skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
"He’s developing a desktop lab and a recipe book meant to equip patients to cook up a range of medicines, including a homemade version of the expensive hepatitis C drug Sovaldi, on their kitchen counters."

Any chemists here? Is it really plausible to synthesize
C22H29FN3O9P at home?
When can we get some of this "free press" then?

Mostly what I see is promoting one agenda or another and not much "free" about it.
Cosmos: Most contributor friendly project on GitHub at Hacktoberfest
crimewave claims to donate 25% of their stolen coins to charity: https://www.reddit.com/r/onions/comments/4c9xlp/robbin_the_h...
I made my first ever OSS contribution at Cosmos. Great memory!
You sound like a lot of fun to be around ;)
From the frontmatter:
>"A toast to the dead, for children with cancer and AIDS/ A cure exists, and you probably could have been saved."

I appreciate the can-do attitude of biohacking, but this is A. flatly wrong and B. a grave insult to every working pharma chemist.

from http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2014/04/15/swe...:

Looking someone in the eye and asking them if they really are accusing me of watching some of my family members die from diabetes, cancer, and heart disease while I was hiding the cures and collecting my paycheck is an uncomfortable conversation, but I’ve had it a few times.

The only counterattack has been that no, they’re not saying that I personally have these things in my desk drawer, it’s the higher-ups, you know, them.

“So how have I been working on these diseases for 25 years without rediscovering any of these cures?” I ask, and that generally winds things up. But I like to think (or to kid myself) that I’ve planted a slight seed of doubt.

You need as much conviction in your voice as the quacks have, though, and that’s not easy, because they have a lot. Science has the evidence on its side, naturally, and that’s a lot, but conspiracy theorists and their friends have something to believe in, and that’s a very strong part of human nature indeed.
My experience was such that I was fired for performance but was genuinely already looking for employment elsewhere due to a culmination of problems in the department. I went to Glassdoor after some time to see the reviews for the company and whether or the experiences of others would comport with mine. I didn't go there to write a review, but Glassdoor will conceal the majority of reviews until you've contributed one. So I wrote a fairly balanced (not just negative) but notably negative and specific review. I was satisfied to see that there were others that felt the same way.
Go talk to an organic chemistry PhD student and ask them how likely this is to work. The answer is "not likely". Organic synthesis is difficult even for a trained expert. Hell, even the pharmaceutical manufacturers screw it up sometimes.

And that's not even thinking about the possibility of unintended side reactions that create toxic products. Do a google search for "MPTP" if you want to read about amateur synthesis. A ton of people ended up with Parkinson's disease due to a bad synthesis.
On the other side of the coin, static typing doesn't catch a lot of things that TDD & REPL development can, although nothing prevents you from using tests with static typing.
Avoid Those 320Ms Password
Pretty much every pharmaceutical manufacturer has a free product program for patients who can't afford (or their insurance company won't pay for) the drug.

I'd rather go that route than start a lab in my garage.
The thing about those people (not sure psychopath is the exact term) is that they can pass for decent people for long enough to get hired and entrenched. Hiring a few of them is inevitable at scale. So as long as they actually do get fired (as in GP's case), yes, it can still be a good place to work.
I think I do need more human interaction than I've sometimes gotten, but what you described really sounds pretty nice. I seem to get worn out from too much alone time and from too much socializing, but get worn out faster from socializing.

A few years ago I decide to try out the whole digital nomad lifestyle thing. I was able to see lots of interesting places, but what I didn't account for was how much of an introvert I am. Most of the celebrity nomad travelers seem to be pretty outgoing and I couldn't figure out where they were finding all of these people they met.

Part of it might have been my strange preference for colder climates, but I spent an entire month in Vilnius Lithuania without talking to hardly anyone. The language barrier probably didn't help either. My time was spent riding the bus, wandering the city, and working in coffee shops.

I've read accounts of other people who had experiences like this and how much they hated it, and while it was sometimes lonely, I do think I learned quite a bit about myself from the experience. Spending so much time alone meant a lot of time to think and reflect, and I think I was able to figure out some things about myself and work on bad habits that people who have lots of other people in their lives might not get a chance to or might not think about.

Some people just need more or less human interaction than others. There is a really good book called Quiet by Susan Cain that is a defense of introversion that was really helpful for me.
The most obvious element is heat: heat production grows at the same rate as volume, but heat dissipation grows at the same rate as surface area. So larger scales invariably end up running hotter (particularly when energetic exothermic reactions are involved), and temperature plays a major role in the kinematics of chemical reactions.

The same surface area/volume issue in bulk also plays into reactions that happen at the margins of materials rather than the bulk--metal-catalyzed reactions are a common example.
Nice! Actually in all seriousness the site was pretty awesome and helpful. Six different companies are flying me out to SF in a few weeks for final interviews with them all. Can't say what percentage of that was due to your site and what was general study, but I found your questions intuitive and super helpful. For real, thanks!
Can you then compile a new version of gcc with that old gcc? Or are there more steps in between?
Certainly not. I've lived on farms most of my life, and I have no moral objections to farm animals, their lot in life, or their occasional coprophagy impulse. It really isn't that weird to eat shit. Has anyone alive really not seen a dog do it?

Did you really create a new account to make that comment? What's the motivation there?
Hypothetical question.

Would you rather live in a world constructed by Google or one constructed by the New York Times?

My personal theory is that these articles keep popping up in the hopes regulators will "do something" then old newspapers will become the primary sources of information again.

But as much as there are hazards of big centralized tech companies, the information we have now is so much more complete than the little slices of bias and propaganda that the newspapers brought us.
I don't know Kant well enough to clearly see the edges of the game being played here, but this species of game is delightful, and this, despite my confusion, is an enjoyable instance of the form.
I just want to say it really depends on the chemical and location in the food chain. Something that's stable and bioaccumulates can have meaningful impact on top preditors even with extremely low initial concentrations.

Especially if it is unusually potent. To use a famous example the LD 50 on VX is ~7 µg/kg. Now, picture something like that that also bioaccumulates.
> Vs the classical conservative world view [...]

Your phrasing implies that Chomsky supports acting "suddenly or without care", which is not the case at all.
> researchers warn against self medication

This should be the first part of the article title.
A small thing: the slide in subscription popover contains language which is dangerously close to the dark pattern of framing refusals as guilt/shame inducing.

A simple no thanks would do.

Because “they won’t remember what you did but hey will remember how you made them feel” and this made me feel “eww”.
Humans are not exactly rare around these parts, and we have many modes of transmission other than genetic. You may fail at biological propagation, but we've got more freedom than the amoebas to define success. :)
> Someone arrives in an ambulance near-death, if I lack morals then one level of maximized extraction price is to have those patients commit to pay a value that represents the earning potential for that person for the rest of their life. They have to agree before getting admitted.

Actual markets don't work that way. If you could actually make that much money then someone would open a competing emergency room right across the street, let everyone know that they charge $1 less and take all the business. Then the first emergency room would charge $2 less to take it back, until they're both charging reasonable prices.

It's the same reason you don't have to sign your life away to buy food even though you would die without it.

The problem in the US is that the regulations on the market for medical services work almost the exact opposite of that. There is no price transparency at all so you have no idea which facilities are more expensive. And if someone wants to open a competing facility, they have to get a Certificate of Need proving that the existing facilities don't have enough capacity. Even though having enough capacity doesn't preclude charging outrageous prices in the absence of competition.

> I see universal healthcare with a shared cost-pool as the lowest overhead way to provide for our social moral desires (but then I'm not in fear of the regulation with may be needed to implement that policy).

The existing US system is pure corruption. It's heavily regulated but the regulations are a result of regulatory capture by insurance companies (who want higher costs because higher costs means more vig), and all the industries the insurance money pays for like pharma.

The result is that medicine in the US is outrageously expensive. But the expense doesn't go away even with universal coverage unless you fix the regulations, and if you did that then people would be able to afford medicine out of pocket without insurance.
Huh? I am all in favor of people having kids and know it is necessary for society... But are you saying you can't pass on other stuff to the next generation? An example of this is teachers, i.e. a teacher who had no kids but who did nothing but did a great job of teaching kids, teaching and inspriring, but didn't socialize with anyone (except with parents during conferences or to the extent necessary with other teachers & administrators)... would you say they "failed at life"?
I hadn't thought of that before, but from searching today, it doesn't look an actual 'canadian pharmacy' is findable among the colossal numbers of non-canadian companies shifting cheap generics.

And, since this isn't a generic, or even a pill that can be copied, they aren't stocking it. :(
Same here.

Worked out perfectly for a while but crushed me eventually.

Not a path I want to go through ever again.

Some people might be cut out to be hermits, I am not.
I really liked how you've added the option to select between many programming languages in the snippets!

Did you write each of them yourself or is there a way to automate such simple code already?
Moon Studios Cinematic Tools – Making of Ori and the Will of the Wisps Teaser
> So how about a JavaScript OS/Machine/Hardware anybody?

Please, no.
Property is created by government, but markets are more like evolution or society; a system that emerges naturally out of multiple separate but interacting agents given the right set of conditions (namely, scarcity and the ability to exchange goods and services).

Even in places like East Germany or prison where overt markets are suppressed, people still exchange things with each other, even developing bootleg currencies such as loose cigarettes. And if there’s a sudden shortage of a specific good inside these black markets, the price will go up; likewise if there’s a sudden surplus, the price will go down; likewise; if there’s a sudden surplus in whatever good is used as a currency (e.g. cigarettes) then there will be inflation, at least until its cost-effective to switch currencies.
A better translation for 笑裡藏刀 is "Hide a knife behind a smile". I'm not being critical, just making it easier to understand for others.

> This is the classic "what breaks you only make you stronger" but in a very aggressive way.

imo This is just continuing effects from the trauma of Cultural Revolution, with fear & self preservation being the primary motivation of the China's red nobility. I remember reading that one of Deng Xiaoping's major reasons to crush the Democracy rallies was because he feared an uprising and being under house arrest again. It makes you wonder what China will be like if you have leadership who didn't experience the bad end of the Cultural Revolution firsthand
Another question that yields different responses from everyone that I like to ask: "what is your more favorite and what is your least favorite thing about working here?"
The articles makes points throughout, but one I found interesting was in the first paragraph. Zuckerberg acknowledging professional failings, suggesting FB does not consider itself to be perfect.

For example, a recent Facebook privacy failure (also, a separate failure for FB PR department):
https://gizmodo.com/how-facebook-outs-sex-workers-1818861596

Some find it worrisome that these systems don't work quite like users expect, and believe there is risk we're not accounting for.
I find the parallels between Xi and Putin fascinating: both had "modest" origins (or modest spells in the case of Xi) and much publicize them. Both were not really accounted for much, simply managing to rise through the ranks without making a wave, and always scrupulously deferring to authority. Both were nominated to the head of their respective party as a compromise or a strawman. That is until they took power, after which they both consolidated their grasp quickly, much to the surprise of everyone.

Interesting that the leaders of two of the world's superpowers (and the two formerly communist ones at that) share such a similar journey.
Have them say no to you, before you say no to yourself, imo. At least then you can always still go for those other options afterwardsif it doesn't work out, but also if it does, right?
Asking questions for the sake of asking questions, while currently necessary, is stupid. I wish it would go away.
Yes, that's failing at life, which is generally defined as biological propagation. It's success in memetics, but not genetics.
I read several of the Bourbaki volumes when I was in school despite the facts that my command of French was very limited and that I was a novice in the subject areas (e.g., set theory). I remember to this day the clarity of the exposition and the delight I felt as I made my way through the materials. Somehow the Mathematics seemed more understandable in French.
SoftBank Close to Announcing Merger Deal for Sprint, T-Mobile
It's arguably prudent to avoid any organic compound that doesn't degrade appreciably in typical aerobic and anoxic environments. Maybe that wasn't well appreciated decades ago, but it's pretty obvious now. The comparison of PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) and PCBs is instructive. Their toxicities are broadly similar. But PAHs degrade quickly, whereas PCBs accumulate.
The issue isn't so much about room as it is about bandwidth. Specifically, mental bandwidth.

There use to be loads and loads of JS frameworks of dubious merit and with equally dubious developers. Now there's generally an agreed upon few (Angular 2.0, React, Vue) that are pretty solid and seem to be helmed by mostly sensible people.

Unfortunately, we're still in the early stages of open-source WYSWIG/WYSWIM;. By the later stages, I hope we can thin out the technically unsound editors with insecure authors.
Awesome! Good luck with the onsites!

When you get stuck, don't get worried or frustrated. Get excited about getting to play around with a hard problem.
All those exist on a continuum and usually not well known anyway.

The Trolley is at one end of an extreme. The point of such a hypothetical is that you can adjust any parameter to find peoples' limits.

It could be the case that you don't actually disagree with one another much at all! But if you never address the Trolley problem or similar you will never know.
Starting to think maybe it would be good to have a "DevTools" lite, now that there are literally dozens of tabs and pages. Is there a shortcut to just bring up the console?
Yeah, agreed. I'm thirsty for that install rate but more importantly I want us to be a force for good.

Fixed in master. Not freaking pushing while we're sitting at #1 unless I have to tho :P

Edit: Thanks for the note!
For industrial scale, yield becomes an much more important concern. There are also physical considerations like the square-cube law.

I'm not a chemist but several times I've seen comments along the lines of "you can do this at home by doing (simple procedure), however in the industry, it is done like that (complex procedure)".
As a founder who sits in on all interviews I agree, but also believe that every question/answer is an opportunity to show more personality — on either side — and as such welcome it.
At that point you may as well just leave. You’re not going to talk the interviewer out of doing the interview.

What I don’t understand though is this: why not just do the problem? People ask these kinds of questions to see how you solve problems and what it’s like to work with you. They ask the same question to every candidate so they can calibrate. They ask questions to known problems so they can see how you will handle unknown problems (ie the job).

How else do you expect them to interview you?
I actually read Into the Wild when I was younger and that was the quote I was channeling. That quote has resonated with me ever since and reshaped the way I think about relationships and what it means to be happy.
I'm a mathematician. I have taught mathematics, albeit briefly, at the university level.

I disagree with the person you responded to, but want to thread this here.

Mathematics can be taught at early ages. Unfortunately, we tend to teach mathematics by rote. We teach arithmetic and not mathematics.

What we could be doing is teaching mathematics as a language. Mathematics is a language, it's an expressive language that relies on logic. Like any language, it is unconstained by reality and can be used to express concepts and ideals. In conjunction with other languages, it can express complexities and trivialities.

Unfortunately, we never seem to teach kids why, but simply teach them the method. We teach them a process, by rote and enforcement. We don't encourage discovery, nor do we try to explain the totality. In part, I believe, this is due to many who give instruction not actually having the knowledge to do so.

Tempting as this is to turn this into a novella, I'll try for brevity. It is true that mathematics isn't an easy subject, but a part of that difficulty comes from the way in which we teach it.
That's awesome - and it really isn't so dangerous as long as you are careful and do your experiments around others who also know what they're doing.

I actually love the sense of 'you can do anything' that this sort of education inspires. But, y'know, it's not the sort of thing I'd hand a 14-year-old before heading off for the weekend. And imagining what would happen if you brought this to your chemistry class today in the US is pretty amusing.
Problem with leaders that consolidate power is that one successor will eventually be a weak link and things will go wrong.
Indeed.

Two other points.

1. Our moral behaviour should be much better than the Geneva convention.

2. You are not bound by the Geneva convention if your opponent is not.
The insurance companies aren't really paying these prices. I wouldn't be surprised if that $2,200/month out of pocket price got knocked down to for 'bulk purchase' ending up with the insurance companies making more than they did before the price hike, and with more leverage over the customers due to the 'costs' involved.
I (founder) actually love hearing these types of questions because they convey actual interest.

However, by no means am I saying ask for the sake of asking because I’ll read through that and will probably try to turn it into a conversation you’d be expected to participate in ;)
I should submit https://spacewar.pro as a clone of DOS SPACEWAR
I'd like to see an open, multiplatform clone of Subspace.

We've had a reverse-engineered server for some time: https://bitbucket.org/grelminar/asss
> Is there a shortcut to just bring up the console?

I think it depends on the last feature used, but F12 does that for me. You can also try ctrl+shift+i (opt+cmd+i on Mac, I think?)
ctrl+shift+j goes directly to console.

I believe ctrl+shift+i goes to whatever tab you were at last, and ctrl+shift+c goes to the element tab and enables the element selector.

I don't know if there's any other shortcuts but these are the one I use most often. You can also drag the various tabs to order them the way you like.
> That said, we also are able to set a maximum # of interviews per week that we will accept, and our time is respected. Perhaps the same cannot be said for peer review in academia.

It absolutely isn't. Until you get tenure, you have to remove the word "no" from your vocabulary.

Of course, lots of public academics will say exactly the opposite, that you have to carefully and strategically choose what you say yes to, and give only one or two efforts your all. The hypocrisy! No one in modern academia can afford to do this! Look at the track record of the people that give you this advice - they all spread themselves paper-thin across eight or ten institutional collaborations, doing exactly just enough to get their name on something and then moving on.

That's the game, because that's what you get rewarded for, because that's what the system measures. Don't hate the player.
I think these styles of puzzles borrow a lot from competitive programming (e.g: ACM, IEEE).

And while competitive programming requires skill, what you do most of the time is collaborative programming: create software that interoperates with other software, with a user, that is maintainable, etc. Software without these skills quickly becomes really expensive and hard to maintain.
I think you can get most of the benefits just from a well designed timetable. I get the impression that's mostly how they make it work so well in Japan.

There tend to be at least local and express services on almost all routes, and often multiple tiers of express. Another common pattern I've seen is having several commuter services which each run stopping for a different section of the route, and then run express to the central stations. This gives passengers the benefits of swapping between local and express services, without them loosing time changing trains.

Of course, all of this is a lot easier when you already have the passenger numbers to support it.
Only if OP never shared anything back with these friends. One of the joys of friendship is sharing special experiences with them that they might not do on their own.
Decreasing the number of people on this planet by lowering birth rate greatly increases the chances of survival of humanity as a whole.

Sounds like a greater success...