Live data from Hacker News

Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

bbc.com

31–40 of 149 posts

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#31
post #4

Eat fruit and take cold showers. The last time this was posted, someone said cold showers were the secret to looking young forever. I can't find much convincing official research (just blogs) to support that cold showers are beneficial to skincare, but I've been taking them nonetheless, and honestly, my pores have looked better :)

There very likely is zero correlation. But potentially, people who take cold showers represent a biased subset of the population, which is statistically more inclined to look young. This applies to pretty much EVERYTHING that is not done via high quality double-blind studies published in reputable, peer-reviewed journals. Point being: Repeating single actions of successful people statistically does not make you succe…

Why is this being downvoted?

As an example, there was a study that eating a handful of almonds every day is correlated with a bunch of positive health outcomes. Then a follow-up paper determined that this is simply because nuts are a relatively expensive snack, so they're eaten regularly mostly by wealthier people. It's well established that being poor is bad for your health, and conversely being rich tends to allow healthy lifestyles in general.

The kind of people that take cold showers are the "health-nut" types that prioritise healthy living over comfort. They're a rare, self-selecting subset of the general population.

It's extremely difficult to do good science based on statistics of self-selecting groups, or groups highly correlated with wealth.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#32
post #4

Eat fruit and take cold showers. The last time this was posted, someone said cold showers were the secret to looking young forever. I can't find much convincing official research (just blogs) to support that cold showers are beneficial to skincare, but I've been taking them nonetheless, and honestly, my pores have looked better :)

It is easier in tropical countries like Colombia, where “cold” is basically “warm”. In colder (northern) countries, I tried this but it is very hard because “cold water” (i.e., non heated) is way too cold (like minus temperatures).

I'm in a cold area and experienced this recently. My hair started to harden and freeze. I started just putting the heat knob just the tiniest bit.

But I guess it depends on your knobs shower knobs.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#33
post #4

Eat fruit and take cold showers. The last time this was posted, someone said cold showers were the secret to looking young forever. I can't find much convincing official research (just blogs) to support that cold showers are beneficial to skincare, but I've been taking them nonetheless, and honestly, my pores have looked better :)

Just googling for RCT, I found one convincing example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5025014/

Ah, I never thought to force RCT in the search to find evidence. Thanks for that.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#34
post #6

wow, an exceptional character what caught my attention is that when asked about his secret to longevity, he said that he eats lots of fruit and takes cold showers not the first time I'm hearing about cold showers being beneficial; been doing that myself regularly for a few months and I definitely find benefits this is definitely encouraging to continue does anybody have a longer experience with cold showers and can s…

David Sinclair, one of the researchers in the longevity field, takes cold baths and goes to hot sauna. His theory is that this kind of stress on tissues kicks the self-repair mechanisms into action.

https://notunhealthy.com/david-sinclair-the-researcher-who-w...

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#35
post #29

You can trial the cold shower experience by just a washing your face with cold water after you wake up every morning. Growing up in Bulgaria that was a standard practice for my whole family. It does wonders for the skin and is very refreshing.

That sounds awful. I think I'll give it a try.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#36
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do it. You never know where it will lead. For example I started screwing around with C a few months ago and now I playing with microcontrollers and cameras because of that.

I started playing with Linux and C in 96. I was just an ignorant teenager. I didn’t know C was “hard”. I didn’t really care that Linux was different from Win95, I just knew Linux had fvwm2, gedit, and C compilers I needed for hacking on MUDs. I didn’t know chasing down obscure memory leaks was hard, I just linked libefence and did it. I was just playing and learning. Then I got offered a job doing web development wit…

That's awesome. I am currently an ignorant teenager and I started messing around with C around this time last year. If I had to describe this current age I'd say it's driven by endless curiosity; I can't wait to start studying later this year. I don't think there has been one day in 2020 on which I haven't tinkered/hacked around. The latest thing I did was looking at the AArch64 reference manual and studying the structure of ELF binaries and then disassembling them manually.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#38
post #6

wow, an exceptional character what caught my attention is that when asked about his secret to longevity, he said that he eats lots of fruit and takes cold showers not the first time I'm hearing about cold showers being beneficial; been doing that myself regularly for a few months and I definitely find benefits this is definitely encouraging to continue does anybody have a longer experience with cold showers and can s…

David Sinclair, one of the researchers in the longevity field, takes cold baths and goes to hot sauna. His theory is that this kind of stress on tissues kicks the self-repair mechanisms into action. https://notunhealthy.com/david-sinclair-the-researcher-who-w...

I've seen some clips of his interview on the Joe Rogan podcast. I didn't catch the cold bath part.

I imagine a cold bath means immersing most of your body in water. So another variant.

Theory sounds plausible. Curious if you happen to know any actual research that backs it up?

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#39
post #3

Truly inspiring. I am in my late forties, and I was wondering if I have enough time to learn Haskell, now I have no reason not to.

My dad is a 55 year old mechanical engineer. He have called me 3 times today with various questions regarding C++. He’s learning it by writing a program to draw Bezier curves. Maybe at 55 I’ll pick up mechanical engineering as a hobby.

Hey! I'm 58 and just starting a new contracting position writing software for Software Defined Radios, which I never did before. Started working with Matlib. Need to learn/relearn some math, too. 55 is certainly not too old to learn C++.

Re: Advice from a 104-year-old PhD student [video]

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I started playing with Linux and C in 96. I was just an ignorant teenager. I didn’t know C was “hard”. I didn’t really care that Linux was different from Win95, I just knew Linux had fvwm2, gedit, and C compilers I needed for hacking on MUDs. I didn’t know chasing down obscure memory leaks was hard, I just linked libefence and did it. I was just playing and learning. Then I got offered a job doing web development wit…

That's awesome. I am currently an ignorant teenager and I started messing around with C around this time last year. If I had to describe this current age I'd say it's driven by endless curiosity; I can't wait to start studying later this year. I don't think there has been one day in 2020 on which I haven't tinkered/hacked around. The latest thing I did was looking at the AArch64 reference manual and studying the stru…

This is good. Computers are very simple at their core. One of the first questions I used to ask people in interviews, for highly technical programming and information security roles, was “How do computers work?”. The number of people, even those with years of programming experience, who could convincingly answer that question was low. It was often hand-wavy answers about processors and memory and stuff. When someone could walk me down to logic gates, that was great. The odd electrical engineer or computer engineer who started taking about silicon doping was great, but I would stop them there lol. Never let the computer or it’s components be a mystery to you! Those fundamental skills and understanding will pay off over a long technology career. It’s not like everyone needs to be a systems programmer, but it’s a competitive and enjoyment advantage in my book :)
Post reply on HN