Is face to face dead? - <AUTHOR> I live in NYC. I am surrounded by people. They're above me and below me. I pass thousands of people every day on the street. I don't talk to them or know their names, I certainly don't ask them for help.
I ask blogs what movie to watch. I ask YouTube to show me how to tie a tie. I ask Udemy for learning. I ask Facebook for an update on my social life. This list could go on forever...
Is face to face dead? <comment><USER2> You know, we're probably doing it wrong. The Internet allows you to obtain many, many of the day-to-day answers in the blink of an eye. One would think that this is great, because theoretically, by virtue of such a shorter question-answer loop, you are freeing up more time to interact with your fellow human beings, have meaningful conversations with them, learn from them.

What I think happens is this: most people simply don't care that much about making contact. Not so much because everything can be found on the Internet, but rather because they are turning into less of a social animal than, maybe, we as a species used to be in the past.

In a way, I would argue that the fact that we can be more independent because BosnianBill on YouTube teaches you how to pick locks without you needing to ever leave the house, means that you feel like you don't need other people to be around in order to get answers or learn some cool skill.

To be completely honest, while I don't have any experience of living in any city that can be considered even remotely big, I have a hunch that, ironically enough, living in a huge city such as NYC is a bit alienating. I said "ironically" because I would guess there are more social happenings than you could partake in even if you could do it as a full-time job.

Ultimately, I think it boils down to trying not to forget that the Internet is valuable, but a good number of people are _more_ valuable. Be it for their knowledge, for their humor or just their kindness. As with everything else, I believe one should find some sort of equilibrium between online resources and human interaction.

Easier said than done, though. The big likes are instant gratification, while maintaining a good friendship is a lot of hard, long term work. And today "long term" is a word we tend to dislike when it comes to getting gratification.

I don't know if any of this makes any sense, as I basically just jotted down my thoughts as I went.

</comment><comment><USER3> I was thinking about the same thing for quite sometime now. I moved from India to US last year and was surprised to see how low face to face interaction here is. People are generally on their phone in trains, parks and other public places and don't bother to really interact in-person. I have also noticed that so many people are so lonely here and have only friends on social-media. They feel amazing about their life on Instagram or snapchat but have no one to share feelings personally or spend time with. People here don't marry or get into relationship to save money. That's how economy and technology is changing the society. I was thinking about creating an app where people can meet totally unrelated people outside their facebook network. That can be life saver for some people.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's not "dead", but our brains have now been trained to get its neurotransmitters differently. We used to feel the fulfillment of achieving something, learning, or friendly comfort through human interaction. Now, people can get it via screens which takes less effort both physically and psychologically (having to get over little awkwardness). We are programmed to gather the most with the least effort, so naturally people end up preferring the phone.

This is actually bad, because we are slowly losing our face-to-face interaction skills and become worse at reading expressions/reactions.

People say that it's no different from the 80's and show a photo of people reading newspapers on a bus, but I've yet to see photos of people reading them on their 1st dates.

</comment><comment><USER5> Physical location does not matter. Why live in NYC? Why do the big tech companies build huge headquarters and make workers commute? Why do interviewers try to determine if you are a good culture fit when all they really care about is how quickly you can produce quality code?

</comment><comment><USER6> Only as dead as you let it be. Keep the human touch. It is special and, depending on the industry you're in, quite rare.

</comment><comment><USER7> With the way this world is moving, unfortunately it's only going to get worse.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you track your blog traffic? - <AUTHOR> I'm about to publish my statically hosted dev blog and I am wondering what tracking solution I should use.
My first choice still would be Google Analytics, however, I don't like the idea of including Google spyware in my blog that much. Besides, many adblockers are blocking Google Analytics and most developers use an adblocker.
I would like to see how much traffic specific articles get and where the visitors come from.
What do you use for your blog? <comment><USER2> [https://simpleanalytics.com/](https://simpleanalytics.com/) is the best for privacy focused, cheap analytics :)

<comment><AUTHOR> As my blog is just a personal project, $9 is a little too much for me just for tracking.

<comment><USER3> Front it with cloudflare and you'll get request analytics for free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use, and quite like, Matomo (formerly Piwik).

[https://matomo.org/](https://matomo.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It took a ton of time and a lot of troubleshooting to setup my own Matomo instance, but it's running now ;) Thanks for your input! However, I needed to rewrite some files so that adblockers don't block the tracking mechanism right away.

<comment><USER5> This seems a bit disrespectful considering how you don't like "spyware"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use my logs and Keen.io (from the back-end). It's more accurate than an external service like GA. Even if a visitor's browser has JS disabled entirely, it still gets counted.

I filter out certain kinds of visits (such as bots) from the dashboards I look at regularly.

The only problem is that since Keen got acquired they've quietly stopped letting people sign up for their free plan and greatly increased the prices of their paid plans. It's probably only a matter of time before I lose access to my current plan and need to find an alternative.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://github.com/usefathom/fathom](https://github.com/usefathom/fathom) We use the hosted version ($9/month, [https://usefathom.com/](https://usefathom.com/))

</comment><comment><USER8> I rolled my own. I have an Azure function that I post the pathname and referrer to, and it then stores that in Table storage. It costs me between 1 and 2 cents per month.

</comment><comment><USER9> Check out Paul Jarvis' Fathom

[https://usefathom.com/](https://usefathom.com/)

Best of luck and link up your blog when ready ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks man ;) Its [https://blog.hediet.de/](https://blog.hediet.de/)!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm using CloudFlare - I know it won't be so detailed as Google Analytics but I don't mind.

</comment><comment><USER11> Apache with Analog Analytics is good.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd recommend web server log analysis with GoAccess or AWStats.

<comment><USER13> As much as I absolutely detest spying and surveillance capitalism, this is the _least_ invasive solution, but please remove or anonymize ALL IPs in your logs.

Other than that I would not log, track or collect any requests from people.

<comment><USER14> Keeping IPs for a short time -- 24 hours to 7 days, say -- is useful for detecting and mitigating abuse.

Though tools for automated throttling or simply front-ending behind a DDoS- capable CDN may be a preferred option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Apache with Analog Analytics is good.

</comment><comment><USER16> personal blog or for work?

<comment><AUTHOR> personal blog :)

<comment><USER16> yeah haven't tried that yet outside of using blog platforms like Blogger (yes I'm that old haha) or Medium so don't have additional analytics implemented</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN : MorningTabs.com, instantly access websites you access daily - <AUTHOR> http://www.morningtabs.com/

<comment><USER2> I will not use sites that require login via a proprietary third-party service (e.g. Facebook, twitter or Google). I do not want my online identity locked-in to a third-party site I don't control. I understand offering these as options, even making them the default, but don't make them the only way to use your site.

Offer an on-site login or OpenID as an option, or I will not use your site.

<comment><USER3> Along the same sentiments here, is utilizing facebook login part of a larger strategy here? Curious as to why it's the only option for users to interact with the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> No strategy here. I though facebook is pretty much ubiquitous. May be I can provide a way to login through twitter as well. I am just asking for basic level of access for FBConnect.

<comment><USER2> _May be I can provide a way to login through twitter as well_

 _No_ , that doesn't solve the problem _at all_. I really doubt it's any harder to use OpenID than it is to use twitter if you're really hung up on not storing usernames and passwords yourself (which really isn't that hard!).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> In morning after waking up there is whole list of websites I have to check. I have built this tool to make it easy to do that.

<http://www.morningtabs.com/>

It lets you create list of websites to visit and creates a single page out of those websites.

Now I don't miss to visit important websites.

Please let me know what you think.

Would you use it to visit websites regularly?

<comment><USER4> Why is this (very slow to load) tall vertical scroll better than a tab group?

<comment><AUTHOR> You can simply scroll through the websites. I prefer it that way. BTW you can also access tabs on the left.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sample page with pages added : <http://www.morningtabs.com/HQIRwQaB>

</comment><comment><USER5> cool idea, I would use it if I didn't have to login. Why not just set a cookie? Make the experience more seamless because easy n seamless is your product strategy.</comment>


U.S. class action lawsuit against Apple over Meltdown and Spectre flaws - <AUTHOR> https://9to5mac.com/2018/01/22/spectre-meltdown-apple-lawsuit/ <comment><USER2> This is such a cash grab. Can someone tell me how Apple is the one responsible for the flaw in Intel's hardware? Why isn't Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Toshiba, Sony, etc. also being sued for these security flaws? The reason: because suing Apple is good publicity for the lawyers.</comment>


Hacking an ATM - <AUTHOR> http://henryschwarz.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/black-hatted.html

<comment><USER2> Some backstory that isn't in this article: Barnaby Jack (who goes all the way back to the original eEye research team in the last '90s early '00s) did this ATM research while working as a researcher for Juniper Networks. I believe the original vendor he targeted was Tranax; they make the crappy free-standing ATMs you see in bodegas†.

Jack notified the vendor and (obviously) got his talk accepted and announced at Black Hat. The vendor complained to Juniper, and Juniper had the talk pulled††. Jack left Juniper for IOActive and gave the talk the following year. Last time I checked, I believe he was at McAfee.

† _Funny thing about Tranax: they managed to let Google crawl their maintenance manual a couple years ago, and the manual had their default maintenance code in it; a huge number of ATMs were found to be running with that default password, which allowed people to re-denominate the bills in the machine._

†† _This was probably a reasonable call, because Juniper has billions of dollars to lose to a negligence suit brought by an ATM company._

</comment><comment><USER3> Its not very nice that the author turns a 'security researcher' (his words) who is effectively helping (if not actually doing) the authors job for him into a pantomime villain.

[edit: I do get that they became 'friends', which gives some levity to these descriptions, but it still strikes me as casting aspersions not just on the individual but more generally on the way he and others like choose to work]

<comment><USER4> It's a joke. He later on describes how they've become friends.

<comment><USER5> Then he mentions booing him at an event at the bottom. Friends seems to be loosely meant.

<comment><USER2> If the tables were turned, The Dread Pirate Barnaby would do worse than 'boo'.

Sorry, there's no drama to be found here. The guy's just having fun writing this up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I couldn't bear reading that article.

The story could've been good, but the style of writing is neither witty nor clever and when I arrived at reserved seats in the front row at Black Hat I closed the tab with a quick sigh of relief afterwards. Horrible.

<comment><USER7> Has HN turned into a literary club? Despite trying to make it a spy novel, I thought this article was one of the better stories read on HN.

<comment><USER2> I liked it a lot too, and, obviously, I'm on Barnaby Jack's side of the vulnerability research fence, not the ATM vendor's. I even thought the style was amusing.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I came here wanting to say I thoroughly enjoyed the writing style. Technical details coupled with great entertaining writing? Count me in. I already read enough dry technical tumblrvomit as it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Here's the video of Barnaby Jack hacking ATM at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas, July 2010: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwMuMSPW3bU>

</comment><comment><USER10> Excruciating, hammy read - wish he'd tone down the dramatic prose and just give us the info.

<comment><USER11> I really enjoyed the hamminess. I found it a pleasure to read.

<comment><USER12> Agreed, and I found it quite opposed to the stiff boring technical read it could of been. Which I believe was the exact point the author was trying to make at the end of his story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just wanted to chip in that I thought the article was a great read, informative, and the author's self-deprecating sarcasm was very refreshing. Much preferred to extremely dry and technical stuff.

</comment><comment><USER14> FWIW Barnaby Jack (or a reasonable facsimile of him) links to this article with the comment "the right way to respond to security vulns...". (<http://twitter.com/barnaby_jack/status/210052884497313793>)

</comment><comment><USER15> Found this article quite amusing. I'm not sure why so many people are getting turned off by it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Its worth noting that the events described occurred in 2010.

<comment><USER17> Can't find a full length video of the presentation anymore online. Anyone else find a copy of the presentaton?

<comment><USER16> I don't know about full-length, but there are some >10min videos on youtube. [http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Black+Hat+2010+b...](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Black+Hat+2010+barnaby+jack)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I remember watching barnaby's video when it first came online in 2010 and was wowed like the live crowd.

Thank you for such a detailed follow up.

</comment><comment><USER19> > [My company's ATM] was just the most conveniently available to purchase on > the web and be delivered to his home. Note to our salespeople: for security > purposes, please make it more difficult to purchase our product.

In this sentence, the author mistakes _obscurity_ for security.

<comment><USER20> In this comment, the author mistakes irony for idiocy.

<comment><USER19> I beg your pardon. It seemed to me like the author dropped the sarcasm near the beginning of the write up and he actually thought denying individuals access to the equipment would make it more secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Well-executed humble-brag marketing.

</comment><comment><USER22> _"Note to our salespeople: for security purposes, please make it more difficult to purchase our product."_

This guy still does not get it...

<comment><USER23> I'm sure this was meant as a joke.

<comment><USER22> Really? For more context here is the entire paragraph:

 _"Barnaby chose my company's ATM arbitrarily, it was just the most conveniently available to purchase on the web and be delivered to his home. Note to our salespeople: for security purposes, please make it more difficult to purchase our product."_

<comment><USER4> Yes, really. The whole article is thick with sarcasm and jokey stabs

<comment><USER22> The whole article is thick with sarcasm? The only other bit of sarcasm/joke in the last nine paragraphs is that the author booed/jeered barnaby when he came to the stage. If "the whole article is thick" with sarcasm why is the last 37% so straight forward and not funny?

<comment><USER24> It comes directly after the line 'Barnaby is from New Zealand and I'm from Australia, and trans-Tasman friendships are regarded as treasonous', which FYI is also a joke.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Forbes Announces Social Networking App with Tinder for Its 30 Under 30 Community - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/forbespr/2015/08/05/forbes-announces-launch-of-social-networking-app-for-its-under-30-community-members/ <comment><USER2> This is an advertisement for Forbes' new app. They got Tinder's help in making it. The rest of the "article" is an advertisement for Forbes' new age-ist community, for which the app was built.

<comment><USER3> Not really age-ist. I am a member and invited to this app but I am over 30. There are lots of members of this particular community that are over 30. The only qualification was having attended the last summit, or presumably attending this years summit. It is an exclusive community which you get for the ticket price. So, you're mistaken.</comment></comment>


What is Silverblue? - <AUTHOR> https://fedoramagazine.org/what-is-silverblue/ <comment><USER2> I have been working on a similar idea (well ok the _concept_ of an immutable desktop - the tech is completely different) - [https://github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation/tree/master/bi...](https://github.com/mikadosoftware/workstation/tree/master/bin)

The article is completely right about this being the future of user OS's - even my half-broke me-ware above has changed how I think about using my laptop - just knowing exactly what is under me is exactly what I have set is ... reassuring.

Being able to know I can try things out and a reboot gets me back to my last known good point is ... well a bit like a video game with savepoints. And there becomes an utter focus on data and non-data. And probably the best advantage is that you ratchet up - every security improvement I think of becomes built in and makes my platform one tiny bit higher

SilverBlue is well worth watching - I say they really are into something

<comment><USER3> Thanks for summarizing the crucial piece, that this is about an Immutable OS. You have to scroll 2 full pages before the Silverblue news release actually gets to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds similar to what Apple's doing with Catalina. On [https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina- preview/](https://www.apple.com/macos/catalina-preview/) they say:

 _Dedicated system volume._

macOS Catalina runs in its own read-only volume, so it's separate from all other data on your Mac, and nothing can accidentally overwrite your system files. And Gatekeeper ensures that new apps you install have been checked for known security issues before you run them, so you're always using good software.

<comment><USER5> That sounds like the way Android partitions work.

<comment><USER6> Linux, the BSDs ...

<comment><USER7> This is a logical volume at the FS level rather than a proper partition, which has the advantage of sharing space with other volumes/&c.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd like to share a similar project/tool that I developed.

Darch. [https://godarch.com/](https://godarch.com/)

I essentially use Dockerfiles to build my operating systems. I push them to Docker Hub so that each of my machines have access to them. I can boot them bare-metal, read-only, with a tmpfs overlay. I can apt-get install/remove anything, completely break my system, then reboot and everything is fixed!

Here are my recipes: [https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch- recipes](https://github.com/pauldotknopf/darch-recipes)

You can easily get it a test-run with a pre-made VM: [https://pknopf.com/post/2018-11-09-give-ubuntu-darch-a- quick...](https://pknopf.com/post/2018-11-09-give-ubuntu-darch-a-quick-ride- in-a-virtual-machine/)

I'd love to hear some feed back. I've been using it personally for the past few years. I wouldn't do it any other way.

</comment><comment><USER9> Basically : the OS is itself a layered read-only "container", on top of which flatpak is the recommended way to install applications.

I wish someone built an OS based on k8s as a service and application orchestrator. We wouldn't have to reinvent all the config files, the command line tools and we could reuse knowledge between cluster and single-machine administration. Plus k8s already voluntary abstracted the underlying technologies, so it should be simple to reuse it. We would use the same high- availability concepts than from the cloud, such as stateless service, horizontal scaling of services, etc. We could also reuse Istio and all the standards it is built-on to introspect the system. In other words, a microservice based OS.

<comment><USER10> No way. I get paid to write YAML hell for k8s at work. I don't want my desktop to have to work like that. Not all things need to be K8s

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The scope seems to be pretty similar to: [https://nixos.org/](https://nixos.org/)

<comment><USER12> But there are also large differences.

Silverblue still uses a single namespace for all libraries (unless you count Flatpaks, which can bring their own dependencies), whereas on NixOS you can have many different versions of the same library in parallel.

In NixOS, the whole system is defined declaratively, including the system configuration, whereas Silverblue uses a mutable /etc.

<comment><USER13> Also with NixOS you can install a package and start using it immediately, whereas with SilverBlue you first have to reboot the system to use the new package or after installing updates (or use one of the experimental live update features that tend to break booting the system). If you don't change the set of installed packages often, and reboot your system daily to get the updates, then SilverBlue works quite nicely. You can use containers (via podman or docker), and there is a builtin utility "toolbox" that gives you a persistent mutable container.

<comment><USER14> In Silverblue, your /usr is really immutable, so when you install package, you are installing it into different tree than the one currently running. Reboot switches to that newly constructed tree.

<comment><USER15> Is there a dev version of silver Blue where you can install/remove package on the fly, and maybe commit and reboot once you're ready?

<comment><USER16> `ostree admin unlock` will make the current image writable.

<comment><USER13> Yeah thats pretty useful for some quick hacking, it is all lost on a reboot though.

<comment><USER16> The —hotfix flag would remedy that. Honestly though it's all fighting the design of the system, really there for developers to break things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's worth a moment to give credit to the long defunct Stateless Linux project:

[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/StatelessLinux](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/StatelessLinux)

This was imagined a decade ago, but the technology and the market weren't ready then. I am really excited to see it as an actual product.

<comment><USER18> I'm guessing there are embedded Linux deployments that went this direction even earlier. Read-only rootfs is generally a good idea if you can swing it. You gain the ability to sign the rootfs which is good for security.

<comment><USER19> Having worked on embedded systems with (nearly) read-only root filesystems:

An even bigger motivator is that flash memory lifetime is more determined by number of _writes_ per block rather than time or reads per block. So to keep your storage both cheap and reliable, it's best to flash it with a single full (compressed) image every time you run a firmware upgrade, and otherwise mount it read-only.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This seems poorly motivated.

> What are the benefits of an immutable OS?

> One of the main benefits is security. The base operating system is mounted > as read-only, and thus cannot be modified by malicious software. The only > way to alter the system is through the rpm-ostree utility.

How is this different from the current experience? "Operating system" files already aren't writable by the user. The only way to alter the system is through the "sudo" utility.

> Another benefit is robustness. It's nearly impossible for a regular user to > get the OS to the state when it doesn't boot or doesn't work properly after > accidentally or unintentionally removing some system library. Try to think > about these kind of experiences from your past, and imagine how Silverblue > could help you there.

How often does this happen? I've worked with complete Linux noobies who were "forced" to use Linux in a VM daily and I've never seen this happen.

<comment><USER21> Uggh. This is such juvenile criticism about something that you do not understand. You really need to look at the design of most modern(ish) operating systems in the last few years including Android and ChromeOS which are already mentioned in the article.

<comment><USER20> Clearly I don't understand, and neither the article nor you were of any help.

<comment><USER21> If you want to guard against persistent malware, you don't want your system partition to be writable. You also additionally need a chain of trust in the boot process to get to this (trusted and signed) immutable file system. That still leaves the issue of user-downloaded apps/code and how to run them securely in a sandboxed manner. Which Android does reasonably well, but it is perhaps too restrictive for server/general use cases which silverblue is trying to address.

About the configuration issue, if configurations are transactional, you get transactional properties. And that would be quite significant. If you hose your system with an apt/yum update, you don't have much recourse unless you also took a filesystem snapshot before it (which you can do with zfs/btrfs/lvm-thin etc. and people shoehorn these things for precisely this reason). They are all different means to approximate the same end which is transactional package management.

<comment><USER20> System files aren't writable by normal users in any Linux distribution.

System recovery from backups is pretty easy and well understood too, so I'm not sure what benefit this would bring.

If you want transactions you can install on btrfs and use apt-btrfs-snapshot to automatically take snapshots. It seems this isn't that well-known though, probably because the problem it solves isn't very serious.

As for Android, it's already a frustrating system on phones, something like that on desktops would be total trash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The operating system is delivered in images that are created by utilizing > the rpm-ostree project. The main benefits of the system are speed, security, > atomic updates and immutability.

The article never mentions speed (or performance) again. Is the OS somehow expected to be faster because it is mounted read-only?

<comment><USER23> No, I wouldn't expect this system to be faster in a meaningful way. Actually maybe a bit slower since fewer libraries will be cached / memory mapped between applications if they carry their own copies.

<comment><USER24> I'd love to see stats on how many libraries are really shared, I'd imagine it might be less than you hope (other than the big graphical ones)

<comment><USER25> On my laptop:

How many libraries are loaded:

        $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp'  |  tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6  |  wc -l
        15429

How many unique library names:

        $ sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp'  |  tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6  |  sort | uniq | wc -l
        872

Top 10 most shared libraries:

        sudo cat /proc/[0-9]*/maps | grep '\.so' | grep 'r-xp' | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 6 | awk '{count[$0]++}END{for (i in count) print i, count[i]}' | sort -k 2 -n -r | head -n 10
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc-2.28.so 299
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/ld-2.28.so 299
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libdl-2.28.so 262
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpthread-2.28.so 237
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/librt-2.28.so 227
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libuuid.so.1.3.0 205
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so.1.2.11 200
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libpcre.so.3.13.3 186
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libresolv-2.28.so 170
        /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgpg-error.so.0.26.1 169

EDIT: add grep r-xp to count code segment only, values in previous edit were overestimated.

<comment><USER23> That's a good idea to measure the sharing! Fortunately even if every app gets containerised, not all of those libraries will be duplicated. Specifically each app which forks on its own will still preserve sharing. For example 11 firefox processes I'm running now would share the libraries, whether it's running directly or from docker.

<comment><USER25> On linux, none of these libraries are duplicated, they are loaded once, and shared across all processes that need them.

<comment><USER26> Even when the processes are loading the libraries from different paths, in different filesystems, in different containers? How does it page in data on demand if the first container that loaded the library is killed and its filesystem unloaded?

It's not easy to share libraries across containers, unless they can be built to share a base layer in a stacked union filesystem approach.

<comment><USER27> Why can't the linker deduplicate libraries as they're loaded?

<comment><USER28> kernel samepage merging already exists

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm a fedora user and I just gave silverblue a try. The idea itself is great but in it's current state it's basically unusable for me.

A lot of application I use are command line based and are simply not available via flatpak. You have to install these via rpm-ostree but that requires a reboot every time you install anything.

Moreover many GUI applications that are available in the fedora repos are simply not packaged as flatpaks and either require rpm-ostree and a subsequent reboot or adding a third party repository like flathub. I really don't want to give up fedoras mostly excellent repos to rely on some badly packaged, possibly malicious container.

After not being able to find my preffered media player mpv, I settled for VLC from flathub. It installed just fine but video playback was completely broken, VLC installed via rpm-ostree worked.

I also don't understand how you are supposed to install patent encumbered codecs for firefox. Usually this is solved by adding the rpmfusion repos but with firefox being installed via a flatpak from the fedora repos, this obviously does not work.

I'll probably check this out again in ~2 years and see if it's any better.

<comment><USER30> For development workflows, command line applications and such, I think you're supposed to go the container route via Toolbox. So you will have dnf etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is great, especially for atomic update and rollback of the OS. I remember a particular painful instance of OS upgrade. I did the yum update command in the login shell and forgot to do it in a screen session. The login shell got killed after a period of inactivity, in the middle of the OS update. Afterward the OS was beyond repair; couldn't roll back or move forward. Had to reinstall.

I wished something like silverblue existed back then.

</comment><comment><USER24> Flatpaking all the things? I'm not sure why there is this push for Linux to have the "download and double click" install experience of windows / Mac. Convenient to install sure, but as a user its a nightmare to maintain/update.

All people on Linux really need is an xdg-open standard for opening a package manager / running an install command.

<comment><USER32> They are updated and maintained automatically, even if your distro isn't.

<comment><USER12> What do you mean by 'maintained' automatically? Many flatpaks use their own custom compiled dependencies that are outdated. I took a frequently-used dependency used to decode untrusted data (ffmpeg). Many Flatpaks on Flathub use outdated ffmpeg versions. Some examples:

\- VLC ships with a slightly older version of ffmpeg (4.1.3) with two known CVEs:

[https://github.com/flathub/org.videolan.VLC/blob/f1b27c13b13...](https://github.com/flathub/org.videolan.VLC/blob/f1b27c13b13b95423813c9ff7b159e88c09caf9b/org.videolan.VLC.json#L608)

\- MakeMKV uses an outdated ffmpeg (4.1.0), which has several known CVEs:

[https://github.com/flathub/com.makemkv.MakeMKV/blob/3c44c8bc...](https://github.com/flathub/com.makemkv.MakeMKV/blob/3c44c8bc999be61157e822fce3db390728d7c52e/com.makemkv.MakeMKV.json#L81)

\- Openshot uses an outdated ffmpeg (4.0.3) which has several known CVEs:

[https://github.com/flathub/org.openshot.OpenShot/blob/ec2077...](https://github.com/flathub/org.openshot.OpenShot/blob/ec2077f6edee6783db2cef783b7939ad0e1a9b4b/org.openshot.OpenShot.yaml#L234)

This is what you get when every application ships custom dependencies, rather than having a consistent package set.

(I like the idea of Flatpak, but I think it hasn't found its optimum yet in terms of dependency management.)

<comment><USER33> Aren't flatpaks sandboxed? Does that help mitigate the risk somewhat?

<comment><USER12> Theoretically yes (minus you are only one kernel vulnerability away from elevated access). However, _a lot_ of Flatpaks take blanket access to the home directory or host filesystem:

[https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aflathub+%22-- filesystem%3D...](https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aflathub+%22-- filesystem%3Dhome%22&type=Code) [https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aflathub+%22 --filesystem%3D...](https://github.com/search?q=org%3Aflathub+%22-- filesystem%3Dhost%22&type=Code)

So, many applications use it as a distribution mechanism and not so much for sandboxing. Of course, this is bound to get better over time when applications are modified to support sandboxing better and can use portals.

IMO you need both: isolation through e.g. sandboxing and timely security updates of applications and all their dependencies. Flatpak currently provides the former for some applications and the latter is completely dependent on the maintainer of the Flatpak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> As a Linux user from the 90s, I welcome this change. RPM Hell and its Debian equivalent are real and painful things. When disk space was a premium, system dynamic linking made sense. Today, it absolutely does not. rpm-ostree is a bit ugly. Snap has the right idea of doing both system services and apps. Fedora should do the same.

<comment><USER35> >system dynamic linking made sense

I too look forwards to having to manually updated all security patches for each binary in the system.

<comment><USER34> Would you rather each update of said binary be dependent on the author or some volunteer? That's how you get Debian stable.. No thanks.

<comment><USER36> On the author of the single vulnerable library instead of the hundreds of authors of projects making use of it, yes please.

The fact that things like flatpak, snap, nix all explicitly try to address this problem with platforms/base layers/grafting etc. is very telling. They are all a trade off of your security vs. the dev's convenience, which might be necessary to succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The author takes a long time to explain what problem this is going to solve. Only at the bottom of the page did I get a vague idea.

</comment><comment><USER38> >"Team Silverblue" or "Silverblue" in short doesn't have any hidden meaning.

Don't "Bill Revues", "Evil Rubles", "Rebels I Luv", "Urb Level I", "I'll Sue Verb", "I Blur Elves", "Be Evil Slur", and "I Serve Bull" qualify as hidden meanings?

(Not to mention "I Beaver's Mullet", "Brutalism Levee", "Album Televiser", "Ever Liable Smut", "Evil Slum Beater", "Melt Bra, Sue Evil", "Be Real Evil Smut", "Evilest Bar Mule", "Leave Stumblier", or "Blames True Evil"...)

<comment><USER39> Well, they're not hidden anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How is that fixing the issue of incompatible configuration changes? This is typically the reason why I see boot or start problems, i.e. I have made some changes to some configuration and the format, or some option changed with a package upgrade and I suddenly can't boot into the gui anymore. In contrast I can't remember when I updated a system and something stopped working because 2 libraries were incompatible. To me this is really solving a non-issue.

<comment><USER41> The contents of /etc is rolled back when you boot into the previous deployment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Also look at openSUSE MicroOS, which provides the same core idea (transactional root fs), but with some key advantages like not using rpm- ostree and instead using plain RPMs.

</comment><comment><USER43> How do they do things like security updates (e.g. OpenSSL)?

I mean, if the system is immutable, do I have to download an install a completely new image? How often do such updates arrive?

And what does immutable even mean in practice? Do I have to start from a CD image or some special boot mode every time I want to install system updates?

<comment><USER44> It's based on a piece of technology called "ostree". Fetching updates means downloading new objects from a remote object store, setting up a hardlink farm in a special location in disk (somewhere like /ostree/deploy), and during early boot, it will switchroot into there. So you can have multiple "filesystem roots" (directories on the same rootfs) and the mechanism can set things up to atomically swap between them, without wasting much file space (anything shared between them is shared, since it's hardlinks).

The details can be found in the ostree documentation: [https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/atomic- upgrad...](https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/atomic-upgrades/)

<comment><USER45> What's to stop malware from modifying the hardlinks and injecting dodgy processes during the next reboot ?

<comment><USER44> The immutability of the OS is not, alone, meant as an in-depth security measure. Don't run malware as root. If you want a fully trusted boot system, you'll have to use features like Secure Boot to verify that the BIOS and bootloader have not been tampered with.

ostree supports signing commits and trees with GPG signatures, and like git, all objects are content-addressed by SHA256 hash, so it is possible to verify that the entire root tree and all objects within it have been signed by some trusted party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > "Team Silverblue" or "Silverblue" in short doesn't have any hidden meaning. > It was chosen after roughly two months when the project, previously known as > Atomic Workstation was rebranded. There were over 150 words or word > combinations reviewed in the process. In the end Silverblue was chosen > because it had an available domain as well as the social network accounts.

It personally made me think of "Silverlight".

</comment><comment><USER47> Oooh, this is poor timing for me.

I'm about to get a new laptop for work, I usually use Fedora. Should I gamble on using SilverBlue? I'll have to think long about this one.

<comment><USER48> IMO, no. I run Silverblue on a machine I can afford to have not work at any given time. It's been rough on occasion, especially around stuff like graphics drivers. If you don't have a disposable machine I think this stack is definitely too early in development.

<comment><USER47> Many thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Concept is interested, but read-only rootfs is stupid, really. It's kind of lock-in.

Of course, ro - great for security, but if something happens with any critical system component like bootloader - I prefer to able patch/fix it myself and don't wait days/weeks for distmakers.

Clear Linux use similar concept, but they allow write access and handle whole fs tree and bundle depends on server side.

<comment><USER44> If you know how, there's an escape hatch.

There are basically multiple filesystem trees under the hood (shared with hard links to avoid duplicating file data), and at boot time you'll get one of them. These are known as "OSTree deployments", and they're found in /ostree/deploy, and they're actually mutable, it's just the bind mounts into that location that are mounted RO.

Anything in the bootloader configuration is not part of the deployment (from what I remember), and so it's mutable.

See the docs here: [https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/deployment/](https://ostree.readthedocs.io/en/latest/manual/deployment/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> How is this different from traditional embedded Linux system? Most firmwares have a read-only rootfs.

<comment><USER51> Applying those tools to desktop systems, where users make decisions about what's on the system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> So basically we're going back to the DOS model for operating systems? Sounds good to me.

</comment><comment><USER53> Oh no. The benefit of Linux is to be able to build your own Setup (Server,Desktop). Now with this "Solution" the user have more and more a closed System where every change creates a lot unnecessary steps to install another software.

I agree that on servers the container runtime makes a lot of sense but not on Desktops where changes happen every day.

<comment><USER54> I agree, and I whish others could see this as what it is - a push to make everything so overcomplicated and repository-locked in the name of security that you need endless maintenance and a support contract to run even basic software on your PC, thereby taking F/OSS _ad absurdum_. When in reality we haven't seen significant end-user F/OSS in almost a decade.

<comment><USER55> What evidence to you have to suggest this extremely uncharitable interpretation of the Fedora project's aims?

<comment><USER53> What's the aim of the Fedora project to Silverblue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It is the reason I'm slowly moving away from Linux. I've learned Linux, for years I've invested time and money learning everything I could. And it was fun. I even built LFS many times. I know how NOT to break it and how to fix it. And as we have seen with GNOME3, systemd, Wayland etc. RH will deliver and every major distribution will eventually adopt immutable directories and statically linked applications. So, my conclusion after all this years learning and having fun with Linux is that it was a waste of time. I understand the propaganda: it's good for everyone (who don't like dealing with Linux, the OS). And I understand the real reason: distribution developers don't like the tedious work that is compiling, linking and packaging the same software over and over again. But the feeling that I wasted my time. If it's to use a immutable, bloated, reboot-all-the-time OS, I just use any other OS.

As I posted here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20425615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20425615)</comment>


What's up with Google? Yesterday personalized home pages, today adsense - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Yesterday their personalized home pages went screwy (I seem to have lost some of my tabs):

<http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Web_Search_Help- Personalizing/msg/8b91d7361a074343>

Today, adsense seems to have disappeared from my sites. I didn't see it on reddit, either.

<http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-troubleshooting/topics>

Wonder what's going on in the google plex...

<comment><AUTHOR> __Update __

Things seem to be back to normal, but still... kind of odd that two fairly major problems turned up in such a short period of time. Makes one wonder what they're up to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> They've been changing the location of the different search links - news, blogs, images etc and it's driving me crazy.</comment>


Emma Thompson's Letter to Skydance: Why I Can't Work for John Lasseter - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-mn-emma-thompson-john-lasseter-skydance-20190226-story.html <comment><USER2> The questions she raised in the letter were so clear and good.</comment>


Should I focus on common or niche skills to get a job? - <AUTHOR> I can take a year off to learn new languages/skills. Will I have more success if I focus on rare languages or common ones?
I'm an American expat living in Asia. I work remotely as a web developer for an American company, but I want to quit and find a new job.
I am not the most attractive employee because I am 14 timezones from PST. Will learning a language like Elixir get me a new job faster than than a mass appeal one like Java? <comment><USER2> You could look through language ratings like this [https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/](https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/)

And choose some new language which is not loosing its market share (like Java, PHP or Perl), but growing now (like Python, Go). Also the best way to switch to new language - is to choose some similar language to the one you used recently, like PHP -> Python or Python -> Go.

Anyway, good luck in your career!</comment>


Wildly Oversimplified Diagram of the Internet Backbone - <AUTHOR> http://dweekly.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/mapping-the-internet/

<comment><USER2> Contains some great tips on where to locate your servers.</comment>


'Five Eyes' Spies Play Down Split On Huawei 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2019/04/24/five-eyes-spies-play-down-split-on-huawei-5g/ <comment><USER2> > Earlier on Wednesday, the Daily Telegraph revealed that the National > Security Council, chaired by Prime Minister Theresa May, agreed Huawei would > be allowed to contribute to "non-core" 5G infrastructure, which would > include technologies such as antennas.

Are 5G antennas computerized?</comment>


Why MicroISV's Fail to Sell - <AUTHOR> http://www.47hats.com/2010/01/why-microisvs-fail-to-sell-2/

<comment><USER2> Most of what Bob says here is extraordinarily good advice, and goes for you whether you're selling software, a subscription service, or whatever. I've always been skeptical of one bit of it though:

 _Not being able to find a physical address, telephone number and business name within one click of the home page is a deal breaker for me when shopping for software: most people feel the same._

I trust Bob's gut right to the colon, but I need data to trust his gut after it, and he doesn't have it. Empirically, I sell to plenty of people without any of these things.

(Incidentally, the trouble with putting these trust signifiers one click from the home page is that normal users don't really care about any link from the home page aside from the ones which let them complete goals. If you're going to have a home number in the hopes of motivating people to believe you are a Real, Trustworthy Business, then put the thing prominently by decision points like your buy button.)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you can easily test it - $20/mail address, $100/month virtual secretary to pick up the phone and "take notes to pass to the engineering team".</comment></comment>


Duke Nukem Forever finally available for pre-order on Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=duke+nukem+forever&x=11&y=17 <comment><USER2> Ha! I know someone who pre-ordered it like 8 years ago. Not falling for that this time.

<comment><USER3> I wonder whether this guy's pre-order will be approved :)

[http://obnoxiousgamer.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/duke- nukem...](http://obnoxiousgamer.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/duke-nukem-pre- order-receipt.png)

<comment><USER4> It would be in GameStop's best interests to do so.

After all, he's still on the hook for all but $10 of the purchase price. If I were GameStop I'd get a camera crew together and make this some good press for a $10 "loss".

Marketing like this doesn't get cheaper than $10.

<comment><USER5> If corporate America had any sense, they'd spend one fiftieth of their next ad buy, send a camera crew and the product lead out to his house, and give him "the first copy" signed by the dev team to play on his brand new Duke Nukem AlienWare computer.

Sadly, finding this sort of initiative in corporate America is rather difficult... which is why folks like e.g. Airbnb eat their PR/marketing lunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Customers who bought this also bought: Half Life 2: Episode Three, Vista with WinFS, TextMate 2.0, Daikatana and a Crunchpad

<comment><USER7> Interestingly enough, Daikatana's 3 years development time is not considered out of the ordinary for AAA games these days.

<comment><USER8> Except that Daikatana was never particularly revered as a triple-A game, so far as I can remember! ;-)

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia said it sold 200k units and payed for its development, so it's not the terrible failure people seem to tout it as either :)

I wonder how much DNF will have to sell to pay back its development costs?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wired has a really good article from last year about why DNF was never finished: <http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/>

Executive summary: The first game was _too_ successful. Failure can be, and often is, a good thing.

" _Normally, game developers don't have much cash. Like rock bands seeking a label to help pay for the cost of recording an album, game developers usually find a publisher to give them an advance in exchange for a big slice of the profits. But Broussard and Miller didn't need to do this. 3D Realms was flush with cash. [...] Yet the truth is, Broussard's financial freedom had cut him off from all discipline. He could delay making the tough calls, seemingly forever. One day, Broussard came in and said, 'We could go another five years without shipping a game' because 3D Realms still had so much money in the bank_ "

<comment><USER9> Another lesson to be learned is: shipping is a feature.

 _"George's genius was realizing where games were going and taking it to the next level," says Paul Schuytema, who worked for Broussard and Miller heading up the development of Prey, another 3D Realms title. "That was his sword and his Achilles' heel. He'd rather throw himself on his sword and kill himself than have the game be bad._

 _Broussard simply couldn't tolerate the idea of Duke Nukem Forever coming out with anything other than the latest and greatest technology and awe-inspiring gameplay. He didn't just want it to be good. It had to surpass every other game that had ever existed, the same way the original Duke Nukem 3D had.

But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He'd see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. "One day George started pushing for snow levels," recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? "He had seen The Thing" — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — "and he wanted it." The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don't let George see it. When the influential shoot-'em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker's conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, "Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very appropriately launched on Dec 28th, the Latin version of April's fools.

I think I'll wait for retail :)

<comment><USER11> Ditto, I'm not even going to believe it when I'm holding a disc in my hand loading it into a drive. I'll believe it when I'm halfway through (what by now should be the first FPS to break the 10+ hour mark, really it should be breaking the 100+ hour mark) and it wasn't a half-complete last-ditch scam to keep the project alive and funded.

I'm serious, until that point I believe DN:F is fake. This wouldn't be the first time a retailer is hosting pre-order before the game actually has a release date set.

<comment><USER12> As long as we're having a bit of fun, here's Yahtzee's "review" of DNF, which your post reminded me of:

[http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2010/09/01/zero-punctuation- viewers...](http://hawtymcbloggy.com/2010/09/01/zero-punctuation-viewers- choice-duke-nukem-forever/)

I have linked to someone embedding the video because as of this writing the Escapist magazine appears to be down. It ought to be living at [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero- punctuation...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero- punctuation/748-Duke-Nukem-Forever) .

For the record, this "review" dates from shortly after the cancellation was announced and quite a bit before the current company picked it up, so when it refers to the game being released it was being very "review"y.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> They have ruined everything! Suddenly "I'll get a date when DNF comes out" lost all its meaning.

<comment><USER14> DNF was a synonym for vaporware. I even always used DNF to explain to people what vaporware is. What now?

<comment><USER15> iPhone on Verizon.

<comment><USER16> white iphone

<comment><USER15> Much better. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'd actually consider paying the pre-order fee to keep it in a perpetual state of pre-order. Goes from epic vaporware to a whole new vapor-based business model.

</comment><comment><USER18> So pumped Textmate 2 is finally coming out. I was just about to switch to vim too.

</comment><comment><USER19> I read this and thought TextMate 2 was out for some reason :)

<comment><USER20> Funny -- there was just a thread on the Mac Ach at Ars Technica on this subject: [http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=113190...](http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=19&t=1131909) , and the top post says:

 _So remember the Duke Nuke'em Forever jokes back in summer 2008!. It's now nearly 2011. Still not even a rumor of a beta. Will this product ever be released?_

Another person said:

 _I really think it's sill in development. I mailed him few days ago to still encourage him to develop TM2. I had a reply from the support guy, containing "hope we can live up to your expectations"_

Of course, my expectations are that Textmate 2 will never come out, so I hope they don't live up to expectations in my case. But those expectations are easy to exceed.

<comment><USER19> TM2 is a lost cause.

I'm banking on Coda 2 now!

<comment><USER21> You, sir, are a master of nuanced satire. Kudos.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't even play video games any more, but if it's reviewed as any good at all, then I'd be tempted to buy a copy and waste a weekend playing it.

...hmm, maybe this is how all those luxury nostalgia business models work like $200 Barbies...

</comment><comment><USER23> This is the first video game to have a "movie" appeal. Fans of other cross- media formats, such as comic books, often will watch the movie simply because they were a fan of the series - even if the consensus is that the crossover is absolutely and completely terrible, and also hear as much from their most trusted referrals (see: Daredevil).

Because of the aging of this game and the story behind it, this sequel has taken on a similar quality - showing that maybe the thing that creates the appeal isn't the media format presented, but rather, the duration of time between one notable appearance and the next.

</comment><comment><USER24> Watch, they'll cancel orders last minute and say thanks for helping fund the sequel, "Duke Nukem Never".

</comment><comment><USER25> Is anyone expecting more than a mediocre game?

<comment><USER4> I played it at PAX. It will be mediocre by objective standards - the graphics are nothing to really admire at, and the gameplay is the same old FPS gameplay we've been used to for the last N years.

But the game _is_ gut-bustingly funny, crude, and blatantly offensive in the way only Duke can. In that sense, I'm fairly confident about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> It's just not the same. It's a game by the same name, but this isn't the DNF that we were waiting for: The possibly end-all be-all of games because it took so long to develop.

<comment><USER27> I was initially skeptical when Gearbox announced that they were releasing it (I figured they had just scrapped most of what was there and built their own game), but apparently 9 ex-3D realms employees formed their own micro-studio (Triptych) and continued development from their homes until they could muster support from Gearbox to help polish and build the console ports. So far Gearbox/2K has also done a great job of marketing so they will probably see a nice ROI for saving DNF.

<comment><USER28> So it's still developed for the PC and ported to the consoles instead of the other way around? GBX's shoddy pc port of that RPG shooter makes me wary...

<comment><USER29> Borderlands? Seems to be a solid port to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love that Amazon lists the PC version as coming out for "Windows 7/XP." So telling! I don't think there's really an analogy to make. Vista was a failure beyond comparison.

<comment><USER31> 7 IS Vista, hastily rebranded and tweaked a bit.

<comment><USER30> Hard to disagree. But it sure ain't priced like a service pack!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Together with GNU Hurd, ON ONE BLUERAY!! BAAAAAAEEEMMM!!!!

</comment><comment><USER33> I think it would have been great if they allowed pre-orders 5 years ago too. I could have sworn I heard of this happening but perhaps not.

<comment><USER34> Try GameStop, nine years ago.

[http://www.bravenewgamer.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/01/SZ9e...](http://www.bravenewgamer.com/wp- content/uploads/2010/01/SZ9e3.png)

<comment><USER33> Amazing - thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Is this game going to be available for Wii?

<comment><USER36> Oh, I can think of wiimote minigames that won't stand very well with Nintendo :)

<comment><USER37> Shake it, baby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Seriously, is this a joke?

</comment><comment><USER39> if there was ever one product I would not risk "pre-ordering" ...</comment>


Show HN: App for Fitness Pros – Book clients, schedule lessons and get paid - <AUTHOR> http://www.plannit.io

<comment><USER2> Great looking app.

Whats the marketing strategy here ? Having been part of a very similar (failed) startup, believe it's a hard market to access.

The market itself isn't actually that huge, the personal trainer turnover is high, a lot prefer cash, and can be hard to get above the noise when there's a bunch of simliarish solutions.

Anyway, best of luck and hope you have better success than us !

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback!

Right now we're conducting a closed beta with a select group of fitness instructors. We've got a great group of pros involved, spanning many different skill sets — tennis, crossfit, personal training, yoga and more. We're directly on-boarding pros and providing hands on support. This exercise has provided an extremely valuable opportunity to learn the pain points involved and workflows that truly work for fitness pros. Reception has been great so far.

Would love to hear the story of your startup. How can I contact you?</comment></comment>


Because my friend works here… - <AUTHOR> http://blog.compile.com/post/79248969509/because-my-friend-works-here

<comment><USER2> Why does this require a blog post I though this was obvious to everybody.

A recommendation from a friend will outweigh any bullshit a founder will spew at you.

Actually selling at that point is counter productive since if you are trying to sell too hard he will get suspicious.

</comment><comment><USER3> If someone is _solely_ working at company because their friends work there, it can be a fragile engagement. What if one or more of their friends leave, or worse, are fired?

(Notice the emphasis on solely; obviously having your friends working at a company is a plus, but should not be your complete basis for working somewhere)

<comment><USER2> Of course it's fragile attachment to friends and family in a company can be more motivating then any speech a founder can give.

You are a lot more motivated to give it your all when you know a friend or family member is relying on you then some random strangers you happen to work with.

You can't have a united, motivated team that you can chop up however you like without consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This jibes with an anecdote in "Peopleware". A client staffed new projects by posting them internally where anyone could apply. The authors studied how projects were chosen by applicants, because the client was worried that important (but non-interesting) projects, would not get staffed.

Being friends with an existing team member was more predictive of choice than project interest, and for many of the reasons the OP's article cited (job satisfaction and trust)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to put faith in what someone during an interview is saying. It's a sales pitch on both sides of the table. This guy already had the inside scoop on what "a day in the job" was like and he was already sold.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hi contactmatts,

I am the author of the post. You raise a valid point.

Just having your friends work there shouldn't be the only reason, but them working there and being happy is a good proxy for the work and the company.

Re: friends leaving, if you review the research in the post, it suggests that like refer like, i.e. your best performers will recommend others at a similar level. It's also symbiotic in that the presence of friends makes them stay longer.

Of course nothing is guaranteed. This approach just reduces the odds of disappointment on both sides.

Shailesh

<comment><USER7> I don't want to detract from what you are saying but you have a few typos in the article.

at one point you have "star-up" and in the very last sentence, "complement" should be "compliment."

<comment><USER6> Thanks much! Fixed.</comment></comment></comment>


Runit – Windows app for quick launch apps, directories and stored web sites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/gspansky/runit <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I've released first version of my program which I've developed after working hours as pet project.

Any comments and ideas what can be improved, changed, refactored, added is appreciate.

Thanks in advance :)</comment>


Insulin Wars: How insurance companies farm out dirty work to doctors patients - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/18/opinion/cost-insurance-diabetes-insulin.html <comment><USER2> I still think the approach I proposed years ago would be a big help: Turn the usual arguments on their head, prohibit all negotiation. Drug companies would be required to sell to all customers at the same price. This would end all cost-shifting, it's fair for all and forces the drug companies to actually compete on the end price.

This would end this sort of preferred drug shifting, it would end the game of state Medicaid often mandating the name brand rather than the generic because most of the money is federal and the state receives a big enough rebate that it's cheaper for them. Applied internationally (we don't have direct authority over foreign drug companies but we could make it a condition of importing them to the US that they follow our pricing rules) and the big subsidy to the UHC countries goes away.

<comment><USER3> > Drug companies would be required to sell to all customers at the same price. > This would end all cost-shifting, it's fair for all and forces the drug > companies to actually compete on the end price.

Then you only sell the drugs that do profit, and stop making the ones that cost money. You cant make people do what they don't want to do, pharma is no exception.

The source of this problem is patent law, importation restrictions, etc. In short, competition.

<comment><USER4> > Then you only sell the drugs that do profit, and stop making the ones that > cost money.

This is the situation we're in now. Just different people shoulder differing amounts of the cost. Equal pricing won't change the fundamental economics of drug research.

<comment><USER3> > This is the situation we're in now.

Cost-shifting is a valuable effect in the pharma industry, because high profit-margin technology might subsidize low-profit high cost drugs.

Price differentiation is usually net positive effect, but being inequitable people have a reaction against it and more so in health related services. If you could only sell 1 type of seat in an airplane, for example, you would have lots less flying than today, by reducing the amount of rich people flying business/first because of loss of quality, and by reducing the median/average person because of increased cost.

So yes, from an economic standpoint, equal pricing has an effect on the research and development of a product. This should be obvious in this community, for example, look at Google. Almost everything loses money but search. Equitable pricing would make search cheaper, and all the other services paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Luckily I never had to take insulin, as I am not diabetic. I had a dog, however, who needed it. She was prescribed Humulin-N, which is not generic. The generic insulin would not be adequate for her, according to the vet.

When I got to the pharmacy, I was amazed to learn that it would cost us ~200 USD each time I needed a vial, which I would not be able to afford; I had pet insurance, but it wasn't any help.

I have family in Brazil. Identical medication is sold there for around 10 USD. By "identical" I mean exactly the same -- including brand name (Eli Lilly). Thus, every time a family member was coming to the USA, they'd bring me a few vials purchased from a local pharmacy that honored our US-issued prescription.

The price difference is shocking. I can only imagine the despair of many Americans who cannot afford the insulin they need and have no access to alternative markets such as I had.

<comment><USER6> You can get novolin-n at Walmart for about $26 a vial without a prescription. I'm a type 1 diabetic and fallback to this when I'm unable to get a prescription.

<comment><USER5> We ended up finding Novolin N at Walmart, before the Brazil solution, but our Dr. dissuaded us from switching.

You probably know this better than I, but the doctor advised us that Humulin N and Novolin N are not interchangeable; while they are the "same" insulin (NPH), the manufacturing process is different, affecting dosage.

In our pet's case, the Dr. had conducted a series of exams to determine Humulin N dosages — which he advised us we would have needed to redo if we switched her to Novolin.

I think in humans it is easier to get blood readings, but in the dog's case the Dr. needed to keep her in hospital to do a series of "curves;" this was expensive, so we did not want to redo.

<comment><USER6> Interesting, for me (and your dog's mileage may vary), humulin and novolin are interchangeable. I bought humulin at walmart before they switched to novolin but I rarely use NPH. I only need it when either I don't have insurance or I need a new prescription because my insurance decided to switch to another preferred basal insulin. It's easy for me to see any changes since I can monitor my blood sugars but for a dog, that could be a challenge and probably requires a stay at the vet to run tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > There are several reasons that insulin is so expensive. It is a biologic > drug, meaning that it's produced in living cells, which is a difficult > manufacturing process.

Seems like this is a fairly minimal component. Per the chart at [https://twitter.com/odavis_/status/930094350478045184](https://twitter.com/odavis_/status/930094350478045184), the price has gone up 10x in the last twenty years or so. It has presumably not gotten more difficult to manufacture.

<comment><USER8> That's list price. Interestingly, net prices have barely budged in the last decade. Up only single digit percentage.[1]

 _As the list price rose and rebates grew, Novo ended up paying more and more rebate money into the health insurance system. Employers used these extra payments to offset costs in any area, including hospital and physician payments. Health plans used them to reduce premiums and also offset other healthcare costs. PBMs retained a portion of these rebates as their profits._

[1][https://www.drugchannels.net/2016/12/novo-nordisk-sheds- new-...](https://www.drugchannels.net/2016/12/novo-nordisk-sheds-new-light-on- pbm.html?m=1)

<comment><USER7> [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/health/rebates-high- drug-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/27/health/rebates-high-drug-prices- trump.html)

> Even as insurers' drug spending has grown slowly, critics say the rebate > game has served to inflate the list price of drugs, which consumers are > increasingly responsible for paying. This is especially true for expensive > specialty drugs, which treat serious conditions like cancer and multiple > sclerosis — and whose prices have been skyrocketing.

> As the cost of these products has gone up, insurers have raised deductibles > and out-of-pocket contributions so that many of the sickest Americans must > now pay thousands of dollars a year to cover their drug costs. These out-of- > pocket costs are calculated using something close to the list price of a > product, not the net price.

<comment><USER8> That is very true. If your insurance requires a copay, it's on the list price, not net.

Sometimes the discount is so big that 20% of the list price is more than the entire net price of the drug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is exactly what you get when there is no transparency, and everything is driven by non-market forces. Why not create an actual market where all medications, medical services, tests, etc, have a known price and people can make decisions based on cost, quality, and other factors?

<comment><USER10> Kenneth Arrow showed in 1963 that markets can't work for Healthcare.

<comment><USER8> Yet they seem to work fine for elective surgery like vision correction and cosmetic surgery.

<comment><USER11> Possibly because there's an opt in gap between "I need larger breasts" and "If I don't find a way to pay for my chemo, I'll die"?

<comment><USER8> Sure, the stakes are much higher, but people often choose their physician based on skill. Why not throw cost into the mix as well? Right now that's impossible.

<comment><USER11> > Sure, the stakes are much higher,

It's not that, it's that the cancer treatments are non-optional. Optional treatments have the luxury of price comparison and choosing the perfect vendor - cancer waits for no man and it shouldn't be the market deciding whether someone lives or dies.

<comment><USER3> There is always an option. People die of cancer choosing not to treat it every day in every part of the world.

I think opinions like yours above always stem from the naive assumption that all life is worth infinite at any point, so any obstacle to prolong it is a failure. Well, its not. Some treatments are expensive and cost is definitely something to take into account. If you get cancer and the treatment to save you is 100 million dollars, you better have them, because other people should not pay for that lavish expenditure.

<comment><USER11> I've never heard in a nationalized healthcare system that someones cancer treatment was too expensive, so they should just die.

<comment><USER3> The practice of medicine always had and always will have an economic component.

Countries dont even match their flu-shot vaccination recommendations, let alone multi-million dollar treatments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It is hard to know where to direct my rage. Should I be furious at the drug > manufacturers that refuse to develop generics? Should I be angry at the > P.B.M.s and insurance companies that juggle prices and formularies to > maximize profits, passing along huge co-payments if they don't get a good > enough deal? Should I be indignant at our elected officials who seem content > to let our health care system be run by for-profit entities that will always > put money before patients?

> The answer is all of the above. But what's most enraging is that drug > manufacturers, P.B.M.s and insurance companies don't have to pick up the > pieces from the real-world consequences of their policies. That falls to the > patients.

I think this is an important and balanced quote. Often in the public debate, drug pricing and access, which are two separate concepts, are conflated. A drug can be priced fairly but be inaccessible to patients because insurance companies and PBMs want to hold costs down. This often happens with drugs that treat lots of people. Because of the high volume, insurers will have massive expense for covering a drug, even at fair (i.e. Cost effective) prices. So they fight tooth and nail (often using the media as a weapon) to reduce price. Drug manufacturers won't lower price (often bc they will lose money if they do), so insurers deny

An example of this is CAR-T therapies. Cost effectiveness research shows that cost per QALY is within acceptable ranges but payers make it hard to get the drug. I think the same was true of the curative hep c drugs but don't recall the cost-benefit analyses. These drugs were incredibly effective and many people would benefit from them, so payers saw a huge potential expense and denied care until competitors emerged

In some cases though, pricing is the bigger issue. This often happens with established drugs where manufacturers increase prices, or drugs with limited competition.

Insulin is an example where both pricing and access are not great, i.e. PBMs / insurers and manufacturers are probably equally at fault

Drug pricing and access is a complex and highly competitive negotiation between manufacturers and payers and the media is a powerful weapon used in this negotiation. Lots of lobbying done as well. And there are many behind the scenes players with a stake in the debate (i.e. Hospitals wanting the public to blame drug companies for high healthcare costs). This seems like a balanced article to me, but take articles about healthcare with a healthy dose of skepticism

</comment><comment><USER13> I always say this, but reading that makes me think thank God for the NHS in the UK. Health and education should never be a business. The pharmaceutical companies are so strong and greedy in the US they want people on their drugs, rather than look for preventing the problems. They often lambast and send confusing scientific studies out to ensure no alternative therapies succeed over their drugs.

<comment><USER14> As a Type 1 diabetic in the UK I feel inclined to agree and disagree. Yes, the drug price negotiation is great and keeps my insulin affordable. However, the NHS comes with its own ailments that we should admit.

For Type 1 diabetics in particular, technological support in the form of insulin pumps, continuous glucose metres, and closed-loop systems are only handed out readily to children, while in the US they are far more commonplace since they are covered by insurance. Personally, it took me 3 1/2 years of fighting to get my pump – something that I would have had in months if I would have remained in Japan. One week ago I finally got it and what a difference it makes in terms of control. However, a continuous glucose monitor is nowhere in sight and I frankly do not expect to get one within a decade. Perhaps a pseudo-continuous glucose monitor like the FreeStyle Libre if I am lucky. My diabetes team in London is great and pro technology, but I can only imagine those that are less well-informed on how to make the system (NHS) work or live out in the country. Do they receive the technology they need to manage this disease?

For those of us with Type 1 diabetes that seek technological support, do read up over at Insulin Pumpers UK [1]. Also, never feel ashamed to seek the technology that would help you live longer and less constrained by our illness.

[1]: [http://www.insulin-pumpers.org.uk/](http://www.insulin-pumpers.org.uk/)

<comment><USER13> Agreed lots of flaws, what I like is because it's state based it's in their interest to cut costs of medicine rather than try give as much medicine as they can to increase profits

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not sure how possible such an idea is, but why not create a public utility that creates essential medication for the lowest possible price? In the end Medicare seems to pay already huge amounts of money for some medications and there must be know-how in the federal government or other public institutions on how to manufacture medications.

I'm not trolling. Like clean water, this is maybe an area were society should not tolerate market failure or cronyism.

<comment><USER16> Let's say we do this, and you create a state funded company that creates cheap insulin, let's say they can sell it for 25$ in Walmart. What then happens is that to sell that drug to the insurance companies they negotiate with the Phamacy Benefits Managers they will say to them:"We want a 66% rebate!!" They'll say errr? At what price? The PBM will say:"we don't care, insurance covers the price". So that company ends up putting a list price at 74 but providing a 66% rebate to the PBM so they still get their profit... but then the next year the PBM comes back saying "well, we are going to need a bigger rebate because the competitors where willing to raise their prices even more and thus giving us bigger rebates"

You essentially have a party who's getting every company to compete on who is willing to sell at the highest list price who's driving negotiations against the producers who only stand to gain by higher prices.

The American system is rotten to the core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, Walmart sells generic insulin. The same stuff used decades ago, for only $25 a vial.

However, the advances in insulin since then mean it's a much more burdensome therapy.

[https://insulinnation.com/treatment/why-walmart-insulins- are...](https://insulinnation.com/treatment/why-walmart-insulins-arent-the- answer-to-high-insulin-prices/)

<comment><USER17> So this implies that the articles blame on greedy drug manufacturers tweaking formulas to keep patent protection isn't really correct since they have made progress in actually improving the drug.

Not to say there is no greed here, but our policy has been that if you do the work of making a new drug, you get to charge whatever you want for an extended period of time.

This is the result of the policies we have chosen.

<comment><USER8> Correct. What we may view as a marginal tweak to create a new product, might mean better blood surgar control, fewer sticks and better health for diabetes patients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> > This pricing is, of course, hidden from most patients, except those without > insurance, who have to pay full freight.

The rest of the story flows from this. The ordinary price mechanism is broken because the patient isn't the customer, and the customer is paramount to any business. As long as most patients don't care what it costs most of the time, it will stay broken.

<comment><USER19> * As long as most patients don't care what it costs most of the time, it will stay broken*

Say what? With insulin it's "your money or your life".

<comment><USER16> As a patient, you don't care if the drug costs 25$ with 20 covered by insurance or 2005$ with 2000$ covered by insurance. That is what he means. List price doesn't matter to insured patients.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The reason seems pretty clear from contrasting these two passages:

> The pricing is all the more infuriating when one considers that the > discoverers of insulin sold the patent for $1 each to ensure that the > medication would be affordable.

> The bigger issue, however, is that companies tweak their formulations so > they can get new patents, instead of working to create cheaper generic > versions.

<comment><USER21> There is a great living for someone to make a generic.

No need to make bazillions.

Crowd fund it.

Or, regulate.

Both would be just fine with me.

<comment><USER8> A generic already exists - Walmart insulin. Apparently it's not that great.

<comment><USER22> It's Novo Nordisk, not Walmart. Walmart just charges a low, no nonsense, cash price for it.

Know how pharmacies work and you can get it for about the same price elsewhere:

[https://www.goodrx.com/novolin-n](https://www.goodrx.com/novolin-n)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why is insulin not an over the counter medicine? Would having it OTC cause problems on the scale of alcohol? What's the "value add" of having a doctor renew an insulin prescription?

<comment><USER24> The number of unexplained but apparently natural heart attacks in middle aged people with disgruntled partners would sky rocket.

Weight trainers can and probably already do (ab)use insulin to maximize their gains by manipulating blood sugar levels during workouts.

self-diagnosed and self-medicated diabetics showing up at hospitals that have no indication of this and pump them full of glucose.

<comment><USER3> > The number of unexplained but apparently natural heart attacks in middle > aged people with disgruntled partners would sky rocket.

Are you saying that insulin has to be prescribed to prevent murder?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't read the article, it's behind a paywall. But from the comments I get that people don't truly understand that there isn't just one thing called 'insulin' that is universally the same. As the husband of a type-1 diabetic who has been on $25 Walmart generic insulin and $1000 name-brand insulin (we have insurance, obviously we don't pay that amount), I can tell you they are not the same. For my wife, she never has unexpected highs/lows on the more expensive insulin.

So, sure, non-generic insulin is probably more expensive than it should be. But there was serious research and development done to make these better insulins, and thankfully someone did because they can make life just that easier to manage for a type-1 diabetic.

<comment><USER8> This is a great point. They might all be insulin's, but the "tweaking" the author refers to means real benefits to patients.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those wondering I found this on WebMD.

> In 2000, the first long-acting synthetic insulin was approved by the U.S. > Food and Drug Administration.

Looks like it will still be at least another year before a viable generic enters the market.

<comment><USER27> It has been available for a couple of years already: [https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release- detail...](https://investor.lilly.com/news-releases/news-release- details/basaglarr-insulin-glargine-injection-100-unitsml-long-acting)

More competion may be coming (or maybe not): [https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/mylan-pressing- forward-l...](https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/mylan-pressing-forward- lantus-biosim-prevails-patent-challenge-against-sanofi)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > The bigger issue, however, is that companies tweak their formulations so > they can get new patents, instead of working to create cheaper generic > versions.

Wait don't the patents eventually expire on the old formulations?

<comment><USER29> Exactly. And that's why drug companies spend 100% of their advertising and promotional budget on the new patented drugs. It's well worth it if they can get doctors to switch prescriptions to the new medications with huge profits and no generic than continue to prescribe the in some cases identically effective old drugs that are now cheap and generic.

And it works. Not to be a big insurance company shill but they're often the last line of defense against your doctor trying to prescribe an identical, brand name product for the equivalent generic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a common problem in healthcare and I think it comes down to these issues:

1\. Pharmaceuticals have natural monopolies on these drugs (due to regulation, market power, etc.).

2\. The public and end consumers are largely unaware when these monopolies are exercising their power to increase costs. This is because there is no one price, you don't actually pay the actual price (if you're on insurance), and it's difficult to actually realize what the price of a drug is.

3\. Many insurance companies don't have strong incentives to combat price increases. [1] As these prices increase, consumers become more and more reliant on insurance. [2] Insurance companies have targets for what percent of their expenses they are allowed to devote to administrative costs (buildings, salaries. etc). As the cost of drugs rises, they can increase salaries etc. while keeping the percent devoted to administrative costs constant. [3] Insurance companies are also largely monopolies. End consumers usually take whatever their employer gives them and in most states there are only a few providers. As such, they don't have much pressure to have more competitive plans.

4\. Pharmaceuticals companies respond to demands to increase shareholder value by increasing drug prices. This is exactly what we'd expect them to do as per their incentives.

\</comment><comment>

The solution to me is the following:

1\. Allow the safe import of drugs from overseas to create a more competitive market (the US has strong regulations against importing drugs mainly due to safety concerns). See this([https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/u-s-make- easier-import-p...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/u-s-make-easier- import-prescription-drugs)).

2\. Regulate pharmaceuticals and insurance companies as the monopolies they are, or dramatically lower the barriers to entry in the space.

3\. Reduce the power of pharmaceutical companies to lobby and reinforce the regulations that help them preserve their monopolies. They have every incentive to lobby for protection and it's no surprise that healthcare industry has by far the biggest lobbying spend in the US - nearly double that of Oil & Gas ([https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i&showYe...](https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i&showYear=a)).

\</comment><comment>

The book American Sickness([https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IOHQ9LO/ref=dp- kindle-redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01IOHQ9LO/ref=dp-kindle- redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)) discusses just how far we are from any type of perfect competition in this industry and the resulting effects on consumers. I really enjoyed it and it's a great book if you're interested in the space.

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe 20 years back I remember reading an article describing how many generics were intentionally ineffective - missing key ingredients - and secretly created by the drug manufacturer themselves in order to increase sales. It was a big article in the New York Times if I recall.

</comment><comment><USER32> While not for everyone, there's religious-like contention on all sides... but a ketogenic diet and fasting focus can help most people get off of insulin. It isn't easy and takes more effort for some than others.

I've been mostly off of insulin for well over a year, though I do keep a vial in the fridge for emergencies, I tend to have a spike once in a while.

Personally, I think it's about time for medical patents to all but be disbanded. The terms are too long, revision patents should not be allowed, and there should be dual-sourcing requirements for FDA approval. If there aren't two mfg's (cannon have a shared parent owner), you cannot sell the thing.

<comment><USER33> For type I diabetics, that option is off the table.

It isn't that they are resistant, it is they don't produce any at all.

It is insulin or death for them.

<comment><USER32> I understand that... but most diabetics (by a large margin) are type 2. Even for longer term type 2, with lower production (damaged beta cell production), it's necessary to monitor and have insulin on hand just in case.

> ... can help _most_ people get off of insulin</comment></comment></comment>