DHL pilot alleges poor labor practices that are spreading throughout industry - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/969690/as-a-pilot-ive-seen-up-close-that-global-companies-skirting-american-labor-rules-have-to-be-stopped/ <comment> noir-york The lack of empathy in the comments is disconcerting. The post is a bit light on details (though the example given of flying 23 hours back-to-back continental flights is terrible if regular) the post deserves better than: 1\. Pilots fly for fun. You made the wrong career move. 2\. Capitalism! 3\. you're lucky - imagine if you were a warehouse worker.

He's a pilot, not an accountant or lawyer. He knows that there is pay pressure due to companies skirting regulations. That exec mgmt gets massive bonsuses while the pilots work very long hours and (probably unpaid) overtime offends one's sense of justice.

Pay has been stagnant for the vast majority of workers for decades. We should be doing something about it, not dismissing it. Capitalism is a great tool for progress, but it should not, and is not, the answer to everything. Human dignity matters.

<comment><USER2> He is blaming a foreign company which is hiring his own comapny for failures his company is not adressing. Sorry stupid article. I´s not DHL´s fault that Southern Airline is not able to compete and to organize. Btw in Germany there are Unions for that. [https://www.vcockpit.de/en.html](https://www.vcockpit.de/en.html)

<comment><USER3> Thats a falacy right there- if a outer system integrates a inner system, any flaw of that integration resides upon the component in direct control of the world (the outter system). If you ingest arsenic, and your liver is unable to discard it- its not the livers fault- its the outter system who decided to put the inner system under impossible strain, thats at fault.

And democracy includes the rights to call upon government to hinder capitalism from destroying the citizens. Like it or not. If you disrespect that part of freedom, you are not a true democrat.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There aren't really any facts here just pure emotion that you would hear in any industry where costs are cut. I've no idea how fairly these pilots are paid. But surely there are regulations about pilot rest just like on commercial flights. And a pilot cannot really pull heart strings about being away from home when they chose that line of work where your job is literally to be away from home all the time.

<comment><USER5> I think transportation is an incredibly important (food!), but the way this is written seems incredibly tone-deaf. He should have focused on the facts (if there are any) about incident rates and length of time flying, instead of saying how his dream of connecting "our great country with the rest of the world" is being jeopardized.

<comment><USER6> To be fair, the emotional approach is what actually works in the vast majority of cases. Normal people don't connect with or understand facts.

I think this might be a case of content audience mismatch.

<comment><USER7> "The essential characteristic of the Argument from Intimidation is its appeal to moral self-doubt and its reliance on the fear, guilt or ignorance of the victim. It is used in the form of an ultimatum demanding that the victim renounce a given idea without discussion, under threat of being considered morally unworthy. The pattern is always: "Only those who are evil (dishonest, heartless, insensitive, ignorant, etc.) can hold such an idea.""

<comment><USER8> etherael doesn't appear to be supporting the logical clout of that type of argument, but rather commenting on its ubiquity in modern public discourse and success in driving policy.

E.g., "think of the children," "if we don't X, the terrorists win," or "we must censor the Internet or undermine crypto, because it enables Y."

<comment><USER6> To clarify my original intent, this is exactly correct. I wish it were otherwise, but the fact is that it is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > We work long hours, fly in dangerous conditions and go through years of > training, but we do it because we understand that our work is vital to > keeping our economy humming.

No. Pilots become pilots because they love flying and because it pays well (mostly the former). Haven't heard of any pilot who chose the job because it's important for the economy.

<comment><USER10> > they love flying

Do they really? I mean, if you love driving, do you become a bus driver?

It is not like it is flying your cessna around the place.

<comment><USER9> I only know the situation in Europe. But here, many get the license by taking out a loan without any prospect of employment. They then have to fly in Asia for dodgy airlines for some years to get enough hours to be considered even for a low-cost airline such as Ryanair. Getting a job at a full-service carrier or even long-haul is next to impossible. These are usually people with a good high school degree and often even university degree. They just do it because they love flying.

There's a TV show called "Worst Place to be a Pilot" about how young people from Britain risk their lives in Southeast Asia just to get a job as a pilot one day. I don't think people take these kinds of risks for many other jobs.

[http://www.channel4.com/programmes/worst-place-to-be-a- pilot...](http://www.channel4.com/programmes/worst-place-to-be-a- pilot/episode-guide)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, realistically, the best way to get a full service carrier pilot position is to go military, early, get your certs, training, time in there, and then make your way to civilian life. The big airlines tend to love military pilots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This isn't the first time we've heard first-hand accounts of massive companies treating workers like slaves. Amazon is already notorious for the ways it treats its warehouse workers. Once again, upward concentration of wealth in our country has created pressure on the people at the bottom to produce more, more, more. If you don't see the parallels to the time period leading up to the massive workers' rights reforms of the Progressive era - you aren't looking very hard. We seem to have have already forgotten the lessons we learned just a century or so ago.

<comment><USER9> There's a very big difference between a cargo pilot and an Amazon warehouse worker. Just because both feel treated unfairly, the warehouse worker will be much worse off. Cargo pilots dream of salaries that were usual in the past, warehouse workers just want to earn enough to have an acceptable lifestyle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The dividing line in jobs nowadays seems to be headquarters or operations, brain or hands. If you're in operations, you are already or will be optimized to the extent possible and permitted. Not pretty, but the modus operandi.

Pilots are part of operations and not different to drivers or cleaning staff, even if they still consider themselves part of an elite.

<comment><USER14> Thank you for putting it into clear words. Seems like these things are more visible when the nice headquarter jobs exist in a different country. Guess how almost all countries where Amazon operates (all but one?) think about the qualities of Amazon as an employer...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not entirely sure what he's talking about. Seems like he should have a word with Southwestern Air instead of blaming DHL and Amazon.

While they undoubtedly contribute, putting all the blame on their shoulders seems a bit silly.

<comment><USER16> is Southwestern Air really independent when the largest shareholder is DHL, and DHL owns and leases the planes to Southwestern?

Even if you can claim the board or management of Southwestern is "independent" what, exactly, can they do? all their inputs are literally owned by DHL.

<comment><USER9> Why not allow foreign airlines to fly domestic US routes? DHL would buy the other 51% and make the ownership clear. They only have to use these vague relationships because of US regulation that tries to protect domestic players.

[https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2014/01/05/ell...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/flights/2014/01/05/elliott- let-foreign-airlines-fly-domestic-routes/4329825/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> A couple things to consider:

* Hour restrictions for passenger transport are significantly more stringent than for freight.

* Southern Air's fleet consists 737s and 777s -- not small planes.

* These plans have to fly over and into major metropolitan areas.

* Many parts of flying can be automated, but in the end, and for aircraft this size, you probably want a human operator in the plane for the sheer reason that they are better equipped to handle unplanned emergencies.

It's a tough call whether flying freight or regional airlines pays worse -- but in either case, you're anywhere from a quarter to half of what a software engineer of similar years experience in the bay area would make. The hours are in a lot of ways worse -- mostly because you're away from home a lot of the time, and you have really limited control of your schedule. (As someone who's worked as an on-call engineer for ten years, and who also flies, I'd take the on-call responsibilities over flying freight any day of the week.)

I'd agree that the article lacks for details. But, a relatively quick reading through things like airliners.net will give you an idea of the kind of hours and pay these guys typically work -- it's not an easy job. If we care about their safety -- and our own, given the number of freight aircraft flying over us every night -- we shouldn't write them off as just asking for money they don't deserve.

<comment><USER18> I think most people will agree that the $200k+ starting salary in the bay area is an anomaly. Everyone is doing everything to "fix" this problem.

If we care about safety, we prohibit them from doing things that are unsafe. If management tries to make them do things that are prohibited, we should make it easy for people to say no without repercussions.

<comment><USER19> The $200k starting salary in the bay area also is a myth. $100-120 is much more common as a first salary out of college.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A few thoughts here.

1) DHL started in the US in 1969 and became German owned a little after 2002 (it has a pretty cool origin story where the founder felt there was a better way to deliver overnight goods to Hawaii than to literally sit a person on a plane and stuff legal documents in his luggage. He used his student loans to... "bootstrap"). IMO the article loses some credibility by using "foreign competition" verbiage a lot to emotionally sway the reader.

2) Is DHL skirting regulator rules and putting pilots in unsafe conditions? Regulations need to first and foremost be in place to prevent deadly disasters.

3) It sounds like pilots are losing their market power in the labor market (supply is increasing faster than demand) leading to lower wages and benefits and worse scheduling policies. This is a place where unions typically would play as a way for laborers to gain back their market power. Not sure the union conditions in the airline industry but I'm guessing there are issues with global labor competition that's making this difficult. We as a society need to understand how globalization (and now automation!) is/will effect every job on the planet.

<comment><USER21> > _DHL started in the US in 1969 and became German owned a little after 2002_

Wow, thanks for pointing this out. I've been under the mistaken impression that DHL was always German (and that German precision is why they were better than the competition), and I'd assumed DHL stood for Deutsche Something Something.

[From the DHL company history: "On 25 September 1969, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom and Robert Lynn (the D, H and L in our company name) incorporate DHL."]

[http://wap.dhl.com/info/history.html](http://wap.dhl.com/info/history.html)

<comment><USER22> >and that German precision is why they were better than the competition

To me seeing that my package will be shipped with them is a negative since I've never had a positive experience. Is a bit better now that I'm regional so they basically only control the package until customs but still bit great before it reaches the country.

<comment><USER21> I'm in Australia, so it could be a different experience here (and my Amazon deliveries here are still superior to DHL & other providers).

The one that really makes my heart sink is Toll - anytime I see "delivered by Toll", I know there's only a 50% chance of my parcel arriving. [The last time I had to pick up a parcel from a collection point, I overheard someone calling out "Can't use Chrome for that, Toll requires IE6 for the log-in"]

<comment><USER22> In Australia too when I was in Sydney they were both problems now I'm in Yamba so everything goes via one of two local guys who are both really great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Hot topic in The Netherlands right now is the threat of a hostile takeover of Akzo Nobel, a chemical company with 50,000 employees, by a US company. The government is discussing putting the same protective regulations in place that Trump is threatening with. The US isn't "losing" jobs to Germany, they are trade partners. If Americans want to stop trading then both sides lose.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wish there was a little bit more detail on what laws are bypassed. Unfortunately I'm also a little put off by the emphasise on averting foreign influence. Regulations against foreign carriers operating in the US were always uncomfortable to me.

<comment><USER24> Isn't the regulation there because the US government uses the carriers in time of war to transport their forces?

<comment><USER25> The cabotage rules came into place after the second world war.

While the military argument may be used by some, to me, this is pretty clearly an economic treaty issue rather than a matter of national security.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Convention_on_Internat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Convention_on_International_Civil_Aviation)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> > At another DHL carrier, pilots went on strike for two days after a year of > regularly being forced to cover overtime shifts due to short-staffing.

Sounds like they need to do more of that.

Is there a surplus of pilots waiting in line for jobs? This isn't the first time I've heard that pilots get paid very little and have to work incredibly long hours. Are there no unions?

<comment><USER27> I'd like them to define "forced", I don't think there really is any mechanism for an employer to compel anyone to do things.

People learn to fly because they like flying, it is fun. Because people like to fly, the going rate for piloting is low. If people didn't like flying so much, the rates would be higher.

<comment><USER28> That's news to me! Throughout my life I've subconsciously picked up that pilots are very well paid. Did I get the wrong impression?

<comment><USER29> Depends on the airline. Pilots of major legacy carriers (and not their low- cost spin-offs) are typically really well paid (sometimes excessively so). In Germany I'm aware of cases of >500k$ annually for end-of-their-career pilots. I believe the situation in the US is similar. However, pilots of low-cost carriers earn significantly less. In Europe I heard of salaries in the range of 50k$ annually. I would guess cargo carriers that are not 100% subsidiaries of legacy carriers are closer to low-cost carriers in their salaries

<comment><USER30> Most American pilots have to start their careers at regional airlines and many pay under $30k/year to start: [https://www.alpa.org/news-and-events/news- room/2016-08-16-st...](https://www.alpa.org/news-and-events/news- room/2016-08-16-strong-career-key-to-attracting-new-pilots-to-airline- profession)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Isn't he working for an US company which contracts to DHL? And isn't said company pushing him because US labor laws let it get away with it?

</comment><comment><USER32> Welcome to the world of competitive market. This is how capitalism works.

This article is filled with emotion and lack of facts. You express how difficult your job is however 80% of the time the computer is doing all of your job. This is why a lot of tech companies are focusing on AI driving/flying automation. Of course it is good to have a pilot on the plain but very little is done now days by him. You only bear the responsibility(not that it is little).

You have few actions: \- Make sure all pilots are on the same page as you and put on a strike (Create Demand in the face of Amazon) \- If others are OK with the working condition then problem is with yourself. You need to provide something more to the table than flying skills - teaching, management, experience.

Stop blaming businesses, they have a very predictable morality - profit.

<comment><USER33> There is no such entity as a business. Every business is a collection of individuals and I have trouble believing that every one of those individuals holds only profit, and the consequent race to the bottom, as a favourable outcome. It's a sad state of affairs where a group behaves in the opposite fashion to how they would behave as individuals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Unionize and do something about it. They are pilots! Well educated individuals. C'mon go help yourselves...

<comment><USER35> Unions sound nice in theory. But in practice, pilot unions work only for very senior pilots [1]. All other pilots in the union get paid much less and have worse working conditions. The detailed story about the effects of pilot unions:

[http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and- airlines](http://philip.greenspun.com/flying/unions-and-airlines)

[1]: Senior vs junior pilots gap is also the incentive for the airline owner to go bancrupt and start a new airline. So that there'll no senior pilots in the airline.

<comment><USER36> > _pilot unions work only for very senior pilots_

Then bargain for different terms and conditions for junior pilots? There is no "one" way that unions work.

<comment><USER37> Unions are run by senior pilots; it's very much in their interests for pay to continue to be weighted towards senior pilots (and they could trot out plenty of justifications related to experience and training for it if they wanted to) Junior pilots aim to become senior pilots when they've accumulated enough experience so it's generally not in their interest to rock the boat

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> During back-to-back flights of 23 hours, are the pilots able to sleep for any significant amount of time?

How often are they asked to take the marathon flights?

More details would be helpful...it's not clear if this is a new norm from the article.

<comment><USER9> There will have been 3 pilots on board. One can always rest so that you don't get over the maximum time. 23 hours is still at the limit of what you can do with 3 pilots. For passenger planes, you would've probably needed 4 pilots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Amazon is making life difficult for the USPS as well...forced them to work on Sundays. They _definitely_ have leverage.

That said, most everyone at USPS is probably quite happy that Amazon is helping their business thrive when it had been floundering for years. USPS folks are also not working marathon hours like these pilots, except at Christmas, but they've been doing that for decades.

</comment><comment><USER39> Trucking isn't a lot different. My dad has worked for a few companies where all out breaking the law is the norm. It was expected and required. The big problem is if a driver is caught, who is it on? Only the driver. That is why he is lucky to be with a company that doesn't ask him to cook his log book.

Another company would not pay for time sitting at a loading dock or line. They say you must be at point X at 9:00. You are 10th in line. At noon you finally get unloaded. That was 3 hours of sitting without pay, but yet you aren't free to walk a way.

They also wouldn't pay for time to fuel the truck. Does the truck fuel itself? I think not. From what I know it is legal to require this task to be done, but not pay for it? Just to be clear, it is a company owned truck and he was an employee.

Labor laws are a mess and I'm sure there are all kinds of industries that are in a similar position.

</comment><comment> artumi-richard That reference about DHL being German doesn't sit nicely with me. Germany is much more socialist than the USA.

<comment><USER40> Are we?

The health insurance system is corrupt and medical services are arguably on the decline.

When you don't have money or a job, you can get basic benefits and in return get treated like a dog. For many people that is still better than in their home countries, so they come here.

The middle class is getting smaller, because they're the ones paying for all this.

Is milking the middle class from all ends socialist? Doesn't feel like it.

<comment><USER9> If you're from Germany, go to a US hospital once to get a basic treatment. Then look at the bill and think about the argument of a corrupt insurance system. Because as a German, you'll likely never have seen how much a doctor or hospital actually charge a patient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I wonder what he would say if an AI took over his job. Would he be sad or happy?

</comment><comment><USER42> Anyone here - not me, but only because I live in Australia - who doesn't recognise they they are the problem, are the problem.

We all want things, and we all want them the cheapest. Amazon is the cheapest. And how? This is how.

We either get used to a world where things cost less and people all across the delivery chain get treated really shitty, or we all accept that we have to pay a dollar more for that 12-pack of toilet paper.

Discussions of flying hours and labour rules here are disingenuous. We choose. Cheap, and people get fucked over? Or pay more, and (hopefully) they don't.

It's up to us. This is not a technology issue.

<comment><USER43> Read the article carefully and you'll note that he was never required to pilot a plane 23 hours in a 24 hour period (which is against all regulations). He was forced to ride along with one flight in order to get to his work flight.

The author has a great job where he is well paid and occasionally has to sleep on a plane. What's the problem?

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Welcome to Capitalism. In this case, there are no H1B pilots to put the blame on in this field. Like cheap H1B engineers from India are taking away our jobs, cheap field workers from Mexico are taking our jobs, cheap Chinese products. Emirates..I can go on. If anyone knows how Capitalism works, they will stop complaining that why their jobs are being replaced. Its not the cheap employees fault, its the very same capitalist organizations that you work for. Dont put the blame on a worker for taking away your job.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is it me or it's a lot of xenophobia and a bit of labor dispute?

</comment><comment><USER46> Long haul truckers also have a difficult job, and are squeezed by large shippers.

People associate used glamour with flying, but I think that is because it was so expensive and most people were shut out. I think of a passenger airplane as a greyhound with wings. There's no reason not to think of a cargo plane as a semi with wings, in which case you shouldn't expect the pilots to be much better off than truck drivers.

</comment><comment><USER47> I thought that with all the safety regulations, cargo pilots were doing more or less the same number of hours that passengers pilots. In fact I read previously that pay was now pretty much aligned between the two, and that this previously unpopular profession among pilots was attracting increasing interest.

<comment><USER48> That i likely more because of plummeting pay for passenger pilots with the new budget airlines

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> DHL is doing the same with their workers in Germany (so it's not because Germany has more loose regulations on their workers, I think they are even more strict in maximum hours work time in comparison even to USA). The problem is that this big logistic companies like DHL and Amazon trying to max. their profit and min. their losses without any ethics and with pressure from competitors on the shoulders of their most important employees. Logistic is going mad and it should be better regulated world wide. A lot of people in logistics and postal service are frustrated because of this online trade trend nowadays.

</comment><comment><USER50> to be honest, why not start by having cargo planes flown by AI in an unmanned aircraft?

You can have an office where drone-operator style aircraft operators can log in for 8 hour shift and then 'handover' to the next shift's operator before heading home.

I understand the sentiment of having an actual human(s) fly passengers but cargo is just -- cargo and it's not as if the skies are as complicated as the roads with rules and other manual driving cars.

<comment><USER51> Two reasons:

1) Because if a cargo jet crashes a large number of ground fatalities is a possible outcome.[0][1]

2) Drone "operators" who are basically monitoring the AI and instruments will not be at peak focus when they need it most. Compare US Air 1549 [2] with Asiana 214 [3]. Capt. Sullenberger well rested and 110% focused on landing the jet, as safely as possible. The crew of Asiana 214 were obviously not focused 100% on landing and were unable to make a "manual" visual landing on a clear day in a normal functioning 777.

The USAF has a contingency plan to shoot down a drone if it drifts off course towards a populated area, or to prevent capture by non-friendly governments.[4]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_6491](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Airlines_Flight_6491)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Al_Flight_1862)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_Airways_Flight_1549)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asiana_Airlines_Flight_214)

[4] [http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp- space/article/20...](http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp- space/article/2009-09/when-drones-go-wild-air-force-shoots-them-down)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> How it is even possible for pilots to fly 23 hours straight? I am pretty sure there are some regulations limiting pilot's working time for safety reasons.

<comment><USER9> As in every passenger flight >~10 hours, there was a third pilot on board so that they could rotate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Summary of article: I want more money.

Why do cargo planes even need pilots? He isn't likely to get more money - instead his job is likely to be automated away.

<comment><USER9> Because you don't want to experience a bug in the automatic flight while the 777 is above a major city.

Self driving cars will come soon, self driving planes won't come for decades. The risk of losing >1000 lives because of one bug or hack doesn't justify the cost savings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> It amazes me that people still believe that these companies care about anything except the bottom line.

</comment><comment><USER55> Emo. No content.

"US patriots, protect our labour achievements from this evil German company!"

<comment><USER56> Yesss, evil nazis taking over the country. I don't see the point of the article. Automated work and cheaper labour is searched everywhere to produce more profit. Only way for people to survive in this race is to develop themselves, educate, learn, specialize, make more value. Not to build walls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> It is EXTREMELY difficult to be empathetic with a pilot. As a class, they are the most FYIGM ultraconservative group. Now they feel the trickle down on their heads....

<comment><USER11> Well, if not pilots, what about private EMTs? Averaging minimum wage or 1-2% above, usually working 24 hour shifts, often without meal breaks, responding to 911 calls. They're a little less FYIGM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> This is a bit of a distorted view"

"veterans or reservists who have spent years in selfless service"

Both veterans and reservists get paid for their work. It's no more selfless than being a programmer or a cleaner.

</comment><comment><USER59> Meaningless post, the only concrete example is:

> For example, my colleagues and I have been asked to sit on 14-hour flights > from the UW to the Middle East, only to then fly the same aircraft to Asia > on another nine-hour journey

Which is a lot to __ask__ for. Wasn't the company willing to pay overtime wages? I'm not a pilot, but to me it sounds like that's a pretty much unavoidable issue in the industry and the pilots are compensated heavily for this overtime, aren't they?

<comment><USER60> Note that he didn't say he wasn't paid for that additional 9 hours. He just said he had to fly 9 more hours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> Sounds like you need some socialism in yer country. But I guess tax cuts to companies will help.

<comment><USER62> Maybe tax cuts to corporations would help. If a company that was previously keeping 65% of profits started keeping 85% due to lower taxes perhaps they would invest some of that in employee pay / benefits / more employees. Of course, they also have the choice to just keep the extra money for themselves.

<comment><USER63> Ha ha hilarious. You don't think they'll just pay larger C-suite salaries?

The question you should ask is: who has the power in this relationship? If the pilots unionized properly, they'd have the power to demand higher wages or better conditions.</comment></comment></comment>


Fish oil supplements linked to prostate cancer (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.nhs.uk/news/cancer/fish-oil-supplements-linked-to-prostate-cancer/ <comment><USER2> There is, I am starting to believe (regardless of whether or not this particular finding holds up), an ongoing problem with our approach to nutrition. The anti-pattern goes like this: 1) people who eat/drink X have health benefits 2) it seems to be related to X having Y in it 3) let's sell Y as a pill 4) dang, no health benefits, how did that happen?

Now this could be for several reasons. Maybe eating/drinking X is a marker for a lifestyle that is healthy, or for coming from a background that includes beneficial genes of some sort. Maybe Y is not the only thing in X which matters, it's just the most obviously related thing, and you really need the whole package. Maybe the amount of Y you get from eating/drinking X is good, but in concentrated form at high levels there are drawbacks of some sort.

But, however you look at it, putting Y into a pill (that can often be patented and sold as medicine) is not the same as eating/drinking X, and despite the financial incentives for claiming it is, we need to recognize that.

<comment><USER3> It's like the whole thing with vitamin supplements. Unless you are actually deficient in one of them, taking them isn't going to do much for you, and in some cases might actually cause you harm. It's like fertiliser on a field, after a certain point the plants can't use any more and it just runs off to the rivers.

Vitamin C is a good one for that, I seem to remember reading that at best taking large doses just means your piss contains a lot of it, and at worst, if you mega-dose for long periods, it raises your chance of getting some cancers.

It reminds me of the adverts on the London Underground. Every time I travel through London to see my parents there will be adverts medicalising lack of sleep and exhaustion, flogging supplements and "remedies" for what is basically being tired, or "chronic tiredness syndrome" as one advert described it. I'm so glad I didn't choose that life.

<comment><USER4> Also risk of kidney stones.

<comment><USER3> Did not know about that one. Another reason not to waste my money :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This was based on the SELECT trial data, which means that it could just as easily be measuring the effects of a very large and prolonged dose of 400 IU of alpha-tocopherol as it is omega-3. Greater than 12x RDA.

Moreover, it's been many years since this was published. If prostate cancer- promoting effects were so plainly an obvious effect of marine omega-3 supplementation, you'd expect to have seen it abundantly replicated by now.

<comment><USER4> Maybe not, it's a very slow growing cancer, so they say.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Keep in mind that this does not mean you have a 70% chance of getting prostate cancer if you take fish oil supplements.

Based on this[0], it's roughly an increase from about 0.02% chance to about 0.034% chance (given no other information to base your risk on)

[0][https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706483/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2706483/)

<comment><USER7> My understanding was that basically every man will, if they live long enough, have some cancerous cells in their prostate.

The main risk seems to be going from "so slow growing you die of old age first" to "fast enough growing it becomes a problem", unless I am horribly mistaken.

<comment><USER8> I worked in a lab that was studying prostate cancer for a summer internship, and most of our samples came from young men who died in motorcycle accidents. They found that a majority of the samples had some presence of benign tumors, but it only really becomes noticeable once malignant tumors develop.

I don't know how representative the samples were of the entire population - one theory was that our young motorcycle samples had significantly higher testosterone on average and were more likely to develop those tumors.

<comment><USER9> Young, and _dead_ motorcyclists. Young male motorcyclist is the definition of testosterone-fueled lethality. (I grew out of sportbikes after two good friends died.)

<comment><USER10> The so called balls to brain ratio.

<comment><USER11> I ride bikes but am low T. For shame.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of an old article, here is a link to an article written around the same time that was updated last summer.

[https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or- foe-2...](https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or- foe-201307126467)

<comment><USER13> At a certain point it says:

"Evidence linking fish oil and cancer has been all over the map. Some research suggests diets high in fatty fish or fish oil supplements might reduce the risk of certain cancers, including prostate cancer. Other research shows just the opposite, a link between eating a lot of oily fish or taking potent fish oil supplements and a 43% increased risk for prostate cancer overall, and a 71% increased risk for aggressive prostate cancer."

Go figure! I guess, inconclusive at best.

<comment><USER14> What dose of fish oil does one need to consume in order for the diet to be considered "high in fish oil"?

Also, I've read in the past that it's important to balance omega-3's with omega-6. I wonder if any of this research takes that balance in to account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The article does not talk about alternatives. A great alternative for Omega-3s are ground flax seeds, one tablespoon a day mixed for example in your oatmeal is enough - [https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/omega-3-fatty- acids](https://nutritionfacts.org/topics/omega-3-fatty-acids)

Also for the derived DHA/EPA, there are pollutant-free alternatives based on algae oil.

<comment><USER16> I prefer flax seed oil to ground flax seeds, due to cyanide being present in the shells.

<comment><USER17> And do you think shells aren't pressed when the flax seeds are for oil extraction?

<comment><USER16> Hydrogen cyanide is not fat soluble, so the levels are presumably much lower in the oil.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > It is worth bearing in mind that this study did not assess participants' > diet and use of supplements. Researchers measured blood levels of fatty > acids and analysed the association with prostate cancer risk. However, it is > likely that the very high levels of fatty acids found in some participants' > blood came from supplements.

Important point

2nd point to consider: is this for all types of cancer? More, less aggressive? Benign enlargement of prostate? In the article (comparison of the lowest Om3 quartile with the highest Om3 quartile):

> 44% increased risk of low grade prostate cancer (HR (hazard ratio) = 1.44, > 95% CI (confidence interval) = 1.08 to 1.93) > 71% increased risk of high > grade prostate cancer (HR = 1.71, 95% CI = 1.00 to 2.94) > 43% increased > risk of total prostate cancer (HR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.09 to 1.88)

3rd point: could this be associated with something else (for example: heavy metals in fish)

As most guidance by the NHS, this is very well explained and de- sensationalized

> However, it cannot show that fish oil supplements cause prostate cancer and > it is possible that other confounders affected men's risk (although the > researchers tried to take these into account)

</comment><comment><USER19> The study in question does _not_ link fish oil supplements to cancer. It correlates (with no clear evidence of causality) high blood levels of fatty acids with actual cases of prostate cancer. It is _speculated_ that for at least _some_ of the subjects, the high levels of fatty acids _may_ have come from supplements.

FTA: "It is worth bearing in mind that this study did not assess participants' diet and use of supplements. Researchers measured blood levels of fatty acids and analysed the association with prostate cancer risk. However, it is likely that the very high levels of fatty acids found in some participants' blood came from supplements."

</comment><comment><USER20> I prefer eating quality canned sardines regularly instead of taking these supplements which can be viewed as a heavily processed industrial food derived from sources of unknown provenance.

They have plenty of omega-3s and are very low on the food chain.

<comment><USER21> A good meal is definitely better than a dozen of pills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't like the reflexive notion that high levels of X in one's diet necessarily translate into high levels of X in one's blood chemistry.

There should be a name for that nutritional fallacy.

</comment><comment><USER23> What about the packaging or matetial of the pill itself that contains the supplements? And any additives in the process? The processed stuff usually has higher risks. I wonder if any studies have been done on what contains the drugs which they also consume.

</comment><comment><USER24> NHS's Behind the Headlines is a welcome relief from pseudoscience. They apparently have a beef with The Mail Online.

[https://www.nhs.uk/news/](https://www.nhs.uk/news/)

</comment><comment><USER25> How about some "studies" to figure out the components of a well-balanced diet?

* macros

* what's out (well, this is easy actually)

* what's in

</comment><comment><USER26> Let me give an alternative view of this epidemiological study.

"Those more interested in their health (motivated to take supplements or eat a high omega-3 diet) more likely to be diagnosed by their doctor with common health issues"

<comment><USER27> Participants were selected by having a cancer. Have you read the article? it's about growth rate.

<comment><USER14> According to the article, _" In this type of study, cases of people who have a particular outcome - in this case, prostate cancer - are matched against a random group of people who do not develop the condition."_

That sounds to me that in fact they were looking at cancer-free people as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> tocopherols have been shown to have negative effects, including increased mortality, in other studies too. Nothing new here.

<comment><USER29> Most research has focused on α-tocopherol, which is thought to displace γ-Tocopherol. In a 2000 study of the relationship between α-tocopherol, γ-tocopherol, selenium, and prostate cancer, men in the highest fifth of the distribution for γ-tocopherol were five time less likely to develop prostate cancer than men in the lowest fifth. [1]

"Recent epidemiological and preclinical studies have indicated that γ- and δ-tocopherols may be more effective because they are more efficient traps for reactive oxygen and nitrogen species." [2]

1\. [https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/92/24/2018/2633585](https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article/92/24/2018/2633585) 2\. [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5337152/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5337152/)</comment></comment>


TV on the Internet vs. TV for the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/07/14/online-video-tv-on-the-internet-vs-tv-for-the-internet/ <comment><USER2> Sigh. If people really do wish the Internet to be Television 2.0 -- guess what will happen? The Internet will become Television! Is that really what you had in mind?

I guess even "real TV" was, in its original form, an educational and informative medium. When it became absurd (it didn't take long, did it -- driven by advertising, mind you) we were fortunate to have the 'net to turn to.

Where should we turn now?</comment>


Apple Quietly Discontinues MacBook Pro 17" - MacRumors.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2012/06/11/apple-quietly-discontinues-macbook-pro-17/ <comment><USER2> Have you tried posting this to Hacker News?</comment>


Website builder Elementor secures $15m from Lightspeed - <AUTHOR> https://sharedhere.com/thread/view/7YfSii82rdqFCKBrLgLAWX <comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like [https://getshogun.com](https://getshogun.com) sans Shopify integration. What is up with everyone trying to bring Microsoft Frontpage to the web?</comment>


Rochefort – Poor Man's Kafka - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jackdoe/rochefort <comment><USER2> I've run Kafka at large scale. I've also seen even larger scale attempts to replace it.

Just use Kafka. Seriously, it's rock solid and is practically lingua franca in backend architecture these days. Everyone understands it and every data processing framework or service supports it.

Kafka is much, _much_ more than just distributed pub/sub. It's disk cache optimizations _alone_ make rolling your own a terrible idea.

<comment><USER3> This is a principle our industry implements poorly. It often seems like each new generation (for very small values of the word generation) must reinvent the same thing. Perhaps because the old thing was too complex to understand immediately... complexity driven by the needs of the underlying problem... complexity which the new implementation will inevitably obtain if it survives long enough and becomes popular enough that anyone cares.

(That said, I'm highly in favor of innovation of most any kind; building new things is great, if the new thing has some plausible innovation over the old thing!)

<comment><USER4> The industry itself feeds this cycle by rewarding people for creating new projects and demanding shiny github projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you're looking for a log that's not Kafka, also worthwhile to check out Redis Streams, which will be included in the upcoming Redis 5.0 release.

[http://antirez.com/news/114](http://antirez.com/news/114) (I think the API has changed a bit since this blog post, but the concepts and capabilities are the same.)

</comment><comment><USER6> On a somewhat related note there is a link implementation of Kafka written in Go called Jocko.[0]

[0] [https://github.com/travisjeffery/jocko](https://github.com/travisjeffery/jocko)

<comment><USER7> This is actually interesting because Kakfka's is great and the protocol makes sense but I want a binary to run so I don't have to deal with the java ecosystem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Backstory and caveats:

> _Losing Data and NIH_

> You can lose data on crash and there is no replication, so you have to > orchestrate that yourself doing double writes or something.

> The super simple architecture allows for all kidnds of hacks to do > backups/replication/sharding but you have to do those yourself.

> My usecase is ok with losing some data, and we dont have money to pay for > kafka+zk+monitoring(kafka,zk), nor time to learn how to optimize it for our > quite big write and very big multi-read load.

> Keep in mind that there is some not-invented-here syndrome involved into > making it, but I use the service in production and it works very nice :)

<comment> 549362-30499 I'm scratching my head about "we dont have money to pay for kafka+zk+monitoring(kafka,zk)". Kafka and Zookeeper are both open source. As are monitoring and alerting tools such as Prometheus. Surely the hosting and storage costs are similar. So what does this project offer its creator, other than a great deal of infrastructural debt and all the latent bugs of a roll- your-own solution that lacks a community?

<comment><USER9> I'm assuming he means money as in time, to install, configure, optimize, and monitor those distributed systems.

<comment> 549362-30499 Even if that's the case, deploying and scaling a Kafka cluster is something that hundreds of companies have figured out and publicly written about. It's something that you _can_ hire an experienced engineer to fix. When this thing runs into problems, they will be all new ones.

<comment><USER10> These days you can also find kubernetes scripts that handle the Kafka installation, setup, routing, etc.

That just leaves the "simple work" of administering and tuning which, as you pointed out, is competence that's steadily growing in the industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm always very curious about the backstory of projects like this. Without that backstory there is very little chance I'd try out something like this.

Ideally the read me would explain why Kafka didn't cut it, why the trade offs the authors made were worth it (in this case), and why I did consider using a this system.

Sadly I don't have enough time to read an entire repo of code to try and figure these things out.

<comment><USER12> Atleast read the bottom of the README where some of this is covered

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Question to OP - Did your team check out NATS ([https://nats.io/](https://nats.io/)) ? What are your thoughts on that ?

</comment><comment><USER14> this repository appears to be just a hair over a week old, so i am skeptical even of "I use the service in production and it works very nice". fun project i'm sure, but if i felt like breaking the rules and engaging in a little NIH of this sort - i'm not sure i'd choose HTTP (or any other network protocol) as the hub to build it around

<comment><USER15> I don't disagree with you, buts it's also possible it was modeled/extracted from something non-public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> How did you pick the name?

<comment><USER17> "Rochefort Trappistes 10 is my favorite beer and I was drinking it while doing the initial implementation at sunday night"</comment></comment>


Peer reviewed startups - <AUTHOR> In academia, when you submit your paper to a journal, it usually goes through peer review.
It would be cool to have a site where you submit a business plan (along with web prototype, if it's a web business) and the plan is given to 3 random people from a pool of entrepreneurs, who write a formal review of your business (and perhaps sign a digital nda).
Maybe Ycombinator can sponsor something like this. <comment><USER2> In academia the paper is the product. In startups the idea for the startup is not the product, but the execution is. And how _good_ the execution is, well that's determined by how successful the startup is. Life is the ultimate peer review.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you already have a version 1, why not just submit it to the market for judgement? That's who ultimately judges it anyway.

</comment><comment><USER4> Unless you are doing something truly unusual or something that requires a lot of investment in time and capital, you should just tell as many people as you know about it and see what happens and reiterate based on feedback.

Consider some YC companies that are still fine-tuning their product. They've been reviewed by the likes of pg and co and had the benefit of their advice for 3 months as well as the benefit of experience from the large pool of YC alumni. But even they need to fine tune based on what the larger market thinks.

</comment><comment><USER5> This seems incredibly dangerous, a bunch of smart, tech-savvy people are exactly the last people I want seeing my site.

<comment><USER6> I disagree. I assume you're afraid they're going to steal you're idea? The only way that would matter is if they care about it enough to do as good a job as you're going to do. I could hear a thousand ideas and probably none of them would be so compelling that I would drop my own projects to work on it.

<comment><USER5> The issue is more along the lines of other startups attacking the same problem with more funding, particularly those still in stealth mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this could be really valuable, although I wouldn't really restrict it to 3 random people.

Flickr for example, have groups that require you to comment on the previous 2 photos to post in that group. That doesn't mean all photos in the group have only 2 comments, many have much more because it creates a culture of critique.

As much there has been talk about "Not going dark" for programmers I think this is equally true of businesses. If you believe in what you do enough to tell other people about it then they can help keep you going in the right direction. If you stay in stealth mode forever you could be digging your own grave without knowing it.

</comment><comment><USER8> I thought that posting here for feedback on your startup already accomplished this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is probably the best alternative. However, the main problems are

1) rigor; comments have a tendency to be whatever pops into a person's head rather than a rigorous assessment of a business model. I think rigorous feedback would provide an opinion on each component of a successful business.

2) reputation; I know people here are very smart, but if you have a selected pool of entrepreneurs you can guarantee a certain level of reputation for your feedback. On ycombinator, you can still get a scathing review from a 17 year old startup wannabe and then sit there wondering whether they really know what they're talking about.

3) non-disclosure; when you post on ycombinator, your business plan reaches a public audience and gets indexed on google. With a random selection of 3 reviewers from a selected pool of advisors, this narrows the audience down, and furthermore you can get NDAs from them. Also, if your business magically appears the next day, you have some legal recourse if it's one of the reviewer's best friends.

<comment><USER9> You talked about getting indexed in Google. Actually, it was possible a few days back to post it on the web and not get indexed by Google or any other search engine. The solution was to make an embedded flash slide show on the webpage and post the link here, but now since they are going to start indexing flash files too, the idea loses hand-down. :)

But surely there must be some sort of solution to post it on the web and not get indexed. Google will surely not index flash videos. Or why create a locked page and then specify the password here. Google then cannot index your file :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think people choosing to invest or not invest in you is probably the best form of peer review in business. The fact they are committing their own money forces honesty and helps to ensure that the quality of insight is high (mainly as bad investors will,eventually, stop investing, while good ones will invest more).

I hope I am wrong and what your looking for can be developed. It really would be an excellent service.

</comment><comment><USER11> On a similar note:

<http://vertonghen.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/i-have-an-idea/>

</comment><comment><USER12> So... you're suggesting what's currently called Closed Alpha.

I guess the innovation here is creating a randomized pool of alpha-testers.

</comment><comment><USER13> if it were a prototype or demo, it would be even better. i'm trying to figure this out right now.. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=243760>

</comment><comment><USER14> Startups often start in "stealth mode" for a reason.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well startups that start in stealth mode might want to get feedback. They can post their business plan in public, go to VCs, ask whatever contacts they have in person. The problems are posting in public defeats the purpose of stealth mode, going to VCs doesn't make sense if you're not ready or are bootstrapped, and you may not have many contacts with sufficient experience in entrepreneurship.</comment></comment>


So Busy at Work, No Time to Do the Job - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/so-busy-at-work-no-time-to-do-the-job-1467130588 <comment><USER2> How is it possible that "managers and knowledge workers now spend 90% to 95% of their time in meetings, on phone calls and emailing". Do we just have a shell economy where people are making up communications that need to happen and calling it work? What a strange world we live in.

<comment><USER3> I don't think its just "made up work". There are some interesting attempts to push agile methods out to executives and that can be a challenge. Also the more senior one is, the more change that is happening in the organization you have to be at least cognizant of.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates is funding factories for 7 coronavirus vaccines, wasting billions - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com.au/bill-gates-factories-7-different-vaccines-to-fight-coronavirus-2020-4 <comment><USER2> No, no, no... This really is not a waste. Businesses do this all the time. When something is needed right away they bet on multiple possibilities knowing that some of them will not work. But they do it because ultimately it will help the situation. It's the cost of doing business.

Governments can't really do it because no matter the result someone will complain about it not being done more efficiently.

I don't understand why the defence department is not willing to do it. It has more flexibility and is capable of spending billions in a time of need without much criticism.

I am just glad Gates is around to do it and is willing to do it. Ultimately it will save lives.

</comment><comment><USER3> *Knowingly

> The Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates told "The Daily Show" on Thursday that > his foundation was funding the construction of factories for seven > coronavirus vaccine candidates. Gates said the foundation would end up > picking only one or two of the seven, meaning billions of dollars spent on > manufacturing would be abandoned. He said that in a situation where the > world faces the loss of trillions of dollars to the economy, wasting a few > billion to help is worth it.

<comment><USER4> This is the response the govt should've had in January. Ramp up test kits, PPE, reagents, etc as fast as possible. If it all goes to waste, be happy that a pandemic was avoided. So much could've been done for the cost of a couple of F-35s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> When you have 100 billions, 10-20-30 even 99 billion are nothing special... You spend it all, you're still a billionaire, and you and your descendants up to 4-5 generations can still live independently and wealthy...

<comment><USER6> At least he is doing it. You can't say that of other so called billionaires</comment></comment>


Quibi to Remake 'The Princess Bride' with Joe Jonas, Sophie Turner - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2020/06/26/quibi-to-remake-the-princess-bride-with-joe-jonas-sophie-turner/ <comment><USER2> Poll:

1\. Wow, can't wait to see that. I'm 12 years old.

2\. Why not remake Casablanca with that kind of talent?

3\. What's Quibi?</comment>


Link prefetching FAQ - <AUTHOR> https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Link_prefetching_FAQ

<comment><USER2> I don't understand how this:

> prefetching is a browser feature; users should be able to disable it easily.

can be preceded so closely by this:

> there is a hidden preference that you can set to disable link prefetching.

> However, the theory is that if link prefetching needs to be disabled then > there must be something wrong with the implementation.

And later:

> Privacy implications

> Along with the referral and URL-following implications already mentioned > above, prefetching will generally cause the cookies of the prefetched site > to be accessed. (For example, if you google amazon, the google results page > will prefetch www.amazon.com, causing amazon cookies to be sent back and > forth.

I honestly can't see this feature doing anything more than harm. Every site has it in their interest to declare every link as pre-fetched, because it will make that site "seem faster". And this will cost every user a lot of hidden bandwidth and cache. Am I crazy?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sites also have an interest in reducing their network usage.

This technique is useful for a multipage process, or some other flow where there is, say, 50+% chance that the user will go to a specific page. It can be verified through analytics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't get it. This feature appeared years and years ago. The FAQ itself mentioned "starting with Firefox 3.5" which is from 2009. This isn't new, and it's not unique to FireFox. Modern IE has something like this as well.

HTTP/2's Server Push implements this concept at the protocol layer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Support for this is already widespread, so it can be used right now. HTTP/2 support is very low, and I'm not sure if this should be a protocol level responsibility or not.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with you about HTTP/2 push. I guess I don't understand why this prefetching via HTML tags or HTTP headers is getting discussed now on HN . Its several years old, and there have been no new advances, short of HTTP2, which is not mentioned in this FAQ. The FAQ itself hasn't been updated in quite some time

<comment><AUTHOR> Just because it's old doesn't mean that it's useless, or widely known.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is great. Can stop hacky prefetching like hidden images or Ajax calls. Front-end optimization is easily overlooked, yet something that greatly influences the user's experience on a site.</comment>


Hacker news needs a better system - <AUTHOR> http://expandas.blogspot.com/2011/10/hacker-news-needs-better-system.html

<comment><USER2> No, it doesn't.

This is impacting news for our industry. Also, it's NH's way of saying goodbye. Please, don't try to ruin this. Don't worry, it will all go away in a few hours.

Just go out and take a walk if this affects you negatively.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I understand that the two websites appeal to different audiences, but it intrigues me as to how Reddit is able to mitigate topic spamming without some sort of topic merge functionality.

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems to be working fine to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't really care about this. The Steve Jobs news is big anyway.

If something needs to be changed to the system it's to fix the annoyingly short "session expiration".

</comment><comment><USER5> HN is much more tech focused and each of the front page articles has high votes, not sure how PG would "fix" that.

But I've created a filtered feed for the next few days:

<http://feeds.feedburner.com/hacker-news-filtered>

(it removes "steve" "jobs" and "apple" and will be deleted after the weekend)

</comment><comment><USER6> It's easy to fix, just add a "jailbait" submission page.

In all seriousness though, I don't really view it as a problem per se. Reddit has a couple million viewers a day, isn't entirely tech-related, and has downvotes for submissions. HN just appeals to a different niche audience, and there's a glut of submissions about this singular, rather large bit of news.

</comment><comment><USER7> In your example HN has 23 links visible on the page (without scrolling), while Reddit has 10 links. Greater quantity of information over visual aesthetic appeals to the hacker market.</comment>


How to Tax Tech Monopolies - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-10-21/how-to-tax-facebook-google-and-other-tech-monopolies <comment><USER2> The question this headline poses implies that we should tolerate the existence of tech monopolies, and this is a premise we should question -- or summarily dismiss.

Instead of merely taxing monopolies, we should be cutting them apart. It's one thing to have your own business. You have no business trying to have your own _empire_ while still claiming to be a citizen of the United States. If your business is capable of dictating terms to democratically elected officials, then your business is indeed an empire and thus inimical to the democratic republic some of us in the US still care enough to try to maintain.

Your private empire should therefore be broken up, because money is like power. No individual should have too much of either, lest they yield to the temptation to set themselves above and apart from everybody else.</comment>


Remember our startup microPledge.com? Want to buy it? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bizbuysell.com/cgi-bin/addetail?J=bbs&q=493240

<comment><USER2> Wouldn't you be better off trying to sell it on flippa.com or something like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip. We hadn't actually heard of Flippa. We looked at Sedo, but it focuses on selling domain names. Looks like Flippa sells the platform/business too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is to buy the source and an instance of it as your own startup, and optionally the rights to re-sell it.

<comment><USER4> from the listing _all the above plus complete ownership of the platform including exclusivity, rights to on-sell, etc_

It sounds like you're selling the whole IP - if this is not the case, could you clarify what 'exclusivity' refers to?

<comment><USER3> That is the case. We will be considering offers for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> are you familiar with the new paypal developer platform? you can now have people create an authorization of amount X, but not charge them until some date in the future(I believe the max window is 1 year).

Would that help your situation at all?

Would be curious to know about your experience with bizbuysell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks -- actually, with PayPal you can only "Authorize and Capture" funds for 29 days, which isn't enough. A year would be quite nice.

However, there are a number of payment gateways that microPledge can use aside from PayPal. At this point we're interested in licensing the software and/or selling the entire business.

<comment><USER5> could you shoot me an email off site? my address is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> You should put in on ebay. Starting bid $0.99 with no reserve.

</comment><comment><USER7> What technology is it based on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Python + web.py, and PostgreSQL for the database.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The name looks a bit going against the sell. It doesn't live up to the site.

</comment><comment><USER9> No.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very helpful, sir! Care to expand on that a bit? For example, why, and where you think we might focus our efforts, etc.

<comment><USER10> Just trolling I think...</comment></comment></comment>


A programmer wrote scripts to secretly automate a lot of his job - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/programmer-automates-his-job-2015-11?r=UK&IR=T <comment><USER2> This is brilliant. I have a few automation scripts myself, but nothing on the scale that this guy went too. Impressive.</comment>


HMS Queen Elizabeth Aircraft Carrier Runs on Windows XP - <AUTHOR> https://www.rt.com/uk/394237-queen-elizabeth-windows-cyberattack/ <comment><USER2> More to the point the Microsoft t+c explicitly say not to use Windows for any real time control action where safety of humans is involved.

Hopefully it is just used for presentation of information from other sub- systems running their own OS or proprietary software that meets Lloyds survey requirements.

Article is very low on useful information.</comment>


World's total CPU power: one human brain - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/adding-up-the-worlds-storage-and-computation-capacities.ars <comment><USER2> I'm guessing made up numbers again, probably some AI researcher getting nowhere and trying to come up with excuses their CPU is too slow or they need more RAM.

And anyway, isnt most of the brain used for other things like making sure you dont fall over everytime you walk. etc</comment>


Apple announces iMac Pro with up to 18-core processor and 5K display for $4,999 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/5/15741540/apple-imac-pro-announced-price-specs-release-date-wwdc-2017 <comment><USER2> duplicate: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14489714)</comment>


Tell HN: Cisco WebEx on OS X uses the same pre-installer tricks as Zoom - <AUTHOR> I noticed while installing WebEx today that the installer immediately terminated itself after popping up the pre-installation script.
Running `strings` on the installation plugin (CWSPkgPlugin.bundle) shows why - it's using a similar process to what Zoom does [1]

  +[CWSUtilBase unzip:to:]
  /usr/bin/unzip
  Clean up temp unziped app done: %i
  unzip:to:
  [...]
  Cisco Webex pkg plugin, begin init work.
  Install CWS result: %i
  Launch CWS result: %i
  Terminate installer: %@
  Terminate self: %@
  [...]
  /usr/sbin/lsof
  forceTerminate
 Previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22736608
[1] https://www.imore.com/zooms-preinstallation-script-workaroun... <comment><USER3> The founder of Zoom used to work at WebEx before it was acquired. Wouldn't be surprised if he brought along some WebEx folks as well.

<comment><USER4> I would love to see a lawsuit about stolen malware IP.

<comment><USER5> Is it officially considered malware by apple? If so... feds don't screw about. Those guys could be in serious trouble.

<comment><USER6> Well then they're lucky that law enforcement has a _slightly_ more involved process to determine criminality than checking Apple's malware filter list.

<comment><USER7> But _should_ they?

<comment><USER8> Yes, I've always been a fan of not giving corporations the right to have people arrested and imprisoned without due process

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No wonder their uninstallation instructions[1] are hilariously complicated. They somewhat-helpfully point to an actual separate uninstaller package to download, but it doesn't even remove all the things mentioned on this page.

1\. [https://help.webex.com/en-us/WBX38280/How-Do-I-Uninstall- Web...](https://help.webex.com/en-us/WBX38280/How-Do-I-Uninstall-Webex- Software-on-a-Mac)

<comment><USER10> What's real great is they didn't notorize the app. So on Mac you have to individually allow about 30 java bits in a row.

<comment><USER11> Yes - holy crap is it annoying. I found the best way was to only launch meetings from their desktop client :S

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was surprised that when I ran a WebEx exe on windows to join a meeting, after the meeting concluded a window appeared with my calendar information pulled from outlook.

It really highlights how on desktop apps can do what they like. Whilst on mobile platforms at least you have to grant specific access.

<comment><USER13> I'll admit as a web dev I sometimes take some of the "omg JavaScript" a little personally. Some of the usual pile on articles (granted their complaints aren't technically 'wrong') sometimes imply the browser is a bad place for a lot of things that are happening there privacy wise and etc.

I always wonder ... "Uh, do you want platform specific desktop apps? You're not much better protected there man... and app availability becomes limited / a pain."

<comment><USER14> There's no fundamental technical reason why apps can't run as their own users (like apache and postgres have done for 20 years) and and use something like oauth to control sharing data with other apps. Just laziness.

<comment><USER13> I'm kinda lost on the comparison between postgres and... web applications?

<comment><USER15> He's comparing postgres to normal desktop application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why do these apps require installers at all? What are they installing—presumably any of their proprietary tech can run in userspace unprivileged.

Personally, my best guess is because that's the flow the product manager expected.

<comment><USER17> The standard way to install an application on the Mac is to simply drag it into the Applications folder. That's what is expected by users. For the vast majority of applications this should be enough. Whenever I see a Windows-style "installer" the first thing I think is... what kind of shenanigans are going on?

<comment><USER18> This standard way doesn't work in corp environments (which WebEx and Zoom are targeting primarily), where machines are remotely provisioned. For decent macOS remote installs and updates you need the PKG format scripts.

<comment><USER16> What is so hard about remotely provisioning app bundles in a standard place? I ask because I have been tangentially involved in both image and script based provisioning and interacting with PKGs would seem to complicate, not simplify, both processes.

<comment><USER19> It's the processes. Every update will have to go through change requests, loads of approvals, ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I still don't understand the issue with this: it's not using this feature as intended, but they're not exploiting any vulnerabilities or attempting to exploit a privilege escalation bug in macOS. Apple's installers allow these scripts to do anything (and I believe there's a prompt along the lines of "this installer will run a script to determine if the package can be installed").

<comment><USER21> > "this installer will run a script _to determine if the package can be > installed_"

Why would the user expect that script to install the application, or even modify their system in any way?

<comment><USER22> The fact that Apple allows an application to be installed in this step is an issue with Apple's design.

<comment><USER23> It's a script, though; should they sandbox the preinstall phase? That would break most packages.

<comment><USER24> Instead of silently breaking they could have a popup like "Do you allow the preinstall script to write into /this/folder?" on a write operation outside of the sandbox.

<comment><USER25> 99% of users will have no fucking idea what that means. They will either click 'Allow' (which makes this feature useless for 99% of people) or contact tech support (adds friction to installation, which is bad especially for conferencing software) or just give up and not use the product (which is bad for the company).

<comment><USER26> To be fair, it would at least ruin Zoom's incentive to do any of this, since they wanted a streamlined process that prompts the user less.

Why they didn't just use a dmg that has you drag the application into /Applications/ is something I still don't understand though. Surely that is the simplest most user friendly way to have non-technical users install applications without using the appstore.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The zoom guys are ex-WebEx guys. I saw the same zoom-bombing problem in WebEx few years back. we just enforce adding passcode/PIN to each meeting to remediate customer escalation.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why aren't more apps like Zoom and this one distributed via the app store? I mean besides the installer hackery they are legitimate and free apps right?

Or would that mean that their premium services would require paying the fees to Apple, which they avoid this way?

<comment><USER29> Can you even use the app store with a company mac? Who has the login - <USER2> personal account or some corporate one?

<comment><USER30> Good question, I think it should be the corporate one, and even if it might be a bit more work to setup, it's definitely in the company's interest, since then the applications that are installed can be sandboxed and be vetted/whitelisted more easily.

<comment><USER31> App Store is disabled on my enterprise mac, same for my last job. I think it's fairly common.

<comment><USER29> Same as mine, but I didn't know if it was common or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Everyone who's spent 3 hours talking a parent through downloading and installing a Zoom client understands exactly why they're doing this. Mine are unable to (1) reliably download a zip file; (2) navigate to that file using Finder; (3) run something inside it.

By the time we were done -- I use copilot (basically VNC with NAT punching built in) -- and I got control of the laptop to just do it myself, there were 7 downloads and 4 unzip attempts.

My MIL and I have literally had facetime pointed at her laptop while I directed her where to to get copilot running for the quarterly cleansing-of- the-spyware.

<comment><USER33> They need to do the work to get on the Mac App Store

<comment><USER34> The Mac App Store is a trap - The sandboxed APIs are severely limited, and no large company is going to let Apple get even more in-between them and their customers.

<comment><USER35> First, they can use the sandbox without going through the Mac App Store. Sandboxing is a good idea regardless of distribution method. That would improve security for everybody, without needing to 'let Apple get in between them and their customers'.

Second, Zoom already runs sandboxed for the other two ways you can run their client on Apple operating systems: the (iOS) App Store and the web. The Mac sandbox is the least strict of the three. So whatever they do, it doesn't seem to be hindered by 'severe limitations'.

I have yet to hear any feature that a legitimate videoconferencing application would need that would be disallowed by the macOS sandbox. Lots of other video chat apps are on the Mac App Store, like Facebook Messenger. Is the issue simply that Zoom is being sketchy and wants to continue to be sketchy, and sandboxing would not allow them to? That's not because the MAS is 'a trap'. That's its main feature.

<comment><USER36> The issue is not technical. It is political. Apple is arbitrary and capricious, and no one sensible wants every update to their software to be held hostage to Apple's whims. Large companies like Facebook can cut special deals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I hate it when the software I am trying to use installs itself on my computer after I click on it.

</comment><comment><USER38> I work in a tech company. The number of people you see who have their desktop filled with permanently mounted DMGs, launching their apps by opening said DMG and launching their trusty old Chrome version 53 by double-clicking the icon would blow your mind.

Users don't use your software as you would like them to. Zoom now requires ~4 clicks to update when a new version is released as you click through the installer steps. You _have_ to click the single frickin' disk icon (which is the only disk 99.9% of Apple users are going to have... still you have click on it) in one of the steps for the Next button to activate. Result: I fully expect a large percentage of the users to never update their Zoom successfully again. Great win for the users, the software which you downloaded, then clicked to install, no longer executes that scary pre-install script.

<comment><USER39> Not sure about what clicking disk icon you are talking about, but today's update showed up as regular pkg installer ("Next", "Next", "Accept", "Finish").

<comment><USER38> Chrome uses an DMG, and the result is that people are using ancient versions of it straight out of their Downloads or Desktop folders.

Zoom uses an .pkg, and have now removed the one-click install script. So every update to Zoom now runs through the same multi-step Next process as well (with one of the steps inactive until you select your disk, as is customary). If you think that isn't a problem for users, you've never walked grandma through the steps while she's trying to show her screen though the phone to you.

<comment><USER39> I believe you that in some configurations you have to select a disk where you want update to be installed but in my case it's selected automatically so as I mentioned in the previous post, it's matter of clicking "Next" buttons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I believe this is not hard to detect. Apple should detect this and report such an installer as particularly risky. Chances are the majority of installers working this way actually are malware, legitimate apps like Zoom and WebEx probably are exceptions.

<comment><USER41> That's extremely unlikely.

Malware on macOS isn't prevalent. There is no market for anti-virus vendors on macOS, and Apple have been repeatedly tightening the approval process for macOS software. Gatekeeper only ever gets _more_ aggressive, not less. Meanwhile videocall software is widespread, it's rapidly become a necessity for a large part of the world's population. I wouldn't be surprised if on macOS it's now in second place as a category behind web browsers.

No.

What Apple should, MUST do as quickly as possible, is understand and react to what developers here are trying to tell them - the usability of macOS software installation is terrible and no, the App Store is not an acceptable alternative. macOS software install UX is worse than Windows. It's worse than Android and iOS. It's better than Linux but that doesn't say much.

If Apple want to end these practices, they need to deliver:

1\. Genuine one or two-click install of software from the web, without the App Store being involved and without requiring sandboxing, allowing install scripts and for signed/notarised software, without any security popups. DMG style installs require drag and drop AND device unmounting, which isn't especially discoverable and hardly used on mobile platforms so some users can't figure it out (hence the reliance on PKG files).

2\. Removal of the scary popup that Safari shows when a user clicks a non-http URL.

Desktop software on macOS relies on these techniques because measuring the ratio of number of downloads to number of successful app starts shows that far fewer people make it through the process than they should, for instance, fewer than on Windows. This is a bit of an open secret in the desktop software world for many years now; Google for instance has detailed data on the problem. Each click you add causes the success rate to drop and macOS requires far more clicks than is justifiable. Additionally, the web server trick Zoom uses is because otherwise some non-trivial proportion of Safari users just automatically click cancel on the security popup when a web page tries to open a meeting, without even reading it. They don't understand what they're being asked or why, but figure if Apple want to double check with them it's safer to say no. Then they fail to join a meeting and if they're an important participant, that means the meeting fails for everyone.

Note that this usability problem is Safari-specific. On other platforms and browsers such workarounds aren't needed.

People need to stop giving Apple the benefit of the doubt here. Videoconf firms aren't doing this extra work because they're malicious or incompetent or because they inexplicably like doing work. They're doing it because otherwise a lot of Mac users fail to achieve the task they set out to do, and that hurts the usage of the video platform. It's ultimately Apple's problem to fix.

<comment><USER42> > 1\. Genuine one or two-click install of software from the web, without the > App Store being involved and without requiring sandboxing

I disagree with this. Why is going via the app store a bad thing? The app store is the solution here. Zoom should be able to tell apple "Hey I'd like to handle zoom://" links, and clicking one will redirect you to either zoom or the app store (without the source of your link knowing where you ended up), where you can have a one click install.

I also firmly disagree with the concept that sandboxing shouldn't be enforced. There is _no_ reason for any software (particularly software like Zoom, Webex, Slack) to have unfettered access to my machine,

<comment><USER43> No company that has a choice is going to pay Apple their tax. That's why the MacOS sure is always going to be the same as the Windows store: a home of loser apps. Since another install procedure is available, only losers will use the app store. Ergo, any software available through the app store is a loser app.

<comment><USER44> And yet Microsoft Office is available via the macOS App Store, alongside venerable packages like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, Logic and Final Cut (Apple-owned software), the Omni suite of software, Autodesk software, Pixelmator, etc.

The App Store has problems, but all apps there being "loser apps" is not one of them.

<comment><USER45> You can't pay for Office through the App Store though, you have to activate it with a personal or corporate Office 365 account. If you bought a perpetual license, I believe you have to go get it through Microsoft regardless.

<comment><USER41> Which is by the way against the App Store policies, so they must have cut some special deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Isn't all of this because of the Historical webRTC issues in safari?

<comment><USER47> In short, no.

<comment><USER46> So, I was under the understanding that Safari was dragging their feet on the whole WebRTC thing, and if they had come out with it when Chrome did, that these types of apps would then be able to run in the browser (just like Jitsi does today, I presume).

I know that companies have a perverse incentive to sell your info to advertisers and such, so I'm not trying to wave that away.

Just wanting to understand if Safari DID have webRTC much earlier, would we be talking about Zoom today?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yeah and if webex suddenly got popular like zoom,it too will be massacared.

This stuff is common. You know how many populat windows software acts bad? Filezilla's installer for example would literally install a very nasty strain of adware (to their credit, they give you the option to opt-out)

</comment><comment><USER49> The answer lies in zoom making a no-fuss-one-click installer and another full- winded-installer.

</comment><comment><USER50> For work we're in the process of switching from one to the other and the join meeting links on invites are now half functional on both. I wonder if this is the culprit

</comment><comment><USER51> Has anyone checked that it doesn't have the same uninstalled bugs? Namely the remote code exec rce that dropped a few months back..

</comment><comment><USER52> On top of that, WebEx quality is way worse than zoom

</comment><comment><USER53> cisco is not from China. Zoom is from China. End of story.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is not malicious. This is simply easing up the installation process. If the files can be copied directly into applications then do so rather than trigger a password prompt.

I would do the same.

</comment><comment><USER55> This is apples fault. Not for not blocking it but for not making the download- and-installed as streamlined as it needs to be. Being forced to drag something to a folder is not the UX you expect.

<comment><USER28> Would distribution via the App Store work? I mean that is the easiest and most trustworthy way - from a consumer's point of view - to install software.

<comment><USER55> App store installs are easy.

The difficult problem is making sure non-technical users can install and run binaries from untrusted third parties in basically a single click.

Does that sound like a security nightmare? It is. But it's also the users' expectation of "just working".</comment></comment></comment>


Why Stack Overflow Sucks (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://sergworks.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/why-stackoverflow-sucks/

<comment><USER2> In my experience, Stack Overflow is still one of the only places that I can ask questions and expect to receive useful information within the same day. I admit I don't answer questions as much as I used to, but there still seems to be plenty of people around to help. Also, as a general corpus of knowledge it really can't be beat - I often find useful answers to questions that were asked years ago.

I know it's currently in vogue to hate on it, but for me it continues to be a great source of information.

</comment><comment><USER3> (Post is from 2012)

Article contains ad hominem and personal opinions. Author is/was personally offended by certain events and his blog provides a source of relief for his distress.

I would comment on every specific paragraph, but the "arguments" are simply absurd.

This kind of post truly deserves to not be read.

</comment><comment><USER4> Have to agree with the post ... there are occasions when you read the question and understand it is a newbie who has no clue what technical term to use when s/he does his search and hence could not get a simple answer. Instead of guiding, it gets voted down real bad and sometimes the person is not able to ask more questions

</comment><comment><USER5> This is kind of symptomatic of online communities in general as they grow, no? Similar concerns exist around community behavior here on HN. Over the past year we've seen declining overall behavior as flocks of new people participate, new moderation systems introduced in an attempt to stem the tide of low-quality comments and karma-whoring actions, and varying levels of transparency into these systems.

The HN moderators (and SO's) seem to do a pretty good job, all things considered, but this is no simple problem to solve.

IMHO, the deep integration of crypto-currencies into these communities and karma systems is key to better self-moderation. Let the almighty dollar speak!

</comment><comment><USER6> Stack Overflow is an amazingly useful programming resource - but - like most things has problems.

From my viewpoint, the main problem is the drive for "karma". You may visit an interesting question and you will often find that partial solutions (or solutions to a re-phrasing of the question [thats as kindly as I can put it])have a high score while the true and, more importantly complete, answer (probably written a few days after the original question was posed) has zero points.

There are also those who answer a factual question with an opinion - I am sure that Dante would have added another level in hell for just that sin should he have lived in the modern age.

Points are not everything but there is a tendency for the scoring system to mislead the seeker after a solution unless they are aware that all factual answers have value.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that SO puts so much weight on points...I had to spend about two months just answering questions in order to have the rights to get any help, before I found out that I just need to say something popular without any real content to get all the points I need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> yup. I also stopped participating there in 2012 or so. It's really quite a shame. I still find my way there from Google pretty frequently, but I don't bother asking or answering questions anymore

<comment><USER9> Sorry but isn't that like shooting yourself in the foot?

Its a democratic process, if you are in it you have a chance to change it. Review questions and be more lenient than others will make the average change.

Asking and answering can certainly be a pain, but its still better than the myriad of Internet forums.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Something I start to notice that more and more questions are being closed as duplicate pointing to another question which only sounds similar but when you look deeper it is different.

<comment><USER11> I see this often too, usually when Google brings me in via the "duplicate" question. I end up steered to a question that is kinda close, but no cigar.

But these moderators have a job to do. If they allow too many "duplicates" SO might run out of drive space or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember being ridiculed for having more questions than answers. It's skewed to the idea that answering and contributing your thought is of more important than the question generating such thought.

Regardless, Stackoverflow has fell off it's high place.

<comment><USER3> _I remember being ridiculed for having more questions than answers_

Do you know that StackOverflow does not tolerate abuse and there is a flag option to automatically review any comment or post. In the rare case that doesn't work out you can directly contact moderators or developers who will actually respond. No community is perfect and you should really consider that options if you were offended. I have yet to see any ridicule that wasn't removed in 15 minutes or less.

<comment><USER12> Well, that mechanism has not worked well. Especially, someone with a large reputation point appears to be exempt and there exists elitism amongst it's members.

Largely, Stackoverflow has now become something like wikipedia, just an index of questions and answers with zealous moderators and elitists and no longer a community.

<comment><USER13> That was _always_ the design goal. It was never a place for discussions, _ever_.

They eventually implemented the chat rooms because there was a demand for community-style conversations and interactions, but they've never allowed discussions or conversations in the Q/A format, and comments that turn into conversations are discouraged in the code.

Subsequently, one of the founders (Jeff Atwood) went on to form Discourse, which _is_ about conversation and community.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Artificial Stupidity - <AUTHOR> https://physicsworld.com/a/artificial-stupidity/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Shane's peculiar genius is to feed her algorithms cultural oddments such as paint colours, recipes and ice-cream flavours, rather than (say) crystallographic data. The results – a warm shade of pink the neural network dubs "Stanky Bean"; a recipe for "clam frosting"; and (my personal favourite) an ice-cream flavour called "Necrostar with Chocolate Person" – are eccentric and often endearing. The book's title is another example: apparently, "you look like a thing and I love you" is an algorithm's idea of a great pick-up line. Frankly, I've heard worse."

[1] [https://aiweirdness.com/rss](https://aiweirdness.com/rss)</comment>


How to Use Intel RealSense Emotion Tracking in Unity 5 - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A3pe7wgfS4 <comment> T-A Sadly, that RealSense feature has been deprecated: [https://software.intel.com/en- us/forums/realsense/topic/5652...](https://software.intel.com/en- us/forums/realsense/topic/565206)</comment>


Beetle PSX HW – Texture replacement now available only on RetroArch - <AUTHOR> https://www.libretro.com/index.php/beetle-psx-hw-experimental-texture-replacement-now-available/ <comment><AUTHOR> First proof of concept is made by an external contributor, a Chrono Cross texture pack. He ran everything through AI machine learning algorithms like ESRGAN and Gigapixel to arrive at the graphics you see in this video -

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXFUNIEGY8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnXFUNIEGY8)</comment>