The suicide rate for farmers in the U.S. is more than double that of veterans - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/06/why-are-americas-farmers-killing-themselves-in-record-numbers <comment><USER2> I have family that farms in Iowa and I also worked in the agriculture industry there for a while after leaving the military. One thing that increases the stress on the farmers is the way they avoid income taxes at all costs so they rarely save any of the profits from good years to help them float during the bad years. This is all anecdotal but I have personally talked with several farmers that would rather buy new equipment they say do not even need than pay the taxes to take the money as income. This mindset causes them to experience a huge amount of stress every season. The farmers would talk about struggling, but have a brand new semi-tractor sitting in a barn unused 10 months out of the year.

<comment><USER3> Dumb question, as I am neither a farmer nor a businessperson, but is there a way for a farmer to set up, say, an LLC, which holds money from profitable years for use in unprofitable years, from which the farmer takes a steady salary each year?

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't that just make the overall tax burden worse? You'd have to pay corporate taxes on the farm profits, then pay income taxes on the salary.

<comment><USER5> I don't think so. I think LLC's allow one to pass through profits without double taxation. C corps, I believe, are the type that suffer from double taxation. Correct me if I am wrong though.

<comment><USER6> Salaries are a deductible expense for any business entity, so that money is never taxed twice by any reckoning.

The debate about double taxation of corporate profits relates to taxation of dividends, which are neither exempt nor deductible from a business' taxable income. Because shareholders are one and the same as the corporation according to some strains of legal and economic reasoning, by taxing dividends you've taxed the shareholders' profits twice.

If you control a corporation, you could achieve the same tax treatment as pass-through entities merely by paying yourself a salary instead of dividends. But if you did that, pass-through entities are easier because there are fewer formalities involved. The real gripe is that because dividends are taxed at a flat 15-20%, paying yourself in tax-preferred dividends is a tantalizing prospect but-for the supposed double taxation "problem".

The debate is admittedly a little more nuanced when discussing passive investments, but that's a different context than family farms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Many 'family farms' even in the dainty UK are multi-million $ businesses, run by people who know how to shear sheep and bunt hurdles and wurzels. They complain about the effect of market prices, and the worry they create, but they are taking on these risks _unhedged_ (and farmers being unhedged makes me giggle). Similar size businesses would we hedging their FX risk through their local bank with simple FX forwards. Farmers could directly hedge corn prices (commodities futures), and indirectly hedge fertilizer and diesel prices with oil futures. They could virtually remove market risk and concentrate on the risk inherent in the business (weather, disease etc)

I would offer this advice, but they are all _so_ clever you can't tell them anything. They are a very insular bunch _in general_ and their tie to their land is a bit more than the blood sweat and tears mentioned below, its a bit more like being the Lord of their Manor. I agree with the top post, they would happily be less profitable to save tax. It is intriguing (but not surprising to me) that many UK farmers voted to leave the EU, despite it being their main source of unearned income and the main market for their goods, and despite the National Farmers Union coming out in favor of remaining. I have noticed the young generation of farmers be openly aggressive towards foreign people (not that they actually meet any). It is kind of sad, but when they all lose their farms after Brexit they will still blame the French for it.

Disclosure: worked a lot with farmers, and have some in the family

<comment><USER8> In the case of Brexit "Fear of immigration drove the leave victory – not immigration itself"

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/voting- deta...](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/24/voting-details-show- immigration-fears-were-paradoxical-but-decisive)

Dominic Cummings, architect of the Vote Leave campaign has been pretty open about what they regarded as the winning factors:

 _" Would we have won without immigration? No. Would we have won without £350m/NHS? All our research and the close result strongly suggests No."_

Even though I was a Remain voter I have to credit Vote Leave with how dynamic and data driven their campaign was - they _knew_ what buttons to press based on large quantities of raw data.

<comment><USER9> > I have to credit Vote Leave with how dynamic and data driven their campaign > was

Almost all of it was false. There's no credit here.

> they knew what buttons to press based on large quantities of raw data.

Well, they do have a large country backing them.

<comment><USER8> Note that I am not saying that the claims they made in their campaign were correct - far from it.

What I mean is that they _managed_ their campaign in a data driven and dynamic way - even to the point of hiring developers and writing their own polling platform VICS:

[https://www.flourish.org/2017/02/a-short-walk-around-vote- le...](https://www.flourish.org/2017/02/a-short-walk-around-vote-leaves- software-vics/)

Both sides had crappy campaigns full of lies - the Vote Leave lot were unfortunately much better at it.

[Edit: For the avoidance of doubt, I've always been and will remain a strong believer that the UK should be in the EU].

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There was an article on HN not long ago [1] about professionals leaving their jobs in record numbers to pursue life as a farmer, producing and living off the land.

How do we reconcile on the one hand farmers by trade leaving and wannabe farmers wanting to join a farm life?

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771168](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15771168)

<comment><USER11> "The grass is always greener". I grew up on a dairy farm, its easy to romanticize it but the reality of waking up to literally chip and shovel frozen shit at 5am (almost daily chore to clean barns in winter) gets old after a decade. I worked hard to get out of farming and never want to go back. I love my tech job.

<comment><USER12> The people leaving tech for farming are not mucking barns, they're managing farms and hiring people to do the hard work. Think of more as a new- plantation, rather than a farm. I worked on a horse farm as a kid, and like you it was backbreaking, shit-shoveling, hay-slinging work. Now I have a good friend who owns horses, but she "has people" who do the hard work. She rides, and grooms a bit... money you know?

<comment><USER13> As someone else who also grew up on a dairy farm (UK), it's very hard to find reliable people to do the work. I can understand that as an office job has a lot of attractions compared to being out in rain in the winter darkness. They will often leave with no notice and it can be very hard to find someone reliable to replace them.

I don't see much progress on this, unless farming becomes profitable to employ staff on top wages or robots can become cheap enough to take over. Therefore, my family, though managing the farm, will often have to get involved in long hours manual labour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Local farm services guy had this to say: "Used to buy truckloads of fertilizer, then the coop would buy train car loads and undercut us. So we bought a train car - they bought a train. We bought a train - they bought a barge. The margins are disappearing entirely"

Almost everybody is being squeezed out by 'economies of scale'. And its going to get worse, when we start making simple foodstuffs electrically (starch, sugar, protein). Then we'll see the entire farm industry turned upside down.

<comment><USER15> This happens any time your only differentiator is price. The small guy is never going to be able to compete with a larger company on only price. Never make your differentiator "we're cheaper"! It's business 101.

<comment><USER16> Unless that's a game you can win - see Amazon.

<comment><USER15> I was always under the impression their differentiator is speed, convenience, and selection. They're marketing is heavily towards how quickly and how conveniently they can get anything you want to you.

Either way, that's exactly my point. Why would you compete with Amazon on price? They can get anything in larger bulk quantities than you ever could.

<comment><USER17> I do a substantial amount of personal shopping on Amazon -- 6-7 orders a month -- and they are _rarely_ the cheapest option. Shipping & hassle-free returns is the value-add.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are few places where market forces work as well as in farming. Which is surprising considering the distortions imposed by subsidies. Still, I think this is a case where automation will eliminate many if not all of their jobs and the market is doing a good job at signaling that they probably need to change professions. This especially rang true when they mentioned how the price of a wheat bushel appeared to below production costs. It's really pains me to see these men having to deal with the dark side of creative distruction but I also don't know what's the best way to help them reinvent themselves for the future.

<comment><USER19> What would a good role of government be?

It sounds like subsidizing getting people off the farm would be helpful, but that's also loaded politically.

One program I've heard of working well is subsidizing fallow land that eventually just becomes wild and never returns to cultivation.

<comment><USER18> I was reading other commenters mentioning the relatively old age of farmers. Maybe the only good option would be something like removing/phasing out existing subsidies so that only right amount of young people choose the profession coupled with a generous retirement program. Something like social security plus but with your farmland backing the plus part. Maybe in the spirit of what you're describing. I worry about the unforseeable consequences of paying to leave arable land fallow. You're essentially raising food prices and that really affects poor people the most.

<comment><USER20> Maybe there's also a concern about losing farming knowledge in local areas. This is a speculation since my general assumption is that as one of the oldest, most studied professions, we have more than enough knowledge socked away on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I imagine that farmers' high rate of gun ownership and social isolation are the big factors. It's pretty well documented that people with guns are more likely to successfully take their lives when compared to suicidal people who do not have guns. Couple that with the fact that there is not really a support system or general awareness of this issue and you have a problem. Veterans are also likely to own guns, but at least they have the VA and other organizations that are readily available to help in the event of emotional or psychological issues. Farmers do not have an equivalent organization.

<comment><USER22> This appears to be an issue for farmers worldwide. In India the same logic is used with "access to pesticide" substituted for "access to guns" [1].

[1] [http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd16/PF/presentations/far...](http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/csd/csd16/PF/presentations/farmers_relief.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Because their way of life is over. You can't be a small farmer any more- farming unfortunately scales really well so bigger concerns run the show now. They've got nothing left-they're up to their ears in debt, their way of life is gone, so whats left to do?

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't want to offend anyone, but could a high rate of suicides on farms have anything to do with the heavy use of pesticides in these places (which operate essentially as nerve agents, so it would not be surprising if they caused higher than normal rates of depression, hoarding, etc). Not trolling, just curious.

<comment><USER25> We know that some sheep-dip chemicals have caused problems, but there's very little evidence that agro-chemicals in general are a causitive problem for mental ill health.

Suicide prevention talks about access to means and methods.

Internationally agro-chemicals are a problem because they're one of the most commonly used methods for death by suicide.

But in the US there's easy access to guns, and so restricting access to agro- chemcials is unlikely to have much effect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One question I would ask: Has the average age of a farmer gone up substantially in the last couple of decades? This alone could be a major contributing factor, because the male suicide rate (at least in the U.S.) goes up with age.

<comment><USER27> Over what time? In the last few years the younger generation has been returning to the farm decreasing the age, but go back farther and the age as been getting older.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unfortunately technology is likely going to exacerbate this problem more than it helps. There will Be platforms like Farmers Buisiness Network of FarmLead, that will help smaller farms access better information and price but but that will quickly be arbitraged away and then you're left with economies of scale.

</comment><comment><USER29> The amazing thing is the median age of farmers in the USA is ~56. In the next ten years over half are retire-able. Who is going to take over? Corporations or the current immigrant workers? Its a huge change for most of the country.

<comment><USER30> This assumes they are able to retire. Given the financial outlooks presented in the article, I think retiring is not in the books for these farmers.

<comment><USER31> Well then what about 10 years later when they start keeling over? At some point, the music stops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The Guardian article on Dec 6, 2017 quotes the stat from Newsweek which has a date of July 13, 2016 quoting a 2014 study showing the number at 15.2 per 100,000. The other cited source is a CDC Study from 2016 with data up until 2012 that shows Farmers, Foresters, and Fishermen have the highest suicide rates of any profession in the US. Strangely, the CDC study puts the number at 84.5 per 100,000[1].

I would really like to see a bit more rigor and comparison so I know what is really going on.

1) [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#contribA...](https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6525a1.htm#contribAff) table 2

</comment><comment><USER33> My educated guess (I was a sysadmin in a major north Texas age company) is the hidden nature of the mergers, acquisitions, and interdependency the huge ag firms and bankers have fostered on what used to be family farms, and don't be fooled, true family farms are rarer and rarer these days.

I don't know when it changed so much from my great grandparents days, but when I see farmers with brand new ford raptors and 500k tractors less than a few years old it seems to fly in the face of what my grandparents described as life on a farm.

</comment><comment><USER34> Gee, I wonder why - small to medium farmers make just enough to get subsidized into _almost not_ backsliding into debt and oblivion.

Then a bad season hits, thanks to climate change. Cant afford food, much less taxes, maybe a mortgage.

Aaaaaaand now we're back to mislabelled sharecropping - or better yet, bottom- dollar buyouts from factory farms that destroy the land, the jobs, and probably your colon, dear reader. Another dust bowl, coming soon!

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder how much prior boom times have an impact on farmers because prices on the crops have just languished for years now.

2008 had very aggressive price appreciation in corn & beans. Same can be said for late 2010, all 2011, all 2012, & early 2013. After that prices have absolutely fallen off a cliff & continue to hover near those lows every single day.

I suspect it's difficult to be in the "risk management" business which farmers are by being "long" the crop in the ground & having no price appreciation for years. Meanwhile all other risk assets continue to explode higher. At some point it probably becomes challenging to find a light at the end of the tunnel. Now with rising interest rates the cost of capital is higher & likely going to accelerate higher.

Higher operating costs (wages & debt service) & continually deperessed prices of the product you produce. I don't have a solution for any of this but by putting myself in those shoes it sure does seem horrible.

</comment><comment><USER36> Maybe they have been faced with the prospect of moving to a city and working in an office.

<comment><USER37> These people are in their 50-60s. That's not a likely transition. A few might be able to get into sales or traveling trade work.

But most of them are going to have a difficult time finding any sort of work. Agism and the stigma of being a bumpkin/luddite will absolutely work against them.

<comment><USER38> _stigma of being a bumpkin /Luddite_

Which is a terrible assumption to make.

Many farmers (at least here in the mid-Atlantic) are college-educated absolutely not bumpkins/Luddites. Unsurprisingly, agricultural programs have a useful blend of business/economics and science.

<comment><USER31> That's why it's called a 'stigma' \- a reputation, not a fact.

<comment><USER38> Yes, I was agreeing with you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The amount of acreage it takes to be profitable goes up every year, and as a result people get squeezed out of the business. That's going to be tough on a guy in his fifties who never wanted to be anything but a farmer.

</comment><comment><USER40> How does this suicide rate compare to small business owners overall? It seems that _owning_ a farm is the suicide risk. Not working on one.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'll guess: depression, isolation, uncertainty, one paycheck a year (when the harvest comes in), physical danger and health risks.

<comment><USER41> Yeah, I'm curious if isolation isn't a key here. As technological advancements have enabled farmers to manage more and more land, they are getting more and more spread out. Social isolation has psychological and real physiological impacts on wellbeing.

<comment><USER14> and hardly any hired hands any more - they work alone

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> It's not only America. Same story in France (as just one example). More interestingly there was a documentary about the 40s in France, and a farmer interviewed said the exact same things as a farmer today about the struggle of surviving in this "field"... nothing's changed.

</comment><comment><USER43> The same thing happens in Canada.

<comment><USER44> For some farms.

I have relatives that are dairy farmers in Ontario and they seem to be doing ok. There's some kind of collective in place that establishes production quotas and you have to pay for the right to produce. Maybe more commodity products could benefit from this type of planning.

<comment><USER45> It makes Canadian dairy products rather expensive. Helping businesses collude to drive up prices and increase profits really should not be the role of government. Cartels are good for their members, but not for the rest of society.

See also, [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob- comme...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob- commentary/canadas-supply-management-system-for-dairy-is-no-longer- defensible/article36029788/)

<comment><USER44> > Helping businesses collude to drive up prices and increase profits really > should not be the role of government.

Well, that's one way to look at it. Another way is to say it stabilizes a strategically important sector and establishes a minimum wage for dairy farmers. I'd rather pay more for milk than have desperate farmers killing themselves at record rates. There's a societal cost to that as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> happy-go-lucky Farming is irreplaceable as of now. I don't want it to be replaceable, do you?.

<comment><USER46> Replaceable with what?

Some lab-based process that produces the same products at the same volume with less impact on the land?

Would that be such a bad thing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Same thing happens in Switzerland.

<comment><USER48> I would say farmers are quite happy in Switzerland being the most subsidised farmers in Europe / the world?

On top, some of them own land, which makes them into multimillionaires the moment the land is turned from farm-land into land that can be used to put houses on.

<comment><USER49> Subsidising farmers is double edge sword, it do inflate the prices of everything you are supposed to buy with that money, be it tractors, land, fertilisers and such. Dealers know how much you are going to get from government and they want some of it.

<comment><USER48> Sure but the Swiss are the most risk-averse people on the planet. In case again a world-war breaks out they need to be able to feed the country without relying on imports. That an important main reasons for subsidies. If somehow it could be guaranteed that there will be no war in Europe ever, my best guess is that the Swiss would immediately drop this "inefficiency" (they love to be efficient).

<comment><USER49> Sure, but my comment was about the effect of subsidiaries to profitability of given farms. What I see, as a small scale farmer myself, and as having family members having executive roles in big industrial farm conglomerates, is that those subsidies have effect on pricing of farm inputs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> new topic but I am noticing a new trend where rich people have started owning farm land. Not sure why but I hope it is not contributing to this problem in a weird way.

</comment><comment><USER51> > but the most extreme anti-government/anti-tax ideologies. It's the very > definition of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

That sadly isn't an extreme ideologies. Every wonder why Republicans are all for tax cuts? Its the simple idea that if the Government has less money it must be smaller. So lower the taxes of the rich and corporations = smaller government. This is why we have problems all the time with tax talks. Both sides talk with different worldviews. You might say "Trickle Down Economics Doesn't Work," they simply don't care, "There is nothing that Government does well." "Government is the problem" \- Ronald Reagan 1981 Inauguration [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1sGN6J9Tgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1sGN6J9Tgs)

Though I love throwing Reagan into the face of today's "Conservatives" they really would HATE Reagan today and his liberal ways.

<comment><USER52> This triggered the sort of low-rent political thread we don't want here. Please don't do that.

We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15862439](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15862439) and marked it well off-topic.

<comment><USER53> I thought everyone was very respectful.

<comment><USER52> It's way off topic.

<comment><USER53> Yes, it is. Thanks for your moderation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Mild shock that the conclusion isn't "Monsanto"

<comment><USER37> That's in the article about why farmers are killing each other.

[https://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532879755/a-pesticide-a- pigwe...](https://www.npr.org/2017/06/14/532879755/a-pesticide-a-pigweed-and- a-farmers-murder)</comment></comment>


What's the difference between data science, machine learning, and AI? - <AUTHOR> http://varianceexplained.org/r/ds-ml-ai/ <comment><USER2> Seems like a clickbait title to me.</comment>


How to kill your Google account: Access it via Tor - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2w618r/how_to_kill_your_google_account_access_it_via_tor/ <comment><AUTHOR> A few quick observations:

⚫ Having all your eggs in one basket is a poor option. And by "your" I mean "my".

⚫ IP-based reputation tracking's been useful. It's dead. Get over it. Thank the NSA. And Google. And Verizon. And advertisers. Not necessarily in that order.

⚫ If you're not offering me GPG/PGP based multi-factor authentication, fuck you. Seriously. Just fuck you.

⚫ Have your CEO go through your account recovery process. Try not to piss them off _or_ hand the keys to their castle to the wrong party. Like I'm supposed to remember the month and year I signed up for your service? Not. Bloody. Likely.

⚫ That and about a half-dozen other questions would have been impossible to answer if I didn't have local archives of much of my data (thank you OfflineIMAP). The cloud really sucks at times. Especially when your feet are glued to the ground.

⚫ CAPTCHA's just about reached EOL as well. I might be able to solve about 1 in 5 these days. If that. Your goal isn't to absolutely prevent someone from getting onto your system. It's to slow 'em down and raise attack costs.

⚫ If you're offering Internet-based services, start sorting out how you're going to manage reputation with your Tor clients. Because you'll be having Tor clients. FAUST and Fair Anonymity are two projects I'd uncovered in the not- too-distant past, though both appear to be little more than research projects at this point. I'm not aware of implementations of any Tor-related reputation management. [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4707v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4707v1.pdf) [https://gnunet.org/node/1704](https://gnunet.org/node/1704)

⚫ You don't trust your users. With good reason. Your users don't trust you. With good reason. And yet you live together on the Internet. Figure something out.

⚫ No, Yahoo, I'm not giving _you_ my mobile number either.

⚫ There's a lot of money not to be made in offering free email service. But I'd be happier if a few more folks were doing that. Or if we could figure out a p2p direct messaging system that wouldn't instantly die under a blizzard of spam. I think something involving clay tablets might work.

</comment><comment> james-skemp I'm sorry, but the top poster on Reddit is correct; you were asked three things and couldn't answer any of them.

Wasn't there a snafu a while back where a security issue with how one company accepted password resets lead in turn to a user losing access to another account? (Someone's Twitter or hosting account?)

They have a way of getting into your account. If you prefer to not use/keep active 2 of the 3 methods, then ...

And based on your fears of giving Google your phone number, I'm surprised you even use Gmail.

Sorry, and best of luck. At least you have a backup! But still sucks :(

<comment><AUTHOR> _you were asked three things and couldn 't answer any of them._

Except that that is incorrect information.

I can answer a number of points directly: I have my account password. I can (and have) accessed it from a non-Tor IP, the same that I've been using recently, and from within the same IP range that I've been using for quite some time (though now long I don't know -- the space is dynamic and subject to change).

I can and did answer last login dates, questions about email contacts, and general questions about email filters (none of which would be likely if I didn't have local copies of email -- in other words, they're tough questions to answer if you don't have access to at least _some_ of your account.

And there are numerous other questions that I _wasn 't_ asked that I could answer. Including as I've noted, my PGP key to which I can sign or respond to challenges. Multiple other accounts that I've referred to frequently in my G+ postings (including this one, also reddit, Ello, and Diaspora, among others). Which, though Google isn't (or shouldn't be) in a position to check, all use different (and difficult) passwords.

So: no, I can't answer _all_ the security questions. Then again, I'd challenge you to go through account recovery procedures for your own online account(s), and to see how far or successful you are with these.

Some time ago close friends lost access to their email account they'd had for years with a very large Internet services provider. It turns out that the password they'd been using was a poor choice -- I'll just say short, based on a limited characterset, and based on personal demographic information that could be pretty easily guessed at, or simply brute-forced.

Oh, and they'd been a paying customer for years before the system switched over to free, which meant that there were both credit card numbers and I suspect street addresses on file. But the CCs had long since expired and been retired.

After a few months, it became apparent that there was simply no way to recover the address.

Which means that any accounts that _weren't_ notified were still sending to it (think financial services, etc., as well as friends and other services tied to it). And that the account could be used to send spam.

I've got a few friends whose Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and other accounts appear to have been similarly compromised.

As I state below, the question "who are you" is a really difficult one to answer. Google's Eric Schmidt stated early on that G+ was designed to be "an identity service". In the sense of "we're going to use this to identify exactly who you are in meatspace and stick with you no matter what" I've got no interest in that.

But in the sense of "we want to be able to consistently and correctly provide access to the self-described entity who should and has been using a particular account", well, yeah, you could say I'm down with that.

And on that count, at least for the moment, the company is failing spectacularly.

<comment><USER2> I've done account recovery for my gmail account a few times without any issues, and it's the main email for all my other accounts, so I can recover them with no issue. Then again, I actually keep my recovery information updated, so it takes about 2 minutes to recover my gmail account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Using what method(s)?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> And for those curious about the follow-up: account recovered, though with the intercession of a Googler I know through G+.

That said, a very deep thanks to Yonatan for helping to get this sorted. I've beat him up a lot over disagreements on G+, he's always been the consummate professional.

</comment><comment><USER3> _Sorry, but you were accessing from a completely unknown IP address that they cannot verify. What is to say the GPG private key hasn 't been compromised?_

Nothing, but with that attitude, why even use GPG at all?</comment>


Cloudflare supports Privacy Pass - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-supports-privacy-pass/ <comment><USER2> This is a very neat concept. One problem I see is that having privacy pass installed instantly lowers your privacy, as it marks you as one of a small set of users with that extension. Combine that with IP address, and you could potentially trace a user across the web. I wonder if there's any potential for tor to support the extension by default, which would prevent users from being punished for installing the extension manually.</comment>


Dispatch, the simplest business model we could make work - <AUTHOR> http://icelab.com.au/articles/announcing-dispatch-from-decaf-sucks/

<comment><AUTHOR> We're a design/dev studio and we've just started selling a monthly coffee subscription. We conceived the business in one week and launched it in the next!

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm a big fan. The coffee from Lonsdale St Roasters is awesome.</comment>


The Hidden Costs of Apple's Push Notification Service - <AUTHOR> http://www.mobileorchard.com/the-hidden-costs-of-apples-push-notification-service/ <comment><USER2> Damn. This also means back end for iphone apps running on google appengine will have a much much harder time...

Sure you could have a cron job that triggers a request handler on the appengine to open and close connections to apple periodically. But this cron job would have to be not too close to each other, so as to not be treated as DOS requests.. aaaaaaaaaah... damn it when will we see real background processing on app engine (or on the iphone, if at all)...</comment>


Ask HN: How to Profit from a FOSS Project? - <AUTHOR> Without going into too much details, I'm working on an online teaching platform for schools and universities. I'm a strong believer in the Free Software ideology, and would like to license my project as such.
The project would be self hosted by the institution, and I want to profit from it. Is there a way to sell licenses for usage even though the source code is available freely? Can someone fork my project, change a few tiny details and the name and provide it for free without licenses?
Would having the project be free of price, but selling "support" worth it, or would they just rely on their IT department and not bother with buying it?
The idea of FOSS sounded better as a consumer than as a supplier tbh, so I would like to know your opinion about this. <comment><USER2> The other two sibling comments are probably better, but a few additional remakes anyway.

I think it's very difficult to make money from a Free Software project. It is somewhat possible from a Source Available project, but not easy.

The elephant in the room is Moodle. Everyone is using Moodle. It is GPL3. It is an pragmatic/opinionated project, so you can find people that don't like it or that want some special feature.

Perhaps you want to read about the AGPL licence, it forces people to share the changes in they servers, even if they don't redistribute them. [I prefer Apache or MIT, but it is even more difficult to make money with them unless your project is huge.]

Some people share the [A]GPL version for free, but charge for the same code under a not viral licence. If you accept contributions, you probably need a ask for a CLA (contributor license agreement) so _you_ can change the licence for the payed version. [I really don't like projects with a CLA. They are not free enough for me.]

</comment><comment><USER3> I 'd suggest the Red Hat model. Copyleft code, trademarked name, make money from support. It has good synergies in incentive alignment between you and the community (that may hopefully materialise) around the project and a track record of success.

</comment><comment><USER4> _Is there a way to sell licenses for usage even though the source code is available freely?_

You can definitely sell F/OSS for a profit. One could quibble about the semantics of whether or not you're really selling a license for "usage" or not, but I don't think that's a particularly useful distinction. Maybe the more important point is to understand that you're not _really_ selling software in a sense. Yes, you could choose to not make binaries available unless the customer pays, but they could always build their own binaries, or get them from a third party.

So why do organizations pay companies for F/OSS at all? Well, there is the support aspect, but its not just "support" as in patches / version upgrades, and phone/email/web/whatever technical support. Those things are aspects of what an organization is paying for, but they're also paying for something more subtle. Organizations, especially larger ones, want stability and continuity. By paying your company, instead of just using your software for free, they are investing in the continued development and evolution of your project. And, yes, they're also paying to have "somebody to sue" if the shit hits the fan. Large organizations want contracts and legally binding commitments around things, and they understand that that costs money.

 _Can someone fork my project, change a few tiny details and the name and provide it for free without licenses?_

Pretty much, yeah. You can protect trademarks, and you can always choose the route of not making the documentation available under a license that permits redistribution, and do other small things to discourage a third party from setting up to sell the same thing. But the licenses (I'm assuming some more or less standard, common-place, OSD compliant license) generally permit that.

 _Would having the project be free of price, but selling "support" worth it, or would they just rely on their IT department and not bother with buying it?_

It depends. There would probably always be "cheapskate" orgs that would download and use the code and never engage with you. That's just part of the cost of doing business. But many organizations _will_ buy your package, assuming it creates value for them, for the reasons mentioned above. Not to mention, their internal IT departments are probably already overworked, underfunded, and stretched thin. They would _prefer_ to outsource the maintenance and evolution of the thing, as opposed to taking on that responsibility themselves.

 _The idea of FOSS sounded better as a consumer than as a supplier tbh, so I would like to know your opinion about this._

It's not for everybody. There are a lot of implications to "selling F/OSS" and you should think through them carefully and do your research before deciding. I kinda feel like this topic has been beaten to death online over the last 15 or 20 years, so there's plenty of discussion of these points for you to read over and consider. See:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+business+models](https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+business+models)

One thing I would suggest, if you haven't yet, is to read

 _Open Source Licensing: Software Freedom and Intellectual Property Law_ by Lawrence Rosen.

[https://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm](https://www.rosenlaw.com/oslbook.htm)</comment>


Dropbox disconnects Boxopus for unwanted features - <AUTHOR> http://blog.boxopus.com/index.php/2012/06/25/dropbox-disconnects-us <comment><USER2> While it's easy to jump to conclusions, it might be a good idea to have a think and maybe ask some questions first.

Dropbox provides a file sharing service, Boxopus uses this to provide torrent downloading services. Should Boxopus become popular, how will this impact Dropboxes cost base? Will people buy more dropbox space?

Are Dropbox possibly obliged to deactivate Boxopus due to onerous copyright rules? Is there anything in their underlying contractual arrangements with their suppliers for example that could result in the termination of dropbox's service, or are they just trying to cover their backsides?

I think this shows a good example of the increasingly common problem where startups tie themselves to a platform and suffer for it as well as benefit. They're looking for another storage provider, but who's to say this won't happen with a new provider too?

<comment><USER3> One question that you are not asking is whether this decision was affected in any way by the Megaupload case.

If I were Dropbox, I would see arbitrary action by the US authorities as one of my greatest risks, and would do whatever it takes to stay in the good graces of the MPAA, given the apparent influence that they have over US law enforcement.

<comment><USER4> I expect that's what's happened. Copyright maximialism succeeds, yet again, in killing creativity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It bothers me that companies are allowed to make discriminatory decisions like this, when providing public-facing services.

If your TOS states that Dropbox can't be used for files above a particular size, or can only be used by individuals and not corporations, or something like that, then fine.

But companies that discriminate based on the _purpose_ of usage -- this seems fundamentally wrong. MasterCard blocking WikiLeaks payments, Dropbox blocking torrents, PayPal banning a VPN provider... Private companies have no business deciding what is "acceptable" in this manner. If it's illegal for them to provide services, then obviously they can't, but if it isn't, then they should continue to provide services.

Honestly, is this any different from a company ninety years ago denying service to non-whites because it "could be perceived as encouraging the races to intermarry?"

There's a reason we have anti-discrimination laws for races, gender, orientation and religion. Why don't we have them for "purpose of use of services"?

<comment><USER6> First, let's just ignore the straw man of:

>Honestly, is this any different from a company ninety years ago denying service to non-whites because it "could be perceived as encouraging the races to intermarry?"

I think we can both agree that it's a hyperbolic statement. Moving beyond that, as a company, I should have every right to decide who can and cannot use my service. Just because I provide a public-facing API doesn't mean I have to allow you do to what you want with it. You're building off of my brand and my infrastructure. If I don't want Initech Inc. to be associated with file sharing, fire arms, or even the Irish, that's entirely within my rights. I'd be far more aghast if companies were forced to take any comers.

On this specific issue, scan the headlines:

"Pirate's dream come true: Boxopus pushes torrents to your Dropbox account" "Boxopus Is A Pirate Friend, Drops Torrents Directly Into Dropbox" "New App Makes Pirating Movies A One-Click Process"

The articles also point out that Boxopus was quickly integrated with a number of torrent sites that host bootleg downloads.

The absolute last thing Dropbox wants to be associated with is piracy. The company is in much more danger of going out of business due to piracy issues than to any competitor.

<comment><USER7> _> If I don't want Initech Inc. to be associated with file sharing, fire arms, or even the Irish, that's entirely within my rights. I'd be far more aghast if companies were forced to take any comers._

I'm rather aghast that any companies think this way. You might as well say that it is well within Google's right to shut down my Google Docs account because they don't want to be associated with the bad poetry I write using it.

One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly functioning economy. If I have to worry that any online service might chose to shut down my access for any arbitrary reason, then I am strongly disincentived from using online services. The strength of any economy is in no small part due to the ease and fluidity with which trusted transactions can take place. Remove the forces that allow us to trust the transactions, and the economy will falter.

The only reason that people are mostly willing to overlook this issue is because service providers exercise their putative right to deny service for arbitrary reasons rarely. But if you as a service provider exercise this putative right more liberally, then you are damaging the entire economic system (albeit only to some small degree for an isolated provider).

The only silver lining in all this free market rhetoric is that hopefully the free market will step in and put you out of business. Unfortunately, however, this often takes a lot longer than it should once network effects have engaged.

P.S. What's with this trend of downvoting people just because someone doesn't happen to agree with what someone else has to say. This is rather rude, if you ask me.

<comment><USER8> > I'm rather aghast that any companies think this way. You might as well say > that it is well within Google's right to shut down my Google Docs account > because they don't want to be associated with the bad poetry I write using > it.

What he is saying is that he believes it is Google's right to do that and it is irrelevant to the fact it is stupid.

> One problem with this attitude is that it doesn't lead to a smoothly > functioning economy.

Sure if people just put up with it but I don't think anyone is suggesting we just accept dropbox's position and pretend it never happened.

<comment><USER7> _> What he is saying is that he believes it is Google's right to do that and it is irrelevant to the fact it is stupid._

And what I'm saying is that it is NOT within Google's right to do this. Among other reasons, it is not within Google's right to fsck up the economy that everyone depends on.

On the other other hand, I fully acknowledge that the best remedy is not always more government, since that doesn't always lead to the greatest utility either.

<comment><USER9> No shirt, No shoes, No Piracy, No Service.

> it is not within Google's right to fsck up the economy that everyone depends > on.

I shut down a non-technology brick and mortar store almost a year ago, partly because of dwindling sales due to the economy, and more importantly because I had a single customer that maintained over 60% of my revenue. That customer decided to move the business they were giving me in-house. Negotiations had been ongoing for over 4 years, both to (naively) prevent them from doing so (it wasn't a surprise that they did, they had been talking about it for years), and to suggest that we could merge businesses. Suffice to say, they hired someone else and I was forced to walk away.

I went through a period of "Fuck them", but I had known all along that if they walked away from me, I was screwed. Relying on a single 3rd party API is exactly the same thing. It's a contract with another business entity. If they decide to implement your additions into their core product (take for example today's Podcast app release form Apple), or if don't like your hair color, or they just don't like what you are doing, it's not "fuck them" it's "what's phase 2?". Grow up and move on. This is business. No one is entitled to consume another company's API, or else there would be no such thing as an API key.

<comment><USER7> _> No one is entitled to consume another company's API, or else there would be no such thing as an API key._

That would depend on what you mean by "entitled" and by "consume". Lawsuits happen all the time because one entity believes that another entity backed out of a deal in bad faith.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're making mountains out of molehills. Don't build your shit on a platform you could reasonably expect to be taken away from you. Company management often sees piracy (and sex) as a plague that can erode customer and investor support in their business.

* * *

Once upon a time there were three little pigs. One pig built a house of straw while the second pig built his house with sticks. They built their houses very quickly and then sang and danced all day because they were lazy. The third little pig worked hard all day and built his house with bricks.

A big bad wolf saw the two little pigs while they danced and played and thought, "What juicy tender meals they will make!" He chased the two pigs and they ran and hid in their houses. The big bad wolf went to the first house and huffed and puffed and blew the house down in minutes. The frightened little pig ran to the second pig's house that was made of sticks. The big bad wolf now came to this house and huffed and puffed and blew the house down in hardly any time. Now, the two little pigs were terrified and ran to the third pig's house that was made of bricks.

The big bad wolf tried to huff and puff and blow the house down, but he could not. He kept trying for hours but the house was very strong and the little pigs were safe inside. He tried to enter through the chimney but the third little pig boiled a big pot of water and kept it below the chimney. The wolf fell into it and died.

The two little pigs now felt sorry for having been so lazy. They too built their houses with bricks and lived happily ever after.

</comment><comment><USER11> Busy week for API drama. I'm going to have to side with Dropbox on this one. This tool was quite obviously going to be harnessed for piracy.

<comment><USER12> The internet is harnessed for piracy. I guess we'd better turn it off then.

<comment><USER13> You can't sue the Internet though. This line of argument begins with entitlement. Dropbox is a company with an ass to protect. Anyone using any service's API is never entitled to any guarantees regardless of whether they comply with their TOS or not. The purpose of an API is to simultaneously add value for users and widen use of the produc (both of those fall technically under the banner of "to help the company providing the API make boat loads of money).

The other part of people's defense of Boxupus is this whole idea that just because it _could_ be used to violate copyright doesn't mean it will. Anyone who honestly, deep down, truly believes this and isn't just towing the Pirate Party Line needs to wake up. The majority of people downloading from torrents are downloading copyrighted material which is not legal, like it or not, the legalities of copyright law are irrelevant here. While I'm sure you can pop in and say "but I was using it for legit use case x, y, and z", most people were using it for downloading music and movies. Where's my proof? Fuck my proof. Where's _your_ proof (I'm using the royal "your" here, not aimed at the op here) that it was being used so innocently? It really makes me upset that I just know someone will try to call me out for not having evidence on that one point despite the fact that we all know what was up just like we all knew what was up with MegaUpload. Demanding my evidence on that one point is the last defense of a person who's just grasping at straws, defending some pro-piracy ideology. But piracy isnt even the issue nor is it relevant!

Dropbox is a company here to make money. Just mentioning torrents puts people in a frenzy. So they're protecting themselves from liability by making sure their product is not associated in any way with torrents. It doesn't matter whether they have a legit purpose or not. It's a case of perception trumping all else and you have to remember that even beyond legal issues, Dropbox has a brand to protect. The perception of Dropbox is that of an exceptionally wholesome file storage/sharing service. Why would they even risk being seen as even the teensiest bit shady?

<comment><USER14> most people using dropbox like services are hosting copywrited material.

<comment><USER15> You are absolutely right! I own the copyright to almost every single file stored in my dropbox account, because I created them. Those that I didn't are happily stored but not distributed, entirely within the licences granted by the owners of the material.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The solution is simple. Build a 2 tier app? One innocuous app (SendToDropbox) that moves files into dropbox. Second app (TorrentIntoSendToDropbox) that saves torrents into the first app.

<comment><USER17> The legal system is surprisingly humorless when it comes to "hacks" like that.

<comment><USER18> The tax system, on the other hand ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> As so many people have pointed out over the last few years, building your product on top of someone else's product is a bad idea unless you have a legally-binding agreement in-place. And having an api key isn't a substitute for such an agreement.

If this principle had a name (ie "<someone's> law") then maybe people would pay more attention.

(And OT: I read "boxopus" as "box o' pus", which makes me think perhaps its a poor name)

<comment><USER14> im not sure why anyone would want to build an app on a platform that lets you log in to any users account without a password... maybe something low risk like hosting torrent downloads

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The lesson here is to never let your core business depend on another company's core business. You just don't want that kind of dependency.

</comment><comment><USER21> It was an absurd pairing of two separate and dissimilar block-structured sync protocols and I am not at all surprised. This should've been disallowed on pure bandwidth efficiency grounds.

I'm sure the actual reason was "torrent user == pirate" and they just didn't want any juvenile connections, bad news in any language.

Everyone who read the original story saw this coming.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like this is the wrong choice for Dropbox. Wouldn't they still be under DMCA safe harbour just as if I uploaded copyrighted material myself? Or is any type of downloader to your Dropbox against the terms of service as an 'Unwanted feature'? Sure they reserve the right to who uses their service, but if they are DMCA compliant are they just losing potential revenue?

<comment><USER23> I would guess[1] it's more about not painting a giant target on their back. Yes Dropbox can be used for pirated material, but they don't promote it and there are no features of Dropbox that enable it, however if this service exists and gets substantial traction people will start to associate Dropbox with piracy and when that happens Dropbox risk being targeted by groups like the MPAA.

Look at Megaupload, they were supposedly complying with the law.

[1] Pure speculation

<comment><USER24> I know you know this, but for the benefit of the thread:

Megaupload is commonly understood to have been "complying with the law" based on a misapprehension of what the law actually is.

The misapprehension is that "compliance" with US copyright law means "honoring takedown notices".

The reality of US copyright law is that there are two sides to compliance: first, takedown notices need to be honored, and second, the service can't operate with foreknowledge of infringing use.

You can execute takedown notices within milliseconds of their arrival, but if an opposing lawyer or prosecutor can demonstrate that you repeatedly (a) came into knowledge that your service was used for piracy and (b) took no action, you effectively forfeit the service provider "safe harbor".

It was discovered by prosecutors that Megaupload not only knew about infringing content on their own site (trading links among staff for particular films, for instance), but also ran a promotional/affiliate program that rewarded uploaders for pushing popular copyrighted material to the site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This shows the difference between an API and a protocol.

You are at the sole discretion of the company whose API you are using.

Different cloud storage provider, different API. I wish they all started using the remoteStorage protocol. <http://www.w3.org/community/unhosted/wiki/RemoteStorage>

</comment><comment><USER26> How is Boxopus better than just tellign your torrent client to download into your dropbox folder?

<comment><USER27> I was actually going to work on a project that did something similar. Doing anything with large files while you're on a mobile device is difficult because of bandwidth, processing, and screen real estate.

If you could move or process large files though a third party without having to physically download the file to a temporary location, it would be awesome... but apparently Dropbox doesn't think so. I deemed my project DOA because I had a feeling that what happend to Boxopus would happen to me across multiple platforms that I wanted to integrate.

<comment><USER28> I believe utorrent has a remote feature that can be accessed from mobile. Point your torrents to dropbox on your desk/laptop and access on the go. Unless your only computer is your phone this would work just as well...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Who saw this coming? Not I! /sarcasm

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm genuinely curious, as I've never actually used it[1], but if someone waved a magic wand, and ALL illegal music, movies and books vanished from bittorrent networks, what would be left?

[1]blizzard uses it for WoW updates, but I don't think that really counts.

</comment><comment><USER30> Surprise, Surprise... did you really not see this coming? Don't rely on 3rd party APIs!

</comment><comment><USER31> Well, duh.

</comment><comment><USER32> Perhaps Dropbox should block itself, given that it can also encourage copyright violations. Time to setup OwnCloud!

</comment><comment><USER33> What makes Dropbox special that they chose it as the only cloud storage solution that Boxopus works with?

<comment><USER34> The fact that it's the only cloud storage solution most people have heard of?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This kind of reinforces my belief that Dropbox is merely a segway toward a more private, decentralized (self-hosted), cloud-based filesystem.

How is Dropbox ever going to stay relevant in the future if they go around telling people what they can and can't store in their directories?

<comment><USER36> Simple - no one cares (for values of "no one" equal to 99% of the population).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> The original thread on this topic (that was evidently heavily flagged) is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4161940>

</comment><comment><USER38> It's pretty appalling that people believe Dropbox has an obligation to bear all the burden so some "startup" can make a quick buck off of copyrighted material. Where are the thought leaders on this? Sitting around with eyepatches over their mouths?

</comment><comment><USER39> I don't understand the need for this company in the first place, (Anonymity when pirating?)

If you wanted to store BitTorrent downloads in Dropbox, all you gotta do is tell your torrent client to use your local dropbox folder as a save location...

</comment><comment><USER40> Dont build anything of value on someone elses API. THey will kill you.

</comment><comment><USER41> I think this is a sign of weakness from Dropbox; for example, big strong players like Google don't just erase all the links to ThePirateBay.se just because some big record label says so; they wait until they are actually forced to do so with a legal petition (e.g. DMCA)</comment>


Ask HN: Bloated engineering titles? - <AUTHOR> Why do we have this meaningless titles like engineer, senior engineer, lead engineer, manager etc. I think it restrict responsibilities and creativity of an individual and create unnecessary hierarchical structure. Higher level goal should to be work together and solve problems at ground level by putting your bloated title aside. Somehow the incentivization process in companies doesn't promote that behavior, rather it is more about showing your individual supremacy over others to get rewarded more. Would like to know if others feel same way ? <comment><USER2> Calling an engineer with 5 years experience "senior" isn't nearly as ridiculous as all of these kids calling themselves "CTO", "CEO", etc, of their 1-person unfunded webapp.

</comment><comment><USER3> When I played X-Com, we had these different soldiers of different compositions. Everyone could do the same thing, fire a gun, be bait, throw a grenade, but some did some parts better than others. I ended up giving them names that reflect their roles, so that I'd be reminded where to put them.

I can imagine a company with three managers doing this - you'd have Project Manager Alice, Technical Manager Bob, Scrum Master Catherine. They might take the roles interchangeably, but it acts as a comment for senior management.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most engineers and developers are happy to go with the title "Engineer" or "Developer", however a lot of other departments marketing, sales, HR could have inflated titles.

Managers, Directors, Vice presidents are very common even for people who have just graduated. Then you find yourself reporting to people who have only worked one job.

As it is most technical jobs saturate and you need to take the management track, with 15 years of experience reporting to someone with a lot less real world experience is not pretty.

<comment><USER5> Depends on the person. Some are born for their role. Some grow with experience. Some nothing helps.

Someone new might be easier to work with in someways compared to a manager who believes in their process over reality.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> They aren't meaningless, in fact in most companies there is specific defined meanings to them, and in some companies the definitions include the culture that is expected to be promoted by that level (team work, etc).

It allows you to grow in your career, have clear expectations around role and responsibilities.

So, I disagree with you.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was around when software "engineers" were called "coders". They were then called "developers". To me "engineer" is a bit of an aggrandisement of what is for most of us more akin to plumbing that it is to bridge building; but alas the world is replete with this sort of thing.

Most of us have to work quite hard to maintain a fragile sense of self. E.g. "I" the engineer, who is valuable and has a body of "knowledge". "I" who am "accomplished", "intelligent", "useful". Title, seniority and to a great degree even salary are artefacts of what we the people want.

I think over time the person who truly wants for transparency, meritocracy and flat structure is rare because obviously most devs aren't in the top 25%. Meanwhile, ambiguity, hierarchy, politics and other status quo preservers are much more reliable for the average.

The ageing dev; his complexes, aspirations and insecurities would be a marvellous book for someone to write; if it doesn't already exist.

</comment><comment><USER8> In a utopia where all engineers have the career progression of a labourer that could work.

Companies pay extra for background and expertise. The title shows how much responsibility an engineer carries under his/her registration. If there are any project blunders, the senior engineer's license is on the line and other legal implications lower level engineers don't have to worry about.

<comment><USER9> Have you worked in a tech company where the engineer's have some sort of licensure? I haven't experienced that. I'm not doubting you just curious.

<comment><USER8> Nah, I'm a mech engg in the mining sector.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yahoo! had the concept of 'technical yahoo'. Everybody had the same default title on the business card. But of course when it came to HR or pay grades there were still junior, senior, architect titles, and some people still chose to have 'director of abc' on the business card. I liked the default though.

</comment><comment><USER11> My company made my official title "Blockchain Architect" despite my repeated written and verbal declarations that I don't want the title as it doesn't fit the work I do and frankly belittles the work I actually do.

Politics and antiquated org structures play a big part in determining someone's job title.

<comment><USER12> Just for kicks: what is your preferred title?

<comment><USER13> Well isn't it obvious:

Senior Lead Blockchain Architect Managing Director - Growth Team.

Followed by another position on the resume where he did Blockchain since he was 12 as the tech lead of a one person team. ( so you know, 13 years professional experience).

In between those two there's a nice Blockchain bootcamp.

Below it all is the obvious Masters in Fine Arts from an Ivy League school.

Edit: I totally forgot to add something to the title: Senior Full Stack Lead Blockchain Architect Managing Director - Growth Team.

Totally forgot 'full stack', can't ever forget that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I agree that inside an atomic, small-ish, teams titles should be meaningless and skipped.

But in bigger companies there is actually some use to the title, when you look someone up in another team you want to know who are you talking to in advance. From my experience this is not something rare or esoteric an actual need.

Add to that the fact that somekind of leveling is usually needed, both for salary ranges and for promotions, so even if you skip the bloated title you'll still have someone's level.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are usually two sides to this.. in some organizations, people really care about their own titles.

In other organizations, especially bigger ones, "Senior" and "Principal" and other kinds of add-ons to titles come with certain perks or responsibilities. For instance, if you're a "Senior" something at a big company I've worked at, you get a slightly bigger cube near the window/outer wall. This can only go to employees, not contractors, too.

The kind view on this is that it cuts down on disputes and disagreements on who gets what, and where, and why.

</comment><comment><USER16> Another reason would be to justify differences in salaries. When some people are getting paid 30K more than some of their colleagues, a difference in title makes it somehow acceptable, or at least moves the debates to "should X be a senior" instead of "should X be paid that amount".

This is not ideal and should not be necessary, as in a perfect world pay bands should come from factual skills, performance and responsibility.

But I still find it better than having no title distinction while still having completely opaque salary gaps.

</comment><comment><USER17> It has to do with job responsibilities and probably pay bands.

An engineer isn't likely to lose their job if they make a mistake, it's expected that junior people will make mistakes. Instead the people in senior roles will be held responsible for allowing it to happen. This may involve losing their job. Nobody really wants to lose their job and so they'll be quite firm in preventing that, you may be interpreting this as 'showing your individual supremacy over others'.

</comment><comment><USER18> Generally, some decent engineering levels hierarchy makes sense. Where it gets super crazy, however, is the financial services industry, where many mid-level (and, sometimes, even lower-level) engineering titles, such as quantitative analyst and software developer, include a VP designation. It is IMO the ultimate title inflation and purely a lack of common sense.

</comment><comment><USER19> 1\. The culture and processes should supersede the org chart. If that's not the case, go work somewhere better.

2\. To some people levels matter for career growth and validation. Other people don't give two sh*ts. For all people looking to switch jobs (as we all inevitably do) the levels make a difference in recruiting, salary negotiations, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> Titles are often used by companies instead of pay raises. Gives you a good feeling but costs the company little.

\- Emperor Sloaken - now thats a title.

</comment><comment><USER21> Facebook doesn't have engineering titles for exactly this reason.

<comment><USER14> but they have levels, isn't it a different name on the same thing ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Are you referring to actual engineers (civil, mechanical, etc) or software developers that call themselves engineers?

<comment><USER23> you know what he means you tit lol</comment></comment>


What's the logic behind Google rejecting Max Howell, author of Homebrew? - <AUTHOR> https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejecting-Max-Howell-the-author-of-Homebrew-for-not-being-able-to-invert-a-binary-tree?share=1 <comment><USER2> Imagine Guns 'N Roses rejecting Les Paul after an audition. The lead guitarist in the band plays Gibson Les Paul guitars, but you're not what we're looking for. Les Paul was an amazing guitarist in his own style but it would be a question of fit, not ability.

<comment><USER3> Is creating homebrew really even that amazing? Seems like nothing too complex.

<comment><USER2> Les Paul guitars are actually nothing amazing either, and suffered from poor sales early on. Their success is mainly in the marketing, not in the engineering.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why has no one really tackled personal email analytics and analysis? - <AUTHOR>

My Gmail account now has 6+ years of mail, attachments, and media. In there are touching personal messages, life changing news, photos I don't know I have, and many digital artefacts I might want to reread/archive/understand better.
Yet there doesn't seem to be an easy way to interrogate and analyse this data? I'm talking more than Gmail builtin search. Something more user friendly, content analysis, sender analysis, stats and trends, media extraction, maybe even sentiment analysis.
I know about Gmail Meter, but am I missing anyone active in this space? Is it too hard? Are privacy concerns too great? Am I the only one who wants this? <comment><USER2> Can't and won't speak for others but here is my blunt honesty from a personal perspective. I never even thought about this and having read the above and it now being registered in my consciousness, I can confidently say I personally don't care at all.

Basically there are two problems.

1\. People not even registering this as a thought to begin with.

2\. People who just simply don't care.

I'd imagine you'd get a lot of the two combined for every person that would want this. But that of course is pure speculation on my part.</comment>


Amazon Web Services Goes Down, Takes Many Startup Sites With It - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/15/amazon-web-services-goes-down-takes-many-startup-sites-with-it/ <comment><USER2> Sigh, here comes the short-term memory inspired backlash. This is only news because a bunch of sites went down at once. Compare this to outage rates for self-hosted sites and I'd still bet the AWS users are ahead. In the last couple weeks, 37signals and Fog Creek have both announced outages. This AWS crash today doesn't change the economics of their offering: service levels good enough for Amazon, and you don't have to spend your time futzing with servers. Websites have outages, that's life. 9's of uptime get more expensive quickly, and you've got to weigh that expense against how much your site makes per minute. Get over it.

[http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/800-what-happened-this- mo...](http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/800-what-happened-this-morning) <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2008/01/22.html></comment>


A former Microsoft engineer stole more than $10M from the company - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-10-million-theft-bitcoin-gift-cards-house-tesla-verdict-2020-2 <comment><USER2> Dupe of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22425648)</comment>


The Hierarchy of Engagement - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/greylock-perspectives/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-5803bf4e6cfa <comment><USER3> This is one of those pieces where you read it, initially nod along and think it just seems like common sense, and then realise with a little sadness that your own businesses could probably be doing better if you spent more development effort on actually doing those common sense things. Well worth a read for would-be unicorns and smaller businesses alike, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER4> Thank you for posting!

</comment><comment><USER5> Not to brag, but I could have predicted the rise of those examples given. Had I been able to invest, I would have done so. Evernote, on the other hand, I would have stayed away from..

<comment><USER6> How is that not just bragging?

<comment><USER7> It's not bragging because he hasn't actually done it and just talking about in on HN in retrospect. You and I could say the same thing too for example, and that wouldn't make us a bragger. It would however make us braggers if we actually did invest and made tons of money out of it.

<comment><USER6> It sounded like he was bragging that he could have done it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article has a bit of a 'just-so' vibe to me. What about a company like Uber? Uber doesn't have any virtuous loops, mounting loss, or cumulative benefits of use.

Now, I don't mean to argue against a straw man, I know that this article isn't claiming that _only_ businesses with these features can be worth >1b - <USER2> exactly what is the ratio of companies north of 1b that have these properties? That is what really decides the predictive and analytic value of this model, not some cherry-picked stories that happen to adhere to it.

And also don't get me wrong, these things make intuitive sense to me as well. But i'd just like to see a more careful, rigorous analysis of these commonly accepted articles of faith in the startup world.

<comment><USER3> The original author does say in the introduction that this is a framework for evaluating "non-transactional consumer companies". Presumably in this context Uber is transactional.

<comment><USER8> Ah, you're right. Should have caught that.</comment></comment></comment>


Guy Steele Interviews John McCarthy, Father of Lisp [video] - b-man http://www.infoq.com/interviews/Steele-Interviews-John-McCarthy

<comment><AUTHOR> The interface is frustrating because there are only hooks to the questions, not the answers.</comment>


Blocks for iPhoneOS 3.0 and Mac OS X 10.5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.plausiblelabs.com/blog/?p=8

<comment><USER2> This is great -- I hate having compiler/runtime advances in Mac OS X always tied to the latest platform release. It can take years before your customer base upgrades, leaving you unable to leverage what I'd consider basic language features -- like fast enumeration, or now, closures.

</comment><comment><USER3> His javascript example is wrong. Overwrites the button argument being passed in with an internal declaration

<comment><USER4> Thanks, fixed. I wrote it inline and decided to modify the signature, but forgot to drop the variable.</comment></comment>


Warren Buffett's Fall From Grace - <AUTHOR> http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/business/warren-buffett-s-fall-from-grace

<comment><USER2> The article criticizes Buffett because he

1) criticized derivatives and now holds "$63B" of them

2) is lobbying congress to "rid the bill of its 'retrospective effect' clause" that might effect his financials

3) backs GS/Blankfein and says they did nothing wrong

While at first blush they should raise questions I don't think the author makes any substantive claims against Buffett's reputation.

1) He criticized derivatives because the way their reporting effects earnings and because their profits are partially based on the other side's credit worthyness. I believe a large portion of the derivatives he owns are put options he has sold on equity indices. So he's not exposed to credit worthyness of counterparties because he's already been paid. I'm not sure but probably the derivatives he criticized as too complex and potentially destructive were things like CDOs/CLOs and other financial engineering products. I think Buffett understands put options very well, so that statement doesn't apply here.

2) He's not opposed to having derivatives accounted for differently, only differently in retrospect as well. I think its reasonable to say "I like the new set of rules, but please don't penalize me for acting in accordance with the rules in the past."

3) He does have investments in GS and this probably does effect his judgement, but the author doesn't really try to prove GS did anything wrong, so his backing of them can't really be said to be wrong (yet, though I don't think it will prove to be wrong).

<comment><USER3> Right, there are derivatives and then there are derivatives. They're not by any stretch of the imagination all equally risky.

I think he is taking some of Buffet's words out of context. It seems impossible that Buffet would say he doesn't understand derivatives. I understand them, and unlike him, I don't own companies that pretty much have to use them.

For instance he owns Burlington Northern, a railroad (which he's had a stake in for a long time). Companies whose profits are reliant on fuel costs (railroads, trucking, airlines, retailers with their own distribution system, etc.) almost always use derivatives to hedge against rising oil prices.

I'm guessing Buffet was speaking only about derivatives based on asset-backed securities in the consumer credit sector, which were relatively new and poorly understood and, as he pointed out, incredibly dangerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a downright shoddy article.

a) An explanation of the derivatives Buffett holds, and the reasons for holding them is provided in his 2008 shareholders letter:

<http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2008ltr.pdf>

It should also be noted that he exited a large number of derivatives contracts that he inherited with General Re prior to the GFC as he felt unable to manage or understand them.

b) Buffett is arguing against retrospective changes WRT derivatives accounting. There's nothing wrong with objecting when people are discussing a retrospective change to the rules that you were operating within.

c) As far as I can tell, the author would pillory anyone who doesn't attack Goldman Sachs. Buffett is entitled to his opinion.

<comment><USER5> The article read to me like thinly veiled mudslinging and innuendo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Buffet falls from grace every few years. But this is not a good article. The problem with derivatives and retrospective changes is that this messes with agreements that have already been made. Not only is that not right but it may have consequences that are unforseen. Berkshire and others are correct to insist that they have rights here that should be protected.

I understand that the US Constitution is truly on the way out but it did have this bit : "No State shall ... pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts..."

I'm pretty sure that used to be taken to mean the federal government wouldn't do it either, but then that can't be reconciled with minimum wage laws either.

Maybe that's all uncertain but I'm confident the article is relatively thoughtless.

</comment><comment><USER3> "But the fact remains that if clients knew that the portfolio had been largely designed by Paulson, they would not have bought. Because Paulson had, months before the Goldman deal, created two funds specifically aimed at shorting the subprime market."

Sadly that is probably not true. Every person buying a synthetic CDO knew that on the other end of the wager was someone (usually a hedge fund manager) holding the opposite bet (a credit default swap). Every synthetic CDO was a zero sum wager, and the people buying it knew that.

(I'm pretty sure that all of the CDOs at issue in this case were synthetics, though it doesn't matter too much to the person buying them. There's effectively no difference between a synthetic and a non-synthetic.)

At the time Paulson wasn't any different than any other hedge fund manager, insofar as any synthetic CDO purchaser knew. The people taking they long end of the subprime market at that point were still under the impression that the ratings agencies were at least reasonably close to accurate.

Effectively what the wager came down to was Paulson saying "the rating agencies are wildly incorrect" and his counterparties saying "no they're not".

<comment><USER2> I think the other side can claim that what they should have been sold was a diversified portfolio to insure whereas what they were given was a concentrated portfolio. If you ordered a box of bananas from a grocer and what they delivered was a box of all their rotten bananas that they hand selected, I think you would have a claim that they acted improperly.

That GS brought in an outside agent, ACA, to me suggests that the portfolio construction was supposed to have some oversight to prevent the box of bad bananas scenario. If not, then why was there a third party agent? GS becomes culpable since they made the representation to the sellers of the insurance that there was an independent third party monitoring the construction, when in fact they knew it was really Paulson driving the portfolio construction.

<comment><USER7> The short side of a banana sale is a guy with a comparative advantage in the production of bananas. The short side of a bet is a guy who thinks you are going to lose. A synthetic CDO is a package of bets, not a package of bananas.

If you bet that the Yankees would win, you can be sure that someone else believed the Yankees would lose. Similarly, if you received a synthetic sports bet, with a payoff of 100 x Yankee win + 100 x Red Sox win + 100 x Blue Jays win, you can be sure that someone else thinks that at least 2 of the 3 teams will lose. If you lose this bet, you've got no cause for complaint since you were trying to do the same thing to the other guy.

Paulson picked (in their opinion) the worst securities out there. ACA picked (in their opinion) the best of the worst. Everyone on the long side of this bet (which includes Goldman) believed Paulson was wrong and were fully prepared to take their money.

<comment><USER3> Humorously even Paulson and most of the other people who made a fortune had no idea just how right they were. They were all buying the mezzanine tranches (confusing lingo for next to worst) of the CDOs, when in reality even the best tranches (called senior) hit 0. They could have made many times more money (and a few people did, though not more than you could count on your fingers) since the credit default swaps were much cheaper on the highly-rated tranches but the risk was effectively the same since the correlation between subprime defaults considered to be about .3 was actually 1.

Hindsight is 20/20 though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this article is a little propagandaish for hn. It really feels like a giant misrepresentation of the truth.

Berkshire was not hiding the fact they owned these derivatives. Buffett has talked about thm many times and defends purchasing this specific set of derivatives as having been "mispriced at inception" which I think is the most basic plan of all investing, right. Buy low, sell high.

As to the lobbying of congress, I would do the same thing, and you would too. When the derivitives contracts were drawn up Berkshire offered both a collatoralized and uncollatoralized option for the contract. The other parties would have paid a higher premium to Berkshire for the collatoralized contract, so they selected to forgo collatoral. Now, after the fact congress is going to step in and demand the contract have collatoral?

If I borrow money unsecured, I'm going to pay a higher interest rate. It would be extremely crappy to come in half way through the loan and demand that I put my house up ad collatoral. Now I have all the risk, and didn't even get to benefit from the lower I intrest rate at inception.

THAT'S what he's lobbying against.

And ontop of all of that, Buffett has said that if congress does include retroactive collatoralization, he will just pay it and his business will still be fine. So where's the fall from grace?

[http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aZcI...](http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aZcI_iSCOUWM)

</comment><comment><USER9> In fact, Buffett thrives with investments in companies that have "fallen from grace." I don't think he is afraid of that stigma.

</comment><comment><USER10> One of the best lines in the AMC series Mad Men is when the senior partner, Bert Cooper, says to Don Draper "Philanthropy is the gateway to power".</comment>


What we did to (not) get into TechStars - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/04/06/what-we-did-to-not-get-into-techstars/

<comment><USER3> _We made sure to notify David, in order to show that we were supporters of open source_

It was at this point that I started to wonder if maybe you sent updates/questions to the TechStars guys a little too often (I assume that's who David is.) I'll be interested to hear your analysis of what went wrong.

Was I just not aware that this level of communication is common in the pre- application phase of these programs?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's what they told us to do at TS4AD.

"Make us keep thinking about your project."

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but there's a steep difference between that and "pester us and annoy us". That's like saying that marketing should make you keep thinking about your project. If you were a marketer, would you spam people and irritate them constantly with email, or would you be tasteful and let them discover for themselves?

"Keep us thinking about your project" probably works best if you're constantly _updating_ your project. Keep building, gently announce releases - not TO David Cohen, but just on Twitter where anybody can see what you're doing - <USER2> show that you guys aren't desperate. TechStars (or any other seed funder) is unlikely to accept the people that most want to get in. They'll be accepting the groups that put in the most effort to their _project_ , who showed they could create without worrying about their funding.

<comment><USER5> I don't know anything about the folks that run TS, but they'd be terrible investors if they let something like overly frequent updates determine how they invest.

The simplest explanation is that they didn't like the team or the idea as well as the other options available to them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the elephants lurking in the living room is the matter how how large the potential market is. More people eat food than purchase plants. (Your D&D start-up looks pretty neat, though.)

<comment><USER6> For those that missed it whilst skimming the first time (like me):

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

It does look pretty cool.

<comment><USER7> My startup is doing something similar: a web app targeted at table-top gaming. It's not ready yet, but it has a few things Obsidian lacks, and we're looking for more coders and/or designers; if anyone is interested, give me a shout at luke at ziggurati dot net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> To me, I feel that it was because you guys got so much progress in a way that you don't need to be in the program since you've already got your site to a point where you can start acquiring customers.

And the brutal truth is David and TechStars will look at how much money your startup can make or potentially be valued at and I have no doubt if you do the right thing, this could be a business that generates a million/yr but that's not the magic number that they are looking for.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's not over until you give up. Maybe you can get into the next group at TechStars. Alternatively, if you can grow in your current form perhaps these guys will help you in a series A (if that's part of the long term plan).

One of the most significant themes I've seen in this community is persistence. If you give up now, then the story stays what it currently is. Maybe if you keep trying, the current situation will end up being one of the challenges in your path to success.

Almost every story in Founders at Work seems to have point at which the founders could have closed up shop and ended up with an "informative" failure story to tell.

</comment><comment><USER10> Being so close to the mentors, did you ask for some feedback as to why your application didn't make it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we asked and David gave us some good feedback. If he gives permission, I will post some of it in the follow up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Your team and the execution looks very good to me. But that is also the case with the rest of the applicants, I guess. Despite all that talk about ideas beign secondary to the application, at this point all you can really show is a cool idea and your desire to dominate the world.

Seems like you fail on these two tests completely.

</comment><comment><USER12> "We've got the technical skill, the domain knowledge, and the grit to work nights and weekends _while holding down day jobs_."

You're not working on this full time? Or is this me reading it wrong?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, nights and weekends, not full time. It worked for Obsidian Portal, and it's working so far for DoLeaf.

I know the conventional wisdom is "Quit Now!", but I like to eat.

<comment><USER12> were you seed funded with that startup?

I ask because I can't imagine applying for seed funding without being 173% committed -- eg, I have to make this work _because I like to eat_.

<comment><AUTHOR> No funding on either project. We fully expected to work full time on DoLeaf if we got accepted to TechStars. We know how it works.

<comment><USER12> of course. I wasn't being a dick, sorry -- I was just curious. I think these funds really value if the founders have already made the jump and are powering along 24/7 _before_ seed funding.

Looking forward to your next post. You can totally jump down my throat when I write a post if we don't get into YC tomorrow ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Please do write a post. I want more info out there about the "real" state of startups. There's too much get-rich-quick crap that distorts the reality (especially about iPhone apps).

The truth is that it's a long hard slog to any sort of success.

We also applied to YC, so we expect to get rejected tomorrow as well ;)

<comment><USER10> Don't we hear back today? Says April 6th here: <http://ycombinator.com/s2009.html>

<comment><USER13> We only hear back if we get invited to the interviews. My finger is hovering over the "buy tickets" button on Expedia. ;)

<comment><USER12> tell me about it. Talk about pay thru the nose from the UK.

<comment><USER13> Return flights London to SF were about £340 last time I checked a few days ago, but they involved some fairly horrible connections making the whole flight ~17h.

Hopefully I _do_ have to go through that torture! :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Great post, thanks for sharing.</comment>


How wind and geography influences wildfire smoke - <AUTHOR> https://www.windy.com/-Show-add-more-layers/overlays?so2sm,38.962,-121.069,8 <comment><USER2> How does the SO2 concentration relate to the smoke, usually I've seen people looking at the 2.5um particle concentration.

</comment><comment> a-ve A similar project: [https://www.ventusky.com/](https://www.ventusky.com/)

Previous HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13559581](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13559581)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do HN-ers have recommendations for connected devices that measure S02 and particulate matter?

<comment><USER4> [https://www.luftdaten.info](https://www.luftdaten.info) has developed such a device for crowd-sourced measuring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Paradise, CA Camp Fire refugee here.</comment>


Prim Laundry Startup Throws In The Towel - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/06/prim-laundry-shuts-down/ <comment><USER2> "Here, there are services that make life easier but not necessarily better, and that lose money every time they do business but exist thanks to their deep-pocketed investors."

It sounds like Prim did exactly what it was supposed to do: test the market. If there was indeed a strong enough market, they could work on creating a more efficient business without the need for outside capital. Investors are not in the business of throwing money away so people can get their laundry done, yet that seems to be exactly what the author is trying to say.

"Perhaps that money could be better spent helping people in need, and maybe so could the founders' time."

Startups are incredibly capital efficient at testing needs. Even if there is nothing there, a lot of experience and knowledge is attained. Could such capital have been better allocated elsewhere? Probably not when you look at the potential upside.

<comment><USER3> _Could such capital have been better allocated elsewhere? Probably not when you look at the potential upside._

This is a worthless analysis without data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you think technology-enabled laundry service in San Francisco is a good idea, you might give Rinse ([https://www.rinse.com](https://www.rinse.com)) a shot. We have a focus on making sure the price and product work in a competitive market, and on using spectacular customer service and quality assurance to build a solid brand.

It's surprisingly difficult to build an efficient delivery service. To succeed you need knowledge of the peculiarities of the delivered goods, effective management of the delivery staff, and of course clever software. Route optimization and dispatch are interesting problems, but quality tools for drivers and other staff are just as important!

<comment><USER5> This seems like a great business to develop in the college market. The options students often have are overpriced and inflexible laundry service or schlepping their duds half a mile into town. Any college you can get access to will be a great testing ground at least.

<comment><USER6> College students have no money...

<comment><USER7> That's not necessarily true, I live in a college town and many students have loads of money. Most of the new off-campus housing targeted at students is out of my price range, and I'm single, work full time, and payed very well for the area.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Through Prim, these Stanford grads invented low paying jobs with long hours, even by YC standards. I wish somebody would have told them what a terrible idea this is in advance--but more likely than not it would have fallen on deaf ears. People fall in love with the idea of being a startup founder and only hear what they want to hear.</comment>


Ex-Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes' Trial Delayed Until August 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.stanforddaily.com/2019/07/29/ex-theranos-ceo-stanford-dropout-elizabeth-holmes-trial-delayed-until-august-2020/ <comment><USER2> > The defense hopes to prove government agencies were more influenced to > investigate Theranos than other companies based on communications with > Carreyrou, as opposed to pure suspicion of illegal activity.

"Your Honor, the suspicion of illegal activity wasn't generate by the FDA from first principles, therefore is not valid, as it warped the agency!"

This is (one of) the leg[s] they are standing on?!?

<comment><USER3> Things look pretty bad so they're looking for any legal rationale they can come up with to try to keep themselves out of jail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if she was knowingly committing fraud for the purpose of amassing wealth, or if she genuinely believed they would be able to deliver if they could keep the R&D going.

<comment><USER5> The thing is they had... nothing.

They weren't anywhere near what they claimed, and used competitors equipment to fake their own results at times.

They had gone nowhere, made no progress.

They couldn't provide the results with their own machines any better than anyone else, let alone with the tiny amounts of blood they claimed.

<comment><USER6> The fraud comes from the distinction between "We _will_ be able to X" and "We _are_ able to X"

They couldn't do things they claimed they could to lure investments. That's fraud.

Also; I wonder how much the release of HBOs "Out for Blood in Sillicon Valley" affects public perception and the judgment/rulings, if at all

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I know specious politicising of stories is bad, but the inclusion of backers from the US political spectrum moved over into their (real, longerm) corporate/relationship/lobbying role really is part of the story: _she had access_ -The difference between the small con and the big con, is that the big con has access.

I would reach further and whisper _Ivanka_ but I think thats probably not sensible. But I do see the parallel. _Believe in yourself and anything is possible_ is true for people with access, except for the wise words of Scotty about the laws of physics, and medicical diagnostics from blood is just applied chemistry which in the end, is physics mapped into the biological world.

She used access to sell shares in a model of science which at root, was a-scientific and because she had access, the model was believed despite the evidence, and the FDA in the end had to act, but because she had access, it went on far longer than it should have.</comment>


Apply HN: Gameplan – Personal Learning Assistant for School Kids - <AUTHOR> The problem we are trying to solve is providing a more personal and improved learning experience to school students. The way this would work is if a student attends a lecture in class, she finds videos/blogs/articles from around the web on the same topic once she goes back home. Based on the type of content she chooses (small video vs long , blog vs video) we show her similar things. Apart from this teachers can set weak topics for each student and they get more content of that topic. Teachers and parents can monitor what content is being looked at by the kids.
We want to build this initially as a web app and then progress to a moodle plugin.
It is primarily for the Asian market. <comment><USER2> I can see you guys having an edge in places where the content isn't in English, but how are you planning to be better than Khan Academy in the long run?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> About Us: Akshay Kulkarni is a software engineer at Microsoft. He is also mentoring high school teachers in US and Canada for the CS50AP curriculum developed by Harvard. He recently attended the highly selective MIT Entrepreneurship bootcamp and his team was one of the winners.

Kruthi Mohan is a final year Engineering student. She recently won a National Level Hackathon. She is also one of the 50 people selected for Indian School of Business's YLP (Young Leaders Program) to do an MBA.

We have known each other for around 13 years

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a cool idea. We did something similar in a college club where we suggested people online courses and content. I am guessing you are trying to automate this process. Love the idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks!! Yeah we want to help students better leverage the online content that is freely available to improve their learning experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A great purpose. Is there educational literature or research behind the pedagogical model?</comment>