Google One - <AUTHOR> https://one.google.com/about <comment><USER2> "Google One" suffers from designer in a box syndrome.

It's probably a great internal name - hey, we've been providing storage for photos, email, docs, drive, and more, for over a decade, and we've finally integrated that storage into one space, so let's call it Google one! It's a great name - simple and powerful, symbolizes the effort and direction we've taken in the past 5-10 years of integrating our consumer, day to day products.

However, outside of the Google box, no one understands or cares what they've been doing. "Google one" sounds like... nothing. "What is it???" is an extremely appropriate response.

Maybe in the future it will come to symbolize all the services of Google, available in one centralized location, allowing for future consumers to easily access all of google services without separate pay schemes, storage, or other infrastructure, and make it a 1 stop shop for your services needs, common or obscure.

But right now, the copy and landing page are way off the messaging mark.

<comment><USER3> It's also a straight rip off of a name from Microsoft...who produces the product _Xbox One_

Not unlike how Google became alphabet which seems influenced by *Amazon A to Z

<comment><USER4> Strange analogy, surely it would have to be ripping off a product called 'Microsoft One'

<comment><USER3> Well it's not an analogy. It's just stealing a product name from a competitor, it really doesn't matter if the products aren't in the same space.

If Google created Google Windows and the product wasn't an OS, it's still a rip off right?

It's one thing when it's Apple/google maps because it's a generic and descriptive mark, but One? Should have just gone full stop Google Windows.

<comment><USER5> If we are going down this road, Microsoft copied HTC, who not only had a product called "One" but also ones called "One S" and "One X"

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

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

<comment><USER3> Ok...I'm no MS fanboy.

But MS OneNote was released right around the same time.

But let's be serious Google spent millions to brand/launch this, and it's got to be embarrassing that either: a. None of the yesmen thought to speak up and say hey should we really use a name MS uses for a bunch of their products (One Note, Xbox One, One OS, One Guide); or b. Straight ripped it.

<comment><USER6> Android One is 4 or 5 years old.

Companies have been naming things with "one" since forever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Consolidation of the services is nice, but I feel like this is just getting creepier and creepier.

It's like "put your entire digital existence onto our platform" Oh and by the way took "don't be evil" out. Now give us all of your data, look at this beautiful UI!

Sorry Google, I don't trust you anymore, I used to love you, it used to be about the ideals and ideas, but now avarice has possessed and consumed you.

No thanks.

<comment><USER8> To quote Google's code of conduct as it exists today:

> And remember… don't be evil, and if you see something that you think isn't > right – speak up!

[https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of- conduct/](https://abc.xyz/investor/other/google-code-of-conduct/)

Media headlines from the time gave the impression that it was removed, which was absolutely false.

<comment><USER9> It was _effectively_ removed.

1\. Moving from top of the doc to very bottom of multi page doc, after things like Trade Controls.

2\. Change of first party imperative to third party - _you_ remember, not _we_

<comment><USER6> Are you suggesting that the conclusion of a document isn't an important part of it?

I'd argue that the last sentence is more prominent than anything that isn't in the first paragraph.

And who is "we" if not "you" in your second sentence? That's an employee code if conduct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Their support site is far more valuable than the landing page.

From the main support index at [https://support.google.com/googleone/](https://support.google.com/googleone/) here are various tidbits of useful content that the surrounding HN comments wished for (sorry, none describe the "expert help" available):

"Get Google One":

[https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004013](https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004013)

> With Google One, you get more storage, help from experts, and extra member > benefits. You can share your membership with up to 5 family members.

"How your existing storage works with Google One":

[https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004014](https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9004014)

> You'll get storage through your Google One membership, which will become > your new storage limit. You'll no longer buy storage through Google Drive.

"Claim a Benefit":

[https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9003266](https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9003266)

> Google One hotel deals depend on the day, time, and other factors. There > might not be a deal for every hotel search.

[https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9080668](https://support.google.com/googleone/answer/9080668)

"Learn where Google One is available":

> Create or join a family; Use Google Play Family Library; Subscribe to the > Google Play Music family plan; Use a family calendar

<comment><USER11> How on Earth are hotel discounts related to cloud storage?

<comment><USER12> Yeah, the hotel benefits creep me out. At first glance, it's an iCloud-like storage plan, fine. But reading more and finding the hotel benefits makes me think "oh right, Google wants to track everything I do online and offline and sell my info to advertisers."

<comment><USER13> Yep it creates a direct connection between a cloud service and what you type in Google search box. That... seems strange. It make it sound like a repository for all of your data/activity on all Google services not just, you know, the data you upload to their cloud service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Easy with the criticism folks. This is just the first version. All the confusion will disappear with Google One 2.0

<comment><USER15> I'll wait for Google One 2.3

<comment><USER16> Is that the release where it's specialized for certain groups? Like, "Google One 2.3 for businesses"

<comment><USER17> Well, it's still better than "Google One 2.3 Tab S3 Plus 10.1 (EU ver), with stylus"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hey Google ... I know you're here, looking for how this is going to go over.

It seems like a nice idea. I'm not on board with any new Google platform unless I have some sort of assurance that you're just not going to kill this off in two years, or let it suffer a slow death of neglect and attrition.

Thanks, but you need to grow up a bit, Google.

<comment><USER13> This isn't some side project like Wave that they'll cut off. It sounds like a pretty core business. If anything it will get renamed and take on a different form in a couple yrs, but I doubt they'd ever stop offering a cloud service like Drive.

But still, this is a very valid point. It's hard to trust any Google service and it's risky to make any significant investment of time structuring your life around them. This is why I don't use Google Music anymore. I invest far too much time into my playlists and music collections to trust them.

<comment><USER19> I wouldn't be so sure that they won't cut it off.

For example, they have already removed the marketing page that people here are making fun of: [https://imgur.com/a/xsF1ZX3](https://imgur.com/a/xsF1ZX3)

<comment><USER13> Ha, amazing. Not only are they bad at it, they are thin-skinned too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does the pricing make sense to anyone? 2TB is is $10/mo but 20TB is $200/mo. That means on a per-TB basis, the bigger plan is 2x as expensive. And then the 30TB is 2x as expensive as 20TB.

Aren't things usually _cheaper_ when you buy bulk?

<comment><USER21> Not necessarily. Many people pay for 2 TB without actually needing 2 TB. I currently pay for Dropbox Pro, which has 2 TB of space available, but I'm only using 300 GB. I'm pretty sure that at this point people going over 500 GB are a tiny minority.

When you pay for 30 TB on the other hand, you probably need it, so their actual cost might be reflected well in that price. This is basically the long tail effect, so when you optimize the price for the majority, price increases are not linear.

<comment><USER22> Lol, I would just buy multiple 2 TB subscriptions from different accounts.

<comment><USER23> Services usually offer convenience. If you don't care about it then you can already register on tons of sites with multiple accounts and get vast amounts of free storage.

This and they have been working on making many accounts hard for some time now.

<comment><USER24> > This and they have been working on making many accounts hard for some time > now

I disagree with that.

The only "hard" part is stuff that absolutely makes sense during the creation part if you're making several: captcha, not allowing the same phone number to be the recovery for more than ~10 accounts, etc ... It's all very obvious protection against spam/mass registration, and if you are an actual person it takes only a few minutes to get around.

And if you go for paid accounts, all of those limits cease existing.

But beside that, once you have the accounts, it's all very friendly, the multi login where you don't even have to logout / log in other account / logout again / relog in first account, account delegation so you can have a master account with automatic access to others, library (apps, photos, ...) sharing, and all of that is on the free accounts !

It might be far from perfect, but compared to the other big ones Google is very friendly to multi-accounts users.

<comment><USER21> You can just register a GSuite Business account, with unlimited storage.

They have a fine print that says you need at least 5 users in your account or something, otherwise they limit you to 1 TB.

However they are not enforcing that limit and on /r/DataHoarder/ you can see people with dozens of TB stored without issues. And even if they start enforcing it, if you pay for multiple accounts it would still be pretty cheap and you don't get this multi-account management overhead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For a moment I thought it was going to be another chat app.

Instead it's... something? A one sentence description at the beginning of the page wouldn't hurt...

<comment><USER26> Compare with [https://www.dropbox.com/](https://www.dropbox.com/)

<comment><USER21> Is Dropbox supposed to be a better example? I find their homepage horrible.

" _Dropbox is a modern workspace_ "

" _Keep everything organized without breaking your flow_ "

I don't understand why these companies feel the need to describe their services in this way.

<comment><USER27> Because valuation of a software company doesn't come from the products they offer, nor the current user base with credit cards on file. It comes from a perceived potential growth/platform/network effect so all of these companies have to pretend that they will someday be a panopticon that commands your entire life in order to keep that sweet VC money flowing in even if they just repackage s3 with a nice client.

<comment><USER28> Neither Dropbox nor Google is particularly concerned with courting VC money.

<comment><USER27> You're right. I should have just said "investor money"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> > You're currently signed in to your G Suite account. Switch to your personal > Google Account to upgrade.

Ugh... Google never misses an opportunity to shit on its most ardent supporters - the people with personal G-Suite domains.

<comment><USER30> Very true, this is the case among many of their products. For example Google Home is not fully working on G Suite accounts, ridiculous.

<comment><USER31> I had to switch back to Spotify a while ago to give my wife access to the premium I was already paying for via the family plan because Google Play Music doesn't support family plans for gsuite accounts.

If they addressed this issue I would probably consider consolidating Dropbox, Spotify, and maybe some other stuff into a single Google One subscription but I suppose grandfathered free gsuite accounts are a low priority for these things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Google One = Google Drive + more space + Customer Service for around $2 a month.

Customer Service is not called Customer Service but Google Experts. What does this mean for actual service?

The thing I like/jumps out for me is no compressing of images. That is one of the reasons I decided to go with Backblaze for backup. I would still stay with backblaze as I am not so confident about Google keeping the product around.

"Your stuff, anywhere". I have managed to setup a upload workflow for Backblaze on my linux machine without going through a browser. Not sure if it is possible in Google One drive. Browsers crash/freeze at the most importune moments. Then I need to restart the upload and pray. There is no way to say upload only the diff (atleast as far as I remember). The extra upload just means increased cost.

Still somewhere, someone in Google has finally listened(?) to the community and heard that customer support is needed. This is an excellent step in the right direction, I suppose.

<comment><USER33> > I have managed to setup a upload workflow for Backblaze on my linux machine > without going through a browser.

Would it be possible for you to share your way of doing this? I would be very interested in B2 access without browser.

<comment><USER34> rclone supports B2

[https://github.com/ncw/rclone](https://github.com/ncw/rclone)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There is no special privacy policy, in other words, if you upload your "whole life" to there, as they suggest, then your whole life is owned by Google and they can do whatever they want with that data, as you signed over all the rights.

I mean, I use online storage for my family pictures, my important documents etc. etc, and so the minimum requirement is that it is encrypted and the company contractually agrees not to snoop, data-mine or even sell that data. Google basically tells you they will do all of that, tied to the most invasive unique ID except than maybe facebook.

Why would anyone actually do that? That's just a disaster waiting to happen...

<comment><USER36> Encrypt your data yourself and don't trust any cloud provider to do it for you. You can only trust yourself.

<comment><USER37> That's the complain: they could do it, and be liable for it, if they wanted, and still be profitable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> That landing page was too busy and did a weak job at selling what "one" was if it's really more than a cheaper drop box.

Expert access for $1.99/mo? Huh?

<comment><USER39> Well, poor customer-service is a longstanding complain about google. Maybe with GOne you now get some real human who takes care of your complain, before they ban your account for violation of what their AI Overlord told them.

<comment><USER40> Hah, GOne.

In the near future, 2 people are on GChat, I mean Hangouts, I mean Duo, I mean Allo, I mean FB Messenger. And one of them is one of those people that can't use the shift key:

"Where did you put the pictures from our trip?"

"oh, gone"

"What do you mean they're gone?!!!!?"

<comment><USER41> Pardon this low quality comment but I must "hehehe".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> So looking from a single private user's perspective: Google One has best pricing, but no Linux native client and Dropbox has Linux native client and no flexible pricing.

<comment><USER43> I don't understand why they won't develop a client for Linux. Is it that difficult? Maybe the code could be also useful for Chrome OS and I guess many Googlers use Linux, so it would be useful for them too.

I stick with Dropbox for the Linux support. It is fantastic. It works on servers, with no GUI, so I can easily sync stuff from my Windows Laptop and my Linux server, where I perform scientific stuff.

<comment><USER44> Linux is something like 2% market share.

We're also the only set of users that will actually saturate the oversold storage while still burning through that $2.50 worth of customer service with a single question prefaced with "hi, I run Linux."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> You'd think an advertising company would be better at, well, advertising. All of the listed benefits at the top of the page are either things everyone has already been using with the exception of full-quality photos, which was previously available as a paid option with the same pricing, and unspecified additional promotional features.

It seems like the main improvements are adding family plans to match Apple and having presumably not-chatbot support but that requires scrolling a long way down the page.

<comment><USER46> Advertising service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Previous thread from 7 months ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168)

</comment><comment><USER48> This page looks like [http://hooli.com/](http://hooli.com/) . Google does seem to have a sense of humor.

It is amazing how Google screws up any UI or explanatory pages apart from search. I guess common sense isn't taught in CLRS.

</comment><comment><USER49> For those wondering, this is Google Drive's paid plans, but it has undergone a rebranding to emphasize Google's ecosystem. I can think of some reasons why this might be a good idea:

1\. Your storage in Google Drive is actually not used only by what's on GDrive, but includes your emails and Google Photos. So it is more correct to deemphasize the connection to GDrive.

2\. This is a good first step to unify Google's paid B2C services that it may want to offer, especially since G+ is being discontinued.

</comment><comment><USER50> Kind of related, I was recentl thinking about making some backups of valuable (emotionally speaking) things like wedding pictures.

Currently they are backed up on my local machine and my server, but was considering cloud options. My wife does use Google Drive (paid account w/ Chromebook) but I don't feel that comfortable with Google things.

Does anyone have good alternatives that perhaps respect privacy? :)

<comment><USER51> With Google -- and especially considering recent history -- I be worrying about when this product is going to be end-of-lifed.

<comment><USER52> If they OEL a storage platform, surely they'd let you export it fairly simply, and you can transfer it to another provider.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I pay $5/yr (a legacy plan that will disappear if I ever have a billing information imperfection) for 40GB Gmail storage, which is all I need. This announcement reminds me that Google has no respect for pricing, SLA, data mining transparency, consumer terms stability, support ("Google Expertsbutprobablynotouremployees!") or consistency. The future is easy to see: "Drive is now One!"

So this announcement is the thing that will finally get me to export all of my data and leave Gmail for personal use altogether. Congratulations, One Team!

<comment><USER54> You have a nice rent controlled storage offering and you're leaving because Google is adding a new service? Or are they evicting you from your old plan?

Really don't follow how this announcement lacks respect for pricing or sla.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I have a fair amount of stuff on Google drive and I would have liked to consolidate there, but the lack of a Linux client was a deal breaker, so I'm stuck with Dropbox.

Not that Dropbox is bad. It would be nice to have things in one place only, but maybe it's better to not be completely dependent on one service.

<comment><USER56> Dropbox now only (officially) supports un-encrypted bare ext4 filesystems. If you plan on using XFS, BTRFS, or even encrypted ext4, you're SOL with Dropbox. [https://itsfoss.com/dropbox-linux-ext4-only/](https://itsfoss.com/dropbox- linux-ext4-only/) NextCloud and a $5/mo VPS work great for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> In what seems to be a standard move for Google these days, the page contains no information about the product for me as it's not available in my area yet. Would someone care to post that information?

<comment><USER58> Its google drive but developed by a different team.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> what the hell -- this is like 7 months ago news/rolled out

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17067168) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079306](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17079306)

</comment><comment><USER60> Google One sounds like a device to me. I think it would be clearer to take the existing "Google Family" service they already offer (of which Google One is feature) and add "Shared expanded storage on Drive, Gmail, and more" as an optional feature.

</comment><comment><USER61> Is Google just a prepetual exercise in branding? They create a slightly different product, get it to popularity, kill it, announce a new brand to replace it, rinse, repeat.

<comment><USER62> How else would the people proposing and working on these things internally get promotions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Language wise this sounds like the Trojan horse that eventually becomes their amazon prime as far as being a "one stop" membership. It's disguised as storage right now but seeing the bit about hotel deals... also prime ~ one... hmm.

Why this wouldn't also bundle things like YouTube red or google music proves my hypothesis wrong though.

I just don't know what the hell is going on at Google lately. What is their strategy? What is their vision? Everything they do is so disjointed and incongruent.

</comment><comment><USER64> Remember that billboard puzzle google put up in 2004?

I think this might be the same thing.

If you can figure out what Google One is you are a genius!

<comment><USER65> Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Prediction: this will shut down in 2.75 years.

<comment><USER67> Why would it, though? It's not a new product, it's just Google Drive under new branding and Drive has been around for about 5 years already. It's also a paid service where they now even offer better customer support.

I don't get the "they'll shut this down anyways" sentiment in every Google related submission on HN. It's getting tiresome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> How significant would the revenue from these services? I mean, if it's quite significant, doesn't it make sense to offer an "ad-free" plan where they do not track the user and do not show them ads. Only a small portion of their tracking user base would be affected and they would not lose many of the privacy aware users as customers.

<comment><USER36> > doesn't it make sense to offer an "ad-free" plan where they do not track the > user and do not show them ads.

They did try it with Google Contributor, but only for a short amount of time to a limited set of users (US only). Now it changed to be for specific websites only which is pretty absurd.

I believe they haven't move toward ad-free plans simply because it would cannibalize their own product. They can sell ad space because they get ad view from all type of consumer. If they can't reach theses consumers, they have nothing to sell, thus will lose theses sales.

I think it's absurd though because it's the future and instead each website will implements it (and some will implements it together) which will cannibalize Google. Patreon is just the beginning.

<comment><USER68> I think customer willing to pay to not to be tracked is not a customer for them anyway. For example, I myself have adblockers installed, use Firefox with tracking protection, use Duckduckgo as search and Outlook as email (this can be debated). It's true that not everyone can go that far in protecting themselves from tracking, but adblockers are quite common.

Web ad-platforms are different from traditional ad-platforms, like television, because in latter you don't really have an option to skip/ignore ads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Does anybody really trust google with any of their services? It's here today gone tomorrow.

<comment><USER36> It's just a rebranding of Google Drive. It's crazy the amount of people here that believe it's a brand new product. Isn't there more user of Google Drive? My account was simply "migrated" to Google One.

They added the client support, that's all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I'm confused. What is it? A storage bump? Paid support? A discount plan? A consolidation of all these offerings from different places into _one_ home?

This is such a bad landing page. I have more questions than answers.

<comment><USER71> Why not actually read the page?

Google One includes

100 GB storage

Access to Google experts

Option to add your family

Extra member benefits

<comment><USER72> Google experts?

<comment><USER73> To help you Google? Lmgtfy.com?

Likely to help you back up and access your data, seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Google One is finally available in my country, although I was hoping for YouTube Premium, which isn't available yet.

Things to note:

1\. Google's Drive File Stream is still not available for normal accounts, only for GSuite — I wonder why, because Backup and Sync is pretty shitty, at least on Macs

2\. GSuite Business costs per user about the same price as Google One's 2 TB plan and you get essentially unlimited storage, Gmail on your own domain, a better ToS

In other words, GSuite is a much better deal, the only annoyance for people that are into Google Photos is that photos in your Drive won't appear automatically in G Photos (not covered by GSuite, different ToS) ... but that's probably a good thing :-)

So I'm wondering, for power users that would want this, why bother with Google One at all?

<comment><USER74> I think you answered your own question - it's not targeting power users.

IMO it's targeting a few groups:

\- Grandpa who wants to see all the family photos and is not completely behind technically

\- Grandpa's kids who are tired of being tech support for him and also probably have lots of photos they would happily store with Google

\- Generally, people 30-50 who want simple "just works" tech and probably will use the hotel discounts

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Wait for Google one Allo with desktop client, which will be neither compatible with old Google one and also only support large files, but it automatically recognise your neighborhood and suggest you to buy from nearby store.

</comment><comment><USER76> I couldn't find anything about availability (24/7?), response times, or issue escalation for their 'experts.' If I got locked out of my account, would I still have access to an expert to help?

</comment><comment><USER77> I just asked my girlfriend of several years to be in my family. We'll see how this goes.

</comment><comment><USER78> This "One" thing is getting a bit tired.

<comment><USER79> Agreed. It didn't even make much sense a few years ago with products like the Xbox One or the HTC One. Heaven help us if Apple refreshes their Mac Pro as the Mac One.

<comment><USER80> Call it the Mac Two and suddenly the whole market perceives you as one step ahead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> My only guess is that large companies suffer from too much bureaucracy when it comes to naming. As a result, you'll never get a phenomenal name, but you also won't get a really bad name either. Odds are you'll get something within a couple standard deviations of "normal" and end up with a name that's just kind of... boring.

</comment><comment><USER82> My experience with Google's Backup and Sync means I would never trust Google again.

I put everything on Google's Backup and Sync... and was initially happy enough with it as a replacement for Dropbox.

Then my laptop crashed.

When I went to restore, I was limited to copying files down 2 GB at a time.

Worse... the process didn't tell me that, I had to figure it out after doing a few downloads and finding that not all my files made it. There was no warning, no errors. I hit download on a folder, it came down "successfully" but when I looked at the contents locally vs. what was on Google Drive it never matched up.

Can't stress enough how shitty this was. I had to manually save everything and manually check to make sure it all saved. I'm still not convinced I got it all downloaded correctly. Took probably 100 hours of my time. Never a single error message if you tried to download a folder that was bigger than 2 GB, but behind the scenes it was truncating files.

</comment><comment><USER83> A lot of people are saying the page is really busy. Visiting on mobile (Firefox) this is probably one of the quietest landing pages I've seen:

A logo

A headline

Two short sentences

A sign up box

A note saying that paying customers will eventually automatically be upgraded.

That's it.

No pictures. No movies. No backgrounds. No parallax. No nothing.

Did they completely change the landing page since this was posted 20 minutes ago?

<comment><USER84> Is the sign up box for a mailing list so you'll be informed when it becomes available in your country?

For me (Germany, mobile Firefox) it's completely overladen with animations that showcase all the wonderful file formats you can store on your cloud drive.

<comment><USER83> No, it does say anything directly along the lines of "get updated when available in your region", but if you read between the lines, it could definitely be understood that way, now that you mention it.

I'm visiting from Scandinavia.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> Interesting that it is available in only some EU member countries, but not all of them. Oddly, not Ireland.

List of countries where Google One is available Argentina Australia Brazil Canada France Germany India Israel Italy Japan Mexico Russia South Korea Spain Taiwan United Kingdom United States

<comment><USER21> Actually it's available in Romania too, I noticed that today, that list is outdated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Can I pay more to stop Google advertising to me and collecting my data? They can keep their HDD space.

<comment><USER87> Yes, you can buy your own hard disks and not use Google.

<comment><USER88> This is actually a valid use case and some of my friends desire exactly that from them - i.e., all Google's smarts, without the tracking part (for individuals). I think they'll find a lot of customers willing to pay a good amount for that.

<comment><USER89> GSuite?

<comment><USER88> I hoped it would be that coveted product, but there is not enough clarity on that at least to me. Do they say somewhere that they do not track you at all if you take their GSuite?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER90> Google One, and Google Drive.. why not just merge the products and call it OneDrive?

</comment><comment><USER91> "Space for everything! Your life, uncompressed! Top standard tier, 200GB!"

OK, I'm a photographer. But I literally outgrew a 300GB drive about 10 years ago, and genuinely shot nearly 100GB in _one week_ on a trip earlier in the year. Heck, my music collection's over 100GB. (No, I don't stream. Too much obscure stuff, too many low bit rate feeds.)

Those numbers. Bit basic. I remember the days when Google's storage offerings were light years ahead of the competition and effectively infinite for most uses.

<comment><USER92> >for most uses

>100GB in one week

I'm willing to bet most users don't use 100GB per week of cloud storage. It seems like your expectation of "effectively infinite for most uses" is still true, you just don't fit the definition of "most uses".

<comment><USER91> I will admit 100GB a week is an unusual case, I've certainly not replicated it myself. But there'll be a _lot_ of people with half-decent cameras for which 200GB is nowhere near 'everything'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any new software released with this for syncing/uploading all of your files to Google One?

Edit: looks like they only have a web app for desktop and only have an app for Android, no iPhone support yet: [https://one.google.com/faq/google-one- app](https://one.google.com/faq/google-one-app)

Without syncing like MEGASync or Dropbox (even if it's only one way uploading) this is pretty useless as a central repository.

</comment><comment><USER93> After Google Plus comes Google One

</comment><comment><USER94> Google OneDrive?

<comment><USER95> I thought that first. With the exception that they exactly leave the Onedrive storage class (1TB, 60$/year) out. If you are happy with 200GB, the Google offer seems to be a lot cheaper. If you need up to 1TB, you pay twice than for Onedrive. Theoretically you can even count Office 365 Home as a 5TB, 90$ option, which makes it even yet cheaper. However that's a bit more of an unfair comparison, since it would involve the hassle of using multiple accounts (and I'm not even sure if the Onedrive app would allow that on a single installation).

<comment><USER96> I think that microsoft did really good job with their Office 365 home package.

Each of the 6 accounts gets: \- 1TB for OneDrive \- Office licence \- 60mins for Skype \- 50GB for Outlook

Initially I wanted to go with the Google Drive because I'm using Android, but after trying android and mac one drive clients i decided to go with one drive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> So now we are going to get 5 copy's of Google drive..

</comment><comment><USER97> Okay. Another product they will sunset after 5 3-8 years.

</comment><comment><USER98> I have paying for Google Drive/One for a year now and having tried Dropbox and Amazon Cloud, GDrive is the easiest for my family. It is seamless for us to back up all camera and phone pictures from both Android and iOS and is much faster and less buggy than Amazon.

I do agree with people's reservations about privacy and longevity with Google, their products don't seem to last for long!

<comment><USER99> Google One hasn't been around for close to a year yet so I assume you were using Google Drive specifically before Google One was officially released? My experience was the opposite of this and because of this experience, I refuse to pay for any Google services moving forward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How does sharing of space work?

Say if you get the 2 TB plan, will each family member get 2 TB, or will that 2 TB be shared between all family members?

</comment><comment><USER100> Yeah it's confusing but give them a break it's their first try. Maybe they'll make it make more sense by Google two.

</comment><comment><USER101> Just a reminder. You are the product Google sells. This is a premium service to make you a more premium product that Google will sell to advertisers. We should all be looking at different (non advertising) models for the services they are offering. Hyper-targeted advertising and all the risks associated with it is not good for society.

<comment><USER102> I hear this often but usually lacks explanation, can you elaborate?

<comment><USER103> I fly in to a rage now every time I hear this. It's become completely and utterly meaningless. "If you're not paying, you're the product!" -> "If you're paying, you're just a better product for them to sell!"

It might be true, but there exists not a single person on this site who hasn't heard it, and it provides absolutely zero value.

It was never even true to start with. The act of paying for something in no way has ever made you ineligible as a source of other revenue.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> I really wish Google would have clearly said whether they will or will not monetize data inside Google One accounts. With my paid G Suite account for personal use I have some confidence Google isn't monetizing my Gmail, Drive, and hopefully Photos, but with Google One, I can't see the same policy written clearly.

<comment><USER105> If they're not very clearly stating the opposite, the answer should be assumed to be yes they are monetizing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER106> My personal approach to storage is to prescind as much from it as I can. I'm constantly deleting old photos and media that I create, as I believe that I will have less and less time to even see them again in the future, so I'm trying to live as light as possible and keep only the 'prime' material.

</comment><comment><USER107> Name is terrible. So, Google One is only about storage. Google Music is different subscription. I would laugh if google would make some Play Store subscription and call it Google Everything. Then you'll have to get Google One and Everything.

</comment><comment><USER19> What a joke. Now they have pulled the marketing page -- possibly because of how hard we are laughing at them.

[https://imgur.com/a/xsF1ZX3](https://imgur.com/a/xsF1ZX3)

Every new storage product offered by Google serves mostly to remind people to get their stuff off of Google.

</comment><comment><USER108> The prize will go to the first person to build a full von Neumann machine using Google One and Coke Zero.

</comment><comment><USER109> And yet again they don't care about gsuite users. I have a gsuite setup for everyone in the family, for pretty much exactly the same needs that are addressed by Google One, but apparently there's absolutely no way to get the benefits of both.

<comment><USER110> I'm confident that's company politics and bonuses for launching the "new" at play here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER111> Will the current or future google censor be applied to your access of your data?

If you have any copyrighted material in your data/content without a valid proof of ownership or payment -> censored OR worse prosecuted and racketted to pay?

</comment><comment><USER112> But can I use it as an image host like Dropbox public folders used to be? Can it sync a folder from my computer like Dropbox does?

The actual amount of space is so trivial compared to my many terabytes of storage so that is not a useful feature for me.

</comment><comment><USER113> It may be a good deal for the space but do not buy this for better support because it is absolutely nonexistent. It takes about 48 hours to get the first email reply and is the same team and capability as the free consumer services.

</comment><comment><USER114> Some of the scariest words that occur when a radical new product is launched are telling current customers of existing products "you'll be automatically upgraded".

</comment><comment><USER115> I've just tried to share this link to a friend over WhatsApp. WhatsApp will NOT show a link preview for it, like it does for all other URLs.

Is WhatsApp blocking link previews for Google services?

<comment><USER27> No, it's just a poorly constructed website that doesn't have any machine- readable summary, and doesn't even conform to their own guidelines about machine-readable summaries. At least the marketing page for this product gives you a realistic impression of how the customer experience will be...

<comment><USER115> I'm not sure about that. Even basic sites with only the 'title' tag set, still create a popup in WhatsApp, albeit with just the title text (obviously).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER116> I still don't understand. What is Google One? Photos and Drive storage still seems separate from each other. So, why is it called One? Have they just changed the paid plans?

</comment><comment><USER117> Hm, does this solve the 'consumer-level support' (or lack thereof) problem?

I can't tell if the experts are essentially human tutorials or if they can actually escalate issues.

</comment><comment><USER118> Not sure what all the hate is about, I quickly figured out they were looking to sell me more storage space, though I do admit the page is really busy.

</comment><comment><USER119> For that price i would not mind to get a subscription if it would be fully encrypted and a good messaging app unlike the hangouts and allo trash.

</comment><comment><USER120> "One" \- sure sign of a branding failure.

</comment><comment><USER121> Can someone explain to me why google really wants me to move my photos out of Drive and into Google Photos? What's in it for them?

<comment><USER122> Everyone putting everything they own into one place will help Google acquire more data about its users. It's fox asking all the hens to put their eggs in one basket.

It's optional now. But, give it a few years, and no one will be allowed to use Google services without all their stuff on One.

</comment></comment><comment><USER123> Everyone is so busy asking "what even is this?" that they're forgetting to ask the more typical question about a new Google product - "will this still be around next year?"

<comment><USER49> The primary benefit that this is based around (increased account storage space) is unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon.

<comment><USER51> Your logic is sound, but is Google's? We all thought that a product based on top of their already-necessary spidering of substantial portions of the web -- Reader -- was also unlikely to go away, and look what happened.

I think that Google have passed Peak Innovation, and now all they can see is stuff other companies are doing and thrashing about going, "We ought to be doing that, too." Check in with MS to ask how well that works.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER124> What's the removal date for this service?

</comment><comment><USER125> That is launched for a while now.

What is new from that page?

</comment><comment><USER126> Maybe it has something to do with one being the rough average number of testicles in the human population?

</comment><comment><USER127> It baffles me that people willingly give their data to Google. Not only that, but some pay for it too.

</comment><comment><USER128> I pay 2 quid a month for extra Gmail storage (20gb) and nothing else... Does this get rolled into that?!

</comment><comment><USER129> Scrolled down the home page and have no idea what the product is. Is this a rebrand of google drive?

</comment><comment><USER130> It seems like Google always gets in it's own way and this is no exception. They need to stop with this nonsense and bring back apps that are actually useful like Google Reader and improving apps that folks use everyday like Gmail and Google Maps. When is the last time one of these apps had a memorable and compelling new feature?

</comment><comment><USER131> If I opt for Google One, does Google stop using my Drive contents for ad targeting?

</comment><comment><USER132> I have almost no idea what the offering is here... can someone explain?

</comment><comment><USER75> Just tell me it's encrypted and even we can not see your data.

</comment><comment><USER133> Flickery mobile page. Tap menu bar to scroll up doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER134> This is Google's version of Amazon Prime right?

</comment><comment><USER135> Also consider Google Eye as a good candidate name,

</comment><comment><USER136> (Google _Drive) + (One_ Drive) = (Google*One)

</comment><comment><USER137> > One

The number of baskets to put all your eggs into.

</comment><comment><USER138> Looking forward to "Google Plus One".

</comment><comment><USER139> Is this to compete with Amazon Prime?

</comment><comment><USER140> Is this something I can change my g suite to? Or is this a personal offering?

Would love the google play etc but need g suite forown domain email

<comment><USER141> Looks like personal accounts only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> Nice, I can't wait to put everything on my One Drive....wait a minute...

</comment><comment><USER143> Google OneDrive

</comment><comment><USER99> A lot of people here have commented about their mistrust in Google and won't use this service. I thought I'd add my two cents base on actual experience with using Google One.

I signed up the day Google One became available since I had been looking for a cloud storage solution. I downloaded their uploader client and began backing up my files. I am sure the fact that it took over two weeks was a mix of my own ISP upload speed and maybe some limitation on how much the client could handle in terms of uploading files (I had just over half a TB to back up).

That said, the speed wasn't what bothered me. What bothered me was the stupid client kept throwing me errors constantly telling me it couldn't upload certain files (always random) and although it gave me an option to retry, I could click retry a dozen times and it wouldn't matter, it'd simply fail over and over again. My only option at this point was to skip uploading this file. If this had been a few files, that wouldn't be an issue except this was easily hundreds of files with no easy way to keep track of what successfully uploaded and what didn't.

Worse, each time it failed, it interrupted whatever I was doing to pop up a notification with the expectation of me having to select retry or skip. This was insanely annoying. I could be doing something and a notification would pop up and unless I respond, it would just sit there. Sometimes I'd be doing something and the notification would interrupt what I am doing midflow. Needless to say this was an abysmal experience.

I then tried contacting support wanting a refund and to simply cancel. First I tried chat which connected relatively fast but it was obvious the person I talked to didn't know what they were talking about. I then did phone support. To their credit they called me back within an hour though it hung up on me shortly after picking up so I then had to get them to call again and there goes another hour.

Eventually, I did get to talk to a human being but felt I was talking to someone who had very little knowledge about how anything worked. I had to get the case escalated to get the service cancelled since the department that handled that had no direct support.

After waiting about a week, I contacted support again and went through the whole motion all the while finding out it seems like the case wasn't properly escalated. Waited several more days and had to contact support again. It had to be escalated again.

During this whole ordeal, I had already stopped the client, uninstalled it, and removed any files I had uploaded.

After about another week, one day suddenly I accessed my Gmail to find a glaring message at the top that read something to the effect of me being over my storage limit and will soon be unable to receive any emails. I was pissed.

At this point they didn't contact me at all, I haven't seen any refund come through, but my access to Google One was gone so I assumed I was cancelled. But if I deleted all the files I previously uploaded, how could I be over the limit?

The only conclusion I could come up with was any photos I took on my Pixel (which came with unlimited photo storage) somehow was being read as non-Pixel photos so my photo storage blew up. I had to forcibly set it to convert all the images to the format that Google would allow that wouldn't be used against my storage space and eventually after like 2-3 hours my Gmail no longer had that glaring message that I may not receive messages due to being over my storage limit.

Now I'm painfully aware I probably could have backed up all my photos and delete them off Google Photos at this point but I was so exhausted and angry that I just took the path of least resistance here. Eventually the refund came through several days later but this was when I genuinely started to hate Google for the first time.

Hope this helps anyone on the fence about paying for Google One, especially with the expectation that you'll get support as if that'll be helpful.

I ended up going with a different cloud storage. World of difference. Never going to trust Google for anything like this ever again.

</comment><comment><USER144> It's nice that you can store photos and it's nice that you can maybe actually finally get support from them, but I don't understand why those two things are bundled together. Their product offerings are typically sort of baffling</comment>


Judge blasts colleagues for defying Supreme Court, allowing financial patent - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/judge-blasts-colleagues-for-defying-scotus-allowing-financial-patent/

<comment><USER2> Why is it taking the US so long to figure out that patents on business methods, abstractions and software are a disaster waiting to happen? Even parts of their own justice system are starting to understand the consequences.

Is it that hard to understand from first principles, like much of the rest of the world has, instead of waiting until the full irreversible burden is felt in legal, industrial and public bodies? Or is the GDP service churn over nothing actually innovative worth the deferrment of so much pain into the future?

Talking about kicking the can down the road...

</comment><comment><USER3> Patent troll script:

      1) Find an excepted business process that has been used for literally centuries.
      2) Create a patent but include the words, "on a computer" or "on a computer network".
      3) Profit.

What a stupid system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Yet another business method patent and the expected "wtf!?".

</comment><comment><USER5> The patent does sound very bad indeed, but I think politicians will get a lot more worked up over a patent that can affect the US financial industry, than one that affects the tech industry.

</comment><comment><USER6> Well this is a very odd story.

For those that don't know NAB who owns half of this alleged patent troll is one of Australia's "big 4" banks and pulls in over $5B a year. It is hardly in need of cash.

Why on earth it is messing about in the US is beyond me.

<comment><USER7> "Why on earth it is messing about in the US is beyond me."

Some ironic scope there. There are a fair few people who might wonder why the US is messing about, well, everywhere. :)</comment></comment>


Do you know of an operating system to build personal robots? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any robotic operating systems that make it easier to build personal robots.  Search engine seems to think ROS is the way to go.<p>http://www.ros.org/ <comment><USER2> ROS is definitely the way to go. Aside from the plethora of existing libraries for preexisting robots, its the 'industry-standard' for personal robots. Plus, its really quite easy to learn, well-documented and capable of really impressive things.

<comment><USER3> I have had nothing but problems with ROS. I've tried it with Lego Mindstorms and with a Turtlebot. Both experiences were painful beyond words.

I think the problems with ROS stem from two things:

1) Complexity - way too much complexity for the really simple stuff

2) Change - code samples and documentation you find on the web don't always work when you think they should. I've wasted hours getting simple stuff to work.

I strongly suggestion you think about why you need a robotics OS. If all you want is a library to move motors around, you don't need ROS or anything fancy. You don't need it if you just want to interface with a Kinect. Just use individual libraries and write the glue code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In Short: It depends on your project.

That being said, you might want to try out these other middlewares: [http://www.mira-project.org/joomla-mira/](http://www.mira-project.org/joomla- mira/) , [http://plasmodic.github.io/ecto/](http://plasmodic.github.io/ecto/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Do you have a local "hacker space"? They would be good people to chat with about this kind of thing.</comment>


Google's A.I. has nearly twice the IQ of Siri, study say - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/02/google-ai-has-almost-twice-the-iq-of-siri-says-study.html <comment><USER2> What a dumb title.

<comment><USER3> the full title of the article is "Google's A.I. has nearly twice the IQ of Siri, study says — but a six-year-old child is smarter than both."</comment></comment>


A Fair Intelligence Test (see the "about" link). - <AUTHOR> http://iqtest.aspden.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made an intelligence test. Will you guys help me calibrate it? It was built with the idea of being immune to practice effects, background, and stereotype threat, because you can practice it as much as you like without spoiling it.

As far as I can tell after trying it out on various friends it seems to be a mathematician / programmer detector.

If people would like to leave comments about their backgrounds that would really help! (What was your last year of formal schooling, do you have an IQ test result, formal exam results, etc)</comment>


How to Work at Google: Example Coding/Engineering Interview - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKu_SEDAykw <comment> a-real-dinosaur Am I understanding that these are the kind of questions that people often memorise?

Quite a lot of this video, was the interviewee following logic, and solving a very solvable problem. It doesn't look like a memorisation exercise to me. It would be so obvious if he already knew the answer.

Although asking for the code seemed a bit redundant, when his solutions could be coded up by anyone following along.</comment>


First Human Embryos Edited in U.S - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608350/first-human-embryos-edited-in-us/ <comment><USER2> We would need a very particular set of conditions for embryonic editing to be justifiable under a medical dogma that aims to "do no harm." Both parents would need to carry a large common set of recessive deleterious alleles, as this would make embryonic selection of non-carriers very difficult. Then we would need the editing system to be so reliable as to not introduce off-target mutations. In a preimplantation setting, we can't easily observe if non- desired mutations have been introduced in some cells, as this would require sequencing every cell in the developing embryo. Serious disease introduced through chimeric errors in the editing process would be a real possibility, and there is no feasible way we could guard against this result using sequencing as it would require destruction of the embryo.

A more realistic scenario would be to develop a human embryonic stem cell culture that has been edited as desired and then implant this into a developing blastocyst at a point at which it would take over the and develop into the fetus. This is done with mice and there is no reason it wouldn't work for humans. I think that most people would find this much more abhorrent than directly editing the germline. However, it would be much safer for the engineered proband and would not require a "perfect" editing system that we do not have.

<comment><USER3> I'm not certain where the premise that our medicine must "Do no harm" comes from. Chemotherapy, for example, is known for being extremely toxic and harmful, yet the justification is that it often yields better outcomes than no treatment. Why can we not use the same justification for editing DNA? Honestly some therapies cause mutations by design, as some cancers are less capable of DNA repair.

I do see one argument, hinging on the difference between an embryo and an adult aged many years. If your argument is that better techniques may exist at the embryonic stage, then I submit to the medical community to ascertain the appropriate course. However, I don't think offsite mutations pose a significant enough risk that one can say that, on aggregate, gene editing won't "do some good".

<comment><USER4> Chemotherapy is more of an exception than the norm when it comes to what treatments are acceptable. Most other drugs have to be proven safe to use even before showing tangible benefits. And even in oncology there are Phase I studies to ensure that your treatment is not Too toxic either. So yeah, Do Not Harm is very much a thing.

<comment><USER5> > Most other drugs have to be proven safe to use even before showing tangible > benefits.

What? I encourage you to read about prescription drug side effects. If a drug were safe, it would be over the counter rather than prescription. Prescription drugs are exactly the kind of harm/benefit bundle GP is describing.

<comment><USER6> As someone with chronic migraines, the question is very much about benefits outweighing costs. Also largely ineffective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've seen most of these arguments for and against gene editing before, but the fact of the matter is that it will come down to the economic competitiveness of nations, as always.

What concerns me in the long term is that gene editing will cause human genomes to converge to a single gold standard with proven mental and physical benefits, thereby reducing our species' genetic diversity and leaving us more vulnerable to a mass extinction event. A "zero day exploit" that everyone missed in the popular new cancer-fighting edit.

<comment><USER8> From an interview with Geoffrey Miller, an evolutionary psychologist:

"Q: What does that mean in human language? A: Any given couple could potentially have several eggs fertilized in the lab with the dad's sperm and the mom's eggs. Then you can test multiple embryos and analyze which one's going to be the smartest. That kid would belong to that couple as if they had it naturally, but it would be the smartest a couple would be able to produce if they had 100 kids. It's not genetic engineering or adding new genes, it's the genes that couples already have.

Q: And over the course of several generations you're able to exponentially multiply the population's intelligence. A: Right. Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that's a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is.

Q: How does Western research in genetics compare to China's? A: We're pretty far behind. We have the same technical capabilities, the same statistical capabilities to analyze the data, but they're collecting the data on a much larger scale and seem to be capable of transforming the scientific findings into government policy and consumer genetic testing much more easily than we are. Technically and scientifically we could be doing this, but we're not.

Q: Why not? A: We have ideological biases that say, "Well, this could be troubling, we shouldn't be meddling with nature, we shouldn't be meddling with God." I just attended a debate in New York a few weeks ago about whether or not we should outlaw genetic engineering in babies and the audience was pretty split. In China, 95 percent of an audience would say, "Obviously you should make babies genetically healthier, happier, and brighter!" There's a big cultural difference.

[https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gw8vn/chinas-taking- over...](https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/5gw8vn/chinas-taking-over-the- world-with-a-massive-genetic-engineering-program)

<comment><USER9> _" Even if it only boosts the average kid by five IQ points, that's a huge difference in terms of economic productivity, the competitiveness of the country, how many patents they get, how their businesses are run, and how innovative their economy is."_

IQ points? Hasn't IQ long ago been discredited as a measure of intelligence?

<comment><USER10> Don't think it is - do you have anything to back this up? I think IQ is pretty accepted as a measure of intelligence.

<comment><USER11> Maybe, but what is the definition of intelligence? And even if there is a usable definition is it something that warrants being optimized?

<comment><USER12> See my comment above. Some additional comments:

\- Optimizing EQ is probably far more valuable for society.

\- I am not sure that EQ can be optimized for in genetics as easily as IQ can.

\- On an individual level, putting a child on the right side of their potential IQ curve will probably make their lives easier or better assuming that relatively few of their peers have this same advantage.

\- If every child is on the right side of their potential IQ curve, then optimizing IQ will largely just be a different state for society rather than a noticeable improvement. Most (all?) improvements would likely be seen on the high end in terms of theoretical developments.

\- Note that if this switch is somehow flipped in a society, I personally believe that there will be a huge EQ intergenerational crisis such that EQ will be valued even more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am so insanely excited for the potential of this technology. There are many ethical questions here, but the potential benefits far outweigh the downsides. In the near future, we can detect and eliminate genetic disorders, ensuring no child has to suffer from these defects any longer. Long term, this gives us a tool to take control of our own evolution in a way never before possible.

Couldn't be more excited for what's possible.

<comment><USER14> While I appreciate the optimism in this sentiment, the similarity to the early atomic age gives me pause. Human beings have shown time and time again that they cannot be absolutely trusted.

<comment><USER15> The atomic age came without the world or our species ending.

<comment><USER16> By that token, every single activity of anyone, anywhere, any time has been a success.

<comment><USER17> So let's put it differently: was the atomic age net good for humanity? I'd say _very much, yes_.

<comment><USER16> Maybe. I think it's difficult painting these things as having a net value. There's good and bad, and they co-exist, one doesn't come without the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> here's a TODO list i made for possibly interesting genome editing targets: [http://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic-modifications/](http://diyhpl.us/wiki/genetic- modifications/)

Many of these have low demonstrated correlation or significance so don't just blindly load everything on that document into your at-home CRISPR kit [http://www.the-odin.com/gene-engineering-kits/](http://www.the-odin.com/gene- engineering-kits/) but it should be a good starting point for thinking about what can be modified, improved, disimproved, etc.

<comment><USER19> I can't speak for all the genes on that list, but I wouldn't go around knocking out FUT2 just yet. We don't know the full extent of biological roles for it, and the functionality is probably redundantly encoded in multiple genes too.

Specifically for viral interactions I reckon you'd be better off designing a small molecule inhibitor of viral binding via whatever lectin they have to whichever protein (or lipid for that matter) the sugar that FUT2 glycosylates is attached to. This allows for much more precise targeting of the undesired behaviour, rather than just chopping out the whole gene.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. I'm a non-secretor and I've benefited from not getting a norovirus when I really ought to have. But if such a valuable trait hasn't reached fixation in the population there's bound to be a reason. It also has a variety of effects on susceptibility to other diseases, some positive, some negative.

[https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs601338](https://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs601338)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Although none of the embryos were allowed to develop for more than a few days—and there was never any intention of implanting them into a womb—"

oh im sure human trials have begun by the time mass articles like this surface.

i've met young gententic research students who told me they went to work for labs based in Latam simply because they were allowed to do perform any experiments deemed illegal in the US - to get a precious few years of a head start.

<comment><USER22> Yup. Common startup advice for US startups in the healthcare space is "go to India"

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Ethics questions need to be raised now, and guidelines have to be decided. The future of humanity is in gene editing. It should not depends on the lazyness of law makers and outrage of godfearing creatures to decide the fate of humanity. It is time we take our evolution into our own hands.

<comment><USER24> Most agree that it is unethical to purposely have a disabled/diseased child if it possible to not have a nondisabled one. In that case, I think it is quite ethical for this technology to be used on those with debilitating genetic defects. We're in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that.

<comment><USER25> > We're in no rush to allow any genome editing other than that.

china in particular does not have the west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics. i think this 'debate' will last about as long as it takes for the first generation of modded chinese children with two or three SDs on the mean to be brought into the world.

<comment><USER26> I don't think you can make a very strong argument for the "west's historical scruples wrt genetic editing and eugenics" when you look at the prevalence of convenience abortions and the history of eugenics in America.

<comment><USER27> The west has been very anti-eugenics for over half a century at this point, but I agree it isn't very historical. That being said, there's a big difference between genetic editing and abortions of fetuses with genetic disorders (which is what I assume you mean by "convenience abortions").

A lot of people are scared of GMOs, even if it's just a simple alteration to a plant. I doubt that genetic modification of people will begin in the west without significant outcry and pushback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I realize that scientific consensus is that gene editing should not be permitted to enhance human performance - be it mental or physical. But if one nation ignores this consensus, and starts producing "super humans" wouldn't other nations be compelled to follow? Otherwise, over time, wouldn't their citizens, and their nation, slowly fall behind as a country of power and status? Just a thought.

<comment><USER15> I all honestly, we can not allow a gene-gap.

Forget racism, what happens when a country can _actually_ make it's people "better" (faster/smarter/live longer/stronger) by significant margins?

<comment><USER29> The rest of the world either catches up or lands in a zoo eventually.

<comment><USER30> The fact that more people aren't terrified of this worries me. Hitler may have been wrong with his "aryan superman" view but what happens when there is science backing it up? Not really looking forward to a genetically-enforced caste system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Gene editing is probably the only way humans can colonize space. By adapting people to different gravities, air chemistry and pressure, radiation, etc., the need for life support equipment can be significantly reduced, and the quality of life of the colonists can be improved.

<comment><USER32> Let me start by saying I'm not a biologist. However, it would seem prudent to think we are much much farther from doing most of what you said than doing terraforming at small levels when we just started editing embryos. Ostensibly the science doesn't even yet exist to do what you are describing whereas funding is the majority of the problem for terraforming at small levels.

<comment><USER31> Even small adjustments can make things better. One example is how melatonin levels in people vary based on what latitude they came from. Native Eskimos can digest different foods. The ability to synthesize vitamin C. Some people are more adapted to lower pressures (high altitude). Smaller body size can reduce life support requirements. It's endless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The BGI Cognitive Genomics Project is currently doing whole-genome sequencing of 1,000 very-high-IQ people around the world, hunting for sets of sets of IQ- predicting alleles. I know because I recently contributed my DNA to the project, not fully understanding the implications. These IQ gene-sets will be found eventually—but will probably be used mostly in China, for China. Potentially, the results would allow all Chinese couples to maximize the intelligence of their offspring by selecting among their own fertilized eggs for the one or two that include the highest likelihood of the highest intelligence. Given the Mendelian genetic lottery, the kids produced by any one couple typically differ by 5 to 15 IQ points. So this method of "preimplantation embryo selection" might allow IQ within every Chinese family to increase by 5 to 15 IQ points per generation. After a couple of generations, it would be game over for Western global competitiveness."

[https://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838](https://www.edge.org/response- detail/23838)

What do you think about this? From what I gather, the Chinese and much of East Asia do not have cultural resistance against using genetic engineering to increase their children's IQs. I will even guess that the governments will encourage their populations to use it.

Will the US, in particular the educated portion of the population, will adopt the practice soon after it is proven safe?

If China starts to do that en masse, Europe and the US will likely criticize them initially. Will they then be forced to adopt the practice soon afterwards? If so, how many years of lag approximately? How much resistance will there be on adopting the practice especially considering the left's belief on everyone's fundamental equality?

The denial about the importance of intelligence is quite obvious now at least by a significant percentage of Americans and Europeans. (They claim "hard work and culture are what matter.", ignoring twins and adopt studies) Will they wait for 1-2 generations until it's so obvious they cannot compete when they start to use genetic engineering themselves?

<comment><USER8> The average Chinese also values education and intellgence much more than the average American.

"Beijing parents splurge £154,000 on street alleyway in catchment area for desirable school

It may be a dusty passageway, ridden with insects and with electric cables dangling precariously from crumbling concrete overhead, but its value outstrips top-end property in Kensington and Chelsea due to rising demand from Chinese parents battling to get their children into elite schools."

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/beijing- parents-s...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/23/beijing-parents- splurge-154000-on-street-alleyway-in-catchment-a/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> The talk is of 'genetic enhancement' but the potential benefit seems more boring and necessary to me: removal of many new and as-yet-unidentified mutations. It is thought that these have been accumulating generation by generation since about 1800 when child mortality started to fall.

<comment><USER34> I would be very interested to read an academic paper that made this point. 200 years is a blink of an eye in almost any vertebrate's evolutionary time.

Also, to support your claim, one would need evidence that the child mortality of the past reflected genetic unfitness (as opposed to poverty or the unavailability of antibiotics).

<comment><USER35> 200 years is a decent chunk of time from an evolutionary standpoint. We feel it's short because of how long our history has been. But within 200 years you can manufacture N new breeds of dogs, for example. We just underestimate how much change takes place in the world.

<comment><USER36> Dogs are fertile at 1 or 2 years of age. You can do an awful lot more in 100-150 generations than you can in 10-15 generations (probably more like 6-8. Checking my family tree, many of my great-great grandparents were born ~1850, so for me personally, 5 or 6 generations).

In any case, we have to go back to the question that the GP asked, that dogs are malleable doesn't help us. Does reduced child mortality really cause more mutations to accumulate?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> As if there wasn't enough inequality in the world, now the rich will be able to afford to make their offspring genetically superior to everyone else's. Have fun with a 1% that are literally overlords.

<comment><USER38> Ideally we'd all improve together, but hey, I'm not going to let people like you stop me, you are right about that.

<comment><USER30> Do you really think you will be among the ones allowed at the top? Protip: if you were you wouldn't be here right now. We will all likely be denied access to the best technology and will quickly fall behind within a couple generations.

<comment><USER38> Here? As in posting on the internet? Why not?

<comment><USER30> I of course have no sources to back this up (how would one even get such data?) but I suspect billionaires have better things to do than go e-slumming with those of us with fewer than 30 cars.

<comment><USER39> Billionaires? Perhaps. But aren't most of us on here taking a quick break from our Silicon Valley-like software engineering jobs that put us in or near the highest income 1% of the United States, and firmly within the highest income 1% of the world? I'm sure any significant medical advance that is remotely scalable will be available to most of us if our competitiveness and survival depends on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> In my class just Monday, we watched a film titled Gattaca, which tells the story of a society fueled by eugenics, where most births are in-vitro modified babies, and there is clear discrimination against those with "imperfect" genes. It's crazy how close these things are to reality.

<comment><USER20> I hated that movie. It's nice to think that you could overcome a heart condition through willpower, but the flip side of that is that if someone has a heart condition and doesn't overcome it then it's their fault. In reality life is just biologically unfair and disease or infirmity isn't actually a moral failing.

<comment><USER41> I don't think they ever confirm he has the heart condition, just when they screen him as an infant there is "~99% chance" he has it. Part of the plot is that the main character and others like him are never given a chance at anything in life because genetics have become viewed as destiny. They have futuristic advanced medical technology that probably could give everyone a good, meaningful life. He lives at the best time in history to survive a heart condition and yet he can't even get into daycare because the insurance won't cover him.

The society in Gattaca has used their advanced technology to imprison themselves and eliminate social mobility rather than expand it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Wasn't there a HN post/thread a week or so ago about some scientist having a (new-ish) theory about DNA and the role specific genes play? If there's enough doubt that there's still room for other theories, is CRISPR really a good idea?

<comment><USER43> Well, you wouldn't want to modify a gene that isn't well-characterized, sure. But there are some things that are known with a great deal of certainty.

<comment><USER42> I remember they used to say that...when the world was flat :)

The issue I have with this type of engineering is there is no means of egress (if you will), no thought about how a recall would be implemented.

Humans are flawed. The history of engineering displays those flaws. But instead we purposely stand in our own blindspot and insist "no. THIS time I'll be different" completely forgetting the countless times that was said previously.

Long to short, our certainty is likely overstated. It wouldn't be the first time either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> noir-york Evolution made us, then we discovered it, and now we can directly code it.

Pity evolution didn't give us the intelligence, restraint and good judgement to make sure that we will not screw this up. And we will.

A myriad of reasons will be given. Medical reasons - how could one refuse? Then parents: "Harvard is expensive and I want to give my child the best chance I can afford". Then nation states will feel pressure to 'level the genetic playing field'.

On the other hand, with AI soon replacing us, apparently, we can fight back and enhance ourselves!

<comment><USER17> > _Pity evolution didn 't give us the intelligence, restraint and good > judgement to make sure that we will not screw this up. And we will._

Because this is how we grow up. We screw up, again and again, but as long as we come out stronger each time, I'd say it's worth it.

That's why I believe a top priority today should be ensuring that our technological civilization does not collapse - through neither technological mistakes, nor through social upheaval. And if we were not given enough intelligence, restraint and good judgement to avoid making stupid errors, then maybe at some point, we'll fix that too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Well this is exciting, but hopefully it will advance beyond "genetic disease". Or maybe in the future we will be able to expand our definition of that term, to include all genetic predispositions to suboptimal traits? (e.g. slow observation-decision loop, hedonism, sentimentalism/too-much-empathy, neuroticism, etc.)

Either way - hopefully, when this tech is completed, we will be able to accept and enjoy that our descendants will literally be superior beings to us, and not look upon them with too much envy.

<comment><USER45> Wait, being empathic is now a negative trait? I'd hope we would want our first generation of superhumans to be too empathic, or else they might exterminate all of us of inferior breed.

<comment><USER44> In addition to the factors mentioned in the sibling comment, empathy can often lead one to make the wrong decision. (Where by "wrong" I mean any decision other than the one best supported by one's rational analysis.)

<comment><USER44> So I suppose it's not the empathy itself that's the problem; rather, it's that we are so emotionally sensitive to the data we gain from our empathy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> We already have a clear division in health along socioeconomic lines, but delivberately encoding our inequalities into our DNA is a future I could skip.

</comment><comment><USER47> Yet another mainstream news report on CRISPR before any scientific report is available.

<comment><USER48> Yeah, science by press release is unfortunately quite common nowadays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I don't think the modest raise in IQ would be worth a society that considers children as products they can alter to specification. Bill McKibben in Enough wrote eloquently about the existential dread that could happen if we somehow managed to select for musical skill for example. It's one thing to deal with your talent or lack of it in terms of the randomness of normal life, another thing to realize you are little more than a racehorse that has been bred because your parents want you to be something.

</comment><comment><USER50> Sounds nice, but I don't want children, I want myself to be improved.

<comment><USER7> This is the real shit right here. There's going to be gene-ism against older generations with inferior genetics, talk of "cutting them off" of government health programs because their fragile bodies are too expensive to maintain...

<comment><USER51> Did you know that even today, old people are less healthy than young people?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Seems like a more socially acceptable form of Eugenics since society seems to value advanced science more than it does traditional mate selection based on desired physical traits.

</comment><comment><USER53> I know very little about this topic, but let me shoot: isn't this method for improving competitiveness misguided and shortsighted? How about working on emotional intelligence, better education and talent management, better food in schools, better child care, more support for disadvantaged families - there is so much we can do... Or is it just not about improving society, but individuals (with deep pockets)?

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm eager to see the long-term results of the gene editing procedures.

>The earlier Chinese publications, although limited in scope, found CRISPR caused editing errors and that the desired DNA changes were taken up not by all the cells of an embryo, only some.

Instability is an inherent property of genes.

</comment><comment><USER55> "Now Mitalipov is believed to have broken new ground both in the number of embryos experimented upon and by demonstrating that it is possible to safely and efficiently correct defective genes that cause inherited diseases."

Seems a little early for such a claim based on embryos that only developed for a few days.

<comment><USER56> In the US human embryos used for research are restricted from developing for more than two weeks

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Evolutionary logic is like a massive legacy codebase without any tests. Fuck with it at your own risk. You could definitely get lucky and improve functionality but you'll never know what you'll be breaking.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think enough people recognize the ethical issues inherent in designer babies enough that we are in no danger of reaching that point. I think the tech could have great applications in livestock and curing genetic defects.

</comment><comment><USER59> In the future, every dissertation will include in its Acknowledgements section, the student's parents, faculty advisor, and gene editor.

</comment><comment><USER60> Why do in on human embryos instead of any other animal? At this stage, it must be for publicity reasons alone. Tasteless in my view.

<comment><USER61> Because we've already done it with plenty of other animals, even cloned them and let them grow to maturity. Never heard of Dolly?

We've been at a point, where it's viable for human application, for quite a while. But the ethical and religious stigma is preventing us from going the full distance.

As of right now, it is very likely that the first genetically engineered/enhanced human will be a Chinese person because they are way more pragmatic about those issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Reactivate Vitamin C synthesis, etc.

</comment><comment><USER63> Wow it's a Brave new world.

</comment><comment><USER64> CRISPR is coming. I seriously think with CRISPR we could see several trillion dollar companies. From cancer and aids cures to fundamentally altering what it means to be human, this is all within the near grasp of CRISPR ( if what i've been reading is to be believed ).

<comment><USER65> Gilead managed to demonstrate how curing a major disease does not result in such a spectacular outcome (of the trillion dollar scale). They did very well by curing HepC, briefly, and now they're eroding back down after just a few boom years. The same would occur with curing HIV/AIDS. There would be a brief boom derived from sales in some developed nations (most nations would receive the cure _extremely_ inexpensively, as with HepC). It might get a company to a couple hundred billion market cap short-term, nowhere near a trillion dollar outcome however. Further, attempting to charge a lot for the HIV/AIDS cure (such that you could get to a trillion dollar market cap), would result in a far worse PR outcome than what Gilead & Co. saw with HepC drugs; calls for nationalization would be overwhelming. Nations such as India and China would simply ignore all patents and proceed to copying the cure - few would support any economic counter/consequence against that move.

It is often said that companies would intentionally prefer not to cure major diseases. Then Gilead (Pharmasset), goes ahead and does so, while charging less for the cure than the cost of healthcare for living with HepC (much less all that is lost from HepC, including quality of life and economic contribution) - and for doing so, they were treated as a villain due to what they charged. For such reasons, I doubt we'll ever see drug prices high enough to deliver trillion dollar outcomes. Throw on top of this, that the last bastion of crazy drug prices - the US - is nearing an end on its tolerance for such.

<comment><USER66> what you describe just shows that the old business model - pill in exchange for money - starts to show its limitations in the globalized world. Facebook would never get where it is now if it charged $10/year in Africa and $100/year in US. The pharma company who figures out that new business model would become that trillion dollar company.

<comment><USER65> There is no new business model that will derive a lot more money. There's a finite amount of global income available in a given year and it's not expanding at a rapid clip.

The very specific problem is the rest of the world will never pay it, and the US is aiming to stop paying it (exorbitant prices). Nothing is going to change that, it's a fact of life when resources such as income and wealth are inherently limited and expand fairly slowly overall. If you come up with something spectacular that is very valuable, they're still not going to pay it - it was demonstrated overwhelmingly by the HepC cure (and has been demonstrated by vaccines as another for decades; what's more life saving than vaccinations? and yet the developing world simply will not - and frequently can't - pay high prices for such).

Vaccines have saved hundreds of millions of lives. Give me an example of something that is going to beat that. Now take a look at the extraordinarily unspectacular financial outcome for the vaccination market (particularly compared to the trillion dollar premise being discussed). Why would anyone by default believe something amazing that comes out of CRISPR, would produce a dramatically superior financial outcome versus what vaccines have produced?

<comment><USER18> Perhaps I am up too late and don't completely understand where your question is coming from... but there's a lot of hope available in biology because DNA is one of the most successfully widely deployed technologies of the last 4 billion years. It's had hundreds of trillions of years being battletested in production environments. It's cheap to copy, replicate and eventually it will be cheap to modify and write. Literally everyone is (badly?) programmed with DNA-- and CRISPR isn't the last word on genome engineering. There will absolutely be changes that large chunks of the population will _demand_ , far and beyond the demand for vaccines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> question is did they use emacs or vim?

</comment><comment><USER68> GATTACA!

</comment><comment><USER69> You want a Gattaca world?? This is how you get a Gattaca world.

</comment><comment><USER70> Why?

</comment><comment><USER71> Related: 'Unexpected mutations after CRISPR–Cas9 editing in vivo' [http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4293.h...](http://www.nature.com/nmeth/journal/v14/n6/full/nmeth.4293.html)

<comment><USER43> This paper was incredibly sloppy and has been widely dismissed by scientists in the field.

<comment><USER72> Well it was refuted by people in biotech, who have a considerable stake in that field.

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608073/gene-editing- compa...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608073/gene-editing-companies- hit-back-at-paper-that-criticized-crispr/)

I thought the original authors had a rebuttal, but I can't seem to find it.

<comment><USER43> I don't think there's any need for a cui bono line of thinking. There are biologists who have nothing to gain who thought this paper was lousy. For example, every single biologist in my department that I spoke to, and every biologist I've found online who had something to say on the matter.

Perhaps that's too much of a selection bias for you, so I'll offer this critique: if you wanted to measure the off target effects of Cas9 in an organism, you would probably sequence the organism before you edited it, and then sequence it again after you edited it. But that's not what they did.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN:[raspberrypi] Using Webapp play audio/video remotely - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/innosam/raspberry-play <comment><AUTHOR> Just want to let everyone know, where this requirement is coming from. Any other way of doing this is also welcomed.

I am working on my laptop the entire day, and i wanted someway to remotely play videos on my television and also play music on the speakers.

Bought a raspberry pi2, wifi adapter, and installed the raspbian os. It can very easily play 1080p videos which is pretty awesome considering its size and price.

To play videos/audio i wrote a server and omxplayer python client that sits on rpi2. And finally wrote a webapp to control the server.

This works out pretty well for me and achieves my purpose. So thought of sharing it with HN.

Let me know if you have fixed similar problems in any other way.

Also, regarding the youtube/netflix player which can be controlled by the mobile app. The limitation is that the content is restricted to only netflix and youtube.

So using combination of omxplayer and youtube-dl supports lot of other content providers.</comment>