Elsevier cuts off UC's access to its academic journals - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-uc-elsevier-20190711-story.html <comment><USER2> I am an academic at a UC who publishes in Elsevier journals. I support this. I don't want copyright for anything I work on. I also work in a field where patent/IP stuff would not be relevant, so I view all of my work as public domain as far as I am concerned. With my code I either do CC0 or MIT licenses.

I have had to publish in journals that are not open access -- mostly I just make pre-prints available to anyone who wants them and encourage my students to use sci-hub if they need to find something we don't subscribe to.

<comment><USER3> Your university commercialization office will disagree. Check with them. From what I understand, it is illegal to release your code in CC0 or MIT unless you have taken permission from the commercialization office (Some universities allow GPL without explicit permission). Have you checked your contract ? Your work is not yours if it has any value. The value belongs to the university (mostly) - which also means you have no incentive to work on valuable stuff.

I think Elsevier is least of UCs problems. It's a distraction from the real ones.

<comment><USER4> Grad student at Berkeley. The commercialization office only takes an interest if your work is high profile enough and has enough commercialization potential. Plenty of UC researchers release CC0 or MIT license code without issue.

Elsevier may be only one of many problems for the UC community, but that doesn't mean it's a distraction—- millions have been wasted every year subsidizing their profits. And Elsevier's rent seeking business model is a problem for more than just the UCs. Hopefully this decision will end up being Elsevier's death knell.

<comment><USER5> Aren't you assuming the risk though? Like, in practice they might not care, but in writing they could care...

<comment><USER6> Assuming risk is part of the judgement required in science.

There's stuff that requires IRB, then there's a whole bunch of judgement and risk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds like everyone at UC is going to use SciHub now, and most likely won't switch back once access gets restored?

This seems like a self-defeating move on Elsevier's part?

Incidentally, I heard from someone who worked at Elsevier around four years ago that the working environment there was terrible, and she couldn't wait to leave. That doesn't seem surprising.

<comment><USER8> Or arXiv. Elsevier authors can post their papers on arXiv and/or their own website.

<comment><USER9> That's not strictly the case. This practice is actually infringing on your (albeit bonkers) agreement with Elsevier. You can only share copies with those who requested it as an act of "professional courtesy".

<comment><USER10> To all authors: note that it's often possible to modify the contract to enable it. They'll often not notice or just approve it. See [https://sparcopen.org/our-work/author-rights/](https://sparcopen.org/our- work/author-rights/)

<comment><USER9> Duly noted! Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The model Elsevier operates on is under attack from a number of sides. In addition to UC, there is Plan S:

> The plan requires scientists and researchers who benefit from state-funded > research organisations and institutions to publish their work in open > repositories or in journals that are available to all by 2021.[4] The "S" > stands for "shock".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_S)

The plan is backed by a wide range of European groups.

Elsevier may have a right to license its content as it sees fit, but the market as turned against its business model. The company now must decide whether to go down fighting or acknowledge the inevitable.

An of course, there's the ever present Sci-Hub, which presents a comprehensive selection of research papers far better than Elsevier ever did - and at no cost to the reader.

<comment><USER12> > Elsevier may have a right to license its content as it sees fit

Elsevier doesn't _have_ content of it's own. It takes others' content (without paying them a dime in most - if not all - cases), _maybe_ runs it through spellcheck, slaps a legal threat and price tag on it, and milks it for as much protection money as it can. Elsevier is the very model of modern major copyright troll.

<comment><USER13> Exactly. Their business added significant value back when paper was the primary medium. With the rise of the Internet, their value-add was significantly decreased, but they somehow decided the right thing was to double down on being a rentier and extract way more money.

I have zero sympathy for them. As they say on Wall Street, "Bulls make money, bears make money. But pigs get slaughtered." They've had 20 years to find new ways to deliver value and it doesn't seem like they've bothered. At this rate they'll be out of business soon, and I'll enjoy it thoroughly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is excellent!

Elsevier could have started by extorting smaller, less powerful institutions but foolishly went after a university they need more than it needs them.

<comment><USER15> Those smaller, less powerful institutions haven't dared to confront Elsevier in the way UC has. Since Elsevier represents the status quo, its opponents are on the offensive and can self-select. They tend to be either big institutions (UC) or collectives (several Europe-wide or EU-state-wide programs) big enough to stand toe-to-toe with the publishers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time I read about the incredibly exploitative scientific publishing industry, I can't help but think: can we just make scientific papers not copyrightable?

Researchers and their institutions don't benefit from the copyright protection; they barely make any money from their work.

Sure, someone can take your work and claim it as their own, but we already handle them as plagiarism rather than copyright infringement.

Currently all the works by the federal government are not subject to copyright, and many are scholarly work by NASA, Congressional Research Service, etc, and we never hear problem about it.

It is also not that far fetched. Copyright protects expression of ideas rather than ideas themselves, and I would argue for most papers, the expression is the less interesting part of it.

<comment><USER17> I honestly feel like intellectual property is harmful in almost every field I look at. It concentrates wealth and slows innovation (the opposite of what IP proponents claim). I voluntarily waive copyright protection for most of my work, but I'd ideally see the dissolution of the concept more broadly. Our government protects these laws which I see as unjust, and some change to that would be beneficial I believe.

<comment><USER18> What I've seen in tech is that a patent is a straw asset to make the bean counters feel more comfortable. The value of non-capital-intensive tech companies is almost entirely ephemeral. Even for capital intensive ones most of the value is usually not in the physical capital but in the brand, ideas, collective employee knowledge, and customer relationships. A patent looks like a physical asset on the books so it makes accountants and investors sleep better even if it doesn't actually mean much of anything.

It'll probably fade away for the most part once a new generation that is comfortable with the dematerialization of value takes high leadership positions.

Copyright is a bit of a different beast as it covers a _specific_ work, not an "idea."

<comment><USER17> Copyright is what keeps billions of people from accessing every book ever written for free.

Google really tried to do this but stopped digitizing books halfway through the worlds collection because of copyright law. It hurts to think of all the knowledge we could have shared if this had been permitted.

<comment><USER19> Copyright _as an idea_ is fine - as in, how it was described in the Constitution: "securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries", emphasis on "limited times". It's our current batarnak of an implementation that's causing all the problems.

Getting rid of copyright and instituting a copy-anarchy would mean that creatives would have no real incentive to publish (no matter how much you do for passion, you still need to keep the lights on and put food on the table) - but our current system, with lifetimes tied to the time since Walt Disney's death, is a bit of a mess too.

Can there ever be a happy medium?

<comment><USER20> How about a combination of

\- free health care for all

\- universal basic income at a really basic subsidence level

\- voluntary patronage

People define themselves by their art if they can live a reasonable life and produce they will do it.

<comment><USER21> Assuming people will create great works while living off a sustenance-level basic income is a bit of a stretch. And, it seems to ignore the extreme level of work, commitment, and persistence it takes to write books, publish science, etc.

The issue is not whether people should be able to profit off _their own work_ but whether a rent-seeking gatekeeper should be able to hijack others' work and profit off it.

<comment><USER20> A system designed to artificially limit supply impoverishes the world and most of the profit inevitably sticks with the middle men whose existence is only necessitated by the artificial scarcity.

I specifically stated the sustenance level basic income plus patronage as I expect people must have enough to survive but ought to be incentivized to earn enough to live better.

I've heard others, not you, express the nonsensical idea that if people had enough to barely survive they would all quite providing value to society until the whole pyramid balanced precariously on the backs of the few remaining working people collapsed. This is a basic mis-analysis of human nature. People would strive to produce both for reasons of self worth and desire for a better than basic life.

I expect many to most writers with no readers and no earnings would eventually tire of the affair and move on to others.

Others would find a way to live a better than subsidence level life via patronage or doing other work to finance their hobby.

Do you really believe in a world without copyright that Stephen king wouldn't find any supporters?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I never understood why university libraries are not making the journals themselves instead of having them done by companies and paying for the subscription. Every university would have like 5 or 6 journals and pay everything for those and all the scientific articles would be free. I mean elife does it and it is great.

<comment><USER10> The problem is not _starting_ new journals, the problem is having researchers submit their work there. And the problem with that is that the name/reputation of existing journals are currently used as a proxy to judge the quality of applicants for e.g. tenure tracks. As long as that's not changed, researchers are incentivised to submit their work to the traditional, "reputable" journals.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that aims to provide an alternative measure of quality.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> > in the words of Dennis J. Ventry, a law professor at UC Davis who is vice > chair of the academic senate's committee on library and scholarly > communication. He says the publisher's last offer would have increased UC > costs by 80% over three years, "hardly cost neutrality."

> Elsevier says its proposal would have allowed a fivefold increase in the > number of UC articles it published under open access — from about 350 now to > 1,750 — while increasing the overall bill to UC by no more than annual > inflation

One of these two parties is clearly misrepresenting this cost increase.

<comment><USER24> Here is my guess at the UC calculations. UC currently pays $11m/yr. For this price, UC wants to get all its 5000 papers/yr as open access, but Elsevier only offers to give them 1750 papers/yr for this price. Elsewhere in the article Elsevier states that the normal open access fees for 5000 papers are $15m, so $15m/5000 = $3000/paper. So UC could take Elsevier's proposal and get 1750 papers (+ read access) for $11m, and pay $3000 for each of the remaining 3250 papers, for a total of $21m. With inflation, $21m is about an 80% increase over $11m.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Meanwhile, everyone involved knows about the black raven in the room (the one with the reddish key in its mouth). It's just not polite to mention it.

<comment><USER26> I do wonder, though, if more academics working in the UCs know about sci-hub, than do not? In case not, start spreading the good news!

<comment><USER27> I am unsure about senior academics, but younger academics and research students are all aware of sci-hub these days, even if they don't use it that much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> UC should consider using open platforms for publishing, like MIT's PubPub[1]. In fact, so much was discussed already, current publishing model (aside of the publishers) is a bad fit for modern science. We need better collaboration, interactivity, and reproducibility. See discussion[2] about this a few years ago. And a number of followups[3][4][5].

[1] [https://www.pubpub.org/](https://www.pubpub.org/)

[2] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers- gitwikxi...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/16/beyond-papers-gitwikxiv/)

[3] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/27/gitwikxiv-follow-up- di...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/27/gitwikxiv-follow-up-distinctions- in-academic-tools/)

[4] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/22/gitwikxiv-follow-up- an...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/04/22/gitwikxiv-follow-up-an-open- attribution-standard/)

[5] [http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow- up-a-...](http://blog.jessriedel.com/2015/05/20/gitwikxiv-follow-up-a-path-to- forkable-papers/)

<comment><USER29> My group at UC provides [https://escholarship.org](https://escholarship.org) \-- a 20+ year old open platform for publishing

<comment><USER28> PubPub is an example of the next generation publishing platform. It provides much more than plain publishing. And it is open source [1]. Good example of the similar, but commercial platform is Authorea[2].

[1] [https://github.com/pubpub](https://github.com/pubpub)

[2] [https://www.authorea.com/](https://www.authorea.com/)

<comment><USER29> my product managers tell me LaTex is to STEMy

[https://editoria.pub](https://editoria.pub) is a project we were involved with with UC Press

We run an OJS instance for our journal program. We are looking a Janeway too.

Manifold also looks interesting in this space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> To clarify, Elsevier is unhappy that they aren't allowed to profit off of other peoples work.

1\. It costs money to submit to Nature, Cell, Science, etc

2\. Reviewers for journals are not paid

3\. It then costs money to read the published papers

4\. The journals are filled with ads

Literally the entire thing is profit for Elsevier, they are paid by the people who do the original work, they don't pay for _any_ of the vetting and review that Elsevier claims you're paying for, and then you have to pay to read the published papers. And get through all of the ads.

Elsevier is a company that steals from the public.

<comment><USER9> I totally agree with your overall point, but I'd be remiss not to mention that these journals originally were paper-only and mailed to institutions & profs (and Xeroxed ad infinum). This did involve a cost, but surely nothing like the million dollar agreements unis are signing with multiple publishing houses.

Nowadays, publishers still put out paper versions, but their worth does indeed revolve around scientist giving them material for them to build a catalogue of copyrighted material.

I look forward to their fall.

<comment><USER30> The modern paper versions are also filled with very expensive ads - the only part of this that is not profitable is the review stage, but that's just because it doesn't produce revenue - which they manage by not paying reviewers

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've always thought that a more reasonable model for academic publishing would be to disconnect the availability of the content from the peer review / "publishing".

Couldn't the PDF's be hosted in the open, in a repository similar to arXiv, and then be "published". Being published would then just basically mean that your paper gets tagged in the repository as "Published in Journal of X", almost like a Twitter verification mark but more granular [0].

Some publishing fees would remain, and pay for the curation and costs associated with the peer review.

[0]: Of course the journal could still be compiled and published separately as well.

<comment><USER10> Sure, and those are usually referred to as "overlay journals". They exist, but the thing that has been keeping the entire system in place now is how existing journals have a reputation upon which the academic career evaluation process is built. That allows publishers to charge ridiculous amounts of money, so they're quite keen on the current situation.

More here: [https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that- ca...](https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-can-make-or- break-academic-careers-704e00ae070a)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> The journals are gonna lose this fight.

Academics are one of the few groups that can afford to be idealists.

</comment><comment> dan-robertson Is this the first time Elsevier has cut off a major group of universities? In all the similar past occasions I know about, Elsevier would threaten to cut off access but not flow through, out of the kindness of their hearts and for the good of academia (or rather for fear that the universities might discover they don't get much value out of Elsevier)

One thing Elsevier builds their strategy on is bundling: that to get the journals a university really wants, they also have to subscribe to lots they don't want. This would mean for Elsevier that they could keep charging high prices until all disciplines don't care about them. A university can't say "well all our mathematicians just use the arxiv and email so we don't want any mathematics journals" and have this work.

Another common theme is universities joining together into larger groups to negotiate a deal together. But this means individual universities can't really choose to not subscribe to any Elsevier journals (because others in the group want to subscribe), so often they still get what many inside consider a bad deal.

<comment><USER10> No, although it has indeed threatened to do so and then did not do it often in the past, in July 2018 they cut off several institutions in Germany: [https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-news/](https://www.projekt- deal.de/elsevier-news/)

Similar things have happened in a few other European countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Death throws of a dying and unnecessary industry.

<comment><USER34> I can't tell if by "dying industry" you mean universities or journal databases.

<comment><USER35> Honest question: why do commenters here frequently seem to bear a chip on their shoulder when it comes to institutions of higher learning?

<comment><USER36> An attempt at an honest answer:

In my case it's related to the continual drumbeat of news stories that seems to show them being transformed from bastions of free inquiry into centers of political indoctrination. It's been reinforced in the last couple of years by a friend who sent his sweet, friendly, apolitical hard working daughter to a liberal arts college, and she returned as a politicized tattooed pierced foul mouthed social warrior who despises her family and home community. While that anecdote has applied for generations it seems to have become more rule than exception. There are an increasing number of parents who feel that sending their kids to college amounts to parental malpractice.

This "chip" may sound like a form of bigotry in that it paints many remaining fine scholars with the same broad brush, but you can't enroll in just that part of a school.

While the STEM fields that most publish in Elsevier are less affected by this trend they seem to be moving in that direction. Simply researching human intelligence, sexual dimorphism, heritability or a constantly shifting range of other topics has become career threatening. The idea that merit should play a predominant role in hiring is becoming scarce in faculty hiring committees.

I'm a product of a university but looking back I see that my degree did little for me in terms of either increased human capital or of signalling, in that I learned to code outside of class and my degree is of ever less value in getting hired. If I could go back and whisper in my high school ears while I was applying to college I might say "skip it". And that's separate from the ideological angle.

Meanwhile it has become much more expensive in the era of federal financing. Both sides of the cost benefit ratio are moving in the wrong direction.

The net result is that I've come to discount the value of universities. If they were all closed tomorrow it would be both a great loss and gain, and I'm not sure which would dominate.

<comment><USER37> Thanks for sharing your experience.

I went to a rather liberal university recently and while the community and ideology you describe did exist, it always seemed to be on the fringe a bit (if very loud). For the most part, people were focused on working hard at school or sex and partying rather than engaging in fringe politics.

Some young people need to rebel for a bit. People's views usually moderate a bit a few years out, just with life experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can anyone steelman the Elsevier side? I don't want to be caught in the headlights of I have to debate this.

<comment><USER11> Elsevier owns copyrighted material, which it licenses to individuals and institutions for a fee. The fee is negotiated on a case-by-case basis, which is no different than any other intellectual property such as movies, music, books, or software.

If a customer is unable or unwilling to pay the prevailing rate, then no access will be granted.

The argument that Elsevier uses unpaid academic labor and therefore should fall under some other system is a red herring. Authors signed over their copyright to Elsevier, and like any other copyright holder Elsevier can license its property toward any legal purpose that advances its business interests.

<comment><USER39> It's not unpaid academic labor, it's actually exploitative labor. They charge the academics ~$3000 - 5000 to publish via any of their journals.

<comment><USER40> The other unpaid labor is peer review — keep in mind that reviewers don't get paid!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Papers produced using any amount of taxpayer money should be required to be publicly available. Not doing so is like stealing a farmer's crops so you can sell him food made from them.

<comment><USER42> Interesting that you mention farmers crops. Should crops produce with government subsidies also be publicly available for free?

<comment><USER43> They should be available cheaper than if they weren't subsidized, proportional to the degree of subsidy. Which is usually the point of subsidizing something's production.

Whereas basic science is almost entirely tax funded, making a pretty good case for it being a public resource.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Now all that Elsevier has to do is eliminate piracy! Just like how the RIAA eliminated piracy, and we are all still willing to pay 99 cents for a new song on iTunes. (sarcasm)

<comment><USER45> I prefer to buy music legally. Am I alone? I don't want to have to worry about legal processes when I could just spend a buck to listen to that little diddy stuck in my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > UC is determined to operate under an alternative model, in which researchers > pay to have their papers published but not for subscriptions.

Yep, slowly but surely OpenAccess is beginning to take hold.

The UK publisher I work for has had a couple projects going for a few years now, looking into ways to rejig their revenue stream.

</comment><comment><USER47> > We know we can provide access to everything through one mechanism or another

Translation: let's see how scihub works out for people. Good luck getting them back after they became used to it.

</comment><comment><USER48> I am writing a review article these days which requires skimming through many many articles and this situation really is infuriating. What the hell is wrong with scientists today that they accept this situation? Why aren't all papers in 2019 hosted as HTML pages (the very thing for which HTML was invented) but instead hidden behind paywalls, behind a PDF file? Why can't i use annotations / search / crossreferences the way i use any website? Why do i have to end up copying-the title of the paper, googling the name of it and downloading another pdf, instead of clicking on an HREF link? Why am i forced to use godawful tools like Mendeley (brought to you by Elsevier now) to conform to ancient citation formats which were invented for (paper) libraries. Someone needs to pass a law that invalidates the copyrights of all publicly funded works, so people other than google scholar can have access to the world's scientific output and build proper services on top of it. And yeah, i 'm sure Elsevier, that pretentious club of high horses will be replaced in a day, by a digital peer-supported "uber for reviews". But first academics will have to remove the stick of elitism that is up their arse.

</comment><comment><USER49> > Traditionally, the publishers accept papers for publication for free but > charge steep subscription fees

To my knowledge (academic family and partner in NZ) this is false, publishers charge for both publication _and_ reading in general.

<comment><USER50> I think this must depend on your field. In mine, it's generally free to publish, unless you want color figures or go over the page limit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Go UC! I wish my alma had a similar backbone.

</comment><comment><USER52> Academic publishing is a weird way to evaluate worker performance.

</comment><comment><USER53> All research done with public money should be publicly available.

Full stop.

<comment><USER54> It seems like NSF is working towards that. NSF-funded publications must be publicly available for free within 12 months after publication. NSF has a repository for this purpose. This regulation went into effect in 2016.

[https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18041/nsf18041.jsp](https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2018/nsf18041/nsf18041.jsp)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I hope UC made some kind of donation to Sci Hub.

</comment><comment><USER56> Who gives a rodent's backside what elsevier wants? Just don't feed that parasite any more, and it will die on its own.

</comment><comment><USER57> The key to all this is that for a person to get a PhD or grants they usually need to publish papers. Self-publishing often isn't recognized, so expensive journals thrive. Maybe that is slowly changing...

<comment><USER58> Usually publishing fees are not the problem. The problem is reading papers is expensive if you're not using Scihub.

In fact, publishing in an open journal (e.g. Plos) cost about twice as much as an equivalent closed journal, but it's the model that everybody except Elsevier wants.

When you get a (public) grant, some of the money is reserved for publishing costs. It's outrageus that public money is used to research and publish but then the public and other researchers cannot access for free that content.

The Elsevier bussiness model is just perfect, they just sit on their desk routing papers from authors to other authors for peer review, and create a PDF. This "work" costs about $1.000. After that, downloading that PDF costs another $20-30, but the original author receives $0.

Just imagine that applied to regular books: the author pay to publish. The publisher charges $30 for the PDF. The author never sees a dime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> "What kept the two sides apart was not merely the difference in approaches, but the question of fees. UC paid $11 million for Elsevier subscriptions last year — about 25% of its overall subscription budget — while its researchers spent an estimated $1 million more on publication fees on papers subject to open access. The university proposed a new deal under which publication fees and subscriptions would be rolled together for a single sum in a model known as "read and publish.""

</comment><comment><USER60> I don't understand the problem, and the article doesn't really help. If I understand correctly, universities pay a fee to Elsevier to access papers. They also submit their published papers to Elsevier. And (this is where I'm not sure anymore) they have to pay a fee to make their work freely accessible?

Then why don't they just pay for the subscription, but don't submit anything? Or upload a freely accessible pre-print version like many people do?

</comment><comment><USER61> Wow, seems like Elsevier move was really stupid. I hope many more join against this business model. Go UC!

</comment><comment><USER62> For those who haven't used it previously, you can use [https://sci- hub.tw/](https://sci-hub.tw/) to bypass paywalls on almost any scientific paper

</comment><comment><USER63> [http://archive.is/m7cTp](http://archive.is/m7cTp)

</comment><comment><USER64> Where are Stanford, Harward, Caltech and other, reportedly progressive universities stand on that issue?

</comment><comment><USER65> It will be ok, as students and faculty know they can simply use Sci-Hub.

</comment><comment><USER66> yes, this is the right way to go. public money is used to research and the public doesn't have access to the results is odd. ArXiv is the way to go at this time.

</comment><comment><USER67> Can someone explain why an alternative hasn't popped up for these universally- hated publishers? What's so hard about hosting a bunch of documents?

<comment><USER40> The problem isn't document hosting, it's that the journals serve as a proxy for research quality, and everyone wants to publish in journals that have high (perceived and/or actual) impact. To effect real change the editors and prominent authors will need to leave, like when _Machine Learning_ was forked into _JMLR_

<comment><USER67> So the world's most prestigious universities who have a problem with the status quo band together and lend their own credibility to a new platform that they run together. Cut out the middle-man.

<comment><USER10> It's not just that the platform needs to be considered credible; it's that they're used as a proxy for the relative quality of academic research. So an article in Nature is considered "better" than an article in Humbug's Best Journal.

Generally, I think the better idea would be to unlink evaluation from publication - so researchers can publish their articles wherever, and separate from that, reputable colleagues endorse their works (or not). In the end, journals derive their credibility from the reputations of their peer reviewers and editors, so that is a way to cut out the middle man.

The challenge, of course, is getting researchers to actually do that.

(Disclaimer: I'm part of a project that does exactly that.)

<comment><USER40> I really like the idea of unlinking publication from evaluation. Especially in CS people cite arxiv preprints all the time since the field moves so fast. I do this in my own work as well, but most of my field does not publish preprints on arxiv. Without real infrastructure, we're all _de facto_ relying on google scholar to sort all these things out.

I'm starting to think that open and signed reviews would go a long way towards moving from review as a gatekeeping mechanism to a means of improving the overall quality and accessibility of the scientific discourse.

What is the project you're involved in?

<comment><USER10> It's called Plaudit.pub [1] and launched not too long ago. The aim is for preprint servers (and eventually journals) to display endorsements right next to the research they host, but more most of them, this currently requires a browser extension.

Also note that it currently only provides a solution for the endorsement part of evaluation - you'd still have to use, say, email or a comment form to provide actual feedback.

[1] [https://plaudit.pub/](https://plaudit.pub/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Good, time to end this

</comment><comment><USER68> Elsevier still hasn't dared to cut off the German Universities, or have there been developments I've missed?

Might get interesting now.

<comment><USER10> Yes they have: [https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier- news/](https://www.projekt-deal.de/elsevier-news/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> When you are on a burning platform some advice - shooting at boats fleeing the fire won't put the flames out.

</comment><comment><USER70> Not to mention that journals employ armies of unpaid editors and reviewers. If Karl Marx were alive, he would have probably chosen this as the perfect example of how capitalism exploits the masses.

</comment><comment><USER71> Suicide, quite simply.

</comment><comment><USER70> Not to mention that journals employ armies of unpaid editors and reviewers. If Karl Marx were alive, he would have proy chosen this as the perfect example of how capitalism exploits the masses.

</comment><comment><USER72> Wanted: Sci-Hub for the LA Times.

<comment><USER73> It would help with their BS about "this content is not available due to GDPR"

Though to be honest they're not an essential news source, so nothing of value is lost

</comment></comment><comment><USER74> I click on the article and get a big paywall instead of text. So meta!

<comment><AUTHOR> In act of brinkmanship, a big publisher cuts off UC's access to its academic journalsThe bitter battle between the University of California, a leading source of published research papers, and Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of research papers, just got more bitter.As of Wednesday, Elsevier cut off access by UC faculty, staff and students to articles published since Jan. 1 in 2,500 Elsevier journals, including respected medical publications such as Cell and the Lancet and a host of engineering and scientific journals. Access to most material published in 2018 and earlier remains in force.The move by Elsevier is the latest development in a conflict that has been brewing since last year, when the university's last five-year contract with Elsevier expired. UC demanded that the new contract reflect the principle of open access — that work produced on its campuses be available to all outside readers, for free.That was a direct challenge to the business model of Elsevier and other big academic publishers. Traditionally, the publishers accept papers for publication for free but charge steep subscription fees. UC is determined to operate under an alternative model, in which researchers pay to have their papers published but not for subscriptions.What kept the two sides apart was not merely the difference in approaches, but the question of fees. UC paid $11 million for Elsevier subscriptions last year — about 25% of its overall subscription budget — while its researchers spent an estimated $1 million more on publication fees on papers subject to open access. The university proposed a new deal under which publication fees and subscriptions would be rolled together for a single sum in a model known as "read and publish."In part, that was a reflection of concerns over a continual run-up in journal subscription costs that UC, along with many other academic institutions, consider to be unsustainable. The very idea of placing scientific research behind a subscription paywall, moreover, can't be reconciled with the idea that research should be made as widely available as possible. That's especially so when the same institutions that generate research papers are made to pay for access to them."Overwhelmingly the faculty, who have given this a great deal of thought, know this is a matter of principle," says Robert May, a member of the philosophy department at UC Davis and chair of the UC Academic Council. The council issued a statement Wednesday expressing its determination for UC to "help change the system of scholarly communication for the betterment of all."UC isn't the only institution to stage a frontal assault on this model. Open access has been spreading in academia and in scholarly publishing; academic consortiums in Germany and Sweden also have demanded read-and-publish deals with Elsevier, which cut them off after they failed to reach deals last year. Those researchers are still cut off, according to Gemma Hersh, Elsevier's vice president for global policy. Smaller deals have been made in recent months with research institutions in Norway and Hungary.UC is probably the largest single producer of research papers to make a stand for open access — and an uncompromising stand at that. The university says it generates nearly 10% of all published research in the United States. That has made it a significant partner of Elsevier, which has published about 18% of all UC output.The traditional model has been a gold mine for scholarly publishers such as Elsevier. The scientific, technical and medical publishing arm of its Netherlands-based parent, Relx, recorded about $1.2 billion in operating profit on about $3.2 billion in revenue in 2018, a gratifying 37.5% operating profit margin.The clash of policies led UC to allow its Elsevier subscriptions to lapse as of last Dec. 31. The publisher allowed scholarly access to continue while it tried to reach a new agreement with the university. With no noticeable progress having been made, Elsevier finally pulled the plug.The publisher is rather cagey about its action. In a statement it emailed to UC faculty who were serving as editors of some of its journals, Elsevier wrote that it "sadly had to move forward with [UC's] request to cancel access." That's spin that places the onus entirely on the university: In fact, UC wanted to continue access, but under new terms.The university, for its part, cited Elsevier's "refusal to address in any meaningful way our dual goals of cost neutrality and open access," in the words of Dennis J. Ventry, a law professor at UC Davis who is vice chair of the academic senate's committee on library and scholarly communication. He says the publisher's last offer would have increased UC costs by 80% over three years, "hardly cost neutrality."Elsevier says its proposal would have allowed a fivefold increase in the number of UC articles it published under open access — from about 350 now to 1,750 — while increasing the overall bill to UC by no more than annual inflation. Elsevier says on a website it established to explain its position that open-access publishing fees for the estimated 5,000 papers UC publishes per year through the company would run to about $15 million, on top of the $11 million in subscriptions."We understand that's not a feasible amount," Hersh told me. She said the publisher's proposal aimed to move UC "along that journey [to open access] in a managed and sustainable way."But university officials say the proposal also would have required UC to "forgo perpetual access to a significant number of Elsevier journals" and would have barred open-access publishing in some especially important journals, including Cell and the Lancet. "UC is committed to making all the work of all of its authors freely available," the university's office of scholarly communication said in a statement posted online.University officials acknowledge that the cutoff of direct access to Elsevier journals will cause some inconvenience on UC campuses. Almost any article sought by a campus researcher can be found legally through interlibrary loans, online repositories such as Google scholar or PubMed, or directly from its author."We know we can provide access to everything through one mechanism or another," says Jeffrey MacKie-Mason, the university librarian. "We've always provided access to scholarly research for things we don't have subscriptions to. Now we'll be doing that for Elsevier articles."Securing access may take a few days longer and a small financial outlay he says, "but there are ways to do it and we're prepared to make sure that our faculty and students get to read everything they want to read."Under the circumstances, it looks like Elsevier may have picked a fight with the wrong adversary. While the open-access movement is growing, "the reality is that the majority of the world's articles are still published under the subscription model, and there is a cost associated with reading those articles," Hersh says.But it's hard to imagine that the open-access trend will slow in the future, much less reverse. Elsevier has been holding its ground, but with a scholarly behemoth like UC on the offensive, there's no telling how long its defense may hold.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Is there value in a blockchain based academic journal?

have it be well distributed, and only let universities submit new articles if they prove themselves doing replication studies against other universities' submissions

<comment><USER10> There have been many, many initiatives based on this thought. However, in my opinion they don't quite hit the mark.

The problem blockchain solves is wanting to store data, making sure that it is not tampered with, but without a single party you can trust.

That's not the problem of Open Access though. Everybody _does_ trust Elsevier not to intentionally tamper with scholarly articles, and they have no reason to. The problem is the oligopoly they and a couple of other publishers have, and the ridiculous prices they charge as a result. Those aren't just solved by adding another failed player; you need to remove the reason the oligopoly can continue to exist. Blockchains do not do that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why did my "Ask HN: Review my Product: DropClock.com" disappear - <AUTHOR>

Just wondering.... Seems weird. <comment><USER2> It's not gone. I just saw it on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3855262>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I can't see it. By the time I hit page 5 I see that the items are about a month old.

It's fine if this is a glitch however if this is part of a human filter or otherwise, I would clearly classify this as a bug.

</comment><comment><USER3> The rankings on self-posts have always been screwy, often you'll see old posts popping back on the front /ask page.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Back now. #11.

</comment><comment><USER4> Magic!</comment>


Ice Box Pro: The best of Dropbox and Amazon Glacier combined - <AUTHOR> http://www.iceboxpro.com/

<comment><USER2> FYI Anyone can see your name, email, and AWS ID/Access Key.

The games on Stripe's CTF were more secure than this site...

EDIT: Looks like it was just patched. Still managed to get a few dozen AWS keys though.

<comment><USER3> Update: I misunderstood, I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to attack but trying to show my concern because I thought he saved some id/keys for himself. Please ignore my comment below.

\--

"Still managed to get a few dozen AWS keys though"

Good for you! What a nice person you are. Please abuse more small projects like this. Even if they say they say it was "was only meant for friends to test out".

Oh I see, you just found a security hole and trying to get some reputation? Cute. Please do it by abusing the small power you found and hurting innocent users. That's really, really nice of you.

"Still managed to get a few dozen AWS keys though"

Wow. Just wow.

You sir, just ruined my night. Thank you.

Ps. I am really concerned about your company and its users. If you can do something like this, I wonder what else you could do (or doing) at your current company. I hope, I'm assuming wrong.

edit: "the" » "your". last paragraph.

<comment><USER2> Perhaps you're misunderstanding my course of action.

1\. I didn't disclose how to do it, merely that it was possible.

2\. By "get" I in no way mean harvested. I just manually incremented the ID in the URL by hand in my web browser to see how many users could be affected.

3\. Since I never saved any of the information (just viewed the pages) I no longer have it since the flaw was patched.

Nothing malicious was done.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I think I misunderstood your comment. I thought you saved some info to yourself.

I'll update my comment above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This sounds great, but since this is using your own AWS account, there is a very serious poison pill; Glacier only lets you retrieve 0.17% of your data for free per day. Beyond that, you get charged based on _your peak hour_ of retrieval.

How much? $7.20 per gigabyte for your highest hour (minus a negligible free allowance if you're using it in this manner).

i.e. the cost to restore m gigabytes over n hours is:

$7.20 * m / n

I'm sure Ice Box Pro will have warnings in place, so nobody will get a $350 bill by accident by restoring a 50 gig account in an hour.

But for disaster recovery, the time will come to decide between a large bill or a very slow retrieval.

Pricing details are here (though quite difficult to follow): [http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_much_data_can_I_retr...](http://aws.amazon.com/glacier/faqs/#How_much_data_can_I_retrieve_for_free)

<comment><USER5> That seems too costly for even large businesses that don't care. When you lose data, you want it back fast. In this case, the faster you take it back the more it costs.

I wonder why they don't use S3. Is it not reliable enough? The charging infrastructure at least is simpler to figure out.

<comment><USER6> There is a huge market for data that needs to be retained indefinitely, or for some long period of time. Oftentimes this is related to compliance. The frequency that the data is accessed is incredibly small -- or even zero.

For example, in several states, all records relating to a minor in state custody, an adoption, or receiving certain nbenefits must be kept for 26 years after the minor turns 18. Today, states are either storing this data on tape, or paying some government contractor to do it for them -- at an expense several times that of Glacier.

Another example is litigation holds. One former employer was forced to hold around a petabyte of data 7 years for a complex civil suit, because... A judge said so. In that case, the high cost of retrieval may be a _benefit_ , because the plaintiff would be footing the bill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For an open source alternative (and my tool of choice) check out git-annex with s3[1]. joehy has a todo for git-annex and glacier[2] and someone has already submitted the beginings of a patch. When i first heard of Glacier I was excited about the possibilty of using it for a backend to git-annex, but then I read cpercival's discussion of glacier[3,4].

[1] <http://git-annex.branchable.com/tips/using_Amazon_S3/>

[2] [http://git- annex.branchable.com/todo/special_remote_for_amaz...](http://git- annex.branchable.com/todo/special_remote_for_amazon_glacier/)

[3] [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap- doesn...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-why-tarsnap-doesnt-use- glacier.html)

[4] [http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-thoughts-on- glaci...](http://www.daemonology.net/blog/2012-09-04-thoughts-on-glacier- pricing.html)

EDIT: Removed comment about competition.

<comment><USER8> I've written glacier integration with git-annex and it's fully functional. Details in [2]. The Glacier retrieval pricing uncertainty just means that I store less in Glacier - but for critical data where the paid retrieval cost is worth it, I happily "git annex copy --to=glacier".

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> hey guys,

i built this with a friend and didn't expect it to get posted to HN already. we just got it approved and i accidentally hit our Like button before we were even ready. my friends immediately commented on the story so we just said, what the hey :-)

in any case, it just "launched" today, was only meant for friends to test out, and yes i agree we need to write more copy.

to address some concerns:

\- this is really only meant for developers at the moment; i.e. those who actually know their way around AWS. if and when we decide to take payments and provide a service, you can expect a lot more documentation and support. we have no desire to dupe normal folks. we built this for ourselves and really only expected friends to try it out first.

\- you don't need to go to your AWS console to get your files. once a file archives, you can click a button to download it back to your Dropbox

\- putting in warnings about the quota is a great idea! we'll do that ASAP.

keep the feedback coming, we really appreciate it and wanna build something useful for everyone.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps you could offer a service where everyone saves their files under your corporate account. When 1 person needs to restore, it will mostly fit within the free download % of the total. So if 10 people store 1 TB each, you can download 500GB/month for free. It's like insurance. We all pay a small amount to cover when one person has a problem.

<comment><USER9> we hope to get to that very soon!

most likely, we'll just keep a small data center. something to get around the bandwidth limitation and availability. we would definitely need to charge then in order to cover those costs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'd like to see someone provide a service in a similar vein to this but just for photos.

What I'm thinking is a service that uses Glacier to store my photo library and some type of front end service (like dropbox) that keeps a low res version of that photo along with some meta data about it.

My reasoning for this is that we all build up pretty significant photo libraries (mines already over 60GB) and I'm always trying to make sure I have them backed up. I currently use a paid plan at Dropbox so I can put them all up there but it's kind of a waste since I hardly ever pull many of them down again. Every once in awhile I browse through them looking for certain pictures that I might need to get a copy of (which is why I'd need the low res copies easy to access/browse) and then be able to choose which ones to pull down from glacier. The other good thing about a service like that is the need is not typically immediate.

Maybe I'll look into building this since it's something I'd love to have for myself!

<comment> matthew-wegner I use Backblaze--$50/year--primarily for photos. My photo drive sits at around 900GB currently. It's entirely in Backblaze, in case it ever explodes and local backups fail.

I let it handle other drives, too, although I exclude my media/music/download/etc drive for simplicity.

<comment><USER12> Is it encrypted on the client side? That's pretty much my only requirement now, since I have separated my two use cases (backups and syncing). I use encfs on Dropbox for encrypted syncing, and it works great, but I need backups encrypted on the client, and I haven't found anything great and cheap yet.

<comment><USER13> What do you mean by "backups encrypted on the client?"

<comment><USER14> I would guess he means that the data is encrypted before ever being sent to backblaze. The answer is yes according to <http://www.backblaze.com/backup- encryption.html>

Rather, it's an optional yes.

<comment><USER12> Yep, that's what I meant, thanks.

EDIT: Actually, it looks like they can decrypt your data to restore it on their end, so it's a no.

<comment> matthew-wegner I believe Tarsnap is your only viable option, if you want that enforce that degree of paranoia: <http://www.tarsnap.com/>

<comment><USER15> Bitcasa is also in the same realm, although I think Bitcasa has some cooler de-dupe technology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Anything that uses Dropbox as the middleman scares me a bit. Dropbox scares me a bit. It silently ignores a lot of meta data , restores files with dates that aren't what the original was ( last I checked ) and has corrupted a few Mac OS X sparse bundles beyond repair.

There's a great app called Arc that handles all of Mac OS X meta data perfectly, works with the relative ease of Dropbox, and backs up to S3 at great savings. De-duplication and other "smarts" are all there.

It's sort of like a Time Machine that you can point to S3.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the idea, but besides the retrieval fees involved that you're not disclosing, I wonder if people will grasp the fact that the files they are putting into the icebox folder are not reachable with opening the same folder and looking into it—instead you need to go to a web site to find them. This is rather disorienting for a non-technical user as the way of putting files in gives a false sense of immediacy to a future retrieval availability.

</comment><comment><USER17> The security problem that was found (now fixed) is less of an issue than the responses they gave afterwards: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4619652>

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow, I've been working on almost the exact same thing! Except I'm charging a yearly fee instead of using the users own AWS account, this makes it easier for users without an AWS account and also means you don't have to worry about the crazy Glacier fee structure.

Try it out if you want, 1GB accounts are free at the moment:

<https://www.tidy.io/>

<comment><USER19> Some feedback about the landing page:

It doesn't show any pricing. I don't want to sign up for something just to see the pricing.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for the feedback!

The landing page not being finished was why I'd been waiting to launch, wish I'd got it done sooner now!

EDIT: Until I sort out the landing page here's the current pricing: 50GB is $25/year, 100GB is $40/year and 500GB is $189

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's this nefarious sense of: Give me your data so I can sell it back to you!

</comment><comment><USER21> Don't give your data to this site until they fix this:

[http://blog.ryankearney.com/2012/10/never-give-your- informat...](http://blog.ryankearney.com/2012/10/never-give-your-information- to-10-minute-old-startups/)

<comment><USER22> And even when it's fixed after the way they responded, don't trust them with your data or anything at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is a little OT, but I was thinking about putting together a weekend (read: week) project that would offer a cloud service (details aren't important) but require a user to add an AWS key. The idea is that it would use the free micro instance Amazon gives a user.

The benefit I see is that customers would have total visibility into their own data, and, of course, it's very cheap to run a system like that.

I'd love to hear any opinions anybody might have about it.

<comment><USER24> That's a subset of what we're trying to do with The OpenPhoto Project. <http://theopenphotoproject.org>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Trying it now (800mb is uploading).

This tool is great for me because the data I'm backing up is something I'll need to access maybe twice a year, or less. But I still need to have this data backed up somewhere.

I love how it's as simple as Dropbox. Set it up once, the rest is just drag and drop.

</comment><comment><USER25> My Dropbox isn't big enough for the file I would want to send to Glacier.

Does Amazon provide a fairly decent interface? Or, failing that, are there clients that can work with AWS Glacier already, the way some FTP clients can speak to AWS S3?

</comment><comment><USER26> I actually thought about it some time ago and even started working on a prototype, got dropjar.com for that, but after seeing how low companies like backblaze sell unlimited backup for ... I figured it's a hard sell.

Good luck with icebox.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great Idea, although to realy archive terabytes with a relatively small dropbox account you'd have to do it in 10-100 steps.. Recovering it via dropbox would be even more challenging.

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm not sure you can use competitors' logos like that.

<comment><USER9> all Dropbox apps require approval. someone from Dropbox actually signed up, reviewed IceBox, and approved it.

we have no intentions of competing with Dropbox. (like that's even possible.) if we get a complaint, we're more than happy to comply.

we love both Dropbox and Amazon Glacier so we decided to pair them. i'm almost certain Dropbox will eventually add a similar feature soon--we may just be beating them to the punch.

<comment><USER19> You might want to make that logo a link to Dropbox since it's required in their guidelines.

<https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/branding>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is the data stored on Glacier encrypted?

<comment><USER12> They're encrypted, but nothing's secure if it leaves your computer in plaintext.</comment></comment>


Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn't Exist If You Are Not Looking at It - <AUTHOR> http://themindunleashed.org/2015/06/new-mind-blowing-experiment-confirms-that-reality-doesnt-exist-if-you-are-not-looking-at-it.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the nice laugh :)</comment>


Ask HN: What does executive coaching look like in startups like Sourceress? - <AUTHOR> So,
The following job was posted on HN a few hours ago.
https://www.sourceress.com/jobs#current-openings
I clicked on the link and found that one of the benefits offered is "we subsidize executive coaching for every full-time team member to help you grow into the person you want to be."
Can someone here elaborate where to find these coaches for myself? Specific recommendations will be appreciated. I am an individual contributor and have been looking for a coach like this.
I used to work with one but he is too old and doesn't know much about current software industry. <comment><USER2> I've worked with all these guys. If you're looking for best in class. Requires peak investment, for sure (not just $!)

[https://theultimatecoach.com/](https://theultimatecoach.com/) [http://geniuscoaching.com/](http://geniuscoaching.com/) [https://richlitvin.com/](https://richlitvin.com/)</comment>


Cambridge bans facial recognition technology - <AUTHOR> https://www.masslive.com/news/2020/01/cambridge-bans-facial-recognition-technology-becoming-fourth-community-in-massachusetts-to-do-so.html <comment><USER2> Banning for municipal use. I assume that means private companies are still allowed to use facial recognition for anything they want? Is it legal, for example, for departments stores to use security cameras at the entrance to run facial recognition on customers, and then advertise to them online?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm. Can someone alter the title to refer to: Cambridge MA, please?

Otherwise folk will assume it might be the UK one ;)</comment>


Die Zeit Uses Six Months of Mobile Data to Profile Green Politician  - <AUTHOR> http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002391.html

<comment><USER2> An almost ironic attempt by a green politician to position his party as pro- internet.

At the same time the Green party is pushing on a state level for the (in Germany highly controversial) use of trojan horse malware to spy on crime suspects ( [http://www.gruene-nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/gruene- nrw/po...](http://www.gruene-nrw.de/fileadmin/user_upload/gruene-nrw/politik- und-themen/12/koalitionsvertrag/Koalitionsvertrag_2012-2017.pdf) ), and to be highly flexible when it comes to abandoning their opposition to the data retention act ( [https://netzpolitik.org/2011/grun-rot-in-baden-wurtemberg- wi...](https://netzpolitik.org/2011/grun-rot-in-baden-wurtemberg-will- vorratsdatenspeicherung/) ).

<comment><USER3> Its a bit unfair to purely project the behavior of his party as a whole on Malte Spitz.

As we are lacking other people that have the guts, the resources and the contacts to make this visualization happen, I am absolutely happy with him going all the way. It is one of the best pieces to show "normal people" how much can be done with all the data companies gather about them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Last year's news: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2379917>

<comment><USER5> And such a baity title. Makes it appear like some sort of spying of the newspaper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be clear, Malte Spitz released this data voluntarily to Zeit. The accompanying article is available here:

[http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data- protecti...](http://www.zeit.de/digital/datenschutz/2011-03/data-protection- malte-spitz)

</comment><comment><USER7> Direct link: <http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-spitz-data-retention>

I recommend pressing the play button (it is not a video) and watching for a bit.</comment>


How Virginia Won Amazon's HQ2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonian.com/2019/06/16/the-real-story-of-how-virginia-won-amazon-hq2/ <comment><USER2> > One local figure spoke to Metro general manager Paul Wiedefeld and urged him > to make sure Amazon got to ride on one of its newest, 7000-Series trains. > Wiedefeld, who says he can't recall whether the official was from Virginia, > Maryland, or the District, responded by explaining that public > transportation doesn't work that way.

Wiedefeld, incidentally, is a total bad-ass. He was hired at the end of 2015. In 2017, the first year they started measuring end-to-end travel time, on-time performance was a dismal 66%. In Q2 of 2019, it was 87%. In 2016, he shut down the entire system for days, and entire lines for weeks at a time, for emergency repairs. He's steam-rolled over NIMBYs, dramatically shutting down entire stations all summer so crumbling platforms can be completely rebuilt: [https://ggwash.org/view/72561/metro-reasons-loud-yellow- and-...](https://ggwash.org/view/72561/metro-reasons-loud-yellow-and-blue- line-construction-is-bothering-residents). (Accomplishing in three months what took years of delays and disruptions during prior, partial shut-downs.) He's brought the hammer down on the WMATA union, controlling costs and resisting calls to overtax the system by extending service: [https://wamu.org/story/17/04/27/transit-union-turns-back- met...](https://wamu.org/story/17/04/27/transit-union-turns-back-metro- leadership-stages-walkout;) [https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/09/18/metro...](https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2018/09/18/metro- will-outsource-operation-of-silver-lines.html;) [https://wamu.org/story/16/11/03/wmata_board_struggles_to_rea...](https://wamu.org/story/16/11/03/wmata_board_struggles_to_reach_consensus_on_fare_hikes_late_night_trains). Not all heroes wear capes.

<comment><USER3> The linked article paints a slightly less heroic picture of someone who used a loophole in the ordinances to allow construction crews to jackhammer after 10PM in the residential areas and got away with it. So while families with small children were kept up in the long hours of the night, the loopholing hero was enjoying his quiet 9 hours of Zzzs.

All hypothetical of course, I am not from the area.

here's the paragraph describing the loophole:

""" "The parking areas, all the travel areas…the pedestrian walkways…that's all considered inside the station," Kirst added, explaining what the noise waiver granted to Metro covers. Crews working in those areas aren't allowed to perform "excavation, demolition, saw cutting, and jack hammering" between 10 pm-6 am on Sunday through Thursdays, and 10 pm-8 am on Friday and Saturday. Those restrictions don't apply to the tracks outside the stations, however. """

<comment><USER2> One of the reasons America can't build infrastructure is that we elevate the temporary inconvenience of a few "families with small children" over the long- term good for hundreds of thousands of people in the region. It's also the underlying basis for the myriad ways in which we let individuals and special interest groups sue to stop development that benefits everyone.

<comment><USER3> yes, this state of affairs where you can buy a property and then expect to not be inconvenienced by corporations or governments in a myriad ways and then to sue if your peace is threatened is called 'civilization'.

it seems that what you imagine is a 'temporary inconvenience of a few families'. what I imagine is a world where every day there is a new 'temporary inconvenience' which you are supposed to endure 'for the good of the many', over and over again -- because that is what will happen when 'heroes' like the one in the article are allowed to run amok.

<comment><USER4> It really depends what "few" means.

A benevolent dictator would do a nationwide cost-benefit analysis, and decide if 30 families having no sleep for a week outweighs 100,000 people getting to work 10 minutes faster for the next decade.

While sometimes our existing legal system makes the same choice as our fictional benevolent dictator, sometimes it doesn't because rather than looking at the big picture, it gets tied up with nuances of wording of ordinances and precident written decades earlier without knowledge of the current situation.

Whenever that happens, on average, people's lives get worse and the economy weaker, compared to an identical country which made the benevolent dictator choice.

<comment><USER5> Or the dictator could put them up in a hotel for that week.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was an hacker news item, where some one analysed stackoverflow metrics and Amazon requirements (of sort) and predicted NOVA is going to be the location of HQ2 months if not a year ahead.

I disagree that VA was pre-decided, the way I see it is, they kind of knew what the front horses are but wanted what others can surprise them and/or improve their negotiation position.

* Austin had something given Whole Foods * Dallas is said to finish #3 for HQ2 (probable rumour) until a tell all from some one in search committee.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm not sure I believe any after-the-fact reporting on this. Amazon has a lot of incentive to make it seem like there was ever a genuine competition.

<comment><USER8> I actually have the opposite take - I've seen "the Amazon HQ is definitely at <place>" reported so many times, with different places, that I won't believe that they're actually putting it there until the electricity is on, people are commuting to it, and they have a contract with a landscaping firm.

<comment><USER9> I think "HQ" is an intentionally overloaded term, and what will eventually happen is that Amazon will build _something_ in most of these locations, constantly fighting against ballooning budgets typical with massive infrastructure projects

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's something to Friedman's point - that technology can let us work from _anywhere_. But far from distributing talent, it has concentrated it. If you can work from anywhere, why not just move to the nice coastal cities?

I think people are missing the forest for the trees - Amazon could have saved billions of dollars a year founding it anywhere else. But we cannot seem to break out this viscous cycle where the good jobs of the future go to tiny, expensive areas. And the primary benefit of these areas is they are already full of successful, well paid people.

Instead of paying 3 people in Tallahassee a decent $80,000, we are choosing to pay 1 person in San Fransisco $240,000.

<comment><USER11> That $240K person is 10x as useful as those $80k people, on average.

<comment><USER12> thats exactly what someone who's trying to justify a monstrous salary would say. In reality, doubtful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > The development firm JBG Smith plastered the inside of its office-building > elevators with life-size images of the interior of Amazon's Seattle > headquarters—"so that when they walked in there," says CEO Matt Kelly, "it > felt like home."

I assume they quickly ripped them down and plastered them with images of Apple Park since they pitched the same space to Apple shortly after.

</comment><comment><USER14> The locations were pre-selected, and Amazon was just testing the waters to know how much free corporate welfare various government institutions were willing to give the 18th largest company in America.

<comment><USER2> Except the whole article is about how Virginia won despite offering less "corporate welfare" than other places.

> All told, Virginia offered Amazon only $550 million in tax breaks and $195 > million in transportation improvements. But it pledged to plow $1.1 billion > into tech schooling. According to Moret, it was the only place in the nation > that made education the centerpiece of its pitch.

More than 2/3's of Virginia's investment into Amazon was in education and transit, which benefits everyone.

Philly, by contrast, offered $4.6 billion in subsidies, just $100 million for transit, and nothing for education: [https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/amazon- hq2-incredible-i...](https://slate.com/technology/2018/11/amazon- hq2-incredible-incentives-losing-cities-offered.html). Chicago offered $1.3 billion in tax breaks and $450 million for transit.

<comment><USER15> That's missing the point, though.

"We're moving to Virginia. Let's see if we can get other cities to bid and see if that improves Virginia's offered incentives."

(Plus free business intelligence hand delivered to them, and leverage if they want to put a distribution hub in one of the cities that didn't win. "You were willing to part with billions, you can't spare a couple dozen million in incentives for this warehouse?")

<comment><USER10> It didn't really seem like that's the case though. Maybe it made Virginia dump _more_ into infrastructure and education? Is that a bad thing?

<comment><USER15> It doesn't have to work for it to be worth _trying_.

Worst case you're at the cost you expected anyways.

<comment><USER10> I mean, fair. I guess I don't see the harm though. They made 20 cities seem very attractive to other companies. It was a bit showy, but it was nice to see the process in the open as opposed to the normal backrooms these deals happen in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> So i dont know should i feel happy for Virginia for succeeding attracting a tax-evading megacorporation to its area. "Close to regulators", yey. Now Amazon employees can just drive down to their office and negoatiate campaign money directly.

<comment><USER17> > Now Amazon employees can just drive down to their office and negoatiate > campaign money directly.

Well, at least the gridlock around 395 should keep them at bay for a little while until Bezos figures out how to bore a private tunnel under the Potomac.

<comment><USER18> At some point there was talk of allowing Amazon to build a helipad. I'd image that's easier than building a tunnel, due to how close HQ2 is to the Pentagon.

<comment><USER13> Approval of a helipad, which would not normally be a given because of the close distance to a major airport, was part of the deal.

<comment><USER18> Not only is it a no-fly zone because of the airport, its also in the special no-fly zone around DC.

<comment><USER19> Airports don't have no-fly zones, they have controlled airspace. It's common to have helicopter operations near airports. You talk to the tower and fly fairly normally.

Similarly, the DC Flight Restriction Zone (FRZ) is not a no-fly zone, but an area where flight operations are much more tightly managed. I (and many other pilots) have authorization to fly into the FRZ and land at the DC-3 airports for non-scheduled operations (in addition to the many air carriers who fly scheduled operations in/out of the area).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Scott Galloway called it along time ago on L2inc (YouTube).

<comment><USER21> And a really straightforward call at that. IIRC it was something like "Bezos has a 25 million dollar house already in DC, he's obviously putting HQ2 there". All the tax stuff, economic fit, etc etc just seems like it could really be fluff to occlude the simple fact that Bezos is most comfortable with HQ2 coming to area he's already well suited to operate out of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's so obvious in hindsight. Amazon HAS money already. They don't need big subsidies. What they need is people.

</comment><comment><USER23> What happened to New York?

<comment><USER24> We decided it was ridiculous to offer $1.5 billion in incentives when we would never recoup that, so we protested.

Amazon paid no federal taxes last year ([https://www.washingtonpost.com/us- policy/2019/02/16/amazon-p...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/us- policy/2019/02/16/amazon-paid-no-federal-taxes-billion-profits-last- year/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.4a1ffe4dd1d3)), and probably would have figured out how to pay little corporate state tax. At the promised level of 25,000 jobs with an average $150,000 salary, the city (but not the state) would have only seen an extra ~$150mil in income taxes.

There's lots of ways to run the projections and factor various costs/benefits, but few of them would have resulted in a 10x improvement in the offhand estimates.

It was a bad investment for the city the same way most sports stadiums are.

<comment><USER25> So what is the city doing with $1.5 billion that you freed up?

<comment><USER26> Nothing, because it's not actual money that they have. It's money that Amazon would have owed had they moved there that they would have given back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> By being close to DC and thus having easy access to government.

Do people really think Amazon really left it up to chance? Then that chance just somehow worked out to right next to DC and the biggest talent hub on the East Coast.

Sure, I'll buy that to go with my new bridge.

<comment><USER28> The, "biggest talent hub" on the East Coast apparently sends most of its Graduates to inferior schools in Massachusetts. More like the biggest military hotel on the east coast

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's nothing here to indicate which parts were relevant or mattered to Amazon's decision.

Big Gov is just starting in the cloud, and Amazon wants the biggest piece of that gadzillion dollars. I can see a private wing of AWS running most of the military, for example.

<comment><USER30> Virginia tried very hard to make sure that HQ2 is not just more government contracting jobs- the region is already very exposed to government work as it is[1]. The limited tax breaks Amazon gets are directly linked to the new jobs NOT being government related.

[1]: From 2010-2015, the Washington DC MSA was basically the only large tech hub that lost tech workers, because of the Sequester and the constant government budget showdowns. Virginia viewed HQ2 as an insurance against that.

<comment><USER29> What 'Virginia wants' is almost irrelevant.

"Virginia tried very hard to make sure that HQ2 is not just more government contracting jobs"

Virginia can think whatever they want, but Amazon will do what it wants to do.

The objective is not 'contracting jobs' \- that's not Amazon's business. The objective is to deeply entrench AWS services and products into government.

The amount of money - and especially the incumbency - provided to the winner of 'gov cloud' will be gigantic.

Defence and civie agencies spent $6.5B on cloud services in 2018, up 35% (!) from the year before, that's an incredible growth rate. [1]

This is going to grow like wild for some time, and that's Amazon's objective.

The lobbying/relationship efforts will be important as well.

Virginia is just the local government, they are actually not hugely part of the equation other than the specific incentives as you point out. Even the 'investment in education' is not hugely sweet for businesses, as the majority of workers won't come from Virginia anyhow.

The best thing Virginia can do is 'be a good government' \- make sure the infrastructure, healthcare, schools etc. are well managed.

[1] [https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/09/federal- clo...](https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2018/09/federal-cloud- spending-trends-toward-all-time-high/151221/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My understanding is that they didn't actively try to lose it and protest against something that would have brought in billions of revenue and lots of high-paying jobs, the way NY City did.

</comment><comment><USER32> This is a long-winded expose of northern Virginia. I only made it about half- way through, there were some subsidies promised apparently.

In any case, I never considered locations other than Northern VA as viable for the HQ2 business, it was 90% going there from the start IMO due to 1) Existing Amazon Offices 2) Existing Amazon Datacenters and major internet exchanges 3) Proximity to DC.

So, to present this as to 'How Virginia Won' is a little wishful IMO. Virginia did nothing other than happen to be the place where other companies are doing business.

<comment><USER33> Virginia won because it scored well on everything but cost of living. I think it's quite likely that the criteria was essentially selected with NoVA in mind.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I think the criteria was "We're building in NoVA unless someone gives us a deal we literally can't refuse." NYC tried that, but there was citizen outrage (apparently).

<comment><USER15> Well, and they're still expanding in NYC anyways.</comment></comment></comment></comment>