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Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#211
post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Several of those weren't really great times. The Renaissance, particularly, was particularly troubled, according to a source ... I cannot locate presently. (Podcast, history hasn't turned it up).

There’s a long essay about how terrible the renaissance was at https://www.exurbe.com/black-death-covid-and-why-we-keep-tel...

Ada Palmer's essay is remarkably close to what I had in mind, and she's talked on that topic on a few recent podcasts, that could well be it.

Thank you.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#212
post #201

Giving up our freedoms and way of life for a virus that kills .26% of the people it infects (and 0.05% for ages 0-49.) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

Just curious how you are not concerned about the long term health affects of COVID infection on survivors?

It's a good question. I guess here's what I'd say.

Anywhere from 25 percent to 80 percent of people with COVID-19 have such mild cases that they are unaware they have the virus. https://www.healthline.com/health-news/50-percent-of-people-...

And here's a follow up study done on severe patients with actual lung damage that showed the damage healed within 2.5 months: https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-27359/v1

Moreover, what we have to know is that organ damage is possible with any disease. People can get rheumatic heart fever from a simple strep infection. Millions of people get strep, yet millions of people don't get rheumatic fever. Organ damage is a possibility, but is a very rare complication. The simple flu you had last winter could have thrown you into the hospital and caused fibrosis, but it didn't. It's a risk with any disease.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#213

Remote work. 20 years of progress were consolidated into the last 3 months. Previously, you saw people living in hubs like SF and NYC for the high salary and high prestige jobs. But when those jobs are available from anywhere, all of a sudden the "lifestyle cities" like Boulder, Boise, Chattanooga, etc. start to look a whole lot better. You no longer have to sacrifice the high-prestige career to live in a lower cost-…

You’re right about remote work — but your take on “have and have-nots” is disturbing.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#214
post #29

- Grime music. A UK hybrid of hip-hop and punk, with a focus on showing poverty as a cold reality rather than a hardened persona - removing the "gang" in favor of the "pang". Honesty and sadness in mainstream music is on its way back. - Self-hosting. A hugely growing movement to host server-side software yourself (on a cloud provider or at home). De-platforming is not possible unless ordinary citizens can host applic…

>Grime music

To each his own, I gave it a try and couldn't stand it

>Self-hosting

This may not be the future but I really want it to become true and am willing to devote significant money and time to make it a reality. If anyone wants to join me feel free to reach me via email.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#215
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Veganism is an utopia. If the whole humanity would go vegan we would die out. Also your body can not produce vitamin B12 and no plants can produce it either so the "you can get everything" part is factually wrong.

Why would we die out? I've not seen a convincing arguement about the arable land thing once you factor in the freed up capacity we use to feed animals. B12 supplements are cultured from bacteria. "Getting everything" from plants is no more difficult than culturing cows etc on a huge scale as we do now. It's just different to what people are used to.

Well we would not literally die out just a lot people would die. No one know how many people could survive but clearly far less than there are now. Veganism isn't only about not eating some snuff. It's about abstaining from the use of all animal products for all possible use cases. People who call them self vegans obviously all have their own definition because it's simply impossible to not use animal products they may stop at drinking milk or using leather for clothing while other wouldn't even sit on leather. But all of them completely ignore that literally everything around us is somehow an animal product or animals where used in the production. Fossil energy for example that is partially an animal product. It's also made from plants ofc but since you cant separate it you would not be able to use it. By that alone, so by removing fossil fuel from humanity we would already kill a really large portion of humans. You could spin that even further and realizes that humans are animals too (yes we are ;D ).

The whole concept of veganism is a religion-like nonsense idea that works for everyone who wants it to work because everyone defined their rules how they see fit. But if you look at it from scientific point of view its just people fooling them-self to feel better/morally superior pretty much like a religion.

Yes modern world can synthesize B12 but a vegan wold could defensively not. Its just very very ignorant if someone thinks that there is no use of animal products in the production line of synthesized B12.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#216

Giving up our freedoms and way of life for a virus that kills .26% of the people it infects (and 0.05% for ages 0-49.) https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/hcp/planning-scena...

WTF? Almost half a million people are dead. Your freedoms? Wear a mask, wash your hands.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#217

The discovery and research of CRISPR makes in vivo genetic modification possible and safe, is going to absolutely revolutionize humanity. Imagine a world completely devoid of genetic diseases or with treatment for those diseases. Imagine a reduction in occurrence of over 50% of cancers. Imagine being able to change fundamental aspects of yourself. Imagine a grad student learning tools that can be used to recreate sma…

I can recommend the documentary about this on Netflix called "Unnatural Selection".

https://www.netflix.com/title/80208910

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#218

Space manufacturing. SpaceX Starship should get a kilogram to orbit for $250 (actually Elon's goal is to get the costs down to $10 per kilogram[1] which seems insanely crazy but be forewarned). Historic costs[2]: - Space Shuttle: $41,000/kg (24.4 t, ~$1B) - Delta IV Heavy: $14,600/kg (24 t, $350M) - Falcon Heavy 2R: $1,700/kg (57 t, $95M) A good first product to make in zero G is ZBLAN, fiber optics so clear that the…

Which brings us to what I think is a bigger issue: Space is a finite quantity, similar to land and EM spectrum. It's a land race for space. SpaceX and similar are racing to put their junk up their in orbit as soon as possible so they can squat. So who is going to regulate space? Will China Russia and North Korea respect ownership at 10KM up? What happens when GPS and GLONAS go out because of debris and some stupid wa…

Some time after that (hopefully) technology will reach a new kind of escape velocity where something like an escape to a cabin in the woods becomes viable. If humans are still around that option will do interesting things for regulation. They probably wont see it that way and look back at us in disbelief.

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#219
post #57

Remote work. 20 years of progress were consolidated into the last 3 months. Previously, you saw people living in hubs like SF and NYC for the high salary and high prestige jobs. But when those jobs are available from anywhere, all of a sudden the "lifestyle cities" like Boulder, Boise, Chattanooga, etc. start to look a whole lot better. You no longer have to sacrifice the high-prestige career to live in a lower cost-…

I am really skeptical of this idea that suddenly people will be moving to small cities. For one, this assumes that people just move to big cities to work. Is there any research to prove that ? For most people, especially when they are younger, people gravitate to big cities for all the amenities that come with the big city living, jobs being one of them. So in essence, it is jobs chasing people into big cities, rathe…

I'm in for an anecdote. I moved to Manhattan from Upstate for work, primarily. Transit being present and inexpensive takeout options are important when starting off a career ;)

Re: Ask HN: What’s a big trend we should all be following?

#220
post #29

- Grime music. A UK hybrid of hip-hop and punk, with a focus on showing poverty as a cold reality rather than a hardened persona - removing the "gang" in favor of the "pang". Honesty and sadness in mainstream music is on its way back. - Self-hosting. A hugely growing movement to host server-side software yourself (on a cloud provider or at home). De-platforming is not possible unless ordinary citizens can host applic…

I think self-hosting should be even more "plug and play" to be appealing to more users. During the lockdown I was looking for simple board-like games that could be played over the internet. There were a few promising ones that were only playable on a single hosted domain that hat a capacity of 100 parties. I thought that it couldn't be too asking for the most basic cloud server hardware to serve this game for a few p…

I think with popularity of docker, self hosting become a lot easier now as almost all server-side apps are available as a docker image. Ten years ago it was quite a struggle self-hosting multiple apps on a single servers due to dependency hell, but now it's as simple as maintaining a single docker-compose.yml that contains the definition of all your self-hosted app. Sure it still requires knowledge in basic linux and docker administration, but I think it still a lot easier to figure out than trying to fix dependency hell due to installing some random packages from random repos.
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