Black Girls Code launching in Miami - <AUTHOR> http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/25/3711112/black-girls-code-launching-in.html <comment><USER2> It's clear that the goals are extremely laudable -- to help a disadvantaged group gain experience.

But this indeed asks the question, which as far as I can tell is completely unaddressed on their website: why create a group that excludes others by sex and race? How do they explain to a black 14-year-old that their group isn't going to help _him_? Or a Hispanic 14-year-old girl? Or any 14-year-old whose parents are below the poverty line, who also wants to learn to code?

Why can't we just help disadvantaged youths _in general_?

I mean, limiting to a certain location (Miami) is fine. Limiting the number of students who can participate is fine. But I really have a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of telling a black boy that they won't help _him_ , because of the gender he was born as.

<comment><USER3> very good point - I imagine though that it's MAINLY to get attention from groups that would donate to such a cause... The more niche the demographic the easier it is to raise money from institutes who aim to help those demos. So short answer, money probably...

We can look at a silver lining and hope they expand into other demos, we will see i guess.

<comment><USER4> and the problem with this is that the groups have a conflict of interest, if they do solve the problem that they are addressing then no one will continue to fund them. So the only way that they can stay in business is to make sure that the problem isn't solved, gets worse or is seen to get worse. Erin Pizzey discusses how this has happened to feminist organisations in this video[1].

[1] - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5AOj6EhRuY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5AOj6EhRuY)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't care about the geopolitical implications of a group like this. I don't care what message it sends to other groups. All I care about is that it help those girls who attend the event. Why? Because I know movements like this can work.

As a black kid growing up I had no tech role models to look up to.It starts to get in your head that you can't possibly have a career in tech because you see no one that looks like you. It is similar to a popular joke in black neighborhoods for decades about "ain't no way you will see a black president" or "they will shoot him the first day he is elected". If you're not exposed to it, even if it is really out there, then you will tend to doubt if you can do it. It wasn't until I was older that I learned about minorities in tech. I was exposed to the internet at 18 and from then on split my time between working security in the clubs, going to college for business management and learning how to code at night when the clubs let out.

Exposure to possibility is very important part of development. So as long as these girls are getting that exposure and it helps them achieve their dream I will worry about the ramifications later.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wasn't thinking about race; now I am. I believe minority focused groups, such as this, perpetuate racial discrimination. Can't we all just be one big group of humans? Disagree with my viewpoint? Please comment before you downvote. I'm willing to rethink my views.

<comment><USER7> This thread isn't going to resolve anything on this "issue"; just look up affirmative action. There's the logic you provide, which is solid. The counterargument is that certain groups currently have a major disadvantage and specifically targeting them improves things, despite it excluding on race or other characteristics. In this case, it may be that "black girls" wouldn't feel comfortable or would be significantly outnumbered in a general "group of humans" so excluding people provides a net benefit in this case.

Another view is that private groups should be able to do whatever they want, and discrimination is only a problem when it's a problem. If "black girls" grew to dominate the industry or significantly change things, then it's become problematic. Obviously that's a rather subjective measurement hence all the "debate".

<comment><USER8> If black girls don't feel comfortable learning with people who aren't, how are they going to cope with a job in the currently white-male dominated industry anyway? Sheltering people doesn't seem like good preparation for reality.

<comment><USER9> I don't think we should necessarily expect children to be able to cope with the range of social situations that we expect adults to handle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really value initiatives that teach people to code, and I've taught at a few myself. But I wonder at the value of this increasing focus on certain minorities. Should we have classes focussed on teaching gay people to code?

<comment><USER11> I take your point, but in my experience gay men are over-represented in tech, not under-represented.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great, thanks for sharing! Hopefully it's able to stick - I live in Miami and there is little-to-no tech culture around.

<comment><USER13> You have to check out one of the Refresh Miami events, tech meetup once a month!

refreshmiami.com

<comment><USER12> Oh awesome, I'll have to check some of these out! Apparently I haven't looked hard enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> While it may seem on the surface that a racially/gender motivated coding class is superfluous, I think that the founders are seeking to appeal to the complete opposite of the coder stereotype (aka white male).

Raising awareness and breaking down stereotypes is a good thing and it seems to me that it's hard to do without seeming like some type of segregation whilst doing it.

Empowering people isn't about making them better than others, but simply raising everyone to the same level.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is an organization started by a black woman who has learned to code for helping black girls learn to code. Can we just give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she knows more about reaching people with similar experiences than we do?

<comment><USER16> The idea is so innocuous. Nobody is being hurt by it. Maybe some people will be helped. It doesn't prevent anyone else from being helped the same way. There's no real use stirring up a shitstorm about it.

Some political zealots are ruining nice things for the rest of us because all they care about is their own ideology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm a bit sceptical of initiatives that carry their ethnic and gender requirements in their name, but I guess those initiatives can't exactly hurt "diversity" either.

But even "diversity" isn't the right moniker for this movement. I think "undiversity" or segregation, especially in tech is the result of "biased sampling" for all sorts of reasons. Hard to counter, but necessary!

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm really, really worried about this thread. Holding my breathe.

(Edit: for context, when I posted this, there was 1 comment by Bsharp.)

<comment><USER19> Threads like this provide a moment to gaze into the abyss

<comment><USER18> Oh my god this turned to shit before I even hit post on my comment. Amazing.

<comment><USER19> If this stayed on the frontpage we would be swimming in gold. Oh well, time to read them all and lose some faith in humanity

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's very true that if you aren't based in SV but visit it regularly this is something that jars every damn time. Doing something positive about it is great.

The other side is the rest of us should see it as an opportunity, given that the effective monoculture in SV gives them a sort of blindness to certain product areas.

<comment><USER21> I never thought of SV as a monoculture, when it comes to nationality and race (it does suffer from a bad case of groupthink though...)

In SV you will find engineers, designers and managers from all over the world --Russia, China, Europe, etc., and when it comes to race you will find very large numbers of highly successful Asians and Indians. Likely more so than in other US industry.

<comment><USER22> What you just wrote didn't include black or hispanics. So now you have Black Girls Code.

<comment><USER20> Precisely. It's also struck me that the vast majority of the female engineers seem to work at a tiny handful of companies.

For example, Google is quite diverse, the attendees at I/O were not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I believe such group can become a subdivision of the greater coding community rather than a segregation of it. they can learn among themselves and still be part of the greater community.

</comment><comment><USER24> This exchange of opinions is not constructive. Helping people is never wrong. The only objectionable part about this is that it isn't helping everyone, but only a select group.

Helping a select group could build a sense of community, or it could potentially segregate groups of individuals. But it is undeniably beneficial for the individuals that the service is targeting.

If anyone wants to take the initiative to help disadvantaged youth in general I'm sure no one would object.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is it when we talk about gender, race, and technology together we get so bent out of shape? It's a fact that in the US the tech scene is predominantly made up of white males. Because of that we have some people who want to add some diversity to our community. And these people have designed and built special programs to address this. Try and remember what got you interested in the tech scene may not work for the next kid.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is awesome, targeting minorities early is a fantastic way to get them into the tech scene. Kudos to them, I really hope it works well.

</comment><comment><USER27> One of my friends very young girls are black. My friend is raising them to be geeks and the girls are unhappy about how few super heroes look like them. Without programs like this, presumably their distress will extend to other areas as they grow older. Kudos to Kimberly for starting this.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hopefully they will make tons of money and make coding cool so that girls in general might want to code too.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a market for this? Buy and sell game components. - <AUTHOR> http://gamifymarket.bigcartel.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I got this idea by wanting to create an iPhone game, but I don't have thousands of dollars on to spend on a graphic designer nor the creative skills to draw characters. The marketplace would make it easier for people to create games.</comment>


Ask HN: Should Yahoo have not followed Google, and grow their curated directory? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> The problem with curation is that it doesn't scale. I'll take a list of links curated by a subject-matter expert over what Google thinks I want, the problem is (a) finding said expert and (b) convincing them that creating _and maintaining_ said links are a productive use of their time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been wondering about 'scale' too, but is that really the problem? Sure, we hear 'that isn't scalable' constantly in startup world. But if you look at Google's gazillion links, users hardly ever get past page 1. Most of them don't go beyond the 3rd search result. Shouldn't Yahoo have positioned themselves as the anti-Google, human powered search engine?

<comment><USER2> It's a problem of breadth as much as depth. Finding the people to manually do this for then thousand, a hundred thousand, a million subjects is going to be a big strain.

Another way of looking at it is that it already exists, as Reddit. The subreddits I'm subscribed to typically have a small collection of high-quality links that are germane to whatever the subject matter is. And when the link to what I'm looking for doesn't exist, asking typically gets me the answer in short order.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting. We are creating a curated directory of websites. We are inspired by the content curation technologies of Wikipedia and Quora. Here is the link - [https://www.cybrhome.com](https://www.cybrhome.com) Please review it and share your feedback :)</comment>


A Summary of "Joel on Software" - <AUTHOR> http://jwbs-blog.blogspot.com/2010/03/joel-on-software-summary.html

<comment><USER2> One of the great things about Joel Spolsky's books is that they are _not_ a series of bullet points. He tells stories, and I for one always find stories to be more useful than adages taken out of context. Sure, they take more time to read, but it's time well-spent. I'll take _Joel on Software_ over _Rework_ any day.

<comment><USER3> A lot of people probably share the sentiment of Joel > Rework. I think that's because Joel reasons things out and his reasoning is nuanced, consistent, and intellectually honest. The 37s advice writing, more often than not, consists of generalization of simple concepts (that worked for 37s) without analysis of their caveats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Interviewing. It is much, much better to reject a good candidate than to accept a bad candidate. You're looking for people who are smart, and get things done."

This made me think. I have read lots of things about how to best hire somebody. What are strategies for picking the right company to work for? If there is a shadow of a doubt, don't accept?

<comment><USER5> 1) They should act professional during the the interview. That means starting the interview on time, and being prepared, not just coming in, reading your resume while you wait, and asking whatever questions they can come up with on the fly. It doesn't mean dressing a certain way.

2) They should ask you difficult technical questions, because you want to know that the people you will be working with were smart enough to pass a tough interview.

3) They should welcome difficult questions from you. I'm not necessarily taking about technical questions about their product, but more the way they run their shop.

4) They should not act like they are in a hurry, even if they are.

5) Ideally, they don't have a lot of unplanned turnover.

<comment><USER6> > _2) They should ask you difficult technical questions_

More important is if they ask you technical questions at all. If they don't, they don't have a bozo filter, and you'll be working with idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a cool idea. It will provide a useful index of Joel's writings.

I already used to to re-read one of Joel's essays about how to deal with chicken-and-egg problems, which is something I've been puzzling over lately.

</comment><comment><USER8> Oooh Cliff Notes! (Joel notes? Jan notes?)</comment>


Scheme in Commercial Web Application Development [PDF] - <AUTHOR> http://www.untyped.com/downloads/icfp068-welsh.pdf <comment><USER2> Interesting to see they had the same problems in using continuations that bit pg with news.yc; you garbage collect them too early and the links in someone's browser stops working, too late and your server exhausts memory. Plus, it's trivial to do a DoS; just act like a newly arrived visitor to the site so a new continuation get created for you. See sections 4 and 5 in the PDF.

I can't see a good way around this as long as the server keeps the continuations instead of offloading it to the client.

<comment><USER3> I don't fully understand the use of continuations in web applications yet, what are they being used for? Are they an alternative to using transaction id's (avoiding the duplicate submission of forms)? I am not sure, but maybe making everthing more RESTful could help? Or maybe not...

<comment><USER4> REST is a broad term, which covers different ideas. One of these is that the statelessness of HTTP is an inherent aspect of web applications. Instead of trying to build abstractions, to hide this fact, (some) REST-proponents, will say that the only proper way to write web applications, is to avoid server side state, and instead rely on client side state. Continuations are in direct conflict with this principle.

Continuations captures state in a way very similar to closures. I think this is why the lisp/scheme crowd are so found of them. In contrast, the client- side-state-way appears procedural. I strongly believe that client side state is the _only_ worthwhile solution; We need to accept that fact and get rid of continuations.

<comment><USER5> I'm part of the Lisp/Scheme crowd. I don't use continuations in my web development, but I think you're stating things too strongly to say they should never be used. I think it's easy to see the convenience of them, and rapid prototyping is important. When scalability becomes a big issue people will come up with a good way of serializing continuations.

<comment><USER4> You're right that most existing web application frameworks (targeted at lisp or otherwise), use some sort of server side state mechanism. But that is not to say, that a rapid prototyping framework couldn't be made, which used solely client side state.

Anyway, I am of course putting it a bit on the extreme end here, but in principle I stand by it. Continuations are but an elegant hack; I might prefer it over other similar hacks, but I'd rather not have to use it at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wish I could upvote you with 100 points ;-)</comment>


How cloud management startup NewVem is cutting its clients AWS bills by 25% - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2012/04/09/how-israeli-cloud-management-startup-newvem-is-cutting-its-clients-amazon-web-service-bills-by-25/ <comment><USER2> _NewVem sees a massive opportunity to help companies cut costs and avoid the costly overhead of hiring a full time IT staffer to manage the cloud._

Makes no sense. If you're using cloud-resources then you probably already have an IT staffer on the payroll.

The hard part is not detecting when you're over-/under-provisioned. The hard part is implementing the actual automation beyond "start/stop an instance".

<comment><USER3> I definitely agree with the fact that the "cloud is programmable" and that one of the major challenges is to be able to plan and implement the automation. On the other hand this highly dynamic environment must be controlled in order to be able to track its behavior over time and be able to maintain and improve its rules and automation. In order to do so you must "Know Your Cloud" in matters such as visibility and control. Does that make sense ?

<comment><USER2> _Does that make sense ?_

Not when you don't have an IT guy. I mean, what is the scenario here? Some contractor left you alone with an elastic EC2 app, that scales magically simply by turning instances on and off? So you have this highly sophisticated application yet nobody who knows how to operate it, nor capacity monitoring? And your best bet is to seek some crummy outside monitoring to aid your... sales-guy(?)... as he pulls the levers?

Seems a little far fetched to me.

If you're a small startup with no tech clue then you're probably deployed on a shrink-wrapped solution (e.g. heroku) to begin with.

I guess I just don't see who they're aiming at here. Their marketing clearly suggests small business with no tech clue; but how did such a business scale to a point where savings are possible in first place then?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone with experience tell me a little bit about the dashboard AWS provides to clients and why it would be worth paying for an additional service to manage the cloud?

<comment><USER5> > Can someone with experience tell me a little bit about the dashboard AWS > provides to clients and why it would be worth paying for an additional > service to manage the cloud?

It's really, really complicated. That's partly because I don't think Amazon is particularly good at UI, but largely because AWS lets you do _so_ much. They have taken things that have traditionally been sold together and split them all apart (IP addresses, compute, storage). Heck, they even sell elastic _network interfaces_ now! Also, AWS was largely designed to be controlled through APIs (and that's how the heavyweight customers use it), so there's not much incentive to make the UI good.

But most customers don't need that level of control, yet they're using AWS to run their apps anyways, probably because they have the most market recognition. Now they have to deal with the complexity but without reaping the benefits, which is rather unpleasant. Hence the need for additional services to help them manage it all.

<comment><USER6> I think you make a great point about the AWS brand. I notice a lot of startups using it because everyone else does, not because they have shopped around to find the best fit for their company.

<comment><USER7> Using the standard/dominant solution is not a bad way of making a choice in a market that is still uncertain and not stable. When there is so much uncertainty, it is not about which cloud provider is going to give me more performance or capacity per dollar, but which one is going to be around a couple of years from now or going to evolve to meet your needs. AWS just keeps churning out new services and functionality while everybody else tends to be stuck on basic starting/stopping/resizing VMs functionality

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks nice, but... why is it free?!

<comment><USER3> My name if Ofir (iamondemand.com) and I work at Newvem. We are still in a beta mode so we provide all our service features for free. We decided to have most of the features that you see today (you MUST try it!) in our freemium package and in the future we will have some advanced premium ones.</comment></comment>


Sun: We'll put Java on the iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/07/sun-iphone-java_1.html

<comment><USER2> This is pretty old news....</comment>


Real Artists Ship [teesprint shirt] - <AUTHOR> http://teespring.com/realartistsship

<comment><USER2> Why is the price so high and where is the money going?

<http://teespring.com/realartistsshipnoprofit>

<comment><USER3> The cost of that shirt screened is still $6 cheaper than the same shirt blank retail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't back my way out when I accidentally ended up in the T-shirt editor.

I would really like to use that reservation/tipping point setup for a totally different project without the t-shirt editor. Does anyone have ideas for a starting point?</comment>


Is iOS 13 Books a parent's nightmare, or am I missing something? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.vrypan.net/2019/12/24/ios13-books-and-parental-controls/ <comment><USER2> Yes you are missing something. Don't give such young children these devices. Be a parent instead of having devices babysit for you because Apple (or any other corporation) does not care about the wellbeing of your child. Personally I let my youngest use an iPad but only to watch shows and play games on rare occasions, and never without supervision. My two older children never even had phones until they were in their teens and they survived just fine without them and I would say their lives were better off that way. I am seeing parents give their children these devices in a very unsupervised manor, even letting them take these things to bed. Sorry if this sounds like the rant of a parent, but I feel kind of strongly about this.</comment>


Snarfbot search - <AUTHOR>

This is an early alpha i have made for demonstration. I am looking for feedback on use ability, and usefulness of the site. Any comments are welcome.
---
Snarfbot is a new way to search.  It allows you to easily     compare results from multiple search engines at once without altering or reinterpreting the results. Future updates to Snarfbot will include the ability to create     custom search tabs and tab groups that you can share with your friends and colleagues.
http://www.snarfbot.com/ <comment><USER2> 1) It's not a new way to search, there are literally thousands of these around. They are so successful I can't remember a single one of their domains.

2) Hooray, we learned the iframe tag in class today. Time to change the web!

In all seriousness, if it saves you time - congrats, you've nailed the first step in developing great products: create them for you, what you need. It's always fun to play around with these things and it may prove useful to you personally.

I would have rather spent the $6 on a pack of smokes than a domain for this though.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) Well, whats new is the ability to create your own groups, and add any search engine you want. I have seen some sites that are similar but never specifically for search.

2) I do find the site useful, and imagine others will to. Granted the iframe tag is not exactly new technology, however I don't think good ideas necessarily need to re-invent the internet. As for the $6 no comment...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Usability-wise, it seems fine. I'm not sure how useful it is, though. What's the value of sifting through six different sets of search results, as opposed to just using Google? If I don't see what I'm looking for on the first page of Google results, I'm more likely to click through to the second or third (or sixth) page than I am to switch to a different search engine, even if the switch is as simple as changing tabs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it depends what you are searching for it may not be the right tool for every job, but neither is google. There are certainly situations where multiple engines are useful. Try out the craigslist group for an example, or the Library group.</comment></comment>


Ubuntu is now available on the Windows Store - happy-go-lucky https://www.neowin.net/news/ubuntu-is-now-available-on-the-windows-store <comment><AUTHOR> Seems to me that the only thing here that's new is that you can actually _find_ Ubuntu in the store.

If you're on the latest non-insider Windows 10, you can do the same steps (enable "windows subsystem for linux" in the os features) and then just open a command-line window and type "bash". That'll download ubuntu from the store and set it up as a subsystem.

An extra thing I like about using WSL, that I hadn't foreseen when I started trying it, is that because the Ubuntu environment is a bit separate from the Windows environment. It feels a bit like working in a VM but then fast. For instance, if you change .bashrc or apt install something, the host Windows environment does not change. This is lovely because it allows me to experiment. If I totally screw stuff up and make my Ubuntu unusable, I just wipe the entire linux subsystem installation and start from scratch. For Linux newbies like me this is very nice.

I guess Docker gives you even better freedom-to-fiddle on native Linux, but it's a good step in the same direction for us Windows coders.

</comment><comment><USER2> Could have been an Onion article just a few years ago :).

</comment><comment><USER3> Note that this is the same WSL/Bash subsystem that has been available in Windows for a little while now, it's just an easier way to enable it without jumping through as many hoops.

</comment><comment><USER4> Are there any really good terminal emulators for Windows though? I guess I could run an X server then run a normal terminal app.

All the ones I see people recommending for Windows typically suck. They're slow or "weird" \- I guess because Windows doesn't expose a first-class way to implement your own terminal?

<comment><USER5> Cmder is a package of Conemu (already mentioned by ZenoArrow), Clink, and Unix tools with a nicer theme. It's the best that I've tried on Windows.

[http://cmder.net/](http://cmder.net/)

Hyper also has a Windows port if you're into that kind of thing.

[https://hyper.is/](https://hyper.is/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> [Slow clap] I trust their (MS) motives about as much as I trust any large monopolistic for-profit organization. I.e. not at all.

In the long run their only goal has to be to get rid of competition.. ie: no ubuntu, no linux.

So in my mind anything they do regarding linux is bad news.

</comment><comment><USER7> This will be an awesome feature if done right--hopefully this will be as simple as a few buttons.

I've switched from Macbook OS to Windows 10 and love it, but I need a *nix type environment!

<comment><USER8> You can use it today: switch the machine to Developer Mode and visit the Windows Features settings page to enable the Windows Subsystem for Linux and it will auto-install Ubuntu.

(It's getting added to the store to make it an easier choice between Ubuntu, OpenSUSE, and Fedora user spaces in the Fall Creators Update.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Don't cry, you can run bash on Windows 10 now

[https://youtu.be/PivpCKEiQOQ?t=169](https://youtu.be/PivpCKEiQOQ?t=169)

</comment><comment><USER10> Incidentally I was troubleshooting a new designer machine that uses our dockerised Linux app. On Windows. The problem was that git converted all newlines to Windows format, breaking... absolutely everything. For the first time I've seen bash refusing to even look at my scripts.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this change anything for people using Bash on Ubuntu on Windows? It seems like they just added the ability to change distros and install through Windows Store (but otherwise no changes), right?

<comment><USER8> The MSDN blog post [1] says that it will download distribution updates much faster and also support side-by-side distribution installs when installed from the store (ie, you could have both Ubuntu and Fedora installed side-by-side).

[1] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/07/10/ubun...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2017/07/10/ubuntu- now-available-from-the-windows-store/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have an irrational urge to switch distros now. It's been a while since I've used anything but Ubuntu or RHEL. Anyone have any recommendations? is Arch still awesome?

</comment><comment><USER13> Using Terminator on Windows is a pleasure :)</comment>


Galcon 2 Fully Funded on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/philhassey/galcon-2-galactic-conquest

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't normally post a Kickstarter, but as a startup founder I've found Galcon to be an amazingly fun way to take quick breaks. The best bit about it is the community — which has a surprising number of fellow startup founders who are really supportive. In recent games I've played with one of the guys behind an a16z-funded startup, a TechStars founder and a YC alumni.

As a multi-player strategy game, Galcon [1] is a lot of fun! And the guy behind the game, Phil Hassey, has made a lot of valuable open source contributions to the Python community like tinypy [2]. So, if you are looking for a good experience, Galcon 2 would be well worth it!

[1] <http://www.galcon.com/fusion/>

[2] <http://www.tinypy.org/></comment>


Microsoft Releases 125M Building Footprints in the US as Open Data - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.bing.com/maps/2018-06/microsoft-releases-125-million-building-footprints-in-the-us-as-open-data?PC=EMMX01 <comment><USER2> Microsoft has allowed the OSM community to trace from Bing aerial imagery for almost 10 years now. That's been a massive benefit to OSM, way more than this dump of buildings. They should be congratulated and thanked for that contribution.

<comment><USER3> Why do you assume anyone using this data is not thankful?

<comment><USER4> Because consumers of the data may not know.

<comment><USER3> I'm sure consumers doesn't know my input there too but I don't care much. I mean...what do you expect? A banner? Money?

Those who entered the data from their browser and directly used the bing data do know and I'm sure they appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't understand why this is needed. Here in Finland the government just gave this info out for free to anyone (CC 4.0). They have all the information anyway because they have need for it due to planning/building permits, defense, etc.

The data is very accurate (for example I can zoom into my parents cottage and see the out house on it). Later on they used laser scanning from planes to scan the whole country for very accurate topological map too.

The moment this information was released for free both OSM and Google Maps quality jumped a notch or two. Before this google maps only had roads but now it has small foot paths etc too.

[https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data- fil...](https://www.maanmittauslaitos.fi/en/e-services/open-data-file- download-service)

<comment><USER6> The USA is about 30x Finland's size by landarea and building data is primarily stored at the county or equivalent level of government (3000 of those). Imagine munging data from 3000 different counties, each with their own standards and systems of recording.

<comment><USER7> It should be trivial. It should be standardized.

It is absolutely bizarre that we need to rely upon commercial companies to map things like streets and buildings when this is very accurately tracked by government. In an ideal world OSM data grids could be delegated to the appropriate governments, where it could have perfect precision with changes, street closures, one ways, redirects, etc.

<comment><USER8> _It should be trivial. It should be standardized._

Your use of the word "trivial" indicates you've never worked on complex GIS systems.

Whether it should be standardized is a matter of debate. Currently, each county or state or municipality uses the software and standard that suits its needs, and more importantly -- it's budget.

The GIS needs of New York City are not the same as the GIS needs of Saint George, Utah. Saint George doesn't need skyscraper functions, and New York doesn't want to measure airports on top of mesas.

The real world is messy, and so is pretty much every single GIS deployment. The real world doesn't digitize well.

<comment><USER7> "Whether it should be standardized is a matter of debate."

In the same way that vaccines are `debatable'. To export an accurate, up to date model of roads (and road data) and optionally building layouts should absolutely be the norm.

Nor does a standardized export format necessitate using a single uniform GIS solution, of which I've had to inter-operate with a number.

The real world digitizes spectacularly well, a lot of people just make poor choices and make excuses (or worse, buy nonsensical excuses) for not helping in getting there.

<comment><USER8> _The real world digitizes spectacularly well_

No, it doesn't. If it did, then the surveying industry would be out of business. Yet every time a building is permitted in the United States, surveys are done.

Here's an example for a recent project surveyed in Chicago just this year:

West Roosevelt Road; South Clark Street; a line beginning at a point 116 feet north of vacated West 16″' Street as measured along the west line of South Clark Street that is westerly 135.20 feet along the arc of a circle having a radius of 375.00 feet concave northerly and whose chord bears north 79 degrees 49 minutes 52 seconds west a distance of 135.20 feet; a line north 69 degrees 46 minutes 04 seconds west a distance of 101.85 feet; a line north 69 degrees 49 minutes 57 seconds west a distance of 26.00 feet; a line along the arc of a circle having a radius of 407.80 feet concave southerly and whose chord bears north 75 degrees 52 minutes 04 seconds west a distance of 85.51 feet a distance of westerly 85.67 feet; a line north 83 degrees 47 minutes 05 seconds west a distance of 164.45 feet; a line north 69 degrees 43 minutes 24 seconds west a distance of 25.16 feet; a line north 43 degrees 07 minutes 24 seconds west a distance of 31.91 feet to a point on the easterly dock line of the former South Branch of the Chicago River; a line south 46 degrees 47 minutes 47 seconds west along the easterly dock line of the former South Branch of the Chicago River a distance of 73.33 feet; a line south 89 degrees 54 minutes 55 seconds west a distance of 32.69 feet; a line south 49 degrees 36 minutes 35 seconds a distance of 46.38 feet; a line north 89 degrees 54 minutes 55 seconds east a distance of 296.25 feet; a line easterly along the arc of a circle having a radius of 375.00 feet concave southerly and whose chord bears south 78 degrees 32 minutes 39 seconds east a distance of 109.97 feet for a distance of 110.36 feet; a line south 69 degrees 46 minutes 04 seconds east a distance o f 136.90 feet; a line easterly along the arc of a circle having a radius of 391.00 feet concave northerly and whose chord bears south 79 degrees 33 minutes 50 seconds east a distance of 135.64 feet for a distance of 136.33 feet; South Clark Street; vacated West 16″' Street; a line 155.40 feet west of and parallel to South Clark Street; the north line of vacated West 16″" Street; and the South Branch of the Chicago River

Digitize that.

Source: [https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2018/05/29/everything- th...](https://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2018/05/29/everything-there-is-to- know-so-far-about-the-78-in-chicagos-south-loop/)

<comment><USER7> You have this somewhat backwards.

Cities have loads of data that define property lines. They could keep it on paper, but more and more they keep it in computers now. Surveyors take that digital data and convert it into its precise real world marks. This has literally _nothing_ to do with whether the real world digitizes well, and if really stretched only proves that it certainly does because that's the entire basis of property grants.

Further, pointing out a massive civic project in the middle of a large city as some sort of counterpoint, when it is in reality still not that complex at all, doesn't make your case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >>The CNTK toolkit developed by Microsoft is open source and available on GitHub as well. The ResNet3 model is open source and available on GitHub. Our Bing Maps computer vision team will be presenting this work at the annual International State of the Map conference in Milan, Italy

Nice!

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if I ever heard about Microsoft Maps before. What is the state of it? Who uses it?

So I tried www.bing.com/maps. The first thing that surprises me is that it tries to set 5 cookies from google.com and one from www.google.com

What is the reason for Microsoft to allow Google to track everybody who uses their maps?

<comment><USER11> > What is the state of it? Who uses it?

In the Netherlands the businesses (shops, restaurants, and general businesses) are more complete than OpenStreetMap, but not as complete as Google because everyone sees Google as the de facto standard and they push owners to add their info in the de facto Google search.

Bing Maps is fast and responsive (unlike Google Maps on anything other than their own, proprietary platforms such as Google Chrome, the Google Maps app, or Google Earth), and has aerial imagery and traffic info (unlike OSM).

Bonus game: turn off labels on satellite view, zoom out to world view, and try to find your house or other places. Surprisingly hard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read the part about downloading the dataset from Github, my first reaction was "Can't Microsoft afford to host downloads themselves?", and then I realized they own Github now...

<comment><USER13> Seriously, the two aren't related. Microsoft has had public projects on Github for a couple of years now with more important projects being made public regularly.

Downvoted because the cynicism and not paying attention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Out of curiosity, I wonder if this data dump includes "sensitive" buildings? eg things that would generally be blurred/missing/etc on OSM for various reasons.

<comment><USER15> If it is visible in the imagery they analyzed it wouldn't be intentionally left out of OSM without some superseding information that it didn't exist anymore.

<comment><USER14> Makes sense, thanks. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If anyone is interested in that type of data, our startup ([https://tensorflight.com](https://tensorflight.com)) extracts information like footprints and 10 other property factors for insurance (including bing imagery). More info: [https://tensorflight.com/catalogue#Objects-supported-by- Tens...](https://tensorflight.com/catalogue#Objects-supported-by-TensorFlight) .

<comment><USER17> Hey ! I'll look into it with a lot of interest. Your catalog link is not very obvious in your navigation (only in text corpus). You could make it more visible in the orange bottom navbar? Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is pretty great! This data is usually locked up in individual scraper- unfriendly county websites, sometimes behind a paywall, sometimes only by person, or even only by mail. And the data is often limited to parcel geometry, not building footprints.

The other option is to use 3rd party services to purchase or lease the data. This data can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for the entire US dataset.</comment>


Mozilla Firefox Extremely Load in India. What Is in Your Country? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> what it means?

</comment><comment><USER3> load?</comment>


Everything that causes gentrification, from A to Z - <AUTHOR> http://cityobservatory.org/everything-that-causes-gentrification-from-a-to-z/ <comment><USER2> > gentrification, which is loosely defined as somebody not like you moving > into your neighborhood.

I would say gentrification is the act of displacing poor people for homes that their family lived in for many years, to make way for wealthier white individuals who would like to live in that area.

In a town I lived in a company was made to clean a river and surrounding streams after years of pollution and abuse. The company did a very nice job. Now this town had a bunch of beautiful water front property. Immediately the minorities in the neighborhood were drummed out. It was very sad to see because I knew many of them for years, my sister's (now husband) was from that area, and now they are mostly gone. No body stepped in to protect them. Even the Chinese food store, with the lady that would give me extra candies when I would go there as kid, is gone. I would be gone too, if I didn't live across the bridge in the wealthier area.

Gentrification isn't just "people moving in", its the destruction of the way of life of poor, simply because the wealthy found something they like.</comment>


Geographic London Tube Map - <AUTHOR> http://www.london-tubemap.com/index.php

<comment><USER2> Why is this limited to about 50% of the actual space in my browser?</comment>


Ask HN: How to Commercialize Research? - <AUTHOR> Hey HN,
I'm a Research Scientist working on various deep learning related topics. It feels to me like ML related hype is dying down, which is a good thing in my opinion.
An interesting trend I've seen anecdotally is the increase in research collaborations remotely.
I've been discussing with lots of my colleagues and friends across research and engineering, and it feels like there are so many low hanging fruit in bridging the gap between research and application in different ML topics like Meta Learning.
Do you think there is an opportunity for a distributed research organization to build practical useful ML tools that may be commercialized down stream? I know many researchers in a cluster of related research areas that are interested but I don't know how to lead a group like this. <comment><USER2> My alma mater had programs designed to help researchers bridge the gap, you might see if yours or a partner institution does.

You might consider self studying some of the startup literature. It may not seem relevant on the surface, but much like academia, they are teaching you how to solve the problems on the business side, which is actually really similar to iterative research, just a very different domain that research folk usually find uncomfortable at first.

I've been thinking about this more lately, lots more thought. Feel free to email me, address is in the profile

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, I'll follow up via email!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to allocate shares to early employees? - <AUTHOR> YC Safe seems to be good way for early investors. How to do it for employees ? <comment><USER2> Check this out [https://blog.samaltman.com/employee- equity](https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity)</comment>


Over 60 spacecraft manufacturers producing satellites between 0.1 – 150kg - <AUTHOR> https://blog.satsearch.co/2019-11-04-list-of-satellite-manufacturers <comment><AUTHOR> This is only the list of satellite manufacturers. We also have companies like Planet, Spire, etc., who are service providers who also produce their own satellites.

Begs to ask the question, if we are in a massive bubble or if space is going to be a highway with a lot of traffic!</comment>


12 industry disaster scenarios - <AUTHOR> http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=19B14368-E225-D443-2617D474507B2DCF

<comment><USER2> A phrase from the article virtually leaps out at the reader: "Disaster scenario No. 1: Patent pools accelerate without government opposition."

What? "Government opposition"? What happened to the role of _public_ opposition? When did affairs of state begin to revolve around conflicts between governments and special interests, with the public permanently sidelined as irrelevant?

I'm not objecting to the article having said so, because I think it's true. I'm objecting that the public's role appears to have been eclipsed by the long shadow cast by special interests.</comment>


GM fungus can rapidly kill mosquitoes that spread malaria, study suggests - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-48464510 <comment><USER4> People do not take issue with doing something against malaria but with the proposed method.

How could it be stopped if something went wrong? It's not like a chemical agent that you just stop applying when you notice adverse effects. This is a living thing. Living things can procreate, mutate, enter new niches and the only deciding factor is the rate of reproduction. Life doesn't optimize for killing malaria-carrying mosquitoes, it optimizes for rate of reproduction and survival. As soon as there is a mutation that can extend the niche to another target, this will happen. And getting such a match doesn't have to be via a mutation on the fungus either, it can also be one of the target, making it susceptible to it.

How do you make sure these things don't happen? I'm worried that the answer is that you can't.

( _Edit:_ I'm not even talking about engineered organisms, just have a look at a list of invasive species)

<comment><USER5> Perhaps there might be a higher level question at hand here. What level of caution is appropriate when the deliberate choice of inaction has a price tag of six digits of lives attached? What level of risk and potentially unforeseen consequences are we willing to accept?

This is not an idle question. It's a critical question for informing a decision-making framework that rests on calculation. Which we need here - <USER2> think we can all agree that personal ick-factor is a bad approach to large- scale public policy.

Which is to say you're right. We _cannot_ be certain that won't happen with this approach. Indeed, we cannot be certain of all consequences with any approach.

With that in mind, what level of certainty should we require?

<comment><USER6> It sounds like you want to take a calculated risk. I'm not convinced that this is a calculated risk -- it's an unbounded risk. What if it, for example, kills of pretty much all of the insects over a large part of the earth?

<comment><USER7> These types of examples aren't useful though because you can make up any number of them, and make them as extreme as you want.

Risk management, on the other hand, is about determining risks that are _reasonably likely_ , and figuring out contingencies and mitigation strategies.

In your opinion, is it reasonably likely that a fungi that is engineered to kill a specific species of insect (and only those carrying a specific disease) can somehow go out of control and end up killing all insects on the planet? In my opinion, it is not.

<comment><USER8> I think there are a number of people waking up to the level of concern that you need to put on unbounded risks. See the popular book, The Black Swan. To throw out these large but improbable risks is taking a large part out of these distributions. Maybe it's not a good idea.

<comment><USER7> On the other hand, we cannot afford to be paralyzed by concerns about black swans. If we did, nothing would get done.

<comment><USER8> I don't think the book and others with similar thoughts suggest anything like being paralyzed with fear, so we should be OK here.

<comment><USER7> I disagree. The often unstated sentiment under such thoughts is always "hmm, this sounds way too crazy, we probably shouldn't do it because it feels too much like 'Playing God'!".

It's a form of concern-trolling: deep down inside you are against something, but don't want to say that openly, so instead you pretend to side with the proponents, but choose to play the role of "concerned citizen" and invent scary scenarios at the extreme ends of the probability spectrum, with the suggestion that "we should probably research this thing more before we try it!"

<comment><USER8> That's not the underlying reasoning and I have heard very clear arguments. The argument goes something like 'the extremely impactful event has never occurred in the past so our risk assessment is very vulnerable to large magnitude errors'.

What is encouraged is taking actions that have well understood _OR_ bounded risk.

By bringing up "concern-trolling", I am concerned you have given up the fight. By avoiding the direct argument and retreating to this supposed hidden argument, which is much easier to counter, there is not anything left to discuss. Tell me if I am misunderstanding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The previous magic bullet against Malaria was called Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT.

DDT worked very well, initially, but its effects and consequences were intractable and long-term. It's still deployed to various degrees of effectiveness, but usage is far more complex than the initial promise of getting rid of Malaria.

A GM fungus 99% kill rate sounds good, but for insect populations that might not be enough. You likely can't use it again to kill 99% of the 1% left, and so on.

DDT is a chemical. You can stop using it to mitigate some of the unforeseen side effects. How can one retrieve or stop GM fungi in the wild? What patterns of resistance will emerge?

With DDT we got "lucky". It turned out to be overall effective when combined with guidelines and different approaches, but it never rooted out malaria completely by itself in one fell swoop.

Creating natural enemies of a pest by genetic modification is a valid approach, but not something to deploy wide-scale at the first hint of success.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Malaria_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDT#Malaria_control)

<comment><USER10> This is like arguing that the Model T demonstrates that cars will never be safe enough to drive.

Yes, there are ways to do this wrong. We have a much better idea what they are and our standards for precision and reliability are much higher. The 1940s are long gone and we aren't the baby boomers. We require seat belts in all cars, houses to be built to fire and electrical codes, and household chemicals to have plain labels and clear warnings.

We also now know that we need to specifically target something like three sub- species of mosquito and that if we hit exactly those three the ecological impact will be essentially zero; we've verified that they don't compete with anything and that nothing eats them and that they don't interact in any of the dozens of ecological systems that professional biologists understand that programmers never learn about. We know that we need to hit exactly those sub- species because DDT happened. We know that we need to study things like evolution rates and virulence before deploying engineered organisms; we have, after all, all watched Jurassic Park.

The people working on this understand what will happen if their solution isn't good enough. You are not adding anything to this situation except uncharitable negativity. You cite DDT. I'll cite Greenpeace, whose blind opposition to nuclear power is still contributing to the ongoing death of our planet. Don't be Greenpeace.

<comment><USER9> Your counter examples are about the mitigation of unexpected and unwanted effects. These were implemented after the fact.

There are situations that have no possibility of redress.

Your paragraph about ecological impact can serve as an example of the lurking danger. I wasn't even concerned about ecological impact. My concern was about artificially creating a resistant species. That's one of the pitfalls here. We're talking about the same thing, but because it's new we're not addressing the same issue.

We got away with DDT because:

\- We could stop using it.

\- There were alternatives that reshuffled the genepool of a now largely resistant population the other way, after the fact.

These two are not a given when deploying engineered organisms. Even though both are means to fight malaria, they are not the same and need different considerations of which some are new and not valid for any older approaches.

> The people working on this understand what will happen if their solution > isn't good enough.

So do most programmers...

<comment><USER10> > I wasn't even concerned about ecological impact.

I spat out a post in ten minutes that looked further out than you did. I wasn't even trying.

The people that actually do this stuff are trained, credentialed biologists and ecologists that have taken courses on this and spend literal decades reading studies about proposals and going down checklists of things that have caused problems in the past. It is literally their job to make sure nobody can say "You didn't consider X" during review, on the news, or in court.

Back in tenth grade I took an honors biology course. The year's final project was to write an environmental impact statement for, if I recall correctly, chopping down twenty or thirty trees in a nearby park. In retrospect, we worked off what I suspect was a _massively_ stripped-down version of a tiny fraction of the real rules.

It took five of us a month and we wrote a hundred pages single-spaced.

> So do most programmers...

I certainly won't argue that the field of software engineering doesn't need more rigor - there are reasons that I prefer writing cleaner code than my coworkers often do. But this proposal isn't operating in the same regime I usually do.

I mangle data at scale for a fuzzy rules-engine type thing. I bet you do something with comparable correctness requirements. There are times I've looked at a bug, looked at the logs, figured out the underlying conditions, estimated the future occurrence, concluded that I spent more money just looking at the logs than it would cost to remediate the data by hand for the next ten years, and estimated that it'd take me three times as long to actually fix it. I _do_ know what happens when my solutions aren't good enough, and I bet you do too.

Aerospace and defense programmers operate in a regime far more like what we see with these environmental proposals. And guess what? They know what happens when their code isn't good enough... and they have huge checklists that they go down for every single change and have their code audited regularly and tested obscenely thoroughly and spend weeks tracking down tiny bugs, stamping them out, and adding them to the checklist.

(Before you bring up the recent boeing failures: Take a look at the politics and incentives. Where did the economic and political incentives lie there? Where do you think the economic and political incentives lie for a proposal like this? Especially given how much environmental fearmongering we see as a result of movies like Jurassic Park? Do you think that anyone would dare approve a project like this with anything less than every single i dotted and every single t crossed?)

> but because it's new we're not addressing the same issue.

Development of resistance is such a well-known failure mode for pest-control tools that wikipedia's page on DDT has a whole second-level paragraph titled "Mosquito resistance".

Why do you think that evolution and resistance are novel failure modes, and why do you think they'd have been missed in the analysis?

<comment><USER9> > that looked further out than you did.

Very much so. You were presenting how there would be no danger to the ecosystem if these three sub-species were successfully destroyed. I never got as far because I wondered about the similarities of population regrowth after destruction with insecticide and destruction with modified organisms.

> Before you bring up the recent boeing failures

I don't need to. Building nuclear facilities is (usually) a very rigorous field with the highest quality of engineering, but sometimes factors of design considerations interact in ways that create new conditions that were impossible to predict. And since you mentioned aeroplanes: if you look at NTSB reports, you often find the cause of crashes is a long chain of trivial events, every single one of them meticulously checklisted and tested with fallback modes to avert disaster. It's not the components, but the intractability of the web of interaction.

> Why do you think that evolution and resistance are novel failure modes

Because evolution and resistance are novel failure modes in the context of genetically designed natural enemies. Previous statistical models might not hold even though the situations modeled appears exactly similar.

> why do you think they'd have been missed in the analysis?

Genetic modification is a statistical process, much like an AI network where something goes in and the output is measured for fitness and fed back. Random artifacts are to be expected and accounted for, but cannot be known to exist before the fact. As such their model might be complete, but it might not be sound.

As you implied, rigor is important, and faced with potentially irreversible consequences, skepticism is not an unnatural or irrational response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do you know why 99,99% of the extant spiders are harmless to humans?

1) Because many spiders (but not all) are evolved to target insect methabolism instead mammal methabolism

2) Because spiders aren't bees. The majority are solitary and small, have a limited body size and can just inject a single tiny dose of its extra-potent poisons.

3) and their tiny chelicers are too small and weak to pierce the human skin until reaching a layer with circulatory system so the poison is stopped by the stratum corneum of dead cells in epidermis and other upper layers of skin

Now lets suppose that a spider could grow indefinitely and make an unlimited amount of poison, like a fungus

And lets suppose that spider poison could be breathed directly and pass from lungs to blood wessels, and acumulated all day like fungus spores entering in your nose

What could happen? shalalala

Maybe nothing

or maybe any insect of any species would be poisoned eventually in presence of spores. They take air directly. Result: collapse of agriculture by simultaneous decrease of suitable pollinators at all levels

or maybe humans would have a new type of allergy, part allergy part nervous poisoning.

People tired of breathing poison all day after a strong rain? People now allergic to a previously harmless and widespread fungus present everywhere?, in its modified and wild forms?

<comment><USER11> Of course having 3000 species of spiders to choose they needed to play with the cool funnel-web spider. One of the most deadly spiders for humans. Wise choice.

Atracotoxins. Stuff extremely toxic for a particular kind of animal: primates, causing pulmonary and cerebral edema in humans.

Fortunately for mosquitoes, atracotoxins are relatively weak as insect killer. Big spiders rely in their fangs to subdue the prey. My congratulations for the people that so carefully designed this experiment.

<comment><USER12> you realise this is a carefully-controlled scientific experiment and not the latest Telsa model rollout, right?

<comment><USER13> What is a 'carefully-controlled scientific experiment'? Please link me to the documentation of the safety controls they used and also to the body that verifies that they actually followed those controls properly and effectively. Hint: Neither thing exists.

<comment><USER14> Please don't post in the flamewar style to Hacker News.

We've had to ask you multiple times not to break the site guidelines. Would you mind reviewing them?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is scary. Not because GM or mosquito populations. This is scary because we don't know enough of fungi role in the environment. Yes, we know this species infects the mosquitos but what else? What other roles does it have?

And with fungi this is especially dangerous because spores get literally everywhere and are hard to eliminate!

Unless we can ensure the fungus is engineered to not generate viable spores on a second generation this is a recipe for disaster.

</comment><comment><USER16> These threads about whether it's moral to kill mosquitoes en masse always seem to end up being about unintended consequences and ecosystem collapse.

Some points to consider:

\- Those who study the strains of mosquito (a generous 50 out of ~3500) which spread disease in humans regularly state that they are not a primary food source for any one predator.[1]

\- Malaria killed 429 000 people in 2015, 90% of those being in Africa, and many of them children.[2]

\- All of our current control methods have unintended consequences. Take for example that NGOs who offered insecticide-treated mosquito nets to communities found that they were being used in waterways for fishing.[3]

\- In developed nations we are happily deploying much less targeted solutions without significant levels of complaint (and to counter relatively less serious mosquito-borne diseases), such as the indiscriminate aerial spraying of insecticides over large areas and waterways.[4]

Everything is a trade-off, admittedly, and we can never know the full set of consequences in advance (see: the impacts of introduced species), but it might be a useful exercise to weigh your concerns against the benefits to sub- saharan Africa as a whole (and to individual African families) that could materialize were these particular strains of mosquito to be eliminated.

And give a little credit to those educated people doing the research into the likelihood of ecosystem collapse and producing reasonable peer-reviewed results.

Edit to add: That said, I'm personally partial to the efforts which release genetically-sterilised males. That seems less like the plot of a Hollywood doomsday movie than a spider-venom fungus.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would- hap...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/09/13/what-would-happen-if-we- eliminated-the-worlds-mosquitoes/)

[2] [https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/](https://www.who.int/features/factfiles/malaria/en/)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global-u...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jan/31/global- use-of-mosquito-nets-for-fishing-endangering-humans-and-wildlife)

[4] [https://www.cdc.gov/zika/vector/aerial- spraying.html](https://www.cdc.gov/zika/vector/aerial-spraying.html)

<comment><USER17> I'm curious, if we had the power to just snap our fingers and irradiate all mosquitoes, do we have consensus to do so? I worry about unforeseeable consequences.

<comment><USER18> I dont. Species go extinct all the time and we're already trying to kill them all with bad side effects like indiscriminate pesticides.

This is one case of me falling on the side of intervention. Malaria is a terrible scourge, primarily on children. So much so that humans evolved sickle cell anemia as a prevention.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/2/l_012_02.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/2/l_012_02.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How effective is a double layer of mosquito netting at stopping fungal spores ? The workers in the photos don't seem to be wearing any sort of protection equipment either. This seems like a very carelessly conducted experiment. The fungus is in the wild at this point. Fungi are very persistent and our immune system is not well equipped to deal with them, much more care should be required to avoid release in the environment of a pathogen agent not thoroughly tested and evaluated.

</comment><comment><USER20> This paper is just a stunt. I searched for previous publications with the same fungus against anopheles, and 2015 study showed a natural isolate that was already 90% lethal.

That strain also kill some rice grubs.

The controlled installations in the picture look pretty piss-poor, such that GMO is already in the wild by now.

</comment><comment><USER21> Good efforts! I'm still slightly partial to that other approach where they genetically modified the mosquitos themselves to only produce male offspring, in such a fashion that the gene was dominant and thus soon there would be only male mosquitos.

Still, if there's been a snag in the road for that approach, this appears to be a viable alternative

<comment><USER22> I'd much prefer the (theoretical) gene drive.

Bad outcomes for gene drive are either that it doesn't work, or the mosquitoes go extinct in nature and cause more ecological issues by their absence. The worst problem is fixable by keeping live specimens for reintroduction. In fact, since malaria is the target and not the mosquitoes, reintroduction might be a good idea after malaria becomes extinct.

Bad outcomes for the fungus is it becoming uncontrollable and starts killing other insects. Reintroduction becomes impossible without engineering a new, immune mosquito. Or that evolution backfires on the spider and causes them to go extinct. Or all of those happening together.

Comparing the two, the fungus has all the downsides and more, with zero upside.

<comment><USER23> The fungus doesn't affect other insects - this was part of the test. So the worst case is that it becomes uncontrollable and wipes out the mosquitoes.

<comment><USER22> I was justifying my preference for the gene drive compared with the fungus. The fungus has potential to evolve independently to do different things, the gene drive does not. QED.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What unintended consequences could large scale deployment have?

<comment><USER25> The fungus is supposed to be deployed on a rather small scale. It is not infectious for other insects, so it's probably not able to spread very far. Most of all, it is already freely spreading in its natural form, and does not lead to mass extinction of these malaria mosquitos, proven by the fact that they still exist...

On top of that the spider venom is probably bad for the fungus. Apart from taking away resources from synthesizing actually useful proteins, it kills the hosts much more quickly. The fungus probably prefers to kill the host slowly in order to cover more distance.

<comment><USER26> >It is not infectious for other insects

Yet.

It's definitely possible for it to adapt to infect something that'll help it proliferate farther.

<comment><USER25> Which would be a much bigger evolutionary leap compared to losing the spider venom. And dauntingly big for a fungus that kills off 99% of hosts in the region that quickly.

I presume that the fungus is obligatorily parasitic, meaning it can't thrive outside its host, except as a spore. This is true for most pathogenic fungi.

From the article it's not even clear that the fungus "spreads" well or at all in a mosquito population. I think they intend to grow the spores large-scale in a lab, and infect most of the mosquitos directly, and not through secondary transmission...

Also: The fungus already exists in the wild. It just doesn't kill the host that quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Predictable negativity from the comments here ignores that over one million people die of malaria per year.

Not using what we can against something this horrible is a choice, too. And one that has the greater of consequences.

It's easy to poke holes in things from the sidelines. That action is actively causing us to drag our feet and kill a lot of people.

It should also be noted that mosquitoes are not depended on as a basis for any known food chain.

<comment><USER28> We have to take into account that with climate change the area where the mosquitoes live will probably be wider affecting more people so extending malaria to bigger populations. IMHO, can be wrong , that we have not made a lot against malaria because till now it affected only poor countries but from now on it will probably arrive to richer ones.

<comment><USER29> The rich countries drained their swamps to end malaria starting in the 19th century. It was one of the first major public works projects.

<comment><USER30> What exactly is stopping 3rd world countries from doing that?

<comment><USER31> Third world countries have already financed the draining of European swamps. It's the wealth stolen in Asia, Africa and America that made those public works projects possible in the first place.

The reason former colonies haven't been able to do the same at home is because their society and economy are permanently crippled by colonization.

<comment><USER32> Not sure why you're being downvoted.

Colonization, was brutal, self-serving, and its economic consequences are still felt to this day (especially when neocolonialism through private corporations and puppet governments is still a thing).

<comment><USER33> It's probably this incredible nonsense:

>> The reason former colonies haven't been able to do the same at home is because their society and economy are permanently crippled by colonization.

Here's an interesting passage from _Early China: A Social and Cultural History_ ( [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GA22L0E/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GA22L0E/) ):

> Even when we are talking only about the areas that can be considered as part > of Early China, back in a time when "China" as a nation was still in her > infancy, we find that more cultural developments had taken place in the > valleys and strips of plains that are surrounded by mountains and plateaus > on the second step mentioned above, or on the transitional belts along the > major mountain ranges, but not at the centers of the floodplains located in > the east. The reason for this development was simply ecological, given the > fact that in the second millennium BC most of the eastern China plains were > still covered by marshes and lakes[2], and the coastline in some sections > was at least 150 km inland from today's seashores. The pre-Qin texts record > the names of more than forty marshes or lakes on the North China Plain, most > of which had dried out after the third century AD. In fact, for millennia > the North China Plain was continuously caught in the process of > sedimentation by the Yellow River which carried on its way east huge > quantities of earth from the topographical second step [areas 1-2 km above > sea level].

> [2] Even in the historical period, it was recorded that the Yellow River had > changed its course some twenty-six times.

The Yellow River killed vast numbers of Chinese who farmed its banks, even being given the name "China's sorrow". But efforts were made:

> Over time, as the bottom of the channel gradually rose, the river overflowed > its banks. Dikes were built ever higher to prevent flooding, and in some > places the river started to flow above the surrounding countryside. Today, > in a stretch of about 1,100 miles, the Yellow River moves along 11 yards > above the plain.

> Under the Qin and Han empires [roughly 200 BC - 200 AD], the Yellow River > was the core of Chinese civilization, home to around 90 percent of the > population.

( [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TXT09W/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003TXT09W/) )

During that period, the Chinese hadn't really settled farther south, because... it was full of swamps. But the swamps were drained, the people moved in, and the Yangtze River basin and areas further south had become the demographic center of China by the end of the Tang dynasty in, um, 900 AD.

Tang China was probably the wealthiest country in the world at that time. But it was much poorer than any country today.

Warring States China in 400 BC was much poorer than that.

So no, no one has been "permanently crippled by colonization", and if they had, draining the local swamps would still be well within their means.

<comment><USER34> You kind of proved the point though because century time scales are involved then instead of decades for the project. I would certainly call "multigenerational when others can do it in one" crippled.

<comment><USER35> But not permanently crippled.

<comment><USER31> As pygy_ explained above, colonialism has morphed into "neocolonialism through private corporations and puppet governments". That is a symptom of the widening gap in power between former colonies and former colonizers. That gap is compounding over time, making it harder and harder for former colonies to catch up. In that sense, the crippling effects of colonization are still felt today, and are continuing to grow with no end in sight.

<comment><USER36> What makes you think the gap is compounding? Is that fact-based, or feelings- based?

I'd recommend reading _Factfulness_ , by Hans Rosling. It'll cause you to rethink some things.

edit: Here's an interesting fact for you. In the late 1990s, the global extreme poverty rate (around $1.80/day in today's dollars) was 29%. Today, it's under 9%. We've wiped out two thirds of the world's extreme poverty in twenty years. [https://www.gapminder.org/topics/extreme-poverty- trend/](https://www.gapminder.org/topics/extreme-poverty-trend/)

<comment><USER31> > _What makes you think the gap is compounding? Is that fact-based, or > feelings-based?_

What a strange way to engage in a debate. I already explained why I think the gap is compounding. Feel free to offer a constructive rebuttal if you disagree.

> _We 've wiped out two thirds of the world's extreme poverty in twenty > years._

That is fantastic. How does it relate to the compounding power gap we're discussing?

<comment><USER36> If you read _Factfulness_ , you'll find that it's not a strange way to engage at all. One thing Hans Rosling proved and taught is that even well-educated, caring, attentive people are incredibly wrong about simple facts about global economics and health - so much so that, on his multiple-choice questions, every group he examined performed _worse_ on their answers than if they simply guessed at random.

So yes, "Is this belief feelings-based?" is an incredibly important question.

So how does the question of the rapid reduction of extreme poverty relate to the "compounding power gap"? First, it shows that progress is being made, that the poorest of the poor are doing much better than they were as recently as two decades ago.

But more importantly, I do not believe you have demonstrated with facts and evidence that there _is_ a "compounding power gap". You _believe_ that there is compounding power gap, based on the fact that there is a power gap at all. But actual, fact-based evidence suggests that power gap (measuring by dollars as a proxy, since you didn't offer a standard of measurement for your power gap) is decreasing, and rapidly. With some exceptions, the poorer nations are increasing their wealth at a far faster rate than richer nations are.

Consider this chart: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate)

It's a list of countries by GDP growth rate. I assume you're familiar with the miracle of compounding, since you used that word.

The first European country on the list is Ireland, at 13. The next is Hungary, at 40. The first former colonial power is the US, at 107, more than halfway down the list.

If you don't think that economic growth is a reasonable proxy for "compounding power gap", then what is?

<comment><USER31> You write very confidently, but don't seem to have a good grasp of this topic, so I'll give you a few pointers.

First, don't use yearly growth rates when discussing long-term trends. The data is too noisy. Ten year averages should be your minimum for the topic at hand.

Second, GDP is not a useful way to detect the ways in which former colonies are crippled. There are several reasons, but just to name a few: it does not distinguish raw materials from refined goods and advanced industries (why do you think Lybia is on top of your list?); it does not reflect quality of life or security; it does not reflect independence from foreign interests; it does not reflect military power or the ability to influence global and regional affairs. There isn't a single metric which neatly reflects every dimension of the problem (I never claimed there was), but as a starting point for further research, I recommend studying the UN's IHDI report. You can find lists of countries sorted by IHDI. Another good thing to do is study the bottom third of pretty much any sorted list of countries - by IHDI, HDI, any variation of GDP or GDP growth - and ask yourself 1) "why are these countries in the bottom?" and 2) "how likely are these countries to be in the top third in 50 years?".

Third, study the role of Trans-National Corporations in the world economy. How much do they contribute to the economic output of former colonies? To what extent are they headquartered in former colonial powers? To what extent are their profits, and capital gains realized by their shareholders, reinvested in former colonies vs. colonial powers? Can you spot a compounding effect?

Fourth, for a different take on the problem, study the racial wealth gap in the US, Canada and Australia. Study the development state of indigenous nations within those countries. Can you guess the root cause of this state of affairs? Can you spot a compounding effect?

Lastly, quoting from your favorite self-help book doesn't make you magically smarter or more convincing, just obnoxious.

I hope these pointers will help you in your quest for "factfulness".

<comment><USER36> And fwiw, I firmly believe that reading _Factfulness_ and absorbing its lessons _does_ make you smarter. Enough so that I would buy you a copy, if you promise to read it.

It's not weird to think a book can make you smarter, either. Assuming you believe reading and learning in general make you smarter (I assume you do), and that smart and engaged people are sometimes wrong (I assume you believe that as well), then it stands to reason that a book dedicated to understanding how smart and engaged people can believe incorrect things will make you even smarter than before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have no issue with modifying genetics normally, but why in the world would you modify a fungus to produce spider toxin? Fungi are far more advanced and intertwined with the biosphere than most people realize. What if they escape and run amok?

Why not just modify the mosquito which has been shown to work?

<comment><USER38> Why would they run amok? Does the spider toxin give them a survival advantage relative to its energetic cost? If the toxin merely allows them to kill the insects they infect, I believe it'd just tamp down the population without downright eliminating it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The comparison to historic disasters caused by the introduction of invasive species can not be understated. Maybe the net positive is good, but there are still negative effects as of yet undiscovered. It would be nice to find a solution with only net positive, but we seem to live in a world of tradeoffs.

<comment><USER18> Malaria is a leading killer of humans. 212 million cases in 2015 alone. 70% of deaths are young children. (who stats)

Not to mention other diseases spread by mosquitoes.

Im down for trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The issue I can see from such techniques is the same issue with all pesticides and that is are these species we've deemed pests necessary for the food web? I know it seems silly but apparently mosquitoes are a major biomass source for fish and other species which may not be easily substituted with a less dangerous one. Maybe the more correct answer isn't killing off the mosquitoes which feed off humans but find a way to eliminate malaria itself. I'm being naive in my assessment, to be honest, but that's just my thoughts on the matter.

</comment><comment><USER41> Let's not go about creating fungi that kill animals en-masse.

</comment><comment><USER42> If this works, GMO seem interesting but fraught with all sorts of unknowns. Why can't a similar effort that cleared malaria from the American South after WW2 be applied again, but on a larger scale (sans horrible insecticides)? [https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.htm...](https://www.cdc.gov/malaria/about/history/elimination_us.html)

<comment><USER43> My understanding was that those horrible insecticides were the primary thing that worked. The link you posted mentions about draining breeding sites, but seems to be saying that DDT application was the biggest component: "It consisted primarily of DDT application to the interior surfaces of rural homes or entire premises in counties where malaria was reported to have been prevalent in recent years."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how much ecological damage is done by humans trying to protect their communities from disease borne mosquitos.

I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don't lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed?

<comment><USER45> >I grew up with parents that urged me to prevent pools of standing water, but don't lots of non-mosquito insects need standing water to breed?

Sure, they can use the other pools of standing water not near humans. The reason it works to limit some species of mosquito (mostly aedes aegypti) is that they preferentially seek to bite humans and so live near them. Other bugs seek out plants and other bugs so they can live elsewhere.

<comment><USER44> There are more than 7 billion humans in the world and lots of agricultural land is required to feed the ones in cities. How much land area is not near humans?

<comment><USER46> Roughly half of the habitable land in the world is used for agriculture. Of the remaining half, only about 1% is developed in any sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Fulltext: [https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2019-lovett.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2019-lovett.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER48> Those mosquitoes are innocent, in fact they have the same right to live on this planet as humans. Stop this mosquitocide!

</comment><comment><USER49> This is a fast way to kill mosquitos and an even faster way of creating toxin resistant mosquitos.

</comment><comment><USER50> Wait, but how many will be in the next generation since 13 survived?

</comment><comment><USER17> 2 layers of mosquito netting is all that's keeping this from going rogue? We're cool I'm sure nothing could possibly go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER51> , Kj.hhde

</comment><comment><USER52> >The researchers say their aim is not to make the insects extinct but to help stop the spread of malaria.

Nothing ever matters less than your, "aim". Intentions are massively overrated. What matters are the actual effects as measured in objective reality. One of the many reasons society is the toilet that it is is because so many judge initiatives and propsals on what they are "intended" to do or what the "aim" of a proposed action is. The Inquisitor who burns you alive because he intends to purify your soul is just as bad as psycho who burns you at the stake because he wants to watch you burn.

<comment><USER25> The fungus they use is already widespread in nature. Their "version" is probably less well adapted to nature than the "original", and should be out- competed by the wildtype at worst.

But if I understand the article correctly, the fungus is quite deadly to mosquitos, achieving "local" extinction quickly, which also stops further spreading of the fungus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> "GM fungus has mutated, hundreds of thousands of _pick one - wheat - <USER3> - syrphid flies - bats - bees_ dying daily"

</comment><comment><USER11> Lets put it simple, this is terrorism.

We talk about a plan to disseminate a potent lethal poison claiming moral reasons. Not unlike releasing gas sarin in metro (for highly moral reasons also, everybody has a good reason stuck in their head). Killing millions to save thousands and so. The main difference here is that is a lethal stuff regenerated constantly and released in the air at random days. Yup, this could be worse than sarin attacks. Any fail would be permanent.

There are _dozens_ of spider poisons known that are weak or harmless for people. They had choosen instead the poison that is worst... not for the insects, the worst for us. The more efficient killing people.

And they plan to give this people's serial killer to fungi, to spread it under the soil and into the air. Fungi kingdom is a poorly studiated group of life beings, with a sophisticate defensive methabolism and a complex ecology. Several species can associate and fuse into one (lichens) and two species can be different forms of the same species; therefore there is some risk of horizontal propagation of the modified gene to other species with unpredictable comsequences.

Forget pot smokers, _this_ people should receive inmediately a visit from FBI in their headquarters. They have a lot of things to explain, and I'm talking seriously.

<comment><USER54> I think you mean negligence and not terrorism

<comment><USER11> I can't help to wonder myself how they though that releasing in the nature a creature able to synthesize venom of funnel-web spider was a good idea. Is astonishing.

Are this organisations, supposedly full of smart people, so hierarchical that nobody could point to the obvious elephant in the room? Even a child could see it coming.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have the whoishiring posts been useful? Can we do better? - <AUTHOR>

Thanks for your input <comment><USER2> HN itself is the biggest bottleneck, IMO. A few days after the thread has been posted, it gets paginated, usually into 3 or 4 pages. Assuming you Cmd+F/Ctrl-F for a couple keywords (remote, state, city), you end up having to do 10+ searches, in addition to weeding out the "no remote" matches. On the same note, it's very hard to keep track of new posts after the first day or two, which means you're searching for "minutes ago" "hours ago" "1 day ago" "2 days ago" etc - again, on 3 or 4 pages.

I know there's one user who maintains a site that lists all of the job postings (forgot the url), but personally I'm not a huge fan of the layout.

<comment><USER3> Indeed, it might be a good idea to have 2/3 separate threads for US/Europe/Asia... or US/Rest of the world since postings regarding jobs in Europe are hardly visible at all.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with this. I'd much prefer a separate Euro post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> My experience with it has been positive. I'd say a way to improve it would be to open a third thread for people looking for new full-time jobs (no freelancers or contractors). Like a reverse who is hiring thread. Programmers post their info in it, and companies get in touch. That way, companies can quickly get a good pool of people to interview.

Try it out for this month.

<comment><USER6> I doubt it will have lots of success. First, companies can use linkedin, or other social networks such as github to reach people, second, most of the people will not want to publicly show that they are looking (their current employer could very well read that thread), and finally as mentioned in another comment, the thread will be way too long (in the "seeking freelancer" thread, there are about 5 times more people looking for work than people hiring).

<comment><USER5> Fair points. Though I'm sure the HTML template could be modified to _not_ include the username of the person posting. Or people could use throw away accounts. Its doable.

<comment><USER6> Then you would have lots of throwaways, saying "I am looking for a job, I am good at X and Y, please contact me at firstname.lastname@example.com". I doubt it will have any success.

<comment><USER5> Of course this would happen. But do realize how much more valuable the whole site would be to the users and to YC. This should be tested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always check them out with lots of hope, but then am dismayed to find that they are usually entirely filled with technical roles and almost completely devoid of any marketing/product/business roles.

This is likely in part due to the HN audience composition, but my hunch is that its also partly because people are making assumptions about the HN audience composition.

I'd love to see one post for technical hiring and one post for business hiring. I think calling it out as its own post would actually encourage people to post those other jobs that they might normally think are not appropriate for the HN audience.

<comment><USER8> As someone posting in that thread and in our case we don't post those jobs not for the reason you mentioned but (1) because we just don't have many of those jobs available and (2) because we already know people we may to hire so those job positions are filled even before the job is posted/advertised.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I will like this thing to be continued. I have been contacted quite a few times from these posts. The only complain I have that I find more developers looking for job/project than the people seeking developers. This thing needs to be addressed.

I have a suggestion, please make it fortnightly .

</comment><comment><USER10> Some way to keep the postings brief would be a huge benefit I think. Many are overly long and make for too much information. Less is more. Just the essentials should be listed, with a link to more information if desired. Maybe using a form to fill in the post rather than free-form. Postings should be 4-5 lines long, not 40-50. Filters for location, job type, and skills would be next after getting the brevity handled.

</comment><comment><USER11> I recently scored a nice internship from last month's, so that is a positive. I also look forward to them because they often showcase companies I may not have heard of so they have the bonus of providing exposure to products and services as well.

I second pknerd's suggestion to make them fortnightly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very useful! I got a job through a post. I was able to hire an intern for my employer through a post. The first place to look for my next job will be there.

Search/Sorting is a definite room for improvement so I can narrow down the opportunities that I'm interested in by location, skills, etc. Obviously, the HN comment system is quite limited for that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER13> The <http://hnhiring.me/> site makes the whole thing a lot more useful

</comment><comment><USER14> I haven't managed to find a job yet, however that is probably due to the fact that I require a H1B visa for the USA. I have actually used the who's hiring threads to meet a lot of people though, I met some interesting entrepreneurs in 2012 via the thread.

</comment><comment><USER15> I haven't used them directly, but I've browsed a few and they seem to be of pretty high quality.

</comment><comment><USER16> I hired someone from one. They were awesome.</comment>


Amazon accused of knocking off AWS customers' products (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/08/amazon_copies_partner_products/ <comment><USER2> Both partners mention they knew from the start that AWS was eventually going to compete with them. I'm not sure there's anything to make of this. Looks like normal and healthy competition to me.

<comment><USER3> Totally normal and healthy. Like when strip malls began copying the successful businesses they leased to and nearly instantly drove those businesses out because the strip mall entities were so ungodly powerful in comparison. Or like when Walmart started producing all the successful products it's suppliers were making - undercutting them and causing them to close down. And who can forget the time the taxi industry was overtaken by shell companies who evaded taxes and underpaid their workers until the taxi industry collapsed?

Well the last one is becoming a reality, but none of these examples should be considered normal or healthy. Competition isn't healthy when it's a more powerful entity sitting over a technology platform waiting for its customers to be successful only to swoop in and copy that tech and power-edge them out.

It's next gen monopolization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Guessing they've never heard of "Amazon Basics" either.

<comment><USER5> It's far worse than that. Amazon literally has hundreds of store brands. Most of them are shockingly high quality as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yesterday they announced DocumentDB - knock off (they could have at least picked a different name) of Microsoft's DocumentDB (which had a Mongo access API like 3+ years ago). People will eventually become more vocal about these practice. If these tactics might reach a critical threshold, the media will be all over it. 2017 Uber, 2018 Facebook, 2019 ?</comment>


Major Australian ISP down over cyber attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/08/telstra-down-over-cyber-attack/ <comment><USER2> It ended up being a DNS failure, not an attack.</comment>