Canada has arrested Huawei's global chief financial officer in Vancouver - <AUTHOR> https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-has-arrested-huaweis-global-chief-financial-officer-in/ <comment><USER4> Many are lost in technicalities here, if Canada has the right to arrest a businesswoman, if the US can stop a foreign company to do business with another country. Who cares?

I'm partial to Iran because a multi-lateral treaty was signed. Iran stopped nuclear enrichment. In exchange, western countries pledged to provide economic relief and stop sanctions.

It is said that Iran has been developing various weapons, but these weapons do not fall under the treaty, and experts and controllers all agree the nuclear program has been stopped.

It is wrong for the US to walk away from this treaty, in the same way it was wrong to walk away from the Paris accord agreement. You agree on one thing, you have to follow. That is the honourable thing to do.

A few will say that Iran is threatening Middle East Peace. What is obvious is that its Saudi Arabia who's bombing its southern neighbour or sending tanks to Bahrain. If you want peace, you have to impose sanctions on Saudi Arabia as well.

What is even wrong for the US is punishing foreign companies wanting to do business in Iran. Perhaps there are technicalities to demonstrate a law in the US is broken. This makes sense for bureaucrats. For the rest of the world, it's just abuse and plain wrong. History will judge.

<comment><USER5> > It is wrong for the US to walk away from this treaty

The Iran Nuclear Deal and the Paris Accords were not treaties. We have a process to ratify treaties in the US. The president approves a treaty and sends it to the senate to approve or reject.

It's easy for president to make executive order agreements because it doesn't require approval from the senate (something Obama knew he couldn't get for either deal). But all parties should know that these non-treaties can be undone without a second thought by a new president.

The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

<comment><USER6> What I read from this is: "the US has a convoluted process, which nobody understands, in order to commit to international agreements". It seems everybody, including head of states, thought the US had agreed to the treaties, but they had not (?), because of a technicality. I assume these technicalities can be applied to anything, any time, in order to justify pulling out of international agreements.

Worse, instead of owning to this change of mind, the rationale of technicality is used in order to justify pulling out. This is done in bad faith.

> The nice thing about the American system is that while treaties are > difficult to pass, they are more or less permanent.

You say this now. This experience shows that, once you want to pull out, you will find a nice loophole to pull out. That is the "more or less" part.

And there is another aspect: once excuses for pulling out have run out, we know that the US will simply break, whenever and for whatever reason it wants, existing, ratified, seal-proof treaties.

The US is simply untrustworthy. And sneaky.

<comment><USER7> Oh come on. That is just plain insulting to all the other parties of the agreement. They knew full well that they did not have a ratified treaty with the US and they were explicitly warned of that fact ahead of time.

Just because people on the internet did not understand that doesn't mean the parties involved did not know that.

<comment><USER8> This argument reeks of "not my fault you were conned, you should have known I'm a conman"

<comment><USER9> Iran got their pallet of cash, they knew Obama was making the deal without the support of congress thereby giving the middle finger to US citizens. It would be diplomatic malpractice to not forecast the deal getting revoked, especially if they violated it (and they did)

<comment><USER10> How did they violate it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> [https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_de...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_deputy_chairwoman_arrested_by_canada_at_us/)

Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

The United Nations International Court of Justice, which ordered the US to withdraw sanctions, to which the US responded by pulling out of international agreements.

The European Union, which has attempted to block its companies from complying with US sanctions.

With that said, the US is free to sanction anyone for its own interests, that's its right as a sovereign state. It is also its right as a sovereign state to refuse market access and trade to any company that violates its sanctions.

But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - <USER3> yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course. This is a massive escalation and will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis. Stay tuned.

<comment><USER12> The author of this comment has a history of apologizing for Chinese crimes:

>>LOL, kill thousands of its own citizens in protests? The Chinese government never did that (even the famous tank man was unharmed and was not arrested), the truth is, many soldiers got killed because they were not allowed to fire at citizens. Even the Chinese government did kill its own citizen they learnt from the US (1932 Bonus Army, 1970 Kent state massacre, Jesus that was only 48 years ago, not mentioning almost every day someone is being shot by the police somewhere in the US. The funny thing is one shot won't even make it to the newspaper now.)

>>In a word, you have been brainwashed by your media. I know it's hard to wake up someone who pretends to be asleep, but it's good for you.

<comment><USER13> The fact that the parent is pro-chinese is pretty clear, I don't see what digging into their post history adds to the discussion, especially since in this case it's tangential at best.

<comment><USER14> Because astroturfing has utterly subverted discussion on hot-button issues on all social media platforms (including this one), whether you choose to believe it or not.

<comment><USER15> We've spent a lot of time working on this, and the actual astroturfing that we've found is small compared to the frequency with which users fire this accusation at each other merely because they hold opposing views. That's why the site guidelines ask people not to bring this toxic trope up without evidence. Some users holding opposing views to yours is not evidence of astroturfing, only of divided views.

Perhaps you or someone else knows more than we do about this on Hacker News, but in that case you should be telling us at email@example.com so we can look into it. That's in the guidelines as well. When there's real information, we take it very seriously. Unfortunately, though, this trope is driven mostly by imagination, not information.

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Can somebody explain to me on what authority the US can request the arrest of a Chinese national on Canadian soil for any action they took while conducting operations of a Chinese organization headquartered in China?

<comment><USER17> The article suggests she took US-made products and routed them to Iran through Huawei. That's a US crime, and the US can issue a warrant for her arrest, and if she shows up in a country with extradition to the US, she can get arrested. Which is apparently what happened.

<comment><USER18> This only works one way though. No one arrested Ronald Regan for selling guns to the contras to fund the revolution in Iran. The US gets to do this because might makes right.

<comment><USER19> The US did, in fact, arrest the arms salesmen: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokers_of_Death_arms_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brokers_of_Death_arms_case)

Regean had sovereign immunity, so he could not be personally tried.

<comment><USER20> I just learned, thanks Wikipedia, that Jamal Khashoggi (journalist murdered in Turkey) who has recently been dominating the news is the nephew of the arms dealer king pen, Adnan Khashoggi, behind the Brokers of Death. It appears Adnan and our current US president have had a prior business relationship (according to Wikipedia).

That is a strange closed loop.

<comment><USER21> A good lesson about the value of networking. Similar things are all over the politics, business or even arts and people inclined to believe in conspiracies love to dig these but most of the time it's just the effect of having a way to meet people that are already in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Coincidentally, a Stanford Chinese American scientist, Prof. Shoucheng Zhang ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoucheng_Zhang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoucheng_Zhang)), who discovered the Quantum Spin Hall effect that plays a big part in the recent Intel announcement of the next generation of chip design, was found dead on Stanford campus on Dec. 1st. Before he's death, Prof. Zhang went together with Huawei's CFO to attend a dinner in Argentina on Dec. 1st.

Basically, after that dinner in Argentina, one of them is dead, another is arrested.

<comment><USER23> There is no way for all the events you prescribed to happen in one day across four different countries.

I'm sorry to hear the loss of Prof. Zhang, however I suspect that his death may have had something to do with his heavy investment in some questionable blockchain startups.

<comment><USER21> >however I suspect that his death may have had something to do with his heavy investment in some questionable blockchain startups

Why do you suspect that?

<comment><USER24> >His family said in a statement that he died after "a battle with depression."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would not look forward to being an American businessman abroad in China right now. I think we're all used to the fiction that we live in a world that's totally governed by fairness and laws. That's been a pretty useful fiction for a long time, and in (some) of the developed world that's basically been how it's worked.

But I really wonder how many shocks this system can take. I would bet money that an important US executive for some company is arrested in the two years while visiting China.

EDIT:

There's another comment here asking how it's possibly legal for the US to do this. Whether you believe it or not, it's useful to know that the philosophy much of our state department believes in is called Realpolitik ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik)). It doesn't really matter what the law says or what treaties we've signed, the primary thing that matters for the US is what's pragmatic for it at the moment.

<comment><USER26> Seriously. It's this fiction that makes me believe that, despite it's flaws, America (along with other democratic countries) is a beacon compared to the rest of the world. A country locking up a foreigner for breaking their laws is so different than a country locking up said foreigner out of retaliation, which is what I imagine China will end up doing.

<comment><USER27> The problem is this, you're always violating _some_ law.

Even in the US, there are over 20,000 laws and regulations at the federal level alone. In China, there are even more. Any small foreign operator in China naive enough to assert with 100% confidence that they are not in violation of any of those codes is being dangerously foolish.

So here's the thing, I actually agree with you. What China will do, they will do out of retaliation. However, I can pretty much guarantee that whoever the patsy is, that person will be in violation of some obscure code that no one in their right mind would have been paying attention to. They will definitely be in violation of some law. And they will condemn him/her to whatever ungodly prison camp for however many years.

So China will also be simply arresting someone for violating their laws. That's the issue.

Now my point is that if you are American, and a small operator without the clout to prevent this sort of thing from happening to you, it's best to try to get out in front of the problem. I know that I really don't want to be one of the poor stooges sitting in a Chinese prison for a decade because these people are trying to make tit-for-tat points.

I'm not talking politics or philosophy. I'm just saying that China is not like the US, and I'm advising people to be careful if they are small and plan to operate in what appears to be a dangerous legal environment that will likely be getting more treacherous with time.

<comment><USER28> >The problem is this, you're always violating some law.

"21 USC §§331, 333, 343 & 21 CFR §133.113(a)(3) make it a federal crime for a cheesemaker to sell cheddar cheese unless the curd was matted into a cohesive mass."

[https://twitter.com/crimeaday](https://twitter.com/crimeaday)

<comment><USER29> Look for laws to be enforced cops need to be aware of them.

Specialists exist both on the government side as say food safty inspectors etc, and the private side as compliance officers. So, rules like this are not obscure for people building factory's to manufacture cheddar and your local cops are not going to know about this crap they are searching your house for something else.

This actually works really well, as we want food to be safe to eat even if most people are not aware of how long food can be kept at what temperatures. Likewise what safty systems need to be part of nuclear reactors, or the minimum safty factor for bridges.

<comment><USER30> It's just a bit odd that _highly_ specific examples like this make it into written law. A pretty clear example of what happens when you have a Government that can be heavily influenced by corporate lobbying.

I don't think your average reasonable person is in opposition to requirements to label food correctly and not mislead consumers. These things are already written in law, in the case of food it's governed by the FDA. However, when we start including overly specific laws like this, of which this is but one of many (sheesh, check-out what was in the TPP), then every other company in every other industry wants the same treatment, and we end up with a convoluted mess that we have today. This is a problem because your average citizen can't possibly keep up with all this; but more importantly these overly specific laws are a nightmare when it comes time to introduce new legislation. _So_ much time is wasted on garbage like this.

The TPP actually had plenty of reasonable components to it, but it was also filled to the brim with corporate garbage. It's hard enough to form trade agreements and pass legislation without corporations insisting their obscure needs must be met. Particularly when legislation and agreements are either signed and passed as entire unit, or not at all. It just wastes everyone's time when there's a few odd sticking points holding up the whole process.

<comment><USER31> I don't understand your argument. You seem to be opposed to specificity in the written prohibition. So what's the alternative? You'd prefer it if FDA regulations _didn 't_ have the force of law? Or would you prefer it if FDA regulations were secret, unwritten, unavailable for cheddar manufacturers and cheddar manufacturer compliance officers to examine? Neither of those seem like good solutions.

<comment><USER30> It's called _industry standards_ , and it's common practice and already in place in written legislation.

 _Written laws_ give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the relevant field.

<comment><USER31> Industry standards don't have the force of law unless they are given the force of law.

> _Written laws give Government bodies power to maintain and enforce theses > standards, independent of legislation that needs to be passed through long > slow processes involving many politicians who have no knowledge of the > relevant field._

"Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are you trying to say here?

<comment><USER30> > "Written laws ... independent of legislation" doesn't make sense. What are > you trying to say here?

You're right, it doesn't. That's what happens when you truncate a quote to completely remove the context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Note that this arrest was due to the lesser sin of export control busting, rather than Huawei's biggest sin: facilitating surveillance and IP theft.

Remarkable that they (she?) went through all the effort to set up a HK front company, but then left the Huawei logo on their powerpoint decks

<comment><USER33> Maybe they're getting for what they can prove rather than what they suspect.

Like Capote for tax fraud.

<comment><USER34> I think you mean Capone

<comment><USER33> Hah. Yes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Notably she's not just CFO, but also vice chairwoman of the board, daughter of founder/CEO, and very widely viewed as the successor of his father.

<comment><USER36> his/her

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In case people aren't aware, Canadian-Iranian relations aren't exactly in a good place right now.[1]

Extraditing someone to the US for violating US sanctions against Iran aligns pretty well with Canada's interests right now.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Iran_relations](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93Iran_relations)

<comment><USER38> Huawei also has a large R&D presence in Canada. Maintaining good relations with Huawei is more in Canada's interest.

<comment><USER39> I believe that the USA's relationship is at least a bit more important than Huawei's R&D budget.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I also wonder what this is going to do to Canada's real estate market considering that Canada has basically been a "safe haven" for Chinese nationals to flock to basically launder their money.

<comment><USER41> It's sad how this has become a fact because it's insinuated enough times in the press by the same few reporters. First it was Chinese foreigners buying up all the real estate, but that was proven false. Now, it's all these foreigners are laundering their money. Yes, a few (although the RCMP is having trouble with their money laundering case) but not all. The press simplifies and that becomes the reality that everyone believes. I had a coworker mention this "fact" after hearing it on the radio. Ugh. Reminds me of the weapons of mass destruction debacle.

<comment><USER42> Though it's not. There is a property management company out of Hong Kong/China that owns 30 condos in my unit and rents it out to tenants. I work near One Bloor and if you see the demographic over there it's all non-english speaking Asian people. Heck the Nordstorm rack in that Condo accepts WePay. Where else have you seen that in Toronto?

<comment><USER43> All statistics point to it being false.

From the financial post ([https://business.financialpost.com/real- estate/perception-of...](https://business.financialpost.com/real- estate/perception-of-foreign-ownership-heavily-influences-housing-prices- cmhc)):

A study from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation released Wednesday found that 68 per cent of Vancouver respondents, 48 per cent of Toronto respondents and 42 per cent of Montreal respondents believe foreign buyers are having "a lot of influence" on their markets and are driving up home prices.

The insight into perceptions around foreign buyers that 30,000 respondents in the three cities shared with the Crown Corporation between September and mid- October is in stark contrast with recent data from Statistics Canada showing foreign buyers only own 4.8 per cent of Vancouver properties and 3.4 per cent of homes in Toronto.

\----

The truth is that we're house horny enough to not need any outside help to increase the price of real estate. According to Statistics Canada, 69.0% of households are owner ([https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as- sa/99-014-x/99-0...](https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/nhs-enm/2011/as- sa/99-014-x/99-014-x2011002-eng.cfm)). While anecdotal data can be comforting, the data doesn't support the thesis.

<comment><USER44> I don't know which Stats Canada statistics the Financial Post article refers to (I'm sure they have more than one measure), but here's Stats Canada putting non-resident ownership at over 7% in Vancouver ([https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily- quotidien/180625/dq180...](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily- quotidien/180625/dq180625a-eng.htm)).

Whatever the exact number is, I don't think you can draw a conclusion just from that measure alone. The percentage of total properties owned by non- residents is less important than the percentage of recent sales that went to non-residents.

Some completely made up and simplified numbers to illustrate my point:

Let's say 10% of all properties in Vancouver have been sold on the market in the last 8 years, and 25% of those went to foreign buyers. That would only account for an increase in 2.5% of non-resident ownership. That by itself doesn't sound significant, but 25% of all sales going to buyers many of which are price insensitive is going to have a massive effect on prices.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Wow this seems like a huge deal.

If the whole company is suspected of breaking the embargo, why is just the CFO arrested? Was she just the one they could get?

Also, it seems weird that Huawei can sell their own products to Iran but not American products they own.

<comment><USER17> > Was she just the one they could get?

This seems likely. Any officer of the company might do in this circumstance. She might be the only one currently accessible in a country friendly to US extradition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> > "Wanzhou Meng was arrested in Vancouver on December 1. She is sought for > extradition by the United States, and a bail hearing has been set for > Friday," Justice department spokesperson Ian McLeod said in a statement to > The Globe and Mail. "As there is a publication ban in effect, we cannot > provide any further detail at this time. The ban was sought by Ms. Meng.

I don't understand the last bit there about a "publicaton ban." So, in Canada, a suspect can request that some info of their arrest be withheld? I googled and came up with [https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/victims- victimes/factshe...](https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/victims- victimes/factsheets-fiches/publication.html), but it doesn't make much sense to me since her name was published? So how would a publication ban protect her identity? I guess there could be others involved that she was protecting and not wanting the names released?

<comment><USER47> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_ban](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_ban)

As stated on the wiki, likely because the publicity generated could affect the case. This case likely will get a lot of publicity.

<comment><USER46> Yes, but her name was released. I'm questioning on what exactly this ban is protecting if her identity is already known?

<comment><USER48> I believe (based on the fact she was arrested Dec. 1) that her name was part of the tight information security but once it gets out that she has been arrested the news are allowed to publish that. Moreover, It also appears these may be international papers and I don't know enough to say they have to or don't have to follow the ban.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Iran sanctions are yet another sad example of the US losing the moral high ground and soft power (followed by hard power). Americans might not like hearing this but increasingly the US is seen a dangerous, untrustworthy and negative value ally. As this continues the EU block will steadily move away from the US eventually NATO will fragment and this will have serious implications for global stability.

Prior to the current return to Iran sanctions the USA had a monopoly on international payments clearance. The EU has responded by setting up an alternative system.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm curious where she was flying. If Chinese execs can't do China to Mexico via Canada connections, that will be interesting. (I am pretty sure she was actively avoiding connections in the US. Overflight of the US is bad if you are Snowden level but it isn't quite as risky as connecting in Canada and way less than connecting in the US, since the US doesn't do sterile transit.)

<comment><USER23> Details are pretty scarce because of the publication ban atm, however rumour has it that she's arrested in the Vancouver suburb of Richmond, and she may have entered the country using a Canadian passport.

Again these are just hearsay at the mlment, however it does explain why the US/Canadian authorities were enboldened to act and she had to seek an order to prevent publication of the particilars of the case against her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> It is telling that Chinese-US relations are at stake when a "private" citizen is arrested for a crime. Beijing was quick to say there was no wrong-doing before formal charges were even made.

China wonders why we distrust their businesses, and this is the reason. They all seem to be heavily politically supported by the Chinese government.

We're all discussing it with the presumption that, of course, it would. When we indicted half of FIFA everyone in the EU loved us for it, and certainly no political establishments condemned it.

</comment><comment><USER51> A tl;dr to address some of the obvious questions here:

In 2013 she set up a Hong Kong shell company called Skycom Tech. That company (attempted to) purchase HP computers from the United States and resell them to Iran. The deal did not involve Huawei products, but many of the documents related to the deal were labeled "Huawei confidential" indicating they created the shell company to conceal their involvement.

She broke the law by attempting to do a straw purchase for the Iranian government of US manufactured restricted goods. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_purchase)

Canada has an extradition agreement with the United States, so the Canadian government arrested her on behalf of the US.

<comment><USER52> It's kinda scary that the US can do anything about straw purchases. US company sells to HK company, the stuff becomes property of HK company, US should be completely out of the goddamn picture at this point, HK company sells to Iran, done. The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention to resell.

<comment><USER53> > The US govt must not be able to do anything about the HK company's intention > to resell.

What does that statement mean?

<comment><USER52> Ah, if it's not buying with the intention to resell that's illegal, but the resale itself, it means nothing.

I just think it's weird that the US law handles the resale case. Like they think they have authority over the whole world.

The US supposedly loves private property. But this transitive application of trade restrictions sounds like complete disrespect of private property. (And honestly even just any trade restrictions in general…)

<comment><USER53> My question was significantly higher level than that. The United States exists to further the objectives of the United States. You made the statement 'The US govt must not be able to...'.

What does that statement mean given that (1) the United States is most certainly able to, (2) the United States merely looks after its own interests, and (3) there is no (earthly at least) authority which can actually judge the United states's actions in this case.

Thus, what does it mean to say '<insert country here> must not'? By what standard?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Suspicious how this comes right on the heels of negative publicity about Huawei's IP theft and possible infiltration of global telecom networks. I suspect someone might be wanting to apply pressure and forcing Huawei to respond.

</comment><comment><USER55> Is she _herself_ accused of breaking the Iran sanctions or is it Huawei, and as the CFO she's being held accountable? I can't tell from this article or the one from NYT. And it seems like that would be a big difference, and if it was Huawai then the US should just level sanctions against Huawai rather than arresting its executives on criminal charges.

<comment><USER56> "It seems" is not really a useful starting point in discussions. It is better to actually know the relevant laws & practices.

<comment><USER55> "It seems" is just fine. I was expressing my opinion of how it should be handled, not making a statement of fact on applicable laws.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Only if Huawei could dismember some journalists, then they would probably be fine, maybe even get to shake the President's hand.

</comment><comment><USER58> [https://outline.com/NWDj34](https://outline.com/NWDj34)

</comment><comment><USER59> Huawei has a branch in the US and Canada. Why not arrest some of them now?

If the criminal is done by other colleagues in the company, should the executives be punished? I highly doubt the CFO is arranging the shipment to Iran...

Or simply because the CFO is the daughter of the founder?

<comment><USER60> The CFO is a fiduciary if the company. The rank and file generally are not. The CFO couldn't possibly be unaware of shipments to Iran. That would be absurd — and awareness of, is the same as agreement with, when you are the CFO of the company. Surely the receipts from Iranian payments crossed the CFO's desk. This isn't some subsidiary selling a few laptops illegally, this was far bigger. Some minion in the US office wasn't making decisions unilaterally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> double standard? I dont recall seeing any of the Bluecoat (Symantec now) CEO's cuffed at the airport when hackers found Bluecoat hardware in Syria...

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

It seems like the US Government has a serious axe to grind with Huawei.

<comment><USER62> And HN plays its part with the downvotes.

<comment><USER63> I flagged this one as a dup, not for content.

<comment><USER61> sorry about that, I duplicate posted by accident after realizing I hadnt whitelisted hn for cookies when switching back to firefox. dupe deleted.

but seriously, just google ITAR violations and youll find a litany of other american companies that have been made to pay fines for violations and allowed to continue business as normal with no sanctions, no boycotts.

[https://spacenews.com/37071us-satellite-component-maker- fine...](https://spacenews.com/37071us-satellite-component-maker- fined-8-million-for-itar-violations/) [https://www.strtrade.com/news- publications-ITAR-AECA-violati...](https://www.strtrade.com/news-publications- ITAR-AECA-violations-062314.html)

its just Huawei for some reason that sticks in the craw of DC, and has for months now starting with senators insisting they should be boycotted, to a defense procurement boycott that extends to DOD contractors, and eventually the evangelism of a boycott that extends to AT&T and others.

Im genuinely curious what caused it? because the trade violation just seems convenient.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Just a bit unclear on this:

"Canada has arrested the chief financial officer of China's Huawei Technologies, who now faces extradition to the United States on suspicion she violated U.S. trade sanctions against Iran."

What violation was really committed? Was it Huawei doing business with Iran, like selling chips/devices/etc on their product line? If it (the Huawei company) did, shouldn't everyone on the company's employ who have had a hand on the products that were provided to Iran be arrested?

I look forward to having more factual information on this, rather than mere speculations on the violations that were supposedly committed.

</comment><comment><USER65> Could someone explain what laws were broken ? I can't understand what's the matter if a foreign national does trade with Iran ? And its kind of suspicious that Huawei, a telecom giant , is the prime target given how much lobbying is done by telecom companies in USA.

</comment><comment><USER47> Whats the Iranian perspective? Theres a lot of Americans here, I presume there are Iranians too?

<comment><USER66> Nothing new here! She appears to have violated the US sanctions. Many people have ended up in prison for lesser offenses, some of whom were not even aware of their crime. The story of John Roth is really informative. He was indicted and jailed simply because of hiring two Iranian and Chinese students. [https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/knoxville/press- releases/2...](https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/knoxville/press- releases/2012/former-university-of-tennessee-professor-john-reece-roth-begins- serving-four-year-prison-sentence-on-convictions-of-illegally-exporting- military-research-data)

<comment><USER67> The fact that it was a USAF drone project which he hired them for seems salient, no?

<comment><USER66> Maybe! Probably he should have known better, but that's beside the point. One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries. This case is more clearcut in comparison. She was actually involved in exporting American technology to Iran.

<comment><USER67> Hmm. You keep forgetting the important bit. Let me help you out again.

"One can end up in jail by simply hiring nationals from sanctioned countries _and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military technology_."

This doesn't just happen to any random employer or any random professor. It happens when you are working for the DoD and you do something you shouldn't. If you don't want to run afoul of such laws, be better informed or don't take government contracts.

<comment><USER66> > _and then giving them access to documents pertaining to US military > technology_

Not true! Once a technology is deemed to fall under ITAR or EAR, the export regulations kick in. Doesn't matter if the technology belongs to the government, a large company, a startup, or a university lab. And for obvious reasons, sometimes people are not aware this fact.

<comment><USER67> Random technology does not fall under ITAR or EAR. They are specific regulations that are pertinent to a very particular industry. If you are building military defense technology, you should probably be familiar those regulations and act accordingly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It is ugly. The US and Canada is going down a rabbit hole.

The dictatorship of Iran is disgusting and dangerous but the US trades with countries governed by equally disgusting and dangerous dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia and China.

The US trade sanctions are imposed unilaterally and create mountains of troubles for US allies. Most of the world oppose the trade sanctions. Such sanctions rarely work anyways. It's a huge cost born not only by US companies but by companies in allied countries that have to obey US sanctions in order to avoid repercussions.

</comment><comment><USER69> It seems to me Canada is doing this for it's southern neighbor. Wondering if the fact that Huawei is putting a lot a pressure on American companies (by competing with them) is part of this?

<comment><USER34> The biggest Huawei competition is from Ericsson in Sweden and Nokia in Finland. The US feels very uncomfortable having it's civilian and military networks serviced by Huawei because of the connections Huawei has to the Chinese military.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> This reminds me of the Yinhe incident:

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

<comment><USER11> 丢掉幻想,准备斗争

<comment><USER71> this translates to "Lose fantasy, prepare to fight" according to google translate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> Good for Canada - they showed a lot of spine in criticising Saudi Arabia this summer and they're showing a lot of spine with this.

Combined with the UK's seizure of Facebook documents, it's a great week for assertive liberal democracies. Let's hope we're setting ourselves up for a 2019 where we'll get some sunlight into all the dark places that have been building up for the last couple of decades.

</comment><comment><USER73> I hope multiple US executives now get arrested in other countries for supporting a US regime that breaks human rights and ignores international everyday

</comment><comment><USER74> Although the propaganda from the white house says a deal was made with China last week on tariffs, this I would consider would be seen by China as a major escalation of the nationalist behavior of the USA. The markets will likely respond with a sell off because the behavior of the USA is not correlating with the statements coming out. Hold on for a scary couple of days.

</comment><comment><USER75> For the conspiracy theorists O2 is currently suffering a massive mobile network outage in the UK [[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/06/o2-network...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2018/12/06/o2-network- customers-lose-access-4g-data/)]. Apparently it has been caused by a third party supplier [[https://twitter.com/O2/status/1070612301110226944](https://twitter.com/O2/status/1070612301110226944)]. Apparently, O2 uses Huawei [[http://telecoms.com/44197/huawei-wins-managed- services-deal-...](http://telecoms.com/44197/huawei-wins-managed-services- deal-with-o2-uk/)] but has recently been boasting about moving away from them [can't find a reference].

But someone on twitter is claiming the third party is not Huawei. [[https://twitter.com/NicFildes/status/1070606845881008128](https://twitter.com/NicFildes/status/1070606845881008128)]

</comment><comment><USER76> The only lesson here is: If your company has ever sold any products in Iran, I think its safe to avoid taking any connecting flights through US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and possibly Britain. Fly Emirates, Qatar Airways or Cathay Pacific.

</comment><comment><USER77> Is Ms. Meng related to Meng Hongwei?

[https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-interpol-chief-ousted-china- to...](https://www.yahoo.com/news/ex-interpol-chief-ousted-china-top-advisory- body-063307660.html)

</comment><comment><USER78> It's interesting that this happened on the same day Trump and Jinping met, there is a possibility they both knew about this prior to the meeting. On Monday stock market goes up on "improving China relations", on Tuesday the Dow tanks 800 points on "no news". Chances are the sell-off was because some people learned about it on Tuesday.

</comment><comment><USER79> And y'all thought we canucks we're nice.

</comment><comment><USER80> So, we are willing to arrest foreign businesspeople and risk an international crisis in order to make sure that our supply of oil is secure, but if our own businesspeople rip off the American people to the tune of trillions of dollars, we not only let them walk free, but we compensate them for their losses. Interesting to see what kinds of behavior are actually punished. Shows you who's really in charge of the government. (Exxon, Goldman Sachs, etc)

</comment><comment><USER81> Is it only coincidence that this prosecution of Huawei come just after Huawei create best smartphone on market?

<comment><USER82> No it's due to their 5G network equipment success. Their tech is on par with Nokia & Ericsson and the price is very competitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Is it only coincidence that this prosecution of Huawei come just after Huawei create best smartphone on market?

</comment><comment><USER83> why Canada arrested Huawei's global chief financial officer in Vancouver, this is not belong to Canada, really suck up to American. Canada got fuck good on tariff and still never learn. stupid the Canadian justice. tax fair paid him and he do job for American.

</comment><comment><USER83> this is violation of international law, what is canada doing for us a favor. to arrest any citizen of country in canada. this is Canada looking own trouble now. really is suck up on us political .

</comment><comment><USER84> Is china still holding those Americans hostage? Victor and Cynthia Liu?

</comment><comment><USER85> This is a mockery of globalization, free markets and rule of law. It's sad for those of us who have supported some of these values to see them mocked like this. This is like China or Russia getting Trump's or Bill Gates daughter arrested on some made up charge in a third country. Who will support that?

Unilateral sanctions against Iran or Cuba without the consensus of the UN is questionable in law in the first place. What crimes have Iran or Cuba committed? And yet these sanctions without basis by countries who count Saudi Arabia as their closest ally are allowed to cause suffering to millions of people for decades on end and no one cares. This is the twisted state of our world.

It seems ultimately foolish to believe in ideals when they only apply to a certain group of countries in their benefit, and when not will use propaganda and their collective political and diplomatic power to harass others.

</comment><comment><USER86> Weird.

Huawei made an _carefully worded_ announcement early this day and states that they are didn't violate any related law:

\- [https://www.zhihu.com/question/304821204](https://www.zhihu.com/question/304821204)

\- [https://weibo.com/2557129567/H5WbTkTkj](https://weibo.com/2557129567/H5WbTkTkj)

December 1, the same day Xi and Trump met at G20. Wonder if anything goes wrong.

Americans better find something this time, one Yinhe incident[0] is bad enough for PR already :)

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

</comment><comment><USER87> I'm hoping Canada puts her on a flight to Beijing instead of involving itself. She is acused of violating a trade embargo that Canada is not a party to.

<comment><USER88> That would violate US-Canadian reciprocation agreements and could dramatically hinder relations between the countries. What your suggesting is a very small- picture POV that will only result in hurting both countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER89> I was under the impression that unless you left the airport you're not technically in that country.

That's how Julian Assange evaded arrest.

<comment><USER90> Not so. The airport is definitely the territory of the country in which it resides. You do not have to clear immigration to be subject to that nation's laws.

</comment></comment><comment><USER91> I have no doubt this has a lot to do with two super powers trying very hard to flex their muscles, both trying to project a position of strength.

However, I don't think China was helping it's cause when a month ago it decided to arrest the Interpol chief, only to have that chief released a few hours latter.

Throw in that mix a crazy Putin itching for war in the Ukraine and we have three boys all trying very hard to take control the playground.

</comment><comment><USER92> Goodbye Vancouver real estate?

<comment><USER93> The Chinese buy real estate in Vancouver to avoid the Chinese government, not the US. Canada does not have an extradition treaty with China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> Probably related to this: [https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world- us-c...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us- canada-46352336). Trump brought it up at the g20

</comment><comment><USER95> This is disgusting, I know what is the brand of my new mobile phone:-D

</comment><comment><USER96> 加拿大还是一个主权国家吗?

<comment><USER34> 加拿大很好

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> Is Canada becoming little brother of US?

<comment><USER98> What do you mean by "becoming"? The extradition treaty that the US most likely invoked in this case has been in force for almost 50 years.

[https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites- ext-c...](https://www.oas.org/juridico/mla/en/traites/en_traites-ext-can- usa4.html)

<comment><USER97> So many double standard to the legal system from US & Canada.

[http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1130954.shtml](http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1130954.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Shameless, hypocrite countries

</comment><comment><USER99> Expecting in couple months, there would be an American executive's nationally televised confession and contrition.

</comment><comment><USER100> I think that's totally fine. Only the US can spy on their own citizens, plus on the entire world.

</comment><comment><USER101> No problem USA! Go back on the Iran deal, go back on the Paris climate deal, go back on TPP.

Just don't expect that anyone believes you anymore.

<comment><USER102> You think THIS proves the US is not a trustworthy nation? Why choose to ignore the last 100+ years of the US's backstory and focus on this rather minor setback to make such a bold statement? I would imagine any amount of trust we had left was entirely exhausted more than 40 years ago, during the Nixon shock [0] and Exorbitant privilege [1].

Surely, you realize the US earns its status on the global stage via its violent & powerful military, and the PetroDollar? It is foolish to suggest that the US expects other nations to possess any pretense of trust.

You don't have to believe me, because after all I'm just some dumb American. But you may want to take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself who is being the true "American" here.

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

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

<comment><USER103> Trust is lost in buckets, and earned in drops. The US will learn this the hard way. There's never been a discussion about a European army, now it crops up, for example.

Even if the next administration is deemed trustworthy what's with the one coming after that?

<comment><USER6> AND pushing for international clearing in Euros, which is much more damaging for the interests of the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> tesr

</comment><comment><USER105> Intern camp.

</comment><comment><USER34> China has a long history of disregarding United Nations and US sanctions. During the second Iraq war they defied UN sanctions by selling anti-aircraft defense systems to Iraq directly endangering US and coalition fighters.

Edit: verb tense.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=grGMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT221&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=grGMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT221&lpg=PT221&dq=chinese+military+burying+fiber+optic+cables+iraq&source=bl&ots=Lke2jW4l_v&sig=fSORayYCs1bfvetAty4Cs3jBBUE&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjI8fKmn4rfAhVIvFkKHeyOC_sQ6AEwC3oECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=chinese%20military%20burying%20fiber%20optic%20cables%20iraq&f=false)

<comment><USER11> Keep in mind that US sanctions against foreign companies doing business with Iran are opposed by:

The United Nations International Court of Justice, which ordered the US to withdraw sanctions, to which the US responded by pulling out of international agreements.

The European Union, which has attempted to block its companies from complying with US sanctions.

With that said, the US is free to sanction anyone for its own interests, that's its right as a sovereign state. It is also its right as a sovereign state to refuse market access and trade to any company that violates its sanctions.

But arresting foreign nationals in other countries for violating US sanctions? That's the equivalent of Russia arresting American business executives and extraditing them to China for violating Chinese sanctions against Taiwan - <USER3> yes, there are sanctions against Taiwan, which are regularly ignored by the US, of course. This is a massive escalation and will undoubtedly cause a major international crisis. Stay tuned.

Source:[https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_de...](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a3hied/huawei_deputy_chairwoman_arrested_by_canada_at_us/)

<comment><USER34> I mean you're right that the UN has a lot of realpolitik, and you need to take those decisions with a grain of salt. But the rulings you are referring to are an instance where the US took a different ideological stance to the EU as to the best course of action to deal with Iran (which nobody wants to have intercontinental ballistic missiles, but really doesn't want it to have nuclear weapons).

The example I gave and what it looks like Meng did at Huawei are examples of the Chinese government actively supporting weapons programs in hostile regions. I very much feel that she should stand trial for the deception she did constructing these shell companies to sell US export controlled items to Iran.</comment></comment></comment>


In other news : Twitter / Error - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/ <comment><USER2> Twitter is down so much lately....what are we to do?

Interesting that a company like Dropbox only has 45 employees and is just so stable. GB's slurped up and down everyday..

Twitter has about 424 employees and cannot stay up for a week straight it seems.

<comment><USER3> To be fair, Dropbox has had a few issues with stability as well.

But I agree, Twitter hasn't exactly been rock-solid lately.

<comment><USER2> Maybe I just seem to never have Dropbox issues!

Well the only issue I have is that they don't offer more than 100gb without paying for their Teams plan which is way expensive for a single person. -:)</comment></comment></comment>


A watershed moment for protein structure prediction - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03951-0 <comment><USER3> As the summary says, the basic approach ( evolutionary data -> position coupling -> to distance restraints - into structure solver ) is actually quite old, with the key paper back in 2011.

In fact, the distance constraints to 3D structure part is in fact very old - <USER2> was calculating structures from experimentally determined distances 30 years ago. You need a surprisingly low number of fairly weak ( these atoms are between 3 and 5 Angstroms ) distances to determine a 3D structure if you have a decent number of long range ones.

What they have done is execute better.

However the problem they are working on

sequence -> structure

though it's been a long term 'holy grail', practically it's not that useful!

The models typically aren't quite good enough, it's not predicting interactions, and experimental methods to determine structures have also moved on in leaps and bounds.

As the article briefly mentions what you really want to do is go the other way.

Designed novel structure -> protein sequence to make it.

One way to do that if you have a function going the other way ( like alphafold ( let's ignore limitations for now - ie does a knowledge based approach work well for completely novel folds ? ) ), is some sort of heuristic search - however the search space is huge and a step size of hours isn't going to cut it.

<comment><USER4> > However the problem they are working on

> sequence -> structure

I recall reading about a result a couple of years ago supposedly demonstrating that "synonymous" DNA codons were in fact not synonymous, because the ribosome took systematically different amounts of time to process them, and the difference in construction time resulted in different folding for the protein.

This would imply that the problem "sequence -> structure" is not well defined, at least if the sequence in question is the sequence of peptides making up the protein and not the sequence of codons making up the gene that codes for the protein.

Do you know anything about this? Am I just making it up?

<comment><USER5> I think it's much more likely that the different codon usage leads to different rates of synthesis, not differently folded proteins. But that's a complex area. Many proteins do not fold to their native structure spontaneously, and there are other proteins that refold them "correctly".

It's not clear to me that you could truly demonstrate substantially different folding due to codon usage like that, on an experimental level, to make a general statement about all proteins.

<comment><USER4> > Many proteins do not fold to their native structure spontaneously, and there > are other proteins that refold them "correctly".

This would also seem to imply that "sequence -> structure" isn't quite the right problem.

<comment><USER5> well, not sure what you mean by "Sequence->structure". Historically, people have used the fact that small globular proteins refold spontaneously and rapidly to their native state to support the idea that there is a single, unique structure encoded by a specific sequence. That's a helpful if ultimately limited approach (as we observe many proteins that don't fold rapidly to single native structure).

That's a reason that evolution-based methods, which use statistics about families of related proteins to estimate distances between pairs of amino acids (in 3D space), are more effective- many times in biology we can use evolutionary relationships between proteins to infer things that would be hard to determine through experiments or rigorous, thorough simulations.

But it's important to appreciate there are a large number of proteins that don't fold to a single unique structure rapidly-- and there are many ways this can be the case and many different biologically relevant behaviors depend on these properties. The tools from CASP are much less useful for proteins that violate the assumptions of Anfinsen's dogma, although the evolutionary data is helpful there too, it can often be a lot more challenging to deconvolute the signal.

Ultimately, "what is the right problem"? THe one that makes the most money? Produces the most "useful" scientific result? Is accessible with today's technology? For now, there's plenty of value in these sorts of competitions.

Personally I think the "right problem" is: "given a collection of diseases, use experimentally derived data and clever math, to discover biological treatments that reduce the total suffering from those diseases, subject to monetary and ethical constraints". That's what pharma attempts to do, although not particularly well. Others might say simply solving interesting problems like protein folding is inherently valuable as the right problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am not an ML engineer (except when I program in ML, of course ;)). But this sounds a lot like the following:

1\. We had a model that worked in principle, but the search space was practically infeasible.

2\. We made an observation that a different model might exist that makes the search space irrelevant.

3\. We threw ML at it.

4\. Now we _might_ have a model that fulfills (2) but we cannot be sure because we used a black-box approach.

5\. Somehow the results are exciting. Better results would be _really_ exciting.

6\. We hope that more data yields these better results.

Is that correct? Am I the only one to lament these black-box approaches? Should there not be a bunch of people now studying the learned models to figure out if much better results can actually exist?

<comment><USER7> >>> Am I the only one to lament these black-box approaches?

Far from it. Prediction looks like a tool in the arsenal for better understanding. One still has to correlate the structure with the complex interactions in vivo. Even using AI in classification mode, where we can segment a large atlas of tumor cells and identify a dozen or so classes of cell anomalies may lead to faster breakthroughs in immunotherapy.

What I am trying to wrap my head around is the synthesis problem. Say AlphaFold generates a promising candidate. One that does not exist naturally. You still need the DNA or mRNA transcription sequence to synthesize the protein, right? Won't some candidates simply be too complex and unstable to reliably produce using existing mammalian or baculovirus platforms?

<comment><USER8> >Won't some candidates simply be too complex and unstable to reliably produce using existing mammalian or baculovirus platforms?

You can add that to the objecting function that your model training function is optimizing, ensuring model output is not "too complex or unstable to reliably produce".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For background, read this fantastic blog post by the same author, Mohammed AlQuraishi at Harvard Medical School, from a year ago:

[https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/)

<comment><USER10> Thanks for posting, it was a great read.

I especially enjoy the segments where he upfrontly addresses "an indictment of academic science" and "an indictment of pharma". He pulls no punches in saying how embarrassing it is for pharma and academia to be literally outclassed by DeepMind.

A great quote:

"If you think I'm being overly dramatic, consider this counterfactual scenario. Take a problem proximal to tech companies' bottom line, e.g. image recognition or speech, and imagine that no tech company was investing research money into the problem. (IBM alone has been working on speech for decades.) Then imagine that a pharmaceutical company suddenly enters ImageNet and blows the competition out of the water, leaving the academics scratching their heads at what just happened and the tech companies almost unaware it even happened."

<comment><USER5> nobody is embarassed here. pharma doesn't work on protein folding prediction. now they can take the published results and code and use it, but protein fold prediction has not, is not, and probably will not ever be the rate limiting step in novel drug discovery and development.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The resulting algorithm outperformed all entrants at the most recent blind assessment of methods used to predict protein structures, generating the best structure for 25 out of 43 proteins, compared with 3 out of 43 for the next- best method."

<comment><USER12> This is remarkable. Teams of researchers all over the world have taken part in the CASP competitions for decades. Many attempts using machine learning and ANNs have been made. What is it about DeepMind that allowed them to make such a breakthrough? Do they have expertise in deep learning that does not exist in academia? Incredible amounts of compute that academia cannot afford?

<comment><USER5> The techniques DM used are popular in academia right now, too. Using evolutionary data to shortcut hard problems has been key to advancement in protein research for decades. DM just executed better, a combination of smart people, some good ideas, and lots of experimentation. NEver underestimate the ability of company that exists to win games, to win competitions.

<comment><USER13> And never underestimate the amount of money that a big tech company can throw at a random problem. DeepMind probably blew through the equivalent of multiple R01 grants writing that paper.

<comment><USER14> Big biotech can throw big amounts too.

And I read that the size of the team was 10 people - that's not a big number.

The compute power applied was not why they had this outcome.

<comment><USER13> If their salaries are anything like what Bay Area companies are shelling out for top AI engineers, each one of those 10 people is probably costing as much as 10 grad students in any of the other labs working on this problem. Big Biotech does not usually have the money to get into a bidding war for engineering talent with companies like Google.

<comment><USER14> "There are dozens of academic groups, with researchers likely numbering in the (low) hundreds, working on protein structure prediction. We have been working on this problem for decades, with vast expertise built up on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific, and not insignificant computational resources when measured collectively. For DeepMind's group of ~10 researchers, with primarily (but certainly not exclusively) ML expertise, to so thoroughly route everyone surely demonstrates the structural inefficiency of academic science."

"What is worse than academic groups getting scooped by DeepMind? The fact that the collective powers of Novartis, Pfizer, etc, with their hundreds of thousands (~million?) of employees, let an industrial lab that is a complete outsider to the field, with virtually no prior molecular sciences experience, come in and thoroughly beat them on a problem that is, quite frankly, of far greater importance to pharmaceuticals than it is to Alphabet. It is an indictment of the laughable "basic research" groups of these companies, which pay lip service to fundamental science but focus myopically on target-driven research that they managed to so badly embarrass themselves in this episode."

From: [https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold- casp...](https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2018/12/09/alphafold-casp13-what- just-happened/)

<comment><USER13> I completely disagree with his interpretation. It would be surprising if group that concentrates some of the top expertise in AI weren't able to make a big impact on a well-defined optimization problem that has been studied for decades.

I think a lot of the commentary is missing two essential points:

1\. Protein structure prediction is to a large extent a solved problem _for small-ish, soluble targets_. AlphaFold is a significant improvement on the current state of the art, but the state of the art was already far enough along that the best computational models in 2007 were good enough to bootstrap experimental structure determination ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17934447](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17934447)). In other words, it's not like the entire academic community was stumbling around helplessly in the dark.

2\. The value of these predictions to pharmaceutical companies is extremely marginal. Having a high-accuracy model is very helpful but it's rare that the researchers have so little information available that a completely de-novo prediction is necessary. And when they really don't have much information at all, it's usually because the target is sufficiently messy to defy traditional structure determination methods - which means it's almost certainly more than AlphaFold can handle too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those unaware of cryo-EM (cryogenic electron microscopy), I highly recommend reading into it. A structural biology renaissance is upon us.

</comment><comment><USER16> Code and neural network weights for AlphaFold: [https://github.com/deepmind/deepmind- research/tree/master/al...](https://github.com/deepmind/deepmind- research/tree/master/alphafold_casp13)

</comment><comment><USER17> I had the protein folding project running in my computer for a few years. Can these deep learning models be distributed like that, or do they require tightly coupled processors? Seems the latter as there was a recent IEEE article on a wafer scale array of CPU for deep learning.

<comment><USER18> Atleast those (obsolete?) bitcoin miners can be put to this use.

<comment><USER19> If you're referring to ASICs, not at all. Those things can only compute hashes

<comment><USER20> (By design, because that's the 'A' (application) in 'ASIC' (Application- Specific Integrated Circuit).)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Will this have any impact on the Folding@Home efforts?

<comment><USER22> Folding@home is working on a different problem. Folding@home finds the path a protein takes to arrive at its final structure, not just the final structure. One of the main goals is to understand protein misfolding or where on the path things go astray to result in disease.

After all these years, we are still at it. New methods are regularly evaluated and the simulation software is being refined all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there or will there be AlphaFold CASP14 entry too?</comment>


Do Trees Sleep? - <AUTHOR> http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/do-trees-sleep-160519.htm <comment><USER2> No, they probably do not. Turgor pressure changes when the sun goes down and trees get less rigid with a lower pressure.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slightly off topic: Do trees wake up? Philosophically speaking "growing, reproducing and consuming resources" is a better definition of life than "gathering/making resources for growth and reproduction". Animals started waking up as part of their life cycle, trees didn't.</comment>


Scientific American's gun error - <AUTHOR> http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/22/scientific-americans-gun-error/

<comment><USER2> As someone who lives in The Netherlands, I used to be a proponent of very strict gun control. Here in The Netherlands almost no one has a gun. Gun shops are hard to find. It seems to work out well for our country.

Then again, I visited Israel 3 times in the past and what's interesting is that lots of people, soldiers in the IDF have guns. You pretty much see guns everywhere. Yet at the same time, you don't have the fear that someone will randomly start shooting people.

Last week I came across the following article, that brings up some interesting points on why Israel has far fewer, if any, of the shooting incidents we see in the United States: [http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and- politics/119408/why...](http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and- politics/119408/why-israel-has-no-newtowns)

In short, the article brings up the following points:

\- "An armed society ... is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. It may be a bit odd to think of Israeli society as polite, but when it comes to guns it is. When everyone has a gun, guns are no longer seen as talismans by weak, frightened, and unstable men seeking a sense of self-validation, but as killing machines that are to be handled with the utmost caution and care."

\- "Rather than spend fortunes and ruin lives in a futile attempt to eradicate every last trigger in America, we would do well to follow Israel's example and educate gun owners about their rights and responsibilities, so as to foster a culture of sensible and mindful gun ownership. Go to any shooting range in Israel, as a soldier or a civilian, and the instructor is likely to talk about responsibility even before he or she begin to cover the basics of shooting."

\- "In Israel, still a somewhat socialist country, mental health services are ready available, for free, to anyone. And because so many young Israelis undergo traumatic experiences in the course of their military service, a whole host of nonprofit organizations are on hand to provide counseling and treatment."

Perhaps the 3rd point is the most important one.

<comment><USER3> _"Yet at the same time, you don't have the fear that someone will randomly start shooting people._ "

That the violence is not random does not make it any less violent. That the violence is more directed in a specific vector may contribute to one's feelings of relative safety so long as one is not identified as "the other."

<comment><USER4> Sucks being "the other." (Side note: Almost shot with AR at Israeli checkpoint.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Gun control advocates cite statistics of the kind "how many deaths are caused by guns" as justification for more gun control. Frankly, whatever the statistic is, it is too high. But that is not the point.

But in order to successfully make an argument along the lines of "more gun control will save lives", they must also cite statistics of the kind "how many lives are saved by guns". Obviously, if guns cause the death of 12000 people yearly and save the lives of 100000 people yearly, gun control is a bad idea. On the other hand, if they only save the lives of 100 people yearly, it might be a good idea after all. I have yet to see a single article on the internet citing such a number. Why is it so hard to find such a statistic?

The number of lives saved by guns (not counting police and military guns) is quite impossible to count. One might succeed in counting the number of cases where guns are used in self-defense, even though these cases usually go unnoticed. But how do you count the number of cases where the would-be perpetrator chooses not to commit the crime on account of a gun being present in defense of the would-be victim? Or doesn't even start to think about the crime?

This is a classic case of Bastiat's "that which is not seen". Because the statistic cannot be calculated, people do not take it into account. But they should if they want to make an effective argument for more gun control based on statistics.

Because the relevant statistics cannot be calculated, statistics should not be used in policy debates such as the one about gun control. Rather, let us reason about the unseen consequences of the actions of individuals as well as of the government. Without involving emotional arguments from either side.

<comment><USER6> This argument in support of "lives saved by guns" is not a classic case of Bastiat's "that which is not seen". This is a classic case of intellectual onanism.

There is a high statistical correlation between gun ownership as a percentage of population and gun deaths as a percentage of population. Unknowable figures such as "lives saved by firearms" are already taken into account. Regardless of how many lives have been saved by potential criminals not committing a crime due to fear of consequences, there were far more deaths actually caused by firearms.

This is why the number of deaths got larger: there were more people dead from firearms than people still alive from firearms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "Based on this, framework, one model for the per-capita
        gun death rate D would be D = V * G * k, where V is the
        average tendency toward violence and G is availability
        of guns, with killing power k factored in."

Ah yes, the old "write an article based on a model that you made up apparently without validation and then accuse everyone else of not citing evidence".

<comment><USER8> Well, the Australian cases of drug laws / murders provides enough validation for his case.

<comment><USER9> Except that in both Australia and the UK the gun murder rates were already incredibly low _before_ their respective gun bans. Their bans didn't actually lead to less violence than before their bans; in fact, violence actually _increased_ post-ban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 1) Am I crazy/ignorant for thinking that his formula seems like an arbitrary way to make his argument appear more technical than it is?

2) I really, really get frustrated when editorializers make the leap from correlation to causation without hard evidence.

</comment><comment><USER11> " _Fewer_ guns means _fewer_ deaths from guns"

Note that the word "less" doesn't feature once in the linked article.

<comment><USER12> I must be missing something here. Fewer is a synonym for less.

<comment><USER10> Fewer is supposed to be quantitative; less is supposed to be qualitative.

<comment><USER13> No, that's wrong. The distinction is between continuous and discrete, not quantitative and qualitative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What if the causality runs the other way, and more violent social environments inspire gun ownership?

Are there other confounding variables that we aren't allowed to think about?

Also, fewer.

</comment><comment><USER15> I love the articles and commentary comparing US gun laws to other countries in the world. There is no comparision and the US will never have gun laws similar to other nations. Any discussion on banning weapons is moot considering that the 2nd amendment exists and has been upheld by the Supreme Court numerous times in numerous ways. Given the high requirements to repeal a portion of the constitution that will never happen.

I even wonder if another "assault weapon" ban would hold up if challenged considering the Supreme Court overturned both DC's and Chicago's handgun bans?

The previous assault weapons ban was a joke anyway just labeling certain features as evil and banning them if you had too many evil features on a gun.

Maybe limiting magazine size could do some "good" but I find it hard to believe changing magazines takes any significant amount of time if the shooter has any experience with the weapon.

</comment><comment><USER16> I don't think there's anything surprising about the stats. The more gun violence around me, the more likely I am to own a gun for self defense. I don't see evidence of causation in the other direction. (For what it's worth, I favor gun control, but I don't like seeing it pushed with bad stats)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is a bullshit article. Why are we trying to minimize "gun deaths?" What the article doesn't mention is that most of those are suicides that would just do it another way if they were less readily available.

Violent crime in the UK is 4x what it is in the US yet there are less gun deaths because of the strict gun control. Who gives a shit if guns are involved or not?

<comment><USER18> Equally a bull shit post.

Suicide is easier and more irreversible with a gun. You can be saved from an overdose, for example. But its much harder to piece a brain back together after a bullet has ripped through it. A bullet to the head is pretty final, and overdose less so. Clearly you dont understand suicide or its psychology.

Next, violent crime is not murder or death. It can be robbery or assault. Your comparison is, to coin your phrase, bullshit.

Finally, "who gives a shit if if guns are involved". Well, what would you prefer to face, a knife or a gun. What are your chances of surviving a hair trigger lunge or trigger? I know I have a better chance of dodging a knife than a bullet. Just like a criminal knows he has more control over a victim with a gun rather than a knife. Can you dodge bullets?

Even so, the US is a gun based culture. International comparisons are the bullshit you crave. The US was formed with guns. It started that way and will remain that way. Taking guns out of the US is as unlikely as taking pubs out of the UK. Which, interestingly suggests why violent crime is maybe higher in the UK. We have an alcohol problem many other countries don't have. Which is another reason why international comparisons are "bullshit". Fact is, culturally we are very different. I am a Brit and I don't want US gun culture and we will never have it. Equally, I bet the US doesn't want our alcohol culture.

So, Americans should keep their guns, but equally not complain about other freedoms being compromised to compensate.

<comment><USER17> As for the suicides, who am I to say he shouldn't be doing it? He wants this to happen, so it shouldn't be included in any kind of gun control stats. It is not the thing we are trying to limit or stop.

As for what I'd rather face, I'll turn that around. If you are a criminal, which would you rather face? I'd rather not face someone trying to hurt me with either a knife or gun while unarmed.

I'm not sure why you consider my post bullshit. Is it just because I said the original was bs? He clearly used meaningless stats to argue his point and I was calling him on it. I even provided stats to back up my position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Less guns means less deaths from guns

(groan) s/less/fewer/

Use "less" for continuous quantities. _Less water_.

Use "fewer" for enumerable things. _Fewer gallons of water_.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_vs._less>

</comment><comment><USER20> Is this supposed to be some kind of revelatory finding? Let's say there were only one gun in the world; how would that affect deaths from guns?

<comment><USER21> "Revelation?"

No, it's pretty much duh.

However, it does need saying every once in a while because there are many who deny this obvious connection, and in the US at least they seem to control much of the discourse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For a look at more data (and different conclusions) see: [http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_Kate...](http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/jlpp/Vol30_No2_KatesMauseronline.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER23> The other side: More Guns, Less Crime - <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/More_Guns,_Less_Crime>

<comment><USER24> _"Lott examines the effects of the Brady law." "The third edition of the book is the first study to examine Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine laws." "Lott spends some time discussing gun ownership rates and crime rates in other countries, such as the United Kingdom."_

What an informative and illustrative article explaining the other side.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Where are the figures for government-caused deaths by guns?

Here's an idea. If we want less guns, perhaps we should stop manufacturing them to sell to government.

</comment><comment><USER24> An assault weapons ban will do little for the murder rate in the US. The US has 17k murders annually, 13k of those are committed with firearms, and 11k of those are committed with handguns. Only 2k out of 13k are committed with longarms (which aren't just assault weapons) - this assault weapons debate is a waste of hot air for both sides, and isn't going to have a meaningful affect on either the real issues or the security theatre.

<comment><USER26> the theory is that decreasing access to large magazines and/or 100-round drums would decrease the _mass_ -murder rate. Considering we're talking about mentally unstable suspects, a little bit of resistance to being able to get a large magazine might mean they can't fire off 30-100 rounds without reloading when they go off on their spree.

<comment><USER24> Mass murder is highly visible, but makes barely a dent in the annual toll. Not to mention that the two biggest school-based mass-murderers in the US did their massacres with legally obtained handguns, not assault weapons. Even if there were ten mass-murders the size of Sandy Hook a year, that'd still make only 300 homicides out of 13k firearm and 17k total. And according to this page [1], there's actually only been about 75 mass-shooting homicides in the US in 2012, including Sandy Hook. 75 is _three_ orders of magnitude less than the annual toll.

Also, 'mentally unstable' doesn't mean 'frothing at the mouth and barking at the moon'. Simply because a mentally ill person might have troubles with moral judgments doesn't mean that they lose the capacity for forethought - look at Cho chaining the doors shut before starting.

Assault rifles are just simply not the problem in US homicides.

[1] [http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeli...](http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337221/a-timeline- of-mass-shootings-in-the-us-since-columbine/?mobile=nc)

<comment><USER26> regardless, there's not much of an argument for 30-round/100-round magazines to be legal. Just like there's not much argument for pipe-bombs to be legal (anyone can make one, right ? is the illegality of easy-to-build bombs "security theater" or just common sense?). These devices have no legitimate uses by civilians.

<comment><USER24> I completely agree. I'm for gun reform of pretty much all kinds except perhaps hunting rifles and longarms for farm/rural use. The problem is that the assault rifle are not even a sideshow to the main event. It's going to run counter to gun reformists desires because after long, drawn-out arguments where they finally wrest some concessions, those concessions are going to do absolutely nothing substantial, leaving the opposing side with a hard-to- argue-with "I told you so".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> After reading this, I remain unconvinced that legislation like "limits on magazine capacity and regulation of ammunition sales" will make Alaskans desire gun ownership, and shoot each other, at rates more like New Jerseyans.</comment>


Blizzard Hit by Multiple DDoS Attacks - <AUTHOR> http://kotaku.com/blizzard-hit-by-multiple-ddos-attacks-1770920820 <comment><USER2> they did piss off a big amount of players on private servers recently wonder if it is connected.</comment>


Dvorak Keyboard Training - <AUTHOR> https://learn.dvorak.nl/ <comment><USER2> Used this site 5 years ago, switched to Dvorak over a weekend. My typing speed slowed initially below my QWERTY speed of 110 wpm, but last time I tested myself I was pull in a respectable 190 wpm.

Dvorak is more enjoyable for me to type on.</comment>


Reverse Engineering Using Chrome - <AUTHOR> https://rudk.ws/2016/10/17/reverse-engineering-by-using-chrome/ <comment><AUTHOR> People you are amazing! Thank you very much for liking this link - Just in two hours, I have never expected it is going to be at the very top of Hacker News web-site. I am very happy you have enjoyed this article.

</comment><comment><USER2> I would be interested in a tool that allows the user to make a snapshot of the DOM, and then at a later instant, compare the current DOM with the saved one (like a diff). For arbitrary websites of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's an interesting idea, thanks for sharing. I haven't heard if there is a plugin is available for such job, although it would be cool to have it!

<comment><USER3> Diffing trees sounds NP-complete. Or is there a polynomial solution of some kind?

<comment><USER4> Trees are a special case of graphs in general, which aren't necessarily even NP-complete.

In fact, if trees couldn't be diffed things like React would have serious speed concerns, or more realistically wouldn't even exist in the first place.

<comment><USER2> React is not optimal, or it would require O(N^3) time at least. Think for example of a linear structure like a listbox, and then consider that a perfect diff requires an algorithm like Smith-Waterman, which is O(N^3). (Perhaps faster algorithms exist, but they are probably not really significantly faster).

<comment><USER4> I certainly wasn't commenting on the preciseness of React's diffing (and how they're able to reduce it from O(n) to O(n^3) by ignoring things). I was merely pointing out that it's possible to diff trees in polynomial time.

Edit: Just to clarity, I'm also not saying O(n^3) isn't slow compared to React's O(n), just that it's potentially a lot faster than NP.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> dezoomify [1] does all that for most common tileset formats.

[1]: [https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify](https://github.com/lovasoa/dezoomify)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing!</comment></comment>


Google, YouTube and Binge On - <AUTHOR> https://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2016/03/google-youtube-and-binge-on.html <comment><AUTHOR> Am I understanding their opt-out requirements [0] correctly: To opt-out of their "optimization" [1] and zero-rating _as a content provider_ , you must not use SSL or UDP and they must be able to identify it as a video?

Does that mean they "optimize" SSL traffic by default?

0: [https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn- Vi...](https://www.t-mobile.com/content/dam/tmo/en-g/pdf/BingeOn-Video- Technical-Criteria-March-2016.pdf)

1: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t- mobiles...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/01/eff-confirms-t-mobiles- bingeon-optimization-just-throttling-applies)</comment>


Why CoreOS Just Fired a Rocket at Docker - <AUTHOR> https://gigaom.com/2014/12/02/why-coreos-just-fired-a-rocket-at-docker/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's still far too early to tell whether Rocket's container technology will catch fire the way Docker's did. Regardless, the pressure is on Docker to distinguish itself now that it has a competitor that seems to be coming out guns blazing.</comment>


Ask HN: Protecting yourself, your chidren, from food? - <AUTHOR> Mercury and toxins in fish, antibiotics and hormones in meat, microplastics in vegetables, fruit and water, metals and drugs in tap water...<p>What active measures do you take, if any, to protect yourself and / or your children from all these things we've made part of our lives at this point ? <comment><USER2> Go somewhere else... In Germany there is no chlorine and fluoride in tap water You can buy meat and vegs locally almost everywhere Most pesticides are outlawed or frowned upon by the people People actively clean up litter, plant wild flowers for bees and try to use renewable power. There are other countries like this, look for these.

<comment><USER3> > In Germany there is no chlorine and fluoride in tap water

That's false. Most places add chlorine to the tap water system, for good reason.

And while tap water isn't fluoridized, you'll have to look hard in supermarkets to find table salt that isn't.

<comment><USER2> In the small supermarket there is one table salt with and one without iodine or flouride In organic supermarkets you'll have more choice for salt and so on. In big supermarkets there are like 5-6 different kinds of salt.. seasalt, himalayan, prehistoric seasalt and so on. German Tap Water is not chlorinated or flourinated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ※ Children.

Too late to edit the typo now, sorry about that.</comment>


This video camera is powered by light - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.columbia.edu/CAVE/projects/self_powered_camera/

<comment><USER2> That's the elegant solution I love about welding equipment. They realized hrm super bright light source.... lets use solar cells. Need just enough power in battery form to keep the micro alive. Been doing it since way back in the '90s.

</comment><comment><USER3> As we go increasingly wireless, we become keenly aware of recharging batteries. Consequence is greater interest in "ambient power harvesting". A device powered by its own sensor's energy input is insightful. What next? keyboards powered by typing? trackpad/mouse by clicking & movement? Screens with an extra sub-pixel for light collection? Smart watch "self-winding"?

<comment><USER4> Backlit screens and backlit watches are never going to be self-powered. It's more feasible that a passive e-paper like display could be self-powered.

<comment><USER5> Depends on how you define the phrase "self-powered." Today, an "electric- powered" car may not necessarily mean to the exclusion of gasoline as an additional power source.

If a backlit device harvests the unused light from its own backlight, it would surely be powered by itself. Not _purely_, but it would be harvesting its own outputs for energy.

<comment><USER6> Unused light? What did you mean by that?

Fueling an electric car with gasoline has has nothing to do with self powered ambient harvesting machines. It looks like you're just trying to stretch concepts to suit your initial arguments.

<comment><USER5> I apologize for not responding sooner.

LCD displays operate by partially blocking or completely blocking the backlight to produce an image. The blocked backlight photons are not used to generate the image. As opposed to a CRT or OLED display, which generate light to produce an image.

What original argument? This is my only comment on this thread. My point was that "X-powered" does not mean "powered-solely-by-X."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Combine this with the recent millimeter scale computer motes [http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/](http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/) and we get real close to several sci-fi themes such as optical camouflage and universal panopticon.

<comment><USER8> What happened to make [http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/in2010](http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDust/in2010) so wildly off? Did those projections seem realistic 10 years before? Is it just taking a little longer?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is very interesting!

"it could lead to a fully self-powered solid-state image sensor that produces a useful resolution and framerate"

In this case would it be able to output colors?

<comment><USER10> Color just means putting red, green and red filters in front of the pixels in some pattern and so it is definitely not a principle problem but you will lose a large part of the light spectrum for every pixel and therefore harvest a lot less energy.

<comment><USER11> In theory, you could put the filters on for just a fraction of the time to measure the colors, and spend most of the time collecting all the light. I'm not sure how to do that and stay low power.

You could have separate smaller color sensing pixels, using only a fraction of the surface area.

ETA: There are also transparent solar panels which only absorb UV. If that were tuned for visible colors, you could have three transparent layers over an ordinary panel, and maybe not lose anything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Can it also be used to power other electronics attached to it, such as a CPU?

</comment><comment><USER13> URL changed from [http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/15/self-powered- camera/](http://www.engadget.com/2015/04/15/self-powered-camera/), which points to this.</comment>