Show HN: Errorship, use datadog as an error tracker - <AUTHOR> https://errorship.com/ <comment><USER2> Why not use distributed tracing? You get the context of entire request in addition to the exception.

<comment><USER3> Do you have examples of how that might work with other languages or tools?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does this compare to Datadog's APM[0]? APM looks like it has far more features and is already integrated with Datadog.

[0] [https://www.datadoghq.com/apm/](https://www.datadoghq.com/apm/)

<comment><USER5> This looks like an admittedly clever hack to avoid the fantastically expensive APM and still get some useful exception logging. I really wanted to use Datadog's APM but $31 per host was too much. The downsides to logging to the event stream like Errorship is that you can't associate exceptions with requests and aggregation is limited to tags. I think event tags have a low-ish cardinality limit similar to metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For Java I'd written a Logback exception sender[0] that creates metrics tagged by level, class, exception class, cause classes. I'll say that it is a quick and convenient way to see changes in system error characteristics. I had used a similar setup for Graphite but didn't work as well without tags.

Since DataDog charges by number of metrics and each tag combination counts as one, actual exception messages should only be included in tags if they don't have instance-varying text.

[0] [https://github.com/karmakaze/logback-metrics- datadog](https://github.com/karmakaze/logback-metrics-datadog)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

errorShip is a python library that sends exceptions/errors generated by your application to your datadog account.

Are you tired of looking at metrics in datadog and then switching over to another website to track your applications exceptions? errorship exists to solve that context-switching problem, among others. It's a bit like sentry, bugsnag, rollbar etc; except implemented in your own datadog account.

I'm happy to receive any feedback or just chat about it.

<comment><USER7> Can you add a little more color commentary? I haven't used datadog, but they seem clear that there's both a logging and metrics (apm) side to their product. Is the logging side neglected somehow?

I see, for example, docs on how to log from Python: [https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/python-logging-best- practices...](https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/python-logging-best-practices/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

> but they seem clear that there's both a logging and metrics (apm) side to > their product.

yes they have those two sides. what they do not have is an error tracking side; something like sentry[1]. errorship exists to bring the error tracking side into datadog.

The logging side of datadog is like splunk or elasticsearch, and their APM side is like newrelic. errorship is bringing the error tracking side.

some of the analogies may not apply 100%, but I hope I'm making sense.

1\. [https://sentry.io/](https://sentry.io/)

<comment><USER7> That's helpful. Basically zero-config central logging of exceptions/stderr/whatever?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah.

But also, errorship will still capture(and send to datadog) any exceptions that you may have forgot to capture or log.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Incredibly dumb question, but doesn't datadog monitor errors out of the box?

<comment><USER9> IMO only if you are using the Logs functionality. You can log exceptions/errors, and it should be pretty easy to set-up monitoring around these events.

<comment><USER10> As a Datadog customer, I still use Sentry next to it, mostly for the top notch exception grouping, reporting etc. It's just their core product, they're better at it when you need to zoom in and actually debug.

For the bird's eye view, Datadog is fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm going to make the classic engineer mistake and assume that it's almost as easy to implement this myself. My understanding is that errorship does something like:

\- register a global exception handler, probably tweaked to hook into framework specific exception mechanisms.

\- make the exceptions "pretty"

\- send the exceptions to the datadog event log.

The benefits of rolling my own is avoiding a soft dependency on errorship and that I can tweak exception aggregation and reporting. Is the primary defense that errorship only costs $10 per month or is there additional complexity I've missed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi. That's a good summary of what errorship does. The pricing [1] page has an faq that touches on the build vs buy question

1\. [https://errorship.com/pricing.html](https://errorship.com/pricing.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can you resolve exceptions like in Sentry? Having to look at the list of all exceptions and figure out which ones are of interest wouldn't be ideal. (In the demo I did notice the level/priorities filters, but nothing resembling an unresolved filter.)

Also, nitpick: it's 2020, maybe update the front page screenshot to Python 3? My immediate reaction seeing that py27 screenshot: is this even maintained?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Having to look at the list of all exceptions and figure out which ones are > of interest wouldn't be ideal.

You can filter for exceptions by tags. You can also use full text search to filter for exceptions. ie all the functionality provided[1] by the datadog eventstream[1] is available for your errors.

> Also, nitpick: it's 2020, maybe update the front page screenshot to Python > 3: is this even maintained?

errorship is compatible with both python2 and python3. Yes it is maintained. We have a testsuite that is ran in CI under both python2 and python3. Some of our customers during early trials still had some python2 applications that they had yet to port over.

1\. [https://docs.datadoghq.com/events/#event- stream](https://docs.datadoghq.com/events/#event-stream)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Doesn't sending the exception as tags increase metrics cardinality slowing down other queries?

</comment><comment><USER13> Benefits over sentry?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main benefit is that you do not have to context switch from datadog metrics/logs to go look at your exceptions in sentry.

With errorship, all these are made available in one place; in your datadog account.

You also do not need to maintain two services. If you are already using datadog(maybe their APM and their logging and metrics service) then you might as well use them for error tracking instead of maintaining an additional account with sentry.

However, it is not a must that you give up sentry to use errorship. errorship will work just as fine, if you choose to continue with sentry.

<comment><USER14> > The main benefit is that you do not have to context switch from datadog > metrics/logs to go look at your exceptions in sentry.

Sentry lets you send exceptions to Datadog though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The library calls back home to validate the key (URL: [https://errorship.com/api/?errorshipLicensekey={errorship_li...](https://errorship.com/api/?errorshipLicensekey={errorship_license_key})). If it fails it raises an Exception. I don't think that this is the correct way to do this.

If your server is down, my application would crash too. Just cut the license validation out of the library. If I wanted to use the library without an license I could do so anyway.

edit: as noted by the author below, this is not the case :). If the server is not available, it won't raise an exception. I did miss that part somehow.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

> If your server is down, my application would crash too.

The errorship library is written in such a way that it fails open. If our servers are down(or any other failure), it does not affect your application and your application continues to work okay.

<comment><USER15> Hey, I edited my comment. I did miss the part in http.py somehow :). Thank you for clarifying.</comment></comment></comment>


Misfits Market raises $16.5M to bring ugly veggies to your door - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/misfits-market-raises-16-5-million-for-their-ugly-produce-subscription-box/ <comment><USER2> I thought the "ugly" veggies were cut up and used in soups - not thrown out.</comment>


Why drug prices in America are so high - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2016/09/economist-explains-2?fsrc=gnews <comment><USER3> It seems we really like to focus on "the evil" company, but it goes two ways.

Example: A family member has serious adult scoliosis, which causes quite a bit of pain. For years she has taken Fentanyl Nasal Spray that was made by a compound pharmacist (e.g., they take the raw Fentanyl powder, and mix it with a liquid solution by hand). The retail cost of this is ~$3k for a 30 day supply. Her insurance brought that down to sub $100.

2 years ago, she received a letter from her insurance company stating that because the FDA refuses to guarantee compound (made by hand) drugs, they will no longer cover her current nasal spray and she must move to one of the alternatives.

One alternative was a lollipop, which she used to take but caused her teeth to rot and she now has dentures. Another was different oral delivery system, but it was discontinued by the mfg less than 6 months after this.

So far her only option is a product called Lazanda, they are individually packaged and metered glass bottles of Fentanyl nasal spray. Each bottle is roughly half a day's dose, has it's own box, literature in EACH BOX, and a month's supply is 60 of these boxes.

The retail value of this? Last time I looked it was >$30,000. And the insurance just accepts it.

Madness.

<comment><USER4> > 2 years ago, she received a letter from her insurance company stating that > because the FDA refuses to guarantee compound (made by hand) drugs, they > will no longer cover her current nasal spray and she must move to one of the > alternatives.

I wondered who lobbied for the FDA to make such a refusal, and who lobbied the insurance companies not to cover such unguaranteed drugs.

<comment><USER5> Having a very clear version history of both the laws in place, and the bills that made those laws, would be super useful in answering this question.

Are the laws / rules for that publicly accessible?

<comment><USER3> [http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInforma...](http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/PharmacyCompounding/ucm375804.htm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I very much like free market. But here, the final consumer is not in a position to bargain prices when getting sick, which is a pre-requisite for a free market to function. Single-payer system works way better in that very particular industry, because both parties can now effectively negotiate.

Example: GSK is selling Advair Diskus for $300 in the US, and the same Seretide Diskus for 30 euros in France. Because on one side, they negotiate, and on the other, the enact laws to prevent negotiations (see Medicaid). When you need that disk every month, it's a huge difference.

I understand why this system is better for GSK, their shareholders and management. But why is it better for American people to persevere with a system where you pay 10, 100 times the fair price?

And don't blame the lobbyists, they can lobby all they want, the voters are the boss. If the majority wants to stop paying 100 times what they should, if the majority is tired to go bankrupt when they get sick, it just takes to publically support a single-payer system, and to vote for that. Politicians will listen.

<comment><USER7> > I very much like free market. But here, the final consumer is not in a > position to bargain prices when getting sick, which is a pre-requisite for a > free market to function. Single-payer system works way better in that very > particular industry, because both parties can now effectively negotiate.

I am sorry but you don't like Free market. That's like saying "I love Hillary Clinton and I am totally with her, but I think Trump would be a better President than Hillary in every way because he is not dying".

My friend describes this as a 'Sales Pitch argument' where you claim to support your opponent's position, but you actually don't. "I am all for Gays to be able to freely marry, but we gotta make sure that the kids they adopt aren't going to abusive homes because statistics say that kids raised by gay and lesbian couples don't do so well".

> the final consumer is not in a position to bargain prices when getting sick, > which is a pre-requisite for a free market to function.

I don't know from where does this kind of faulty thinking originates. Lemme show you why it is faulty:

The final consumer of food is not in position to bargain prices when he is hungry, which is a pre-requisite for free market to function. Therefore a single payer food system works better than a private food system.

The final consumer of a gun is not in a position to bargain prices when his home is invaded, which is a pre-requisite for a free market to function. Therefore a single payer gun system works better than private market for guns.

The problem is, you're not suppose to look for food only when you get hungry, or buy a gun precisely when you're getting invaded, you're suppose to do these things BEFORE you actually need them.

And just like food (which you need daily multiple times) you buy in chunk. The whole system of food acquisition works out perfectly fine.

Your rest of the comment is more to the point, and the way things are in America are antithetical to a free market in healthcare and pharma industry.

<comment><USER8> > The final consumer of food is not in position to bargain prices when he is > hungry, which is a pre-requisite for free market to function.

You are ignoring the fact that consumers can pick from a plethora of food options. When you have sickness A the ONLY option you have is medicine X (take this medicine or you die), where is the market force to drive down the price? That isn't free market

<comment><USER7> > When you have sickness A the ONLY option you have is medicine X (take this > medicine or you die), where is the market force to drive down the price? > That isn't free market

Sure, but if a country suffers famine, do people (and you) suggest single payer food system?

<comment><USER8> > if a country suffers famine, do people (and you) suggest single payer food > system?

Yes! The government (payer) gets the food it needs to feed its people or...?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Not US specific:

* Ridiculously long patent validity periods. Let's put aside the fact that patenting a fucking molecule is even a thing, 20+ years is way too long a term to guarantee profit to a private corporation. Enforced by governments.

* Heavily subsidized (read: price artificially propped up) by insurance laws. This is student loans all over again. Again, created by governments.

* Astronomically high R&D costs, most of which is the cost of obtaining regulatory approval. Enforced by government agencies.

Free market? Yeah, right.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget to add stuff like banning Canadian drug imports. Medicine absolutely should be validated before being sold in a country, but other than that, I see no reason why Canadian companies, or companies from other countries, couldn't sell a competing drug in the U.S. for whatever price they want.

Obama played a big role in banning this type of imports. Just saying. And TPP/TTIP would make this problem much worse, and virtually irreversible, because then they can just say "well, we wish we could change the monopoly laws now, but it's in the treaty, you see...so tough luck."

<comment><USER11> There are ridiculous levels of regulatory capture. E.g. epi pens are off patent and there are many competing companies in Europe, but the FDA refuses to approve any of them. Or cancer drugs that have been used for decades in Europe very effectively with tons of data there to support them, but the FDA refuses to allow them. One time they even required a drug to have a trial with more patients than exist in the US with that disease. They kill way more people than they save by preventing terminally ill patients from getting life saving drugs. And raising the cost developing them.

The FDA needs to be shut down. Perhaps replaced with something like a prediction market, where people can bet on how likely a drug is to pass a trial or even work in specific patients.

<comment><USER12> > epi pens are off patent and there are many competing companies in Europe, > but the FDA refuses to approve any of them

Not entirely true: there's adrenaclick. But if a doctor writes "epipen", the pharmacist isn't allowed to give you an adrenaclick, even though that kind of substitution is usually allowed. [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining- dr...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs- chairs/)

<comment><USER13> It's not allowed in this case because the FDA, rightly or wrongly, wants the patient trained in the use of the specific injector they are being prescribed. Having never needed one I don't know what the practical differences between the operation of an Epipen injector and Adrenaclick injector are, but the FDA seems to think they exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every time I see an article explaining why system so-and-so is corrupt, the answer is always "companies lobby politicians with campaign donations".

Why is it so hard for publications to use the word "bribe" instead?

<comment><USER15> It would be illegal for the article to call lobbying a bribe, because lobbying is a legal form of bribery, while bribery is illegal form of the same. However they can argue that really there is no difference between the two, and that would be legal. The issue is that the majority thinks that lobbying is ok, while bribing is not. Once you fix that, then you can call it "bribing".

<comment><USER16> Part of the problem is that lobbying is explicitly protected by the 1st amendment.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances"

How would one prohibit lobbying without also prohibiting petitioning for a redress of grievances?

<comment><USER17> Many of us don't think lobbying should be illegal or wrong, just that the law accept that the "free speech" of a corporation and special interest groups will always overpower that of individuals.

<comment><USER16> This is a natural result of the fact that:

1) Printing presses are expensive and always have been.

2) It is possible to be more effective at things in general by working in a group, especially one with division of labor. Can you imagine a world in which a disorganized mass of individuals without training was more effective at advocacy than the EFF?

<comment><USER18> The modern "printing press" is decidedly not expensive!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "And it is illegal for Medicare to negotiate with drug companies. Private insurers do so instead, but the government binds their hands, for example by requiring them to pay for six broad categories of drugs, without exception. This suits pharmaceutical firms."

While requiring companies to pay for broad categories of drugs may suit pharmaceutical firms, I'm going to guess this was more to help folks that are sick. What they must cover include [1]:

1\. HIV/Aids treatments 2\. Antidepressants 3\. Antipsychotic medication 4\. Anticonvulsive treatments for seizure disorders 5\. Immunosuppressant medications 6\. Anticancer drugs (unless covered by Medicare Part B).

These are generally categories that people really do need a drug that works. Different antidepressants work for different people - the same with antipsychotic medication. Many of these make a huge difference in quality of life - or life itself.

The medicare regulations aslo state they must have a range of medications that are generally needed by the population it serves, insulin (even if available without prescription), and things only available by prescription (so some allergy medication won't be covered, for instance).

Yet the article proposes this is too much regulation: To me, these are very basic things one expects out of drug coverage. This sort of interpretation makes me question the objectiveness of the article itself.

[1] [https://www.ncoa.org/wp-content/uploads/part-d-drug- coverage...](https://www.ncoa.org/wp-content/uploads/part-d-drug-coverage- rules.pdf)

<comment><USER20> > Yet the article proposes this is too much regulation:

Doesn't the article say it's just the wrong type of regulation, and compares to the US (weird regulation, expensive meds) to other countries (plenty of regulation, cheaper meds)?

<comment><USER19> It points it out as being an unwise regulation with bad price consequences.

It does state that other governments set price controls in various ways - <USER2> the UK refusing to pay for a drug if it doesn't meet cost-effectiveness.. though I'm not sure how exactly that winds up affecting which drugs are available and which aren't.

Then the actual reason for the listed example is that it makes sure folks are covered for some things. Rules for coverage in itself doesn't raise prices. And when these are the things they highlight as soft spots in the regulation system instead of focusing more on the non-negotiations, the systems itself, the money on advertising, and other such things, to me it comes down to having a weird slant or poorly thought out.

<comment><USER21> > UK refusing to pay for a drug if it doesn't meet cost-effectiveness.. though > I'm not sure how exactly that winds up affecting which drugs are available > and which aren't.

It means the supplier has a choice: meet the cost effectiveness model's price, or earn almost no money in that market. It's a powerful tool and run quite transparently. Look up the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

There is occasionally some political blowback that distorts the purity of it, but generally it works pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's not just America, there's a case in the EU right now where a company for some reason as gotten a 10 year exclusive on a drug that cost basically nothing. It has now gone up 4000% in price. This is for an out of patent drug.

That company for some reason got an exclusive, by using a law that was suppose to ensure that companies could recoup development cost. In this case it's a drug that pharmacies used to make, there's absolutely NO COST to recoup.

<comment><USER23> Got any links, or name of the drug?

<comment><USER22> Sure, it's Caffeine Citrate: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_citrate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine_citrate) it's now being sold under the brand Peyona, by a company called Chiesi.

If you feel like learning Danish: [http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/fra- en-20er-til-800-kroner-...](http://www.dr.dk/nyheder/indland/fra-en-20er- til-800-kroner-medicinalfirma-haever-prisen-paa-livsvigtig-medicin-til)

Basically the price has jumped from 3.33USD to 121USD.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> There are many many reasons. IMHO medicare not being able to negotiate prices is silly and expensive but not the whole story.

If i could wave a magic wand and change any one thing, I'd require drugs and perhaps devices for clinical trials to be produced by the patent office, from the text of the patent. I think this would reduce the FDA approval for generics down to, Can the manufacturer make the drug correctly and consistently?

I don't have a problem with companies charging whatever they wish for the shiny new drug. But the transition to generic needs to be as simple, cheap and smooth as possible.

<comment><USER25> Is there an example for the difficulty of making a generic being a barrier to entry for competitors?

<comment><USER24> The epipen is a glib response. Biologics are pretty notorious for not being reproducible. Etanercept (Enbril) is the last one i looked at deeply. There winds up being some 'secret sauce' that doesn't quite make it into the patent.

 _edit_

Enbril is around $2000/month, for what it's worth.

<comment><USER26> Strictly speaking, epipen is a device, not a drug... The drug inside sells for pennies.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It's not hard to understand. Pick a medical commodity that costs a few dollars in Europe or anywhere else in the world but is exorbitant in the US. Could be insulin, an epipen - whatever. Try and bring some back in to the country with you. You're breaking the law. Try and bring back a whole box of it and you're off to jail. Without the government-backed threat of jail, the market would very quickly find the proper price.

<comment><USER28> Appeals to the "market" are baseless. There is no competitive "market" for drugs anywhere. In Europe, drug prices are artificially suppressed by central governments exercising buyer-side market power.

<comment><USER29> European pharmaceutical companies are still earning billions of dollars. Suppressed are hikes of prices and not drugs themselves

<comment><USER13> How much of that is coming from the United States?

<comment><USER30> Roughly 2/3 of the global pharmaceutical market is the US. The EU is the other 1/3 and the rest-of-world is a small slice (but growing).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> On a recent vacation in the US a friend and I dropped into a pharmacy to pick up a relatively mundane and day-to-day pharmaceutical. In the UK this would cost around £5-£7.

We were told that it was available but we would need a doctor's appointment,a prescription and then to pay $100-$200 for the exact same product. They had a similar medication with a different active ingredient for around $20, but the price difference was astounding!

<comment><USER32> Many generic forms of prescription only drugs have a cost of $5-$10. Not after insurance or anything, the negotiated price.

For people without insurance it may be necessary to whisper magic numbers to receive a better price (I say that sarcastically because the pharmacy gives anyone access to better prices, so long as they simply _ask for the better price_ ):

[http://www.costsofcare.org/drug-discount-cards-liftin-the- ve...](http://www.costsofcare.org/drug-discount-cards-liftin-the-veil-of- secrecy/)

So you might have a drug with a PBM negotiated price of $5 for the generic, a cash price of $40 for the generic and a cash price of $400 for the name brand drug.

<comment><USER33> Even generic can be pretty dang high without insurance at the cheapest vendors.

<comment><USER32> Sure, it depends on the drug. But lots and lots of them are inexpensive, the system isn't completely broken.

It's also often worthwhile to see what the price is with a discount card or at Walmart, as it can easily make a 90% difference in the price for someone with no insurance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Scott at Slate Star Codex recently discussed this in depth: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/07/reverse-voxsplaining- br...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/09/07/reverse-voxsplaining-brand-name- drugs/)

tl;dr: Regulation is the problem, not the solution.

<comment><USER35> Unregulated medicine is literally where the phrase "snake oil" comes from, meaning an oversold but ineffective solution.

<comment><USER36> Ironically, the original snake oil actually worked: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/snake-oil- salesmen...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/snake-oil-salesmen- knew-something/)

<comment><USER37> Really interesting, hadn't read that :) . Might be worth a submission of its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> It's a concise article, and yet tl;dr ...

> The simple answer is because they can.

> Rather than lower prices, rules for Medicare help raise them. ... And it is > illegal for Medicare to negotiate with drug companies.

> But [negotiating] would be effective only if the government could also > refuse to pay for some medicines, ... The spectre of so-called government > "death panels" looms large.

<comment><USER39> In the USA, if I have a potentially fatal medical problem and I can't pay for treatment (myself or via insurance) what are my options? I ask because I imagine I could not get treated which is the same outcome as 'death panels' but without the government bureaucracy.

<comment><USER40> It ends up being a really terrible game. You get treated, and then you get presented with an outrageously high bill.

You then have two options - negotiate with the billing company, or go bankrupt. A large number of people take the latter[1]. The result is that the hospital then has to eat the costs of the procedure... which it then responds to by jacking up the price even further for everyone else, knowing full well that most of the uninsured patients who get the even higher price won't be able to pay that, either. The hospitals then use this increased price to negotiate better rates with the insurance companies.

So, you do get the treatment you need, but it nukes your finances, and everyone else ends up paying for it anyway in this ad-hoc, incoherent, uncoordinated mess.

[1][http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148](http://www.cnbc.com/id/100840148)

<comment><USER41> Well, you get the most basic treatment. If you are dying quickly, you can get treated. If you have a longer term issue or re-occuring issue, good luck. Hospitals don't have to treat everyone, they are legally able to stabilize you and let you die from complications.

More often, you slowly degrade due to lack of treatment. Then you can't work and end up on medicaid and get the treatments you need. However, now your disabled. It's a great system.

<comment><USER30> There are plenty of charitable hospitals in the US that will treat people who have no other options.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's important to remember that the largest expense item for big pharma is not R&D but marketing & administrative.

<comment><USER30> You do realize that S&GA is a catch all for the general expenses for running a company right? Why would you be surprised it's such a high percent?

Also, you may want to do a side-by-side comparison of which industry spends the most on R&D. It's ~20% in pharma which dwarfs most other industries.

<comment><USER42> There are articles that actually break out Sales & Marketing budgets (2013 numbers I am excluding J&J since they have a lot of consumer products) "Next in line is Pfizer ($PFE), long known for its marketing muscle. The drugmaker plowed $11.4 billion into marketing in 2013, $4.8 billion more than it spent on R&D--a difference of 72%. AstraZeneca ($AZN) is close behind with a 70% difference. The U.K.-based company put $7.3 billion toward marketing last year, and $4.3 billion into R&D. AstraZeneca has been pumping up marketing behind products such as its blood-thinner Brilinta as it preps for the onslaught of Nexium copycats.

The next 5 range from a 47% difference in favor of R&D on the high end-- Novartis ($NVS), with $14.6 billion in marketing spending--to 27% on the low end. The latter is Merck ($MRK), with $9.5 billion allocated to marketing and $7.5 billion to R&D.

Then there's Eli Lilly ($LLY), with a mere $200 million premium to the marketing side. Its marketing spending clocked in at $5.7 billion, compared with $5.5 billion for R&D. That's a difference of just 7%.""

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > These high prices support innovation, they argue—not just for America, but > for the world. But it is unclear if firms' profits need be so high to > sustain research.

Thank fuck someone finally says that this isn't mostly about the US subsidising the rest of the world. (A nonsensical claim when you look at how much drug companies spend on marketing).

<comment><USER43> I wonder if we should (some day) gradually start to regulate marketing in some industries. Cannibalizing through marketing only increases prices for consumers, creates bullshit jobs and destroys the environment.

If it is about commodities, the increasing profits could then be taxed away until the product is virtually free for society. Not regarding the obvious opposition from shareholders a big problem seems to be to decide when something is really a commodity. Drugs are obviously not, we still seem quite mortal.

<comment><USER44> Consumer marketing for drugs is forbidden in many parts of the world, the US is more an outlier. However this still leaves marketing to doctors, which is a problem. There are some initiatives that reject that (e.g. there's a german group called Mezis).

It also completely makes sense. The decision for or against a drug should be guided by scientific evidence. So the only form of "marketing" that should be allowed are high quality scientific studies. And they shouldn't be delivered to the doctors or patients via marketing brochures, but via scientific articles and recommendations from independent organizations reviewing scientific articles.

<comment><USER45> > Consumer marketing for drugs is forbidden in many parts of the world, the US > is more an outlier

Exactly right. Because consumer marketing of prescription drugs is an utterly crazy idea, both in general theory, and in its present unethical incarnation.

Last time I checked there were exactly two developed nations which allow so- called DTC (direct-to-consumer) advertising of prescription medications at all. Namely: USA and New Zealand. Apparently every other country got the memo. Not us!

Every few years they talk about getting rid of it here in NZ. As you'd expect, public heath officials tend to support that idea, and industry shills tend not to.

I mean it took Big Pharma until 2008 to even adopt some basic ethical guidelines in producing these ads. I'm talking things like not using actors to play doctors anymore, and making sure that endorsers who said they had used a particular drug had actually used it. Yep, those kindly old men in white coats telling you to "Ask _your_ doctor if this drug is right for you" weren't even real doctors.

Moreover, surveys carried out in NZ and in the USA show that when a patient asks for a specific drug by name they receive it more often than not. "The truth is direct-to-consumer advertising is used to drive choice rather than inform it," says Dr Dee Mangin, associate professor at the Christchurch School of Medicine. "In an era of shared decision-making, it's much more likely that general practitioners will just do what the patient asks."

Professor Les Toop from Otago University says: "Internationally there have been many reviews of DTCA from health professional groups, academic institutions, governments and importantly many independent (non industry funded) consumer and patient groups. Without exception they have come to the same conclusion: the partial and potentially misleading information and the accompanying medicalisation caused by DTCA is of net public harm."

The AMA says: "Direct-to-consumer advertising inflates demand for new and more expensive drugs, even when these drugs may not be appropriate."

End the madness, I say.

<comment><USER43> > Last time I checked there were exactly two developed nations which allow so- > called DTC (direct-to-consumer) advertising of prescription medications at > all. Namely: USA and New Zealand. Apparently every other country got the > memo. Not us!

I think when almost every other country does something different than you and it is not something you introduced first, you should have to prove why of all these you are the different one.

For Germany it is a general speed limit, but trying to introduce that would be like a general gun ban in the US: If you really think about it, probably a good idea, never going to happen.

<comment><USER46> > For Germany it is a general speed limit, but trying to introduce that would > be like a general gun ban in the US: If you really think about it, probably > a good idea, never going to happen.

And, most importantly, for now the speed limit isn't even necessary – all the dangerous areas already have one, and the Autobahn is still one of the safest highway systems in the world.

(And as liability goes up a low the faster you go, there's already a kinda speed limit anyway)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Competition doesn't force prices down unless there are at least four suppliers. Two are not enough - price collusion, implicit or explicit, results. With three, some price competition may appear. An EU study indicated that it takes four before prices really get competitive and fall to near actual manufacturing cost.

There's a huge price difference between drugs where there are at least four suppliers (those are really cheap) and ones with fewer suppliers. When there's one name brand drug and one generic equivalent, the generic drug tends to be only slightly cheaper than the name brand. (Some of that comes from retail pharmacies, who tend to price that way. Costco doesn't; they just mark up everything they sell by about 15% over wholesale.)

<comment><USER48> almost 20 years old GSM market in Poland confirms that. Up to the moment we had 3 telcos, prices were stagnant. Introduction of fourth one (major three were prohibited to own/acquire it) driven prices down really fast. Market literally entered not-yet-ended downward trend (in terms of prices).

BTW, exactly 14 USD gives you today nolimit voice/text/inet plan. Dodge that AT&T ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> We as a manufacturer, want to make as much money as possible. Its as simple as that. If nobody stops us, we will maximize profits.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm not sure an article about "drug prices" makes much sense; the reasons why an EpiPen is expensive have practically nothing to do with the reasons why Hervoni is expensive. If you lump it all together and start looking for reasons why _both_ are expensive, I doubt the answers you end up with will get you very far

I think this was covered in excellent detail here: [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining- dr...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-drugs-vs- chairs/)

</comment><comment><USER51> Could a reason also be that there's rarely a lot of competition between firms supplying the drugs? They basically get a state-sponsored monopoly through patents - not much of a market-dynamic.

</comment><comment><USER52> Drug prices are so high because people will almost always pay anything to stay alive.

What I find interesting is people think they have some sort of right to someone else keeping them alive. Do you really ?

To me as harsh as it sounds its reverse greed. I want to live therefore other people should be forced to produce a good for a cost I want/can afford.

Its a harsh truth that is the real issue but the vast majority will never say it or talk about it. They just want to live.

</comment><comment><USER53> The only thing that can drive prices down is competition. No competition — no price reduction. Economy 101.

<comment><USER54> That's true, but it's important to figure out how to increase competition without destroying expensive innovation and risk. It's arguably the most important question in any industry when regulation is discussed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Everybody wants to maximize the value of their investment, or product.

To the consumers affected so much by the high price, this comes around as greedy. While to the business themselves, they see this as good business incentive.

Of course, there are other factors: \+ economics of how much people are willing to pay for, the scarcity of the product (and resources used to build it) \+ the derived (and perceived) value of the people taking the medication \+ politics and lobbying cost

In the end, it all comes down to the business' bottom line and the consumer's capacity to pay. It is very probable that the pharmaceutical companies have done a lot of calculations to ensure that their price point would be at the stage where they have balanced everything to lean on profit for their side.

</comment><comment><USER56> An acquaintance of mine made quite a bit of money running a "compound pharmacy" for a few years. With his pharmaceutical degree, he was licensed to "compound" common combinations of prescription medication into a single dose. Insurance companies would consider the combination a separate drug (i.e. not just the sum of its parts). Therefore each new combination he made was a "new" drug and he was, quite literally, able to name any price. The insurance company would then pay for it.

He had a nice operation going, even shipping to multiple states. He eventually shut down the business when regulation tightened after a few compound pharmacy scares.

</comment><comment><USER57> Whenever I see such articles, I attribute the cause to collective laziness not economics. Why are health insurance costs high? Answer: Laziness Why are drug prices high? Laziness Why is higher education expensive? Laziness

Somebody is lazy and they don't want to do the important job of making these fundamental things cheaper and accessible. This somebody could be 'we' collectively or govt or companies or just our greed.

</comment><comment><USER58> _" But it is unclear if firms' profits need be so high to sustain research."_

It's very clear, and they don't. Profits are enormous. Profits are also calculated _after_ the cost of R&D. So no, profits don't need to be astronomical for companies to still be profitable after the cost of R&D.

</comment><comment><USER59> What they need is government enforced FRAND style patent licensing for prescribed medications and drugs that are to be covered by government programs, and all medications prescribed must have at least two sources... that would increase competition.

</comment><comment><USER60> Because America refuses to swallow its pride and admit our health care system is flawed and completely inefficient. All we have to do is follow a health care system that actually functions, but we refuse and just keep doubling down on stupid. It's the sunk cost fallacy. It's just like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, and gun laws. America is in denial.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is it really mysterious?

</comment><comment><USER62> Answer: Capitalism. And monopoly.

<comment> atom-morgan I think most would agree that protected monopolies wouldn't exist in a pure capitalist economy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Because it's a largely unregulated market.

<comment><USER64> If you read many other posts in this thread, you will see it's the exact opposite. Unregulated markets nearly always result in lower prices. Pharmaceuticals are, by far, one of the most register markets.

<comment><USER65> Unregulated markets never stay unregulated for long. It's an unstable system. The biggest players in the market have incentives to create regulatory capture mechanism through influence on policymakers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's called inflation.

<comment><USER59> The pharma industry, iirc is seeing 40% year over year growth, which should be unsustainable in a free market.

<comment><USER25> I was referring to industry specific factors that continually push prices up. In the medical industry insurance companies have market power but individuals do not. So providers see their prices slashed by insurance Companies. If their desired price is X and they know he insurance company will cut their price in half they charge 2X. To do so they also have to charge uninsured patients 2X. Because the uninsured have no market power they largely get stuck with 2X and the price sticks. Suddenly the listed price has less to do with the greater market than the specifics of the medical.

<comment><USER59> It's still anything but a natural free market... it's far more captive with motivated players all around. In reality what is needed is a FRAND-like compulsory licensing requirement for patent licensing as well as a gov't requirement of two manufacturers/distributors for approval, with limitations on exclusivity in contracts. That would afford some reduced patent protections, and ensure competition. That's the only way to drive prices down in the long term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Because of a free market. And limited rules against making profit.

A CEO of a new drug company can legally set his salary at $10MM and have it be a part of the cost of running his business, hence selling drugs for $10MM+.

<comment><USER9> If the market were free drugs would be commoditized, like aspirin.

The reality is:

* As a pharma company you can't compete because another player is holding the patent for decades

* Governments around the world will indirectly spend trillions by way of social insurance on your products, so prices will balloon because that money has to go somewhere

* The barrier to entry is so high thanks to regulation

This is a made-up situation of artificially low supply coupled by propped up demand.

How is this a free market exactly?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Research isn't cheap. Testing isn't cheap. Marketing isn't cheap. Manufacturing, distribution, the list goes on.

There has to be a financial incentive to build an infrastructure around a product.

Add in that access is highly controlled, meaning that there is significant IT and non-IT security infrastructure that needs to be in place throughout the life cycle of a given drug.

There will always be instances that are easy to politicize - pick your favorite disease and there's a company with an overly expensive drug on the market. But what happens when the financial incentive to innovate goes away?

There are cheap drugs all over the third world. Not too many of them were developed there.

A major change in how the industry worked would be a significant event that I'm not ready for, and I don't think the rest of the world is either. It will take years for new economic strategies to build - and not all of those strategies will be consumer friendly.

Today the solution is that access to expensive drugs is subsidized by insurance which is subsidized by law. It's not the best solution, but it's a working solution.

The political and economic climate that we have tells me that we'll talk about change for another decade and look to actually implement some sort of real change sometime 20-40 years from now as the industry ages and stabilizes.

You have to remember how young "modern medicine" actually is. Rabbit tests for pregnancy aren't that far back in our history. We're still at the point where compulsory sterilization is seen as a reasonable resolution to problems. We're mere decades away from a time when companies like Baxter and Abbot enjoyed an almost competition free environment and not too long before that, heroin was a common ingredient in cough remedies and parasites were commonly sold weight loss solutions.</comment>


Chicago Open Data Portal - <AUTHOR> https://data.cityofchicago.org/ <comment><USER2> One of the things that annoys me about all these Socrata Open Data Portals is that they all look the same. Part of me thinks that this is great for consistency for users going from site to site, but it makes it all feel very disingenuous and template-y. I much prefer when portals have a custom feel that represents and encourages people to interact with the data.</comment>


Watch Morley Safer Lie in Real Time, on 60 Minutes - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelellsberg/2012/05/21/morley-safer/ <comment><USER2> Michael, thou doth protest too much. You were teaching them how to walk up to influential people and make their acquaintance. Safer shorthanded that to "handshaking and eye contact" to make it simpler (and yes, to play into the geek stereotype). Welcome to television. If you're that thin-skinned, it's probably a medium you should stay away from.

<comment><USER3> "doth protest too much"

Funny exactly the thought that came to my mind as well.

And then again the linkbait headline is without merit: "Watch Morley Safer Lie". We don't know who was behind this (even if you want to consider it a lie). Morly has input but I'm not aware that he (and not the producers and editors) make the determination of what makes it "in the can" on a report like this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have an experience with 60 minutes that similarly gave me concern about the integrity of their reporting. I was born and raised in Las Vegas. When I was a teenager, 60 minutes did a report the message of which was something along the lines of "look at the poor youth of Las Vegas and how they are the victims of this grown up town with its neglectful gambling parents and are spending their time around casinos, etc. etc." Fine - for some reason people feel free to say rude things to people from Vegas about Vegas. Me and many I know have routinely heard things like, "I hate Vegas" and "How awful for you" when we say we're from there. The problem with the 60 minutes spot was that they did things like show an establishing shot of the strip and then cut to a bunch of teenagers hanging out in front of the Red Rock movie theaters that's many miles from the strip, but which had a blinking marquee that might look like something on the strip. It clearly was meant to appear like the kids were handing out on the strip. At the theater, they interviewed a girl I happened to know and I can't help but think that they cherry-picked her. She was a goth chick - very smart and loved to be odd and controversial. She said all kinds of things about her neglectful mother and other things that fed into their premise. 60 minutes has done some excellent reporting that's directly resulted in positive change and Vegas is not a shangri-la for kids, but the manner of that report has forever made me question the show's integrity.

</comment><comment><USER5> That was a tv cheap shot and classic spin method using editing and voiceover. The media wanted a particular viewpoint expressed and in the process they offended somebody. I suspect they didn't mean to personally offend but they did. And so the blogger blogs about the offense. I think his reaction was reasonable and provides a good reminder of how media operates sometimes.

<comment><USER6> That might be the case had the author not used words like _lie_ and _slander_ , which are big charges. Similar to plagiarizing in an educational context, you don't ring that bell unless you know exactly what it means.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interesting rant. So the author seems to completely "miss" the point of television and web based "news."

       Priority #1: Get ratings, everything else is subservient to this.
       Priority #2: Make your advertisers happy.
       Priority #3: Inform the public.

Really, they are in that order. So if you're not working on #1 you're working on #2 and if you aren't working on that only then are you working on #3. Generally organizations stay away from making up news from whole cloth (as wonderfully lampooned in Dave Barry's "Big Trouble") but they 'film' to get stuff for someone's eyes to look at during the story, not necessarily to report on what is being filmed. Then they tell their story and some film editor goes and cuts in bits of video that 'look like' what the story is saying at the moment.

So the fact that they filmed a talk you gave can have nothing at all to do with the story they are writing. So complaining that they used footage of you doing one thing, while they talked about something else, well that is their right, you signed the release. Now if you had added a codicil which said "My only use my image when reporting on this talk about this topic." That would have prevented them from using your likeness in the story.

True story, had a friend at a sports bar when a film crew came in to pick up background video. After the fact they passed around releases for folks to sign, and my friend, being precise, added a clause like the above to his release. The station used the film on a story about sports and drinking and his face was a big blur :-) It was kind of hilarious but they take those things seriously.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a long-time 60 minutes viewer I was actually a little shocked by what a dick Morely was last night. The piece really did seem very slanted against Thiel, with not much substance to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER9> Business schools also teach students how to play golf, why doesn't he mock business schools for taking $200K off people to teach them to play golf?

<comment><USER10> There might be a lot to mock business schools about, but the piece was about Thiel's school, which has apparently earned some mockery as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 60 Minutes has been burned in the past by people who did their own taping of an interview and were able to demonstrate that 60 Minutes cherry-picked.

</comment><comment><USER12> tl;dr. Guy upset with the tiny snippet of himself on 60 minutes and how it was used to illustrate one of their points and not make his.

<comment><USER13> tl;dr Guy upset with the tiny snippet of himself on 60 minutes and how it made a false claim about what he was teaching.

<comment><USER14> At worse, a mis-representation, but hardly a "lie" or "false claim".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The armchair lawyer in me cringed reading this entry. Black Rock's lawyers could swoop in and eat the author for lunch, given the legally-strong words he's throwing around in his prose. This is dangerous, dangerous territory and take heed, folks; any chance you have for legal recourse in a case such as this is completely and irrevocably undermined by temperamental writing in the heat of the moment. This has liability written all over it for the author, in fact, and one should really think twice before squaring off against a legal team that has been in the trenches against _all of big tobacco_ for the very same program.

Morley Safer is one of the old guard, one of the few journalists (the traditional meaning, not a blogger) left who has actually seen Vietnam. His work on _60 Minutes_ is, typically, quite strong, and he has doubtlessly been on _60 Minutes_ longer than this person has been alive. I find myself siding with Safer here instead of this blogger, and that's even with a deep-seated distaste for the media these days; that's merely on the credibility that _60 Minutes_ has established, in my mind, and I really hope the author is prepared for many people with similar mindset to mine.

Namedropping your blog on Forbes isn't something that gives weight to your argument, since they've been comically easy to get for the last couple of years (troubling for Forbes's image, in my opinion). I don't think this entry will have the effect the author intended, as I'm more prone to indict the author instead of the person he wanted me to condemn.

EDIT: Clarifying a remark that confused my intent.

<comment><USER15> The blog post makes a substantive charge of journalistic misconduct against 60 Minutes and includes evidence supporting the charge. What do Vietnam and Morely Safer's age have to do with it? Why are you siding with anyone if you haven't seen the evidence? Are you too lazy* to watch the video, yet nonetheless possessed of a need to share your opinion about it?

What, exactly, do you want to accomplish with this comment?

* EDIT: this is inappropriately unpleasant language on my part, I apologize

<comment><USER6> > Why are you siding with anyone if you haven't seen the evidence?

Why are you assuming I haven't? Anybody that disagrees with the author automatically hasn't done the necessary research, in your mind?

I appealed to Morley Safer's incredibly long history with the program for a specific reason. The author of this piece charges _60 Minutes_ with slander, which is a _very_ big word, and journalists don't have multi-decade careers when they're stupid enough to open up their company to claims of slander. Particularly on a (to them) relatively unimportant story.

<comment><USER15> Because you did not engage at all with the facts of this specific complaint. You still have not done so.

It's not clear what a long career in broadcasting has to do with any of this. You're talking about credibility. Credibility has it's place, but it's a heuristic for evaluating claims in the absence of facts. When the facts are available it counts for nothing.

If you want to know whether it's raining outside, don't ask Morley Safer--look out the window.

<comment><USER6> You completely missed the point of my comment. I am completely noncommittal on this specific allegation, and my comment remains a generality. You clearly read it and assumed I implied the author is wrong or that I disagree with the allegations, which I most certainly did not.

I reacted to the presence of words like _slander_ , which is an entirely different ballgame from accusing Morley Safer of skewing the truth. Slander is a big, legally-actionable word, and you don't bang that drum unless you're ready to march behind it. My point about siding with Safer is that due to his credibility, I'm prejudiced to his side even before being told of this issue.

Nowhere in my comment did I address this specific issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Future of Work: More education is not the solution for everyone - <AUTHOR> https://threader.app/thread/1039635544244973569 <comment><USER2> Upvoted this one because it centers on a discussion we, as a people, need to have.

I'm in the USA, please take the comments in that context.

For now, I want to model that discussion using just one point from the many good ones in this piece:

"In the past, attractive jobs for "low-skilled" workers were concentrated in 2 worlds: factories and bureaucracies. Alas those are precisely the jobs that have been destroyed by globalization and technology."

Attractive has very different meanings, depending on one's perspective. On a basic level, given the difficulty over half the nation is experiencing economically right now, attractive means work that is not hell to do, or at least work one can do, and having that work yield enough income to fund the basics of a modest, reasonable life.

Housing, health care, clothing, food, etc... A whole lot of people can be happy, given their work gets them through the basics. Many people don't need much, yet they labor a lot and have trouble meeting those needs.

Someone working a 40, getting the work done, not being a pain in the ass, etc... should be able to live modestly and reasonably. Right now, just that is attractive.

Would be nice to raise that bar some, but just meeting it for now seems appropriate. When that doesn't happen for too many people, it costs all of us.

No matter what we do with software and higher technology at present the basic labors need to get done, and those people doing those basic labors are in real trouble economically too.

From my perspective as a concerned American, making that happen more than it is right now, is damn attractive.

I think it would help some to improve on "worth perception" regarding basic labor. Again, it has to get done, or we are doing it ourselves, and I don't want to do that.

It's not being lazy at all. No. It's that I can do higher order things, and when I can't do those higher order things, for lack of money, or time spent on basic labors, I don't perform as well as I could. I suspect many readers here are in a similar scenario.

The cost of that "do it myself" scenario is pretty high too. Seems to me, that is one way to improve on the perception of what basic labor is worth.

It's not just factories and bureaucracies. Back in the 70's, for example, one parent was a janitor, and that funded a basic, modest, dignified life, and a happy family. Didn't have much, but didn't need much. The basics were there.

Odd jobs, people working things out, got many of the extras done.

A grandparent was an appliance repair person, self-employed. That funded a better standard of living.

I could go on here, but the basic point is costs and risk exposure is much greater today, while wages did not match up.

I really value the people who do basic labor for me. I want them to have happy families not in real need.

How can we improve on that "worth perception?"

Seems to me, the basic idea of, "anyone can do it" boiling down to rock bottom wages is broken.

Sure, almost anyone can do the basics. Do they want to, and can they be doing some other thing worth more to all of us?

Even if that isn't true, those families are in real need today.

Maybe we can make it actually cheaper to live?

Or, maybe people getting assistance / help, is the norm, and if so, why shame them so much about it?

I live in a smaller town right now. People know people, and that basic dignity can be seen, or when it's not there, it can be seen, and it hurts. Nobody wants it that way, yet it is that way.

Having lived big city, this is all worse. People don't know one another, and value perception goes down, as does humanizing others, their scenario, issues.

Thoughts?</comment>


To the witchunters of Hacker News. - <AUTHOR>

I get it.  I really do.  You all wanted to be involved and our over developed senses of ego have been feeding our desire to do more and more.  I'm guilty too.  I think I know more than I do.  But lets clear something up once and for all folks.  This is not a jury.  We are not a court room.  Most importantly we are not judges.
There is a reason for government.  I know we all cringe at the word (well some of us do, not all), but it is an important facility.  One of it's most important duties is to stop witch hunts.  It really is there to prosecute people like the Boston bombers.
These sort of witch hunts can stick with someone for the rest of their lives.  You can really mess someone up.  They see that THEY were a suspect when all they did was go to cheer on their friend/family and that can destroy someone.
I'm ashamed of our community as a whole for this witch hunt.  I'm ashamed of 4Chan for blogging about it.  I'm ashamed of myself for not being able to do more to stop it.  I left reddit because I didn't want to be part of this sort of "news"... is this really where we want HN to go?
P.S. I realize not everyone was involved, but this is a reflection on our community as a whole, and as such we are all responsible.  And this also shows that in some cases a downvote for everyone may actually improve HN... <comment><USER2> Ashamed of "our community"? Your account is incredibly new to HN.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been part of HN for about a year now, I've had to change my handle twice. The first time was before the password reset feature was in place and the second time was because I included part of my email handle and I didn't like that.</comment></comment>


The Real Amount of Energy Used to Power the Internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.electronicsilentspring.com/real-amount-energy-power-internet/ <comment><USER2> Sure, computers use a lot of energy. But a few considerations are worth pointing out:

1\. They do useful calculations, which make all sorts of other things far more energy efficient.

2\. Data centers are constantly improving their energy efficiency.

3\. Programmers are making greater use of virtualization techniques including containerization to improve utilization efficiency.</comment>


Team player – In search of a unicorn - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alexdevero.com/team-player-in-search-of-a-unicorn/

<comment><USER2> It's worth looking at this from the flipside as well, new hires that are a bad fit for the company can be insidious in the long term, and poison the company culture. I'm a big fan of vetting potential applicants over a number of days (if resources allow!) and seeing how they fit.</comment>


Stanford Professor Stung by Bond Fund Wins $2.2 Million - Bloomberg - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-07/stanford-professor-stung-by-slapdash-bond-fund-sale-to-get-2-2-million.html <comment><USER2> It should be pointed out, though, that chasing above market yields veers perilously close to fitting the maxim that "You can't cheat an honest man".</comment>


Download IE 8 and donate 8 meals to charity - <AUTHOR> http://www.browserforthebetter.com/index-htm.html <comment><USER2> Hey, I've got no problem with this type of marketing.

Though personally, I'd rather just send $10 to a local charity. (Here's one here in DC that does fantastic work: [http://www.miriamskitchen.org/HELP/Donate/tabid/67/Default.a...](http://www.miriamskitchen.org/HELP/Donate/tabid/67/Default.aspx) )

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading the small print at the bottom, the maximum Microsoft will spend through this campaign is 1MM. I downloaded it anyway (on Ubuntu :).

</comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft can't convince people to download their browser without doing this?

<comment><USER5> I was wondering this too.

On the one hand, it's for charity.

On the other hand, it's a well known fact that Microsoft is losing browser market share, and that their browsers often lack the features of their competitors. I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that other browsers will support HTML 5 way before Microsoft does.

I'm venting a lot of IE6 frustration here, but I think Microsoft has been holding back the progress of the Internet for the last several years. Standards could have evolved so much faster...

EDIT: I'm a little cynical. And for those people who will vote me down and go on about how it's for charity: Microsoft is losing browser market share, and Google is rolling out a browser-based OS. Do the math.

<comment><USER6> They only donate if you upgrade from IE6 to IE8 (or so said the site). People who are still using IE6 probably don't even know what's Firefox or Chrome (I know plenty of people that fits in here).

I don't think it's about the marketshare, they are targetting their own users. It's probably more about getting rid of the dinosaur that is IE6 and moving forward (about time).

<comment><USER7> I'd bet that a lot of people don't even realize that IE6 is way behind (or even know what you mean when you say IE6). Short of a forced upgrade, this is probably one of the best ways to get people to upgrade. With the added benefit that food goes to charity. Also with the added benefit (for MS anyway) of good publicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even as someone who loathes pretty much all versions of IE, this is something I can get behind. I can bitch all I want about slow javascript, no rounded corners, and other css bugs in IE8, but its still 1000 times better than IE6. Upgrade away people!

<comment><USER9> Indeed as a web developer-designer I'd rather see people on IE8. I'm so conflicted, this is MS but they're feeding hungry people and enticing people away from IE6 - gotta love it. But it's Microsoft ... gah!

[sheepishly] Thank you Microsoft.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Better a few hunger stricken souls than install IE 8

<comment><USER11> really? you'd rather that someone goes hungry than you having to _download_ ie8?

<comment><USER12> Really? You took his comment literally? That's almost as unbelievable as the original claim. ;-)

<comment><USER10> ha ha ;-) Can't believe someone feel for it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> yep I downloaded it... to linux. microsoft better feed someone else something better than the crap they keep feeding me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Yeah. What about the rest of the world?

</comment><comment><USER15> I just love this idea. Everyone wins.

</comment><comment> onreact-com For every IE you download a fairy dies!</comment>


Show HN: A tool that helps you be your BEST YOU at work - <AUTHOR> https://professional.3ssentia.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! We have created 3SSENTIA (desktop only for now)to help people be more inspired and resourceful in their daily work activities.

Here is a teaser of how 3SSENTIA works.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kODrJXmnwko&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kODrJXmnwko&feature=youtu.be)

We would love to get your honest feedback on the product as that will help us understand what improvements need to be made in order to create something that can meaningfully impact the lives and well being of professionals.

Thanks</comment>


Vulcan – Tools for building dynamic and easily expandable HTTP reverse proxies - <AUTHOR> http://www.vulcanproxy.com/

<comment><USER2> Oh baby! I'm going to use this to write a parameter filter for a "sensitive" (fragile) app. I think I can move all filtering from app code to this. Keep garbage data from ever hitting my code

<comment><USER3> We do things like this in our WAF and it works well. You're right that this looks like a good alternative.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any APIs for domain name booking?  - <AUTHOR>

I have a cloudfuji like business where I let people create custom instances of a particular software.
Currently I give them *.myhost.com subdomain names but then I see a business opportunity in giving tlds. I want this process to be fully automatic since I am the only one working on this project.
Is there any ISP who sells domain names through APIs ? <comment><USER2> I'd presume that any sane registrar will have it, I know my favorite registrar (Gandi) has an API for resellers. I have never used it to testify on its quality though.

</comment><comment><USER3> Name.com has a robust API. Godaddy has one through WildWestDomains.com, but Name.com is a better business partner.

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you.</comment></comment>


Advice: how to monetize a website with – 30,000 page views per month? - <AUTHOR> I have a technical website with ~ 30,000 page views per month --- how to monetize this?
(the site is a how-to-do-various-useful-things-in-programming-language-X sort of site)
I tried putting a "donate using bitcoin" badge on there but guess what: total BTC donations so far are 0.000
I don't want to put ads up (unless someone tells me I can make considerable $$ doing so and even then it rubs me the wrong way)
any other suggestions? <comment><USER2> Other than ads. Find a couple of the most common questions/issues and those that get the most action and turn that into an ebook where you can offer advice, and show the various opinions and details around each different methodology etc.

If you are getting newbie's coming to the site that are either new to the language or new to the industry or just having common issues, ebooks, subscriptions and training are a fairly easy way to monetize.

You could also collect say 50 best useful tips and sell that as an ebook. Go through all the content on the site and collect these into an organized training manual basically. Its a FAQ in ebook form. Or maybe do a architecture practices, design practices and intro ebooks etc, all based on the content you have.

Also, you could give a small ebook away to increase conversions on getting people's email addresses. Then get a newsletter setup that you can offer services to the list, or use it again to sell ebooks, training etc. You may already have setup the email list, but just in case you haven't yet gone that way. You can work with partners then to monetize the list where you will not rent or sell your list but if someone presents you with a good solid topic or service you will market it to your list and you will get paid to do that. You just have to be picky about what you send to the email subscribers and not abuse that responsibility or your opt-outs will destroy the list real fast.

Last idea, going back to the newbies, you could offer a 3-6 month initial training service where they pay monthly for weekly tips, training and assistance while they are getting started. Of course I am making a ton of assumptions with this idea.

I am just shooting ideas out of my head, so they may be totally off base for your situation, as your question is pretty broad without a link to the site to understand what you already do.

<comment><AUTHOR> awesome thanks for the kind suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't waste time with donations.

With ads you would be targeting about $150/mo or $5/cpm with US visitors, maybe 25-50% of that internationally. So, you could try to sell something on the site, and if you don't make that much - go for the ads.

I would do adsense and not waste time with the other ad networks unless you had time to try different ones out and find one that yields better than that..

</comment><comment><USER4> You could possibly offer referrals to other Bitcoin sites and charge a fee. Some sites offer Bitcoin wallets, others can predict the market market. I know of one Bitcoin site which has a 90% accuracy on prediction.

I'd say, safety of Bitcoin will become a big thing later on with quantum computing on the rise.

Checkout Meetup.com in you local area. I live in Seoul, it has regular meet ups about Bitcoin. If you attend this, you should be able to get some ideas.

Best of luck! I think I saw your post on Quora.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have also a 30-35K monthly pageviews niche blog and my experience says that is very difficult to monetize a website like this. I never made more than 90€/month (including all sources of income) with an average of 60€/month. Anyway my two cents are:

\- donations: forget about it. Before put ads up I tried paypal donations. That only got me $5 despite remembering readers about it every couple of weeks for 5 months.

\- ads (adsense): ugly and annoying but is the most important and stable source of income my blog has. 80% of all income.

\- amazon affiliates: margins are low but with some work (and luck) you can get a decent source of monetization. Probably depends also on your niche market. 20% of my blog income.

\- email marketing: since recently I have been collecting emails but didn't use it yet. Anyway my market target is mostly students so the potencial income will be low.

</comment><comment><USER6> Developers are a notoriously hard-to-monetize crowd, and more developers have adblockers installed than any other demographic. So I would avoid normal advertisements.

Here's what you need to do:

1) Collect email addresses

2) Sell things to the email addresses. Books come to mind.

e.g. "Want to hear my recommendations for programming books? Leave your email."

Or, as another commenter suggested, write a book yourself.

Also put some amazon affiliate links to books somewhere on the site.

</comment><comment><USER7> Without knowing more about your site, it's hard to say. My first suggestion would be to start collecting email addresses and sound out interesting jobs from sponsoring recruiters.

I created a free book of revenue models that might help you think about the possibilities - [http://TapRun.com/revenue](http://TapRun.com/revenue)

</comment><comment><USER8> [http://skimlinks.com](http://skimlinks.com)

</comment><comment><USER9> Have you considered trying affiliate guest posts? Either that or develop a service that your users could use - especially if your brand is strong, basically license a white label widget and market that.

</comment><comment> M-S-B Perhaps a CTA to up-sell an e-book with useful pro information?

</comment><comment><USER10> first, what is your site address? make donate with Paypal available

Your visitor should coming from US,Russia,German or western

consider to use flattr.com and Google adsense(many developer use it)

<comment><USER2> I agree, bitcoin is still not as easy as paypal for a lot of people, so adding paypal itself may help.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there any advantage to using SOAP these days? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Advantage over what?

<comment><AUTHOR> REST

<comment><USER2> Then SOAP is a proper RPC protocol, with clearly specified way of reporting call errors and well-defined serialization method. This is a large advantage, as you don't need to design a _protocol_ every single time you expose an API to the world.

On the other hand, SOAP is a very complicated thing, especially if you count in its all iterations, of which every one changes the paradigm of using SOAP. It's better to stick to its roots, XML-RPC, or more modern variant JSON-RPC (2.0) (or RPC protocols in general). Simple to wrap one's head around, simple to use, and all the necessary things are firmly defined, so programmer's job is only to design the procedures and their arguments.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The List - <AUTHOR> http://thelist.io/docs <comment><USER2> I see a few problems with this:

* The website doesn't have critical mass or any special hooks (like pg's essays and pg himself, for instance) to help build it

* I'm not "applying" to post on a website

* Costing people karma is going to drive everything towards a hive mind as soon as possible; if you're going to lose karma by posting you're going to try to make sure that you'll earn that karma back. People are also not going to burn karma making civil responses, everything will become a political performance.

<comment><USER3> I'm with you, and would be happy to post a bet (proceeds to Watsi!) that none of these invite-only HN clones are going to succeed long term.

<comment><USER4> What was it Grouch Marx said? "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept people like me as a member"?

Edit: Updated caps is from telegram, apparently.

Edit 2: Undid caps--sorry everyone. can't take it.

<comment><USER5> So, what you're saying is that HN should ban your account?

All snark aside, I hope you can see the irony of your comment.

<comment><USER3> I am not seeing the irony. HN isn't an invite-only site; it's not a club at all. That's the point.

<comment><USER5> HN has all the properties of a club, it's just very cheap to get in. It's certainly possible to be kicked out of the club (just ask LoseThos/SparrowOS); so, since HN continues to accept angersock as a member, why is he still here?

<comment><USER3> Terry Davis is schizophrenic and his HN accounts feed random noise into threads; at times, the noise is more than just disruptive. He hasn't been "kicked off" of HN. If he created an account tomorrow and used it to post coherently, or even just in a markedly different way than he uses the site today, that account would not get banned.

The point 'angersock and I are both making is that it's not that HN is a different kind of club or a better club. It's the fact that it's _not_ a club that makes it relevant. Overtly clubby alternative sites (with invite-only participation) are destined to fail, for reasons both obvious and subtle.

You say HN has all the properties of a club. But it doesn't:

* There's no shared purpose or interest, unless you count typing words into text boxes as that.

* There's no membership.

* There's no bar to entry.

* Half the site's participants are anonymous; for all I know, you and "angersock" are the same person.

<comment><USER5> I disagree with most of your statements here, but I don't think this is an argument worth having. angersock & I already circled back to the main point elsethread and settled it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is it just me or have people stopped testing how the font renders on anything other than a Mac? Don't people believe in cross-platform readability anymore?

The font being used looks terrible on a Windows machine (Win 7 with Chrome at 100% zoom).

<http://i.imgur.com/OmWJiyn.png>

<comment><USER7> Oh this looks really like living crap. But I'have to admit with everything non-commercial I develop I give a shit on Windows compatibility (it's so hard to test Windows' browsers, either you need some VM running or netbook).

<comment><USER8> Testing basic stuff like that is easy, just use one of those "website screenshot" services.

<comment><USER7> is there any free one around?

<comment><USER5> <http://browsershots.org/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The problem with this system is it actively penalizes use. I see the point of wanting users to have skin in the game, but if I had to give up 2% of my HN "karma" to post this comment, I probably wouldn't do so. If you extrapolate that across all users, you may gain more quality content, but using the site would feel like being punished. And with a social news site, your biggest problem is gaining critical mass. The last thing you should do is discourage use in any way.

Instead of penalizing those things, you should be using them as a metric for measuring site use. Pinterest, for example, would use "repins" as a way to see how much the users are enjoying their experience. Reddit and HN might use upvotes or comments. What you want is as much content as possible and a good sorting method to weed out the best stuff, which is what HN has.

But I could be wrong; we'll have to wait and see.

<comment><USER10> And the fact that it's 2% rather than some fixed amount means that it costs established users more to post, and new users less. Which seems somewhat backwards.

<comment><USER11> But with more initial karma points, the high-karma user's post would appear before the new user's, giving it a visibility bonus in exchange for the extra karma cost. Seems like a worthwhile trade for high-karma users, though it would skew the most visible content towards that of high-karma users and raise the barrier to entry for new users, for better or worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The problem with these high barrier to entry discussion sites is that they lack productive people. The people who have the time and inclination to put up with rules like this spend far too much time posting on internet discussion boards, are far too little time building awesome things (i know this from first-hand experience). The best part of HN is the first-time commenters who have made something awesome and come here to reply in the thread about it. If you put up walls to keep casual users out, you drive all the best posters away.

<comment><USER13> That's a very good point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The font used on that site is literally broken and unreadable in Chrome, on Windows. It cuts out parts of the letters. For an example of what I'm seeing, here's a screenshot: <http://i.imgur.com/e6SVAsY.png>

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm on Windows, when I have text zoomed at 100% in chrome, I can't read it, at all. 110% makes it readable. Firefox looks ok, but the looks a little strange. Some parts of letters look bolder than others.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem with any sort of online gamification is you have winners, losers and cheaters. You also have dangerous unexpected consequences.

I used to be part of a MUD (yes, go ahead, laugh) back in the 80s and 90s. It just so happened that quite a few of us in town were part of the same game. So we game'd the game. There was about 20 of us and we effectively created our own league. When you are dealing with a game with maybe 100 active people a league representing 20% of the total population was huge. Not only that but we were able to synchronize our events and became the most hated group in the entire system. They wound up banning all the ISPs in our city (but then they opened them back up when their game turned into a ghost town).

Karma, badges, points, notoriety are all the same. Phbb and VBulletin (and muds for that matter) have been doing this kind of thing for twenty years. None of it really works all that great. The biggest killer tends to be when people organize (SRS). What happens when enough people organize on this system?

A successful community is small, focused and diligent.

The next -big- system that will replace reddit/et/al isn't going to be rehashing the karma system or increasing the complexity. Rather it will be smart enough to know who you like and who you dislike. It will deliver you the content and people that you want to engage in, not provide a battle to the bottom where only the most watered down high-school level content is going to pass through the masses.

</comment><comment><USER7> Very nice game mechanics since on HN the 'old boys' have some advantages when submitting and commenting.

But I would like to know more about you guys and why or how you want to get traction on this before I put myself on the waiting list.

Besides: I love the .io TLD, it looks nice and it's typed fast but won't bring you less search traffic since Google haven't ranked it as a generic TLD yet (like .co, .biz, .org, .com, etc.)

Another side point: HN lost traffic over time when looking on Alexa, I don't know if this relates to the real traffic though.

EDIT: a small note: .io brings you then less search traffic when you try to target more than 1 country/language. If you just target let's say en-us you can set (one) target audience in Webmaster Tools which then would be us-en despite being on .io but if you target more than 1 language then you have a problem since you cannot address multiple targets and you should go with a gTLD or gccTLD. However, if you want to get some decent search traffic choose ALWAYS .com (or at least .net or .org but nothing else, you need much more efforts with other TLDs to rank similar to a .com)

<comment><USER17> Come someone link to (or explain in detail) some info about Google and how it ranks generic vs. non-generic TLDs? Where did the list of .co, .biz, .org, & .com come from?

<comment><USER7> [https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](https://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1347922)

<comment><USER17> Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> A couple of things to note: \- The applicants list features every person's email in plain text (in the 'send x an invite' href). \- The list is orderly illogically. As the idea behind this site is that you would sort the best from the worst, having the longest waiting people at the top of the queue until they get picked makes no sense. \- As mentioned previously, the applicant link takes you to a non-existent site.

Please don't claim to be something you are not. This is by no means a better Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER19> Applied to get in? They're listing you publicly: <http://thelist.io/applicants>

<comment><USER20> One of the great things about the site...get rid of the riff raff

<comment><USER19> Holy smokes, Mark Zuckerberg's listed as not even being able to score an invite. This shit is exclusive!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> You should really do something about the way comments are displayed.There is too much wasted space.

</comment><comment><USER20> I love the idea of putting some skin in the game when posting/voting/etc.

<comment><USER22> Agreed. The guidelines (<http://thelist.io/guidelines>) are nice too:

The List is not for:

Social media news

Traditional news

Funny images

Angry rants

Advice animals

Linkbait

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The apply link is to thelist.dev/apply

<comment><USER24> -> <http://thelist.io/apply>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> And yet, front page has the story of Mark Zuckerberg's hoodie. :)

<comment><USER20> down-vote it then....

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I also see many problems with the karma system and the rules. Like many others have pointed out, if you punish people for postings, people are way less likely to post and a forum without posts are useless. Also the rules for what to posts are way too strict. It is like not allowing students in the class to ask 'stupid' questions;overtime, students will be too afraid to ask any questions.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been thinking that costs for upvotes or comments are probably worth a discussion on HN. The problem with online karma versus offline karma is that for buddhists, offline karma has a real cost in some respects. Yet online karma is just a positive score. If you really had to stake your reputation on a link, would you really post that lolcat?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE ON TWO ISSUES:

When you sign up there's now a checkbox to hide yourself from the applicants list.

Font smoothing now works on Windows machines so looking at The List should be much nicer for Redmond devotees. (might have to clear cache)

Signup link on the docs page links to the right place now.

</comment><comment><USER28> One feature that would make me apply right away: no down-voting a comment without commenting on why you down-voted it. In other words, everyone should be required to give a reason when they down-vote a comment.

</comment><comment><USER29> Looks like my user name throws an exception, might want to create some rules and validation on usernames: <http://thelist.io/user/chris.truman>

<comment><USER30> Thanks for pointing that out. This is on our Issues List <https://github.com/JacksonGariety/The-List/issues/48>

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It makes me a bit sad that this is just as unusable on mobile as HN.

<comment><USER30> Pushed an update that should fix that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> __WARNING __

If you submit a request and allow it to be public, your email address becomes available for all to see and harvest! Nice idea overall but this is a horrible, horrible flaw.

</comment><comment><USER33> How do you fight spam if you essentially gave out your algorithm?

<comment><USER34> Security via obscurity will not help much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> A better HN would be an HN where some bugs are fixed, and (some) people are a bit more civil. That's it. But nobody is perfect.

</comment><comment><USER36> Question: Why did you choose a single thread comment system over nested comments?

</comment><comment><USER37> Why does it cost more for experienced high karma users to post?

<comment><AUTHOR> When you post, you invest your karma. If you have a lot of karma, your post starts out with more, so the likelihood of front-paging is higher for users who have a track record of quality posts.

<comment><USER37> If I have a lot of money, It does not mean that I am willing to invest a lot of money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any background info on the people/person running this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're two high schoolers in Portland who like to build all kinds of things.

<https://github.com/JacksonGariety> <https://github.com/ColbyAley>

<comment><USER5> Wow, nice work guys. For what it's worth, I think you've got some interesting ideas on tackling online forums; I hope you get enough activity to see how they work out.</comment></comment></comment>


Waterlines: On Writing and Sailing - <AUTHOR> https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2020/02/05/waterlines-on-writing-and-sailing/ <comment><USER2> I'm renovating a sailboat at the age of 34, so it's never too late to start. My father had a sailboat he would take us up and down the coast with, but it's been a long time. And one thing that sailboats beat everyone else with: They don't make sound while you're sailing. You can just hear the sea, the birds and it's like nothing else.

See you out there.

<comment><USER3> Additionally, dolphins enjoy playing in the bow waves of a sailboat; they stay far away from powerboats if ever they can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Are there any vagabond developers here? I've been dreaming about this lifestyle for over a decade. Now that I'm finally freelance and saved up a bit for a boat I'm reluctant to jump the fence. Last year we've chartered a boat for two weeks and i couldn't do any work. Partly because of all the admin - anchoring, weather, moving to another spot, monitoring system status. Another reason was it was vacation for rest of the team plus it was sport hot to work down below.

What are others experience? Is there any forum where you congregate? With Starlink coming I feel this is going to be much more viable.

<comment><USER5> The only developer living on a boat that I know of is Dominic Tarr, creator of secure scuttlebutt. I think one of the other main contributers lives off the grid somewhere. Seems like a cool group. They could probably tell you what it's like.

I lived on someone else's boat in the marina for 2 months about 10 years ago. It gets pretty damp in the cabin, so electronics might have a short life. I would love the opportunity to sail and code at some point. I haven't looked into weather proof gear, but a raspberry pi in a plastic shell case might work well. At least the pi is easily replaced.

Scuttlebutt is a peer to peer protocol with peer discovery on the same LAN, which seems like it would be good for making friends while docked.

<comment><USER4> I haven't heard anyone loose gear due to dampness (even tho salt spray eventually gets to everything). I think it depends a bit on the size of the boat.

I've fried couple of iPhone chargers tho. Just touch the charger end with wet fingers and it gets fried instantly when on fast charge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sailing has really helped me get away from it all; 'it' being the stresses of work and life. Besides the allure of open waters and beautiful sceneries, getting out of a marina, unfurling the sails, killing the motor, and then just using the wind and the water to propel a boat towards a destination is one of the most gratifying feelings I've experienced.

And then there's the myriad terminology and theory, with the various points of sails, different types sails, fine-tuning their shapes for optimizing speed, navigation rules, man overboard procedures, various knots, etc. Those, with the occasional spray of salt water, the feel of the rudder, the way the boat reacts to minor adjustments keeps the activity exciting enough to not get boring and monotonous.

</comment><comment><USER7> "we'd spend hours on the water trying to obey the instructors' yelled commands. I was freezing cold, I understood nothing about the wind"

I think this is too many people's first experiences on boats, why husbands and wives fight on boats, and why their partners ultimately leave the sport. We used to go out every weekend, but now we are more selective, choose those sunny, flat days. We still pick a couple of "wet" events like Spinnaker Cup down the coast during early spring, but everyone's enjoyment has gone up considerably. Orientation and comfort go a long, long ways towards getting people back out on the boat again.

</comment><comment><USER8> Very well written, I was taken aback with footnote that it is a translation.

<comment><USER9> Agreed! Note that the author has recently published a French novel ("Le chien de Schrödinger") and an English translation is available for pre-order.</comment></comment>


Puerto Rico's Hurricane Maria Death Toll Could Exceed 4,000, New Study Estimates - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/29/us/puerto-rico-deaths-hurricane.html <comment> a-fried-egg This is only an estimate yea? Since the hurricane has already passed, what is the official toll?</comment>


Backbone → React: it's a people problem after all - <AUTHOR> https://swizec.com/blog/backbone-%E2%86%92-react-its-a-people-problem-after-all-%F0%9F%98%91/swizec/7049 <comment><USER2> I honestly don't see the difference, at least not on your example. What do you mean by: _You'd have to replay all user interaction on every re-render_

<comment><USER3> Reads like he was modifying the DOM directly, instead of changing state in response to an event</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How long would you go unpaid on a startup? - <AUTHOR>

Suppose you are working for a startup, how long would you go unpaid and give credit to the company? (With and without equity) <comment><USER2> If it is MY company, a long time. If it is your company I need cash on the barrelhead.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely this. My own company - as long as I believe I have a realistic chance of it working out then as long as I'm able to (ie as long as I can pay rent, etc).

If its not my company, then not at all. Even with equity, since equity is worthless (until its not).

I define "my company" as: I don't necessarily have to have had a part in coming up with the idea or have to have a fancy position like CEO/COO/CTO, but rather have physical ownership (equity; a _minimum_ of 10%, anything less doesn't feel like really owning the company), my opinions matter (input) and the other founders recognise me as a founder and treat me as a founder (this includes being named as a founder on any documentation where doing so is relevant, eg, slide decks, angellist).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, it depends on idea. If the idea is good and will grow with the time I will ready to give one year.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope for my sanity you're talking about the case of equity.

<comment><USER4> Yeah .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Without equity? Not a single day.</comment>