never heard of anything like that happening in the US before 2015. Could you give me some examples of this happening?

Okay. Here's a quick timeline of related incidents where the ISP has modified someone's access to information - it includes an ISP blocking information about a labor strike against the company;

"""

TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h...

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea...

- https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...

"""

I feel that these incidents establish a strong precedent and behavioral pattern that makes the expectation of a hands-off approach by ISPs irrational.

> Wake up? Why invent scenarios that everybody knows would never happen? ISPs had 30 years until 2015 to do it, and we were fine. But now of course suddenly they all go crazy and start destroying their own business because they want $4.99 from you.

Some form of the scenarios I've outlined have indeed happened in the past. From folks trying to ban competitor's emails to attempts to block specific applications and traffic types at every level. Also if China can block VPNs then I'm sure Comcast can figure it out too;

Here's a quick timeline;

"""

MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today. http://news.cnet.com/Telco-agrees-to-stop-blocking-VoIP-call...

COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/eff-tests-agree-ap-com...

TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites. http://thetyee.ca/News/2005/08/04/TelusCensor/

AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009. http://fortune.com/2009/04/03/group-asks-fcc-to-probe-iphone...

WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/10/04/05/phone-company-h...

MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices. http://www.wired.com/2011/01/metropcs-net-neutrality-challen...

PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/update-paxfire-and-sea...

AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing. http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/11/12/15/top-10-ways-car...

- https://www.freepress.net/blog/2017/04/25/net-neutrality-vio...

"""

These are just some of the abuses that the FCC has interfered with and circumvented in the past. I can't predict the future but I do believe that past behavior is indicative of future results.

Again, do you want to take the gamble that the honorable ISPs won't abuse their position of power to make everyone in the value chain pay out of their nose and threaten our industry's future growth?

I don't.

That's a flawed argument as the level of abstraction matters. We can route around FB and Google. Direct message each other through Signal, Telegram, or just setup our own email servers. We can't do that if the ISP inspects our packets and refuses to send them no matter how we send them.

What are you going to do when Comcast decides that hey let's charge $50 more for VPNs and another $4.99 for messaging apps (pre-approved of course)? What will you do when Signal or Telegram aren't on that list due to "security" concerns? What will you do if an ISP decides that all encrypted traffic is bad and decides to create whitelisted exceptions?

Where will you go then?

Here's a map of the major players carving up territory like cartels; https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/04/01/16998/us-internet...

Notice how almost none of the service areas intersect? Internet competitiveness in the US is measured by census zones, and they know that. So they carve up territory block by block, allowing them to be engage in "competition" without competing. (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/10/isps-dont-want-t...)

And here's one of the many, many court cases and lobbying efforts they've engaged in to keep rivals from getting a toe hold in their territory; https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...

> Will there be ISPs that offer packages that we have now? (I.E bandwidth only restriction)

Cynically? Market segmentation. Segment the market into sub-communities along demographic lines as well as producers and consumers. Figure out how to charge both small businesses trying to start a shopify store and the consumers who're likely to visit them.

> How will ISPs decide what websites I can not visit? Will they have a whitelist/blacklist?

If they don't have to treat all traffic passing through their lines equally, then they can choose to downgrade traffic from say Google unless El Goog pays up the fee. And, probably, ask you to pay up too.

> Will there be ISPs that offer packages that we have now? (I.E bandwidth only restriction)

To quote myself;

What makes you think they won't take full advantage of the power that you've given them? Once you give them that power, do you think they won't use it to make more and more? To squeeze every last dime from your pockets?

That's what they've done in the past. They've carved up territory like drug gangs to maximise profit. (Look at the maps - notice how they don't overlap? https://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/04/01/16998/us-internet... ). At the same time, they've often colluded to pass legislation that locks out competitors (https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...). And they've gotten so good at it that even the almighty El Goog couldn't break into their territory - I mean, market.

What makes you think that these rent seekers won't extract their pound of flesh and then some from you and your customers?

After all, past behavior is indeed predictive of future results.

> I've seen good arguments both for and against net neutrality and I really don't know which would be better.

When all else fails, go with enlightened self interest. Do you really want to pay some "ISP-fee" in the future to start your startup? Do you think consumers will be able to find your company or bother to do so if they have to pay $5 extra for the privilege of seeing your website?

It's in everyone's enlightened self interest over here to oppose this, because in the long run it will kill the consumer internet as we know it.

Have I made the claim that it increases the frequency of occurrence? I feel that link is a red herring and obfuscates reality. What I, and all of the papers above, have been referring to is the frequency of intensity of storms. NOT the frequency of storms.

Other than the graphs I've already pasted, the phenomena shows up over and over again in the power dissipation index;

http://images.nature.com/m685/nature-assets/ngeo/journal/v3/...

Here's yet another paper on the topic and its graphs;

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/roypta/365/18...

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1860/2695

> Of course, you don't have listen to me or the weather people who repeatedly say that storms have not increased in frequency or intensity (beyond their normal cycles) [0].

First of all, the graph you linked to only mentions the frequency of occurrence. It does not include intensity. Second, I trust well sourced papers featuring replicable research by scientists published in notable peer-reviewed journals over random people on Twitter.

I don't understand the point you're making. Also to be clear, your statement;

> Harvey was the first cat3+ hurricane to hit the US in 12 years.

is patently false, because in that time period we've had (and I'm including 2005);

Katrina Cat. 5 (2005)

Rita (2005)

Wilma (2005)

Ike Cat. 4 (2008)

Sandy Cat. 3 at peak (2012)

I didn't bother to correct you earlier, because Cat. 3+ hurricanes hitting the US are more or less a very narrow set of data points. When you view the system globally and at sea, start counting the total number of hurricanes, and add up the data, then the trend becomes quite clear.

I feel that such cherry picking doesn't befit our discussion. Because we can argue passionately over this and one of us might convince someone else that we're right, but at the end of the day - either way - nature can't be fooled. Nature can't be lobbied against. Nature doesn't care about PR firms. Nature can't be reasoned against. Nor can the law of thermodynamics.

We have put a large amount of energy into the global system. We can now argue with the laws of man whether this is reasonable or not, but we can't argue against the laws of thermodynamics.

The data is clear. There's something going on and the mean frequency of intensity has increased. And we have a relatively solid understanding of why this has happened - which can be wrong, but the balance of probabilities right now is that our theory is correct. You can call BS all you want, but that doesn't change the science. That doesn't change the facts at hand.

And that's pretty pointless, because it is clear that while there is seasonable variation in the frequency of occurrence of storms; the shift in the frequency of intensity is a phenomena that's a global event happening at scale. The global weather system goes through a series of cold and warm cycles, but the mean has been shifting for a while that has had a global shift in the frequencies of different storm strengths being seen around the world;

Here's a graph demonstrating this phenomena; https://imgur.com/a/97x7d

I've taken this from this study; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Chih_Yuan_Yang/publicat...

That arrives at this conclusion,

> However, storm frequencies during the current warm phase (since 1995) have also been much higher than during the previous warm phases in the middle of the last century. The difference can no longer be explained by natural fluctuation; rather, this difference must be attributed to global warming.

After making this rather thorough argument (reproduced here in its entirety because it is important to pay attention to the nuances of the science);

> In addition, for climate variables, recent studies (e.g. Lehmiller et al. 1997; Bove et al. 1998; Maloney and Hartmann 2000; Elsner, Jagger, and Niu 2000; Goldenberg et al. 2001; Landsea 2005; Sutton and Hodson 2005) have attributed Atlantic hurricane activity increases to a natural climate cycle, termed the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). In recent decades, Geo Risks Research has undertaken hurricane frequency analyses that account for the AMO. The AMO index is a detrended (anomaly) measure of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) (e.g. Knight et al. 2005) and is believed to be capable of explaining the recently elevated levels of hurricane activity. Because it is a measure of SST anomalies, which are correlated with hurricane activity, the AMO index has been used to predict near-term hurricane activity. Therefore, warm phases in the AMO (positive AMO index) are theorized to lead to higher SSTs and above long-term average hurricane activity in the Atlantic. Conversely, cool phases in the AMO (negative AMO index) are theorized to lead to lower SSTs and below long-term average hurricane activity.

> One of the most important recent papers on this topic is the article by Elsner et al. (2008), who consider a time-series model to forecast the average hurricane-season Atlantic SST and then use a linear Poisson regression model to forecast North Atlantic hurricane intensity given the predicted coefficients of the Atlantic SST model.

> However, some studies (Knutson and Tuleya 2004; Barnett et al. 2005; Emanuel 2005; Webster et al. 2005, 2006) indicate that global climate change (rather than natural climate cycles) may play the dominant role. In addition, the fourth status report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007) highlights the significant link between human-induced global warming and the greater frequency and intensity of unanticipated tropical cyclone events.

> Figure 1 clearly shows that the average number of destructive major hurricanes is significantly higher in the warm phases of the AMO than in the cold phases. This finding supports the theory that hurricanes form over warm sea surfaces. However, storm frequencies during the current warm phase (since 1995) have also been much higher than during the previous warm phases in the middle of the last century. The difference can no longer be explained by natural fluctuation; rather, this difference must be attributed to global warming. Based on these U.S. Hurricane Risk Measurement 3 opinions, the modeling of hurricane activity should have the ability to additionally capture the time trend of hurricane activity to illustrate the phenomenon that hurricane activity increases with time because of global warming.

Texas isn't the only place on Earth where this phenomena is playing out. And you may downvote me, but that doesn't change the data nor the facts.

> The government lined up 50 random people and executed them, to appease a foreign government that was holding 500x people captive. We're talking houses vs houses, not people vs people, but how is the morality different? Scape goat. Since it is property, the engineers probably assumed they'd be sued, and I bet they knew exactly what they were doing, and it was still cheaper than the alternative.

I feel that the central thesis of your comment that the government is this faceless entity that has decided through force to violate lives and is thereby reprehensible to be something that's counter to the facts of the matter and the case at hand.

From the article, it quickly becomes clear that they were trying to avoid catastrophic failure by diverting water to a historic food plain;

> “If we don’t begin releasing now, the volume of uncontrolled water around the dams will be higher,” Colonel Lars Zetterstrom, the Corps’ Galveston district commander, was quoted as saying. “It’s going to be better to release the water through the gates directly into Buffalo Bayou.” The danger was that the water would flow uncontrolled into homes located upstream from the reservoir, crest the reservoir walls downstream, or crack a section of the Barker dam that was under repair. Had either dam failed, the Houston Chronicle later wrote, West Houston would have been left with “a week of corpses by the mile.”

In one cases, the failure would have been sudden and would have killed an unforeseeably large number of people. In another, they could act to preserve lives, but damage property that can be later rebuilt. They chose the latter, and I believe this was the most moral and correct response to the situation at hand.

Why aren't these people heroes for making this call? The Government in this case acted exactly as it should; as an entity that is meant to be representative of and beholden to its citizens and chose an action that preserved the lives of citizens over arbitrary property value that can be repaid through other means.

There is no version of this scenario that plays out well for anyone at all, but the fact that they minimized harm while reducing the risk of catastrophic failure shows that the system does work as intended. After all, homes can be rebuilt, but as far as I can tell, people can't be brought back from the dead.

Except the argument isn't about the frequency of storms nor the occurrence of a severe storm, but the increase in frequency of severe storms. Essentially, if we put more energy into the system, then we shouldn't be surprised if more energy is outputted as a result of the same system.

> A sustained upward trend is found between the global proportion of Cat 4–5 hurricanes and ACCI (Fig. 4), balanced by a similar decrease in Cat 1–2 hurricanes. The results are independent of the choice of models to calculate the ACCI as can be seen by comparing Fig. 4a and b. In both cases the ACCI explains 80–85 % of the variance in the smoothed annual hurricane proportions with p < 0.01 (using unsmoothed data). This finding is consistent with the SST-related increases in Cat 4–5 and decreases in Cat 1–2 found by Kishtawal et al. (2012), the relationship of intense hurricanes with SST found by Hoyos et al. (2010), and the Atlantic landfall hurricane changes noted by Grinsted et al. (2012).

Diagram: https://static-content.springer.com/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs0...

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/S00382-013-1713-0

A lot of air purifiers come with activates carbon pre-filters that should take care of most volatile organic compounds. I'm not sure how effective they are in practice but this paper suggests that activated carbon is used in aqueous solutions to remove PAH; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26820781

So you're probably better off than not buying one of these things

Look life is filled with lottery tickets with unknowable odds, playing every lottery out there just in case you win is foolish and a misallocation of resources. I'd much rather invest it into myself and build a game where I know the odds.

My life isn't a lottery ticket.

Say what you will, but this irrational exuberance is precisely that; irrational. I knew about Bitcoin 6+ years ago, when I read a blog about someone buying a sandwich with this newfangled currency. But I didn't rush to mine it. I didn't rush to buy it either. I was simply indifferent to the prospect of it, and I don't regret it.

Here's why. Bitcoin's thesis is that it possesses inherent value because it will become a medium of exchange i.e. people will trade in bitcoin, thereby using it as a store of value, and making it valuable. And yet, that hasn't happened yet. While it's hard to estimate the velocity of money for something like Bitcoin, and the "Bitcoin days destroyed" metric isn't accurate either, it is quite clear that as Bitcoin as a store of wealth rises rapidly in value, its utility as a currency correspondingly drops in value; thereby invalidating the central thesis on which the question of its value rests.

Here are rough estimations for the velocity of money for BTC;

http://charts.woobull.com/bitcoin-velocity/

https://charts.bitcoin.com/chart/velocity

Even if these are filled with inaccuracies, the general trend seems to be quite clear. People use BTC as an asset not a currency. And as such, the idea that it's a savvy investment belies the fact that it's value as an asset is entirely psychological in nature and completely ungrounded from actual metrics like fiat currency (though again fiat currency does run on trust, but the difference is that it's a marker of exchange thereby measuring the economy and its productivity gives an estimate of its value).

Further, even if it was a valid currency, then what we're witnessing over here is hyperdeflation in action, and it is fundamentally irrational to expect it to continue.

The reasoning for the above points is quite straightforward and simple. The magic of money and capitalism isn't that you can hoard gold and get rich. No, it's that you can make money. It's the idea that value can be created and destroyed through the economic actions of human beings, and that money as a concept serves as a measure of wealth as opposed to wealth. It's why we moved away from the gold standard - it was fundamentally irrational and in the long run, would have caused the exact phenomena we're seeing with BTC.

If you really think that somehow as a store of value BTC is going to become some significant fraction of human wealth, then go ahead buy this. But if you give it any rational thought whatsoever, then you'll see clearly that this is the tulip mania in action and that timing your actions to beat the market is even more irrational.

So no I don't regret passing up on buying BTC, precisely because it was and is a lottery ticket and I'm not in the business of buying lottery tickets no matter how well conceived they may be.

Right now, the most rational thing to do is to bet for it to fail. And then figure out how to time that bet. Because the farther it rises, the harder it will fall.

Good luck.