A mysterious company's Covid-19 papers in top medical journals may be unraveling - <AUTHOR> https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/mysterious-company-s-coronavirus-papers-top-medical-journals-may-be-unraveling <comment> tuna-piano Ugh. I'm so disappointed in this whole situation. Feels like Theranos.

I want to cover my eyes and ears for the media and political shit show that's going to come from this. It's true that a certain politician shouldn't be trumpeting unproven treatments, but the media seemed to celebrate when that politician was "proven" wrong. Did we forget that we should all be rooting for treatments to work?

I hoped during this pandemic science would move fast and sacrifice some accuracy for speed. But I didn't expect (a seemingly) complete fabrication could go so far with so many eyes. Now I worry the overreaction toward accuracy-over-speed will cause significant slowdowns in published data.

We shouldn't over-punish honest mistakes when we value speed over accuracy... but this just feels awful. Would think prison is likely to come.

A good read: [http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05/30/implausible- healt...](http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05/30/implausible-health-data- firm)

<comment><USER3> Even I hadn't let my cynicism about our national discourse sink so low as to think medical treatments would be politicized. Ultimately, it was a new low point. Once it started it was clear where this was going. Many may have died from it if the worse case scenario turns out to be true: this treatment does in fact work, and was stalled or prevented due to politics.

Similarly, the complete disregard by the medical community of playing their role in reminding others organizing protests to take steps to prevent participants from spreading the virus has been equally disturbing. I've heard literally nothing from the medical community about tips, methods, or instructions for ensuring protestors do not cause a new outbreak. There does not seem to be any innovation happening in helping people organize and protest while keeping social distancing in mind. I don't know what that would look like, but it's a moral failure that the problem hasn't been worked whatsoever. I haven't even heard stories of people just handing out masks. Things are quite dire.

<comment><USER4> >it if the worse case scenario turns out to be true: this treatment does in fact work, and was stalled or prevented due to politics.

There are two worst case scenarios here - Firstly, politicians pushing unproven drugs on the general population, causing unnecessary deaths. Secondly, treatments which may have some efficacy being abandoned because of a reaction against those politicians, potentially causing a failure to bring an effective treatment to bear.

Both of these can be true at the same time.

<comment><USER5> But did we actually have "politicians pushing drugs"? "Push" sounds to me like "suggest people take." I'm certain that the president didn't tell anybody to take anything. He said almost verbatim what dr fauci was saying elsewhere at that same point in time. (See dr fauci on the jama podcast earlier that same week.) I won't argue that the president has not oversold optimism at every juncture, but to say he "pushed" people to take plaquinil (illegally?) is either delusional or dishonest.

<comment><USER4> It's beyond optimism to latch on to an a specific treatment that has no real evidence attached, and say things like "what have you got to lose?" from your podium, speaking as president. It's deeply inappropriate.

Where you personally draw the line between "authority figure spouting off about something in official capacity" and "pushing" is up to you, but it's hardly delusional. It's also a hypothetical worst case scenario, if you read what I actually wrote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hydroxychloroquine is a really frustrating topic as there's so much bad science involved. The early studies were terrible and didn't give any useful information. And now we have more studies in prestigious journals that appear to be at least problematic, if not based on outright faked data. And on top of that are the politics, endorsing and promoting it before any substantial data could be collected.

We still have no idea whether hydroxychloroquine works or not for COVID19. And the hype is rather harmful and misleading as even if it did work, it is exceedingly unlikely to be a game changer but a small incremental improvement.

This is also certainly a failure of peer review. Though that has always been rather weak for cases of outright fraud and scientific misconduct, it still relies on the researchers to be honest about the data they represent.

<comment><USER7> >We still have no idea whether hydroxychloroquine works or not for COVID19

Don't we know to a first approximation that it doesn't work? This because it has been widely tried and there wasn't an "Awakenings" experience where the patients obviously got better. So if it works at all, it only does so at the margin. So hard to tell that it's necessary to gather a large statistical sample to know one way or the other.

<comment><USER6> I personally think it is unlikely to work, and at best might have a marginal effect. That is mostly because most of these early results don't pan out, so that is a reasonably safe bet in any case. And as you said, a very strong effect would likely have been shown by now, with all the attention and the large number of people getting the drug.

I was trying to keep objective when writing that, there simply wasn't any really well-designed trial yet. Though from what I read just an hour ago or so there is a new trial that is said to be randomized and well-designed that hasn't found an effect, but I haven't looked beyond the headlines there yet.

<comment><USER8> One of the potential reasons that ex-USSR has quite low death rate (even if we consider that numbers are forged, and actualy 5x (!) bigger than in reality is that all of these countries actively use antimalarial drugs.

<comment><USER9> Where does this claim come from? Ex-USSR sounds too broad. Any sources on the 'active use'?

<comment><USER8> Russia does according to various circumstantial pieces of evidence - keep in mind, being Russia, lot of this info is not public. All of ex-USSR shared similar medical system previously, and many (except for Baltic countries probably) tend to follow the advice of Russian doctors. I cannot give you some "hard evidence", only probably for Russia, yet the death rate and speed of infection spread is clearly lower in these countries.

<comment><USER9> Russia is currently third in the world with the highest number of confirmed cases (over 400k), after USA and Brazil. Deaths data reported from Russia are even more questionable, given their disposition, early in epidemic, to fudge it on comorbidities.

As for the malaria drugs, these were not in routine use, at least not prior to the current epidemic. Moreover, recently Russia seems to place its bets on a Japanese broad-spectrum antiviral drug Favipiravir [1].

[1]: [https://www.trialsitenews.com/russia-ministry-of-health- appr...](https://www.trialsitenews.com/russia-ministry-of-health-approves- avifavir-favipiravir-for-covid-19-patients-cuts-duration-of-illness-by- over-50/)

<comment><USER8> 1\. They have lots of cases, because they do lots of testing. Even then it is on 33rd place on the cases per capita scale. 2\. As I said, even if the actual death rate is more than 500% (unrealistic number) of claimed the number is still low, much lower than of the most of Europe. 3\. Of course they did not use malaria drugs prior to epidemic - why would they? They used quinine derivative long before May, cannot find a link right now, but here is a link for Uzbekistan ([https://podrobno.uz/cat/obchestvo/stalo-izvestno-chem- lechat...](https://podrobno.uz/cat/obchestvo/stalo-izvestno-chem-lechat- koronavirus-v-uzbekistane-/)) which uses chloroquine. The death rate is abysmal in Uzbekistan, and everywhere else in Central Asia, the other countries use similar methods. You may argue that Uzbekistan is not a reliable source of information, but there is clearly no outbreaks in that particular country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Desai, through the spokesperson, also said of the company's work with > patient data: "We use a great deal of artificial intelligence and machine > learning to automate this process as much as possible, which is the only way > a task like this is even possible."

I wonder if we are heading for an AI winter soon. AI has been heavily hyped, but is having a lot of real world failures and is becoming associated with a bunch of fraud. At this time, I am less inclined and I believe a company if they invoke "AI" or "machine learning".

Sure, businesses will still use machine learning for problems where it makes sense, but the hype of AI will die down and funding will dry up.

<comment><USER11> I think AI/Machine learning fits much better at the big big companies like google.

You only need one or 2-3 competiting Neuronal Networks for cancer detection and if you look how expensive it is to train that stuff, not many can actually do it anyway.

But what tripples down are pre learned networks you can easily reuse for your small use cases which are specific and have plenty of data and only need to outperform the existing solution.

<comment><USER12> >You only need one or 2-3 competiting Neuronal Networks for cancer detection and if you look how expensive it is to train that stuff, not many can actually do it anyway.

This is just wrong. You can train a cancer discriminator on a low end gpu on your desktop. The hard part is getting quality [often annotated] data - <USER2> thats why data brokers like Google are positioned to dominate.

<comment><USER11> So why are those papers with good results are not running on 'low end gpus'?

I don't mean running them, i mean training them.

<comment><USER12> Which papers? There are thousands of papers being published.

There are a couple potential reasons. Powerful GPUs accelerate research and iteration. Some state of the art problems have hit the limits of current theory and make up the deficit by building massive nets - but even there we already have multiple automatic pruning/optimization algorithms to shrink those nets so that they work with smaller resources.

Make no mistake, the field is advancing exponentially. The state of the art googlenet/inception that arguably kicked off the whole craze with image recognition are laughably obsolete now and easily outperformed by simpler nets.

MNIST was the gold standard for recognition problems just a couple years ago, and now it's considered a solved toy problem.

<comment><USER11> If i google for it specificly, the paper in nature states:

"This study had some limitations. Mammograms were downsized to fit the available GPU (8 GB). As more GPU memory becomes available, future studies will be able to train models using larger image sizes, or retain the original image resolution without the need for downsizing. Retaining the full resolution of modern digital mammography images will provide finer details of the ROIs and likely improve performance." [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48995-4](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-48995-4)

Here they use a Nvidia V100 [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336339974_Deep_Neur...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/336339974_Deep_Neural_Networks_Improve_Radiologists'_Performance_in_Breast_Cancer_Screening)

Which yeah okay is more reasonable than i thought. But the advantage will still be at who ever has the hardware and thats just cheap for google.

You wouldn't need a market for models, you would just use whatever research delivers from whoever has the most accurate data & hardware.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I gave up reading The Lancet some time ago. They have a poor record frankly with this kind of thing, Andrew Wakefield et al chief among them. They should have been cancelled over that one.

Anyway, the larger point is that these established journals have failed us. Their added value, already low, has dropped below zero in this pandemic. They are slow, opaque, rent seeking parasitic entities seemingly run by individuals who don't grasp basic statistics. The combination of preprint servers + twitter has proven far more effective in looking after humanity's best interests.

<comment><USER14> No, you don't understand this.

The Lancet is one of the most impactful journals in medicine, and has played an important role in shaping how medicine is practiced. It is rigorous in its process, but it's not foolproof. So yes, there are some bad studies that come through, but that is why healthcare professionals are TRAINED to interpret studies--we separate all the bullshit from the legitimately useful stuff.

You should see some of the crap that comes through in some of the lower-impact journals.

> The combination of preprint servers + twitter has proven far more effective > in looking after humanity's best interests.

This view is incredibly false and dangerous for so many reasons.

<comment><USER13> I am a healthcare professional, and I've published in one of the Lancet Journals. I understand perfectly fine.

Here's the thing - The Lancet is not impactful. Researchers choose to publish their impactful research in The Lancet. Other researchers donate their time to peer review this research. It is the researchers that have shaped how medicine is practiced, not The Lancet. It is the researchers and the peer reviewers that are rigorous. The Lancet itself is none of these things, it is a business run by people who don't do research. Without the people who actually do the work, or the patients that volunteer for the research, it is nothing. The Lancet, like all top tier journals, has long forgotten this distinction.

The problem isn't healthcare professionals lacking training. Take the Wakefield study. Did any doctor decide to stop offering vaccines because of that study? No. But it had a large impact on a the anti-vax narrative. These top journals have influence far beyond the professional sphere. This is why your suggestion we should give them a free pass is dangerous.

I think it is clearly true that rapid publication and out in the open discussion and peer review is very healthy. I don't see how you could argue otherwise? Why wouldn't I want to be able to read the opinion of someone I respect intellectually eg Andrew Gelman, on a study they have decided to comment on? How is that 'dangerous' if I am a healthcare professional who should be able to critically review a published paper as you suggest? Why do I need to rely on the reviewers the journal has chosen? The Journals want to keep things as they are to maintain their importance and their bottom line. We suffer as a result.

<comment><USER15> How can you criticize The Lancet for a small number of faked studies that have gotten through, but then praise pre-print servers, which are rife with complete nonsense?

Pre-print servers are great for getting results out quickly, but the level of quality control is extremely low. Journals are slower, but have a higher level of quality control.

There is a trade-off between speed and quality control, and both pre-print servers and journals sit at useful points in that trade-off.

Given the pressure to get information that might help fight CoVID-19 out quickly, journals have probably shifted towards the "quick/low-quality" end of the spectrum in the past few months. They'll move back when things calm down.

<comment><USER13> Specifically I am praising pre-print servers in the current crisis, not in general. I don't propose they can replace journals wholesale in the near future.

The harm done by bad research in the Lancet is colossal because the results are widely read and disseminated, that is obvious isn't it? Pre-print servers are still quite obscure. Anyway, arxiv has been running for a long time with much success in certain fields, and hasn't been overwhelmed with nonsense, so your characterisation of pre-print servers is poorly calibrated and hyperbolic.

Also the Lancet charges money for its products, and can therefore expect to be held to greater account.

<comment><USER15> So the pre-print servers are better because not a lot of people read pre- prints?

> arxiv has been running for a long time with much success in certain fields, > and hasn't been overwhelmed with nonsense, your characterisation of pre- > print servers is poorly calibrated and hyperbolic

I just said that the level of quality control on pre-print servers is extremely low - which it is. They check for very little beyond blatant plagiarism and obvious junk (determined within minutes).

I didn't say that pre-print servers are useless. They're very useful, but it's undeniable that prestigious journals apply an additional filter, which is much more exacting.

If you were to pick a random study from a pre-print server, and a random study from the Lancet, which do you think is more likely to be reliable? Which do you think has undergone more thorough peer-review?

<comment><USER13> You don't seem to be reading my comments. I agree with you that pre-print servers are not useless, and that prestigious journals are also not useless. Pre-print servers obviously have a lot of questionable content, this is immediately obvious. As I said, they are not a replacement for peer-reviewed journals (except maybe in the early stages of a pandemic, which was my long departed original point). It is also true that good research gets published in prestigious journals. Lots of good research also doesn't get published in prestigious journals because the editor of the Lancet decides it isn't interesting enough, or they chose clueless or callous reviewers who kill the paper in peer-review, or they just accepted a paper with the opposite result last week or for many other arbitrary reasons unrelated to the quality of the research or utility to humanity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The best quote is at the end:

"Here we are in the middle of a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of deaths, and the two most prestigious medical journals have failed us."

There should be prison time if an investigation determines that this was done to increase certain drug sales.

<comment><USER17> I strongly believe there were people at the Lancet who _wanted_ to believe the HCQ study, regardless of how well it was run.

See, if you can skewer HCQ, that means you get to take a shot at a certain politician too.

There were a number of researchers who criticized the study's structure and numbers from day 1. Over 100 researchers wrote an open letter about how skeptical they were.

I understand journals make mistakes, but this was egregious and smells like agenda to me.

<comment><USER18> > See, if you can skewer HCQ, that means you get to take a shot at a certain > politician too.

For clarity, and I'm sure you agree: Trump's boosting of this drug as a "miracle" and "greatest breakthrough" was absolutely irresponsible _even if_ the drug actually works, for the simple reason that we didn't know if it did (frankly we still don't), and that it is known to have significant risks (it still does, even usingly only baseline data and ignoring this study).

This was a bad study. It's possible that the editors at the Lancet hate Trump. But... you're simply reading too much here. Bad science gets published all the time. In particular, bad science gets published in circumstances like we have now where there is desperate need for "fast science".

Not everything has to be an "agenda" by global elites to damage your favorite politician.

But even granting your framing: why are you so concerned about the Lancet boosting bad data as an "agenda" but not with Trump doing _exactly the same thing_ , with even less evidence? Why is it an "agenda" only when your enemies do it?

<comment><USER17> Where did I defend Trump's tweets? Where did I say it was OK for him to give false and misleading medical advice? Obviously he should NOT. HAVE. DONE. THOSE. THINGS. I think you're wearing your bias on your sleeve a bit too much. I get it, you hate him too. That's fine. But it's blinding you just like it did whoever let this garbage pass muster.

Just because Trump does a thing that is despicable doesn't mean we give everyone else a pass too.

<comment><USER18> Where did I defend the Lancet? Where did I say it was OK for them to publish that paper? Obviously they should NOT. HAVE. DONE. THAT.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea -- literally everything you wrote can be flipped right around, which is why you need to consider whether or not your own sleeve is maybe a little decorated.

Seriously: I agree with you. I'm pointing out, however, that you're jumping in to claim "bias" by the "media" in a context where the "other side" very clearly already had blood on its hands over the same issue. And treating one side and not the other is helping no one.

<comment><USER17> "Where did I defend the Lancet"

Umm.... right here...

"It's possible that the editors at the Lancet hate Trump. But... you're simply reading too much here. Bad science gets published all the time. In particular, bad science gets published in circumstances like we have now where there is desperate need for 'fast science'"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> ICMR in India does _not_ trust the Lancet study and have formally objected to it.

[https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/coronavirus-csir- ch...](https://www.thehindu.com/sci-tech/health/coronavirus-csir-chief-flays- hcq-trial-suspension/article31712065.ece)

[https://www.news18.com/news/india/icmr-says-hcq-reducing- ris...](https://www.news18.com/news/india/icmr-says-hcq-reducing-risk-among- healthcare-workers-even-as-lancet-study-questions-drug-benefits-2647007.html)

[https://theprint.in/talk-point/lancet-hcq-study-row-did- who-...](https://theprint.in/talk-point/lancet-hcq-study-row-did-who-experts- rush-to-damn-the-drug-due-to-trump-modi-politics/434908/)

</comment><comment><USER17> Chloroquine and its derivatives were given to thousands, if not millions, of people for years. We know and understand the safety profile of this drug well. To think that all of a sudden it became more dangerous was silly and unreasonable.

This study always smelled bad. The media was _so_ quick to champion it everywhere though. Why might that be I wonder? Where are the retractions now? The whole thing is disgusting.

The media in the US is doing everyone a disservice. Because of this less people are going to believe "science" and more people are going to just retreat to their echo chambers and believe whatever they want. I know I'm not going to trust the Lancet or the NEJM ever again. It's all political now.

What a mess.

<comment><USER20> "I know I'm not going to trust the Lancet or the NEJM ever again. It's all political now."

This is an absurd reaction and I suspect you know it. There isn't a single scientific journal in the world not subject to some bias, trend, or failure of one form or another. To dismiss an entire platform because of an imperfect record amounts to an abdication of your own responsibility to form your own opinions about scientific matters. This is a responsibility for which journal reviewers can only ever take partial responsibility for both practical and intrinsic reasons.

Peer review is not a rubber stamp which blesses anything which passes through it as "TRUTH." It is a minimal standard and subject, at any rate, to all the uncertainties and biases implicit in any human endeavor. It is entirely possible this paper represents a political bias. Almost everything does. It still falls to us to make reasonable judgments about science. What doesn't make sense is to reject the entire process because it fails to meet some unreachable expectation of perfection.

<comment><USER17> > This is a responsibility for which journal reviewers can only ever take > partial responsibility for both practical and intrinsic reasons.

So what you're saying is we should never fully trust these journals? We should always be skeptical?

That's what I'm saying too...

<comment><USER14> If you're healthcare, you're taught not to trust results because it was published under a brand-name journal.

YES, you should be skeptical, but mostly not at the journal-level. You need to be skeptical at the article-level. That is why it's so important to be actually TRAINED to interpret the studies.

The abstract of a trial is like an "advertisement" for the study. You quickly scan it to see if the study is worth reading. If it is, you make multiple passes of the article, identifying biases, understanding the study context, calculating ratios and numbers, reading through the lens of your own practice, and a bunch of other things.

<comment><USER21> i am in the process of compiling a list of ways to quickly spot flawed studies. do you mind sharing your best tips?

<comment><USER22> There is a course on this (taught Autumn 2019 at U Wash) that will also soon be published as a book:

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's amazing how big of a mess this is:

\- NEJM and the Lancet published (and "peer reviewed") this article, or apparently just rubber stamped it.

\- The company doesn't have any semblance of having the capability of doing the work it purports to do.

\- The article has severe inconsistencies, for example, do you really have data on 98k hospitalized patients? [http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05/30/implausible- healt...](http://freerangestats.info/blog/2020/05/30/implausible-health-data- firm)

\- The company apparently was founded in 2008 but no data from them was used in any peer-reviewed journal until this year. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgi...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/covid-19-surgisphere- who-world-health-organization-hydroxychloroquine)

And governments and the WHO bought this, hook line and sinker?

<comment><USER24> Look at how easily the original flawed pro-HCQ paper was bought into (edit: removed my false statement it was retracted - I think it was criticized by the publishing society of the journal, but not retracted.). Many people were treated with HCQ across the world and so far there is no evidence it did anything to help them.

An important lesson here about the limits of peer review and science. A lot depends on the original authors not being frauds or simply making mistakes as we've seen time and again with scandals.

<comment><USER19> There is a truckload of evidence unless you have closed your eyes to it. Anyways many national medical boards of south-asia have adopted HCQ formally.

[https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/may/29/icmr- wri...](https://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/2020/may/29/icmr-writes-to- who-disagreeing-with-hcq-assessment-officials-say-international-trial-dosage- four-ti-2149702.html)

[https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/hcq-and-ppe- used-t...](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/hcq-and-ppe-used- together-cut-covid-risk-by-80-icmr/articleshow/76146220.cms)

<comment><USER24> Looked at both your links

1\. Seems to be saying there isn't currently a health risk posed by the continuing of their trial.

2\. Says they tried using HCQ and PPE together and found health providers were catching the virus less. Nothing in the article attempts to break out whether HCQ or PPE was responsible for it - obviously it's common sense that using PPE would reduce the risk of catching the virus.

This is hardly a truckload of evidence at all. Also the original study from France was about using HCQ for patients who had already caught the virus, not prophylactic use. HCQ proponents shift around between possible uses of the drug as it becomes clearer that there is a lack of evidence for one way to use it.

Could evidence be found in the future that the drug has some small beneficial effect? It's possible - but what's clear is that claims that it was a miracle cure are completely unfounded.

<comment><USER19> Yes, I guess I should have posted the other links apart from the French study. Apologies. There is also a massive ongoing study in India which is expected to post findings by July end.

Statement from American Journal of Epidemiology, [https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance- article/doi/10.1093/aje...](https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance- article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586)

Statement from Yale [https://medicine.yale.edu/yigh/news- article/25085/](https://medicine.yale.edu/yigh/news-article/25085/)

HCQ Studies [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.22.20040758v3) [https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20073379v...](https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.27.20073379v1)

The older study on SARS [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1232869/)

<comment><USER24> Ongoing studies should continue and we can see if there is an provable effect, now that the claim of health danger has been discredited.

My guess right now is that at best it will be as effective as remdesivir, but really until an actual RCT is conducted there is no proof either way.

The only thing I'm sure of it isn't a "100%" cure as was touted by some politicians since if so, that would be obvious by now as the drug has been tried since January/February and yet patients treated with it are still dying.

<comment><USER25> > My guess right now is that at best it will be as effective as remdesivir, > but really until an actual RCT is conducted there is no proof either way.

By now, it also matters _when_ you give it. Lopinavir/ritonavir were called ineffective in NEJM, but a recent publication (in Lancet, ironically) says that perhaps (no placebo, blech) that given within 7 days of symptom onset they may be beneficial.

Remedisivir looks best in patients with moderate (requiring oxygen) but not critical disease.

And as for RCTs on HCQ, one of those (for post-exposure prophylaxis) from UMN should be apparently be published soon (no idea when or how: their PI is being, IMO rightly so, tight-lipped), and another is under review. A third one is ongoing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gator-io The corruption of science should be aggressively confronted.

If you dig into Surgisphere, you will see they have significant consulting engagements with Johnson and Johnson. Not saying that's necessarily bad, but so much bad science about Covid and HCQ seems geared towards promoting high- priced treatments like Remdesivir, and not low-cost preventative measures like making sure you're not D deficient. All these studies need to be evaluated based on who's funding them or the political agenda behind them.

HCQ seems like it's been targeted for destruction. Every study I've read on it shows you shouldn't use it in late stages of disease. Fair enough, but the theory of its effectiveness (as a Zinc ionophore) hasn't been fully studied, although there is a good amount of anecdotal and country-level evidence it works well if taken early (with Zinc).

These garbage studies are dangerous and should be called out loudly.

<comment><USER26> I have been wondering why so many HCQ studies do not include Zinc. A couple months ago I watched a video that detailed how Zinc once inside a cell could block replication of coronaviruses. And that HCQ being a Zinc ionophore gets the Zinc into the cell. The relevant study was published approximately 10 years ago.

<comment><USER24> Zinc has been pushed as a cure/treatment for common cold for decades.

The actual track record of whether the OTC zinc tablets you can buy in a store work is quite uncertain though. Lots of studies coming down one way or another, and uncertain levels of statistical rigor. [https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common- cold/e...](https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/common-cold/expert- answers/zinc-for-colds/faq-20057769)

It is easy enough to make a video with what seems convincing but many of these neat explanations don't actually work once you get into the human body.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Media & select journals helped justify trillions of societal costs when many could be saved from death by _early_ treatment with zinc + zinc ionophore (HCQ/quercetin) therapeutic that costs less than one dollar. Some poorly designed HCQ studies have used late treatment or omitted zinc, which is known not to work. Specific cohorts are also excluded, including cardiac patients with long QT interval and some malaria-prone populations with G6PD gene.

Some US states have blocked pharmacies from filling doctor prescriptions for HCQ, instead of advocating for increased manufacturing capacity within US factories that make HCQ/ingredients. Meanwhile, we boosted ventilator production, where hospitals received $30K for each late-stage patient placed on ventilation, with only 20% chance of survival. We blocked early treatment that worked and we funded expensive late-stage equipment that did not work.

All this with more global information sharing than ever before in the history of humanity. Since we were collectively unable to filter/parse data generated by wildly different economic incentives, where the consequences were DEATH, how can we design new systemic incentives to avoid repeating such mistakes?

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/02/prof-lockdown- ne...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/06/02/prof-lockdown-neil- ferguson-admits-sweden-used-science-uk-has/)

 _> Neil Ferguson, who became known as "professor lockdown" after convincing Boris Johnson to radically curtail everyday freedoms, acknowledged that, despite relying on "quite similar science", the Swedish authorities had "got a long way to the same effect" without a full lockdown._

<comment><USER28> I never understood the hate for what Sweden did during the pandemic both here and in media. It's like there was a whole misinformation campaign to frame Sweden's approach as irresponsible and deadly. Article after article in the news, all the comments here back in April, the list goes on. Yet the data shows Sweden pretty much as stable as any other country.

[http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid- visualization/](http://91-divoc.com/pages/covid-visualization/)

<comment><USER29> [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect- of-s...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/03/architect-of-sweden- coronavirus-strategy-admits-too-many-died-anders-tegnell)

> Sweden's chief epidemiologist and the architect of its light-touch approach > to the coronavirus has acknowledged that the country has had too many deaths > from Covid-19 and should have done more to curb the spread of the virus.

> Sweden's death rate per capita was the highest in the world over the seven > days to 2 June, figures suggest. This week the government bowed to mounting > opposition pressure and promised to set up a commission to look into its > Covid-19 strategy.

> Sweden's 4,468 fatalities from Covid-19 represent a death toll of 449 per > million inhabitants, compared with 45 in Norway, 100 in Denmark and 58 in > Finland. Its per-million tally remains lower than the corresponding figures > of 555, 581 and 593 in Italy, Spain and the UK respectively.

<comment><USER30> That's a _seven_ _day_ death rate.

The specific shortcoming its government is looking into, according to the article, was inability to "protect care homes where half of all Sweden's Covid-19 deaths have occurred."

Sorry, don't need a society-wide lockdown to protect nursing and group homes, which are highly regulated and often government-operated.

Lies, bad lies, and statistics.

<comment><USER29> 10x the total per-capita deaths of Norway (third paragraph I quoted is not seven-day; seven-day rate has held consistently higher than their neighbors; it's not a short-term aberration, and it remains that high _after_ locking down care homes etc.) is an issue you can't just handwave away.

<comment><USER31> But much lower per capita rate than Belgium which had full lockdown. So obviously a lockdown is not a magic fix. we do not even know how effective they are since there are many more differences than lockdown/no lockdown between Norway and Sweden.

<comment><USER29> [https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/0...](https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live- updates/2020/04/22/841005901/why-belgiums-death-rate-is-so-high-it-counts- lots-of-suspected-covid-19-cases)

> Belgium has surged to the top of the grim leaderboard because authorities > decided to be radically transparent, if perhaps a bit speculative, about the > toll from the novel coronavirus. They include not only deaths that are > confirmed to be virus-related, but even those suspected of being linked, > whether the victim was tested or not.

> As of Wednesday, Belgium, with a population of over 11.4 million, has > counted a total 6,262 deaths from COVID-19 — roughly 540 per million > citizens — and more than half of those deaths were in nursing homes. Of > those 52%, just 4.5% were confirmed as having been infected, yet all are > counted in the national tally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> To the comments suggesting preprint servers as the solution, it's worth remembering that they are subject to much higher levels of noise, especially at high volume times like now.

In early April, my co-authors and I were planning to submit a computational COVID manuscript (I was the first author). The journals were overrun with COVID submissions, and _required_ preprint submission. This was a sticking point for my co-authors, who felt they had a much bigger paper on their hands given more time, and were opposed to a preprint submission. Personally, I was in favour of the preprint, since I felt we had hit the upper limit of what could be achieved with our collective resources. The other authors disagreed, and outvoted me to bring in a big name author who could steam roll his way into a reputable journal. The only way they could tempt a big name scientist would be to offer up the first author credit, so I bowed out.

At the time, there were 4,500 preprints dealing with COVID, which just seems bonkers. Honestly, even most of the published work around COVID is of poor quality.

<comment><USER33> What, they forced you out of a paper you did most of the work on?

<comment><USER32> Honestly, it's not that straight forward, which is why I didn't mind leaving the manuscript in the end. I did much of the work bringing it to a workable manuscript, but I didn't originate the project.

I was approached by the corresponding author, who had originated and done most of the initial work. This was just a data dump, and he felt he didn't have the time or the ability to polish it into a manuscript. My contribution was to analyse the data, and write most of the manuscript. However, it became clear that the two other authors were pushing a narrative which I felt wasn't well supported by the data we had. We discussed two possible options: bring in an immunologist to determine if our results make sense, which I voted for, or stick to our guns. The second option would have also required submitting to a preprint, which they were against. The corresponding author felt the claims were justified, and decided that a more forceful (and prestigeous) first author was what was needed instead, and I agreed. Since my contribution wasn't all that much (about a week of my time?), and I wasn't convinced by the findings, I didn't mind losing the authorship. This sort of negotiating happens all the time in academia, so it's unsurprising.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Whenever this kind of thing happens, you get a lot of people advocating for the abolition of peer review and its replacement with Twitter or something. I simply don't understand that.

Normal peer review means "we showed our work to about 2 people who know what they're talking about and they thought it was okay."

Preprints mean "nobody who knows what they're talking about has looked at this carefully yet, but we think it's okay."

Viral Twitter threads mean "here's my opinion, which hasn't been shown to anybody who actually knows what they're talking about, but which has been selected for maximum public response."

Of course, in all cases, real credibility only comes once a paper has been looked over by _hundreds_ of people who know what they're talking about. Yes, showing something to only 2 experts (who themselves are very busy, and are powerless to directly verify many of the paper's claims) is not a perfect initial quality cut -- but no cut at all is worse.

If you really believe in the power of Twitter, take a long, hard look at the sensational, outrageous tweets you've liked. Go look at a sample of 100 old threads and see how many actually held up. The accuracy rate will not even be comparable to the Lancet's.

<comment><USER35> The credibility problem has been partially solved with a PageRank type algorithm. (Sergei and Larry were actually inspired by the weighting system of research papers)

Highly regarded scientific journals like the Lancet are used to accelerate this weighting process.

The problem is that nowadays they seem kind of outdated, opaque and corrupt on many levels.

Nobody wants to suppress peer-review, simply replace the journals mafia with something less corrupt.

<comment><USER34> But this isn't a case of a journal acting like a "mafia". This is a case where something bad slipped past peer review, because of the inherent limitations of peer review. The reason is that expert time and attention is intrinsically scarce (if you double the number of experts, you double the number of papers produced, and hence double the amount of time that must be spent on peer review), and really properly vetting a paper takes a massive amount of time. This wouldn't be changed by system reform.

In my opinion, the best option for everybody who's serious about this is to read a lot of papers, until you become "well-calibrated", i.e. when you have a good handle on the overall chances a preprint is true, vs. a Twitter thread, vs. a paper in a top-tier journal. This has to be learned from experience. Reform doesn't change the fact that you need to do this -- it just adds yet another venue, either more or less reliable than the previous ones, that you also need to become calibrated on.

<comment><USER36> > read a lot of papers

In order to do this, those that are serious need to be able to access papers, but paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for Elsevier can put them out of reach.

<comment><USER34> Indeed, but that _is_ the problem that preprints can solve. (As in, they don't solve the problem of telling what is correct, because that's just inherently hard, but they solve the problem of giving access so people can learn to tell.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So much of the lockdown and gov't response around the world has been political. It fundamentally rests on virtue, not science. It's clearer with every passing day. There were legitimate concerns in the beginning, but by now it's bizarre to see when people decide to ignore lockdown with the right political justifications.

</comment><comment><USER38> This guy [0] did some good analysis of the "mysterious company".

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23394357)

<comment><USER39> Linking directly to the article here: [https://www.medicineuncensored.com/a-study-out-of-thin- air](https://www.medicineuncensored.com/a-study-out-of-thin-air)

It reads like a Muddy Waters (famous stock shorter) screed. Good stuff. Fair to say the data is made up. The question is, who would be incentivized to do such a thing? Things that make you go hmmm....

<comment><USER38> When such a large study is published in a big Journal, claiming that a drug might have a negative impact on lives of people in the trials, the authorities will be considered stupid not to pay attention to it at all and continue the trials. That is exactly what they did: They paused their trials temporarily to look at the evidence of this study, examined it and found that it was indeed controversial and lacked solid data. Now they have resumed the trials again. The media sells it as a clickbait story "All trials STOPPED because of a flawed study" implying they were stopped PERMANENTLY to excite the general audience. For them it is entirely something that brings them huge revenue from ads when they write such "emotinally driven" stories, they do not care about the effects it has on the public in the long term by reducing faith in world health organizations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Can anyone explain why there's a new trend I. Saying a negative, then saying "but" and stating another negative. Like...

"He was a dishonest man. But, he cheated on his wife"

"He had a nut allergy. But, he had a dairy allergy."

It's like they're saying: "he's a good father. However, he had a dark side." But they're really not.

Also, at the beginning they say "it may be unraveling" and begin to show how it never had any legs to stand on. Just confusing communication for an article.

<comment><USER41> _Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly._

I think the quote above is what you're referring to. If so, the structure "Not only {small_point}, but {large_point}" is extremely common and used both with negatives and positives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> OT - lets face it. Half of the country wants to see Trump fail and another half want him to succeed. For covid we should hope 100% of country want to see him succeed.

The problem is, part of that half is entire media enterprise (BTW, next adminstration will face the wrath of the other half of that enterprise) who have invested so much of their own credibility on Trump failing.

As a result I have little confidence (just knowing how the CYA-mindset works inside any type of corporations) that we will ever hear a correction with (or nearly with) the same magnitude that will inform the public of the updates. It's unclear what data ultimately comes out of the Hydroxychloroquine research, maybe no update is needed. But I just don't have the confidence we'll get any mea culpa broadcasted across the airways. Nor will I expect much, if any, of my social media contacts who posted some of the articles to post the correction.

Trump is a polarizing figure, but I don't understand (outside of increase ratings) why the media falls for his traps day after day.

It's possible Trump might accidentally be right once (or not completely wrong), if the media can not remain objective, the entire nation will lose faith in the institution of journalism as a whole. Opening the doors for all types of conspiracies and people searching for alternative news sources. This will eventually lead to a showdown between Facebook and these media entities that Facebook should ban anything outside of the few established news outlets to prevent the spread of disinformation. Which is another bad policy, because people ultimately leave Facebook to other places to find these disinformation or alternate sources.

Doing some basic fact checking on this company, before taking their research at face value, especially given there was so much red flags, is what should separate established media from someone writing a blog post in Romania. This is really a massive failure, given the vitality of information around COIVD.

</comment><comment><USER43> ... and the W.H.O. based their decision making on this ...

What exactly _is_ surgisphere? Hackers that paid for illicit data feeds? A total fabrication? Chinese misinformation? Nothing makes any sense.

</comment><comment><USER44> > _Antimalarial drugs touted by the White House as possible COVID-19 > treatments looked to be not just ineffective, but downright deadly._

Immediately when the long knives came out against HCQ I was cynical. A drug on the market for 60 years (and over the counter in many countries) is "extremely dangerous"?

Or, more likely because it's out of patent there's a lot of _money_ interested in exploring other things as a treatment.

<comment><USER45> >A drug on the market for 60 years (and over the counter in many countries) is "extremely dangerous

Tylenol has been on the market for a 60 years, often over the counter, but off label recommendations involving a high dose could be deadly. Drugs should always be considered "extremely dangerous."

<comment><USER46> Anything in high dose can be dangerous. So that's not helpful.

Anything. For instance, water.

<comment><USER45> Yep, taking ~8 extra strength Tylenol twice a day is comparable to drinking however many gallons of water a day you would need to cause problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> So they suspect that Surgisphere has manufactured or falsified the data?

<comment> gator-io Yup. More than suspicious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> > Chaccour says both NEJM and The Lancet should have scrutinized the > provenance of Surgisphere's data more closely before publishing the studies. > "Here we are in the middle of a pandemic with hundreds of thousands of > deaths, and the two most prestigious medical journals have failed us," he > says.

Well maybe that's one positive thing here and people will be more skeptical about where this data is coming from

> "We use a great deal of artificial intelligence and machine learning to > automate this process as much as possible, which is the only way a task like > this is even possible."

He meant it as a defense and to paint themselves as highly knowledgeable professionals using advanced technology, but I read it as "we used machine learning to generate this data".

</comment><comment><USER49> For reference, this is the original study and HN comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23273615)

</comment><comment><USER50> The lancet has really fscked up a number of elements in Covid19. Not only this, they also published a letter on March 11th saying that NSAIDS make COVID worst.

This is a consistent problem with them recently. I'm more then willing to say that it's more due to error in judgement then malice, but the political ramifications are obvious.

</comment><comment><USER51> I always think that you can tell when a 'narrative' is being pushed in the news when there's an obvious lack of dialectic examination of the issue at hand across multiple outlets (even better when the same keywords are used across publishers). This was observable during the WMD, Russiagate, and yeah, the HCQ stories, and many other issues. It's a pattern which, if you read many sources of news every day (thanks RSS), you can spot pretty quickly.

The other thing is hyperbole, which may be a little harder to discern if you don't have direct experience with the subject. I used to take HCQ regularly so was pretty "read up" on the health impacts. The fear-mongering I was seeing in the news about the risks was a bit much. A common refrain about Trump is that if he publicly said cancer was bad, the media would advocate cancer for everyone.

I don't know if it's better or worse that journalists wear their politics on their sleeves these days, but the one person out there who still regards journalists as competent objective reporters should probably read the mess they make of science and legal reporting and then realize the same level of competence is applied to domestic and foreign affairs reporting.

</comment><comment><USER52> There are a lot of comments questioning the political motives of publishing this research quickly. In medicine, if there is even a hint of increased risk of death, then studies are stopped. It happens a lot. In two weeks the journals published statements and corrections. Imagine if this same article was posted that said the drug was killing patients for two weeks, and the journals withheld the research because it was politically sensitive. This was a mistake, and human error and bias may have come into play, but it was a mistake that erred on the side of caution. Unfortunately, if the drug does prevent deaths, then it could also be just as bad an error. Hindsight is 20/20\. I wish politics never entered this equation, and I blame the president for pushing politics into medicine during a pandemic. It was dangerous and these are the issues we are now facing.

</comment><comment><USER53> More: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23272222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23272222)

</comment><comment><USER54> Despite the helpfulness of quick exchange of laboratory results via preprint, peer review is clearly going to remain central to the scientific process.

<comment><USER55> I completely agree. It seems great now, because the situation is dire, to get preprints instantly as they become available. But people don't seem to realize just how much crap gets into preprints and ultimately fails during peer review. There's so much garbage out there now, and it can and will (and probably already is) be used as just more political fodder.

I like reading preprints as much as the next geek, but I think we might ultimately be better served if the papers weren't released until after peer review.

<comment><USER56> Do you think that people will start to read preprints for what they really are? If that's the case then I think they'll never go away. Open review by peers before publication is incredibly useful compared to peer review. Imagine if these 3 papers could have been scrutinized before getting that Lancet peer review stamp that has led to bad policy decisions and research decisions by so many. People would have started questioning Surgisphere's data sooner and wouldn't have taken their results so seriously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Perhaps this is the phenomenon behind fake news being applied to medical research?

</comment><comment><USER58> It feels like science is becoming more like religion every day.

</comment><comment> gator-io Fantastic analysis of the Lancet study's flaws: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUD_wvkNhnk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUD_wvkNhnk)

<comment><USER59> This is a garbage analysis that ends up with a plug for vitamins and t-shirts. You don't write off a journal for making mistakes. Retraction is part of the scientific process.

What this YouTuber failed to mention is that there were already a couple of other studies before this one that reached the same conclusion - that there was no evidence of it working for COVID-19, or that it potentially made things worse in the most sick patients. The retraction of a single paper doesn't invalidate the body of evidence (albeit small) provided by other papers prior to it.

<comment> gator-io Don't get hung up on the how the channel survives. The channel, whose host has a Phd in pathology, has been focused on Covid issues for months, after being demonitized by YouTube.

<comment><USER60> If a channel advertises snake oil supplements and products then that should be a valid reason to criticize them.

<comment> gator-io And just to be clear, the supplements are recommendations based on research, not advertisements. No commissions.

Go back a few episodes and you'll see the rationale for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> A lot of people got hung up in the politics of this issue. A prominent politician endorsed using hydroxycholoroquine.

Bill Maher recently made a good point: "Liberals are falling into lionizing someone because because they are the anti-Trump. Even before the virus America had a far too chronically sick population which is one reason we've lost so many now. We need to demand something better than how the entrenched medical establishment manages symptoms but cures and heals far too little".

I guess pushing "the narrative" was more important than the science.

<comment><USER62> The narrative was never that the drug was good or bad. What people were upset about was that a politician stept in and started pushing for treatments. It makes no difference what so ever if a politician turns out to be _correct_ , it's an absolutely unthinkable thing to do regardless.

Now, you could argue that people _wanted_ the politician to be right or wrong (depending on views) and that this muddled the reporting, and that's probably right.

But it doesn't change the fact that everyone should be upset when their politician starts doing experts' jobs (poorly).

<comment><USER63> >The narrative was never that the drug was good or bad.

Multiple prominent journalists came out saying this like: "if you take HCQ, you will die."

Thousands of headlines were written saying "Donald Trump pushing _dangerous_ drug" etc.

The narrative from the left was that the drug was bad. The narrative from the right was that it is a miracle cure. NEITHER of them are correct yet.

<comment><USER64> >Multiple prominent journalists came out saying this like: "if you take HCQ, you will die."

Huh? Can you point to some of those claims?

<comment><USER63> Sure: [https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-neil-cavuto- shocked...](https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-neil-cavuto-shocked- trump-hyroxychloroquine-announcement-video-2020-5)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> How much of this coordinated FUDDing of HCQ was knee-jerk because Trump touted it, and how much of it was because progressives (the rich ones, especially) wanted a higher death toll, longer lockdowns, and more overall suffering to blame on Trump?

If they willingly buried a viable, cheap, unpatented, easy to produce therapy, then they have blood on their hands.</comment>


Show HN: A gong that rings automatically when we get a new client - <AUTHOR> http://engineering.rjmetrics.com/2013/09/27/the-gonginator

<comment><USER2> nice job and idea.

this reminded me of github using traffic lights for their continious integration system.

[1] [http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2010/05/19/the_github...](http://urbanhonking.com/ideasfordozens/2010/05/19/the_github_stoplight/)

[2] [https://github.com/atduskgreg/GitHub- Stoplight](https://github.com/atduskgreg/GitHub-Stoplight)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do people who are hard at work and trying to concentrate really want to be interrupted by a gong at random intervals? It must get really old after about the third time. I'd much prefer to get an e-mail each week with a list of new customers, or just put it on an internal web site.

</comment><comment><USER4> I chuckled at the link to ifttt about page

[https://ifttt.com/wtf](https://ifttt.com/wtf)</comment>


A PaaS Comparison You Don't Want to Miss: CloudFoundry, Microsoft Azure + More - <AUTHOR> http://blog.gopivotal.com/cloud-foundry-pivotal/features/paas-comparison-cloud-foundry-microsoft-azure-google-app-engine-amazon-heroku-and-openshift

<comment><USER2> The way this was written allowed me to scan and come back here going "Why did you even share this, there's nothing here."\--so I looked back and most of the content seems to be in the slides, which can only be accessed by a single link. The picture of the "lessons learned" slide made me think that's all there was.

Instead of a picture that was taken from the video, embed the video.

Instead of a picture of one of the slides that--to my interpretation admitted "we don't have very confident results"\--include the presentation.

As it is, this article's presentation (not the slides) lost me after 40 seconds.</comment>


Apple is a hypocrite (and so are we) - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-is-a-hypocrite-so-are-we/ <comment><USER2> And the author is a massive hypocrite too.

> Apple seem to suggest that their engagement will make the local people > happier.

> We recognize that Chinese aren't going to be Gorbacheved.

Did anybody follow what happened to regular citizens of the Soviet Union after it broke apart? Economy output cut by half per capital, life expectation reduced drastically. And freedom in some of the republic got much worse as they became absolute dictatorships. And this guy speak like it was some glorious event for the people.

Presumably, on his moral high horse, he would agree that the democratic government of Iraq was a massive improvement over Saddam Hussein? But such judgement should be left to the Iraqi people, and last I have checked they are not exactly happy with what happened to them in the last decade and half.

</comment><comment><USER3> Apple's P.R. is very effective at painting their totalitarian lust for control over their platform as a pro-user, pro- freedom stance, when in reality they are very much like China in their tenets.

when faced with an adversary they simply cannot manipulate into submission, like they do to Western democracies, they cower and roll over to the side of money.

When Apple's fanatical fans defend their actions as "complying with Chinese law", they're merely regurgitating the messaging Apple's Juggernaut of a P.R. machine has programmed them with.

<comment><USER4> Not sure why this comment is being being downvoted. While the phrasing could be better, the point stands.

It's frankly ridiculous that people are fighting for their democracy in a country, but Apple won't allow them to install an app that can help them track police activity.

These are thousand dollar devices, that these people OWN, but on which they still can't install the apps they choose. Honestly, fuck Apple for this. It makes me so angry to see this BS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I too remember the American worker demanding production be outsourced to China. /s

Now that this has resulted in the choice to live like the Amish or buy Chinese goods, he is a hypocrite for choosing the latter. How convenient that multinationals that drive US trade policy, and ordinary workers, both fall under the author's 'we' umbrella.</comment>


Inmates in Finland are training AI as part of prison labor - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/28/18285572/prison-labor-finland-artificial-intelligence-data-tagging-vainu <comment><USER2> Why should I be outraged at this? How is this much worse than any other prison job?

<comment><USER3> exactly, the only outrage is them being paid and not using that money to help the victims of their actions

<comment><USER4> Depriving them of pay is not required. They are still humans themselves, and they're paying for their actions with prison term.

Societies that confuse prison with vengeance have more crime, and end up worse for victims themselves.

<comment><USER3> not true, even in feudal times there were less crimes because of harsher punishments, even in much harder times, i don't think that prisoners should be abused by the way while in jail also (and this happens mostly by other prisoners as well) that should be strictly prohibited

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you're pulling stuff from out of your ass, the truth here is corrective vs punitive, corrective leads to a lot less recidivism, unlike punitive. All you have to look at is recidivism rates in the US vs northern European countries that have corrective prison systems in place. Norway has a 20% recidivism rate compared to the US's 67.8% withing 3 years, and 76.6% within 5 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Good intent from the labellers isn't always _required_ for a good model but it certainly helps, especially if the model training process is unsophisticated. I'm sceptical enough of this being the case for poorly-paid annotators - surely for prisoners it could be even worse?

<comment><USER7> If we trust for profit private prisons to fight wildfires I don't see why we wouldn't trust them for other things.

[https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/california-is-paying- inmates...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/california-is-paying-inmates-1-an- hour-to-fight-wildfires.html)

<comment><USER4> > _for profit private prisons_

Who trusts "for profit private prisons"? Other than "libertarians" and people making money off of running them?

<comment><USER8> What is with people and thinking all libertarians are idiots? I'm liberatarian and I despise for profit prisons. They have perverse incentives

<comment><USER9> Not sure where you're writing from, but there's some muddying of the term in the US. While libertarianism outside the US has roots in anarchist anti- authoritarianism, in the US, right-wing libertarianism has a bit of a reputation for using anti-statist language to advocate for stripping away any kind of limitations on capitalist enterprise, regardless the incentives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Its getting so hard to spot the April Fools day stories.

After reading, I'm guessing this isn't one of them.

<comment><USER11> It is not a hoax/joke.

For the record, the article is older than that. The CSA press release is over two weeks old.

<comment><USER10> I know. I was scanning the front page for likely fools day stories, and this seemed the most likely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Unconventional, but as a means to fill a "Mechanical Turk gap" it seems like a fine approach as the results can be isolated and tested. Inmates read and summarize with the benefit of being paid (and perhaps learning something in the process based upon the material read), Vainu gets a training set.

That said, the headline just begs for a "Alexa, shank the snitch" kind of joke.

</comment><comment><USER13> As I've been saying, the "AI threat" is not that it'll autonomously decide to hate humans but that it will, under the control and guidance of actual humans, be used for anti-human purposes.

<comment><USER14> The major, implemented, commercial use cases for AI have so far been anti- human:

\- Youtube's deep learning recommendation engine. Thanks to Guillaume Chaslot for publicly stating what I suspected was going on at Google [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/technology/youtube- conspi...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/19/technology/youtube-conspiracy- stars.html)

\- Google, Facebook, etc use of machine learning for advertising optimization.

\- Presumable widespread use of facial recognition cameras in China (an area I don't know a lot about.)

How are we supposed to expect the leaders in AI to perform ethically in the future, or today, when their first foray in to machine learning commercialization has been sloppy and ethics-free?

<comment><USER15> > How are we supposed to expect the leaders in AI to perform ethically in the > future, or today, when their first foray in to machine learning > commercialization has been sloppy and ethics-free?

Remove the billions and billions of dollars in profit to be reaped from making humans obsolete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I hope they're not asked to label if specific actions are morally correct or not :)

<comment><USER17> That's a stereotyped characterization of why people go to prison that HN should be wise enough not to propagate.

<comment><USER18> Alright, I'll bite. Are you saying that most inmates are serving time for alleged violations of law that have not actually occurred?

<comment><USER19> Not OP, but just because you've broken the law once doesn't mean you're a bad person, much less lack moral agency.

People make mistakes. Sure, some deserve to rot in prison for irredeemable crimes, but many (at least, in my context as an American citizen) are there for nonviolent drug offenses or failing to pay fines.

<comment><USER20> That's irrelevant. All that the OP's point requires is that, on average, the moral choices of such people are worse. The existence of outliers -- or even common exceptions -- does not refute that.

<comment><USER21> You break a lot of laws every morning while driving to work; doesn't mean your moral choices on average are worse than someone else.

<comment><USER20> My frequency of lawbreaking would indeed (anti-)correlate with the quality of moral decisionmaking, and my frequency of lawbreaking is likely lower than those who have been convicted (at least if severity-weighted).

Further, the comparison was against convicts, who do it frequently and severely enough that someone finds it worth the money to prosecute and get a conviction. And at that point, yes, a correlation appears.

You're still making the same fallacy: "I can find an exception, so the correlation doesn't hold." That doesn't follow.

(And, FWIW, I don't drive to work.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Anyone use VOTT for labelling training data? Man that is just a joy to use compared to labelImg, especially the template stamp feature and label hotkey.

<comment><USER23> I gave up on VOTT, ended up going with RectLabel on macOS. IMO better workflow, and being able to copy and paste annotations from one image to another (to then go fine tune them) blows both VOTT and labelImg our of the water.

<comment><USER24> I checked VoTT and RectLabel and they seem to be desktop apps. Can they be used by a tagging team (more than one person), especially if some of the taggers work from home?

<comment><USER23> Not really, which is another big problem for all of them (including RectLabel). No great solutions all around :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Skynet labor camps

<comment><USER26> My thoughts, exactly. Or even like The Matrix where humans are farmed for energy. Here, they are farmed for their mind to train the next AI, which might in a worst case scenario rule them someday. Somehow reminds me of this beautiful piece [1] by Maciej Cegłowski .

[1] [https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm](https://idlewords.com/talks/superintelligence.htm)

<comment><USER27> I once found what looked like an early draft of The Matrix. Instead of body heat being used for power, part of each enslaved human's brain was used as an organic supercomputer to _control_ the fusion reactors.

<comment><USER28> The story goes that the studio executives wanted it changed to energy because they thought that viewers wouldn't understand using brains for computing power. Hard references to this fact are hard to find, though [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was- executiv...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/19817/was-executive- meddling-the-cause-of-humans-as-batteries-in-the-matrix) seems to collect a couple of secondary sources.

<comment><USER29> Strange that viewers would struggle to understand using captive brains for computing power, but would have no problems with a whole lot of other concepts from the movie...

Then again, the plot is the usual Hero's Journey (Campbell) like the majority of Hollywood blockbusters tends to be, but I guess the devil is in the details (illusory matrix/maya, recursive resurrection/enlightenment of Neo, the Christian theme of consuming an apple (pill) from the tree of knowledge and the subsequent expulsion from "paradise", etc.)

The Matrix trilogy is good on many levels, but I can't buy the "people used as batteries is easier to understand than people as compute accelerators". There are plenty of other, perhaps more relevant, places to dumben down in the Matrix if one goes down that road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a LitRPG novel waiting to happen

</comment><comment><USER31> What could go wrong?

<comment><USER32> Last week there were the poor women in India who were making a living out of labeling data, now it's the inmates in Finland, I wonder who will be next? Will we have to boycott the likes of Google or FB for how the label their data the same way some people used to boycott clothes made in Bangladesh?

<comment><USER33> > poor women in India who were making a living out of labeling data

Is there something unethical about hiring people to label data?

> now it's the inmates in Finland

Forced labour in general is always up for debate, but is there something about labeling data that is inherently worse than other forms of prison labour, such that tech companies deserve a boycott?

<comment><USER34> > Is there something unethical about hiring people to label data?

Inherently, no. The question I'd ask is - if labeled data is so important, would we pay them equitable benefits of the outcomes we achieve after the usage of this data? Or, do we simply fire them once they fuel our algorithms. It reminds me of "blood diamond" like practices.

<comment><USER35> Screws are also very important, I imagine millions and millions of IKEA furniture falling downs if screws disappear magically. More seriously, for some structures it's much better and easy to use screws than nails. (Nails are very important too.) Anyway, I don't imagine that the operators in a screw or nail factory are getting payed millions per year.

There are hundred of economy books explaining how much you get paid, with different theories and interpretations, but if you can be replaced by a person that will do your work a minimal wage, you will probably get only a minimal wage.

Also, each label of the data is not so valuable, some are wrong, some are unclear, you must aggregate and process millions of labels. Imagine how little value they do get for each Captcha reply.

> _Or, do we simply fire them once they fuel our algorithms._

Most works are like this. Imagine you are the main architect/engineer in charge of building the Empire State Building. They pay you for a few year to do the plans of the building, hiring the workers, buying the materials, whatever is necessary to do. After the building if finished, they thank you and now you are unemployed. (The workers are unemployed too.) You don't get a cut of the profits of the building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So they'll get AI with criminal mindset as a result? See where it leads to?

<comment><USER37> They were classifying news articles. How could that possibly have a "criminal mindset"?</comment></comment>


Why Are We Building Jailbait Sexbots? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3021651/why-are-we-building-jailbait-sexbots <comment><USER2> In the U.S., operating a child sexbot would seem to be illegal under the PROTECT Act, which prohibits "virtual child porn":

" _In the United States, the PROTECT Act of 2003 made significant changes to the law regarding virtual child pornography. Any realistic appearing computer generated depiction that is indistinguishable from a depiction of an actual minor in sexual situations or engaging in sexual acts is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A._ "[1]

Maybe the government could get away with it, but if independent researchers did it, they could be charged with producing child porn.

Yes, Orwell's "thoughtcrime" is an actual criminal offense in the U.S.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Vi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Virtual_child_pornography)

<comment><USER3> FWIW, simulated child porn laws aren't just about "thought crimes". They're motivated by the fact that defendants in cases involving real child porn sometimes claim the child porn is simulated, and it can be difficult and expensive to prove that false.

<comment><USER4> Which is why making _pictures_ illegal is rather screwy.

Make causing actual harm to an actual child illegal. Make profiting from it (eg _selling_ pictures of said actual harm) illegal. Make _possessing_ pictures not illegal, but something that will get you asked where the pictures came from.

.

But really it is about thoughtcrime. Society (or at least politicians) have decided that having certain interests/desires is _wrong_ (or rather, that those people are creepy and dangerous and can't possibly have the self-control to not fully act on said thoughts). And so anything that may indicate someone having said thoughts is made illegal, even if it doesn't hurt anyone, and even if it indicate that they know not to act in harmful ways.

<comment><USER3> >Make profiting from it (eg selling pictures of said actual harm) illegal.

Can't someone accused of selling child porn claim it's fake just as easily as someone simply accused of possessing it?

<comment><USER4> Sure, and the supposedly-stolen things I'm selling really just fell off the back of a truck.

I would think that sellers having ties to producers would have a harder time arguing they were selling fakes. And if they don't have those ties -- if they're not supporting the people causing the harm -- then their actions are only illegal for the sake of simplifying the prosecution's work. Which means their likely being able to get off at trial is less of an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem is they are not soliciting a bot, they are soliciting children and are going to lengths to ensure that they are getting what they are paying for.

If an MMORPG had "100 year old elvish" NPCs which had childlike features and full nudity, then playing the game might be distasteful but probably should fall under constitutional protection.

The law is very cognizant of intent and willfulness. If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime. I don't have a problem with that.

I think you must agree that if you solicit a bot then there is no crime, just like if you "murder" a bot there is no crime. Ultimately we have juries to decide of the accused if full of shit claiming they were soliciting bots when they were actually soliciting children. The burden of proof falls on the Government to prove this beyond a reasonable doubt.

As bots get increasingly realistic and entertaining enough to create a market for that service (regardless of the physical characteristic of the avatar) it will be interesting to watch jurisprudence evolve.

A convincing avatar which can be synchronized with a human's text input, and/or speech alteration (not text-to-speech) is one way you approach 'the singularity' without having to synthesize human thoughts and emotions. Such a system, if it can cross the uncanny valley, would radically improve quality of live for millions of (and I hate this term) 'genetic lottery losers'.

<comment><USER6> > If you willfully intend to break the law, but fail to actually break the > law, you can still be charged and convicted of a crime.

No, you can't.

If you take concrete action in an _attempt_ to commit a crime, that is often _itself_ a crime (usually a lesser offense than the one attempted; e.g., "attempted murder" is a distinct crime, and a lesser offense than murder.) But if you are not proven to have broken the law (and, more specifically, _committed a crime_ \-- not all lawbreaking is criminal), you cannot be convicted of a crime.

<comment><USER7> Do attempted murder charges typically have a less extreme penalty than actual murder charges? It is my impression that is the case, but I can't find much that actually supports that notion.

This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off. Nobody should get off lighter just because their victim was particularly hearty.

Of course on the opposite end of the spectrum, if I try to break the speed limit with my beat up '65 Volkswagen beetle, but fail to do so, obviously I don't deserve a speeding ticket. Attempted speeding isn't a crime, not all "attempted [whatevers]" need to be punished.

<comment><USER6> > Do attempted murder charges typically have a less extreme penalty than > actual murder charges?

Yes.

> This is a concern to me because it doesn't make sense to me that somebody > who tries to kill somebody but does a poor job of it should be punished less > harshly than somebody who tries to kill somebody and manages to pull it off.

Typically, both the degree of "wrongness" of the act and the degree of harm inflicted by it are factors in setting criminal punishments. While attempted murder might be as morally wrong as actual murder, the harm inflicted is different.

<comment><USER7> What if we view sentencing not as punishment or revenge, but rather as something that we do for the safety of society?

It isn't clear to me that an attempted murderer is less dangerous to society than a successful murderer _(unless we assume that all failed murder attempts failed due to incompetence, but I don 't think that is safe to say)_, surely they should both be kept off the streets for the same amount of time.

<comment><USER6> > What if we view sentencing not as punishment or revenge, but rather as > something that we do for the safety of society?

It could be argued that someone with both demonstrated bad intent and demonstrated capacity is still more dangerous than someone with equally bad intent that fails to demonstrate the capacity to successfully carry that intent into fruition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> My personal position is that "soliciting" an "underage" sexbot should not ever be a prosecutable crime, but that they can be used in the current way to determine probable cause for warrants searching suspected pedophiles.

If there are actual human victims, then prosecute with all the harshness possible; but if some pedophile gets off on 100% computer-generated images, well, then that's probably a win for society that reduces violence and exploitation.

<comment><USER9> > but if some pedophile gets off on 100% computer-generated images, well, then > that's probably a win for society that reduces violence and exploitation.

More research is needed. Some people suggest that users of pornography need to collect more and more of it. Some people who collect images of child sexual abuse are caught with hundreds of thousand of images.

A person collecting pseudo-photograph images of child sexual abuse _might_ be a risk to children. (Data is tricky to find.)

But yes, if people can stay away from children and real images of child sexual abuse then pseudo photographs would be great.

(I agree with you about the bots too.)

<comment><USER10> But surely without at least a reason to think virtual child porn causes child abuse we should not make the act illegal?

<comment><USER9> There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children.

Obviously it's very hard to test that, but it's at least credible.

The other point about pseudo-photographs is that it's a historical remainder from times before we had photo-realistic rendering.

People would take real images of children, and manipulate those into images of child sexual abuse. Sometimes combining real world children's heads onto real world images of child sexual abuse, or images of adults having sex.

In that case two images are created from one instance of abuse. Two children are shown, but only one has suffered abuse. Or children are shown, but adults were used for the sexual parts of the photograph. Since people thought strongly that possession of images of child sexual abuse was a signal that the person would go on to commit actual abuse they made sure to make these images illegal.

I find this very hard to talk about. I strongly want to protect children from harm. Images of child sexual abuse cover a wide range of harm, from sexually suggestive clothed posing of 15 year olds at one end to brutal rape of small infants at the other. My instinct is to keep these images illegal, but I realise that the demonisation of paedophiles does not help them seek help to stop their offending behaviour, and drives them to "support groups" that attempt to normalise their behaviour. And if we did proper research and found that virtual images reduced real world offending it'd be hard to keep those images illegal.

<comment><USER10> >There is a reason to think that virtual images of child sexual abuse cause real world child sexual abuse. People need more images, and there aren't enough virtual images and so the collection is 'topped up' with real images. And there's a possibility that people viewing images, even virtual, of child sexual abuse will go on to abuse real world children.

Or you could just as well argue that people use the imagery to fulfill their needs, and if they didn't have that they'd turn to actual child abuse.

'credible' should not be good enough. (Of course in the current political systems, it doesn't even have to be credible if you can spin it scarily enough: see war on terror, war on drugs, sex offender registrations for urinating in public etc.) You need evidence that actually supports your theory.

<comment><USER9> Show some research, do the work.

So far we have people who collect images of child sexual abuse, and some of those people go on to abuse children more directly.

We don't have groups of people telling us that their collections of images of child sexual abuse help prevent their offending behaviour. (For some obvious reasons, of course.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think we should not worry about the criminals but we should worry more about the victims. Objective should never be to put every sex offender behind bars but the objective should be that no child should be a victim of such crimes.

Once we get that clear, putting all potential victims behind bars becomes one of the way to have 0 victims. The question is how effective that method is and whether it is achievable or can it backfire.

I would say that a bot that can detect a vulnerable child is far more effective in preventing a crime than a one that detects a potential offender.

<comment><USER12> You are primarily attacking the supply side of the equation. Locking up those looking for this is working on the demand side. Both are valid means that should be done in concert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The more (or less, who the hell knows) horrible aspect of this is that I foresee a cottage industry springing up where "good enough" digital replicas of children are used to provide sex services in the same way that phone sex operators work now -- only, it'll be known (or at least assumed) that the service is being provided by adults pretending to be children with digital avatars, and the quality of the service will be measured by how convincingly they portray their parts.

This will lead to all sorts of legal gray areas, wherein "I just assumed she was digital" could well work as a positive defense, or, even more eerily, a faux-pedophile service provider could staff enough adults to cover for the non-adults that they sometimes use.

<comment><USER9> The UK has some useful law around this.

For some offences it doesn't matter if you thought the person was a certain age or not.

Compare this section:

Causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/8](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/8)

With this one:

Meeting a child following sexual grooming etc [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/15](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/section/15)

See here, where they include both tests-

[http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crosshead...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/42/part/1/crossheading/abuse- of-children-through-prostitution-and-pornography)

> (i)B is under 18, and A does not reasonably believe that B is 18 or over, or

> (ii)B is under 13.

And there's stuff in the photography bit that means pseudo-photographs still count as illegal.

<comment><USER13> Interesting.

> And there's stuff in the photography bit that means pseudo-photographs still > count as illegal.

That's where America differs. We expressly allow pseudo-imagery under the first amendment. Logic being that the harm comes in the exploitation, but for digital representations of images that are pornographic, nobody was exploited in the process of their creation (at least, assuming nobody was exploited in the process of their creation).

The UK laws though seem to both be more tangible than the situation discussed in the article, at least assuming that 'sexual grooming' has been defined and is fairly narrowly interpretable.

I'm not the person to say whether or not pretend pedo-porn is a net good or evil for the world; but I can see arguments in either direction, but if they're actually grooming children who they then meet, clearly, that's a net bad.

Edit: I had it exactly backwards, and now I'm wondering how in the hell I remember it so wrongly. Apparently we do _not_ condone digital representations of child porn under the PROTECT Act of 2003[1].

I would swear I knew it the other way 'round.

[1] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Vi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_child_pornography#Virtual_child_pornography)

<comment><USER14> I think you were thinking of

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashcroft_v._Free_Speech_Coalition)

I'm not aware of whether the PROTECT Act (which I believe was a response to this decision) has been challenged in court.

<comment><USER13> Quite possibly. The only thing I can think of is that there was a potential challenge to the PROTECT act, but cert was denied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is as disgusting as the crime its trying to rid us off.

Its modern-day witch hunt and completely skips over the fact that many sex- offenders where in fact themselves victims when they were children.

Populism when its worst.

<comment><USER16> And I was bullied at school. That's why I spend my day browsing child-beating websites.

But seriously, I have to disagree. I'm aware of the absurdities that arise from populist demonisation of paedophiles. (E.g. the 17-year-old girl who arrested for child porn because she sent a picture of her tits to her boyfriend.) But I really think we should take steps to choke off the demand for live images of child abuse.

<comment><USER15> Disagree away you are not taking any demands away from anything it will just find other avenues and forums.

Just as in war on drugs.

<comment><USER16> I don't claim we can entirely eliminate it, but we can (and do) make it a helluva lot harder than it might be if we took a _laissez faire_ attitude. I think that has a real effect on children's lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Somewhere, in deep, dark, cold Russia, an army of Hackers is already building an army of undetectable Pedophile Man Bots just to screw with these guys ..

Seriously though, wouldn't the creators be creating a virtual child designed to encourage pedophilia ? So who would they be to judge ?

</comment><comment><USER18> Wow I would be really uncomfortable working on that project.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if websites that show exclusively CGI generated underage porn will be illegal or not. Seems like if it isn't hurting anyone then who cares.

<comment><USER20> In the US it's illegal, as per a comment directly under the submission.

<comment><USER19> I think the first comment says you have to purposefully be trying to break the law. If you went into a situation where you knew what you were seeing was a bot and not a person then I don't think that would count as attempting to break any laws. Or am I misreading that?

<comment><USER20> "In the United States, the PROTECT Act of 2003 made significant changes to the law regarding virtual child pornography. Any realistic appearing computer generated depiction that is indistinguishable from a depiction of an actual minor in sexual situations or engaging in sexual acts is illegal under 18 U.S.C. § 2252A."

That's the part I'm talking about.

<comment><USER19> Gotcha, yea pretty cut and dry. I don't agree with that law but that's another issue I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There isn't any question or moral ambiguity here. Replace the code with an undercover cop and re-try the thought experiment.

<comment><USER22> While in both scenarios a crime is technically committed (I would guess something like "using a computer with the intent of accessing/distributing child pornography,") can't you appreciate how it bothers some to think that one could be convicted without any victim? Lets use a computer analogy: what if I put up a server running running an SSH-like service that would present a false shell and allow commands to be entered, and even give reasonable-yet- bogus responses, and I put up the username/password information on a pastebin and post it everywhere. Should anyone who connects to it and attempts to run "rm -rf /" be convicted of a crime for intended to destroy computer data, even when their action actually has no effect?

<comment><USER23> Crime is a combination of intentions, actions and results. Just because no-one is harmed doesn't mean there's no crime. If I try and murder someone and fail (perhaps I'm a poor shot?) then I'm hardly an innocent.

I'd recommend the webcomic 'The illustrated guide to law' to everyone, especially many of the commentators on here. It is disturbing to read some of these posts.

[http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=173](http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=173)

<comment><USER24> Seconding this recommendation; the whole series is lengthy and consistently pretty great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here's a philosophical question, as technology progresses to the point that virtual reality is so good that it is able to replace real children in cases like these and satisfy child predators thus eliminating victims is this a fundamentally morally good thing?

</comment><comment><USER26> It occurs to me that they would be better off building filthy old man bot so as to catch the producer side of the equation.

</comment><comment><USER27> unbelievable interesting. I'm working on studies of human behaviour in various channels, including darknets like those. I am curious how psychological manipulation can be used to subconsciously counter this, the CG-Sexbot was the missing piece.

</comment><comment><USER28> Those are doing a lot of damage if you ask me. Real kids are not that "open" to have cyber-sex with strangers.

By making fake jailbaits, you are baiting adults into... cyber sex with kids! "Hey, the kids love it! Let's keep going!"

This is not a solution.

<comment><USER29> One of the major problems with law enforcement today is that so long as they carefully skirt the edges of what is legally defined as "entrapment", they can bait people into crimes, and arrest them for it even if otherwise they would not have committed any crime at all.

This really isn't good, and that's what the anti-entrapment statutes are for, but law enforcement finds its way around them... That's one of the best ways to catch "criminals", and catching criminals is their job, right?

<comment><USER30> Surely you don't think having a bot introduce itself as a 10-year-old Filipina counters as entrapment. That's not even skirting the line — based on what they've shown, the bot is not the one that brings up sex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> To put more people in jail. It is the American way.

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems like a slippery slope that ends in people getting arrested for murder because they play GTA.

</comment><comment><USER33> asl?</comment>


Fundraising Wisdom That Helped Our Founders Raise $18B in Follow-On Capital - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/the-fundraising-wisdom-that-helped-our-founders-raise-18b-in-follow-on-capital/ <comment><USER2> For God's sake, please price your products and services appropriately and make money from the start. Then, you won't have to beg vulture capitalists for scraps. If you raise money, those vultures become your bosses. Why are you even starting a company when you'll be enslaved to vultures that will push you short-term gains, forced growth, exit and all the other BS. Be your own person and say no to Vulture Capital. That's how you become independent, free and able to work on something you like on your own terms.

<comment><USER3> This is a bad comment for Hacker News, first because it calls names ("vulture", "mafia"), which the site guidelines specifically ask you not to do [1], and second because it's unsubstantive.

Thoughtful critique is good—especially when backed by concrete experience—but generic denunciations are boring and lower the discourse below what we're hoping for here. Empty riler-uppers are particularly to be avoided.

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER4> I appreciate that you're leaving the comment up as a learning experience rather than simply taking it down.</comment></comment></comment>