Amazon Dodges Responsibility for Unsafe Products - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-amazon-dodges-responsibility-for-unsafe-products-the-case-of-the-hoverboard-11575563270 <comment><USER2> Shouldn't these devices be UL or CE or TÜV rated so that we know they've gone through some kind of basic safety testing?

There is so much cheap untested crap that gets sold on these platforms. We should stop it.

<comment><USER3> A lot of the product descriptions just lie about that. I recently wanted to buy some dust masks during the fires here in California. People recommended getting N95 certified masks, but when you go to Amazon and search for "N95" most of the listings will claim to be N95 certified but aren't listed on the government's lists of masks that are actually certified. I even found some masks that claimed to be certified _and_ listed their certification number, but when I went to the NIOSH website the certification number was listed as "revoked".

The only legit ones seem to be the 3M masks, and there's no telling if the ones they're selling are actually real.

<comment><USER4> But isn't it incredibly illegal to claim false certification? Sounds like all those products should be recalled and some companies should be getting steep fines.

<comment><USER5> I don't believe it's a felony or misdemeanor crime, but it could be copyright or trademark infringement if you use a safety approval logo on your product without paying and certifying your product with the agency who owns the logo. A company like UL could sue an infringer for using the UL marks on products which UL has not certified, but I think that's about it.

UL enforcement info: [https://www.ul.com/news/ul-teams-law-enforcement-brand- defen...](https://www.ul.com/news/ul-teams-law-enforcement-brand-defense)

If you claim your device complies with regulations set forth by government agencies such as the FCC or OSHA when it does not, then I think the criminal or other special courts may get involved as it may no longer be just a civil matter. Although FCC violation investigation usually just involve recalling product and paying a "voluntary" fine (it's voluntary, unless you decide not to volunteer, and then it's no longer voluntary).

FCC enforcement info: [https://www.fcc.gov/general/enforcement- primer](https://www.fcc.gov/general/enforcement-primer)

<comment><USER6> Wouldn't it be fraud? At least according to the UK definition of fraud (lying for profit) it would fit the bill.

<comment><USER7> But if you order it on amazon and it's shipped to you from China, then is it? And if it is you have no way to prosecute.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Related is their recently leaked internal AHM transcript: [https://outline.com/ZrDE7w](https://outline.com/ZrDE7w) (section: "On bad actors on Amazon's marketplace")

Message is they seem to be on it. Contradicts the media reports, which happen to argue wilful shirking of responsibility.

<comment><USER9> > we also ensured that 99.9% of all pages viewed by our customers were to > products that had never received a counterfeit notice of infringement

While this initially seems impressive (i.e. 1 in 1,000 products are fake), Amazon has a power-law distribution to its sales, and thus likely to its views [1] [2].

This means that, as long as the products on the left side of the power-law aren't counterfeit, this claim can be true.

As a result, if you venture into niche product spaces, beware that you're looking at much higher odds of a counterfeit.

[1] [http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/2010.09_Brynjolfsso...](http://ebusiness.mit.edu/research/papers/2010.09_Brynjolfsson_Hu_Smith_the%20Longer%20Tail_286.pdf) [2] [https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/marketplaces- power...](https://www.marketplacepulse.com/articles/marketplaces-power-law)

<comment> ar-jan Also, absence of a counterfeit notice does not mean the product is necessarily genuine. It seems to me that actively preventing counterfeits would entail much more than responding to notices.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [http://archive.is/N2sPz](http://archive.is/N2sPz)

</comment><comment><USER11> I've been a Prime customer since the program started, a customer of Amazon before that, and probably order from them on average twice a week (including groceries). I would say when it comes to products from Amazon (not Whole Foods), 1 out of every 4 purchases of mine have been defective, expired, a return, or etc.

Examples include a 4 pack of Eneloops containing 3, a Magic Mouse with a scratch under it and the instruction booklet in a different font and language from what it's supposed to be, a glass candy jar with multiple cracks in it, a cell phone case with some sort of mold growing inside, expired food and drinks when ordering from Fresh, ordering two matching office chairs and getting two different models, etc.

It's gotten to the point where buying from Amazon feels like buying from a garage sale or dollar store. They make returns fairly easy, but I've found myself choosing other online and physical vendors that charge a bit more but who I can trust to have more reliable products.

I haven't had any product issues from Amazon Whole Foods delivery yet; one of the drivers told me they deliver from the store to a centralized warehouse before it gets delivered to me, so I'm hoping at some point groceries don't turn into how Amazon works in general, and I'll end up getting discount, bad food that they routed from a central location.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is it a realistic target for Amazon to detect and manage this at the scale they operate?

Does a set of solution options exist, but Amazon doesn't work on those?

Just thinking from solution angle, rather joining on Amazon bashing. (not that I lack reasons to do so)

</comment><comment><USER12> It's as if the Wall Street Journal has conveniently ignored how markets work and the legal system governing them so that it could target Amazon for something that no other reseller has responsibility for.

<comment><USER13> How's that? If I buy something from Home Depot and it later turns out to have been defective and injured me in some way, I absolutely can sue Home Depot.

The fact that Amazon has tried to position themself in such a way as to take my money and ship me a product but "they're not really the seller" should be immaterial. They walk like a seller, they quack like a seller, I should be able to sue them like a seller.

Ditto Paypal and banking regulations. Someday, I hope.

<comment><USER14> I would disagree with this sentiment.

While I don't know what law says here - but, in my opinion, the mere act of selling a legal product by a merchant should not imply that the merchant is liable for all possible damages that the product may cause.

If I were on jury in a case like this I would consider punishing the merchant _only_ of there is some sort of negligence on their part. For example not pulling the product after it has been demonstrated to be unsafe.

<comment><USER15> The implied warranty of merchantability[1] applies to all merchants, not just manufacturers. In the case of a reseller like Home Depot or Amazon, a consumer can seek recourse from the reseller, and the reseller can in turn seek recourse from their supplier, and so on up the chain.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty#United_States...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Implied_warranty#United_States_2)

<comment><USER14> the question here is of course, how should one classify a manufacturing defect that affects a tiny percentage of the product?

Is that a merchantability issue? Is it realistic for a merchant to test every single product so extensively to uncover a defect of such a rare occurance?

One of the greatest ingredients of justice in the USA is that laws can be interpreted by a jury. I would most certainly vote against applying this "merchantability" blindly - without more context and more proof of negligence beyond simply stocking a product. If one in a hundred thousand catches on fire and the product is pulled makes for a very different story than if every other ignites yet they keep selling it.

<comment><USER16> They don't need to individually test every single product, they just need to make sure that they can turn around and sue the supplier if the product turns out too be defective. If they have no means to hold their suppliers accountable for the quality of the product, then they should be testing every single product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have been encouraging anyone who will listen to not buy anything on Amazon. The co-mingling of goods (especially nutrition items) is going to result in some Chinese vendor sending a batch of poison in as supplements or baby food and get a bunch of people killed. That is the only way this is going to end.

<comment><USER18> My wife ran a successful supplements business selling primarily on Amazon. She was very strict about testing every batch (which costs money), ensuring quality, etc. As an MD she approached the business with a seriousness we now know does not exist in that domain, well, on Amazon anyway.

Things got seriously ugly when her products started to get to the top of the search results. This took time and a ton of money and effort. That's when the attacks started.

Two forms of attacks prevailed: Fake reviews and click fraud.

Competitors would post completely fake reviews about her products. They would claim things such as having had to go to the hospital or having diarrhea for three days straight. All false, unverified. The other way you could tell the reviews were fake was when the review posted before the product shipped out of the Amazon warehouse. I could not believe Amazon didn't have just a little bit of common-sense code to automatically reject such obviously false reviews.

Sellers can advertise on Amazon. We did. Once her products started to show up at the top of search results her ad budget would be consumed in its entirety by 4 or 5 AM every day. You could look at the analytics and see, plain as day, that all the clicks happened during the span of an hour between 3 and 4 AM eastern US time. Thousands of clicks every day. This meant that our ads did not show by the time people got up.

Oh, yes, the other method competitors used was to contact Amazon and make false claims about her products. They'd claim we were not disclosing true ingredients; fake copyright violations, etc.

It was all-out war against her in the worst possible way. At the time I remember thinking that this experience had to be an approximation of what it would be like to deal with the mafia. I had never seen such dishonest, criminal behavior in my life.

I captured analytics and put together analysis to show Amazon what was going on. Her business was being destroyed at a rapid rate. It was relentless. Amazon could not care less. It was impossible to deal with them. I persisted. It took them about six months to finally admit our data showed a coordinated effort on the part of competitors to destroy her business. They also claimed they identified who did it but refused to give us the information. They issued a refund that amounted to tens of thousands of dollars in wasted advertising. Never mind the hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales, nobody paid for that.

In the end we decided we had zero interest in dealing with the mafia and quit, which, ironically, was probably exactly what these criminals wanted. We make more than enough money with our day jobs and tech business, no need to complicate our lives in that kind of an environment.

My experience with Amazon, in this regard, was an eye opener. Today I do not buy anything on Amazon that isn't marked as "Sold and Shipped by Amazon". I want nothing whatsoever to do with their third party sellers. That entire ecosystem is permeated with people you just can't trust, even if all you are buying from them is a spoon.

I still have friends I met along the way who sell on Amazon. The stories, years later, remain the same: Amazon does not seem to care about criminal behavior on their platform so long as they are making money.

<comment><USER19> I think all you said must be true. I just wonder what they could do about it? Better ML models to identify ad click fraud? Get rid of reviews altogether?

What do you think would have helped?

<comment><USER20> Policing. By informed humans.

Yes, it's expensive and carries its own risk of corruption and insider fraud, but either Amazon polices itself or others will police it, and they will be less kind on the organisation as a whole.

If Amazon manages to get a reputation among the public for fakes (rather than just us, a specialised audience), it will be extremely expensive and hard to shift.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can someone post a non-paywalled link?

<comment><USER22> Firefox (also mobile) + bypass paywalls addon

[https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls- firefox](https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-firefox)</comment></comment>


Deep Paper Gestalt – paper review as image classification - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/vt-vl-lab/paper-gestalt <comment><USER2> So what happens when you run this paper's algorithm on itself?

<comment><AUTHOR> From the paper:

"We apply the trained classifier to this paper. Our network ruthlessly predicts with high probability (over 97%) that this paper should be rejected without peer review. :("</comment></comment>


Pingtop: Ping multiple servers and show the result in a top like terminal UI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/laixintao/pingtop <comment><USER2> Very cool will try...Thanks!

fping is what I have been using...

<comment><AUTHOR> Also cool, I will check this project out.</comment></comment>


Darpa Red Balloon Challenge and the Diminishing Power of Elite Networks  - <AUTHOR> http://savemefrombschool.com/2009/12/darpa-red-balloon-challenge-and-the-diminishing-power-of-elite-networks/

<comment><USER2> I eagerly anticipate the proliferation of self-organizing dynamics as it pertains to how we will consume (social) media in the future.

"For nearly everyone, the opinion of one's peers is the most powerful motivator of all—more powerful even than the nominal goal of most startup founders, getting rich." <http://www.paulgraham.com/mit.html></comment>


Create and Publish a Python Package with Poetry - <AUTHOR> https://johnfraney.ca/posts/2019/05/28/create-publish-python-package-poetry/ <comment><AUTHOR> I recently took Poetry for a spin when releasing Flake8 Markdown[1], and I thought it might be helpful to walk through the process of making a package using Poetry, from start to finish.

I found it more straightforward than using setup.py and twine, which I used for other packages.

How are you publishing to PyPI these days?

[1] [https://github.com/johnfraney/flake8-markdown](https://github.com/johnfraney/flake8-markdown)</comment>


Facebook is selling invisible ad impressions - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sefsar.com/post/28370197014/facebook-is-selling-invisible-ad-impressions

<comment><USER2> In Display advertising this is common. The fact that tools like Adxpose exist points that this is a common problem for advertisers. Very often the impressions are sold anyway.

Heck, C3Metrics has even come out with a new product - Viewable Impressions solely to address this issue.

Is this a problem? Yes and no. I think ad spaces should always be sold. But I think there should be a price difference between impression loaded and impression viewed.

<comment><USER3> I'd like to know under what circumstances you think that a company or individual should, or would, pay for advertising which is not (by definition) used?

even if it were at a different price, why would _anyone_ pay for advertising, knowing full well that it would not be viewed?

<comment><USER2> Simple. Pages with long content under the fold. Most of the ad tags are called with page load, and there will be many situations where the ads will be served but not seen. The situation cannot be helped.

In case you're wondering about asynchronous ad-loading, i.e only load an ad when the tag scrolls into the viewport, no that is not a viable option because the world out there is crazily varied, and not everyone uses the latest nightly build of Chromium. There are a lot of bad javascript engines out there, so I wouldn't jump to assume that async loading of ads would work across the board. Trust me I've worked on this problem before.

As for why different pricing would work: what I had meant was billing post- facto.

So for example, you may have an IO saying you're buying 300k imps per day at $1 CPM viewed and $0.1 unviewed. At the end of the day you may have 150k viewed and 150k unviewed. You only pay $165 instead of $300

EDIT: I have bad arithmetics for an asian person

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This really takes the cake for one of the dumbest posts I've seen for a while.

What exactly are you expecting Facebook to do: hide content and just show ads ? And how is this anyway different from Google's Search page or almost every website with advertising for that matter.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hide content and just show ads? What? Who ever suggested anything like that? If other sites are doing this, then they're messing up too. So I've no idea what are you talking about.

They are loading ad impressions that aren't visible. That's a major problem, because it's preventable. Why don't they track scroll –which I'm sure they do already– and load ads accordingly. Their only defense would be that they load the ads, but don't charge for them unless the user scrolls.</comment></comment>


Mailpile Alpha Release: Shipping Bits and Atoms - <AUTHOR> https://www.mailpile.is/blog/2014-01-31_Alpha_Release_Shipping_Bits_and_Atoms.html

<comment><USER2> I'm definitely going to be testing this on my own server. I've been looking forward to this since it was annouced.

One bit of constructive critism: You got to lose the Mailpile font (which looks like some bastarization of Museo). I know it's part of your branding, but it has no place in the UI. Not only is it much less readable than almost any simpler sans-serif, but the huge x-width makes the text take up so much more space than it needs. Your backup Helvetica Neue with the weight toned down to 400/500 is a huge improvement alone.

Keep up the good work! This is a true service to society.

<comment><USER3> Brenann (Mailpile designer) here. Thanks for the note and feedback. Good eye- it is a reworking of Museo (due to their license being non compatible with GPL/Apache). Our font is still being developed, the x-width & kerning are far from done and on our radar. After the font is fully done, if the spacing still irks enough people (and ourselves) we'll revisit how and where we're using it! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Huge +: It works without Javascript!

Moderate -: It is not responsive, on a small screen the HUGE sidebar and top header leave no space for the message.

edit:

Actually threaded message threads do not work without JS. All messages are collapsed. With JS enabled I seem to have to click on each message to expand it which is terrible UI.

<comment><USER3> Designer here. The responsiveness is being worked on (alpha release).

Curious about the clicking to expand msgs comment- this standard UI behavior in Gmail as well!

<comment><USER4> I don't use GMail so I have no idea how it works there. Having to expand every single message strikes me as unnecessary mouseclicks (and hell on touchscreens).

<comment><USER3> Gotcha. I personally like having all emails (in a thread) fully expanded, but due to pushback from other ppl with "vertical space" and time to scroll I had to go this other route. We will most likely at an "Expand All" link to the top of the thread!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe this is a silly comment, given that this is just an alpha. I would be happy about better keyboard shortcuts.

* Select next/previous message/thread

* Reply, reply all, forward, delete, archive

* Scroll message (most systems have space to scroll a page down and shift+space to scroll up, but scrolling by line would be awesome)

<comment><USER3> Yah! We had keyboard shortcuts but they got commented out before alpha- will be re-implementing soon :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> cool. small peeve though, the side panel refreshes via fade-in every time i nav anywhere, if you're redrawing the whole thing, at least disable the fade- in so it's less distracting.

<comment><USER3> Designer here. Great feedback- will work on this soon ;)

<comment><USER7> +1 to parent post. It looks awesome, the fade-in is kinda distracting. It also re-fades the main area when you switch between categories.

To the coders: Nice job on using multiple URLs to allow pages to be viewed without JS enabled. Having to reload each page when it is requested is not trendy, but it's nice to know Mailpile will work on locked-down browsers. Kudos!

<comment><USER3> Yah, this is precisely why currently there is more fading than we'd like. We want to evolve to something that behaves like a single page app yet gracefully degrades to non-JS users for read only browsing- thus takes a bit more time to think & iterate on it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does an MVP need an original typeface? Seems the opposite of minimum.

Looks good, nice work.

</comment><comment><USER9> saw the talk at fosdem yesterday. would be happier if they would have tried to be just a mail user agent instead of their vision of being everything at once.

Well but maybe hte unix philosophy of doing one thing really well really is dead

<comment><USER3> Brennan here from the team. Mailpile is just a user agent. The app talks to GnuPG for crytpo. We follow the unix philosophy as much as it makes sense, but for the overall experience of an MUA that is easily searchable + allows sending encrypted mail, but also offers a modern web app interface- there must be a certain size + scope of project :)

<comment><USER10> I also saw the talk at FOSDEM. If Mailpile is just a MUA, why does it do its own indexing, why is there talk about including a server, etc.?

<comment><USER3> Mailpile does indexing so as to be able to do complex searching of one's mail index. We include a Python "web" server that renders our search engine's result in the web UI, however one _can_ use Mailpile strictly via the CLI.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have been looking forward to this.

Of course there are a lot of features missing, but the overall feel of the application is, so far, pretty nice. It's U.I is very nice. Man, I can't wait for the final release.

<comment><USER3> Glad ya like what we are doing, thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm curious how the search engine is going to scale. Every time things like that are reinvented instead of using something that already exists, like, say, ElasticSearch, I will be skeptical. Then I looked at the implementation, and it begins with "take _all_ the message-ids you know… then do a bunch of set intersects on it". Um, seriously? Do you have some stats on runtime behavior with, say, 250k messages?

<comment><USER12> are you a web developer by any chance? i keep seeing people wanting to use elasticsearch for everything. the last thing I heard was indexing file metadata in elasticsearch

just because a piece of software is great, it doesn't mean it's great for everything.

why not use one of the many mailbox indexers out there ? like mu.

[http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/](http://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/)

<comment><USER10> Yes, guilty as charged, it was just the first thing that came to mind. The point stands, though: Why not reuse something existing, tried and proven, stable, instead of reinventing the wheel again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This was launched yesterday at the FOSDEM conference and attracted quite a crowd and interest. However, judging just by their presentation, the current team will not be able to bring this product at the level it needs to be to solve the problems they started on. They are smart people, and they get things done, but don't put all your hopes in this basket. Good ideas but acute lack of depth and sophistication.

<comment><USER3> Brennan here from the Mailpile Team. Thank you for your critique. The other team members and I would love to hear a more substantial justification of how we lack "depth and sophistication" to tackle this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great news. Glad to see my donation being put to good use. I last installed this back when it first got some traction but interface wise there was almost nothing there. Even still it was showing good promise with what it could do.

Seeing it now it's evident that a lot of work has been going on. Kudos to the team, their dedication really shows.

<comment><USER3> Really glad we seem to be delivering and making so many of our backers happy- thanks for your support :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks pretty nice, especially compared to the open source alternatives. I personally care a lot more about non-web-UI clients, but I know a lot of people like web UI, and I love that you seem to care about security pretty deeply.

I just donated. Please continue!

<comment><USER3> Thanks so much, glad you like what we're doing :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This seems to be the demo mailbox:

[https://demo.mailpile.is/in/inbox/](https://demo.mailpile.is/in/inbox/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Gratulations on shipping the alpha.

Installing now and trying to get Offlineimap running with Yahoo/Outlook. Any pointers?

<comment><USER3> No exact pointers, as none of us are Yahoo / Out look users- we'll happily add any quirks you discover to our wiki [https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/Getting- started](https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/Getting-started)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> thanks. i've been watching it for a while

but, i always thought the main hell of personal email setups is that you have to deal with postfix or exim. which is why atmail was so great. milepile doesn't help me with that does it?

[http://atmail.com/products/](http://atmail.com/products/)

<comment><USER3> Mailpile does not help deal with postfix or exim. We have various plans to make the whole "email" pipeline easier + secure + cooler down the line!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why no HSTS? Or Content-Security-Policy?

<comment><USER19> Smári here, from the Mailpile team. There's no HSTS because Mailpile is generally supposed to be run on localhost. We don't bundle SSL certs because it simply wouldn't make sense. That said, we will be improving things w.r.t. use of SSL and Internet-facing installations before 1.0, including authentication mechanisms and such. We will also be doing some Content Security Policy work before 1.0.

<comment><USER18> It should run on SSL even if it is localhost. Self-signed cert/adding a personal CA is a valid config.

If you are proposing to be secure, I would think that you want to cover security (encryption in this case) for both in-flight and at-rest data in both local and internet facing configurations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Big thanks to the developers!

</comment><comment><USER21> nice!</comment>


Itsy Bitsy Spider's Web 10 Times Stronger Than Kevlar (2010) - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/8686-itsy-bitsy-spider-web-10-times-stronger-kevlar.html <comment><USER2> And 25% as strong as carbon fiber.

[https://www.engineersedge.com/material_science/images/yield-...](https://www.engineersedge.com/material_science/images/yield- chart.gif)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you manage your codebase once it gets large? - <AUTHOR> Hi all! I'm working on a project, and lately I've noticed that it seems to be getting harder to navigate and develop as it gets larger and more complex. Is this a sign of it maturing, or am I doing something wrong? What do you guys do to help manage your codebase when it gets somewhat large?<p>(This is my first "real" project using Rails, so I have no previous experience on this question :P ) <comment><USER2> This is one of my periodic pain points with Rails, as compared to Java. At the day job I work with multiple code bases with more than X00,000 lines of code each. My Rails site has 5k lines as reported by rake stats, and due to a combination of poor IDE support compared to Java and the toss-it-all-in-one- folder Rails conventions, that sometimes results in headaches.

My suggestions:

1) Refactor like it is going out of style. Rails classes (particularly controllers and models in my experience) have a tendency to accumulate cruft over time. Periodically evaluate whether something should be broken into two classes, or at least two files. Mixins and require are your friend here. (Breaking a controller into two changes URLs by default. I think letting Rails assign publicly visible URLs is a mistake, but most people do it. Consider carefully whether you can accept URLs changing as a result of code changes.)

2) Encourage internal code reuse, and better separation of responsibilities, by breaking things into plugins when appropriate. I extracted code from my own classes to make A/Bingo for example. It keeps my own classes readable and makes it much easier to publish and reuse A/Bingo.

3) Coding conventions are your friend. Since the IDE lacks a reliable jump-to- definition-of-this-function feature, I tend to try to put predictable things in predictable places. For example, model classes always have a consistent ordering of filters, validations, and associations at the top of the file prior to business logic. (Those could be externalized if they got realllly messy, via the magic of require.)

4) Put partials into thematically coherent subdirectories. This saves you from having to find the right form partial from a directory with 20 views and 50 partials.

<comment><USER3> I _slightly_ disagree with point 2. The problem is that sometimes making something be adaptable to multiple use-cases makes it more complex than simply having two very similar pieces of code.

<comment><USER4> It's true that you lose some time by doing this. But my experience has been that it inevitably improves the quality of your code if you and your team are forced to think about interfaces and common pain points by moving towards reuse. Your team members are code consumers too.

Plus, you end up in a position where you can give back to the community, which is nice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I maintain a codebase that is about 300KLOC C++ and about 900KLOC Java. Abstractions become important at this scale.

We follow a simple MVC principle, C++ side is model, JNI-glue is control, and Java is view. Then, individual pieces are broken into functional modules and there is documentation on slides (flowcharts) on how these functional components interact.

You should be able to let go and trust fellow developers. I don't know all of the code; There are four others who have their own pieces of functional modules that they are responsible for. I trust their judgement/decisions on their modules just like they trust mine-- we still question which is important.

Rest of it sort of fall into place as we progress. Hope this helps.

</comment><comment><USER6> Segmentation, interfaces, documentation.

You want to make changes that do as little damage as possible. By structuring your project so that independent functions are really independent, you can think about them independently. Providing interfaces to your own code also helps there, you can ignore one part of the code and just use its functionality, and only have to keep the interface in your head. Also, notes- to-self often help provide context and memory cues to reload something you've forgotten. Either way, you should be using source control. That way you can look at the changelog for a file and reconstruct what you did with it, again helping you recall structure.

</comment><comment><USER7> Well I've had a look at some of the project that are sitting on my hard disk (all are current by the way) and here is the Code LOC values for them: 50, 225, 261, 346, 402, 572, 857, 980, 1099, 1213, 1475, 1677, 1841, 2002, 2123, 2242, 2887, 3138, 3338, 3421, 3421, 7812, 7812, 46757, 57495

The most used projects, used daily by our clients are in the 2000-4000 range, the smaller ones are supporting tools and the two massive ones are that way because the business rules are completely insane. Also they are quite old and could probably be trimmed down quite a bit.

Some of the more actively developed code has been trimmed down through constant development, the two monsters do not get touched too often.

Actually I'm quite surprised has to how small our core applications are, I would have guessed more in the 8000-12000 LOC. But then Ruby tends to be rather concise.

What sort of numbers are you seeing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually less than I would've thought: 831 Code LOC.

It's not impossible to manage yet, but I'm beginning to notice that it's getting harder. I think doing some refactoring and general cleanup will help with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> First: you need good test coverage, so that you can refactor and restructure with confidence.

Then, I would look into dividing up the code base a bit. Usually once you get to a certain size you'll be able to identify useful bits and pieces that could be extracted as standalone libraries. This will also render these more generic parts of your code ready to reuse.

You might also find it useful to divide the application-specific parts into layers and ensure lower layers don't depend on higher ones. These types of divisions allow you to consider lower layers independently. And when you're hunting for something, you should have a feel for which layer it is in first, which narrows your search scope.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you can help refactoring into sub-folders, thats a small change that helps a lot. When I can, I break down components of my application as much as possible. In Java thats natural with the packages idiom. In C++ or C I just force it upon myself to do it.

For example with the language/VM I've got built for doing some DSL work, I've got folders for the garbage collector (src/gc), the compiler (src/compiler), the runtime (src/runtime) and so on. I'm not entirely familiar with doing any sort of large-scale ruby development so I don't know how much that helps you (most of my ruby code are small 100-200 line all inclusive scripts).

Hope that helps.

</comment><comment><USER10> One important thing to notice as a codebase gets large is that it's going to slow you down. Accept that, and pay more attention to maintaining a high quality codebase. Invest in reviews of new merges, refactoring of stale code and documentation. Automate as much as you can - make sure you can create good API docs, and that there are tools for working with the existing codebase. Finally, try to remove code as much as you can (refactoring, or simply deleting code you no longer use).

</comment><comment><USER11> As your codebase gets large, modularity becomes more important - so it might be time you refactor your code with greater size in mind.

Another crucial aspect is unit tests - as long as you know the project well, you can go in and make a change relatively easily, as long as you know that a system of unit tests will catch any unintended side-effects.

</comment><comment><USER12> This video was pretty good -- "Living with legacy software": David from 37signals talks about how they refactored the Basecamp code as it grew:

<http://railsconfeurope.blip.tv/file/1555560/>

Breaking pieces out into modules (and even further into plugins) can help keep it manageable.

<comment><USER12> Erhmm.. this was the one I actually watched:

<http://www.vimeo.com/1752667>

Same presentation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This tends to be the job of the IDE. I am working on a largish .NET codebase, and Visual Studio, combined with a plugin called Resharper is the thing that keeps that sane, giving us context menus that allow us to quickly find usages of a method, or implementations of an interface.

For Java code, Eclipse performs similar functions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think your project's automated testing scripts are _not_ keeping up with the development.

</comment><comment><USER15> what scm system are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Git, hosted by GitHub.</comment></comment>


Mylan overcharged Medicaid for EpiPen for years, despite warnings - <AUTHOR> https://www.statnews.com/pharmalot/2016/10/05/mylan-overcharged-medicaid-epipen/ <comment><USER2> The graph of epipen pricing over time at the bottom of the article is jaw dropping. "Did we get in trouble yet? No? Add another 10% then". Only imaginary books on Amazon have price curves like that.

<comment><USER3> Supply and demand?

<comment><USER4> No, this is not an 'ideal' market. Mylan was able to exert significant control over the demand by getting recommendations changed (you now need two EpiPens, rather than one), and getting EpiPens required in many schools, etc.

<comment><USER5> I can't imagine anyone recommending having less than two pens: what if one fails due to a manufacturing flaw, user error (e.g. it would suck to fumble it in the heat of action and drop it in an unacceptable location), etc.? And isn't a second dose sometimes needed?

I don't _know_ the details, but I _do_ know my sister always carried two for her eldest (past tense because he's now in college and presumably carrying them himself now).

<comment><USER6> And state legislation mandating that medic units carry multiple EpiPens.

Medic units, that have trained personnel, that have all the equipment to draw up Epi from a $3 vial themselves, who are already on scene.

This leads to my county alone having to throw away $130,000/yr of EpiPens that don't get used before they expire. Because the state legislates that we're required to carry them.

<comment><USER4> What state is that? We just carry epi...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This part is golden...

 _" The company is in the hot seat and it is a bit convenient that CMS decides after 19 years that Mylan has been wrong all along while it did nothing about it, just in time to suit Congress' needs."_

This product has been classified as a non-innovator product for the last 19 years and CMS is just getting around to it? Sure.

And whenever someone says the US gov't doesn't negotiate down drug prices, take a 2nd look at the Medicaid rebate. This is how those negotiations went....

CMS: Oh that's your price? We're going to go ahead and give ourselves a 13% discount (it's 23% for most drugs).

Drug company:....

<comment><USER8> Is anyone required to sell to CMS? Why can't they just say we won't sell it to you. Please go through our distributors.

<comment><USER7> CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) is not a purchaser, they are just a payer. For example, a pharmacy will fill your Rx, then go to CMS (if you're on Medicaid) to ask them to pay it. Most drug companies use a distributor, but that doesn't impact how they interact with CMS.

To answer your question if they are required to "sell" to CMS, the basic answer is yes. In order to sell your drugs to Medicaid and Medicare patients, CMS requires a "Pharmaceutical Pricing Agreement" (PPA) to be signed. One part of that agreement is that you give a significant discount to CMS for certain patients. This is why I chuckle when people say "Medicare can't negotiate drug prices", which is true, but the gov't takes their pound of flesh other ways (Medicaid rebate, 340B rebate, which both have price increase penalties). There are examples of drugs where the manufacturer is required to sell them at "penny pricing". That is, $0.01 per unit of drug. This is usually due to the manufacturer cranking up the price really fast, but in the end they have to give the drug to the gov't for _FREE_.

Do companies have to enter in to a PPA? They don't have to, but since Medicaid and Medicare represent more than half of all patients in the US, you'd be stupid not to. There is one example where a drug company said "no thanks". It was J&J's over the counter division. I assume Medicare and Medicaid was a super small slice for that business so they just pulled out all together. Most companies can't afford to do that.

<comment><USER9> > This is usually due to the manufacturer cranking up the price really fast, > but in the end they have to give the drug to the gov't for FREE

To add to what you're saying, this same effect also results in inflated prices for patients on private insurance and patients who are uninsured. When Medicare reimburses less than the direct cost of goods and services (which they _do_ , in the aggregate), then providers have to make up the difference elsewhere.

That's why you see incredibly inflated bills for basic services. It's because private insurers and uninsured patients are in effect subsidizing Medicare through higher reimbursement rates, which get passed on to patients as higher out-of-pocket bills or higher premiums.

<comment><USER10> You're also missing the frequent abuse of the ER by medicaid members, the number of patients that go to the ER for a cold and waste everyone's time and money is way too high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you think that's nuts, you should look at Medicare Part D:

By the design of the program, the federal government is not permitted to negotiate prices of drugs with the drug companies, as federal agencies do in other programs. The Department of Veterans Affairs, which is allowed to negotiate drug prices and establish a formulary, has been estimated to pay between 40%[27] and 58%[28] less for drugs, on average, than Medicare Part D.

Although generic versions of [frequently prescribed to the elderly] drugs are now available, plans offered by three of the five [exemplar Medicare Part D] insurers currently exclude some or all of these drugs from their formularies.…Further, prices for the generic versions are not substantially lower than their brand-name equivalents. The lowest price for simvastatin (generic Zocor) 20 mg is 706 percent more expensive than the VA price for brand-name Zocor. The lowest price for sertraline HCl (generic Zoloft) is 47 percent more expensive than the VA price for brand-name Zoloft."

— Families USA 2007 "No Bargain: Medicare Drug Plans Deliver High Prices" Estimating how much money could be saved if Medicare had been allowed to negotiate drug prices, economist Dean Baker gives a "most conservative high- cost scenario" of $332 billion between 2006 and 2013 (approximately $50 billion a year). Economist Joseph Stiglitz in his book entitled The Price of Inequality estimated a "middle-cost scenario" of $563 billion in savings "for the same budget window".[29]:48

Former Congressman Billy Tauzin, R–La., who steered the bill through the House, retired soon after and took a $2 million a year job as president of Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the main industry lobbying group. Medicare boss Thomas Scully, who threatened to fire Medicare Chief Actuary Richard Foster if he reported how much the bill would actually cost, was negotiating for a new job as a pharmaceutical lobbyist as the bill was working through Congress.[30][31] A total of 14 congressional aides quit their jobs to work for the drug and medical lobbies immediately after the bill's passage.[32]

(Wikipedia)

<comment><USER7> _By the design of the program, the federal government is not permitted to negotiate prices of drugs with the drug companies_

Yes, but Medicare Part D is not run by the federal gov't, it's run by private insurers (the gov't just pays them). Private Part D plans negotiate down the cost of drugs all the time. In fact, the actual costs of Part D have consistently come in lower than projected since the start of the program.

Private Part D plans get lump sum payments from the gov't to pay for patients. Each Part D plan bids on being a provider. So, when the Part D plan negotiates a lower price on a drug, they can bid lower for their overall plan and the savings get passed onto the gov't.

And it's not fair to compare Medicare Part D prices to what the VA pays. The VA is a pretty small slice of the market and there is statutory language about the discounts they _must_ receive. A lot of it isn't even negotiated.

And finally, Medicare couldn't negotiate lower prices if it wanted to. Right now, Medicare Part D has a hell of a time excluding a drug from their formulary. They basically can't say "no, patients can't use this drug". If they can't say no, then what leverage do they have over drug companies? The rules on how Medicare can manage their formulary would have to change before they could start negotiating.

<comment><USER5> And don't forget that us Medicare Part D "customers" or whatever you want to call us have more than a little skin in the game, especially the ones who'll enter the "donut hole".

I'd add that the government "choosing a plan" web site is rather good, give it a list of drugs and it'll tell you what you'll pay next year, modulo changes. It's also not difficult to manipulate it to play what if games, e.g. every once in a while I get a sinus infection, and it takes 30 days of a not so cheap generic antibiotic to be sure to cure it. So I put that drug on and off my list, to make sure it'll be acceptably priced if I have bad luck next year. Displays quality survey data that seems to have some relation to reality, makes enrolling in a new plan a snap, etc. etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Revoke the Epipen trademark immediately! They declared their own product to be generic after all.

<comment><USER13> I believe they said the epinephrine in the pen is generic (i.e. non trademarked), but the actual device (the pen) is.

<comment><USER14> Which means it was misclassified, as Medicare patients are not paying for Epinephrine, but for the pen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm torn on this subject, could someone explain to my why this is morally wrong? (honest question, equally torn on the Shkreli case). I don't have any knowledge of US medical policy, law and regulations but does the fault not lie squarely with government here? Surely one can not expect a commercial enterprise to price a product as 'fair' (whatever that means) when it is operating in a competitive environment? (I wouldn't have the heart to run such a company but isn't this to be expected?).

There are soccer players here in the UK that get paid £100k per week to do nothing- noone is up in arms to regulate that market?

<comment><USER16> Because I won't die if they're paying their players ten times market rates. They're merely entertainers. That's private money, mostly. Making a public service overpay by factors of almost 10 when it's quite literally a matter of life and death is morally wrong, yes.

Putting themselves in almost a situation of monopoly on epipens in the US (which you can't fault the high cost of entry for, I'm quite happy that medical devices have high standards) then yes, they should have a moral obligation to sell Epipens at a fair price.

<comment><USER9> > paying their players ten times market rates

They're not paying their players ten times market rates. They're paying their players 1x market rates. The market rate for those players happens to be very high. That's the whole point.

<comment><USER17> Exactly, the sports star/actor arugement is nonsensical. As far as I know the NFL is very profitable. Those players create tons of value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> it will be interesting to see how this is decided because apparently there is a generic epipen: 'adrenaclick' but pharmacists are not allowed to substitute the generic for epipen on a prescription. more details here: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining- dr...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs- chairs/)

<comment><USER19> Adrenaclick is an alternative _branded_ epinephrine auto-injector.

There's a couple of companies that make generic versions of it, so you can get a pair for $150, but the branded version costs ~$400.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am sorry, but as someone who isn't from the US (but does live and work in the US) ... phrases like this make zero sense:

> Mylan should have been paying a higher rebate of 23 percent, but did not do > so because the company improperly classified EpiPen, despite being told its > classification was incorrect.

If a regular person defaults on paying their taxes, the IRS can seize their property and stuff. Why are Mylan's EpiPen warehouses not being seized to pay for these rebates? Instead, they are being gently chided saying "you really should have paid more, because um, _the law requires it_?"

In my opinion, due to massive lobbying, there are really one set of rules in the US for regular people, and a different set for the ultra rich and large corporations. I would be delighted to be offered a working alternative explanation, or seeing massive financial and possibly criminal penalties for Mylan executives (if willful misclassification is proven).

<comment><USER21> That's not how it really works for regular people either. Virginia sent me a letter last year stating "we think you were required to file a 2012 Virginia return." Several months later they decide "we think you owe us X." No Department of Revenue agents seizing my assets. A few months later I had my CPA call, gave them my W2s showing I lived in New York at the time, and the revenue agent was like "our bad, you didn't owe us anything after all."

The government really doesn't go full bore after "you should have checked Box A instead of Box B" situations unless something really egregious happens, and that's true for little people too. When there is a big corp, involved in something like this, it's almost always true that there is ambiguity about which Box should've been checked. All these things get the blessing of some tax lawyer who doesn't want to go to jail.

Here there doesn't look like there has been an adjudication (a decision in a lawsuit proving Mylan owes something). Until then, it's just some official's statement.

<comment><USER20> The IRS can garnish your wages without getting a judgement first. That is just a fancy way of saying they can take your money without going to court. You'll have to sue them if you think it's being done incorrectly, right?

Why can't the same be true of Mylan? "Garnish" their profits; and if it was done wrongly, they can sue the relevant Government department.

I'm guessing there are issues of scale of bad behavior involved here, and perhaps wage garnishing is really true only for "egregious" cases. My point is that maybe large lobbying pharma companies making insane profit margins off up-marked drugs ought to an egregious case too.

<comment><USER22> That's actually the IRS having special standing (which it shouldn't, arguably). If it's a private contract, you'd have to go to court over breech of contract and probably end up settling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The World's Most Expensive Drugs: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654450](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654450)

</comment><comment><USER24> I imagine that it's too much to hope that this could ever lead to criminal charges?

<comment><USER22> Why would increasing the price of a good lead to criminal charges?

<comment><USER25> Because the lied to the government and misclassified the drug as a generic. By doing this, they can give out half the discount as with brand name drugs. Generics are discounted ~11% when sold to Medicaid, but brand name drugs are often discounted 20-30%.

<comment><USER22> Then just fine them, why does this have to be a criminal issue? It should only be a criminal issue when they did this knowingly and maliciously instead of checking the wrong box somewhere.

<comment><USER24> You try checking a wrong box that nets you millions, and see how willing the justice system is to take you at your good word.

<comment><USER22> They just fine you. People who get audited for millions oftentimes just pay a fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Reminder for this recent Harvard study:

[http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article- abstract/254569...](http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article- abstract/2545691)

Drug prices are high because of all the government-granted monopolies.

<comment><USER27> It's really odd. The NHS in the UK does a reasonable job negotiating prices down and recommending generics. It's been recommending an alternative to the Epipen for a while now, I believe. So it shouldn't be _intrinsic_ to state-run medical systems.

<comment><USER28> It's definitely not intrinsic.

"[The] federal government is prohibited from negotiating drug prices on behalf of Medicare Part D plans."

[http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/04/t...](http://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2012/sep/04/tammy- baldwin/uncle-sam-barred-bargaining-medicare-drug-prices-s/)

It probably doesn't take much guessing to figure out which industry's lobbyists helped that one along.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This means there are people who died who otherwise would not have. So weigh the loss of everything those people would have contributed to society and the economy over the increase in stock value.

</comment><comment><USER30> Doesn't say much for the ability of government run health care to control costs.

<comment><USER31> Given how hamstrung regulators are these days thanks to a pro-corporate Congress, it doesn't say much other than that the government we've elected has _chosen_ not to control costs.

<comment><USER32> Many people have strong support for a single payer system. Seeing this simple failure illustrates a risk in moving that direction. Who do you trust to do a better job keeping costs in control? The greed (or fiduciary duty) of an insurance company or the governance of bureaucrats?

I trust the market more because the government has proved to be far more corruptible. There should be a government option for sure, but regulations should focus more on making the healthcare market healthy.

* Open straightforward pricing

* Removal of trademark protections for named drugs

* Reducing patent terms, adding affordability conditions

* Publicly funding research with open access requirements

* Mandating manufacture of unpopular or poorly competitive drugs to get patent protections

* Adding efficiency to approval and regulation process

It seems all too obvious that a single payer system in America would get overrun with regulatory capture and skyrocket costs in sweetheart deals.

<comment><USER33> "I trust the market more because the government has proved to be far more corruptible."

Proved? Has the U.S. government actually been proven to be more corruptible than private industry?

I realize you might have been using a bit of overly-strong language, and not actually meant that in a literal way.

Still, frankly speaking, I trust the government a heck of a lot more than private businesses like Comcast or the health insurers.

Your statement, all the same, leaves me wondering if somehow I've missed out on some news stories or something, that shows how the government is corrupt while BCBS or UnitedHealth act with integrity.

<comment><USER32> There's no way to say "proved" about anything but mathematics that meets with it's usage in that context. It's not overly strong language, just used in a different context therefore with different meaning.

I trust an insurance company and healthcare provider because they are adversaries. Insurance vs insurance, insurance vs provider, provider vs provider. They're being driven with competition and ultimately greed. If one of them does a bad job, another that's doing better will replace it. They're all playing with their own money.

A government bureaucrat tough doesn't really have any skin in the game. They might be driven by good natured ideals, but I think that's far too vulnerable to compromise. From politicians being bought by lobbyists to a revolving door between industry and bureaucracies personal greed leads only to healthcare providers and government colluding for their own individual benefits to the detriment of the citizen who has no option but to pay taxes and get the services of the single healthcare system.

In theory a benevolent dictator is the ideal form of government, but in reality the people with power just aren't angels. You can use competition and greed for the greater good if you do it properly, you just have to recognize what you're doing and how to manipulate human behavior for the best outcome.

<comment><USER34> >I trust an insurance company and healthcare provider because they are adversaries. Insurance vs insurance, insurance vs provider, provider vs provider. They're being driven with competition and ultimately greed. If one of them does a bad job, another that's doing better will replace it. They're all playing with their own money.

I mean, alternatively, doesn't the ultimate utilization of what the market can bear mean "no aggression pacts" between companies? As far as I've observed change in local options and markets in recent years hasnt been from innovation or disruptive new comers in many healthcare fields but instead buyouts and mergers consolidating the power until you're left with giants that just sort of leave one another alone. This doesn't breed competition, it breeds complacaency and a market with extremely few choices.

I don't know the answer but this idea that corporations will fight for our dollar doesn't sit well with me, as the current state of healthcare options shows this to not be the case. The barrier of entry just on cost (equip, doctors, medicine) excluding regulatory issues is prohibitive, and doubly so for insurers. Disruptive forces that would provoke competition or a change in pricing just seems too difficult to get off the ground.

<comment><USER32> There are plenty of markets where competition drives the margins to near zero. I'm not saying medicine can or should be one of them, but something along that trend is wholly possible.

The government _does_ have a role in this. They need to be there to foster the healthy competition environment with appropriate legislation and regulation. Part of that healthy regulation is punishing highly illegal "no aggression pacts" and enforcing antitrust laws to prevent mergers that would suck out the competition.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jason Scott: Archive Corps - <AUTHOR> http://www.archivecorps.org/

<comment><USER2> Context:

After rescuing 1,700 boxes of manuals from a closing manual warehouse for future archiving and scanning,

"goodwill and the interest in these types of project shouldn't fade away with the completion of the main part of the Manuals Plus project. He instead proposed that there be something like Archive Team for physical rescues. Naturally, there's a lot to learn in that space, but with a level of speed and radical approaches that worked for Archive Team, maybe something good will come of it.

Therefore, in one line, I announce: ArchiveCorps."

from: [http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4755](http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/4755)</comment>


Ask HN: How do I delegate? - <AUTHOR>

I have reached the point where I recognize that I am trying to do too much. And I spend more time thinking about what needs to be done first rather than acting.<p>I am not a control freak, I just don't know how to connect with people I can outsource specific projects. <comment><USER2> One good strategy is to break the tasks down into categories, and automatically delegate all tasks in that category to a certain person. For instance, you could assign someone to be the PR person, and automatically delegate any issues with customers to them. That way, people start to specialize in a certain area, and you don't need to worry about who is best to deal with it. Just make sure those people are aware that from time to time, when you deem a certain issue important, you may step in and do it yourself.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you asking how to manage direct reports, or how to go about finding someone to farm tasks off to in the first place?

I _think_ you're asking the latter, but I'm not 100% sure.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's a two-part problem. First is finding the right people to delegate the tasks to. Second is to define the tasks, assign them, then evaluate the result.

What kind of arrangement do you have though? Do you have employees? Are you assigning things to co-founders? outsourcing to another firm?

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll let the community field this one.

<comment><USER5> looks like I'll have someone else take care of the jokes from now on.

<comment><USER6> you just have to learn how to delegate</comment></comment></comment>


Alphabet X new bipedal robot can climb stairs and overcome obstacles - <AUTHOR> http://www.techtimes.com/articles/148771/20160409/alphabet-x-showcases-new-bipedal-robot-that-can-climb-stairs-and-overcome-obstacles.htm <comment><USER2> Very nice. It's good to know that Schaft is doing something. The leg mechanism is clever; they can run the legs in and out, without having to deal with the large forces needed to operate a knee joint. This is probably more useful in the near term than Boston Dynamics' hydraulic monsters. This is a big flat- footed machine, not an aggressive active balancer - less ambitious technically, but more useful.

It doesn't have any arms, but Google has some other startups into manipulation. Maybe they can get their companies to work together. The next generation might be good enough for factory work, moving around machines and loading and unloading parts.

One picture seems to shows a little spinning brush-like thing sticking out the side of the foot, like the wall following sensor on early Roombas. Is that a sensor? Seems an odd choice today.

They do look a little like the robots from "Silent Running", but that's OK.

<comment><USER3> > _The leg mechanism is clever; they can run the legs in and out, without > having to deal with the large forces needed to operate a knee joint._

Yeah, that's interesting. I know I've seen sci-fi robots with sliding pistons instead of knees; it seems like a pretty straightforward concept. I don't recall anyone besides SCHAFT attempting it seriously, though. I wonder why? (Or have I missed previous attempts?)

> _The next generation might be good enough for factory work_

Hmm. I would think that factory work is a prime case where wheels are more effective than legs, though.

<comment><USER4> Depends on the factory. Here's a picture from Boeing's: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Boeing_F...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Boeing_Factory_2002.jpg)

Especially relevant due to "No FOD" sign (meaning there's sometimes shit lying around that the a bipedal robot could walk over).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Holy shit, that website is atrocious (I also don't have an adblocker installed...)

Here's a direct link to the video for anyone hoping to avoid a monster of "modern" web development: [https://youtu.be/iyZE0psQsX0](https://youtu.be/iyZE0psQsX0)

<comment><USER6> Same reaction. And thanks, you're a gentleman and a scholar!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This robot will be inherently stable, which is a good start. A clever underslung chassy approaach to balance.

 _Knees_ higher than pelvis is inherently stable under load - ( akin to spider and beetle legs ) - this makes that useful mechanical linkage adjustable.

Mechanical Intelligence is important, this robot _thinks_ mechanically with its 'knees'.

</comment><comment><USER8> So, what's stopping them from making 2.5m high units? Making it small and cute is just a trick to reduce the fear inspired by Boston Dynamics' war bots. I like this bot but I liked the BD bots too, sad to see such a promising company be cut off.

Just take a look here, ain't it cute? So human-like (after a few bottles of wine)

[https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=38](https://youtu.be/rVlhMGQgDkY?t=38)

<comment><USER9> Getting closer to seeing terminators around every corner - it's not being paranoid if it's true!

<comment><USER10> Robots aren't affected by nerve gas. The terminators won't come for us with shiny exoskeletons and miniguns.

EDIT> Bullets are expensive. Industrial chemicals are cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Climb stairs, overcome obstacles, and tell you that you have 20 seconds to comply.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks quite similar to the robots from Interstellar.

<comment><USER13> Yes I though the same. Especially when it walks in natural landscapes (e.g. on the beach and the snowy forest).

I find the view of autonomous human artifacts roaming in otherwise unaltered natural landscapes aesthetically very pleasing.

Sci-Fi is real. We leave in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Seems strange to showcase a robot that looks less impressive than the product of the company they recently announced they were trying to sell.

<comment><USER15> I was more impressed by this over the Boston Dynamics stuff. The BD robots looked like they had some size and noise problems to overcome.

<comment><USER3> If the SCHAFT robot is quieter and less bulky than the BD models, it's because it's running off of batteries instead of a piston engine, which means it will have a regrettably short range before needing a recharge. (The BD bots are much quieter when attached to a power cable in a lab.) Nobody's gonna get around that limitation until there's a major breakthrough in battery tech.

<comment><USER16> an autonomous robot can go swap out it's own batteries, or go charge itself. if it can operate for 24 hours a day, losing ~5% of that time for battery swapping is not that significant.

<comment><USER3> Depends on what you're using it for. The Boston Dynamics jobbies were intended for search and rescue, or accompanying soldiers on foot; they'd need to go for hours or days without access to resupply.

My point was just that this thing isn't quiet because of better engineering, it's quiet because it's made for a different job.

<comment><USER16> agreed that it is designed for a different job. but those different jobs are likely to represent a huge percentage of the market (home, office and factory environments). i dont think that in these settings a relatively short battery life will be "regrettable" at all. as i mentioned above, swapping batteries is an easy solution to the problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This remind me of RoboCop's ED-209, which also had a linear-motion way of moving the lower leg.

<comment><USER18> The video has a proto Ed-209 at 1m25s [https://youtu.be/iyZE0psQsX0?t=1m25s](https://youtu.be/iyZE0psQsX0?t=1m25s)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> They have lowered the center of gravity. Pretty clever.

</comment><comment><USER20> brilliant

i love this track as leg idea

it looks so stupid obvious when it is working this nicely

congrats on vision and execution

<comment><USER10> Yeah, right? This is the kind of innovation that makes me feel stupid. Well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Thrilled to see that the presenter is wearing a FC Barcelona shirt, 1999 centennial edition. Força Barça!

</comment><comment><USER22> Definitely see this being a commercial product to help around the home</comment>


Europe's Free-Speech Apocalypse Is Already Here - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/17/europes-free-speech-apocalypse-is-already-here-france-germany-spain/ <comment><USER2> "In October, a judge sentenced a man from northeast Germany to five months' probation and a 300 euro fine for a Facebook post saying refugees should burn alive or drown in the Mediterranean Sea"

Sounds reasonable. Inciting violence is illegal in the US as well, by the way.

It may not be obvious to everyone, but we're seeing a wave of anti-immigrant violence. Just yesterday a court in my region sentenced two men and a woman to up to eight years in prison for throwing a Molotow cocktail in a house where a refugee family was living. Only by chance (the small child slept in his mother's bed that night) was noone killed.

Don't you think this is just academic, and words don't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER2> "and Germany has extracted commitments from social media companies to summarily expunge anything that smacks of hate speech."

That's -- at best and very generously speaking -- an inaccurate description

<comment><USER3> And why is that?</comment></comment>


On Shinichi Mochizuki's Inter-Universal Teichmüller Theory - <AUTHOR> http://inference-review.com/article/fukugen <comment><USER2> My favorite explanation of IUT is buried deep on Mochizuki's website: [http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/sokkuri-hausu- link...](http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/sokkuri-hausu-link- english.pdf) And accompanying animations: 1) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJTm8pTV5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hJTm8pTV5A) 2) [http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/IUT-animation- Thm-...](http://www.kurims.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~motizuki/IUT-animation-Thm-A- washi.avi)

</comment><comment><USER3> slightly old and slightly technical -- the discussion on MathOverflow -- not nearly as good as the Sokkuri House example

[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/106560/philosophy- behind-m...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/106560/philosophy-behind- mochizukis-work-on-the-abc-conjecture/)</comment>


How Google Search Trends Provide Insights Into Rental Prices - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kwelia.com/2013/10/24/apartment-research-how-google-search-trends-provide-insights-into-rental-prices/

<comment><USER2> What were the actual correlation values? I didn't see them reported anywhere.

Simply reporting p-values is insufficient; there is a huge difference between statistically significant (high confidence that the value is not zero) and significant (the correlation is large enough that it's relevant for anything useful).

From the plots I suspect the correlations are pretty low...</comment>


Why I'm not enabling Bitcode (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@FredericJacobs/why-i-m-not-enabling-bitcode-f35cd8fbfcc5#.pjlo4ndz5 <comment><USER2> This article was criticised the first time on HN. This part is particularly fanciful:

>an adversary could find a vulnerability in the LLVM backend to obtain remote code execution on Apple's Bitcode compilation infrastructure to inject a compiler trojan that would affect every single app on the App Store that was submitted with Bitcode.

That seems like a very much "just so" failure scenario. There's no reason to think this would open up a huge, recommend exploitable attack surface. And even if it did, it seems highly unlikely it'd be limited to just apps submitted with Bitcode.

Same for the backdoor risk. Thinking suddenly Apple would be a target is silly. There may be good reasons against Bitcode but these security hysterics don't help the argument.

<comment><USER3> A compiler provides a very large attack surface. Once an attacker exploits it, they can directly attack bitcode applications without any further exploits. Attacking non-bitcode applications requires exploiting certificate validation as well.

<comment><USER4> One would assume Apple is running the compiler backend in a heavily locked- down container or VM.

<comment><USER3> But that sandbox has access to all bitcode apps by necessity. That's the whole point — once the bitcode compiler has been owned, all bitcode apps are immediately vulnerable, while compromising non-bitcode apps requires significantly more additional work.

<comment><USER5> Why would it have access to all apps? It only need access to the app it is currently compiling.

<comment><USER3> Depends on how it is implemented. If it is implemented as the GGP described, as a container or VM back end service that compiles multiple apps, that's a problem. That is precisely the type of problem that would only affect bitcode apps that the top post didn't think could exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still wonder what the real agenda behind bitcode might be.

It's hard to imagine it's _only_ to make binary size a tiny bit smaller: it would surely have been easier and faster to have Xcode just categorize each application's assets and binaries by screen size and architecture, eg by pushing a ZIP (or whatever) file of separate binaries. This is assuming otool or a similar utility can't extract individual architectures out of a fat binary, which I imagine you can probably cleanly do as well.

The app control thing does have me worried, those concerns are undeniable.

</comment><comment><USER7> As another security expert, I see tremendous security opportunities presented by bitcode. Apple can start providing high-fidelity feedback to application developers about security risks in their applications through both XCode and the app submission process, and may be able to remediate exploited issues on- the-fly by transforming bitcode.

<comment><USER8> How much could you actually transform with a high degree of certainty that you don't break the application?

I just don't buy that they is much gain here, for anything. Possibly you'd be able to swap out assembly instructions for new/better ones that the processor provides, but do you really want Apple to be giving your customers transformed application binaries which you haven't tested?

<comment><USER7> > How much could you actually transform with a high degree of certainty that > you don't break the application?

Compilers routinely "modify" the programs given to them via optimization passes and the like. This is normal. By having access to bitcode, you're essentially given a second chance at compiling an application. Forget to turn on control flow integrity? Want to optimize out a useless API call? You can fix that.

We even do it far more aggressively by lifting binaries back to LLVM bitcode with mcsema, then outputting significantly modified binaries with new functionality. See [https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema](https://github.com/trailofbits/mcsema) for more info. There is breakage when we do this because we can't be sure of the correct control flow through the application, but you won't have this problem if you're not lifting back from a binary.

You're also only focusing on the modification part. Don't forget that bitcode provides a far more suitable target for analysis than binary code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish Apple would drop this entirely. The biggest thing it does is force you as a developer to use their tools. The actual benefits are very limited.

It would be more interesting if they encouraged source uploads, they built an entire CI/CD system for testing and releasing your code. Then they could recompile for anyone opting to use that.

For some background, read this on Rust and bitcode targets for Apple devices (only appleTV and appleWatch require bitcode, it's optional for everything else): [https://github.com/rust- lang/rust/issues/35968](https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/35968)

<comment><USER7> Something I've learned from being a consultant is that there are an infinite number of possible build system configurations for real applications. Apple gets the best of all worlds by asking for bitcode since it abstracts any unique requirements on the developer end but provides them with something of nearly identical utility as source code.

<comment><USER8> It's not though... its not CPU architecture independent, source code is, or can be.</comment></comment></comment>


Errors found in https://www.healthcare.gov/js/all.js - <AUTHOR>

I don't know...I thought I'd just take a peek under the hood. Ofter 10 minutes I didn't want to look any longer.
Tool: http://closure-compiler.appspot.com/home
Url analyzed: https://www.healthcare.gov/js/all.js
1 Warning:
JSC_INVALID_ES3_PROP_NAME: Keywords and reserved words are not allowed as unquoted property names in older versions of JavaScript. If you are targeting newer versions of JavaScript, set the appropriate language_in option. at line 151 character 616 in all.js ...,"visible");f.css({overflow:"hidden",float:o.vertical?"none":"left"});ul.c...
My 2 cents: Use quotes around object literal keys
1 Error:
JSC_TRAILING_COMMA: Parse error. IE8 (and below) will parse trailing commas in array and object literals incorrectly. If you are targeting newer versions of JS, set the appropriate language_in option. at line 271 character 8 in all.js
        'young-adults': 'Jóvenes',
My 2 cents: Don't trail object literals or arrays with ',' if you want IE to behave.
Just looking at this makes my eyes bleed: view-source:https://www.healthcare.gov/marketplace/individual/#state=california Why is all that js mixed in with content. This is just unbelievable. <comment><USER2> That's not "unbelievable" and doesn't "make your eyes bleed" unless you've never looked at the source of a webpage before.

The first file is a couple open source libraries the site's using concatenated together, probably automatically by a good deployment process. It's nothing but Twitter Bootstrap, jQuery, a few jQuery plugins, a JSON parser and a couple arrays. Other than extraneous whitespace, there's nothing that needs improvement in there. The warnings you're pointing out aren't in code written for this site; they're in the jQuery carousel plugin.

That second file is well-formatted, well-structured and human readable HTML and jQuery doing some very basic DOM manipulation, and each block of JS code appears near the part of the document it manipulates. The front-end code is easily better than 99% of what you get from contracted-out work in government or elsewhere. In fact, the markup, class names and JavaScript read just like many modern startups' sites.

I don't think you looked at any of the code you purport to be criticizing. I also don't think you realize that the front-end website you're trying to poke at isn't part of the same code base as the troubled and over-budget marketplace application. The front-end site was built by a small 12-person startup, Development Seed, with modern methodology, tools and libraries, openly on Github, and is really not much more than a well-designed static brochure site. They worked out of a garage and finished in less than 4 months.

The code others are speculating about is the backend enterprise application, written by an entirely different company, CGI Federal, that runs the marketplace portion of the site. We don't have access to that code.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you take notes on your 1:1s being an IC (not a leader)? - <AUTHOR> 1:1s are, in my understanding of it, a meeting focused on the team member, not on the leader. Its value is exactly to allow the IC to define the agenda and conduct the conversation of a meeting with their leader.
Still, I usually only see leaders taking notes. I am an IC and I do take notes. I ask because as a side project I am bootstrapping a 1:1 meeting tool and I am interested in giving this bias to my product - i.e. more features for the IC, not just the leader.
So, as an IC, do you take notes of your 1:1s? Any features you would like to request for a tool that would help you take the most of your 1:1s?
(my product if anyone is curious: hhtps://www.oneonemeeting.com) <comment><USER2> I always take notes at these meetings because I want there to be a paper trail of who said what when. I tried to do it on a tablet's screen keyboard but immediately realized that paper's a better interface -- for me.

I'd try something electronic but I can't think of anything I'd use other than a surreptitious app for an Android phone taking a voice->text transcript of the meeting.</comment>