Ask HN: How to get Bill Gates's attention? - <AUTHOR> I have what is possibly a very simple, cheap and quick solution to solving the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is I am in Australia and only someone like with clout in the USA or Europe like Bill Gates can put it into practice. Any ideas how I can get their attention? <comment><AUTHOR> If anyone wants to know what this possible solution is I have written it up here in non-technical language [0].

0\. [https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to- covid-19/](https://www.tillett.info/2020/04/05/a-solution-to-covid-19/)

Edit. HN seems to have put me on the "posting too fast" treadmill so I will have to edit this post.

While effectively the same as a vaccine, it is quite different. Any such attenuated strain identified can be used outside of the regulatory system. This is the real key to the idea.

Edit 2. I am not a crank - well at least I don't think I am. I have a PhD in microbiology and I have been a professor in microbiology and virology. I now work in the biotech industry. Have a look at the about me section of my blog to check into my background if you care about these things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is the post for those who don't want to follow the link.

Like nearly everyone on the planet I am worried about COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) appears to be killing between 1% to 3.5% of the people it infects and has a R0 (i.e. how many new people each person infected goes onto infect) of between 2.5 to 3.9. Left to run wild, the virus will likely kill tens of millions of people worldwide.

The governments of the world have implemented strict population isolation protocols to try and limit the spread of the virus, but the economic cost of this is extremely high. A vaccine for COVID-19 is 12 to 18 months away (at best).

We are stuck in a diabolic situation where the only way to prevent the economy sliding into a slump deeper than the Great Depression is to consign many tens of millions of people to an early grave. Is there a way out?

SARS-Cov-2 Viral Diversity

SARS-CoV-2 like all viruses mutates (changes) overtime. Many of these genetic changes are small (single nucleotides) that are not important to the replications or transmission of the virus from person to person, but they can be used to identify the origin of the virus. DeCODE genetics has been testing Icelanders for COVID-19 and genome sequencing the SARS-CoV-2 strains isolated. They have found two very important pieces of information:

1\. More than 50% of the people infected with SARS-CoV-19 are asymptomatic (i.e. they have no illness). 2\. They can identify the geographical origin of the strains by the genetic differences (mutations) between the different strains.

This data suggests a simple and testable hypothesis – _there are natural strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have mutated to be non-pathogenic (asymptomatic), but are still infective and will provide immunity to the more pathogenic (deadly) strains._

If we can find one of these non-pathogenic viral strains out in the wild we could give it to everyone in the world and solve our diabolic problem. This non-pathogenic strain would act much like the live attenuated (oral) polio vaccine.

How do we find the attenuated SARS-CoV-2 strains?

This hypothesis is worthless if we have no way of finding any of these non- pathogenic SARS-CoV-2 viral strains. Luckily there is a quick and cheap way to find these strains if they exist – test asymptomatic people for COVID-19 and then genome sequence the SARS-CoV-2 strain that has infected them with the aim of identifying a virus with mutation(s) in an essential viral gene(s). This approach is cheap (a couple of hundreds of dollars a virus strain) and quick (a week or less). With almost no effort or cost we could sequence a few thousand viral strains from asymptomatic people until we find a virus strain with the right mutations to make it harmless and which is in effect an attenuated vaccine. We would know that this strain can still reproduce in people and lead to immunity, but not make people seriously ill.

What viral mutations are we looking for in a good non-pathogenic viral strain?

We would ideally be looking for a virus strain with a large(ish) deletion in an essential viral gene. This sort of mutation is easy to spot in the SARS- CoV-2 genome data, and because the genetic information has been removed, it makes the virus very unlikely to be able to mutate back into a dangerous strain. Ideally, the strain identified will have infected a number of other people in the local area too so we can know it is safe.

Has this ever been done before?

Yes. The polio, measles, rubella, mumps, and chicken pox vaccines are all live attenuated viruses. Even something as dangerous as smallpox was controlled in the 18th century using a variation of this idea called Variolation. The idea was the doctor would deliberately infect you with a less harmful strain of smallpox to make you immune to the more deadly strains of smallpox. Of course, they didn't know how this approach worked in the 18th century, but it was still very effective and millions of people were saved from dying from smallpox by it.

What are the risks?

The major risk is the virus we think is safe is not 100% safe. While we can use community spread of the identified strain to estimate how safe it will be (i.e. if it has infected 1000 people and none have got seriously ill then we should have a pretty good idea that it is safe), but our knowledge will be incomplete. We can of course spend the next few years testing and trialling, but if we do this by the time any strain is shown to be 99.999% safe (not even the polio vaccine is 100% safe) we will have all got COVID-19 and the world's economy will be a smoking ruin.

We have a choice of taking some small risk now, or face the certainty of a much worse problem later. Time to accept some risk and do something.

Q & A

I have been getting a few questions on this post so I thought I would address them here.

How do you know there is an attenuated viral strain out there?

I don't. I am hypothesising that there is one (or more) based on the known mutation rate of coronaviruses and the number of cases. Coronaviruses mutate continuously (this is why companies like deCODE can tell the geographical origin of different strains) as the molecular machinery for replicating their RNA genome is not very accurate. When you combine this with the millions of mild cases out in the world, the odds are on our side that there is at least one person infected with a strain that has a mutation that makes the virus less dangerous (attenuated). We just need to look for this strain – luckily the tools we need to use (genome sequencing) are now cheap and quick. What would have been impossible 20 years ago can now be done in a week.

Aren't most people who have mild/asymptomatic cases infected with the dangerous strain?

Yes. Almost all (>99.9%) of people who are infected (and have a mild case) are infected with a dangerous strain of the virus, they just happen to have an immune system that can control the virus well. With COVID-19 a mild case does not mean you are infected with an attenuated strain – for most people with a mild case if they happen to infect a person with preexisting conditions or who is old, that person will be at a high risk of dying. A mild case does not equal a harmless strain.

My argument is coming from the other direction. While almost all mild cases of COVID-19 are caused by a dangerous strain of SARS-CoV-2, an attenuated strain of SARS-CoV-2 will only cause mild disease. If you want to find an attenuated strain you need to look at mild cases even though >99.9% of the people you check will be infected with a dangerous strain. What we want to find is one of the rare natural viral mutants that is attenuated. Where you will find such a mutant is in people with a mild form of the disease.

Can't we just wait for the vaccine?

No. Apart from the time it will take to develop, trial, and mass produce a vaccine (12-18 months), it is unlikely that any vaccine will be practicable. The reason why is immunity to respiratory viruses (like corona) doesn't last long – 6 months to 2 years. We would have to keep vaccinating everyone in the world every year (or maybe every 6 months if we are unlucky). This just isn't going to work in the real world (especially poor countries) and is one of the reasons we don't have a vaccine for the coronavirus strains that cause the common cold. Unless we can drive the current dangerous SARS-CoV-2 strains to extinction we are going to have a problem with this disease indefinitely.

Isn't social distancing and quarantining solving the problem?

Yes and no. Yes countries like South Korea and Australia have shown that through mass screening and social distancing you can keep a lid on the disease, but this leaves the population susceptible to a new outbreak. Singapore and Japan have recently seen this in action where they eased restrictions and found the disease came back and they had to reintroduce restrictions. I don't think many people want to live for years with cycles of restrictions, easings and further outbreaks.

Wouldn't the use of such an attenuated strain just be a vaccine?

Yes in one way, but it is a little more subtle. Assuming we can find an attenuated strain, then how to best use it a separate question. Giving it deliberately to lots of people would change the ecosystem for the dangerous strains of the virus. The dangerous strains would find it dificult to spread through the community as many (most) people would have already been infected (and hence immune) with the attenuated strain. Overtime the dangerous strains would become rarer, and the attenuated strains more common, until eventually the dangerous strains would go extinct and we would just be left with the mild version. While we would not be able to get rid of this mild strain, it would just be another of the hundreds of viruses out there causing common colds. The idea is at its base is really to replace the dangerous strains with a less dangerous strain that we can live with.

<comment><USER2> > The major risk is the virus we think is safe is not 100% safe.

IANAD, but IMHO you cannot just sequence the virus in asymptomatic people - you have to sequence a randomized, sizable % of the whole positive population, including mild or severe cases, and the dead too. Only then you'll be able to "paint a picture" of the different strains' effects on humans and slap some confidence data to each identified strain. Your idea definitely looks promising though.

<comment><USER3> That was my thought as well - basically, how do you know if the strain doesn't kill if you don't check for severe and lethal cases linked to the same strain? I understand the part about looking for specific mutations, and assuming they would indicate the "usual" complications with the deadlier strains would not be present, but mutations are not exactly predictable, right? If they don't cause the sympthoms of the current deadly strain - they may be causing something else completely, which could be as deadly a little bit later down the line - isn't this a reasonble concern, @danieltillett?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First get this validated by a medical authority. Find the best one you can.

Next, send your idea and medical validation to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. You're not contacting Bill, you're contacting his foundation. Their doctors will look at your idea and can present it to Bill on the next scheduled call.

<comment><USER5> No one should contact that terrorist eugenics organization. They're diabolical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I sent this to someone at the Bill & Melinda foundation. If they contact you let us all know.

</comment><comment><USER7> I read somewhere that Bill Gates is very active on social media e.g. Reddit and Twitter. Here is one of the AMAs he did on Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5whpqs/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

A recent AMA related to covid-19. There are references to his team and adviser: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

His Reddit handle is: [https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates](https://www.reddit.com/user/thisisbillgates) His Twitter handle is: [https://twitter.com/BillGates](https://twitter.com/BillGates) His blog is: [http://www.gatesletter.com](http://www.gatesletter.com)

If you search, you will also easily find his email address online. He has multiple email addresses as per online searches.

HTH

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes in an ideal world I should just be able to write to Bill and he will have the time to consider my proposal seriously. In the real world the only way to get the attention of someone like Bill is to have someone he takes seriously bring it to his attention. Hence the post here.

<comment><USER7> In the last AMA on Reddit he did provide information about the people to whom he listens. I am posting the link to the AMA again here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Coronavirus/comments/fksnbf/im_bill_gates_cochair_of_the_bill_melinda_gates)

Dr. Trevor Mundel[0], who leads the Gates Foundation's global health work, and Dr. Niranjan Bose[1], Bill Gates' chief scientific adviser.

[0] [https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General- Informati...](https://www.gatesfoundation.org/Who-We-Are/General- Information/Leadership/Executive-Leadership-Team/Trevor-Mundel)

[1] [https://www.linkedin.com/in/niranjan- bose-014b00](https://www.linkedin.com/in/niranjan-bose-014b00)

<comment><USER8> Sounds like these people would be much more likely to see a message and would be plenty capable of passing it on to Bill if they see merit in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes to get to someone like Bill will be a two jump exercise.

<comment><USER7> I have heard of a healthtech startup in Cambridge, UK that is supported by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The company is simprints([https://www.simprints.com](https://www.simprints.com)). Contact the founders of that company. One of them is Alexandra Grigore ([https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra- grigore-8aa20186](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexandra-grigore-8aa20186))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Chinese researchers on findings of a less deadly strain, preprint March 10:

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.10.20033944v2)

We found, in our 788 confirmed COVID-19 patients, the decreased rate of severe/critical type, increased liver/kidney damage and prolonged period of nuclear acid positivity during virus dissemination, when compared with Wuhan. To investigate the underlining mechanism, we isolated one strain of SARS- CoV-2 (ZJ01) in mild COVID-19 patient and found the existence of 35 specific gene mutation by gene alignment. Further phylogenetic analysis and RSCU heat map results suggested that ZJ01 may be a potential evolutionary branch of SARS-CoV-2. We classified 54 strains of viruses worldwide (C/T type) based on the base (C or T) at positions 8824 and 28247. ZJ01 were both T at these two sites, becoming the only TT type currently identified in the world. The prediction of Furin cleavage site (FCS) and the sequence alignment of virus family indicated that FCS may be an important site of coronavirus evolution. ZJ01 had mutations near FCS (F1-2), which caused changes in the structure and the electrostatic distribution of the S protein surface, further affecting the binding capacity of Furin. Single cell sequencing and ACE2-Furin co-expression results confirmed that Furin level was higher in the whole body, especially in glands, liver, kidney and colon while FCS may help SARS-CoV-2 infect these organs. The evolutionary pattern of SARS-CoV-2 towards FCS formation may result in its clinical symptom becoming closer to HKU-1 and OC43 (the source of FCS sequence-PRRA) caused influenza, further showing potential in differentiating into mild COVID-19 subtypes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep this is exactly the sort of mutant we want to look for, but ideally we want a strain with a gene deletion not just point mutations to lessen the chance of back mutations. It does prove that there are less pathogenic strains out there, there just needs to be an effort put into finding them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can you put the desired action and the solution in the first sentence, then back it up in the rest of the post?

The post has an academic style, and academia optimizes for _writing_ articles, not for the articles to be _read_ or impact the world.

If you rub a lamp and a genie appears, better get to the point.

</comment><comment><USER11> You're most likely not going to get a response from an email or a tweet. To get his attention, put in some legwork.

1- Create a website: [http://IhaveaCOVIDsolution.com](http://IhaveaCOVIDsolution.com) , On the website, outline your idea, why it would work, put a personal video of a story etc.. 2-Email the website to everyone who knows Bill. Track if he opens it for free with Email Tracking, Scheduling, Templates & Attachment Tracking. 3-If he doesn't open it, tweet it to him. 4-A week later, follow up on your email 5-Find where many of his followers (on Twitter) hang out, which hashtags do many use. Post your website and use that hashtag. Or, tweet each of them individually. 6-Find posts on Quora about Covid-19 solutions, post your idea (for free) and post your website. 7-A week later follow up again with Bill. Also, reach out to other Gates foundation Execs. Reach out to Melinda or Microsoft execs(ex-Msft friends also) and get ignored (will toughen you up). Maybe 1 of them will want a phone call. Find Bill's address, write him a hand- written letter and send the website URL as well.

At some point, he will either:

Answer, quick email from him. Best case a phone call. His publicist will say "Thanks, Bill will look at your ideas." You'll never hear from them again

Maybe he won't answer, but at some point you'll get someone to respond and perhaps become a client to your solution.

</comment><comment><USER12> Check out the Mercatus Center's 'Fast Grants' program: [https://fastgrants.org/](https://fastgrants.org/)

They're giving $10k - $500k grants to fight covid-19, and decisions are made within 48 hours.

Press Release: [https://www.mercatus.org/features/mercatus-emergent- ventures...](https://www.mercatus.org/features/mercatus-emergent-ventures- launches-fast-grants-fight-covid-19)

<comment><AUTHOR> I have already applied there. I don't actually want any money just collaborators to make this happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While possible, the notion that asymptomatic[†] cases are due to a separate less-pathogenic strain is both indeed a possibility researchers are thinking about, and yet also _not_ (a priori) the only or perhaps most probable explanation for the wide variance in clinical outcomes we see. Other important, perhaps dominant, factors include heterogeneity in people's immune responses to virus--common in other conditions--and (possibly) a dose- dependence (e.g. if you are exposed to a high viral load e.g. by intense or prolonged exposure, some reports (but far too few for definiteness yet) are that clinical outcomes may be poorer). Though there are different COVID strains in circulation (see the amazing data tracking of [https://nextstrain.org/ncov](https://nextstrain.org/ncov)), with regards to the proposed hypothesis: there is no evidence that these strains show any difference in virulence (see e.g. the perspective of Francois Balloux at UCL: [https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/12395362423558225...](https://twitter.com/BallouxFrancois/status/1239536242355822592)). Many groups are attempting to scale up environmental genomic testing for COVID (see again the nextstrain site).

[†] Note that currently, researchers are rather vigorously debating the true proportion of asymptomatic cases (or distinguishing them from pre-symptomatic cases)--we need more widespread e.g. antibody-based testing to answer this more confidently than we can by indirectly fitting coarse time-series to simplified models.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is likely to run into some hiccups.

When we exterminate species of animals, microbes that inhabit them jump species. It's how they survive.

One of the things that fosters antibiotic resistance is that bacteria mutate at a higher rate in hostile environments.

Different people with different genetics react differently to the same things.

I am not trying to rain on your parade. I'm trying to take you seriously and share my thoughts. I'm sure we all want a solution.

I think we need to up our game on other things. I don't know how to get traction on that. We already know a lot of things that help and we are just not doing a very good job of getting everyone to understand and comply.

If we did, people might dismiss the success as "luck" anyway. Humans have a terrible track record of not knowing how to count the disasters that didn't happen but should have.

Best of luck. I see in comments someone forwarded it to the Gates Foundation. I would be happy to learn I'm wrong and this works.

</comment><comment><USER15> Summary of the idea from the link in the sibling comment, partially in the words of the author (edited by me):

 _[There might be] natural strains of SARS-CoV-2 in the world that have mutated to be non-pathogenic (asymptomatic), but are still infective and will provide immunity to the more pathogenic (deadly) strains.

[If there are and] we can find one of these non-pathogenic viral strains out in the wild we could [use it] much like the live attenuated (oral) polio vaccine._

The submitter seeks help to test this hypothesis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would add that the hypothesis can be checked very quickly and cheaply by genomic sequencing.

I can afford the cost of all the sequencing, what I need is access to a large number of samples from people infected with mild cases of COVID-19. My best estimate is you would need to look at north of 5000 samples to find a strain with the right sort of gene deletion.

<comment><USER16> What about reaching out to the mods of [https://Reddit.com/r/Covid19Positive](https://Reddit.com/r/Covid19Positive) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For all our sakes, I wish you the best of luck with this idea. I'm sorry I don't know how to help you but your idea sounds promising and it's super invigorating to see high agency people try to implement their solutions to our problems! :)

</comment><comment><USER18> Presumably you are asking for

\- Website where people who fit criteria can register

\- some form of triage (symptoms checking, contact tracing)

\- Then _collection_. Presumably people will need to supply mucus samples, _and have those samples collected safely_. This sounds difficult and seems like the expensive and hard to scale part. But I can imagine a fleet of drivers with some training being able to collect and store samples in "proper" equipment. This is well out of my expertise.

\- testing / sequencing (lab based). This you seem confident on.

Is this a good idea - I don't know. Is it possible - yes it seems quite doable. Does it need billg? I doubt it. Plenty of people have cash and now have motivation.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER19> You could reach out to companies like [https://lifeomic.com/](https://lifeomic.com/) ? If they can't help directly, they might be able to steer you in the right direction?

Good luck

</comment><comment><USER20> So I'm no expert in medical sciences, but have some basic knowledge. Here's what I think:

You're basically proposing a form of vaccination. Essentially everyone knows that a vaccine would be the way out of this mess. There's loads of research on Vaccines for Covid-19 right now. Your idea isn't exceptionally surprising, as you write yourself it's close to how some of the early vaccines worked.

I am reasonably convinced researchers into vaccines right now turn every stone to look for possible ways to make a vaccine as fast as possible. They probably got the idea already and if it's a feasible path someone is working on it.

That said making a vaccine still faces some basic challenges that every medicine faces: You want to be pretty sure that a) it works and b) it has no massive surprising sideeffects. Given that you want to give it to potentially almost everyone on the planet, you want to be really sure.

<comment><USER21> > Given that you want to give it to potentially almost everyone on the planet, > you want to be really sure.

This is why I have a hard time with the current crisis. We are in what is now universally called a "global health crisis".

Measures are being taken to help prevent the virus that are incredibly costly for the economy, which will cost hundreds of thousands of jobs, and that will indirectly kill thousands of people.

Yet when it comes to vaccines and treatment tests, we use the usual approach, tests on a very very small number of patients, regulator validation that takes months to process, x phase trials where each phase needs to be tested x times. All these are very fine in a normal situation and help prevent mistakes, but extraordinary times require extraordinary measures.

You don't need to be "really sure" that your vaccine is good, you just need it to be better than the status quo. If we can identify one strain that is indeed less deadly than the average of the virus, it's good enough. You sure are going to kill people, but in a crisis mode, if that allows you to save more, it should be a tradeoff we are willing to make.

<comment><USER22> I hear you. I hope we overhaul the fda when this is over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Variolation is a good idea with or without attenuated virus. That just improves on it.

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut- co...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/03/variolation-may-cut- covid19-deaths-3-30x.html)

I'd like to sign up for it either way, assuming medical supervision.

<comment><AUTHOR> This suggestion is not really variolation. Real variolation involved infecting a person with an attenuated strain of smallpox, not just a low dose. While the idea by Robin might help to build herd immunity relatively safely those infected will still be a hazard to the vulnerable around them and it won't lead to a long term solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Post your solution on or blog or github with a permissive license. If your solutions is worth anything Bill Gates will come to you.

<comment><USER25> He did: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810925](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22810925)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> By reading 'The art of computer programming' (Knuth) from cover to cover :) He'd be more than willing to listen to you then (according to his own words, ironically printed on the backcover of my copy of TAOCP).

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems overly complex. Why not just inject live virus into people's glutes? At dose low enough to trigger a response hopefully not enough to cause pathogenesis.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is actually extreme simple. You suggestion of injecting virus into people's gluts is a vaccine, just one that is unlikely to work well and be dangerous as well. I have explained why vaccines are not the answer.

<comment><USER27> It might be a lower risk to innoculate in the the glute then getting a primary infection in the lung first. We do not know yet and that's what vaccine trials are for. We know that the spike protein is probably the target though. That protein and fragments can be amplified and expressed and tested as vaccines.

Your search for a live attenuated strain would probably take 18 months minimum and probably longer. You need widespread testing and sequencing which are both in short supply. You also need outcome data. You would also need a sufficient sample size and then hope that your predicted attentuated cohort is say not just all young people.

Sars-Cov2 mutation rate is <26bp per year. [https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?l=clock](https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?l=clock)

<comment><AUTHOR> No it won't take long. We already have the samples (they are what has been sent in to labs) and with modern genomic tools you could sequence 100,000 samples for under a million dollars in a couple of weeks at most.

The mutation rate is just an average - anyway we are looking for one specific mutation and in the 6 months SARS-CoV-2 has been around there has been plenty of time for the right mutant strain to have arisen.

It doesn't matter who the cohort is - all that matters is the strain has the right mutation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Robin Hanson and other public intellectuals are engaged in ongoing debates about variolation, with several variations on that theme.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFnP5TK61aI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFnP5TK61aI)

[https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/wh...](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2020/04/why- i-do-not-favor-variolation-for-covid-19.html)

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/04/reply-to-cowen-on- vari...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2020/04/reply-to-cowen-on- variolation.html)

I know your proposal is not exactly that, but it has some overlap with those ideas. I'd recommend joining those discussions on those blogs.

If yours significantly improved the safety of their proposals, it would be a welcome addition to those discussions.

Note though that it shares some obstacles with widespread vaccinations, in that safety and efficacy testing is the major delay, not the chemistry.

We could alternatively do low dose variolation on the young with technology today, with infectious strains administered through a cut on the shin to encourage lower severity progression. We might lack implementation capacity and social will to try very experimental approaches. If so, "found strain" vaccination will face similar capacity issues while also introducing new questions about safety and effectiveness and requiring significantly more research.

So I'm not sure it's a silver bullet, or how it fares against existing proposals, but seems an avenue worth exploring in parallel, and raising first with others generating policy ideas in this space.

N.b.- Tyler Cowen has a foundation that is actively providing grants or prizes for work on COVID-19, he's not Gates, but not just some random blogger either.

</comment><comment><USER22> This is a great idea! But why it would be any faster than a vaccine. We already have vaccines, the slowness is testing them. Wouldn't this method need just as much testing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it is a natural virus. You don't need approval from the FDA to be infected with a natural virus.

<comment><USER29> But to deploy this at scale, you need to

1\. Prove it works (is there data that provides lasting immunity to all other strains?) 2\. Prove it is safe (e.g. is it mild/asymptomatic across all populations?)

Both of those things take time to fully vet. What's the difference between rolling the dice with a live strain vs. one of the half dozen vaccines already in development?

<comment><USER30> or people could just start infecting each other

<comment><AUTHOR> Well spotted ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Did you get the email we sent you? It contained a repost invite for [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798626](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22798626). I worry that it might have gone into a spam hole.

(I apologize for hijacking the thread. By the way, invited reposts are related to the re-upping system described here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11662380))

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Dan I have only just got up (it is early morning here in Australia) so I haven't had a chance to check my work emails yet.

Do you happen to know someone who knows someone that someone like Bill will take seriously? I did apply to the fast grant program, but I suspect it got thrown in the bin as I am industry not academia these days.

Edit. Just checked and no email even in my junk mail folder :(</comment></comment>


Now your boss can buy back your unused vacation days - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-11/now-your-boss-can-buy-back-your-vacation-days <comment><USER2> Is this a new thing? My father, when he worked at places that had actual vacation policies, and wasn't a more-or-less independent logging contractor[1], has always been compensated at the end of the year for any unused hours of personal, sick and vacation time.

[1] Loggers, the original Uber-esque contractors-not-employees, wink-wink</comment>


Why Atom Won't Replace Vim - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/programming-ideas-tutorial-and-experience/433852f4b4d1

<comment><USER2> Good article. One quibble:

"But of course, Vim isn't perfect. ...[Y]ou need to install a half-dozen third-party plugins (and a third-party plugin manager at that) to get basic functionality working."

I've been using vi and now Vim since 1980. I don't use any third-party plugins, so I don't need a plugin manager. I do almost no customizing. I have much more than "basic functionality" with a bare-bones Vim install. Why? Because Vim is installed on pretty much every *nix system. When I ssh into a server I can't afford to be helpless because my favorite plugins and scripts and key bindings aren't there.

I can skip hours of "on-boarding" because I'm happy to work with bare Vim and other command-line tools on OSX or Linux. I don't need to spend a day getting Eclipse configured or setting up a bunch of other stuff just to edit and build code.

Emacs is almost, but not quite, as ubiquitous as Vim. I use Vim because I learned vi a long time ago and have never wanted to put that much effort into learning another text editor.

<comment><USER3> I cut my teeth (and watched them bleed) on vi in the mid 1980s. The first few weeks were horrible ... then it got better. And now virtually anything else is painful.

Since then I've used other editors and word processors: WP51, MacWrite, AmiPro, WordStar, the DOS editor, MS Word (from Win3.11 through Office 2000 or thereabouts, little since), the VAX/VMS and AXP editors EDT and EVE, Notepad, MS Write, the IBM TSO/ISPF editor, StarOffice and its successors (OpenOffice, NeoOffice, LibreOffice), Abiword, the KDE editors (whose names I honestly cannot remember). The andrew editor (just long enough to exit it and install vim).

And, somewhere in the middle of all of this, in the late 1990s, finally my first exposure to emacs. It was actually my primary productivity environment for a number of months, and the three-window mode (stdin, stdout, stderr) for code, reports, and logging was actually pretty slick.

But it wasn't installed on the _next_ set of systems I was working on (and the boss was an idiot, something I should have clued in on far sooner but didn't). And the skills atrophied.

Meantime I'd installed my first Linux system with vim and, hey, that worked.

I also keep to a pretty vanilla configuration though I've got a .vimrc file with some settings in it -- a bunch of spelling corrections, syntax highlighting, and a few various settings. The whole plugins thing seems to have emerged while I wasn't paying attention, and so far I've not used any, though not out of any fundamental objection. The baseline is good enought.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The atomic "noun verb" structure of vim's commands is in fact highly versatile. For me, being able to operate on, search across, or navigate my text by _structure_ is absolutely key.

It's not far from the Unix philosophy in general -- we get simple tools and send nouns (data) through them on pipes. Not always, but frequently. I recognized this distinction particularly from working on other systems which didn't have this facility: VMS, MVS, and of course Microsoft and Apple systems prior to OS X.

You rarely have the specific tool you want, but you can readily build it up out of components via pipes and some shell scripting. As opposed to the other systems where you rarely have the specific tool you want ... and you need a systems programmer to write it for you.</comment>


House tech investigation seeks CEO testimony in July - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/exclusive-house-probe-wants-big-tech-ceos-to-testify-in-july-2cbd0ad9-5dbd-4afc-a0bf-7f1092840fa0.html <comment><USER2> For those who have trouble with the link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20200613225928/https://www.axios...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200613225928/https://www.axios.com/exclusive- house-probe-wants-big-tech-ceos-to-testify-in- july-2cbd0ad9-5dbd-4afc-a0bf-7f1092840fa0.html)</comment>


Renewable Energy Production in Denmark sets another record in 2015 at 53.2% - <AUTHOR> http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=3 <comment><AUTHOR> Renewable share increased to 53.2% in 2015 compared to 44.9% in 2014.

Long-term trend:

[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=4](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=4)

Record net energy exports achieved in 2015:

[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=7](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=7)

Conventional energy production is minimal during summer period at 30.6%:

[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=19](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=19)

Wind energy production remains volatile throughout the year:

[http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=5](http://apps.axibase.com/slider/energinet-2015/?slide=5)</comment>


Kodak Professional digital camera systems 1987-2004 [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.nikonweb.com/files/DCS_Story.pdf <comment><USER2> Steve Sasson describes development of first digital camera, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDLEBsThvk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yDLEBsThvk)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This pdf is a good overview of the development of the digital camera.

Note the migration of features from high end to the lower end and the continuous improvement of the workflow.</comment>


The Death of Google - <AUTHOR> https://lauren.vortex.com/2018/10/08/the-death-of-google <comment><USER2> Yeah - shuttering Google+, and their reasoning, was a huge violation of trust. My faith in them as an institution has been impacted and i now feel forced to migrate services away.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not very convincing. Google is shutting down one product which didn't have traction. They have killed products in past with a bigger user base. And G+ gave rise to Photos and Hangouts, both widely used.

<comment><USER4> You clearly didn't read the article. Shame on you for commenting without reading past the header.</comment></comment>


The iPhone Won't Do Well in China - <AUTHOR> http://markjournal.com/2009/08/the-iphone-wont-do-well-in-china/

<comment><USER2> There are other ways to look at this. The iPhone launched in Japan and is considered a success form numbers I've seen. As for China, you do not need to penetrate the entire market to be successful. Mercedes is expensive in China. Most cannot afford one. However, I'm certain Mercedes is very happy with its growth in China.</comment>


Defecting by Accident - A Flaw Common to Analytical People - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/372/defecting_by_accident_a_flaw_common_to_analytical/

<comment><USER2> I am all for being in control of what exactly you are saying and being alert to unintended slights but this example from TFA

 _"But we don't have the budget or skills to do that, how would we overcome that?" ... makes the presenter look very bad. ... be diplomatic and tactful ...

You could phrase it as, "This seems like an amazing idea and a great presentation. I wonder how we could secure the budgeting and get the team for it, because it seems like it'd be a profitable if we do, and it'd be a shame to miss this opportunity."_

I don't think the first question necessarily insults the speaker, but that aside, does the second version even mean the same thing as the first?

The technique used seems to be an overblown [positive-(watered down)negative- positive] sandwiching. I am not sure it is the most effective way to communicate intent without giving offense.

If I heard something like that in a project meeting I would have to think about what exactly was being said and mentally strip away all the bracketing empty phrases to understand the real concern.

The first question can be modified to lose its sting (assuming a sting exists, I am not so sure, it wold depend very much on shared history, context and tone) by softening it up a bit without the unnecessary padding of the second version.

 _"What are your thoughts on the budget and skillsets needed to implement this idea?"_ or the more narrowly focused _"How could we secure the budgeting and the team for this idea?"_ asked in a friendly tone avoids the middle manager speak of the second version (imo).

I've been in meetings (Hello Intuit!) where everyone was constantly trying to avoid giving even the slightest offense and every point was hedged in a lot of positive stroking and pre-declarations of non offensive intent, with sideways glances at the top dog in the room, to the point where no one could make out wtf was actually being said or who had what concerns.

Another example, the second response to his blog post didn't seem to be offensive to me, unless you are predisposed to see offense in any feedback that didn't use the sandwiching technique - positive stroke-mildly negative feedback with more hedging about ultimate altruistic purpose etc-then another positive statement about your intent/the speaker etc.

How much of this is a predisposition of the author vs sound advice that should be followed to get specific effects? Just something to think about.

By all means, be aware of how your speech/writing etc could give offense and avoid such instances where possible. Be careful in your phrasing, tone etc. Be socially aware.

That doesn't mean you have to be longwinded or speak in sandwiched Middle Manager-ese all the time. I think the central point of the article is valid and worth thinking about but the examples aren't very convincing. The article would be stronger with better crafted examples, considering the target audience.

PS: just saying: my only "strategic intent" (heh) with this comment is to provide a bit of a counterpoint here on HN, not to provide acritique feedback to the author etc, which means I don't have to follow the sandwich strategy or pad up my comment with superficial stroking to make him more amenable to my suggestions and so on and so forth.

<comment><USER3> You know plinkplonk, you make some fine points there†. What would you feel about the following - how about stating upfront your lack of intention to insult?

"I'm not criticizing you personally but, yada yada yada"

†this being and polite malarky is a cinch, wish I'd known sooner

<comment><USER4> You have to be careful that what follows the "but" is not a personal criticisim. For example:

      "I don't mean to be rude, but you're an idiot"

is no less rude as a result of claiming not to be rude (though they /may/ not notice this and it might work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great and all, but there's a bigger skill to learn: how to react appropriately in context. People who are tactful in meetings can also be overly tactful in casual conversations, to the point of giving offense.

Check out a few of his examples:

 _#1 is kind of clever pointing out a spelling error. But you have to realize, in normal society that's going to upset and make hostile the person you're addressing. Whether you mean to or not, it comes across as, "I'm demonstrating that I'm more clever than you."

There's a few ways it could be done differently. For instance, an email that says, "Hey Sebastian, I wanted to give you a heads up. I saw your recent post, but you spelled "wisen" as "wizen" - easy spelling error to make, since they're uncommonly used words, but I thought you should know. "Wizen" means for things to dry up and lose water. Cheers and best wishes."_

If somebody posted a comment like that aimed at me, I'd think, "Wow, why is this guy working so hard to maintain distance? Is he afraid I'll think we're best friends or something? Or do I really seem so fragile he needs to soften the blow?"

In a meeting at work, I appreciate more tact, but I still don't like being treated like I'm fragile. Treating someone with inappropriate sensitivity is actually a great passive-aggressive way to make them feel like shit. You should only do that on purpose, never accidentally ;-)

 _Let's look at point #2. "FWIW, I think posts like this are more valuable the more they include real-world examples; it's kind of odd to read a post which says I had theory A of the world but now I hold theory B, without reading about the actual observations."

This is something which makes people trying to help or create shake their head. See, it's potentially a good point. But after someone takes some time to create something and give it away for free, then hearing, "Your work would be more valuable if you did (xyz) instead. Your way is kind of odd."_

Didn't he just do the same thing? He got free feedback on something he wrote, and here he is criticizing it without first thanking the guy profusely. Irony upon irony, this is shortly followed by a list of guidelines for social self- awareness.

Context is everything! I appreciate tact at the right times and in the right doses, but misspelling a word is exactly the kind of small error that can be treated lightly, and excessive formality destroys any feeling of frankness or openness. Criticism is always hard to take; excessive solicitude for a person's feelings just adds an implicit criticism of, well, their ability to take criticism. To some extent, this varies by situation. Anything that aggravates the inherent anxiety of the situation -- a superior criticizing a subordinate, or criticism of a sensitive personal characteristic, for example -- indicates more sensitivity.

But there are many situations where directness and informality is better. Actually, I'd rather somebody posted, "Hey, it's 'wised up,' not 'wizened up,' you pompous dickhead," than for them to act like they're afraid my ego will be crushed by having a spelling mistake pointed out. At least I can assume they're kidding about calling me a dickhead.

</comment><comment><USER6> Bad explanations of the prisoners dilemma are a constant fascination to me. They pop-up in so many otherwise excellent bits of writing, imho, because the standard mental image of two prisoners being interrogated is such a mismatch for the actual dilemma.

For example, in this case he's talking about "defecting by accident", yet two paragraphs before he's just outlined the fact that "the best solution individually is to defect".

So you're "accidentally" following the optimal strategy, which is the same one you'd pick if you had perfect information about the situation. I fail to see how that's a problem.

The key to the prisoner's dilemma is to avoid being in that situation. Once you're in that situation, a situation that is fascinating precisely because you are so totally screwed once in it, the "game" is over. You (and your partner) only have one rational choice and it leads to a poor outcome.

Change the game when and if you can, that's the lesson of the prisoners dilemma (also, if you can't change the game then defect because the other guy should logically defect too leaving you high and dry if you try to cooperate and if for whatever irrational reason he doesn't defect then you get the best possible outcome by defecting when he doesn't).

To be extra clear, "defecting" will always gain you something in the standard Prisoner's Dilemma. That's kind of the whole point. In an iterated prisoners dilemma, where the guy you betrayed previously gets a chance to get even it's not so simple and gets more confusing if people hold irrational grudges. Interaction with colleagues obviously fits that kind of iterated version better as does pissing off your partner in crime who'll have you shanked in the prison showers as revenge for betraying him.

For a discussion about nerds needing to communicate better, leading off with a false technical analogy seems like a perfect way to piss the techies off and make them ignore the rest of your message, which all seems reasonable enough in itself and doesn't really need the reference to the PD and talk of defecting to jazz it up.

<comment><USER7> I love this comment, because it is such a brilliant demonstration of the blog author's points -- let's focus on what I can do to show that I am smarter than you!

<comment><USER8> To be fair (but really to sound smart (possibly unsuccessfully)), your comment is also an example of this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This matches my experience exactly. So many times people, especially technical people, have something to say, some information to convey, and almost arbitrarily many ways to say it. They then, from among those arbitrarily many ways, fail to exercise any judgement as to which is going to achieve secondary goals of improving working relationships, making people feel good, getting people on-side, and generally improving the working atmosphere. Often they think that the information is enough, and how you say it is irrelevant.

Or perhaps, more accurately, they simply don't realise that there really is a choice to make, and it's an important one. How you say something can make the message more impactful, more effective, and additionally, get people working _with_ you to make things better, instead of resenting you and potentially sabotaging your work.

<http://www.penzba.co.uk/SoothSayer.html>

<comment><USER10> Pretty moot argument. If technical people spent a significant part of their time on how to bring a message instead of the content of the message, they would hardly be technical people. You need smart minds to be doing what they are good at.

It's pretty obvious why different people have different tasks, you wouldn't let a person from PR do a technical design, and you wouldn't let someone from technical design do the PR. Both would probably have ackward results...

<comment><USER9> And I wouldn't let someone be a manager or technical people unless they also had some technical skills, and technical people without the ability to work well with other people usually don't get very far. There are honorable exceptions, but I've learned never to rely on being one of the exceptional cases.

By all means, concentrate on your technical skills and your technical skills alone, but understand the decision you're making. I've found that a small amount of time understanding business, negotiation, psychology and personal interaction has been enormously beneficial. If you choose not to learn from my experience, that's your choice.

<comment><USER10> Don't get me wrong -- I do see the importance of those things. But I also recognize they are a science in themselves. To get involved with that too much is a kind of slippery slope, which detracts from the main focus.

A lot of people make a living of being obsessed about how things look and sound, the outward appearance. I choose to not be one of those people.

<comment><USER9> Much can be gained from a very small amount of effort. Like learning to say "Hello", "Goodbye", "Please" and "Thank you" in the language of the country you visit, the returns are disproportionate to the effort. It's not about being obsessed by how things look and sound, it's about realising there's a choice, and making the choice that makes it easy for the other person to join your side.

There are a few small and simple "tricks" and techniques that can make a world of difference. "Not bothering" is also a choice. I just don't think it's a good one. Investing a small amount of time is better.

Find a good balance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've always suspect that the almost ritualistic indulgence in self deprecating humor common in many places I've worked is pretty much the antidote to the "over direct" form of communication that technical types are so prone to.

This is probably related to the suspicion that people aren't completely comfortable working together unless you have all got very drunk at some point.... but perhaps that's because I am Scottish.

[NB I did find that British self deprecating humor does _NOT_ work with corporate attack lawyers belonging to a certain extremely large semiconductor manufacturer]

<comment><USER12> This sounds like a good idea. The examples in TFA are bit too far to the managerspeak side for me.

Can you give some examples, though? I can't really see how you could turn, say, the "budget" issue from TFA into a self-deprecating thing.

But that is because I suck dicks.

(Am I doing it right?)

<comment><USER11> To be honest asking "But we don't have the budget or skills to do that, how would we overcome that?" doesn't sound that bad to me - at least it is suggesting that there could be a solution.

We Scots call the technique of appearing ignorant the "daft laddie" approach - something I like to employ a lot (probably because I'm half daft myself). Ask the questions, imply that _you_ are the stupid one for not understanding stuff.... Of course, this is a lot easier if you are in a relatively senior position and suspected of not actually being completely daft - but it's a lot better than being an insufferable know it all.

<comment><USER13> What you call the "daft laddie" approach would be how I would handle it, rather than piling on enough sugar to give everyone in the room a toothache.

"What are the budget and staffing constraints for this project?" I KNOW the project is doomed, but I don't need to be the one to point that out - let the presenter handle it, if they haven't thought about it they can give a vague answer now and figure it out later, or maybe they have thought about it and have a solution I don't suspect. Either way, the focus shifts from "you haven't thought about X" to "what about X?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Speaking of rhetoric, I loved the essay "How to Teach a Child to Argue" by Jay Heinrichs <http://www.figarospeech.com/teach-a-kid-to-argue/>

I also found his book "Thank you for arguing" really interesting and informative.

His essay is a delightful read. His book, unfortunately, somewhat more heavy handed... but still worth your consideration in my opinion.

<comment><USER15> From what I've seen, arguing comes naturally to children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I switched my strategy as soon as I got out of high school.

I used to defect all the time. Then I shut my mouth. I was initially surprised at how much information I could get if I didn't say anything, forcing the hand of others. over 10 years later and I've gotten pretty good at social and professional politics.

The trick is this (Socrates thought of it first). Ask questions. Still havent won? Ask some more. Only answer when you absolutely have to. Information is critical. Don't let it slip.

</comment><comment> loup-vaillant Oh my.

My _mom_ often insisted on the importance of criticising with care, to avoid making the other feel bad. Yet I needed this article, written in a foreign language by a complete stranger, before I realized on a gut level that she's right.

And it's not the first time. So, note to self: Mom is right until proven wrong.

</comment><comment><USER17> You never really win an argument.

Is it that important to be correct? Just go with the flow, it's social lubrication. Try to just go with it, vibe! [1]

> GOOD VIBING:

GUY: You'll never guess how much I got this coat for.

FRIEND: Wow.. Umm, 200$.

GUY: No man. 45$

FRIEND: Wow.. Nice man.

BAD VIBING:

GUY: You'll never guess how much I got this coat for.

FRIEND: Oh you got a deal. I guess 30$ then.

GUY: Umm, actually 45$

FRIEND: Oh.. well that's not bad.

I've gotten better as I've gotten older, and I remember times where I've literally butted horns with my dad - over such things as silly as how far into the intersection should you go when making a left turn. I didn't want to get caught in the intersection so I always waited until the last moment to spurt forward and make the turn quickly as the light turned yellow. My dad on the other hand - believed it should be halfway or whatever in the intersection - and even Google'd up a DOT/Driver's Manual to prove his point - and CC'd all our other family members who had no interest/idea we were so fired up about our respective viewpoints.

[1] "Social Vibing"

[http://www.bristollair.com/2008/outer-game/pua- skills/social...](http://www.bristollair.com/2008/outer-game/pua- skills/social-vibing/)

<comment><USER18> If your comment said "this link will teach you to ease your social interactions by guiding you through aligning your natural vibrations" you'd be downvoted for woo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I remember clearly that I already had understood this when I was 12 and corrected some of the teacher's assertions (such as people not having weight in the Moon because of _lack of air_ ). Classmates used to laud my soft and well-mannered way to tell the teacher he was wrong, without saying it explicitely, and leaving him a graceful retreat path.

So either I'm not a proper geek/nerd or the generalization is a bit overextending.

My impression is that most persons do understand that vocal negative critics are a fact of life (and specially online forums) so don't worry too much about them. They're just too visible, but the same happens with ads.

Once I've cleared the constructive comment stuff, I feel the urge to write some snarky comment on how the author's understanding of HTML tags made his cursive text appear without spaces around :-)

<comment><USER5> I had the same experience with teachers, and there's definitely two sides to the failure to communicate, and there's a cultural aspect as well as a "skills" aspect. I was taught that every reasonable person is open to correction and should strive to appreciate it. I got on fine with teachers who felt the same way. Teachers who had weird ideas about authority and tried to pretend omniscience, I didn't get along with, but I didn't really care. At least not until I started worrying about my GPA, and then I just kept my mouth shut and let them make fools of themselves and mark the occasional right answer wrong. As I saw it and had been taught, if a person didn't respond well to disagreement, then I didn't owe them the favor. From a purely practical perspective, I would have been better off using them as an opportunity to practice tact, but sometimes practicality conflicts with self-respect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _Hey Sebastian, I wanted to give you a heads up. I saw your recent post, but you spelled "wisen" as "wizen" - easy spelling error to make, since they're uncommonly used words, but I thought you should know. "Wizen" means for things to dry up and lose water. Cheers and best wishes._

I see where he is going and agree, but if it takes someone a whole paragraph to tell me I misspelled a single word I am _not_ going to be as joyful as he makes it sound like.

</comment><comment><USER21> hmm... I think many rationals problem is that they don't interact enough and then use their positive social interactions to social proof their bad ones.

Consider his first scenario where the person puts up his hand and says that they don't have the budget to do that. The speaker might indeed be mad and likewise some others in the room. Invariably there would be someone there that likes your outspoken or directness[just by the share number of people in the room, probability dictates it].

Now, if our rational guy stands there by himself and refuses to interact with others, the speaker and his allies will brand him as rude. Every move he makes, no matter how trivial would only be seen in this light.

If he had started interacting until he found someone who likes his disposition, he is then social proof by that person. Then he begins to climb a ladder of social proof. He would meet someone else who because that one person liked him they would like him too, and you can see how this spreads exponentially. Now, it would be just the speaker left hating him; well no actually, the speaker will now think his evaluation of the situation was previously wrong and that the guy is alright.[Appropriate reading: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asch_conformity_experiments>]

And if our rationalist is lucky he can turn his new found social proof into Authority by running for some prestigious position such as president. At which point, people will like him cause he is in that given position.

Being nice has it's only problems also. For instance, people would assume you want something from them if you start acting nice the first time you meet them.

Again, social proof can over come this problem of being suspecting of wanting something.

Social proofing can lead to what I call, the lovable Jerk. People who act in a way that undermines others but the general populous loves them so they are forgiven time and time again.

With that said let, me sum up my points. Being social proof will lead to people liking you but as a rational you only have a few people who naturally like you but you need to build from those few.[Appropriate viewing: Derek Sivers - How to start a movement <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V74AxCqOTvg> ]

</comment><comment><USER22> Defecting by default is actually a pretty stupid and inconsiderate move. There are many variations of the Prisoner's Dilemma, but commonly the options are weighted such that the least punishment (or greatest reward) is gained _overall_ when people cooperate. Defection has a certain chance of bringing a locally maximized outcome to one individual, but that chance is relatively small considering the risk, and even if the gamble succeeds the global rewards from cooperation would have been higher. I believe this basic scenario also applies to many if not most real-world settings. Defecting is a stupid and risky, a gambler's choice in pursuit of a questionable (and often time elusive) outcome.

<comment><USER9> You've confused me. The article isn't about people defecting by default because they've chosen to defect by default. It's about people not really realising that there is a choice to be made, doing something, and that something is defection, even though they never realised it and never thought about it.

Your comment reads as if you haven't read the article at all, which I'm sure can't be true. Perhaps you could explain the apparent discrepency.

Thanks.

<comment><USER23> I think that might be some deliberate (if softened up) defection right here :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I believe it may be due in part to valuing the channels of communication. A lot of social politics / etc. muddy the waters, because being to the point is socially disadvantageous so often.</comment>


The codes and codswallop surrounding Leonardo da Vinci - <AUTHOR> https://usa.spectator.co.uk/2018/04/the-codes-and-codswallop-surrounding-leonardo-da-vinci/ <comment><USER2> Some years ago at the Louvre, one could see quite a few visitors hurriedly walking past walls of Italian Renaissance art, any hundred square feet of which walls would be the making of a small American city's museum, to stand at ten yards from the Mona Lisa and take a picture. I suppose that some number of them, having checked that off, went on to look around and see what else the Louvre had.</comment>


Pronouncing SQL: S-Q-L or Sequel? (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://patorjk.com/blog/2012/01/26/pronouncing-sql-s-q-l-or-sequel/ <comment><USER2> Saw it pronounced 'squeal' in an article once. Have used that ever since.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seek well?

</comment><comment><USER4> TL;DR: Yes.</comment>


Ask HN: Secure email provider - <AUTHOR> I was looking for a secure email address. After some research, Protonmail, although it looks good, and has a A+ SSL rating, can't be used with POP3/IMAP, only with their proprietary API with their web client or mobile client, and that is a deal breaker for me.
Countermail allows to upload your public key so that any non-encrypted incoming email es encrypted in the inbox. A few others also looked good for one or another reason including some in offshore locations for extra privacy/anonimity. Then I tested them on Qualys SSL tool and some other tools and the rating of most was terrible. Countermail had a C rating, what a dissappointment.
PFS = Perfect Forward Secrecy DANE = DNS-based Authentication of Named Entities
My findings where: - Germany based posteo.de has an A+ SSL rating, incuding PFS and DANE, can encrypt incoming email with your public PGP key, problem is you can't use your own domain, although they do have many domains you can choose from. - Germany based mailbox.org has an A+ SSL rating, including PFS and DANE, can encrypt incoming email with your public PGP key and you can use your own domain. - Belgium based mailfence.com has an A+ SSL rating including PFS, but no DANE. Can encrypt incoming email with your public PGP key and you can use your own domain.
Please note both Germany and Belgium are 14 eyes countries. They have good privacy legislation but if a court warrant was served to give information about a user they would have to comply.
Posteo.de claims that they don't provide possibility of using your own domain so that they don't know anything about you, so they have privacy in mind. In my case it was for a business email so I wanted security and being able to use my domain.
Mailfence donates to Electronic Frontier Foundation and Digital Rights Foundation  but doesn't support DANE for now. Is DANE that important?
Any other service on par with these that you know? What are your thoughts? <comment><USER2> If you care about security in the sense that the EFF does, you should _not_ be seeking out providers that rely on DANE for security. DANE is a tree- structured PKI, like the SSL/TLS web PKI, where world governments have de facto control over the tops of the tree. The overwhelming majority of email domains we see on HN every day are in DNS zones controlled by Five Eyes governments.

There is a reason most secure providers don't use DANE.

[https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against- dnssec/](https://sockpuppet.org/blog/2015/01/15/against-dnssec/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good read, thank you!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://runbox.com/](https://runbox.com/) from Norway has been around for quite some time. Don't know if they meet your requirements.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have you looked into building your own mail server?

It's certainly a bit of work but it may be worth your effort.

Check out [https://mailinabox.email](https://mailinabox.email)

<comment><AUTHOR> I know about self hosted solutions like mailinabox and mailpile, and sure, it would be fun to set them up to try them out, and they're much easier than going low level with dovecot or postfix and put all the pieces yourself, it still requires maintenance, update the os and the software, keep your server secure from intrusions and so on. I could do it, and I understand the reasons why someone would do it, but I think it's time consuming, and I'd probably not do such a good job in keeping the server secure as a dedicated team.

<comment><USER4> MIAB installs OS updates automatically and the Admin tools alert you when updates have been installed and prompts you to restart the server. You can configure it to auto install updates to the MIAB install, or not. I've set mine up to not install them. This allows me to make a snapshot before installing them in case they break something.

The biggest downside I've run into with MIAB running on DigitalOcean is being being blacklisted by AOL. Other services like Gmail and Outlook might send emails to a users spam folder until they mark them as "Not spam". It took me a bit of fine tuning on my end to get my "Spam Score" down to less than a point or two but that was really a good exercise to go though.

There were other benefits I hadn't considered though, like the built-in DNS server that comes with MIAB. I ended up moving the DNS records for most of my sites over to it. And it manages SSL certs automatically for domains running on it, or that use its DNS server.

It was time consuming to get it set up right though. I went through the process 3 times before I began to understand what was needed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> fastmail blog post on dane from last december:

[https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/20/dnssec- dane/](https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/20/dnssec-dane/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I heard good things about fastmail too but it's hosted in a five eyes country...

<comment><USER5> wasn't suggesting it, just pointing you at an article about dane.</comment></comment></comment>


NSA to release estimate of number of Americans under surveillance - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-surveillance-idUSKBN1452FX?il=0 <comment><USER2> Well, now, depending on how you define surveillance, it's either 0 or 319 million, give or take.

<comment><USER3> I was just thinking the same thing.

Given that Yahoo, Google, Microsoft et al recently-ish obtained permission to release rough numbers of NSLs and such ("in FY 2015 we received between 1000 and 2000 requests for user data"), I would not at all be surprised if the result is:

"We have surveilled between 1 and 318 million American citizens"

<comment><USER4> Same thought. Metadata won't count for them, obviously, or the answer is "all." Probably they won't count storage of transcribed content either (again the answer might well be "all.") Here's guessing that they won't count multiple bots scrutinizing transcriptions of every word you've said in emails or on the phone as "surveillance", either. I personally wouldn't be shocked if the correct answer in this latter case is also "all."

I might add that for those who think that they have nothing to hide, that's the wrong question. As I've found out personally, the real question is whether every single friend of yours you contact, let's say by phone, has anything to hide. When interrogated, they won't be told that surveillance was the source, they will be told or led to believe YOU were the source, and turned them in. Then the fun really begins. [Note that in the incident I just described, an acquaintance's wife was dragged in for what was a criminal offense at the time, but this offence has since been removed from the criminal code, so I don't feel bad about not reporting it at the time. She was not, to the best of my knowledge, prosecuted. Surveillance on me has since increased, however; and my circle of friends decreased.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I will totally believe those numbers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Breaking News: Secret-service agency venturing into census statistics

</comment><comment><USER7> Let me guess, 319 million, less the number of people who don't use the internet or make phone calls?</comment>


Ask HN: How to get involved with AI as a non-AI programmer? - <AUTHOR> As someone interested in AI, but with no real technical  knowledge of the field, I find it hard to dive in. I could certainly start learning AI programming, but the math involved seems a bit out of reach.<p>Are there any online courses or books that can teach you the basic concepts of AI? I'm trying to really look at different business and design opportunities with the AI field, and I'm wondering if that's possible without the technical understanding of knowing how to program AI. <comment><USER2> AI software projects need people who are good at builds and version control and releases and other things that you might not learn to do at a professional level in CS graduate There is a huge amount of chopping wood and carrying water to do.

It is already getting less important to know the algorithms than it used to be because everybody and his brother has been working on algorithms for the last few years and now you find them automated, overseen by an "expert systems" in products like this:

[https://aws.amazon.com/machine-learning/](https://aws.amazon.com/machine- learning/)

I may be biased, but I also think some of the "old AI" ideas are coming back, and it is very clear that logic programming and rules engines can be improved upon greatly.

For instance you look at Drools and think it might be pretty cool but then you write some code and fight with a compiler that can't give sensible error messages and then...

Something can be done about it

</comment><comment><USER3> Berkeley's Aritifical Intelligence course,CS-188 is a great content base for concepts. The projects of the course include the implementation of search algorithms with Pac-Man. If machine learning is more interesting to you, Udacity's Introduction to Machine Learning is very approachable. If you are interested in learning in a traditional fashion, "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach" by Peter Norvig is a widely used AI textbook.

</comment><comment><USER4> You may want to have a look at the 2015 projects from Andrew Ng's course at Stanford for some trends in machine learning too [http://cs229.stanford.edu/projects2015.html](http://cs229.stanford.edu/projects2015.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> A friend/ex-coworker of mine recently got a job at an AI company with no previous AI history as a software engineer. AI researchers need tools, systems, etc, that a programmer with little specific AI experience can contribute. Aside from also learning the topics etc in your spare time it seems like a good way to get into a relevant company early and work to a more AI-involved position from there.

</comment><comment><USER6> As a non-AI programmer who's currently slogging through the material, you really need to get your math up to speed. Linear algebra, statistics, probability theory, and multivariate calculus. There are courses on these on Khan Academy and other MOOCs (or you can do what I'm doing and go back to uni).

It's really hard to get a sense of why you're doing this-and-that without those fundamentals.

</comment><comment><USER7> The introductory videos from PyCon are very accessible to anyone with a little programming knowledge, no math needed: [https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_pycon2015](https://github.com/jakevdp/sklearn_pycon2015)

You aren't going to be an expert without math, but you can learn enough to evaluate ML related business ideas.

</comment><comment><USER8> This might be of interest: [http://www.constructedintellect.com/learning-ai- resources-li...](http://www.constructedintellect.com/learning-ai-resources- links-courses/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Read AIMA, Know your maths, discrete maths, probability & stats. Take some machine learning courses (free ones at coursera, edx, etc), read up on Deep learning, you should be good to go.</comment>


Design love, anyone? - <AUTHOR>

Hi All,
I've been following Hacker News for a while, but never really posted in here before. I was hoping I could get some startup advice from you guys.
We are a bootstrapped startup operating out of New Delhi, India. Okay, I'll be honest. We're three folks under thirty who love eating ramen and spend most of their time building a web application for a global audience.
We want to change the rules of the game in the sourcing advisory market by bringing the entire process online and harnessing the power of social influence. We are ready with the concept and a prototype application, spending around three months full-time. We have so far built the core application engine (capable of requirement and evidence-based technology recommendations for say a healthcare provider operating in France with a project budget of $500k) and a CMS to handle the data.
Here's the challenge for us though - we are fairly confident with the technology part, know our concept will ruffle a few feathers, but we can't seem to find the right balance on UI design. We need help on getting progressive UI and graphic design, but we are in the ramen mode and don't have enough monies to buy our way through to the design Gods. We want to be ready for TC Disrupt when it happens next (possibly Dec'10) but can't seem to solve this problem as none of the local design firms are up to the task.
What should we do? Any suggestions or pointers in the right direction would be immensely appreciated. Would you know of any design groups or startups who may want to collaborate with overseas startups?
The Three Ramens <comment><USER2> Wait a second:

 _We want to change the rules of the game in the sourcing advisory market_

OK.

 _Would you know of any design groups or startups who may want to collaborate with overseas startups?_

Damn, if we only knew someone in the sourcing advisory market. They could answer your question, no doubt.

Seriously: the irony is killing me.

<comment><AUTHOR> my bad :D

sourcing advisors are sort of like management consultants who help businesses with decisions on what to buy and from whom (they charge a grand buck for doing this too)

<comment><USER2> Yes, I know that.

You are asking us for help with a decision on what to buy and from whom, without offering us a grand buck.

Presumably, this is what you meant when you said you wanted to _change the rules of the game_.

Seriously: if your target audience are sourcing advisors, certainly you are close enough to several of them to be able to get some advice from them on your problem.

The fact that you turned to HN for help in finding a firm to outsource your designing to, instead of to them, is puzzling.

<comment><AUTHOR> we are indeed trying to change the rules of the game - the idea is to draft in the concept of social proof, say someone similar using and recommending a particular piece of technology or service. having worked as a sourcing advisor these last 5 years (focused entirely on big and bulky enterprise software though), i feel the status quo is closer to a guru-speak model than true evidence-based research.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Set up your own truly secure, encrypted and shared file synchronization - <AUTHOR> https://raymii.org/s/articles/Set_up_your_own_truly_secure_encrypted_shared_storage_aka_Dropbox_clone.html

<comment><USER2> Two things:

1\. You have been able to use rsync.net as a target for this scheme for ... 4-5 years now. [1]

2\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640700)

      [1]

      ssh email@example.com "git init --bare autosync.git"
      Initialized empty Git repository in /user/autosync.git/

<comment><USER2> In fact ... we like this particular writeup so much that we are going to start pointing customers to it since it is a bit simpler than the EncFS/Truecrypt recipes we were handing out, and _just works perfectly_ with the platform.

Thank you! Cheers!

<comment><AUTHOR> If you drop an email to me with some more pointers I can edit the article with an rsync feature?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This encrypts via encfs, so not sure what the advantage is over just using encfs on top of Dropbox (or any ol' provider)?

<comment><AUTHOR> You keep the data fully under your control. Who knows whatever ram-scanning- key-searching tricks Dropbox or any other Closd Source piece of software utilize...

<comment><USER4> Does dropbox run as root?

<comment><AUTHOR> You install the package/setup as root.

<comment><USER5> You don't _have_ to, if you want to be that paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using Sparkleshare ([http://sparkleshare.org/](http://sparkleshare.org/)) as a secure alternative to Dropbox, and it works decently, although it has some rough edges.

<comment><USER7> The Mac client crashes a lot with ~10 shared folders checked out in my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does including the EncFS XML file make things much easier to crack?

<comment><USER9> The XML file contains encoded key and salt data. It also includes other metadata like KDF iterations, etc. Narrowing down the problem domain for the attacker leads to faster password cracking. While that is true using a strong password should render this attack useless.

<comment><USER8> Well how are you going to decrypt the files if you suffer data loss without that file? Plus, the key should be strong enough that this doesn't matter, yeah.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like that dvcs-autosync is able to keep a history, but I wouldn't use it because it doesn't have the ability to delete old versions of a file yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Would something like git gc work when the repo is considerably big?

<comment><USER11> Git gets very slow with large files and isn't optimized for binaries. bup ([https://github.com/bup/bup](https://github.com/bup/bup)) is based on git but designed to solve this problem (has its own high-speed packwriter/readers).

Although still can't delete old data at the moment (though its being worked on).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Duplicity [1] is a good alternative too.

[1] [http://duplicity.nongnu.org/](http://duplicity.nongnu.org/)

<comment><USER11> Duplicity is backup not sync.

<comment><USER13> In another thread, you mentioned bup. Quickly skimming bup's readme on github, I seem to only find references to the backup use case - not sync. Am I mistaken and bup also supports syncing, or did you bring up bup for another reason?

<comment><USER11> Someone mentioned using git - which has noted problems as a general purpose backup tool with large files. bup is the tool developed to solve those (git big-file is another, and technically git-annex could work that way but its not really a backup tool).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Add popups to your website  backed with Google Sheets (for free) - <AUTHOR> https://proven.ly/demo-notify.html <comment><USER2> Ahh another tool to annoy your users. This reminds me sudden "Meet Local Singles in Your Area" popups.

</comment><comment><USER3> How To Add Pop Ups, or How to Lose Users in 10 easy steps!

<comment><AUTHOR> not always sometimes users want to know that you have something new

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I appreciate the idea there is never anything truly "free from Google." At this point I would rather pay to self-host or get fewer but sufficient features from an entity that allows me to control my data, including prohibiting it from ever ending up in marketing/data-mining systems owned by Microsoft, Google, Facebook, et al.

<comment><AUTHOR> you do not need to post private information in this Google Sheet these are just public notifications for the site you are not hiding your blog post, are you :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The page does nothing on my browser (Android chrome). Blank screen with navigation menu.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, fix it now, please try again [https://proven.ly/demo- notify.html](https://proven.ly/demo-notify.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On iOS (iOS 14 beta 3) this page is largely blank, with merely a title and menu. No content, no google sheets, no popups (thank goodness).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, fix it now, please try again [https://proven.ly/demo- notify.html](https://proven.ly/demo-notify.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Incidentally, most browsers block popups by default. There might be a reason for doing that...

<comment><AUTHOR> I checked, until it is not blocked even by a adblocker

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Navigation does not work. What does it do with Google Sheets?

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, fix it now, please try again [https://proven.ly/demo- notify.html](https://proven.ly/demo-notify.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On Firefox your main navigation does not work.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, fix it now, please try again [https://proven.ly/demo- notify.html](https://proven.ly/demo-notify.html)</comment></comment>


Show HN: Generate weekly report from your Git repos - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/timqian/weekly-report <comment><USER2> I read the code roughly. It seems that this project is just a wrapper of git commands :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, you are right. But makes life eaiser</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's the fair amount of equity for a VP of Engineering in a startup? - <AUTHOR>

I am offered a position in a medical technology startup in exchange for 5% of equity. Is this a fair amount?<p>Are there any points of reference on how to make this evaluation? <comment><USER2> Will you add more than 5% of value to the company? What do other execs have? Is it late stage, or early stage?

5% seems somewhere between about right and a little low, depending on the factors above ( plus others).

Also, step back and think about the big picture. A typical startup will have a CEO, VP of Engineering, VP of Marketing, VP of Sales, CFO, VP of Biz Dev ( maybe not all of these in all cases). If they each got 5%, that's 30% right there, which is quite frankly probably high, depending on the funding.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fairly early stage. The project was initiated 6 months ago, but it's not funded yet. They are still working on building a working product. The website will be 1/3 of the overall product strategy.

The titles are meaningless at this point because I am also doing marketing and strategy. What I am told is they want to work out an equity strategy based on milestones I deliver. The first milestone, they said, would be the entire website, fully integrated with the proprietary app they are building.

Is this reasonable? Especially considering that the site is an essential part of the product.

I heard elsewhere that an alternative is to use the "sweat equity" algorithm.

<http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/16191>

But seeing as we are all working remotely, it'd be hard to ensure that everyone is working fulltime on this project.

<comment><USER2> This is just off the cuff, but based on having a fair bit of experience in things like this...

What you're describing doesn't sound like the beginnings of a real solid company. IMO, what you're most going to get out of this is experience and resume fodder (which will likely be highly valuable in the future).

EVERYTHING is always negotiable. Rather than put up a shit fit up front, it's probably best to take the 5% and start plugging away. You could push and argue for more, but it's more than likely you'd be spending time arguing for a larger stake of nothing (not trying to be negative), especially if you're only being offered common shares anyway with no preferences.

IF the thing actually gets legs, than a large part of it will be due to your efforts, and you won't have any problems arguing for a second grant during the next funding rounds (which would pretty much obliterate any grants you get at this stage anyway).

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree with you. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here is Aaron Patzers (founder of Mint.com) take on things.

[http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/08/startups-101-the- complete-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2009/10/08/startups-101-the-complete- mint-presentation/)</comment>