Hacker News: bgutierrez

New comment by bgutierrez in "Blood-Sharing Drug Trend Fuels Global HIV Surge"

bgutierrez — Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:38:56 +0000

> One reason the practice hasn’t been more widespread is that it delivers a diminished dose of a drug. It isn’t clear how much of a high secondary users receive, and some medical experts say there is no more than a placebo effect.

Yes, this makes sense. People are not actually getting high from this, so I doubt that very many people are trying to get high from injecting other people's blood directly.

> Unusual injection practices in Pakistan include selling half-used, blood-infused heroin syringes. (link to https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19558668/)

This is the headline, I think. Street vendors sell hits of a syringe that may have already been stuck in someone else. Every time the needle enters a blood vessel, some of the blood goes back into the needle. It's not that users are asking for "blood-infused" syringes, it's that the vendors are sticking multiple people with a single syringe and now 50% of intravenous drug users in Sargodha have HIV.

New comment by bgutierrez in "The spy who flunked it: Kurt Gödel's forgotten part in the atom-bomb story"

bgutierrez — Thu, 16 May 2024 15:08:42 +0000

To me, the most interesting sentence in this essay is: "[H]e, Gödel, had felt that a nuclear chain reaction would be possible only 'in a distant future'."

Gödel was second-to-none in analytic ability and he was paranoid. What made him so certain that nuclear chain reaction was a distant possibility? If it were anyone else, I'd say they were just trying to comfort themselves by not thinking about terrible consequences. I wish I knew what made him come to the conclusion he came to.

The challenge of being human in the age of AI

bgutierrez — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 20:33:04 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/being-human-artifical-intelligence-ai-chess-antibiotic-philosophy-ethics-bill-of-rights-11635795271

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29099910

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

How I became the honest broker

bgutierrez — Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:16:43 +0000

Article URL: https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/how-i-became-the-honest-broker

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27539243

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

A genetic link to Covid-19 loss of smell and taste

bgutierrez — Thu, 03 Jun 2021 15:59:26 +0000

Article URL: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.28.21257993v1

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27383308

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by bgutierrez in "Blizzard has lost almost 29% of its overall active playerbase in three years"

bgutierrez — Wed, 05 May 2021 20:43:32 +0000

I didn't like how obsessed I'd become over Hearthstone. When this happened, I took it as an opportunity to delete the app and I haven't played it a single time since.

How New York’s ‘vaccine passport’ app works

bgutierrez — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 15:44:29 +0000

Article URL: https://www.popsci.com/story/technology/vaccine-passport-apps-privacy-security/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26876169

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by bgutierrez in "GameStop Is Rage Against the Financial Machine"

bgutierrez — Thu, 28 Jan 2021 01:51:48 +0000

Yeah, I think the anger is a device for keeping each other from selling, but has nothing to do with how this situation arose.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Rolling blackouts in California have power experts stumped"

bgutierrez — Mon, 17 Aug 2020 22:56:19 +0000

Same. Never before seen a thunderstorm where no precipitation hit the ground.

The heat doesn't feel so new to me. As a kid I was always watching for those 100F+ days with the fascination of hitting triple digits. I have 30+ years of seeing those.

The thunderstorm was crazy tho.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Noprocrast (2010)"

bgutierrez — Sat, 25 Jul 2020 17:17:52 +0000

On Facebook, most of the friends and family I used to know have been reduced to the memes and shares that flow through them.

Twitter, on the other hand, will have me doomscrolling every single time.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Endurance Athletes Set New Records Despite Lack of Races"

bgutierrez — Mon, 20 Jul 2020 22:37:50 +0000

More like "Endurance Athletes Set New Records Due to Lack of Races." Everyone has had to reevaluate what they're doing without the usual competitions. I'm going for a 1-mile personal best, but FastestKnownTimes.com also seems pretty cool.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Space Jam's 1996 website is still alive"

bgutierrez — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 17:25:21 +0000

I made a few close friends there in the chat, where other hacker wannabes and philosophy neophytes would gather. The chat forum had fun weird bugs that my friends and I would play with in order to edit past posts, or obliterate each other's posts. It was wonderful little corner of the web for a short while.

That was just one part of that great site. In 1999, the Internet still felt new and full of potential. I loved all the concept art posted there, the trailers, and finding easter eggs.

Years later I recreated the full chat for my friends, including the bugs. It

New comment by bgutierrez in "Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled"

bgutierrez — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 21:36:04 +0000

That's cool. I'm happy that some people had good homeschool experiences. I grew up in a house full of books and loved to read and it mostly turned out okay except for the constant feeling that I had never learned enough.

My point is only that homeschooling in the US has an enormous variety of outcomes. This should be expected, because there is very little oversight, even here in California where some of my siblings only acquired what education a reasonably bright child can acquire by cultural osmosis. If you think I'm exaggerating, it might because you've never had to explain to an intelligent 13-year-old that the '<', '/', and '>' they are learning to use for html can also mean less-than, division, and greater-than.

I see you are invested in a company catering to homeschoolers. I think it's fantastic that education is becoming easier and easier to come by. Homeschoolers need all the help they can get. As long as you are encouraging people to consider homeschooling, I hope you'll take a glance through r/HomeschoolRecovery and get a view of what happens when homeschooling goes wrong.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled"

bgutierrez — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 20:41:32 +0000

After homeschooling, I also have a hunger for learning. It is the hunger of someone that did not always get enough to eat as a child and isn't going to let calories go by uneaten. The hunger of someone who suspects others know how malnourished they were as a kid and is afraid to look skinny. A hunger that keeps them up at night, telling them to eat and eat until sleep seizes them, then wakes them up early in the morning, so they can eat again.

New comment by bgutierrez in "Laura Deming, founder of the Longevity Fund, on being homeschooled"

bgutierrez — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 20:32:04 +0000

If you want an eye-opening, follow https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeschoolRecovery/ for a bit. I've seen some really terrible examples of homeschooling that left people stunted and overwhelmed by the world. The best I've seen is from parents that spent an immense amount of time working with their kids and who went out of their way to expose their kids to ideas that the parents didn't necessarily agree with.

The worst outcome I've seen has been my sister, who is in her thirties and rarely leaves my father's house.

New comment by bgutierrez in "White hat social engineering: How to become an admin of a system"

bgutierrez — Wed, 13 May 2020 23:26:22 +0000

No, he's explaining that acting responsible puts him in positions of responsibility.

New comment by bgutierrez in "How coffee became a modern necessity"

bgutierrez — Mon, 27 Apr 2020 23:39:03 +0000

This is what everyone at Starbucks is taught.

Thousands of coronavirus tests are going unused in US labs

bgutierrez — Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:25:28 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01068-3

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22831611

Points: 66

# Comments: 77

Blood from coronavirus survivors might save lives

bgutierrez — Thu, 26 Mar 2020 00:31:02 +0000

Article URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00895-8

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22689812

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

New comment by bgutierrez in "The McDonnell Douglas-Boeing merger led to the 737 Max crisis"

bgutierrez — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 19:29:35 +0000

Yes. If enough customers die using a product, people will stop using that product.