Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/23/twitter-may-receive-formal-bid-shortly-suitors-said-to-include-salesforce-and-google.html <comment><USER3> IMO, Twitter is the poster child for the tech bubble. They have users, which is their only claim to viability, but notably, they have _never_ made a profit. Currently valued at around $10 billion with 350 million active users, that's about $29 per user. You'd be hard-pressed to find an investor so foolish that they would invest $29 in each of their users and hope to make it back if it were stated in those terms, but people have rushed to invest in a company which only has users, and whose attempts to monetize users through advertising have correlated strongly with loss of users. There can be little argument that Twitter's price has become entirely detached from its value.

That doesn't of course, mean you couldn't make money by investing in Twitter. You can make money by investing in overvalued companies as long as you don't hold onto your share until it busts. One profitable route would be if Twitter does get bought by a larger company. The market as a whole will lose on Twitter, but local maxima can be more profitable than the whole.

But at a personal level, don't be naive about this. A lot of people are investing, not just money, but time and energy, in Twitter or startups like Twitter. If you find yourself thinking that Twitter is a company with any real value, you should take a step back and evaluate whether you're being wise, or whether you've fallen prey to the unbridled optimism of the tech bubble. Twitter's position as poster child for the tech bubble makes it a good litmus test for people's understanding of the industry, and I suspect it will correlate very strongly with who loses everything when the tech bubble collapses.

<comment><USER4> Agreed on poor finances. But Twitter has one thing that no one else has - <USER2> are in the center of the zeitgeist. Every political candidate is on Twitter. Every news network discusses Twitter happenings everyday. NFL broadcasts list players' Twitter handles. Half the commercials on TV advertise hashtags. South Park just did a whole episode about Twitter. The cost to embed your brand in the minds of Americans like that would be far greater than $10B. The question is can some larger company capitalize on that mindshare.

<comment><USER5> Oddball idea: If all these news outlets, and other organizations, benefit from it, maybe they could finance it. The same way the Linux Foundation is sponsored by large tech companies.

<comment><USER6> I can't imagine politicians funding Twitter.

<comment><USER7> I most definitely saw a Trump ad in my twitter feed.

I marked it as offensive ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google acquiring Twitter is actually the _best_ end result here. Salesforce is probably the worst. Lots of people hate the idea of a Google acquisition, but I think it's well suited because:

\- Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat them

\- The company is a very different one now from years ago

\- Google doesn't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an issue

\- Google mostly just wants a social graph

\- Twitter is a bad public company that makes irrational decisions

\- Merging Google engineering/leadership with Twitter might actually give direction and ease the financial pressure that seems to drive the company's poor engineering decisions

<comment><USER9> > _Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat > them_

Google has learned nothing from their mistakes.

As evidence their real name policy is still active. Contrast with Twitter where a lot of users have fake names. And yes, you can find hateful users on Twitter and I know of some folks that have been harassed, but the community I'm active in is very professional and civilized and the conversations have a much higher quality than what I've seen on Google+ or YouTube, even with their real names. Guess some people are assholes no matter what.

Also the Google+ API is still read-only. Which means you can only use Google's official tools for posting content. There's no way for example to cross-post on both Twitter and Google+. Apps like TweetDeck aren't possible for Google+.

Oh and Google Reader is still dead.

> _Google doesn 't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an > issue_

I'm sure they don't want to mess it up, but given that they are continuously messing up identity, I'm also sure that it will be an issue.

<comment><USER10> _> Also the Google+ API is still read-only. Which means you can only use Google's official tools for posting content. There's no way for example to cross-post on both Twitter and Google+. Apps like TweetDeck aren't possible for Google+._

Is this true? Buffer allows you to cross-post to Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

<comment><USER9> I don't know what Buffer is, but if they can post to Google+ it only means they have a private deal with Google.

The Google+ API is read-only, it says so in their own docs: [https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/](https://developers.google.com/+/web/api/rest/)

And if you want a service that has integration with everything except for Google+, there's IFTTT.

<comment><USER11> Correct me if I'm wrong but I think buffer can also post to Instagram

<comment><USER12> It could be doing the reverse of scraping no? Faking app requests

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if Twitter's fate is being decided and played out in the media via endless speculation? It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins. I am not aware of what they are trying to do, but at the same time it is not as if they could have exhausted all the possibilities. Remember Facebook's beacon? That failed, but FB still managed to repackage the same crap into something more lucrative didn't it? Is this just impatience from stockholders?

For example, let us just say, hypothetically, something really damaging comes out about FB (e.g. the news about the fake video view metrics) and advertisers start fleeing from it. Wouldn't Twitter be the beneficiary of at least some of that exodus? Do they really have no option of an end game?

<comment><USER14> > Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point > where it practically looks as if ... Is this just impatience from > stockholders?

Money doesn't grow on trees, and Facebook has lost a half billion dollars every year. They have maybe four years left at that rate before they run out of cash on hand. The numbers are improving by about 20 percent a year, which, if projected forward, means they'll stop losing money in ... four years.

I don't think it's impatience to question if your investment will go bankrupt or not. Impatience was taking the company public before it was profitable.

> For example, let us just say, hypothetically, something really damaging > comes out about FB (e.g. the news about the fake video view metrics) and > advertisers start fleeing from it. Wouldn't Twitter be the beneficiary of at > least some of that exodus? Do they really have no option of an end game?

Why would you invest in Twitter if the only reason to expect a positive outcome was if Facebook horribly fucked up?

<comment><USER15> Wait fb is losing money? Sorry I couldn't parse that correctly.

<comment><USER14> No, I thinko-d that. Twitter is.

<comment><USER15> Ok thanks for the clarification

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Unclear is what kind of "deal" they are talking about.

A considerable buy in? A full acquisition?

And, assuming a full acquisition... what would be the gain?

Google has a bad story with attempts at social media, apart from YouTube. (Bought Orkut, killed it, tried Google Plus, went nowhere). Twitter is hard to make profitable without alienating the users with too many ads.

For Google, it would probably be an acquisition like YouTube. With the knowledge that it might never be profitable, but intended to get control over a significant asset. But sharing Google infrastructure and resources could probably bring down operating costs in the medium term.

We'll see.

<comment><USER17> How is a company which "might never be profitable" considered a "significant asset"?!

<comment><USER16> Money isn't everything.

YouTube is a hugely popular service, driving lots of data, traffic and brand image towards Google.

Could be the same for Twitter.

<comment><USER18> I'm not sure if brand image is something YouTube gives Google. I honestly don't think the general public knows that YouTube is a part of Google. YouTube seems like its own separate thing to the casual user. It would be interesting to see a poll of the general public.

But the data. The data is key. They have rocked image recognition and video is a _huge_ data source for their ML efforts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Salesforce feels like a bizarre choice, although I agree with their digital chief that "I love Twitter" personally.

I use twitter every day as my primary method of content discovery.

So at their core the BUSINESS should revolve around monetizing my eyeballs, eg advertising.

So to me it's Facebook or Google that should grab it, w/FB at the lead considering their relatively smooth / unhurried / and successful takeovers of whatsapp / instagram

<comment><USER20> Perhaps there's some back end tech, talent that would be useful for tackling Salesforces problems.

<comment><USER21> Salesforce's back end is AWS. They ran their own cloud for a while, but ditched it.

<comment><USER22> Incorrect.

<comment><USER21> O RLY??

[http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/salesforce_aws_m...](http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/06/03/salesforce_aws_microsoft_platform_wars/)

<comment><USER23> [http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/instances](http://trust.salesforce.com/trust/instances)

These are all running in SFDC datacenters.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Twitter's real value to Google is real-time search, in my opinion. They already license results from Twitter for search results, but having access to all of that sweet, sweet real-time data is nice.

The social graph is nice, but between Chrome and Gmail, Google already knows quite a bit about everyone.

</comment><comment><USER24> Bad idea. I think the social networks who's main purpose is to feed into people's vanity will not stand the test of time since they're not solving a real problem and are merely novelties.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think Twitter's recent foray into becoming a content streaming source (see: NFL) is very interesting and a natural next step, albeit a late one. The user base is already there to essentially compete with Twitch and other streaming providers.

<comment><USER26> Why can't youtube live replicate this streaming service and give even more split ad revenue back to NFL, CBS, etc.??

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> My bet is GOOG. They need a streaming newsfeed product in which to insert ads.

<comment><USER28> What is this inane trend here on HN of referring to companies with the names they are registered to stock exhange?

<comment><USER29> For many of us its sheer laziness and its been this way for a long time. GOOG is faster to type than Google. (This is especially true for MSFT.)

<comment><USER30> I remember MSFT being a common reference on Slashdot way back when.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Seeing a lot of arguments about profitability that don't make sense. At Twitter scale, profit sensitivity to even minor tweaks in ad rate/targeting/placement is massive. They could also go into 'maintenance mode' tomorrow and break a massive profit (it would just be stupid).

Active users is a poor metric for Twitter. It's much more about the views. A relatively smaller number of people on Twitter can command an outsized influence. It's a fundamentally different kind of network.

Twitter's future will probably be more about monetizing its viewership. It's definitely not going to disappear anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER32> OH: "Twitter is a Friendster whose Facebook hasn't appeared yet."

From Jessica Livingston yesterday: [https://twitter.com/jesslivingston/status/778948962724315136](https://twitter.com/jesslivingston/status/778948962724315136)

</comment><comment><USER33> Is Google the suitor, or, is Alphabet the suitor? The article says Google, but this could be out of habit. I am not sure that answering my question changes much about the news. But it might say something about how Alphabet views Twitter based on who they decide owns the acquisition and where Twitter would fit within the company (as subsidiary or under Google).

</comment><comment><USER27> My bet is GOOG. They need a streaming newsfeed product in which to insert ads, especially on mobile where FB is killing it.

<comment><USER34> GOOG has to buy TWTR or its real-time web ambitions are dead. FB has to buy TWTR to prevent GOOG real-time entry. AAPL has to buy TWTR or be cut out from social media. MSFT too. The bidding war that is going on behind the scenes must be unreal. This acquistion may be the biggest ever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Anecdotally I use twitter to advertise my SaaS monitoring product, Cronitor, with far more success than we found with AdWords. The ad platform feels easier to use, and promoting content on Twitter is less of a time investment vs selecting, culling, and optimizing sets of keywords.

</comment><comment><USER36> I really can't see salesforce buying twitter. I think a social media giant would gain something from twitter, but not much else.

<comment><USER37> I think it makes a bit of sense. For a lot of companies Twitter is already a major point of customer interaction and retention. Maybe Salesforce feels like they could monetize that aspect of Twitter, with the advantage that a ton of consumers are already there and using it.

<comment><USER38> It will introduce a conflict of interest, where the side that has is paying Twitter.

The perception alone of a conflict means people will 'find' it all over the place and those examples to their bias until slowly and gradually no one will trust the service anymore. Even if Twitter never changes anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Perhaps off-topic, but does anyone know why Twitter gave up on its effort to monetize its API? There was a moment, circa 2010, when that seemed like the obvious move. When Twitter first began to shut down access to its full firehose, it seemed clear that there were businesses willing to pay for its information. But Twitter suddenly turned away from that idea, and focused on advertising. Considering how many sites compete for advertising dollars, it seems crazy that Twitter felt that was the right way to go.

But then Facebook went down the same path, first promoting its API, then largely giving up on any attempt to monetize it.

And before that, way back in 2006, I tried to build a business that would rely on Technorati's API, which they briefly promoted, then gave up on.

There are a lot of companies that make money by selling information via an API. And there is tremendous competition for ad dollars. These 2 facts would lead me to expect more companies might try to make money from their APIs. But what happened in Twitter's case?

</comment><comment><USER40> I wouldn't blame Jack one bit for wanting to get back to Square full-time (not that it's necessarily fully his decision to sell).

</comment><comment><USER41> It doesn't matter it would still not cover my losses in the stock. Talk about crappy decisions.

</comment><comment><USER42> To me Twitter has always been real time news.

Why haven't they worked on a way to 'validate' tweets around a story, I can't understand it (from a biz perspective, not technically).

With validation they become, instantly, the #1 news agency in the world.

</comment><comment><USER43> Would it be a bad idea for Twitter to charge a small yearly fee for use? The reason why I think this might work is because some users are very loyal and might not mind spending $20/year for an advertisement free Twitter service. They have about 350 million users, according to a comment here, and if 50 million users would stay, that would be $100 million revenue per year, and with many fewer users, their cost of doing business would be reduced, but with reduced network effects the service would not be as valuable for users. I like Twitter and I would pay $20/year in return for no promoted tweets.

<comment><USER44> So they'd convert 15% of all user accounts (many user have more than one account)? That seems really high - 1% might be attainable. Hardly the numbers they need to justify their valuation. Maybe if they lay off a ton of employees and start getting lean, while keeping their current revenue?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Stock is through the roof right now. About +19%

<comment><USER46> Oh good. Just 30% off from when I first bought in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I would pay $10 a year to use Twitter. It's just that good for live news.

</comment><comment><USER48> By Salesforce?? RIP twitter.

<comment><USER49> C'mon, no one knows how to run indefinitely at a loss than Salesforce...

<comment><USER50> Indeed. They've never turned a profit either, right? I still can't fathom how/why they're sinking half a billion dollars into that new building in downtown SF.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> At the end of 2015 Twitter had 3900 employees [0]. Why would they need close to that? How many could a new owner fire without noticeably affecting the day to day operations?

[0] [https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of- twit...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/272140/employees-of-twitter/)

</comment><comment><USER52> I wish Slack would somehow take over Twitter. Expertly adding in custom channels would save the social platform.

</comment><comment><USER53> By any normal metric, Twitter is a huge success. 300 million people find their service useful.

But it was already huge success when it had no business model. Moreover, what is fundamentally valuable about Twitter to its users--sharing and discovering little bits of textual expression over a publicly visible social network--is not very expensive.

From the perspective of the users who find it valuable, why does it need a for-profit model at all? Why can't we just subsidize it as a non-profit via grants and donations, a la Wikipedia? I'm pretty sure you could do the important thing that Twitter does--ignoring all the extras devoted to figuring out how to extract more money from the data--at a small fraction of its $2 billion in revenue.

I'm not being naive here--it's quite obvious why things are the way they are. But there many examples out there of making a big impact while making a decent living (just without anyone trying to become a billionaire). Social networking is ripe for more of this approach. The attempts so far have failed not because of their business model, but because of the usual reason: poor execution.

<comment><USER54> >>By any normal metric, Twitter is a huge success

Revenue - Cost is perhaps the _most normal metric_

<comment><USER53> >> By any normal metric, Twitter is a huge success > Revenue - Cost is perhaps the _most normal metric_

Badly chosen phrase. I'm not saying that currently Twitter is not a _business failure_ \--it is, at the moment. But from the perspective of providing value to many people, it's doing very well. Plus, the cost part of the equation is driven at this point largely by trying to figure out how to make more money, not by continuing to provide a valuable service to users. (The making-more- money thing is obviously not working yet.)

The alternative model is: lower costs drastically by focusing on doing a handful of useful things well. And then you might be able to raise the money to cover those costs the way Wikipedia does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky If you try to make people want what you make, you end up making something disposable, a short-lived romance.

</comment><comment><USER55> Amazon or Facebook . It would make sense for the latter as it is its only real competitor.

<comment><USER56> Facebookgot big by copying the twitter timeline. They won't buy them. Not for the product, not for the team

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why are Twitter's expenses so high? Don't get me wrong, scaling is hard... But at the same time, they don't have the issues of scaling photos or videos (like Facebook).

<comment><USER58> They host both those things...

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> They aren't investing in the present value, they are investing in the future value. Is Twitter going to be more or less relevant in 5 years? 10 years?

</comment><comment><USER60> Why no mention of Oracle? That's a more likely acquirer than Salesforce.

Other Oracle acquisitions: Datastax, push.io, Collective Intellect, etc.

<comment><USER61> Has Oracle shown an interest? But like Salesforce, why would Oracle they be interested? I may be missing something but it is not at all obvious how twitter is related to the type of thing those two companies are currently doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> I had to come here to read some saner comments; the comment section on the linked CNBC article is, uh, deplorable.

</comment><comment><USER63> Is it logical to buy Twitter at $ 16B? I think it is too expensive considering a lot of their actual users are bots.

<comment><USER64> A lot of everyone's users are bots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Twitter should be a public utility.

<comment><USER66> That would be nice but who would pay for servers? I would love an "Open Twitter" built on standard protocols and implementable by anyone, however if SMTP and NNTP are any indication, most people prefer convenient silos over open solutions. And the reality of a hostile internet mean that there is a need for active resources devoted to protecting any service from abuse.

<comment><USER67> > most people prefer convenient silos over open solutions.

Most people don't care one way or the other. They just want it to do what they want/need.

<comment><USER68> And they also want their friends to be on the service. That's what's really important, and why a lot of open solutions didn't take off. No one they cared about was using them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Just going to leave this here (from last month):

[http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthissho...](http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/downloadthisshow/swisherr/7719978)

"Twitter will be sold in six months - Kara Swisher"

<comment><USER70> I'd be curious to see a statistical analysis of how unlikely it is for there to be predictions of something like this on _any_ given timeframe. Whenever Twitter got sold (or didn't), what are the odds that some vaguely recognizable name would have "predicted" it?

To do this analysis we would need some kind of easily searchable corpus of simply-worded predictions, issued by a sizable fraction of public personalities. _Hmm..._

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> If there is anyone who could mess up Twitter worse than Twitter it is Google.

</comment><comment><USER72> If google buys twitter, I'm out

</comment><comment><USER73> Anyone else see S20E02 of southpark? All I'm going to say is it put Twitter in a very interesting perspective.

</comment><comment><USER74> any idea why advertising is working on facebook and not on twitter?

</comment><comment><USER75> There are better alternatives to Twitter out there. It's time for everybody to move on.

<comment><USER76> Such as?

<comment><USER77> GNU social [1], Mastodon* [2]

There is a set of standartized web protocols called Webfinger, ActivityStreams, Salmon and PubSubHubbub which allow websites to interact with each other as a sort of decentralized/federated Twitter (this is called the "fediverse").

[1]: [https://gnu.io/social](https://gnu.io/social) [2]: [https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon](https://github.com/Gargron/mastodon)

Disclaimer: I'm working on Mastodon, it's a new open source implementation, I'm trying to make it more approachable to people who value UX and maintainability

<comment><USER78> Nice thing this mastodon.social, how do I reach out to people/interests ?

<comment><USER77> Short answer: The sidebar has a form at the bottom where you can enter a username@domain to follow them. For that method, you have to know the user in advance, realistically atm you can browse the public timelines on quitter.se and quitter.no etc to see who interests you (or ask friends who're using the network, etc).

I'm going to eventually implement a "who to follow" suggestions section to make this process smoother.

Mentioning people in statuses works the same as in Twitter, except if it's a user on the same domain as you (e.g. mastodon.social) you can enter their @username, but if they are somewhere else, you enter @username@domain.

If you are replying to a status on your timeline, the mentions are pre-filled like you would expect from e.g. TweetDeck to save you the typing.

Edit: You can follow me as firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER79> Salesforce wud be an interesting prospect. Not sure how wud it fit in their business plan

<comment><USER80> "wud" is not a word. Use English. please.

<comment><USER81> Not sure how wood it fit in their business plan

<comment><USER82> Please use periods at the end of sentences. This is Hacker News for crying out loud.

<comment><USER83> Not sure how wood it fit in their business plan. . . . . .. ..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> Might sound strange, but I think this would be a great purchase for Apple. They have the cash, they certainly have the engineers and UI skills it desperately needs. iMessage working brilliantly, but closer integration with a Twitter style feed makes real sense to me.

<comment><USER85> Actually, with the new iMessages app platform I wish all my Twitter conversations moved to iMessages. If Apple buys Twitter, that would be personally awesome.

<comment><USER86> I can only imagine what Apple will do with censorship given their app guidelines and general attitude towards editing their own user forums. Ping wasn't such a hit either.</comment></comment></comment>


How Too Many SMS Messages Can Shut Down Your Nexus Phone - <AUTHOR> http://allthingsd.com/20131129/how-too-many-sms-messages-can-shut-down-your-nexus-phone

<comment><USER2> Now I'm curious: how do you send a class 0 SMS to a phone?

<comment><USER3> It's pretty easy - all you need to do is change the Class of the SMS PDU to 0. I've written a short tutorial in Python showing how it can be done: [http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/06/raspberry-pi-python- and-3g-d...](http://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/06/raspberry-pi-python- and-3g-dongles-oh-my/) In this case, I'm using a basic 3G dongle and Raspberry Pi - it should work on any device which allows serial port access.

A few phones have the capability via 3rd party apps - they all seem to be ancient Nokia & BlackBerry devices.

Amusingly, iPhones don't (or didn't) display the sender's number on Flash SMS, so you could text very realistic looking prank messages like "This phone has been recalled - please nearest Apple store" etc.

Flash SMS is a bit like Push To Talk - one of those standards which never quite took off the way it should.

<comment><USER4> My bank _does_ send Flash SMSes for 2FA codes as an optional fallback to the chip+pin-card based 2FA keypad, that does both time-based and challenge- response to authenticate the transaction, and is mandatory (i.e no SMS fallback) for adding people's IBAN and outbound transfers.

<comment><USER3> Oh! That's a good idea - prevents them from being saved (unless you take screenshots, I guess).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Already fixed in CyanogenMod: [http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/54850/](http://review.cyanogenmod.org/#/c/54850/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Jokes on you. My Nexus 4 barely ever receives text messages correctly.

<comment><USER7> What actually happens? My wife was thinking about getting one and uses SMS all the time so this could be a deal breaker.

<comment><USER8> I had a Nexus 4 from launch until the Nexus 5 and never had a problem with receiving or sending SMS messages.

I've never heard of it being a common problem either. Your wife should go ahead and get the phone if she wants one.

<comment><USER9> Yep - Same here, SMS's have always been perfect. I reckon the GP poster is simply trying to stir..

<comment><USER7> Thanks both. I suspected this.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Bronson – Automated Java Code Review on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://www.bronson.io

<comment><USER2> Nice. Would love to have more features:

      * Bitbucket integration (since it allows checklists for PRs)
      * Review request for entire projects (not just PRs)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Yeah, both Bitbucket integration and full project reviews are definitely on the TODO list.

<comment><USER2> That's great! If I could add one more to the list:

Request a review by just tagging a PR with @bronson-io (or a similar text command).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's already triggering on updated PRs but I'd guess a comment trigger could be useful as well.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Woolly mammoth could roam again as extinct DNA merged with elephant - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11488404/Woolly-mammoth-could-roam-again-as-extinct-DNA-merged-with-elephant.html

<comment><USER2> If you search the HN archives you'll see this topic comes up not infrequently. I did that now. In one from three years ago, vibrunazo points out "There's a running joke in the skepticism community, that in the next few years we're gonna have baby mammoths flying around in jetpacks [1]. That's because stories of both mammoth cloning and jetpacks in development keep coming back on the media."

See [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3997443](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3997443) for the full comment.

Such a project will be time consuming and expensive. Elephants and mammoths eat a lot and live a long time.

And other than proving that we could do it, what's the long-term goal? Once we have re-bred the mammoth, do we kill them off and try another species?

Edit: One plan is to have them in the Pleistocene Park [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleistocene_Park) .</comment>


Ask HN: YC in SF or TechStars in NYC? - <AUTHOR>

Both programs have high expectations, 'big league' connections, and amazing locations. I would like to know what the HN community thinks...
Also, if anyone has entered either in the past, can you please share any wisdom on how to a.) get in and b.) get the optimal learning experience?
I'm sure a lot of us are wondering the same thing as things are changing faster and faster and more of us are starting to believe we can make a valid contribution.
If you haven't decided to apply or not, just do it anyways for practice. What do you have to lose? <comment><USER2> I went through the program in 2007 in Boulder (the first year they were offering it) with Brightkite.

I'd definitely recommend doing it, it's more than worth it. To answer your specific questions:

a) It's primarily about the team. Assemble a founding team that has a history/evidence of being able to execute. You can do that by either having an impressive resume, or (in my case back at the time) demoing software that you've written, even if it's not directly related to what you're applying with.

There are also a bunch of online resources that answer this question. A select few:

[http://nattyzola.com/7-pieces-of-advice-to-techstar- applican...](http://nattyzola.com/7-pieces-of-advice-to-techstar-applicants- for-2010/)

[http://www.seattle20.com/blog/Some-tips-for-applying-and- get...](http://www.seattle20.com/blog/Some-tips-for-applying-and-getting-into- TechStars.aspx)

[http://www.nearlynicole.com/2010/05/tips-for-applying-to- tec...](http://www.nearlynicole.com/2010/05/tips-for-applying-to-techstars/)

b) This really depends on your experience, but in a nutshell, try to focus on learning the things you have little experience in. For example, if you are a great engineer, but know little about raising money, focus most of your time on that.

Also, my friend Jon from IntenseDebate (sold to Automattic) has some great advice here:

<http://jonefox.com/blog/2008/06/08/tips-for-techstars-teams/>

Hope this helps,

Martin

<comment><AUTHOR> It helps a lot. I definately feel a synergy with my co-founder and we both consider this startup a central part of our lives.

Thanks Martin

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm a TS Boston '09 grad. TS bills itself as a family or fraternity for entrepreneurs. Once you get through the program you have friends to relax with, colleagues to bounce ideas off, and mentors to guide you through the many stages of your career still ahead. Whenever I go to events around the country I always check the roster and hope some TS teams will be there so we can meet up. As TS has grown I've been able to do this more and more and I look forward to meeting some of the grads from the recent Seattle class.

To address your two questions more directly 1) This isn't a college application. Don't just apply and wait for a letter to come back to you. Get your application done early and send it in. Follow up with an email or two. Try and meet some mentors and get their feedback. Don't apply in a vacum! 2) Be open to feedback and work hard. Start now. Get your application done early and get feedback as quickly as you can. Basically, do more faster.

Hope this helps,

\-- Henry

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the great advice.

I will start working on that application NOW. I really think TS NYC will be an amazing experience, NYC seems to be the hotter city right now for innovation. I will probably apply to YC too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> TechStars has a new feature at <http://ask.techstars.org/> designed to answer a lot of these questions. I was involved in TechStars Boston '09 as a technical mentor and fell in love with the program. Joined with a company in TechStars Boston 2010 - and had an amazing experience!

With TechStars its all about the mentors: Learning from those who have come before you: Both through TechStars, business professionals, funded entrepreneurs, etc.

The connections you gain are for a lifetime!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link and the recommendation. It really does seem like a game changer for a young, ambitious entrepreneur.

I will apply to both and hope one gives us a chance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think Henry nailed my experience thus far in the Seattle TechStars program. The activities, presentations, midnight oil burning drinking bin... I mean. It's been great growing my network of friends and colleagues, while receiving the highest level of input from some really high caliber individuals that genuinely want to support you in building a great company, a great product and knowing the handbook of how to get investment.

My answers to your specific questions are as follows: A) Giant Thinkwell made a video of us changing diapers and getting peed in the face, as well as sending Andy Sack ransom notes and cupcakes. That's out of context, but the point is, we let our personalities show through and allowed ourselves to have as much fun with it as we have with our product.

B) Understand that time is ticking and this opportunity will come to an end. Absorb and contribute to every possible presentation, meeting, pitch practice and social outing as you can. Know what your values and standards are for the company you want to build, but take heed to the advice being given and apply where you can.

Best of luck! If I could do it all over again, I'd absolutely shoot for NYC. David Tisch is geyser full of wisdom. RECORD EVERY MEETING AND CONVERSATION!

\- Kyle

</comment><comment><USER6> I was interviewed by YC, DreamIt Ventures, and Techstars and ended up in Techstars Boulder. Can't say much about DreamIt but YC is all about your idea and a quantity of companies. Techstars is really about the team and quality.

As a suggestion to get in you just need a good idea and more importantly you need to work your ass off! Before I got in I cut my second job to part time, stopped going out, almost lost my girlfriend, etc because I was putting every second of my day into my company. Make sure the other members of your company do the same because it's all about the team.

As for the optimal learning experience... during the course of the program work out of the shared space and be there all day seven days a week. You'll have the advantage of bonding with the other teams and meeting random people that stop by. Also take advantage of all the sessions and meet as many people as you can. We probably had 100 meetings with different people over the summer and I counted only 3 that weren't useful for us.

Either program is great but if you have a choice I would hands down suggest focusing your energy on Techstars.

Good Lick!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thorough advice. I dropped out, quit my job, and have been designing and building alone for a few months. I am evaluating a few friends to see if they are as devoted as I am or just looking for a cheap thrill/little fame. I don't see any other direction I want to take in my life besides this dream of mine. I will share it with HN community before applying for feedback.

I will apply to both and try out KickStarter as well. Diaspora got in somehow and went straight to the big leagues.

How is your startup doing now?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I went through TechStars in 09. It was the single greatest accelerator for my company. We benefited from incredible mentorship and attention from the web's best and brightest. We would not be where we are today without TechStars.

We chose TechStars over YC because of the focus on mentorship. Both programs are fantastic and both will help you develop but do your research on the strengths of each so you know which will work best for you.

I encourage you to reach out to any of the TechStars founders and ask about their experiences first hand. All are happy and excited to share their experiences. You should do the same for YC.

The bottom line. Get into one of the two and kick a$$. Apply to both, do some research so you know what to expect and then make the decision.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was in TechStars class '07, with IntenseDebate. I really enjoyed the TechStars experience and have greatly leveraged from the network I was able to build.

Incubators are generally looking for good teams and less for the perfect business. It's a growing process finding the right thing for the team to do, but if the team works well, you have a much higher chance to create a good business. As for learning as much as possible - ask questions! Everybody is there to help, and even just touching base with your fellow "classmates" is very useful as it often helps you to avoid problems you might've run into otherwise.

Isaac Keyet

</comment><comment><USER9> I was in TS Boston 2010 with Loudcaster.

You get in by applying. I would apply early and send TS regular updates regarding the progress of your project since applying.

I have my own opinions about which model is better, but if you are willing to move to be in a business acceleration program for three months, then you should apply to both.

I think I recall some TS staff suggesting people apply to both, otherwise you're limiting your options, and you're in a great spot if they both want you.

You'll get the optimal experience by dividing and conquering. You're supposed to come out of it with a better business sense and a product.

You need to find the right balance between product development and business development, and having the right partners is key to that.

Whoever is the CEO for all intents and purposes should probably go most of the sessions, but not the whole team. This can be a little tough if the CEO is also one of the coders, so it's extra handy if your partner is also a coder.

You should also be very proactive going through the mentor list and reaching out to mentors early.

Oh...and when you get accepted, grab your office early and get the one closest to the entrance because a lot of mentors will drop in the first couple weeks to meet everyone ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Loudcaster looks very promising. Best of luck to you.

We will do our best to get accepted into both. Thanks a lot for the sage advice. Basically, it all boils down to who can JUST DO IT.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was part of the TechStars 2010 Boulder class with Vacation Rental Partner. I've heard great things about YC, but do consider the fact that with the small size (~10) of each TechStars class your company gets a ton of one-on-one time with awesome mentors, including the director of the program. Your mentors really get to know you, your company, your space and can help with problems specific to your company.

</comment><comment><USER11> A great bonus from TechStars NYC program this year: [http://www.businessinsider.com/techstars-new-york-is- moving-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/techstars-new-york-is-moving-in-to- pivotal-labs-2010-9)

</comment><comment><USER12> Most of the points have already been echoed but I went through TS Boston 09' and couldn't have walked away with a better experience. I highly recommend applying!

</comment><comment><USER13> If you haven't, listen to this: <http://techzinglive.com/?p=409>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. she is a prodigy. best to learn from the best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We got into TechStars in Boulder in 08, but before that we were couped up in the upper west side trying to make it happen. Had there been a TechStars in NYC, we probably never would have relocated to Boulder. There's something to be said for the fact that the NYC community isn't as swamped with startups yet. That's not to say you'd be completely lost in the SF noise, though, because YC definitely helps with that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will give both a try. Either city is great. It seems like both are life changing experiences for young, ambitious entrepreneurs.</comment></comment>


AI robot learns new words, tells creators it will keep them in a "people zoo" - <AUTHOR> http://glitch.news/2015-08-27-ai-robot-that-learns-new-words-in-real-time-tells-human-creators-it-will-keep-them-in-a-people-zoo.html <comment><USER2> Click bait headline but a reasonably good, quick read.</comment>


Where FP meets OO - <AUTHOR> http://christopherhunt-software.blogspot.com/2014/12/where-fp-meets-oo.html

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure that OO-ness is a desired property.

Alexander Stepanov, original creator of the STL:

"I find OOP technically unsound. It attempts to decompose the world in terms of interfaces that vary on a single type. To deal with the real problems you need multisorted algebras - families of interfaces that span multiple types. I find OOP philosophically unsound. It claims that everything is an object. Even if it is true it is not very interesting - saying that everything is an object is saying nothing at all. I find OOP methodologically wrong. It starts with classes. It is as if mathematicians would start with axioms. You do not start with axioms - you start with proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you come up with axioms. You end with axioms. The same thing is true in programming: you have to start with interesting algorithms. Only when you understand them well, can you come up with an interface that will let them work."

More discussion:

[http://www.quora.com/Was-object-oriented-programming-a- failu...](http://www.quora.com/Was-object-oriented-programming-a-failure)

<comment><USER4> "You do not start with axioms - you start with proofs. Only when you have found a bunch of related proofs, can you come up with axioms. You end with axioms."

Um, what? You have no FACTS to _do_ proofs with without axioms; they are the fundamental statements one assumes to be true to define a logical system.

Somebody who insists that they need "multisorted algebras" while misunderstanding a fundamental definition in mathematical logic is exceptionally confused...

<comment><USER5> I interpreted this to be a top down vs bottom up argument.

In mathematics, we certainly have ZFC as an axiom system now, but mathematics was performed for thousands of years without a "stable" axiomatic base. For example, calculus was developed before the axiomatic delta-epsilon definition for limits was created. The math was developed first, and it was only after the fact that mathematicians went back and set the theory on a stable theoretical footing.

Therefore, I believe Stepanov suggests a bottom up approach: You write an algorithm that performs your work first, and then once you have that, you can refactor the code into classes that encapsulate the various parts of your existing algorithm.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Alan Kay was inspired by the real world, mostly biology back when psychotropic substances were rather popular. That's were the problems start. The real world systems are: 1) unpredictable - except for those who can forecast the future. 2) Unreliable 3) Slow 4) Uncoordinated - except if you believe someone runs the world. 5) Unmaintainable - just ask someone on human maintenance (drug research etc). 6) Naturally autonomous

Point 6 is very critical, because in von-neumann architectures you will end up having a shared memory and trying to give an autonomous memory to each agent, will end up very suboptimal, and no zipper, COW of any other FP trick can change that.

You just cannot afford to write your software like the real world, and you don't even have intelligent agents of human ability as building blocks...

<comment><USER7> For point 6, that wasn't Kay but the simula crowd who invented OOP before Kay.

FP is like math: it isn't based on biology or natural human thought, but rather the truth of math. OOP is much more fuzzy, you can say things that you can't nescessarily prove are true via biased naming and relating (just like you could say and think as a person). Math is great and useful, but there is a reason we haven't evolved into straight up Vulcans yet.

<comment><USER6> Well seems that simula OOP was a bit more like java/c++. It was Kay who had the message passing idea, and the smalltalk people still don't consider java/c++/simula-derivatives as true OOP languages because they miss that.

[http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented](http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?AlanKaysDefinitionOfObjectOriented) [http://userpage.fu- berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay...](http://userpage.fu- berlin.de/~ram/pub/pub_jf47ht81Ht/doc_kay_oop_en)

<comment><USER7> I think you have it backwards: OOP in Simula was more bizarre since all objects basically ran as co-routines. It isn't until Smalltalk where we get the non-autonomous objects that we are familiar with today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one who finds the goalposts gave moved for FP? it used to be lambdas/lexical closures that were the big must-have FP feature, then it was immutability. Now that we're seeing traditionally-OO languages sport a raft of immutable types and good support for lexical closures, now it's all about higher-kinded-types.

For a while, the big feature was homoiconicity and tail-call-optimization until lisp fell out of favour with language geeks.

Does FP just mean "has features of my favorite self-proclaimed-functional- language"?

<comment><USER9> Functional Programming is just composing a program with pure functions, nothing else.

Immutability and closures are required for that, because mutability may break homoiconicity (which is required for purity), and lack of closures means you can't pass state around.

Higher-kinded types are very useful for helping with lots of functional abstractions, but they are a type system feature and have nothing to do with FP. If someone claims that, this person doesn't understand FP or type systems.

OCaml and Standard ML are two examples of languages without higher kinded types but are just as good as Haskell for FP.

(Although they have a powerful module system to compensate for that).

<comment><USER10> > because mutability may break homoiconicity (which is required for purity)

Are you sure you meant that? My (admittedly weak) understanding of homoiconicity is that it's unrelated to either purity or (im)mutability. Isn't homoiconicity related to the program text and its AST? Aren't there languages such as Haskell which encourage pure functions but are not homoiconic?

I'm pretty sure you meant something else...

<comment><USER11> I bet "referentiality" was meant. It would make sense as a replacement for "homoiconicity".

<comment><USER11> I bet "referential transparency" was meant. It would make sense as a replacement for "referentiality". oops :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Scala is the only language that I know of that marries the world of FP and OO"

You can do that in C#/F# too. There's nothing special about Scala from this point of view.

<comment><USER13> OCaml was doing that before any of them.

<comment><USER14> Although I find it interesting how Ocamlers only rarely reach for the OOP bits of the language. I think that this is in part due to the powerful module system that language has.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. Also, the object system doesn't have the reputation of being very fast. That said, it lets you use structural typing, which is extremely handy once in a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> While I'm reasonably open-minded about using some parts of OO at higher levels of organization (or at least just genuine modules), I'm not sure Akka is the right place to land there. Functions which are just typed as `a -> ()` have lost (or hidden) all their interesting structure.

<comment><USER16> Certainly Haskell, for example, is one of the few languages richly endowed with a non-existent module system, but I personally don't know of a distributed computing environment that does preserve types across machine boundaries in any language. I must be missing something, please enlighten.

If type preservation in distributed computing was a trivial engineering problem it would have already been solved and widely used. As it stands Akka is enjoying fairly widespread enterprise adoption in the distributed computing market, untyped-ness notwithstanding.

Interestingly, as saryant points out, Akka 3.0 apparently will be typed, although I was under the impression that the typed actor project was experimental/a long way off/not a sure thing. Guess things have changed for the better...

<comment><USER15> I'm not claiming it's a solved problem; I'm claiming that the current solutions are lacking.

You can take it as standing on the outside and throwing stones, but it's not malicious. I _want_ something better.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, I know, same deal with type safe database query DSLs, none have hit the mark yet, including M$'s Linq to Sql, Scala's Slick, Haskell's Esqueleto and Opaleye, etc.

Seems we're on the brink of a completely type safe distributed stack, but argghingly not quite there. Maybe in another couple of years the computing community will have turned the corner.

FWIW, from the outside looking in Haskell seems to be kicking ass in terms of language evolution (7.8 and 7.10 in particular). Here on the Scala side of the fence we've got a ways to go, probably 4 years or so until the dust settles with various compiler forks and research work brings a (hopefully) vastly improved Scala into being.

<comment><USER15> Yeah! I want to see an EDSL impl of a nicely typed Tutorial D sometime already!

Personally, I don't know that I care about the distributed part of the stack. I want something like Erlang's actor model in Haskell even on one machine. I think if there was a nicely typed way to do that (and see pipes-concurrent and mvc for nice examples) there'd be some fantastic "large scale" application operating space that would get opened up.

Akka does this somewhat below par with Erlang. I'd wonder if a GHC implementation of straightforward single machine Erlang's semantics could do better with typed effects and true asynchronous exceptions. This would be nice even with just effect typing (e.g. untyped channels and lots of living in some IO-alike) and could be a good interpreter target for simpler strongly-typed organizational designs.

I started fiddling with this (under the name hotep) a few months ago and got sidetracked but it keeps coming up!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _Scala is the only language that I know of that marries the world of FP and OO and thus does not need to "throw the baby out with the bathwater"._

Have you had chance to try Swift yet. It could do with Tail Call Optimisation but I do think it can already be used for functional programming.

<comment><USER18> I think LiveScript does a good job too.

But it's a bit of a niche product, not a LISP and more like Python.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> OCaml also has both, and its object system is probably more powerful.

<comment><USER19> How come?

<comment><USER9> Besides the object system, OCaml has a powerful module system, with first- class modules and functors (which is already basically very equivalent to what you'd expect from objects).

Besides that, objects have structural typing, and you can even create objects without classes (somewhat similarish to anonymous classes, except instead of interfaces you have the structural typing to give you something like statically typed duck typing).

OCaml also has multiple inheritance and friend classes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Ruby is pretty FP/OO friendly.

</comment><comment><USER21> Interesting article Chris.

</comment><comment><USER22> In CLOS.

<comment><USER22> Why there are so many ignorant idiots in the world?

According to Alan Kay, the essence of OO approach (or paradigm if you wish) is a synthesis of a few fundamental concepts (like a Lisp itself) where _not a single one can be removed_ because harmony (or balance) would be destroyed, and an ugly, mediocre construction would emerge instead (Java).

The concepts are:

* First-class closures - isolated, share-nothing abstractions.

* Nesting of closures, so they could have an internal structure.

* Message passing as _the only way of communication_ among closures.

As long as you follow these three principles, you have "generics" for free, because all the operations are mere messages.

These are three of four principles upon which Smalltalk has been built upon.

Here is an illustration, assuming that we are implementing message passing as simple as a procedures call.

       (define (kons x y)
          (lambda (m)
            (cond ((eq? m 'car) x)
                  ((eq? m 'cdr) y)
                  (else (error "bottom!")))))

       (define (kar x)
          (x 'car))

       (define (kdr x)
          (x 'cdr))

Notice that using only these abstractions we could implement a unified list structure of Lisps (recall Escher's hands).

This is (surprise!) the "core" of Erlang - extending of closure-based language with immutable data with explicit message-passing, to create first-class _agents_ (servers, etc).

Where is inheritance? Inheritance is just a _protocol_ which specifies what to do with unknown message instead of signaling an error or returning a bottom like in Haskell.

What is MOP could be found in Wikipedia. Smalltalk was its ancestor.

What is CLOS? It is a DSL embedded in a Lisp (based on structures made out of closures) which implements some or other subset of MOP. MIT Scheme, for example, has SOS.

So FP meet OP in CLOS.

<comment><USER23> > Where is inheritance? Inheritance is just a protocol which specifies what to > do with unknown message instead of signaling an error or returning a bottom > like in Haskell.

Care to explain? Doesn't make any sense to me...

<comment><USER22> A protocol is like a set of rules. It it specifies, for example, that each object (a closure) has special bindings, which holds references to its class (which is also a closure) and to itself, so it could send a massage to its super or to self. Classes could have its own methods (inner closures).

Basically, when you send a message, you have to specify a symbol, that corresponds to a method name, and parameters. The protocol specifies the "routing", like if there is no method that corresponds to this name, then send (forward) the very same message to your superior (exactly like they do in army, which is an implementation of the actor model).

If supers doesn't know what to do with the message, then there is panic - <USER2> exception.

The protocol also specifies the rules of shadowing of symbols, such that a method could be redefined (shadowed) within a closure, so it "overrides" a method with the same name from its ancestors.

Object methods (inner closures) could send messages to classes (invoking class methods) and then doing something with a returned value. Usually, there is some syntactic sugar for that.

In short, inheritance is a set of rules, and these rules could be implemented using various mechanism, like explicit message-passing (a-la Erlang) or implicitly, using procedures calls.

Brian Harvey in classic Berkeley CS61A explained these ideas much better than me.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3pp7JCAIU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u3pp7JCAIU)

<comment><USER23> yes, that part makes sense, but in Haskell, an unknown "message" is a compiler error, and bottom represents abnormal termination (e.g exception or even non termination), I don't really understand how that's related to inheritance.

<comment><USER22> I am not sure that an unknown message could be caught at compile time, because we don't know everything in advance. I also don't think that static type checking is the only way to program.

In that toy example I should return an error, because '() is a legit value.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [https://parleys.com/play/51c1994ae4b0d38b54f4621b/chapter33/...](https://parleys.com/play/51c1994ae4b0d38b54f4621b/chapter33/about)

After about 53-th minute Odersky gets lost in side effects in a very simple code.

This is why there's nothing elegant about Scala.

<comment><USER25> The OP points out that immutable code is the standard in Scala. You have picked an example where Odersky gets 'lost' in mutable code. If anything, this video (and your comment) makes the case for immutable and side-effect free code using Actors and FP, as apparently it can be confusing.</comment></comment>


How to Pervert Direct Manipulation - <AUTHOR> http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?HowToPervertDirectManipulation

<comment><AUTHOR> A great rant by someone who knows what they're talking about :-)

I love it when language geeks and HCI snobs take the time to tear their peers a new one. Enjoy, and make sure you don't spend more than 8 hours on c2 ;-)</comment>


Build your own open-hardware laptop: meet the Olimex Teres - <AUTHOR> https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY-Laptop/SPARE-PARTS/ <comment><AUTHOR> Some details:

\- You can also buy the entire kit for 240 euros here: [https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY- Laptop/KITS/TERES-A64-BL...](https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY- Laptop/KITS/TERES-A64-BLACK/open-source-hardware)

\- Here are the user manual & the assembly guide: [https://github.com/OLIMEX/DIY- LAPTOP/blob/master/doc/manuals...](https://github.com/OLIMEX/DIY- LAPTOP/blob/master/doc/manuals/TERES-I-rev1.4.pdf)

\- Olimex is a Bulgarian corporation dedicated to embedded open-hardware, more infos: [https://www.olimex.com/About/](https://www.olimex.com/About/)</comment>


Punishing Blizzard for anti-HK partisanship by flooding it with GDPR requests - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/10/08/ddos-gdpr.html <comment><USER2> Previously discussed two days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199701](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199701)

</comment><comment><USER3> DMCA is the other one that can be abused easily. I've seen people weild DMCA on Reddit like a weapon, attacking entire forums with copyright requests and Reddit automatically taking stuff down and even suspending accounts for "repeat copyright infringement".

Always the sign of a poor law, but sometimes useful to expose it. I hope it gets documented well.

<comment><USER4> In Poland, there's no abuse whatsover, since they're requesting a scan of ID to let you delete your account, and that's illegal. It used to be a can of worms and people had loans taken in their name without permission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have also noticed a lot of 1* and HK comments on the Apple store for their products.

</comment><comment><USER6> People call that "punishing" but it's nothing of the sort: it's just exercising a fundamental right to access whatever data companies have on you.

If they didn't do the work to automate this 3 years and half after the law was voted, then it's on them.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something that I think would do more is for the e-sports community to keep criticizing the CCP on live streams. Ping your favorite players on the issue and ask what they think. A lot of them will probably try to distance themselves from politics altogether but some of them might actually respond in ways that piss people off. If that generates more demands from the CCP to ban people then Blizzard has to think long and hard about who's paying the bills; the players or the CCP.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there no way to (mostly) automate GDPR responses? I too want to see Blizzard crash, but I don't like abuse of the law, and even less when the law in question has as many upsides as the GDPR.

<comment><USER9> The hard part about automating the responses is that most companies haven't put in the large amount of investment necessary to fully automate data provenance. I'd bet that most companies have enough data to actually figure out what is about which user if push comes to shove, but imagine having to crawl through your 5-10 years of accumulated ORM and ETL hackery to fully automate the ability to swim upstream through all of the dark corners of your microservices to pull that data together.

I'm obviously exaggerating a bit, but for companies like Blizzard that have been continuously developing Battle.net for over two decades, you can bet there are some dark corners in the data pipeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The GDPR has provisions for companies suddenly being flooded with requests, extending the deadlines for responses in those cases.

<comment><USER11> Only up to 3 months and you have to notify the person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why not "punish" them by criticizing them, or boycotting them? Even "review bombing" sucks, but abusing the GDPR, that _really_ sucks.

I'm very much in support of the protests, I think what Blizzard did was shameful, and I loved seeing the hundreds of memes on their subreddits. I'm not completely against civil disobedience and some tasteful vandalism. But still, that doesn't mean anything goes at the drop of a hat, there's a thin line between solidarity with a cause or a group by a massive number of people, and a mass stampede to smash and destroy all enemies of said cause or group, which can easily lead the whole thing into a ditch, not to mention rob it of all moral standing.

<comment><USER13> I am not punishing them with GDPR requests.

I am really curious what they do have on me, especially now that they start to expand greatly into chinesee market. I don't even play their games any more as they all turned into bland pulp.

<comment><USER12> I was referring to the article, not you :) I think it's totally fair to be reminded that hey, actually, what _do_ they have on me and not hold off until the "punishment" is over, but then what I said obviously doesn't apply to you per se.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How about offering jobs to blizzard employees? Might work better in the long term and a good PR move.

But food for thought here: can America win when fighting both Russia and China at the same time? They say Germany's mistake in WW2 was fighting America and Russia simulta eously.

My opinion is to stop fighting Russia, let them have their way with non-NATO eastern europe and central Asia so long as they steer clear of genocide and terrorism.

As far as China goes,offense is the best defense. Perhaps with help from Russia,american allied western europe can compete with China's belt-road initiative? Ex-colonial western europe has the upper hand to compete in Africa. Just going by the nature of China's high-profile hacks (OPM and Equifax for example),it seems influence and long-term control of the west is their goal. They have no delusions of open war or a quick collapse of the west but they simply do not want to be told what to do just like America will not be told what to do when "advancing democracy" all over the world with or without force. China is in the process of doing to america,east asia and africa what America has been doing in Africa and South America for decades. Russia on the other hand wants regional control, their former glory restored and like china they also don't want to be told what to do. Except russia shows no sign of ambitions for world domination like China. Either way, America with all the internal strife would find it very hard to win in a proxy war against either china or russia alone.

I only hope things don't escalate to military involvement in HK.

<comment><USER14> Weird,would love to know which part of my comment caused all the downvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Is this really the best move? Blizzard made a smart move; the player was going to piss off a large portion of their user base. Freedom of speech works both ways.

<comment><USER16> A foreign country is imposing companies to self-censorship according to their thoughts. It's also not the first time, by a long shot.

Fun part Blizzard "has" a motto, "Every voice matters".

<comment><USER15> "Self-censorship" happens every day. I'm allowed to say whatever I want but I'm not allowed to force someone to give me a platform for my speech. This is not a violation of free speech in any way.</comment></comment></comment>


The Monopolization of America - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/25/opinion/monopolies-in-the-us.html <comment><USER2> Low central bank interest rates may have played a part in big business consolidation.

Large mega corps can borrow money at extremely low rates. Because of this infinite access to capital, they can more easily acquire their competition.

Even if a company uses equity to purchase a competitor, they can counteract the dilution with financed stock buy backs.

Money may be too cheap for big companies and too scarce for small companies.

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't monopolization an inevitable consequence of Pikkety's observed behaviour that capital begets more capital and it's increasingly concentrating in fewer places? Not only can concentrations of capital in private companies enable them to gobble up smaller competition until there is nothing left, it also enables them to control legislation over it.

I'm not sure if me observing this relation is correct, but if it is then politics must be very strong to resist the trend. I sure hope it is.

<comment><USER4> Only tangentially. I recently finished Pikkety's "Capital" and found it very much to be (as you said) about observed behavior not theory. His primary discussion is about labor vs capital return split of output (and its resulting effect on individual inequality). He does discuss observed economies of scale for returns on capital which could have monopolistic effects. (aka returns on 1 million might be 5% but for 100 million might be 7%)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> They aren't wrong about the timing. I cite bank mergers [0] as evidence, you can see they start becoming the norm about 1981. The inflation-adjusted numbers start exploding as well [1].

I'm a bit suspicious that the real advantage of large companies is more assets, more faith and better access to credit. From an economic perspective, I can recall many mergers and acquisitions that basically failed to make money. But on the other hand, maybe a good merger is a very low key event, I can name a few in tech specifically that worked - but usually that is because the network effects of online businesses are absurdly important.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone know why the tire industry (bottom line of the graph) bucked the trend and decentralized over the time period displayed?

My educated guess would be that something happened that caused value priced tires manufactured in Asia to suddenly increase in quality and capture some market share from buyers who previously shunned them but I'm really not familiar enough with the industry to put any confidence behind that claim.

<comment><USER7> Only anecdotally: a couple Korean tire companies (Kumho, Hankook) I had never previously heard of started showing up in the U.S. in the past decade or two. They are of high quality and at a lower price than the U.S. tire manufacturers.

So, foreign competition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The concept of monopolies needs a complete overhaul. When I worked for Steve Jobs we were more focused on differentiators, since a differentiator defined a monopoly. You don't need to control an entire market or even be the major player in a segment - you can charge high prices and extract obscene profit from everyone if you have a good differentiator - especially if it is something they need. In some circles, these are referred to as "effective monopolies".

</comment><comment><USER9> The power of monopolies and indeed of corporations in general is directly tied to the power of the State. It's no surprise to those who understand this that, as the federal government has grown in size, strength, and scope, corporations have followed.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say that consumer-hostile monopolies cannot exist for any substantial amount of time without the backing of the State. Whether that be through IP law, limited liability, regulatory capture, or explicit utilization, monopoly in one industry requires the support of the largest monopoly there is: that on coercion, aka the State.

Never have I seen evidence of a lasting consumer-hostile monopoly that existed without the involvement of the State. As far as I can tell, natural monopolies are a myth grown from mistaken economic theory.

<comment><USER10> Do you even know what a natural monopoly is? Have you ever seen anywhere in the world where the business of a natural monopoly is actually not a monopoly? Is there anywhere in the world where a can buy a house and can have 5 different companies with 5 different sets of pipes attached to my house in fierce competition with each other offering me water service? I would really like to check out such a place.

This is one of the things that is really annoying about economics. Because the result of economics depends on money, even the simplest most obvious things will be disputed. In physics nobody will seriously say that gravity on Earth makes things fly up, but boy in economics there will be an endless supply of serious scholars writing books and articles and earnestly arguing on TV shows that up is down and down is up.

Because of course if you convince people that up is down and down is up in economics, you can get really rich. If you can convince the public that there is no such thing as a natural monopoly, there will still be natural monopolies but they won't be treated as such by the government, and then you have a license to print money.

<comment><USER9> Why would the incentive structure of competition suddenly disappear when applied to utilities? Food and housing are equally inelastic and have high barriers of entry, but we see competition there.

The water example you gave is an example of the government proactively monopolizing such utilities. It's exactly what I was talking about.

Never have I seen evidence of water, power, etc naturally monopolizing and being hostile to consumers. Firms just can't keep out competition without state intervention.

<comment><USER10> Ok then give me an example. In the entire world there are places with weak governments and with laissez faire governments. Is there any place where I can buy a house with five different independent water delivery and sewage removal systems attached to it?

If there isn't then you would have to rethink your theories don't you.

The fact of the matter is that there is such a thing as a natural monopoly and just a cursory examination of the facts on the ground and the history of the last 150 years or so will prove it.

<comment><USER9> > there are places ... with laissez faire governments

Not really

> Is there any place where I can buy a house with five different independent > water delivery and sewage removal systems attached to it?

I never claimed that it exists. I claimed it was possible. A thing doesn't need to exist to be possible.

> The fact of the matter is that there is such a thing as a natural monopoly

Name some, then. Show me the evidence of all these natural monopolies which cropped up on their own, taking advantage of consumers, and resulting in the necessity of making them state utilities.

<comment><USER11> I'm not sure it directly helps anyone's argument here, but 5 minute's searching gave this study of water service in Nigeria, with a mixture of public and private services competing to provide potable water using different strategies.

[http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JWARP20120700002_74310948.pdf](http://file.scirp.org/pdf/JWARP20120700002_74310948.pdf)

I think two responses to this would be a) that sounds like terrible public _and_ private provision, and b) the competing water providers don't all use pipes — they use boreholes, tankers, and rainwater collection, so they don't count. But that's probably how competition against an apparent natural monopoly would work: what might undermine Comcast, say, isn't another cable company digging up the road, but a wireless broadband provider, or some technological alternative that circumvent the apparent advantages of the monopolist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> From the article: >"America was born as "a nation of farmers and small-town entrepreneurs," the historian Richard Hofstadter once wrote, "anti- authoritarian, egalitarian and competitive." Hostility to corporate bigness animated Thomas Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt, as well as the labor movement, Granger movement, Progressive movement and more. "

I disagree that Progressive Movement of today, is reflective of

> "America was born as "a nation of farmers and small-town entrepreneurs,"

Completely opposite, I think, what is called Progressive movement today -- is completely Pro-Monopoly.

It is easier for a monopoly to lobby Federal government, it is easier for a monopoly to litigate complex issues, it is easier for a monopoly to control opinion of the masses.

Therefore, it is absolutely, more desirable for monopolies to have more power concentrated within fewer individuals -- and that's done by making Federal government more and more powerful.

Powerful monopolies a fuel for political corruption, by means adapting the 'veil of political-correctness' that hides bribery and money-laundry (through well known means of: 'book signing', ' paid speeches', and 'charitable foundations')

So the self-feeding, snow-balling cycle of power is 'larger federal government' <\--> 'more powerful monopolies'

And today's progressive movement' is 'larger federal government' type of ideas.

<comment><USER13> This is why I didn't identify as liberal for a long time (even though I'm wildly socially liberal) - the more power the government has, the more it tends to wind up like that. Whether in the form of classic regulatory capture, the defense-industrial complex, or the student debt industry writing the law that covers itself... it's a troubling reality of "big govenment".

However at some point, the party representing the conservative movement (i.e., the Republicans) completely abandoned this pretense, instead becoming baldly corporatist. Everybody gets their hands dirty (post Citizens United, how can you not?) but the Republicans don't even pay lip service to that idea any more. The platform is more or less what's good for big companies must be good for America. It raises employment after all!

In that world, the one which we live in, the progressive movement (ie, the Democrats) starts to seem actually anti-corporate by comparison. Of course they have tons of their own issues and different corporate patrons, but in comparison they look great. Can you imagine a Republican saying the EPA should regulate CO2?

Another way to look at it - from a progressive point of view, regulatory capture and more powerful monopolies are an undesirable side effect of attempts at regulation and reigning in the power of these companies. From the view of today's conservative, it's a desirable outcome; bigger more powerful companies means a bigger more powerful America with better jobs and fewer shipped overseas. Let them trample individual rights because they'll either do it here or do it there, and if they do it here at least it's good for employment.</comment></comment>


What are your experiences running Linux for real-world development? - <AUTHOR> I was wondering if anyone has experience running Linux full-time for software development in a corporate environment, including startups and smaller companies.  What were you developing?  What distribution did you use, and how large was your team?  How was the operating system managed (e.g. independently or through an IT department?
How was your experience with all of this?  Have you identified any long-term consistent problems using Linux exclusively?  Did you find yourself wishing you could instead run OSX or Windows?  What about for non-developers on your team?  I ask because it seems a lot of the problems of the Linux desktop (like overwhelming choice and configuration) seem like they could be solved with a knowledgable IT department provisioning the machines, but I have no direct experience to reference.
I am especially interested in experiences developing final goods for customers outside the Linux ecosystem, versus for example working at Redhat on kernel development. <comment><USER2> Working at startups, both systems and webdev work, have always used Linux managed independently. People who want to use Linux at work usually don't want to be locked in to whichever old distribution/version combination their IT department has decided to support.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you have rough days while working remote? - <AUTHOR> Hey all! I've been working remote for 6+ years and have observed that some days get hard (Not the movie :). Am I alone in this?
I'm trying to gauge if my new organization is worth pursing or not. It's https://www.remotetogether.com/
Would love any personal or professional feedback! <comment><USER2> Not me, I love it. Can't really comment on what you're doing because there's no information on the website.

What I'd like is a dummy with remotely-operable glowing red LED eyes that I could put in a desk in the office so people would have a visual reminder of when I'm working.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have spent most of my career working remotely, whether on staff or as a freelancer. It's hard for me to imagine working in an office, regularly. For one thing, I'd have to wear shoes. And there's no cat. How could anyone be productive?

I know some people find it hard to work alone, but there are lots of ways to cope with that. In my case, I always have an instant messaging window open. I have conversations with other people (work-related or otherwise) several times a day. And I'm active on social media. I never feel alone. In fact, I feel far more connected than I would in an office, where there's some sense that you have to be compliant with "what the boss says."

It helps to love what you do.

What would you hope to accomplish with your organization?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ha. Very nice! It looks like you guys have great practices in place to overcome the alone thing.

So I'm envisioning my organization supporting people who work remote in three ways. Let me know if anyone of them pops out or none.

1.) A podcast around working remote the awesome sides and the downsides. I've scheduled several with a couple of different people.

2.) A support network for people who work remote.

3.) A working retreat to a fancy place for people who.. work remote.

Thanks for the responses guys!

<comment><USER3> I've no objection to podcasts, but no particular tropism to them. Even though I can play music-or-whatever as loud as I wish (another advantage of telecommuting), I'm more likely to scan text rather than to listen to someone talking. But that's just me.

I don't need to retreat. I'm already in my comfy place. Not to mention that a high percentage of people who choose to work from home do so because they're introverts (though that does not describe me); "get together with other people" has little value.

What do you envision for a support network? That doesn't already exist?

Sorry if I sound critical; I don't mean to. But I'd rather press you on the hard questions than encourage you to set up a site that won't draw traffic.</comment></comment>


Reading Kafka Improves Learning - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090915174455.htm <comment><USER3> I like the hypothesis but I was expecting a better description of the experimental design. What kind of patterns were found by people who read Kafka that were missed by others. Were the subjects tested before reading - <USER2> doesn't say so. I guess the research paper might answer that.

But its interesting to know that there is a heightened sense of pattern recognition in those that are exposed to the unexpected. It seems to hint that this might be an evolutionary characteristic in humans that compensates for one having been through survival struggles in life.</comment>


US academics feel the invisible hand of politicians and big agriculture - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/31/us-academics-feel-the-invisible-hand-of-politicians-and-big-agriculture <comment><USER2> The U.S. should just go ahead and pass an amendment to the Constitution stating that only corporations count as people. That way when our politicians say they are doing something for the public good it will at least then be truthful.</comment>


Show HN: OpenHub – Startups working together - <AUTHOR> http://openhub.co <comment><AUTHOR> I've built some startups in the past and they have all failed miserably. I think main reason being me building them too long without showing anyone.

I will take a different approach this time—I have a general idea and for now, I have implemented only a little just to get started.

I've created a public task list for OpenHub for anyone to add tasks and upvote their favorites: [http://openhub.co/@openhub/tasks](http://openhub.co/@openhub/tasks)

I'm happy to start working on your requests and sharing my progress through OpenHub!

<comment><USER2> very confused on what it does and how it applies to startups working together.

<comment><USER2> figured it out added a bunch of task I thought might be interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> A little confusing, so you're using the openhub platform to show the progress you've made making the openhub platform?

Dogfooding is good though :)

Related: [https://www.indiehackers.com/](https://www.indiehackers.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Related: [https://wip.chat/](https://wip.chat/)</comment>


Twitter Says Russian Bots Retweeted Trump 470,000 Times - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/articles/2018-01-26/twitter-says-russian-linked-bots-retweeted-trump-470-000-times <comment><USER2> Skynet wouldn't accept an asymmetric war. How many times did the HRC bots retweet her messages?

</comment><comment><USER3> If only they were as honest about everyone else's tweets.</comment>


The Masterful Marketing of the Heimlich Maneuver - <AUTHOR> http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/masterful-marketing-heimlich-maneuver-94519/ <comment><USER2> This article hits home for me.

I just last week gave my pregnant wife the Heimlich after she started choking on food at home. She is about 6 months pregnant. I was present enough in the moment to press into her abdomen above where the baby is situated. The food released on the second or third thrust. The thrusts where rather light compared to what I would have done had she not been pregnant. I shudder to think what I would have had to do if the light thrusts had not worked, given that the only thing in my mind at the time was the Heimlich maneuver. Despite it all happening to so fast, I was aware of the fact that I was willing (as a last resort) press lower in her abdomen and harder and risk injuring the baby to save my wife.

It all turned out okay, but I wish I had known that back blows are a viable alternative and probably a first approach for pregnant women.

<comment><USER3> Interestingly enough I was all set to argue your point about back blows. When I became an NREMT-B back in the late 90s, we were told, in no uncertain terms, that back blows WERE NOT recommended as they could lodge the object fully.

After just now doing a bit of research, it appears that back blows are still "controversial" with the Red Cross recommending them as part of their '5 and 5 method' (first 5 back blows and then 5 abdominal thrusts) and the American Heart Association ONLY recommending abdominal thrusts.

<comment><USER4> I find it interesting that the American Heart Association is taking any kind of stance. It's not directly a heart issue, is it?

<comment><USER5> They do CPR certification, and choking treatment dovetails with those courses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Choking is really interesting in that it's one of the few life-threatening situations that, if treated properly, you can walk away from without any further medical care. One moment you're about to die, the next moment you're fine to carry on with your day.

I'm not sure how an effective study of choking treatments would be developed. How do you take into account all the successful treatments that go unreported?

<comment><USER7> There are many examples of this problem. SIDS [1] is similar: there's no way for experimenting, it's extremely difficult to find out the circumstances when something bad happens; and if you can somehow record them, then it's extremely difficult to find out what's relevant and what's not.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudden_infant_death_syndrome)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Back blows are the proper first-aid measure for dislodging an object that blocks the airway.

The problem with the Heimlich manoeuvre isn't so much that it's ineffective but that in order for it to be effective you have to exert an enormous amount of pressure on the abdomen, which in turn can cause severe injuries. That potential trade-off might still be worth it if the person otherwise would choke to death and there's no other help available but it makes it something of a measure of last resort.

</comment><comment> vertex-four > A little air has gone out of Dr. Henry Heimlich's claims, but he still saved > thousands of lives.

Except that you've just stated that it's entirely possible he's caused more harm than not.

</comment><comment><USER9> Radiolab have an episode [1] that the history of the Heimlich manoeuvre, as well as it's inventors other dubious creations.

[1] [http://www.radiolab.org/story/273532-heimlich/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/273532-heimlich/)

<comment><USER10> I preferred to try to find written sources about "dubious creations."

[http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2007/07/heimlichs- son-...](http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2007/07/heimlichs-son-p/)

"A recent 20/20 investigation detailed Dr. Heimlich's attempts to promote the use of his maneuver on near drowning victims and cystic fibrosis patients, which leading medical experts say is either useless or potentially dangerous. Dr. Heimlich has also been criticized for supporting human studies into his theory that malaria can be used to treat AIDS patients. The application of so- called "malariatherapy" has been denounced by leading AIDS researchers as dangerous, scientifically unfounded and unethical. "The harm that he's caused overwhelms the good he accomplished," Peter Heimlich told ABC News about his father."

"Every study in this shows that back slaps drive the food deeper and do not save lives, that only the Heimlich maneuver saves lives," eldest son Phil Heimlich told ABC News on behalf of his father.

Though Peter denies the charge, Phil also believes that Peter's campaign has been motivated by personal issues."

Radiolab's episode was also edited later:

"We removed the audio of Peter Heimlich, Henry Heimlich's son, from the version now on the site. When we approached Henry's other son Phil to arrange an interview with his father, one of Phil's conditions was that we not air audio of Peter. We thought he'd waived that provision in a subsequent conversation but he contends he did not. So we are honoring the original request."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In Poland nobody heard of this, everybody used back blows. Recently this changed because of movies and internet.

<comment><USER12> In Germany it's the same. Are there countries except the USA where this method is the normal one?

<comment><USER13> In France, the official method (taught in first aid classes) is the 5+5 approach from the red cross described in another thread.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have been saved by the Heimlich maneuvre after choking on some bread, and recently saved the life of another family member choking on some meat using the same technique. If we had started with back blows, I think the family member would have been unconscious before we had the opportunity to resort to the Heimlich maneuvre, given that my family member didn't raise the alarm until quite a while after the choking started.

Personally, despite the potential for injury that people say the maneuvre has, neither of us were injured, and both were able to breathe after the blockage was removed (it took 2-3 thrusts). I am forever grateful that this technique is so well known. In our life threatening situations, the risk of injury or bruising was well worth it to be able to breathe again.

<comment><USER15> Why do you assume that back blows would not have been just as effective at removing the blockage? Obviously in your case it's great that the Heimlich worked, and natural that you appreciate it having been used. In some cases though, perhaps back blows are even more effective. And they are certainly easier to perform correctly.

Also, five back blows take less than five seconds to administer. Certainly it is beneficial to know the Heimlich as well, and be ready to administer it if the back blows fail, but I'm inclined to agree with the current medical opinion that they should be attempted first.

<comment><USER14> I guess that given the sense of urgency I felt, I wanted to get the person breathing as soon as possible, and I knew from my personal experience that the HM was very effective.

I've also read that back blows may further lodge the blockage in the throat, especially if you can't get the person to lean over, and this was a concern for me as well. Whether it's true or not is hard to know, but when your family member is choking and close to losing consciousness, you really don't care about breaking ribs! It's kinda the same with CPR - you don't care about breaking ribs, and it's pretty common for that to happen during compressions.

I'd be interested to know what the potential injuries are from the HM - is the main one breaking ribs?

<comment><USER15> Yes, it's unfortunate that it is really difficult to formally study something like this. You can't very well induce choking to test the options.

My completely uninformed guess is that the 'further lodge the blockage' thing might be a result of the marketing campaign ("death blows", etc.) rather than an established fact. In that case, although it would take a few extra seconds, I can see it making sense to try back blows before the HM. For one thing, you may actually dislodge the blockage _more_ quickly. (Especially, one would think, in cases that make the HM difficult, such as with pregnant women, or even if it's just physically difficult to get into the correct position due to surroundings.) And while of course I agree with you that a few broken ribs is an easy trade for continued breathing, I expect in rare cases those abdominal injuries could have serious (or even fatal) consequences. Ah, yes; a quick search came up with this[1].

[1]: [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8576987](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8576987)

<comment><USER16> > You can't very well induce choking to test the options.

Why not?

Put some soft rubber on a string and place it in the airway then try to dislodge it. If you have any problems pull it out with the string.

It wouldn't hurt the person - you can hold your breath for a minute with no problem.

If it's uncomfortable you can spray some local anesthetic in the throat first.

<comment><USER17> Maybe you could try this, but I don't think this is something that any reputable institution's IRB would approve.

I would actually recommend trying what you suggest on cadavers. You'd have to inflate the lungs first though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is the Heimlick really the most _effective_ way to dislodge something caught in a person's throat, or is it just the most _convenient_? I ask because, thinking about the mechanism behind e.g. water-boarding torture, the first thing I'd want to do to someone who is trying to get something _up_ that's trying to go _down_ their throat, is to flip them over or incline them such that the gravitational force on the object will be aiding them rather than fighting them.

I mean, nobody would think of trying to perform CPR on a drowning victim with the person propped up instead of laying flat, right?

<comment><USER3> With babies, this is a recommended method (cradling them upside down, letting gravity work, while also giving minor back blows). However, this method would be entirely impossible with a fully grown adult. The problem is also that the object can get lodged wanting to neither move up OR down, so getting them upside down only, probably wouldn't dislodge it. That's why it becomes necessary to push it out with what little air is below the object.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'd did the HM on a guy choking at a Backyard Burgers. The weird thing he was making these seal-like barks, which wouldn't seem possible with a blocked off airway. Anyway, it worked and it dislodged the hamburger.

I have heard of people's ribs being broken, and wouldn't be surprised if someone was sued after a HM. Fortunately I didn't hurt the guy, despite me being 6'5" and probably lifting the guy off the ground.

<comment><USER3> Most states have good samaritan laws that prevent such lawsuits from happening. The good samaritan laws do not cover professional EMS personnel however. As a professional, you can be sued for negligence if you render aid and you're found negligent.

<comment><USER20> Just as FYI / technical distinction, you can be sued for rendering first aid, the likelihood of that suit being successful is unlikely due to the protections under the good Samaritan laws. Lawyers can still be expensive. As a professional you should always have professional indemnity insurance on top of whatever the employer provides.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Don't forget the famous Rex maneuver. [https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=568822759849746&set=pb...](https://m.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=568822759849746&set=pb.113732812025412.-2207520000.1383499943.&type=3&theater)

<comment><USER6> That actually brings to mind a very practical question - what do you do if you're choking alone? From the mayo clinic:

        First, if you're alone and choking, call 911 or your local emergency number immediately. Then, although you'll be unable to effectively deliver back blows to yourself, you can still perform abdominal thrusts to dislodge the item.

        - Place a fist slightly above your navel.
        - Grasp your fist with the other hand and bend over a hard surface — a countertop or chair will do.
        - Shove your fist inward and upward.

[http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid- choking/basics...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/first-aid/first-aid- choking/basics/art-20056637)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot of interesting backstory on the Heimlich family.

One son goes on to accuse him of fraud: [http://medfraud.info/](http://medfraud.info/)

Another becomes a Cincinnati religulous politician: [http://philheimlich.com/](http://philheimlich.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> A perspective from a comedian: "The trouble is it's very difficult to say when you are choking to death". [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itordNWNRM8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itordNWNRM8)</comment>