Chloroquine, past and present - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/20/chloroquine-past-and-present <comment><USER3> Since this 13th of February, the Koreans recommend the use of hydrochloroquine for patients infected by the covid-19 [1]. The Covid-19 fatality ratio in Korea is one of the lowest in the world, around 1%.

The study in France showing a spectacular drop in covid-19 viral load after only 6 days of hydrochloroquine treatment has been directed by Pr Didier Raoult who is the most cited researcher on infectious disease in the world. [2]

Anecdotally, I personally know a patient who took hydrochloroquine, and indeed the viral load dropped quickly, even though the lung damage is still there.

According to Pr Didier Raoult, the hydrochloroquine has been routinely prescribed for decades to prevent Malaria, with well known and limited side- effects.

According to him, the in-vitro effectiveness of hydrochloroquine on covid-19 has been confirmed by several labs independently, including his own lab and the lab of Mr Zong the most cited researcher on infectious disease in China. (Sorry, I am not sure about the spelling)

[1] [http://m.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=7428](http://m.koreabiomed.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=7428) [2] [https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ&hl=fr](https://scholar.google.fr/citations?user=n8EF_6kAAAAJ&hl=fr)

<comment><USER4> I'm reminded of the old armour-where-the-bullets-aren't story [0]. The most important things to watch out for are places where symptoms don't show up at all.

One interesting challenge that the people doing studies must be facing is that by the time symptoms get bad the virus is probably to some degree irrelevant. If someone's lungs have given out then whether or not there are virus particles in their body probably doesn't matter so much; the damage is done. Raw viral load isn't putting people in hospital as much as that important parts of their body have been dissolved.

For a drug to be effective against the virus maybe it needs to be cheap & administered very early before symptoms become too obvious. That'd be hard to study.

[0] [https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not- to-...](https://medium.com/@penguinpress/an-excerpt-from-how-not-to-be-wrong- by-jordan-ellenberg-664e708cfc3d)

<comment><USER5> There's actually a team at the University of Minnesota doing that study right now.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/fkb0wa/university...](https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/fkb0wa/university_of_minnesota_covid10/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We definitely want more studies, but IMO we're reaching a tipping point. We have anecdotal evidence from China and South Korea, and this quite flawed, but at least data-containing study from France.

Chloroquine's safety profile isn't great, but the safety profile of COVID is way worse. If you look at Chemotherapy for example, one would never take any of those drugs unless you had cancer.

COVID isn't quite as bad as cancer, but Chloroquine, especially for a short course, isn't anywhere near as bad as most chemo drugs. Many people take it for years as prophylaxis -- not even to treat an existing disease.

<comment><USER7> > Chloroquine's safety profile isn't great, but the safety profile of COVID is > way worse. If you look at Chemotherapy for example, one would never take any > of those drugs unless you had cancer.

The FDA's Office of new drugs is split into divisions (dermatology, oncology etc) and the different divisions have different approval criteria as you mention. From my Onco friends' PoV, cancer patients are pretty much assumed to be dying anyway so the standard of risk is quite different from, say, Derm, whose patients don't really die of anything except cancers.

Note: I have presented to the FDA and have written clinical trial requests (e.g. IND) which have been approved, but I have never done a submission to OOD. However my friends who do really talk about the approval path in a different way than I used to.

Don't self-medicate with chloroquine. It's very hepatotoxic.

<comment><USER6> I appreciate an expert opinion here. What do you think is the actual rate of adverse events from Chloloroquine, and of what severity?

<comment><USER8> One of the comments in the article:

I prescribe Plaquenil extensively in patients with autoimmune conditions.The safety profile of this drug is excellent. It is also still used for malaria prophylaxis in healthy individuals .it is not a new drug. I don't see the reason of labeling it as dangerous. The question is : does it work for Covid19 prevention and treatment? The answer is "the current limited evidence suggests that it does". What i can tell you that I am aware of a number of doctors in the US who are currently infected or waiting for results who are taking the drug. And I cannot blame them.

<comment><USER9> This whole incident hasn't done much to shake my impression that US doctors are interested first and foremost in making sure they get their "cut" on every prescription, even when the drug is relatively innocuous.

Like fine, we can have this discussion about chloroquine. It's behind-the- counter in the UK, so on par with sudafed in terms of access control, and OTC in a lot of countries that actually have to deal with malaria directly. But the same argument gets applied to stuff like oral contraceptives, which are straight-up OTC in a lot of countries too, and can simply be discontinued if you notice symptoms.

At the same time, we allow drugs with insanely narrow theraputic ranges like tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol (seriously, almost as bad as the chloroquine people are freaking out about, a normal dose is 1-4g and a lethal dose can be as low as 5g) to be sold OTC here with no questions whatsoever. We allow combination products despite obvious risks for multiple dosing, we allow combination products to "dissuade addicts" from abusing opiods (like any addict has ever been dissuaded by a risk bodily harm). And doctors don't make a peep about that, because they're not accustomed to getting their cut on that one.

That's also why the AMA resists nurse practitioners so hard. The truth is, a lot of those drugs really should be "behind the counter", a pharmacist should simply have to give you a quick rundown of possible symptoms and what to do if you notice them (discontinue and see a doctor or go to a hospital depending on urgency, same as you would do with a doctor-prescribed drug), but doctors won't allow that because they wouldn't get their cut, so we just call them "nurse practitioners" instead.

US doctors really like playing gatekeeper, to a much greater extent than other countries (where coincidentally, money doesn't come into the picture as much).

<comment><USER10> Do doctors "get a cut" when their patients buy from a neighborhood pharmacy?

<comment><USER9> They get a couple hundred bucks for a 5 minute office visit to write the prescription, yeah.

I'm fine if there's a serious reason for a physical examination, but a lot of stuff the doctor is effectively filling the role of a pharmacist: telling you side effects and if you have this set of serious side effects then to stop it and/or go to a hospital, here's your script, pay at the front desk. A lot of stuff is unnecessarily shoehorned into Rx-only, and despite a lot of talk about "reducing costs" there is no real drive to actually do so.

A great example is oral contraceptives. You may have to try a couple different blends before you find the right mix for your body. Some of them will be uncomfortable. Some may cause dangerous bleeding and you need to go to a hospital. There is not _zero_ risk here, or with any drug. But the doctor has no way of telling which might be which for your particular body, they are there to tell you the risks, sign the paper and let you try it out. And that's why oral contraceptives specifically are being looked at as something that could be moved out of Rx only and to either OTC or pharmacist-prescribable - but the problem is there are really a lot of drugs that don't belong there.

A pharmacist can read the risks to you just as easily and not charge you $250 for a 15 minute office visit and another $250 for a one-month followup 15 minute office visit.

I have lots of 6-month maintenance visits that are literally 5 minutes. Everything going well? "Yup!" "OK, we'll call in your prescription, pay up front". They're just using their gatekeeping power to extract a check.

<comment><USER11> They don't make a couple hundred bucks. A 99213 established outpatient visit is worth 0.96 work RVUs * $36.0391 Medicare conversion factor = $34.59 for a standard outpatient visit. Even if you add the facility RVU = 0.48 + malpractice RVU 0.08 that is $54.78 for an outpatient visit. To make a couple hundred bucks, you need to do something like placing a stent for someone who is having a heart attack: CPT code 92941 - 12.31 work RVUs = $443.64.

All this information is available online. You can look up the physician fee schedule straight from the CMS. [https://www.cms.gov/apps/physician-fee- schedule/search/searc...](https://www.cms.gov/apps/physician-fee- schedule/search/search-results.aspx?Y=0&T=2&HT=0&H1=92941&M=5) . Here are the cardiology codes - [https://myheart.net/cardiology-coding-center/coronary- interv...](https://myheart.net/cardiology-coding-center/coronary-intervention- cpt-codes-and-rvu/)

To add an additional data point, doing a heart transplant is 89.50 wRVU * 36.0391 = $3225. I don't think doctors are living as well as you think. CPT code 33945.

<comment><USER9> Providers don't bill Medicare rates to normal patients, so none of that is valid.

Providers in fact make a point that they lose a significant amount of money at Medicare rates and have to limit the number of Medicare/Medicaid patients they see as a result.

I can confirm that a "45 minute" (5 minutes with nurse taking vitals, 25 minutes waiting in office exam room, 15 minutes with doctor) specialist "new" office visit was just billed to me for $246. They didn't charge me half the rate they charge a heart attack, they charge the heart attack patient 100x as much.

I don't think you understand how US billing works. Probably not from the US, or probably not subject to the system due to age (child or senior) or privilege (an engineer on a cadillac PPO plan perhaps).

Anyone who has ever experienced the US system knows that's absolutely normal.

<comment><USER11> You said physicians get paid a couple hundred bucks for each visit. I provided the source that says how much a physician gets paid by medicare for an established outpatient visit. An outpatient visit for a new patient (99203) is 1.42 wRVU + 1.48 facility RVU + 0.13 malpractice RVU = 2.14 RVUs = $109 for Medicare. A complex new visit (99205) is 3.17 wRVU + 2.40 facility RVU + 0.28 malpractice RVU = 5.85*36.06 = 210 dollars. The facility RVU is the amount given to pay for staff, rent, and other overhead. In general, if a physician is employed, they are getting just the wRVU for the visit.

For outpatient visits, this source says medicare pays 92% of what private insurance pays for established outpatient visits, and 80% overall [https://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/medicare- docto...](https://money.cnn.com/2014/04/21/news/economy/medicare-doctors/) .

I am a US citizen who used to be a software engineer who now attends a US MD Medical school and I have student health insurance.

For the heart attack patient, it isn't the physician who is charging the huge amount. It's the hospital. The physician is only going to get a certain factor (somewhere between 1x - maybe 3x on the extreme end) of that $440 for the wRVUs.

<comment><USER9> And like I said, billing for normal patients isn't determined on medicare/medicaid rates and those are widely noted to be far lower than break- even let alone private billing rates.

> The researchers found the gap between the prices Medicare and private > insurers pay hospitals increased from 2015 to 2017. Specifically, the > researchers found private insurers in 2015 on average paid 236% of Medicare > rates, and by 2017 that grew to 241% of Medicare rates.

[https://www.advisory.com/daily- briefing/2019/05/13/hospital-...](https://www.advisory.com/daily- briefing/2019/05/13/hospital-prices-rand)

Again, I just provided you an example of me getting billed $250 for 15 minutes of physician time during an office literally this month. Right now. Just paid it today. Will seeing the bill solve this discussion for you?

> For the heart attack patient, it isn't the physician who is charging the > huge amount. It's the hospital. The physician is only going to get a certain > factor (somewhere between 1x - maybe 3x on the extreme end) of that $440 for > the wRVUs.

That's not what we were discussing, you're changing the topic from an office visit to a heart attack. A doctor's office visit is mostly doctor time, there's no surgical ampitheatre necessary for an office visit. No recovery time in a hospital bed. Completely different situation.

$1000 an hour net billing rate for a specialist office visit sounds about right. That's what I just got billed.

And yes, student insurance is unusually generous and usually subsidized by the university in terms of provider reimbursement as well as direct rates. You are not paying the full freight there.

Furthermore, you are far, far off the reservation suggesting the normal billing for a heart attack is $3200. You are underneath the Dunning-Kruger curve here, you don't even know what you don't know and you think you are informed for it.

> Heart attack hospitalizations cost a median $53,384 and strokes cost > $31,218, according to the study. The resulting catastrophic costs make it > difficult for uninsured patients to keep up with basic living expenses such > as transportation and housing, according to researchers.

[https://newsarchive.heart.org/uninsured-patients-faced- devas...](https://newsarchive.heart.org/uninsured-patients-faced-devastating- hospital-bills-heart-attack-stroke/)

Feel free to tell the American Heart Association that they're wrong by a factor of 15. Let me know when they update the article. You're wrong, it's no longer worth continuing the debate with you.

Again, like I said, I mean this in the gentlest possible way: if you think an average heart attack billing (not just for the doctor, the whole thing) is $3200, you're too privileged to have been exposed to the realities of the American system. You are more incorrect than you have the worldview to even grasp. Even the doctors' association themselves think you are wrong.

<comment><USER11> I get that a heart attack hospitalization is expensive, $55k on average. The physician is not pocketing all of that $55k. They aren't the ones charging that, that is the hospital. The physician will get ~$1k of that (look below for the calculation). Please try to be charitable in your evaluation of my ability to reason here.

I'm not trying to change the topic from office visit to heart attack. I provided the RVU calculation for the outpatient visits. That is how much the physicians are getting paid. You said that physicians are making a couple hundred bucks of each outpatient visit, which I don't believe is accurate, and I provided the calculation of why I don't think that is accurate. The total cost of the visit can be $250, but the physician is not getting anywhere near that.

I don't think it's accurate to say that they will be able clear $1000/hr. There is additional time needed to document each patient (often equal to the amount of time seeing the patient). I think seeing 3 visits in that time is plausible, but the physician is not getting that whole $250 (which is the point I'm trying to make). The clinic revenue may be $750 for that hour, but that needs to cover all of the overhead, and the physician will get whatever is left.

Make sure you are looking for sources that compare how much the private insurance pays physicians compared to medicare in particular vs how much they pay hospitals compared to medicare. The numbers will be different.

The $53,384 is what the hospital charges for the heart attack. The physician only gets the wRVUs for the services they provide in the hospital (if they're employed), so the 12.56 wRVU for the cardiac revascularization + the admission history and physical (2.61 wRVU CPT 99222) however many days of progress notes (2.00 wRV 1x each day - CPT 99233) in the hospital and the discharge summary (1.28 wRVU - CPT 99238) they write for the patient. So if a patient got revascularized and were in the hospital for 4 days before being discharged that's 12.56 + 2.61 (admission day) + 2 * 2.00 (2 inpatient days) + 1.28 (discharge day) = 20.45 wRVUs for the admission = $737 for the physician for that hospitalization.

I'm trying to make the distinction here between how much the hospital gets paid vs. the physician who provided the care. It's not accurate to say the physician is making $53,384 for the heart attack hospitalization, that is what the hospital is charging. The physician may make ~$1000 for an admission like that. If the physician is self-employed or in a group, they will charge for the facility RVUs and malpractice RVUs as well, because they need to cover the overhead of having a clinic to see the patient after the hospitalization.

If your bill breaks down the overhead for the clinic separate from the physician charge, then I'll agree that the physician made the $250 straight cash, but I don't think that is in any way the average amount any kind of doctor will make off an outpatient visit. Look at what you're suggesting, that a physician makes $1000/hr * 2080 workable hours in a year (not likely a physician only works 40hrs a week..) = $2+ million a year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It seems to me that we should immediately move to massively increase production of hydroxychloroquine. If it turns out to be part of a solution, great. If not, I doubt that more than a tiny fraction of the total resources dedicated to the pandemic would have been used up by the effort. There is no time to take things slowly in our situation. In any case, from what I've read on places like r/medicine, many people who have access to hydroxychloroquine have already begun to hoard it. So one way or another, if we do not ramp up production there will be trouble.

Hydroxychloroquine has been around for decades, so it's not like we would be jumping into a total mystery about its side effects.

It seems to me that, whether hydroxychloroquine ultimately turns out to be effective or not, it is the closest thing we have right now to something that might prove to be a very helpful medicine.

<comment><USER13> Supply is not an issue: [https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/new-commitments- mylan-an...](https://www.fiercepharma.com/pharma/new-commitments-mylan-and- teva-move-to-supply-tens-millions-hydroxychloroquine-tablets-to)

We need testing that the medical community will accept.

<comment><USER14> > Supply is not an issue

Well, I was going to order some, been researching for a couple days before buying, and in that time all stock on my known pharmacy sites is now gone.

<comment><USER15> How does one find these sites? I've never been able to determine which are reputable

<comment><USER14> I literally just googled it. Read around for people's experiences ordering. Picked one to try. Same way you'd find info about anything you're looking to buy on the internet. They delivered and the meds were clearly effective, been using the same place for a decade now. I've also tried a couple others over the years when looking for something my main site didn't carry. Never been burned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Also take a look at thymoquinone, which supposedly inhibits mouse coronavirus, which is very similar to SARS-coronavirus.

The effects of Nigella sativa (Ns), Anthemis hyalina (Ah) and Citrus sinensis (Cs) extracts on the replication of coronavirus and the expression of TRP genes family [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933739/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933739/)

Thymoquinone is also generally protective of lung health in several models: [https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10520295.2019.16...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10520295.2019.1681511) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31044379](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31044379) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31143688](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31143688)

It is found in orange peel and black seed (Nigella sativa) extract.

<comment><USER17> Pardon the dumb question, but has anyone just tried quinine? I've been wondering if a hefty gin and tonic would help matters.

<comment> red-indian I'm taking it, I've also got my family and neighbors on it. I was unable to convince doctors since February to take me seriously that hydroxychloroquine is likely to have prophylactic effects so I took matters into my own hands. I know what I'm doing. Those who don't know what they are doing should not just jump in since they need to manage and understand the dose, the drug interactions, and the side effects. None of which are a problem for most people. Most. The ones that aren't though the interactions are well enough known and documented. I am not recommending it to anyone, that would probably be a crime. I'm saying if you're smart and understand science and thoughtful and not reckless you might be able to use it with the same safety that indians did for thousands of years. I still don't think you should though. Push for HCQ instead.

Commercial tonic is limited by federal law to 20mg per 8 oz, so I make my own tonic.

It would be much much better and would likely stop this whole problem if we'd just mail prophylactic doses of HCQ to the whole population instead of mailing a $1500 check to everyone like they've decided instead.

It's very humorous how people look at tropical countries that still have widespread HCQ use for anti-malaria and announce that they must be undercounting cases since their reported numbers are far too low. No, their numbers are not too low. It's just a lot of people in these regions are essentially vaccinated.

<comment><USER18> I think you're missing one of the key parts of the article: be careful. Mass administration of a drug is dangerous. As you mention early in your post, you know what you're doing, I take you at your word. But a drug with known serious side effects shouldn't be mass distributed without clear benefit. Studies so far are encouraging but tiny and noisy sample size. We'll get better data soon.

Even then, if it proves effective in symptomatic cases, it's unclear prophylactic use is called for. More sensible to administer to those with current symptoms. If truly effective this would lower fatalities and keep ICUs from being overwhelmed.

Finally, the most recent French study suggests a combination with azithromycin is the actual effective treatment. We just don't know enough yet, we will soon, let's be responsible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was under the impression that chloroquine was used to facilitate cellular absorption of zinc and that the zinc was responsible for any antiviral behavior: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT6mHi_8V5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT6mHi_8V5E)

<comment><USER20> I was under the same impression. Zinc acts to disrupt cellular replication of viral cells, and this is true for MANY viruses. Cloroquine acts as a zinc ionophore providing a pathway for zinc to cross the cellular wall at much lower concentrations, greatly improving its effectiveness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is pretty interesting. I've been taking Plaquenil (hydroxochloroquine) regularly for 6 months now to control an auto-immune disease, and I came down with potential symptoms of covid-19 2 weeks ago, but it was very mild - just a sore throat and cough that lasted 4 days, and I had a slight fever the first night. I self quarantined just in case, but after recovering thought I must have just caught a cold, since my symptoms were so mild. But I wonder now if I got it and if taking Plaquenil helped me recover quickly.

Too bad I can't get tested to know for sure :-(

When I started Plaquenil, the doctor told me it takes about a month or two to really build up in the blood stream to help control my condition. I wonder if the need to take it for a while also applies for Covid-19.

<comment><USER22> Please remember that greater than 90 percent of people who have covid like symptoms test negative. So while there's a chance you had it and recovered, it's very small. Stay safe and assume you're still vulnerable.

<comment><USER8> 90% of _tests_ reported negative. If someone is tested, they need to take 2 tests. If someone is tested positive, they need to be tested until they get 2 negative tests in a row. So the numbers are very skewed.

<comment><USER22> This is good info. Are you suggesting that most people would get 3 tests...a confirmation, then after x weeks 2 negatives, skewing the number potentially up to max ~66% testing negative even for people with the virus?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there not an argument that given chloroquine's apparent efficacy, albeit statistically weakly or improperly demonstrated (so far), along with its long history of relative safety in anti-malarial prophylaxis (with known caveats), set against an exponential growth in dangerous pneumonia - it is therefore rational to want to at least offer it to all suspected cases and healthworkers in balance of the serious risks they face?

<comment><USER24> The possible side effects include permanent blindness.

Giving this drug to people while you simply don't know if it does any good is only justifiable if you do it within a properly designed clinical trial. Which is the thing you should do. If you feel lots of people should get this drug - do a large trial. Will give us better data.

<comment><USER25> If you take it for years. Why is everyone ignoring that part?

<comment><USER26> because it doesn't generate enough offense. most online arguments seems to be attempts at creating the maximum possible offense to create "engagement"

the fact you need to have 1 kilogram of chloroquine during years of treatment is an inconvenient complicated fact, while the emotional appeal of blindness scores more indignation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think the drug combinations are going to turn out to be as important as the single instances. One to bind to receptors. One to limit related infection risk. One to be an anti-pyretic.

This is how HIV was fought, with cocktails. Single drug treatment comes later.

Chloroquine is a powerful drug. It needs to be treated with respect. Yes it is cheap. it also has effects on the mind and we don't need a wave a psychosis to follow the corona-virus illnesses.

<comment><USER28> We've already weathered at least one wave of panic induced psychosis. From panic buyers, to Congress members using privileged information to blatantly sell stock just before the first crash.

<comment><USER29> Neither of those are examples of psychosis. Overreactions to unusual instability in our society? Sure, but hyperbolic comparisons like this muddy the waters around what psychosis is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Does anyone have any information about the Favipiravir testing going on in China? From what I read, it has a 90% success rate treating coronavirus AND is a super safe drug in general.

<comment><USER31> I read this X% success rate for many drugs, Remdesivir, chloroquine etc... What does it mean? Giving no drug, just ventilator alone has 97% success rate right? So how do we know that that 90% is due to the drug and not, you know, immune system itself? Moreover, a lot of people keep saying both Remdesivir and chloroquine are in official treatment suggestions in Italy, and seeing Italy is suffering a pretty bad mortality rate, how do we even know these drugs are better than placebo?

<comment><USER32> Was 97% a hypothetical? I have heard much lower figures for ventilator success rates.

<comment><USER31> Do they use these drugs only to severe patients who need ventilator? I was referring to the overall estimated CFR (3%). What is the success rate of ventilators then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I was intrigued by the results from the recent quick french study: [https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp- content/uploads/20...](https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp- content/uploads/2020/03/Hydroxychloroquine_final_DOI_IJAA.pdf)

I read through the paper, and it's not immediately obvious, but if you look at the two graphs at the bottom, the hydroxychloroquine is 75% effective in the first chart, but only 50% in the second one. That's because the actual test was:

Control: 16

hydroxychloroquine: 14

hydroxychloroquine + azithromycin: 6

The first chart includes all 20 people who got hydroxychloroquine - <USER2> the 6 who also got azithromycin.

My question: do we know how effective azithromycin would be on it's own? Maybe it's the wonder drug we should be focused on, which would be great since it's available everywhere.

It should go without saying these are VERY preliminary results from a small trial but it's something!

<comment><USER34> It's an antibiotic. Severe patients will be dealing with secondary (bacterial) infections, so it makes sense to use both. But on its own, I expect it would have little effect.

<comment><USER35> It's already commonly used as both treatment and profylactic (in healthy risk group patients) for viral pneumonia. _Why_ it works for I think is still not entirely clear.

Being an antibiotic is also convenient because many times you would also get antibiotics to prevent a secondary infection from bacteria.

It's not exactly a miracle cure (like an antibiotic is against a bacterial pneumonia), but doctors have few tools when it comes to viral pneumonia, so even something that helps a little is welcome.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Quinine is amazing stuff and quite easy to make, but the poison is in the dosage. Controlling that when you're making your own with cinchona bark isn't something you want to do trial and error style, serious side effects.

</comment><comment><USER37> There are papers out there that qualify chloroquine and derivates as effective in case of viral infections with viruses related to covid-19 [0] and try to explain what the mechanism could be :

« The exact mechanism of antiviral intervention by chloroquine is not yet elucidated but is possibly a multitarget mechanism, depending on the time point at which the drug is added »

[0] [https://aac.asm.org/content/53/8/3416](https://aac.asm.org/content/53/8/3416)

</comment><comment><USER38> How well does chloroquine mix with gin? Asking for a friend.

<comment> munk-a It's much more often to mix in Quinine - and you're doing so every time you have a gin & tonic (with real tonic - not just carbonated water). Amusingly it's also an anti-malarial.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I realize that the FDA serves a purpose, but in dire situations I think anyone should be able to take any drug if they sign a document stating they will hold no one liable for adverse affects of a drug that might have chance of saving their lives. Why does one have to follow the state's one-size-fits-all rules when their life is at stake and any potential harm is limited to themselves?

<comment><USER40> It's an interesting question what aspects of human behavior the government should be able to regulate.

A couple of points beside that are 1) this would incentivize drug companies to use desperate patients as a low-cost way of screening drug candidates — "free" data with all liability signed away. And 2) the externalities of a person being injured can be huge, so the possible harm isn't really limited to that patient.

Edit: With some reasonable guardrails, I think "right to try" makes sense. I personally don't know what the guardrails should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Given the relationship with Malaria, does anyone know if correlation with G6PD has been subject of research? G6PD is a common genetic Deficiency that provides immunity from malaria. G6PD people have to avoid consuming e.g. blue colour, sulphites and other anti malarial drugs, aspirin, fava beans etc. at risk of haemolysis.

</comment><comment><USER42> As non-specific antivirals the benefits of these drugs are most likely at disease onset or as preventives. A trial has started in the US for people with known exposure: [https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04308668?term=hydroxy...](https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04308668?term=hydroxychloroquine&recrs=ab&cond=COVID-19&draw=2&rank=4)

Note the dosage being trialed is quite high. Definitely not something to do without proper medical supervision.

</comment><comment><USER43> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine#COVID-19](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chloroquine#COVID-19) is not suitable for people with heart disease or diabetes

</comment><comment><USER44> This chloroquinine rush is already out of control. My pharmacy is already out of it and is unable to procure from other pharmacies (which are also out already!)

My pharmacist placed orders for all her patients to prefill prescriptions (where possible) for the next few months.

I can understand a shortage when there's a clear evidence-based need, but the rumour-mill hasn't even ramped to full bore yet and it's already harming people with a pre-existing need for the medication.

It's even worse _if_ the medication works to prevent or shorten c19 infections, because the people currently taking chloroquinine are very likely high-risk (immunocompromised) patients.

Really wish people would chill out.

Note - This affects me, as I take the medication. It's scary to think I could be without it at some point in the future as it's been practically life- changing.

<comment><USER45> This is where having a fully funded CDC and pandemic team in the US pays off. They would have been paying very close attention for weeks on end in China, Italy and South Korea and many approaches could have been already dead-ended before it even significantly reached out shores.

To say nothing of actually being in the process of ramping up medications that _HAVE_ shown to be effective. It feels like we are starting from ground zero when that should simply not be the case.

<comment><USER46> I think everyone would like to see the CDC be better funded. Hindsight makes that an obvious mistake, but monitoring C19 should have been their number one priority in any case. From January onwards it was clear that it was the number one threat. There's still no explanation (afaik) for why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test, nor have they effectively communicated their plans for ramping up testing or medical capacity. I don't see how this is anything besides mismanagement (e.g., how does funding impact which test they used? Presumably being under-funded would prompt them to use the test that the rest of the world is going with instead of rolling their own), and I really hope congress or the justice dept rips into this after the crisis is averted.

EDIT: Note that I say all of this as someone who is a big believer in "it's almost always more complicated/nuanced than it looks", but there seems to be no information about said nuance or complexity.

<comment><USER47> There seems to be a really obvious explanation of why they rolled their own test instead of using the WHO's test: there was no WHO test when they did it, the two different tests were developed in parallel (and they're not the only country which developed their own test either, there are something like seven different ones used in various countries). The CDC had already been using its own test internally when the WHO announced the alternative German one they'd been using. Then when the CDC test didn't work when rolled out to labs, it's not like the WHO could have supplied them with testing kits instead. The CDC would have had to produced the WHO-designed test itself, verified it worked, arrange for it to be mass produced, and hope that the same problem didn't happen - all whilst their test rollout was massively delayed by essentially starting from scratch. Most of the media just doesn't seem to be interested in explaining this.

<comment><USER46> I didn't see any such explanation on the CDC page either, and I thought I was pretty thorough in searching for it. I did know that they were developed concurrently, but I'm unaware of any information about why they couldn't at any point pivot and use the WHO test, for example. Why is this information so hard to find?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Yesterday's paper from the COVID-19 hospital in China mentioned chloroquine. They use it, but only in a few specific situations.

</comment><comment><USER49> hydroxychloroquinine should be readily available in pharmacies in India. I expect many to start using those when they're in bad shape.

</comment><comment><USER50> _And so to today. As I said yesterday, I find the reports of chloroquine /hydroxychloroquine activity against the coronovirus very interesting, but preliminary. There has as yet been no well-controlled trial, and unfortunately the effects seen are still the sort of thing that can look exciting but disappear when you look closely. I mean that. It happens all the time – ask anyone else who does drug research for a living. If this drug isn't useful, then sending hundreds of millions of people out to swallow all of it that they can find will be a massive waste of time and money, and will actively harm people besides. This is not a benign compound; it should only be taken when you have a solid expectation of benefit, and (saying it again), we don't yet have that. Better trials are cranking up right now: please, wait for those. The generic drug companies (Teva and Mylan, I've seen so far, and there's this) that are cranking up production are doing the prudent thing – if this reads out well, we'll need a lot of it. But we'll need to give it to people who are in bad shape from the viral infection, too, remember that, and I fear that a lot of people around the world are just starting to take it now in hopes of a prophylactic effect, which is (saying it again) a bad idea._

<comment><USER51> This is a great reminder, thank you for pointing it out. Interestingly during the 1918 Spanish flu aspirin was a new drug and was given to people in an effort to reduce fever. The problem is they gave it in doses that we now know is toxic. There is some evidence that patients treated in hospitals with aspirin had a 30x!!! deathrate vs those treated "homeopathically". This YouTube video goes into the history and context of it ...

[https://youtu.be/dT6mHi_8V5E](https://youtu.be/dT6mHi_8V5E) (go to 11:30 in video)

I beleive in modern medicine and science but we should be careful about being overly optimistic and harming people by giving them a powerful drug that hasn't been tested properly.

Edited to add time point in video.

<comment><USER52> Those that did not take aspirin during the Spanish flu had far lower morbidity rates. Fever is not something I rush to suppress with drugs until I exceed 104.0 - same for my family and even when our daughter was a little tiny thing.

Preliminary unpublished information shows concerns on accelerating progression of SARS-CoV-2 virus to COVID-19 illness for ALL NSAIDs (not just aspirin). However, even with non-NSAIDs I exercise extreme caution when using (e.g. acetaminophen - Tylenol - 4000mg is considered VERY TOXIC for liver).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Derek's column does not ever post my responses (censorship ?) so here it is:

The side effects of chloroquine are modest for most, especially on a 10 days or less regimen. Approx. 5% or higher risk of NOT taking it when ill from coronavirus it is you could end up in ICU on a ventilator, on the other hand, the risk of taking it and getting serious side effects is minimal, like at about 1.5% in the study below.

Google this title: Reported Side Effects to Chloroquine, Chloroquine plus Proguanil, and Mefloquine as Chemoprophylaxis against Malaria in Danish Travelers

Summary: 85% of Danish travelers reported no side effects

minor side effects are:

Diarrhea, stomach pain (take only with a full meal), dizziness

the depression / anxiety incident was ONE person - - we don't base science on what happen to ONE person.

severe side effects in only 1.5% of cases

Only LONG TERM USE for many months or years can have retina involvement.

So all those who want to bash the multiple recent published research results showing good results with chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for COVID19 - - - maybe I'll read about you in morgue statistics somewhere soon. I have already got my 'script for chloroquine (cost me 70 cents total), I am ready and prepared - - - instead of being a naysayer with my head in the sand.

</comment><comment> Munky-Necan Until there's a double blind placebo trial I will take this type of report with a truck load of salt. We want randomized control trials in medicine. We want highly vetted research in medicine. Lacking either is a bad idea.

I am also not holding my breath about a vaccine. We tried making a vaccine with SARS-CoV with a significant amount of the animal models dying from cytokine storm after viral exposure. Drug trials are hard, but necessary.

<comment><USER54> >> Until there's a double blind placebo trial I will take this type of report with a truck load of salt.

You're welcome to. The remainder of the world should have the choice. Some people can't - or don't - want to wait for an RCT with a sample size in the thousands before taking a cheap and well-known drug with well-tolerated side effects.

<comment><USER55> To be fair, I don't think that he's saying it should be banned -- he's saying that we need a lot more testing before claiming this is a cure based on one study with a tiny number of participants. His statement is accurate.

And the quinine derivatives have some very subtle neurological effects that last a lifetime. Suicidal ideations -- for life and incurable -- are a well known side effect of mefloquine at least. Maybe this one doesn't have those effects, I don't know -- but there's a really good argument to do a lot of testing before taking this in any other than an in-extremis situation.

<comment> Munky-Necan Bingo, we need nonbiased blinded drug trials otherwise the data could be seriously flawed. There's drug trials for reasons, and even in this pandemic we should respect the rationale for why we established those trials.

Also, I'm finding that this forum is full of incredibly intelligent individuals who demonstrate the a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. It amazes me how often y'all will talk about medicine like you're experts but miss fundamental concepts. May points, like the other poster, sound awesome to lay people, but under the scrutiny of any medical professional would be laughed at.

<comment><USER55> Dunning-Kruger is a thing unfortunately.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> A vaccine was developed in haste for an outbreak of swine flu in 1976 (CDC feared it was a repeat of 1918 flu) and about 45 million Americans received it but 450 people developed GBS (Guillaine-Barre Syndrome) as a result.

Going on a hunch or unproven stuff is simply going to give the anti-vaxxer idiots further ammo

<comment><USER57> Taking your numbers as fact, that would be a .001% death rate.

Coronavirus has a death rate ranging from .6-2% (overall), varying drastically to upwards of 20% with age.

It's not a hard call to make.

<comment><USER58> > Taking your numbers as fact, that would be a .001% death rate.

Death rate for GBS is more like 7.5%, not 100%. Though for today's challenge, the relevant stat may be that ~15% of GBP patients end up needing a ventilator. But even that wouldn't be a problem if we had such a vaccine for this coronavirus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Only one clinical study has been published on chloroquine (by a French group), and the results are lackluster. No patient was cleared of virus after six days using hydroxychloroquine alone. A tiny fraction of patients were cleared in 4 days using an adjunct therapy (azithromycin). The study itself has issues, and it's not even clear whether it will clear peer review.

The President is doing something very dangerous here with his comments in the last two days.

By stoking chloroquine hype, he's setting the country up for a massive disappointment should the drug fail to produce treatment, or unexpected side effects.

Although the drug has been used in humans for decades to treat malaria, it has not been used to any extent on humans to treat COVID-19. There's a non-zero chance of adverse reactions, potentially serious given known problems with the chloroquines.

Even worse, the idea that a "treatment" exists will encourage people to let down their guard and will very likely lead to even worse outbreaks.

Unexpected things happen all the time in clinical trials. This is the main reason it costs billions to bring a drug to market. We can't predict jack squat.

<comment><USER60> Are you referring to this study?

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWS...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/186Bel9RqfsmEx55FDum4xY_IlWSHnGbj/view)

Afaikt, 57% patients on HCQ alone were "virologically cleared" by day 6 and 100% on HCQ+Azithromycin were clear By day 6. Compared with ~12% of control group.

<comment><USER59> Yes, and I'm looking at the aggregate data in the last two graphs, and also the big table.

HCQ + AZ was the only group with clearance for all after six days. It was also the smaller of the two groups, which makes it hard to give any weight to the finding. But there are many other features of this study that make the result hard to interpret.

<comment><USER60> Great that we're looking at the same study! I'm not sure what you mean by:

"No patient was cleared of virus after six days using hydroxychloroquine alone."

Because the percentages there are 57% Of patients on HCQ alone we're cleared, vs 12% control.

<comment><USER61> Is there sufficient evidence in favor of rejecting the null hypothesis, that 57% of patients in the HCQ study group would have gone on to spontaneously recover without HCQ? Because that's the really interesting question. It's not a question of the study group versus control group, it's a question of whether the study group and control group had enough characteristics in common to make them statistically equivalent samples of a population that vary only in whether they were given HCQ. And I think the consensus among people who are clear on that is that the populations have too little in common.

<comment><USER60> A fair criticism of the study, but does not make the case that "no patient on HCQ alone was virus free by day 6", since that is objectively false by my reading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> The Quinism Foundation Warns of Dangers from Use of Antimalarial Quinolines Against COVID‑19.

"Use of Chloroquine, Hydroxychloroquine, Mefloquine, Quinine, and Related Quinoline Drugs Risks Sudden and Lasting Neuropsychiatric Effects from Idiosyncratic Neurotoxicity."

[https://quinism.org/press-releases/dangers-of- antimalarial-q...](https://quinism.org/press-releases/dangers-of-antimalarial- quinolines-against-covid-19/)

The Anit-Malaria drugs They are pushing have a common ancestor to Fluoroquinolone antibiotics have MANY FDA warnings. The FDA says they should not be used unless all other options have been exhausted.

Those that have already been devastated by Fluoroquinolones are extremely upset to hear that a related quinolines drug is being proposed. While these two drugs are technically in a different class, they share some common ancestors. They both share many of the devastating side effects.

I have put all the FDA warnings for Fluoroquinolone antibiotics on my late wife's website. Levaquin was a significant contributor to Karen's suicide. :-(

[http://www.kpaddock.com/fq](http://www.kpaddock.com/fq)

<comment><USER63> Respectfully, though I understand your effort to warn others, I think it is dangerous at this time to conflate chloroquine derivatives with Chloroquine. Single substitutions in biologically active compounds can cause drastically different effects including substantially different therapeutic ratios. Compare for example the various drugs in the amphetamine family (methamphetamine, amphetamine, MDMA, etc). They are not equally dangerous.

Similarly, the terrible results you report are AFAIK rare with Chloroquine. It is a well tolerated drug and if you're an older or immunocompromised patient playing Russian roulette with a late stage COVID19 infection, the minimal risk is highly preferable to no treatment.</comment></comment>


Sony Mobile and Telefónica reinforce partnership - <AUTHOR> http://blog.digital.telefonica.com/?press-release=sony-mobile-telefonica-reinforce-partnership

<comment><USER2> Mozilla was very clever to partner with a big mobile telecom operator early on. Through Telefonica we're seeing good acceptance by OEM! I'm looking to see a Sony's equipment running Firefox OS than an Alcatel or ZTE... Still I'm looking forward for Ubuntu Touch and Jolla's Sailfish but is there enough market for everyone?

<comment><USER3> If Mozilla is making a new revenue source from this besides the one they get from Google searches, then it might be worth it even to have 1-2% market share for them, as long as it's a viable business to use FF OS for the OEM's involved.

Same goes for Ubuntu. Ubuntu is being used on only like 20 million new devices every year, I think. If they can double that number with their mobile devices, that would be _very good_ for them. In 2014 that will only be 1% of the smartphone market.</comment></comment>


Maximizing Concurrency and Minimizing Timeouts in Distributed Databases - <AUTHOR> https://www.scylladb.com/2019/11/20/maximizing-performance-via-concurrency-while-minimizing-timeouts-in-distributed-databases/ <comment><AUTHOR> Scaling workloads through parallelism and the role of Little's law in arriving at an optimal number of concurrent sessions for maximum throughput while maintaining low latencies.</comment>


What do Climate Change, Data Centres and Cloud have to do with each other? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@PaulDJohnston/what-do-climate-change-data-centres-and-cloud-have-to-do-with-each-other-9b908887c610 <comment><AUTHOR> We have a big problem in tech to do with how we use the Cloud and Climate Change. Our Greenhouse Gas Emissions from just data centres are equivalent (and probably higher) than the aviation industry.

[https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers- by-2024](https://www.change.org/p/sustainable-servers-by-2024)

We can do something about this. Anne Currie and I have written a whitepaper on this.

[https://bit.ly/2024](https://bit.ly/2024)

So we'd like everyone to move to sustainable servers (cloud providers are self reported):

* Google is 100% offset * Azure is 100% offset * AWS has 4 carbon neutral regions - Oregon, Montreal, Ireland, Frankfurt * Move to a Data Centre using/offsetting with renewable energy * Request Data Centres to move to renewable energy

These are simple things we can do now.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's a very high impact thing to host on 100% carbon neutral servers. If we don't want to switch to Goggle or Azure then it's just about prioritising the AWS sustainable regions of Oregon, Montreal, Ireland and Frankfurt</comment>


Show HN: A URL shortening service intended to be simple and user-friendly - <AUTHOR> I know some people got really good and interesting reviews here.
It's really hard to get meaningful feedback and that's whyI need your help.
URL : lessn.io
Github : https://github.com/MaxandreOgeret/lessn
Good feedback is of course welcome but ideas to improve are even more important !
Thanks ! <comment><USER2> we don't really know what we are signing up for through that "sign up" link

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that's true. There is more information on the github page.

It allows you to access the link manager</comment></comment>


Google "Doubleclick", click on the first sponsored result, observe epic failure. - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Goes to <http://www.ooyala.com/monetization> for me.

Is this some sort of blackhat SEO attempt?

</comment><comment><USER3> Fail.</comment>


IRC integration with your GitHub projects - <AUTHOR> https://kiwiirc.com/blog/IRC_integration_with_your_GitHub_projects

<comment><USER2> Very cool. I would recommend resizing your badges to match the size used by most other services on Github. See how the Kiwi badge is much larger than my other badges: <https://github.com/RestKit/RestKit/></comment>


Top under sold Nexus One features - <AUTHOR> http://www.littleprod.co.uk/blog/?post=485

<comment><USER2> For me that page has nothing at all in the middle. Maybe one of my addons is interfering.

I clicked the rss feed and read it there.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a JavaScript delivered blog provided by <http://factorthreecms.com/></comment></comment>


Introducing Facebook Shops - <AUTHOR> https://about.fb.com/news/2020/05/introducing-facebook-shops/ <comment><USER3> Small businesses operated either individually or by less than 10 people. A bunch of customers buy products/services from these businesses. So they need a better way to:

Engage with their customers

Sell and manage product/service deliveries

Target specific customer audience

Show products/services availability

Whatsapp could be the right solution not facebook apps.

Also a combination of Yelp and Facebook/Whatsapp could lead replacing small business websites(I'm not telling that no smb website should exist) that going to make a fortune. The platform needs to accomplish these three things :

The ability to list core info like contact details, hours of operation, and service offerings in a minimalist fashion.

The ability to solicit feedback (not ratings) from customers in a low- friction, high-upside way.

An ad system that let's a 60 year-old luddite set up a campaign in less than 3 minutes without having to call anyone.

There's a lot to tell but I'll leave you with these thoughts.

<comment><USER4> I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it. If I ever start getting ads or requests for reviews or anything remotely related to someone selling something to me, as a personal message because of automated Facebook tools, I'd get myself and everyone I know off the platform in a matter of seconds.

On the other hand, for information requests they already have Whatsapp for businesses and it works fine, several luddites I know use it.

<comment><USER5> > I have always thought about what it would take for Whatsapp to lose their > place as the dominant chat app and you finally nailed it.

Unfortunately, that's not how these things work. I don't know of any mainstream platform that died because of ads.

You have to keep in mind the fact that the average person on this site has a total different attitude to technology and its warts than most other people.

<comment><USER6> Tangentially, I know they mentioned the "adpocolypse" for YouTube but recently it's insane the amount of adverts being shown. It's really putting me off using it.

But as you say, mainstream platforms with no competitors seem to get away with it.

<comment><USER7> I've been youtube pro subscriber for a while. Zero ads, it's heaven. Really transforms the youtube experience.

<comment><USER6> Does this also work for YouTube in smart TVs etc.?

Does it permit playing of videos audio-only? I use backing tracks on my Honor Play but it has terrible screen burn so after an hour of instrument practice my screen looks like the comments section (which keeps moving on YouTube)

<comment><USER8> It does work on smart TVs. You get can use backing tracks without them being on screen by either using the regular YouTube and putting it in the background or using Youtube Music, included with YouTube Premium, which has an option to play audio only.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Crucial information from Shopify:

"Merchants will get control over customization and merchandising for their storefronts inside Facebook and Instagram, while managing their products, inventory, orders, and fulfillment directly from within Shopify."

"Consumers will be able to easily find, browse, and buy products through a purpose-built, immersive experience in these apps they use every day. Checkout will be powered by Shopify for merchants, with Shopify also offering Instagram Checkout to select merchants testing the new feature."

Facebook wants to capture all discovery through FB and Insta directly competing with Amazon and Google Shopping.

<comment><USER10> FB should be merciful and buy shopify before murdering them

<comment><USER11> I think there's a place for FB Shops, mostly with "small-small" businesses, think "kiosks in the middle of the mall" or "plastic two-colour sign stapled to electrical poles" type of small, but any reasonable business that cares about it's brand and wants to maintain control over itself would still likely be attracted to a more flexible and powerful platform like Shopify..

You give up a lot of control when you use FB, they control branding, UI, UX, etc.. if you don't care about those things and you just want to sell stuff, that's probably fine..

I say this of course without knowing what the future holds for FB Shops..

Facebook is basically already the shopping mall food court and bus stop, they're just adding the stores now I guess..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "We're also working more closely with partners like Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce..."

Is Facebook Shops not a direct competitor to Shopify? Or is this just "embrace, extend, and extinguish"?

<comment><USER13> My guess is that they will try to integrate Shopify sites into the platform, to give the FB Shops platform some momentum, then gradually push the non FBS stores down the page. My reasoning is that they are emulating Google.

Alternatively, they could be looking to make FB Shops an advertising platform, similar to Amazon Seller Central, where they don't care who you buy from, but they want each seller to pay for ads and/or payment processing.

<comment><USER14> Although being a simple shopify drop in replacement would have its advantages in simplicity, there is probably more long term potential if they embrace multi-channel sales, and become a storefront management tool ala [https://www.ecomdash.com/](https://www.ecomdash.com/) and [https://www.shipstation.com/](https://www.shipstation.com/) Some people are going to keep shopping on amazon, some on ebay, some on walmart, some on etsy, some directly on websites.

Im not saying that's what they are doing, but its a way to skim off all transactions instead of trying to force business into facebook.

<comment><USER15> Probably the right answer. If you have a shop that's getting some sales on etsy, amazon or ebay or wherever else you're not going to want to _close it down_ in favor of facebook – you'll just open a second storefront there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just wish we could read on HN tomorrow:

"Introducing Antitrust action against Facebook (justice.gov)"

<comment><USER17> That's not likely to happen under this President unless MZ says something nasty about him.

Otherwise you'll probably have to wait until the next admin at least.

<comment><USER16> This is likely to happen neither under a Biden administration nor under a Trump one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's fascinating to see these tech giants fight each other for control over the Internet empire. Eventually I think we will see 1 by 1 they will fall, and a couple will remain. This is Facebook's attempt to take on Amazon and Google both at once, and given their huge user base and method of engagement, they may just have a shot at it.

I can see it now. Scroll Instagram to see photos of your friends wearing new clothes, "like" the photo. Get an ad the next day for that same product now available from a Facebook Shop for 40% off. Use your Facebook Credits to buy it.

<comment><USER19> They might also implement object detection within photos and match things in the photo to products you could buy... on Facebook...

<comment><USER20> Google could do this with Chrome... They already have the "right click, search google for things looking like this image".

All they'd need to do is make the UI more discoverable and make the search results include products, and they'd be $1B up on revenue...

<comment><USER21> i don't think the "search by image" tool is doing as much computer vision as you think it is -- it seems to mostly match shapes and colors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't need to bother reading dystopian sci-fi anymore, it's all happening around me.

<comment><USER16> One of the frightening things is when you notice that, as society becomes more dystopian (e.g. more totalitarian, more extremely unequal in the division of wealth etc.), there doesn't develop the strong awareness that it _is_ dystopian. It that the sense of what's normal and acceptable degrades. At best you get this weak sense of a general malaise.

<comment><USER23> So either people are clueless sheep that don't know better or they simply don't care. The first seems pretty patronizing to me and the latter means we are in minority with our definition of dystopia.

<comment><USER6> I think they just don't care. I had a look at Marx's ideas of people being in a certain class and engaging in a class struggle, rising up.

But it didn't happen because people are mostly just selfish.

They don't care if they're in a certain "class", they don't care if they're being sold to, they generally don't care if they're being tracked. They just care about being able to do what they want to do.

As long as it doesn't interfere with their life too much (or even if it does, if there's no alternative), they don't do anything about it. And with the modern population, as long as it is extremely easy they will do it.

I am not sure if this is good or bad, or just an inherent part of human nature.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As someone with an Etsy shop this got me excited for a second, but unless I missed something, this is just some sort of link from your FB Page to some integrated shop? We use Etsy because we get all these sales from people using it to search for stuff, but I guess if we only have 80 people and spend no money on FB ads or trying to grow our page, this is essentially completely useless as we already have links to our shop...

We were hoping this was some sort of shop built into marketplace that was curated or searchable or something, since we've had some success selling on there, but it's a complete garbage pile and dealing with people is awful and doesn't scale very fast. People flake out like crazy, no way to manage messages well or anything. Missed opportunity.

Maybe for Instagram, having a shop built into your profile could be awesome instead of saying, "link in profile" then having your user search for the product they say starting at your site homepage.

<comment><USER25> If you make a shop on FB Shops, please know that you do not need Shopify to do that. Shopify provides no benefit and charges you per transaction.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This is long overdue. I bet they're working on a PayPal competitor and eventually their own in-house data driven credit system.

If you think you were being tracked across every mouse hover and scroll now, imagine what it'll look like when there's this much on the line.

<comment><USER27> > I bet they're working on a PayPal competitor...

They've allowed money transfer through Messenger for sometime now. The UX is probably the best I've had. I prefer sending money that way because it's through the debit card (easy set up), free, and instant.

<comment><USER28> In Europe at least they've rolled this back from the only 2 countries they tested it in (UK and France). You can still do donations to organizations in most countries, but no p2p money transfers.

<comment><USER29> Any reason why? Seems to be a strong digital payments ecosystem in the U.K. and Europe that would've made it work well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> With the rise of services like Shopify, Etsy, etc. why are independent product manufacturers in the US / Europe still using Amazon? Is it the lack of the supply chain / item delivery that Amazon provides so well or is it something else? Hearing about how Amazon undercuts pretty much every seller on their system makes me think that sellers would be willing to jump in a heartbeat if given a viable alternative.

Facebook Shops seems like a Shopify clone to me ... but I'm not sure as I haven't really used Shopify (and I keep mistaking it for Spotify).

<comment><USER31> It's the logistics network. Being able to just ship your product to an Amazon warehouse and then have them handle the rest on the cheap pretty much guarantees that using Amazon will come out cheaper.

Combine that with Amazon handling the bulk of customer support, returns, and payments and you end up making more money on Amazon than anywhere else.

I've actually tried to get a company to price match _their own store on Amazon_ and they told me to just order it on Amazon because it was better for them.

<comment><USER32> I purchased an item directly from a manufacturer's own website, so there's no middle-man and no fees lost to selling on another platform. The price difference between that and Amazon was so staggering, I returned the original purchase and re-purchased, this time from Amazon. Same product, but it was significantly cheaper on Amazon.

<comment><USER33> You will almost never get good prices from the manufacturer itself. That would undermine their standing with sales partners. So you will always get the rather high list price.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I already have enough trouble with businesses that think Facebook is the internet. I wonder how many customers businesses lose by only engaging with Facebook users?

<comment><USER35> Not many. Most of their customers also think Facebook is the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Yes tie yourself to a large platform that can and will shut you down for political/social reasons.

Or just stick a paypal button on a static site.

<comment><USER37> Yep that worked well for Wikileaks

<comment><USER38> Yep, Wikileaks is still around.

Their store is at [https://wikileaks.shop/](https://wikileaks.shop/) or [https://eu.wikileaks.shop/](https://eu.wikileaks.shop/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hm, unlike classifieds, shopping is not a social activity, in fact most ppl would not like their friends to know what they re purchasing.

And the shops would need to either duplicate inventory or lock it in facebook.

They 've tried this before, and failed

[https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing- stor...](https://mashable.com/2012/02/21/facebook-brands-closing-stores- fcommerce/?europe=true)

I don't think it will be better this time

<comment><USER39> > in fact most ppl would not like their friends to know what they re > purchasing

Not true by my experience. In fact, lots of people go shopping together. Sure, some stuff is private. But most clothes, electronics, computer games, household, furniture etc etc is stuff people buy and share around all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Has anyone seen anything specifically mentioned about an API? I did a quick search and didn't see anything mentioned, but if they integrated with 3rd party tools, either they have an API or they already programmed a feed scraping tool of some sort.

I suppose if there is an API, but they haven't released public documentation, it might be possible to find out details about many of the endpoint from WooCommerce's code.

<comment><USER41> As someone who's been burnt by using their IG API before when they decided to shut it down out of nowhere, I won't trust their API for this.

<comment><USER40> For my personal selling, I wouldn't trust the API's:-). However, I have a product that helps a particular retail vertical list their items for sale online. I imagine my clients wouldn't mind having their items automatically cross-posted to Facebook's shop as well. (So, if Facebook kills the API, it would kill a feature in my product, but not my whole product.) That's why I was wondering about the API. I'll probably need to do some reading and searching today when I get some time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> FB, just came with a bang. with how prevalent fb is internationally. they can capture majority of the market share. sad day, for open solutions like woocommerce. & if FB had managed to get libra, off the ground, then they would be transacting more amounts of currency than anyone in the world. I won't put Shopify in the discussion, as they are only available in select 1st world countries.

<comment><USER43> Woocommerce fails to deliver a product that doesn't require a developer and or thousands in add-ons. It works for a very basic shop but after that you will need to hire a developer.

<comment><USER35> It's $45/month from the company behind WordPress for the majority of companies that don't need that level of customization. Past that, it's probably still cheaper than rolling your own solution or doing a panicked migration off Facebook Shops when they start closing the doors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> What took it so long for FB to do this? This is honestly one of the first things they should have done.

<comment><USER45> They are waiting for Libra.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Another BigCorp trying to put a gate around an existing market, this time it's retail. Yuck.

<comment><USER47> "Is your store doing well? Have you expanded to a couple of other locations successfully? Is it time for you to create a broader franchise? ... Don't worry, we've been watching, and we already made this information available to big stores in your area who were willing to pay for the privilege. That's why Big-store-chain is already negotiating a better contract with your supply chain. I hope you enjoyed it while it lasted. Thank you for your business." \- American Edge. It's our edge, not yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> That advert is an incredibly tone deaf advert. Support the little guy! Yes, support little Mark Zuckerberg and his sole control of a $600Bn company. Has it ever occured to anyone in a multi billion dollar corporation that maybe it doesn't come across well to pretend you're fighting for the little guy. Why not take a break for once and just say "Hey, we're fucking enormous, no one even browses the web anymore, they browse facebook, so we've deigned to give you the smallest sliver of access to our amazing hoard of treasure - <USER2> (in exchange for 90% of your profits)". At least it would be honest.

<comment><USER49> As always, when you're everyone's favorite punching bag: damned if you do, damned if you don't. Would love to know how you got to them taking 90% of the profits. Are they even charging commissions or is this a scheme to drive more ads purchases?

<comment><USER48> I love it, spend a decade engaging in scummy behaviour, and then have people completely ignore that and claim that you're just a punching bag. Do you know how you become the everyone's favourite punching bag? Stand by and watch whilst people use your platform to commit genocide, and then tell everyone you're looking out for the little guy.

Damned if you do enable a genocide, damned if you... oh no, just the first one.

<comment><USER49> This would be a great rebuttal to someone who said "I like that Facebook helps people kill people" but is a pretty weak rebuttal to someone calling out you making up fee structures for the product and your silly moralizing over a company launching... checks notes... a way for people to sell things on the internet. The horror.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Shopify will be the loser here.

FB will use them, chew and spit them out.

FB only wants shopify now because it has all the data, inventory, categorization, etc.

The next logical move would be to buy a company like wix, then target smb with their sales and marketing team to help them make digital storefronts on FB, integrate with their social platform and then ditch shopify.

Edit : Also, there is no way to tell if your competitor is paying to get your data and costomer info.

This will lead to an overall weakening of the mom and pop store operations, where they are disrupted ever more easily by the competition.

<comment><USER51> True. Square bought Weebly for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I don't see this as a positive for FB at all.

To me, this looks like FB has finally accepted defeat in the social networking space. Over the years it has been deteriorating at delivering on its core mission of connecting people and supporting personal relationships.

I don't think FB of the past would have green lighted this project, the hit on its brand positioning is significant. It will only accelerate people's disassociation between FB and a social network.

Effectively, at this point they're just cashing in on their brand equity and milking their user base.

They'll pay in terms of churn and decreased LTV.

<comment><USER53> Do you know about Facebook Watch, their streaming service with real original TV shows? Their switch from 'just' a social network was years and years ago

<comment><USER52> Didn't know they had original TV shows, but I thought at least they will build social features into Watch.

Shopping on the other hand, is a private and individualistic activity.

I feel this is far removed from their core mission.

<comment><USER54> > is a private and individualistic activity

Some people go to malls as a social activity. Others like to read product reviews by people (sometimes well known bloggers), or watch youtube videos. Sometimes people even ask their friends for product recommendations. Shopping is to some a very social thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Why have 2 different shops on Facebook and Instagram, it will lead to more confusion. Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?

<comment><USER56> Plenty of brands were already doing lead-gen to their products through Instagram, whether through ads, or just by creating a photo/video of their product that started trending (in a way similar to how you'd expect a pretty craftwork to trend on Pinterest.) I think Instagram even already has the inline "purchase the thing this is a picture of" flow—though right now it's just in the form of a modal webview to the partner's shop product page for the relevant item.

The "Instagram Shop" part of the offering they're describing, sounds less like an independent system, and more like a way for independent creators to get the same benefits as those large partners, where they can take a picture of the fancy sweater they made, have it appear on trending, and then there can be a "Buy" button right there on the post everyone's sharing. It's an Instagram _integration_ for the Facebook Shop system.

I also don't think there's going to be a separate "Instagram Shop" landing page for a given account, per se; if there is an index view, it'll just be a collection of the buyable items posted by a given Instagram account. The expectation, though, would be that "buyable" posts would just be part of a brand page's regular feed of posts. The "buy button" is just an enhancement to what the account was already doing, rather than a whole separate storefront to set up.

I'm guessing, in the end, what you'd really be purchasing via the Instagram hosted inline purchase flow, is a Facebook Shop product SKU. You'd probably get an email from Facebook Shopping about your product, etc. In other words, "Facebook Shop" would be a payment processor / hosted commerce backend, that happens to have a flagship front-end UX; and Instagram would be an alternative front-end UX.

> Also what about for folks who don't use either of those services?

Given the way they seem to be building it, there's definitely some backend core with an API that looks a lot like Shopify's API. I'm guessing they'll offer third-party developer access to that API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Tangentially related:

>'GrokNet', the AI behind Facebook Shops, looks for body type, skin tone, location, socioeconomic class in photos

[https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind- fac....](https://boingboing.net/2020/05/20/groknet-the-ai-behind-fac.html)

Is there good reason to be concerned on this level?

</comment><comment><USER58> The WeChat-ification of FB is going forward. There is still so much to do, but I for one am happy that total control over society's interaction by a single company is slowly coming over to the Western world.

(For reference if you don't have wechat or alipay in China, you might as well live as an hermit because fewer and fewer places will accomodate you)

</comment><comment><USER59> Facebook has had the shop option for quite some time now on the Facebook pages. I have used it, it really sucked. What's new here? Checkout option? The Instagram shop is new that's for sure. But I am not sure how that will perform.

<comment><USER59> Discovery was a real issue. I hope they have improved it now

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> The more low hanging fruit these companies pluck, the more obvious it becomes how much of the internet wants to be connected to real identities.

Facebook is largely a real person <-> online person connector and a very crude version of everyday items such as photographs, calendars, small shops, etc.

Except computers lift the constraint of copying being expensive in the real world, while the internet lifts the constraint of copied object being expensive and slow to move around.

While Amazon provides inventory and delivery infrastructure to businesses and an internet storefront for customers, Facebook hardly provides anything that isn't trivial to copy - they rely solely on network effects and as a result - can largely be seen as a middleman parasite, worthy of extermination.

</comment><comment><USER61> Another nail in the decentralized web coffin. The big steam machine is working at full power.

</comment><comment><USER62> If Facebook Shops allows you to sell digital products like PDFs, then it very much has my attention.

<comment><USER63> I really hope they don't poison that market as well.

<comment><USER62> Well, to be fair, there are digital product marketplaces that are still essentially monopolies (DriveThru, Kindle). I doubt Facebook is going to take over those markets any time soon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I still remember that time when Zuck publicly admitted that he was aiming for Facebook to replace the internet, which was clearly promptly scrubbed from the internet (it is one of those regrets that I did not save the video even though I realized it was important, while not realizing we actually had memoryholes already). It seems more than ever that he is well on the way to doing so, as it becomes ever less likely that any kind of relief or resolution will come from captured regulators, let alone captured and bought off legislators. Pretty soon, real competition will be dead, it has little life left in it as is.

</comment><comment><USER65> The main source of revenue for FB is advertising. They are able to offer Facebook Shops at a loss to get the market share. Many small businesses are mainly present online as a shop on a platform and a FB page. This is bad news for Etsy.

</comment><comment><USER66> Instagram shop charges 5%+ transaction fees... (more if the product is priced below $8) is this going to be the same pricing model?

Because if so it's a non-starter for myself and anyone comfortable with the stripe api and/or shopify at least.

</comment><comment><USER67> I dislike Facebook, but this is a really smart way to grab a market share. Most businesses need minimal online presence so FB front is sufficient.

I won't see those businesses, but I know I am a minority, when it comes to this.

<comment><USER68> Random non rant:

Thank you for being self aware enough to know that you are in the minority when it comes to not having Facebook.

Most posts by people who don't use FB and post to HN feign ignorance and say something like "I haven't used FB in 10 years. Does anyone still use it?"

<comment><USER69> Minority of what exactly?

As pointed out downthread, a lot more people on earth don't have FB than do.

I'd also wager plenty of people who've stopped using it still technically "have" an account but never use it.

So how do you define that "the majority" use Facebook?

<comment><USER68> [https://www.worldometers.info/world- population/](https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/)

First subtract China where it isn't available and you're down to a possible market of 6.35 Billion. But then start subtracting the number of children in the world, the number too poor to spend any money on anything FB would be selling or advertising and random other places where it might be blocked.

<comment><USER69> That's a lot of words to say "the majority of Facebook users are using Facebook".

That you just ignore the country with the largest population because Facebook doesn't operate there is a big tell.

Also, why would you assume the kind of products people might sell and thus their pricing? I've seen (and bought!) stuff online for ~ 11THB. 35 US cents.

You can say a lot of people use Facebook and that's fine. But if you're going to say "the majority of people" you really need to define which people you're talking about.

<comment><USER68> No business cares about trying to reach people who don't have money to spend on their products. It's kind of common sense that FB isn't trying to reach 5 years old. Also, it's kind of common sense that Facebook doesn't have many people in China where it's banned. Out of the FAANGM's, the only one that competes with Facebook is Google and they aren't in China either.

But to be even more blunt. FB no more cares about people spending 35 cents online than Apple cares about people who only want to/can buy a phone that cost $100.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> And using the big E-commerce platforms. Reducing opportunity for a software developer with his own platform to connect to it, what is basically just a product feed + order confirmation endpoint.

And more useless noice on Facebook of everyone promoting their take-away.

Ugh

Ps. I buy local, the take-aways across the street. Not the 30 places from my old hometown.

</comment><comment><USER71> _> Creating a Facebook Shop is free and simple._

That's just PR speak. The truth, as it will be realized soon (if not suspected already), is that this will not be free. It will take away the freedom of the businesses and hold them to ransom for Facebook's own benefit. Neither will it be simple to move out when the realization hits.

It's a trap, IMNSHO!

<comment><USER54> Game theory would suggest that even if all individual business participants know this, they will still opt to sign up anyways because they're making locally optimum decisions.

The paradox of advertising is well known as well, yet ad spend continues to go up.

Unfortunately there aren't many solutions to the dilemma, there's always the illusion of choice but the reality ends up being coercive nonetheless.

<comment><USER71> Could you suggest some reading material on this please?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Some time ago I was thinking what would it take to bring down Facebook and one of the ideas was for social platform to allow direct sales for hobbyists/small shops. They managed to patch this vulnerability now.

</comment><comment><USER73> How can developers leverage Facebook/Insta shops for business opportunities?

</comment><comment><USER51> FTC is asleep at the wheel, with Facebook.

Did you know they're doing dating, gamestreaming, classified ads....list goes on longer than my patience.

</comment><comment><USER74> In the light of this, it's much more obvious why they stared exposing the Facebook brand in their Instagram and WhatsApp properties.

</comment><comment><USER75> What does this mean for Squarespace and companies alike who strive to make shopping experiences for small and medium businesses?

</comment><comment><USER76> Uber buys GrubHub, Facebook creates a Facebook Shop vertical for restaurants and food. Most places have a Facebook page anyway.

</comment><comment><USER77> Interesting that their preview doesn't show any stars/reviews. I wonder if they will add this feature in the future?

</comment><comment><USER78> how are those going to magically just-work without logistics and conflict resolution?

<comment><USER79> (unfortunately) worked pretty well for amazon, and the concerns were the same

<comment><USER80> what do you mean? isn't the logistics and conflict resolution of amazon, pretty much best-in-class?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> This is a very smart move. Zuck proving he's the best allocator of capital in the consumer Internet space once again.

Im not in the HN bubble so much, I did delete for a few years.

Recently installed it to get on a few silver bullion trading groups as there is a shortage and boy are those groups super valuable for buying and selling.

</comment><comment><USER82> Any idea how to apply for the early access to this api?

</comment><comment><USER83> Looks like a challenge to Amazon minus the warehouses!

</comment><comment><USER84> Does this work for subscription based businesses?

</comment><comment><USER85> A whole class of retailer that will be blocked at my router. The Balkanization is well underway.

<comment><USER86> My thoughts exactly. I've blocked Facebook in my DNS hosts file & thankfully Firefox has a Facebook fence to isolate their trackers.

<comment><USER30> Out of curiosity, has doing this disrupted your web browsing experience in any way? I'd like to do this but I'm kind of afraid of alienating 75% of the web that relies on the FB JS SDK for something (I'm not really sure if this is the case, but it might be?)

EDIT: thanks for the responses. Will block at DNS :)

<comment><USER87> By "disrupt", do you mean "improves immensely"? It depends on how much FOMO you suffer from. For instance, the folks that I used to do music jams with (picture middle-aged folk playing bluegrass) have moved to FB Live(?) for some things. I don't see those, nor participate. That's okay, we do our own non- proprietary chat once a week in lieu of live jammin'. Local animal shelter posts stuff on FB, most of which I can live without.

Does shit break because something, something FB SDK? Nope, at least not shit _I_ care about, and not FB.

But for the most part, I get to mostly forget that FB even exists.

<comment><USER88> Indeed. What's the point of having values if you're not willing to be burdened with some costs?

Since FB lacks strong values it gets imposed on the wider community, but such is life. The only true option is using or building alternatives. Trying to chain the monster, where every individual positive attributes always has to be controlled and directed from some other central body, whom we then also have to trust with even more power, sounds like a losing game to me.

Not using FB isn't that difficult anyway. There's plenty of group messaging apps that achieve much of the same.

<comment><USER87> Are you replying to me, or just hijacking to make a general point? Because FB gets blocked at DNS at my house, I could have saved you some typing on "values".

<comment><USER88> I was commenting in support of not using FB, which is supporting what you're saying...

<comment><USER87> Gotcha, thanks for the clarification (and the stealth edit ;-). I'd delete my original question if it wouldn't leave your comment dangling.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> To me, it seems like these tech giants want the internet to start and end with their platforms. Facebook is becoming (or has become) people's experience of the "internet", it has a lot of what people want.

My concern is there isn't yet a law or enforced guidelines (similar to the GDPR) about machine learning, and what happens when it gets things wrong.

Recently, we've seen with a postcast app and pushbullet being threatened on Google. What happens if an AI or system decides it no longer likes your shop, or factors outside your control cause it to be flagged?

A commenter worried about MLM's, which is a valid point. Will we know the identity of the FB user who made the shop? How does the ownership process works? (I.E who actually "owns" the FB shop on FB and get admin controls).

I refuse to engage with and use FB, it may be that some shops become entirely FB oriented and forget "mycoolshop.com", because FB provides all the tools a business owner needs.

Sad, but slowly we're seeing the death of the internet we all wanted and possibly knew for a time in the early part of the century.

</comment><comment><USER90> Brace yourself for the tide of MLM FB shops

<comment><USER91> What is MLM?

<comment><USER92> Multi-Level Marketing, e.g. that person from grade school who messages you out of the blue to ask how you're doing, and then tell you how much better you'd be doing with daily injections of IsoLeanIonigenTonicWater which you will also want to sell once you feel amazing/thin/virle/whatever.

<comment><USER93> I used to program in a co-working space for fun where the company next to me was trying to build one of those schemes with some sort of ionized water. The CEO was perpetually convinced that if he "just got 400,000$ in funding" everything was going to be great. All the employees seemed to hate it there. Was pretty annoying to listen to, but not as annoying as the guy a few cubicles away who was trying to sell gold.

<comment><USER94> Yikes, do you know what happened to him?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER95> Is it US only?

<comment><USER96> US Only and selected shops for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> It's interesting how people here are happy to criticise "chyna" when facebook is really the same thing with a corporate logo and a backdoor. The difference is china has a frontdoor. Facebook also runs in your phone with spyware.

<comment><USER98> This thread seems mostly negative towards Facebook (good - fuck em') but your comment seems to suggest you think there's some bias here. Are people on HN being too positive about Facebook?

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> lol FB trying to fuck over 3rd party sellers and Amazon is like go ahead chumps we've been at this for decades.

Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody. They should fold.

<comment><USER100> >Seriously though who the hell trusts FB. Nobody.

2.6 billion monthly active users beg to differ

<comment><USER99> I'm one of them. But the graph is going down and engagement is going down faster, hence the frantic acquisition of anything else that gains traction - IG, WA etc.

Tiktok won't sell and their curve is convex so let's see what happens in the next couple years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> Facebook needs to be broken up _immediately_ , and their core platform offering replaced by an open protocol.

<comment><USER102> why open protocol and not help other competitors gain market share?

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Finally some honesty, good riddance to feel good nonsense about persons, being connected and the like - it's all about the money.

</comment><comment><USER103> Is it just me or was that the most hippy non-value product ever? Like printing with antique printing press seems as mumbo jumbo as gwyneth paltrow's selling stones to me</comment>


Surfboard: Audio Feature Extraction for Modern Machine Learning - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.08848 <comment><USER2> I was curious, how does Surfboard compare to Librosa?

It looks like Surfboard is a wrapper combining feature extraction methods from Librosa and other libraries, plus some of its own implementations. Is that correct?

[https://github.com/novoic/surfboard/blob/master/COMPONENTS.m...](https://github.com/novoic/surfboard/blob/master/COMPONENTS.md)

<comment><USER3> Hi there, Author of the paper here. Thanks for your question. I have actually already addressed this question on our reddit post, please see it: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/gqvnpv/p_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/gqvnpv/p_surfboard_audio_feature_extraction_for_modern/)

<comment><USER2> Thanks, this helps!

> Surfboard actually builds on LibROSA for a few of its components (e.g. > MFCCs) and its functionality (e.g. loading .wav files into memory). In that > sense it is the same as LibROSA for a lot of their communal functionality.

> LibROSA was built to extract individual components for music analysis. The > components we built into Surfboard are largely different to those in LibROSA > (apart from a few). If you are interested, please read our paper and > documentation to find out more!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also pretty useful is Essentia [1]. It's created by the guys at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and designed for use both in research (for things like Music Information Retrieval) and in industry (iirc it's used in a guitar tuner app and a few other things). Written in c++ with python wrapper, pretty cool!

      [1] https://essentia.upf.edu/

<comment><USER5> This is interesting. Essentia has a js wrapper too that runs via WASM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is very off topic but why is something submitted May 2020 to preprint listed as [https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.08848](https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.08848)

The 2005. confused me - is it some coincidence of random number generation or something else I missed?

<comment><USER7> It's YYMM.ID I believe

Last year may was 1905.xxxxxx

<comment><USER8> Yep. This and the last year will be the only two confusing years for a century.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe somebody knowledgeable of the field can pitch in: How could this be used to assess accuracy of pronunciation in language learning contexts?

</comment><comment><USER10> Github: [https://github.com/novoic/surfboard](https://github.com/novoic/surfboard)

</comment><comment><USER11> [https://github.com/novoic/surfboard](https://github.com/novoic/surfboard)

</comment><comment><USER12> I understand that the author(s) like to surf, but what does that have to do with this library?

<comment><USER13> Surfboards catch waves, like sound waves?

<comment><USER12> Sure. I wish they'd put a bit more work into the name. Maybe I'm thickheaded since I can't get over the word association each time I read, "Surfboard".</comment></comment></comment>


Hackney Podcast - relevant, high quality local broadcasting - <AUTHOR> http://hackneypodcast.co.uk/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just wanted to share this podcast I found with HN users. Really enjoyed the pace of editing and the interesting content.

I have no affiliation, just enjoyed the most recent show!</comment>


Critical turning point can trigger abrupt climate change - <AUTHOR> http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/04/20/critical.turning.point.can.trigger.abrupt.climate.change <comment><USER2> So if I get this right - it will be ice bergs around the UK coastline any day now. That could be - it's pretty chilly today.

<comment><USER3> Sadly I don't think we'll avoid major climate change. But on the other hand, the Sahara was green and full of lakes and rivers once.

<comment><USER2> But it has to be 50:50 which way it goes. Do you think it will be warmer or colder? Given where I live - I vote warmer - the thought of mile thick glaciers in my back garden is rather depressing.

<comment><USER3> The way I understand it, currently the Gulf Stream evens out the temperatures between the tropics and the north pole. The melting of the the north pole is alleged to stop the Gulf Stream an this would make the tropics a lot warmer but northern Europe colder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clojure vs Ruby & Scala -- Transient Newsgroups - <AUTHOR> http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/12/clojure-vs-ruby-scala-transient-newsgroups/

<comment><USER2> I'd _love_ to see those ruby benchmarks in jruby, since it's usually at least 50% faster than MRI</comment>


How We Drove 10K Unique Visitors to a New Product in a Month - <AUTHOR> http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/237922

<comment><USER2> I'm glad I read this - I expected some cheesy story about how a bit of contrived content and some founders/employees gamed HN.

This is a good template for how to identify, reach and get the most out of your ideal audience.</comment>