Y Combinator, but with 20x the red tape - <AUTHOR> http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/2009_ict.jsp

<comment><USER2> If you're located outside of a startup hub, taking the week or two to apply for a $100,000 Phase I SBIR grant - if there is one relevant to what you are doing, is a smart move. If you know your subject matter, it is not that much work, and the red tape can be well worth a six month budget. Other than the red tape, which is not THAT bad operationally, the money is literally free. There are often good opportunities from DoD, in some solicitations. There's a new solicitation out from someone every few months. <http://www.dodsbir.net/> A Phase I can lead to a Phase II - which can be $1 million or more. For instance, there were some very interesting topics in DoD's solicitation a few back: [http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sbir092/osd09...](http://www.acq.osd.mil/osbp/sbir/solicitations/sbir092/osd092.htm)

BTW - DoD is pretty cool about not requiring an advanced degree, unlike some other departments. If you have a background full of successful projects but no degree, you can still win by stuffing some MS/PhD's in as advisers.

That being said - for some of these it can take six months to hear whether you even won the grant, so this is not a primary funding strategy. It is a supplementary funding strategy. Its something to do, then forget about until you hear back. You don't want to try and setup a company with the government as your only customer - they will bleed you dry with delays. But if you're going to build something anyway, and are an expert in the area... why not go for the cash?

Your state may have an office setup to assist you in applying for these. The folks at ATDC in Atlanta were very helpful: [http://innovate.gatech.edu/Default.aspx?alias=innovate.gatec...](http://innovate.gatech.edu/Default.aspx?alias=innovate.gatech.edu/sbir) There are numerous companies in Atlanta that have 'bootstrapped' to the tune of several million dollars using SBIR/STTR, and have gone on to success in the broader market.

This doesn't really compare to Y Combinator, but it is (almost) free money. Uncle Sam dolla dolla bill, yo.

<comment><USER3> Anecdote of something that _never_ happens, where the value of "never" includes "at least once".

A long time ago, when a Phase I SBIR was a lot of money to a tiny company, we got one and spent 6 months on it only to find that the department which was supposed to accept the report had been organized away. After a year of trying to get someone to sign off on paying us we gave up. Five years after the money was to be paid, out of the blue we got an panicked call from an accountant that we _had_ to accept the money _right now_! Seems it was going to get returned to congress for being unused for too long and that is bad form.

But that was the '90s. Don't make your plans based on that.

<comment><USER2> You get paid up front, so this was your Phase II award - based on the fruits of your Phase I? I take it this was a lot more money than the Phase I then?

<comment><USER3> They may have changed the rules since the the 90s. They payment was to be triggered by the phase I report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My company (Freytag & Company, LLC), won a DARPA Phase I and Phase II STTR (just like a SBIR but 30% goes to a US univesity). Phase I was for <$100K/1 year (at least 30% to a U.S. university so its $70K which has to in fact last you 18-24 months IF you win Phase II - YC-like if you ask me) and Phase II was competed with second-contract award a year after Phase I ended for < $750K/2 years (again 30% to university).

Topic DARPA ST061-004: ttp://tinyurl.com/yzuqxwh

This was our fourth SBIR/STTR proposal and only win. SBIR/STTR topics are very competitive (winning teaches you how so you are more likely to win again). This particular topic received ~30 submissions of which an unusually high number were awarded (3) Phase I money. Winning Phase I does not mean you win Phase II because of poor results or no Federal funds available. For this topic we also had two competitors for Phase II funding. You cannot win Phase II without first winning the Phase I.

The marketing, regulatory, and compliance process that comes with this money has been VC-pitching-intense but the advantages and cautions are very, very different. One advantage is that the Federal government pays in a recession. The catches are important and I found surprising (e.g it is non-trivial to negotiate a contract with a U.S. university under a deadline and to do so while complying with the Bayh-Dole Act). Also DoD SBIR/STTRs train you to become a government contractor (NSF might be different). Selling commercially is unusual but laudable - just don't expect people to be very familiar with what you need in the way a VC is "supposed" to be.

As a result of this process, my company (Freytag & Company, LLC), has products, enough money for one other employee, and huge experience going to the government market.

Since, our Phase II contract was "cost plus fixed fee" (most bigger government contracts are), and most costs are labor hours, regulatory compliance means tracking labor hours with contract codes. We passed our first Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) audit just before we won our Phase II and are about to undergo another audit less than two years later. As a result we have probably one of the tightest accounting systems for a company this size you will ever see (and a damn fine accountant).

Because we took a lot of money and are doing something that might fail despite the money, we (well, -I-) decided to give our time-tracking tool away free. Figured it was a certain way to: 1. help the SBIR/STTR program grow our economy by 2. helping other firms immediately solve one part of their compliance problem - that of being able to track employee and contractor hours in the particular way the government expects.

If you need to track your labor hours over a distributed team of developers and would like to use a tool that has taken at least one firm through a government audit (and soon another - joy!) email me at email@example.com. Please tell me who you are and what your problem is when you write.

<comment><USER5> So... 3 winners out of 30 applicants, that's a 10% chance of winning, or $10k expected profit six months down the road. Suppose it takes 2 weeks to prepare...

Can you spend 2 weeks in a different way to generate > $10k in extra money 6 months down the road? If the answer is yes you should probably stick with your other work.

<comment><USER6> Where do you get the $10K figure? I tried to find a link to award amounts for the exact application linked, but could not. I did find another database of NSF awards from a superficially-similar link on that site:

[http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/progSearch.do?WT.si_n=Clicked...](http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/progSearch.do?WT.si_n=ClickedAbstractsRecentAwards&WT.si_x=1&WT.si_cs=1&WT.z_pims_id=503361&SearchType=progSearch&page=2&QueryText=&ProgOrganization=IIP&ProgOfficer=&ProgEleCode=5371&BooleanElement=true&ProgRefCode=&BooleanRef=true&ProgProgram=&ProgFoaCode=&RestrictActive=on&Search=Search#results)

Looking at a few of the awards to software companies, they appeared to reach $150K.

<comment><USER5> In this thread several people mentioned awards of $100k, given 10% probability of winning the mathematical expectation (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value>) of the award is $10k.

That is if you try 100 times you will win 10 times and get $100k each time you win, or $1m total, or $10k per attempt.

<comment><USER6> Trying to calculate expected value is a reasonable approach. (I understand expected value, just hadn't seen the $100K estimate.)

This appears to be the full solicitation of which the "(IC)" area is part:

<http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2009/nsf09609/nsf09609.htm>

Looks to be 200-300 awards of up to $150K each

It might be reasonable to assign a much higher expected value, if the applicant knows (via communication with the program officer) that their team and area are in a favored area, or if they expect to also seek government funding past the first stage, or if they get some value (experience/feedback) even from a 'loss'.

Also, the costs of applying could be far less than 2 weeks if (for whatever reason) an applicant is good at the process or can repurpose other presentation materials.

So perhaps the expected value is some multiple of $10K, for just a day or two's effort,

<comment><USER5> I expect most other applicants to do the due diligence and communicate with program officers as well, it's even suggested on the application paperwork. In general I expect similar situations to attract similar caliber of people, the only exceptionality I expect is in their core competency not in other things such as process, paperwork etc.

I agree on non-monetary rewards, those can be useful for some people depending on their future plan. I see myself in consumer market, so it's not clear how much benefit will I get from it. Would be nice to know more about that.

I need to look closer into the two-week thing. You might be right, and if it's less than a week I might as well just do it.

Speaking of probabilities, they have funded 395 out of 2067 submissions in 2007, so the estimates are going up slightly: <http://www.nsf.gov/eng/iip/sbir/phaseI_map.ppt>

<comment><USER4> Definitely try to speak to the PM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's significantly more convoluted for European Commision-funded projects. Having worked on a number of proposals, the process goes something like this:

You put together a consortium, with partners from at least three different European countries (seven for some proposals).

If you are applying for "Future and Emerging Technologies", you write a 5 page proposal saying what you want to do, how much it will cost, how you plan to do it and why it should be done. Wait three months for the EC to respond. If they like your idea, you get to the next stage.

If you are applying for a specific call or your FET-open short proposal was accepted, you get to write a full proposal. This is 60-90 pages of detailed justification for why your proposal is beyond the state of the art, a detailed work plan, a justification of the concept, the specific tasks of each partner, a timeline, a budget, and what "impact" it is meant to have on Europe as a whole in terms of the objectives of the specific call. This is a rather massive, hard to distribute amount of work. During the three months after the deadline, your proposal is sent to some call-topic-specific experts as deemed by the EC. A lot of these experts are working in the same field and indirectly competing with you. They are almost all academic or bureaucratic, since industry people don't have time for this sort of stuff. Three months later, you are told how you scored, and if you scored well enough, you are put on a list. The commission goes through the list and funds projects until the budget runs out or the projects get too bad. All in all, the feedback cycle can be over a year long, and that's before you even start work on the project itself. Resubmitting an improved/modified proposal takes an incredible feat of enthusiasm across a necessarily large number of people within several institutions. The amounts distributed are in the millions of euros, so it can be worth it, but the process essentially requires the working group to be so large that a lot of efficiency is lost.

<comment><USER8> True, and often that consortium isn't just a bunch of SME-sized companies. Even the bigger players, like universities need to form multinational consortia to compete successfully.

Long processing times might effectively require you to have the amount you are seeking in your own bankroll (money comes often late, not before). Thus you can't actually compete without stable finances.

I'm not sure that the scheme produces innovations efficiently, but at least the investment in networking (might prove valuable) and bureaucratic efforts is huge.

More info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh_Framework_Programme>

Luckily there are plenty of funding instruments at the national level.

<comment><USER7> Yes, the networking is very, very effective. A lot of the people I've worked on EC-funded projects with I've ended up working with on other, more meaningful things as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh how deliciously ironic: sneering contempt for the NSF... on the Internet.

This is the government agency that gave us ARPANET and the Mosiac browser. They also provided funding for Larry Page and Sergey Brin's proto-Google project at Stanford.

<comment><USER10> 1\. the point was stronger before you added the second paragraph.

2\. So what? Yes, we need DARPA, NSF, &co to fund $10^9 research projects like space elevators or The Internet. YC has shown that the real problem with such projects isn't red tape _per se._ It's the decade-long release-response- revision cycle you're forced to deal with when the stakes get so high. You have to deal with a lot more accountability mechanisms when you beg or borrow that much money. I'd be willing to bet YC's success rate compares favorably to NSF's.

<comment><USER2> DARPA birthed the Internet. YC birthed reddit. I guess the jury is still out.

<comment><USER10> I'm not saying DARPA/NSF are bad. They deserve the respect they get. But their job is to tackle problems that only _might_ have solutions, way out at the edge of what's possible at a given level of technology.

But it takes a long time for the benefits of that kind of work trickle down to the average person, and there's no feedback to indicate what the private sector will want and what it won't. So for every Internet, there are a lot of ITERs: <http://www.iter.org>

Total cost of ITER has been in the tens of billions, and the project is projected to start producing energy about 40 years from now. In contrast, General Fusion, a startup with under $25M in funding, could be ready a lot sooner: <http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23102/>

<comment><USER11> General Fusion: "It's a long shot, they say, but well worth a try." Read that as _It's got less than a 1% chance it might work, but compared to the potential gain it's still worth looking at._

ITER on the other hand has an 85+% chance of working (net energy gain) and only costs the US ~1billion. So while ITER might cost 50x as much it's more than 50x more likely to actually work. Also should ITER work as well as expected a working fusion reactor that could produce 1GW of base load power could be built in 10 years. ITER's initial design was for a 500MW power plant, but ITER was scaled back to a demonstration device to lower cost and reduce risks.

PS: All fusion devices produce a lot a radiation and need extensive containment and decommissioning costs. The only way you can build a 20 million$ fusion reactor is by avoiding actually producing significant amounts of fusion. So all projects that say we can demonstrate fusion for < 50 million are not going to produce significant amounts of electricity.

<comment><USER12> "ITER on the other hand has an 85+% chance of working (net energy gain)"

That is "working" only under an irrelevant definition of the word. The test of a commercial power system is not whether it can produce a net energy gain, but whether it can produce large amounts of energy at prices which compare favorably to coal and nuclear. Having a zillion hamsters run on wheels all day might well qualify as "working" in the sense of producing net energy, but we don't use it for a reason.

"and only costs the US ~1billion."

Although technically true, this is a gross misrepresentation of the actual cost, which is enormous.

"ITER was originally expected to cost approximately €5bn, but the rising price of raw materials and changes to the initial design may see that amount double." - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER>

"All fusion devices ... need extensive containment and decommissioning costs."

Evidence? Lead is very cheap.

"The only way you can build a 20 million$ fusion reactor is by avoiding actually producing significant amounts of fusion."

Evidence?

<comment><USER11> ITER's cost is inflated because it includes a lot of research that would not take place in working power plant. Based on the physical cost of ITER and the scaling factor in fusion reactors a multi GW design similar to ITER should be close to the cost of fission. However, it has significant political advantages both for non-proliferation reasons and Not In My Back Yard reasons.

Lead under heavy neutron bombardment becomes radioactive as does all other materials with long term heavy neutron bombardment.

PS: If you are interested in fusion I would suggest you look at fusor.net. It's a message board for amateurs but there are some solid posts relating to the amount of neutrons produced per watt of net fusion energy for the better fusion materials. As well as a look into the cost of shielding etc.

Edit: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JT-60> _JT-60 does not have the facilities to handle Tritium; currently only the JET tokamak has such facilities. In fusion terminology JT60 achieved conditions which in D-T would have provided Q=1.25 where Q is the ratio of fusion power to input power._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DEMO> _DEMO must have linear dimensions about 15% larger than ITER... Subsequent commercial fusion reactors could be built for nearly a quarter of the cost of DEMO if things go according to plan.[2][3]_

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Anecdote: I've applied twice with NASA's SBIR program and been denied twice. It has the advantage of being 'free money', besides your time required to apply (the first time I took about two months of weekends and evenings to put together an application; the second time I did 1/2 week full-time), and the disadvantage of being extremely competitive. The competitors are often firms which do little but SBIR, full time, and they have serious advantages from knowing the system.

(Example of not knowing the system: on my first application, I put forth a very ambitious workplan in order to entice NASA with a high bang:buck ratio; this backfired completely as they loved my proposal except for its unrealistic workplan. D'oh!)

However, I'd still say it was worth the time, as they forced me to do a lot of explicit planning about where I was taking product development, and now I have two well-written proposals that I can cut-and-paste into various new incarnations for other audiences.

That said, my company will never be doing that again. :)

<comment><USER14> So the real advantage is it's a free and formal way to thrash out a business plan?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hey, what is this for? I'm about to start on a project at the border of research and industry, and I could use some money.

<comment><USER2> For most agencies, it has to be something they're interested in, and it has to constitute basic R&D, one step past the state of the art.

Check the current solicitations and see if there's a fit.

<comment><USER15> It looks like they have a category for "applications", which seems to use the same definition commonly used around here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Don't apply for SBIRs if you're at a startup - unless you think addiction to crack is good. Seriously, there have been but a dismal few examples of companies that actually stop working for the government and become product centered.

</comment><comment><USER17> I wonder if some other person like PG will do a Y Combinator for another industry.

<comment><USER18> Outside of tech, you can't really do much for $20K. Any sort of retail/manufacture/biotech/cleantech/etc startup requires far more capital to get off the ground.

<comment><USER19> It could easily be transferable to the entertainment business. I'm picturing a bootcamp for authors, or musicians, or screenwriters, etc.

Participants would get enough money to do their thing for a few months in exchange for royalties against a future work. They'd also receive training on the ins and outs of the business, and access to industry people.

It could work well. For all I know, it might exist already.

I think it's unfortunate that the entertainment industry seems to prefer competitions, like "Project Runway" or "Making of the Band". It would be a better investment to coach all those early-stage participants towards something, rather than pit them against each other and declare a winner.

Could you imagine how much better tv/music/publishing would be, if the major players did something like this?

<comment><USER20> There are lots of places like this, but they don't work specifically on the venture capital model. (But they should!)

<http://www.channel101.com/> is an example where it's a kind of co-operative incubator for comedians, directors and actors. Andy Samberg and his two partners (who are major players on SNL now) were incubated there. Too bad you can't invest in a comedy team the same way you can invest in a corporation - because if you could Dan Harmon (the guy who runs C101) would be rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> goodluck with that, nsf</comment>


Want a Stronger Democracy? Invest in Education - <AUTHOR> http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/want-a-stronger-democracy-invest-in-education/

<comment><USER2> A nitpick with the article. He argues that education -> democracy by using a test case to rule out democracy -> education.

But he makes no attempt to rule out the possibility that XXX -> {education, democracy}, where XXX might be { wealth, free markets, socialism, various other relevant factors }.

The real problem here is that he seems to want to do 2-variable correlations rather than multivariate regerssion.

<comment><USER3> A major nitpick with the whole line of reasoning (and basically much of the work in comparative politics).

We've (in political science) been trying to study democratization in a formal/quantitative way for at least the last 50 years, and every single explanation we come up with, however many variables we put into our regression, fails to informatively explain the data. We have too poor a grasp on the independent variables (what they are, how to measure them, etc.), too poor a collective definition of democracy ("I know it when I see it", essentially), and way way too little data to make definitive causal models. Running experiments to test our hypotheses would take decades, at least, so instead we mine through historical data looking for trends. As Feynman said, "To report a significant result and reject the null in favor of an alternative hypothesis is meaningless unless the alternative hypothesis has been stated before the data was obtained."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting, but nothing new. Plato's Republic says functionally the same thing - that an educated citizenry is essential for the proper function of the polis. Plato takes it to an extreme in the Republic, and people are still arguing whether or not he was serious about the extent to which he argues the point, but he definitely argued that education was essential.

And Aristotle says similar things in the Politics and Poetics. The citizens of Athens who participated at the Agora were literate, concerned men (unfortunately, only men).

The Roman Forum was open to any citizen, who bore the responsibility of educating himself before speaking.

Even modern political philosophers recognize that without an educated citizenry, democracy is impossible. Alexis de Toqueville in "Democracy in America" found the concern of the commoner for the welfare of the nation to be a key to the success of the American experiment of self-government under law.

Looking at how poorly educated our citizens are about the real issues of the day, it's no surprise that we are seeing problems in public policy. I'm not suggesting it's inevitable that the nation will collapse, in fact the article gives me hope we can turn it around. But it has to start with educating citizens about their basic responsibilities.

Of course, there are good and bad ways to do this. Heinlein had a model to ensure only concerned/educated citizens, and he presented it in Starship Troopers. So some thought should go into HOW we educate.

</comment><comment><USER5> I agree with other posters that his conclusion is flawed. Specifically Argentina has very well researched reasons why they ended up the way they did.

Argentina were an extreme free market country in the late 1800s with little taxation or duties. They had essentially open borders and were one of the main immigration countries of the world in that period. All of this grew the economy for it to end up at the turn of the century as I believe the 6th richest country in the world.

What also happened though was a huge influx of workers from Europe. This was during the a large wave of unionizing and radicalization in Europe, this movement was brought with the immigrants across to Argentina. This spawned a period with many strikes, bombings etc throughout the 20s. Strangely enough that in itself did not lower the economy. What it did do was create enough of a backlash (remember 9/11) that a coup was made possible and the whole downward spiral started.

Read more on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_argentina#Yrigoyen.2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_argentina#Yrigoyen.27s_administration_and_the_Radicals)

Since then Argentina has had essentially a mix of either military rule by juntas who carried on strong protectionist policies or democratically elected governments carrying on strong protectionist policies (the Peronistas). The current state of the economy is mainly due to the common factor here "strong protectionist policies".

The current government is carrying on the exact same idiotic policies. Argentina has many great programmers. Many of them are now working for US startups bringing in valuable foreign currency. What is their main tool? Well naturally a MacBook Pro.

In the US the cheapest 13" model costs $1199. In Argentina that costs 8,249.00 Pesos (US $2,162.25). If you're lucky enough to have US dollars it's only $1889. Now the current protectionist peronista government have just approved a further %35 electronic gadget tax that will go on top of this. See more <http://econotrix.com/archives/000648.html>

You have heard of import duties, well this current government tried to impose export duties on the agricultural industry the number one foreign exchange earner. I could go on.

As always while it is really cool to be able to plot to sets of data on a graph it is not terribly useful with some individual explanation.

I think this that the reason why this study is so attractive to certain people is that it plays into a variation of a classic flaw intelligent people have. Hayek called it the Fatal Conceit. Basically I am more intelligent than the masses, thus I know better. This translates into "I am intelligent, if you disagree with me you must be dumb". In the case of the study author and just about all intellectuals further mutates into "My ideas are obviously right. The masses ideas are obviously wrong. I'm educated. Lets educate the masses to the level where they are at my level so they agree with me."

I am all for education, but I'm much more in agreement with PG's approach to education than the traditional form that tends to be pushed.

Developing countries with poor education often have large classes of people working in informal businesses. These people are often not educated. But in almost all of these countries (where the culture allows it) the parents are pushing their children to be educated. (eg <http://econotrix.com/archives/000640.html>). Economic development will increase education unless there are certain cultural issues (such as not educating girls etc) that halt it.

<comment><USER6> Pelle, You give a good analysis! Here's an additional distinction between Argentina and the U.S. which (I believe) is also a factor...

In the 19th Century, both nations had vast tracts of land relatively undeveloped...

The U.S. essentially "gave" the land away to vast numbers of its citizens if they'd work it... encouraging and then creating a great class of free- spirited, industrious entrepreneurs with their own capital!

Argentina transferred its land in vast tracts to wealthy landowners and created essentially a division between the wealthy elites and the landless peasant!

The secret to capitalism FAILS when wealth becomes too concentrated... (remedying this is a focus of mine).

<comment><USER5> I agree. Similar to the grid lock mentioned in the latest EconTalk [http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/11/heller_on_gridl.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/11/heller_on_gridl.html)

I am also working on the same in the financial space.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Better education = more engagement in democratic initiatives in the USA. Ok, I accept. Same rationale does not seem to fit Scandinavia, where engagement is low.

I'm guessing that education might be key to stronger institutions, which do create stability. Institutions are very strong in Scandinavia and probably in every other Western country as well.

Education is a prerequisite to functional democracy, but some other skills and/or needs are required for us to actually pursue initiatives. External threats? Common goals?

</comment><comment><USER8> A related post, in case anyone wants the link, is here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=866889>

</comment><comment><USER9> This is quite a dilemma to someone who greatly values education, but is very apprehensive about democracy.

<comment><USER10> Democracy doesn't have to be total, it can be limited.

But you are right, it isn't without some very big costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> And instead of empowering its citizens, governments are operating in terms of profit & loss.

</comment><comment><USER12> Where is china? I think democracy leads to more wealth, which creates better public education.

</comment><comment><USER13> Correlation ≠ Causality

<comment><USER14> Did you read the article? The author explicitly notes this point, and argues for why the evidence points toward a causal relationship, rather than simply a correlation. (Although yummyfajitas points out, that argument isn't necessarily convincing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Too bad the ruling class _doesn't_ want a stronger Democracy, and thus _won't_ invest in education...

<comment><USER16> What do you think has been going on for the last century? The "ruling class" has greatly expanded the education bureaucracy. They love democracy; when combined with their schools it makes it easier for them to achieve their goals.</comment></comment>


The periodic table is 150 years old this week - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2019/02/28/the-periodic-table-is-150-years-old-this-week <comment><USER2> One of the most interesting controversies I've seen about periodic table schemes is the placement of helium. It usually sits above neon as a noble gas. However, not everyone agrees with that:

 _" Two things are surprising about Mendeleev's classification of the chemical elements according to the Periodic Law," Bent writes. "One is how much of the classification has not needed revision. The other is how long the scheme's second element has been misplaced, above neon, despite Mendeleev's Rule of Light-Element Distinctiveness; despite his statement that the Periodic System is about atoms, not simple substances; despite classification by atomic physics of helium atoms as s2 systems (not p6 systems); despite appearance of the Left-Step Periodic Table nearly eight [now over nine] decades ago; and despite numerous implications of the LSPT that require placement of helium above beryllium."_

[https://cen.acs.org/unassigned/Reactions/97/i3](https://cen.acs.org/unassigned/Reactions/97/i3)

How you view the placement of helium (and other more difficult elements) comes down to what you believe the table represents:

\- empirically-derived reactive trends of elemental substances (in which case helium above neon makes much more sense); or

\- a summary of theoretically-derived electronic configuration (in which case helium above beryllium makes perfect sense).

You can see aspects of both views in the modern canonical table. It's weird exceptional cases like this that can, among other things, make chemistry such a difficult (and fun) subject to learn.

<comment><USER3> Why does electronic configuration put it above Beryllium? Helium has a full first shell of electrons, and other noble gases have their subsequent shells filled with electrons, this is why they all have their property of being more or less inert. The reactive trends of noble gases aren't "emperically derived" as you say but as a result of being extremely energetically stable due to having full electron orbital shells.

EDIT: Perhaps I misunderstood and you meant that its initial placement was due to empirical data. But for good theoretical reason it has remained where it is IMO.

<comment><USER4> Beryllium has 2 electrons and 6 holes in the last shell.

Neon has 8 electrons and 0 holes in the last shell.

Helium has 2 electrons and 0 holes in the last shell.

How do you align Helium, in the 2 electrons column over Beryllium or in the 0 holes column over Neon?

[I vote for aligning it over Neon.]

<comment><USER3> If the number of holes tells you more about the reactivity and properties of the element than the number of electrons in the outermost shell, then they should be arranged that way. AFAIK there is no theoretical mandate that the periodic table should be the way that it is, so just organize it in the way that makes sense while also providing maximum utility.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's things like this that should serve as good reminders just how young our "modern existence" is, how far we've come as a species in such a short time, and (potentially) how easy it could all slip away if we let it.

Maybe that's not the best way to put it, but I hope my point comes across anyhow...

Happy Birthday, Periodic Table. May you have 150+ more...

<comment><USER6> > reminder

Time [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XkV6IpV2Y0)

Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0)

It's like asking a 2 year old to count way... way past 10

<comment><USER7> (They should make a similar movie about wealth distribution, going from someone who makes 1 dollar a month up until Jeff Bezos.)

<comment><USER8> Look up dollar street by the same people who made gap minder. It's a wonderfully simple look into the differences in wealth and living, which shows you things like "favorite thing" filtered along an axis of wealth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are now attempts to create a "periodic table" for data structures. Such a table would allow you to predict variations of data structures and the behavior of such variants. You can see such an example in page 7 of the PDF below.

[https://stratos.seas.harvard.edu/files/stratos/files/periodi...](https://stratos.seas.harvard.edu/files/stratos/files/periodictabledatastructures.pdf)

<comment><USER10> I'm very interested to read this paper, but the grammar mistake in the first sentence of the first section doesn't bode well...

<comment><USER11> Is it the is/are issue?

Maybe they are using it as a mass noun or speaking specifically about the the phrase itself or the idea of data structures. Could stem from a cultural or ESOL reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm pretty under-educated on chemistry, but I read Asimov's _Search For The Elements_ a few years ago and loved it. It really demystified things.

In modern times it's easy for laymen to just wave our hands and say "yeah, we use fancy technology to do this stuff, which pretty much just treats it as magic. Asimov goes through the development of the periodic table and the discover of individual elements using classic technology.

Scanning tunneling microscope is still opaquely magic in my brain, but reading about discovering an element using technology I already understand makes even modern chemistry feel more in the realm of stuff I can get a solid grip on.

<comment> xkcd-sucks So I actually did a PhD in chemistry and just happen to work in software for reasons [0]. A thing that totally blows my mind about the periodic table and early materials chemistry is how it's in essence a derivation of "quantum mechanical" electronic structure.

One which was achieved through top-down "black box" debugging of nature on a scale too small for any human to see or touch!

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19266614](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19266614)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Highly recommend reading Oliver Sacks' Uncle Tungsten - his tale of growing up and discovering the beauty of the periodic table with his home chemistry set. Made me appreciate chemistry and the periodic table and Oliver Sacks so much more.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think the coolest thing about the periodic table is that it's macroscopic evidence of the discrete, particle nature of atoms and the rest of the sub- atomic universe.

</comment><comment><USER15> Quote from Mendeleev himself:

"I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper."

This is fascinating to me -- Our brains continue working during our sleep on problems we think about during our day!

<comment><USER16> The structure of Benzene was famously conceived in the same way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a bunch of other interesting subsequent designs [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_periodic_tables)

</comment><comment><USER18> In the last fifty years or so, 15 elements have been added to the periodic table.

<comment><USER19> I went to a talk at Oak Ridge National Lab soon after the discovery of Ununseptium (element 117 that is now called Tennessine) and it was really interesting the international collaboration needed to make the discovery happen.

Basically, at Oak Ridge they produced radioactive isotopes with the appropriate number of neutrons and protons to match the theoretical ratio of the atom. Then, those isotopes needed to be shipped to Russia so they could be smashed together in a particle accelerator to briefly create the atom which we know existed from its specific decay and gamma ray emission.

But there was a lot of political hurdles in the way of shipping the isotopes to Russia in the first place, and it almost didn't happen because the isotopes were decaying while paperwork was floundering between state departments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The accessible (no registration/subscription required) article:

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-300-the- true...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24132190-300-the-true-story- of-the-birth-of-the-periodic-table-150-years-ago/)

</comment><comment><USER21> One of the best documentaries I've seen on the subject is BBC's A Volatile History : [https://youtu.be/g_2bo4abkPI](https://youtu.be/g_2bo4abkPI)

</comment><comment><USER22> Mendeleevs Table

</comment><comment><USER23> Hey, to celebrate this, everybody share your favorite "Periodic Table of X" where X is something that is absolutely not periodic at all!

<comment><USER24> The Periodic Table of Things Not On Any So-Called "Periodic Table of X".

<comment><USER25> Does it contain itself?

<comment><USER26> Periodic table of self?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Rapidly Disappearing Business of Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/disappearing-business-of-design/

<comment><USER2> This is less an op-ed piece than it is an advertorial. No substance that I can detect, and lots of meaningless platitudes and cliches.

<comment><USER3> I was just about to post the same comment.

<comment><USER3> > Page one of the New York Times on the day these paragraphs are written > contains eight important news stories. Four of them, or one-half, are > propaganda. The casual reader accepts them as accounts of spontaneous > happenings. But are they? Here are the headlines which announce them: > "TWELVE NATIONS WARN CHINA REAL REFORM MUST COME BEFORE THEY GIVE RELIEF," > "PRITCHETT REPORTS ZIONISM WILL FAIL," "REALTY MEN DEMAND A TRANSIT > INQUIRY," and "OUR LIVING STANDARD HIGHEST IN HISTORY, SAYS HOOVER REPORT."

> Take them in order: the article on China explains the joint report of the > Commission on Extraterritoriality in China, presenting an exposition of the > Powers' stand in the Chinese muddle. What it says is less important than > what it is. It was "made public by the State Department to-day" with the > purpose of presenting to the American public a picture of the State > Department's position. Its source gives it authority, and the American > public tends to accept and support the State Department view.

> The report of Dr. Pritchett, a trustee of the Carnegie Foundation for > International Peace, is an attempt to find the facts about this Jewish > colony in the midst of a restless Arab world. When Dr. Pritchett's survey > convinced him that in the long run Zionism would "bring more bitterness and > more unhappiness both for the Jew and for the Arab," this point of view was > broadcast with all the authority of the Carnegie Foundation, so that the > public would hear and believe. The statement by the president of the Real > Estate Board of New York, and Secretary Hoover's report, are similar > attempts to influence the public toward an opinion.

> These examples are not given to create the impression that there is anything > sinister about propaganda. They are set down rather to illustrate how > conscious direction is given to events, and how the men behind these events > influence public opinion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Synopsis: Design agencies are disappearing. The industry of design has evolved from independent experimenters, to being a core skill of successful founders, and now established enterprises are investing in design talent. But, Human Centered Design has the potential to solve big problems, so that's why the author is starting a design firm in the social sector.

\----

That's interesting, but I think there's another layer happening (admittedly outside the scope of this article). The very skill of design is becoming democratized, and that's bringing the era of the design studio to an end, while people who wouldn't otherwise call themselves "designers" are learning design, and applying those skills in their day-to-day jobs.

The design industry used to survive through the complexities of the craft. Pasting up layouts and setting type took more resources, training, and investment than most companies could reasonably take on themselves.

Now, the tools are so widely available, everyone is a "designer." If I say "Helvetica" or "Times New Roman," most people will have images pop into their heads of what those typefaces look like. That wouldn't have been the case 20 years ago.

People who wouldn't otherwise call themselves "designers" are already learning design, and they're using those skills across all levels of all professions to create presentations, websites, etc..

Of course, there's much more to design than just being able to use the tools. There are visual communications components such as typography, colors, and shapes.

Many people think of design as something that someone is "just wired for," but it's a skill that can be learned, is being learned, and will increasingly be learned by more people – just so they can do their jobs better.

Source: I used to win fancy-pants design awards, but quit that to write a book called "Design for Hackers" ([http://designforhackers.com](http://designforhackers.com) ). I teach non-"designers" about design. I have doctors, scientists, business consultants, software developers – even a chef – taking my courses.

<comment><USER5> Design studios are not coming to an end anytime soon, no matter how well domain knowledge is packaged up and sold off as competency. We've given people better tools and guidelines to improve their day to day presentational communication skills, not "made them designers" – it's like saying that buying a new plug-and-play faucet for your shower and installing it yourself has made you a plumber, to use a cliche'd comparison. Years of study, work and research has made this a relatively simple thing to do, so let the layman handle it. Let them pick a style, it's a small job, who cares?

This production work is coming to an end, the value of a design agency in their years of experience working in the field in practises too many mention here is not being given the shoulder in favour of inexperienced word processors, unless it's Ralph from accounting making a so-so boilerplate christmas card for a law firm. When you want to reposition your firm as a leader in immigration rights cases and communicate that effectively, who you gonna call?

Classically trained designers and alums from design masters courses offer a skill set outside of basic production. Take a look the design maturity scale [0] to see what I'm taking about. Valued designers have moved on to (like the OP article mentioned) applying design principles and design viewpoints to affect structural, organisational, long-term change across a wide number of industries and social endeavours. Choosing a nice grotesque for your h1 is not on the same level as designing a conceptual poster to rouse the heartfelt concern for audiences you're trying to make take action on a social issue.

I'm sorry David, but for you to come here and ply you're wares of "Top 20 Typefaces To Use" and herald it as the downfall of the independent design industry is shortsighted, ignorant and quiet frankly insulting. You're marketing here, so by all means work away – but I'll not have that spiel stand un-countered, where design skills are the equivalent to a new swish suit some wall-street head is showing off to his friends, pointing out the finer details of his cuffs. Jesus wept. /rant

[0] [http://www.sjef.nu/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/design_maturit...](http://www.sjef.nu/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/design_maturity.png)

<comment><USER4> James, you may want to read my comment again. I said nothing about "the downfall of the independent design industry." Independent designers aren't going anywhere, but there will be far fewer of them.

<comment><USER5> David, I meant independent as in non-inhouse companies, which you do mention (design studies/consultancies). There will be less people who do production work, similar to how there are very few people tilling fields at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting takeaway for me is that a possible "exit" for a consulting company is becoming the in-house group for large corporation. Hadn't considered that before, but it makes perfect sense.

<comment><USER3> Surely this would be the same situation faced by any number of small businesses at any point in history, just with different jargon (small specialised business is subsumed by big rich business that wants that specialisation).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's unfortunate that the article ended with advertisement for the author's venture, but I don't think that should take away from substance of the article because a lot of it is valid.

One thing the author neglected to mention:

UX is becoming a function and domain of IT.

That's why you're seeing IBM hire UX people in drove, because IBM wants to make UX bigger part of its IT services offering.

And it makes sense. Whether you like it or not, IT can make or break success of UX.

I manage a small ux team in a fortune 50 and I've come to conclusion that it's basically impossible to instill design centric thinking to business and product owners on consistent basis, which is something that agencies have tried to do in the past.

But with the right IT people, I've had great success in building the best products.

my 2 cents.

<comment><USER5> A great deal of UX knowledge and practises come from HCI studies, it has almost always been in the realm of IT. It's borders with service design is when it starts to pick up some concerns with identity, marketing, and a few others.

Design thinking was the big one years ago in trying to get alternative, yet profitable viewpoints in the boardroom. UX has done much better with this as it's much closer tied to the business lingo with things like conversion rate, A/B, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A couple things I wish these types of articles would address :

1) the nuances around how the various employees of the design firm benefit when it is bought/merged.

2) the nuances of the people at the bigco leading the buying activity. Who are they, what are their motives and rewards? Are they former designers who know the value of design and its processes? Are they executives who have reached a level where the next career development item is "buy another company"?

Just like other mergers : will be interesting to see if the pendulum swings back in a couple years to see if new design firms are created ...and the cycle starts anew

</comment><comment><USER9> 1908 Adolf Loos: Ornament and crime.

[http://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf](http://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Ouch. I like gingerbread men over plain gingerbread, but then I'm a designer, and I spend many of days polishing turds to make them saleable.</comment></comment>


Twitter locks WikiLeaks account days before Assange's extradition hearing - <AUTHOR> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/20/02/17/2121236/twitter-locks-wikileaks-official-account-with-54-million-followers-days-before-julian-assanges-extradition-hearing <comment><USER2> This might be a good moment to remind people that Assange has been the victim of a successful smear campaign since the moment a woman did NOT make a rape allegation against him in Sweden. Nils Melzer, UN special rapporteur on torture, actually went over the original proceedings and gave a long format interview on the matter lately. He too took some convincing to even touch the case, that's how effective sexual violence as a smear tactic is. Which is a damn shame, given that there's plenty of _real_ sexual violence to go around, and which now once more gets harder to make visible.

Here's the interview: [https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about- wikilea...](https://www.republik.ch/2020/01/31/nils-melzer-about-wikileaks- founder-julian-assange)

tl;dr:

Assange was right about everything that has been made falsifiable: secret indictment, spying on his lawyers, extradition to the US, no fair trial, the whole lot. He's showing every mental and physical sign of being tortured. He needs help, and he's being denied the very rights that western society purports to uphold.

EDIT: and that is leaving aside the whole dimension of Sweden, the UK, Equador, and of course the US making (even more of) a precedent out of him. What this means for the free press, and the relationship between freedom (of expression, of information, and in this case of truth, really) vs national "security" (in this case, the national security to not be held accountable for shooting down civilians) should send shivers down everyone's spines.

EDIT 2 To the people downvoting: care to express which part of the above exactly you disagree with? Do you think it's factually incorrect? How about correcting it then? Do you think it's inappropriate? Why so? Off topic?

<comment><USER3> The article is not completely truthful about what happened, at least according to the police report. The interviewee claims to speak fluent Swedish, so there's no way he'd miss it accidentally. Here's the short version of what happened according to the official police investigation[0]:

Assange and a woman have consensual sex. He wants to have sex without a condom, she insist he wears one. Eventually he agrees, and they have sex and then fall asleep in the bed. The next morning she wakes up by him penetrating her. She asks "are you wearing anything?" to which he replies "you". Her main reason she wanted him to wear a condom was fear of STDs, so she thinks there's no point in stopping now since the eventual damage is already done, so they continue. He comes inside her.

When she later asks the police if there's a way of forcing Assange to take an HIV test the police decides that what she's describing constitutes rape, and starts an investigation.

The whole problem is that she gave her consent under the strict condition that he'd wear a condom. When he started having unprotected sex with her while she was sleeping, he didn't have her consent. Call that what you want.

[0] [https://www.magasinetparagraf.se/wp- content/uploads/content/...](https://www.magasinetparagraf.se/wp- content/uploads/content/bilden/forundersokningen-avseende- assange/AssangeSexAllegations.pdf#page=13)

Edit: OK, I see that that's mentioned later in the article. But the part about rewriting the statement isn't completely truthful either: > "Now the supervisor of the policewoman who had conducted the questioning wrote her an email telling her to rewrite the statement from S. W."

What the mail actually says is that there are two hearings, but only one formal one, and they want the second one included too. The supervisor writes: "Make a new hearing. Paste the text in that and assign the hearing to the case. Sign the hearing."

<comment><USER4> >>The whole problem is that she gave her consent under the strict condition that he'd wear a condom.

It's called "stealthing", apparently, and it looks like it could be an offence under UK law as he only had "conditional consent": [https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/insights/blogs/criminal- law...](https://www.kingsleynapley.co.uk/insights/blogs/criminal-law- blog/stealthing-conviction-brings-conditional-consent-out-in-the-open)

<comment><USER3> I believe stealthing generally is taking the condom of during sex without her noticing it, but the idea is the same. Consent given under a certain condition is only consent while that condition is met.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a growing problem. I'm not sure what the solution is, but something needs to be done to stem the absolute power that social media companies have to arbitrarily censor voices.

<comment><USER6> The solution to this seems pretty straightforward: force social media companies to choose to identify as a "platform" or a "publisher", rather than a mix of the two that gets to claim the most convenient aspects of both.

If they choose "platform", then they can take no responsibility for content posted, but also allow all content, and only remove content when it is required of them by the legal system (when the content is illegal and has been reported as such)

If they choose "publisher" then they are free to censor, "deplatform", delete, or restrict posting of anything they wish, but if someone posts something illegal, they take their share of legal responsibility for publishing it.

<comment><USER7> That seems like a good idea but it's simplify the issue way too much.

> but also allow all content,

Almost no platform survive without a bit of moderation. If you don't moderate, you'll get any kind of content, including spam, troll, etc...

Add that to the fact that you'll get people that will just push to boycott such kind of platforms, and thus you'll no longer have much possible ways to make this kind of platform exist.

> but if someone posts something illegal, they take their share of legal > responsibility for publishing it.

That's also kind of impossible. The law evolved to consider that impossibility to look at every piece of content, and this is why the DMCA exist. Look at Youtube which try to filter their content much further than the law currently require, they have HUGE teams of moderators, multiple tens of thousands, with some of the best kind of neural network, working on this and yet it fail so often.

The world isn't binary, we need a bit of both.

It could be an interesting experiment though to allow legally the kind of platform you suggest. Someway to protect website owner from any legal retaliation. It would most probably look like 4chan, but still interesting.

<comment><USER8> > Almost no platform survive without a bit of moderation. If you don't > moderate, you'll get any kind of content, including spam, troll, etc...

There is moderation and there is censorship. Nobody is against filtering spam. Trolling is fine in my opinion. Just let the user have the option of blocking who they want to block an follow who they want to follow.

> Add that to the fact that you'll get people that will just push to boycott > such kind of platforms, and thus you'll no longer have much possible ways to > make this kind of platform exist.

If that was true, twitter, reddit, facebook, google wouldn't exist in the first place.

> That's also kind of impossible.

No it is not. Publishers don't find it impossible. Platforms don't find it impossible. If it was impossible, telcoms and publishers wouldn't exist.

> It could be an interesting experiment though to allow legally the kind of > platform you suggest.

We already had this kind of platform.

> It would most probably look like 4chan, but still interesting.

No, it would look like 2009-2013 twitter, reddit, facebook, etc.

<comment><USER9> > There is moderation and there is censorship. Nobody is against filtering > spam. Trolling is fine in my opinion. Just let the user have the option of > blocking who they want to block an follow who they want to follow.

In my experience, most people are not interested in sifting through mountains of garbage just to pick out a few morsels of a decent conversation. If you let trolls and bad-faith actors persist on your site, soon those people will be the only folks who are left.

<comment><USER8> > In my experience, most people are not interested in sifting through > mountains of garbage just to pick out a few morsels of a decent > conversation.

If that was true, HN would be infinitely more popular than reddit.

> If you let trolls and bad-faith actors persist on your site, soon those > people will be the only folks who are left.

No. If you let users block trolls and bad-faith actors, they go away.

Once again, if you were right, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc wouldn't have grown to what they are today.

<comment><USER10> > _If that was true, HN would be infinitely more popular than reddit._

Reddit communities live and die by the strength of their moderation. Sure, Reddit as a whole is mountains of garbage. But the beauty (if that's the word) of the subreddit system is that to folks who want to talk about communism, hating women and minorities is garbage, and to folks who want to hate women and minorities, communism is garbage, and _they both get the experience they want_.

Reddit's popularity is due to the fact that a) people have multiple interests and so they want to hop communities with low activation energy (same high- level reason that GitHub got popular over individual git hosting sites: you already have an account) and b) there is some correlation between being a "bad-faith actor" across communities, regardless of their specific moderation worldview (e.g., neither /r/GamersRiseUp nor /r/FULLCOMMUNISM is interested in V1agr4), and so "you have some karma at all, regardless of source" is a useful filter.

> _Once again, if you were right, twitter, reddit, facebook, etc wouldn 't > have grown to what they are today._

All of these systems put work into blocking abusive participants site-wide (including real humans who are very carefully and intentionally spewing vitriol) and are increasingly _automatically_ blocking them.

<comment><USER8> > Reddit communities live and die by the strength of their moderation.

Hence why I wasn't against moderation. I'm against censorship. I'm all for limiting "communism" subreddit to the topic of communism ( moderation ). However, I'm against the communism subreddit censoring people saying nasty things about stalin or what have you ( censorship ).

Like how politics, atheism and other popular subreddits used to be open platforms for people to express how they truly feel. Until the shift happened and they turned into censored hellholes.

> All of these systems put work into blocking abusive participants site-wide > (including real humans who are very carefully and intentionally spewing > vitriol) and are increasingly automatically blocking them.

No. All of these systems put into censoring people they disagree with. If truly "spewing vitriol" was the reason, then politics, worldnews, twoxchromosome, atheism and every major sub would be banned.

As long as the "vitriol" was pertinent to the topic, it should be allowed. After all, that's the point of the voting system right? If you don't like it, vote it down.

The 2009-2013 social media was great because everyone got to spew their vitriol so it evened things out. Now the vitriol is so concentrated that you have shitholes like politics and the_donald. Funnily enough, one is quarantined and the other isn't.

Moderation is okay. Censorship isn't.

<comment><USER9> I don't agree with your core conceit of delineating between moderation and censorship, but this threw me:

> As long as the "vitriol" was pertinent to the topic, it should be allowed. > After all, that's the point of the voting system right? If you don't like > it, vote it down.

Voting systems as implemented by many popular sites are moderation/censorship via mob rule, and I'm surprised that you advocate for it.

I actually prefer having actual moderators to having a post voted down because five random people disagreed with my opinion and wanted to hide it in a attempt to control the narrative of the comment thread.

That's a problem even this site doesn't manage to avoid. Heck, look at your posts; in this comment thread, people are downvoting you in an attempt to hide your opinion, and I don't even agree with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> _-___________-_ > He flew with Scandinavian Airlines from Stockholm to Berlin. During the > flight, his laptops disappeared from his checked baggage.

Laptops in checked baggage? Seriously? I really cannot believe that Assange wouldn't know better than this.

<comment><USER11> I'm more interested in how did he manage to check them in. Where I fly I can't put anything with a battery into my checked in bags...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Worth to mention that Brazil charged Intercept co-founder Glenn Greenwald with cybercrime charges similar to Assange. The guy who first met Snowden in HK with Laura Poitras.

Even if it looks like they have "postponed" prosecution for now.

[https://theintercept.com/2020/02/06/glenn-greenwald- intercep...](https://theintercept.com/2020/02/06/glenn-greenwald-intercept- brazil-charges/)

</comment><comment><USER13> > _Twitter locks WikiLeaks account days before_

Was there any story with WikiLeaks account on Mastodon?

</comment><comment><USER14> Big thanks twitter! You really never suprise me any positive actions. So sad that we have big tech companies like that existing today.

I'm ditching twitter long time ago.. too much sensor and negativity from that company.

</comment><comment><USER15> It is no longer locked

</comment><comment><USER16> it's pretty sad to see otherwise extremely bright people who are able to spot censorship in China, Russia etc, and who normally would stand up for human rights, to applaud or defend this Twitter shut down of Wikileaks. It is exactly the goal of propaganda to give people the ability to spot its effects when it comes from the enemy and make it invisible when done by their own state.

"This is America" \-- sings Childish Gambino (... actually this is Everywhere, thanks to global reach of US propaganda and the West alignment with US language in policy)

</comment><comment><USER17> Twitter closes Twitter account.

Twitter owes you nothing. Don't use them.

<comment><USER18> I don't.

But I also don't like Facebook's forced news.

Reddit is decent as long as the subreddit isn't big enough to be astroturfed... But big companies can do searches...

This place is probably the worst out of the social networks I use for censorship.

Snapchat is good

<comment><USER19> > But I also don't like Facebook's forced news.

There's nothing forced about FB. You don't have to use FB, it's that simple.

<comment><USER20> No but given the place it occupies in today's world, everyone's entitled to their opinion on FB and the harm it may cause, whether they use it or not.

<comment><USER19> > given the place it occupies in today's world

I don't use FB. FB occupies no space in my world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> unbelievable

</comment><comment><USER22> did they also lock the accounts of US government agencies and representatives?

<comment><USER17> Why would they?

<comment><USER22> They locked the account of a pro-assange org, so it seems that they should be applying such decisions equally. After all, the government isn't guaranteed free speech - that's a right of the people.

<comment><USER19> > so it seems that they should be applying such decisions equally

No, why would they do that?

> After all, the government isn't guaranteed free speech

Twitter is a private organization. There is no such thing as "free speech" in the private world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All I would say on this is, don't cheer when your political opponents get deplatformed, and then complain when it happens to your side of the fence.

</comment><comment><USER23> Population of US: 330 million Twitter US MAUs: 68 million % of Bots on Twitter: ~ 15% So Twitter users that really matter: ~ 57 million Way overrated.</comment>


US to ban soaps and other products containing microbeads - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/08/us-to-ban-soaps-other-products-containing-microbeads <comment><USER2> While it's cool and all that this has been done, it's many years after credible people started warning about the dangers of these products. The fact that manufacturers kept making this stuff with knowledge of the damage it was causing is pretty damning, and is the kind of thing that makes me mistrustful of arguments that the free market will sort things like this out. There's just no good mechanism to stop massive harm to common resources (even now, we don't have a good mechanism to stop this kind of thing, since it took years to do so, even for something as uncontroversial as this...our system barely even puts a dent in the ecological harm of fossil fuels, animal agriculture, etc.).

<comment><USER3> > mistrustful of arguments that the free market will sort things like this > out. There's just no good mechanism to stop massive harm to common resources

Most arguments that the free market can handle these problems start out with the recommendation that the resources involved (rivers, lakes, ocean) should be privatized. Economist Walter Block and others have written about ways this could be done. To fault free market arguments for not working when the waterways aren't privatized is to misrepresent the arguments. Most people aren't arguing that the free market is going to solve problems relating to unowned, unownable, or government owned property without first recognizing private property rights in those resources.

Governments often protects polluters by limiting their liability. If that were changed, and assuming these resources (bodies of water) were privatized so non-governmental parties had standing to sue, if you have an argument why a class action lawsuit or something like that can't handle these problems, then that would be an interesting comment. But just saying the free market doesn't solve problems where there are no property rights is rather uninteresting, because free marketers agree with that.

Also it's pretty amusing that a failure of government (who owns the waterways, and most of the sewer systems) to solve this problem sooner somehow gets twisted into a failure of the free market (who doesn't own these resources). Without property rights there's no free market.

I agree that governments, who subsidize animal feed, water, land, and waste, and prosecute activists, do a great deal of harm to the environment by promoting and protecting animal exploitation. I'm fine with banning animal exploitation, even on private property, and I see that as no more anti-free market than banning slavery on private property.

<comment><USER4> Yes, because a private entity completely owning natural resources like lakes and forests, will completely prevent those resources from being ruthlessly exploited. Those private entities would rationally take a long term vision, and certainly wouldn't exploit those resources until there's nothing left.

There's certainly merit in trying to make people pay for externalities (offsetting carbon pollution for example), but you can't do that for everything. Privatizing everything might be an appealing free-market pipe dream, but unless we can completely/mostly stop externalities from happening, such an experiment would be a disaster.

<comment><USER5> I don't see any evidence of that.

You can't take your wealth with you upon death -- Property owners of valuable resources nearly always maximize exploitation in the short term and could give a shit about the long term.

If they took a long term view, we'd still have old growth forest in the US.

<comment><USER6> I think that was his point as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am happy that small, but fairly substantive (and meaningful) policies like this still manage to get through Congress. And that not everything becomes like that "feds are confiscating our light bulbs" fight because of posturing or corruption.

This is a good regulation/law, and it's actually going to be passed. Glad it still happens sometimes.

<comment><USER8> Not all the opposition to the light bulbs regulation was corruption and posturing. Some of it was quite reasonable objections from consumers along the lines of "hey, I buy that product, and there's no good substitute at a reasonable price point." I doubt consumers really care that much about microbeads, which makes them a lot easier to ban.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, CFL bulbs are icky blue flickering garbage, and the LED bulbs I've used (Hue), while otherwise fine, don't support my dimmer correctly. Using the Hue app isn't as easy as walking over to the light switch, and they won't work anyways, unless I rip out the dimmer - I ended up putting the Hue bulbs in the bathroom, which is at least fun for a joke.

Incandescent bulbs are just a better experience for me right now. I don't think there are any such advantages for microbeads.

<comment><USER10> There are LED bulbs on the market that have great compatibility with all dimmers. I hope that market forces eventually weed out all of the less compatible LED bulbs. At that point, LED bulbs should be truly interchangeable with incandescents for lighting (heat generation, not so much).

<comment><USER11> True, but it depends. I bought a bunch (16?) of top-end Soraa MR16 bulbs at about $30 apiece to replace the halogens in my new house. This is not something everyone can easily afford.

Of course, it turns out that even though they have great dimmer compatibility, they're not 100% compatible with my magnetic dimmers. I have to trim them to 80% of peak; if I try to run them over 80%, the transformer resets and the bulb turns off. Sometimes they strobe for a few seconds when they're running at max brightness, I haven't solved that issue yet.

So unless I want to replace every transformer at ~$60 a pop or more (plus labor costs if not doing it yourself), plus likely a bunch of switches.. It's either $100 _per bulb_ to go LED, or suffer with not-quite-perfect replacements.

<comment><USER12> Can't say I've had any experience with magnetic dimmers, but the cheaper dimmer compatible LEDs seem work fine on Triac dimmers.

<comment><USER11> I think often the answer is "you won't know until you try it". Forward-phase, reverse-phase, symmetrical... Low voltage in particular makes things more complicated.

[http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-9/issue-6/...](http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/print/volume-9/issue-6/features/understand- triac-dimmer-issues-to-ensure-compatibility-magazine.html) [http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Education- Training/Pages/LCE/Dim...](http://www.lutron.com/en-US/Education- Training/Pages/LCE/DimmingBasics.aspx)

<comment><USER13> Why can't the LED controller circuits come with a calibration feature that detects (with user help) the minimum level the dimmer will support, and makes that the all-black point?

<comment><USER12> Partly because the usual minimum level the dimmer will support is off. That is the all black point :)

I know what you mean though. It'd be nice if there was some way to adjust them to change the brightness curve to match what you'd expect. It's one reason I'm considering something like the Phillips Hue bulbs instead of dimmers in the future despite the cost difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This was an obviously bad idea from the start.

One of the tenants of a reasonably modern mechanical engineering curriculum is at least passing coverage of 'product lifecycle', which basically means thinking about disposal/recycling during design. What did the CPG companies think was going to happen when they dumped a billion tiny little pieces of plastic directly down the drain?

<comment><USER15> > What did the CPG companies think was going to happen when they dumped a > billion tiny little pieces of plastic directly down the drain?

They clearly thought it wasn't their problem.

<comment><USER16> As much debate as I've heard recently over what qualifies a person as an "engineer", one of the key features has always been a very strict adherence to a code of ethics.

I'm starting to wonder if the title is even worth arguing over anymore.

<comment><USER17> In a highly competitive job market, it's hard to have ethics that result in your unemployment. And any actual "whistleblowing" that costs businesses money can be career-destroying, life-ruining, or (in the case of Snowden) force you to flee the country.

Look at how nobody's broken _omerta_ on what actually happened in VW.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Forget about these beads winding up in streams and our ecosystem, which is bad enough. Dentists warn that toothpastes with these beads can embed them in your gums leading to infections and tooth decay.

No idea how this became legal. Our regulatory body should be a whole lot more about transparency, so questionable stuff like this can be easily weighed by the consumer.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2014/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2014/09/18/why-dentists-are-speaking-out-about-the-plastic-beads-in- your-toothpaste/)

<comment><USER19> Because things are made illegal, not the other way around.

<comment><USER20> Depends, medical drugs are default illegal.

Though the crap that is ok to put in the food supply is ridiculous. [http://sagewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Renew- Downlo...](http://sagewater.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Renew- Download-9115.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've used some of the products containing microbeads and was flabbergasted when I learned that they were plastic. It was my dentist who asked a pointed question during a routine cleaning:

"Do you use Crest toothpaste?"

I answered yes and was informed that some of the plastic beads from the tooth paste had gotten stuck in my gums. The dentist went on to explain that she'd sent in many complaints to the company but they still didn't drop that ingredient.

What weighs on my mind now is why a toothpaste company continued to use microbeads after learning of the externality. Did they have too much inventory to sell. Were they afraid that discontinuing that exact product would upset customers? Did they think that owning up to the mistake and correcting it would draw too much attention to the mistake?

Personally, my respect lies with any entity that can own up to and correct its mistakes before it is forced to do so.

</comment><comment><USER22> Easy solution, just switch to natural biodegradable abrasives like crushed walnut shells. These are already used a lot in the cosmetics industry.

<comment><USER23> That sounds slightly more expensive than plastic.

<comment><USER24> Why would walnut shells be expensive?

<comment><USER25> Plastic is way cheaper than walnuts. Look at the price per pound of raw materials, not to mention only specific places in the world can grow walnuts versus plastic which can be produced anywhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just curious -- what is the main problem with these (as opposed to say sand and other natural objects of similar size) -- do they float in water instead of settling down, or look like food, or something else?

<comment><USER27> They're super small and don't get caught up in wastewater treatment filters so then they enter into local watersheds. There, they get ingested by the critters at the bottom of the foodchain and enter into the foodchain that way.

<comment><USER28> So what is the difference with, say, very fine sand/dust? Density? E.g. do the same critters ingest fine sand - and if so, why plastic is more harmful? Also, if these microbeads are chemically inert, what is the harm from them entering the foodchain - as opposed, again, to e.g. dust?

<comment><USER29> Sand and dust tends to settle, where as these microbeads form a "soup".

The beads absorb some chemicals, and so they're not inert by the time they're eaten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There are a number of natural "beads" regularly used in alternative products. Likely a higher pricepoint, but clearly a better idea. e.g. [http://www.kiehls.com/mens-oil-eliminator-deep-cleansing- exf...](http://www.kiehls.com/mens-oil-eliminator-deep-cleansing-exfoliating- face-wash/515.html)

</comment><comment><USER31> Microbeads were banned in Minnesota several months ago.

[http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/05/microbeads](http://www.mprnews.org/story/2015/05/05/microbeads)

</comment><comment><USER32> What about pumice soaps, don't these particles float as well? Probably too abrasive to have widespread use outside of some hand soaps.

<comment><USER33> They aren't a polymer. Nature is well-adapted to having small bits of rock in the watershed.

<comment><USER34> Technically speaking, I think pumice is a type of glass, and silicates are actually inorganic polymers (...-Si-O-Si-O-Si-O-...).

The problem is that microbeads are _new_ to the ecosystem, and no species larger than a bacterium has yet adapted to suddenly having a lot of anthropogenic plastic particulates around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> FINALLY

How people aren't able to be put in jail for this kind of idiotic stuff in the first place I'll never understand. Our priorities in our legal system don't really accommodate the destruction that can be caused by normal everyday products at scale.

</comment><comment><USER35> Holy batman, I didnt know (certain type of) microbeads are made of plastic. _Everybody_ knows plastic in general is non-biodegradable etc etc, and they're making it in small particles? Who in their right mind?

What I don't understand is, they get the profit, everyone else clean their shit. And they can get away with this? _Sigh_

</comment><comment><USER36> Not only are these environmentally harmful, but they get stuck in your ear after you shower with them and then your doctor has to refer you to an ENT costing time and money to vacuum them out. Not to mention the psychological stress when your doctor tells you you have a blue growth in your ear and they don't know what it is. Or so I've heard this sort of thing can happen...

</comment><comment><USER37> Why 2017? That seems very far off.

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone who cares about science rather than religion want to link about issues with microbeads here?

Can't say I've ever seen any, other than the normal anti-science, stuff is 'scary' point.

That alone annoys me with this conversation, how about starting with a real reason this is bad rather than we can track it.

</comment><comment><USER39> What's wrong with pumice soap that we need plastic?

</comment><comment><USER40> Great, but now what do I do when my hands are covered in tree sap and normal soap isn't working? I guess we'll just have to settle for a more environmentally friendly alternative like acetone.

<comment><USER41> Do microbeads show up in products like Gojo Fast Orange and other degreasers — that is, things a mechanic would use to clean gunk off his hands?

<comment><USER42> Products like Gojo, traditionaly at least, used crushed pumice or sometimes walnut shells.

<comment><USER43> Apricot pits are my favorite.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mad Max violence stalks Venezuela's lawless roads - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-economy-trucks-widerimage/mad-max-violence-stalks-venezuelas-lawless-roads-idUSKBN1FT1G9 <comment><USER2> Regime change is currently on the table. In the event of further economic collapse.

What Would a U.S. Intervention in Venezuela Look Like?

[https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-11-08...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/venezuela/2017-11-08/what- would-us-intervention-venezuela-look)

<comment><USER3> US intervention seems like an option. Especially given the fact that Venezuela is looking to sell oil for Yuan[[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2017/09/15/venezuela...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2017/09/15/venezuelas- latest-currency-decision-shows-desperation/#5f8fd5a53094)]

a move that has been the strongest predictor of US intervention in the past 2 decades.

<comment><USER4> What are the other cases of US intervention in this style? I can understand the consternation at some level, but has something happened in the past 2 decades that I just missed?

<comment><USER3> Hussein began selling oil for Euros shortly before the US invaded in 2003, Gadaffi was looking to sell oil for gold shortly before the US decided 'more freedom' was in order.

Might just be a happy coincidence, but the petrodollar is a huge part of the US Dollar's value.

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure why you're being downvoted for stating facts. This is a well- known theory for when the US government chooses to intervene in other countries' affairs.

<comment><USER6> I bought a bottle of olive oil recently in a supermarket, and paid with Euros. I expect the American imperialists to bomb the shop soon.

(just kidding)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's quite impressively mucked up. I wonder if there's some way of returning to sane government of if they have to wait 35 years for Maduro to die of old age.

<comment><USER8> I really hope so. This is a beautiful country that deserves better. Oil has made us rich and now screwed us up in a massive way.

<comment><USER9> Oil is not what _caused_ the food shortages, it's what allowed the government to convince everyone their policies were working during the good times, while they depleted their cash reserves to cover the massive unsustainable hole their radical social policies were burning in their pocket.

Food shortages were a result of government enacted price controls, expropriation of farmland, and centralization of financial markets. Which subsequently disrupted local food production, scared away foreign imports, and reduced access to critically needed foreign currency.

No country can produce ALL of their own food. Imports are a necessity, even for socialist countries. Artificially reducing prices, fucking over all of your domestic business talent, and severely limiting foreign currency is a (predictable) recipe for a massive food crisis.

Venezuela suffered persistent food shortages well before the oil "crisis" (as early as 2002-2003) [1] ...meanwhile every other non-socialist petrol-state has bounced back from the crisis, EXCEPT Venezuela.

When Chavez came to power he announced "capitalism was dead" to the cheers of farmers. Those farmers are now starving and flooding over the border to Colombia whose "capitalist" food markets offer both greater variety and far greater supply. The oil crisis merely exposed the complete failure of their "modern" economic system.

Yet the Venezuelan government continue to blame the west for all of their failures. And local "hoarders" and "speculators" for food shortages [2].

It's obvious that looking in the mirror and admitting personal responsibility would be political suicide for the pseudo-dictators and all of their corrupt friends.

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

[2] [https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21571445-cost- postpo...](https://www.economist.com/news/americas/21571445-cost-postponing- inevitable-devaluation-out-stock)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> yeah that's not a sensationalist headline at all.

<comment><USER11> Sure it's not flaming guitars, but for once the movie reference seems more exaggeration than fiction.

<comment><USER12> The first Mad Max was not particularly post-apocalyptic - the world was falling down, but the vestiges of society were still rather strong, and the lunatic fringe like Toecutter were just motorcycle gangs cranked up to 11.

Things have gotten weirder and weirder in every installment since.

<comment><USER13> > Things have gotten weirder and weirder in every installment since

Reality is following suit</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Making the Case for no DRM - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN!
I live an volunteer at a non-profit in India. We are just about to release our books to the Amazon Kindle and iBooks stores.
I am trying to make the case for no-DRM. Could you guys help with any links/studies you have found useful?
The subject matter is spiritual/self-help. <comment><USER2> It's all subjective really. DRM in my opinion is a way of basically saying, "We don't trust our own customers so we are going to make it harder for you to use your legitimate purchase on multiple devices, multiple times." the proof that DRM doesn't work? Look on The Pirate Bay, count the number of video games alone protected by DRM that have been cracked; Diablo 3, Starcraft 2, Battlefield 3, Modern Warfare 3 and so on.

The money spent on DRM is a waste, no matter how smart you think your DRM implementation is, there are people out there smarter with tonnes of free time to crack your DRM. Want to know what the best DRM implementation is? No DRM. Why? you won't make your customers feel like criminals which in term will make them not spite you. See how angry people get at those, "You wouldn't steal a car" anti-piracy adverts at the beginning of their purchased and rented DVD's? Perfect example of treating your customers like criminals.

The bottom line is: if people want to steal your stuff, they will eventually find a way. Is it worth the extra added effort and cash to implement something you know for certain will be cracked? I don't think so.

Just my two cents.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the reply.

Without meaning offence, do you have any numbers/links to back your statements? I can't exactly present a report to a link to a HN thread...or can I? :)

<comment><USER2> No worries dude. No offence taken, here are some links to various articles about why DRM is bad, including one about how DRM is crushing Indie booksellers.

I'm sure there are more links and studies out there, but this should be enough to make a decent argument.

DRM is crushing indie booksellers online [http://paidcontent.org/2012/04/06/drm-is-crushing-indie- book...](http://paidcontent.org/2012/04/06/drm-is-crushing-indie-booksellers- online/)

It's time for a unified ebook format and the end of DRM by Joe Wikert [http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/02/unified-ebook-format-end- dr...](http://radar.oreilly.com/2012/02/unified-ebook-format-end-drm.html)

Cutting their own throats by Charlie Stross [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/11/cutting-...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/2011/11/cutting-their-own-throats.html)

Why DRM-Free eBooks Are a Very Good Thing by Laurie K [http://www.stellarfour.com/2012/04/why-drm-free-ebooks- are-v...](http://www.stellarfour.com/2012/04/why-drm-free-ebooks-are-very- good-thing.html)

Study: Freedom Of Expression Vs. DRM: The First Empirical Assessment by Patricia Akester [http://www.ip-watch.org/2009/05/25/freedom-of-expression- ver...](http://www.ip-watch.org/2009/05/25/freedom-of-expression-versus-drm- the-first-empirical-assessment/)

Study: Are Digital Rights Valuable? Theory and Evidence from the eBook Industry <http://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2004/42/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why does this organisation sell books? Is it to earn money which they can spend on their true purpose? Is it to spread the message contained in the books? A bit of both?

If the point is to spread the message, why use a technology whose only purpose is to restrict that spread?

<comment><USER4> It is possible the non-profit is self-funded. In which case it would need a source of income to continue its mission.</comment></comment>


How to Fix Quibi - <AUTHOR> https://couchpotato.substack.com/p/how-to-fix-quibi <comment><USER2> It's failing because of their mobile only idea. They've now added Chromecast and Airplay support, but it might be too little, too late. Missing Roku support leaves a huge gap (40% market share).

They sent out a questionnaire about two weeks ago asking about how the user wants to consume their content, and a few days ago they released the Chromecast and Airplay support (which came as no surprise to me) but that's just a bandage solution.

I have no issues with their content, just how they want to force me into horrible ways to consume it! Will subscribe when Roku support lands.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point!

Comparing directly, would you pay for Quibi in addition to your slate of Netflix/HBO/Hulu or would you replace one? Content wise it still feels the least compelling

<comment><USER2> It would be an addition, Quibi has a way to slim offering to replace any/all the other offerings. I liked some of their originals, and that's the only reason. Their short form (10m) episodes are also welcomed by me, since I often find myself needing a quick break to reset myself.</comment></comment></comment>


James Simons: former mathematician and now billionaire hedge fund manager - <AUTHOR> http://seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/seed_interview_james_simons_2.php

<comment><USER2> His fund suffered loses recently, making it all suspicious that the math was just good old "sweeping the risk under the rug" kind:

You buy a decent assets that give you 7% return, but have a 2% chance of default. You borrow at 5% and leverage to the max. As long as your assets perform, you have returns that beat the market consistently with high probability. But with a low probability you lose a lot more, and you just hope that this doesn't happen while you rake all the fees and gains.

<comment><USER3> Medallion was up something like 70% after fees last year. Are you talking about REIF, which is benchmarked to the S&P, and which performed close to the S&P?

 _Edit: Now is as good a time as any to disclose that I work with Rentec, among other companies. I'm not sure if this makes me informed or just biased, though. Everything I've said about them is publicly available._

<comment><USER2> I'm talking about Renaissance. Medallion is closed and manages money only for Renaissance employees.

<comment><USER3> Renaissance is the fund management company. It manages several funds, which have different returns because they use different strategies and have different benchmarks. Which _fund_ do you mean? What _strategy_ are you talking about?

<comment><USER2> You're right, it was RIEF down for the year, but even Medallion suffered losses in August, here's his letter to investors explaining it: [http://www.dealbreaker.com/2007/08/simons_warns_about_august...](http://www.dealbreaker.com/2007/08/simons_warns_about_august_resu.php)

<comment><USER3> "Medallion's 3.9 percent return during August, though that fund too was whipsawed by volatility, bolstered Simons's reputation as the silver-bearded wizard of quantitative investing."

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=ho...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=ayjImYcoCiH8)

So you may mean that they suffered from _volatility_ in August. But making 4% per month is not bad, even if there are 10% swings along the way.

<comment><USER2> Here's another one - from April this year:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a6eS...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a6eSZD5YgDTI&refer=us)

<comment><USER3> Oh no! A fund that correlates with the S&P is down about 12% from peaking in May to early April! Meanwhile, the S&P is down, um, 13.8% from peaking in May to early April! So the fund is slightly outperforming its benchmark, even though it's dropped. I don't think anyone invested in the fund hoping to lose 12%, but this is within the range Simons said to expect. One thing you claimed was that we should expect stable, high returns, and the occasional massive crash. And yet the massive crash you predict has not materialized! Instead, we have a slight decline, mirroring a slightly larger decline in the index one fund follows -- as well as a record-breaking year, in which Medallion appears to have earned over 100% before fees, on over $5 billion in assets.

It's suspicious to me that you point to their low-risk institutional fund's losses as proof that their high-risk strategy is dangerous, even as their high-risk fund is posting record gains.

<comment><USER2> I'm trying to make a point about their overall strategy:

It is easy to have low returns with low volatility - just buy bonds.

It is easy to have hight returns with high volatility - just buy penny stocks or emergent markets.

Their Medallion fund was doing something that defied that rule for 20 years, it had high returns with low volatility. Up until August last year.

<comment><USER3> That is incorrect. It is very hard to use simple rules like that to get high returns, because when enough people follow the rules, they become invalid. Renaissance is using a huge number of strategies, and they're constantly testing them. It's likely that any given strategy will be obsolete soon enough, but less likely that they'll all be wrong at once.

It might be useful to think of Renaissance as a market-maker, not a money manager -- given that you described two buy-and-hold strategies, and their average holding period is six minutes, it sounds like they might not be in the business you're talking about.

It's possible to get superior returns over time by having such a low cost or such a strong brand that your product is qualitatively different from someone else's: having a brand like Coca-Cola that is, say, 5% more recognizable than Pepsi can give you something that's worth much much more than Pepsi + 5%; being able to make trades 1% faster and 1% cheaper than anyone else (if Rentec can do that) means having a monopoly on taking advantage of one set of market discrepancies. They obviously have to spend a lot of money to maintain that advantage, but the advantage remains.

<comment><USER2> Ok, so you're saying that in the business of making money buying and selling stocks (short or long term doesn't matter) they have distinct competitive advantage that is not going away.

So what would be their advantage that holds for so long? Ability to properly calculate short-term risk/reward given all available public information?

Update: after reading your blog I found an answer - if stock market is a casino then quant funds are girls serving drinks to the audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another profile:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=ho...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&refer=home&sid=ayjImYcoCiH8)

For folks interested in understanding his strategies, here is a thread by some quants:

[http://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=48...](http://www.nuclearphynance.com/Show%20Post.aspx?PostIDKey=4851)

</comment><comment><USER4> Can quants see into the future or is it just luck or market-custom algorithms?

Out of amusement I love it saying he's no longer a mathematician, because now he's a hedge fund manager! He must have given that up to play the market.</comment>


The Celebrity Photo Hacks Couldn't Have Come at a Worse Time for Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/09/the-celebrity-photo-hacks-couldnt-have-come-at-a-worse-time-for-apple/

<comment><USER2> "If Apple were a startup like Dropbox, such a high-profile theft of users' sensitive, private data could spell the difference between success and failure as a company."

The stock market doesn't seem to care. Or care more about possible new products coming out next week. The stock price went up after the celebrity photo hack news. [http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=1m&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL&t=1m&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=)</comment>