Doctors use five liters of beer to save toxic-alcohol poisoned patient - <AUTHOR> https://english.vietnamnet.vn/fms/society/215818/doctors-use-five-liters-of-beer-to-save-toxic-alcohol-poisoned-patient.html <comment><USER2> This URL seems to be in a never-ending redirect loop.

</comment><comment> a0-prw Hair of the dog ;)</comment>


Why I'm Returning Google Glass - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=1047&doc_id=265693&

<comment><USER3> >It feels very prototype-ish and I can't help but feel that it's the precursor to something better Google might even be working on now as we try these.

^^ This is totally the point of this run of Google Glass. While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product. He's basically saying that, for $1500, he wants to be blown away _now_.

He doesn't want to pay a substantial premium "just" to be part of a privileged set of early-adopters. Everyone knows that this is still a beta, and improvements are on the way, so he's just saying the current iteration can't push him over the hump to hold onto the device (as opposed to recoup his cash).

<comment><USER4> > While this is a fair and worthwhile personal essay, I don't think it's a > particularly impactful statement about the potential of the product.

This is an unfinished product and he wants his $ back because the user experience leaves him cold. He's not investing in Google - he's buying an actual product. And clearly he is skeptical that this particular product will ever live up to its potential.

Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.

<comment><USER5> >Contrast to the iPhone, yet again (the original). It showed both incredible potential and was an excellent actual product.

Or as someone else mentioned, contrast this to a console devkit. Imagine someone making a blogpost about how they are returning their Xbox One devkit because there aren't any good games for it.

<comment><USER6> Is Google Glass marketed as a developer kit, or even as a prototype or "first run" device? All the FEM I've seen is very polished (leading me to believe the company wants me to think the product is polished) and seems to be catering to a mainstream audience.

Compare this to the Oculus Rift, which explicitly sells a "development kit" and even requires checking a box that says "I understand this hardware is intended for developers and it is not a consumer product." And, as an aside, the Oculus Rift development kit is a much more polished and functional product than the current generation of Google Glass.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I think Project Glass has been pretty clear about this being a first run device. That's why the participants are referred to as "Explorers". The point is to start mapping out use cases and fine tuning the UX.

Source: My wife is getting her Glass in a few weeks.

<comment><USER8> They should have avoided being cute and simply called it a "Developer Kit" instead of targeting it towards "Explorers".

I don't know about you, but the use of "Explorers" is broad enough and appeals to the ego enough to be inclusive of a pretty large swath of society that is going to be disappointed by the device. "Developer Kit" pretty much describes exactly what audience it is actually ready for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The first paragraph says it all.

> "Yesterday I made the call to return my Google Glass. After months of > anticipation, a trip to New York, and several weeks with the device, after > much deliberation I decided the device wasn't ready for prime time and my > $1,500 would be better spent elsewhere."

He shelled out for a beta product and was disappointed when it was, well, a beta product. More than that, even -- it was a beta version of a product which is the very first of its kind. I'm glad he was able to get his money back, but I'm not sure why he was surprised.

<comment><USER10> While I get this sentiment, in fairness, I think the reason we expect people not to be underwhelmed by beta testing is because it's _beta testing_. If you ask people to shell out $1500 for the privilege, you've now raised expectations - they're not just beta testing, they're buying a significant luxury good.

I get why G charged - when you get people to invest in an item, especially by weeding out the less-passionate, you bias them towards strong positive responses - but they did cross "beta testing" and "luxury goods" wires.

<comment><USER11> I don't get this. The current release is meant for developers, journalists and "technologists." Google was very up front about this. It's not intended to be a consumer product. Complaining about it at this point seems akin to someone getting a console devkit and complaining there's no games available and those cost 10s of thousands of dollars.

Really, the alternative is to not get access until the thing is done or to create some sort of secret selective list for early access.

<comment><USER12> Complaining about it did get his blog to (at least) the top 4 on hacker news.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm actually wearing Glass for my last day too.

First off, I do not have toys to communicate with Glass. I realize that Glass is too early. There are not enough data dumping devices available at decent prices. Withings, vehicle data, health data, all the things people try to keep private. That kind of data is what would be useful with Glassware.

The lack of a SDK and depending on RESTful services. I want to toy with sensors too. Delayed gratification does not work. Where are my long nights of programming?

Battery life and destroying my cell's data plan are also issues. I'll miss watching people's faces light up when they try it on.

<comment><USER14> The Android SDK works fine with it. Turn on debugging mode on the Glass and code away. Sensors are no problem: [http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret- sensors-...](http://neatocode.tumblr.com/post/49807659612/secret-sensors-in- google-glass)

Google even flat out stated at Google IO that the upcoming GDK will just be the Android SDK plus extra classes you compile against.

<comment><USER13> OK, now you have got me interested. I really have not heard anything about this. You may have just made my week. I was getting quite depressed about the money I wasted.

I can only run APKs on Glass while in USB debug mode? There is no way to actually execute the program again without being in the debugger, correct?

<comment><USER15> You can install a third party launcher on Glass. Here's one that lets you switch between launching APKs and the standard Glass interface pretty easily:

[https://github.com/kaze0/launchy](https://github.com/kaze0/launchy)

There's also a Mirror API based Glass app that lets you launch apks, but it's a bit more work setting up. It actually requires you install a couple APKs as well: [https://pontedivetro.appspot.com/](https://pontedivetro.appspot.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Imagine that you buy an Xbox or Playstation DevKit, they cost 10x as much as an actual console that is shipped. There is precious little software except samples and demos, and you are expected to be a tester of buggy and incomplete stuff as well as potentially develop.

And then you go and complain about how you shelled out thousands and there was nothing to do, and other devices will cost a fraction in the future.

Do people not understand that Glass is primarily intended for developers and dogfooders?

I think the #ifihadglass program was a mistake. They should have kept it limited to people attending Google I/O or other bonafide developers. I understand they wanted to have it tested by a diverse group of people in the real world and not just developers, but the wide ranging audience they were seeking also happens to be the people who don't seem to understand what devkits are.

</comment><comment><USER17> Let me be the first to say: if you don't want it, feel free to sell it to me (seriously, email in my profile). I tried some out when I was visiting the Bay Area and I did think they were amazing and magical; YMMV.

edit: The author mentions that he wasn't interested in developing an app for Glass anyways; I thought that was half the point of the Explorer program (unless you're a skydiver/ballerina/whatever who can produce awesome marketing content).

<comment><USER18> The TOS probitis reselling, loaning or transferring.

<comment><USER19> I don't think a TOS can override first sale doctrine on the physical hardware, can it?

Or was the initial "purchase" actually structured as a rental or lease?

<comment><USER20> They can't prevent you from selling it, but they can revoke your access to the API.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In the summer of 2007 I was doing a bunch of research as to whether or not to buy a few shares of $100-$130 Apple stock. I knew the iPhone was coming, and I thought it was going to be big. The reason I eventually decided the iPhone was going to be a loss? Rumors of a Google phone, which I thought would be the end-all.

Heh. A few years later working at Google, my boss discussed with me about how Google is just not a very good products company. Big consumer products require a polished launch, with products that speak to the consumer. Google on the other hand, rolls things out slowly, iteratively, and rarely takes them to a polished, user-friendly state. If this ever happens, it's usually over a very long period of time, and quietly. And that's just with software products - <USER2> could say this is even more the case with hardware.

I don't think glass will be the silver bullet of wearable computing. It will be the concept definer, the 'what', but the 'it' will come from somewhere else.

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't help but have a little CueCat-ish response to Glass. I don't wear glasses and don't care to. So Glass saves me from having to take my smart device out of my pocket by having something on my face all day?

NB: I've seen plenty of these around but haven't actually played with one.

</comment><comment><USER23> I had the unique experience of borrowing a pair of Google Glass for a multi- day hackathon. The very first thing I did was figure out how to develop and install actual Android apps on it, because the "card" system isn't conducive to developing interesting applications. Frankly I'd rather go with a smart watch if cards are all I could do.

During my time with Glass I prototyped 3D interactive software where you could load up models of human body parts, physical structures, etc, and swipe the side to rotate them around and view from all angles. This ran pretty well on the embedded processor, and I was importing relatively large 3D models.

As well, I tried running computer vision algorithms on the device. This did not go so well. I could not run a basic Canny edge detection algorithm at more than 1 FPS. FYI this algorithm - and similarly complex ones - are fundamental to doing anything remotely useful in image processing. The alternative is doing all your image processing offline, which may be fine in the future as internet becomes super fast. Some people are doing facial recognition like this, at a whopping 2 FPS.

About the product. There's the issue of the screen size. Small, hard to focus on, and up to the right. Not really conducive to augmenting your vision. I think it's fair to say that Glass was meant as an information retrieval device - which again, makes me wonder, why not just use a smart watch? Frankly I think the screen quality could be better on the watch too.

All in all, the platform is an interesting foray into wearable computing but I reckon it will take multiple iterations (and years) to get it to the point where I can run more interesting CV and AR applications. In the meantime, I've been building my own wearable computing hardware to enable the types of software I want to build. The Alan Kay quote, and all that.

<comment><USER24> How were you implementing the Canny edge detector? As a GLSL shader or on the CPU?

I implemented a (simple, not quite Canny) edge detector in GLSL and it runs fast enough not to be distracting ([https://github.com/matt- williams/Optometrist](https://github.com/matt-williams/Optometrist)).

I've tried using OpenCV (which isn't GPU-accelerated on Glass because I think OpenCV is only accelerated on Tegra) - this _was_ too slow.

<comment><USER23> Yep, via OpenCV. If I still had access to Glass I'd love to try out your library. Do you have any first-person videos of your application? If you have an iPhone 5 you can hold it up to the prism in good lighting and record first- person (it's a real pain though).

<comment><USER24> I don't have any first-person videos yet, but I should give it a go. (I don't have an iPhone 5, but I can try with my HTC One X.) I'll link to it from the project's github page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been wearing glass for a while now and am active in development (see [http://openglass.us](http://openglass.us)), there are a few select groups of people I'd recommend it to at this point: developers (it's a fun/simple/exciting platform to write for), researchers (just like with the kinect, it makes it much easier to reproduce experiments), people who are constantly running around town while being in contact with others (business/sales people), who drive all the time (much safer/easier than a phone), who would use a gopro on a regular basis (sports), and who travel often (in the US due to mobile data).

At this point that's really it. If you sit at a desk all day you're going to have a bad time with the notifications, "oh great I got a notice on my face a minute after my phone buzzed and my laptop notified me". They work much better when you are active, out and about when even picking up your phone is a chore. If you already know your way everywhere you go (you don't travel) then one of the best features, directions, is lost on you.

This applies to the current device/software/apps, part of what we are trying to do with OpenGlass is push it past being a "beeper on your face" because that only applies to the segment of people to whom getting notifications faster than you do with your phone matters. Once they allow devs to push to the Play store (coming soon) it'll be a much more compelling product for end users. I think it'll ultimately be an amazing product, it's just the current feature list targets what I see as limited audiences.

<comment><USER26> DO NOT USE GLASS FOR DRIVING.

It is illegal, is not safer than a car docked phone and since it moves your eyes away from the road is extremely dangerous. Stop being so selfish and stop the car. Studies have shown that when you are distracted you are more likely to crash. So innocent people's lives are at stake here.

<comment><USER27> Glass is a perfectly fine way to get directions while driving. Just listen to the voice prompts and ignore the screen. Heck, one can push the prism up to the top of your head so there's no chance to see it.

(To be sure, one can also do this with a GPS app on a smart phone, but having left a phone behind in a rental car, I see value in using a device that's attached to me.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> My personal bet is that Google Glass is the Newton of wearable hardware. It's directionally correct, but way too early for the available hardware and the existing ecosystem, and too expensive as well.

As a happy owner of a Pebble, I definitely get the value of going beyond the phone screen. And as a sci-fi reader, I fully expect that everybody's going to end up spending 99% of their time intimately connected to tech (and the broader world via that tech). But I don't expect head-mounted UIs to be popular outside of tiny niches for 15 years, if ever.

</comment><comment><USER29> I actually think industrial applications might be the hidden killer app for augmented reality. Imagine walking around a power plant and seeing your environment annotated: last inspection time for each inspection point, what is flowing through each pipe and its current pressure, etc. Construction sites could be truly amazing.

<comment><USER30> Glass is not an augmented reality device.

<comment><USER31> Totally. I kind of want to start every comment on every thread on HN with "Glass is not an augmented reality device."

I've worn one (very briefly) now, and let me be very clear: you can not superimpose labels or images on anything you see in daily life with Glass. This is a physical limitation of the hardware, and it is absolute. This hardware will never, ever, ever be able to do that.

And it's unclear to me if the hardware for Rainbows End/Halting State augmented reality will ever (or at least in this generation) exist if Glass- like heads-up-display hardware can not be successful in its own right.

<comment><USER32> Not really true, I have one that I wear regularly, and it could be used as one in limited fashion.

There's also a little Easter Egg in it that lets you see the entire Glass team, and look around at them, up, down, etc. and it's pretty engrossing, so you can use it as limited VR as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think the biggest problem is this swiping thing. Imagine Apple had released the first iPhone with a mouse plugged to it. It's a pure betrayal of the original Glass vision, where all user => machine communication goes through voice.

<comment><USER34> Voice-only is the hardest HCI problem left. Just consider the challenge as an English speaker, with 18 years of experience, of traveling from Alabama to New York to London and Wales and Scotland and Ireland to Mumbai and Kerala to Cairns and Sidney and Auckland.

<comment><USER33> True, but in the case of Glass the speaker is always the same (it's the owner) so you can learn and adapt the acoustic model over time. I'm wondering btw if Google doesn't do that already for Android's built-in speech recognition, which accuracy is amazing.

The other problem is that apps cannot (at least for now) change the language model, so Glass will always be in either "search" or "dictation" mode.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> One wonders if the tablet (or small tablet) isn't really just the last good form. We've spent decades building towards it. Time to stop and enjoy.

(That and make tablets cheap enough to be ubiquitous)

<comment><USER36> Not even slightly. I don't think there is _one_ last good form. The future is a variety of devices. Despite the rise of tablets, I still code using a desktop machine with multiple monitors, and I wouldn't ever trade it for a tablet.

<comment><USER35> I'm looking at the progression of form. The paperback book did not kill the newspaper, but it was kind of the bottom end. "Tiny books" are a novelty.

So yeah, development is serious work like stocks trading and you want a big interface like the Wall Street Journal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kind of weird he mentions the Recon Jet. You can't even remove the sunglasses part of that, so you certainly won't be reading emails casually at home on it. It doesn't seem to match his key complaints.

</comment><comment><USER37> 1 year from now: "Why I'm Returning To Google Glass"

</comment><comment><USER38> I don't know if anyone has asked this yet but why does it have lenses if those lenses don't actually do anything? I mean, why not just the display portion in some sort of headpiece instead of including the glass?

<comment><USER14> The lenses on Google Glass are completely removable and replaceable. Most people wear Google Glass without any lenses. There are clear and sunglass lenses you can snap in, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> "Because a title like this is bound to drive traffic to my blog."

</comment><comment><USER40> I had the option to get a Glass through the #ifihadglass program, but after reading up on it's abilities and more on augmented reality, this is not the device I want to spend 1.5k on.

</comment><comment><USER41> "Peacock. Peacock."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO_mF9e2svM)

</comment><comment><USER42> finally some honesty - i _knew_ it would be exactly the same as when I got my Nintendo Power Glove in the mail in 1989.

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

<comment><USER25> "I love the power glove, it's so bad" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacoxHFYvZw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> My first reaction is someone finally decides to speak up aside all that marketing noise.

</comment><comment><USER44> I know this is off topic, but how do I get one of those "<dev>" shirts?

</comment><comment><USER45> duh!!! Its a beta device and its priced that way so developers can start making their profitable apps already on it. Its an investment. Off course its to expensive for daily use.

</comment><comment><USER46> If you are returning Google Glass, you weren't meant to have it in the first place.

Bleeding edge isn't for everyone for a reason. This is the birth of a new form factor that has potential, not complete market realization.

</comment><comment><USER47> "Wearables" in general are going to be a much tougher nut to crack than tablets. Glass is, at least, radical enough to stand a chance.

I'd be less sure that a watch is enough of an improvement over taking one's phone out of one's pocket.

Also, unlike tablets, which have the obvious business use case of liberating people from the "sit down with your computer" inhibitor to interpersonal interaction, nobody knows whether or how pervasive use of wearables could improve productivity or interaction in a business setting.

<comment><USER28> You know, I bought a Pebble watch so I could help an organization I love (the Long Now) develop a Pebble watch face. I expected to hate it, as I hate most gadgetry.

I've ended up loving it. One of the most annoying things to me about a modern phone is its intrusiveness. Text messages, calendar alerts, phone calls, and other interruptive communications. The Pebble makes all of those notifications a) quiet, and b) subtle. It's fantastic to be in a meeting, see who's calling, and decline the call, all without breaking flow.

I think it will also be good for a variety of special-purpose interfaces. E.g., one person already has built custom software such that when he starts moving on his bike (as triggered by phone-measured movement speed) it switches over to a bike computer display.

And the nice part is that it looks just like a watch. Unlike Glass, people are entirely ok with it.</comment></comment>


Launch HN: Hexel (YC W18) – Create a cryptocurrency for your community - <AUTHOR> Hi, we're the founders of Hexel (https://www.onhexel.com), in the current YC batch. Our product lets anyone create a cryptocurrency (an ERC20 token on Ethereum). You don't sell it or do an ICO, you just create it and start using it right away. It's supposed to be fun!
Cryptocurrency is still in a very experimental phase, but most cryptocurrencies out there seem aimed at a serious, large-scale technical problem (not to mention the get-rich-quick schemes). We're helping people create currencies for interesting things they actually want to try using now.
So far, we've seen some cool use cases. To name a few: A gaming streamer is rewarding his most loyal viewers with tokens they can redeem for shoutouts or merchandise. A hip hop website is giving tokens to content curators and using them for giveaways. A few Discord channels have created tokens to use as a form of upvotes in their communities (and we think this could be cool for subreddits too).
We also provide tools for managing and tracking the token you make. This is free, but we plan to make money by charging for advanced features in the future. Right now on Hexel, you can do the following:
1.) Mint tokens and airdrop them to anyone with an Ethereum address
2.) Share a public page for your token, with information and a UI for sending that token to others
3.) Explore other tokens created on Hexel, subscribe to the ones you like, and request tokens from the creator
4.) Message your token's subscribers with updates or info about things you're doing with your token
5.) View a feed of payments made using your token
Although the ICO bandwagon and hype have left many people feeling cynical about cryptocurrencies (we feel that way ourselves), we're optimistic that there are many more potential applications and cool use cases out there. Our goal is to widen the space, make it interesting again, and make other use cases easy to explore. We'd love for anyone to poke holes in the use cases you see on the site, and even better would be feedback on use cases were you think this could be really useful. Thanks so much for any ideas you have!
Thanks! John & Marcus <comment><USER2> Everything you want to do can be done on a simple database. You can mint tokens / share it / explore other tokens / message people / view feed. It isn't clear why you want to forcibly put this on Ethereum blockchain and pay a fee to do every transfer (The transaction charge currently is ~ USD 0.5-1 per transaction)

<comment><USER3> Simple answer, your centralized database can go away tomorrow, or be arbitrarily modified. That can't happen with the blockchain.

<comment><USER4> Does that happen to your databases a lot? That's just bad engineering.

<comment><USER5> That's not the troubling case.

The troubling case is the company hosting the DB shutting down, and therefore the entire system becoming worthless. This is what prevents you as the customer from trusting such a system.

<comment><USER6> _That_ is preventing you to trust a system where "a gaming streamer is rewarding his most loyal viewers with tokens they store in their own database and you can redeem for shoutouts or merchandise."?

I would somehow think that the database technology is quite secondary to the creditworthiness of the gaming streamer when people decide whether to trust or not a token system of a gaming streamer.

<comment><USER7> It's the streamer who's trust you need. Whether they have their patron's trust is a separate issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm somewhat of a blockchain sceptic (or rather, unconvinced at this stage), but this sounds really interesting.

Meta: This is also a very well written announcement post, IMO, and I suggest anyone looking to launch something learn from it. It starts off with the most important soundbites up front, including the rather weird sounding "it's supposed to be fun". Then it gives a bit of backstory, but most importantly, provides interesting examples that back up the weird "fun" assertion.

It ends with a pretty clear explanation of what this costs and what the business model is.

All in all, great job. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, that's really nice of you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hey I offered this exact service with:

www.dotcomco.in

Some of the in-house community cryptocoins I made as a portfolio of examples include:

www.ycco.in - distributed karma for HN community (still up)

www.instagramco.in and www.facebookco.in - distributed likes

Of course I didn't make it to front page of HN and got no traction. As I have more than a few cryptocoin/blockchain themed domains I began tozenizing the domain ownership rights to try to sell with the pre-made community cryptocoin, my experience is there seems to be more interest in these domains than the community coins.

<comment><USER9> You charge 10 bitcoin as your fee which is around 80,000 usd in today's value!

<comment><USER8> That does sound outrageous, then again from the perspective of the cryptocoin world the first purchase with bitcoin was two Papa Johns Pizzas for 10,000 bitcoin which is around $80,000,000 today.

When I launched bitcoin wasn't worth what it is today...that said what would you pay for your own community cryptocoin anyway?

<comment><USER10> $0

<comment><USER11> Then you are not the target audience. Every small business or community can be tokenized, just like every small business can have a website. Tokenization could encourage repeat visits, community virility and vested interest, not to mention investment.

<comment><USER12> "Every small business can be tokenized"

My parents own a gift shop (like a Hallmark). Can you give me an idea of how their business could be "tokenized"?

<comment><USER11> Off the top of my head:

* Distribute tokens to partners (product / gift manufacturers). Partners with vested interest in the success of a company could be much less likely to sever relations as it will hurt their investment.

* Distribute tokens to customers as a type of rebate. Like a loyalty program that encourages patronship.

* Use tokens to vote on what products should be sold. Many gift shops sell pipes and other drug related items. This decision would sink other family oriented shops. What would your customers like?

* Distribute tokens to the locals as an attempt to build virility and community around your shop.

* Distribute tokens to employees as a way to recognize accomplishments. Ever get a few bonus stock from your company for doing good work over the week? Me neither.

* Sell tokens to raise funds.

* Set budgets based on community votes.

The list is endless and these are rough ideas. Look for ways to align business interests and customer interests.

<comment><USER13> Most of these (e.g. rewards, distributing to locals/employees, sell to raise funds, etc.) rest on the idea that the token has value, which begs the question.

Many also have existing solutions that are well-understood (e.g. loyalty programs tied to phone numbers).

And, what happens when every business has its own tokens? Who wants to track/manage all of that? Seems like a recipe for token fatigue.

> _Look for ways to align business interests and customer interests._

In general, seems like token advocates look for ways to wedge a token into an interaction. Not saying there are no use cases, but there's a lot of "solution looking for a problem" happening.

<comment><USER11> The token will have value based on there being value in the company or asset being tokenized. You can't start a coffee shop but can own some of the coffee shop down the street.

What are we here for if not to share in the risk and success of the endeavours we support?

<comment><USER13> > _The token will have value based on there being value in the company or > asset being tokenized._

The token doesn't de facto inherit the value of the business. That would only be true to the extent that the token represents a claim on assets or profits or other tangible benefit; in other words when the token acts like a security, in which case we have already solved that. There is also a co-op model that exists and conveys some of this benefit.

I don't know what a token adds to these scenarios, and in fact are not even legal in the US to act as securities unless the buyers are accredited (most people are not). Sure, until recently, the token has made it easier to skirt non-accredited investor status and other regulatory matters, but it doesn't make it legal or a better solution and, in any case, the SEC is moving in on that.

I appreciate the spirit of what you're saying, and want it to be true. It's just not currently the case.

<comment><USER11> Yes there are barriers and plenty of reasons why it wouldn't work. I agree it's not currently the case, thanks for thinking about the possibilities, not many do.

The tokens must be valuable but that will be shaped by the market forces. I'd love to buy some of the potential profit in my local coffee shop but I won't buy if it's backed by nothing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Trying to actually use this reminds me of how frustrating and slow it is to actually use cryptocurrencies. Endless hoops, lots of waiting for confirmations, and that's me doing things the 'easy' way with Coinbase and MetaMask.

Edit:

> We've submitted your transaction to the network. This usually takes about 2 > minutes to confirm.

30 minutes later...

Edit 2:

One email to the Hexel support team later and lo, my token is live: [https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aa...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/e4a37f4f-3a26-4ae3-a8b2-c932aaed7d8f)

5/7 would recommend

<comment><USER15> Yeah you're right, the user experience with Dapps can be pretty painful. We're trying to make this better.

Edit: transaction time depends on the gas price, email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and I can make sure that things go smoothly!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> My favorite coin so far is the TallCoin: "I will issue 1 coin to any person who is taller than me (I'm 6'7")".

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e73...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/bb571299-e19a-4671-9036-7b3e736eb154)

<comment><USER17> I like WednesdayCoin, a coin that can only be transferred on wednesdays. [https://wednesdaycoin.io/](https://wednesdaycoin.io/)

(not a hexel coin, but another ERC20)

<comment><USER16> Agreed! Also one of my favorite coins. I was blessed to receive some a few Wednesdays ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You say that you're not focusing on trading and that you want to do things right. But isn't the sole point of crypto _currencies_ that they can be traded? What uses are there other than trading?

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh I do think the currencies should be used for exchanging things. I mostly meant that they shouldn't be viewed as an investment or a way to make money. More as an actual currency.

<comment><USER4> That already exists and is named complementary currency.

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

There's no need for a blockchain, or distributed stuff, etc. The only thing you need is to convince people to accept it. You might as well make an app that transfers balance between rows on a database. And the reason why you never heard of complementary currency before, is that it's something done "just because you can" and has no real advantages.

I understand that none of the things I said are specific to you. But am I wrong?

<comment><USER18> But isn't there still a cost advantage? Rather than securing a centralized database you simply create a coin secured by the Blockchain?

<comment><USER4> I don't know. How much does it cost to run things on the blockchain. _Someone_ must be paying. How much does it cost you to spin up on MySQL instance, replicated in all AWS datacenters?

<comment><USER13> Yeah, it's easy enough to spin up a DB on RDS, but using the blockchain does offload the need to secure the database (and securing infrastructure in general, at least where managing the token is concerned).

There's also no dependency or trust on hexel per se once the coin is created. They can disappear, but the contract/token lives on.

Definitely upside for using Ether, but comes at a price in transaction time and money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What value are you guys actually providing? Everything you listed is incredibly easy to do without your site. How are you planning on making money? A static site could do the majority of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> The most direct answer is that we're providing ease of use and helpful tools. I guess you could argue that it's easy or hard depending on the person. We plan on making money from paid features later on, like automated token distribution hooked into API's, and smart contracts that can easily be hooked up to your token.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All the use cases you mention could be more easily implemented on top of a more mature distributed ledger such as Datomic.

1\. What's to stop a competitor from copying your app feature for feature and implementing their own features faster than you can keep up because they're using established distributed ledger technologies instead of blockchain?

2\. Are there any features you have planned that make use of the one thing that differentiates blockchains from distributed ledgers (decentralization)?

<comment><USER15> To your first point, someone could implement something like Hexel using a distributed ledger, but it would not have the trustless components of tokens that exist on the blockchain.

The first immediate feature of using a blockchain is that token holders do not need to worry about a private distributed ledger shutting down its service. A future feature we have planned is a developer program where anyone can submit smart contracts that do interesting things with tokens. For this to work with a distributed ledger you would need to implement your own public API for interacting with your ledger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hi,

How long have both of you been working on this project?

What was your traction before getting into YC?

I'm most interested in the traction part since there's this misconception that YC does not accept early stage companies. It looks there are a whole lot of companies in the very early stage and I personally take that as a positive sign.

<comment><AUTHOR> In total about 4 months. Before getting into YC we had a an Ethereum developer tools project. It had pretty low traction at that time (a handful of dedicated users, but now many). But we had built other Ethereum projects together before. That developer tools project eventually transformed into Hexel, which is now consumer facing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Congratulations. Couple of questions, hopefully I haven't missed you.

1\. Recent SEC activity: is this a threat to you? I see you have been careful to avoid fundraising in your examples, but other people here have come up with that as a use case in brainstorming.

2\. Did you look at Stellar? It has none of the disadvantages of Ethereum (ie instant confirms and de minimus fees) and was in part purpose built for your kind of project. I know you both have Ethereum backgrounds but was wondering if you'd considered and ruled out alternatives.

Good luck! I'm keen to see a healthy online micropayments ecosystem so I'm supportive of your project, which could become part of that.

</comment><comment><USER22> Given how the SEC is looking into crypto currency, how are you dealing with the potential risk that brings to your business model?

</comment><comment><USER23> Would anybody be interested for the same thing but for regular currencies? I'm making a new one at [https://pointsproject.org](https://pointsproject.org) and could make local ones

</comment><comment><USER24> There area bunch of these services already, so is this YC doing a me too or is there something inherently different?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, totally valid point. The difference I see is that we're focused on functionality that goes beyond selling / trading. I know there are quite a few options for "Do your own ICO" and stuff like that, which is not that interesting. We're deliberately avoiding things like ICO's and trading right now. Our focus is on making tokens usable today, and consistently improving the ease of use for someone that wants to use a token for something real.

<comment><USER25> But you can't avoid trading with a ERC20 token, because they are designed to be tradable. Any exchange can add the token to the supported list, and the users can immediately send the tokens to the exchange and buy and sell them.

Unless these are not really tokens and the "user/owner" can send the tokens without a centralized permission.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, the creator could go trade them on an exchange if they wanted to. But we don't help people do an ICO or encourage it. I do think tokens made on Hexel could gain value, but that would come from making them useful, not starting off with a scammy ICO.

<comment><USER26> Altruistic attitude shall not save you from the idiocy of greed surrounding coins/tokens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send you some (for free!). Either request on Hexel or comment with your Ethereum address.

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f)

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh shit, this might be perfect for a fun idea I had for something I wanted to do for my friends but without charging them money.

But if it's an ERC20 token, don't we need to pay gas to use it? Or does the token run on a chain that you guys control instead of on the Ethereum blockchain?

<comment><AUTHOR> You do have to pay gas because it is on the main chain. We are working on a way to make this free in the future.

<comment><USER27> Speaking of ways to make transactions free for the user, is it possible to run a full node that verifies transactions and have it look at the type of ERC20 token in addition to the amount of gas and choose to always verify those ERC20 tokens that were made with Hexel even though they pay 0 gas?

Rather, I mean, I think that the above would be possible, but would those transactions be accepted by the rest of the network or do transactions need to be verified by more than just the one or few couple of full nodes that you run? I seem to recall something about the execution of every single smart contracts happening on all full nodes in the network but that seems strange (mainly because of how volatile any large scale network of distributed nodes will be in terms of nodes passing in and out or temporarily losing connectivity with the rest of the network) so I think I did not understand correctly how the Ethereum network really works.

Furthermore, if a full node could be run in the fashion I mentioned above then how many smart contract executions would it be able to facilitate per hour? Currently Ethereum is Proof-of-Work, so it would depend on your hashing power I guess. Perhaps the chance of finding a block is so small that you can't realistically run the kind of node that I mentioned? And how about after they switch to Proof-of-Stake, will it be feasible then if not now? How much would you have to stake in order to be able to put through the transactions you wanted?

<comment><USER28> \- I seem to recall something about the execution of every single smart contracts happening on all full nodes in the network but that seems strange

Your understanding is correct. All code runs on all nodes. That's why it costs $0.50 or so every time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hi, just a general question for tokens that you might be able to answer: let's say I create a token and I want to programmatically give those tokens to people as a reward. Think of it something like "kudos" so let's say I'm at work and I want to give my coworker a thank you and for that, as a token of my gratitude, I want to send them one of my tokens. Is this do-able at all or am I just thinking of this the wrong way?

One more question: since these tokens are created on ETH, does this mean for each transaction related to a token, I will need to pay gas each time I want to transact?

<comment><USER30> You could just make a Google Sheet called "My Friend Tokens", make two columns "name" and "amount", and put each friend on a row. Then enter your rewards there and share the sheet in read-only mode with everyone.

What's the actual difference between this and an Ethereum token? Except you don't need to pay for the Google Sheet, of course.

<comment><USER31> This made me laugh. In case it's a serious question: the excel sheet doesn't transfer ownership of the tokens to the friend. It would be like writing it down in my notebook.

<comment><USER30> What does ownership mean in this context? There's nothing that the friend can do with those tokens. Transferring them to someone else doesn't make any sense either.

So how is having a useless token balance recorded on Ethereum any different from having one recorded on a Google Sheet?

<comment><USER32> Zasssssssssssss! In his mouth. You Win.

And your opinion is my opinion. It's not a good idea because it is not free.

You could create anything worthless that would mean "the token", and that would be enough.

You could use PGP keys if you want it to be private and to run.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Created a coin! We've been toying around with the idea of crowd-sourcing a lot of mapping (for augmented reality) and could use the ETH network as the basic infrastructure to make it happen.

The details around pricing + scarcity mechanics connecting to physical spaces still need to be worked out, but the idea is promising. This would be a nice abstraction once there is an API where we could hook into!

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef- dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b7927...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/aab493ef- dbef-4d78-bb3a-9b79273c8ed6)

</comment><comment><USER34> This is very very rad. Good work folks! Less crypto scamming and more crypto fun is great.

Jean

</comment><comment><USER35> Hi i'm founder of [https://bitbank.nz](https://bitbank.nz) a cryptocurrency forecasting platform, pre ICO.

I think more things supporting ICO's would be great e.g. like how waves has a decentralized exchange so that when you create a token on waves you can immediately monetize it.

I suppose theres a decentralised exchange for ERC20 tokens somewhere, but something that smoothes the entire end to end ICO process would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER10> Trying to check your app out, I got "Our security policy blocks MetaMask in Firefox. Please try Chrome, Brave, or Opera."

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's pretty unfortunate. We have a CSP in place to keep our site secure, but Firefox enforces it differently than other browsers, which prevents MetaMask from working. To make it work we would have to relax our CSP to the point where it wasn't really secure at all, so for now we don't support FireFox. We put a bounty on Gitcoin for someone to fix it.

<comment><USER36> If the user agent shows that the browser is Firefox, serve a relaxed csp policy, and a large warning banner explaining what you just explained.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I like the idea of ease of use for creating a token . But, if I sign up for your service what do you anticipate the cost of it will be per month / year for this?

Also, what are the smart contracts you use or security features that you have and can it be audited or is it a trade secret ?

Have you looked at other private ledger technologies and what do you think of those ?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is no cost per month / year for the existing functionality, it's all free. The cost later on will be for opt-in features.

Right now we have a single token contract that has been audited. We also have a few other smart contracts in the works, to be used with your token.

By private ledger, do you mean private blockchains? I've always been less interested in those. Part of the fun in blockchains is the public nature of them, and how they enable transparency and interaction between everyone. To me, private blockchains seem like they should just be databases in most cases. But I'm not an expert in that area by any means.

<comment><USER37> More like things like hyperledger [https://www.hyperledger.org/](https://www.hyperledger.org/) . Maybe a better term I should use is permissioned ledger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> My favorite is the HN Coin.

> I created a Hacker News token. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send > you some (for free!).

[https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e7...](https://www.onhexel.com/token/9ef7aaf7-82b2-470f-a84d-e392e748d28f)

</comment><comment><USER39> Hi John & Marcus. We are interested in this. Can the coins we make be traded on an exchange?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, they are pretty standard ERC-20 tokens, so they technically can be traded on an exchange. However, right now all of the coins have pretty low volume, so most exchanges probably wouldn't list them. A decentralized exchange built on 0x would work though!

<comment><USER40> It was my impression that any coin could be listed on certain exchanges if you pay the fee to do so. Depending on the exchange it could range from 50k to 1 million USD just to be added.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's usually about right for most exchanges. But if your coin isn't popular enough, they usually will not add it.

However, there is a protocol for decentralized exchanged called 0x. Any tokens on Ethereum can be traded on this protocol, using websites like Radar Relay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Congratulations on your launch! Could you please compare your project to OST? For example, I just used their new kit to launch an ERC20 based token: [https://kit.ost.com/](https://kit.ost.com/)

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER42> Browsing to that page I notice my browser is pinging mainnet.infura.io over and over. Is infura.io the same company as hexel, do you have a formal partnership with them, or are you just piggy-backing their API without proxying it?

<comment><USER15> Infura is a service that allows you to make calls to the Ethereum blockchain. We use it to get the current state of your token contract.

<comment><USER43> Why do you use infura and not your own node?

<comment><USER15> For now we're using Infura for speed of development. We plan to use our own node in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Sounds like a great project.

I notice that the pricing model currently only features a free option. Wondering if you might be able to tell us more about the business model long term?

Many thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> We're going to keep developing features that make tokens easier to use, especially at a larger scale. We'll charge for premium features later down the road, but those features aren't set in stone yet. We have a few things planned already, things like automated token distribution (without needing MetaMask) and smart contract integrations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> neat! this is such a great idea. I think there was someone else trying this as well but your setup is a lot more streamlined for non-techies out there.

</comment><comment><USER46> This is an interesting take on the BaaS market. So this does something to similar to, for example, Chain (chain.com), but for non-technical people?

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of. I don't know that much about Chain, but it seems like they are building private blockchain infrastructure for payments. Our tokens can obviously be used for payments, but the angle right now is not that this is faster and easier (because at this point in time, it's not). It's more that this lets people explore new concepts with tokens, and we give non-technical people the tools to try those concepts out. And also make it fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Scammers on HN now... To be expected I suppose.

Human greed is matched only by human gullibility.

</comment><comment><USER48> But do we need that, though?

</comment><comment><USER49> Pyramids for everyone!

</comment><comment><USER50> awesome! do you want hire another engineer?

</comment><comment><USER51> great product!!!

</comment><comment><USER52> Given that your goal is to make toys, the tradeoffs of cryptocurrencies are unacceptable. The whole architecture of cryptocurrencies is based around extreme security and trust. Who needs that level of security for a toy? Why would I tolerate high fees, slow transactions, and a clunky user experience if the token isn't worth anything? Why would I use a globally-distributed power- guzzling network of thousands of GPUs to make something as silly as TallCoin? This has all the downside of cryptocurrencies with none of the upside.

Databases aren't trendy, but they'd solve the same problem better with less waste.

</comment><comment><USER9> Once we create the token, do we have full control of the Ethereum wallet from which it is issued?

<comment><USER15> You will have full control of the token contract from the ETH address that you used to create the token.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> This is super cool. Love your unique take on making crypto useful right now and focusing on fun & community (rather than ICO hype).</comment>


How to bypass Zeus Trojan's self protection mechanism - <AUTHOR> http://int0xcc.svbtle.com/how-to-bypass-zeus-trojans-self-protection-mechanism

<comment><USER2> How people come up with such nice writeup? Is that by experience or by reading books? Just out of Curiosity, I'm loving it..

Amazing Knowledge it is, Amazing Article.

<comment><USER3> This is standard level reverse engineering, nothing too advanced. So, if this is a "tutorial" then it's for beginners, though the author uses terms like "unpacking", "fixing the dump", "OEP" without further explanation. Anyway, nice work.

<comment><USER2> I never really had an idea about reverse engineering, seems like it is a great subject to dive into.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it that this binary has all the symbols in it still? All of these trojan functions can't be Windows API calls.

<comment><USER5> Those function names are almost certainly set in IDA by the reverse engineer (I think it's "n" to rename a function).

<comment><USER4> Yes, exactly, so if that is the case then hasn't the author skipped over the most important part about the work. That being the process they went through to identify each of these functions purpose? aka: the actual RCE work?

This is kind of a pet peeve of mine with many RCE articles. They always seem to leave out the difficult parts. In that respect I view most of them as bragging rather than providing much in the way of a useful tutorial or learning material.

<comment><USER5> I'm assuming you're thinking about the functions that are named "DecodeRc4Key" and "XorDecode" and the like? I guess a lot of it is just reading the code (the disassembly, or the pseudo-C if your tool of choice can produce that), and possibly compare it mentally against things you've seen before, and/or to see how the data flows, to determine its purpose?

Also, in this article, it's more interesting to be learning about the overall structure of the malware piece, which algorithms are employed, and a small bonus about the c&c at the end. The author skips the usually boring details for us and presents a summary of his findings (xor, rc4, etc).

I'm sure there are other articles around that focus more on the low level mundane RCE work of actually identifying each subroutine, but that's not what this article is focused on. In fact, going further in the details about that here would have been a distraction, I think. On that note I agree the "...for dummies" headline is a bit of a stretch, though :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great stuff. Finally something that makes it worthwhile to take apart those trojans.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is some very impressive work. Good job!

</comment><comment><USER8> Tinsey nitpick: It's Spammers. There is no apostrophe before the plural 's'. The graphic has it correct.

Sorry, that bothers me :-)

The rest of the article was fascinating.

<comment><USER9> I guess the nusances of the ten major languages spoken in the author's homeland of Kasmhir are as well developed and that you can point out minor nitpicks in the offical Kashmiri language of Urdu.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hosted forum with SSO? - <AUTHOR>

I've got a community site that I built in Rails, and there's a forum kind of tacked on. It's really crappy and I hate supporting it, but some of the users really like it.  Plus, it's not really core to what we do.
I'd like to just sign up for some kind of hosted solution that I redirect/CNAME a subdomain to.  The only sticking point is that I really want single-sign-on (SSO), so that my users don't have to register new accounts or anything.  Preferrably, I would just construct a link that has their user id, username, and userpic URL all hashed together into some parameter that I append to a special link.  Then, when they go to the forums from my site, they're logged in automatically.
(Note: tenderapp.com does this for a ticketing system, and I like it a lot)
Any YC companies that do this?  Anything else people can recommend? <comment><USER2> Have you considered using OpenID, Facebook Connect, or both? Then you can support two-click account creation for anyone with a Yahoo, Google, MSN, or Facebook account. Check out Zoho and Plaxo's sign-up process for an example.

Also, HN uses Clickpass, which is an OpenID identity provider.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a good idea, but now that I've seen how well SSO can work with my site's existing user accounts, I'm hooked.

<comment><USER2> Plaxo ran a trial using OpenID identifier-select and the OAuth Hybrid extension. They had a 92% on-boarding rate for users, which blew away expectations: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/comcast_property_sees_9...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/comcast_property_sees_92_success_rate_openid.php)

I'd imagine that FB Connect sees similar numbers.</comment></comment></comment>


Delicious earnt $7k (total) from premium accounts - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/871104375716020226 <comment><AUTHOR> Whilst spending $40k per month on AWS hosting:

[https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/871113325089882112](https://twitter.com/pinboard/status/871113325089882112)</comment>


Terence Tao: the Mozart of maths - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/good-weekend/terence-tao-the-mozart-of-maths-20150306-13fwcv.html <comment><USER2> FYI:

The publication [1] that improved on the MRI results was the famous paper that layed out the foundation of the what is called "Compressed sampling" / "Compressive sensing". This is the main field of research for Signal Processing folks since around 2006. (Before it was mostly "just" Wavelets for a few decades).

In MRI you sample in the frequency domain (FFT) and compressive sensing can be used since MRI signals (which are structured signals) are sparse in that domain.

[1] Stable signal recovery from incomplete and inaccurate measurements

<comment><USER3> [1] [http://statweb.stanford.edu/~candes/papers/StableRecovery.pd...](http://statweb.stanford.edu/~candes/papers/StableRecovery.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I didn't realize professors could make so much money:

[http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state- pay/#req...](http://www.sacbee.com/site-services/databases/state- pay/#req=employment%2Flist%2Fsafename%3Dterence%2520chishen%2520tao%2Fdepartment%3DUC%2520Los%2520Angeles)

<comment><USER5> There is a general consensus that Terrence Tao is on a whole other level than any other mathematician alive. Compared to the average salary of baseball, basketball, football and soccer players, his salary is pathetically low.

<comment><USER6> Oh, it may be that those math professors considered the best will have their salaries approach those of sport stars while median pay for those who teach classes continues to drop.

This seems like part of the general trend to value the "rock stars" of every field while diminishing the field in general. Could mathematics get by with just the fifty or however many people there are now who are "truly on the next level" (or whatever is said). Perhaps when colleges have replaced with moocs (an appropriate name if you know rpgs).

<comment><USER7> > This seems like part of the general trend to value the "rock stars" of every > field while diminishing the field in general.

This is precisely the topic of Tyler Cowen's _Average is Over_ [0]:

> Cowen forecasts that modern economies are delaminating into two groups: a > small minority of highly educated and capable of working collaboratively > with automated systems will become a wealthy aristocracy; the vast majority > will earn little or nothing, surviving on low-priced goods created by the > first group, living in shantytowns working with highly automated production > systems.

Cowen's blog, _Marginal Revolution_ [1], is also worth a read.

0: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average_is_Over)

1: [http://marginalrevolution.com/](http://marginalrevolution.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Terence Tao is a great mathematician - accepted. But I wish journalists would use a fraction of the space they use for hyping Terence Tao to write about the mathematics he does.

<comment><USER9> It would be inaccessible to most. But the stories about the man can be enjoyed by everyone.

<comment><USER8> Then the writer should give explanations to make it more accessible.

<comment><USER10> I suggest you give that a try. You will find it nearly impossible, stretching analogies into meaninglessness and then stacking them atop each other.

<comment><USER8> In some sense I did (not Fields-medal level, but graduate math level) some years ago. The problem is not that it is impossible or that one needs stretched analogies etc., but that the mass is simply doesn't like learning about concepts that are foreign to them etc.

Or to explain it in different terms: When one asks me, what I'm doing as a mathematician (in research): When the other person works in a related area I can give a short, concise explanation that they will understand. On the other hand, if the counterpart hasn't that deep knowledge, I have to give longer explanations that are understandable for their level of knowledge. But this is not what they want to hear (and I have not yet found out, what they want to hear). For me it's quite illogical to ask what I'm doing research about, if they don't even want to hear the answer...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting to read up about what terry himself has to say on the subject. [https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one- have-t...](https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/does-one-have-to-be-a- genius-to-do-maths/)

The comments section is particularly interesting in which a reader asks Terry about the genius of Ramanujan.

<comment><USER12> "Does one have to be a genius to do maths?"

The question is vague. What is a genius? and what is "doing maths"? Are we talking about solving a simple linear differential equation, or getting a professor position in a reputable institution? or getting a field medal?

In any case, it seems to me that Tao is giving the politically correct answer, that is everybody can do anything provided they work hard enough. I wonder if he honestly believes what he's saying.

It may be pleasant to hear, but I'm convinced it's far from the truth. Some people are naturally much much more math inclined than others and no amount of extra work is going to make up for the difference in talent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Related conversation about his PhD General Exam at Princeton, which I believe he took when he was 19:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2771031)

A direct link to the notes:

[http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence](http://web.math.princeton.edu/generals/tao_terence)

</comment><comment><USER14> In the 5 minute interview video, he mentions that the most exciting uses for math are learned in college and that grade school math is very dry because the students don't see what it can be used for. However, the article says that his focus is on pure math, which doesn't necessarily lend itself immediately to real world application.

I'm wondering what his opinion is on how to encourage a love for studying abstract/pure math in spite of not seeing how it can be applied immediately.

</comment><comment><USER15> Reading about guys as smart as Terence Tao makes me realize just how intellectually mediocre I am.

<comment><USER16> On a similar note, how should one feel when reading/ learning about people like this?

I mean, on one hand, it's rather inspiring to read about the amazing thing that another human is achieving. On the other hand, I can't help but feel ... helplessness, like whatever I do, it doesn't really matter (add on with the guilt of squandering my time, and wondering if I could ever have been that good).

When I was younger and have less (or no) ambitions, it was easy to brush off everytime a story like this comes up: well, they're genius, and ... so what? But interestingly, since I've learned that I might be able to do more than I thought I could, everytime I read a story like this, I just feel extremely mediocre, even pathetic of myself.

<comment><USER17> I've been dealing with this kind of existential anxiety myself lately. Nothing anyone does matters on a universal scale, and I realized that was only painful because I had expectations for myself that were incongruent with reality. It's okay to not be a genius or contribute something significant, you only need to look for happiness and stability, which could be fading into obscurity and enjoying your time with friends and family. Personally, the times when I feel most relaxed are the times when I am most creative and do some of my best work anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My experience was similar to his in one respect, specifically the quote that suggests he first had a fairly normal life when he went to grad school at age 17. I left home for the first time to go to college at age 16, specifically graduate school in mathematics at Harvard. In retrospect, it seems to have been a fairly normal experience in leaving home and going to college.

It helped me that I was friends with Ran Donagi (started in my department at age 17, had the office next to mine, and accepted my invitation to be my roommate), and that Ofer Gabber (started grad school at 16) was around in the next dorm room to the right, being even more awkward than I was. (At least I didn't have a language barrier ...)

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting article. The information quoted in the last paragraph contains an error. It seems that Adam Spencer confused a primality test for a factorization algorithm. There IS an efficient test for primality, the AKS- test, see [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AKS_primality_test) and [http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v...](http://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v6.pdf)

<comment><USER19> And that's a pretty cool-mindblowing idea -- we can "efficiently" prove that a number is composite, while still having no idea what its factors are!

<comment><USER20> It's common in math to get theorems that prove existence without giving any explicit examples (nonconstructive proofs). A big research area is coming up with efficient ways to construct such examples.

<comment><USER19> Definitely true, but these things are of a different "kind" (in my opinion). Often such a proof implies, for instance, a really inefficient algorithm, such as "try all the random possibilities and with positive probability such an example exists. They also tend to have a flavor of a somewhat complicated object whose existence you are proving, and they don't tend to be phrased as algorithms (especially not efficient ones).

Here the primality test algorithm is an efficient algorithm, and doesn't seem natural to view as an existence/nonexistence proof of an object, in the same way. Instead it's exploiting the number-theoretic properties of primality in a weird way. Hope that makes sense, but anyway just trying to explain my intuition for why this is very different from the phenomenon you mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This top-rated story is kinda low even for "Hacker News". Written in the ritual heroic allegory style. A puff-piece with supposed facts about some dude's childhood and what people think about him, patronizing even his own opinions as modesty-only-rivalled-by-his-genius.

I'd at least understand such articles about Sophie Germain or Alexander Grothendieck, who achieved "genius" despite not being coddled quite so much by every superficial social system arbitrarily impressed by early child- development timelines. For example, Germain hacked the system as a child: _" When night came, [her parents] would deny her warm clothes and a fire for her bedroom to try to keep her from studying, but after they left she would take out candles, wrap herself in quilts and do mathematics."_

Then, _" She used the name of a former student Monsieur Antoine-August Le Blanc, 'fearing,' as she later explained to Gauss, 'the ridicule attached to a female scientist.'"_

Social engineering? One thing hackers do.

As for Tao as a child wanting something in shape of arabic numerals, or as an adult imagining himself as some mathematical transform? His wife giving up _" paid employment to manage the household, shield Tao from mundane matters and buy the polo shirts he wears"_? Seems less hackerish. If Tao has done anything beyond what society shaped him to do, straying from the path he was given in an intensely hierarchical society, I don't recall seeing it in this article.

<comment><USER19> I thought it was an interesting/fine article. If you want to submit articles about other people to HN, go for it (your anecdotes sound interesting). But there's no reason that every interesting person has to fit some "hacker" archetype you seem to have in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is a bit nitpicky, but I was annoyed with the shifting between using "math" and "maths" in the article - it's annoying enough to see "maths" used, having formerly been in the academic math world, but to waffle between the two is just confusing.

<comment><USER23> > _it 's annoying enough to see "maths" used_

it's the standard shorthand for "mathematics" that's used in Australia. We don't use the term "math".

<comment><USER24> More specifically: the prose written by the journalist uses "maths", because that's the standard spelling in Australia.

Every example of "math" appears in a quote, so they are being reproduced verbatim.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if China has captured his DNA and made 50 or 100 clones.</comment>


The mid-Victorian diet was a mini golden age of nutrition - <AUTHOR> https://health.spectator.co.uk/forget-paleo-go-mid-victorian-its-the-healthiest-diet-youve-never-heard-of/ <comment><USER2> _Our study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (here, here, and here) shows that the majority of the Victorian urban poor consumed diets which were limited, but contained extremely high nutrient density. Bread could be expensive but onions, watercress, cabbage, and fruit like apples and cherries were all cheap and did not need to be carefully budgeted for._

Show me a grocery store where fresh watercress and cherries are cheaper than some artificial crap loaded with added sugar, sodium, and preservatives, and people will start to eat healthier.

<comment><USER3> My local grocery store (Berkeley Bowl) is very expensive, on par with Whole Foods -- however their produce department is shockingly cheap. They even have bags of bruised food that go for 99c and contain a gallon-sized bag of random fruits or veggies -- and this is at the super expensive local grocer.

Cheap, good food is easy to find. The problem isn't in the pricing of watercress and cherries, it's that people don't see those as complete meals and don't want to go through the effort to cook for themselves. Eating poorly isn't done because it's cheaper, it's done because it's easier.

<comment><USER4> Easier _is_ cheaper. Don't discount the value of the labor required to prepare all that produce and bring it to the table.

<comment><USER5> Not just labor -- expertise. Also, do you have access to fully furnished kitchen? Living out of a car or in a marginal housing situation where a kitchen isn't available (or you've got a microwave/hotplate and fridge) changes some of the cooking.

These considerations aren't conclusive, and I'm sure there are people who find a way to overcome them, and possibly we could use resources that help others to do so.

But on HN of all places people should understand the power of marginal gains. And marginal obstacles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd never heard of this, but it makes sense: satisfying fruits and vegetables (artichokes, onions, beets, apples, cherries), some bread (whole-grain, I'd guess), a little meat. Doubtless tea, too, and a little chocolate, but minimal sugar. This is definitely a diet to keep in mind!

The article's point on life expectancies, also, is timeless. In almost any era, if you make it to 5 years old, you'll make it to 70. (This was as true in the Middle Ages as in the mid-Victorian period.) When we see life expectancies of 30 or 40 years, it's a sign that most people didn't make it to 5...

<comment><USER7> Correction: a lot of meat. The diet was basically animal protein and vegetables. In their linked studies, the authors make it clear that offal in particular was consumed far more heavily than today. I guess it was cheaper than skeletal muscle meat.

<comment><USER8> Offal not only was, but is cheaper than skeletal meat.

Hearts, for example, are good meat. You can get them for 1$ per pound. Tastes very similar to normal muscle, but it's darker.

Which is why they're always sold out after 11 am..

<comment><USER9> Yeah, we used to get chicken livers at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Funny, I'd forgotten about that until now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> " _A return to mid-Victorian eating habits is not feasible, given their high calorie intake and our low-energy lifestyles. This would exacerbate our already alarming rates of overweight and obesity, problems which were uncommon and mostly confined to the urban upper middle classes in the mid-Victorian period but which have become major public health concerns today. Instead, we recommend that the modern diet be re-engineered, integrating the micro- and phytonutritional elements of the mid-Victorian 3500–4000 calorie /day diet into the modern 2200 calorie/day diet. [...] The realities of a need to promote an intake of nutrients at a level not naturally available in today's 2200 calorie/day diet does require the vexed issue of food fortification and supplements to be included in strategic public health policy formation. Inevitably, this also means that it will have to be reflected in the regulatory sphere._"[1]

Possible translation: If you're going to follow a Victorian diet, you need to get lower- and middle-class Victorian amounts of exercise: enough to support a 3500-4000 calorie/day diet.

Me, I'm personally wondering if the true bottom-line here is that you could skip the whole diet thing and get the health benefits purely from a high- exercise lifestyle? (A _very_ high-exercise lifestyle.)

[1] "An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part three: Victorian consumption patterns and their health benefits". [[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/)].

<comment><USER11> TFA seems to be fingering carbs and sugar as the key issue, rather than total calories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you'd like to know what the daily life of mid-Victorian poor people was like in excruciating detail, check out "London Labour and the London Poor" by Henry Mayhew:

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

A major point of interest is that the oceans had not yet been overfished, so fresh fish was an abundant and extremely cheap source of protein that formed a major constituent of most poor people's diet at the time.

<comment><USER13> yes. and i suspect that one must pay more today for meat from animals that are comparable to those in Victorian times.

our cows, pigs and chickens are fed differently than they were back then. and it's not just a matter of feed quality. it's a matter of new ingredients (e.g. some chickens are fed small amounts of arsenic to change their flesh color and as an antibiotic for certain diseases. and who knows what the hell goes into farmed fresh water fish - it's literally animal sewage and garbage on some farms in certain parts of the world.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I could imagine choosing to describe one's diet as Mid-Victorian solely for the bonus points it would earn one at the next Steampunk meetup.

</comment><comment><USER15> >"In the 1870s Victorian health was challenged by cheap sugar and the first generation of mass-processed high-salt and high-sugar foods. This dragged urban health and life expectancy to a nadir around 1900 — a date that consequently provides a highly misleading baseline. (The trend was even reflected in people's height. The minimum height for infantry was lowered from 5ft 6in to 5ft 3in, then later to 5ft, in just two decades.)"

High salt and high sugar led to a shrinking height. Could this be applied to how the average height is rising in the US?

<comment><USER16> > The minimum height for infantry was lowered from 5ft 6in to 5ft 3in, then > later to 5ft, in just two decades.

I suspect this has way more to do with WWI than cheap sugar.

<comment><USER17> The problems in recruiting healthy men were seen for the Boer Wars, long before WWI.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The comments on the article are quire interesting, at least to me, as they show a community that is very confident (even when they disagree with each other) about broad food "right-ness".

</comment><comment><USER19> The English show "The Supersizer" did a great take on the Victorian diet. Too bad that it is not on their youtube channel because it is on many other youtube channels.

</comment><comment><USER20> _Forget paleo, go mid-Victorian

[…]

Bread could be expensive but onions, watercress, cabbage, and fruit like apples and cherries were all cheap and did not need to be carefully budgeted for. Beetroot was eaten all year round; Jerusalem artichokes were often home- grown. Fish such as herrings and meat in some form (scraps, chops and even joints) were common too._

So, a diet with little to no bread that's focused on vegetables and meat (including fish)—sounds pretty paleo to me.

</comment><comment><USER10> Call me cynically suspicious, but reading the related articles makes me think this is intended to indirectly support the supplement industry.

" _[To provide remedies for the appalling state of our health,] Look, instead, to the food and beverage industries, and to a lesser extent the supplement companies, who may well step up to the plate with better designed foods and nutritional programmes once the currently profoundly counter-productive regulatory system has been re-drafted._ "[1]

Key parts of the argument seem to be that the Victorian diet was better, not necessarily because of the types of foods, but because of the large amounts of micro- and phytonutritional elements ingested. It's not possible to make use of the massive caloric intake today, so...pills.

[1] How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died. Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham. [[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/)].

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> In my opinion, the interesting thing about the article is not the diet, it is the claim that if you remove death during and shortly after childbirth, mid- Victorian era life expectancy was about the same as ours now. If true, that's a startling counterpoint to the prevailing narrative of modern medicine's triumph.

<comment><USER21> Quality of life should be considered as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is everyone on this thread so obsessed with protein? If there's anything most western diets have a surplus of compared to traditional Asian or African diets, it's protein. Unless you're a vegan who likes junk food over whole foods, it shouldn't be a problem.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm sorry but what in the article actually makes a solid body of evidence in support of its thesis?

<comment><USER24> It may be worth pointing out that this is an article intended for a broad audience, not a scholarly work on PubMed.

But I do agree that providing some links to actual data, at the end, would have been useful.

<comment><USER7> The start of paragraph six provides three links to related studies.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Clight, small C linux user daemon to turn webcam into light sensor - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/FedeDP/Clight <comment><AUTHOR> I am glad to present you all my latest project: clight.

Clight will set your screen backlight level by capturing frames from webcam and computing ambient brightness; it can manage your screen gamma temperature too. It uses geoclue2 to retrieve user location, and will compute sunrise/sunset times to set gamma.

It depends on a Bus interface i developed together with it, Clightd. Clightd is responsible of setting/getting screen brightness, capture frames from webcam and returning their average brightness, and setting/getting gamma. As it uses libudev to get/set backlight/get video device, it is much less prone to mistakes than "fopen/fscanf/fprintf", and safer.

Both softwares are distributed with a GPL license.

For more informations, please refer to both projects READMEs. I hope someone will find them interesting and useful!

<comment><USER2> Neat project! I might just start using this.

One thing - does clight support ICC color profiles? My screen is harshly blue without the correct profile applied. Redshift normally simply overrides your profile; it recently added support for a "preserve" option, which applies the desired color temperature as a function of the current profile, but unfortunately this makes the transform relative, and also not symmetrical. Turning the temp down by 1000K and then up by 1000K causes a loss in brightness.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does not, i'm sorry. Let me know if it feels better with clight compared to redshift though; may be different algorithms lead to different (hopefully better) results!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a beautiful thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I hope someone noticed the "see light" pun!</comment></comment>


Secret TPP Talks Continue as the Deal Grows More Controversial - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/07/secret-tpp-talks-continue-hawaii-deal-grows-more-controversial <comment><USER2> For a harbinger of what's to come, look into what's happening in Romania with their Rosia Montana gold mine.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-11/paulson- ba...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-09-11/paulson-backed- gabriel-threatens-4-billion-of-claims-in-romania) [http://www.miningfacts.org/Blog/Mining-News/Canadian- Miner-P...](http://www.miningfacts.org/Blog/Mining-News/Canadian-Miner- Prepared-to-Lose-$1-5-Billion-Investment/)

Basically a Canadian company will most likely sue the Romanian government for refusing to allow an open pit gold mine. They won't do this in a Romanian court.

Just like we saw with Greece, sovereign nations are no longer all that sovereign. Treaties like TPP, and TTIP will further remove decision making capabilities from sovereign states. It's kinda crazy.

<comment><USER3> My understanding of this case is that the mining company signed a contract with the government for development of this mining project, and there is now the possibility that the parliament will at the eleventh hour break the terms of the agreement. I don't see why the government should be exempt from making restitution in cases where it breaks contracts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To get the viewpoint of people championing this agreement, I recommend reading this article by the Economist[1] where they say "for all its flaws, the biggest trade deal in years is good news for the world"

[1] - [http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21659716...](http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and- economics/21659716-all-its-flaws-biggest-trade-deal-years-good-news-world)

For the record, I think the TPP is pernicious for all the reasons pointed out by the EFF.

<comment><USER5> I'm confused by this statement in the article you linked, and I've heard it before:

> the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), is the most important free-trade > agreement in years

How does "29 chapters of dense rules and hundreds of tariff lines " == "free trade"? Free trade is meant to be open, without restriction, and free. Some of the conditions being reported are anything but.

<comment><USER6> It's lowering barriers to trade, making it easier for goods made in one country to be sold in another. One way it does that is by harmonizing regulations, so you don't need to make different versions for different countries, or pay for lawyers to explain compliance laws separately for each country.

<comment><USER7> Only part of that results in lower barriers to trade. Mostly that reads like "follow these rules, update your processes and factories to these other specifications" \- significant barriers themselves, just upstream from the actual trade.

More significant is that there is little transparency and a, seemingly, active avoidance of public discourse about the rule-setting. The rule-setting is where the power lies, and that's what most of the objection is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article [1] linked from the OP contains the following fact: the pro-TPP lobby spent _$135 million_ in the second quarter of 2015.

I mean, I know lobbying costs money, but where can that much money possibly go?

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/us-trade-tpp- lobby...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/07/23/us-trade-tpp-lobbying- idUSKCN0PX2JO20150723)

<comment><USER9> Read the Reuters article carefully: that's all the money spent by all the members of the "US Business Coalition for TPP" on _all lobbying_ , it's in the same order of magnitude as it was prior to TPP, and even the surge in spending now isn't all TPP. For instance, Boeing doubled their lobbying --- to lobby against the proposed elimination of the Export-Import Bank.

<comment><USER8> Sure, but even if it's not all TPP related - that is a truckload of money. I have no idea what you even spend that amount of money on - it would buy a lot of champagne and hookers for representatives.

<comment><USER9> Not only is it not all TPP related, it is _mostly not_ TPP related. They cited the aggregate lobbying of all the (gigantic) members of a trade coalition, and that statistic is misleading.

The "champagne and hookers" snark is silly. Where do hundreds of millions of dollars in lobbying fees go? Approximately the same place as the hundreds of millions of dollars of donations to giant institutional charities go:

* Salaries for formal employees of the organization

* Contractor fees for copywriting, advertising, event planning, legal

* Giant advertising and promotional campaigns

* Fundraising

* Direct political donations

* PAC donations

Just replace "food banks" and "medical care" with "report writing" and you're close.

Lobbying isn't a great thing, and it interacts very badly with PACs, but it certainly isn't millions of dollars in strippers. Mostly, it's a scam to skim money off the political process and into the pockets of lobbyists and their firms.

<comment><USER10> Slight correction: lobbying spending numbers do not include donations to candidates or PACs. Federal law prohibts organizations from giving money to either.

Organizations can pay the expenses for a "captive" PAC (usually in the form of hosting it within their headquarters with all the costs that implies), but that spending is also excluded from reported lobbying numbers.

Other than that, you are spot on. Once people realize that lobbying expenditures include salaries and media buys, it's not hard to see how the total gets into many millions of dollars.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands Every time I hear about an awesome "free trade agreement", I need to look no further than the disastrous NAFTA agreement:

 _" Such outcomes include a staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada and the related loss of 1 million net U.S. jobs under NAFTA, growing income inequality, displacement of more than one million Mexican campesino farmers and a doubling of desperate immigration from Mexico, and more than $360 million paid to corporations after "investor-state" tribunal attacks on, and rollbacks of, domestic public interest policies."_

and

 _" For instance, we track the specific promises made by U.S. corporations like GE, Chrysler and Caterpillar to create specific numbers of American jobs if NAFTA was approved, and reveal government data showing that instead, they fired U.S. workers and moved operations to Mexico."_

and

 _" The data also show how post-NAFTA trade and investment trends have contributed to middle-class pay cuts, which in turn contributed to growing income inequality;"_

source: [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta- at-20-one-m...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lori-wallach/nafta-at-20-one- million-u_b_4550207.html)

This too was being touted as a great free trade agreement for the US and its economy and the exact opposite happened. I can only assume the outcome for the TPP will be similar.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well here goes my tiny store of karma points but as a contrarian I can't resist going against the comfortable consensus that the TPP and TIPP (which is of more relevance to me as a European) are evil and sinister.

Some observations:

These negotiations (at least the TTIP ones) are not being conducted by cigar chomping cartoon evil tycoons. A friend I know is involved and the guy is a very modestly paid civil servant. It's mostly boring and technical bureacratic work.

There are very good reasons to conduct discussions like this in private. Despite the impression the EFF article gives, the biggest losers will be commercial special interests not consumers. Consumers don't form groups to spend millions to lobby politicians to enact laws blocking the import of foreign goods and services - these laws and regulations were campaigned for and paid for by politically connected local commercial interests. The secrecy is required to prevent these special interests from using their power to derail the negotiations. Consider what would happen if public minutes were published while say discussing the US bio-ethenol subsidies? Massive political pressure would be exerted on the US negotiating team from the corn producing states effectively making negotiation impossible. Other countries party to the discussion would face the same impossible pressures.

Finally I don't believe that the ISDS is some evil anti-democratic instrument to allow corporations to subvert the local laws. In fact most countries have had similar instruments for decades as part of bilateral deals. The sole purpose is to prevent governments specifically targetting foreign companies with extra rules while not applying the same restrictions on politically connected local enterprises. I believe an individual should be able to defend themselves from capricious government behavior through the legal system. I don't see why businesses shouldn't have similar recourse.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why this needs to be done as one giant agreement seems crazy...

A relevant example where this could be a good thing; I'd love for tech businesses in London to be as easy to invest in for Silicon Valley investors as local tech companies - this would be amazing for investors, London startup scene etc. - maybe it would require a special sort of company and also an easy way to move a company to CA if needed.

There are loads of things in TTIP to hate but the above example would be a better use of these bureaucrats time and something that would be easy to pass and help lots of businesses grow!

<comment><USER13> > Why this needs to be done as one giant agreement seems crazy...

If you want to circumvent debate and controversy, get all your buddies together and write up an omnibus agreement or bill. Bundling different ideas together makes it hard to talk about it, let alone debate it.

<comment><USER12> I go back and forward on this; is it really this brazen or do the people crafting TTIP and TPP really believe it'll make the world better. There must be some involved who think it'll create jobs and money for everyone.

Maybe I'm just being overly optimistic - it certainly does look like what you have said.

<comment><USER14> Obviously the people involved think it will make the world better for _some_ people.

<comment><USER12> I suppose it comes back to this crazy religion (Ayn Rand et. al.) that looking after yourself at the expense of others is the only way to make the world stable. It's very convenient for people who are being selfish or making things worse to agree with such crackpot ideas.

<comment><USER12> Interesting down voting here, any reasons you care to give as to why you disagree? I think the above is a pretty common belief from economics, right wing thinking and Ayn Rand amoungst others.

Here is a reference: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_egoism)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Planet money had a fascinating podcast on how trade deals are made with the example of NAFTA. [http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/26/417851577/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/06/26/417851577/episode-635-trade- deal-confidential)

<comment><USER16> I came here to link it as well. It really explained to me why these negotiations are secret, something that seemed a little sinister to me at first glance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A perspective from New Zealand... [https://dimpost.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/nuanced/](https://dimpost.wordpress.com/2015/07/29/nuanced/)

</comment><comment><USER18> I don't think current system (with fast track) is conductive for any partial fixing. TPP should be scraped completely and USTR should taste their own medicine. They don't want open negotiations and democratic oversight? They shouldn't get any agreement altogether.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can somebody ELI5 the whole TPP thing? As an European should I be concerned? Does it matter only to countries involved?

<comment><USER20> The TPP is a wholesome beneficial legislation, orchestrated by businesses around the world to ensure their continued profits and ownership of capital creation, such as copyright (it will be harder to share content online without paying for it and DMCA youtube takedown style action will increase.) Furthermore it allows corporations to legally prosecute governments for getting in the way of their hard-earned profits or potential profits, for example if you don't allow a gold mining corporation to mine your gold, you as a country will be sued for the value of that gold.

I can't understand why everyone has got their panties in a bunch over this; that small group of people with capital who makes and influences the laws will do what they can to make sure they keep getting the capital for the future, so that there is less transfer of wealth, which is necessary for a stable global economy.. I personally am looking forwards to when governments are abolished entirely and corporations simply write laws along side their company charters. Whichever corporation has more money, has more rights to enforce their laws.

<comment><USER21> I hope this is sarcasm because otherwise it is ridiculously short-sighted and naive.

<comment><USER20> /s

<comment><USER21> Thank god.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Someone is getting ripped of deeply by this new agreements if they get done as planned.

Hint: It's not large US coorporations.

It's us, the citiziens of the world.

<comment><USER23> That's exactly why they're working on it in secret.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Not sure why my comment was flagged but let's put it up again:

Corporate dictatorship recipe.

</comment><comment><USER25> Europe will pass it, blame America and the cycle will continue.</comment>