> This study was done on women in Denmark only which isn’t a great study subject considering Denmark doesn’t get a lot of sun to begin with so most of these women would already start at very low levels
Generally, when a study is done in the US - no one will ever question the location. The moment the study is outside the US, "not US so not generalisable" questions always arise.
The grandparent explained exactly why it is an issue though. It isn't because US is somehow just magically more legitimate than Denmark.
As they stated, it is because the population of Denmark is very homogenous, as opposed to the US. If you are trying to make a generalization that applies to a range beyond just white people, having Denmark as your sole sample is clearly flawed.
Along the same lines, picking Japan for the purpose of generalizing to wider racial/ethnic groups would also be a bad idea. Not because their research is untrusted/considered non-reputable (it is quite the exact opposite), but because their population is too homogenous.
> As they stated, it is because the population of Denmark is very homogenous
If you know about vitamin D, you'll note that sun exposure is one of the primary reasons location matters for this study. It would be similarly relevant if they only studied students in Miami or southern California.
Essentially: sun exposure helps you create vitamin D, and so you shouldn't naively generalize this study to other lines of latitude
I don't think it invalidates a study as long as you do things on relative terms and have a control group. Another study can see if the same delta effect is reproducible in an e.g. homogeneous Asian population and report on it.
It is probably a logistical nightmare to do a study of this sort in multiple countries and regulatory systems simultaneously.
It doesn't invalidate the study at all! On the contrary, if you're measuring vitamin d levels from blood tests, it is easy to adjust the dosage to match.
It's just an important factor - if you live much further south or spend a lot of time outdoors, your target dosage will be different than someone in _Denmark_.
> when a study is done in the US - no one will ever question the location
Studies everywhere are now being scrutinized for the participant cohorts because it is now widely recognized that biological differences exist between different groups. Some medications for example aren’t sufficiently studied for effects on women vs men and are being reviewed.
Plus, studies in US are less scrutinized because researchers are aware of the need for a diverse cohort and you are more likely to get one in the US vs elsewhere.
A lot to these blogposts are trying to catch on the next buzzword "harness". It's almost close to the productivity porn mindset that we witnessed 10-15 years ago where creating the complicated system is more exciting than using the system for daily tasks.
> Our results suggest that remote work substantially increases isolation and worsens mental health, particularly for those living alone.
Another angle - people don't know how to deal with isolation if not their work. Remote work has accelerated an aspect that we already knew existed. Social systems are tied ONLY around work which is not healthy.
> Social systems are tied ONLY around work which is not healthy.
That is the real problem. I've been working from home for most of my career, but I also have friends (some i made while working, some from other common interests) and we meet at least every weekend.
Nuclear familly with one breadwinner was and is exactly that. Staying at home with a kid is more isolating then work from home (you dont have meetings).
"Third places" have existed for 1000s of years. We have actively weakened them by replacing them with modern work in the last 30 years or so. Remote work exposes it even further. In office work, papers over the cracks. It doesn't solve the issue.
Yeah, although I suspect the study isn't taking account major economic factors involving ai and remote work jobs - the fact is society is built around jobs you commute to and it takes a little bit of time for society to change.
People have understood suburbs are designed for commuters since they first started popping up, this isn't like some bizarre thing that needs careful understanding. It would be like if people stopped using boats, everyone in Venice would be like "people who once used boats are now having trouble getting around town and the streets are too crowded. How curious."
In most cultures "what do you do" is the first question that people ask, but answered with their job position in most Western countries.
In most other places, people will respond with their current activity, or their hobby or even religion or believe.
A lot of our culture revolves around work giving us meaning and satisfaction. And this is very obvious now due to recent layoffs and how people are affected in feeling/prospect because of this.
>In most cultures "what do you do" is the first question that people will answer with their job position in most Western countries.
No, it's the opposite, in most places in the world, average people typically respond with their profession just as they always had in every coultre on the planet, from India to Bulgaria to North America from 2000 BC to 2026 AD. Are you a blacksmith, are you a priest, are you a teacher, are you a construction worker etc. In Europe many people's family names are literally the profession of their ancestors.
>In most other places, people will respond with their current activity, or their hobby or even religion or believe.
Again, the opposite, People identifying with their "current hobby" are typically snobby western white collar hippies, who now think their identity transcended beyond their profession due to the privileges of the wealth of their profession, and the social pressures of their politically correct society that views certain professions that generate wealth (like tech bros) with a certain stigma that might be a negative to society, so they they shy away from it and choose another identity not related to their profession.
I am in Asia, and do not experience that 'snobby western white collar' attitude here.
It is seen as a polite form like "how's the weather", and answer like "just going to grab a snack", inviting others to join. Have worked with many people from different backgrounds due to an international/localization team and open source activities in Asia.
And the name argument in a lot of places was a forced naming. In the Netherlands they were sometimes based on profession, but also their location, or their parents/relationship. The names where a Napoleonic side effect; in 1811 he mandated that everyone in the Netherlands must adopt a surname. Before that, it was very unusual. Note: look for 'van' and what follows, as often it is not a profession.
>I am in Asia, and do not experience that 'snobby western white collar' attitude here.
Probably because Asia isn't much like "the west".
>Have worked with many people from different backgrounds due to an international/localization team and open source activities in Asia.
Well-off tech workers who travel to (or host) open source conferences around the world, are a selection bias of a niche within a niche, not representative of the customs and attitudes of the general population within their respective countries, same how football fans(hooligans) who travel abroad at games, also don't represent the average people of their respective countries.
as I said: a very Western way of answering, but you brought India into the mix too.
> Open Source
Local people, not the expats or visitors. I have been a regional manager. Dealt with people from China, Japan, Cambodia, Laos, India, etc. Locals. You assume and limit a lot when I point out "different backgrounds".
Every day when I pick up my son, there is a middle eastern man (nationality not important) who asks the same question; and answers himself too as "waiting for my daughter". Westerners assume this means to ask about job. It isn't everywhere.
Common sense (and assumption) isn't as common, as the environment you grow up in influences this.
The people paid to be there aren’t your friends. They’re nominally “coworkers,” which is not a social relationship but a transactional one. The fact we’ve as a society replaced human social interaction with people acting a work persona for money is more sad than being lonely - this should be the state that is considered lonely.
Being isolated in the way discussed is in my mind a process of reclamation to normal social relationships. At first it’s disorienting and hard. Over time; you adjust.
> The people paid to be there aren’t your friends. They’re nominally “coworkers,” which is not a social relationship but a transactional one.
You're getting paid to be friends with your co-workers? Or are you being paid to work, and work, like many other situations where multiple people gather and share experiences and spend time together are also places that people tend to form friendships in. You had friends in school that you stopped maintaining the friendship when you stopped attending school together I'm sure. Were those people not actually your friends? How long does a "social interaction" have to last, and over what distances before it becomes a "friendship" instead of a "transactional relationship"? If it ever ends was it never a real friendship? It's certainly possible to view every relationship you build with people that you share circumstances with as transactional relationships, but that to me seems like a good way to never actually build a friendship with anyone.
My experience could not be more different. I’ve made life long friends at work, especially when I was working for smaller firms. I don’t think those relationships are transactional.
That was always the case historically. Outside of family people mainly interacted and formed social the mainly with the people they worked with. There is nothing modern about that if anything we have more opportunities to met new people outside of your close these days.
One thing is less stability, people tend to form less life long bonds when they change jobs ever few years instead of working with the same people for 20-30 years
> people paid to be there aren’t your friends
Well children are forced to attend school, does that make you can’t make any friends there? Its not that different..
Haha, the classic “Why didn’t you do X?” comments always appear. I think a lot of people underestimate how much quality researchers deeply think about such setups. My genuine standard rely to those folks is - do the research with your setup and publish it.
> - do the research with your setup and publish it.
Which sounds arrogant and IMO don't belong to hacker news. IMO it's ok to don't like some questions. But it's ok to have such question in a non-research forum like here.
> Under Cook’s leadership Apple has grown from a market capitalization of approximately $350 billion to $4 trillion, representing a more than 1,000% increase, and yearly revenue has nearly quadrupled, from $108 billion in fiscal year 2011 to more than $416 billion in fiscal year 2025.
Carbon offsetting is risky. You plant a tree and you don’t know if it will die. You create a swampy area to absorb co2 and 10 years later it dries out due to global warming. Offsetting should be used if there is no other way to reduce emissions in the first place. Same is true for sucking carbon out of the air and storing it somewhere… it’s expensive and it should not be the default - we need offsetting and carbon segregation for the really unavoidable stuff
Sucking carbon out of the air using fully renewable energy (solar/wind) is a great thing to do! ... once we've fully decarbonized all other energy use and we have extra, left-over renewable energy.
Equities as large as Apple act as stores of value like gold, so it could just mean there's more money to be invested. You would need to compare Apple against what happened to the market in general.
The price over earnings (arguably an imperfect, but better way to compare stock prices against each other than using pure revenue) for Apple has been fluctuating within about a factor of 2 for the last 20 years. Since before the iPhone, people were nervous about the possibility of sustained growth of profits of the company, and the P/E was similar to today. Once Apple started making a lot more money under Tim Cook, the price was at a relative discount becauee 10 years ago people were certain (but wrong) that this run would end soon and badly. The long term stability under Cook was truly impressive. Lets see what the markets think abiut the leadership change tomorrow, but probably this is not an immediate event.
To be fair, a PE <10 didn't even represent the ground truth of customer's relationship to Apple at the time. In hindsight we have a lot more information, but in that era there was still a lingering question of whether their iPhone advantage was durable, due to Android competitors. It only later became apparent that the stickiness factor was super high.
From a correct pricing perspective, of all the companies in tech Apple seems one of the most likely to keep customers for a lifetime. They have immense lock-in and customer affinity. I don't know if the correct number is 20 or 30 or 40 but unless the economy completely tanks (which tbf is reasonably possible these days), I can only imagine a majority of their customers today will still be their customers in 15-20 years.
It's not the brand - it's not like Apple's hit this valuation in isolation Meta, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft all enjoy similar.
It's the cash-money value of putting a fee on all digital goods and subscriptions and cash transactions in a world predisposed to forming and consolidating around monopolies. What does Apple's services revenue look like in another 20 years when Africa, China and India are paying their smartphone provider every time a dollar moves, a few billion more people paying one of two companies every time for their music, movies and tv, games, books, real-world transactions... in de-facto perpetuity.
That’s a moat in hardware that is going to get even stronger over time. Given this hardware moat they can dip their toes gently into the B2B market they’ve never really cared about and pick up another few hundred billion in high margin revenue over the next 10 years no problem.
I’ve always found it weird that Apple’s entire org runs on Mac but no other Fortune 500 company on earth does. Seems like an opportunity to nibble away at Microsoft.
You want to be careful about who your customers are, and what they will do to you as an organization. Enterprise customers create enterprise teams create enterprise culture creates enterprise rot. Apple is wise to play to their strategic position as a consumer product company that lives or dies on great product, because when the buyer is the user thats what they demand.
The real strategic risk for Apple is if it overly locks-in users and falls back into complacency. The discipline of having to continually win customers with better product is ultimately the only thing that will cause them to thrive long term.
Market cap should theoretically be determined by profit, interest rates minus liabilities (see legacy auto makers). Though it's future looking, so it might be higher or lower than a simple analyst estimation. Of course, this discount meme stocks (like TSLA) which are valued by the insanity of the crowd.
This is a specious comparison at best. Apple is, at heart, a hardware company. They have different growth profiles. A consumer hardware company getting that sort of growth is mind boggling.
He destroyed my trust in Apple in ways that can't be put in numbers.
This growth comes from rent seeking. Greedy fees and lock-in they can sustain due to control of the platform and cultivated duopoly.
Apple narrative around security is patronising and deceptive, used as an excuse for removing users' freedoms (by not letting users replace Apple's services with competing ones Apple protects users from their bad choices). Very conveniently the supposedly most innovative company that is great at UX can't do better than Vista.
Apple's response to pro-consumer laws was petty, vindictive, malicious compliance.
To me Apple morphed from having premium products with excellent integration to having cross-product lock-in that maximizes money extraction from users.
And then there's Cook sucking up to Trump with a golden turd to protect next quarter's revenues. This showed that Cook had no principles more important than profit.
Why would it keep the notification history after they’ve been dismissed, though? There’s no user-facing way (that I’m aware of) to access a history of dismissed notifications.
The article doesn't actually give a coherent answer on why.
People would generally claim "lazyness", as that is the Apple way. Why fix code when you can just sell new phones?
The actual answer is plausible deniability. Closed source software often leaks metadata in hard to discover ways so governments can deprive citizens of their rights under the law, and then claim "whoops, we didn't clean up correctly, our bad!".
Apple, like every other major tech company, goes along with it when nudged in the right direction.
Generally, when a study is done in the US - no one will ever question the location. The moment the study is outside the US, "not US so not generalisable" questions always arise.
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