The Arsenic DNA paper exposes flaws in peer review - <AUTHOR> http://www.michaeleisen.org/blog/?p=1439#sthash.y6DGan5d.dpuf <comment><USER3> ``we need to get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication – or publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that a paper is valid, let alone important''

Most scientists I know (physics) don't have this idea. They know publication is just a step. Most grad students learn at some point that just because it's published doesn't mean it's correct.

Publication is a checkpoint, not a finish line, for any theory or experimental result.

<comment><USER4> Very true, but he does go on to state:

> If we had, instead, a system where the review process was transparent and > persisted for the useful life of a work

That is a very interesting idea. (Reviews are currently confidential and usually anonymous -- only the author and editor sees the reviews, and only the editor knows who wrote them.)

Not only would this reduce blatantly petty reviews, it would also give some recognition to the work that goes into reviewing a paper. It's currently an important but very thankless job. It's considered polite to acknowledge reviewers at the end of the paper (even if they remain anonymous), but it's often not done.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to respond to this in the context of academic computer science (which works off conferences), in particular, the systems subfield. YMMV if you extrapolate this to non-CS science and journals, so take this with a grain of salt.

The bottom line is I, as a powerless grad student, am _very_ comfortable with the level of reviewing competence I have witnessed (and been a part of).

The proposal to deanonymize reviews has a huge flaw: Namely, there's no way I (as a grad student with no political power) will write a critical review of somebody famous if I know I won't remain anonymous.

The risk of blowback is too damn high. (And given the small pool, writing style would probably be sufficient to deanonymize, if my entire trail of reviews were public). There's no way I have the balls to write a critical review of a paper by, say, Robert Morris or Larry Peterson, for some prestigious venue such as SOSP, when I'm asked to write a review. Unless I know for sure that there's absolutely no risk whatsoever of being identified.

Look. Reviewing is thankless and hard. Anonymity exists so that we can be critical and not risk career suicide. Last year at OSDI I received 9 reviews, and they were all exemplarily thoughtful, even the obligatory "strong reject" one of them. The problem of "petty reviews" _has_ a solution: The program committee is self policing, and the reviews are not anonymous within the PC. (For example, at SOSP this year, there are 28 PC members.) You know that most of your reviews come from this gang of 28. You might have one or two externally solicited experts in addition, but that too is not anonymous _to the PC members_. If there's a culture of meanness, the PC members and PC chairs can fix this by internal policing (and they do).

<comment><USER6> Your point regarding anonymity is highly valid, and I appreciate that you bring it up. There is actually a concept I'm rather fond of that seeks to address this, usually referred to as peer-reviewed peer review [1].

Essentially, anonymous experts review publications in much the manner they do now, with no risk of their identities being revealed. A _separate_ set of review-reviewers then rates the publication-reviewers themselves, scoring them on a standardized quantitative scale (1-10) based on the validity of their claims and the depth of their assessment. In this manner, experts collect an "aggregate reviewer rating" of sorts analogous to an h-index [2], call it an R-index.

This R-index can then serve to select accurate reviewers for future publications. A high R-index could also be included as a positive bullet point on a CV, providing some reward for reviewers to put a high degree of effort into their otherwise unrewarded reviewing work.

A few potential flaws are evident: what is one to do if early reviews are scored poorly, and you are no longer able to provide new reviews to increase your R-index? A grace period before scoring could potentially remedy this, ie) an R-index is not assigned until a reviewer has written >10 reviews.

[1] - [http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.338...](http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00020/full) [2] - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H-index)

<comment><USER5> I like the R-index idea. It's basically Slashdot's meta-moderation system? I always thought that had some promise. However, it does add even more _work_ to a system that is extremely stressed (writing reviews is so much work! Imagine having to read papers, read reviews and then review the review on top of that!)

But basically existing program committees (in computer science) do serve that meta-moderation purpose (without the empirical R-index metric). The entire PC does get to see the deanonymized reviews of the other program committee members. If someone's just being an unhelpful jerk, they're probably not going to get invited back in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post takes the lead-in with the Felisa Wolfe-Simon "Arsenic DNA" paper. In recent times I remember this was one of the most Hyped-up papers something akin to the Cold fusion paper by Fleischmann and Pons.

The contrast in the public response to the two incidents is fascinating. While Cold-fusion became a career-ender for anybody associated with it and Fleischmann & Pons both suffered pretty much banishment, repeated experiments have shown that there is something funny going on with that particular mix of compounds (Heavy water, Palladium, Nickel etc) - excess heat.

With arsenic life however, follow-up experiments have proven that it was contamination that was a cause of the result. So there is NO ARSENIC based life. Yet the lead authors of pretty much a gigantic false claim -orchestrated shamelessly by NASA- seem to be doing pretty well, dodging the basic questions with that most famous catch-all - more work is needed (hence more money should be sent my way) to prove the (bogus) claims made.

<comment><USER8> > excess heat

There is no excess heat, it's measurement error caused by miscalculating how much hydrogen recombines in the cell.

If you build a calorimeter that recombines all hydrogen you find no excess (but it's really hard to do accurately).

<comment><USER9> And, even more tellingly, there are no fusion neutrons emitted.

<comment><USER10> That's not very telling when what they were claiming was aneutronic fusion.

<comment><USER9> The Pons / Fleischmann claims about their "cold fusion" experiment had nothing to do with aneutronic fusion. In fact, the definitive debunking of their claims consisted in the failure of other labs, and of P & F themselves, to detect fusion byproducts, including the expected neutrons: [http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050399s...](http://partners.nytimes.com/library/national/science/050399sci- cold-fusion.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> His title is a red herring. he admits later he didn't actually do this. His point is actually a rebuttal to John Bohannon's submission of a fake article to public/open journals, demonstrating the Science Magazine also makes the same poor errors in review as the open journals.

<comment><USER12> His title is the _hook_ , not the catch. So it can't be a red herring.

<comment><USER11> I actually knew that when I wrote that, somebody was gonna call me on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Warning! This title is a total lie! I know it's a lie done intentionally and calculatingly, but most of the time most people don't read past the title and will assume that it's true. I really think this needs to be edited! Even if it 'spoils' the article. Please do this, whoever can!

At the time of writing the posted title here is the same as the article title: "I confess, I wrote the Arsenic DNA paper to expose flaws in peer-review at subscription based journals"

</comment><comment><USER14> If you want to talk about honesty and integrity in publishing, you shouldn't give your blog post a blatantly misleading linkbait title.

<comment><USER15> True - but to make a very valid point about the state of peer review in science journals it is perfect.

<comment><USER14> You needed a demonstration to see that people can easily mislead each other on the internet with bogus headlines?

<comment><USER15> No, I was disagreeing with you that the post was about "honesty and integrity in publishing".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The Last Psychiatrist talks in his/her blog sometimes about what a joke peer review is. Here is one entry: [http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/wakefield_and_the_aut...](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2011/01/wakefield_and_the_autism_fraud.html)

<comment><USER17> LP is so sarcastic and snarly that it is difficult to understand what they are trying to say. Not an effective tone in an article about the problems of misinformation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There should be an "Open Source" science journal. Where anyone can submit a paper and anyone can peer review or freely read said articles. User accounts could have a vetting process to verify their real world credentials and the articles they review would be weighted accordingly. Funding by donations and for-pay apis to do advanced searches perhaps? How awesome would it be to be able to freely read a repository of this kind of information? And to also be able to accurately say what is or isn't the current "scientific concensus".

I feel like this shouldn't be too difficult to make.

<comment><USER19> [http://www.plosone.org/](http://www.plosone.org/)

PLOS ONE is this. It is well respected already. The initial invited reviews are mainly a junk filter to establish baseline methodological quality and NOT to evaluate significance.

From their "About us" page:

"Unlike many journals which attempt to use the peer review process to determine whether or not an article reaches the level of 'importance' required by a given journal, PLOS ONE uses peer review to determine whether a paper is technically sound and worthy of inclusion in the published scientific record. Once the work is published in PLOS ONE, the broader community is then able to discuss and evaluate the significance of the article (through the number of citations it attracts; the downloads it achieves; the media and blog coverage it receives; and the post-publication Notes, Comments and Ratings that it receives on PLOS ONE etc)."

<comment><USER20> I'll just mention for those unaware that the author of the post is one of the founders of PLOS, which is an umbrella organization under which a number of journals (including PLOS ONE) are published.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Here is a real case of this happening: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair)

<comment><USER22> The point of the Sokal affair seems to lean more towards proving that postmodern cultural studies as a field is lacking in substance than to demonstrating the ineffectiveness of peer review in general.

<comment><USER23> What bugs me about the Sokal affair is the implication that they didn't catch a bad review process but proved an entire discipline to be a sham (a discipline which they understood relatively little of to begin with).

So, when you get junk accepted in a humanities journal, its because the field is about bullshitting anyway - when you get junk into a science journal it's a hitch with the review process?

<comment><USER24> Was the Sokal paper published with inadequate review? Or was it passed by experts in the field?

<comment><USER25> All it takes is reading the wikipedia article...

But yes it was and no it didn't. That's always bugged me about the Sokal affair and people holding it up as an example of anything. While the editors did publish the paper, which is a basic problem in and of itself, they _claim_ they wanted big revisions that Sokal refused to make, but then they published it anyway. Since the whole point of that journal at the time was to get wide- ranging viewpoints, I think there is some merit in the editor's claim of a simple betrayal of trust: they assumed Sokal was being straightforward, and the worst that would come of publishing his piece would be a bunch of letters telling him to stick to his day job. In any case, I don't know if we'll ever a definitive story of what really happened, how carefully they vetted the paper, etc.

Regardless, the journal he submitted the paper to was not peer reviewed, so the whole thing demonstrates nothing about the peer review process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The problem is not the opaque peer review system.

Instead of making the reviews transparent, some journals solicit notes from other researchers to discuss the published articles. It is an ethical responsibility to publish notes which criticize previously published articles, regardless of how painful it is for the publisher to publish them.

e.g. [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.summary](http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6069/665.summary)

Reading an article that falsifies claims of another article is pure scientific joy. And such articles are not uncommon at all!

The problem is, as pointed out in the beginning of the paragraph "we need to get past the antiquated idea that the singular act of publication – or publication in a particular journal – should signal for all eternity that a paper is valid, let alone important".

</comment><comment><USER27> In legal practice, decisions are tested on appeal or by subsequent tribunals.

While this process is currently conducted by paid-for editorial teams, most practitioners rely on citation tools which for any judgment provide links through to subsequent decisions which have, for example, "approved", "considered", "distinguished" (as in disapplied due to different facts, but this can have the practical effect of confining an earlier decision to its particular facts) or "overturned" that decision.

Although Google Scholar seems to provide some authority measure through the "cited by" tool, I've often wondered why academia (or perhaps I've just missed it) hasn't developed a comparable "precedent" system for research.

</comment><comment><USER28> > Any scientist can quickly point to dozens of papers – including, and perhaps > especially, in high impact journals – that are deeply, deeply flawed – the > arsenic DNA story is one of many recent examples

Dozens of flawed papers out of how many total papers? Numbers are meaningless without a context.

</comment><comment><USER29> peer-review scientific analysis has been an issue for some time if you ask me. As the guy points out, all you have to do is find a few people already receptive to your idea. I'm not really sure why "peer-review" is so lofty a concept anyway.

<comment><USER30> > _I 'm not really sure why "peer-review" is so lofty a concept anyway._

I agree. Will someone tell pg to turn off the upvotes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> There are 250+ journals that have cancer growth as part of their field? That shows you the problem right there.

There is absolutely no way that a researcher in that field can keep up with publications in all of those journals.

</comment><comment><USER32> Hey Michael Eisen, we get it. You don't like the peer review journal process and having to pay for access to scientific research. If you don't like it, make a better system.

Also -1 for having the worst form of linkbaity title, which is one that is utterly false and misleading, and lying for the first two paragraphs of that blog post.

<comment><USER33> To me, the title was obviously satire from the moment I read it.

Also, he did make a better system. He co-founded the Public Library of Science (PLOS).

<comment><USER17> Does PLOS protect against false claims somehow?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Quote: "So I created a manuscript that claimed something extraordinary - <USER2> I'd discovered a bacteria that uses arsenic in its DNA instead of phosphorous [sic]."

This tongue-in-cheek piece would be more plausible if the author could spell "phosphorus".

<comment><USER35> Really, get away from your computer screen for a while. Get a passport, visit places. Know about the rest of the world, what they wear, what they eat, how they talk, _how they write_.

<comment><USER17> Where do they write "phosphorous"? They don't indiscriminately sprinkle 'u' after every 'o'. That would be "phosphourous".

<comment><USER36> phousphourous?

([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Phosphorous#Spelling_and_e...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Phosphorous#Spelling_and_etymology))

> According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the correct spelling of the > element is phosphorus. The word phosphorous is the adjectival form of the > P3+ valence: so, just as sulfur forms sulfurous and sulfuric compounds, > phosphorus forms phosphorous compounds (e.g., phosphorous acid) and P5+ > valence phosphoric compounds (e.g., phosphoric acids and phosphates).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Amazon brought down by DDoS? - <AUTHOR> http://www.appscout.com/2008/06/rumor_amazon_hit_with_denialof.php

<comment><USER2> "Amazon.com was taken down by a distributed denial-of-service attack that struck the Web site's load-balancing system, _according to a rumor that's begun circulating among security professionals_."

Don't know if it's true, but at least it's a reliable source.

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt this story. First, it's not sourced. Second, it lacks details. Third, NEWS.COM went and asked a bunch of actual security people, including Arbor Networks, which operates monitors plugged directly into the backbones of almost every tier 1 ISP on the planet, and nobody corroborated that it was a DDoS.

Who knows, maybe Arbor was covering, or maybe they screwed up. But the evidence for me favors something other than DDoS.

</comment><comment><USER4> Wouldn't surprise me... there are some _huge_ ghost botnets right now...</comment>


The Internet's librarian: Brewster Kahle, archivist and idealist - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13174399

<comment><USER2> The Internet Archive was served a National Security Letter by the FBI demanding information about a patron of the Archive. The Archive fought it with the help of the EFF and ACLU.

We won.

We can now talk about it, and what it is like to get a secret demand. We hope that this will be useful for the others that will receive these powerful demands.

[http://www.archive.org/details/National-Security-Letter- Vide...](http://www.archive.org/details/National-Security-Letter-Video)

</comment><comment><USER3> Brewster's an incredibly nice guy. I emailed the Internet Archive about a piece of OCR software I've developed, and, even though I just emailed their generic contact, Brewster got in touch (email in lowercase!) and said "Can you scan the numbers in index pages".

I didn't really manage it, but I was amazed he replied in person.</comment>


EpiPen Price Rise Sparks Concern for Allergy Sufferers - <AUTHOR> http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/08/22/epipen-price-rise-sparks-concern-for-allergy-sufferers/ <comment><USER2> One of the early on-line responses was "maybe we can figure out how to 3D print these cases". It turns out that an Epi-pen is just a plastic safety housing around a normal syringe.

Some discussions:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4y5481/cost_of_epipen...](https://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/4y5481/cost_of_epipen_continues_to_rise_putting_burden/d6lao38)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/4y7f26/epipen_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/3Dprinting/comments/4y7f26/epipen_fork_of_the_enable_project/d6lmoaf)

<comment><USER3> That second discussion got heated quite fast. I agree with the downvoters though. 3D printing a medical device is not something to take lightly.

 _Edit:_

Here's why I agree.

You download this design from the internet, and 3D print the parts. You then assemble it. Awesome!

Some time later, you get an allergic reaction. You use the pen, but it fails to work correctly. Who's responsible? The designer? You (if you're alive)? The printer manufacturer? Your friend who emailed you the design? etc.

There's a reason why even getting such a simple design considered for FDA approval and certified for use on live humans is such a long and complex process. It's easy to make something that works some of the time, but it's _extremely_ hard to make it work essentially every time, especially in life- or-death scenarios.

Of course, the price hike is terrible and the company behind it deserves punishment, but that doesn't make it OK to endanger the lives of people.

<comment><USER4> Scarcity demands innovation. I don't think its being taken lightly; more like, "a private company is gouging medical users and the government won't step in". Not left with many options when your life depends on it.

EDIT: Alternatively, a "better" temporary solution would be to arrange for the import of these from Canada, where the price is fixed by the government.

<comment><USER5> Well the cheaper and more effective solution would be to carry around a syringe and a small bottle of epinephrine.

<comment><USER6> That makes too much sence for the FDA, AMA lobby, big pharma, and very entity/persons that makes a killing off health care.

As to the simplicity the EpiPen, I once used it, and under stress didn't do it right.

When I was younger I was very interested in medicine. In college finished all pre-med courses. Interned at a Coroner's office, etc. Even spent some time in med school. Very familiar with giving a subdermal injection.

Now my father had a bad asthma attack years ago. I knew he was in poor health, so my stress level was high. He blurted out where the EpiPen was kept. I got the device, didn't have time to read the instructions, and just stuck it in his thigh. I apparently pulled it out too quick--just wasn't thinking, and nervous. I pulled it out so quick, because I was scared, felt the device was foolproof, and felt weird hurting my father. We luckey had enother one around, and injected him longer this time. If I was forced to use a syringe, their would be no assuming. "I need to get the drug into the syring. I then need to empty the syring into his thigh. Done?"

Well it didn't work, and he ended up in the emergency room. He survived.

I drove home feeling guilty, and still do today.

I always felt a kit with a single dosed bottles of epinephrine, and a syringe would make intuitive sence to a lot of people? I know I would have felt more comfortable that night.

I honestly think the powers at be underestimate the abilities of the average person, especially a person who's had an previous asthma attack. If a doctor/nurse spent a minute showing a patient how to injection themselfs with epinephrine; I don't think most would ever forget. Plus--we have all watched injections given on the boob tube? "But the average person would probally jab the syringe in the Carotid artery, or pull a Pulp fiction." They could jam it into a carotid, even with a EpiPen--with enough effort/stupidity?

I hope in the future we have over the counter life saving medications over the counter, including naloxone.

Demand passing a basic test if worried about consumers hurting themselfs? Something like a CPR certification? If the patient can pass, they can buy cheap medications over the counter? They don't need fancy propriatiatry drug delivery gadgets in so many cases.

I really think the only way to bring down medicine costs will be to make many drugs OTC, and demand basic competency exams if worried about ineptitude? There will always be people out there that will find a way to abuse/overdose/screw up dosesages on medication. Let's just try it for a year? Especially with certain life saving drugs. How many diabetics die each year because they don't have a prescription for insulin, and couldn't get to a hospital?

I used to have so much respect for any sector of the health care; now I look at most of them with utter discontent.

<comment><USER7> It's recommended to seek medical attention immediately after using any epinephrine injection.

There's a pretty fair chance that you driving your living father home from the emergency room is evidence of the injection working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Meanwhile, in single-payer Britain the NHS pays £26 ($35).

[https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnfc/current/3-respira...](https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnfc/current/3-respiratory- system/34-antihistamines-immunotherapy-and-allergic-emergencies/343-allergic- emergencies/anaphylaxis/adrenalineepinephrine/intramuscular-injection-for- self-administration)

<comment> norea-armozel You know what's weird about this situation is that often I've been told by people here in the US that the price NHS and other single payer systems pay is only possible because we here in the US supposedly pay for it at the free market price. I don't believe that myself since it wouldn't make much sense to say that the prices would plummet to such a degree as to be unprofitable. But I do wonder how much of the price would be affected if every country in the world were under single payer systems. Would it be even marginally higher? Would it be possibly lower for all? I'm not sure. But I would love to see someone analyze this to see if this is statement I keep hearing is 100% bunk.

<comment><USER9> > we here in the US supposedly pay for it at the free market price

The free market price system does not work in American healthcare because we do not have a free market. Healthcare is one of the most heavily regulated industries and the third-party payment system means that consumers are divorced from the price mechanism.

<comment><USER10> As a consumer of epipens, I can assure you that we are not divorced from the price mechanism. We are talking about $300+ a unit for a dispenser (the drug itself costs pennies). The time needed for competition to manifest in the market will cause much suffering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Someone might reasonably wonder why a federal task force is required to investigate "price gouging" for an item that contains under $10 of materials and is not mechanically complex.

Why wouldn't an entrepreneur simply introduce a competing epi-pen design and bring it to market for $300 (for example) and undercut the price being charged by Mylan?

We're told to hate the Martin Shkrelis of the world, and to resend the Mylans, but the truth is that our system prevents price competition _because_ it is designed to protect established firms. This is why many established firms and "industry leaders" strongly supported the affordable care act.

<comment><USER12> The government has created a moat for the current pen through regulation, particularly the extensive testing needed to bring it to market as a medical device whom people's lives depend on it delivering the right dosage with a low failure rate.

This creates something of a small granted monopoly.

It makes sense for the government to step in when something goes wrong.

There are lots of theoretical arguments for a freer market that may drain that moat and allow competitors to quickly react to gouging but the reality is that consumers don't have a great way to test things like epipens and a market trial and error approach seems a little barbaric.

<comment><USER13> Seems to me that less testing is necessary for an established product.

Are there patents involved?

<comment><USER7> Sure, any company wishing to enter the market can use the expired patent as a reference.

<comment><USER13> It looks like there's a minefield of patents granted post-1995[0]; and so which enjoy a 20-year term of protection.

I can't see why any protection is necessary.

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12344059)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If your kid is allergic and needs an EpiPen (or something like it), most school districts will not allow the child to attend class unless they have one at the school. Maybe two.

And of course you have to carry them. There's another two.

So that's $2400. Out of pocket if you don't have insurance, or if your insurance doesn't pay.

The EpiPen manufacturers are abusing their monopoly.

<comment><USER15> Given the proper age, teaching kids to use syringe/vials or having a school nurse that can administer epinephrine would be a much cheaper alternative.

EpiPens are purely about the delivery mechanism. Stabbing a syringe into your thigh and injecting a predetermined amount of epinephrine into your leg isn't majorly complicated.

Maybe having a single pen on the kid and vials/syringes at the school would be a cheaper option.

<comment><USER16> I don't think you've ever seen a child in Anaphylactic Shock if you think all you need to do is train the child to use a vial and needle. Even training school personnel is not a great idea - While an ER nurse or paramedic can handle it because they give injections every day, a teacher or even a school nurse may go for years without ever needing to do an epinephrine injection and the stress and inexperience may make them unable to perform under pressure of having a child dying in front of them.

An IM injection is easy to do when you're calm, but just filling the syringe can be difficult when you're under intense pressure.

<comment><USER17> I wonder why glucagon isn't done in the same format as EpiPens are. I'm a T1 diabetic and I have one glucagon vial at work and one at home. In the case I go low (barely responsive low) someone has to go grab it from the fridge (it needs to be there) load the syringe and use it on me.

When people sleep over I teach them how to use it and I do something like a show and tell at job from time to time so new people know about it.

<comment><USER18> It's not just 'load' the syringe. There's a liquid and a powder that has to be mixed. First, the liquid is injected into the powder. Remember to remove the protective cap from the vial and the two protective caps from the needle (apparently, people frequently forget the one on the vial and break the syringe). Then, mix by rolling, not shaking, for 30 seconds. Then, withdraw the mixture into the syringe and inject it.

Not only does it need to be kept refrigerated, the shelf-life isn't that long to begin with (about a year).

I'm also a T1D and there's a reason that, despite the various seizures I've had in my lifetime, I've never received Glucagon.

Cake icing squirted between your gum and cheek also works (although everything ends up sticky and blue by the end of it).

Edit: I didn't mean to sound like you didn't know what you were talking about, I just wanted to expand on what you were saying about 'show and tell'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The adrenaclick generic is much cheaper than the epipen, with or without insurance. Although technically different epinephrine auto injectors cannot be substituted (you can only be prescribed the one written by your doctor, or its generic equivalent), practically speaking the only difference between the epipen and the adrenaclick design is the instructions for use. I would hope there isn't a case of doctors being unaware of the alternatives.

<comment><USER20> Thank you for mentioning adrenaclick. Generics have been completely missing from the public debate. While epipen price gouging is very real, and a problem, there is one short term solution for allergy sufferers: demand an Rx for the generic. They are under $200 (source: checkyourmeds.com). Vote with your wallet!!

Looks like the differences are: extra safety cap and Epipen brand has an auto- retracting needle.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LRgqwgCh4Fs](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LRgqwgCh4Fs)

<comment><USER21> Great business to be in, attach an auto injection mechanism to maybe $5 worth of syringe and epinephrine.

Then undercut your competition by over 60%. I hope they do well. If more generic manufacturers get in on this or the patent expires we might see this go down to a more reasonable <$50 price, but this is definitely a step in the right direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How many people will this price hike kill? I'm sure that's estimable.

What would be morally justified, to stop it?

<comment><USER23> Nah because it would upset the free market.

I mentioned in another comment when someone from Europe or Canada asked something to the effect of "how come everything has to be free market in US even healthcare and such".

And I think the answer is we treat free market as a religion. We don't evaluate what is better, healthier, more rational answer for a problem. Like say, "How do we keep people from dying from anaphylaxis?" We don't answer that. We always answer first, what would free market want? Will it want us to do this? If not, we don't proceed.

We treat it as if it is deity of sorts and if we disobey we'll be punished.

Someone replied and said this idea isn't so outrageous because a similar concept has been defined already in politics:

American Civil Religion ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_civil_religion))

I am just proposing there is a similar religion in respect to free market.

It is often sold in propaganda terms of course -- we are not communists here, we just want efficiency, we want progress, don't worry stuff will trickle down eventually and so on. So we make it palatable but the main incentive is worshiping the deity.

It sounds crazy but evaluating a lot of things we do as a society through that perspective can be interesting.

<comment><USER24> That's silly. How do you propose to "evaluate what is better, healthier, more rational"? I suppose some panel of experts could give you their best approximation, but it will always be sub-optimal. Markets exist in order to answer these questions, and they answer them by delegating the decision to every person involved in the decision, not by hoping a designated person can make a guess that's close enough.

It appears that the problem in this case is that there is a single producer who is able to engage in monopolistic pricing, which is certainly not something a market-oriented person would condone.

And the market for healthcare is not a free market. Not anything resembling a free market.

<comment><USER23> > Markets exist in order to answer these questions,

Well in this case it answered that the price should be $600. This means people, kids, astamatics are going to die at some point in higher numbers because of that.

I say the market is drunk or evil and should not be allowed to make medical decisions.

But because it has a religious following, we don't want to make it angry so we can't say "we mandate EpiPen cost to be $25". Instead we dance around it and say "oh we'll create this health insurance thing, and then that will pay for it". But only if you work. Or ... if you don't you have to buy it anyway, or you have to pay a penalty. But unless you are old, then we kind a let you off the hook a bit and you sign up for this other thing. All of that is done in paper and in how it is presented to the public because we don't want to upset the free market gods.

<comment><USER25> Setting prices via administrative fiat doesn't eliminate problems. If the price is set to low, there will be shortages or no product at all. If the price is set to high, then the blame for the high price is shifted to the legislature rather than the supplier.

In any case, it is the government that is creating the conditions that allow the price to be set so high in this case. Blaming the 'market' for adjusting to the conditions created by government is confusing cause and effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If people don't want to buy two epipen there's always that neat trick for multiple doses in precarious locations far from hospitals.

It is a well known hack taught in wilderness medicine training.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luultUD0eK0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luultUD0eK0)

<comment><USER27> So a "used" epi-pen's internal syringe might contain 4-5x more epinephrine than actually goes into a standard dose? I assume this means most of the expense of making it comes from the housing/mechanics. (And recouping whatever cost of QA/approvals.)

<comment><USER28> The drug itself is very cheap. With an Rx you can purchase an ampule with about 3 doses for < $10.[1] You can administer it with an insulin syringe, which I don't think requires an Rx. Of course administration is a lot more tedious and requires some training.

I worked at a summer camp where we would carry 1 or 2 pens plus a bunch of ampules if we were in a wilderness situation where we couldn't get to emergency care and needed more than one dose.

[1] [http://www.buyemp.com/product/epinephrine- ampule](http://www.buyemp.com/product/epinephrine-ampule)

<comment><USER29> The drug is cheap...because it's unpatentable (as a molecule anyway) and is old enough that any patents would be expired anyway.

The marketing of autoinjectors has some legitimate public health value, but it's also a clear business strategy to get new drug prices for an ancient drug

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If the product is decades-old, why haven't generic variants appeared?

Something seems to be missing from this article.

<comment><USER31> There are generics. What is patented is the delivery mechanism. I've had to administer it twice. You take the cap off and just push it into the thigh. The top part moves back and the needle pushes through.

<comment><USER30> Thanks, so this is the missing information. The article misleadingly says the medication is decades-old, where actually the pen itself is patented.

<comment><USER4> The patent is expired: [https://www.google.com/patents/US4031893](https://www.google.com/patents/US4031893)

Courtesy ceejayoz below: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340464](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12340464)

<comment><USER32> so why aren't there more case manufactures

<comment><USER33> For the same reason there were no competitors to daraprim before Martin Shkreli decided to be a complete ja. When the price is low enough that there's little profit to be had, nobody bothers competing because it's not worth the time, money, and effort to get FDA approval. When the price gets jacked up like that, you will find generics pop up quickly. The problem is the window between the price hike and when generics pop up can sometimes be years due to needing to get FDA approval.

In this case there was a competitor, but they recently had their product pulled from the market in an FDA recall. So Mylan decided: why not raise the price 600% (and rising) when it's a drug people HAVE to have.

Capitalism in action baby. Let's deregulate EVERYTHING!

<comment><USER34> Hmmm... from your description, it sounds like the market is working, just not fast enough for everyone.

It's not worth it for a company to develop their own Epi-pen since profits are so low. Eventually enough drop out that one manufacturer raises the price. Significant profits result which attracts other competitors. Prices drop.

Would you just prefer the gov't to step in and set the price? What happens if companies decide it's not worth the effort? Have the gov't force them to produce the product?

<comment><USER4> > Would you just prefer the gov't to step in and set the price? What happens > if companies decide it's not worth the effort? Have the gov't force them to > produce the product?

Cut out the private market and have the government manufacture it directly.

<comment><USER34> Can you give me some examples where the gov't has come in as a manufacturer and it's actually gone well?

<comment><USER35> They've done pretty well in the power sector. One could argue that most power (electric) companies are really just state run shells.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Mylan refers the press to their local politicians "go talk to them about it, we pay our lobbying fees to get whoever we want elected specifically so we can charge any price we want, you can't do a damn thing - it's a free country".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Why haven't competitors entered the market with cheaper products?

<comment><USER37> There are really two villains here, Mylan, of course, but more importantly, the FDA. FDA regulations make the cost of bringing a new medical device to the market absurd. There are no competitors because the time and effort to bring a competing device is so ridiculously high that it doesn't pay to do so.

I have a child with a peanut allergy. I am worried every damn day of my life. I see articles about people who die every year because they didn't have an Epipen handy. The numbers of people who die will increase. I want to see FDA bureaucrats hauled to those funerals so they can see what they've done.

<comment><USER38> So, The FDA, because they require drug and device makers to demonstrate efficacy and safety by going through a rigorous clinical trial process, are evil? Really?

I also find your comment pretty uninformed considering that the FDA just paved the way for generic drug makers to basically "knock-off" super expensive biologic drugs like Humira and Enbrel which were previously covered by similar patents.

The FDA has it's problems - but to say that it is an agency staffed by people who don't care ("bureaucrats") who typically have both Ph.D _and_ M.D.s and have dedicated their careers to ensure patients have safe and effective medicine is unfair.

edit: grammar.

<comment><USER37> > So, The FDA, because they require drug and device makers to demonstrate > efficacy and safety by going through a rigorous clinical trial process, are > evil? Really?

Yes, if the process is so rigorous and expensive that it drives the cost of drugs beyond the reach of people who need them, and it hampers the effective functioning of the free market. And I think it's widely accepted that's far more expensive to bring a drug to market here than it is elsewhere in the world.

The FDA believes its mission should be to ensure that drugs are safe and effective. That is wrongheaded. Instead, it should undertake a rational risk/benefit approach. Rather than saying that no drug gets through the filter unless it's safe (as demonstrated through reams of evidence), it should ask, how much risk should we tolerate in exchange for how much benefit?

In the case of Epipens, there's little risk, because epinephrine is an old, widely-used drug. There is some risk that it will be mis-administered by a less-than-perfect device, but the fact is that a $10 bottle of epinephrine and a $1 syringe can save a life. It is offensive that the FDA thinks it should get in the way of the distribution of such things.

I was in Colorado last summer and took my son horseback riding. Our tour guide was allergic to bee stings, but she was just scraping by financially, and couldn't afford an Epipen. She'd been stung before, and her throat had tightened, but fortunately she happened to have an old, expired pen from before the price went up and so she survived. But now she was going out bare. We gave her one my son's pens. It won't last long. It's possible that she won't last long either.

You want evidence this is an evil system? There it is.

<comment><USER39> I don't really think you know all the history here. There _are_ other companies who have/are attempting to create competitors to EpiPen. A few of them weren't able to get passed by the FDA, and one of them passed the FDA in 2012 but was recalled because of the product misfiring. The EpiPen problem seems to be much less an FDA problem then it is a problem with manufacturing, other companies don't seem to be able to make products that work nearly as well as EpiPen. If the FDA wasn't in the picture, you would still have the problem that there aren't any other reliable replacements for EpiPen even though companies have tried.

IMO, I also don't see how your solution would solve any real problems. People shouldn't have to ask themselves "Do I buy the one that is 600$ with a 100% success rate, or the one that's 100$ with a 95% success rate?". That sounds like a pretty bleak state of affairs, and could easily encourage cutting corners to cut costs. "How much does a death cost us?"

<comment><USER40> What about buying 5 of them that are $20 bucks a piece? Maybe they can be made in a stackable format, so it would be easy to carry 5 of them. If one misfires, snap it off and use the next one in the stack.

<comment><USER39> That only works if you can actually tell if it misfired or not - if you're administering it to someone else, you may simply not be able to. With that, part of the problem was that the misfires would deliver some of the drug but not all, and only sometimes would completely fail to deliver any of the drug. Telling if you got 50% vs. 100% would probably be tough - and even if you could, if you took two because the first gave you 50%, you might end-up getting a big overdose or still get an underdose. So having multiple of those pens really just doesn't solve the problem if the pens themselves are unreliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The petition to Congress mentioned in the article:

[http://www.petition2congress.com/20720/stop-epipen-price- gou...](http://www.petition2congress.com/20720/stop-epipen-price-gouging/)

</comment><comment><USER15> They don't produce EpiPen's as a generic in India because the Indian medical community does not recommend self-administration of epinephrine.

If you're that much in need though, you can buy pre-filled epinephrine syringes for intramuscular injection - just keep in mind the ease-of-use of an EpiPen won't be available. You have to take the time to take off the cap, insert and inject the medicine.

<comment><USER32> what happens if someone goes into anaphylaxis?

<comment><USER15> I assume they intramuscularly inject epinephrine just as you would with an EpiPen. I doubt it'd be hard for patients to get hold of an epinephrine kit.

You'll also find developing countries have far less allergic population. It's said this is partly due to urban environments having more vitamin D deficiency as well as people being more exposed to more pathogens/etc during childhood outside of developed countries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Since Sanofi previously had an equivalent product on the market for at least 3 years (called Auvi-Q), I'm really curious - why were people paying up for an Epi-pen? Was it the brand name? Do schools mandate it's an Epi-pen? I know Sanofi pulled the product in October of last year, but it seems like Mylan has been raising prices during that time.

<comment><USER43> They seem to have some manufacturing trouble, leading to a recall[0] and pulling the product from the market. They mention Epi-Pen and Adrenaclick[1] as alternatives.

[0][https://www.auvi-q.com/recall-faqs](https://www.auvi-q.com/recall-faqs) [1][http://www.goodrx.com/adrenaclick](http://www.goodrx.com/adrenaclick)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a simple example of how health care systems should be nationalized. Or that the profit motive in health care is corrosive to health.

<comment><USER45> No it doesn't. Switzerland has one of the best healthcare systems in the world, which is completely private (although there are some public hospitals), but heavily regulated.

<comment><USER46> Alas, there are significant differences between the Swiss and US one. Most importantly, law in Switzerland specifies exact coverage criteria for basic health insurance and prohibits excluding pre-existing conditions from it. I'm not sure how financing of hospitals works exactly (I was under the impression that they are at least partially publicly owned). Minor things: there are phone-a-doctor public services that are free of charge for residents in some areas.

Edit: also, every company that provides basic insurance can vary the price based on a limited set of factors and must accept any person.

<comment><USER7> The ACA standardized basic health insurance and prohibited excluding pre- existing conditions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is this only in the US?

I'm in Switzerland, and I bought some for my kid, I paid around 80$ per piece.

[http://compendium.ch/mpro/mnr/22294/html/fr](http://compendium.ch/mpro/mnr/22294/html/fr)

You have the price at the far bottom of the page, around 76CHF.

I'm a bit concerned if the price is going to be x10.

<comment><USER48> I'm not familiar with the swiss health care system, but in Norway the government foots most of the bill for prescription drugs. The government is negotiating price with the manufacturer and as a big buyer they can get a fair price.

<comment><USER49> I have an EpiPen, just in case, because I keep bees. It is a prescription drug, but government co-pay doesn't kick in because the price is to low. I paid USD120, around DKK800, for one EpiPen.

My guess is that the US prices are higher, because insurance will pick up the bill for most people, allowing the manufacturer rise the prices with little consequence... for most people. Generally speaking Americans tend to pay a high cost for their lack of a national healthcare system, with very little benefit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is one of those devices that also should be low cost because businesses, locations, ect should have them as well as individuals (many people can have first time deadly allergic reactions, including as adults)

That the price for the case is expensive just rose as random is serious business. There really is no need for it to be so expensive

<comment><USER50> I have no evidence, but this headline coupled with the insulin price hike... it really feels like this is an attempt to manufacture a crisis.

I fill a prescription for epi-pens once a year (nut allergies), but insurance bears the brunt of the cost.

<comment><USER25> Insurance simply distributes the high cost to many people via higher premiums. Without competition to reduce the cost or regulations that set the price by law, the high cost remains.

<comment><USER51> >or regulations that set the price by law, the high cost remains

It is important to note that even such a law does not magically remove the high cost. Certain products have a high price for a reason and setting the price by fiat is guaranteed to cause shortages. That's when people really start dying. See Venezuela for a prime current example.

<comment><USER52> There is no supply side reason for the high price Mylan is charging for EpiPens. It is a couple bucks worth of materials (plus QA, distribution, and all that). The R&D costs have long since been amortized away to nothing.

<comment><USER51> How do you know? The medical industry regularly has shortages of dozens of different products [1]. And that is to say nothing of the cost of navigating through all the regulatory hurdles.

[1] [http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/10/drug- shortages-...](http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2015/10/drug-shortages- price-gouging-and-our.html)

<comment><USER52> The price of epinephrine in other packaging (vials, ampules, etc) has remained more or less unchanged (speaking from firsthand experience as someone who orders supplies for an ambulance service). It is not an epinephrine shortage driving this price increase.

Similarly, the EpiPen is already an FDA approved product, and has had no new regulatory hurdles to jump through recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> A friend of mine has a child with an allergy and was visiting Turkey. A family member of his (in Turkey) is a physician, and said that in Turkey nobody uses epi pens and allergies are generally never the cause of visits to the ER.

Is this true? What's going on?

</comment><comment><USER53> Oy. As someone who carries two of those damn things (grumble grumble Peanut allergy grumble grumble) and is a very conservative eater, this is not good.

Luckily, I haven't had to use one of them in like 8 months.

</comment><comment><USER54> This seems less damming to me considering the medicine naturally occurs inside your body. What reason is there that nobody else can make a competing product for cheaper?

<comment><USER5> Regulatory hurdles to get a new device approved.

<comment><USER54> Maybe regulation is not so good after all

<comment><USER55> There was a competitor but it wasn't able to reliably inject the correct amount of medicine so it was recalled. [0]

[0] [http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/sanofi-s-auvi-q- recall...](http://www.fiercepharma.com/marketing/sanofi-s-auvi-q-recall-puts- mylan-s-rival-epipen-full-control-of-blockbuster-market)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> link to patent:

[https://www.google.com/patents/US20050273054](https://www.google.com/patents/US20050273054)

</comment><comment><USER56> Well you know, they need to recoup the R&D costs to develop the drug.

> Mylan, the pharmaceutical company, acquired the decades-old product in 2007, > when pharmacies paid less than $100 for a two-pen set

Oh.

This is why US health care is broken people.

<comment><USER57> This is one reason. Another reason is that a huge chunk of the population will simply not see these costs.

For instance, I choose to be on a high deductible plan at my work (they offer both a high deductible plan and a traditional PPO). My wife has the choice of a reasonably priced HMO and a extremely expensive PPO.

On my high deductible plan if I need a refill for an epipen I pay the full boat unless I'm past my deductible (or really my HSA does) on my wifes HMO plan we pay $25 every time we need one. We both have prescriptions, what is the rational decision for my family to make if we need a new epipen?

That cost differences is not "free money", it comes out of the pocket of my wife's employer and peers rather than my employer and peers. There is a dramatic agency problem in the US health system as well.

<comment><USER7> Apparently they'll cover your copay.

[https://www.epipen.com/en/copay-offer](https://www.epipen.com/en/copay-offer)

(I didn't read it closely, but the eligibility criteria seem to be 'private insurance')

<comment><USER57> I don't have a copay on epipens, but I do have a deductible. This actually can help me but the max is $100 off of full price (a few years ago I got $75 off with a similar card).

<comment><USER7> Oh, I didn't think you would be terribly concerned about the savings, I thought the company helping patients use their insurance was a nice addendum to your comment about the agency problem.

Edit: The way I read it, if you give the card to the pharmacy, the company will pay the $25 on your wife's plan.

<comment><USER57> Yeah, for sure. It is interesting. Also copays vs deductible etc all seem to be ways to complicate coverage on purpose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> > selling service contracts, [...] The price is still $0 and there are still > no regulations on it.

I assume at this point that you're being paid to shill some political viewpoint on the internet, because you just explained that the price of software isn't actually zero, because it's unusable (to the customers that buy a service contract) without a service contract, and creating a company that employs the developers that wrote the software to support that software has a high barrier to entry. (because those developers are already employed)

To pick at company at random, HortonWorks. I pick on them because I recently saw an invoice. $20,000 for 16 hours of training. So by your argument, there must be some kind of regulation there, right?

<comment><USER59> You're making quite a vast assumption that service contracts mean the software is unusable without them. Red Hat Linux is just one counterexample.

A further vast assumption is that your arguments are so compelling that anyone not convinced must be a paid shill.

There are many software consultants who charge over $10,000/day for doing training. Many companies find them worthwhile when amortized over a roomful of engineers. Those consultants aren't suckering anyone in by giving them free software, in fact, they don't provide any software whatsoever.

<comment><USER58> >> it's unusable (to the customers that buy a service contract) without a service contract

> You're making quite a vast assumption that service contracts mean the > software is unusable without them. Red Hat Linux is just one counterexample.

No. I'm not. I'm basing that on the tautology that consumers of "free" software who purchase expensive service contracts spend their money purchasing expensive service contracts.

Software is free in the same way that air conditioning at the mall is free, the hugs handed out by the "free hugs" guy are free, the way that the privilege of watching advertisements on TV are free. Somebody is spending time and money making this software, because they think they are going to get more out of it than they put into it (either tangibly or intangibly (except for that TempleOS guy, who does it for the voices in his head))

And this still doesn't change anything about the EpiPen. There's a consumer surplus, and the price is increased to maximize capture of consumer surplus regardless of the cost in human lives. I don't care how free software is, the price on EpiPens is going up to maximize profit.

To frame this as a simple dichotomy, would you rather live in a world where people die to maximize profit, or a world where regulation is applied to reduce human suffering and death?

<comment><USER59> > To frame this as a simple dichotomy

Except it's not so simple. Peltzman showed with statistics in "Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation" that the 1962 FDA amendments resulted in an increase in human suffering and death. (The 1962 amendments added "and effective" to the FDA's mandate.)

While some ineffective drugs were prevented from reaching the market, this was overshadowed by good drugs being delayed, and a sharp reduction in new drugs being developed due to huge cost increases from the regulations.

Markets are very dynamic systems, and unintended side effects always happen even with regulations that have the best of intentions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> The US is subsidizing the rest of the world. When Canada decrees that the price of something will by X, then guess who pays?

<comment><USER61> Do these things actually cost more than $100 to manufacture? The US isn't subsidizing the rest of the world with this, we're subsidizing the shareholders of a single company.

I've seen this argument made regarding American health care costs in general. Everyone else pays much less because we're subsidizing them, the argument goes. Except that American medical R&D spending is about $500/year per capita, while the gap in health care costs is thousands. That's some combination of waste and people getting rich off of other people's suffering.

This product could pretty clearly be sold at a profit at the old price. But they can make more money if they charge more. People will die because they can't afford it anymore? Fuck 'em, apparently.

<comment><USER62> Indeed, the UK NHS (National Health Service) pays £26.45 per pen. NICE (the NHS purchasing and commissioning body) negotiates prices on most drugs, devices and medical services used by the NHS, and they make sure that the prices they get are not only evidence based but also sustainable (in both the fiscal and health sense).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> These are $125 for two pens or thereabouts in the UK, same device. Presumably import is regulated?

[https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen](https://onlinedoctor.lloydspharmacy.com/uk/allergy/epipen)

<comment><USER62> Actually the NHS pays £26.45 per pen.[0]

And yes it is regulated; it is considered both a drug and a medical device.

[0] [https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/3-respirat...](https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/formulary/bnf/current/3-respiratory- system/34-antihistamines-hyposensitisation-and-allergic- emergencies/343-allergic- emergencies/anaphylaxis/adrenalineepinephrine/intramuscular-injection-for- self-administration/epipen)</comment></comment>


HyperbolaBSD Roadmap: hard fork of the OpenBSD kernel and userspace - <AUTHOR> https://www.hyperbola.info/news/announcing-hyperbolabsd-roadmap/ <comment><USER2> > Reasons for this include:

> • Linux kernel forcing adaption of DRM, including HDCP.

This links to a Linux kernel patch which _allows but does not require_ turning on HDCP in video output. Is that really so bad?

> • Linux kernel proposed usage of Rust (which contains freedom flaws

"freedom flaws" here means a Firefox-like trademark policy. This does not really affect software freedom in the traditional sense?

<comment><USER3> > This does not really affect software freedom in the traditional sense?

That's not the point though. These kinds of people just consistently seek conflict and are bending the reality to fit their narrow field of view.

And yet, they don't see why no one use their projects.

Anyway, this article was probably written on a computer booted with a proprietary bios, typed on a keyboard with a proprietary firmware, a proprietary CPU microcode and what else.

There's no code base to "hard fork" to sell as their own nor really something to make outrage of so they don't care though.

In reality, that's more of a religious issue than anything else. Fingers are pointed at those that are not extremist enough for their taste.

Real freedom is letting people do what they want with software. Most so-called free software licenses are actually really restrictive and absolutely not freedom inducing.

I guess it's very important to create confusion not to say exclusion and throw around licences so complex that you actually almost require a lawyer to understand if you can use the software or not so organizations that produce nothing of real importance can exist and preach the "real freedom".

<comment> m-p-3 > Anyway, this article was probably written on a computer booted with a > proprietary bios, typed on a keyboard with a proprietary firmware, a > proprietary CPU microcode and what else.

Ah ok, let's give up then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Unless it's not immediately obvious-- there are no OpenBSD developers associated with this project, past or present. This isn't some splitting of existing communities.

There was nothing "hard" about this fork, it's funny how a few GNU aficionados think that deleting a few freely redistributeable firmware files constitutes significant "new code" contributions.

It's in the same vein as projects like "libertybsd" or "libreboot"\-- misleading people into thinking they are anything but a agenda driven project, onboarding like-minded and inexperienced new users, meanwhile offloading most (if not all) the support/technical burden on other communities.

<comment><USER5> I take "hard fork" to mean they aren't going to rebase on future versions of OpenBSD.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure they won't, if history tells us anything. It'll forever remain "liberated".

<comment><USER6> So what do you take hard fork to mean then?

<comment><USER4> What it means. It's glib remark implying there was any difficulty.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In the US at least, you do not need to register a trademark to enforce it, just like you do not need to register a copyright, and one of the specific things trademark law lets you do is prevent people from misrepresenting the origin of a product bearing that name.

Neither the BSD or GPL license families grant a trademark license.

Therefore, Hyperbola should immediately cease distributing _all_ software that doesn't have an explicit "You may use the name of this software for whatever you like" license and where the original authors might want to go into business with that software, on the grounds that such software is non-free, just the same as it would judge software with no copyright license as non- free. That Rust and Firefox have trademark policies does not make them _less_ free than un-trademark-licensed names anymore than having a BSD license makes code less free than unlicensed code.

<comment><USER8> "In the US at least, you do not need to register a trademark to enforce it... and one of the specific things trademark law lets you do is prevent people from misrepresenting the origin of a product bearing that name."

Unless you register, you cannot sue for damages and you are limited to state courts.

So how do you prevent people from using your mark?

You apply for an injunction. You would have to do this in every state where you want to enforce the mark. If you target multiple states, you would likely need multiple lawyers. How many of those free software authors will want to pay for this legal expense?

Until you succeed in getting your injunctions, and there is no guarantee you will succeed, there is no incentive for someone to stop using an unregistered mark. Whatever damage they cause cannot be recovered under a claim based on trademark law.

<comment><USER7> Sure, but free software projects typically do not work based on the principle of "What's the worst they can do in court" or "Are they really going to sue us," they work on the principle of "What are we actively and explicitly allowed to do." Otherwise they'd have no worries about incorporating clearly abandoned code, or incorporating code with an unclear license and not selling it knowing that they can always reply to a lawyer letter with "Oops, sorry." Otherwise Beerware and WTFPL and the JSON license would be free software licenses.

It's quite clear that Mozilla isn't interested in suing Hyperbola or any other free software distro for being a distro and doing distro things, and that in the worst case, they'd send a nice message first and Hyperbola could choose to discontinue distributing Firefox and Rust. Yet Hyperbola wants to take the "explicit permission" principle to an extreme and discontinue distributing them now, proactively. They should be consistent and cease distributing everything else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Due to the Linux kernel rapidly proceeding down an unstable path....

I've been hearing this argument for 20 years now. What's different today?

<comment><USER10> > What's different today?

About 300 system calls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It seems strange to fork the least advanced kernel in common use today. OpenBSD still doesn't have a unified page cache (like literally every other mainstream operating system does), and it still implements SMP using a "big kernel lock" strategy from 20 years ago.

The opposition to Rust is also strange. Yes, the trademark restriction is annoying, but it's not fatal: the existence of projects like Pale Moon and Waterfox show that forking projects in the presence of trademark restrictions is viable. (I still think Mozilla is really shitty for applying these restrictions in the first place though.)

 _Technically_ , Rust is a good thing. A way to structurally prevent memory safety defects is a major advance that occurs only rarely. Rust is the only game in town for memory safety if you also want low-level control over the machine. Giving that up over a trademark is just luddism.

> Grsec is no longer free software

I really hate how various corporate forces in the Linux world have made is socially unacceptable to sue people out of existence for blatant GPL violations.

<comment> yjftsjthsd-h > OpenBSD still doesn't have a unified page cache

I doubt that they regard that as a flaw; no shared cache is an effective mitigation against cache-based attacks (cache poisoning or information leaks).

<comment><USER12> It means that there are two incoherent caches, not that they aren't shared.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > Future versions of Hyperbola will be using HyperbolaBSD which will have the > new kernel, userspace and not be ABI compatible with previous versions.

I don't know why they waited so long to do this. While it's a good choice to switch to the OpenBSD kernel, I'm not quite sure if doing it now makes sense. This involves recompiling everything, probably a new toolchain, plus adapting software to work with the new kernel, or even worse: A Linux compatibility layer for existing software / drivers.

This doesn't seem like the right time to move to a new kernel for an existing Linux distro. They might as well have created a new Hyperbola from scratch from the side or started with OpenBSD from the start.

<comment><USER14> So this is an existing Linux distro? Honestly there is basically no context at the link so I thought this was a brand new project.

<comment><USER5> Yes, Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre is based on Arch Linux and focused on user freedom. So a lot like Parabola, but with maybe a stricter freedom definition and slightly different goals. Looks like they found the goals of the project are incompatible with the GNU/Linux operating system and had to find a new operating system to base on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Future versions of Hyperbola will be using HyperbolaBSD which will have the > new kernel, userspace and not be ABI compatible with previous versions.

A bit ironic for a project that claims it's more stable than Linux…

<comment><USER16> Hyperbole BSD ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What really irks me about this is the implicit intent to ensure that anything Hyperbola adds to its OpenBSD fork can't be ported back to OpenBSD due to the one-way street of license compatibility (BSD-licensed code can be included in a GPL-licensed project, but not the other way around). Pretty ironic/hypocritical given that in the same breath they mention the existence of (and desire to replace) GPL-incompatibly-licensed OpenBSD code (where? how?).

If they have any desire to be good free software citizens they'd release the OpenBSD modifications under the ISC license or something else suitably copyfree so that OpenBSD can use those modifications.

\----

Also, I fail to see how a copyfree-licensed binary blob is non-free. Sometimes code only exists as binary code (i.e. if it's been written by hand). Whether or not that's the case here is beyond my skillset/expertise, but it seems silly to declare code to be inherently non-free if it's not human-readable, actual license terms be damned. As long as you have the freedom to use it / modify it / distribute it (verbatim or modified) / etc., then that's free.

Like, if someone wrote a device driver in Brainfuck, I probably wouldn't be able to make sense of it, either, but that doesn't make that Brainfuck code inherently non-free; it just means I don't know how to read Brainfuck code.

</comment><comment><USER18> Eh, many OSes have been down this road, but the problem is that you end up having to emulate the Linux ABO, but the Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and underdocumented, and you'll need to be compatible with it, and that's ETOOHARD. Even Microsoft has given up on emulating the Linux ABI.

<comment><USER11> > Even Microsoft has given up on emulating the Linux ABI.

Then what's this Linux subsystem that Windows ships?

> Linux ABI is large and fast-evolving and underdocumented

You don't have to keep up with the latest ABI. You don't need to match tip-of- tree. You only need to match some version of Linux that programs still target, and that version can be pretty old, since enterprise customers scream bloody murder when you force them up upgrade kernels to run new programs.

<comment><USER19> WSL2 operates in a Hyper-V environment, there's too many issues with trying to do syscall emulation that WSL1 attempted - while both will remain supported for a while the writing is already on the wall.

<comment><USER11> Ugh. I hadn't heard that. WSL2 being a VM is a huge disappointment. There's the technically-cowardly Microsoft from the Ballmer era. Just when I thought Microsoft had rediscovered how to do technically interesting things, they wave the white flag and run away.

Using a VM for WSL means that it'll never be possible to write a program that's simultaneously a good win32 GUI citizen and a Unix API user. WSL1 (AFAIK) didn't allow this use case, but there was a path to get there. There's no path from a VM to a native USER32 process.

The bright side is that at least Cygwin won't die. Cygwin allows for precisely this use case.

<comment><USER20> > Just when I thought Microsoft had rediscovered how to do technically > interesting things, they wave the white flag and run away

You might want to look up all of the reasons why they made this choice, including but not limited to the _amazing_ impedance mismatch between Linuxy I/O operations and Windowsy I/O operations.

Running the Linux kernel in a VM and doing all sorts of integration tricks ends up being a better end-user experience, even if it's not as cool and clever as what WSL0 and WSL1 are.

<comment><USER19> > You might want to look up all of the reasons why they made this choice, > including but not limited to the amazing impedance mismatch between Linuxy > I/O operations and Windowsy I/O operations.

Yeah, this right here is the most problematic. It's fairly easy to implement the proactor pattern of the Windows asynchronous IO APIs using reactor implementations common on Linux, the opposite is not so true. Seeing as this is a fundamental design choice of the NT kernel itself, and not just the Win32 subsystem it's rather difficult to properly emulate the Linux API's without a similar amount of indirection that a hypervisor layer adds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like this kind of announcement, clearly talks about what they want and what they think is important. It tells me that I will not be very interested it but I wish them the best of luck in achieving their goals.

</comment><comment><USER22> Diversity is a good thing, but BSD seems like it needs a lot more manpower as it is. Why start a new project instead of contributing to OpenBSD?

<comment><USER15> The project seems to value being GPL-licensed.

<comment><USER19> There's some irony to be found in forking BSD-licensed code and putting it under the GPL.

<comment><USER23> They don't seem to be changing the license of the old code, but licensing their new contributions under the GPL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Uh, why is it necessary to change the license? BSD code can be compiled into a GPL project without issue; by changing the license you guarantee the BSD crowd won't help you one iota.

<comment><USER25> Hyperbola seems to be a project driven largely by GNUish licensing ideology.

<comment><USER24> But what does that gain anyone? If the Linux/GNU ecosystem were re-licensed to MIT/BSD/Apache2, what would be lost?

<comment><USER7> In practice: there are many companies that built interesting networking products on top of BSD kernels and had no compulsion to release the source, and meanwhile the performance of Linux's networking stack slowly beat it, because companies were working upstream.

<comment><USER24> "Have no compulsion to release the source" \-- reminds me of the interview on the Bryan Lunduke show with a FreeBSD maintainer who talked about Juniper, Comcast, EMC, and Netflix engineers who contribute back a lot of code to FreeBSD, just not the code that specifically makes their work a competitive advantage for their employer, a definition that changes over time. I might be conflating the Lunduke interview with something else but I thought that the Netflix engineers that build their ISP-level caching servers ultimately decided that none of it constituted a proprietary advantage so they released it all. Had the project been based on closed source this wouldn't be an option -- and GPL was out the question all the way unless it was known up-front there would be nothing that could give the makers a competitive advantage.

Programmers have to eat; permissive licensing is the best compromise between openness and needing to make a living. History has shown that eventually the code comes out rather than being socked away in proprietary hell.

<comment><USER26> although you make some good points, sadly, the permissive license structure is arguably enabling a new Feudalism, at least in the West, with seasoned programmers reduced to share-cropping, while finance rules the castle (and its dining halls).

<comment><USER25> Permissive license structure for computer programs (or, for that matter, anything especially about computer programs) has nothing to do with that, it's just the normal labor-capital relationship of capitalism. There is, literally, no conceivable software licensing regime that avoids that effect, as long as the broader economic system is predominantly capitalist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is/was Yet Another Arch Distro, right? So I highly doubt that they have the personpower to continue with this project. Even Devuan (Debian w/o Lennart-ware) had more people behind them, this would be closer to Mastodon, the Linux distro that wouldn't switch to ELF.

Not that I'm entirely against the general idea, I think it's scary how common corporate-ware is getting these days compared to early Linux. For example, I'd much prefer a language that's not controlled by a commercial entity (and without a "BDFL", while we're at it), preferably with several implementations for example.

</comment><comment><USER28> Is this actually a GNU project? I don't fully understand who's behind this. I also don't understand why the name would have been chosen, as it seems to not have a good connotation?

I'm also a little confused about their problems with Rust ([https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:rusts_freedo...](https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:rusts_freedom_flaws)) Firefox also has the same trademark issues, but there are multiple forks/distributions of it with the trademarked material removed. It seems like a petty thing to bring up on an "about" page.

Also, it feels weird that they complain that linux is including some things they don't like (e.g. HDCP), but at the same time just gloss over that the BSDs are they base of many proprietary products where you can't get the source at all. I mean, I hate DRM and things like HDCP as much as anyone, but it just feels like an _off_? argument?

<comment><USER29> They have the same complaint about Firefox. [https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:rusts_freedo...](https://wiki.hyperbola.info/doku.php?id=en:main:rusts_freedom_flaws)

That said, I don't understand how that is in violation of freedom 3. It is just saying, "if you want to redistribute it, don't call it rust so that nobody gets confused and we don't get stuck supporting your fork." I think that there is a higher barrier for something like firefox due to the graphics, but Rust only has a simple copy and paste. And if your whole purpose is to hard fork, why is that a problem?

I think that the requirement for internet access to build might be harder for Hyperbola's goals, but _shrug_

<comment><USER30> There is no requirement for internet access, they are mistaken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This seems like the first time I have ever seen a GNU/Linux distribution switch to BSD.

Has this ever happened before

<comment><USER32> Gentoo added support for BSD kernels at some point, but it wasn't a switch, and didn't see much use as far as I know.

<comment><USER33> Gentoo and Debian both had (have?) support for what they call "Debian/kFreeBSD" or "Gentoo/kFreeBSD"

The kernels are FreeBSD but userland is all GNU as far as I understand it?

I'm not sure how well supported they are, or if anyone ever used them beyond proof of concept

<comment><USER34> Debian/kFreeBSD has been discontinued for years. [https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd- gnu/](https://www.debian.org/ports/kfreebsd-gnu/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I love the concept of using OpenBSD on my personal machine as my primary OS, but it's much slower and the drivers are less stable than Linux these days. I wonder if this move will either shrink or grow the audience of this admittedly small distribution.

</comment><comment><USER32> All their complaints are about Linux. Why not just use OpenBSD instead of forking it? GPL puritanism?

Seems like an enormous effort for very little benefit.

</comment><comment><USER36> I am a great supporter of open source diversity and ambitious projects, but the rationale behind this one...leaves me skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER37> Whatever happened to the other openbsd fork, bitrig?

<comment><USER38> Bitrig doesn't seem like it is maintained any longer.[1][2]

[1] [https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Bitrig-F...](https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Bitrig- Fork-Dead)

[2] [https://github.com/bitrig/bitrig](https://github.com/bitrig/bitrig)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Won't be a "distro"... What do they think the D in OpenBSD stands for?</comment>


How to encode video for mobile devices (iPhone/iPad, Android, etc.) - <AUTHOR> http://zencoder.com/encoder-blog/2010/09/30/how-to-encode-video-for-mobile-use/

<comment><USER2> That's a particularly meaty blog post, for which I (a mobile developer) have used several of the configurations or very close to them when working with things, and he's spot on.

</comment><comment><USER3> Useful info.

Anyone care to provide the corresponding ffmpeg CLI examples?

</comment><comment><USER3> Also, iPads can go up to Baseline 3.1, 1024x768, IIRC.

<comment><USER4> It can but Apple doesn't recommend that size for "mobile" use. You can see all the Apple recommendations here: [http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/technotes/tn2010/imag...](http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/technotes/tn2010/images/tn2224_SettingsV2.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great link. It's specifically for HTTP Streaming, so you can get away with higher quality for videos downloaded before being watched. But even for regular old HTTP Progressive Download, these guidelines are very useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title of this article is misleading. There is nothing here that says how to encode video for the mobile devices. It only contains information about the video formats that the mobile devices can accept.

<comment><USER5> It's a great post. They enumerate a dozen headaches you have to deal with and edge cases you must account for if you want video on mobile devices.

Or, you know, you could use our free one-click video transcoding service.

We need more "use our service because we save you from doing complicated X, Y, Z yourself" posts.</comment></comment>


Pokemon Go banned by Iranian authorities over 'security' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-36989526 <comment><USER2> ok, my next business card is going to say "Minister, High Council of Virtual Places" (with a foot note "and virtual responsibilities.")

Pretty clear though that if you are playing Pokemon Go, and your actual identity is attached to your account, then there is a way for Niantic to tell someone where your are right now, and where you have been.

Given enough adoption in the population, that data set could be used to illuminate organizations and memberships which might otherwise be considered classified. Both for players, and for non-players.[1]

[1] Examples are available in the literature where people using good OpSec were identified by employees who did not.

<comment><USER3> But your Facebook, Twitter, Tinder and Google Maps apps already have access to that location data. To be honest of all the aforementioned I think Pokemon Go is the less likely to use that information for evil.

<comment><USER2> I don't disagree, perhaps Pokemon, by virtue of its active engagement while you are using it, provides higher density data. The social networking and mapping services really only note your location when you generate content or seek an address. Waze however would be a good example of something collecting location data all the time and potentially creating records of it upstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a Iranian I can always clearly see how foreign analyzers, do analyze Iran issues from wrong perceptive.

The regime is afraid of peoples life style change. They do know if people life style changes toward western culture then they have no place to rule.

Any banning, suppression / etc you can see from Iran regime is because of this. They block access to YouTube, satellite, porn, Facebook, etc, not because they think these things are wrong. They do it just because people must not become familiar with western life style.

"If they become familiar, they will understand Islam,tradition,etc is bullshit and if status quo changes ,then we don't have any place to rule"

P.S. I live in Iran right now and I always track political analysis about Iran regime.

<comment><USER5> >If they become familiar, they will understand Islam,tradition,etc is bullshit

Don't they (government) themselves believe in Islam so much?

<comment><USER4> Nope. Don't be naive, they are professional politicians, they don't believe in anything, at least when they are acting as leader.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What is the perceived security issue? People wandering places they don't belong?

<comment><USER7> More like the possibility that American spy agencies can use the app to gather intel (about where military installations are located, what's there, etc.).

<comment><USER6> So they're worried about us accidentally crowdsourcing our spying? Don't we have drones and satellites and stuff?

<comment><USER8> Some things may be obscured from above but clearly visible from ground level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Israel also shares this concern, apparently: [http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/01/world/middleeast/...](http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2016/08/01/world/middleeast/ap- ml-israel-pokemon-go.html)

<comment><USER10> Israel banned it on military bases (it wouldn't surprise me if most countries do the same), you have an active application which records GPS coordinates, near by players, and uses the camera this conflicts with even basic opsec.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For a long time they didn't know why or if they should ban it. They simply didn't know what to expect of it is open to public so they banned it.

How China is dealing with this? Are they allowing people to play Pokemon Go?

<comment><USER12> How does China comes to an Iran thread?

I think this issue is more about that for the type of islam practiced in iran any form of representation of images of living beings is a sin.

<comment><USER8> Any citation or that? It looks to me you're just raising bullshit accusation.

Pokémon Go can be rightfully suspected to be a surveillance device given how it works (geotracking, camera overlays and stuff) and how popular it is among general population. Not every nation is, or wants to be, in bed with the US, so such concerns are no surprise.

<comment><USER12> Accusation of what? I just telling you that I think that as pokemons are representations of (fictional) beigns, its a sin in the view of some islam branches/currents (I dont know how they are divided) I'm not an expert in any religion and my source is a youtube video which named the fact as a side note.

But is just a point... Im not intending to provoke a flamewar...

About the "surveillance", I don't buy it, all that the game is doing, is already being done by google itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can see the problem if the CIA have Niantic put a Charizard in a suspected nuclear enrichment plant and send back photos.

</comment><comment><USER14> the Islamic Republic generally views phenomenons beyond its 1979 revolution that amass popularity as a threat.</comment>


Proxyman – native HTTP/HTTPS requests observation and manipulation app - <AUTHOR> https://proxyman.io/ <comment><USER2> `mitmproxy` is also a really nice tool for MITM'ing your connections.

It's free and open source, has a nice TUI, scripting in python, intercept and modify requests/responses, etc

[https://mitmproxy.org/](https://mitmproxy.org/)

<comment><USER3> Seconding: mitmproxy (including its `mitmdump` util) is an outstanding tool; should be in every software developer's kit.

<comment><USER4> but the CLI is not friendly for new users like me couple year ago. I used to be an iOS Developers, who spent most of time to communicate with QA team during the development. QA teams are not willing to use mitmproxy since it's too hard and Charles was the last choice/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Author of Proxyman here. The reason behind of Proxyman is to simplify Web Debugging for everyone. \- Free-Distraction \- Native app, feel like my home \- Ease of use are the catalyst we ship Proxyman.

Feel free to Ask me anything.

<comment><USER5> Nice app! Gonna test it sooner or later. Any plan for a Linux or Windows distribution?

<comment><USER4> For the Window, we're aiming to ship the first version at end of this year 2020. Stay tuned!

<comment><USER6> Curious about how it matches up against Fiddler.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't find the Linux version, perhaps something is wonky with the browser/os detection, it's assuming I'm on a mac and showing macOS screenshot previews, etc.

<comment><USER8> Yeah it's mac only. If you're looking for a Linux equivalent, try [https://HttpToolkit.tech](https://HttpToolkit.tech)

Works similarly, but runs on Linux & Windows too, and it's fully open source: [https://github.com/httptoolkit](https://github.com/httptoolkit)

<comment><USER9> Caveat: Node/Electron app.

The Pro version costs 6 EUR/month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice work, will be trying it this week. Like many others, i am using Paw.

I have a comment about the UI, it resembles a lot to Table plus and Postico

Table Plus UI [https://tableplus.com/assets/images/postico- alternative/dark...](https://tableplus.com/assets/images/postico- alternative/dark-mode.png)

</comment><comment><USER11> Really like how your landing page looks like - clean, tidy and straight to the point. Maybe you would like to share your product and news around it on [https://owwly.com](https://owwly.com) Worth to check it in free time :)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for kind words. We will share Proxyman around _owwly_ soon

<comment><USER11> Thanks, Have a nice day!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been using Paw ([https://paw.cloud](https://paw.cloud)) for a while, which I guess is just a slightly more advanced version of this. Lets you sync state across team members etc which is handy.

<comment><USER4> But, the functionality of Paw and Proxyman are completely different. Paw is an advanced API tool for Mac -> Help you to construct the Request and test it. On the other hand, Proxyman is MitM, capture all traffic from the device, intercept it and see the HTTP/HTTPS Request and Response.

<comment><USER12> Ahh okay. Sorry I made assumptions on what it did as it looks fairly similar. Have used mitmweb before but this looks to have nicer usability etc

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How different is this from Fiddler?

<comment><USER14> From what I use, Proxyman is pretty much the same with Fiddler, with nicer and friendly UI.

And Proxyman doesn't come with many advanced features. It's obvious because Fiddler is born 17 years ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> What are differences btw Charles Proxy and Proxyman?

<comment><USER4> Basically, it's a _fresh air_ for Web Debugging app with native macOS UI :D

If you're familiar with other tools like Charles or Fiddler, you could switch to Proxyman since those functionalities are the ready much the same. The UI is thoughtful and we put of lot of works to re-design the UI to make it super easy to get started.

Let check the Map Local or Install Certificate menu too see how it looks like.

Fun fact: The number of users, who are complain how to install the Certificate is significantly dropped down when we re-design the Installation Guideline Windows. It means they could make it without googling :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just so you know the logo cuts off on mobile view.</comment>


The Airplane That Saved the World - Lessons from WWII Fighter Innovation - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/id/2293662/pagenum/all

<comment><USER2> That image is so hilariously not a Spitfire. It's not even a plane; it's just one engine of a Catalina.

<comment><USER3> Seriously. How do you write an article referencing one of the most iconic, symbolic and emotive engineering creations of the 20th century and slap an image so glaringly incorrect onto it?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Jumpshare for Mac – Incredibly fast, real-time file sharing - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/jumpshare/id889922906

<comment><USER2> Hi everyone,

We just launched an all-new Mac app that allows you share files quickly from the comfort of your desktop with a simple drag and drop to the menu bar. Now you can auto-upload screenshots, email files directly from the app, and share work even faster with built-in screenshot annotation, screen recording, and note-taking tools.

While similar apps exist, Jumpshare stands out because we support collections (and nested folders), have the ability to view over 200 file formats online, and allow you to track your shared files.

The best part? Everything works in real-time! When you share files, your recipients can see upload progress at your end. The moment upload completes, the preview appears instantly in the file viewer. It feels magical!

All features mentioned above are for the Free plan. Jumpshare Plus offers additional features, such as, custom branding, advanced sharing options, Analytics, and more. Check out the complete list of features here: [https://jumpshare.com/plus](https://jumpshare.com/plus)

I am excited to get feedback from the HackerNews community, and happy to answer any questions.

</comment><comment><USER3> I am really impressed with the Team Jumpshare. They have got a world class product !!

Congrats nakodari !!</comment>


How to Kill Zombies with your Eyes - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpwQsfKatio

<comment><USER2> Nice</comment>