A personal ode to the Boeing 747 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/1/16820772/boeing-747-airplane-aviation <comment><USER2> How can someone write an ode to the 747 while simultaneously decrying "vile, predatory capitalism"?

I suggest anyone wanting to read something non-hypocrytical about the 747 instead try [https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/travel/747-airplane- je...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/travel/747-airplane-jet- pilot.html), for some informed commentary that isn't half diatribe.

/end ironic rant

<comment><USER3> I was rolling my eyes at the subtitle. The article devolved from there.

Some great (sometimes indirect) information on why the 747 and to a lesser extent the A380 are being phased out, from my new favorite YouTube channel, Wendover Productions:

The Economics of Long-Haul Flights: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlIdzF1_b5M)

ETOPS: Explained [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxSgbNQi-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxSgbNQi-g)

Politics of Aviation / 5 Freedoms of Aviation: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thqbjA2DC-E)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Concorde was eventually undone by its excessive noise and fuel consumption, > limited capacity, and destructive high-altitude emissions.

This is incorrect. "High altitude emissions" had zero to do with Concorde being retired.

[https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-Concorde-retired- in-2003-d...](https://www.quora.com/Why-was-the-Concorde-retired- in-2003-despite-having-a-good-operational-history-barring-the-2000-crash)

It might seem that the author of this piece has a problem with facts — there seems to be a willingness to distort the truth to fit some kind of leftist agenda.

<comment><USER4> Allow me to respond to the downvotes: the author decries the "race to the bottom" due to deregulation and "vile predatory capitalism," yet that very capitalism is what made air travel so affordable to the masses. In 1974, very few families could afford to fly. Now pretty much anyone in the middle classes can afford it. That "vile" capitalism created competition and that resulted in being able to fly round trip from Denver to Frankfurt for roughly $1000 while in the halcyon 70s, such a trip would have been far more cost prohibitive. It wasn't regulation that made flying something almost everyone could afford — it was the very capitalism the author seems to abhor.

As far as the downvotes — it's clear the author has some leftist agenda — first of all lying about the reasons for the ending of Concorde — it wasn't some environmental nonsense about emissions or noise or even fuel costs — it had to do with maintenance availability. That is just a fact. Next complaining about capitalism that enabled the masses to travel while attempting to evoke Hunter S Thompson when describing drinking champagne on the upper deck. How ironic that the author savors the exclusivity of the upper deck, while complaining about capitalism that creates the opportunity to actually make money to buy an upper deck ticket.

<comment><USER5> > Now pretty much anyone in the middle classes can afford it.

[https://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/484941939/a-portrait-of- ameri...](https://www.npr.org/2016/07/07/484941939/a-portrait-of-americas- middle-class-by-the-numbers)

Quote from NPR "Since economists first began keeping track in 1970, every decade has ended with fewer people in the middle class than at the start. And 2015 was the first year on record when Americans in the middle-income bracket did not make up the majority of the country"

Middle class can afford it now you say and yet the middle class is shrinking and the poor class is growing. Are you ignoring the inequality and shrinking of the middle class when you make such a statement?

> deregulation and consolidation

If there were many air lines and now they are consolidated to fewer is this not anti competition? Or is the market going to fix it by less regulation?

Here's the graph from the 1970s to 2010s: [http://psf_blog.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/201...](http://psf_blog.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/AirlineMergers.jpg)

Do you believe in the concept of natural monopoly I[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly))? If so what's your solution to that?

edit/update:

Something in the back of my mind was skeptical about your claim of airflight being cheaper without source. It seems more like you're making a statement base on feeling.

I googled:

Note here's one article that stated that it went up on average by a bit adjusting for inflation:

[http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/airlines- airport...](http://www.travelandleisure.com/travel-tips/airlines- airports/airfare-cost-change)

Another article argued that the statistics ignore the outlandish carry baggage checkin that in fact it is more costly today to fly than it is in the 70s.

[https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/blog/seat2B/2014/05/...](https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/blog/seat2B/2014/05/don- t-believe-the-airfare-spin-cost-to-travel-is.html)

<comment><USER6> >Note here's one article that stated that it went up on average by a bit adjusting for inflation:

And here is one that is saying exactly the opposite:

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how- air...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/02/how-airline- ticket-prices-fell-50-in-30-years-and-why-nobody-noticed/273506/)

And another one (US domestic): [https://www.enotrans.org/etl-material/is-air- travel-becoming...](https://www.enotrans.org/etl-material/is-air-travel- becoming-pricier-for-travelers/)

And here another nice graph (typical NY/London) : [https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfar...](https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch3en/conc3en/airfarenylondon.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not an ode.

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

An ode is not a tribute, it is a particular form of verse. I guess people get confused because the word sounds like "owed", or something.

<comment><USER8> I don't know why you are being down-voted but here's my modest +1 of moral support for having made a factual statement and paid the bitter price for it...

<comment><USER9> Because complaints about rigorous/academic meanings of words don't really add substance to the discussion.

<comment><USER8> I quite like precise use of vocabulary, it makes it so much easier to ensure everybody intends the same concepts if what one expects to be conveyed is the dictionary definitions. Apparently the OP felt so too. I think he's justified in wishing to draw attention to that.

<comment><USER10> It's a well known phrase used appropriately in the article. The OP suggested that the author got "confused" and misused the word, which is clearly not the case.

Besides "tribute" is also used non-literally today, the original meaning is very different

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My dad was always proud of being the main guy on the ramp for the 747 Houston to Honolulu and Los Angeles flights. He used to tell everyone about how the wingspan was longer than the Wright Brothers first flight. Apparently it's true, but I had always thought he made it up.

</comment><comment><USER12> > _At the heart of the upper deck was, thus, a kind of louche and tragic > nihilism._

Also aerodynamics.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think there may be a future for 747 and even the A380 in the domestic routes in Indian and China. I can only wonder at the huge amounts of passenger traffic once a larger percentage of the population comes to dependent upon air travel.

<comment><USER14> China southern runs a 380 between Guangzhou and Beijing. But it won't last forever: china is building lots of new airports to take pressure off its big city airports and provide more direct routes; while the big city airports are expanding and aiming to provide more frequent service betterment handled by smaller planes.

<comment><USER15> Not willingly. The rumor is, none of the Chinese carriers wanted to buy 380, but the Chinese govt sorta promised the French govt. In the end China Southern agreed to take them, in exchange for some hot international routes like Beijing to Paris. By the time the planes were delivered, the official who promised the routes were long gone, and the new one refused to honor the deal. In the end, the poor carrier is stuck with those huge planes and no suitable routes to fly them. They are apparently bleeding money.

<comment><USER14> To be fair, the plane was full when I was on it, but maybe that was because of the cancelled flights (one of them ours) that were rebooked onto it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> another ode to be is for the airbus a380 or more like a swan song. This is a marvel of engineering that will soon be put to an end cauz its not profitable.

<comment><USER17> Each time there is an aircraft where boeing can not compete technically like concorde and a380, they fight to make the market less profitable. I am not sure there are a380 buyers reading HN, but I think they should not buy boeing's lobbying. The more a380 are sold, the more profitable it is for buyers.

<comment><USER18> Looks like A380 with the max seating capacity of 853 would be significantly cheaper to operate per seat than anything out there. The current installed maximum is 615, hinting that the market is not quite there yet.

I could imagine that some airfields would soon increase their per plane landing prices as a result of crowding. That could make the A380 more profitable.

<comment><USER19> It's the 4 engines which gives airlines A380/747 fuel cost problems. Both fulfil relatively niche markets and are gradually being displaced by the more- efficient and flexible twin-engine A350/787 types. We're just starting to see the secondary market for A380s now which is a good indicator for its long term commercial viability.

<comment><USER20> Twins are actually overpowered compared to comparably-sized quads due to engine-out climb requirements. In terms of raw seat-km-litre they are therefore slightly less efficient.

A good example is the old A340-300 quad, often maligned for being underpowered. Now that it is mostly retired data has emerged that it was more efficient than the rival 777-200 twin.

Where twins _are_ cheaper is in terms of capital costs and consumables, though ETOPs requirements mean you need more technicians to service a twin ( separate teams for each engine ).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Man With A 'Battery Operated Brain' - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2013/06/25/195521917/the-man-with-a-battery-operated-brain?ft=1&f=1007 <comment><USER2> This might be a little dated now (a year or two), but I had a class with some emphasis on deep brain stimulation. The overall consensus from the professor was that we know that it does work, we know how the electronics and everything work, but we don't know what's happening in the brain to make it work. We don't know why we see the results we do with DBS, and they're sometimes pretty phenomenal results (like this tremor remover). Depression, chronic pain, tremors, and probably many things we don't know yet can be solved by putting some electrodes deep inside your brain and outputting a constant current.

The one trouble spot is that the brain really, really does not like when foreign objects are embedded in it. The electrode goes in, punctures the blood brain barrier, and works for a while. When you put something foreign in the brain, astrocytes (brain cells that form the blood brain barrier) will form around the electrode and create a new blood brain barrier around it, causing the electrode that was once inside the brain to be on the outside.

Also, the stimulation current seems to 'overdrive' the nearby neurons, causing them to die. This reduces the effectiveness of DBS, as living neurons are now farther away, reducing the effectiveness of the stimulation.

Patients need to be awake during surgery so the doctors know when the electrode is placed correctly - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_fjiEOb40M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_fjiEOb40M)

<comment><USER3> Very accurate summary! I would add

* The current best guess is that the electrical stimulation inactivates the neurons (acting as a reversible lesion). Older surgeries used to do a real lesion near that brain region.

* Parkinson's is, unfortunately, a progressive disease. So the decrease in efficacy of the stimulation is partly related to the fact that this disease itself is getting worse. We typically hear that DBS buys a patient about another decade (which is a lot).

<comment><USER4> I'd be very surprised if electrical stimulation simply acts as local inhibition. This is inconsistent with other electrical stimulation experiments (eg: driving muscle movements by stimulating in M1), and would not provide the correct manipulation to the basal ganglia.

The problem in Parkinson's is that the Substantia Nigra and a certain class of excitatory neurons start dying off, leading to less dopamine release. The electrical stimulation is thought to stimulate the remaining neurons to release additional dopamine to compensate for this loss.

<comment><USER5> Remember that the shaking you see in Parkinson's patients is not due to the disease, but that a side effect of the medication. Untreated Parkinson's patients "freeze".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Simply awesome.

The people who research, design and implement these "hacks" deserve infinitely more credit and acknowledgement than all of us.

It really annoys me that the superficial celebrity turds on legs get so much attention and the people making real differences to the world go unknown and unacknowledged.

</comment><comment><USER7> I know nothing about this procedure or what percentage of patients would be eligible for it but... my complete lack of education on the topic aside... on the face that has to be one of the most remarkable medical videos I have possibly ever seen. Seemingly groundbreaking.

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember reading from multiple sources that MDMA is able to suspend Parkinsons, apparently through its primary effect, ie. flooding the brain with seratonin. Could someone more clued up on brain science please explain how the mechanism of deep brain stimulation (DBS) is related to that route of suspension, if at all?

</comment><comment><USER9> I heard about this years ago, and thought it was science fiction that would never actually happen. Then I saw in a Facebook feed that my high school physics teacher has one. Funny how these can sneak up on you.

</comment><comment><USER10> So awesome.

It's not appropriate to post to Hacker News, but if anyone's interested in reading a funny, lay-person friendly commentary on the economics and ethics of cognition enhancing surgery and technology, I've got a really interesting paper lying around called Wireheading Rawls. I'd be happy to send it to anyone interested.

<comment><USER11> I would as well - old econ reading is a little rusty, so layperson is probably the right level to restart my brain at.

ccarter84 (at) the all-surveilled google mail

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> i hope some day there will be a cure for my LHON :)</comment>


Musk mulls taking Tesla private, Saudi sovereign fund builds $2B stake - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-07/tesla-jumps-on-report-of-saudis-building-about-2-billion-stake <comment><USER2> All: please stick to specifics and don't go into MuskMania (the fever that results when MuskLove meets MuskHate). That's always the same and therefore off topic here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I'm starting to think this is less about avoiding the public markets and more about getting out of the crushing debt (8.65 in liabilities comming due before the end of March 2019)that they have coming due in March of 2019.

The billion of debt coming due is convertible above a price of $360 and if he can keep the price propped up will almost certainly force all bond holders to convert into equity holders.

[https://seekingalpha.com/article/4191711-tesla-stealth- capit...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4191711-tesla-stealth-capital- raise?ifp=0)

I mean, think about this rationally, if it wasn't for the public markets Tesla would already be bankrupt. Going private means giving up this access to capital as well as having to come up with 9 Billion to fund debt commind due.

With stock you have something to bargain with when selling debt. Without it you've lost a huge weapon.

Same for paying your employee's. No more tesla stock that appreciates each quarter that you can sell as soon as it comes to you.

Also just did some digging on Tesla bonds and CDS...

At current levels, they imply a about a 30% chance of a Tesla default in the next five years. It costs around $1.3 million to insure $10 million of bonds against default.

And if Tesla went private and he funded it with debt he's looking at a rate somewhere around the low teens from what Bloomberg is reporting which means borrowing $58 Billion to finance this would cost aroudn $7.1 Billion a year in interest payments at 12.5%.

And keep in mind he's paying that to cut off public markets access for raising money, one of his best sources of cheap capital in the past 5 years.

<comment><USER4> All of that is moot if it's the Saudi government buying in.

Tesla are by far the most advanced of all "green" car manufacturers; over the next 7-12 years there will be countries banning petrol/diesel cars.

If Tesla can scale their battery and car production by that time then you could be looking at a market share of Apple proportions.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > over the next 7-12 years there will be countries banning petrol/diesel cars

I do not think so. At most, in that timeframe we will see countries starting to ban sales of new cars which are not plug-in hybrids or better. And then remember the average lifespan of a car today is ~20 years, you will still see old pure petrol cars on the roads in 2050 is my bet. Just like you still see old cars on the road today without any catalytic converters.

If you look at the electric car market today, you have lots of small cars with reasonable-ish range, one sedan with good range and two pretend-SUVs (Model X and I-pace) with good range.

No manufacturer anywhere makes a pure electric estate car (station wagon); this is the most popular type of car in Europe. Nobody makes an electric pickup; this is the most popular type of car in the US. Nobody makes an actual SUV, Ford Expedition/Toyota LandCruiser/etc. style that can fit four mountain bikes in the trunk and tow a 9000 lbs trailer. Nobody makes an electric commercial vehicles of the type electricians, plumbers etc. drive.

What do all these have in common? Inherently terrible aerodynamics / poor mileage and a relatively frequent need to go long distance trips. If you take current battery tech and do some optimistic extrapolation of future developments, you still end up with battery packs costing $50k+ and weighing several thousand pounds. Which isn't going to work anywhere, nobody is going to buy an $80k+ electric pickup when a diesel F150 starts below $30k.

But I do think we will see reasonable plug-in hybrid versions of these car types. And Tesla will never be building cars with internal combustion engines, so they're effectively locked out of what I believe will be the biggest part of the market.

<comment><USER5> Germany considers to ban diesel cars from cities to meet polution requirenments of EU.

I consider to buy a new car at the moment. My favorites are electirc or petrol. I don't even consider hybrids. I see no benefits. They have no upsides of an electic car (quit, no exhaust, clean, simple). They are basically more expensive/complex petrols with a slightly lower consumption.

<comment><USER6> Not exactly. What you are describing is correct for things like a Prius, with dual drivetrains. It is certainly not correct for cars like the Chevy Volt (or the BMW i3), with the main engine being the electric one, and a gasoline generator. This combination is less complex than a normal car – for one, you can remove basically the entire transmission and hook up the eletric engine directly (with maybe a reduction gear like a Leaf). The gasoline engine can be much smaller and simpler as it is only driving a generator (and maybe not even running all the time, depending on battery and workload).

Such a design is not as clean as a pure EV, but it is definitely better than what we currently have.

<comment><USER7> The Chevy Volt is not a serial hybrid like the I3. It has a very complex transmission system to blend the gasoline engine and electric motor power. A nice car, but not at all simple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Keep in mind that this position was built via the secondary market and not from Tesla itself. And that the position size would be about 3 Billion, a large but pretty ordinary size for a fund of their size.

They also put in $400 million into magic leap, ar large bet on Uber and about $50 Billion into the Softbank vision fund that is throwing money around.

I think this puts them about the 8th largest shareholder of Tesla.

As an aside, with Musk's recent tweet I think he's going to get a pretty stern talking to by the SEC about discomfiture and Reg FD.

Even if its true,

1) You've now used that bullet in your gun against the short sellers

2) Did it in a very dubious way, via twitter rather than RegFD disclosure.

3) will now have to answer questions about this "private takeover", ie where is the money coming from? how long is it committed for?

For what? An SEC headache a momentary pop that was immediately erased?

The tweet caused a momentary pop in the stock price which was erased about 2 minutes after it popped. The market can be exceedingly good and correcting itself.

Elon seems to be doubling down

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026879404905885697](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026879404905885697)

<comment><USER8> Is it corrected? I'm still seeing it up $25.

<comment><USER9> Today's peak TSLA price was $371.07 (through my provider) so it's yet to be seen whether it will reach that again or close lower.

<comment><USER8> Looks like it's up to $380 after hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Saudi fund just made public that they own just under 5%, which is when you have to publicly declare to the SEC your holdings. This usually happens when there is an attempt at a hostile takeover. What Elon did was brilliant and he just countered it by tweeting this out. He is willing to take it private at the $420 price, probably way higher than the Saudi's were planning on. So now it'll be a race to see who can obtain >50% of the shares. Elon has a massive head start with how much he owns already, but the Saudi's fund is ridiculously huge right now ($250B) and I'm sure they have the ability to pull in another few hundred billion on demand. Kind of scary. Elon will need to find a stupid amount of capital and fast to do this.

It's very smart on Saudi Fund's part... They would own the worlds largest solar, battery, and EV producer. They could cover a desert in panels and sell the cars and batteries across Europe/Asia, while providing the power as well. They would once again have the largest control of the world's energy.

<comment><USER11> > They could cover a desert in panels and sell the cars and batteries across > Europe/Asia, while providing the power as well. They would once again have > the largest control of the world's energy.

Doesn't seem like you can reasonably charge a car in europe/asia from solar panels in the middle east. You'll be dealing with some pretty nasty transmission losses.

<comment><USER12> > Doesn't seem like you can reasonably charge a car in europe/asia from solar > panels in the middle east. You'll be dealing with some pretty nasty > transmission losses.

First of all, the oil reserves in Saudi-Arabia aren't going to last forever - but they will need massive amounts of energy to maintain their cities, especially for drinking water. Desalination is ridiculously expensive, and water access will be _the_ war driver in the entire Middle East once climate change really hits. Cover the desert with solar plants, the coasts with desalination plants (and don't care about the brine) => control who gets the electricity and/or the water, control the region. Saudi-Arabia is actually already going pretty far in their fight for regional supremacy, that would fit perfectly.

As for transmitting the energy to Europe/Asia, well... there's technology in the works to synthesize gas (both gasoline and, well, gas) using electricity, which can be fed into the existing gas pipeline infrastructure and thus sold to the wide world.

<comment><USER13> Wars about control of water will be centered around areas with fresh water availability. The middle east doesnt have any.

If you have cheap desalinization capability, why would there be wars over water?

<comment><USER14> > Wars about control of water will be centered around areas with fresh water > availability. The middle east doesnt have any.

More likely, they'll be centered around points of availability in areas of relative scarcity.

There is, in fact freshwater in the Middle East, just not a lot. Which makes what is there a potential source of contention.

<comment><USER13> Fair point. Do climate models have the fidelity to predict desertification? My intuition would be that the entire middle east will be devoid of water at 2 degrees hotter.

<comment><USER15> As always, the question is 'with how much certainty'? At low enough certainty I could predict what parts of the world will get dryer or wetter on the back of an envelope, but there are a lot of unknowables like human activity that would have to be included to make a quite reliable prediction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Trading of Tesla stock has now been halted following this news & Elon's tweets.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-stock-jumps-on- musks-t...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-stock-jumps-on-musks-tweet- that-he-is-considering-taking-compan.html)

<comment><USER17> Interested in seeing where the funding is coming from at that valuation. Potentially the biggest buyout of all time?

Other buyouts of such scale involved companies with huge cash flows/profits - think RJR Nabisco, Hilton, TXU (big US utility).

Tesla of course is a very different animal. Hard to imagine any kind of conventional financing working for this type of deal.

Beyond the Saudis maybe some other SWF or deep pocketed individual investors?

<comment><USER18> Why does is have to be beyond Saudis? it also could Qatar, China,UAE etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Taking Tesla Private

[https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla- private](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla-private)

<comment><USER19> Tesla reopens 10% higher after weighing decision to go private

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-says-no-final- decision...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/07/tesla-says-no-final-decision-has- been-made-to-take-company-private.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's a sign public equity markets aren't structured well that companies aren't encouraged to think long term. The most successful companies in today's markets don't even allow common shareholders to control the company, ie Google and Facebook with their special classes of controlling shares. We might need to reconsider changing laws around choosing board seats or requiring shareholders to have minimum holding times in order to align incentives better for the long term.

If public equity markets don't work, the alternative is more and more of wealth creation happening privately, in startups funded by VCs, private equity, or family owned businesses. The public won't get to participate.

<comment><USER21> That's a very sad thought, and unfortunately the way things are trending right now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Saudi money is dripping with blood - the kingdom's wealth and control is a result of well documented massacre of dissidents, of Shias and of funding terror and patronizing the Wahabis, especially against philosophies opposed to the kingdom.

It's deeply disappointing to see Musk legitimatize the Sauds, who threatened Canada with a 9/11 style attack just 24 hours ago

<comment><USER23> FT which broke the story, said that the Saudis approached Tesla to buy a stake, but Tesla refused, for whatever reason, probably financial, or maybe didn't want to dilute the stock.

Musk can do nothing to stop anyone from buying or shorting Tesla shares, that's regulated by the government.

So how is this true again?

>It's deeply disappointing to see Musk legitimatize the Sauds

Also, don't you know that the Saudis put $50 billion into Softbank's fund?

<comment><USER22> > Also, don't you know that the Saudis put $50 billion into Softbank's fund?

Anyone with a conscience would refuse Saudi funding, funneled via SoftBank or directly. Remember how HN and googlers were up in arms against accepting Pentagon money, this is a million times worse.

It is true that Musk is accepting a bailout from the Sauds, are you disputing that?

Hence, it's disappointing that he's ignoring, or somehow rationalizing all the blood shed by the Sauds

<comment><USER24> > It is true that Musk is accepting a bailout from the Sauds, are you > disputing that?

How did you reach that conclusion? He declined to sell them new shares, so the Saudis bought them on the open market. Tesla didn't get a dime. What bailout are you referring to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Who would have predicted 30 years ago that a _Saudi_ sovereign fund would invest in an electric car company ?

Symbolically that is a pretty potent signal.

<comment><USER26> Hedging their bets, not the worst idea.

<comment><USER27> Yep. I believe the Saudi sovereign wealth fund has divested from or has mandates to divest from fossil fuel related investments.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/01/saudi- arabi...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/apr/01/saudi-arabia-plans- to-sell-state-oil-assets-to-create-2tn-wealth-fund)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Super coincidental that Elon announced he was thinking about taking the company private right after this happened.

My guess is that they had run the numbers on taking the company private before. Since the Saudis had approached Elon before and he denied their offer (for whatever reason) he probably was upset that they acquired a stake through secondary markets and tweeted their half-baked plan... (not a good course of action IMO)

<comment><USER29> > Super coincidental that Elon announced he was thinking about taking the > company private right after this happened.

Not super coincidental. It's incidental and on-purpose. What a day

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article mentions 4 times that it's unlikely Tesla will be able to pull this off.

Not a single positive or optimistic note. Which is fine, but it's not as if Bloomberg has no ability to influence market prices.

</comment><comment><USER31> I get it, it's Musk, but this is still such an irresponsible way to announce news of this magnitude. From a WaPo article:

The sudden announcement gained immediate criticism from former regulators who suggested it may conflict with SEC rules for potentially market-moving statements. Harvey Pitt, a former SEC chairman, told CNBC on Tuesday that Musk's tweets "might consittute fraud if any of the facts he disclosed are not true" or if there was any indication that he had floated the proposal purely to boost the stock price

<comment> B-Con > to announce news of this magnitude.

Only if he's announcing news, which he likely is not. The method itself makes it feel more like a muse and less like an announcement.

[edit]

Well, everyone seems to be taking him seriously...

<comment><USER32> The founder and largest individual shareholder of a corporation announcing that they're considering taking the company private is definitely news.

<comment><USER33> Small nitpick, he's the CEO, but not the founder. Tesla loves to forget telling this part of the story, but it was founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Elon invested the next year, but didn't become CEO until 2008.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Can someone explain how Tesla can go private while still allowing all employees and any current investor who wants to remain shareholders as Musk is saying? AFAIK there is a threshold number of shareholders after which a company is required to be public. You can't just declare that you're a private company if you have thousands of members of the general public still holding equity.

<comment><USER35> That threshold was raised from 500 to 2000 shareholders as part of the JOBS act:

[http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-44.html](http://www.lathropgage.com/newsletter-44.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Just saw this today. I couldn't believe it because I saw this first on reddit like a few weeks back, where a redditor thought all of Musk's weirdly negative publicity stunts were to make Tesla less desirable in wallstreet's eyes so he could make it private. I can't find the post now, but that's interesting it turned out like this. I do agree that institutional investors have an incentive to prioritize short term over long term gain. After all, you can just sell your stocks, buy into another company and push for short term gain over and over. Maybe it is better for Tesla to be private

</comment><comment><USER37> Trading is halted.

[https://seekingalpha.com/news/3379457-tesla-trading- halted-l...](https://seekingalpha.com/news/3379457-tesla-trading-halted-live- updates)

<comment><USER38> "...Would create special purpose fund enabling anyone to stay with Tesla. Already do this with Fidelity's SpaceX investment."

Does anyone know more about how this is organized? My understanding (which could well be wrong) is that organizations with over 500 owners must do normal quarterly filings in the same way a publicly traded company would. Yet in previous years I've searched and come up empty handed on SpaceX.

<comment><USER14> I think the model is the fund is one investor in Tesla, many people are investors in the fund. So Tesla doesn't have materially different reporting requirements.

<comment><USER21> How does this skirt the accredited investor requirement in Sarbanes-Oxley? Seems like a very obvious way to avoid it, and hence something that would not be allowed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> [https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla- private?redire...](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla- private?redirect=no)

</comment><comment><USER40> Elon has just written an email to employees, also published on the site, explaining how he thinks going private would be good for Tesla and very generally how it could work.

It doesn't appear to include any more specifics about where funding for the opt-in buyout would come from.

TSLA resumed trading just before closing bell and closed at $379.57 up 11% for the day.

[https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla- private?redire...](https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/blog/taking-tesla- private?redirect=no)

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't mean to rub it in , those people who said to short Tesla a couple weeks ago were sure wrong. Last week Steve Eisman who rose to fame in 2008 by betting against the housing market, shorted Tesla. That position is probably at least 25% underwater now. Not only that, but Tesla losing money does not mean it is insolvent, because it can keep raising money and most of those losses are capital expenditures instead of operating losses.

<comment><USER42> While I don't necessarily disagree with your statement it is important to note when Eisman and others shorted the housing market before the 2008 collapse their positions also took big negative hits having to pay hundreds of millions to hold their short positions. Obviously in the end of the housing market collapse they made massive profits. Still very early in their TSLA position to determine the winners & losers.

<comment><USER31> If Tesla goes private, that _is_ the end for the shorts - there is no "after" after that. Everyone who shorted will have to pay back their shares at $420 a share (or whatever the final price ends up being).

<comment><USER43> That _if_ is a big if. Tesla is currently trading $40 under their supposed acquisition price. That's not exactly high confidence from the market that this deal will go through.

<comment><USER41> that is because nothing has been finalized. it can easily get there just based on market momentum. Tesla gained $70 in a week. another 40 is not that hard

<comment><USER43> Wall Street loves free money. The stock was trading at $360 before this proposal was announced, and only moved a third of the way to the purchase price on the news. That's not implying investor confidence that this will happen. Otherwise, plenty of people would be willing to load up on the stock on the assurance it would be bought at $420.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> DISCLAIMER: I work for a Tesla competitor, any opinions are solely my own. I am not a financial analyst, I may be a lizard-person. If I were Elon, I would love it if I could take my company private and keep my fans as shareholders. I would love it if I could "go private" and not have to actually buy back all of the shares of people who want to go long anyway. I would love it if shorts had no mechanism to short my company.

I would love it, but I don't know if I could find a real financial instrument that allows for it.

(I posted this on another thread in case it shows up twice.)

</comment><comment><USER45> I hope he pulls this off. It would be excellent if he could get out of the public company weeds, and get more brain bandwidth to focus on executing and solving problems.

<comment><USER43> Why does that not affect other CEOs? I don't see Jeff Bezos complaining about being a public company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I really don't get the obsessions with going private. It used to be everybody's goal to go public, an IPO was one of the greatest achievements. Musks wants to go private to have better control of "his" companies and to prevent market pressures?

I think being a public company is good for many reasons, amongst other: the _public_ can participate in the success of companies and for the company it provides a great reality gauge. Maybe that's what he's afraid of...

<comment><USER47> I don't get the obsession with going public. It has killed or derailed many a great company. It's not exactly a good thing to constantly be chasing short term profits and quarterly results over long term health.

The idea that companies should have the goal of going public is deeply flawed/unhealthy, I think. Though it makes sense for some.

<comment><USER48> You do understand that going public does not automatically equal only valuing short term profits right?

<comment><USER49> Amazon managed to not chase them for some time while being public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> IMO it's just a PR ploy to prop up the price.

1\. How is Tesla going to raise capital if not through the public markets? Would a PE firm lend them money at better rates (unlikely, with interest rates going up)? They could've gone to Warren Buffett for another convertible-bond deal but Musk just had to get into a pissing match with Buffett.

2\. Only Musk can sell a story about how $TSLA going private is good for employees' stock options. It's the other way around; Tesla is losing employees and the only way to get them to stay is to lock them in with an inflated valuation. Ask anyone who has worked during the Dotcom bust.

3\. Using an after market hours price of $380, $420/share would be a premium of 10.5%, or a market cap of about $72B. In the meantime the company is still not profitable. And that Saudi sovereign fund investment is just a hedge against oil prices, since Musk has said he will not give up his holdings nor resign if the firm were to go private. His ego wouldn't allow him to do so, either.

</comment><comment><USER51> Very simple, as the fight of big oil against tesla seems to have backfired as Musk still has resources to buy back the company. It's better for them to hedge their exposure to oil.

</comment><comment><USER52> What if the funding is the Saudi wealth fund and the stake they acquired was to form a majority ownership?

Edit: this is probably not the case, sounds like speculation is of a hostile takeover.

</comment><comment><USER53> Good on Tesla. Markets are fickle and not conjunctive to long term planning and investment

</comment><comment><USER54> Very scary to see Tesla fall into the hands of a despotic nation that is cracking down on free speech

[https://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia- orders-16000-students-...](https://www.newsweek.com/saudi-arabia- orders-16000-students-leave-canada-amid-diplomatic-row-1060547?piano_t=1)

<comment><USER55> This is making the very large assumption that it is the Saudi's financing the deal...

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> What happens if I refuse to sell my share?

<comment><USER57> If you hold shares in a company that gets bought, your share is converted into your portion of the proceeds. You can't refuse.

In this case, Elon wants to let current investors stay investors, so you should be able to hold your share and it'll convert into whatever the private equity equivalent will be.

<comment><USER14> The private equity equivalent of a share of stock is...a share of stock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026872652290379776)

"Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured." Elon

<comment><USER59> A pot joke borderline market manipulation. Just amazing. How do people get away with this?

<comment><USER60> Except it's likely not a joke?

<comment><USER61> You do realize that 420 is the police code for Marijuana, right?

Its a joke. The only alternative is that Elon Musk is manipulating the price of his shares by tweeting private and sensitive information and therefore needs to be fined by the SEC and possibly jailed for stock manipulation.

Therefore, its a joke. Because as stupid as Mr. Musk has been this past year, I am sure he's well aware of the illegality of stock manipulation on American markets.

<comment><USER60> You do realize that 420 is also part of the set of real numbers before being an alias for marijuana?

420 is also somewhere in the range of 15-20% higher than the current price, making it a realistic offering price.

Also:

* [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026885883482365953](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026885883482365953)

* [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026890900885184514](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1026890900885184514)

But thanks for your valuable input.

<comment><USER61> Since when is Twitter a public disclosure as per the law then?

Normally, announcements for stock buybacks, taking a stock private, etc. etc. need to be filed with the SEC months in advanced and announced to the general community.

<comment><USER62> As the CEO of Tesla, his Twitter account can act as a legal announcement platform for the company, just as the Tesla site can. The SEC issued that guidance five years ago.

The requirement to comply with Regulation FD is that investors should be able to have some reasonable confidence that the source in question - the twitter account - is a legitimate source for the company. The two Twitter accounts that would clearly apply to would be @tesla and @elonmusk.

<comment><USER61> TSLA stock should have been halted before the news, not after it. (It seems like TSLA is currently under a T1 halt: "News Pending").

[https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts](https://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=TradeHalts)

If this isn't a joke, then that means Mr. Musk announced the news before the T1 halt. Expect an SEC investigation soon. I'd definitely expect his actions to be illegal, although I'm not a lawyer.

Its probably going to be a slap on the wrist / a relatively small fine, but there's a proper dance to releasing information on the stock market to ensure everything is fair.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Musk would be much more tolerable if he followed the ancient rule of "put up or shut up"

<comment><USER64> Come back when you led a team to build an orbital rocket with a reusable first stage while simultaneously leading a team to build a luxury electric vehicle with self-drive capability... and largely succeeded in both with a few hiccups.

I think he's put up.

<comment><USER65> Not many people have a spare billion dollars, however.

<comment><USER66> Is that supposed to discredit him? He started with nothing. Nor is simply having money anywhere near a guarantee of success in that industry.

<comment><USER63> Nothing but a very comfortable safety net. I mean come on, his parents were part of the group of people who fled South Africa after the end of Apartheid... not exactly rags to riches.

He's done a lot, but "started with nothing" is seriously disingenuous. Additionally: you don't have to "start from nothing" for your achievements to be worthy.

<comment><USER64> If you were born in a first world developed nation and grew up above the poverty line in your area, you are not a rags to riches story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> Musk is only, what, 50 billion short of buying the company? Looks like another PR stunt.

<comment><USER60> He never said he was buying Tesla himself though...

<comment><USER43> Still needs to find someone with %50 billion though</comment></comment></comment>


Ask News.Yc: What is social bookmarking lacking today? - <AUTHOR>

I know, i know...they are a tons of social bookmarking sites out now, but they all seem cluttered, slow, and confusing to me. Im trying to get a feel of what features poeple like, dislike or they would like to see implemented.
News.YC is sort of a bookmarking app (at least the way I use it).It works great for me because its fast, has a clean layout and it just so happens to deal with web pages I would typically bookmark. but the internet isnt all about startups and entrepreneurship.
Any input would be great. Thanks <comment><USER2> Waleed asked something similar recently.

See this thread for some ideas : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31244>

I think he posted a summary of sorts here <http://selfdebugging.com/>

Perhaps you should ping him and see if you can join up ;-)

</comment><comment><USER3> The first suggestion that comes to mind is to automate as much of the process as possible. I rarely use social bookmarking sites because, 1) they waste more time than they save, and 2) I don't have the patience to sort through the details of URL submission.

See if you can develop a heuristic to determine a user's favorite sites based on their browsing patterns. Convolve that into a set of browser extensions and expose the user data through a web front-end. Make personalized suggestions based on user history. Auto-generate site summaries by looking at page markup (size of fonts, page title), that sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER4> CoReap is one service that I've started using more frequently off-late. It combines social search and social bookmarking with a no-frills browser sidebar for bookmarks management and a browser extension for social search integration. See: <http://www.coreap.com>

</comment><comment><USER5> One word: community.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats a given... I was wondering along the lines of technical features.

<comment><USER6> Well, you have to enable a community through the technical features, is the thing. The community has to be intrinsic in the tech.</comment></comment></comment>


Clever Cloud (french-based PaaS with auto-scaling) - <AUTHOR> http://www.clever-cloud.com/

<comment><USER2> hard to understand the drop-pricing-model.</comment>


GeckoView in 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2019/06/geckoview-in-2019/ <comment><USER2> This is related to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20295694).

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the warning, I hoped it was the embeddable desktop Gecko engine that I need, not the Android component.</comment></comment>


By growing cells in unrealistic liquids, scientists may have skewed results - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/cancer-culture-media-plasmax/579283/ <comment><USER2> There is also an issue with growing cells in regular atmosphere (20% oxygen) vs body atmosphere (<8% oxygen).

However, until you _show_ that these differences matter, nobody cares.

<comment> xkcd-sucks [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=low+oxygen+cell+culture...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=low+oxygen+cell+culture&hl=en&as_sdt=0,22)

I attended a small local conference a few years ago at which a presentation on practical low oxygen cell culture was given. It seemed like the perfect way to pep up our fetal hippocampal neuron cultures. But it never happened because of, um, "research culture"

<comment><USER2> It's actually not that expensive to do: [http://brincubator.com/](http://brincubator.com/) (Disclaimer: I have links to these folks, so treat that as unsubstantiated marketing drivel until you prove otherwise :) )

Those folks have lots of literature citations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >> This red elixir, known as Eagle's minimal essential medium (EMEM)...

It's just me, right? That doesn't sound like something out of a D&D sourcebook?

</comment><comment><USER4> Showed this to a cancer researcher;

He told me that this is a money-making scheme for selling different lab equipment.

<comment><USER5> That's an answer which hasn't had much thought applied to it. In the groups I've worked in, the problems with culture conditions were long appreciated. The factors entrenching the existing practices are largely down to: standardisation between laboratories, being able to publish (non-standard practices can be a large negative for reviewers), and cost (DMEM is cheap in liquid or powder form).

I've used specialist media for endothelial cells, and stem cells of various types (human and mouse, embryonic and mesenchymal). It could be up to £200 for 500ml of culture media, with a shelf life of just a week once you'd added all the frozen supplements. This makes things _very_ costly once you scale things up.

But culture media are only the beginning of the problem. Another source of big problems are the culture conditions. Standard incubator conditions used everywhere are 37.5°C, 5% CO₂, 100% humidity. However, this is not remotely realistic, and is actively damaging to most cell types. The 5% CO₂ keeps the pH in balance (the media contains buffers). But the other 95% is regular atmosphere containing ~20.9% O₂, so the effective concentration is ~19.9% O₂. But the physiological oxygen concentration in the body's tissues is much less, a fraction of a percent.

One culture phenomenon is that "primary" cultures of isolated cells don't proliferate much, but after several "passages" they eventually become "established" and more proliferative (essentially, somewhat cancerous, and losing some of the characteristics of the original cell type). There is also a limit on the total number of passages the cells can withstand (all except the most aggressive cancer lines). This is largely down to cumulative DNA damage from oxygen. If you culture the same cells under low oxygen conditions, the cells don't become established, retain their characteristics, and can be cultured nearly indefinitely. Much more realistic. This can be done with an incubator with additional gas feeds and an oxygen sensor, which can purge the excess oxygen with N₂ then add CO₂ to 5%.

Another problem is that the culture medium is static. The cells use up its nutrients and then sit in their own waste. It needs regular replacement. But this cycle of nutrient excess and deficit and waste accumulation isn't realistic either, and may also have profound effects upon cellular physiology. Tissues in the body are continually perfused by blood plasma, maintaining nutrient levels and removing waste. This is something else which researchers should be developing; in fact, developing such systems was a part of my PhD (an unsuccessful part, I should add; it's actually quite technically difficult to perfuse patterned 3D scaffolds). But doing this for flasks and plates is a much simpler problem.

So these three major areas (media, conditions, perfusion) all contain major deviations from physiological conditions which all have the potential to grossly affect research outcomes. The fact that we have all collectively stuck with what worked for over 50 years is somewhat outrageous, particularly when for the first two there are commercial solutions which could be used today, but most people ignore. That's lazy. None of it is a "money-making scheme", though there would certainly be opportunities for media and equipment vendors.

<comment><USER6> I cultured immortalised and primary cells during my PhD, and i came away with one firm decision about my postdoc: i would work on a model organism where i didn't need to do this cringe-inducingly unphysiological practice!

There were groups at the university working on zebrafish and _Xenopus tropicalis_ (a little frog), both of which are pretty sweet experimental systems.

Zebrafish are really easy to raise, and are transparent, so you can do live microscopy on them without having to do surgery or take explants. Someone i knew worked on a project where you zap them with lasers to cause wounds, and then watch immune cells respond to the damage.

Trops are more work to raise, and the embryo is not transparent, but they are the only vertebrate for which we have powerful classical genetic tools - it's naturally diploid (two copies of each chromosome, like humans, but unlike many other animals you might consider using), but if you produce embryos using sperm which has been zapped with UV light to destroy its DNA, they're haploid, and then if you block the first cell division with a cold shock, they're diploid, but with two identical copies of each chromosome [1], so sort of functionally haploid in a way which lets you investigate the effect of mutations really easily.

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4273174/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4273174/)

<comment><USER7> uh? Zebrafish aren't transparent. They are white and stripped in metallic blue. Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER8> As the other comment mentions, the embryos are, but also, you can get amelanistic zebrafish.

This might be an interesting addition. You can't usually just buy zebrafish from Petco and use them for research. There are standards in animal facilities that determine whether your fish must be "specific pathogen free" or various other levels, and so you have to generally buy them from one of a few sources if you can't bum some from a beneficent lab. When we went to purchase embryos to set up a zebrafish colony (at something like $400 for 2 females and 1 male), the facility in Europe had suffered a fire that required them to stop production for 4-6 months.

<comment><USER7> As an aquarist I find this hilarious. For $399 you could hire an expert in fish pathology to check that the fishes are free from diseases and spend the other dollar into buying the real fishes, and put it in a quarantine tank then.

> the facility in Europe had suffered a fire that required them to stop > production for 4-6 months.

This sounds very strange, unless you want to artificially create a scarcity in the supply of an animal that anybody can breed by thousands in their living room. You don't need almost any space to breed this fishes, and aquariums can be moved right?. 6 months seem too much.

I wonder why nobody has tried with another of the 100000 species of fish with transparent embryos and bypass this money-grabbing structure.

<comment><USER9> The issue is the genetic 'cleanliness' of the animals. Some zebrafish will only glow red when you feed them special stuff, some glow green, some only glow green in certain parts of their yolks/chorion. Sometimes this only happens with every other generation of females.

It's _very_ complicated and quite 'messy' when it comes to the phylogeny/genetic trees. Most of the time, researchers only need those 20 fish or so once every few years, if that. Sometimes they need to interbreed these different fish to glow green and red. There are literally tens of thousands of types of fish that have to be kept. As an example: Jackson Labs has mice ready to order to the specific genotype that you want and it gets _very_ specific [0]; zebrafish aren't quite at that level yet, but are getting there.

But the effort is worth it. Zebrafish are a great animal for studying neuro development and many other things. Many of the proposed treatments for ALS, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, etc. got their start in zebrafish and in studying how those little vertebrates function. The effort will save countless human lives.

[0][https://www.jax.org/strain/008199](https://www.jax.org/strain/008199)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In practice, this could be really bad for machine learning when applied to cell images (I work for a company that grows modified human cells and collects the images and applies DNNs to them as classifier). DMEM (or FBS, which we use) would effectively cause a systemic bias that would be hard to correct for.

<comment><USER11> Sounds interesting. Out of curiosity, what company do you work for?

<comment><USER10> insitro.com. See also Recursion Pharma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This makes me mad. Billions are being poured into medical research and I wonder how much of it is being wasted. Several weeks ago I heard that some study concluded that moderate amounts of alcohol and coffee are good for you[0]...Argh.

[0] [https://abc7news.com/health/alcohol-coffee-could-be-key- to-l...](https://abc7news.com/health/alcohol-coffee-could-be-key-to-living- longer-study-finds/4969361/)

<comment><USER13> How much is being wasted? A lot of it. But media is not one of the big problems.

Media are formulated for various reasons. The first reason is to get something to grow in culture at all. This is _hard_. Most cells from mammals won't survive more than a few hours outside the body. Most bacteria won't grow in liquid culture. So the first thing a medium is formulated for is to get something to grow. Often you fail at this entirely. Leprosy is still cultured in armadillo footpads because we don't have a medium it will grow in. Penny Boston is probably the best in the world at this, and her artistry is basically thinking of what weird thing might put the right bits in medium to get some funny bug to grow. Rusty nails, for example. Getting _a_ culture medium is a big deal.

Next is getting a repeatable culture medium. Old microbiology papers regularly used beef heart broth. That's made by boiling beef hearts and adding a few things to it. The amounts in it are completely uncontrolled. If you try the same experiment two weeks later with stringier beef hearts, and you get different results, is that the broth? Maybe. So we get defined media, media that are repeatable. Weirdly, that may still involve ground up critters. Luria-Bertani broth, which is ubiquitous, includes ground up yeast. We know how to culture yeast into a repeatable ingredient, though.

Then you have specialized broths. Can this organism produce its own ascorbic acid? Try to grow it in a medium without ascorbic acid. Once you get through a bunch of experiments like that, you end up with a minimal medium. Minimal media are incredibly useful for metabolism studies. Let me rephrase: they are essential for metabolism studies.

And then there are selective media, such as 7H9 used for mycobacteria. Tuberculosis grows in it okay. Very little else does. That's really helpful because almost every culturable organism grows faster than tuberculosis, so without a selective medium, you pretty much always get contaminated cultures.

And there are logistical issues. I know that if I grow my culture in a rich medium and then take cells from it and grow them in a minimal medium, I will get different results than if they were passaged through a minimal medium. That's not genetic, it's just physiological adaptation. But in tuberculosis, rich medium takes weeks to grow a culture in. Minimal medium takes months. Better to do a bunch of experiments in the rich medium to minimal medium, see if I find anything, then check if it's an artifact being held over from the rich medium. Cell culture studies aren't as long, but the same argument applies.

Plus every time I start working in a new medium, I have weeks or months of experiments to calibrate it, make sure I know how it affects what I'm studying, and get the data to be able to compare it to my previous media. It's a big investment, so most labs will have a handful that they use.

Meanwhile the organisms are also evolving under the selection pressures you're applying by growing them in these crazy environments. Formulating lab experiments that remain relevant to the world beyond is a difficult, detail driven subject and can go horribly wrong in many fascinating, mind bending ways. So there's a lot of wasted money in research, but it's not because of this stuff. This is table stakes, because biology is _hard_.

<comment><USER14> And all this while I used to think programming is hard!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I haven't read the article yet, but the title sounds like "by putting salt water fish in fresh water, scientists may have skewed mortality rates". I hope it's not that bad.

<comment><USER15> Found the anal retentives.</comment></comment>


My Nightmare - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2014/04/my-nightmare/

<comment><USER2> My first thought: it sounds like you are subconsciously worried that there is a bubble in the market...</comment>


Americans and Canadians might need visas for Europe - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/04/08/news/europe-visa-americans-canadians/index.html?sr=fbmoney040816europe-visa-americans-canadians0449PMVODtopLink&linkId=23245319 <comment><USER2> European officials say they may suspend a visa waiver program for the U.S. and Canada because they still require citizens of some EU countries to apply for a visa.</comment>


Square for Fundraising - <AUTHOR> https://squareup.com/card-reader/fundraising

<comment><USER2> This is an awesome idea, but the implementation of it I think could lead to scammers.

I'm very reluctant to pull my debit/credit card out for someone claiming to be collecting money for something. Since it's going to be a widely accepted practice it seems anyone with a square reader, phone, clipboard, and a nice suit could go "collect money" for a fundraiser.

Like I said, great idea... just worries me.

<comment><USER3> How is this any worse than "fundraisers" walking around neighborhoods with clipboards taking card imprints or writing down card numbers?

And, as a fraudster, how competitive is this particular vector --- of walking door to door to steal card information --- versus any of the, you know, SANE mechanisms already available to steal cards?

<comment><USER4> > How is this any worse than "fundraisers" walking around neighborhoods with > clipboards taking card imprints or writing down card numbers?

Wait, people do this? And people give up their credit card info?

<comment><USER3> I doubt it, because going door to door to attempt to steal from people's credit cards sounds like an incredibly stupid way to commit fraud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do they offer any % discounts for non-profits in this capacity?</comment>


Just how conceptually economical is the Many Worlds Interpretation? - <AUTHOR> https://philipball.blogspot.com/2019/09/just-how-conceptually-economical-is.html <comment><USER2> This presents a much more refined view of the actual difficulties surrounding MWI than a previous article I'd read by the same author in Aeon (dated February 2015): [https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis- just-a-...](https://aeon.co/essays/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a- fantasy)</comment>


500 Startups Batch 9 - <AUTHOR> http://mattermark.com/app/research/500-startups-batch-9

<comment><USER2> The original list of 500 Startups Batch 9 participants with background information for each startup was released a few months ago: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/30/500-startups-accelerator- ba...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/04/30/500-startups-accelerator-batch-9/)

This is just a list of those startups with a somewhat-arbitrary ranking applied. (a startup with a -517 score?)</comment>


How do people justify earning more than others? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33613246 <comment><USER2> I wish someone in the article had said something like this:

We live in a society where individuals are mostly free to negotiate salary and compensation with whoever they choose to work for, and employers are in turn free to negotiate with who they want to employ.

The actual compensation then comes down to a mixture of supply, demand and negotiation skills. This can often lead to "unfair" outcomes - but we've found that alternative systems in which prices and wages are externally regulated result in everyone being worse off.

Why is this so? It is not so much to do with how _hard_ people work, but how much risk-takers are compensated for taking on risk. If risk takers aren't adequately compensated (and for sure, part of what they are risking is the time they are spending), it becomes irrational for _anyone_ to take on the risk, and so no-one does. Then, everyone is worse off.

To give a concrete (but arguably overly simplified) example: During the industrial revolution, there were lots of different attempts at making more efficient steam engines. It wasn't possible to know up front which designs were going to work and which weren't. But people were motivated to _try_ lots of different things, because they knew that if they succeeded, all of the time and money spent researching each failed attempt would be more than paid for once they succeeded. Without that compensation though, it doesn't make sense to even try, leaving everyone with the inefficient steam engines.

<comment><USER3> Your concrete example doesn't work.

In a system of equal wages you'd still get paid for developing your steam engine even if it didn't work - the safety net means that engineers won't have to take a risk (beyond wasted materials) in order to develop new designs. You'd need a central bureacracy [which is the problem] so you could apply to a group akin to the InstMechEng and they would asign finances for your project or not (or you could self-finance if the costs weren't too high).

It also however means that when they make the new design everyone can benefit rather than just them. For sure, some people will consider it only worth working to improve things for themselves and so refuse to work to make new engineering advances.

A better example you could give IMO would be something like coal miners. "No one would want to work in a coal mine, as it's high risk, if the reward is the same as working in an office as that's low risk.". I don't think it's true, some people will still want to work manually, despite the risk - people take risks for pleasure so the economics are far more complicated than "people only take risk if there's greater financial compensation".

It's a source of sadness for me that one might feel the only reason to do something is to have more than other people rather than to give more, to make everyone's world better. Greed is hard to combat, I certainly haven't managed that, but it's not the only motivation to work.

<comment><USER4> "You'd need a central bureacracy [which is the problem]"

It's more than a problem - you couldn't implement such a system without a totalitarian state.

"It's a source of sadness for me"

It's a source of sadness for me that you haven't thought through the details of your plan to "make everyone's world better".

<comment><USER3> "one might feel the only reason to do something is to have more than other people"

Are you saying you do ascribe to this position, that your only motivation to work is to get more money (and by extension luxuries) than everyone else has?

My plan, which I haven't mentioned is to guard against my own tendency towards greed and basically follow Ghandi's maxim of "being the change you want to see in the world". Do you have specific objections to that plan?

<comment><USER4> "Are you saying you do ascribe to this position, that your only motivation to work is to get more money (and by extension luxuries) than everyone else has?"

No. I never said anything like that, and you are arguing dishonestly.

(For the sake of other readers: the goal of work is to achieve eudaimonia, productive happiness. The false dichotomy between "material greed" and "spiritual self-sacrifice" causes massive and unnecessary misery. See the books in my profile for details).

"Do you have specific objections to that plan?"

The change you said you wanted to see in the world was everyone earning the same wage. Here's a specific objection: let's say I'm a plumber living in your utopia, and some of my neighbours complain that InstPlumbing is often slow fixing their pipes. Though it's a fair bit of work, I'm willing to do it myself in exchange for a few of their hoarded dollars (or cigarettes, or whatever), which I later barter for extra bread rations for my kids. Whoops, now I'm earning more than other plumbers and we have inequality again.

Should I be banned from performing this greedy, selfish activity? And how are you going to stop people from engaging in such voluntary trades without totalitarian surveillance?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are better than drivers or cooks. We are not.

5% of population is working on really groundbreaking stuff. We are just lucky we are in demand but our time will come as well and then those Senior Software Engineers that brag about how they are rich and successful will be useless once again.

95% of software is pure s...t so please show some respect.

The more I work in IT and meet more people the more I appreciate "normal workers" that take care of our stomachs,clothing,trash and so on.

<comment><USER6> > 95% of us are doing shitty low IT as well so please do not pretend we are > better than drivers or cooks.

I don't think anyone is saying we're better people. Programming - even basic programming - is harder than driving a car.

<comment><USER5> That does not mean it's more useful than being able to drive a car properly.

It's pure capitalism I get it. I like capitalism okay ? I live in a socialist corrupt hellhole.

Even if it's harder that does not mean it's more useful than to drive car properly.

That's why the rich countries are outsourcing to cheaper countries so much.

How do you justify 150k salary in US vs 25k salary in India ? Different costs of living ? Yes and no. In many poor countries some stuff is just more expensive than in the richer ones.

<comment><USER6> I'm actually surprised people are asked to justify why harder jobs should be paid more.

Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that.

<comment><USER7> _> Someone considering that they deserve the same as someone else for doing and easier job is a kind of entitlement. I'd like to see someone justify that._

I'd like to see someone provide a reason why anyone would pick the "harder" jobs if they were paid the same.

If I could choose between a job digging and filling holes all day or a job where all I do is play video games - I'm not sure many holes would be dug. Extend this to hundreds of "easy" jobs and hundreds of "hard" jobs and it makes one wonder how many jobs requiring physical or repetitive labor wouldn't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the article misses the point. Since when do you need to "justify" getting a salary that is above average?

I see it as simple as: I wanted X, I was offered X-10%, we settled on X-5%. I don't need to justify anything, to anyone.

<comment><USER9> When your X is double, triple (sometimes even quadruple) the national median, I think you need to justify why you wanted (and felt entitled to) X.

<comment><USER10> Why? If someone is willing to offer me X, they value what I can do at X (or more). Why does that need justification if it's some multiple of the median?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Finn Brennan, who drove London Underground trains for 23 years and now works > for union Aslef, says drivers deserve their £49,673 annual pay because they > do a "difficult and skilled job".

> He says they start work as early as 04:45 and finish as late as 01:30, > working eight-hour shifts in a "small metal box underground" \- conditions > he says would be considered "cruel and unusual punishment" in other > circumstances.

And yet whenever LU try to automate them they go on strike. Guess it can't be that bad after all. I wonder if he can say "hypocrite"...

<comment><USER12> Eh, it's not inconsistent to have a very bad job, and that such a bad job is better than no job - the same way that one is not a hypocrite for not quitting from a bad job. People generally need money to have shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc. for themselves and their family. Do you think these merit sacrifice?

<comment><USER11> That would be something they should discuss. Instead, by striking and getting what is a well above-average salary, it could be argued they are perpetuating the suffering of future workers to have to put up with those conditions, on account of having created a very attractive 'pull' in the form of a good salary.

There could perhaps be some way of bringing in automation, moving existing employees into different roles for the remainder of their careers and therefore satisfying both aims.

Instead, from the outside, the tube unions seem to go on strike every other month. I don't see my water, gas, electricity or internet connections being switched off because workers at those companies are striking. Tube workers seem more than happy to inflict financial damage and inconvenience on the other 8 million people who live in London and who depend on them. Apparently they don't care that their actions are likely to be having a much more damaging impact on those Londoners on average salaries (as well as the large numbers on below average salaries).

I know someone on the breadline who works all hours and makes an absolute pittance. One day of not being able to go to work for someone in such a situation can literally risk their job, rent and ability to feed themselves.

I find the actions of the - by comparison wealthy - Tube unions generally disgraceful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I have spent the last X years studying hard and earning good grades. I still have nearly 5 years (planning on getting a PhD after this terminal MSc) left of education ahead of me. Why do I do this? Because it makes me entitled to a higher pay? No. I do this because I enjoy studying.

Am I entitled to a higher pay? No! But I have spent the last X years NOT earning an income. The longer you are working to amass a certain skill set the longer you defer income you could have earned. It would be nice to recoup that.

Not everyone can do what I (and my fellow) peers can do and thus we have some sort of leverage in an interview. I demand X, they offer Y and then I can negotiate because I have certain skills they want. If they want skill set Z and there are 100 people lining up in front of the building with exactly the same skill set they can just say find the first person that agrees to their abhorrent demands.

Does a higher education make you entitled to a higher pay? No. It's all about supply and demand.

This post has become kind of ranty, long, and unstructured. Sorry.

<comment><USER14> It's also about value, not just supply and demand. Your extra X years of studying most likely includes increases in the value that you can provide a potential employer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _> So as pay goes up, workers may feel less and less like they're getting what they deserve._

I remember an anecdotal story told in a social psychology class (sadly many many years ago) where a psychologist is annoyed with some kids playing in their yard. So instead of telling them to stop he/she pays them each a quarter ($0.25) and tells them if you come back tomorrow I will pay you $0.50 to play in the yard. The kids do and he repeats his promise but raises the pay to a $1.00. The kids come and the psychologist pays them. The final day the kids come but the psychologist tells the kids he is all out of money..... What do the kids do?

They stop playing in the yard. Something they did for free they are not willing to do anymore because they are no longer paid.

Sadly I can't remember what theory the anecdote was teaching (maybe consistency theory?).

</comment><comment><USER16> Well this demonstrates how economically illiterate people are. What matters is market rate and how well you negotiate. The rest is part of market rate equation or irrerevant.

<comment><USER17> Those are not the only variables affecting leverage when negotiating pay. As reference see Hollywood actor paychecks after and before Michael Ovitz and CAA.

<comment><USER16> Yes they are. He negotiated market rate for the actors.

<comment><USER17> Ok, if we take this wide view then yes. But "market rate" is not always a very descriptive when discussing pricing in general because there are often time corner cases where the phenomenon that's actually important is not captured by it. I.e. in market situations where the price can be effectively agreed in an oligopoly then the discussion about oligopolists' pricing has a social context as well, and things like "political leverage" are far more important in studying the phenomenon in larger context than just observing the preset "market rate".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've made peace with the fact that life isn't fair...and work hard to be on the right side of that coin toss.

</comment><comment><USER19> Funny thing is the opposite is true too; if you make less than others, at some point people expect an explanation.

__________

Even more bizarrely, if for some reason people believe you're doing "nothing" they rapidly switch to projecting their expectations of what doing nothing means to them.

In the end, it's just hard for people to understand that some people are different than them and the answer is not to suggest everyone be the same.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wouldn't even attempt to justify this in a market-based economy...earning as much as you can to _take care_ of yourself and your family and _shelter_ them from the vagaries of life is kinda the point, right?

Actors acting in their interest to maximize happiness and well-being is the basis of all modern non-Marxist economies, and every metric related to those goals shows that this albeit-non-perfect-system works pretty damn good.

There really isn't any point in rehashing the 160yo Marxism v. Capitalism argument here, I know, but there is almost zero evidence that _in a wildly diversified and large society_ (not Sweden or Denmark, for example), that a government-controlled economy can bring happiness and well-being to its people.

<comment><USER21> Wildly diversified and large society?

As far as I remember Germany has 1/3rd of the population of the US – and a social democracy very similar to Denmark or Sweden. And Germany has large immigrant populations as well.

Could you explain why this concept can work with 80 million people in Germany, but not, say, the 40 million people living in California?

<comment><USER20> Germany is a complex and rather unique blend between both systems, and frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high-volume immigration policies.

The US has a plenty of "safety-net socialism" as well, so I'm not sure of your point you are making about CA..a country that almost doubles its national debt ($12t to $20t) in only 8 years is surely doing its best to provide for its people, no?

For how many generations is that possible before the country bankrupts itself?

<comment><USER21> > frankly wasn't really that diverse until rather recently with Merkel's high- > volume immigration policies.

That's not true.

The current influx of foreigners is about an order of magnitude smaller than the influx of foreigners from Turkey during the 70s.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This topic is explored in Michael Sandel's book Justice[1]. IIRC his conclusion is that we are products of our environment and as such we owe a debt to the environment that helped create us: university, school, parents and not least of all the society that helped to build everything that came before us.

So the question should not be how do you justify earning it but just how much can you justify keeping it?

Kind of lefty, I know, but it's Friday :)

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do- ebook/d...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Justice-Whats-Right-Thing-Do- ebook/dp/B002RUA4XE?ie=UTF8&ref_=dp_kinw_strp_1)

<comment><USER23> I prefer a lefty guy on a friday than all those cynical-I-deserve-to-be-rich- they-deserve-to-be-poor guys on monday, thursday, wednesday, tuesday ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I think it should be the other way round: if somebody thinks somebody else is being paid too much, they should have to explain why they think that is possible. That is, there has to be a market failure and they should explain what caused it.

Often the envy seems to be about jobs where people have little idea of what is involved. For example in banking or being a CEO. I guess most people have a rough idea of the importance of a doctors skill, so they complain less. I also see few complaints about artists earning millions of dollars. How does Beyonce justify her income - maybe she should be replaced by some random street musician?

<comment><USER25> People absolutely complain about artists earning millions of dollars. Do you remember Lars and Napster?

<comment><USER24> To be honest, I don't remember. I know Napster, but not Lars.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> How hedonic adaptation produces just world assumption.

</comment><comment><USER27> Instead of talking about money, turn it into man-hours. How many regular people do you deserve working full-time for your personal benefit?

I think that puts claims on millions of dollars in perspective. Of course, given global inequality, most of us here probably have more than one full time servant-equivalent working for us.

</comment><comment><USER28> Supply vs Demand x Potential Benefit of your position?

</comment><comment><USER29> How do people justify asking such stupid questions?</comment>


WebKit Will Soon Support CSS Variables - <AUTHOR> https://lists.webkit.org/pipermail/webkit-dev/2012-May/020633.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The actual draft spec is here:

<http://www.w3.org/TR/css-variables/>

</comment><comment><USER2> The interesting part is that CSS variables are inherited unlike in SCSS/SASS. That means you'll have to assign all your variables to ancestor nodes if you want to reuse them everywhere on the page.

I can see the `:root` selector getting pretty crowded with variable declarations.</comment>


Blogger page views - <AUTHOR>

How are these blogs in blogger.com getting these random page views. I just started a blog yesterday and i didn't share it or promote it but still i got around 50 page views in under 8 hours. Most of these came form U.S. Any idea?
Crawlers ? <comment><USER2> odd

<comment><AUTHOR> ya it is, But maybe because spammers and search engine spiders.</comment></comment>