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Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember that list, because I said then what I'll say now - posting a list like that on a site like this is akin to handing out bags of heroin at a school :P . But I guess it's what the OP asked for.

At least you learn something from reading these sorts of sites. Heroin doesn't do that...then again I may just be justifying an addiction.

That's almost part of the problem though. My feelings about LW/the Sequences/SSC/etc. are complicated with lots of positives and negatives-- way too much to summarize in an HN comment when I'm supposed to be working ;) -- but the main negative I was referring to here is that they are incredibly potent "insight porn". That term was originally coined to describe the work of hacks like Malcolm Gladwell, and while LW et al are definitely on a level above Gladwell's crap, something can be true and still be insight porn, with all the addictiveness and consequences to your mental faculties that implies.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#312
post #117

Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…

Those are oddly specific.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#313
post #117

Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…

A "rabbit hole" for you... A major annoyance for me (a paramedic). Accurately categorizing the stupidity humanity can be surprisingly time consuming...

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#314
post #230
post #221

https://urbit.org/ - deep and exciting one This article [1] is a good start even though it's 6 years old. It's not vaporware anymore, I haven't checked it in a while, but it seems to be actively developed. If you feel that you've learned enough programming languages that you have a problem finding anything new this may give you some dopamine. 1. http://moronlab.blogspot.com/2010/01/urbit-functional-progra...

Urbit reminds me of a programming language that was featured a while back on Hacker News. It was a purely functional language and each function and data structure was addressed by its cryptographic hash. Functions and data structures did have convenient labels, but linking was done by the hash. So you can have as many different versions of a function as you like. Your code is never broken by updates. You can apply up…

I believe you are thinking of http://unisonweb.org

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#315
Sometimes I read a few months worth of NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) event reports.

http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/event-status/e...

Patients given excessive doses of radiation. Lost and stolen troxler gauges and their recovery (or not.) Reactor SCRAMS and their various causes, artfully downplayed with technical jargon. Drunken contractors escorted off reactor sites. 30 year old flaws discovered in power reactors.

Someone's got to read this stuff...

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#316
post #130

The US Civil War has been mine for the last couple of years. The sheer volume of history and contributing factors, decades of build up, aftermath, affects on the US today, etc. My goodness, the economics of the whole thing are just fascinating. All the internet debates I saw when the confederate flag came down got me really interested in how so many people could know TOTALLY different things about the most historical…

I have been to Gettysburg multiple times. Once did a guided tour of the battlefields with a guide. It was very interesting. I wasn't born in this country (WWII is the major battle I learned about) but it was still fascinating seeing sites and learning the history, since it is my new country I want to know as much as possible about it. It is a different understand to see the place and be told, here is where attacked,…

Do you know if non-US countries stage battle re-enactments?

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#318
post #167
post #117

Browsing medical diagnosis codes... https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coding/ICD10/2016-ICD-10-CM-and... Some of the most mildly interesting: V9543XD Spacecraft collision injuring occupant, subsequent encounter W5602XD Struck by dolphin, subsequent encounter X35XXXD Volcanic eruption, subsequent encounter X52XXXD Prolonged stay in weightless environment, subsequent encounter Y0881XD Assault by crashing of aircraft, subseq…

I don't even... why in the world would it be important for a doctor to differentiate being struck by a dolphin or struck by orca (side note: orcas are dolphins!).

Insurance billing. These need to be exact in order to correlate to a) rates negotiated b) data collected for future underwriting c) exact repayment. Medical billing is a crazy world.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#319
"How the brain wires itself up during development, how the end result can vary in different people and what happens when it goes wrong": http://www.wiringthebrain.com/

Very good at exploding conflations and weakly argued conclusions by those who would popularize and construe results in neuroscience.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite internet rabbit hole?

#320
post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Urbit reminds me of a programming language that was featured a while back on Hacker News. It was a purely functional language and each function and data structure was addressed by its cryptographic hash. Functions and data structures did have convenient labels, but linking was done by the hash. So you can have as many different versions of a function as you like. Your code is never broken by updates. You can apply up…

I believe you are thinking of http://unisonweb.org

Yes, that's it. It's beautiful.
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