Amazon joins in on killing Flash, stops accepting Flash ads - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/news/amazon-joins-in-on-killing-flash-stops-accepting-flash-ads-1631748/ <comment><USER2> You know Flash is dead when Homestar Runner says it's dead! [http://www.homestarrunner.com/flashisdead.html](http://www.homestarrunner.com/flashisdead.html) For those who don't know, this site was a legit phenomenon in the early 2000's, and it has always been 100% flash-based. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestar_Runner](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestar_Runner)

<comment><USER3> How hard would it be to convert those Flash videos into mp4s for archival in the IA?

EDIT: Looks like they've been uploaded to Youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/user/homestarrunnerdotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/homestarrunnerdotcom)

<comment> martin-adams Not quite so straight forward, a lot of their videos were interactive for hidden gems. They will be lost when moving to a linear file format.

<comment><USER2> With access to the source, it should be possible to export them to HTML5 using Adobe's flash authoring tools. I've never tried it though, and I don't know how good the HTML5 versions would be.

Edit: huh, it kinda runs with Mozilla's Flash-runtime replacement, Shumway. Another few rounds of bugfixes and we might not need any Adobe code to play these files just as they are.

<comment><USER4> The problem with most current Flash-to-HTML5 conversions is that they only barely support ActionScript, if at all. So anything meaningfully interactive (like minigames) is pretty much out.

<comment><USER5> Shumway makes it sound like "we got this" (which then discourages someone like me--someone who has a ton of knowledge of compiler design and a lot of background specifically with JavaScript-based language but almost no interest in duplicating effort, someone who would normally see this call to action and go "oh, I'll add this to my todo list"\--from even spending much time researching the current space). Are you saying Shumway only "barely" supports ActionScript?

<comment><USER2> There are several such projects - swfdec, lightspark, gnash, etc. From what I've seen of them, they all underestimated the amount of effort. Most of them just petered out. So if you're going for it, I would worry less about duplicating effort and more about setting realistic goals for the project.

<comment><USER4> The big problem is that AS2 and AS3 are drastically different from each other and neither of them can safely be ignored.

Supporting even one of them in its entirety is a Herculean effort. Supporting both is insane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Amazon is switching to JavaScript animated ads to support all devices. This isn't anything against Flash, this is a business decision to reach more eyeballs.

Flash is fast. JavaScript/HTML5/WebGL/etc are just recently getting close to the performance we had in Flash 10+ years ago. Flash is perceived to be slow because it was used to make obtrusive advertising, like JavaScript is used now.

The evil dictator has been replaced, with much fanfare, by a new evil dictator!

An example from 2010 of Flash running in-browser 3D with millions of polygons and lighting effects: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaXvTsoeVs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szaXvTsoeVs)

<comment><USER7> Flash's speed on desktops is not the main strike against it, although it was actually quite bad for many things (the 3d stuff worked better for it because it bypassed its aging 2d rendering engine which no-one left at Adobe understood or could fix). Flash's speed on mobile was abysmal and Adobe tried and failed to fix it for years (after Steve Jobs' famously pointed all this stuff out).

The fact that Flash would store user information separately from the browser in such a way as to circumvent security and privacy models, and did so for years after Macromedia (i.e. pre-Adobe-merger) knew about it, and that Flash had and has as many vulnerabilities as any two operating systems is simply icing on the cake.

Here's a discussion -- also from 2010 -- of Flash's abysmal 2d performance (which entailed fixing an example created explicitly to show how awesome Flash was):

[http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362](http://loewald.com/blog/?p=3362)

Bear in mind, this is Flash's nearly 20-year-old/mature rendering engine optimized to only do minimal screen updates against a five minute hack using a canvas.

And, finally, you need Javascript anyway. Flash actually needs Javascript to even load properly (thanks to the stupid Eolas lawsuit), so it's a case of giving up one evil dictator while keeping a not-nearly-so-evil-and-much-more- useful dictator.

<comment><USER8> > Flash's speed on desktops is not the main strike against it

Flash's speed on _windows_ wasn't the main strike against it. As a Mac user it was always quite slow, even worse in the PPC days.

<comment><USER6> I didn't notice any drastic difference between the two operating systems in that regard. I had to test educational software written in Flash on a range of computer systems years ago. Adobe has always supported Apple/Windows evenly, so I'm surprised you would experience a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If we want to speed up the demise of flash, there are several roots that need to be whacked simultaneously:

1\. Tons of existing flash content people want to access

2\. Give current flash devs a reasonable alternative

The first one is a thorny problem and is somewhat solved by things like Shumway but still needs more work.

As for the second, things like Unity and HTML5 have not covered all of flash dev's use cases, so only some of them have switched over.

I think OpenFL (a Haxe-based reimplementation of the Flash API -- _not the flash PLAYER_ ) is our best hope for that:

[http://www.openfl.org](http://www.openfl.org)

[http://www.haxe.org](http://www.haxe.org)

Devs can keep their current flash workflows but export to non-flash targets, specifically native C++ (supports mac/win/linux, iOS/Android) and HTML5 (with canvas, DOM, or WebGL rendering). They can also use SWF-based vector animation assets, and even integrate with the Flash CC player. And it's all open source.

Flash has been "dying" for years, but if we really want it to bite the dust, we need to give people a better way to make their content that doesn't depend on a plugin.

EDIT: Video of OpenFL integrating with the Flash CC editor: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU)

<comment><USER10> Media players: browsers don't have native support for H.264 over HLS or RTMP, and MPEG-Dash seems native to Chrome only. If the browsers could accept these natively, this would certainly speed flash's demise. Until then, what are the alternatives?

<comment><USER11> Exactly. Much of the live streaming on the web defaults to flash, the alternatives (hls, rtsp, webrtc) are all underperforming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Cool. Now if only Amazon would eat its own dogfood. Their Prime Music/Cloud library music player still requires Flash in order to use.

<comment><USER13> Now if only the music licencing services backing Prime don't require flash and DRM ..

<comment><USER14> Does Netflix still require flash?

<comment><USER13> Silverlight is required on browsers that do not support EME

<comment><USER15> Can EME be used in streaming music players, like Prime Music or Spotify?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I've been wanting to update my existing Flash games (I've released 7 games) to something more modern, like HTML5+JS or (maybe) Unity, but I don't want to spend a ton of time learning a new stack and getting things working, as I really don't have the free time I used to.

A few of the games have heavy use of graphics and animation also, that I don't really want to have to recreate manually. I've worked on games made with Unity and Cocos2d(ios) since then, but I'm really hoping there's some shortcut I'm not aware of.

There's a ton of JS frameworks out there and it's hard to evaluate which would be worth the time and effort.

Plus I really don't want to have to do this again in the future, so hopefully this can be something I do once and I'm good for the forseeable future (which is why I'm leaning towards HTML5 + JS). Some cross-platform capabilities would be nice too.

Example of the heavy art/animation: [http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/187047](http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/187047)

If anyone has any suggestions, I'd appreciate it.

<comment><USER9> OpenFL!

[http://www.openfl.org/learn/tutorials/using-swf- assets/](http://www.openfl.org/learn/tutorials/using-swf-assets/)

[http://community.openfl.org/t/using-swf-assets-tutorial- feed...](http://community.openfl.org/t/using-swf-assets-tutorial-feedback- wanted/1450)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU)

That's as close as you get to keeping your existing workflow and maintaining your assets. It's really close IMHO and works well. Also there's some scripts that can translate As3->Haxe and take care of 95% of the work of porting the code, and then OpenFL has the same API as flash does so your API calls are all the same.

Alternatively FLUMP can be used if you just want to export assets and use a totally different framework: [http://threerings.github.io/flump/](http://threerings.github.io/flump/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great! Now I'll no longer see these "Click to Play" placeholders instead of the intrusive animated ads. I'll finally be able to experience the intrusive animated ads the way they were meant to be seen.

... Yay?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm actually torn on this, because the fact is that Flash can do things that you realistically can't do any other way. In my case, I've written a couple of video conferencing apps that need web-web and web-Android connectivity, and Flash/AIR is still definitely the easiest way to do that sort of thing. WebRTC has promise, but it requires a reasonably recent browser (and not Safari), and until very recently it didn't work in WebViews on the Android side.

</comment><comment><USER18> I tried to uninstall Flash, but my bank (Citi) uses it for their one-time credit card # applet. And, I miss a lot of videos on the internets, but I can live without those. The bank thing, I cannot. (Yeah, I complained and was told moving away is "in the works.")

<comment><USER19> Same thing here, my bank updated their entire website, except for internet banking which still uses flash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only thing I will miss on flash is the Copy to clippboard feature (e.g [http://zeroclipboard.org/](http://zeroclipboard.org/)).

Is there other way to do the same when flash will be extinct?

<comment> dao- see document.execCommand("copy"), document.execCommand("cut"): [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Document/ex...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/API/Document/execCommand)

<comment><USER21> So in other words... NO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm actually a bit conflicted about this. The nice thing about Flash-based media is that one can disable JavaScript (thus increasing one's privacy) and then enable Flash _only_ to view a particular video (e.g. on Amazon Play); with JavaScript and HTML5, one generally has to enable JavaScript for the entire domain rather than a single video on a single page.

Why would one want to disable JavaScript in the first place? Privacy & security: why enable a site to execute random code on one's own machine when all one wants to do is read some content?

<comment><USER23> Flash has had vulerabilities and executes arbitrary code as well... What's the difference?

At least with javascript, there's only one attack vector (the browser itself). Flash requires a plugin to work properly.

<comment><USER22> > Flash has had vulerabilities and executes arbitrary code as well... What's > the difference?

It sure has! But it's nice to expose oneself to vulnerabilities only when absolutely necessary (e.g. to view a single video), rather than for every page currently loaded for a site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm a flash dev in my 30s, never made as much money as I am making now. Flash is not dead, it's changing, it moved to embedded devices and has blazing performance results. As usual, a decade ahead of where the web is at. [http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air.html](http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/air.html) Haters gotta hate! (-__-)

<comment><USER25> Curious here, what do you use it for on embedded devices?

<comment><USER24> Sorry sir, meant 'mobile' devices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We need Google to remove bundling Flash player in Chrome. Chrome for OS X has Flash built-in. Not sure about other build.

<comment><USER27> My understanding is that Chrome for Flash uses Pepper (a NaCl extension) for its plugin support so its not a vector for attack. You can always turn it off from chrome:plugins.

<comment><USER28> >plugin support so its not a vector for attack.

I wanna say this is untrue, I vaguely recalling an exploit within the past month or so.

<comment><USER29> Hacking Team's Flash 0-day: Potent enough to infect actual Chrome user

[http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/hacking-teams- flash-...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/07/hacking-teams-flash-0day- potent-enough-to-infect-actual-chrome-user/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm sure this decision made them a fair number of enemies in the far east...

</comment><comment><USER31> ok, now we need spotify to make a move

</comment><comment><USER21> I have Flash enabled all the time. No probs here. Smooth and efficient. I have no agenda or need to kill it.

So much viral hate. Plugins have a right to exist. You gonna declare war on all plugins or just Flash? HTML doesn't necessarily run its full suite of tricks on all browsers and platforms. And my iPad3 often slows to a crawl because of bloated well-known websites. Browser memory maxes out and I can't even switch tabs without full page reloading. Inefficiency follows poor technical design no matter what technology is used.

Is javascript next because of those trendy promo pops where they think you're leaving? Kill everything that sux, or whatever technology it comes from. Kill it all and dance on its grave like there's no tomorrow.

Tomorrow we'll retreat to our native apps with virtual coins and account validation. We'll share our contact lists without knowing that we did, and we won't be blocking ads because we can't.

Tried the Youtube HTML player once. That was one hell of a rough and buggy experience. Switched back to Flash.

Clicked a link to youtube in iOS Safari more than once, and got auto-switched to the youtube app rather than the video play in Safari. I don't know what or who to hate about that, I'm just tired.

<comment><USER32> Flash is a closed source binary plugin with a long history of security vulnerabilities that Adobe was slow to patch. For the most part, JavaScript engines are open source, don't have a history of security vulnerabilities (to the same severity), and are typically patched quickly.

<comment><USER33> Here is a 2014 vulnerability report of Secunia: [https://secunia.com/resources/vulnerability-review/update- al...](https://secunia.com/resources/vulnerability-review/update-all/)

Google Chrome is at the top with most vulnerabilities, IE a bit below it, Avant browser, Firefox. Same with the 2015 edition.

Flash didn't even make it in the top 20. And yes, they also evaluated it.

<comment><USER34> You can't compare counts of published vulnerabilities when organizations have vastly different standards of publication. Open source projects (e.g. Firefox, chromium) publish everything, even internally found flaws. Closed-source projects tend to publish only those reported by external reporters, not ones they found internally. At least one hopes they are also fixing lots of internal bugs! They might not be, in which case a low vulnerability count could actually mean they've got lots of unfixed vulnerabilities.

What about attacks found in the wild? Flash takes the cake there, although that may in part mean its ubiquity makes it a useful target.

In any case you can't use Flash to browse the web. You are already taking on the risk of whatever vulnerabilities lurk in your chosen browser; using Flash is adding vulnerability risk on top.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A game made without coding - <AUTHOR> https://www.scirra.com/construct2/games/the-next-penelope I was just amazing that a non code based environment could create such an amazing piece of work. <comment><USER2> This looks cool. It looks like Unity. Though I'm really dubious about the game logic being faster to implement without coding.

Unity has a very comprehensive animation system that you can program entirely using the UI without code, with flow charts and so on. I never use it because it is so slow and tedious to drag lots of boxes around and connect them and fill them in rather than write one line of code with a simple equation. I feel the same about Strumpys shader editor for example.

<comment><AUTHOR> Its aimed at beginners. If you know the logic and design upfront, I think coding is quicker. But this allows you to iterate ideas at a faster pace than coding. Its not really a Unity competitor, its a totally novel way of doing things. I think this game is the first proper polished game from the tool.</comment></comment>


Mapquest sold for undisclosed amount "not material enough to file paperwork" - <AUTHOR> https://searchengineland.com/a-eulogy-for-mapquest-322945 <comment><USER2> MapQuest seems most valuable for its ability to petition Europe or the US to take antitrust proceedings based on its case.</comment>


Hospitals to launch their own drug company to fight high prices and shortages - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/09/06/644935958/hospitals-prepare-to-launch-their-own-drug-company-to-fight-high-prices-and-shor <comment><USER2> If you think about it, the entire US pharma industry paradigm doesn't really make sense. A lot of exploratory research into drugs is publicly funded, but for some reason we then rely on private companies to pass FDA trials and bring the drug to market, at the cost of profits/subsidies/advertising/executive compensation/rent seeking IP.

Why not publicly fund R&D all the way up to when a drug passes FDA trials, then allow any private company to produce a generic version of the drug? That way you have competition on the price of manufacturing without all the unnecessary costs involved with private IP

<comment><USER3> The amount of innovation and capital at risk in private biotech companies is similar to that for the tech industry.

If we got rid of the tech industry and had the govt do all of it, do you believe we'd be where we are today?

I'd argue we wouldn't be.

One of the big reasons why small biotech's outperform big pharmaceutical companies is the lack of bureaucracy and high level of risk taking. Two things the govt is bad at.

As well, one reason why we have so many drugs is there are thousands of companies placing different bets on an idea. If that was all pulled under a centralized committee that made decisions on what to pursue, we'd be missing out on a ton of long-shots that every "smart" person said would never work.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for your opinion! :)

You make it sound like there is a hard barrier between these two options but like most things in reality it is a continuum. You can have mainstream R&D be publicly funded all the way and not necessarily restrict private companies from competing.

I personally believe that there is a good chance that a centralized publicly funded and nonprofit pharmaceutical organization could outperform most for profits on various important metrics. At least something that should be investigated and not dismissed outright.

Regarding long-shots, I think you fall victim to the survivorship bias here. Even if some good things came out of it, the question is at what cost? If many tries fail you really need some big wins to cover those costs. Thus, it's really something that you should look into on an empirical level before making strong judgements.

<comment><USER5> Out of curiosity, do you have any specific proposals thoughts about what this centrally funded / non profit approach would look like, and why it would work?

My contention is that drugs are expensive because developing drugs is expensive. Developing drugs is expensive because biology is hard. Public vs private funding would not change that

<comment><USER4> Hey, sorry for getting back to you so late but I had a full weekend :)

I am not an expert in the pharmaceutical space so take everything I say with a big grain of salt. I would think it could be possible to have some agency like NSF or FDA be tasked with financing studies to develop medicines and do medical trials, etc. I don't think it would need to look much different what there is now, maybe higher and more long-term grants for applied R&D. Manufacturing could then be outsourced, Apple style. I guess the main challenge would be to have reporting and grants be distributed effectively and fairly. There should be some level of friendly competition/ cooperation to ensure that progress is being made. But I think, in principle this already works pretty well through peer review and on some level metric tracking for individual researchers (although I would argue we still often track the wrong metrics). So it's all about designing the right incentives work work to get done, profit is but one of the possible metrics to achieve that.

This of course does not change that the work itself is incredibly hard. The benefit of doing it in a more "structured" and nonprofit way is that it is possible to create a more specific/ tailored/ guided set of outcomes given the ability to align the incentives with societal goals. Everything you see going on in blockchain is work in that direction. How can we design economic systems where incentives are aligned to create an overall desireable outcome for individuals, the community and society at large?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Doesn't stop the hospital from turning around and gouging their patients and leaving them a ridiculous hospital bill which seems to be the norm in this country[1].

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2017/09/05/3-ways-h...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertpearl/2017/09/05/3-ways- hospitals-overcharge-you-and-what-can-be-done-about-it/#824bf922f1d3)

<comment><AUTHOR> Incidentally, one of the health systems (Intermountain) leading the initiative is itself also non-profit.

<comment><USER6> Non profit hospitals overcharge just like for profit hospitals [1].

[1]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2015/1...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2015/11/13/how-nonprofit-hospitals-overcharge-the-under-and- uninsured/?utm_term=.c26748ea0ec0)

<comment><USER7> Hospital funding is a mess in the US. The US government flat out gives money to for profit hospitals because of how messed up the system is. EX: [https://www.hrsa.gov/rural-health/index.html](https://www.hrsa.gov/rural- health/index.html)

Non profit's still need to play the game to stay in business because their costs are no lower.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cry me a river. The more I've learned about it, the more it seems like hospitals are the ones making the majority of the profit in the US's strange and byzantine healthcare system. The cost of their services are generally absurd, and not adequately balanced by customers and competition because 'insurance will pay for it'.

<comment><USER9> Yes, a friend of mine, a doctor at our local hospital, has shared his pessimism about the hospital's pricing and profit stance with me. In his mind they capitalize on our rural economy and only an idiot would get treated locally rather than drive to the bay area where the pricing is much more reasonable (!).

Even worse (in my mind), the hospital bears the name of a major religion. As if God needed this kind of PR...

<comment><USER10> It's estimated that 50% of hospitals in the US are currently owned by Catholic organizations. For some this is thought to be good because as religious organizations they can run as non-profits and non-taxable. But this comes with other problems such as being denied care like abortions or end of life care that conflicts with church beliefs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't recommend the book Overcharged enough if you really want to understand what is wrong with American healthcare. The answer is basically everything, but the fee-per-service billing model and third-party billing that obfuscates prices are the essential causes.

[https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health- Car...](https://www.amazon.com/Overcharged-Americans-Much-Health- Care/dp/1944424768)

<comment><USER12> _David A. Hyman is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute_

Yes, if you are paid to argue against price caps you argue against price caps.

<comment><USER11> Yes, it's from Cato, but really it's a whirlwind tour of what's wrong with the system from a group that has no dog in the fight. But the democrats and republicans are very, very invested. If you are skeptical, read the book, and then make your decision. It has thousands of citations, it is more academic than opinion.

<comment><USER12> It's the Cato Institute, it's supported by the Koch Foundation, and the Koch Brothers are supporters of economic and individual liberty. Whoever is supported by someone's money is not going to argue against their dearly held viewpoints.

An interesting question that a scientist would ask: how does that book argue against price caps and monopsony buyers, considering that that approach works extremely well in the civilized world. Health expenditures in all other OECD countries are about 1/4 of what they are in the US.

<comment><USER11> One model suggested is we let people take the money they put into health insurance and instead put it into a health savings account. Given that family plus employer pays about $20k per year for a family of 4, the value adds up quite quickly. Then you let the family take as income any amount they don't spend. This encourages frugality and price shopping for routine procedures.

Additionally, the government should backstop everything with catastrophic insurance as is done in Switzerland, so if cancer hits you don't go destitute.

Also, we should drastically expand retail medical care, with advertised prices, as it has routinely been shown to reduce costs through competition and price shopping (LASIK, Botox, vasectomies, etc. all prove this out).

They go in great detail about pharmaceuticals and the suggestion that a prize based system would be better than the current system of the government paying for all the research and then letting a private company gouge the consumers who paid for it with tax dollars.

The book is very detailed, if you are interested in this subject I highly recommend it. Keep an open mind, clearly neither the American left or right has solved this issue and this book is very refreshing.

<comment><USER12> When it comes to health insurance you want to spread the risk over a group of people. Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic illness and need continuous medication and frequent physician visits. Price shopping doesn't work - when you need medical care you need it, and it's the big-ticket items that drive the cost. When you take the kids to the doctor because they have a fever, that kind of visit is a few hundred dollars at most.

<comment><USER13> > Health savings accounts are very nice, except when you have a chronic > illness and need continuous medication and frequent physician visits

That's covered by the parent's catastrophic scenario, which would be backstopped by the Federal Government. If you have a diagnosed chronic illness, you are no longer operating under any semblance of normal health terms, it's catastrophic.

The US could easily segment itself into these two systems (Federal catastrophic program, eliminating most bankruptcies; and a market system, for routine and trivial healthcare items), and it would be a drastic improvement over how the healthcare system works today.

Medicaid is 22% of all health coverage today, expand that to 25-30%. Medicare is 15% of the population, expand that to 20%. Use that 50% leverage to aggressively deflate pricing in healthcare (which is a stick the government largely refuses to use). Create a Federal catastrophic program for the other 50% of people.

Now to implement this obvious, dramatic improvement, all you have to do is change everything about US politics and remove nearly every politician.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The fact that hospitals are launching the drug company is irrelevant. The argument here seems to be that there aren't enough generics companies out there to compete for existing demand, leading to spotty supply (untapped demand) and high prices.

Besides, generics aren't the "expensive drugs" most people think of when they talk pharmaceuticals. Hospitals will do nothing to fight those high prices because they can't -- pharma companies need to recoup their R&D. The alternative is having less R&D, which I believe nobody to be in favor of.

<comment><USER15> Why not publicly funded R&D?

<comment><USER14> Do you trust the government to spend money wisely (read efficiently) more than you trust investors?

<comment><USER16> Yes. Very much so.

Profit, while useful in the market, has an upper limit before it can be considered a lack of efficiency, IMO. In some sense, it is the stripping of productive economic value, which is then given to shareholders. It is basically a tax that produces wealth rather than wellbeing.

When shareholders have this money, do they use it wisely in the economy? I don't think that this is an absolute truth. Can the government do better? Yes, if we abandon the conceptual thought that government is always the problem, or by default inefficient, when in fact it can be demonstrated that governments around the world, and here, do many things very well.

<comment><USER17> are you familiar with risk

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another method is to declare at a nation-state level that you're going to ignore patents on certain pricey medicines, such as in India.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=india+drug+price+patents&oq=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=india+drug+price+patents&oq=india+drug+price+patents&aqs=chrome..69i57j33.6516j1j7&sourceid=chrome- mobile&ie=UTF-8)

India is big enough that it can push back against big pharma.

<comment><USER2> This only works if you can get private businesses in other parts of the world to do your R&D for you. Not a viable strategy for _all_ of the world, tragedy of the commons, etc.

<comment><USER19> > This only works if you can get private businesses in other parts of the > world to do your R&D for you. Not a viable strategy for all of the world, > tragedy of the commons, etc.

That's assuming the prices set by those drug R&D organizations are fair and reasonable given the work they're doing. However, if they're engaging in predatory pricing in pursuit of maximum profit (which is almost certain), the world could probably get along just fine with all medical R&D being performed by nonprofits at-cost.

<comment><USER20> This is why the USSR created the Polio vaccine, Venezuela created the MMR vaccine, and India leads the world in drug resistant antibiotics.

OH WAIT.

<comment><USER19> > This is why the USSR created the Polio vaccine, Venezuela created the MMR > vaccine, and India leads the world in drug resistant antibiotics.

> OH WAIT.

The USSR actually did a lot of interesting work developing phage therapies which could become increasingly important as current antibiotics become more and more ineffective due to antibiotic resistant bacteria.

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

And it's not like any of the vaccines you listed were developed by corporations following capitalist profit-motives. The ones I checked were developed by researchers focusing on contributing to the public good, for instance:

> Salk [developer of the first successful polio vaccine] campaigned for > mandatory vaccination, claiming that public health should be considered a > "moral commitment."[7] His sole focus had been to develop a safe and > effective vaccine as rapidly as possible, with no interest in personal > profit. When asked who owned the patent to it, Salk said, "Well, the people > I would say. There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?" > ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Salk))

But of course, you probably didn't know that. People who write comments like yours usually don't know much beyond certain ignorant dogmas.

<comment><USER20> I knew Salk refused the patent, not about the USSR's pioneering work in barely feeding their people (sorry, phage therapies).

But if Salk had made 100M dollars, would that have been bad? Lebron is worth way more than that. He plays basketball.

We as a society should be recognizing and paying for talent, not pretending workers co-ops and non-profits are effective or that capitalism hasn't produced all of the good things we enjoy.

<comment><USER19> > I knew Salk refused the patent, not about the USSR's pioneering work in > barely feeding their people (sorry, phage therapies).

That's pretty stupid snark, by the way. More evidence of unthinking dogmatism and rather limited understanding.

No one sensible seriously claims the Soviet Union had a model worthy of emulation. However, it's foolish to think it was totally flawed or that its flaws somehow prove "capitalism is best, the more the better."

> But if Salk had made 100M dollars, would that have been bad? Lebron is worth > way more than that. He plays basketball.

> We as a society should be recognizing and paying for talent, not pretending > workers co-ops and non-profits are effective or that capitalism hasn't > produced all of the good things we enjoy.

Some segments of society need to stop pretending that capitalism is a suitable replacement for literally every other kind of human motivation. The main strength of capitalism is that it _sometimes_ incentivizes the already greedy according to their own logic to behave in ways that are socially beneficial (at least more than some other systems), but that's about it.

It's a serious error to want to corrupt the noble people who raise above greed and want to do good for its own sake to the point they need to rely on capitalism to motivate them. It's also a serious error to think that capitalist motivations will accomplish all the good those people would have done for their more noble reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Given that the raw materials are incredibly cheap compared to the resulting medications, charging often $10+ per pill for what costs a fraction of a cent with all costs included, patients ought to consider banding together and forming an employee- and customer-owned co-op generics pharmaceuticals co. that charges cost plus X%.

<comment><USER14> Except they can't manufacture drugs if someone else owns the patents. Drug prices drop significantly after generics come into play, at least for those drugs that are very easy to produce.

<comment><USER21> smh. READ. Generics. There are overpriced generics which make absolutely no sense other than a lack of competition.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, but Joe Startup can address that as much as these hospitals -- and will potentially be better at it since manufacturing drugs isn't the core business of these hospitals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Funny since US hospitals are just as guilty as the drug companies of gouging the public with abusive pricing ... I'm not sure consumers will see any of those cost reductions. More likely the hospitals will pocket the difference.

</comment><comment><USER23> > _Civica Rx will require hospitals to commit to long-term contracts to buy > the medications at fixed prices, even if another generic company drops its > prices lower. Liljenquist argues that the long-term stability will be more > attractive than the short-term temptation of getting a deal._

Just a guess: existing high-priced generic pharma companies will react by offering similar long-term contracts. They'll try to do an end run around Civica Rx.

I will admit that I'm puzzled that the FDA has not reacted to the high prices and shortages by allowing more competitors to be licensed to create various drugs and to enter the market quickly and easily.

<comment><USER24> Being a renal patient, I take a whole bunch of medications. One of the medicines I take became generic 1 year ago and now it is only $5/month under my insurance. Meanwhile another one became generic 4 months ago but it is still $90/month under my insurance. I just cant wait till next year when hopefully my insurer renegotiates the second one down. I think when 3-4 generics manufacturers start selling a medicine, the prices go down a lot.

<comment><USER3> The first generic drug approved gets 6 months of exclusivity where no other generic drug can be approved by the FDA.

As such, the first generic is typically ~10-20% lower than the branded drug. Once the 6 months expire, other generic manufacturers pile in (assuming it's a big enough market) and the price drops 80-90%.

<comment><USER25> > _The first generic drug approved gets 6 months of exclusivity where no other > generic drug can be approved by the FDA._

Not quite. The first patent that files a lawsuit challenging a patent on the non-generic drug and _wins_ said lawsuit gets 180 days exclusivity.

This rule was established to incentivize generic companies to challenge drug patents and get their products to market sooner.

In the case where the patents aren't being challenged, there's no exclusivity for generic drugs.

In practice, this 180 day exclusivity is a very big deal to generic companies, because typically the first to market among the generics will have a big edge in capturing the market (once a drug has a generic, pharmacies will typically automatically fill prescriptions for the brand name drug with the equivalent generic unless the doctor specifies not to).

<comment><USER3> You can get 180 exclusivity even if you don't challenge the validity of the patent.

From the FDA guidance[1 - page 6]:

When filing an ANDA, the sponsor can do one of the following 4 things to gain 180 exclusivity: (1) indicate no patent exists in the Orange Book (paragraph I cert), (2) that the patent has expired (paragraph II cert), (3) that the patent will expire on said date (paragraph III cert) or (4) that the patent is invalid, unenforceable or will not be infringed (paragraph IV cert)

But you are correct in that it's the status of the patent and how it relates to the filing that drives the 180 day exclusivity. My comment was a simplification, since I can't think of anyone who would file and not do that.

[1][https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegula...](https://www.fda.gov/downloads/Drugs/GuidanceComplianceRegulatoryInformation/Guidances/UCM536725.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This was announced in January. Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16182152)

</comment><comment><USER27> How far they can succeed is a big question mark. It's not easy to compete with the mafias of the pharma industry

</comment><comment><USER28> AFT

</comment><comment><USER29> Can we just get universal income and be done this?? Capitalism has to become obsolete at some point.

<comment><USER30> In what way would universal income eliminate shortages of generic drugs?</comment></comment>


AWS Security Documentation, by Category - <AUTHOR> https://docs.aws.amazon.com/security/ <comment><USER2> Grokking all of that is a massive undertaking, but it really NEEDS to be done by anybody deploying critical systems on AWS. I wish they would go so far as to require some confirmation that the security docs were reviewed before being able to deploy to a particular service. At least in cases where PII is involved, it's not optional in many jurisdictions to ignore them.

Sure that UX could hurt adoption, but wouldn't it ultimately boost retention? Success with a cloud IT org means nothing breaks and nothing leaks. Part of helping customers succeed is helping them not to fail to the point of catastrophic business risk. How many billions of private records have been leaked from S3 or ElasticSearch because of simple, detectable, preventable misconfiguration.

AWS provides a number of security and compliance services today- for a price. They would do well to suggest sane defaults like they do with a default VPC.

<comment><USER3> This is where many folks don't understand enterprise. The tech has gotta work but it shouldn't impact the business in a negative way either. This is why out of the box, no vendors are perfect for us in the banking world because they just don't get it yet and hence, kicks off a huge wave of customisations just to get it up to an enterprise security standard.

<comment><AUTHOR> We should talk... email in profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Half-OT: On Twitter I read a few times people stopped using IAM, but never got an answer when I asked what they were doing instead.

I had the impression IAM was required. Does anyone has more infos on this?

<comment><USER5> You have to use IAM, but if you're feeling particularly rebellious then you can setup one Admin account and one API account with liberal permissions and never touch IAM again. For obvious reasons it wouldn't be recommended...

<comment><USER6> I know that you said "For obvious reasons it wouldn't be recommended..." but for anyone else reading please do not do this under any circumstances. If any of your applications get compromised the attacker will have full control of your entire AWS account.</comment></comment></comment>


Documents Reveal N.S.A. Campaign Against Encryption - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html

<comment><USER2> It could make one wonder if there aren't NSA employees working full time as open source contributors to make sure open source encryption software (or even OSes..) remains un user friendly and out of general use.

I would certainly prefer to believe the current state of the OpenPGP ecosystem was due to malice rather than incompetence.

<comment><USER3> It's possible, but not likely. Targeting proprietary, commercial vendors is probably a lot easier than open source, as it's much easier to hide what you're doing. And many more of the targets they are trying to attack are likely buying fully supported solutions from commercial vendors, not COTS hardware and installing open-source software themselves.

Even for open source software, it would be easier to just target the integrator, such as the binary packages provided by the distro or preinstalled on hardware by a system integrator, rather than introducing vulnerabilities or causing problems in the upstream open source project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does the NY Times decide which aspects of the Snowden leaks story to cover in a serious way vs a tabloidesque way?

<comment><USER5> Honest question: Which parts of their coverage of the leaks do you think were covered well and which were covered poorly?

(E.g. do you think yesterday's encryption article was "tabloidesque"? Do you like when newspapers post source documents?)

<comment><USER6> Possibly grandalf is referring to the Times publishing personal details of Snowden and his activities abroad vs. the actual contents of his leaks.

<comment><USER3> Well, until recently, they haven't had direct access to the leaks, so covering the Snowden story or reporting on what the Guardian said were all they could do.

However, ever since the British government forced the Guardian to destroy a laptop containing leaked information, and detained David Miranda and confiscated his belongings, the Guardian has decided to partner with the NY Times, as they believe that the First Amendment, and American jurisprudence surrounding it, still provides better protection of freedom of the press than Britain's laws, so sharing information with the NY Times helps ensure that the British government can't stop the reporting on this story.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> aka propaganda</comment>


14-Year-Old Genius Alaina Gassler Solves Car Blind Spots - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/14-year-old-genius-solves-blind-spots-1839540078 <comment><USER2> That's pretty cool.

I wonder how practical it would be though. Isn't it going to be tricky to get the perspective lined up correctly? Mirrors can be adjusted, won't this need to be somehow?

How does it look to passengers too? I could see it being a bit distracting since it won't line up at all and will be changing all the time. I could even see it being a bit nauseating, though it's hard to tell without seeing it.

<comment><USER3> Chocolate ashtray mate.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Keep your inbox clear and make notifications useful again - <AUTHOR> http://www.arrivals-app.com/

<comment><USER2> Email app notifications are created with smart algorithms (especially the daily digests), which can be useful to read them.

But when using tonnes of apps/tools, they just clutters your inbox, and I end up ignoring them.</comment>


The Mathematics of 2048: Optimal Play with Markov Decision Processes - <AUTHOR> http://jdlm.info/articles/2018/03/18/markov-decision-process-2048.html?href= <comment><USER2> As someone who studies reinforcement learning (or at least attempts to), this article was expertly written and illustrated. The graphics were phenomenal to explain how MDP's function. The text was written with enough intuitive explanations to guide the reader but provides the correct notation to the reader to further investigate. If I had any complaint, it would be that the author didn't mention backwards induction or dynamic programming when describing the solution method in Appendix B. Still, I think this was the best intro/case study of standalone MDP's I have ever read. Great work!

<comment><USER3> I haven't read the article yet, but I'm definitely going to; what a great review! This part is the kicker:

> The text was written with enough intuitive explanations to guide the reader > but provides the correct notation to the reader to further investigate.

So many explanations about complex or in-depth topics have difficulty finding the sweet spot between being too basic and hand-wavy on one end of the spectrum, and too obtuse and difficult to follow for a layperson on the other end. I've particularly noticed this with articles on quantum mechanics and relativity in the past. It's either complex mathematical equations or trains and flashlights (I'm exaggerating a bit).

When I read an article on such a topic that is accurate, yet understandable, while giving the reader the information and keywords they need in order to learn more, and providing a good on-ramp into the topic, it's a noticeable experience.

<comment><USER4> abstruse not obtuse /nit

<comment><USER3> Ugh, I always forget; I don't have a lot of occasions to use it, so it's hard to break the habit. I guess I'm just obtuse.

Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel compelled to write every time 2048 comes up: 2048 is a shameless rip- off of another game called "Threes" which came out just before it. "Threes" is more or less a game-design masterpiece, far superior in every way (graphics, sound, design, gameplay, you name it) to 2048. The reason 2048 is more popular is that it was a free clone of Threes!, and people refuse to pay even a little bit of money on mobile platforms for games.

This is nothing against this article, of course, which is an excellent write- up. But: if you like 2048, you'll like Threes better, and the creators of Threes deserves to be rewarded for coming up with the design.

<comment><USER6> For folks who are interested in the what went into designing it, the devs published their emails over the course of development. It's a pretty neat glimpse into how a game's design evolves, as well as the effort it takes to come up with a clean, "simple" mechanic: [http://asherv.com/threes/threemails/](http://asherv.com/threes/threemails/)

<comment><USER7> It's interesting he says that only 6 people in the world have ever seen a 6144 tile. Automatic controllers can reach it pretty often, [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07374.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1606.07374.pdf) says 7.83% of the tries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As the author points out in the conclusion, the state space blows up very quickly as the grid becomes larger.

There is a large class of algorithms for finding approximately optimal solutions to MDPs[1] that are model-free or stateless, meaning you don't need to enumerate all of the state-to-state transitions to get a good policy.

If you google 2048 reinforcement learning[0], you'll find lots of implementations of such algorithms.

[0] [https://www.google.com/search?q=2048+reinforcement+learning](https://www.google.com/search?q=2048+reinforcement+learning)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process#Algori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_decision_process#Algorithms)

<comment><USER9> What a coincidence. I was just reading a blog about concrete vs abstract interpretations of chess (and how to deal with its massive state space through abstract representation) this morning: [http://www.msreverseengineering.com/blog/2018/2/26/concrete-...](http://www.msreverseengineering.com/blog/2018/2/26/concrete- and-abstract-interpretation-explained-through-chess)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Shameless self plug: if you're interested in Markov Decision Processes and related algorithms , I am the author and maintainer of a C++ and Python library that implements lots of planning and reinforcement learning methods for them.

I hope to officially publish it later this year, but has already been used by a lot of people, in academia and out.

Feel free to play with it if you like!

[https://github.com/Svalorzen/AI-Toolbox](https://github.com/Svalorzen/AI- Toolbox)

<comment><USER11> (Author here.) That looks like a great library --- I will have to try it out!

In case it helps anyone, I also wrote a much smaller MDP library in ruby to support this 2048 project (and several others): [https://github.com/jdleesmiller/finite_mdp](https://github.com/jdleesmiller/finite_mdp) . It basically just does value iteration and policy iteration.

<comment><USER10> Thank you too for putting the code for your article out there. There is always a shortage of public code to study this field, and every bit helps.

I've actually wanted to write a similar article on 2048 for a while, but unfortunately I've never found the time. But it seems now I won't have to, your article is great and much better than anything I could have ever done!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone is interested in the "state of the art" of solving 2048, I believe [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.05085.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.05085.pdf) is currently the best, reaching the 32 768-tile in 70% of games.

The code on github: [https://github.com/aszczepanski/2048](https://github.com/aszczepanski/2048)

</comment><comment><USER12> Sorry guys, but I won the 3x3 to 1024 on the first attempt, so the next 99 of you will only see losses. ;)

> We can also see it being 'lazy' — even when it has two high value tiles > lined up to merge, it will continue merging lower value tiles. Particularly > within the tight constraints of the 3x3 board, it makes sense that it will > take the opportunity to increase the sum of its tiles at no risk of > (immediately) losing — if it gets stuck merging smaller tiles, it can always > merge the larger ones, which opens up the board.

One flaw in the strategy I noticed was failure to prioritize getting higher values together when board space is scarce. That is, it seems to employ the same strategy regardless of board free space. (Maybe they addressed this, admittedly didn't read all.) Or maybe that is better than my strategy.

<comment><USER13> It's better than your strategy.

<comment><USER14> Care to elaborate?

<comment><USER15> That's what optimal means.

<comment><USER11> Strictly speaking, all we can say is that the optimal strategy used in my post is _no worse_ than ballenf's. It's possible that ballenf's strategy is also optimal --- i.e. that they are equally good. :)

<comment><USER16> Yes! Optimal strategies for playing a game too complicated to reason out completely in your head, or which has some random element often aren't unique.

Cepheus [http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/](http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/) is a Heads Up Limit Texas Hold 'Em strategy (two players, no betting strategy needed beyond whether to fold / call / raise) that is proved to be approximately optimal. There absolutely must be other strategies that are similar, and in particular circumstances one would dominate another, it's just that since they're all optimal if they played random hands over time they'd all break even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Back in the heydays of 2048, I wrote a solver based on monte-carlo search[0]: Given a board state, continue playing in memory using random-moves. Do this multiple times. Choose the best fairing initial move.

It does surprisingly well considering it has no domain-specific knowledge of the game. (Reaching the 8192 tile)

Also this might be of interest: Many variants of 2048 came out at the time such as a hexagonal board or Fibonacci tiles. The algorithm is domain independent so it works just as well for these variants. Also, luckily, the original version of the game had its game state and controls exposed in JS and therefore so did most of the variants. This allowed me to write a bookmarklet version of the solver that could play many of the variants without modifications.[1]

[0][https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22342854/what-is-the- opt...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22342854/what-is-the-optimal- algorithm-for-the-game-2048/23853848#23853848) [1][https://ronzil.github.io/2048AI- AllClones/](https://ronzil.github.io/2048AI-AllClones/)

</comment><comment><USER18> This was a nice article. I've enjoyed running this 2048-ai[0] every now and then. It's fun to turn on the browser extension and watch it go. It's come quite a long way from the earlier versions.

[0][https://github.com/nneonneo/2048-ai](https://github.com/nneonneo/2048-ai)

</comment><comment><USER19> To reach 2048 the game works by adding the numbers 2 or 4 at each play with probabilities 0.9 and 0.1, respectively. Then the expected average optimal number of steps to win is 2048/(.1 * 4 + .9 * 2) ~= 930.9. This optimal number of steps occur when 2048 is reached and is alone in the board. In the real case, the larger the board, the more scattered are going to be the numbers, and the number of step will increase accordingly. This result is valid for every board size.

</comment><comment><USER20> "it takes at least 938.8 moves on average to win"

60% of the time it works every time.

</comment><comment><USER21> This task seems particular well suited for Markov models because it actually is a Markov process underneath. Also, I don't know why, but I was particularly tickled by the sentence:

> At the risk of anthropomorphizing a large table of states and actions, which > is what a policy is, I see here elements of strategies that I use when I > play 2048 on the 4x4 board 6

</comment><comment><USER22> For all the in-depth analysis of MDPs, a very good heuristic for playing 2048 is to just alternate swipes toward a corner (e.g. down and to the right), with an occasional movement in the other direction if it's stuck. How close does this get to the optimal policy?

</comment><comment><USER23> Took me a while to realize playing "optimal" means in this case playing optimal according to their chosen reward scheme. Not optimal in the sense of optimal strategy to play 2048 at all which the title can suggest.

Anyway, nice solution and presentation.

<comment><USER23> "Conclusion

We've seen how to represent the game of 2048 as a Markov Decision Process and obtained provably optimal policies for the smaller games on the 2x2 and 3x3 boards and a partial game on the 4x4 board.

The methods used here require us to enumerate all of the states in the model in order to solve it. Using efficient strategies for enumerating the states and efficient strategies for solving the model makes this feasible for models with up to 40 billion states, which was the number for the 4x4 game to 64. The calculations for that model took roughly one week on an OVH HG-120 instance with 32 cores at 3.1GHz and 120GB RAM. The next-largest 4x4 game, played up to the 128 tile, is likely to contain many times that number of states and would require many times the computing power. Calculating a provably optimal policy for the full game to the 2048 tile will likely require different methods.

It is common to find that MDPs are too large to solve in practice, so there are a range of proven techniques for finding approximate solutions. These typically involve storing the value function and/or policy approximately, for example by training a (possibly deep) neural network. They can also be trained on simulation data, rather than requiring enumeration of the full state space, using reinforcement learning methods. The availability of provably optimal policies for smaller games may make 2048 a useful test bed for such methods — that would be an interesting future research topic."</comment></comment>


Facebook Shares get sliced into derivatives - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-23/facebook-shares-get-sliced-into-derivatives-as-value-of-social-site-surges.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Since the subprime crisis, I am very wary of derivative trading by investors who do not understand the fundamentals. This whole valuation bonanza may not leave a good taste in the end.</comment>


The Enlightenment bull market and its decolonial future - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.kcl.ac.uk/kingshistory/2015/10/27/the-enlightenment-bull-market-and-its-decolonial-future/ <comment><USER2> Starts good. The idea that enlightenment is constructed later doesn't even surprise me too much. Cohesive political movements usually have some sort of geopolitical motivation behind them. And that element seems to be missing from the enlightenment. It seems weird to label long period of time just because there happened to be individual smart people thinking great ideas relatively separately. Socrates, Buddha and Confucius we're alive at the same time, yet we don't call that "age of philosophy".

>"unbearable whiteness of the Enlightenment"

This is weird. If you wish to strip history from it's later constructs, it's really weird you label something "too white". Smells like political agenda more than truth seeking. Colonialism and enlightenment happened at the same time. Was that really news to anybody?

This get's bit off topic. I'm ashamed to say, but I really don't understand this "accomplishment is too white" sentiment. If I try I get two alternatives:

A) Somebody is envious.

B) Somebody thinks pride is a sin, and the master race should purify itself from sin. To show the barbarians how much better the master race is. (Unconsciously of course but anyhow.)

<comment><USER3> _Colonialism and enlightenment happened at the same time. Was that really news to anybody?_

Only if you stop and think about it for a second: the use of "enlightenment" to refer to a set of ideas about freedom and liberty which were in practice only extended to white men. The only way to reconcile the "we the people" of the US constitution with the actual historical facts is to assume that the drafters meant that people == white men. Because the rights weren't extended equally to women, slaves, or Indians.

You've substituted "accomplishment" for "enlightenment", which isn't the same thing. The article refers to the Enlightenment in the context of its modern marketing campaign: why are people talking about the Enlightenment so much now? He postulates that this is in contrast to Islam, as part of current habit of painting the West as morally and racially superior to the people of the near East.

> _" The apotheosis of this turn came in the early Twenty-First Century, when > Christopher Hitchens and Martin Amis identified "Enlightenment values" with > the prosecution of the "Global War on Terror". And so, it appeared, we came > to bomb and torture in defence of the Enlightenment."_

There's also an assault on the "Whig view of history", an old academic hobby horse; a reminder of the importance of the Haitian revolution; and a general call to seek out and include in the Enlightenment canon those who were an important influence on it but not white or European.

<comment><USER4> Yet you and the others presenting this argument conveniently forget that not all white men were free and privileged - and that these progressive thinkers of the day, naturally strived to free and uplift those that were closest to them and mostly visible to them.

Also you forget that not all people of colour were slaves and that not all slaves were of colour. You also ignore the fact that most slaves were bought and purchased by non whites.

Applying modern zeitgeist and morals to different historic periods is wrong at best.

<comment><USER5> Enlightenment ideals of liberty were not universally applied, but only to a limited in-group deemed worthy. That in-group was primarily wealthy white men and not all (hence the American States originally granting the vote to male property owners as well as adding race requirements), but that doesn't really change anything about the point of the article or the point of the person you're replying to, but rather illustrates it.

<comment><USER6> If you gave every 18th century American a vote there would be an official church in every state along with all the marginalization/oppression that brings along. Not extending the vote was part of the checks and balances negotiated as a result. Right or wrong it was a valid existential problem for a young democracy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's amusing to me that works of criticism like this are jam-packed with the same questionable labels that it seeks to debunk. German Jews, white Americans, Trancendentalists, Cold War liberalism, Anti-Communists, Marxists...

Who are these people? Why are these labels any less problematic that the label of "Enlightenment" assigned to a certain group of philosophers in the 18th century Europe?

<comment><USER8> Those labels are less problematic because they are much better defined (e.g., "German Jews" == persons who practice(s|d) Judaism in Germany), self-applied labels (e.g., anti-Communist), or a combination of both (Cold War liberalism).

<comment><USER7> The question of what counts as "Jewish" is, itself, incredibly complex. As for self-applied labels, what does that even mean? If you call yourself something once, are you that thing forever? Do you even know what it implies to call yourself "Anti-Communist"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It could be that the rise of 'enlightenment' word occurences in the 1960s refers to the enlightenment as the Buddhists and Zen practitioners speak of it instead of the European context of the word. The rise would map with the counterculture movement of those times which we're still living in.

<comment><USER10> I thought this might be the case too, but the n-grams for "enlightenment", "Enlightenment", "the Enlightenment", and "The Enlightenment", etc. are all quite different. Lowercase "enlightenment" doesn't show the same pattern as capital-E or with the definite article.</comment></comment>


Amazon Should Acquire Netflix - Here's Why - <AUTHOR> http://ryanspoon.com/blog/2009/01/02/why-amazon-should-acquire-netflix/ <comment><USER2> The argument I've always heard against Amazon acquiring Netflix is that Netflix has distribution centers in something like 45 states, whereas Amazon only has them in a handful. So that'd be 45 states in which Amazon would then have to charge sales tax.

If Netflix were a solely streaming operation, it'd make sense for Amazon, or if tax on ecommerce was already charged in most states regardless of physical presence it would make sense. Not sure it does otherwise, though.

<comment><USER3> Amazon seems to charge sales tax based on where the goods are shipped to, not where they are shipped from:

"Items sold by Amazon.com LLC, or its subsidiaries, and shipped to destinations in the states of Kansas, Kentucky, New York, North Dakota, or Washington are subject to tax."

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=4...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512)

<comment><USER2> I think those are the states in which they have a physical presence. I know their headquarters are in Washington, for example, and that they have a big distribution center in Kentucky. New York, though, may just have laws taxing ecommerce (I'm not certain).

<comment><USER3> Nope, Amazon has distribution centers in 8 states, but they don't all get sales taxed:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Fulfillment_and_ware...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com#Fulfillment_and_warehousing)

<comment><USER2> I guess it would depend on the sales tax laws in each state.

Some states require sales tax on ecommerce if there is a physical presence, some do not. Some require tax regardless.

The argument I have always heard in relation to Netflix is that if Amazon were to acquire Netflix it would mean charging sale tax to a much greater number of customers.

Netflix has many more established physical presences across the US: [http://www.listology.com/netflix_tracker_reports.cfm?report=...](http://www.listology.com/netflix_tracker_reports.cfm?report=centers)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Netflix and Amazon know the days of physical discs are numbered. I don't think Amazon needs to acquire a business to dominate a dying vertical. They already have digital distribution and a huge brand, just bank on that.

<comment><USER5> The days of physical discs will last for quite a while. First Amazon would have to provide a TV-centric solution that matches Bluray's power, and then they will have to provide a drm-free solution so buyers aren't tied to Windows Media.

<comment><USER4> Why would it have to be DRM free? DVD and Blu-Ray are riddled with DRM and they are still popular. This is to do "rental", not purchasing. Only makes sense to have some DRM on there or else the purchase business will end.

<comment><USER5> Depends on the form of DRM, really. DVD's DRM doesn't bother most people, because it doesn't really pose an obstacle to what they want to do with it. But Windows Media DRM won't work nicely with set-top boxes, with Macs, perhaps even with Microsoft's own products (remember Zune not working with PlaysForSure?). And there have been well-known cases of Windows Media DRM servers going dark. The DRM the movie cartels insist on for digital downloads is just too intrusive.

<comment><USER4> Amazon does video on demand to Macs, PCs, XBOX, Tivo, etc. Who cares if DRM servers go dark, this is a streaming service. You watch it and then Microsoft could be fire bombed and it doesn't affect you.

I agree DRM is shitty for purchased movies, but this is basically a pay-per- view service. For most movies that's all people want. Why wait for the mail man or go to a store/kiosk when you can watch instantly from your couch?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> i guess the reason amazon doesn't have many distribution centers is because they are expensive

she outsourced the problem by having amazon marketplace

now every kindle is distribution center (cheap)

looking at this trend, she might be better off creating a kindle for movies

her strength is not in rental (why safari bookshelf is unchallenged ?)

if she _really_ want to be in movie rental, maybe safari dvd-rack model (download high-res per dvd chapter or streaming lower res for full, 3 titles/rack/mo) is a long shot

the success of youtube indicates that not everyone cares about dvd-quality clips, they simply want to watch it now

<comment><USER7> Could it be that the larger iPod Touch will be the new kindle for movies? If and when our bandwidth catches up to our foreign counterparts, renting movies via the embedded iTunes app will seem natural enough.

However, unlike books, movies are best experienced in an environment dedicated to it. So even if the iPod Touch is the next kindle for movies, something like Apple TV, or the numerous netflix set top boxes will most likely be the next step in movie rentals and purchasing.</comment></comment>


Development for Designers - <AUTHOR> http://intridea.com/2011/2/4/development-for-designers

<comment><USER2> As a designer trying to pick up development for fun (it's Cocoa, _lemme 'lone_ ) the biggest issue isn't in basic actions, or classes, or anything else. It was in getting from basic programming concepts to actually making a program _do_ something. It's not inherently clear in a lot of programming books, as they assume a programmer's mindset. _How_ do I get from an idea of what it should do, to something that does it? (It's hard to remember what my frustrations were, since I'm learning the language it's hard to remember what it was like before I knew how to think.)

This type of issue is extremely hard to convey to a programmer, because they know how to take these little bits of logic and build something functional. A lot of programming books are either completely step-by-step or abstract, and it's rare to find one that describes how to use these little legos to build something that works.

With design, I can throw stuff on a board, and mush it around until it looks decent, and go from there. I can do the same with programming, but I never learned how to walk like that so it's hard to prototype classes. (Yeah, I now know to just return a dummy object or whatever.)</comment>


PagerDuty Files Confidentially for IPO - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-15/software-maker-pagerduty-is-said-to-file-confidentially-for-ipo <comment><USER2> Having one team on victorOps and the other on Pagerduty I can say that pagerduty has better UI and mobile app. The scheduling UI in vitorOps is a mess.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried OpsGenie by chance? Their pricing looks attractive, but it is Atlassian (I cant get past how slow Jira is).

<comment><USER4> Their UI is also a mess. So they'll fit right in at Atlassian.

<comment><USER5> Atlassian PM here - we're working on improving Opsgenie's UI. And also the speed of Jira Cloud. You'll see some significant improvements this year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Worth recalling that PagerDuty is a YC S10 alumnus. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758653](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=758653)

<comment><USER7> YC raking it in this year</comment></comment>


Machine Learning: Attention Mechanisms Decoder Trees for Code Generation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guillaume-chevalier/PyTorch-Dynamic-RNN-Attention-Decoder-Tree <comment><USER2> It would help to see some examples of the output.</comment>


Vindicating the Hot Hand with the Mathematics of Streaks - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/momentum-isnt-magic-vindicating-the-hot-hand-with-the-mathematics-of-streaks/ <comment><USER2> This has been the repeated topic of conversation among some well-known statisticians on Andrew Gelman's blog over the years. It's worth searching his old posts for it</comment>


Portfolio – Documentary on Behance, Dribbble and DeviantART - <AUTHOR>

Any ideas and project suggestions are more than welcomed! <comment><USER2> Hey, you forgot to post the link/url maybe ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that! Here it is: [http://rockajoint.com/projects/project/76/](http://rockajoint.com/projects/project/76/)</comment></comment>


Show HN:Reading Your eBooks Should Be Easy - <AUTHOR> http://bookfusion.com/ Read all your Hacker News Magazines across all your devices booth offline and online on any device!
Tired of being restricted to one device Tired of copying your eBooks from one device to the other
*Tired of losing your bookmarks and notes
We are revolutionizing the way we read and interact with eBooks today by making reading eBooks easy
See http://www.bookfusion.com/  for more details
Feel free to post feedback in the comments or reach put to mr at firstname.lastname@example.com <comment><AUTHOR> No eBook readers on HN! Let me know what you think guys</comment>


Componentizing the Web - <AUTHOR> http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2844732 <comment><USER2> The big takeaway here is interoperability. React is great, Angular was great for its time, etc, but if your company builds out all its UI components in a specific framework you're locked into that framework, so a lot of churn happens if you ever decide to try the newest hotness. It appears that all the major browser vendors are now in agreement on a Web Components spec so it's only a matter of time now before we have a good, standardized way of extending the web spec.

<comment><USER3> Do you believe that you would never find yourself feeling "locked in" to the features/capabilities of Web Components?

<comment><USER2> Well, yes, because web components are native to the browser, not some third- party library. In other words, I'd feel no more locked into Web Components than I feel locked into the current DOM API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Google cache: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:O7S2Ist...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:O7S2IstQexsJ:https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm%3Fid%3D2844732+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER5> That looks like it might be a way out of the maze.

</comment><comment><USER6> There is no solution here. Who decides what I can and cannot declare with the select? If it's not me, then how will this other body of control make sure to include all possibilities in their API, which satisfy my requirements that even I don't know yet? And of course, how will these features work together? and then also be efficient?

.. aaaand we're back to where we are today. Pointless article.

<comment><USER7> It's amusing to see that the web is haphazardly rediscovering decades of CS research. They finally figured out how to write subroutines into HTML.

Also, don't web components require JS, due to the document.registerElement call? If that's true, they've even failed to write web components into plain HTML. They're just gluing another JavaScript framework onto the web, the same way people expected would happen with prototypeJS.

<comment><USER8> You can style any custom element just fine without using document.registerElement, and use it like a native element if it's extending one. You only need to register it to do Javascript-specific things just as attaching functions to lifecycle callbacks, so it really isn't any different from being "required" to do `document.getElementById('#id').addEventListener(...)` in order to use plain DOM events.

<comment><USER6> You are comparing to JS, as if this is a good thing?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


CryptoCam: Privacy Conscious Open Circuit Television - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.08602 <comment><USER2> A lot of this proposal is interesting, but the proposed invention is really concerning. The proposed CryptoCam (section 5) in particular ignores the privacy rights of recorded individuals in an attempt to offer greater access to recorded footage.

Section 5, the proposed CryptoCam, is to me the most concerning. The proposed solution would use location-awareness communicated from a recording subject's digital proxy in order to collect encryption keys to later access footage that they may have been a subject in.

This gives a person access to:

1\. The biometric information of private individuals, based only on their proximity to those individuals (faces are incredibly sensitive information) 2\. Any intellectual property or sensitive information that may have been visible during the period that they passed through a space.

Someone intending to perform an illicit activity need only wander through a space and receive the exact perspectives and resolutions of existing cameras in order to summarily defeat the protective capabilities of that video surveillance deployment.

There's so many new ways a system like this can be abused, and the proposed setup doesn't reduce any existing abuse vectors.

2 additional concerns:

There exists with video surveillance today an understanding that one or more agent is watching, recording or analysing footage, and that footage may exist for some period of time. Benefits of video surveillance may include deterring illicit activities, particularly when the location and perspective of cameras is generally but not specifically known.

3.2 suggests a framework for access, but I do not, at first read, understand a change being proposed from what is currently industry standard practice; access to recorded footage is generally need-based and restrictive.

3.3.1 suggests new mechanisms for exposing some of this information (active vs passive monitoring, whether recording exists). I mention it above but the partial Panopticon effect is one of the main reasons video surveillance has a deterring effect.

<comment><USER2> The real benefit inspired by the authors might be in a logging scheme for moving in surveilled spaces. When I pass through a bounded space, my tracker app gets a log of the camera whose space I moved through. If you wanted to request the footage you'd have a 2-party confirmed list of cameras and times to request, reducing impact of a request and potentially increasing East of compliance.

This would be difficult still without fine-detail geographic bounding via maybe Bluetooth and likely very expensive to retrofit into existing systems, but would also still protect other private individuals' privacy and security. Released footage could still be masked, for example, and access and use encouraged to be more directly audited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A valiant though experiment. But the value in CCTV exists IN the latent information asymmetry between watcher and watched. No operator is going to voluntarily subjugate that.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think the watchers are more trust worthy than uhhh random devices in proximity.

I would like to see a request for data be logged along with a description of an offense. An international government committee with at least 1 randomly rotated member from each foreign country each of which has the key. (there is no key inside the country) If just one deems it necessary the footage is made available to either local law enforcement, a judge or a citizen who has legitimate reason to review it. If no offense is found nothing is released. If the choice is sufficiently dubious the reviewer is reviewed and replaced. (plenty of people with eyes)

That way we can have tons of cameras without all the paranoia.

</comment><comment><USER5> For anyone wondering how this works, the TL;DR is in figure 1.

> Fig. 1. Footage is recorded, encrypted and uploaded to a cloud storage > provider. Encryption keys are distributed to phone-based listening clients > nearby. Phone clients later retrieve encrypted footage from the cloud and > decrypt the contents usingthe key previously provided locally, then the > footage can be played on the device.

</comment><comment><USER6> So it's cloud stored localized panopticon?</comment>


DirectX creator on Microsoft DeLorean and the dawn of zero latency gaming - <AUTHOR> http://www.alexstjohn.com/WP/2014/08/25/microsofts-delorean-dawn-zero-latency-gaming/

<comment><USER2> If I play one of these games, all I'm doing is slowing down the latency compared to letting the simulator play for me -- and diminishing the quality of the play. For me, that highlights how much harder it is to see fun from the outside than when you're the one having it.</comment>


Musk's Boring Company is launching DIY watchtowers with bricks from tunnel dirt - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/11/15/elon-musk-boring-company-diy-watchtowers-bricks-tunnel-dirt/ <comment><USER2> Just a thought...

Normally the concrete reinforcement panels that line tunnels are precast based on calculations for how many they'll need to complete the project, which makes sense because tunnels are usually large one-off infrastructure projects.

Boring Co, which wants to be in the business of making tunnels constantly and for anything from transport to utilities, could look into making a Just In Time process for precast panels using tunnel dirt/rocks to mix with concrete and for aggregate.

It'll use only a fraction of what they dig up, but reducing waste and improving process is always a good thing.

<comment><USER3> Typically the tunnel walls need to be pretty strong, whereas compressed dirt bricks tend to be rather mediocre as far as strength goes.

<comment><USER2> I might not have been clear - I mean using the dirt and rocks in the concrete mix, not replacing precast panels with dirt bricks.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Messages by the community, forever etched on the Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://ethereumtothemoon.github.io/ethertothemoon/ <comment><USER2> Might be a better idea to put a gif of the app in action on the page along with an explanation. Folks not familiar are just gonna click the back button when they're told they need to install a random plugin.

<comment><USER3> As I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see some users here negatively commenting on the fact that this requires installation of the "MetaMask" browser extension.

If you haven't heard of MetaMask before, I'd highly recommend checking out their website. MetaMask is a bridge from the Ethereum network to the browser. It uses a library called "web3.js".

FYI, you can also download and install the Brave browser, which now has MetaMask built-in by default.

[https://metamask.io/](https://metamask.io/)

[https://github.com/ethereum/web3.js/](https://github.com/ethereum/web3.js/)

[https://brave.com/](https://brave.com/)

<comment><USER5> Hmm, I use Brave browser on my phone, but it's still complaining about not having MetaMask. I guess it's only included in the desktop version?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those wondering, metamask is a browser extension to interact with the ethereum network. I know a few of the developers.

[https://metamask.io/](https://metamask.io/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Can't check it because of missing plugin but is it something like [https://eternitywall.it/](https://eternitywall.it/)?

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm not installing a plugin to see your app, dude.

</comment><comment><USER9> Oh nice an ethereum browser extension. Yet another attack vector for people to hack your ether coins.

</comment><comment><USER10> some explanation would definitely help.. Does anything with Blockchain or ETH go to top of HN nowadays?

<comment><USER3> Apparently. What on Earth is a page consisting of nothing but a message telling me I need to install a browser plugin doing on the front page of HN in Current Year?

Also, "The Blockchain." You know, that one single blockchain.</comment></comment>


Facebook Goes Down Amid Rollout of New Brand Pages  - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2010/12/16/facebook-down-rollout/

<comment><USER2> "Okay, let me tell you the difference between Facebook and everybody else; we don't crash, ever! If the servers are down for even a day our entire reputation is irreversibly destroyed."

<comment><USER3> meh. Everybody crashes, eventually. Software/hardware is just too complex, with too many cooks in the kitchen, evolving too fast, with too many unknowns. That quote from Mark's character in the movie Social Network was more of an ideal/goal statement rather than fact or hard requirement. Overall I think Facebook has had great availability/performance considering how many active users they have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is Facebook questions tied to business pages? If so, that is certainly a shot across the bow for GetSatisifaction I would think.

<comment><USER5> Of course. FB has taken a leaf out of Microsoft's book. They are now dedicated to copying smaller businesses, and using overwhelming market power to overrun the people who actually thought of novel ideas and businesses.

True to the MS style, first they try tr buy you. If you say no, or want too much money, they'll just copy you. Examples: twitter, foursquare AKA 'the wall', 'facebook places'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My god, has anyone seen the awful new photo display?

<comment><USER7> Didn't think it was particularly awful, so much as... new.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Does anyone use a non-macOS BSD for desktop? - <AUTHOR> Or any other Unix OS other than macOS and Linux? <comment><USER2> Here are some interesting past conversations on this topic on HN:

OpenBSD as a workstation --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20344766)

Setting up OpenBSD as a desktop --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13223351](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13223351)

FreeBSD is an amazing OS --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102372](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22102372)

FreeBSD myths --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12194796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12194796)

Using TrueOS --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818574](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13818574)

FreeBSD as a desktop --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=365784)

Comparing BSD and Linux --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12034277)

Switching to FreeBSD from macOS --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10644690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10644690)

FreeBSD desktop How To --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371688](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12371688)

Running FreeBSD on a Macbook Pro --> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027506](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13027506)

I think the main take away is that the BSDs can be great desktop OSes, but in general they will require more configuration than running macOS or Ubuntu. However, they are less likely to bump into bleeding edge problems than eg Arch.

I experimented with running FreeBSD as a desktop for a little while a while ago, but ended up switching back to Linux due to needing support for some remote-desktop software for work. During that time I came to realize how often GNU breaks POSIX; however the userland software for FreeBSD is excellent and quite well documented IME. If you enjoy trying out new OSes, they are worth a spin.</comment>


Show HN: A Neural Networks Based Amazon Review Summarizer - <AUTHOR> https://thereviewindex.com <comment><AUTHOR> Reading product reviews on websites like Amazon is tedious. We felt that there has to be a better way to grasp large volume of reviews without having to go through them manually.

We've built TheReviewIndex to try and help solve this problem.

You can use our summarizer to create a scorecard for any electronics / gadgets / appliance Amazon product.

We also call out products with fishy / spammy patterns, so that you don't end up reading biased reviews.

Do let us know if you find this useful !

</comment><comment><USER2> Do you detect bias in the reviews ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not exactly sure what you mean by "detecting bias" \- but we use statistical modelling on the reviewer history to infer whether a product contains too many incentivised/spammy/fishy reviews. If we do detect any fishy behavior, we warn the user about it.</comment></comment>


Show HN: an app to help you shop for food - <AUTHOR>

Wanted to get everyone's feedback on the web app my startup has been working on for the past few months. (didn't want to tweak it anymore before getting feedback from viewers who weren't my friends/family).
http://www.foodia.com
Would definitely love feedback on the UX (which needs work) and whether this is something you'd use before shopping/deciding what to buy.
I'd also love to hear what food problems (if any) you all feel need solving. Thanks. <comment><USER2> The best food discovery tool I have used is foodspotting.com The reason foodspotting works so well for me is because I am a sight eater. I will try anything but I want to see it first or I won't order it or try your new place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed - foodspotting does food visuals well. We're less about dish discovery, though, and more about food shopping. The problem we're trying to solve is picking through the 100 choices in the cereal aisle, where having pictures of the boxes (which we DO have, btw) isn't as important as how popular, healthy, tasty, or sustainable those items are. Do you mainly eat out or eat in?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Professional personal assistants for $2.99/hr - <AUTHOR> http://www.tryaccelerate.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN fam!

I recently partnered with other colleagues in finance / consulting / start ups to launch Accelerate - a service that allows you to find vetted assistants starting at $2.99 / hr.

Our thesis is that personal assistants should be available to everyone and that pricing should not be a barrier. Additionally, we are helping the community by fighting against the the job crisis in Philippines (read about it in our FAQ page!).

Let us know what you think!

FAQS:

-What's the benefit?: The initial benefits of having a personal assistant is the ability to offload low ROI errands that you MUST do so you can focus your full energy on things you WANT to do. Although it is very simple to look through your email, schedule a meeting, pay your bills, do your taxes, this takes valuable attention and brain power from your passions or top priorities for example, spending time with your family, or coming up with a new idea for a side gig. Imagine trying to work on a new project or starting to work out but having a bunch of small roadblocks before it -- human will power is limited and drained. Thus, if you have an affordable personal assistant, you can enhance your life by minimizing the roadblocks to focus on your highest priorities. It takes 21 minutes to recover your attention from a distraction. Our goal is to reduce these distractions so you can have large blocks of time to focus.

-Can't I do the task faster myself: The beauty of having a dedicated assistant is someone that gradually understands your preferences and will be able to order similar things in the past or recommend things to you in the future. Think Donna from Suits - she is able to give Harvey great suggestions on presents, restaurants etc. while Harvey focuses on what he does best, being a lawyer because she knows him well.

-How much do the assistants get paid?: Our assistants get paid based on how long they've been with the service - after training period, they'd get paid anywhere from $2.50/hr - $5.00/hr (high end for some that work for our platform). Minimum wage in Philippines is ~$1.16 / hr which is typical for a lower paying job such as a personal assistant. The average wage in Philippines is ~$2.50/hr. Keep in mind, this is including higher paying jobs such as engineers, doctors as well as higher wage areas (Manila) etc so we are paying VERY well, especially to the assistants in lower wage areas. We've heard that some government workers in the Philippines get paid less than $2 / hr, causing them to spend more than half of their wages on transportation.

Cost of living in Philippines ranges from ~$490 - $1060/month if you have to travel to work (main pain point we've heard from our assistants as many commutes are >4 hours a day) as transport costs ~$150/month due to inflation / gas prices. However, if they are able to work with us at home, their costs drastically are reduced (transport costs and decreased food costs) to ~$300 - $500.

The Accelerate Team</comment>