4 Year Compensation Packages Comparison - <AUTHOR> https://www.levels.fyi/calculator/?co=Facebook&bs=160000&sg=350000&sbone=20000&bp=10&gr=10&co-2=Square&bs-2=145000&sg-2=275000&gr-2=48 <comment><USER3> Free food provided by the company is for the company's benefit. If they asked you to stay another hour each day and improve your relationships with coworkers, talk about projects and possibly stay within a few hundred yards just in case of a pageable emergency, you would ask for a significant bonus. But providing $5-25 worth of food changes your attitude to "might as well eat lunch here, the food is good and it's free!".

It makes good economic sense.

<comment><USER4> Why can't it be mutually beneficial?

I really dislike this "us vs them" attitude. Sure the company has free food and sure you _can_ have lunch with your colleagues and _sure_ that's more likely to happen than if you had to find your own lunch but...

\- you don't _have to_ have lunch with your colleagues

\- you don't _have to_ eat at your desk or work through lunch

\- you don't _have to_ have a short lunch

I love the food simply because it's something I don't want to have to think about. I'm certainly not going to make my own lunch. It's not even about the money of going out and buying lunch. I just don't want to think about what I want for lunch today, where should I get it from, when should I go, how long will I have to queue, will it be a pain getting out of and back into the building (eg elevator queues) and so on. I just eat whatever is on offer that day.

So while the company may benefit from you being more likely to eat with your colleagues and that undeniably helps build culture overall, it's also of clear benefit to me and many others.

Why does this have to be a zero-sum game?

<comment><USER5> Yes, this very much so! Getting food provided for me at the office has more personal value than just the strict monetary benefit. Eating food that someone else bought for you just feels better than eating food you bought for yourself.

Try this experiment: pick a friend that you eat out with a lot and set up a system where you each alternate picking up the whole bill. You'll each spend the same amount of money on aggregate, but I am confident each of you will feel better every time you go out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this suggesting the standard stock package is $275,000?? Or is that just a default value.

If so I'm just now realizing I'm massively under compensated...

<comment><USER7> My stock comp for Google was $400k/4y in SF, so it's definitely not outside the realm. Once I started to look around I was amazed at how much I'd been leaving on the table.

<comment><USER8> How much experience did you have when you were offered $400k/4y?

<comment><USER7> About 2.5 years out of school, plus a couple of big-name internships (Adobe and Microsoft). I also had offers from some other great companies which certainly helped. Google only negotiates when you have other offers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think people should try to price in stock value "growth" into the equation. The fair value today of the stock you're promised on the nth year is just the price of the stock today (for publicly traded companies).

<comment><USER10> Why on earth would it estimate a 48% y/y growth forever for Square stock. That's insane. Past performance != future performance, yeesh. At that rate by the end of the 4 year estimation here, Square will be worth $240B (4.8X) -- or the market cap of Tesla. By year 2028, $1.150 TRILLION (23X) dollars, or just shy of an Apple.

Keeping in mind that they just divested a major business unit, point to where in [1] you think this is justified haha.

It's downright negligent to suggest people consider a 48% y/y growth in equity when figuring their future compensation. I mean Square's down 6% since _July 2_. Not to mention, Square stock saw zero or negative equity total return from _September 2018_ until _this week_. It trades like a penny stock. Can confirm, am shareholder.

If we're moving up 48% y/y forever, I'll quit my job as I'm going to be a billionaire by the turn of the decade.

I think it's also important to consider that at a company like Facebook, you won't stay an IC4 forever, and you will start seeing IC5 refresh grants that will be much more substantial. I don't know how Square's handling leveling these days, but comparing my time at both, Facebook's going to be much more structured. It's not enough to compare without factoring in expected time to next level and next level refresh grants, and promotion grants. And, of course, grounding your expectations for equity appreciation in something approaching reality.

[1] [https://s21.q4cdn.com/114365585/files/doc_financials/2020/Q1...](https://s21.q4cdn.com/114365585/files/doc_financials/2020/Q1/2020-Q1-Shareholder- Letter-Square.pdf)

<comment><USER11> This is the problem of using a website/front-end created by some arbitrary person (Peter Levels in this case) to view what is essentially a read only copy of some crowdsourced data

<comment><USER12> I'm almost 100% positive that Pieter Levels is not the creator of this

<comment><USER11> I believe you are correct and I misspoke. I could have sworn I remembered seeing that site on his twitter bio as something he created, but now it seems to me that I have mistakenly identified him as the arbitrary creator :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It would be a better overall comparison if you could factor in stock refreshers and the cadence of which they are given.

</comment><comment><USER14> It would be great if I could autopopulate the default values by entering a Level/location

<comment><AUTHOR> Great suggestion, definitely something we can do – will work on it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just a random slightly off topic rant.

I'm of two minds seeing the comments below.

For context: I only started taking my career seriously about a decade ago and I've spent the last ten years jumping between 5 companies as your standard Enterprise CRUD developer/team lead/architect in a relatively low cost of living city in the south east.

Before my current job working remotely for Amazon (AWS Consulting), I was making about the median for my local market for level of experience $140K - $160K and with my wife working. We were comfortably able to meet our short and long term goals.

Then the local market tanked post Covid, and my former employer did an across the board pay cut.

My emotional mind is saying all of these folks graduating and within three to five years are getting more than I am even now that "I am working for a FAANG". What did I do wrong? That's a rhetorical question - a series of $bad_life_decisions for the first decade of my adult life.

On the other hand, my logical mind knows how fortunate I am that I am making what I make now, I am able to work remotely from a low cost of living area, and that I was able to do it without "grinding leetCode" and without a whiteboard coding interview.

<comment><USER16> How did you land your current job with AWS Consulting without grinding leetcode for a whiteboard coding interview, though?

<comment><USER15> Dumb luck.

Working for small companies all of my career forced me to wear a lot of hats. So I could answer questions about "the Leadership Principles".

Consulting is more about helping "big enterprise" move to AWS. They cared about a few things - could I deal with customers, solve business problems, juggle tasks, and did I know how to do your standard "enterprise development". It even seem to be an afterthought whether I had any experience with AWS - <USER2> did.

The interview process was a little more intense, but it was mostly just like all of the other soft skill interviews I had with my last two jobs as "adult supervision" for companies that were trying to move past the "move fast and break things" phase to the "how can we stabilize all of this stuff and have good processes".

A recruiter first reached out to me about an SDE role - I knew I would fail miserably plus I didn't want to relocate. She told me about the consulting role.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Free food to me is worth more than $10 per meal. It's the time that kills you. If you work out your rough hourly salary and calculate how much money you waste making food then it's worth thousands of dollars a month.

<comment><USER18> Measuring non work activities by how much opportunity cost there is in salary is a losing game, imo. Cooking isn't time that I can be paid for. (And besides, shouldn't we all be considering that time ours and not our employers anyhow?)

<comment><USER19> If you'd prefer to think of it as 'X company will give you 40 more minutes of leisure per day' or however much you cook, it's probably the closest financial approximation you can get.

Another way to calculate it would be to try and figure out what you would pay for another 40 minutes in a day, but that starts getting very subjective very quickly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Pretty slick tool. I look forward to using it in the event I manage to stumble my way through the interview grind and into multiple offers.

For now it looks like it treats stock compensation in private companies (eg. Stripe) as equivalent to public companies. Would be pretty damn helpful if it could expose some knob that could adjust for liquidity risk.

My current approach (working for private Unicorn) is to heavily discount the face-value, operating on received wisdom that most of the time you'll get next to nothing.

However anecdotally, this has proved far too pessimistic (like off by a factor of 10).

</comment><comment><USER21> Seems like location should be a toggle on this page as well, as I imagine that can contribute to a large variation in compensation figures (fairly or not).

</comment><comment><USER4> That's a pretty decent calculator. Good points:

\- It correctly showed Amazon's (crappy) vesting schedule (5/15/40/40%);

\- I like the attention to detail with showing round dollar numbers on the Y axis

Areas for improvement:

\- I believe Amazon's offer factors in stock growth in their quoted dollar value for your initial grant. It looks like the calculator is working on the nominal value (which is what Amazon should do too as their method inflates their grant value);

\- I see no mention of 401k matches or vesting.

\- No mention of cliffs or the lack thereof

\- I'd probably show PTO days and company holidays too

\- It might be worth showing vesting schedules as it can matter if it's monthly vs annually;

UI/UX suggestions:

\- This site has enough information where you could pick a level on many company's job ladders and it will correctly fill out bonus targets, grant ranges and so forth. Likewise it could show salary bands. For the big tech companies it'll probably be pretty accurate;

\- Arguably you can drop the table entirely

\- I'd make the company names more prominent above the total 4 year compensation figures. The font is too small. This should be highlighted

\- UI-wise I'd probably put the chart at the top and the offers side by side. It's weighted very much to the left column such that I get line wrap even on a 32" monitor (with the capped width). Even without the line wrap there's way more on the left column than the right.

\- The top heading is (IMHO) too big. Reduce this.

\- I'd move the Reset Form button, certainly from the top. Maybe next to the share link?

\- I think you need a clearer breakdown of each bar between salary and stock. I'd even add a third category of bonus. Put them in this order from top to bottom: stock, bonus, salary.

So my suggested layout is:

        +</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+
        |  Chart  |  Table  |
        +</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+
        | Offer 1 | Offer 2 |
        +</comment><comment>---+</comment><comment>---+

If you ditch the table put the summaries to each side of the chart. I think the share link below the chart makes the most sense.

The last thing I have to say is for anyone comparing offers, I would advise you to consider the growth in the company value to be 0. It may well be more. It certainly has been for the last decade but this has also been the longest bull market in modern history. It can also go down. Zero-growth assumed IMHO is a safer course of action.

Put it this way: if you're putting in, say, that a company will grow 20% y/y why wouldn't you put all your money into it?

<comment><USER15> Two things about Amazon:

I was quoted salary + bonus + shares of stock.

I know Amazon's stock vesting schedule is back end heavy. But the first two years are made up by the bonus. Even if I assume 0% stock growth, signing bonus/RSUs balance each other out over four years. What am I missing?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is not really very useful. How are we supposed to know what the companies' future growth rates will be?

<comment><USER23> The major tech players have been _consistently_ growing for decades. The major tech players before them likewise grew for decades.

It's hard to know if you're joining IBM in 2010 or Google/Apple in 2000 though. You can simplify the problem if you're comparing 150k in equity from a top-5 tech company by market cap with a 5+ year history of > 15% YoY stock growth vs. 150k in startup options. How much money are you potentially leaving on the table by not working at the large company? What does the return rate need to be on a 4 year time horizon for the startup equity to be worth it?</comment></comment>


A nicotinic hypothesis for Covid-19 with preventive and therapeutic implications - <AUTHOR> https://www.qeios.com/read/article/581 <comment><USER2> The Swedish population might be an interesting demographic for studies about this since we have the lowest rate of smoking in the EU [1], mostly due to our high use of snus (tobacco under the lip).

Some quick glancing at the graphs: ≈ 10% smokes everyday and something like 20-30% uses snus every day.

Hence we have a large part of the population using strong nicotine products, without smoking.

[1]: [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics- explained/index.php/Tobacco_consumption_statistics)

[https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/artiklar/2018/farre- roker...](https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/artiklar/2018/farre-roker-fler- snusar/)

<comment><USER3> As an italian I can tell you there's LOTS of people smoking in italy... so there's also that.

<comment><USER4> That's actually good for testing this idea. If most of the people dying are non-smokers that would be an indicator.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first sentence of the paper cites a reference for a claim, but the reference doesn't support the claim at all. That's an immediate rejection of the paper from me.

Specifically, the paper says "Symptomatic Covid-19 disease (as caused by SARS- CoV-2 virus) is observed in 2.5 percent of infected individuals [2]". That's an interesting claim, so I checked the reference.

Reference 2 explicitly says "All estimates are based on persons who developed symptoms, and this work makes no inferences about asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2." In other words, the reference does not describe what percentage of infected individuals show symptomatic disease. The 2.5% number apparently comes from the reference's estimate that "fewer than 2.5% of infected persons will display symptoms within 2.2 days of exposure." (Symptoms show up after a median of 5.5 days.)

Thus, the paper claims 2.5% of infected individuals have symptomatic disease, but the reference to support the claim says that 2.5% of infected individuals with symptoms show symptoms _within 2.2 days_!

My conclusion is that the paper is misusing references, either carelessly or maliciously. Reading a paper like that is a waste of time, since you can't trust anything it says without checking every reference.

[2]: [https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation- period...](https://annals.org/aim/fullarticle/2762808/incubation-period- coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19-from-publicly-reported)

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a preprint. This sentence could be modified and not change the core claim of the paper. What's interesting is studying the data on which this is based (some commenters yesterday said it made a few mistakes [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935451](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935451) ; but without enough details to dismiss the paper entirely), and the other papers (this is not the first) which have similar claims.

The doctors are rushing to share their core (incomplete) data to have others study it. In normal times, this type of study would stay hidden for months (I've heard up to two years for some niche domains) so that everything could be checked, re-checked, and editors could fix the introduction mistakes. We aren't in normal times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In countries where smoking is more prevalent, non-smokers are also more likely those people who quit smoking because of other health problems.

<comment><USER7> Sometimes I think we can understand things. Then I read a (very astute) comment like yours and I feel like we might as well give up trying to understand anything at all. Everything is confounded.

<comment><USER8> This might not confound things if current consumption of Nicotine is the protective element. people who quit previously are not currently consuming nicotine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone following the early data from China noticed this trend of PROFOUND underrepresentation of smokers w COVID19.

Lots of theories why, but my latest (total ignoramus speculation) is that smokers are more likely to have been exposed to the common endemic coronaviruses, which seem to result in T-cells that are able to fight Sars2: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07ukT8WkfY&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H07ukT8WkfY&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER4> I like that line of thinking. It leads me immediately to the question "do smokers get more colds?". If the answer is yes, you may be on to something. If the hypothesis in the paper is right the answer should be that they get fewer colds.

For me this whole thing reminds me that nobody takes colds seriously. But now it seems like there has actually been a lot of study on coronaviruses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is prompted by the observation that in hospitals in Paris, the proportion of smokers among COVID-19 patients is ~5 times lower than the proportion of smokers in the population. The effect is big enough to merit some attention. The challenge will be to disentangle a protective effect from the increased vulnerability caused by smoking. The answer may be just a few nicotine patches away.

<comment><USER11> Those hospitalized tend to be elderly. How many frequent smokers live to be elderly?

<comment><USER10> In the linked study[1] the effect is still there after controlling for age and sex.

[1] [https://doi.org/10.32388/WPP19W.3](https://doi.org/10.32388/WPP19W.3)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those nitpicking the preprint's (gasp!) lack of editing and clarity here's an article with some further (rather convincing) background and stats. "French researchers to test nicotine patches on coronavirus patients"[1]

> The results confirm a Chinese study published at the end of March in the New > England Journal of Medicine that suggested only 12.6% of 1,000 people > infected with the virus were smokers while the number of smokers in China is > around 28%.

In France, figures from Paris hospitals showed that of 11,000 patients admitted to hospital with Covid-19, 8.5% were smokers. The total number of smokers in France is estimated at around 25.4%.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french- study-s...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study- suggests-smokers-at-lower-risk-of-getting-coronavirus)

<comment><USER3> This might simply be because the ones that require hospitalisation are usually older. So the % of smokers must be taken within the older population, not the entire population.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not an immunologist, but one claim that contradicts other published work stands out to me — fn 7 and the assertion that ACE2 isn't expressed in lung tissue.

ACE2 has been shown as the target site for SARS-CoV [1] and expressed in particular lung epithelial cells [2] and an important factor in infections with the first SARS-CoV [3].

I wonder whether this nicotinic hypothesis is more important for understanding the transmission and infection modes of the virus, rather than its involvement in acute disease.

[1] [https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6485/1444](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6485/1444)

[2] [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v2](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.26.919985v2)

[3] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1287568/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1287568/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it just me or is this entire article a bunch of junk? Right off the bat, they give 2.5% as the symptomatic rate of those infected. As in, 87.5% are asymptomatic? That seems completely bogus. Moreover, I don't see how they get to the conclusion that hypothetical CNS involvement is "in contrast to" the currently accepted view that ACE2 is the primary receptor. The significantly weaker repesentation of smokers in the COVID patient population is intriguing, but why are outpatients even more weakly smoker-proportioned as compared to in patients? Also, doesn't this fly in the face of the Chinese data where smoking is believed to be a major comorbidity? Their homology argument seems particularly weak, since I see 6 non-conservative mutations in a 12 amino acid stretch. Finally, I should note that this article is not peer reviewed at this point in time.

</comment><comment><USER15> We know (from RKI) that 86% of the fatalities in german ICUs were people with an age of larger than 70. Compare that to the distribution of smokers vs age in germany. 80% of the smokers are younger than 70.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Percenta...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Percentage_of_smokers_by_age_and_gender_%28Germany%29.png)

[https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus...](https://www.rki.de/DE/Content/InfAZ/N/Neuartiges_Coronavirus/Situationsberichte/2020-04-21-de.pdf?__blob=publicationFile)

</comment><comment><USER16> We really need some data about vapers, some of them get way more nicotine than smokers, directly into their lungs, but with less irritation.

The real protective factor may actually be the constant irritation provided by the smoke, not the nicotine itself. What about Marijuana smokers?

Then we need to differentiate between long-time smokers with damaged lungs and short-time smokers with more or less intact lungs.

In any case, we need to get over our confirmation bias that smoking is universally bad.

<comment><USER17> My girlfriend and I vape and caught the bug in March. I had no idea the phat cloudz were what saved us. Honestly, neither of us much felt like vaping when the fever was bad. But I had to read this paper twice to make sure it wasn't saying the opposite. This is interesting because the news and politicians have been reporting that smokers and vapers are at risk. I never say any information to back that up, especially vaping. I think I saw one study recently where they concluded that vaping had basically no effect on outcome. I should take a look at that study again if I can find it.

<comment><USER18> > My girlfriend and I vape and caught the bug in March. I had no idea the phat > cloudz were what saved us.

That is not a conclusion I would draw from this study, or any study I've come across.

I do agree, however, that the conclusion that vaping is a risk factor is also not backed up by any literature I've seen.

<comment><USER17> I was being glib about the vaping. Getting sick was awful and honestly I didn't even think about my nicotine addiction for the 14 days we were ill. I definitely didn't draw any conclusions about vaping being good for me. If this hypothesis does turn out to be correct... I just don't even know. God has a sense of humor or something.

<comment><USER16> Out of curiosity, did you have any risk factors such as (pre)diabetes/obesity?

<comment><USER17> No

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can't see my way through all that.

But, just a thought, could a Nicotine patch be of any benefit? Would introducing through that path provide any protection? If Nicotine provides any protection at all, of course.

<comment><USER20> Clinical studies should answer that pretty quickly but yeah that's the idea, to have medical staff put nicotine patches if Nicotine prevents Covid-19

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Forgive me, I am having trouble understanding what is being argued in this paper. Could someone do a quick ELI5?

<comment><USER22> Google Translate this - [https://www.franceinter.fr/la-nicotine-une-arme- contre-le-co...](https://www.franceinter.fr/la-nicotine-une-arme-contre-le- covid)

Proposed study - Hospital workers wear nicotine patches to protect themselves from Covid-19.

<comment><USER21> Just what I needed! (I read French, but not science ;)

Thank you so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Vaping at home during work hours has improved my performance and now it's protecting me from the virus?!?!?

WINNING!

</comment><comment><USER24> If that were true you'd be able to show it convincingly with COVID-19 demographic surveys. The fact this argues for an experimental treatment that could be hazardous (even fatal) without first having reviewed available demographic data or arguing for a study to obtain it makes me question the ethics of what they're proposing.

For example other studies have looked at this question and found nicotine to be a risk factor:

[https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news- perspective/2020/04/studies-...](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news- perspective/2020/04/studies-smoking-age-other-factors-raise-risk- covid-19-death)

<comment><USER25> The article you link shows _smoking_ to be a risk factor. That's why you can't do this with demographic surveys: Smoking != tobacco != nicotine.

Nicotine has been shown to be a dangerous chemical all on its own, but that's also true of almost any drug taken without medical regulation or supervision. Whether this is safe to do or not should be left to the professionals.

<comment><USER24> From the thread's link:

> propose nicotine and nicotinic orthosteric and/or allosteric agents as a > possible therapy for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

So nicotine's safety is absolutely relevant to the topic at hand.

> Whether this is safe to do or not should be left to the professionals.

Professionals have to consider the ethics and available data when proposing a study. Considering this paper doesn't reference the available data (nor propose gathering) it is reasonable to question that. There's a long history of immoral science occurring during periods of national and international strife, so I believe oversight, harm reduction, and due diligence remain important considerations.

<comment><USER26> Maybe I'm blinded by medical jargon, but where in that sentence are they proposing administering nicotine through smoking tobacco?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This paper has a deeply obfuscatory tone I tend to associate with liars. Slogging through the words, here's the money shot:

> A potential protective effect of smoking and of nicotine on SARS-CoV-2 > infection has been noted. Until recently [39], no firm conclusions could be > drawn from studies evaluating the rates of current smokers in Covid-19. All > these studies [40-48], although reporting low rates of current smokers, > ranging from 1.4% to 12.5%, did not take into account the main potential > confounders of smoking including age and sex. In the study that two of us > are reporting [1], the rates of current smoking remain below 5 % even when > main confounders for tobacco consumption, i.e. age and sex, in- or > outpatient status, were considered. Compared to the French general > population, the Covid-19 population exhibited a significantly weaker current > daily smoker rate by 80.3 % for outpatients and by 75.4 % for inpatients. > Thus, current smoking status appears to be a protective factor against the > infection by SARS-CoV-2. Although the chemistry of tobacco smoke is complex, > these data are consistent with the hypothesis that its protective role takes > place through direct action on various types of nAChRs expressed in neurons, > immune cells (including macrophages), cardiac tissue, lungs, and blood > vessels.

Notice how this mess of a paragraph starts with a passive voice claim. Reference 39 is a meta-analysis that concludes that "active smoking does not apparently seem to be signicantly [sic] associated with enhanced risk of progressing towards severe disease in COVID-19." That's not a "firm" conclusion.

At this point, I'm going to stop wasting my time. Do a controlled study or get out.

<comment><USER28> With all respect, that isn't how science works. This article is about forming a hypothesis based on limited available information. Such a hypothesis might potentially be useful for designing studies for further investigation or the hypothesis itself might be found to be fundamentally incorrect or contradictory. This step of reviewing evidence for potential hypotheses is essential in order to proceed to meaningful studies later. In this particular case it should be obvious that the core ideas will be extremely controversial as they point in the opposite direction of early advice that people should stop smoking in order to avoid infection and disease progression.

<comment><USER27> How do you think I think science works?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> So I'm posting on mobile and can't find the link, but there was a literature review posted on reddit a month or two ago. It was a collection of some 1-2 dozen papers regarding smoking and risk of infection for COVID19 as well as SARS and MERS.

What was clear from multiple papers was that smokers were significantly less likely than the general population to test positive for these viruses, though their infections may be more severe. There is published evidence that nicotine may downregulate ACE2 receptors - which means fewer binding sites for potential infection.

I have a related pet theory that vaping may be doubly protective, considering that some 60 years ago, propylene glycol was used as a surface disinfectant. Since vape juice is some 30-70% PG, and because the virus infects lung cells at the interface between air and blood, I'd bet good money that PG may have an effect in reducing viral load, at least prophylactically. That's in addition to the ACE downregulation, though we don't really know how long and how much vaping one needs to do to see any benefit, if there is one...

<comment><USER30> Interesting theory that reminds me of the Japanese researcher's paper posted around early April which proposed that shallow breaths of alcohol vapor (by dissolving boiling water into whiskey or sake) could "disinfect" the lungs, and provide relief from COVID-19.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22742835](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22742835)

[disclaimer: sharing for discussion/informational/entertainment purposes only]

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Classic Sleeper prediction:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFxksNcLfcA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFxksNcLfcA)

I have a friend who studies the history of plagues; was telling me last summer that smokers were viewed as more immune to historical plagues. I never asked him for detailed evidence, as it was one of those conversations you have on the balcony over a smoke. I enjoy entertaining wacky ideas, and figured smokers might be fumigating the fleas, or in the case of pneumonic plague, filtering the air. Never thought of the nicotinic hypothesis. Never really took it real seriously; taking it seriously now. The evidence is pretty overwhelming. A lot of people are going to lose their freaking minds over this, as anti-smoker posturing has become a sort of substitute morality among the upper middle classes (really it's just social class shitting on poor people).

Of course, nicotine is known to statistically significantly reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, so it wouldn't be the first example of something like this.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/faluhv/an_exhausti...](https://www.reddit.com/r/COVID19/comments/faluhv/an_exhaustive_lit_search_shows_that_only_585_sars/)

[https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.13.20063669v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.13.20063669v1)

[https://www.qeios.com/read/article/561](https://www.qeios.com/read/article/561)

[https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574](https://www.qeios.com/read/article/574)

[https://www.qeios.com/read/article/581](https://www.qeios.com/read/article/581)

<comment><USER32> Nearly all the ill health effects of smoking come from other stuff in the smoke, not nicotine. It's easy to get nicotine via gum, pill, patch, or vaping.

<comment><USER33> > It's easy to get nicotine via gum, pill, patch, or vaping.

.. or snuff! Which I think is one of the most elegant ways of delivering nicotine to your body

<comment><USER34> 'Elegant'? Have you ... ever tried it?

My experience of it decades ago was anything other than 'elegant', unless having one's face scrunch up like a bulldog pissing on a nettle before exploding into a sneezing fit can be considered 'elegant'.

<comment><USER35> The OP may be referring to Snus, which is often referred to as Snuff.

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

<comment><USER34> I had that stuff too, around the same time* - and re-visited it on a trip to Sweden last year.. and, I'd still not consider it particularly 'elegant' :)

* we had a deal with our English teacher - my Swedish friend would supply him with little snus bundles, and we'd all get to sit in class using it ourselves. As a 17 year old, I thought it was the coolest thing, 'getting away with smoking in class with the teacher', even if i thought the actual process was utterly, utterly disgusting :)

</reddit></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Atmospheric ducts: Did we just prove the world isn't flat? Or maybe it is - <AUTHOR> https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/article/atmospheric-duct <comment><USER2> We got 446km.

We achieved something we are proud of. On 6th June 2018 we sent out packets over TTN. Our location was approximately 600m high in the Pennines around Sheffield at a location known as Barrow Stones (maybe the one seen in your article). To our surprise, a single packet was picked up at Delft, all the way over in the Netherlands. The gateway is in fact owned/run by the Delft University of Technology. This is a distance of 446km. Here is our proof this was achieved: [https://ttnmapper.org/special.php?node=1279_b370&date=2018-0...](https://ttnmapper.org/special.php?node=1279_b370&date=2018-06-06&gateways=on)

We are the Sheffield Hardware Hackers and Makers (The Sheffield Hackspace: [https://www.facebook.com/SHHMakers](https://www.facebook.com/SHHMakers) )</comment>


Dash 5: API Documentation Browser and Code Snippet Manager (macOS) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kapeli.com/dash-5 <comment><USER2> I'm glad this is making the rounds on HN. I saw the update dialog the other day and wanted to know what other people thought about it.

In my mind Dash 4 didn't really add anything useful to me other than a slightly different UI. In fact I upgraded to Dash 4 mainly because the update notifications were annoying me and it was only $15 and I like Dash. Now I'm getting hit with a $20 upgrade fee and I don't really feel like any of the new "features" are really worth $20.

That coupled with the developer leaving a bit of a bad taste in my mouth in regards to couple years ago there being allegations that the developer used to produce a ton of shovel/crap-ware and Dash just so happened to take off. Their apple account was banned [0] at one point for fake reviews (both positive on their own apps and negative on competitors apps) and there was a whole back- and-forth [1] [2] [3] between Apple and the Kapeli. My memory, albeit potentially unfair/incorrect, of the event left me with the impression this developer was a bad actor.

All that to say: Is there an alternative to Dash that people like and/or am I wrong/misremembering the situation (re: Dash/Kapeli)?

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680131)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684265](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12684265)

[3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680597)

Edit:

Timeline

Oct 5th, 2016 - Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12646919)

Oct 6th, 2016 - Apple Has Removed Dash from the App Store: Update -[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12654093) (same webpage linked but different comment thread)

Oct 10th, 2016 - Apple Responds to Dash Controversy - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680435](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680435)

Oct 11th, 2016 - Dash and Apple: My Side of the Story - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680597](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12680597)

Interestingly the articles from the developers blog, while still online, are no longer listed in his archives: [https://blog.kapeli.com/archives](https://blog.kapeli.com/archives) \-- Personally I find that odd and potentially suspicious.

You can see sentiment on HN change from anti-Apple to anti-Kapeli over the span of this saga. I'm not saying that was correct necessarily but it is what appeared to happen.

Lastly I stumbled on this which seems to be a good reference so I'll leave it here: [https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/10/apple-and-kapeli- respond/](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2016/10/10/apple-and-kapeli-respond/) \-- This was also covered on ATP and The Talk Show I might go back and re-listen to those episodes...

<comment><USER3> The phone call with Apple that Kapeli recorded makes it pretty clear that it wasn't him making the shovelware or manipulating reviews. But also made it clear that Apple were justified in taking action against linked accounts as part of their integrity process. That they were willing to work with Kapeli to get his account reinstated I think shows Apple in a good light.

As for the price, It's been 2.5 years since the last paid upgrade, and I use it every day so I'll probably end up paying again even if I can't expense it because it's so useful

<comment><USER2> It appears to be his mother which was doing it with a handful of apps he originally wrote then transferred to her account when he decided to focus on Dash [0]. I think he handled some of this wrong but it does appear he had nothing to do with the manipulation. As for the price I'd be more comfortable paying a subscription fee since he has servers to maintain but you are right, $20 ever few years isn't worth saying behind on an older version. I'll probably upgrade.

[0] [https://www.imore.com/dash-developer-speaks-heres-his- full-s...](https://www.imore.com/dash-developer-speaks-heres-his-full-story)</comment></comment></comment>


Qt Company will turn all releases commercial only for the next 12 months - <AUTHOR> https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.html <comment><USER2> That's the minimum they have to do under the contract between KDE and Qt Company. Qt core/essentials must be released under open source license after 12 months. [https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/Software_License_Agreeme...](https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/Software_License_Agreement_2015.pdf)

If you look at what Qt is doing, their business is moving away from the KDE type uses. They get their money from embedded and appliances. Qt on MCU's moves Qt more into this direction.

</comment><comment><USER3> The official KDAB position:

[https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde- community/2020q2/006101.h...](https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde- community/2020q2/006101.html)</comment>


3G on your smartphone whilst visiting the USA - <AUTHOR> http://www.tim-rogers.co.uk/posts/getting-3g-on-your-mobile-whilst-visiting-the-usa

<comment><USER2> You're also missing T-Mobile's 30$ Unlimited data (5GB), unlimited text, 100 minutes plan.

<http://prepaid-phones.t-mobile.com/monthly-4g-plans>

<comment><USER3> T-mobile is a great choice if you've got a HSPA compatible device like a Galaxy Nexus--not LTE fast, but fast.</comment></comment>


What Is BGP Visibility, Really? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.thousandeyes.com/what-is-bgp-visibility-really/ <comment><USER2> Alas, at least one v6 block in mozilla's ASN has been unreachable for several months now from my ISP (compared ISP's looking glass and RIPE looking glass)... and _there is no avenue to report this_. Sending mails to the whois contacts remains unanswered and customer support is utterly incapable of even understanding what I am reporting.

<comment><USER3> HN is proven to be good support channel for unusual issues. List here src and dst IPs, there is a good chance net ops from various ISPs read HN and may help.

<comment><USER2> Routing problems aren't particularly "unusual" though. The issue is that sometimes there's no good way to report them and they may go unnoticed for a long time if things like happy eyeballs or dns round robin mask some of their impact.</comment></comment></comment>


Kardashev Scale - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale <comment><USER2> > The limitation of biological life-form and the evolution of computing > technology may lead to the transformation of the civilization through Mind > uploading during the transition from Type I to Type II, leading to > digitalized civilization).

Neal Stephenson's recent novel "Fall; Or Dodge in Hell" deals with humanity taking its first steps down this path in the near future.

<comment><USER3> What's uploaded can maximally be a fork of your mind, not your actual mind, or "you". And that fork starts to diverge within that new environment as it adapts to it, and won't recognizable for long, so it's not even a good idea for conservation.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I've been thinking about this, and I believe with what we know today about neuroplasticity, if you take a multiple-year approach to "uploading" at the end of your biological life, assuming one is able to couple digital and biological neurons transparently enough, there is no reason to believe that the brain wouldn't shift all parts over to the digital as the biological went down.

This would definitely be "you". I think the main question is whether we will achieve a sufficiently transparent digital neuron anytime in the next few centuries, and whether your personality would change during the "upload".

A more scary thought is, what if we develop human-to-human transfer capabilities long before we develop digital neurons? Then I think it os inevitable that people in power will purchase young humans and transfer to those at the end of their life. Maybe this will be some dystopian nightmare. Or maybe it will turn out to be the ultimate version of marriage, if the two "selves" remain distinct in the merged brain.

<comment><USER4> "Then I think it os inevitable that people in power will purchase young humans and transfer to those at the end of their life. Maybe this will be some dystopian nightmare"

Depending on how you see it, that already happens by having "a son who will continue my deed". People give a birth to people, pass down genes, knowledge, viewpoints, behavioral patterns.

What you mean is probably that 'self-aware thing' that could teleport to a new body. But in fact there is no teleportation, since there is no evidence of such 'thing'. You could make a fresh copy of your body (or a machine) and maybe copy your brain contents to it, but you will not see from these new eyes. Someone completely un-different will do. Because no soul; sensory gaps define borders between us, your original eyes are still in place and your sad brain is still there. Your copy will be happy that they are alive for yet another century, but it is no different than when someone very similar is already young and happy while you're slowly decaying. Why not just tell them all your stories and fade out then?

That brings us into the situation where dystopian nightmare already exists (it ain't me, it ain't meee) and you're doomed to live in your body no matter what till the death.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > but you will not see from these new eyes

No, what I am proposing is that if done carefully, gradually, strengthening the link over a timespan of several years, it would be possible to actually see from these new eyes. The mind would gradually expand into the other brain.

<comment><USER5> maybe a closer reality is doing this temporarily via TCMS. scan one brain, and impose the neural pattern on a target brain. the beauty is that its temporary. you could plug into someone else, and for a moment experience what they are experiencing, even through their eyes

<comment><USER6> Everyone here seems to be missing his point. He is talking about transferring over the thing that is "you" in a continuous fashion, over time, into another host. "continuous" is the key here, as in the "self-aware thing" that is you will not have a disruption in his aware conscious experience. No disruption in history.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=AC470ED016B9B9214C6...](http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=AC470ED016B9B9214C64625F4709AA38)

<comment><USER8> Smil's _Energy and Civilization_ is indeed excellent.

<comment><USER9> I've been meaning to look at his work, but I'm not sure where to start? Any books to avoid/prioritize?

<comment><USER8> Quite honestly, this is as good as any. I'd read the earlier version ( _Energy and History_ ) previously. His materials book, _Making the Modern World_ , is also an eye-opener.

He covers energy transitions, fertilisers, China, and much else.

Oh, and apparently just published:

[https://www.worldcat.org/title/growth-from-microorganisms- to...](https://www.worldcat.org/title/growth-from-microorganisms-to- megacities/oclc/1085577162)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think fossil fuels moved us too far up on the energy usage scale before we were ready for it.

<comment><USER11> You may be on to something, but what would "ready for it" have looked like? Are we talking technical, or social progress? Because social progress would appear to depend at least in part on technical progress (for example, automation making slavery obsolete), and technical progress depends on... abundant energy.

<comment><USER10> Would we have had the energy for WW1/2 without fossil fuels? I don't think so. They were at least in part due to pressures for countries to grow into other countries territories. Without oil, population growth wouldn't have brought the world to that point so quickly. We also wouldn't have had airplanes nor jets. That probably would mean the atomic bomb would be developed after nuclear power plants-avoiding a century of associating nuclear power with nuclear bombs.

Kind of a neat thought experiment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A more accurate measure would be the average amount of wellbeing a civilization extracts from its consumed units of energy.

<comment><USER13> The difference between each point on the Kardashev scale is about 10 orders of magnitude. The observed variation of well-being per unit of energy is so vanishingly small in comparison that I don't even need to work it out, because it's like comparing one subsistence farmer with only their own labour — no tractors or horses — to the entire primary energy consumption of the industrialised United States of America today.

2500 kcal/day vs. 3.18 TW</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so difficult to install a web app or service on a server? - open-source-ux There is only one language that makes it (relatively) simple: PHP.
Imagine you create a server-side web app. You want your users or customers to install the app themselves. You want to give them the widest choice of installation options possible including shared hosting, VPS or on installation on their own server.
The shared hosting option is probably the easiest for most users. In the case of PHP, it can be as simple as uploading files to the folder on the server. And that's it. (Even that might be too complicated for some users.)
But why is it so much more complicated with other languages? Even web-friendly languages like Python and Ruby rarely let you simply upload files to a folder and be done with it.
The topic of decentralisation sometimes pops up on Hacker news. You could argue that shared hosting is a form or decentralisation. It may not be the 'pure' solution for decentralisation, but it is a practical and realistic option for people to self-install software.
Wordpress is an example of a profitable open source app that can easily be installed on countless shared hosting platforms. It's easy to switch hosting providers when you want to (and to take your data with you). Is it the ultimate example of a decentralised app?
Having a ridiculously easy web app installation process for servers would unlock countless opportunities for developers to reach more users or customers.
If you're a server-side web developer, is this something you think about? Is it a source of frustration in the language you work with? What can be done to make server-side installation easy?
I find it kind of crazy that in 2017, server app installation remains needlessly complicated for so many languages. <comment><AUTHOR> Have you tried cloudron.io? It solves exactly what you are talking about

</comment><comment><USER2> Try Sandstorm, Sandstorm make it easy to install web apps or services.</comment>


The new sandbox: open-source and self-hosted - <AUTHOR> http://blog.dotcloud.com/new-sandbox

<comment><USER3> I'm sad to see their free sandboxes going away, they were a good option for deploying Django for small, non-commercial projects or tests. The experience was better than Heroku (rsync deploy, reasonable database limit, ssh shell) and the docs were alright.

From the free options I've seen so far, AppFog comes closest, but last time I tried them the Python/Django documentation was pretty sketchy and the build process had some issues.

What are some other good free (tier) PaaS options out there?

<comment><USER4> Appfog no longer allows custom domains on new free accounts, and bandwidth is down to 5GB from 50GB. It's good for testing, but little else.

<comment><USER3> Not that I wouldn't like more, but I'm perfectly happy even with those terms, they still mean I can deploy as many experiments and prototypes as I want.

I wouldn't expect to run a production application with 50GB/month traffic for free (unless it was some kind of great free service itself, and then you can probably talk it over with them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since my comment on Dotcloud's blog post hasn't been approved, I'll repost here. Mind that this was addressed to Dotcloud...

First of all, I want to congratulate you guys on what you're doing for the community by open-sourcing these projects. I have hope that it will lead to faster extension of the options provided by the already-slick configuration scheme to better support new variations on deployment strategies, as well as better documentation.

That being said, my days as a Dotcloud customer may be numbered. Back when I was evaluating PaaSs to use for my commercial project, I chose Dotcloud because I could be free to experiment and test using the Sandbox. While we use a Live application for our production deployment, my company still relies on the Sandbox for staging and one-off tests.

I have since run into a couple pain points using Dotcloud's services. The first of these is the fact that your Postgres service cannot be easily scaled. Dotcloud support themselves recommended that I use Heroku's Postgres hosting as an alternative. This seems to be just one step down the slope of potentially migrating our whole stack. The second pain point is that the instance-based model is not amenable to running New Relic for monitoring. This is not a problem specific to Dotcloud, but again, Heroku is outflanking you by integrating New Relic pricing directly into their basic pricing model. This provides for much more predictable and bounded billing–super important for my company in our bootstrapping stage.

While I certainly understand that the Sandbox flavor must come at a significant cost to your company, the fact that it's phasing out is a significant reduction in value for mine. I'm sure this wasn't an easy decision, but I hope you understand that this is a strong push toward testing out my deployment on your competitors' services so I can evaluate the pros/cons of bailing. I hope you'll consider this as just one customer data point.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Their new strategy is to decommission the free plans and re-invest in building open source instead.

It's not really clear how to self-host and how to transition from self-hosting to their platform if the need arises.

<comment><USER6> The sandbox was a good incentive to try DotCloud out and keep a healthy staging server etc.

But I suppose the freemium model (I understand it's a kind of freemium) costs, again, too much in this case.

<comment><USER7> I'm sure they have the numbers to support decision. It's never a one-size- fits-all, unfortunately, and I think I'll stop using dotCloud at this point.

Not that I want to make the impression that there are any obvious alternatives for a fairly easy Django deployment experience.

<comment><USER6> As someone who is going to launch a SaaS all-paid (no freemium), I can certainly understand their decision :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is great, with one request: I would love to be able to use the same dotcloud toolchain to deploy to a local VM (or, container, I guess.)

Something like `dotcloud local push`. This way I don't have to mess with chef/vagrant/etc for my staging environments: I can simply use my dotcloud configurations for both local and production deployments.

It would be sad if I had to create one deployment system for testing environments, and something entirely different for production - because by the time I set things up for tests, I might as well use that same tool chain for prod!

I don't mind that the free tier is going away - because for me, it has been less about the "free" and more about the "easy to throw a stack together".

Exciting times!

<comment><USER5> That's a really good point. If it were really, super painless to set up a local Dotcloud "Sandbox", it would alleviate a lot of the pain of the loss of the free Sandbox. But it's gotta be as easy as it used to be. For me, this means that there should be a zero-config Homebrew package for Mac and a zero- config Apt package for Debian/Ubuntu.

If this existed, it would be really easy to convert self-hosting customers to the paid service for scalability and support, and maybe some of the Dashboard tools. But considering this could be months away, I really wish the Sandbox were sticking around for a while...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does anybody else feel that less than 3 weeks is not enough advance notice before permanently destroying applications?

<comment><USER6> It's even shorter: 4 days before you cannot update your staging server if you have one. The people who forwarded me this announcement were really surprised about that (they use sandboxes as staging server).

<comment><USER10> DotCloud CEO here. You're right, that does feel too short. We're going to extend the grace period.

<comment><USER11> You probably want to update <http://docs.dotcloud.com/guides/flavors/#sandbox> too so that it doesn't give the impression that this is a service you still intend to offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How does this affect the ability to run staging vs production environments? We had been looking at using dotCloud thanks in large part to the ability to run as many staging environments as we needed on the same infrastructure.

With that said the possibility of using the open source variety - <USER2> along with it the ability to use it outside of US East - sounds pretty promising.

<comment><USER10> A lot of dotCloud customers use paid apps for staging because it more accurately reflects production and makes for zippier demos (Live apps get faster machines).

You can keep it scaled to a minimum (but still >1 containers to catch scaling bugs) and destroy it after your tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Their prices seem really high. 1 instance with 1.7GB RAM is $233/m vs $44/m for Amazon EC2. What an I missing here?

<comment><USER5> Dotcloud is built on top of EC2 to provide super painless configuration and management. If you want to manage your whole stack, EC2 is not a bad way to go, but for early testing and deployment with modest hosting needs, it's a cheap way to avoid a lot of sysadmin work. Particularly if you haven't done it a whole bunch of times before. There are a whole bunch of folks that provide this type of service, it's called "Platform as a Service".

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Wow, that's pure awesome, and ballsy.

</comment><comment><USER15> I highly dislike how docker is structured, LXC itself is a somewhat mess of enterprisism and slathering on more abstractions on top of it makes it even more so. Look at <http://criu.org> for a more modular approach (a sandboxing interface would still be needed) and IMHO what is needed is a sane library to abstract sandboxing (not libvirt) and another for resource limiting (which includes hardware)

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like a typical "pasture-source" play - when something gets too hard to maintain, put it in the open-source pasture to let it live or die however it might.

<comment><USER17> Except that they still use all of the technologies that they are open sourcing! They benefit from any fixes & features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this a fail about the business model of dependant Paas? IMO open source is not an "alternative" business model, but a complete model (see Redhat, Talend etc...). I don't know open source PaaS that made money then big companies... Curious to see if they will monetize with open source what they couldn't closed source...

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder how simple this is going to be getting set up and running. Non- trivial, I would have thought?

</comment><comment><USER20> So how long before BitNami announces something clever related to dotCloud?

<comment><USER21> There is some overlap with our LAMP/Django/etc. stacks, but we are much more focused on the application layer. We like the dotCloud guys, they are nice people and very smart. I am sure they will figure out a model that works for them. It is always difficult to get it right the first time. The PaaS business is tough though, because you are competing with the underlying platform providers in a very direct way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> dotCloud (YC '10). :)</comment>


Saudi Aramco's $2T Zombie IPO - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-07/saudi-aramco-s-2-trillion-zombie-ipo <comment><USER2> The Aramco ipo is less urgent after MBS extracted well over 100 billion from his tribal cohort [https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/saudi-arabia- says-...](https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/saudi-arabia-says-it-has- arranged-to-seize-over-100-billion-in-financial-settlements-in-corruption- purge/story-VvVp2MxksGSqLXx1thXNdI.html)

<comment><USER3> Yup - OP mentions this, buried towards the middle of the article.

"He may also not need the money as much as he did at the outset of his mission to change the country. Saudi authorities this year reached agreements to recover more than $100 billion (the same amount the Aramco IPO was supposed to provide) from a controversial corruption investigation that saw many of the kingdom's most prominent subjects imprisoned at the five-star Riyadh Ritz- Carlton. "

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just to underscore the argument that they want to diversify the economy, about 45B of SoftBank's massive fund is from SA's Public Investment Fund.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/how-softbanks-100b-fund- is...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/09/how-softbanks-100b-fund-is-in-a- league-all-its-own/)

That's a lot of money even for SA. ($100B is a nice round number, approximately equal to the amount they would raise in the IPO, the amount they "extracted" during their corruption drive, and the amount of Softbank's total fund.)

<comment><USER5> They have a lot of money, I just don't know if that is enough.

The thing is Saudi Arabia has tried to diversify its economy many times before... it hasn't gotten it done. They have a huge gut of workers entering the workforce soon and it seems they are they're not educated enough to compete.

A nice man I met from SA noted that education in SA was still heavy on religion, and all his friends aspired to comfortable government jobs that are easy, and pay well, as that has been the place to be for decades.

I'm not sure you can fix that in say 20 years....

<comment><USER6> if you're a native Saudi citizen you pretty much are guaranteed a very cushy govt job plus tons of perks (free education, interest free loans for building a home etc). Many parts of the middle east work like this (relying on expats to do all the real work).

It will take generations for this mentality to change (if it ever can..) and by then the oil will have run out.

<comment><USER7> Yes, I once did a consulting project in Kuwait (considered one of the better places in the region) and they wanted me to consider joining as an employee. I talked to someone I knew in HR in another company over there regarding how much could I angle for and whether it was a good idea.

He told me that for the exact same job if a Kuwaiti (or American (because liberators)) would be paid $100, another white guy would be paid $70, and as an Indian I could expect $30 or so. He told me I could negotiate a bit more because I have a PhD from US but not that much. This would still have been several times what I would make in India. I declined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IPO is meant to raise capital (for growth) and to provide liquidity to existing shareholders.

Saudi Aramco needs neither of these.

Be very wary of investing in this IPO. The end of oil is coming - even Saudi Aramco knows it.

<comment><USER9> One shareholder (Prince Mohammad bin Salman) needs 500B to finance his project of starting a city from scratch to compete with Dubai. (project Neom if you want to google it). He also wants to feed some money in a tech investment fund (solar energy and AI). That's the main reason behind the IPO IMO.

And shareholders would probably be more interested in the oldest reason to buy stocks: getting a share of the profits as dividends. If oil supply becomes insufficient before the Saudi reserves dry up, the prices will skyrocket and so will the profits.

Sure, it won't last 100 years, but if you are looking to get dividends within 20 years, that's not necessarily a bad deal.

<comment><USER10> I would think, or at least hope, that 500B could buy peace in Yemen and that he could pick a city there to refurbish from scratch.

<comment><USER3> Probably can't. Saudi military strength in Yemen is not limited by budget, so doesn't help with a military solution. And the issues of control and religion and security over which the war is being fought can't really be made to go away with money, so wouldn't help too much with a political solution.

In any case, building up a city in Yemen would not strengthen the Saudi state and MBS's personal political power in the way that a new and rich Saudi city would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Overall I see this as a milestone in SA history. They are anticipating the death of the oil market. Many people think it's unwisw to play games with what is essentially their entire economy. But I guarantee if you knew what SB has planned, you would find it hard to see any other path forward

<comment><USER12> So what do they have planned?

<comment><USER11> MBS is very smart and he has shown an appreciation for precedant in his nudging forward of social reform. I guarantee that he plans to cement his name in history by implementing another very large reform -- the transition of his countries economy from soley oil to no oil at all (in time). His goal is to create a kind of scandanavia of the middle East (economically, not culturally). I know this because I know that he knows that oil is as good as dead -- the transition to renewable energy is so far underway as to be undeniable. The interests of all the biggest economies except Russia align firmly with this transition. There is simply no future in oil and he knows it. The only move that would be characteristic of MBS and the country as a whole would be to rise to the challenge of this transition while maintaining the prosperity and prestige that they currently enjoy. And all of the above leaves little doubt about what they will try to do.

I should clarify. He will try to make SA a source of innovation, investment and so on like the United States, Germany, Sweden, Norway, estonia, and other such countries -- robust, diverse economies that are driven primarily by the high levels of education and training observed by their populations.

<comment> saiya-jin He will most probably fail, but somewhere in the middle so maybe still not a bad move long term.

Local population is lazy, and will remain lazy until they face poverty, which will be too late to maintain prosperity. The only solution that might work is to create some tax-haven for foreign companies with massive grants. Maybe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> After speding a few years in the middle east, this is how things go over there. Things only moves if it's senior management priority. Now that MBS has found enough cash through his corruption probe, the IPO is not his main focus anymore, and things wont go forward until he personally pushes for it.

Right now, his main focus is to make sure the Iran does not develop it's O&G infrastructure, that could challenge KSA's position. One part the the article does not explore, is "what did the US gave in exchange of the OPEP increasing their production?". Could it have something to do with the WH ending the Iran deal?

One part that is extremely true is that investing in the GCC is extremely risky, due to the way regulation can change within weeks. Most people that I know over there thinks that without a good, personal relationship to the royal family (or equivalent), having high stake investments is probably a mistake.

Also, i'm highly skeptical with the 20% marginal rate this article talks about. I remember reading that the cost of production of a barrel in KSA what about 3$.

</comment><comment><USER14> How much is the offering discounted in the eyes of the investors because it is not issued by a "normal" company, but a dictatorial state ?

<comment><USER15> The article discusses how investors are leery of downward pressure on crude oil prices and government fiat.

If you want to be cynical, investors don't need true rule of law as long as the courts respond to their needs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Without knowing much about the details: it seems misguided to put the entire economy of a nation on the stock market.

<comment><USER17> Every developed country which supports itself by selling bonds to pay for its expenses is effectively putting its economy "on the stock (bond) market"

<comment><USER18> bonds have essentially a capped upside, and are pretty similar to debt which is vastly different from equity.

<comment><USER19> Bonds ARE debt.

<comment><USER18> Bonds are a type of debt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> There's this: Five Stop Signs along Saudi Aramco's IPO Road [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-stop-signs-along- saudi-a...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-stop-signs-along-saudi- aramcos-ipo-road-michael-okane/)

and this: U.S. Court Says "No" to Aramco IPO? [https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-court-says-saudi-aramco- ip...](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/us-court-says-saudi-aramco-ipo-michael- okane/)</comment>


Pope Francis could shape the future of robotics - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-47668476 <comment><USER2> Don't totally mean to sound rude about it, but institutionalized religion, like the Catholic Church, approaches these topics fundamentally in the wrong way in my opinion.

I could get into it, but honestly fuck these places and people running them. They've been a large factor in what I would consider "holding back" the human race and evolution of technology in the modern age..

I recently asked a Priest if a sentient artificially made intelligent system (AGI) could have a baptism, a conscious thing, would get through Turing test, all that...

His reply was short "absolutely not" ....I think he considers humans "playing god" to be satanic</comment>


Ask HN: Where do I start iOS8 development? - <AUTHOR>

How do I get started with iOS 8 development ? I mean, do I go ahead and learn swift, or I learn Obj. C(which I already know) + Swift and also, from where ? I tried checking out the Apple Developer Library but it's "Getting Started" tutorial is outdated and for iOS7.
I'm not sure what to do, and I really need help... <comment><USER2> Here are some payed sites, but very good ones!

[http://www.raywenderlich.com/store/swift-by- tutorials](http://www.raywenderlich.com/store/swift-by-tutorials) [http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/ios-development-with- swift](http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks/ios-development-with-swift)</comment>


CloudFlare is ruining the internet (for me) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slashgeek.net/2016/05/17/cloudflare-is-ruining-the-internet-for-me/ <comment><USER2> Similarly, seeing Google's traffic captcha everywhere is ruining the internet for me. I don't want to work for free to classify cars, sign posts, and roads for Google on every site I visit. If you enable that for you site, I'll stop visiting it. It's especially frustrating when they keep changing the images on you and you have to wait like 4-5 seconds before each one loads, and you have to pick like 6-7 of those. Screw everything about that.

<comment><USER3> For months, that Google classifier captcha was incompatible with iOS Safari, just kept offering infinite rounds.

I realize the odds of a Googler experiencing this are nil thanks to developer employment policies requiring Chrome (ahem), but still surprising this persisted from introduction until just recently.

Out if the office I'm a happy iPad Pro "What's a computer?" user, so this broke the web. But finally seems to have been fixed a couple months ago.

Lesson here is don't start all your user stories with "As a mono-culture developer..." Users do exist that prefer the battery-life and privacy preserving Safari browser.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I run into this too. Because I have Comcast as an ISP and they engage in malicious man in the middle attacks on their users I use socks 5 proxies to remote VPS for all my browsing.

That means I end up in IP blocks that get blocked by many services or presented with captchas.

Additionally, both Cloudflare and Google are trying to set up caching services to prevent people from ever leaving their network in the form of AMP.

</comment><comment><USER5> Two questions come to mind about the author. First, does he have cookies disabled? Because disabling cookies will cause loss of the previous captcha result, thus triggering a new challenge. Second, is he sure his customers (or those who have pwned customer boxes) aren't tainting his IP ranges through malicious activity?

</comment><comment><USER6> Cloudflare simply can't solve this problem! Google/FB are more suitable because a large of internet has fb/gmail account, some sort of profile mining or behavioural analysis can reduce captchas. In comparison, i rarely come across Google's recaptcha while i am logged into google services.

<comment><USER7> I seem to encounter the opposite problem. Cloudflare never puts up a captcha for me, while Google presents me with a captcha >50% of the time. This is regardless of whether I'm logged in to my personal or enterprise Google account, essentially extracting free labor out of paying users.

From my rough observation, it seems Cloudflare weighs IP country heavily, while Google seems to weigh OS and browser combinations more (pretty much all the Linux users at my work hit Google captchas frequently, while Mac/win users never see them).</comment></comment>


Personal Genome Project UK - <AUTHOR> http://www.personalgenomes.org.uk/

<comment><USER2> Compare this to the NHS project. ([http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/dec/10/1000000-peopl...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/dec/10/1000000-peoples- dna-mapped))

And here's a list of programmes that are recruiting for volunteers [http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Genetics/Pages/clinical- trial.a...](http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Genetics/Pages/clinical-trial.aspx)</comment>


AMA: Steven Pruitt, a Wikipedian with 3M edits - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pruitt_the_wikipedian_with_over_3/ <comment><USER2> One strange thing about the AMA is the reverent tone of some of the replies. Some people are saying "thanks for this article" or "thanks for getting me through school", etc. I think there's a misconception at play because people are assuming since he has the most edits, he wrote most of the content. It probably also doesn't help when there are blatantly false headlines like "Meet the man behind a third of what's on Wikipedia". [0] In actuality, a majority of the edits are semi-automated and minor fixes: think things like fixing typos, categorization, or page formatting.

Not trying to diminish his work, but hoping to provide some perspective. It's important that people understand the vast collaboration behind the project and the numerous voices that have built it up to what it is today. If one person was responsible for most of the content, it would be nowhere as diverse as it is.

[0]: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-man-behind-a-third- of-...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/meet-the-man-behind-a-third-of-whats-on- wikipedia/)

<comment><USER3> On the other hand, we can assume all of those small edits add value. This gives Wikipedia more appeal (no typos, clean pages, etc), which, in turn, invites others to edit. Are those his contributions? No. Does he deserve some credit? Some.

It is always hard to measure these secondary and further effects. The best way to determinte the value is a market with independent actors. Thought experiment: imagine Wikipedia edits were paid in _some_ currency. Doesn't have to be monetary; it could be e.g. karma. How much would he have gotten per edit? Sum it all up: that's his contribution.

One thing is for sure: it's more than just a motley of typo fixes. He has, indeed, added a lot of value to Wikipedia, albeit probably indirectly, and, thus, helped people through school.

<comment><USER2> Of course. Like I said, "not trying to diminish his work". But it also gives the wrong impression of what editing Wikipedia entails. Anyone can edit, and even a single edit adds utility. One doesn't need to devote as much time has Pruitt has, or have reference books, or make as much edits. My point was that the commenters seem to have a misconception about who writes Wikipedia. It's not just Pruitt, it's people like you and me. It's also women, people from every continent, laymen, scientists, college students, retirees, people working alone, those at editathons, people who edit once, those who edit regularly, those who edit anonymously, those who edit under a pseudonym, etc. Wikipedia is a massive _collaborative_ project; it's great that they're spotlighting his (commendable) efforts, but care should be taken to avoid outrageous misinformation like saying he wrote a third of Wikipedia. Those thousands of content creators deserve commensurate credit as well.

<comment><USER4> I'd imagine there's a pareto distribution of edits amongst users, and so it might not be so unreasonable to think that a handful of people have written a significant percentage of what's there.

<comment><USER5> Hmm, there's lots of ways you might go about measuring who has "written significant portion of what's there" and this "number of edits" is a poor one indeed.

But the nature of Wikipedia means that entropy/rust/rot is a very really thing - and the wikignomes that tirelessly keep articles together in the face of endless silly vandals and clueless people "just trying to set the record straight" are big part of that. Internally there is some recognition in the relatively new "Thanks" feature - and the "barnstar" business. However, just as with Steveen Pruitt, I suspect that the main driver for editors is being able each day to make the world a _slightly_ better place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Apparently, higher-up, editors get tools that let them make modifications to multiple threads simultaneously. [1]

 _And_ , Wikipedia happens to count those edits separately even if the editor applies the fix to multiple articles at once as a single action. <\-- This is my self-assessment though, I could be wrong!

[1]: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pruitt_the_wikipedian_with_over_3/eh56ryj/)

<comment><USER7> Wikipedia (or, rather, MediaWiki, the wiki engine powering it) has a comprehensive API (see e. g. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:ApiSandbox)), allowing all kinds of automated tasks. You do not need any special permission to use it, however, you are rate-limited, unless you get an exemption. And, there are many ready-made tools utilizing the API for common tasks. Either local tools like Pywikibot or hosted online like many tools on tools.wmflabs.org

<comment><USER8> He says in the AMA the tool he uses is invite-only after you have over 500ish edits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like a really humble and level-headed guy. Kudos for all the selfless hours he has put in for the greater good.

<comment><USER10> +1

User Aka[1] in the German Wikipedia follows Steven with only 30,000 edits behind in the main namespace.

[1] [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Aka](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Aka)

[2] some statistics:

English Wikipedia: [https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm](https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm)

German Wikipedia: [https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm](https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaDE.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Turns out the guy who wrote Baba Yetu (civilization 4 theme song which won grammy) is in the comments too, thanking Steven [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/au2rjb/i_am_steven_pruitt_the_wikipedian_with_over_3/eh59ajr). What a small world we live in.

<comment><USER12> Funny! I met Christopher Tin once, and got to sing his music, on a choir tour in Turkey. It was during the mass protests in 2013.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's a bit sad that this guy mainly came into the spotlight because of some Twitter user making fun of his appearance and not because of his work.

<comment><USER14> For some humble self-reflection: _You_ just brought the spotlight on his apparently-noteworthy appearance here. This was not discussed by anyone here and at least for me, nothing that would have come to mind.

<comment><USER15> I don't think GP is agreeing with it, or that it requires "humble self reflection": the Twitter thing made Reddit's front page (which is seen by many more people than the CBS and HN combined, and is incidentally where I first heard about it as well).

You can step off that high horse now.

<comment><USER16> Leave out that last sentence and you're making a cogent, convincing argument; the insult adds nothing and takes something away.

<comment><USER17> Agreed. Might have upvoted, instead downvoted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm pretty sure Steven Pruitt read the Asimov trilogy cover to cover and loved it!

<comment><USER19> > the Asimov trilogy

Just for clarity, I think you meant the _Foundation_ trilogy. Asimov wrote an awful lot of books, and more than just the one trilogy. (Also, there are more than three books in the _Foundation_ series, but that's a separate point.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I want to see his library

</comment><comment><USER21> How did you learn about Wikipedia? P.S. Thank you for all of your edits on Wikipedia, I'm sure you've helped countless people.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why?

</comment><comment><USER23> Who else contributed to wikipedia since this AMA ?

</comment><comment><USER24> How many hours per week do you spend on edits, on average?

<comment><USER25> You have to ask on reddit, this is just a meta discussion of the AMA.

<comment><USER26> I like the term "meta discussion" to characterize this comment thread. It describes and explains concisely what HN is about/does best.</comment></comment></comment>