Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-07/soylent-thinks-it-found-what-was-making-people-sick-algae <comment> old-gregg Soylent's problem is not a seemingly overlooked ingredient. Their biggest problem is inability to run the continuous food processing loop.

What's the point of tweaking the recipe if you can't guarantee the execution and your customers get, basically, randomness for lunch?

We had a corporate subscription for Soylent 2.0 drink. The taste varied from batch to batch on the scale from "milk in a cereal bowl" to "sewage water".

These issues have been regularly popping up on reddit and their own forums for months now. We have suspended the subscription and I can't bring myself to try another bottle, even though I originally loved the concept and the taste.

<comment><USER2> To be fair, this statement is something that needs to be followed up with hard evidence. Inconsistent flavour between batches does not _necessarily_ mean you're getting different percentages of ingredients. You can't simply blame them for variation in taste; just look at orange juice companies for the amount of chemical manipulation that goes into making a single brand of orange juice taste exactly the same in every batch even though oranges naturally have varying flavors. That is _not_ the kind of science I want behind my food.

There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why haven't we heard from them? I can't imagine risk of lawsuit for defamation is the only reason. The whole appeal of Soylent is that the formula is public; surely they can't be hiding behind "publishing analysis of our product is exposing our corporate secrets".

<comment><USER3> > There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the > equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why > haven't we heard from them?

Honest question, why would anyone bother? Who would actually benefit from being able to release a statement about how variable it is?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Inexcusable.

The only reason Soylent have gotten away with it for so long is that the FDA rules for this category of product haven't been written yet.

A product shouldn't make people sick when used as intended. So if a product is intended to be consumed as 100% of your diet, it MUST:

\- contain all known macro- and micro-nutrients necessary for human health

\- contain nothing that makes you sick when you eat it all the time

Soylent failed on both counts:

\- Early formulations lacked selenium. Beta testers duly developed symptoms of selenium deficiency.

\- The latest formulation contained algae. Customers duly got sick from consuming more of this kind of algae than humans have ever consumed before.

The first mistake might be excused as a beginner's error and a learning experience. But they didn't learn. Luckily, Soylent lives in the land of class action lawsuits. The lawyers are gonna shut these jokers down.

<comment><USER5> Good lord. The percentage of people who 'got sick' by Soylent was less 0.1% of all consumers. If we went into panic-mode for that kind of result for every product, we wouldn't have any products. The variation in humans is too great to test for everything.

"The Lawyers" aren't going to shut anyone down because no one is suing, and if they tried I doubt any judge would allow a class-action lawsuit for a few tummyaches.

Soylent lists the ingredients on the box. That the consumers were unaware of their sensitivity to algae is not evidence of misconduct on the part of Soylent.

<comment><USER4> I take your point about the class-action.

I also take your point about human choice, as far as it goes, but I still think Soylent is a special case.

If I eat ridiculous amounts of pesto and rupture my duodenum, nobody would hold the pesto producer responsible, because that's not the way people eat pesto.

But if eating lots of Soylent made me ill, Soylent's makers should, in principle, bear some responsibility, because they know that this is how people eat Soylent. Indeed, Soylent was heavily hyped as something that could be 100% of your diet, and they can't pretend that never happened.

The FDA actually DOES require that novel ingredients are tested to the point where 0.1% problems are detectable. I know that the algae isn't a novel ingredient, but if Soylent add it to their formula, it will suddenly comprise a large part of the diet of a large number of people. That is a novel thing in itself, so I would argue that Soylent has some responsibility to make sure what they're doing is safe. If FDA rules say its okay not to, the FDA rules need to catch up.

I might be inclined to give Soylent the benefit of the doubt if I thought they had a better attitude. But when they made themselves sick because they forgot humans need selenium in their diet, they didn't say, "Wow! How could we have been so dumb? We need to take more care with people's bodies." It was more like, "Hey, no problem. Nobody died and we fixed it now. Let's move on."

These are just the screw ups we know about. What are the odds there are plenty more they managed to hush up? Nobody has been killed or injured so far, but if they don't change their attitude and people continue to live off their swill...

<comment><USER6> If I release a product containing lactose, clearly state it contains lactose, and a bunch of people have stomach problems after ingesting it because they are lactose intolerant, is it my fault? Regardless on whether or not it was meant to be a 100% meal replacement?

This is a fairly ridiculous argument. People's lack of knowledge about their own food sensitivities is not Soylent's fault, nor should it be expected to be.

<comment><USER4> Your analogy is inappropriate. You know as well as I do that common ingredients such as flour and milk are regulated differently from novel ones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Where is the FDA in all of this? I would hope that after the widespread issues with the product, they would have stepped in and blocked shipment until safety studies have been done that comply with regulations.

<comment><USER8> They're busy regulating life saving drugs. If we got rid of the FDA all together, there would be more competition for products like this, and companies would need to win the trust of consumers by providing real health study information.

<comment><USER9> Please read about "The Jungle". (Wiki: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle)).

Relying on companies to compete on the basis of maximizing customer health is... short-sighted at best.

<comment><USER10> Right, I was gonna say, didn't we literally try this? And decide that it was a mistake? And _come up with_ the FDA in response?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong.

What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.

<comment><USER12> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick.

Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups. If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it.

People get food poisoning randomly from restaurants all the time. And usually they can never figure otu exactly what it was that caused it, they just carry on and maybe get their rating lowered or license taken away if it keeps happening. Chipotle even just had the same problem.

Yes, they get a bunch of shit for it. But it's not like this is a problem that doesn't afflict the 'normal' food industry as well.

<comment><USER13> > You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant.

But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1]

[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521)

<comment><USER14> That documentary tested overeating well outside the bounds of any sane nutritional guidelines. It's sad that people don't have the critical thinking skills required to realize the same thing would happen if you ate those levels of calories at any restaurant or even at home.

<comment><USER15> wasn't there a counter-documentary where someone ate from mcdonalds every day and also followed a fairly strict exercise regimen and wound up being way fitter than when he started?

<comment><USER16> Yep, it was called "Fat Head." The exercise regime wasn't even that strict, it was basically continuing the regular walking the documentarian already did. However, the food intake was strictly limited to 1800 calories and less then 100g of carbs per day. The goal being to show fast food isn't inherently unhealthy, it was the quantity (as already noted above) being eaten in Super Size Me that was unhealthy. In that regard, Fat Head succeeded as the documentarian's health metrics all improved (lot weight, lower blood pressure, better cholesterol measurements).

<comment><USER17> Note that the premise of "Super Size Me" was to get the "Super Size" menu whenever asked by the Mc Donald's counter clerk, leading to overconsumption.

<comment><USER18> Yes, but the overall point remains if you overeat you'll get fat regardless of what it is.

You can actually get a balanced daily diet out of mcdonalds if you ask for unsalted fries and get one of their salads once in a while.

Honestly sodium aside the only thing you need to do not to over eat at MC is to get water instead of soda and just regular sized burger.

It will be around 600-700 cals per meal with fries which means you can eat 3 of those a day and maintain weight or even lose some depending on your age, sex, bodymass and daily regiment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >Since its introduction in 2013, the protein drink Soylent has become the go- to food substitute

Maybe I'm being pedantic, but Soylent is not a protein drink. It's primarily a carbohydrate drink.

<comment><USER20> Is actually more of a fat-drink than a carbohydrate or protein drink.[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to- Drink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_\(food\)#Ready-to-Drink)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Soylent better be sure that they are right. They just fingered the problem onto another company (TerraVia). What supplier would work with Soylent if it turns out Soylent is wrong?

<comment><USER22> Plenty. Food is a cut-throat competitive business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love what Soylent is doing, I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life.

I've drank something like 40 bottles of Soylent (which are, so far presumably safe) and they have helped me replace a lot of fast food. Never had problems with them until I started getting nauseous and now I can't drink it anymore.

With all these news about people getting sick, I feel a bit silly having beta tested stuff with my own body. And they definitely have lost at least one customer here.

But I'm still happy to see them experimenting with such a product. I still want this to happen, I will just not beta test it myself.

<comment><USER24> > I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life.

why aren't any of the very many other products that have existed for years been good enough?

<comment><USER25> What products would those be? Most meal replacement shakes marketed in the US are for people trying to lose weight, so they have far less calories and fat than a meal for people just trying to eat healthy.

<comment><USER26> Have you heard of Ensure?

<comment><USER25> Yeah, I even wrote a paragraph bashing it (or at least, people claiming that it's a product of serious medical research) last time we had a Soylent thread. It has a lot more sugar and carbs than most people would want to eat regularly, which makes it more suitable as a _temporary_ food replacement or a snack than a lunch staple.

<comment><USER27> Try something like Glucerna. It's like Ensure but for diabetics, so it has a lot less sugar and carbs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> _> Algal flour is a fairly novel ingredient that serves as a vegan replacement for butter and eggs. Derived from algae grown in fermentation tanks and then dried_

Reminds me of fungal protein, aka quorn aka mycoprotein. They were advertising it as the next big thing in protein sources. Its also grown by fermentation. If you google it, there are safety concerns.

<comment><USER29> There are safety concerns, but I think there are differences in product maturity. Quorn products have been available since the 80's, and early 2000's in the USA. Over the last ~15 years there have been a couple thousand complaints over the products, but since these are not incident related I would characterize them more like complaints about specific ingredients. Some people get reactions to peanuts, red wine, etc, but we do not consider that the manufacturer is at fault.

Thanks for getting me to take a look at Quorn safety. I've been eating it for years, and continue to. Even though I am no longer really a vegetarian I enjoy Quorn products more than chicken based products since Quorn has better product consistency (not fat or gristle bits) than animal sources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Clearly there is a market for this 'super convenience' food/drink if people are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. Even when their own stomach is the guinea pig. The company could do with better marketing though, reading things like this:

 _In 2013, he raised capital to turn his full attention to Soylent, which he named after the science fiction novel that served as the basis for the 1973 movie featuring Charlton Heston as a detective who discovers that a new type of food called Soylent Green is made of people._

..certainly doesn't help.

<comment><USER31> I'm more aggrieved by the marketing (from day one) being a variation of "techies too busy to cook for themselves"

It's not even a suggestion to drink it once in a while, when you're indeed unable to eat something else. It's an invitation to replace all meals with a prepared drink.

It feeds on, and enables, the perpetually-busy/all-nighter culture of SV.

<comment><USER32> s/busy/lazy/g

At least, that's how the marketing is hitting me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Part of the issue is their desire to keep the product vegan. Instead of using known-safe, health-promoting sources of polyunsaturated (O3/O6) fats like fish oil, they use algal sources, which have very little data supporting them as safe/effective sources of O3.

<comment><USER34> [http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or- foe-20...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or- foe-201307126467)

There are other safe sources of omega 3's.

<comment><USER33> The sources mentioned in that article are ALA, which have conversion rates to the desired DHA/EPA that vary greatly between individuals [1]. Typically, something like 5% of ALA is converted to EPA and even less is converted to DHA. It's better to eat the preformed DHA/EPA rather than relying on the conversion.

edit: Harvard health seems to even disagree with themselves: [http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not- flaxse...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxseed-oil)

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Blue Bell in Texas shut down for months due to listeria. Would that put some companies out of business? Maybe, that's ok. This is public health we're talking about.

Disrupt. Move fast and break things. Iterate iterate iterate. Fail fast. This may be okay when you're making a better spreadsheet, but not everything can be a startup.

<comment><USER36> Spreadsheets are used to make real decisions. Spreadsheet bugs kill too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is this unrelated to the mold contamination people were reporting?

<comment><USER38> yeah, different issues

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> The fact that Soylent is classified as a "Nutritional supplement" is absurd. No inspections, no accountability.

<comment><USER40> This is false. Soylent is classified as a food, and has to follow the same FDA requirements as any other food.

"Soylent is not in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements, and is manufactured in FDA-approved facilities that follow federally regulated current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP)."

Source: [https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en- us/articles/204197379-Californ...](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en- us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65)

<comment><USER39> You just proved my point: cGMP relates to drug safety, not to food consumption. It is not regulated as a food.

[http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufact...](http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufacturing/ucm169105.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well one of the reasons I liked their products was because of the "algal oil" (no word on if they're going to remove that also). This is basically vegan fish oil, which as a vegetarian is one of the things I've missed.

<comment><USER42> As a long-time vegetarian, I've been buying algae-sourced EPA/DHA capsules for years from a company called Vegetology. They actually, you know, _test their product_ for safety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Here's what I don't get... There is all this bad hype about Soylent. Why not just get one of the dozens of other meal replacement shakes in your average health food store?

<comment><USER44> Wrong subculture. Health foods are marketed for hippies and athletes and dieters. Soylent is for nerds!

/s

<comment><USER43> So it's strictly a Marketing game? There's nothing behind the product? I would have thought nerds would be smarter. Or is it something like a hipster beard and hats when it's warm?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.'

Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that may or may not break.

<comment><USER46> Things that go into your body get rapidly developed and released all the time. Ever been to a restaurant with a new item on the menu?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand" ([https://bertrand.bio/](https://bertrand.bio/)). It is made out of organic ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real" natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components (e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today (quite likely imho), they should still be in the drink since it's not made from artificial components.

I'm drinking it for two months now and I'm happy with it. Very convenient, fair price, available in a vegan & gluten-free version and it tastes okay-ish (like oatmeal).

P.S.: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.

<comment><USER48> Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from protein.

<comment><USER47> That is true, especially the vegan version lacks protein (in comparison to the "active" version). That's why I add rice protein to the drink to get up to 120-150g protein/day. Besides that I add also Acerola powder for more (natural) vitamin C.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> We always get latest version of soylent instead of having a way to subscribe a specific version. This is like cloud based service, the upgrade is transparent, you benefits from ingredient upgrade, and you suffer from it. The key here is how fast Soylent can identify and address customer's concerns.

</comment><comment><USER50> I enjoyed Soylent when it first came out, but then they started trying to be clever. It was already a complex product and they went crazy trying to replace the fish oil they were using. Around v1.4 it started to taste absolutely disgusting and the consistency was that of slime.

</comment><comment><USER51> I've not often eaten algae, but I do remember it to have the weirdest taste I have ever experienced.

<comment><USER52> Seaweed is a type of algae, and I eat rehydrated dried seaweeds every so often. I wouldn't call any seaweed delicious but they're no worse than the average vegetable. If you eat other seafood you'll probably find the taste of seaweed acceptable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm not surprised. Spirulina is sold as a miracle health food, but it makes me toss my cookies.

</comment><comment><USER54> That's too bad. I love the algae based DHA-3 fortified milk at the super market. The other option is fish based DHA-3 fortified and I can't stand the taste. It's strange to blame something sold in supermarkets like that.

</comment><comment><USER55> I get sick every time I eat fake eggs made from Algae- this makes a lot of senseto me.

</comment><comment><USER56> Please fix it and get these products back on the market so I can get my order in.

</comment><comment><USER57> Move fast and make people vomit

<comment><USER58> Sounds like a fun roller-coaster

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Wasn't Soylent Green also made of "algae-based ingredients"?

Perhaps the name of the product is more on-point than we realize...

</comment><comment><USER42> No, I'm pretty sure it was hubris. Proximal cause versus ultimate cause, and all that.

</comment><comment><USER60> Does it really make a difference for Soylent at this point?

I would imagine their brand is already trashed.

</comment><comment><USER61> I was sure it was going to be "People"

</comment><comment><USER62> Way to casually ruin Soylent Green, Bloomberg!

</comment><comment><USER63> someone should inform the author of this article that algae aren't plants

<comment><USER64> Would you prefer they complicate the discussion by trying to explain what they are? My understanding has always been that they have many plant-like characteristics, but not all. In fact, they are even a part of the plant kingdom. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.htm)

<comment><USER63> Some are, some aren't. Upon further research it does appear the type used in this algal flour are related to plants but many algae species aren't closely related to plants at all.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> Oh boy, another Soylent discussion.

Here is what all the off topic discussion will be:

Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all your meals, just ones that you are too busy to eat. Also, it has all the vitamins you need not like all those thousand other bars/drinks!?"

Person2) "I'd rather move to the bottom of the ocean than buy Soylent. Why would you ever skip a meal?! Capitalism is the root of all evil including making me miss my dinner!"

Folks, we all come at food differently, it's a very personal thing. Just because _you_ feel this way about food, does not mean we all do. It's like people that stand or sit when they are wiping after going #2. We all coexist just fine and none of us know that there is really any other way and are astounded when other people are different.

Chill, people, chill, it's food.

<comment><USER66> You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being more educated.

I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity.

I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and cooking.

<comment><USER67> > The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and > Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity.

Conceptually, the advantages of a product such as Soylent includes long shelf- life, reducing the frequency and time needed to shop food, offering healthy fast-food meals, having a lower carbon footprint and being more sustainable than regular food, reducing the time spent preparing food, being cheaper than other sources of ready-made food (with basis in my own budget). These are not trivial advantages if fully realized, and it seems reductive to reduce the advantages of Soylent to just being a product for people poorly educated about food.

> I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating > and cooking.

I believe most people who eat healthy basically just follow hand-wavy norms and guidelines about what is considered healthy, e.g. include fish and vegetables in your diet (simplified). Once someone actually tries to engineer a complete diet such as Soylent it becomes apparent how hard it is to guarantee rich completeness. However, in the long run I believe the engineering approach, based on scientific input, is more likely to result in a proper diet. Especially when in the long run a "Soylent version X" can be based on a closed loop with personal body telemetry and customized food mixes based on these sensor readings.

<comment><USER66> I agree with you overall, but my different viewpoint comes from witnessing other companies addressing the advantages you've mentioned.

Just as trends in the computer industry have been largely led by power users, there are also food "power users". These are people who save time cooking with new equipment (powerful blenders, sous vide, etc), have high quality, freshly- picked food delivered in weekly boxes, have convenient herb gardens, etc. There are more innovations on the horizon (Farmbot, Cinder, etc).

Of course, Soylent is still much faster, but I think these "power users" will close the gap in convenience faster than Soylent can close the gap in quality.

<comment><USER68> I do not and will not prepare my own food, so it usually takes me at least 30 minutes and $10 to go out and get a meal. When I don't feel like doing that, a bottle of Soylent saves most of that time and money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Such an unfortunate name. The 1973 film was set in 2022, so not far off the mark.

<comment><USER70> But then again the 1973 movie was made in 1973, so there are tens of millions of people who have never heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> People have been warning us about the green soylent since the 70s.

</comment><comment><USER72> I flagged it because the site started playing audio while I was trying to read. Had to close the tab to make my phone shut up. It was embarrassing and I was unable to read the content.

</comment><comment><USER73> Algae? Yeah right. Soylent green is made of people.

Seriously though, how can a food supplement (sorry, meal replacement) company expect to prosper with a brand based on a sci-fi movie about cannibalism?

<comment><USER70> You feel that way because you're on the Internet. I've never seen the movie, it was way before my time, and it exists in the tiniest amount of public consciousness today. The only reason I know what Soylent Green even means is because people on the Internet reference it occasionally.

I've talked to quite a few people about Soylent and I've said "you know, like the movie" and most of the time they have no idea what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER74> Besides, it's not called "Soylent Green". Green was the cause of the shock twist in the movie, but there was also Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow in the movie, which were pretty much what Soylent, the product, is trying to become.

The name is appropriate in the context of the movie, although I would have never chosen it.

<comment><USER73> > The name is appropriate in the context of the movie

Only if you don't see a problem with buying from a company whose other product lines include ground up paupers.

The name is like a stupid teenage joke which somehow managed to survive onto packaging.

Also it's objectively ironic that the problem is related to algae, which is commonly _green_.

<comment><USER75> And what are people who hate a product simply because its name resembles some movie 40 years ago? A stupid teenager? Or a stupid adult?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: E-mail reports for Twitter activity of people you care most - <AUTHOR> http://www.socialhuntapp.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> It's our side project that we've done during the weekend. We used React, Javascript and Java. We are open to questions if there are any :)

<comment><USER2> How do I sign up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently you can only use Twitter to sign-up. It's a pretty easy process.

1- You sign in with Twitter. 2- Pick 5 accounts to get notifications. 3- You leave your e-mail address.

Then we start sending you e-mails according to your preferences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> thumbs up</comment>


Twitter-based game from iList — Spymaster - <AUTHOR> http://playspymaster.com/

<comment><USER2> Gross. The S/N ratio on twitter was already on the decline, crap like this is going to make the problem even worse. I deleted my account about a month ago and haven't looked back.

<comment><USER3> The ratio is even worse on the internet in general. I'm thinking about canceling that, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Everyone knew that the next thing to hit twitter would be games. There is already several of them out there that focus mainly on trivia, which makes sense and could be used as an excellent marketing tool. What scares me is that this is listed as a "social" game, and in looking at the FAQ (<http://playspymaster.com/faq>) it is clear that this is Mafia Wars for Twitter.

Whats really funny is the question about people with a "Director" level title who are apparently developers or close friends of the game. The answer contains this:

"Directors are playing characters of Spymaster just like you — however, be advised that plotting assassinations against directors may have dire consequences."

But to be honest I made a twitter game a while ago with a friend just to mess with the twitter api, its called BattleBird: <http://battlebird.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this just gonna be Mafia Wars, etc, on Twitter? Waiting to see, but I do hope not...

<comment><USER6> Of course it is!

<comment><USER5> _sigh_</comment></comment></comment>


Intro to Comp Sci language breakdown - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested to know what universities offer (or offered) as the programming language(s) in their introductory programming courses.
If you majored in computer science, or if you know about the introductory computer science program at some university, could you leave a message here with: University Name / Language(s) / Time Frame (or year)
I'm not interested in their relative merits, just the hard facts: what, where, when. <comment><AUTHOR> I went to UConn, which taught C++ until 2004 or so, at which point they switched to Java.

I also know that MIT used to run with Scheme, until just recently (2008?), when they switched to Python.

</comment><comment><USER2> Cornell / Matlab or Java / 2009 and many years past. You can choose multiple versions of those courses. There is even a "robotics" version.

</comment><comment><USER3> University of Waterloo / Scheme / 2009 <\-- Computer Science

University of Waterloo / C# / 2009 <\-- Computer Engineering

</comment><comment><USER4> Loyola University New Orleans / VB.NET, Java / 2004

Computer science program is now extinct though.</comment>


The Nightmare of Human Organ Harvesting in China - <AUTHOR> https://outline.com/H63avJ <comment><USER2> I actually know someone who got one done in 2006. From what I remember, it was one of those don't ask don't tell deal. However it was understood that the organ came from executed prisoner. It saved her life. I don't know anything about what goes into ensuring donor's organ is a reasonable match, but I'm not too sure if the waiting period for her was that long. Anyway I do remember it became much more difficult for foreigner to get transplant shortly afterwards but this article seems to indicate the trend is reversing with institional practice.

<comment><USER3> I always wondered why Steve Jobs waited around so long for his liver transplant instead of just getting one from China.

And before you say morals don't forget he gamed the waiting list in the US to get the too-late liver and he had no qualms seeing slave labour build his companies products.

<comment><USER4> Steve Jobs didn't need a Chinese organ. He just needed to decide he was ready to get the transplant instead of trying to cure his cancer with a special diet. Once he realized he wasn't curing himself with his diet, he got the transplant quickly because, as you noted, he gamed the system.

<comment><USER3> But once he was on the transplant list he still had to wait and he still gamed it to shorten that wait.

Which makes me wonder why he didn't just get a Chinese liver at that point.

<comment><USER4> Possibly because he didn't want someone killed for his liver. Also it's not clear how long Jobs actually waited. In addition to the geographic system gaming, there was some shady stuff with the doctor who gave Jobs the transplant.

[http://fortune.com/2013/12/08/the-surgeon-who-gave-steve- job...](http://fortune.com/2013/12/08/the-surgeon-who-gave-steve-jobs-a-new- liver-and-two-more-years-faces-new-questions/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> _Where are the organs coming from? China claims it has the "largest voluntary organ donation system in Asia" and stopped using prisoners in 2015. But the country has no tradition of voluntary organ donation._

<comment><USER5> _stopped using prisoners in 2015_

"Congratulations, Prisoner #289,349 — you've been paroled. You're no longer a prisoner!"

"You mean I'm free to go?"

"Well, most of you is. Step this way..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting; I had only heard the other day from a bizarre discussion with a Chinese friend who has a family member in government back in China that the price of an organ can increase if the donor is from a clean Christain denomination, because it is feasible that the organs are better kept (ie not an alcoholic, not a drug taker, not a smoker etc) before their donor was deceased.

Supposedly there is a market for the healthiest organs to the highest bidder. I guess they hit the jackpot!

</comment><comment><USER7> There are 36,000 organ transplants performed in the US every year, does anyone know how many occur in China?

<comment><USER8> The article touches on this momentarily:

>In 2010 China's official number of voluntary donors was 34. In 2018 China still had only about 6,000 official organ donors, who are said to donate more than 18,000 organs. Yet the "Bloody Harvest" researchers find that figure is "easily surpassed by just a few hospitals." Tianjin First Center alone performs more than 6,000 transplants a year, and the report's authors "verified and confirmed 712 hospitals which carry out liver and kidney transplants." Dr. Huang claims China will perform the most transplants in the world by 2020—more than America's 40,000 a year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I confess I fail to see how outline.com (which is currently where this link leads) is anything but a massive content piracy machine masquerading as some kind of tech startup.

I find it incredibly hard to believe HN would allow submissions of warez sites and links to cracked app downloads, and fail to see the difference between that and the way outline is used here. I get that it's convenient to have free access to paywalled content, just like it's convenient to have free access to tons of cracked apps.

<comment><USER10> Piracy actually rules

<comment><USER11> This comment adds absolutely nothing of value to the conversation whatsoever.

<comment><USER10> Sure it does. The OP assumed that piracy was bad and compared outline.com to piracy to attempt to argue it is bad. Their premise is false, because actually piracy rules and is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> >Mr. Rogers is East Asia Team Leader at the human-rights organization CSW, deputy chairman of the U.K. Conservative Party's Human Rights Commission

Hm, I wonder what the political motives of the author are.

<comment><USER12> Unless you're suggesting he's part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data, I find his politics extremely irrelevant.

<comment><USER13> Why wouldn't he be "part of a grand conspiracy to fabricate this data"? It's called promoting their country's national interests, and it's part of the job description for such roles.

Conspiracy doesn't have to include loonies, aliens, and illuminati. Nation states do conspiracies perfectly well, they just call them "foreign policy", and include presenting the data as they like, painting the pictures to fit the politics of the day, having cosy relations with journalists, getting selective people on the other side (e.g. opposition leaders) to give the kind of statements they like, and so on.

<comment><USER12> Seriously?

"In 2006 Chinese-speaking researchers posed as organ buyers and directly asked if organs from Falun Gong practitioners could be arranged for transplant. Hospitals throughout China confirmed they had such organs available, no problem.

The stories are brutal. Dr. Enver Tohti, a former surgeon from Xinjiang, testified in the British, Irish and European parliaments to removing organs from a prisoner forcibly in 1995. "We had been told to wait behind a hill, and come into the field as soon as we'd hear the gunshot," he recalled. "A moment later there were gunshots. Not one, but many. We rushed into the field. An armed police officer approached us and told me where to go. He led us closer, then pointed to a body, saying, 'This is the one.' By then our chief surgeon appeared from nowhere and told me to remove the liver and two kidneys." According to Dr. Tohti, the man's wound was not necessarily fatal. But Dr. Tohti went ahead and removed the liver and kidneys while the man's heart was still beating.

Experts around the world have testified to China's crimes. Israel, Taiwan and Spain have banned "organ tourism" to China. United Nations rapporteurs have called China to account for the sources of their organs but received no response."

This isn't just some rogue pundit, this is a major geopolitical topic.

I swear, parts of HackerNews recently have been reading more like InfoWars.

<comment><USER13> Well, it can be totally true, and it possibly is. Chinese government did kill and torture several million people during the "Cultural Revolution", so there's that.

But it's not true because some organization or high ranking official couldn't possibly be lying or presenting a fine-tuned picture.

Whole trillion dollar wars were supported on false testimony and lies or exaggerations.

E.g. it could just be part of the "China is suppressing Falun Gong" (including executing prisoners they consider leaders etc, and then using their organs) as opposed to "Chinese are so evil that they routinely kill Falun Gong members just to get their organs" (which I find harder to fathom).

I'm skeptical because a lot of times very official testimonies are very official BS (WMDs, "collision", Nayirah testimony, Iran-Contra, and lotsa others), so bullshitting the population and spinning the media is not some unique habit of undemocratic countries.

E.g. one basic pillar of this China-organ story is the so-called "Kilgour- Matas" report. Matas was on the board of the International Centre for Human Rights & Democratic Development, which is not unknown to controversy itself (basically funding radical organizations and R&D to covertly promote foreign interests out of line with its stated purpose) and was closed down later ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Centre_for_Human_Rights_and_Democratic_Development#Controversy) ).

<comment><USER12> Fear is the death of reason.

By all means investigate the sources if you wish, but don't peddle conspiracy theories without any actual evidence.

<comment><USER13> In politics there's seldom evidence available to average Joes.

They release/open some files after decades (not even everything) and you find out that they were lying through their teeth.

If people are to make any difference now, not in several decades, they should doubt most things said officially said, especially for matters concerning trading competitors, or the "enemy du jour" \-- evidence or not, they should take things with a grain of salt.

(I'm also from a much smaller country. In countries where politics directly affect you, history is lived and wars are fought directly -- not 10.000 miles away --, and everybody knows everybody, being cynical of official announcements -- of yours and other governments --, and recognizing duplicity and private interests at play, is a survival skill.

In larger countries like the USA, you can live your life oblivious of politics and major historical events, except on a much larger and slower scale. Heck, your country can even be at war decade after decade, and it will only affect a tiny minority of poor folk that go a draft, 99% of the people will live business as usual.

But I digress -- and of course that's not proof that I'm right on this, just my 0.02 in why some can better recognize that "political and private interest conspiracies" are everyday realities, and not the stuff of conspiracy nuts who believe in illuminati. Try telling that to Italians, for example, who have suffered politicians in bed with the Mafia for half a century, had whole establishment programs to meddle with elections (and prevent parties with 20%+ of the popular vote to ever reach power), and even "enjoyed" government backed extremist organizations killing their own citizens -- and all those verified by courts, albeit much much later).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You should check e-mail on a schedule - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/productivity-hacks-want-more-productive-never-touch-things-bradberry <comment><USER2> I completely agree, but I'd still say that this is true only for the IT industry and only for some roles. You wouldn't do that if you're a high profile CEO.</comment>


Miller Columns - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller_columns <comment><USER2> I remember using these somewhere, perhaps a music player, and how amazing they were.

It's interesting to note that Thunar (XFCE file manager) and Dolphin (KDE manager) have removed Miller columns, in KDE's case because the column view had "been used by only very few people but was tricky and time consuming to maintain." [0]

A slight side note, I've been a fan of Mark S. Miller's work for a while now and I never knew these were named after him. Mark S. Miller's other contributions, particularly his work on popularizing capability-based security[1] and the E programming language[2] are well worth looking into if you're interested in how easy secure, race-condition-free, distributed computing could be made.

[0] [http://ppenz.blogspot.com/2012/01/dolphin-20-status- update.h...](http://ppenz.blogspot.com/2012/01/dolphin-20-status- update.html?showComment=1325669619833#c91135672311802014)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability- based_security](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability-based_security)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_\(programming_language\))

<comment><USER3> Came here to say much the same. I spent much of my youth reading reading ERights.org [0] and related capabilities-based security sites (Hardy, Shapiro, etc.). Weird how it seems nothing ever came of it (or am I wrong?).

[0] [http://www.erights.org](http://www.erights.org)

<comment><USER2> Cap'n'proto's RPC layer[0] is interesting and is heavily inspired by E language's network layer (capTP) and the author says that Miller was involved in the design [1].

I also seem to remember that one of the authors of Pony language[2] says that Miller had been involved in discussions with the authors of Pony language.[1]

I seem to remember a comment stating that Cap'n Proto is used by Cloudflare, but I'm not sure if they use the RPC layer as well as the serialization layer.

I also think that we are in an age where promises are widely used and promise pipelining[3] could somehow end up a future mainstream language feature.

[0] [https://capnproto.org/rpc.html](https://capnproto.org/rpc.html)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9483735](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9483735)

[2] [https://www.ponylang.io/](https://www.ponylang.io/)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises#Promise_p...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises#Promise_pipelining)

<comment><USER4> Cloudflare uses both Cap'n Proto serialization and RPC, though at present the serialization is used by a lot more systems than the RPC is. Serialization is most notably used in the logging aggregation pipeline, though shows up in a number of places as well. At present the only place I'm aware of RPC being used is the control protocol for Argo Tunnel (the tool which lets your web server connect to Cloudflare, rather than the usual arrangement where Cloudflare connects to the web server, hence letting it stay behind a firewall with no public IP). We're investigating more use cases, though, particularly around IPC (communicating between processes on the same machine) and Workers (communicating between sandboxes in the same process), both places where zero- copy is likely to shine. I'm also excited by the possibilities for capability- based interaction between Workers.

(I'm the tech lead for Cloudflare Workers and also the creator of Cap'n Proto, though Cloudflare was using Cap'n Proto long before I joined. And yes, Mark Miller is a friend and I worked with him on the RPC design.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love it so much. The only Finder's feature(well, aside from label) I miss when using Windows Explorer. I can _fly_ through my folder hierarchy quickly with just directional keys, with crystal clear picture of where/how deep I am in the directory.

Windows have an alternative File manager with Miller Columns called OneCommander, though it is quite sluggish compared to Finder.

<comment><USER6> I find the bread crumb in the navigation bar of the Windown File Explorer does 90% of the work the columns did. Its advantage is that it takes a lot less screen real-estate, can show more levels at once, which in turn allows navigating further up faster. Its only downside is that to go up and then down takes two clicks instead of one. OTOH, with columns, you an onyl do this if you go up only one level or two, given that the number of visible columns is much more limited than the bread crumbs.

Overall, I think the bread crumbs is a win, especially given the balance between real estate vs frequency of use.

<comment><USER7> I agree. I thought I'd miss column view when I switched from Mac to Linux, but I'm ok with the breadcrumbs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think that for this layout to be truly useful the underlying tree has to have particular structure (not too deep an very wide), things like music library or Smalltalk Browser matches this well (mostly because the depth is inherently fixed), while arbitrary tree structures (think Unix filesystem) does not. Another case where this kind of view is very useful is when the user only has vague idea where in the immense hiarachy the thing that she searches for actually is (think online component catalog, with Farnell's eshop having quite similar but by default hidden navigation tool)

</comment><comment><USER9> I could have sworn Norton Commander used a similar layout, but it looks like it just had columns, as well as a left-right split for viewing two directories at once.

(One of my earlier memories is my grandmother teaching me how to launch a game on their computer; I can still remember her saying "н ц".)

<comment><USER10> What game was it?

<comment><USER9> Tetris, I believe; I'm not sure which version. This would have been late 80s or early 90s.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I never use this view in Finder. I get the idea, to show multiple levels of the hierarchy at once, but I always liked the "collapsable list" view more. The horizontal space is better used as a table for further file attributes (filesize, last modified, etc.).

<comment><USER12> I could imagine you could have the best of both worlds:

      +-+-----+</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-+
      | |     |                         |
      | |     |                         |
      | |     |                         |
      |A|  B  |           C             |
      | |     |                         |
      | |     |                         |
      | |     |                         |
      +-+-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-+

Where B is the previous level of the tree, C is the detailed table view of the current level, and A is a compressed representation of all the previous levels (you could e.g. click on it to replace B with B's parent, and C would get replaced with details of B).

Did anyone try something like this out?

<comment><USER13> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_tree](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbolic_tree) has some of the same strengths as this idea. Perhaps it hasn't been pursued because it was under patent the whole time when desktop UIs were still evolving.

<comment><USER12> Another reason to hate software patents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The movement of most music players, led by iTunes, away from Miller columns as the default navigation paradigm has sucked for me. For me, nothing works as well as three Miller columns: Genre, Artist, Album.

<comment><USER15> It's still there. Click "Songs" under Library in the sidebar. That causes a "Column Browser" menu to appear in the "View" menu. Select "Show Column Browser" from that. It's a toggle.

That menu also lets you choose which columns to enable. The choices are Genres, Artists, Albums, Composers, and Groupings.

<comment><USER16> Thanks a lot. I had been relying on the search feature but it hangs often on a 26k songs library.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Could anyone recommend an open-source software for cataloging generic objects that allows setting up these columns of categorization dynamically? I've been looking for such a software, preferably web-based, that could be used to catalog and categorize anything with some configuration.

Edit: Not just for file-browsing, but for adding any kind of list.

<comment><USER18> You reminded me of the file manager Ranger, which is indeed for file browsing, though files and folders are also one possible model/paradigm for cataloging and categorizing just about anything. (In fact in many ways, computers and especially unices reward you for cataloging information using this paradigm)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_(file_manager)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_\(file_manager\))

<comment><USER19> came here looking for ranger and wasn't disappointed. i love it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find it amazing that there are no Linux GUI file browsers listed that support the column view still.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. I just commented that I remembered seeing Miller columns once, years and years ago on someone's Mac's Finder and really liked the idea. Now I'm really annoyed to read that Dolphin had it but dropped it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Looks like the layout used by Ranger ( [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_(file_manager)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_\(file_manager\)) )

</comment><comment><USER23> Ranger does this very well. [https://github.com/ranger/ranger](https://github.com/ranger/ranger). Perhaps midnight commander (mc) has a similar mode.

<comment><USER24> Yep, love ranger. And if you use the right terminal emulator, there's a flag that will enable honest-to-god _image previews_ in your console!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I personally never liked these. I'm not sure why, but I find them awkward and clunky for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks. Didn't know this UX came from Smalltalk, I always assumed it was kinda-exclusive to macOS' Finder/iTunes and heavily patented by Apple.

<comment><USER27> The live demo of Smalltalk-78 that was posted here a while ago shows it off quite nicely.

[https://lively-web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html](https://lively- web.org/users/bert/Smalltalk-78.html)

<comment><USER28> I fumbled and clicked around for a while, but I still don't have the slightest idea of what I'm looking at and how to use it. Except for the obvious "an ancient operating system emulated in Javascript."

<comment><USER24> Click-and-hold the right mouse button on the desktop, and select 'Open a Browser' from the lovely ornate dropdown menu. You'll see a miller column browser at the top of the window.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I love these. I've always thought a textual filter at the top of each column would solve the scrolling issue.

</comment><comment><USER21> I remember I saw this once, years and years ago on someone's Mac's Finder and really liked the idea. Now I'm really annoyed to read that Dolphin had it but dropped it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every smart phone uses this interface but presents it one column at a time. It's a powerful and beautiful design.

</comment><comment><USER31> You either hate it or love it. (personally, my default view in OSX Finder)</comment>


Why aren't there any technologists on the NSA review panel? - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/28/why-arent-there-any-technologists-on-the-nsa-review-panel/?hpid=z12

<comment><USER2> Describing Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire as "White House staffers" is downright insulting. They're academics who happened to serve certain White House posts at points in their careers.

<comment><USER3> Not that I'm a fan of his, but the description also glosses over Richard Clarke's resume a bit too.</comment></comment>


Building accessible websites and apps is a moral obligation - <AUTHOR> https://gomakethings.com/building-accessible-websites-and-apps-is-a-moral-obligation/ <comment><USER2> So let's say some random person, Bob, builds an awesome website in his free time. Bob spends hundreds of hours just so others can use his awesome idea. Now you're telling him what to do. That's not morality, that's just entitlement.

Even if Bob was to put some ads on his webpage, because he wasn't so selfless after all, then what?

> It's not on people with disabilities to tell you how you screwed up

If you have a problem, you complain. If you don't complain, then you'll have to wait until someone else does or just live with it. That goes for everybody; it's how life works.

> If you build for the web, you have a moral obligation to make sure it works > right for everyone.

No. No I don't.

It wasn't my moral obligation to build that website to begin with. It wasn't my moral obligation to make it available to anyone in the first place. It's not my obligation to translate the web page to make it available to people who don't speak my language. And it isn't my obligation to make it available or accessible to any other group of people.

<comment><USER3> It's an interesting discussion. Governments often require buildings and businesses to have certain accommodations for certain types of people.

Are websites different to buildings of businesses?

Mr Bob Hypothetical makes his new burger joint, and spend hundreds of hours working making it so people can eat his awesome burgers. Should there be any building or health codes he should have to follow?

I realise the barrier of entry to a website is lower than a physical business. Presumably though at somewhere between ismyideafunnyyet.xyz and amazon.com/co.uk/ca/multi-national doom machine we have to start treating them with the same or similar expectations to the local chippy.

<comment><USER2> > somewhere between ismyideafunnyyet.xyz

The blog post doesn't make that distinction, nor does it seem like the author really cares. That's precisely my point. Is it a moral obligation for amazon to build their services so everyone can use them? There's probably a strong case there.

I think we need to draw a few clear lines. Some websites are inherently tied to one medium and don't make sense beyond it, others should be viewed as a piece of art, just like a drawing or a piece of music.

<comment><USER3> > I think we need to draw a few clear lines. Some websites are inherently tied > to one medium and don't make sense beyond it, others should be viewed as a > piece of art, just like a drawing or a piece of music.

Agree there, and it's very hard to draw these lines. Similarly to whether or not it's OK for software you publish to be a buggy mess, somewhere between your one-weekend lisp implementation you pushed to github and home security camera firmware lines need to be drawn.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People with visual disabilities make up about 2.5% of the US adult population. (Source: [https://nfb.org/resources/blindness- statistics#](https://nfb.org/resources/blindness-statistics#))

People who do not speak English natively make up about 20% of the US population, and around 8% of the US cannot speak English fluently. (Source: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_Stat...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_United_States) , [http://blog.languageline.com/limited-english-proficient- cens...](http://blog.languageline.com/limited-english-proficient-census#))

So if you're aiming for maximum inclusivity, you should consider translating your app into Spanish a higher priority than adding ARIA tags.

<comment><USER5> Unlike learning a language, blindness is not something which can be overcome with education.

<comment><USER6> I've tried learning multiple languages and have lived abroad and learning another language for me was not easy or fast despite years of studying and practicing the language.

<comment><USER7> So? You still learned it. You can't learn to see if you're blind.

<comment><USER2> Just because something is possible you shouldn't go around expecting it from anybody. Learning a language just for a website is dumb and nobody is going to do it, so the website is essentially just as unaccessible to someone who doesn't speak the language as someone who's blind.

<comment><USER7> I don't think you understand that my argument wasn't necessarily contrary to yours, just stating that it's certainly easier to learn a language than it is to not be blind. Both of which are unfair expectations to thrust upon anyone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If those websites are life or business supporting or required to use (government, etc).

I don't think it's a "moral obligation" to make e.g. a gaming website accessible, any more than it is to "help the poor" or thousands of other ways we can directly do good.

In other words, if someone fails to make their hobby SaaS for passive income accessible, they haven't have some "moral failing". They just prioritized shipping basic functionality for the majority of users. It's not really that different that opening a website or business for business in one country (or part of the country) and not another.

<comment><USER9> > It's not really that different that opening a website or business for > business in one country (or part of the country) and not another.

It is, because people can choose to move to a part of the country where your business operates. Maybe people don't do this as a rule, but the option is there. People can't just opt to not be disabled.

<comment><USER10> That is an absurd barrier. Move to a foreign country to get access?

Also, money is the ultimate accessibility issue that affects everyone, and that's something Facebook and friends understands, which is why they're swallowing the world.

Another huge reason people can't access things is because of linguistic or cultural access. I mean, some people say the professional or academic writing of their own culture has access issues...

<comment><USER9> > That is an absurd barrier.

It may be absurd for someone who has always lived in a location with access to the education, job opportunities and other services which allow them to live the life they want. It's not quite that absurd for the millions of people who have migrated to other countries rather than stagnating in a place they didn't choose to be born in. It's not that absurd to those who live in countries so vast that moving to another city may involve the sorts of distances that people from smaller countries can't cover without crossing a border. And it's not at all absurd for disabled people who do this because their country doesn't allow for independence.

Nevertheless, my original comment was more addressing people who move to another city/state, or away from a rural area, to gain access to services which otherwise would remain unavailable to them. That happens all the time.

<comment><USER10> Next you're going to say that people should be making themselves unpoor? Because you can't be unblind but you can be unpoor (I mean, you could even move your family to another country and learn a new language), should we now be asking why people choose to "remain poor"?

Money is the most severe access issue in the world, which is why Facebook and friends are dominating. That's why they want to subsidize everything, because even $5 is a barrier which will stop people across the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would have no problem if this were _only_ a moral obligation, but it seems like it's becoming more and more a legal obligation. Legal obligations that require a developer add something frustrate me, because they essentially crush people doing things for fun.

<comment><USER2> I'd say, when people build stuff for free, or in a way that it just barely covers the costs, it's even morally wrong to expect them to make their stuff more accessible. They're already doing others a favor and asking for even more is just a sign of entitlement.

<comment><USER12> I think that the baseline more obligation is not to be _exclusive_ , i.e. whether you are working for free or not, you have an obligation not to design tools that actively further harm to a group, demean or discriminate against a protected group, etc. The duty to be actively _inclusive_ scales with commercial reasonability. For example, it would be reasonable to expect a small business to read aloud a menu to someone with a visual disability, at minimal cost. By contrast, it would be reasonable to expect a transnational company like Walmart to spend significant sums making stores wheelchair accessible. Someone who does something for free, or for incidental income, should only have to do very low time/cost accommodations.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's my breakdown:

> Morality is not always relative (house example)

Building an unsafe house exposes people to active harm. When you invite someone into a house you make the implied warranty that the roof will not collapse and kill them do to your negligence.

> You're a web professional

If you're making a new product for Google or Microsoft, I completely agree with this article. However, developing web apps is not the same as building bridges. If you are a bridge builder, you're a licensed civil engineer with a sizeable government budget. If you build web apps, you might be a 30-year senior dev, or you might be a student trying to launch a startup with a hundred dollars and no employees. Or, you might just be making a personal web page for yourself or family.

> The web is accessible out-of-the-box. We break it.

As with any term, "the web" can have multiple meanings. This statement is true of the original web implementation, "[an] HTML file with no CSS and no JavaScript." That's not the web anyone knows today. Modern definitions of the web might include PWAs,

> It's not on people with disabilities to tell you how you screwed up

If you're Google and you "forget" to alt-tag images, again I agree by all means. But this is only true if we're talking about common knowledge stuff (which is relative to size and resources of the developer) or things that are deliberately ignored.

> It should be easier

Why is it the job of a side-project, non-profit, startup, or personal developer to conform to obscure, complex standards--why isn't it the job of the for-profit screen reader companies to make decent standards in the first place?

> you have a moral obligation to make sure it works right for everyone.

Building anything is a game of tradeoffs. If you can afford and have the expertise to do so, you absolutely should invest in a11y. Your moral obligation is to not intentionally harm users, not to spend endless amounts of time complying with every standard and best practice.

</comment><comment><USER13> I agree to a point, but I think it goes too far at times, mostly when it comes to making _all_ images/video accessible. I can't imagine YouTube would exist if it had to have captioning for every single video to begin with, for example. (Now they auto-generate, but I don't think even today your average independent web dev could make their own videos do that, pretty sure YouTube needed a huge corpus of content to start with to develop it. And even with auto generated subs, any video that's mostly things happening without words is "dark" to a blind person.)

<comment><USER14> > I can't imagine YouTube would exist if it had to have captioning for every > single video to begin with

In many instances, the rise of YouTube has been deleterious to the web. So much content that would have once been presented in text is now video, with the result that what might have been a fast skim now forces readers to move at the slower pace of the video, and it is much more difficult to parse for those with disabilities or to find in a search engine. (Too much content today has moved to images, too – it is remarkable how people who would have once written a blog consisting of longform text, are now trying to shoehorn their content into the more limited space that Instagram provides for them.)

<comment><USER15> I can never get over the fact people share images with one or two sentence "wisdoms" or "jokes" as their only content on social networks instead of just copying text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Perhaps a more general state is that it's a moral obligation to think and care about inclusivity relevant to your platform, instead of just "works for me"ing it.

The application I work on is not specifically inclusive of blind people. However, it is inclusive of people who have very basic levels of general and technical education (e.g. not understanding what a percentage is), because those are the people we know use it.

I think it's understandable if your videogame doesn't work with blind people, but lots of people have simple visual imparements you could work around (colour blind modes, scalable UI for old people etc).

Similarly, giving a shit about having good contrast on your website doesn't seem like a big ask, as well as not breaking everything when someone wants to scale fonts.

I don't think you have to support every possible use case under the sun, but at least thinking about and considering some of them is a big positive step.

</comment><comment><USER16> You could turn anything into a moral obligation, eg. I have a moral obligation not to eat pasta because there is less environmentally damaging food available and it's also probably doing some non-zero amount of harm to my body compared to something healthier so since I may feel a tiny bit worse therefore I'll have less potential energy to help someone in need or have a lower probability of assisting a disabled person when I next encounter one. So let's not play that game.

</comment><comment><USER17> As a contract developer who provides estimates on my work I always include a section for ADA compliance, WCAG compliance, Accessibility, and a few others. I provide time estimates and explain to my clients that I consider these extremely important things to do. My company has the ability, knowledge, and experience making websites that are accessible.

Our clients often don't want to spend the money required for this task.

This seems to assume that the developer is at fault for making the choice to not make websites accessible and not management or clients who don't want people to spend time on "useless" things like aria attributes.

I preach about accessibility to every manager and client I meet. Most don't care because it "costs them money for such a small percentage of users".

<comment><USER15> Adherence to laws or special guidelines may take time and cost money, but isn't a professional working to spec what a client should be able to expect? Should a baseline of accessibility not always be provided and thus figured into the base price? Does adhering to HTML Spec for example cost a premium price?

<comment><USER17> Adhering to HTML spec does not by default make a fully accessible website. White text on a white background adheres to the spec but no one can see it. If you mean adhereing to something like WCAG then that is a premium since it requires things like aria attributes, balancing contrasting colors for foreground and background and a whole slew of other things.

Isn't it my job as a professional to tell my clients what I am doing and how much it will cost them? Isn't it my job to also explain the importance of these line items? I do this task.

Isn't it my client's professional job to then take that information, process it and see how those line items affect their bottom line? If accessibility for the blind on an Aircraft Pilot app website for Pilots who need vision to have that job and use the app is then excluded is this a moral failing on my part or the clients fault? I would say no in both cases, they have literally zero visitors who are blind visiting their website.

<comment><USER15> Your arguments seems reasonable and I heard it before, but I am not really convinced it strikes to the heart of the matter. Accessibility does include more than the HTML Spec, but adherence to the spec already provides a huge chunk of accessibility for free. And I don't feel every website needs to be 100% accessible, but people complaining about lacking accessibility often do so because developers disregard good practices and common sense. Yes, bad contrast is bad, but most disabled users know ways to fix this minor issue[0], but needing js to dynamically load basic text and image content that a screen reader than struggles with is just inexcusable and gets to the hearth of the issue, that ignoring accessibility also often means ignoring different user Plattforms and usage. A finely crafted website is not only readable by a modern browser and a screen reader, it will also very probably mostly work on older browsers, minor browsers/operating systems and so on. So every developer should have accessibility in mind when creating websites.

Of course, being competitive, a shoddy developer who just bangs two wordpress themes together will always be cheaper than good craftsmanship, but in my experience, the problem is more often targeting the wrong clients anyway.

[0] And, as sad is this is, the actual design is often not the developers responsibility, unless of course, when it is, in which case he is also to blame. ;-)

<comment><USER17> I agree with you, my only point is that accessibility costs something. It either costs time and money if you want to adhere to some standard like WCAG, it costs in hiring a better designer who doesn't make inaccessible design choices and understands basics like contrast ratios, and/or it costs in hiring a developer who has enough experience and common sense to know what is accessible and what isn't.

Accessibility costs time and money, there is no way around this. Not all companies want to pay that money. I don't think the entirety of the blame can be placed on developers.

<comment><USER15> You are right, it is not entirely free. I do see a baseline accessibility as necessary to call yourself a competent developer though. And you are right, a competent developer costs more than a bad one. But we are a community of developers here who, i would assume, think of themselves as competent. Should we not strife for a certain baseline standard instead of partaking in a race to the bottom? In the end, there is always someone that does a bad job cheaper than we can. I know there are often economical circumstances and we all cut corners one time or another, but we as the knowledgeable developers must be the one to educate the clients and put in the work, because no one else will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's as much my moral obligation to build an accessible website as it is a mason's moral obligation to build a wheelchair accessible house.

</comment><comment><USER19> > _An HTML file with no CSS and no JavaScript is accessible by default._

This is not true. What about color contrast? What about alt text for images? These problems (and many others) can occur in plain html pages.

<comment><USER20> Color contrast between a default background #FFF and foreground text of #000 is pretty much the gold standard.

<comment><USER19> That's true! But the author didn't talk about just sticking to the defaults. He made it seem like it was as simple as not using CSS and JS. In reality, it's more complicated, like you pointed out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We have vision algorithms that are able to tell that a picture is a picture of a horse, why do we still need the alt attribute ?

We have the level of knowledge to build a tool that make website accessible, so my opinion is you need that tool. It is easier to build one accessible tool than to ask all developers of the world to put an alt attribute and respect the h1, h2 naming

</comment><comment><USER22> Yes. And in some cases you can actually be fined and or sued for ignoring accessibility requirements for handicapped and senior users. So you could argue the government will enforce morality if you do not.

Side note, in interviews I always gauge seniority by asking about accessibility. I find it an obvious characteristic of more junior engineers to not have had to consider accessibility APIs. It is a must, and rightfully so.

</comment><comment><USER23> >Would you say the builder has a moral obligation to not build a house that's going to collapse on people?

This is nothing to do with moral obligation. At least for me, much more to with the cost vs return on building a house that's going to collapse on people.

Unless I'm forced to build website that is accessible, I won't do it.

</comment><comment><USER24> TFA gets a few things wrong - the analogy to house building is off, and I don't think the moral argument is even necessary - but ultimately if, as I infer, he's talking about web professionals, not hobbyists, those people should care and be educated about how to do this.

The house analogy bothers me because a house is not a public space the way a shop or museum is. And a lot of accessibility concerns like contrast ratios are simple and can be minor CSS changes - analogous to curb cuts in sidewalks. But if you're acting as architect for a public-facing website for a business then it absolutely makes sense without invoking any moral obligation to engineer at least a minimum amount of accessibility.

</comment><comment><USER25> I look at this very simply. If you are a business that is marketing the app to external consumers, adding internationalization and accessibility protects you from possible legal and regulatory trouble, while also increasing the size of your potential user base.

But for side projects? No, when it comes to my side project, I'm the master, in the dictator, what I say goes. Users don't like it? Tough, go build your own app.

<comment><USER26> Sure, but you have to accept that means you are not committed to the dignity of disabled viewers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> You should build for your market. Unless you're specifically targeting a market segment that has accessibility requirements, then you should do the least amount of work possible to provide value, then iterate. When creating a product in an _early stage_ market, most development time is better suited to discovering an MVP than adding accessibility features. Think of it as premature optimization.

</comment><comment><USER28> Yes, it's a good thing for sites and apps to be accessible.

No, it's not an obligation of any kind (nor should it be).

For companies that have grown enough to be providing services to (and profiting off of) a large enough part of the population, it would make sense to expect them to put resources into this. For someone working for free, trying to get an idea off the ground, or servicing a very niche subset of the population (i.e. a very restricted market) this blanket statement makes no sense and the costs it would add to make it an obligation would likely only cause a decrease in quantity of what is available (which, if deemed valuable, can be made more accessible later on) rather than an increase in quality of what's available.

</comment><comment><USER29> I thought screen readers by now would be able to adapt to the large volume of malformed web content out there instead of breaking on misused tags etc.

</comment><comment><USER30> Chalk it up to SEO if you need to make a business case for it.</comment>


Achieving the Impossible: on genius, chess and more - <AUTHOR> http://30sleeps.com/blog/2007/11/06/achieving-the-impossible/

<comment><USER2> All that buildup for some Tony Robbins flapdoodle? Here's a classic article touching on similar topics:

"Before he was two years old, it is said, Wayne Gretzky watched hockey games on television, enraptured, and slid his stockinged feet on the linoleum in imitation of the players, then cried when the game was over, because he could not understand how something so sublime should have to come to an end. This was long before Gretzky was any good at the game itself, or was skilled in any of its aspects[...] But what he had was what the physical genius must have before any of the other layers of expertise fall into place: he had stumbled onto the one thing that, on some profound aesthetic level, made him happy."

\-- From _The Physical Genius_ , by Malcolm Gladwell: <http://www.gladwell.com/1999/1999_08_02_a_genius.htm>

<comment><USER3> wow ! that (Gladwell's article) was inspiring! Thank Zach!

<comment><USER2> Of course! Say, if you have the time, watch his recent video on the changing face of genius:

[http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwe...](http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/gladwell)

I think it has something to say about living near a startup hub, why the great hackers of the past are different than the ones of the present, and maybe even the future of tech startups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I read Tony Robbin's book(s) and frankly I think he doesn't know too much about the science part of things he talks about. Nevertheless, even dubious reinforcement can be helpful. I kind of needed it, so thanks.

</comment><comment><USER5> _Good things come to those who wait. Great things come to those who don't._

Great things come to those who don't screw around with games.</comment>


Ask HN: Consultants - How do you charge your clients? - <AUTHOR>

Do you charge per project or per hour?  If you sub-contract out and work with designers are you transparent about this? <comment><USER3> I'm up front about bringing in other people when needed, and typically have one separate bill rate for those people, and it's disclosed up front before the project starts. I don't try to pass people off as my own employees - <USER2> simply indicate I have professional colleagues in my network that I collaborate with, depending on the project's needs. Most people seem to understand that, and I've never had an issue so far.

I've occasionally submitted to being subcontracted out under someone else's company name, and it's ended poorly about 80% of the time, due to misunderstandings about communication between all parties involved.

I typically charge per hour with a base estimate up front that spells out the understandings. If the understandings change, more work is done and more hours are used, but I let the client know, and they make the final decision as to whether or not to have me/us do the extra work.

</comment><comment><USER4> Per project or per hour depends on the client.

They often have a preference; in large companies, they may be able to get a "per project" budget approved, but not a per hour budget - so be it. You have to be a little flexible.

What I used to do when I contracted was to estimate the amount of time needed, and then say X weeks * Y$/hr = total Z$ project cost.

You learn to pad that, depending on the client, to calculate in "unexpected" costs. ie. for a difficult/inexperienced/unknown client, I would double the estimated hours.

Both as a contractor and a client, if there is some trust in the relationship, I much prefer per-hour based jobs. But it's not always possible.

If you bring in other people, don't hide it. There's no need to.

</comment><comment><USER5> Personally, I charge per project and am extremely transparent about every single person who I bring into the project. However, I'm not very successful so you may want to do the opposite...:)

Good luck consulting!!

<comment><AUTHOR> lol - ok, well thanks for sharing! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use "we" and bring in people as needed for skills that I don't have in high enough levels

I explain THAT I do this all, but not exactly when for many clients</comment>


Pentax Camera Radiates 2.7µSv - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSeZqIWX2Ko <comment><USER2> Apparently lenses can be radioactive: [https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses](https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses)

<comment><USER3> Yes, more specifically [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoriated_glass)

also:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I thought common knowledge. Some old lens used radioactive elements. But I was under the impression the glass protect quite a bit of it.

<comment><USER5> I've read that good isotopes emitting alpha and beta are slowly decaying and transforming into isotopes emitting gamma radiation. This is why old lenses can become dangerous after 40-50 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the non-physicists, how worrisome is this?

In other words, how does this compare to eating bananas, getting dental x-rays, etc?

<comment><USER7> It's not. The XKCD is pretty solid, but if you like napkin-math, here's some. This is napkin-math quality only. I take no responsibility for personal irradiation choices.

[http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1988JBAA...98..309F...](http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/1988JBAA...98..309F/0000310.000.html)

Someone studied this back in 1988 and, if I read this right, if you're using a radioactive lens as an eyepiece (say, for a telescope) then the exposure limit for the eye back then was a cumulative 15 mSv per year.

This camera emits (rounding up) 0.003 mSv/h, so you must only use it for 5000 hours per year. There's 8760 hours per year, so in order to reach the 15 mSv annual exposure limit, you'd need to hold this camera up to a single eye for ~13 hours a day for 365 days in order to reach annual exposure limits.

TLDR: If you tape this camera to your skull in front of one eye for a year including while sleeping, you'd receive 26 mSv of exposure in that eye, exceeding the 1988 annual safe exposure limit of 15 mSv cited in a random paper from 1988. Most people will hold the camera up to their eye for less than this amount of time per year.

TLDRTLDR: Do not use this camera as a cyborg attachment and you'll be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 2.7? Not Great, Not Terrible.</comment>


CERN's use of MongoDB for Large Hadron Collider data - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mongodb.org/post/660037122/holy-large-hadron-collider-batman

<comment><USER2> I'm curious to know why they chose to use MongoDB? Is it because its free & fast? Or is it truly faster than a propriety SQL system?

Either way, it's nice to see that computation in science isn't stuck in the 90's, which is sometimes how it feels.

<comment><USER3> They use it as a trivial caching system of pre-aggregated data.

<comment> brown9-2 Correct me if I'm wrong but couldn't any number of other caching solutions (such as memcached) be used in this situation?

In other words, are there any features specific to MongoDB that they are actually making use of?

<comment><USER3> They don't give much details, but it sounds like a very superficial need that could be accommodated by Redis, Memcached, AppFabric, and on and on. Kind of surprised that they chose MongaDB as it's far from the fastest competitor.

<comment><USER4> Just speculation, but the built-in map/reduce is probably quite useful.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps, but the description essentially said that there is a custom python layer that aggregates the data, and they punt it into MongoDB with some SQL extraction pattern simply to store it into that silo.

e.g. If I run a query for NAME LIKE 'BLAH%' it stores that resultset. If I run NAME LIKE 'BLAP%' it stores that resultset. If someone else comes and runs either of them, only a direct match will pull my prior results.

It's okay, but it's no big win or case study.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>