Casper went to war with popular mattress review site, then financed its takeover - <AUTHOR> https://www.recode.net/2017/9/23/13153814/casper-sleepopolis-lawsuits-mattress-reviews <comment><USER2> I'm fascinated by this story. I was searching for a new mattress months ago. I found a casper.com case study from a web designer, which piqued my interest in a Casper mattress. After some research, I found sleepopolis.com. The site owner reviewed a dozen mattresses and his opinion was that Casper rated lower than its competitors, like Leesa, especially for side sleepers like me.

Later, the site owner mentioned he was in a legal battle with Casper and fully intended on going to war until the end. It was all over his site, blog posts and everything.

I was ready to buy a couple weeks ago so I checked sleepopolis.com again to check in and make a final decision. His site had been sold, all his posts about the legal stuff were gone and I remember feeling like the valuable "human-perspective" opinions of the writer were gone.

I would love to hear the perspective of the original Sleepopolis writer/owner - he built a valuable thing. Likely his deal prevents him from ever speaking about it publicly.

Side note: I bought a Leesa and it's very firm compared to the W bed I bought a decade ago. It's a few hundred dollars cheaper but we will probably return it before 100 days and buy W again.

<comment><USER3> Here is the original motivation:

[https://ideamensch.com/derek-hales/](https://ideamensch.com/derek-hales/)

Here is a cache of his perspective:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F3VoYT...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:F3VoYTa0IA0J:https://www.honestmattressreviews.com/casper- buys-sleepopolis-number-1-paid-affiliate-site/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=tw)

"Casper filed the lawsuit against me in April, 2016, on the same day that it sued two other websites that review mattresses. The suit makes a number of different allegations, but they are primarily focused on my Casper mattress reviews and how I inform my readers about referral links. I am currently fighting the lawsuit and pushing for it to be dismissed with prejudice.

It is my opinion that this lawsuit is nothing more than an attempt to silence my voice and infringe my first amendment right. When my lawyer asked Casper what it would take to resolve the case, Casper's settlement demand was that I take down my reviews of Casper's mattress and never write about Casper again. I don't think Casper is concerned about my referral link disclosures at all – they just don't like criticism of their product."

<comment><USER4> I remember reading about this when it happened. The owner of Sleepopolis was down to fight, so it's quite sad that it ended this way. We may be the wiser, but the average consumer will never know that any of this happened.

I'm rather sad that the owner sold the blog, likely knowing where it was going, but when you are embroiled in a legal battle like this and have the option to take a decent paycheck and have it all end, I can see why they took it. I can sit here from afar and say that I would have told them "no, fuck you" and fought to the bitter end, but who can truly say they would do that until actually presented with such a decision?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'll diverge from the main topic here for a moment. When I moved to the US I was puzzled to discover that there're stores that specialize in mattresses. Later it became apparent that US has, what seems to me, a bizarre fascination with mattresses. In my home-country (and I think many other countries) most people grew up sleeping on thin cotton-filled mattresses and the idea of mattress brands and "technology" just sounds preposterous. It seems like mattress firms have been able to reshape how a whole populace thinks about what elsewhere is a comparatively straight-forward product. Does a person really need hi-tech space-technology memory foam for a thousand dollars to sleep on? This study for example suggests that not: [http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11198791](http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/11198791)

<comment><USER6> You might have noticed Americans are obsessed with technological solutionism, whether it's the form of products or pills. There's a cure for anything.

<comment><USER7> I think that's unfair towards technology, which is our primary and - I dare to say - only tool for solving problems[0].

What Americans, and other Western cultures, have a problem with is an obsession with _consumptionism_ \- the belief that you can always _buy_ a solution for everything, the belief that the best solution comes from those who advertise most, the belief that they even _care_ about you solving your problem. The gullibility to buy "space-tech" widgets with "new QuantumPower formula" that is obvious bullshit, from people who obviously have zero incentive to help you, and all the incentives to take your money.

\--

[0] - I mean, what else is there? Magic? Hoping for divine intervention? Pretending a problem doesn't exist?

<comment><USER8> You are conflating science and technology. For example, people want to get a new mattress because they are having problems sleeping at night. Yes, you can try to find a more technologically advanced mattress and hope it solves your problem, or you can exercise more -- which has been shown to reduce insomnia in scientific tests.

<comment><USER9> Or you can do both. Sure, the mattress might only marginally increase your quality of sleep, but if the price exceeds the usefulness you get out of it, I'm not sure what the issue is. We spend a third of our time sleeping, after all. Might as well make the most of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand this. Large parts of the review business doesn't seem to abide by common ethical standards. Paid adverts are deceptively presented as objective reviews in a myriad ways. Is it even legal?

<comment><USER11> Nope not legal but the FTC/others are really bad at enforcing it. Look at all the brand "embassadors" out there promoting products on personal accounts and trying to hide their affiliation as much as possible.

<comment><USER12> Which makes it really hard for people who actually enjoy the products to talk about them. If I mention any brand name in my comments, it seems about 40%-50% of the time I'll get someone accusing me of being paid to mention the name. Word of mouth is being ruined by advertisers who don't know what word of mouth actually means.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, publishing something online is not quite the same as traditional word of mouth, which is shared between friends that know and trust each other. It's a lot harder to discern the biases and motives behind a post from an unknown person on the internet.

Brought to you by Carl's Jr.

<comment><USER14> $ecretary of $tate ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I got a Casper mattress when they were new and liked it a lot. But recently I had another occasion to buy a mattress — to my dismay, upon doing some research I found out they bought out a review site and they'd also increased prices and swapped out latex with cheaper materials. So I went with a less expensive Leesa mattress this time around and I sleep just as well as before.

<comment><USER16> Was this Leesa to replace the Casper? If so, that's a tiny amount of time for it to last.

<comment><USER15> No, I donated the Casper to a friend when I moved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> [http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store- bubble/](http://freakonomics.com/podcast/mattress-store-bubble/) mentions that a mattress store only has to sell 1 mattress per day to be profitable, now that's a profit margin.

</comment><comment><USER18> I recently went bought a Casper. I didn't like it. It gave me a sore back and neck and didn't get any better until I switched. So next I ordered a Leesa. But that had the strong chemical smell. And I left it unpacked in a room with ventilation for two weeks and the smell didn't stop. Then I ordered a Tuft and Needle, and despite being the cheapest of the three (I think?) it had no odor issues and was surprisingly the more comfortable. I'm very happy with it. The return on the other two mattresses was completely painless and easy, so I highly recommend taking advantage of their 90-100 day trials.

<comment><USER19> Curious: Did you consider the Purple? I tend to get pretty hot at night (no AC) and that one seems to boast the best marketing jargon with regards to cooling. Can you speak to the breathability of the others you've tried?

<comment><USER16> I'm in the market for a new mattress, and Purple has great advertising. But as far as I've seen in reviews, it hasn't lived up to the hype. That being said... [https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/69yukn/purple_mat...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Mattress/comments/69yukn/purple_mattress_suing_reviewer/)

<comment><USER20> I have one and love it, fwiw.

<comment><USER21> My wife and I also love our king sized purple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I bet there are plenty of people Googling specifically for coupon codes and then lifting them off of review sites like Sleepopolis without even reading the review. In that situation it does not even matter how favourable the review is, just that the site has good SEO.

If you find a substantial seeming coupon that's valid then that's a major positive feeling that encourages completing the purchase.

</comment><comment><USER23> You can buy a whole shipping container of Memory Foam mattresses like the Casper kind for about $200/Queen, $100/twin, $250/King from China. Log on to Import Genius and you can find all kinds of excellent suppliers. In Canada they get them in and wholesale them out. They typically sell them for about $400 for a Queen. I have one in my guest room. Doesn't smell, is comfortable if you like memory foam. My guests so far like it. I like to sleep on individual pocket mattresses (traditional).

Anyway, the other mattresses I bought for my dwelling in Toronto was from Queensway Mattress Warehouse across from Ikea in Etobicoke. Double size that is completely organic cotton with individual coils with a thick pillow top and box spring for $600 CAD. It is the best mattress I have eve purchases in my life.

My primary dwelling in DFW has mattresses that cost 3 times as much and are half as comfortable. I have come to realize that there are only 2 or 3 companies that sell mattresses in the USA and that is why they are so expensive. Total ripoff in America when it comes to mattresses.

Casper doesn't seem like anything special since anyone can buy from China and mark it up and sell it in a market like the US for a big profit since there is no competition really.

Casper just has good marketing.

<comment><USER24> You don't have to go that far.

[http://www.thefoamfactory.com/mattress/memorymattress.html](http://www.thefoamfactory.com/mattress/memorymattress.html)

Will sell you the foam to size, as a mattress or a topper, in different densities, etc.

I've bought their memory foam mattresses and latex toppers, I thought they were fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I like how the final remarks so clearly show the shift in perspective, review and affiliate marketing after the Casper influence. Many of these on-demand mattress companies had 30-day return policies: has any one tried and returned such a mattress? My suspicion is that the large unwieldy-mess of the mattress suppresses ability for the customer to return, so the police is great on paper, but then you end up stuck with the mattress and settle?

<comment><USER26> From what I've read, the companies have done a lot to make this as frictionless as possible by picking up the mattresses rather than requiring the customer to package and ship them themselves if necessary. Here are two I'm aware of:

Casper: "we'll send a courier over to remove the product from your home and either donate it to a local charity or have it recycled." ([https://casper.com/faqs/returns-exchanges/tell-me-more- about...](https://casper.com/faqs/returns-exchanges/tell-me-more-about- the-100-night-trial))

Tuft & Needle: "Instead of shipping it back to us, we'll work together with you to donate the mattress to a local charity or non-profit organization. Upload or email us a scanned or photographed copy of your donation receipt and we'll process your full refund. If no charity is available nearby for donation, we'll arrange a 3rd party pickup for the mattress." ([https://www.tuftandneedle.com/faq/#category:3](https://www.tuftandneedle.com/faq/#category:3))

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> As someone who grew up with the web, it feels odd that I distrust all of these direct-to-consumer product sites by default. Mattresses, underwear, watches, shaving equipment, etc. It all feels like a gimmick.

</comment><comment><USER28> I have one right now, (I bought the mid level one) and I don't like it. Not comfortable on the long run and it seems it is actually smaller (by one inch in both sides and length) than my older mattress. If you are tall it can be a problem.

Good marketing, not so great of a product.

</comment><comment><USER29> I bought a high-end Stearns and Foster 15+ years ago from a department store and it's about due for a replacement. It was expensive and worth it.

Now it seems the market is all about overpriced mattress stores with sleazy salesmen or start-ups selling fabric covered foam.

<comment><USER30> I recently bought the same brand after the Leesa didn't work out. Tried out a lot of beds and the Sterns and Foster is working out, seemed too pricey but it's fine. There just doesn't seem to be enough support for me in an all foam mattress. It's a bummer because going to a mattress store is a complete and utter hassle, just like car salespeople. They use the same tactics and I want none of it. And you hear the sales people say thing like "Well beds haven't changed much however the sleep science has come a long way." What the hell are you talking about. So I went in the store, tested out mattresses and then left and priced them online. Called them back and beat them up on the price and bought it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The FTC should treat sites which offer reviews and have affiliate links the same way they do as celebrity endorsements on social media: They should be required to disclose that, and fine those who don't.

<comment><USER32> This is already the case.

<comment><USER31> If it was, this article wouldn't be relevant. Many sites feature affiliate links but don't state they are receiving commission.

<comment><USER33> ...and if they're reported to FTC action will be taken.

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/nat...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/native-advertising-guide-businesses)

[https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftc...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business- center/guidance/ftcs-endorsement-guides-what-people-are-asking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Does anyone sleep on a hard surface? I generally don't, but when I get a migraine, I can't stand to sleep on a soft surface. I also can't deal with pillows. Maybe the reason is that I can put my body in the exact position I want without any give or movement. When I don't have a migraine, I sleep on a thin foam, but I don't mind hard surfaces with a blanket covering.

</comment><comment><USER35> I invested in a Rumpl blanket and eventually took to putting that on the carpet, a smaller blanket to support the head, and one top cover. The Rumpl is designed to be of a similar quality to a sleeping bag but easier to spread and wash. It's an "as if perpetually travelling" mindset.

<comment><USER36> Dude, are you recommending we sleep on the floor?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> For anyone reading this interested in mattresses, I highly recommend natural latex. It's pricey, but 7 years and 17k+ hours of use later, it's still in near impeccable condition, sleeps perfectly (I got the firm) and is easily the best $2k investment I've ever made.

<comment><USER38> Except when it gets hot. Latex holds heat like a brick; if you haven't got air conditioning and live somewhere where it gets warm, stay well clear of latex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> One of the reasons I trust the reviews on The Wirecutter/Sweethome is because they are pretty up front with disclosing they get paid via affiliate links. I don't know how these sites built up enough trust to influence people's purchasing decisions.

</comment><comment><USER40> We bought a Costco Novaform Serafina 14" about six months ago, unpacked it and let it pop for a few days, and its been the most comfortable bed we've owned.

<comment><USER41> My wife and I really enjoyed our Novaform when we first got it however it has developed a lump in the middle where we usually don't sleep so it bothers the wife. We will be in the market for a new one soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> How do you even buy non memory foam these days?

I really don't understand the benefit - if you ever move in your sleep then you will be uncomfortable.

<comment><USER43> There are hybrid mattresses that give you strengths of both. Basically foam wrapped coils. So you still get the nice spring action for sex, but for sleeping it conforms to your body, and doesn't wake your partner. Ordered Saatva mattress, and it's by FAR the best mattress I've ever slept on. Organic cotton, no horrible gas smell, no overheating like full foam, eco friendly construction. The thing is magical.

$1027 delivered + removal of old mattress.

[https://www.saatvamattress.com/the- mattresses.html](https://www.saatvamattress.com/the-mattresses.html)

<comment><USER44> Seems like a decent matress but the reviews page were somewhat suspicious. 12,000 reviews most 5 stars and first time ever I found a website where each review is professionally written - with nice grammar, punctuation, full sentences, few nicely worded paragraphs. Most start with "client" fear of buying online and ends with full relief upon sleeping on it first night.

<comment><USER43> No doubt a lot of reviews are nonsense, you'll find that anywhere though. Seriously good mattress, especially for $1000 though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I bought a Zinus Memory Foam Mattress recently on Amazon for a 1/3 of the price of Casper. Most comfy I've ever slept on. Not sure why one would pay 3x the price.

<comment><USER46> My general feeling is that two mattresses might feel the same at first, but they could age differently.

I don't know if this is the case here, and it's difficult to assess this even with side-by-side testing in a showroom. What you really need is years worth of data from genuine reviews.

As this article indicates, genuine reviews are hard to come by.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> So what were the 3? I only see Sleepopolis named.

<comment><USER48> I know a guy that offered X service, and also registered a ton of the "is X service a scam" websites

great SEO at the time, probably still is.

the moral of the story is that this article is probably affiliate marketing for sleepopolis and leveraged buyouts

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It amuses me that many of the informal reviews and attestations in the comments echo the mattress sales pitch. Also buyers-bias.

I'm not saying anything is untoward.

I'm just saying that when someone mentions how many hours they slept on a mattress I can immediately see a sales rep or marketer pattering. Also reminds me of when audiophiles talk about their kit.

<comment><USER50> Also, how can a store have a policy where you destroy the item and get your money back, without the price being a complete and utter scam with markup that's through the roof?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would be your ideal API for news content? - <AUTHOR>

There are APIs like Daylife, NYTimes, Guardian, even Zemanta.
What would your idea API for the news look like? What's missing in the existing solutions?
Images? Video? More customization? More analytics and number crunching abilities? <comment><USER2> Let me send a URL and retrieve the unique news story that it's a part of, or perhaps multiple news stories with confidence intervals.

I don't know of a single API that currently does this.

</comment><comment><USER3>
      def getNews():
         return _("Sorry, nothing has happened yet today, why not try %s while you're waiting?" % todo.next)

;)</comment>


Eating Ramen by Yourself Is an Antidote to Everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-and-off-the-avenue/eating-ramen-by-yourself-is-an-antidote-to-everything <comment><USER2> I haven't made it over to Ichiran, but have hesitated over the price. It's $19 for a standard bowl which is pretty ridiculous especially given it's location (Bushwick). That does include tip, but even a soda is $5...

<comment><USER3> The author mentions having to wait in a 20 minute queue in order to get to the door.

The prices are just reflective of basic economics.

They need people like you to hesitate at the cost, otherwise their queue would be even longer, making for a more frustrated customer base, and their business would suffer.</comment></comment>


Uber Posts $708M Loss as Finance Head Leaves - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-posts-708-million-loss-as-finance-head-leaves-1496272500 <comment><USER2> $708 million loss, narrowed from $991 million last quarter

18% growth from last quarter (note: that's not Y/Y. this is ridiculously fast, given the huge base.)

708mm loss / 3.4 billion in revenue is only about 20% under even. And what most people miss, is that the 3.4 billion is the 30% cut Uber takes from a ride. Prices don't have to rise 20% to break even, prices have to rise 6% (assuming no efficiency improvements via pool etc, which is frankly ridiculous)

Yeah... Uber is doing fine.

<comment><USER3> > Uber is doing fine.

Yes and no, they are in a space which is extremely price competitive. I literally am watching Uber take a dramatic hit in my area right now. Lyft came to town and probably 80% of the drivers solely use them now, driving up the Uber prices.

Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people. Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here and the people think Ubers a snaky company.

I realize this is ancidotal, but everywhere I go (I travel a lot, switching between Uber and lyft), Lyft seems to be more popular among drivers and riders. They simply don't use it because of price/market share. However, adjust the price or driver's and the equation changes.

I honestly still don't see them making it out of their situation.

<comment><USER4> I'm not buying that most people use Lyft in your area - passengers or drivers. I believe you think that and your circle of people may also be doing the same, but beyond that, I'm guessing there's a lot of bias. Especially if you're saying everywhere you go Lyft seems to be more popular among riders. It's just not true at all.

For my own anecdote, I'd bet 75% of my FB friends with smartphones within my age range, 21-40, have Uber on their phone or have only ridden Uber. And a fraction of them will have Lyft. Among people I actually know, this is roughly the case, with Lyft being a bit more popular, but that's because of who I am/surround myself with.

<comment><USER5> As long as we're sharing anecdotes, most of the people I know, parents and young kids included, have made the switch to Lyft starting about 8 months ago. They seem to be the less evil company, so people enjoy working for and using them.

<comment><USER6> Most of my family and friends exclusively use Uber because of Travis and his values.

<comment><USER7> What values?

<comment><USER6> Libertarian

<comment><USER8> So money, gotcha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A couple things to note:

1\. This is new loss excluding 'employee stock compensation and other items'. Anecdotally I've heard that Uber offers, particularly for advanced technical positions, are extremely stock heavy. This could be a big exclusion. It's also a bit of a double standard since so much was made of Snap's recent losses which were largely stock based compensation driven.

2\. Past discussions on HN have noted that Uber counts the full Pool fare as revenue but this is not the case for Uber X or Uber Black. So if Pool is a rising share of rides (I've heard it is) then Uber will show strong revenue growth without a proportional growth in net income.

And a question: How long will Uber's investors tolerate the current situation? The company is losing money at a record setting pace, has a new scandal every day, and has seemingly no plans for a liquidity event. Even though the on- paper growth is fantastic people must want to get their money out. If this was a public company there would be a huge sell off.

</comment><comment><USER10> If I understood the Reuters article correctly, Uber made $3.4 billion and therefore lost $4.1 billion in the first quarter of 2017.

Can someone help me understand what Uber spends $4.1 billion dollars on in 3 months? Is it because they're subsidizing rides by that much on average? (i.e. paying drivers more than riders pay)

<comment><USER11> They're paying drivers 70% of the fare, so no.

It's a very good question. They must burn a lot of money on developing self driving cars and other research. But can it really be this much?

<comment><USER12> Advertising and expanding around the globe would be a good place to start. It's not cheap to find/put top-notch staff on the other side of the world to expand a business, open offices, recruit drivers and customers, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They haven't broken out the losses.

(a) Are they profitable in the US? That would be a huge milestone.

(b) If not entire US, are they profitable in top-X US urban markets, and thus losses are all due to expansion into 2nd/3rd quartile of cities?

(c) Maybe some metrics like "After subtracting R&D efforts in self-driving cars, and legal fees due to multiple lawsuits, we are on average making X cents for every mile/minute driven."

"Our drivers take X days to enroll, and then work for us Y hours per week, and the turnover rate is Z."

<comment><USER14> From internal sources, I can say with some confidence that they are profitable in most major US cities.

(I do not work for Uber, so take this for what it's worth)

<comment><USER15> Is that under the old accounting system (which paid out too little to drivers) or the correct one?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Last quarter people drew attention to the different accounting methods used for pool versus other uber services, with pool booking the entire price of the ride as revenue rather than just uber's take. Does anyone have a sense of how much of the increase in revenue is due to increased ridership versus a shift in demand towards pool? Do flat fares use the same methodology?

</comment><comment><USER17> Great example of how the headlines can drive a story more than the story itself.

While Uber may have posted $708 million of losses, it is also up 18% in revenue from last quarter. That's 3.4 _billion_ dollars in the first quarter of 2017.

 _Uber is making approximately $1,500,000 per hour._

I dislike Uber as much as the next person for ethical reasons, but a company that can achieve millions of dollars in revenue per day, _in 7 years_ , is quite extraordinary.

<comment><USER18> $1,500,000 per hour in revenue sounds great.

Spending $1,872,000 per hour to bring in $1,500,000 per hour sounds less great.

I understand that it takes money to make money, but this is one of the most extreme cases in a business.

<comment><USER19> People were saying the same thing about Twitter forever and turned out to be largely wrong. I have a feeling the company making billions of dollars in revenue has some smart people who figured out how not to mess this up.

But who knows maybe Uber will stop being the dominate taxi / self-driving car company globally over the next decade and mess it all up. Or not... but I doubt this large expenditure was done without foresight. The question is whether they can dominate for years to come in a high-growth industry, which it seems likely given the wide gap between them and the competition.

<comment><USER20> > People were saying the same thing about Twitter forever and turned out to be > largely wrong.

Twitter lost 456 million dollars in 2016 [1] and I don't remember them ever being profitable so i don't know how those people are wrong.

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

<comment><USER21> If you look, their losses are because of stock-based comp, not because of spending. It's generally a GAAP loss, not a cash loss.

<comment><USER15> It still means that their owners won't see any of the money generated by the company. Before compensation, most companies are profitable. And in the end it doesn't matter to the shareholder if you pay stock compensation or cash.

<comment><USER22> Not true. Stock compensation is dilutitive to existing shareholders putting future pressure on earnings per share and generally means you'll see a share buyback further reducing cash on balance sheet or increasing debt. Further, large blocks of lockup expirations cause selling pressure. Once talent sells stock compensation how do you then retain them? Do you grant more shares diluting existing shareholders further?

<comment><USER15> It is different for incentives but not for the actual outcome. Obviously you'd have to compare the same compensation levels, i.e. 100k in cash vs 100k in stocks (at payout).

For start ups it can turn out cheaper as the compensation will be lower in stocks if the company doesn't perform well. From a shareholder perspective it's compensation and shouldn't be treated differently. Excluding it from costs is dangerous as it gives the impression that it's optional costs when in reality, you need to pay the stock compensation to retain talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Revenue: $3.4B Loss: $708M Growth: 18% Quarter over quarter Cash to burn: $7.2B

With the current burn rate, Uber can burn another 10 quarters.

<comment><USER24> That would be at 0% growth, which is unlikely.

<comment><USER15> If much of the growth comes from Pool (where gross fares count as revenues, not their cut), growing revenue could actually increase losses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Uber is great, but I've relocated to Bali and the competitors here are doing such a fantastic job at giving me reasons not to use Uber.

Go-jek is cheaper, you can pay with cash, and they offer like 15 other services like... go-food, go-massage, go-cleaning, etc.

It's incredible.

</comment><comment><USER26> So Uber made 612M more in revenue and lost 283M less money, in 17Q1 than 16Q4.

Naively, that seems like a good sign (for Uber), but it could also just be that they stopped growth spending or are hiding losses in unreported figures.

Does anyone have more insight in to what could have caused it?

<comment><USER27> Tangentially related: is there a seasonal ebb and flow to Uber usage that could soften or sharpen this delta? I know I'm much less likely to want to walk 3 miles in February than October, but that's just one person in one city.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder how they'll be able to raise more cash with all this turmoil within the company. Even a 15B [1] cash hoard can't last much longer at this burn rate.

[1][https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/dealbook/why-...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/business/dealbook/why- uber-keeps-raising-billions.html)

<comment><USER6> People are standing in line.

<comment><USER15> People who are willing to take a substantial share at a $70bn valuation? I'm not so sure about that. An IPO could be their only chance to raise significant amounts of capital. They'll need to use the time they have with their current cash balance (~2 years) to look good enough for an IPO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> They do not have a sustainable business. They're clearly pumping up revenue with subsidies (which is why they lose so much money). I do use Uber occasionally but when I do there's so many offers and deals that I never pay anything close to a break-even price. If you sell dollar bills for 85 cents it's easy to have lots of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER29> They are surely gonna run out of top c-level execs faster than out of cash.

</comment><comment><USER30> I like how the WSJ headline tries to imply casualty between loss and leaving of finance head. Why cannot these guys simply share the news instead of trying to imply the cause.

<comment><USER31> "as, conjunction: used to indicate that something happens during the time when something else is taking place: Frank watched him as he ambled through the crowd | as she grew older, she kept more to herself."

So they're just trying to mention both big news items in the same headline. The casualty[sic] is all in your head.

<comment><USER30> Maybe, but "as" also can be used in place of "because or since". Here is another headline from Reuters "Uber's finance head leaves; company's quarterly loss narrows". In my opinion, both the headlines provide a different slant to the same story.

P.S:- We both misspelled "causality", what a "casualty" :)

<comment><USER31> That use of "as" would require a comma: "they were free, as the case had not been proved."

P.S.: I noticed the misspelling of causality, which is was the [sic] was trying to indicate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Has anybody published an estimate of what Uber's cash reserves might look like, or how long they can remain solvent at these insane burn levels? Losses of $3B/year seem like they would put almost anybody out of business.

<comment><USER33> From the article: "The company, which has raised some $15 billion in equity and debt funding, said it still has $7.2 billion of cash left on hand, about the same as it had at the end of last year."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I know most people hate on uber, but it has impacted my life a lot. I think the model they've demonstrated is a legit model, and the ruthlessness with which they pursue it should not take anything away from the company's value. In fact, it should add. I want companies to show a giant middle finger to monopolistic city laws that harm citizens.

<comment><USER35> >I want companies to show a giant middle finger to monopolistic city laws that harm citizens.

Just wait until a private company holds a monopoly on an essential service, especially one with a history of unethical conduct like Uber. The city laws will seem like the good old days in comparison.

<comment><USER34> Why would uber have a monopoly? There are numerous competitors already.

<comment><USER35> You don't have to be an outright monopoly in the literal sense to cause damage. An overwhelmingly dominant position like the one Microsoft had in the past is enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> [http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

</comment><comment><USER37> Paywall bypass: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-posts-708-million-loss- as-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/uber-posts-708-million-loss-as-finance- head-leaves-1496272500)

</comment><comment><USER38> You could say they lost an Otto.

<comment><USER39> Hahaa

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Reuters (non-paywall): [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-results- idUSKBN18R3E...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-results- idUSKBN18R3EQ)

<comment><USER41> wsj Article Unlock bookmark: javascript:window.location.href='http(s)://m.facebook.com/l.php?u='+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href);

remove the '(' and ')' around s in https

<comment><USER29> This is incredible. Context: wsj allows clicks from facebook to view the content without paid subscription.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> > Yes and no, they are in a space which is extremely price competitive. I > literally am watching Uber take a dramatic hit in my area right now.

You are 'literally' watching Uber take a 'dramatic' hit. Okay.

Extremely price competitive market, yet you only mention Lyft.

> Lyft came to town and probably 80% of the drivers solely use them now, > driving up the Uber prices.

Where did you get your numbers from? Just making stuff up as you go?

> Now, I only use Lyft - as do most of the people.

I only use Uber - as do most of the people. See how this generic mud-slinging like commentary works?

> Plus, most of the Uber drivers are shady here

Making blanket statements with words like 'shady' and 'here' is cheap.

You did not mention a single, verifiable fact. I can apply this kind of narrative to pretty much anything.

> I honestly still don't see them making it out of their situation.

Wrap it up with a cliche 'honesty...'. I do not understand comments like this; how much is Lyft paying you?

<comment><USER43> Commenting this uncivilly will get your account banned on HN, so please don't do that, and please in particular don't accuse other users of astroturfing just because you happen to hold a different view than they do. It's a popular internet trope but it isn't allowed here.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14456973) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER44> That said, harsh — maybe, but @korzun still has a point.

Original comment is (clearly) biased and doesn't align with the actual facts. I wonder why it got upvoted in the first place.

I don't think the accusation has been made because "one happens to hold a different view". It is harsh, but to be fair, OP failed to make a valid point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Could we stop posting links to paywalled content, for crying out loud? Or at least require that it be marked? Most news is available somewhere without a subscription.

<comment><USER46> 1\. Click "web" link below story here on HN 2\. Click first result on Google

WSJ doesn't paywall if the referrer is Google.

<comment><USER47> FWIW, I still hit the paywall after clicking on the Google search result.

<comment><USER45> Yes, I don't think that trick has worked for some time.

<comment><USER48> Google doesn't seem to work anymore but Facebook does; I was able to find it and read the whole article by searching for the title in Facebook.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So for $70b I can buy a wallet that pays me -2.8b per year? Not to be negative, but it sounds like it is time for a down round.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Revenue up 18% Loss down 1/3rd 22x+ the revenue of $snap

So much important work left to do, but congrats to the @Uber team."

[https://twitter.com/jason/status/870059383765389312](https://twitter.com/jason/status/870059383765389312)

<comment><USER51> Why the silly dig at Snap? If you subtract Snap's employee stock program it lost $200m last quarter which is a lot less than Uber's $700m loss.

<comment><USER52> Uber might actually exist in 10 years, the dig at Snap seems extremely fair game in this frothy environment

<comment><USER51> At their respective current burn rates they both probably have 3-4 years left.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ancient Teeth Bacteria Record Disease Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.hngn.com/articles/1322/20130217/ancient-teeth-bacteria-record-disease-evolution.htm

<comment><USER2> I get blocked and told this website is adult or pornography...</comment>


How do states track sales of goods  36,000 ft in the air? - <AUTHOR> How do states track sales of goods @ 36,000 ft in the air?
In United States typically 500 ft to 1000 ft is considered private property - however, what happens as you go into outspace (literally) w/state and government ownership.
Musings... <comment><AUTHOR> Maritime has the Law of the Sea to set ownership, etc. curious if anyone knows aerospace comparable "Law of the Sea" Basis for Martime (Anyone aware of comparable for Air/Space): The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), also called the Law of the Sea Convention or the Law of the Sea treaty, is the international agreement that resulted from the third United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS III), which took place between 1973 and 1982.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why is this of interest? With super-cheap energy the cost to lift a transaction may be less than the taxes incurred for the transaction on ground (without leaving the footprint of the state w/respect to longitude/latitude)... musings.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I explain Tor to my Mom? - <AUTHOR>

When I start talking cookies, privacy, security she thinks oatmeal, tightens the grip on her purse and whispers: "why, what, wait, who's listening?". Keep in mind that this is a 60+ lady who's getting along well with Ubuntu; however, all she does is power up, click-open a browser and plays online.
Point is: with most of today's computing done in a browser and most users being non-techie: is it even possible to spread proper secure/private browsing? A simple click-install-go solution? <comment><USER2> Tor has bad latency & availability characteristics for everyday use. You probably shouldn't try to push your 60+ year old mother into using it unless she's e.g. a journalist or political activist.

When Tor is actually appropriate, the drop-and-go version is the Tor Browser Bundle, which uses a customized Firefox distribution.

[https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en](https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en)

Note that all this does is proxy your requests, it won't prevent you from deanonymizing yourself through characteristic requests, traffic patterns, or whatever. That's often where people screw up, since it involves a running battle where losing a few bits of entropy here and there can and will expose you.

But to explain it:

A group of people don't want others to be able to snoop on what websites they want to view. So they agree to lump all their requests together, and then they don't keep any records about who ordered what once it has been delivered.

If someone's snooping, all they can tell is that someone in the group requested it - they can't point a finger at any specific person.

</comment><comment><USER3> You do realize TOR is going to be unsafe for the average person and their every day browsing, right? Your traffic is going to be visible to any person running an exit node, so if you send any personal information or login credentials over a non-https connection, the person on the other end can read your information.

As someone else mentioned, if your mom is a journalist or political activist, and needs to access information anonymously, while at the same time is careful enough not to release any information over TOR that could be used to identify herself, than it might be in her advantage. If you're setting her up on TOR so she can browse her favorite social networks, cooking blogs, and e-mail, then she's most likely going to be less secure, entrusting personal information to strangers instead of her ISP, and waiting on the slow load times of the TOR network.

TOR isn't some magic bullet that makes browsing safe and anonymous. In short, I'd recommend your mom doesn't use TOR. Based on her profile, she's going to make the mistake of sending unencrypted personal information, and when that happens, I think she's better off trusting her ISP over a stranger with that data.

</comment><comment><USER4> From the top comment on: [http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19twt9/el...](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/19twt9/eli5_the_deep_web_onion_routing_and_tor/)

"Let's say I want to access the website that's located at this server. My computer connects to another computer in the Tor network, which connects to another, and so on. Eventually, one of them will connect to the server, which can send back information using this pattern. However, none of the computers in the Tor network know who is getting what. The computer that you connect to isn't the same as the one that connected to the server, so it's very anonymous."

</comment><comment><USER5> I use the analogy of Russian dolls with secret messages inside them. You don't know how many dolls there are and you can only ever open the doll that was intended for you. The secret message either contains instructions for what to do, or who to pass the dolls to next.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, dolls or an onion appear to be the best analogies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Imagine I want to send a letter to someone, but I am worried that it may be intercepted (by the government, for the sake of argument). So instead of sending it directly to my recepient, I make arrangements with some reliable friends so that if they receive a letter from one of us, they take it out of the envelope and put it in different one, addressed to another friend. To make sure the letter doesn't travel forever we add dots at the end; once there are more than three (four, five...), we send the letter to the original intended recepient. Nobody knows for sure who is the person who sent the letter originally (as I can put different number of dots at the end of the letter). We can also make it so that none of the intermediate parties know what the message says (possibly even who is the final recipient?) by encoding the message at every step and using extra envelopes. At the outset I write my letter, add some dots at the end and send it to one to my friends, picked randomly, together with an extra envelope addressed to the intended recepient.

That should do as far as Tor goes, but the more general problem of explaining _why_ is such a thing needed by your mom is much harder. (Unless she lives in North Korea or some such place).

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive](http://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive)

</comment><comment><USER9> "It's something you don't have to know about. When and IF there's a decent alternative that's actually useful and doesn't also need you to gap 100 other holes in your whole online process, I'll let you know first."

</comment><comment><USER10> How to explain it to your mom: "Tor is a method for encrypting Internet traffic. Most of the nodes are operated by the NSA."</comment>


Risks from Daily Low-Dose Aspirin Outweigh Benefits for Healthy Seniors - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/16/647415462/study-a-daily-baby-aspirin-has-no-benefit-for-healthy-older-people <comment><USER2> According to a study I read in the NY Times, I thought low dose aspirin was already shown to be useless, but regular aspirin was effective.</comment>


Mumbai based Pizzeria tests successful delivery by Drone - <AUTHOR> http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/top-this-mumbais-francescos-pizzeria-uses-unmanned-drones-to-deliver-pizza-224184.html

<comment><USER2> It's an ad - it's not real.

Extensive discussion here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7788356](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7788356)</comment>


Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/14/googles-life-sciences-unit-is-releasing-20-million-bacteria-infected-mosquitoes-in-fresno <comment><USER3> This is called the sterile insect technique, and it is a well-established practice for getting rid of mosquito populations that could threaten humans. It is very safe, both to humans (male mosquitoes don't bite) and ecologically (species other than mosquitoes aren't affected at all).

It sounds like Google is working on improvements to the process. This is important work, because mosquitos are a major cause of disease, especially in Africa, and we haven't been able to fully solve the problem with existing technology.

<comment><USER4> Can they do something similar for ticks. Ticks seem to be picking up steam as a disease vector spreading more than just Lime disease, as if that were not enough.

<comment><USER5> I'm still mad that the Lyme disease vaccine was killed by anti-vaxxers. If not for those people, ticks would be about as annoying as leeches.

<comment><USER6> That would completely depend on your definition of 'annoying': ticks spread more diseases than just Lyme. For example, I'm really not sure whether Human Anaplasmosis [1] is only as annoying as a leech.

[1] [https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/anaplasmosis/symptoms/index.html)

<comment><USER7> There's also the one that induces a severe, life-long allergy to red meat. [https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives- people...](https://www.wired.com/story/lone-star-tick-that-gives-people-meat- allergies-may-be-spreading/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I recall hearing when I was younger that mosquitoes were an outlier in the natural world. With most species, the balance of any food web would be pretty thoroughly disrupted by a major culling. As I heard it, this isn't the case for mosquitoes - if you could press a button and kill them all tomorrow, most ecosystems would be largely unimpacted.

Am I just making this up/misremembering it?

Edit: found a few sources.

Pro-mosquitocide:

[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html)

[http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/02/160207-mosquitoes- zika-virus-environment-science-animals/)

Anti-mosquitocide:

[http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth- went-...](http://io9.gizmodo.com/what-if-every-mosquito-on-earth-went-extinct- tomorrow-1646840383)

<comment><USER9> I believe I recall reading that if we were to eliminate only the disease carry mosquitoes, those responsible for transmitting maleria, dengue fever, Ross river virus) there ought not be a problem in the ecological web of life as other mosquitoes would fill the void.

<comment><USER10> Yes. Most mosquito species do not actually bite.

<comment><USER11> They don't feed on people, or they don't feed in general? If the latter, how do they even survive? They eat in their larval form but then not as adults?

<comment><USER9> The Wikipedia article has more detail:

 _Typically, both male and female mosquitoes feed on nectar and plant juices, but in many species the mouthparts of the females are adapted for piercing the skin of animal hosts and sucking their blood as ectoparasites. In many species, the female needs to obtain nutrients from a blood meal before it can produce eggs, whereas in many other species, it can produce more eggs after a blood meal. A mosquito has a variety of ways of finding its prey, including chemical, visual, and heat sensors.[36] Both plant materials and blood are useful sources of energy in the form of sugars, and blood also supplies more concentrated nutrients, such as lipids, but the most important function of blood meals is to obtain proteins as materials for egg production._ [1]

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito#Feeding_by_adults)

<comment><USER12> Let's pick out each mosquito one by one to check which one we should kill or release then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unlike other questions, I'm interested in logistics behind this. How do you produce 20m mosquitos and where do you hold them? How do you transport them and how do you release them? How do you 'store' them and when releasing are most harmed, are they 'sprayed' or you 'open a box and they will go by themselves'? How do you decide where to release them? Is it all at once (1m per week) or is there a pattern, is it related to wind... so many questions!!

I wan't a documentary "How it's made: Mosquitocide". I'm willing to make one if someone can provide access to info and logistics.

</comment><comment><USER14> Google, while you're at it, please find a way to eradicate ticks. They are getting more and more irritating and dangerous in Northern Europe!

<comment><USER15> There are even ticks now which will make you allergic to meat![1]

[1] [http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/tick-bite-meat- al...](http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/tick-bite-meat-allergy- spreading-spd/)

<comment><USER16> In before PETA releases 20 million ticks to turn people vegetarian.

<comment><USER17> Don't give them any ideas!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Verily, the life science's arm of Google's parent company Alphabet, has hatched a plan to release a ..."

My immediate reaction on reading that sentence was to wonder why they'd written it in some kind of Shakespearean English.

My next reaction was to feel stupid.

<comment><USER19> Is there a startup named Hwæt yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Can someone with knowledge of this particular experiment explain how they've overcome the regulations that have stopped Oxitec / Intrexon with their aedes aegypti solution? They key regulatory factors cited against Oxitec, especially in their Florida Keys trials in the past year, were centered around controlling for the release of only males (which do not bite humans), thus avoiding transmission of any kind from the genetically modified varieties, or bacterially modified varieties in this case.

Oxitec has worked for years to filter their mosquitoes so only ~0.2% of the released mosquitoes are female[1]. They then had to demonstrate that and more in many trials before being allowed to release their mosquitoes in the wild in Panama and Florida.

Otherwise, it's great that Google can overstep the other factors that would stop this solution like NIMBYism and working with county / municipal boards. These solutions are great.

[1]:[http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/florida-voters- weigh-...](http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/florida-voters-weigh-gm- mosquito-releases-what-are-issues)

<comment><USER21> It's mostly because circuitous jurisdictional turf battles. The bacterial approach involves applying something to the mosquitos to kill them, rather than modifying the mosquitos, so it apparently counts as a pesticide, which puts it under EPA purview. Producing genetically modified animals is subject to FDA review instead. Apparently the EPA has a lighter touch, as the Wolbachia mosquitoes got approved by the EPA for use in the same area that was originally going to be the site of an Oxitec test in the Keys that got squashed by the FDA.

See [https://phys.org/news/2017-04-florida-bacteria-infected- mosq...](https://phys.org/news/2017-04-florida-bacteria-infected-mosquitoes- bugs.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's interesting that Google is doing this rather than some government organization. What's Google's motivation? Is it purely altruistic, a PR move, an experiment, or does it have some direct benefit to them?

<comment><USER23> Maybe the mythical 20% time is back. Or they want Zika to stay out of their self-insurance pool. Googly Googs gonna goog.

<comment><USER24> 20% time was never removed, it was always in place. (there was just some miscommunication about this I guess since people here keep saying it was removed)

And this is something done by Verily, not Google (even if it's an Alphabet company)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm aware that this is a known technique and thought has been given to whether or not it will impact the food chain, etc. But I do wonder this: has anyone considered what the effect will be of removing this constant source of stimulation for our immune systems?

<comment><USER26> Do normal (non-infected) mosquito bites do much for your immune system? I know it will have _an_ effect (because every action has an effect) but will it even be noticeable?

<comment><USER25> Both good questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just want to point out that a megacorp breeding and releasing a sterilization disease is pretty sci-fi. Also a mutation away from a Children of Men style dystopia.

</comment><comment><USER28> "You don't understand. I didn't kill just one mosquito, or a hundred, or a thousand... I killed them all... all mosquito... everywhere."

<comment><USER29> Dresden Files reference. Excellent.

<comment><USER30> This is a Star Trek: The Next Generation reference, circa 1989! If the Dresden Files (circa 2000) used such a line, they were, in fact, making a reference. ;)

[http://memory- alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Survivors_(episode)#M...](http://memory- alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_Survivors_\(episode\)#Memorable_quotes)

<comment><USER29> Oh, that explains why it's familiar. I might be mixing them up. There's a similar ... thing in DF. Trying not to spoiler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds of when UC Riverside released some stingless wasps to prey on a whitefly infestation in Southern California. This was in the early 1990s.

I think this paper is relevant, but I only scanned it:

[http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca5106p5-67707...](http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/repositoryfiles/ca5106p5-67707.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER32> What kind of planning and permitting process does a project like this require?

Or would it be legal for me to just go and release a cloud of mosquitoes myself?

<comment><USER33> If you're a massive company that is importing a bunch of money all you have to do is make the right phonecalls

"hi, this is X calling on the behalf of $C_level_person at Google. $C_level_person would like to meet with you to discuss controlling the local mosquito population, no cost to the city, of course. Please call back when you have a chance."

A mid-level city administrator will probably call back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Why is "Google" in the title? The only connection between Google and this company is that they share a parent company, Alphabet.

</comment><comment><USER35> What an unfortunate headline.

<comment><USER36> It's done on purpose. This is what we call clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> From what is explained so far, this process doesn't kill mosquitoes. It just makes sure that some of the females (that reproduce 5 times in a life of 2 weeks as an adult) get fertilized with unproductive eggs. [http://www.denguevirusnet.com/life-cycle-of-aedes- aegypti.ht...](http://www.denguevirusnet.com/life-cycle-of-aedes-aegypti.html) The eggs of aedes aegypti can be spread anywhere and the fertile hatch whenever their area gets wet in the next year or so.

Does anyone know what % population reduction impact this process results in? They'd have males likely die after 2 weeks and that just wipes the reproductive chances of the females in that period. Google is treating for 20 weeks in dry weather, which is not exactly the peak reproductive season of this mosquito.

</comment><comment><USER38> Has any research been done on potential benefits of widespread micro blood transfusion as a result of mosquitoes? The diseases are the obvious downside, wondering if resistances, etc may be an unrecognized upside.

</comment><comment><USER39> First they came for the mosquitos, but I didn't speak up because I wasn't a mosquito. Next they came for the invasive fire ants and then we all cheered because mosquitos and fire ants were finally gone.

</comment><comment><USER40> Does this prevent reproduction of the mosquitos, or of the disease? If mosquitos, will this have a negative impact on bats? My bats eat mosquitos and moths, but there are not many moths any more.

<comment><USER41> Mosquitoes, I think. These are an intrusive species, new to the area, so probably not a primary food source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I wish the other mosquito killing efforts would go forward.

<comment><USER43> Which "other" efforts? Do you mean pesticides?

<comment><USER21> There has been a separate research effort to develop mosquitoes that are genetically modified rather than bacteria-infected, with similar objectives, that so far has been stymied in the US by a combination of stronger regulatory hurdles (since it's regulated by a different agency) and NIMBYism. Oxitec is the company spearheading that research. See, e.g., [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/11/20/50271725...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2016/11/20/502717253/florida-keys-approves-trial-of-genetically- modified-mosquitoes-to-fight-zika)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> All good. Yet I thought that was a responsibility of the gov... A big corp spending millions for free seems, you know, questionable

<comment><USER45> Governments hire companies (contractors) to do work that is well outside the standard city services (well, sometimes they even hire companies to do the normal city services). This is just Google paying for a trial for the city. I'm sure they will later charge other cities so it looks like most hired contractors that a city uses.

<comment><USER46> Part of the question is if we should rely on a single company for so many different things. A company that's controlled by only two people.

This is maybe not an issue today, but what happens once the founders die and their inheritors take over control? Children of founders tend to purely focus on profit, and such a focus might lead to a Google led in the way Comcast is led today.

And I don't want to see a Google, Amazon, etc – likely even larger than now – with such leadership. Ideally we wouldn't leave that much power to such a low number of people we can't even elect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Similar project in Germany:

[http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/tigermuecken-in- deu...](http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/tigermuecken-in-deutschland- tausende-sterile-maennchen-ausgesetzt-a-1158263.html)

However they use gamma rays to sterilize the mosquitoes instead of bacteria.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know why the mosquitoes wouldn't evolve to be repulsed by others infected in this way?

Or is this a similar class of problem to antibiotics becoming useless over time?

I.e. it's useful to do now so let's cross that bridge if we come to it?

Or is there something else I don't understand about this?

</comment><comment><USER49> I can't wait until the day we start releasing solar powered the mosquito- hunting drones.

<comment><USER50> I don't know about drones, but there's this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito_laser) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> For those of us who live in Fresno and are curious as to which neighborhoods are being targeted: Harlan Ranch and Fancher Creek. They say "communities outside of these areas will not be affected."

</comment><comment><USER10> I wish they'd do it in Sacramento where most of the mosquitoes live.

</comment><comment><USER52> This is some real breakthrough. I don't remember i have heard of anything like this before. Any amount of success with this solution will have a lot of consequences on other problems.

</comment><comment><USER53> >> Verily's male mosquitoes were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans

What they mean is; harmless in the short term and hopefully also harmless in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER54> Google is releasing 20M bacteria-infected mosquitoes in Fresno... wearing small cameras and a projector that can display text advertisements

</comment><comment><USER55> I always wondered, how do they count so many mosquitos? Is there a technique to determine that it's 20M?

</comment><comment><USER56> I just love how people simply refuse to use the Alphabet name and keep calling it Google.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've never been interested in biology. But this is so cool! :O

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm curious how mosquitoes will evolve to beat this.

<comment><USER59> Hopefully by going extinct. Not all evolutionary challenges are solved by the organism before extinction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER61> No one should have the right to play god with our biosphere.

<comment><USER62> Yes they should. Next you're going to try and tell us that we shouldn't utilise modern medicine and vaccinations?

<comment><USER61> Well you certainly don't have the right to make me use modern medicine or take vaccinations. Just as I don't have the right to spray herbicide on your lawn. Even if there are weeds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> could we have a less clickbaity title

</comment><comment><USER64> _So what's the plan to get rid of them? Verily's male mosquitos were infected with the Wolbachia bacteria, which is harmless to humans but when they mate with and infect their female counterparts, it makes their eggs unable to produce offspring._

Thank goodness. We can't eliminate mosquitoes fast enough.

Wildlife will probably find other food sources, so bring on the weapons of mosquito destruction.

<comment><USER65> To supplement this, the article says: > This particular mosquito species entered the area in 2013.

Although the scientific consensus I usually read on the topic of eradicating mosquitoes is that it won't destabilize _any_ ecosystem.

<comment><USER66> _that we know of_ Natural systems are like huge codebases built by novices. That variable you are changing _shouldn 't_ cause the whole system to collapse, but... see cases like the Cane Toad in Australia.

<comment><USER67> I don't really care it does disrupt an ecosystem, because the total disruption will be reduced.

Humans suffering from horrible diseases disrupt much. Disease is one of several things that keep people in poverty. People dying is expensive and causes a reduction in skill and investment in trying to save those suffering. Then there is the emotional cost of death by disease. People in poverty do shortsighted things like clearcut jungles to grow food.

That previous argument totally ignores any value judgment. Values judgments like how I value humans more than ecosystems so shitty as to be disruptable by removing 1 parasitic species. Malaria is one of the single most dangerous things to humanity, ever. Killing mosquitoes deal with the problem. The amount of innovation, art and good works lost because of people who died to malaria is staggering. At modern rates it kill more than a million people per year. With that amount of lost effort not lost we could build hundreds of ecosystems.

<comment><USER68> You are aware that, like, humans are part of the ecosystems, right? That we depend on these ecosystems to keep working if we want to survive? We don't preserve bees (being the classic example) not "because ecosystems", but because without bees, far less pollination, without pollination no food, without food we starve to death.

<comment><USER67> In some ways we are, but unlike every other animal we can choose to destroy or create a new ecosystem. For an extreme example, how much do astronauts participate in any natural ecosystem, and what is the ecosystem of thousands of square miles of farmland.

With the effort of millions of people not dying and struggling we develop new farming tools and tech, produce more food on less land (as has been the trend for the past 50 years) and could plant 10s of millions of trees and reclaim lost jungles lost to subsistence farming.

<comment><USER68> > For an extreme example, how much do astronauts participate in any natural > ecosystem

Well, what do you think how long astronauts on the ISS will survive if we stop all flights to the ISS?

> and what is the ecosystem of thousands of square miles of farmland.

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

Overall, I don't really understand what you are trying to say?! That there is no damage we could possibly be doing to ecosystems that couldn't trivially be undone? That we don't really need any ecosystems, but could just trivially transition to completely artificial food production? That planting 10s of millions of trees will bring back extinct life forms that had yet-undiscovered secrets in them that we could have used to derive new materials or drugs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Unless this solution virtually slaughters every single mosquito wouldn't this technique only select out unfit mosquitos eventually leading to populations of mosquitos with genetic countermeasures to this method of eradication?

</comment><comment><USER70> What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER71> At least they aren't attempting to go viral.

</comment><comment><USER72> What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

<comment><USER73> >What could possibly go wrong? (Eye roll)

Any perceived correlation between Zika outbreaks (like 2013 French Polynesia, 2015-2016 Brazil) and those modified mosquito releases (like 2010 French Polynesia, 2011-2014 Brazil) is probably just pure coincidence. Even more coincidental is that ~15 years ago the islands 300 km from Gabon were specifically identified as the best isolated places to test the modified mosquitoes and the 2007 Zika outbreak in Gabon, one of the first major outbreaks (another one was in the same 2007 half a world from Gabon - <USER2> remote island Yap :).

<comment><USER74> Could it not be that the correlation is that geographical regions with higher incidence of Aedes Aegypti would have higher likelihood of having Zika outbreaks and would also have local governments more inclined to pursue mosquito reduction efforts?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> I came up with this idea last year! I didn't know someone was already building it.

</comment><comment><USER76> Wait. Is there no regulation around this? Any company or individual can cook up whatever specimen they want and simply release it into the environment en masse?

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER77> They are working with Fresno County [0]

[0] [http://www.mosquitobuzz.net/](http://www.mosquitobuzz.net/)

<comment><USER76> Ah. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences)

<comment><USER79> It would be very easy to re-introduce the mosquitoes back into the wild if their absence cause problems</comment></comment>


Why Google made the NSA - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/why-google-made-the-nsa-2a80584c9c1 <comment><USER2> second part of the series; the first is at [https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made- google-e836...](https://medium.com/@NafeezAhmed/how-the-cia-made- google-e836451a959e)?

</comment><comment><USER3> If you trust Google more than you trust gov't, you don't believe in democracy.</comment>


Facebook inundated with scam Libra ads - <AUTHOR> https://decrypt.co/8036/facebook-scam-libra-ads <comment><USER2> What goes around, comes around! hahahahah</comment>


Alex Miller is Congregating Us (The Strange Loop) - <AUTHOR> http://congregating.us/alex-miller.html <comment><USER2> right at the bottom.. "© 2011 Andrew Gwozdziewycz. I like community. Powered by Modest. Not tested in IE, because it sucks." .. i agree totally!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm excited for this project. Thanks for the link!</comment>


Mean Stack - <AUTHOR> http://mean.io/ <comment><USER4> I'm not a NoSQL expert, but everyone I know who is considers Mongo a joke in production. And I would never use Angular in production apps ("painfully slow" is reason enough but I have ideological differences as well). That makes saying "no" to this stack easy.

<comment><USER5> Does "everyone you know" have recent _experience_ running Mongo in production? Because I have, and from my perspective calling it "a joke" is borderline trolling.

I'm not trying to be hostile, but you've got to understand that Mongo is most certainly not a joke, has lots of support, and is a very appealing option in a number of cases.

<comment><USER6> > very appealing option in a number of cases.

What cases do you have in mind?

<comment><USER5> Rapid iteration comes to mind (as a result of its lack of schemas). It's also great if your objects are JSON documents, and as such it's particularly suited for uses such as a backend to Backbone.

Those are two areas in particular where I would first look to Mongo.

<comment><USER7> Don't lie to yourself, it has schemas. They are just implicit. Want to write JavaScript migration scripts for changing the Schema? I sure don't. But that is not even the begining to describe how broken mongodb design is. getLastError as a way to do write confirmation?

<comment><USER5> You can call them whatever you want, but I don't need to write any migration scripts when I change the schema. Writing a migration script MIGHT be a good idea, depending on my setup, but I definitely don't NEED to.

I don't really know what you mean about the design being "broken", unless you mean that it's "different", in which case I would agree.

As for write confirmation, you have flexibility in that regard. You don't need to be checking getLastError for write confirmation[0], though if you wanted to use a broken pattern, you could.

[0] [http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/write- concern/](http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/write-concern/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the deal with MongoDB and the node.js community? I don't find non relational databases that enticing and there are javascript drivers for postgres [1].

[1] [https://github.com/creationix/postgres- js](https://github.com/creationix/postgres-js)

<comment><USER9> JavaScript "developers" feel the need to not use any other language than JavaScript, so they decided to shove it into as many unnecessary places as possible, even if their code more frequently ends up being an unmaintainable mess with no noticeable performance gains.

<comment><USER10> The "developers" dig seems unnecessary.

@cuttooth and @PommeDeTerre, since you both are pushing the "JS is a flawed language" angle, what do you find are its greatest flaws?

<comment><USER11> I can tell you why I _dislike_ programming in JavaScript (those aren't necessarily faults of javascript itself):

1\. Complex code usually contains some horrible callback spaghetti, which is not pleasant to debug at all.

2\. General flakiness, or, as I call it, the "WTF happened?" syndrome. I run into this all the time. Change or add something - suddenly you find the web page broken. Okay, so there's a bug somewhere. Click developer tools - console... blank. No error messages, nothing. Just you and the broken web page. Just the other day I was trying to integrate a select2 input field into some angular.js-powered page and ran into all kinds of weird issues. But why does it even have to be a problem? Why can't I just stick a new control into a web page with a click and maybe a few lines of code? Hey, remember those things called "Visual Basic" and "Delphi"? UI programming with these was a blast, all the controls looked and behaved the same across all applications. And then there was ActiveX. The idea behind ActiveX is almost _futuristic_ compared to the shit we have to put up with.

3\. Type system. Made a typo in a variable name? Bad luck, Javascript will introduce a new variable and you'll have fun chasing a non-existing bug. Oh, look, here's a function: "function foo(param)". I wonder what does it do? Unfortunately, the previous maintainer has not left much comments, so now I have to dig through the implementation to find out what the parameter should be and what values the function may return.

These are my main issues with javascript. I hope sometime in the future we'll throw out the whole Javascript/HTML thing and start writing web application front-ends in a language that is more geared towards UI programming. I can imagine having a nice declarative language (instead of HTML) to describe what the interface looks like, and a statically typed imperative scripting language to describe UI behavior. It would also be awesome if these technologies allow for painless integration of independent UI components (a bit like ActiveX controls). But those are just dreams...

<comment><USER10> I hear you. I have extensions to your points and disagree here or there but, in general, all your points come down to the same thing: the developer toolchain for JS _really frickin ' sucks_.

Web development is a pain. Web developers have to deal with at least _five_ separate technologies to get anything non-trivial to show up on the page. HTML, CSS, JS, server-side language, persistent store. Each one brings its own config languages or preprocessors, maybe some kind of build system, and, of course, mo' tech mo' problems as they say.

(An aside: I think select2, specifically, is really beautiful and an absolute pain to actually use with any other framework in real usage)

There's some truth to the argument that JS development is merrily rediscovering development methodologies pioneered decades ago:

1\. "Yay! With RequireJS I can do _real_ dependency management!" 2\. "Did you see that article on how to do conditional breakpoints in Chrome dev tools?" 3\. "Using type annotations in the Closure Compiler let you add some kind of type checking!"

All that said, it is getting better:

1\. _Always_ use a linter. JSLint if you wanna cry, JSHint otherwise. 2\. Callback spaghetti in JS is equivalent, in my mind, to cryptic one-line pointer arithmetic in C/C++. It's a symptom not of the language itself but of the programmer's hostility to future maintenance. 3\. Declarative widget-y tech is the future of web front-ends: between AngularJS directives and the evolving Shadow DOM specification (to name two), we're moving in the re-usable component direction.

We're never going to throw out JS. Ever. Every browser vendor would have to simultaneously switch to some staggeringly amazing technology all at once as well as convert all the old browsers as well. It's not going to happen.

JavaScript, if measured by installed runtimes, is the most popular, wide- spread language on the planet. Count the devices in your home that can run JS. That's its true strength, I think.

<comment><USER12> It isn't necessary for everyone to switch to something new at once. If one big browser accommodates a different language, someone will use it. If it is popular, it will be adopted more broadly.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention, it can be compiled to javascript at first, for backward complatibility. Actually, Google's Dart comes to mind, but I haven't really used it to make an informed judgement about it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So much hate on HN these days. Thanks for sharing, that's definitely a very useful and productive stack that I keep going back to again and again for every projects. Will give it a try next time.

</comment><comment><USER14> Love it - except for the Angular part - can we get a MEEN stack with Ember.js?

<comment><USER15> What don't you like about Angular? The template engine makes the insanity of explicit updates go away...

<comment><USER16> Some would say data-binding and logic in HTML attributes is insanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This would be even smoother as a Yeoman generator. [http://yeoman.io/generators.html](http://yeoman.io/generators.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> We've been using almost the same stack at StartHQ ([https://starthq.com](https://starthq.com)) with great success. Mongo and Angular make it easy for us to iterate quickly. Performance hasn't been an issue with up to 300 concurrent visitors on site running on a AWS micro instance.

The one thing we do differently is that we're using fibers and Common Node ([https://github.com/olegp/common-node](https://github.com/olegp/common- node)), as well as Stick ([https://github.com/olegp/stick](https://github.com/olegp/stick)) instead of Express. This lets us write complex business logic with less code and without having to worry about explicitly handling errors, since we get to use exceptions.

</comment><comment><USER19> How about providing a npm module(binary) as well. So we can use it like this.

`mean create myapp`

<comment><USER20> actually this is the next step for us, we just started to work on it.

<comment><USER19> awesome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Guys as the author of this project one of the guidelines i had was to create it as modular and familiar as i can, so whenever I could I tried using a popular module(mongoose, passport etc.)

I deeply encourage anyone who wants to break, replace, remove, add any part of this project to go ahead and do so! Like any recipe this is just our serving suggestion.

I'd love to see an ember fork!

</comment><comment><USER21> I spoke of the "MEAN" stack today - cool to see others using to a tee - <USER2> Mongoose and Passport.

Two other nice packages:

Nodemailer - for emailing - npm install nodemailer

Moment.js - for time/date formatting, and a ton more (manipulation, etc) - <USER3> install moment

</comment><comment><USER22> It's pretty sweet, I cloned this project to get started and it was much harder to learn at first since there wasn't an example of the basic CRUDs; They added examples now, so the learn curve is less steep.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks a lot like this node+express+mongo boilerplate: [https://github.com/madhums/node-express-mongoose- demo](https://github.com/madhums/node-express-mongoose-demo)

<comment><USER24> Thanks for sharing this. I've been getting into express lately and this boilerplate is a little leaner for the reading.

It also just informed me of the app.param api in express. I had no idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> the background image makes it unreadable on small windows... i suppose it's the same on mobile devices

<comment><USER26> It is. The text blends in to the background image on my iPad and makes it very difficult to read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I had worked with several people that chose Mongodb.

Their reasons were the database is easy and it "scale".

The real reason why they chose it because they think SQL is too hard. Really, they were self taught programmers that couldn't bother to learn SQL and jump straight to NoSQL hype and the fact it was "easy".</comment>


You *can* have it all, and 13 other lessons I learned from How I Built This - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexhoffer/how-they-built-that-or-i-listened-to-50-episodes-of-how-i-built-this-so-you-dont-have-to-d307c332a368 <comment><USER2> I think my favorite insight from this post is that the difference between founders and others is the bias to action to go after an idea that seems like a good one, and take it where it may go.</comment>


"I wonder what happened to Zuck since the early days of FB regarding privacy." - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1ydy0w/i_am_raylene_yung_a_facebook_engineering_manager/cfjru3k

<comment><USER2> Probably busy with married life --- lucky girl married a billionaire at such a young age. Won't need to worry about money for the rest of her life</comment>


Scrap your type classes (and implement them at value level) - <AUTHOR> http://www.haskellforall.com/2012/05/scrap-your-type-classes.html

<comment><USER2> Discussion on the Haskell Reddit --- [http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/t2yy2/scrap_your_ty...](http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/t2yy2/scrap_your_type_classes/) \--- 9 comments so far.</comment>


Show HN: Simple Responsive Images with Jekyll - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/blog/2015/08/20/simple-responsive-images-with-jekyll

<comment><AUTHOR> Lets face it - responsive images can be made so complex that we end up just giving up dealing with them.

This is a small plugin that aims to make it completely straight forward to at least do a good job of handling pixel densities.

Won't do nearly as much as some of the more complex plugins based on the picture tags, etc, but the goal is making it so easy to use that there's not really any reason not to :)</comment>


2 CRAZY Korean backpackers' video interview project - <AUTHOR> Hello Hacker News.
My name is Mikey Lee. My partner Hyuk and I came to San Francisco from Korea 6 days ago to for our video interview project. We aim to interview entrepreneurs, programmers, artists, and other self-motivated interesting people in this region on camera and deliver their story and insights to our subscribers.
On our second day here, we successfully interviewed Saeed Amidi, the CEO of Plug and Play (http://www.inc.com/jill-krasny/silicon-valley-matchmaker-saeed-amidi.html) and after we uploaded his interview video to our Facebook page 2 days ago, it generated 19k views so far. (https://www.facebook.com/stage5)
We are backpackers doing video interviews. Starting here in SF, we plan to travel around the world and interview people with different backgrounds. Our current focus is on startups.
We are interested in people that enjoy a sense of pride and fulfillment from the things they do. We are inspired by people who have walked through unpaved roads. We love people that are driven by purpose and craftsmanship. These are the people we want to invite to our interviews.
So if you are one of them. Leave a comment here or send us a email at firstname.lastname@example.com. I'm also open to fb friend requests (facebook.com/jkl1384) but my posts are mostly written in Korean. We are here to build relationship with people, not just interviewing them.
We are two crazy Koreans finding themselves in US with extremely tight budget. We eat $2.99 'Hungry Man' frozen food a meal to survive. But we have 25k passionate fans supporting us and soon we are going to open up our channel in China as well, to deliver our videos in Chinese subtitles, so if you are interested in Asian markets or build your user base there, we can help you.
Thank you. I look forward to seeing you guys soon!
Mikey email: email@example.com
facebook: facebook.com/jkl1384
channel: facebook.com/stage5
phone(us): (415) 513-3056 <comment><USER2> I'm an aspiring backpacker and this is something I've been thinking about as well. Good luck, may we meet someday!

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an exciting adventure! I look forward to seeing you somewhere along our journey :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice meeting you at the lobby inside Zynga building in San Francisco! I couldn't speak with you in length due to the tight schedule, but I would love to meet up with you guys again and contribute to the project. Let me know if you happen to visit New York! -Claire</comment>