jlavine

I can see the difficulty of integrating with Anki if you're trying to implement a sophisticated system for tracking a user's progress, however I would definitely want some way of studying vocabulary with spaced-repetition flashcards I could have on my phone for something like this, Anki or otherwise. I've personally found traditional flashcards and (even more so) writing words with pen on paper to be the most effective ways of absorbing vocabulary. I've found that I don't ultimately absorb vocab as well using other self-quiz methods like multiple-choice / fill-in-the-blank / matching / etc. in Duolingo and similar apps (though I've had the false impression of learning from these methods). Just my personal experience.

It seems we're on the same page regarding specific word-meanings, comprehensive linguistic information provided along with a word, and using good dictionaries.

I would suggest including at least the option of viewing the full conjugation / declension / etc. associated with a word, and not just that used in the context of the text. I don't know any Japanese (though I recognize the example character you provided from the little Chinese I've studied), but something like this full conjugation of that verb is roughly what I'd want to see for any conjugated/declined language: http://www.japaneseverbconjugator.com/VerbDetails.asp?txtVer....

I understand parsing and matching up parallel texts is difficult, but I thought NLP would help with that, and if the software fails at matching up individual words, you could default to matching up clauses or sentences, which the user could study (with flashcards or something similar) alongside the individual words taken from the dictionary.

I took a look at the app, but I see the currently-available demo is only English-Japanese, and I'm also consistently getting "API Error: Request failed with status code 412" in multiple browsers.

Exactly what parts of the app are you looking for someone else to work on?

I've studied a few languages and have long wished for / thought of making software roughly along the lines of what you're suggesting here. While tackling a text, looking up words one-at-a-time can be painfully inefficient and break the flow. Digital dictionaries are quicker than paper ones, but don't resolve the fundamental problem. Nothing as advanced as natural language processing crossed my mind, but I did imagine software that would take a target text and generate a vocabulary list that the user could then study efficiently, allowing the user to then read the text fluidly without need for looking up words. There is a long tradition of human-produced "readers" that do this, but software would allow generating this for any text the user wanted and with much greater flexibility and learning options (e.g. auto-generated Anki flashcard decks).

I looked into LingQ (mentioned in another comment here), which promises just this idea, but found that it failed pretty badly in execution, to the point that a paper dictionary and notebook just worked better.

I know you're seeking a cofounder, but here are some suggestions I hope you find useful:

- I think it's essential to use a top-quality dictionary for something like this. I've found Oxford to produce excellent bilingual dictionaries in the languages I've studied. Of course these are copyright-protected and so would require paid purchases or licensing of some kind to use. I think there's a tendency to use generic free-license dictionaries for software like this, and these really aren't good enough.

- There's also a tendency to bake into the software the false assumption that "a word is a word", when of course words can have many different meanings, words in different languages do not have one-to-one correspondence, and for most languages, learning a word requires also learning extra information such as gender, conjugation, declension, pronunciation/stress, etc. This goes hand-in-hand with using a top-quality dictionary, which lists multiple word meanings, phrases, and extra linguistic information that poorer-quality dictionaries omit or get wrong.

- I would suggest incorporating human-produced translations in the user's native language of the texts in the user's target language, at least as an option that the user could upload. Even the best machine translation software can miss quite a lot.

Out of curiosity, did you get a microbiome test (e.g. from Viome) before and after removing each one of these elements from your diet, or did you make conclusions based on how you felt? Of course everyone is different, but I think published research supports your suggestion that sugar and alcohol are "bad" and fruits, vegetables, and resistant starch are "good", but disagrees on coffee. Here's a recent study showing association between high coffee intake and "good" gut microbiome [1]. I put good and bad in scare quotes because it seems the science around this is still pretty weak, mostly based on associations rather than clear and verified mechanisms. [1] https://gi.org/media/press-info-scientific-meeting/featured-...

Jason Fung explains his theory of type 2 diabetes / metabolic disorder, and how it is addressed by fasting, in detail in episode #59 of Peter Attia's "The Drive" podcast [1].

The review of Fung's "The Obesity Code" on Red Pen Reviews [2] details some serious flaws in the scientific claims in the book related to calories, insulin, and fasting, and their relation to obesity and fat loss.

Relating to nutrition/health/longevity, they aren't books, but I've found the podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, and even tweets by Rhonda Patrick (FoundMyFitness), Peter Attia (The Drive), Stephan Guyenet, and Chris Masterjohn quite enlightening.

[1] https://peterattiamd.com/jasonfung/ [2] https://www.redpenreviews.org/reviews/the-obesity-code-unloc...

I don't have a record of exactly where I read this - it was years ago - but you can find many articles explaining the claim in a similar way by googling "roundup" and "no till". Here are some articles summarizing the pros and cons: - http://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2015/roundup-ready-crops/ - https://pha.berkeley.edu/2014/03/02/monsanto-corporationroun... - http://web.mit.edu/demoscience/Monsanto/impact.html

The general concept is that tilling/plowing is used to mow over weeds, and killing weeds with chemicals is an alternative.

Your question is a good one. I don't know the answer. The articles listed above describe the environmental and health downsides.

A distinct problem - also described in these articles - that may spell doom for Roundup-Ready crops is the emergence of resistant weeds.

There are alternatives to industrial-scale weed control outside of tilling and herbicides. One way is to grow cover crops in the "off season", then cut them and leave them in a thick mat that starves weeds of sun while also gradually rotting and fertilizing the soil, then cut little holes in this mat where you plant seeds. The USDA NRCS promotes methods like this largely through educational programs. Farmers adopt them because they ultimately save costs on herbicides and fertilizer.

Who knows maybe in a few decades we'll produce all food through some industrial process resembling hydroponics, with energy from Nuclear Fusion replacing sunlight, and weeds will be a distant memory.

I hate to sound like a shill for an evil company, but I've read that even Roundup-Ready crops have an environmental advantage in allowing greater use of low- and no-till methods on industrial farms, which sufficiently reduces erosion of soil (with all the fertilizer that causes algae blooms and other problems) into public waterways. I was stunned to read that a majority of US industrial farms - not only permaculture hippies - now employ such methods.

Your characterization better fits someone like Thomas Friedman, not Pinker. Pinker absolutely acknowledges the many problems of the current system and the need to devise solutions to these problems. His argument is that things have, on the whole, been improving, we've solved big problems in the past, and we can solve current problems so long as we hold with Enlightenment and humanist / liberal values and put the effort in. He's arguing against those who want to throw away liberalism and replace it with some form of mystical authoritarianism, whether that be socialist, fascist, or whatever. And there are many such people, who take the benefits brought from liberalism for granted and would throw them all away for some romantic wishful thinking. His argument reminds me of essays written by Albert Camus defending liberalism against fascism during WWII and against the communism that was en vogue in France after the war among Sartre and others that Stalin referred to as his "useful idiots".

By liberalism here, I mean the original (and only sensible) meaning of a system of individual freedom in social, religious, and economic spheres, equality before the law, and democratic representation, not the New Left's utter misappropriation of the term to represent tribal resentment and mob justice.

> If you don't feel like a criminal in today's society, you are complicit.

Which society exactly are you referring to? What crime are you claiming that every single member of this society is complicit in? How does feeling like a criminal itself absolve someone of complicity in this crime? You seem to be saying we should take on guilt for something precisely in order to free ourselves of this guilt. This seems like a paradoxical admonition. Could you please clarify?

I'd guess it has something to do with the fact that human skin tones all fall within some range of orange. This is the reason behind the pervasive use of orange and teal color grading in TV and movies: it accentuates the contrast between people and the rest of the scene.

I love this idea, but the only participating websites they list are Popular Mechanics and National Post, making this effectively vaporware for the time being. Launching this service without a significant set of participating sites is ridiculous, and seems to be asking for the service to fail.

There's at least a couple of studies [1][2] showing benefits of using a probiotic cleaner containing B. subtilis, B. pumilus and B. megaterium made by Belgian company Chrisal [3] over just using bleach for surfaces in a hospital setting. I first read about this in the book "I Contain Multitudes" which is about the microbiome.

From [1]: "This concept has been designated as biocontrol when the application is antagonistic towards a certain pathogen [26], and has already successfully been applied to the abatement of Legionella in water systems [27]."

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [3] https://www.chrisal.com/about.php

My impression is that "left" is used synonymously with the Democratic party and "right" with the Republican party in practically all American media. By this popular understanding, calling the New York Times right wing makes no sense, as it's very clearly allied itself with the Democratics. The Democratic party has been just as dedicated to the corporate and military status quo as the Republican party. The two parties only differ practically on social wedge issues.

What you write is true, but this mistake was deliberately spread through IBM's hype, such as seemingly empty promises to apply Watson to all sorts of business, medical, and political problems. This hype is the reason these demonstrations get as much attention as they do. This hype, which IBM uses to sell unrelated services, also seems to be the only thing IBM actually gets out of funding all of its AI development.

You're conflating health issues with health care issues. What health care system now implemented in any country, or proposed for implementation in America by anyone, controls how people eat, how much alcohol, tobacco, and other harmful drugs they consume, how often they exercise, how much they sleep, whether they provide healthy environments for their children, etc.?

Just as schools and teachers are simply one factor in educational outcomes, the medical system is simply one factor in health outcomes. You must consider lifestyle, environmental, and genetic/epigenetic factors to get a full picture. You must equalize for these factors - as far as this is possible - to fairly compare the effect of the medical system and associated policies alone on health outcomes in different countries. Properly accounting for genetic and lifestyle differences in different sub-populations is largely taboo, and this prevents a fair comparison of medical systems across countries.

Edit: Consider this article by the CDC on infant mortality: https://www.cdc.gov/reproductivehealth/MaternalInfantHealth/...

Over 23,000 infants died in the United States in 2016. The five leading causes of infant death in 2016 were: Birth defects. Preterm birth and low birth weight. Sudden infant death syndrome. Maternal pregnancy complications. Injuries (e.g., suffocation).

While the medical system can intervene, these causes all seem far more dependent on genetics, the mother's (and to a lesser extent the father's) behavior during pregnancy and the infancy of the child.

In 2016, infant mortality rates by race and ethnicity were as follows: Non-Hispanic black: 11.4; American Indian/Alaska Native: 9.4; Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander: 7.4; Hispanic: 5.0; Non-Hispanic white: 4.9; Asian: 3.6

Compare white Americans with European countries, and the discrepancy drops significantly. There's something beyond the medical / health care system playing a role here.

The above commenter mentioned demographic and lifestyle discrepancies not adequately accounted for in this comparison of outcomes among countries... not health care problems, as you're implying.

It's their bread and butter. Sticking to the truth is tedious and gets fewer clicks than tabloid-style soap opera, so why bother?

I find that it's usually pretty clear from the bizarre language, excess enthusiasm, and lack of detail which reviews are fake or paid for, without need to refer to any 3rd-party websites. For many products with fewer than 100 ratings, it's clear that all or almost all of the ratings are fake. This often happens when there are several versions of essentially the same product, presumably all from the same factory in China. It's usually best to stick to the one or two variants with the most reviews.

But Parliament did vote to pursue Brexit and trigger Article 50 following the referendum.

You're right that the referendum did not legally compel Parliament to this vote, but many MPs thought that it ethically compelled them to it, and for good reason: The entire premise of the referendum was that Parliament would act on the results. The referendum didn't just pop up like a random opinion poll; it was years in the making, came about as a result of political negotiations, and followed a high-profile months-long campaign.

Elections were just held following the Article 50 vote precisely to give voters a second chance to express their view on Brexit, and this resulted in maintenance of a pro-Brexit Tory government.

By "irregularities", you seem to imply corruption in the conduct of the referendum. Which exactly are you referring to? Your link provides no guidance.

>> each side had months to state their case

> With one side directly and openly lying, and breaking funding laws in the process.

Both sides lied and, even more so, misled, and the Remain side had the bullhorn of the government and media on their side. Such lying and misleading happens in every vote everywhere. The premise of democracy is that, with a free press and open debate, voters are capable of sorting through competing claims and deciding. The Brexit debate was as free and fair as it has ever gotten anywhere.

>> and the results were uncontroversial

> Anything BUT controversial.

I've heard universal consensus that the referendum votes were collected and counted fairly. The implications are what have been controversial, not the results of the referendum itself.

I certainly wasn't advocating for any sovereignty of the people outside of or above Parliament. The point is that Parliamentary elections and Parliamentary votes have aligned with the pro-Brexit result of the referendum.

Parliament voted to trigger article 50, and subsequent elections (still very recent) resulted in a pro-Brexit government.

The only democratic way now for Parliament to overturn the democratic decision on Brexit would be for a party to run on an anti-Brexit platform and win the next elections, then take a vote to reverse course. But, to repeat, there just were elections, this didn't happen, and nothing fundamentally new has happened since the elections that would lead to any change if elections were held again now.

What vote in any democracy has not been surrounded by misrepresentations by advocates of different sides? There was no censorship in the Brexit campaign. All sides were free to make their case for months during the campaign. There were plenty of false and misleading claims on both sides, as well as attempted debunking of these claims on the opposing sides. The Brexit debates were far more thorough, fair, and civil than anything you ever see in the US or most other democratic countries. The notion that the electorate shouldn't have been trusted to sort through all of this, and requires a set of true facts cultivated by some elite group, undermines the entire premise of democracy.

The promises of Parliament and the will of the people regarding Brexit were about as clear as it gets in any democracy. Parliament voted to have the referendum. The referendum was simply and clearly expressed (though not at all detailed), each side had months to state their case, and the results were uncontroversial. Parliament followed the referendum with a vote to trigger Article 50. Subsequent elections resulted in a pro-Brexit government. What more could you possibly want in a democracy? To reverse course now - or to just keep having a referendum or revotes until the "right" result is achieved - would express total contempt and disregard for democracy itself. Such total disregard for the will of the people occurred following referenda on the EU Constitution in France and Ireland. The EU's anti-democratic actions were one of the main arguments of the Brexiteers.

You can buy pasture-raised / grass-fed ground beef from Australia, and US-raised ground bison, in US supermarkets for $9-10 per pound, so no, it wouldn't. Even for cheap corn- and soy-fed CAFO-raised meat, agricultural subsidies lower the cost by a negligeable fraction.

There's already a book on this: "Other People's Money" (2016) by John Kay. It discusses how most of the modern financial industry is self-dealing, provides no real value to the economy, and is actually parasitical. Here's a short official video introduction to the book: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kOAS0yzUIQ

> It's to enable you to NOT own a bike.

While this is its main use, it's also a great alternative to riding your own bike in cases where you want extra flexiblity - as referred to in point 5 in the list above - not only for changes in weather, but also when you want to travel out and back through some asymmetric combination of biking, walking, public transit, and Uber/Lyft. This flexibility can be very liberating.

It's also a useful temporary backup when your bike is broken.

> 4. Yep America's like that. I carry mine up & down from the 3rd floor. If I move I'll choose not to live above the 3rd floor. Or maybe I'll live on the 5th floor after all, and become a bad-ass with huge calves and five flights of endurance.

As I'm sure you'd recognize, there are many people (e.g. the not-so-fit) and situations (e.g. fancy clothes and dirty bike, or also having other things to carry) for which this isn't practical.

GDAX started market trading way too soon, after a surprise launch of BCH trading. The momentary price spike could simply have resulted from people making unwise market orders without enough sell limits yet in place. GDAX shut down trading a second afterward, until the following day, when they allowed more time for limit orders to build up before opening market trading.

But that goes both ways: It's no easier for an American to move to and work in France than for a Frenchman to do so in the US. There are plenty of Americans who would love to make the move - to gain quality of life at the expense of a big chunk of their salary - if it weren't for immigration restrictions. A fairer comparison would ask whether the US government has taken any actions against European companies operating in the US similar to those enacted or threatened by Europe against Microsoft, Google, Facebook.

It seems this problem should be addressed by more energy-efficient Bitcoin mining rigs and changes to the Bitcoin system to improve efficiency over the next 1-2 years.

A related very recent announcement: https://halongmining.com/

>Announcing the DragonMint miner series: The DragonMint 16T miner is the world’s most efficient Bitcoin miner, running faster and cooler than any competing miners. It’s the culmination of over 12 months research and development which has resulted in major advancements in mining technology including a brand new generation of ASIC mining chips. The DM8575 ASIC runs at a staggering 85GH per chip with power efficiency of around 0.075J/GH.

Your comment is right, but it seems BD are still developing their robots to be more practical, and may eventually have something they could sell for use in the field.

BD have battery-powered robots much quieter than the gas-powered Big Dog: Handle (https://www.bostondynamics.com/handle), Spot (https://www.bostondynamics.com/spot), Atlas (https://www.bostondynamics.com/atlas)

Spot was mentioned in the article you linked to as being quieter but able to carry less weight and less autonomous than Big Dog.

The Marines are resuming limited testing with a version of Spot upgraded for greater autonomy in 2018: http://www.military.com/daily-news/2017/04/05/spots-back-mar...

It's not just a dangerous idea. It's an unjust one that foregoes due process. It's vigilante justice, like witch hunting in early modern Europe and N. America, lynching in the Jim Crow era Southern USA, and the Hollywood communist blacklist in the 1950s. Just because ruining people's lives via social media is en vogue at the moment doesn't make it right. How could you possibly know whether claims you've read are true before you decided to ruin the lives of the accused?