Nobody Knows That I Use These Apps - <AUTHOR> http://jakelevine.me/blog/2013/04/nobody-knows-that-i-use-these-apps/

<comment><USER2> I love this about Windows Phone's Live Tiles. I never open my weather app. I hardly ever open the Facebook app. I hardly ever open my stock market app. I just check their Live Tile, and at a glance it tells me exactly what I need to know. It's the biggest thing I miss, by far, when I'm using my Android phone. The information density of Android and iOS doesn't even come close, even with a proper notification center.

I really want Android live tiles. Widgets just aren't comparable.

<comment><USER3> What do live tiles have that android widgets are missing? Honest question.

<comment><USER2> taude thinks similarly to how I do. Live Tiles feel like a part of the ecosystem and there's not a widget available for every app I wish there was on Android. Then you have to factor in that there's just not that much room on the Android home screen, and widgets come in a variety of odd shapes and sizes.

Live Tiles are consistent, with only three square (rectangular) sizes to pick from. The fluid scrolling through them (rather than page by page) makes it feel more spacious. I have an entire home page dedicated to Facebook, for example, because the Facebook widget that shows me updates (and only one update at a time) takes up fully half the screen. The weather widget I use takes an entire line of icons, and the calendar widget takes up two columns by three rows. It's like playing a jigsaw puzzle trying to arrange a useful "live" home screen. Live Tiles are also visually consistent, which Android widgets are not (my Android home screen looks hideous).

A Live Tile is a app shortcut that also acts as a widget by displaying useful information. An Android widget is a widget that can also link to the application. That tiny difference is a huge gap in comparison.

<comment><USER4> The non-discrete page-flipping (so you can scroll one column at a time, instead of a whole screen) is nice. I don't know any Android launcher that can do that.

<comment><USER5> This one can:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pierrox.li...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.pierrox.lightning_launcher&hl=en)

With Lightning Launcher, you can also skip the grid altogether and freely align, scale and even rotate your widgets and zoom in and out in the launcher, if you want. It's very customizable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like the author has only worked with iOS.

On Android push notifications are done through GCM (Google Cloud Messaging), when it's sent your application gets a callback (Intent). So it is up to the application to decide what to do with it, whether it is to show a notification or do something else entirely. So on Android you have a pretty good idea that the the user is actually getting a notification. Jelly Bean and up you can also do very rich notifications with images and actions built right into it.

On iOS when a remote push notification is received there is no indication sent to the application at all. The only way the application knows something has happened is if the user actually opens the notification.

I haven't programmed on windows phone, so I am not sure how much an app developer knows that a user is viewing a live tile or not. Maybe someone who's built one can chime in.

Overall it seems to me, that what the author is describing is Android, where the app developer has at least some feedback as to whether a user is seeing the notification (albeit not an exact: user has seen x notif).

Edit: Wording

<comment><USER7> > On iOS when a remote push notification is received it there is not > indication sent to the application at all.

I'm not well versed in push notifications, but I thought this was part of the value that a company like Urban Airship would provide?

<comment><USER8> Only if you use their inbox-like thing, which will still not tell you deliverable rate, it just ensures the recipient can see a list of all _attempts_.

The actual push notification itself is entirely untrackable unless the recipient actually taps on it, or it is received while your app is running. IIRC you can read out the application's badge number, but that only shows you what the most-recently-received notification was (if it set a badge value), it implies nothing about any intermediate ones. There is no way to list the notifications, nor count them. You can do this with _local_ ones you generated yourself, but not ones pushed to the device.

While someone is actively in your app, you do get a method called that gives you the notification as it arrives - which is handy, because the system entirely mutes it (doesn't go into the notification center, doesn't appear at the top of the screen). You can do that to do a _negative_ tracking system ("they didn't receive this, don't count it in the stats"), or to show it yourself.

<comment><USER9> The usual approach is to track acks or callbacks driven via user actions on the server-side. Adding a "guaranteed delivery" QoS will involve queuing, waiting and retrying on non-ack timers - and do so without abusing users' trust in your app.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know this is completely off topic, but is there any reason a website should have a rapidly changing gif animation as their tab icon?

I tend to open a ton of tabs and leave them open ( _particularly_ if they're interesting and I want to re-read it or refer to it in a blog post), but the constant oscillation of that tab icon is so distracting that I feel compelled to close that tab as soon as possible since it's going to get in my peripheral vision as I do other work (it's even distracting me as I type this very post!)

I thought the blog post was really interesting but now the only thing I remember about the site is the obnoxious icon, and it compels me not to look at the archives for other potentially intriguing posts :(.

Dear OP, _please_ change that icon. I think it will increase readership and good will of your otherwise interesting blog.

<comment><USER11> I had to test in most of my installed browsers before I found one that actually animated the icon - Firefox. Chrome, Safari, and Opera have all decided (rightly, you'll probably agree) that allowing animated favicons is not a good idea.

<comment><USER4> Chrome has a hideously awful alternative though: The tab icon throbs when AJAX updates a page (Gmail, etc), regardless of the web developer or user's preferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm the exact opposite -- using Facebook for many years and experimenting with many apps has trained me to avoid allowing applications to interact with me out of band.

Back in the day, I was getting harassed about my friend's achievements in Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook. More recently, some app my wife installed lets me know every time I'm within a quarter mile of a Target store. The beauty of iOS is that I don't need to deal with a dozen little icons demanding attention like in Windows.

The Windows 8 approach is refreshing, I'm curious to see how it develops.

<comment><USER13> I mean, the responsibility is sort of on you to manage what notifications you receive. This seems a bit like installing a bunch of toolbars and Bonzi Buddy and then claiming that your browser sucks. (for the record, I had numerous Farmville-playing friends and never received push notifications about that).

> The beauty of iOS is that I don't need to deal with a dozen little icons > demanding attention like in Windows.

This is confusing to me. Aside from Java updates and similar things that are largely hidden, what icons in Windows demand your attention? One thing I don't like about iOS is all the badges on icons, which, to my psyche, are much more demanding.

<comment><USER12> I agree that it is my responsibility, I've choosen to handle it by saying "No" in most cases. But I'm a bit of an appaholic -- I download new apps all of the time, and don't have the time to figure out what chatter a particular app is going to bother me with.

I'm on my work Windows 7 laptop right now, and I've been bothered by the following since 7:30 when I came in:

\- SCCM has some updates for me that must be installed in 7 days

\- AV is slowing down my computer, for my safety.

\- Some printer is unavailable

People at home get bombarded with Java, Adobe, and other apps whining about updates or whatever. Microsoft recognized this as a serious enough problem that it basically hides most toolbar icons automatically. (I have 19 on the work laptop, with 4 visible)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know too much about how push notifications work, but don't they have some kind of tracking on them? If not, why not? That would seem like a perfect (obvious) solution for what the article describes. If you could somehow track when people take actions on your push notifications, or discard them. Or heck, even if someone decided to receive them, that should indicate that they are looking at them. Mainly because if someone isn't looking at them, they would probably get very annoyed by push notifications from apps they do not care about and thus, turn those notifications off.

Again, maybe I'm just naive about how it all works, but it seems like it could be a pretty measurable metric already?

<comment><USER15> On iOS, it's pretty much just fire-and-forget. You do get notified when a device isn't reachable anymore, which usually means the app has been uninstalled (so that's sort of feedback). (I think this also might trigger if the phone is offline for a long time, but I'm not sure.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Imagine if app developers could send more data (images, videos) through push > notifications, or even receive simple responses ("Yes" / "No") from users > without requiring users to launch the application itself.

You can do this today on Android.

</comment><comment><USER17> Dark Sky definitely knows you're getting value on those notifications. Popular apps get positive ratings from happy users. Dark sky doesn't need a specific metric to tell them the notifications are working; having a bunch of people 5-star your app saying "I love the notifications!" is sufficient.

</comment><comment><USER18> Never heard about Moves but it seems to record everything, send it to their server, analyze it there, then send you that notification. So, they know it's being used.

<comment><USER19> Yes you are correct. Reading the built-in help of the Moves app show the data collection end up on their server... So they clearly know which user is still running the app. If users were to disable pushes and no more daily data collection was happening then Moves will know they lost one user, but stating they don't know as the article show is a wrong conclusion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The author says the app developers have no way of knowing if he's using their app. Now having never developed an iPhone/Android app, just want to confirm if it is true. Isn't it that their servers would know that they are sending push notification to a phone after all?

</comment><comment><USER21> "Imagine an entire suite of apps with which you interact without ever opening. Imagine if app developers could send more data (images, videos) through push notifications, or even receive simple responses ("Yes" / "No") from users without requiring users to launch the application itself."

Then what is the point of having apps? Isn't this just cramming a lot of extra bits into the notifications? I think if all apps did more and more in the notifications, people would start to say it was cluttered or difficult to use/read.

The great thing about notifications for me is they are quick and simple. If I want to do more, the application is a click away. I don't need a faux app inside the notifications panel.

</comment><comment><USER22> I totally disagree here. I think most people know how to turn off their push notifications and its way easier than unsubscribing from an email newsletter, how many notifications pushed out and how many active users in my opinion would be a direct correlation.

</comment><comment><USER23> This triggered a Deja-vu moment for me from pre-tablet times when there were entire web-sites sprouting up around the no-click movement. You could do everything without clicking, until touch-screen devices came out and roll- overs stopped being an option.

I think real-time updates can work really well in a google glass world, especially with smart watches. Although they can cause trouble if you're trying to focus on something. I foresee a hide-notifications button next to the mute button one day.

Just like the no-click movement, a notification-heavy world will probably piss off analytics people, until metrics on data displayed/consumed notifications come out.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is why Google Now is so awesome. It's a whole suite of basic apps that most people use, pushed to you only when they're relevant. It's the most impressive software on my phone by far (and I have 200+ apps).

</comment><comment><USER25> Unrelated, but you have an error on your page:

        Warning: sprintf(): Too few arguments in /home/jakelevine/webapps/blog3/wp-content/themes/codium-extend/functions.php on line 190

</comment><comment><USER26> I find it curious that the idea being touted is essentially the same as the the way iGoogle works. And of course iGoogle is being shut down.

So why is one on the rise and the other falling? Is this yet another example of the apps-win-over-the-web trend? Is the problem with iGoogle that it was trapped in the browser? Is it that iGoogle was one company's little piece of the web versus an idea that is being pushed as the front-and-center UI for an OS?

</comment><comment><USER27> One way to know if a user is getting utility out of your product is to charge a monthly subscription. If a user is paying you, you know they are using the app and gaining utility from it, even if it's just a daily push notification. If they stop paying you, you know they are not getting utility from the app.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hmm so you can't track how many people turn off the notifications? I would assume the metric would be based on how many people leave them on without getting annoyed and switch them off. The lower your notification disable rate is, the more successful you are right?

</comment><comment><USER29> Isn't the value from the number of installs of a app or the number of times someone paid for the app? Unless they started using notifications to send me ads....which with 100% certainty cause me to uninstall the app (if such a practice is even allowed).

<comment><USER4> Spamming ads to the notification bar is a popular technique on Android. Zynga loves to do it, as do others.

<comment><USER30> Short of blocking them with a host file addition after finding the adhost, one can block notifications for individual apps via the app info (hold press on notification and select app info).

Must be on Android 4.1+ I believe though. I dont think ICS had it. There's also a bug in blocking notifications for 4.1 that inadvertently blocked Toast messages within apps as well, but it was fixed on 4.2. Just something to be aware of if you go blocking them and a developer was not aware enough to avoid putting important info in Toasts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "how many steps i took yesterday "valuable information"

ah. :P

I think this will just end up in a popup nightmare anyway. "you have 50 notifications - 45 requires a reply" inline or not: yay.

</comment><comment><USER32> I think it would also be interesting if one could simply subscribe to push notifications without even having to download an app.

</comment><comment><USER33> This light interaction is exactly the sort of thing that products like Glass are going to excel at.

</comment><comment><USER34> On Apple, isn't a major limitation of iOS? OR is there a mechanism to utilize push better?

</comment><comment><USER35> Isn't this what analytic packages are for? The app receiving the push message on your phone could anonymously provide analytics back to the server and with that knowledge alone, they know you are using it. Also additional analytics can be provided to see if you actually open the app.

<comment><USER19> On iOS unless the receiving app is either an official background app (aka GPS/VOIP/Music) or if the app is in the foreground then you are out of luck the app will not know a push was received. The only time the app knows a push was received is when the user act on the notification or if the push did contain a badge then the app can access the badge value... Otherwise nope!

Basically the summary for iOS is really the push is received by the notification center -own by Apple, and your app has no access to it when it run. Technically too if you go in the iOS settings and decide to remove the app from the Notification Center screen, then the pushes start to be 'lost'.

The concept of push is good and iOS now are better than in the past but they are far from being perfect and the iOS settings screen is a mess/confusion when you start playing with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The business impact is that companies are evaluated and funded on the basis > of metrics like Daily Active Use, Monthly Active Use, Impressions, Visits. > Notifications happen prior to all of these metrics.

These are all vanity metrics, not revenue metrics. There is no problem in adding a new one to the list: "Notifications served" and assuming they are received by engaged users. Just like page views and visits, as good and as bad.</comment>


How tinkerers brought PID temp control to espresso machines - <AUTHOR> http://home.lamarzoccousa.com/history-of-the-pid/ <comment><USER3> I was in Vivace's the other day and Schomer's latest quest seems to be around water. As I understand it they are starting from purified water then adding in their own blend of minerals to achieve the consistency they want. (apparently only the Capitol Hill location is testing this, more here: [http://espressovivace.com/index.php/water- formulation/](http://espressovivace.com/index.php/water-formulation/))

I have a PID'd Silvia ([https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/pid-retrofit-kit- for-ranci...](https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/pid-retrofit-kit-for-rancilio- silvia-with-pre-infusion-white)) and it does make a difference. But man, the black hole that is making repeatable excellent espresso at home doesn't end there. You start wondering about your tamp pressure, need a $700 grinder to have consistent adjustable grinds and start roasting your own coffee.

It is an expensive hobby, but a tasty one at least.

If you pass through Seattle, make sure to drop by Vivace, they define what proper espresso is.

<comment><USER4> How is a $700 grinder better than any burr grinder?

<comment><USER5> Ego.

PS: Most people fail blind taste tests with this stuff. But, just like the high end audio market spending money on junk makes some people feel good.

<comment><USER3> Source please?

It isn't an ego thing, it is a consistency thing. People go mad about getting higher end grinders, machines, etc... because they are trying to control for all possible variables. Espresso is incredibly finicky about those variables, but you can control for them with the right equipment.

It is pretty easy to demonstrate that the higher end burr grinders have greater adjustability and consistency than the lower end ones. It is also totally obvious that they are needed on any higher end machine.

I used to think it was all bullshit too, then I got a Silvia, started with a blade grinder, then a low end burr grinder, then a rocky before I could finally get the grind both fine and consistent enough to pull a proper shot.

It isn't a subtle difference between a good shot or a bad one, anybody can tell the difference.

<comment><USER5> EX: [http://www.drbunsen.org/coffee- experiments/](http://www.drbunsen.org/coffee-experiments/) _Based on this analysis, subjects did not show a statistically significant preference in coffee brewed from a blade grinder or burr grinder._

First off only ~1/3 of coffee drinkers take it black which masks a lot of taste variation.

Second, taste sensitivity varies widely. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supertaster)

Put together well under half of coffee drinkers notice subtle differences in grinding methods. Assuming the devices are setup to similar grinding levels and use similar source beans.

Note: You can find examples on both sides of this issue. But, the blind taste tests that repeat over time fail to provide the expected consistency.

PS: There are a few people that both notice _and_ care about these issues, but they really are the minority of coffee drinkers.

<comment><USER6> I'm kinda with you on the ego thing, but I will claim that there is a noticeable difference (in brewed coffee, I'm not an espresso fan) between beans ground with a good burr grinder vs a blade grinder.

I couldn't match the quality of my local Dunn Bros coffeeshop until I started asking them to grind my beans when I bought them. Switching from my cheap blade grinder to their in-shop one made the largest difference in taste.

<comment><USER5> Your assuming it was using there grinder vs. there grinder _settings_ that was important. In other words proper technique vs. proper device.

Also, time sitting around post grinding is a large factor.

<comment><USER6> Well, considering that simply by virtue of being completely different types of device, there's no way I could match their settings with my grinder.

Yes, time is a factor, but a week after the beans were ground in store, they still tasted better than mine, so...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm curious: Since the problem was clear to anybody in the field - <USER2> control, and there's a whole field dealing with control where PID is bread & butter,so it's quite simple to ask for a solution , why did it take something unique and tinkering to add PID to coffee machines ?

why didn't companies in the field just implement this as part of their product development(maybe aiming for the higher end) ?

<comment> the-dude I was told by a professional coffee technician manufacturers experimented with electronic temp sensors 15-20 years ago but they were prone to failure. Field service is expensive. This is for the professional machine ( 2 - 3 groups ). They have always used pressostats which are very reliable but they wear due to arcing.

For the home market, lots of machines are not heat-exchangers and therefore need to run a lot cooler ( 100c instead of around 120c ). A pressostat does not work well in this range and they just mount cheap thermostats.

<comment><USER8> This is more or less what I've heard. Early espresso machine tech was based off mechanical relays, and they didn't play well with early electronic temp sensors. Also, temperature stability was not really a thing anyone was talking about to that degree, so it wasn't a priority for manufacturers until noise was raised.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> the-dude Well, I just have to shamefully plug the meCoffee PID ( [https://mecoffee.nl](https://mecoffee.nl) ). The product is just picking up a bit of steam.

Disclosure: mine.

<comment><USER9> Super cool! I'm tempted to up my Silvia's game (I've a v2 from ~2003), but the lack of iOS app has me less likely to go there -- although I know you're just getting off the ground and things take time. Nice work all around!

<comment> the-dude You should definitely PID your machine, the increase in taste and consistency is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Before we had reasonable espresso in Austin, I had my own PID'd Silvia. I had had good coffee Vivace in Seattle and wanted to replicate it.

But boy was it a lot of work, your home-roasted beans have to be the right freshness, the milk has to be super fresh and your tamping technique has to be spot on.

Now that we have good coffee in Austin I cant see going back to doing it myself.

<comment><USER11> Meh. I live in Austin, and I have yet to find a shop that makes espresso drinks as well as I do (at least to my taste).

Don't get me wrong, Austin has some great shops. However, I feel like there was such a strong move away from the "burnt Starbucks norm" that all of the good shops feature _extremely_ light roasted coffee that, IMO, doesn't stand up in milk drinks well and is usually way too acidic for me. If you know of a place that serves a great medium-roasted, chocolatey/nutty cappuccino, would like to find it!

<comment><USER12> Much like there was a "hop escalation" in IPAs, there's definitely been a "sour escalation" in coffee. It's fallen off a bit in recent years, but around 2012, it was bad (I'm looking at you, Intelligentsia!).

Roasters became accustomed to the sourness of the coffee, to make each new coffee taste "right", they had to make it more, and more sour. For those of us who didn't consume coffee in quite the volumes of the professionals, it didn't go over well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> PID Controller, if you don't know what one is. (I didn't) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PID_controller)

<comment><USER14> If you've worked in industry and/or programming PLCs, you've probably come across PID loops before.

Maybe not as accurate, but a simpler explanation: [http://plchowto.com/plc- pid/](http://plchowto.com/plc-pid/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> PIDs are great for espresso boilers where you want water around 202F (sea level), so below boiling. My home machine with an 800ml brew boiler stays within +/\- 2F all day with the PID. My previous machine without PID could barely keep it in a +/\- 5F range.

For steam boilers, pressure stats are actually quite effective, especially as they get larger.

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, I've read an article that explains why it's easy to make a great cup of coffee in Denver. The boiling point of water in Denver is 202, so you can add coffee to boiling water and it's right at the right temp (something that would be a big no-no at sea level).

<comment><USER16> link? would love to read!

<comment><USER17> I don't know the article, but there are many sources for the individual claims, e.g.:

* Denver is at 5,130–5,690 ft (1,564–1,731 m) [0]

* The boiling point of water at this altitude is between 201 and 203 °F; at sea level it is 212 °F [1]

* "Your brewer should maintain a water temperature between 195 to 205 degrees Fahrenheit for optimal extraction. Colder water will result in flat, under-extracted coffee, while water that is too hot will also cause a loss of quality in the taste of the coffee." [2]

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

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_cooking#Boiling_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High- altitude_cooking#Boiling_point_of_pure_water_at_elevated_altitudes)

[2]: [http://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew- Coffee](http://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/How-to-Brew-Coffee)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> PID temp controllers are also used a lot in homebrewing especially for controlling mash temperature.

You can use the PID to maintain the temperature of the wort at ~65C by passing the wort through a heating element and a temperature probe (this is called Recirculating Infusion Mash System).

<comment><USER19> I've found that the mashing temperature of the venerable 'huge cooler wrapped in bath towels' is unbelievably stable.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, that's true, although using RIMS/HERMS lets you performed stepped mashes too and to some degree helps with clarity as the wort is constantly filtered through the grain bed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anybody had espresso from a Mirage?

[http://www.keesvanderwesten.com/mirage-special- features.html](http://www.keesvanderwesten.com/mirage-special-features.html)

Awesome use of a PID loop.

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anyone know what the thermal stability system, which is more precise than the PID on the graph represents?

<comment><USER8> Hi! Disclaimer, I wrote the piece for LM.

That's a graph from La Marzocco's internal documents and represents the total heat stability architecture of their machines, including boiler and grouphead design, preheating, tuned PIDs, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi everyone, I'm the post author. Feel free to ask me any questions and I'll answer as best I can.

</comment><comment><USER22> is anybody buying $7K home coffee machine + only $500 for side panels and $200 for flexible steam pipe?

</comment><comment><USER23> Is there any proof that a PID is worth it?</comment>


Ask HN: Recommendation for PhD-level course on DeepLearning for self-learner? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, I have started my study on DeepLearning from March. Initially, I went with no Math courses like fast.ai and Started working on code. But to implement something new I needed a Deeper Knowledge on Research papers so I have completed the following courses.
1. Andrew Ng's DeepLearning Specialization
2. NLP from Stanford.
then I went to https://www.deeplearningbook.org book by Ian Goodfellow. But the unsupervised learning part too abstract. that I feel like I am still missing the foundation for understanding deeplearnning.
Any recommendation? <comment><USER2> You can not really appreciate the beauty of machine learning without the maths behind it. I don't know what your maths background is but if I had to recommend, a good understandig of Linear Algebra makes all the difference when you read ML papers. I would storngly recommend Gilbert Strang's two courses on Linear Algebra [1] and Matrix Methods[2].

Everything else that mostly cares about application is easy to find on the internet (see the r/MachineLearning subreddit).

[1] [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear- algebra...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra- spring-2010/video-lectures/) [2] [https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-065-matrix- method...](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-065-matrix-methods-in- data-analysis-signal-processing-and-machine-learning-spring-2018/)</comment>


What Twitter and the NYT have in common - <AUTHOR> http://scripting.com/stories/2011/03/20/whatTwitterAndTheNytHaveIn.html <comment><USER3> I understand why Winer says that "each is the solution to the other's problem" (referring to Twitter and the NYT). It is a reasonable assumption to come to, but I have to admit: I suspect its wrong. I don't think the primary reason why most "normal" people use Twitter is to share news links. I think Dave Winer uses it that way, but I feel like he has a tendency to assume that _his_ way is the _only_ way. It isn't.

I also understand Winer's objection to the 140-character limit. I really do. I personally think that it breaks Twitter for me and others who primarily access it via the web or the data connection on our smartphones.

However, I don't think Winer understands that for people who _don't_ access Twitter in this way, anything more that 140 characters _completely breaks_ the service. My wife used to have a "dumb" phone and thus access Twitter entirely through SMS. Had the service broken the 140-character limit, she would not have been able to use it.

I don't know how many people use Twitter in this manner. I don't know if anyone but Twitter does. I suspect, though, that Twitter doesn't change this because they _know_ it will negatively impact enough of their userbase that it isn't worth dealing with.

<comment><USER4> I was going to say that the 140 character limit is what separates twitter from every other blog+rss feed combination - but now that I think about it, that's only partially true.

Twitter's appeal is that it _is_ a blog+rss feed combination and is probably the only one of it's kind. The technologies existed as separate entities - <USER2> post your thoughts on your own page - you use a separate tool to read an aggregated list of other's thoughts. Twitter combined the two into a dead simple interface.

The 140 character limit - initially an artifact left over from the days when sms was the primary means of using it - is now more of a practicality issue.

You can't show a steady stream of other's thoughts if they all extend to multiple pages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here is an idea for Twitter: they could open source their server infrastructure and make it distributed, thereby massively reducing their operating costs. Then they could offer paid hosting of Twitter streams for people who are too lazy to host their own Twitter servers (the Wordpress model).

One can dream, no? :-)

<comment><USER6> They've taken too much investment for that to be seen as a success. They need the control because they need 9-figure revenues, and that don't come easy for social web services. It's a shame really because twitter as a federated protocol would undoubtedly create more true value in the long term, and potentially join the ranks of ftp, smtp, and http as fundamental tools. I'm sure that would have appealed to Evan and Biz, but such things are impossible unless set in motion before the business people get their skin in the game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If what he's saying is right (and he very well could be) that's actually kind of bad for everyone. If The New York Times can't figure out how to make money then they will simply go out of business and we lose one of the more respected newspapers in the world.

I'm less concerned about Twitter but I can understand that it brings enough value to people's daily lives that not having it would be a net loss.

At least in the case of NYT, they're at least making an attempt to monetize their business in a reasonable way - you pay us money and we give you content.

<comment><USER7> Disagree. The NYT can make money by changing their cost structure to one more conducive to distributing news via the internet. The old rule of thumb for newspapers is that the "cover price" essentially covers distribution, and advertising pays for everything else. Advertising should end up being the same or larger, but the cost of distribution should be significantly less.

They'll end up there anyway, but executives tend to fight tooth and nail against lower cost structures, because it also means lower salaries for executives (smaller company means that fewer of them are needed and there's less room for featherbedding).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having some optional for-pay features seems like the no-brainer way for almost of these "give service away for free, get huge if popular" web businesses to get revenue. It should work for NYT, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Essentially, freemium bolted on late. Even if not all users would be willing to buy anything, there will always be some folks that do. Find out what those folks want and are willing to pay, and make that happen. Done.</comment>


New Facebook app: lifestream aggregator - <AUTHOR> http://apps.facebook.com/intuuch/ intuuch publishes a users activities at various sites ( flickr, youtube, twitter ) as their digital lifestream into your facebook newsfeed. <comment><USER2> That title seems deceptive. This is a Facebook app rather than something launched by facebook.</comment>


Economics Simulation - <AUTHOR> http://nbviewer.ipython.org/url/norvig.com/ipython/Economics.ipynb <comment><USER2> If you are interested in economic modelling have a look at Minsky.[1][2] It isn't that pretty and it is in (C++ and Tcl/Tk) rather than Python but Steve Keen's Minsky project looks like an interesting take on macroeconomic modelling (rather than microeconomic simulation). It was Kickstarter funded (at least partially).

Steve Keen was predicting a big debt triggered crash before 2008 and believes in economic models that at least have the possibility of crisis and disequilibrium being the normal state (which is regarded as unorthodox in economics).

Minsky can model chaotic system (even outside of economics)[3].

[1] [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/minsky/](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/minsky/)

[2] [http://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/home/Home/](http://sourceforge.net/p/minsky/home/Home/)

[3] [http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/09/10/famous- models-...](http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2013/09/10/famous-models-of- chaos-in-minsky/)

<comment><USER3> Tom Sargent, the econ Nobel Laureate, has a great website with examples in numpy/scipy solving some well-known micro/macro problems.

[http://quant-econ.net/](http://quant-econ.net/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is not economic model in any usual sense of the word 'economic'. At best it's a discrete diffusion simulation -- purposely obfuscated with loaded words like wealth and transactions.

Its a nice exposition of using python for a simulation, but it has little bearing on economics.

<comment><USER5> [http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/WhyEconomistsShunSimul...](http://www2.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/WhyEconomistsShunSimulation.Lehtinen2008.pdf)

<comment><USER6> As someone who works with simulation models for a living, this was a fascinating read. Thanks for linking it.

<comment><USER7> I'd be interested in what you think of that paper - I was fascinated by it as it seemed rather odd coming from an engineering perspective.

<comment><USER6> Disclaimer: I'm an Epidemiologist, not an Economist, so it was a reading from someone outside the field.

The idea that fields have certain "ways of knowing" something was interesting to me - that for economics, its about the analytic solution of an equilibrium.

My own field has something similar - generally speaking, the "hierarchy of evidence" starts with single case reports at the bottom, and then way up at the top are meta-analyses of large randomized clinical trials. As a modeler, I was once asked by a clinician where models (be they analytical or simulation) fit in that framework, and the only answer I could give was "along side it". Analytic results are Capital-T True in a way that even RCTs aren't, but are only true in the universe laid out by the model itself, for example.

It was also just an interesting read as models in my field have been migrating from analytic (or numerical) solutions to equilibrium problems toward more simulation and agent based models, and that same "Yes, but how do you _know_ it's right" type questions are coming up.

<comment><USER8> This is slightly off-topic but I've recently read the book "Growing Artificial Societies: Social Science From the Bottom Up" and in my spare time I've been slowly implementing something very similar to the sort of "Maximally- Minimalist" simulation they describe.

This simulation includes the concept propagation of disease, again in a sort of "Maximally-Minimalist" way. While it's suitable in the sense that it fits with the rest of simulation, I've identified it as something that I am going to have to learn about before I extend that part of the simulation beyond what's already been described.

So I was wondering if you might know of a resource which presents various minimalist models of disease propagation that you could recommend. I'm not epidemiologist, I'm actually retired and studying economics as they pertain to environmental systems, so I'm not actually looking for anything that extremely complex or compute intensive... I'm just looking for something slightly more detailed that what I've got now and perhaps describes a step-by-step method towards modeling that's actually realistic.

<comment><USER6> This may be a good place to start: [http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9639.html](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9639.html)

It's a textbook on agent-based models written by an ecologist (where an awful lot of disease modeling is done). I believe there's a cheaper paperback version on Amazon, and they use NetLogo, which is pretty gentle computationally.

<comment><USER8> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's an interesting simulation, but fatally flawed by the assumption that transactions between actors are a zero sum game. It would be more realistic if it modeled the fact that wealth can be created and that actors transact only when the net outcome is more valuable to each of them.

<comment><USER10> Seems to model things like transactions in fixed resources like land pretty well.

In third-world countries we (the US) have repeatedly bought up land in exchange for short-term goods. The people in the country increasingly become dependent on providing services to the foreign land-holders, or factory work for the outside market.

Once they get fed up with this near-slavery they often try land reform, and that's when we send in the troops/CIA-paid thugs in the name of anti-communism (see Guatamala or Haiti as good examples).

It's like the Asimov story where aliens offer to extend humans' life by ten years for a price in natural resources, which they repeatedly double every ten years. Every resource on earth is eventually strip-mined, life can no longer be supported, and the aliens just move on to the next "voluntary" target.

The WTO plays a big role in these kind of attacks on societies as well. Of all the third-world countries that have developed, they have almost uniformly made heavy use of protectionism, foreign-ownership limitations, etc. The Seattle WTO protests in the 90's were actually seeded with some really interesting arguments and analysis.

Still focusing on land, but bringing things back towards Norvig's simulation (lots of individual actors), Thomas Paine's short essay, "Agrarian Justice," has some good descriptions of what goes on and offers some pretty good solutions.

[http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html](http://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html)

<comment><USER11> _in fixed resources like land..._

What is this resource you talk about?

Land values are f(productivity, past productivity).

That is they are derivatives of income and wealth.

Notwithstanding the critique of the author, the GP has a point that the science of economics is about the relationship between (production, distribution).

Eliminate that feedback loop, and ... yes, you are just looking at the diffusion of "fake games" people play.

Which are only insightful in the assumptions, but broadly speaking, not so much

All of that in mind, this type of essay/article is just a demonstration of ~technique in a very broad sense.

Its useful to mention/caveat any extrapolations are problematic, but no need to dwell or be overyly crtitical here. IMHO.

<comment><USER12> To clarify dllthomas' comment,

Land _acreage_ is a fixed resource.

This is one of the reasons that a lot of economic models depend on land: there is a very real scarcity there to drive the equations with, and it forms a foundation for virtually every other form of scarcity besides labor.

<comment><USER13> More subtle is the point, particularly in early economic thought, that land is a proxy for the master economic input: energy.

With sufficient energy, you can provide other inputs (raw materials, labor, capital). Without it, you're sunk.

In a preindustrial society, energy == land (and sea), in the form of food and fuel production (agriculture, grazing, fuelwood, wild herds, fish, all by way of direct or indirect sunlight conversion), as well as in the form of wind and water power resources which can be tapped through mechanisms. Ricardo's "law of rent" was in part a lament that all the good ones -- that is, most productive acres -- are taken. He was complaining about asset allocation in his day (he also saw economic surpluses accruing to landowners and labor rather than hard working capitalists and bankers, which is a tad curious).

With an industrialized society, energy's become something we _extract_ from the land (coal, oil, gas, uranium), rather than which is produced or converted by it. But the fundamental truth remains.

In a future sustainable world, we'll again either be at the point where what we take from the land matches the rate at which it's created, or we'll have found some entropy gradient so abundant (fusion? thorium?) that it can be used extractively for tens to hundreds of thousands of years or more without exhaustion, despite the very formidable technical challenges to its utilization.

My leaning is more toward the former than the latter.

<comment><USER12> Economics would be a lot more interesting if they discussed things in terms of joules rather than in terms of dollars.

<comment><USER13> I've been exposed to the idea of an energy-backed currency since reading Arthur Clarke's _Imperial Earth_ as a kid (it's actually got a lot to do with energy economics in general, among other themes).

More recently I've been looking at some of the principles of dissipative systems and wondering if one of the fundamental inequality equations of that field isn't applicable as a general concept of capital accumulation. Let's see if I can't find that ... OK: the storage function here:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system#In_control_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system#In_control_theory)

I've also been kicking around the ideas of, variously, an organism (say, a human), or a herd, or an ecosystem, as an economic analog, and trying to figure out what the equivalent systems within them are. For the body analog, there's the long-standing metaphor within economic literature of the banking system and money as the heart and blood. My read is that these are mistaken -- those correspond to physical constructs within the economy (transportation systems and energy), not the _control_ and _signaling_ systems of the economy. There I think you'd want to map something more on the lines of Ca+ ion exchange or endocrine signaling, though honestly my understanding of biology and systems is pretty loose. I've been meaning to look at how biological and ecological systems signal for resource utilization.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a fun experiment, but in real life transactions create wealth. If a buyer doesn't feel that the widget she's been offered at a certain price is worth more than the price then she won't buy it. Similarily, if the seller feels the widget is worth more than the price, he won't sell. Therefore, a transaction means wealth wads created since both parties' wealth has increased after the transaction.

I'm pointing this out because it is quite a common misunderstanding that a certain amount of wealth exists in the world, and that it is a zero sum game, where someone has to loose every time someone wins.

<comment><USER15> How does buying a can of pringles or a pack of cigarettes create wealth for the buyer?

<comment><USER16> Economists call it "increasing utility". When, in a free market with perfect information, you part with your money in exchange of a good it is assumed to be because the good has higher utility for you than the money it costs. A transaction increases utility for the two parts concerned, otherwise it will not happen.

<comment><USER15> > A transaction increases utility for the two parts concerned, otherwise it > will not happen.

But it happens all the time, through manifactured desire and the exploitation of people's addictions. People are not "rational actors" even though economic theory attempts to dictate it. In fact, most of consumerism seems to be built on getting people to buy things that in turn does not help them to create even more value.

<comment><USER17> You start off fine by saying that in the context of addictions and other mental aberrations, people are not likely to act in their long term best interests. But then you say this:

> In fact, most of consumerism seems to be built on getting people to buy > things that in turn does not help them to create even more value.

In this context, "creating wealth" is not about accumulating resources to create 'even more value' a la Capital. It seems like you're confounding wealth and capital, and they're very different things here. Here we're talking about wealth as meaning economic welfare. Society has more economic welfare--Wealth --when economic exchange happens because resources are allocated in a way that increases utility for everyone.

Life wouldn't be worth living if we worked for the sole purpose of creating lasting capital, in order to build more capital. Consumerism is necessary, so

>In fact, most of consumerism seems to be built on getting people to buy things that in turn does not help them to create even more value.

isn't really a bad thing.

So your first idea and your second idea are only marginally related, and combining them probably hurts your argument overall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There's a wide variety of economists. Speaking as someone with Master's degrees in Math & Economics, this sort of simulation is inadequate in many ways.

I was educated via the Neoclassical approach, where the macroeconomy is modeled through a microeconomic (individual) foundation. What's needed at least is a budget, a utility function (preference relations), and a transition function. The agent then is modeled through optimizing their utility against their budget constraint at each timestep, then the transition function gets applied. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This form the basis of a recursion model, the simplest one being the Solow model [1]. More details are available in Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics by Stokey & Lucas [2]. Computer simulations are definitely used in cases where the models are mathematically intractable.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solow_model) [2]: [http://www.amazon.com/Recursive-Methods-Economic-Dynamics- St...](http://www.amazon.com/Recursive-Methods-Economic-Dynamics- Stokey/dp/book-citations/0674750969)

</comment><comment><USER19> The redistribution rules strike me as being closer to a simulation of games of chance, perhaps blackjack when played with good strategy. If you have a big bankroll to start with, you can afford to ride out the bumps in the road so you'll probably win eventually. If you have a small bankroll, you'll probably get wiped out by random chance pretty quickly.

But it doesn't seem to have much bearing on actual economics.

<comment><USER20> >>big bankroll...you can afford to ride out the bumps >>small bankroll...you'll probably get wiped out by random chance pretty quickly

>>doesn't seem to have much bearing on actual economics

Don't be too quick to assume that, I think your post actually contains everything you're looking for...

<comment><USER19> So if you randomly bump into someone on the street who has more money than you, you give them half of whatever you've got?

It's only a simulation insofar as people are governed by mindless rules and random chance, with no thought or planning involved. So it's a decent simulation of some people, but certainly not everyone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> As a model of economic institutions, it has what Joseph Heath of the University of Toronto has termed _catallactic bias_ : gain from trade is explicitly modeled, but the four other mechanisms of cooperative benefit, economies of scale, risk pools, self binding and information transmission, are not recognized.

"...much of contemporary social contract theory has been marked by what might be referred to as a _catallactic bias_ , which results from a tacit conceptual privileging of gains from trade as the primary mechanism of cooperative benefit. [1]"

[1] Joseph Heath. The Benefits of Cooperation. Philosophy & Public Affairs. Volume 34, Issue 4, pages 313–351, Fall 2006

</comment><comment><USER22> One flaw with this model is that the value of money is not absolute, it is relative to the price of goods and services. Furthermore, the rate of circulation of money is directly related to the amount of economic activity taking place in the society (since each transaction represents an economic event), and economic activity _creates wealth_ as PG says.

I once tried to develop a similar theory to the link, by applying the principles of statistical mechanics, and treating the rate of circulation of money as the temperature, and each actor's amount of economic activity as their kinetic energy. It seemed like a neat approach but it has it's flaws obviously.

<comment><USER23> Another is that there is no credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Lesson learnt from the comments: beware of modelling economics if you have a background in a hard science. As a profession, we are incredibly envious and defensive of our position as the quantitative social science.

</comment><comment><USER25> Generally speaking, the problem with Economic models is that they are mathematical models of a particular economic theorem or 'identity', as economists sometimes prefer to call them. When you dig into the scientific basis for those theorems however, it's often lacking. So saying that this isn't an economic model is quite correct - but that's actually a good thing, not a bad one. Economic models by and large have no scientific validity.

Although this isn't that useful by itself, it's a very nice way to get some basic intuition about how money behaves as a unit of exchange, in a system with a constant money supply. The reason why some commentators think that this isn't a realistic simulation of our actual monetary system is that in the current system, the quantity of money is more or less continuously expanding. But that doesn't imply that more 'wealth' is being created, it just means that more tokens are being created.

The problem is though that as a result the unit of measurement (money) is also expanding, and so you have a monetary system that appears superficially to obey rules of 'growth' as measured in other fields, but in fact is based on something that is quite different, as these experiments show. And you have economists merrily chasing their tails for the last 3 centuries over trying to determine what causes 'growth', when actually it's an illusion of measurement created by the day to day operations of the fractional reserve banking system.

<comment><USER26> Except there really is 'growth'. We have computers and cars instead of papyri and horses.

Technological advancement, quality of life, etc..., IS growth...

<comment><USER25> Yes, exactly. But modern economics isn't actually measuring that, and I think is in a certain amount of denial about it occurring at all. Economic growth is growth in GDP. GDP is calculated as function of price, and although it's adjusted for inflation, the vagaries of the monetary system mean that inflation is a very poor proxy for the actual growth in the money supply. [Which btw. is well known within Economics - better known there as the mystery of the 'monetary policy transmission mechanism'].

Go back 150 years, and production was measured as production (tons of coal, etc. You can see this in historical records like the German Statistical Yearbook's from the 1870's.) Today's economists make measurements using money, and ignore the very real problems of money as a unit of measurement.

For example, take the quantity theory of money (and note the word theory there), MV = PQ. V - velocity of circulation of money cancels - this was pointed out in the 1930's, but for some reason has never made it into the textbooks. We're left with P(prices) ~ M (quantity of money)/Q (quantity of transactions.

Now if this equation is valid (and it is mainstream economic theory, although the presence of a cancelling issue probably isn't a good sign there), then we have an inverse relationship between the quantity of money in the system, and the quantity of transactions (i.e. production), indicating that actual economic growth in the sense you're using it would cause decreasing prices, if M is held constant.

OTH, if that equation is wrong, then how can we measure anything with money, since we don't know what the relationship is between production and prices?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you want to understand the classic economic models you might find useful the python implementation I wrote a while ago of some of them. Inspired in Caltech's Principles of Economics for Scientists, they still lack supporting documentation, but I think they are good enough to play with and explore. [https://github.com/juanre/econopy](https://github.com/juanre/econopy)

</comment><comment><USER27> Uhm, I see the problem here:

m = random.uniform(0, pot)

Once somebody wins a few games, he will fish "wealth" from a bigger and bigger pot, even if he plays against the poor. According to this, you just have to be rich to be even richer. However, your wealth per se doesn't affect your future wealth, this is clear, right?

Maybe this could be a poker game simulation. Certainly not an economics simulation.

<comment><USER28> "However, your wealth per se doesn't affect your future wealth, this is clear, right?"

No. Your current wealth is a very strong indicator of your future wealth, and indeed, your future income.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I tried creating economic models like this for a video game I was trying to make, but inevitably the market would end up oscillating too much or the whole thing would crash. The idea was to allow people to exploit arbitrage, but then as they did that, the market would become more efficient and the player would have to find some other commodity to arbitrage. I spent more hours than I care to mention and trying to take as many factors in as possible, but doing quasi- realistic simulations is just hard.

I think part of that is for reasons others have stated here, which is that there aren't a lot of people doing market simulation. Even the best simulations are going to be wrong, so what's the point.

<comment><USER12> Have you tried looking at how EVE Online does it? The idea you describe roughly matches my experience in it, though I was never a dedicated trader exploiting arbitrages. As a manufacturer, though, I'd often be able to ascribe price fluctuations to externalities like, "Alliance X just won a war in region Y and now they're consolidating their gains, resulting in purchases of lots of starbase construction materials, which I'm making." Or even simpler ones like "Corporation Z seems to have come back from hiatus."

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Could someone perhaps explain to me how the "random_split" results in wealth accumulation? From the description, I would expect it to have the opposite effect.

If two actors with initial values X and Y interact, their expected outcome would be (X+Y)/2, with expected change being (Y-X)/2 and (X-Y)/2 for the two actors. If X<Y, then (Y-X)/2>0, and so the person with less wealth expects to gain, and the person with more wealth expects to lose, for an overall smoothing effect.

<comment><USER31> First, accumulation would be the wrong way to think about it. Once the two agents are engaged in transaction, it doesn't matter which is which.

Let D be the difference in wealth post-transaction divided by the total. The expected value of D is 1/2\. That means that we should expect that one agent will walk away with 75% of the pot and the other with 25%. Thus, although the expected outcome for an agent is 50% of the pot, we're still pretty much guaranteed to get very uneven splits.

Next, note that a person's wealth affects the payout of the next transaction. In other words, the person who takes 25% is almost guaranteed to be able to make less on the next transaction than the person who walked away with 75%. Suppose all our agents start out with 100, and that the 75%/25% splits are guaranteed. If each agent engages in exactly one transaction, then half our agents will have 50 and half will have 150. A 50's next transaction will either be (50, 50) or (50, 150). A 150's next interaction will either be (150, 50) or (150, 150). The expected outcome for (50, 50) is (25, 75). The expected outcome for (50, 150) is (50, 150). The expected outcome for (150, 150) is (225, 75). None of the expected outcomes even things up. It just gets more and more spread out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I think it's worth pointing out the most politically salient missing feature.

All the people who are on the blue line have enough money to start changing the rules of the market. For example persuading government to grant them a special licence, or bail out their company or letting them bank offshore.

As this is HN I should point out that I don't think this is an argument for no government, just against political funding.

</comment><comment><USER33> It would be interesting to simulate Free banking vs Central banks and the effect of different interest rates.

<comment><USER34> Such a simulation would reveal a lot about the creator's beliefs, and essentially nothing about reality.

<comment><USER35> Making the creator's beliefs (including hidden assumptions) completely clear is valuable all by itself. But in addition to revealing the creator's beliefs it also reveals arithmetic errors, which are quite common in poorly specified verbal models.

For an example of the latter, observe this HN thread: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7042469](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7042469)

<comment><USER36> I'm surprised you didn't include a link to this thread, where I still owe you some work...

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6725096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6725096)

<comment><USER35> Yeah, but that's a discussion I didn't want to get into again. A simple, completely indisputable arithmetic error made the point better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Nothing is more fun that listening to economists argue about economics. Programmers have nothing on them.

</comment><comment><USER38> "For now we will only consider transactions that conserve wealth, so our transaction rules will decide how to split up the pot of X+Y total wealth."

Economics is not about redistribution of wealth, it is about human actions that generate -- or destroy -- wealth.

Wealth, in economics, is not a quantity of money, it is some set of valuable goods usable in producing other goods or to be consumed.

In fact, every voluntary transaction by definition creates wealth, because it brings the goods (being transacted) from an individual who values them less to an individual who values them more -- and vice-verse.

<comment><USER39> Surely that depends on your definition of voluntary, the value functions of the individuals involved, and the impact of any externalities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I remember calculating an economic model with my Mum when she was doing her Masters. It was done by modelling the "world" in a large, fairly sparse matrix and performing particular transformations as per a defined algorithm. It basically collapsed the matrix into particular values to find what you were looking for.

The guys who came up with it (I think they were Australians) won a Nobel(?) prize for it, but I can't remember what the technique is called. Anyone know? I might be remembering it incorrectly however.

</comment><comment><USER41> The other day I was wondering why we, as a population, keep arguing about what economic model would work the best? Don't we have computers that can run simulations and provide answers? Inputs could be population size, current wealth distribution, socialist/capitalist/hybrid, tax rate, cultural influence etc. We don't have to be accurate, just directionally correct. Why do we keep playing this game in the real world? Is it because we don't yet have information to model the engine?

<comment><USER42> > Don't we have computers that can run simulations and provide answers?

It's the old "garbage in / garbage out" problem. If you don't have a good model, you can only simulate a bad one. Also:

> We don't have to be accurate, just directionally correct.

If the model is not accurate, you can't ever falsify it, thus you can't improve it. That's one of the biggest flaws of current economics, their models are not accurate.

<comment><USER26> > That's one of the biggest flaws of current economics, their models are not > accurate.

Some are more accurate than others. This isn't a flaw BTW, rather an indicator of how complex the problem really is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Any way to see when this was created? Do these ipython notebooks log create/change events? Just curious to see if this was a recent creation or just a recent discovery...

<comment><USER44> At norvig.com/ipython where the file is hosted it says it's from 18-Apr-2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> this is highly abstracted and missing the usual attempt to link psychology with economic behavior. that doesn't mean it isn't useful and interesting. at minimum this does a good job of showing what sort of results we might expect from policies w.r.t redistributive policy vs. deregulatory policy.

</comment><comment><USER46> This shows how nice an Econometrics book made with IPython would be, something in the likes of [https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic- Programmin...](https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic-Programming- and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers)

</comment><comment><USER47> Glad to see there's some interest in economic simulation on HN. I'd personally like to see some simulations done where economics is actually applicable, ie. scarce resources.

</comment><comment><USER48> Is it possible to get a full list of all such notebooks by Norvig?

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd like to see individuals split out. The variance in wealth for a particular individual over time is likely very high in these simulation--much higher than in reality.

</comment><comment><USER50> This does not seem to take into account the fact that the bottom quartile start with horses and outhouses and end up with motorized vehicles and indoor plumbing.

<comment><USER51> Yeah, but that would have been true regardless of markets... look at the slavery, or stalin's five year plans...

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Redistribution kills motivation, ergo diminishes prosperity.

How do you simulate motivation?

<comment><USER53> All wealth is redistributed at some point. Many people just want to redistribute it to their kids.

I'd be happy with a flat tax for all, as long as there's a significant death tax. Maybe cap inheritances to (average household income x average life expectancy) for each child. The rest would be distributed to everyone else, equally.

<comment><USER54> I think that, in this context, "wealth redistribution" refers to _forced_ redistribution.</comment></comment></comment>


Mayday Masks – Donate your N95 masks - <AUTHOR> https://maydaymasks.com <comment><AUTHOR> My wife, Christine, started this to help find masks for healthcare workers. Her Mom is treating COVID-19 patients and has a single mask to reuse for a month, which she carries around in a plastic bag.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you want to contact her: [https://twitter.com/christine_hall](https://twitter.com/christine_hall)</comment></comment>


$1,000 per month cash handout would grow US economy by $2.5 trillion, study says - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/31/1000-per-month-cash-handout-would-grow-the-economy-by-2-point-5-trillion.html <comment><USER2> Halfway through:

> _These estimates are based on a universal basic income paid for by > increasing the federal deficit. As part of the study, the researchers also > calculated the effect to the economy of paying for the cash handouts by > increasing taxes. In that case, there would be no net benefit to the > economy, the report finds._

> _" When paying for the policy by increasing taxes on households rather than > paying for the policy with debt, the policy is not expansionary," the report > says. "In effect, it is giving to households with one hand what it is taking > away with the other. There is no net effect."_

TL;DR: If we create money, there's more money in the economy. If we don't create money, there's not.

<comment><USER3> I'm a libertarian. I think that the UBI could allow for economic growth based solely on the power it as to eliminate the welfare trap. However, this would only work as a replacement for all welfare, though. It would have to replace welfare, food stamps, social security, etc, with the exception of medicaid and medicare.

I support UBI _only_ as a replacement for existing (bad) welfare systems. I think UBI in conjunction with simplified tax code could inject life into the inner cities. Add onto that decriminalization of all controlled substances, and you've got a huge boon.

<comment><USER4> Hello fellow libertarian.

The problem is that very many welfare recipients get more than $1,000/month per adult. Disabled? Single mother with children? You'll easily get 2x that (including check, food stamps, subsidized housing).

And no one is going to want to take away from the poor.

$1,000/adult/month replacing welfare is an impossibility. We'd have to use _much_ larger numbers.

<comment><USER3> If two checks are necessary, that's just more incentive for parents to stay together, or if that isn't possible, the child support can be taken out of the check. Also, with a guaranteed income, a family could much more easily move to a cheaper area with more opportunities.

People also don't tend to consider the harms that means-tested programs do to the poor. Subsidized housing is one huge per peeve of mine because it's essentially creating ghettos.

<comment><USER4> > People also don't tend to consider the harms that means-tested programs do > to the poor.

True. Still, there will be many who are worse off with $1 UBI.

I agree with your views. But if UBI is ever created it has 0% chance of replacing welfare.

<comment><USER5> It would certainly replace unemployment benefits but certainly not health- and family-based welfare.

Though the children could receive something like $800/month for the first, $600/month for the second, and so on up to the fourth which is compensated for $200/month. Anything above that will not be compensated. The diminishing returns will discourage people from having more kids just to have more money, and also will appease those who are afraid of "welfare queens" who only have kids to get money from the state. We know that the contingency of people actually doing that is practically nonexistent but it will assuage those who are still concerned about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it is really dangerous to hand over an amount of money that lets people completely check out of contributing to society. Alone maybe that is a sketchy amount to live off of but with roommates in an inexpensive area without a car it seems very doable.

If you look at the amount of entertainment you can get from a used cheap desktop computer and internet connection along with the low cost of at home production of marijuana/alcohol I think it would be disastrous socially and economically.

Maybe that is overly pessimistic but I'm far more in favor of minimum wage elimination with government wage substitution up to some higher livable minimum and in the case that someone can't find a job the government acts as an employer of last resort creating some sort of busywork that has some social benefit.

<comment><USER5> Maybe it's just me, but

>some sort of busywork that has some social benefit

sounds like so much more of a trap and a hellhole than hanging out at home with the potential to produce the things you love. There will be some who simply don't contribute at all, but think of all the artists who could contribute to social good through culture enrichment who are stuck in the stereotypical barista/retail/waiter job who have no time to contribute to their community outside of their two jobs. You think they are already contributing maximally? They will be climbing out of a local optimum (making money to scrape by( to pursue their global optimum (producing art that enriches others' lives and gives them a sense of meaning, and possible a path out of crippling depression).

Edit: I should also include that "some social benefit" can be twisted to mean anything. One person handing out tickets, another stamping a wrist, and a third saying "enjoy the show" arguably provides social benefit but there is a significant opportunity cost involved with railroading people into these sorts of jobs.

<comment><USER7> > _...think of all the artists who could contribute to social good through > culture enrichment who are stuck in the stereotypical barista /retail/waiter > job who have no time to contribute to their community outside of their two > jobs._

Is there any evidence that there's an explosion of artistic and other innovation happening in any of the economically depressed areas of the US where a significant percentage of the public were/are already on public assistance? Has Appalachia or Detroit or similar places experienced an artistic renaissance? I certainly see no indications of any such thing happening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wait a minute, though: Every adult gets $1,000/month. That's $12,000/year. How many adults do we have? Well, the US population is 326,000,000. Median age is 37, so I'll guess that 3/4 of the population is "adult" (age >= 18). That means that paying this handout will cost $12,000/person * 244,500,000 people = $2.934 trillion. That's... not a net win.

<comment><USER9> How many make > 200k and will be paying 100% of that 1k back as a tax? maybe 30%? So you can cut that by 30%.

<comment><USER10> Do you honestly believe 30% of the US earn 200k a year? Where do you figure?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Do people actually believe this universal basic income nonsense? If money isn't scarce but goods are the goods become proportionally more expensive. Inflation is a thing.

<comment><USER12> Yup, inflation is a thing. Alaskans get Dividend checks every year -- almost $2k. Right after they get their checks, the price of everything skyrockets, on top of already extremely high prices for everything up there. The best time to spend the check is to wait until next year right before the checks are sent out to increase your buying power. If UBI made sense, Alaska would be a utopia. Not seeing it..

<comment><USER13> Compare Alaska with dividend checks to the Alaska without. Do they make Alaska better or worse

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It would _not_ grow the economy. You _grow the economy_ by creating more goods and services. When you inject money without adding goods and services, the result is inflation.

<comment><USER15> I agree it would cause inflation. What is not clear (and I probably won't believe any study claiming clarity) is what % of said inflation would be caused by economic growth vs monetary manipulation. There are lots of studies that show disbursing money to relatively poorer people results in more immediate demand for goods than the investments & spending of those it was taken from. Whether this is a net positive for the economy is unclear, but the GDP metric would likely record growth.

If the money for UBI is obtained through debt, then I 100% agree with you because then gov. is basically taking money from the working class through inflation and also giving it back to them with an awkward couple year delay + corruption leakage in the giving and taking cycle. Ironically this would probably increase wealth and power inequality in the long term.

Edit/PS:

What is worrisome about proposals like this is the delay in the giving-taking cycle. If party A enacted such a policy they would probably enjoy a big economic boom for the duration of their term and then 8 years later party B would suffer from a massive increase in inequality and possibly financial crises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nothing about inflation ? That is likely to increase ? So what are the long term effects when corrected for inflation ?

<comment><USER17> It will cause inflation at the bottom of the economc and reduce it at the top. We call the difference between the top and the bottom inequality. Imagine you earn 24k in a very cheap part of the US. You now have 36k. Most of the cost gets absorbed and you need 36k for the same quality of life. However that CEO with 1000k per year also only gets 12k which means he gets 1012k. Before UBI the CEO had 42 times the income. After UBI the CEO has only 28 times the income.

<comment><USER16> > Most of the cost gets absorbed and you need 36k for the same quality of > life.

In that case the handout does not make any sense ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> ... While costing roughly exactly the same amount? :)

</comment><comment><USER19> But, inflation.

<comment><USER20> It's not inflationary because you're not creating new money you're just redistributing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would work if you take it from the 1%

<comment><USER11> No it wouldn't. It would ruin the buying power of the dollar which is effectively the same as giving every working person a pay cut. Those who own companies and assets would be who benefits.

<comment><USER21> Your logic is flawed.. if it is taken from the richest 1% it is not creating money from nothing it is simply moving money from A to B, therefore still the same amount of money in the system therefore it does not devalue buying power.

The rich might put the prices up to steal it back but that is another argument

<comment><USER22> How can you "steal back" something that was stolen from you?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Laser Guided: Tactics Cloud Got Us 1300 Highly Targeted Followers in Two Days - <AUTHOR>

My company, Dash Hudson, is a mobile style marketplace for men. We are unique in that we enable anyone (guys / girls) of style influence to become one of the curators of our community, a Style Editor.
Our challenge is to attract both high quality Style Editors and early adopter customers.
Prior to our launch, it was important for us to generate buzz and drive engagement around the brand. While on a guerilla mission in NYC meeting with partners, I met up with the TacticsCloud guys how showed me what they were up to.
TacticsCloud is an incredibly powerful way to search and find the twitter users you care about. For us, we wanted to find and engage with fashion stylists, writers, bloggers and aficionados. TacticsCloud made it easy. By searching by keywords and @ handles, we were able to build lists of over 50,000 highly targeted twitter users.
We used the lists to engage with people we thought would care about our business. And they did. In the course of three days we attracted 1300 highly targeted follows. This resulted in 300 customer signups for Dash Hudson. Through the course of our engagement with new followers, we also connected with 20 highly qualified Style Editors (many of whom will be joining our team, the supply in our marketplace) and generated five PR opportunities two of which turned into stories.
The greatest benefit to us what that we got to engage early with an amazing group of followers that care about our business. All it took was a few hours to search and build the list and then constant engagement with our new followers.
Laser guided. You can sense the power and potential behind the TacticsCloud engine. Great team of guys who experiment fast and build mean products. <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing. Really nice service they offer! Can you talk more about how you engaged with the 50,000 users to achieve 1300 targeted follows?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Phil. In some cases it was direct @ reachouts (highly targeted) in other cases it was adding targeted users to relevant lists, essentially generating a free impression.

<comment><USER2> Would you have a few minutes to chat? I have a few more specific questions related to my own campaign that I think you might be able to answer. If you are willing, send me an email with your preferred communication username. phil at curiousmedia dot com.</comment></comment></comment>


DRACOs may be a cure for all viral diseases - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/16784-meet-todd-rider-the-man-who-maybe-probably-cured-most-of-the-viruses-on-earth <comment><USER2> I have read a couple of similar stories. While there may be a legit case for funding this work (I don't know the details) one should be aware of one thing: There are a lot of promising preclinical results, and the vast majority never turns into any medical treatment. I think the article completely fails to reflect that and gives the impression that turning this research into a treatment is just a matter of proper funding.

As far as I understand there currently only exist a few animal lab studies that indicate this treatment works. Especially in these preclinical settings many studies turn out to be not reproducible. But even if they are, there's a very long way to a treatment in humans.

<comment><USER3> > There are a lot of promising preclinical results, and the vast majority > never turns into any medical treatment.

There are a lot of promising startups and the vast majority fail.

Science needs to take a _lot_ more risks, not less, and be willing to fail. If science is now unwilling to take risks or fail, science is over as anything other than a cargo cult built around the science of previous generations.

<comment><USER4> Great! Who's going to pay for those risks to be taken?

<comment><USER5> Anyone, everyone. Crowdfunding science should be done more.

<comment><USER6> So science will become "throw money at the people who can win a social media popularity contest". How is that any better than what we have now? Everything about it seems worse.

<comment><USER5> I'm not saying it's a perfect solution. It's better than what we have today and that is all we really can ask for at any given time.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I work in academia. Funding is always scarce. It does not come out of the sky.

Example: If the grant says that all proposal text must be in 11 point Times New Roman font, and you do 12 point Times New Roman, in the trash you go.

People giving vast sums of money want to make sure every penny is carefully spent.

As for crowdsourcing research, well, go for it. It's just that we already have a method for this. It's called "taxes."

Edit: inevitable tax argument deflection: the vast majority of the US federal budget is, as Thomas L Friedman put it, "an insurance company with a military." Research as a portion is teensy-tiny. Our society could easily fund federal research - "we" just choose not to.

<comment><USER5> I should have been more explicit. When I say "everyone" I mean collectively through taxes. I think both methods have merit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a virologist, but this seems over-hyped. There wasn't a lot of info on how DRACO works, but it seems to cause cell destruction on detection of double- stranded RNA, which means it will only work on double-stranded RNA viruses. I'm not sure how many human viral infections are caused by double-stranded RNA viruses, but from skimming the wikipedia page it doesn't seem to be many ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- stranded_RNA_viruses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double- stranded_RNA_viruses)). The main example the wiki page gives is rotaviruses, which do cause a lot of deaths of children in developing countries, but there is a vaccine available.

The fact that he explicitly is saying this could treat ALL viral diseases makes me skeptical. Maybe I'm wrong, and most viruses produce dsRNA in some form or another during infection.

<comment><USER8> Am a virologist, and this is over-hyped, but not for that reason. The PKR/dsRNA response pathway is activated by a number of non-dsRNA viruses. There are double-stranded intermediates for lots of viruses, including herpesviruses, that we don't necessarily appreciate or know exactly how they're activated.

The major issue is that these are macromolecules, and it is incredibly difficult to deliver these in vivo. Every pharmaceutical encounters this problem, and the fact that it isn't really addressed is probably why no companies are biting.

There is some mouse data in the (single) paper, but it is missing some important controls. 1. He never shows that the protein makes it into the cells of the liver/kidney/lung/etc, just that there is some identifiable protein in the organs, and 2. he doesn't control for general immune activation from the injection of the protein, even though he has a control DRACO in the tissue culture experiments.

Also, though it may be overkill, he never shows IFAs of the actual DRACO protein inside the cells from tissue culture.

<comment><USER9> Will it be possible to combine this technique with genetic engineering to cause your cells to produce these proteins in the first place?

<comment><USER8> Sure, but you still have the question of delivery mechanism in vivo, and how to target. Also, I'm not sure you'd want this produced permanently. There may be many off-target effects from over-production. Proteins that require oligomerization can be overexpressed in cells to activate them without the target present. This would be bad in an organism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 98% of the time, "i had a neat idea 15 years ago, but we still need to test it through phase I, II, and III" does _not_ become "I am the man who probably cured all viral infections".

and he has exactly one paper, and it's in PlOS One.

Yawn.

<comment><USER11> I wouldn't dismiss this work that quickly. The idea is sound and came out of the MIT Lincoln Lab and has been worked on for many years. If it's still around, it probably does something

[https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/DRACO.html](https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/DRACO.html)

The Wright Brothers were just 2 guys in North Carolina...

<comment><USER10> that's fine, but their publication count with this guy as an author is exactly 1. In 15 years, that's called "an idea that doesn't work."

<comment><USER11> Not exactly true. [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5630/213.long](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/301/5630/213.long)

Furthermore, this man worked on bio-defense stuff-- very likely a large majority of his work is not published for security reasons, as well as in startups.

There are plenty of people working in science, that don't make their career goals to publish in prestigious journals.

Real discoveries are rarely made at the pace required for securing tenure- track positions in academia.

<comment><USER10> That is another publication of his, yes. It's not clear that it's got much to do with DRACO. In his science paper, they engineer B-lymphocytes to fluoresce when they bind to target pathogens. 300-odd citations, which isn't too bad for that field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> TL;DR for DRACOs

what it is: they made a poison which will kill a cell when two-parts of the poison touch each other in a certain way (think bubble gum in mission impossible). They've designed the parts of the poison so it _should_ only trigger when a virus is present.

why no big pharma compnay will touch it: the criterion for "virus present, KILL CELL" is potentially highly highly error prone, could easily go haywire killing all the cells.

Contrast to Immunotherapy -- the state of the art in clinically approved cancer treatments which uses the body's own immune system to selectively kill cancer cells (which also faced significant finanical barriers to its development), even if the signal goes haywire, the body's immune system still has fail-safes to not killing all of its own cells.

disclaimer: i am not a biologist, but i took some basic college bio courses

From wikipedia: "Differentiation between infected and healthy cells is made primarily via the length and type of RNA transcription helices present within the cell. Most viruses produce long dsRNA helices during transcription and replication. In contrast, uninfected mammalian cells generally produce dsRNA helices of fewer than 24 base pairs during transcription. Cell death is effected via one of the last steps in the apoptosis pathway in which complexes containing intracellular apoptosis signaling molecules simultaneously bind multiple procaspases. The procaspases transactivate via cleavage, activate additional caspases in the cascade, and cleave a variety of cellular proteins, thereby killing the cell."

From the paper ([http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2F...](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/asset?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0022572.PDF)) :

"In its simplest form, a DRACO is a chimeric protein with one domain that binds to viral dsRNA and a second domain (e.g., a procaspase-binding domain or a procaspase) that induces apoptosis when two or more DRACOs crosslink on the same dsRNA. If viral dsRNA is present inside a cell, DRACOs will bind to the dsRNA and induce apoptosis of that cell. If viral dsRNA is not present inside the cell, DRACOs will not crosslink and apoptosis will not occur."

</comment><comment><USER13> Isn't Y Combinator itself investing in this type of venture now?

</comment><comment><USER14> We're a start up in the science space working with research labs [1].

A big problem is certainly funding, but also how the funding is spent. We are seeing researchers paying 3-4x for the exact same item.

[1] [https://labspend.com/](https://labspend.com/)

</comment><comment><USER15> A demonstration that DRACO works in pig cells for a problematic virus, which you should take as less convincing than the existing in vivo mouse studies, but was carried out by another research group not directly affiliated with the original developer:

[http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2392-4](http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00705-015-2392-4)

DRACO, double-stranded RNA activated caspase oligomerizer, is a broadly applicable antiviral technology that has been under development at a slow pace for quite some time now. You might recall some publicity back in 2011, for example, but that marked the results of years of earlier work. DRACO attacks infected cells, not the viruses themselves, following the principle of finding a common vulnerability to target rather than trying to tailor therapies to every different variety of attacker. Despite technology demonstrations to show effectiveness against a broad range of very different types of virus, and the fact that this technology can in principle be applied to near any type of virus, there is next to no ongoing funding for DRACO. It stands as an example of the fact that you can build a better mousetrap and still have the world ignore you. In this case DRACO is languishing despite grave concerns regarding spreading viral resistance to existing drugs, and billions devoted to constructing new drugs that are just more of the same.

Advocacy and philanthropy are often the only ways forward for a new medical technology that is a radical departure from the present status quo. This is a lesson to keep in mind when we talk about the various branches of medical research. It is hard to obtain funding in the life sciences in any meaningful fashion, and the organization of funding for any ongoing serious effort has become a baroque effort involving many players, all of whom are operating with perverse incentives that only serve to slow down progress and make funding less effective on a dollar for dollar basis. For example the large funding bodies are extremely risk-averse, and thus almost never fund the most important early-stage and high-risk projects, the science that is actually science, at the forefront and involving new discoveries. These funding bodies only ever put money into ongoing development wherein which the researchers can already demonstrate proof of concept and an understanding of the mechanisms involved. Getting to that point for any new line of research requires creative accounting and the help of philanthropic donations, and even so there is far too little actual science taking place in major laboratories.

</comment><comment><USER16> Maybe the easiest solution is to give the man a Nobel price. Technically it's a breakthrough, and adjusting the method for more viruses is just a matter of funding, which the Nobel price committee is responsible for.

<comment><USER17> I think they only have some studies in mice. And as all the initial research there is a high chance that it will never be safe enough or effective enough to be applied in humans.

The Nobel price is usually awarded after the technique is thoughtfully tested and applied for many years, so then try to avoid the current fad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> DRACO: Drugs Relieving Antigen Class 0

<comment><USER19> I rolled a 14. Am I cured?

<comment><USER18> logfromblammo used APSIRIN against INFLUENZA. Attack is successful. INFLUENZA is vanquished.

You gained 14 exp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> If he can't find funding but there is a real problem to which the startup has a promising solution, why not try to get acquired by a larger company that does have the means to finish the research?

<comment><USER21> He doesn't have an equity vehicle for the research -- he needs funds for his university lab, but he's basically at a point where he needs more funding than he can get from public sources, but his work is still considered too speculatove for pharma companies, hence the "valley of death" monicker.

Plus, acquisition doesn't mean the research will continue. I consulted with a med-tech startup a few years ago whose founders had, in a prior company, developed a novel adjuvant that was extremely promising in a wide variety of pharmaceutical applications. To commercialize the research, they were going to close a funding deal with a top-5 PE company -- on September 11, 2001. Needless to say, the funding fell through. They ended up selling the IP to a major pharma company, but that company wasn't willing to put the research dollars into proving out the science, so it sits on the shelf to this day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> not sure why they don't sell "shares" through one of the crowd funding sites. I'd put a $1000 to make a few bucks for possible cure for viral infections but not for a call to researcher.

<comment><USER23> Shares? This is research in progress at the academia, not a company.

<comment><USER24> I think the question is why he doesn't register a company to sell shares(i.e. IPO). Crowdfunding is nice but not everyone is a philanthropist.

<comment><USER22> I'm just saying I would put down 50x more if I could make money on it. Does that make me an a __ __ __probably.

<comment><USER17> How much do you know about biotechnology? Clinical trials? Do you know the alternative treatments that are under research in other universities?

The problem of crowfunding in areas you don't know is that it's very difficult to distinguish between the real research breakthrough and the scams.

PS1: "Never invest more than you can afford to loose."

PS2: What about investing in a company that can make a blood analysis only with a drop of blood?

<comment><USER22> I read it on the internet so it must be true. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Second Chance - mighty-fine https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/09/24/jeffrey-masson-trial-second-chance/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+nybooks+%28The+New+York+Review+of+Books%29 <comment><AUTHOR> A nice read and a good reminder that presentation and knowing your audience counts for a lot, in court as well as the workplace. It's not the facts or your deliverables, but the way in which you sell them to others.

<comment><USER2> In this case,I felt it was only needed because of having jury trials. I had the same takeaway that is useful in other places as you. For example, my boss presented a feature that I had worked on better than how I would have done it.

<comment><USER3> A judge is a jury of one. They may be better trained to rely on evidence, but they are clearly also human and affected by other factors. For evidence of this, I only need to refer to the well-cited study showing that parole judges were significantly more lenient at the start of the day and after their lunch break.

<comment><USER4> Wasn't that debunked a while ago? [https://www.pnas.org/content/108/42/E833.long](https://www.pnas.org/content/108/42/E833.long)

<comment><USER3> Interesting, I haven't read that.

However, I really think it's a stretch to assume that judge's are immune to presentation style.

<comment><USER5> IMX (albeit very limited) in code[1] jurisdictions, judges do most of their work by correspondence. They direct the proceedings in writing, and the lawyers respond in writing.

Bonus common law track: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBM82Ju2kJU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBM82Ju2kJU)

[1] compare "what have the Romans ever done for us?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article makes it sound like the lawyer botched the first trial, which is mildly surprising given that it was paid for by insurance with a strong motive to win.

You should know before trial exactly how a witness will answer all questions. It doesn't sound like there were any surprise questions, they just didn't prepare the witness well enough for the first trial.

</comment><comment><USER2> Can the URL be cleaned up :)</comment>


American Apparel Founder Says He's Broke and Can't Afford Lawyer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-05/american-apparel-founder-says-he-s-broke-and-can-t-afford-lawyer <comment><USER2> good</comment>