Disembodied pig brains revived: Your questions answered - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01289-1 <comment><USER2> The title is very misleading (I know that it is the title on Nature's own site). The pigs brains were not revived; when stimulated, neurons were observed behaving as live neurons do but the overall coordination of the brain was not reinstated. This is a long way from revival.

<comment> nils-m-holm From the article:

> In this study, the researchers deliberately prevented the pig brains from > regaining consciousness, by using chemicals to block neurons from firing.

> And last year, researchers at the University of California, San Diego, > reported that 'mini brains' grown in a dish had spontaneously produced > human-like brain waves for the first time.

Maybe the way is not that long!

<comment><USER3> That's disturbing. Rather than producing "human-like brain waves", we stay with growing mini-brains with worm-like or insect-like brain-waves for a very very long time until we master simpler neural systems. We know so little about the brain and consciousness that I think we should err on the side of caution. 100 years from now, imagine if we learned that these "mini brains" had semblence of human consciousness that we weren't aware of. It would horrifying.

But I also don't know how we can advance in neuroscience without taking some risks. So much of knowledge and advancement requires us breaking things apart and making mistakes. Maybe the risks are worth it especially for something as important as knowledge of the brain and consciousness. In many ways, is there anything more important than that?

<comment><USER4> We don't have a definition of consciousness that allows us to test whether something is conscious or not, or at least I never heard of one.

<comment><USER5> That is the problem the grandparent is getting at. We don't have a widely accepted definition, and therefore we should tread lightly, without assuming that we're not even close to crossing that boundary.

<comment><USER6> We also don't have a definition of God. We should thread lightly as anything can make her angry.

Sorry for the sarcasm (I'm definitely not trying to be impolite) but it was honestly my best attempt to make my point.

<comment><USER5> That's right, and the previous poster recognizes that:

> I also don't know how we can advance in neuroscience without taking some > risks

I replied, because pointing out that we don't have a definition of something is unproductive in both ways: "we don't know what consciousness is? so let's drop precautions" is just as bad as "we don't know what consciousness is? so let's stop in place". It's quite understandable to me to feel that experimentation in this area are disturbing to someone who doesn't know what model of consciousness was used to ensure that nothing immoral is being done. The answers provided in the article don't really address that.

I also don't agree that consciousness is a complete mystery. We can infer criteria based on various measures of similarity, although the one criterion given in the article: "brain-wide activity that would indicate the organs could be conscious" doesn't offer any explanation as to where the criterion comes from. I take this as a failure to explain and justify that the precautions taken to eliminate the risk were enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I believe now it's a very good time to reread the book _I will fear no evil_ by Robert A. Heinlein.

<comment><USER8> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil)

SPOILER:

Last paragraph of the plot summary. I found this paragraph particularly nutty (not necessarily in a bad way):

> Joan marries her lawyer, Jake Salomon, and moves her household and friends > onto a boat. Jake has a massive rupture of a large blood vessel in his brain > and dies, but his personality is saved and joins Smith and Eunice in Joan's > head. She (Joan, Eunice and Jake) immigrates to the Moon to find a better > future for her child. Once there, her body starts to reject her (Smith's) > transplanted brain. She dies during childbirth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, I needed to stop reading that about halfway through. My mind goes to weird places when I think about consciousness in the abstract like that.

<comment><USER10> There's a form of meditation where you try and just be aware of awareness itself, and it can do similarly weird things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It reminds me of [https://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/200/](https://www.earthexplodes.com/comics/200/) (NSFL ?). It is probably what this experiment looks like from pigs perspective.

<comment><USER12> Similar to Black Mirror: Black Museum. Anda few others in that season.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wow. Greg Egan's _Distress_ (chapter 1) in reality.

> All right. He's dead. Go ahead and talk to him.

"He" being a murder victim.

</comment><comment><USER14> A lot of people are mentioning brain-in-vat type fiction, so I'll just name- drop the earliest example I know of (and my favorite) - "William and Mary" by Roald Dahl in 1959. I'd be curious if anyone can name an earlier example.

</comment><comment><USER15> The most interesting question/answer is the last: "What does this mean for the possibility of cryonics?" "No one has tested whether the system would work on brains that have been frozen."

So that should be one of the next steps

<comment><USER16> Until we have a vitrification process that doesn't do significant tissue damage, that will be difficult. It is being worked on though, as the ability to freeze organs would revolutionize transplants.

<comment><USER17> I thought that was demonstrated on animals last year, and the team had started looking for human volunteers?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16577627](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16577627)

<comment><USER16> Hadn't heard of that, but it appears they used a different sort of process, which will preserve some state, but only to a degree; it's not expected to preserve the organ such that it would be viable when thawed.

 _> It proved effective at preserving an entire brain to the nanometer level, including the connectome—the web of synapses that connect neurons.

> A connectome map could be the basis for re-creating a particular person's > consciousness, believes Ken Hayworth, a neuroscientist who is president of > the Brain Preservation Foundation—the organization that, on March 13, > recognized McIntyre and Fahy's work with the prize for preserving the pig > brain.

> There's no expectation here that the preserved tissue can be actually > brought back to life, as is the hope with Alcor-style cryonics. Instead, the > idea is to retrieve information that's present in the brain's anatomical > layout and molecular details._

While some may believe that the connectome alone is sufficient to define memory and consciousness, there are reasons to believe it's more complicated than that, so I have my doubts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Most of the answers start with 'We don't know'

<comment><USER19> That's how it is in cutting edge research. It is much better to say "we don't know" than to speculate, which is what a natural reaction of many other researchers would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I've been thinking that bio-engineered primates would replace agricultural workers and other low-skill labor jobs for some time.

Bio-mechanical brains might prove to be useful automation engines. Would you utilize a self-driving car that's powered by a bio-mechanical brain?

Seems quicker and easier to bring a primate brain to human-level intellect than to bring a machine.

<comment><USER21> And before long, someone asks why just automation engines? If you can get a bio-mechanical brain to drive a car you can get it to understand Math, C++, Law and what not. All at a much lower cost than training a full human being... And before long someone will think that - hey, how do we know this has not already happened? ...</comment></comment>


Best business model to make $5M - <AUTHOR> As a thought experiment - suppose you wanted to personally net $5M, what type of online business would you create? <comment><USER2> Im also curious to know.</comment>


Quantity Always Trumps Quality (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/08/quantity-always-trumps-quality.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Posted when it was new 973 days ago. Decent comment thread there. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=265520>

<comment><USER2> I disagree with the tone of your comment. The book cited in the article, "Art and Fear", was first published in 1994. Having read both this article and the original book I strongly argue that neither has lost relevance over time. Re- posts are OK.

<comment><USER3> He was just linking to the original thread for people to read it. There was no "tone".

<comment><USER4> I didn't find any negative tone to your post either. It was pretty matter of fact.

I'm glad this was reposted, since I wasn't aware of the original link (even though I do read coding horror every now and then), and thanks for posting the prev discussion thread.

This post makes me feel better about my horrendous code from 10 years ago. I was learning, and maybe this was the best way to go about it? I think almost all programmers go through a period where we produce huge volumes of software. There's one big difference, though. In a ceramics class, nobody has to maintain your mountain of crappy plates, vases, and ashtrays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I agree in general with these premises:

1\. Stop theorizing.

2\. Write lots of software.

3\. Learn from your mistakes.

However I completely disagree with the conclusion that quantity _always_ trumps quality. Seems to be a lot of blog posts showing up on HN lately that make fairly bold conclusions in the title, which are then supported weakly by simple premises that most rational people will agree with. They then quickly jump straight to the conclusion without showing how they got there.

First problem is obviously the word _always_. I don't think I have to explain the red flag there.

Assuming instead we actually mean to say, "in general quantity is more important than quality," lets see if we can make that argument from the above three statements...

Getting to work quickly, building some prototypes, writing some quick code to test our assumptions, or using other techniques (my preferences is TDD) to learn through the act of actually building software is undeniably a good idea. I'm sure 90% of us here agree that this is the best way to accomplish this. However, we also know that along the way we are going to produce some badly written software (that still basically does what we need) and are going to need to improve it's quality if we want to keep building new features, extending and maintaining it.

Quantity does not absolutely (or even generally) trump quality in practice. They are logically related in a balance that deserves to be recognized, and that balance should be considered and applied to the software design by people who actually understand how the tradeoff affects it.

A good article to read on internal quality tradeoffs is here: <http://martinfowler.com/bliki/TradableQualityHypothesis.html>

Some more MF stuff on Technical Debt in general <http://martinfowler.com/bliki/tags/technical%20debt.html>

A short explanation is that quality is very relevant, particularly over time. Prototyping with quick, poorly planned or designed code in order to learn before committing to a final design is a good idea if (and only if) we are willing and able to throw most, if not all, of the prototype code away at the end and only keep what we've learned from the process.

Of course, I won't make that argument that quality is _always_ important. I'm not willing to get into absolutes territory here. I will however gladly argue that it is usually important.

</comment><comment><USER5> As Stalin once said (<http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Stalin>), "Quantity has a quality all its own".

<comment><USER3> Stalin was also convinced that planting crops closer together would yield better results since they would 'cooperate' rather than compete. He was not exactly a pillar of deep thinking.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko>

<comment><USER5> Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So Louis L'Amour is the greatest American novelist of the last century. Well, at least one U.S. president thought highly of his novels.

</comment><comment><USER7> Absent some form of Directed Feedback/Learning you could just end up with a large number of equally low quality software. The only way that Quality would emerge would be by sheer dumb luck.

As usual the title and the intent of the post is wildly simplistic. Quantity almost never trumps Quality without direction.

</comment><comment><USER8> High volume makes high quality both possible and necessary.

If a company sells 500 $500,000 sports cars a year, it isn't going to have much information about problems that happen at the 1:1000 level. Toyota, on the other hand, is able to think about problems that go wrong at the 1:10,000,000 level with Corollas.

This is why the "six sigma" label makes some sense... Big corporations really work on a scale where problems at the six sigma level really turn up regularly.</comment>


Netflix Eats Up 15% of Internet Downstream Traffic Worldwide - <AUTHOR> https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/netflix-15-percent-internet-bandwidth-worldwide-study-1202963207/ <comment><USER2> I dunno, what else are most people going to spend bandwidth on? The occasional short video on Facebook, some gaming that is more concerned about latency than shoving bits down the wire, and some web surfing of pages that are agreed to be hefty these days but nowhere near the weight of video.

And, frankly, I dunno what else even I use the bandwidth for. It's not like I'm dragging down multi-gigabyte updates every single day. I rarely do torrents anymore. 4GB of Xcode here, a few GB for some OS updates there, Forza Horizon 4 was 50GB yesterday. But day-in-day-out, it's not the frequent-but- small blips from the IoT crap lying around the house, the refreshing of a web page, or however many 10s of Kbps an online game needs, it's an hour or two of video streaming every night.</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with invisible threads? - <AUTHOR>

I was looking for updates to this thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3147157
but it is nowhere to be found on HN. Even after several pages, it does not show up.
I searched for it on Google, and that's how I found it, and it apparently is still present in the HN database, but simply does not show up on the first several pages of HN.
I've noticed this before with other threads, and I'm a bit baffled. Was this flagged as spam? If yes, why wasn't it deleted? If no, why is it hidden? <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting that people seem to be interested in this issue but no explanations yet.

Maybe I should have titled this "Ask PG: ..."

</comment><comment><USER2> The thread you linked to is (currently) three days old. That's like practically an archaelogical dig for HN (granted it was only 2 days old when you posted this now day old question). This forum moves pretty fast. I email myself a link to anything I want to check back on because it moves so fast. I really don't see any reason to treat this as some big mystery.

<comment><AUTHOR> As you mention, when I posted this, that thread was not that old. Also, I went through several pages of HN threads, and ended up on pages where the threads where much older and had fewer points than that thread, and yet that thread was nowhere to be found.

<comment><USER2> Sounds like we might need more data? As you noted, your question got upvoted, so presumably some folks are curious. Yet there hasn't been any kind of substantive reply. Maybe start linking similar threads here or something and see if the picture can be fleshed out some?

Just thinking out loud (and I'm possibly the worst person here to help you with this as I am not a hacker).

Take care.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you get a grip on phantom errors? - <AUTHOR>

Most of us already had it: you thought all errors in your app have finally been ironed out and then someone sends you an ugly screenshot showing an even more ugly error you cannot reproduce. He's not tech savvy enough to tell you details about his system config and cannot reliably reproduce the error himself. But the screenshot shows: it's out there. How do you get a grip on that? <comment><USER2> I've had this happen many times on random users' systems. If the user is nice enough to work with you (and they were in my case since they were caught pre- deployment in contract work), you can often ask them to try new things with a dev build for instance.

The main key is to reproduce the errors on your system, so just try a bunch of wacky things like different screen resolutions, memory constraints, database configurations, etc. Continually look at the code and brainstorm what might cause that issue -- there are a limited number of code paths -- and try to cause the constraints in your code. It's definitely very specific to the individual situation.

</comment><comment><USER3> Without the screenshot and an idea of the applications state at that moment that's kind of hard to answer.

What you could do, is figure out the IP address of the user (that shouldn't be too hard), then go back into the log files and check all their actions one by one rebuilding the state up to the moment of the bugs occurrence.

Chances are that you'll be able to reproduce it that way, even if the user is clueless.

This little trick saved my ass a couple of times.

</comment><comment><USER4> Mark it as 'unable to reproduce' and don't worry too much about it until you get enough information to track down the cause. It sort of sucks, but if very few users are seeing the problem, sometimes it's not worth the effort unless you get a clear lead as to the cause of the problem.</comment>


Heinz buys Kraft - <AUTHOR> http://www.wpxi.com/news/news/local/heinz-buying-kraft-deal-food-giant/nkd3x/#__federated=1

<comment><USER2> Makes sense, I could never eat KD without my Heinz Ketchup!</comment>


Show HN: Ml-hot-or-cold, Classify water as hot or cold from the sound of pouring - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/cjjeakle/ml-hot-or-cold <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN, I'm sharing this project because it's finally in a state I'm happy to show to others. It's my first effort to make use of the skills you learn in Fast.ai's MOOC (part 1).

The Fast.ai course encourages experimentation to learn more effectively, and I have to admit, they have the right idea. I learned a ton working on this project that simply working through notebooks and taking the course couldn't make stick.

Feedback is very welcome. This is my first fully self-hosted web server, so I'm iffy on best practices for that part of the project. Plus, I'm sure there are plenty of domain experts on here to suggest improvements in other ways.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've added some example data to the demo page, now folks can give the classifier a try without the hassle of making a file and uploading!

A direct link to the demo: [https://ml-hot-or- cold.projects.chrisjeakle.com/](https://ml-hot-or- cold.projects.chrisjeakle.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Was the same vessel used to pour the different waters? Same height?

<comment><AUTHOR> It varied: in the "data/audio" folder I used a fairly heterogeneous set of vessels (a short thermos, short and wide ceramic Starbucks "you are here" mugs, some standard water glasses, and some somewhat narrow glass mugs). All were between 10 and 20 oz in capacity.

In "data-v2/audio", I just did a ton of samples in ceramic Starbucks mugs and the narrower glass mugs.

It turns out the model generalized quite nicely! In build log 3 I took a model trained on "data-v2/audio" and applied it quite successfully to "data/audio".

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there any way to derive a human-comprehensible explanation of what the AI model is keying off of?

<comment><AUTHOR> Alas, not in a way that I'm capable of, I'm still working through part 1 of Fast.ai's course. I looked over my folder of spectrograms, and there are definitely patterns, but I don't know exactly what features the model deemed relevant.

I've added some example audio to the demo page, so now you can see the accompanying spectrograms of various temperatures without needing to run the notebooks.

There is hope for human understandable models, however. Lots of brilliant minds are working on model interpretability [0][1]!

[0]: [https://distill.pub/2018/building- blocks/](https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/) [1]: [https://openai.com/blog/interpretable-machine-learning- throu...](https://openai.com/blog/interpretable-machine-learning-through- teaching/)</comment></comment>


A library optimized for concise, principled data graphics and layouts - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/metrics-graphics

<comment><USER2> If all you need are time-series graphs, I really like Dygraphs: [http://dygraphs.com/](http://dygraphs.com/) It doesn't seem to get much love, does anyone know why?

<comment><USER3> No dependencies, fast, highly customizable, responsive. I use it for everything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I tried this out once. At the time the CSS wasn't namespaced, and used fairly common class names, so it interfered with other parts of the project. Not sure if it has been fixed since.

Eventually went pure D3.

<comment><USER5> The linked page:

 _" Important changes in v2.0

The library is now namespaced. data_graphic is now MG.data_graphic, convert_dates is now MG.convert.date, clone is now MG.clone, button_layout is now MG.button_layout and data_table is now MG.data_table. We added a new convenience function called MG.convert.number."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Love the combined simplicity and expressiveness!</comment>


Facebook's Joel Kaplan faces Kavanaugh critics at emotional town hall - <AUTHOR> https://www.axios.com/facebook-joel-kaplan-faces-kavanaugh-critics-town-hall-854eb64e-93a0-4649-b7dc-43116651e222.html <comment><USER2> Does a link exist to the livestreamed video?</comment>


Ask HN: How to practice the development of large-scale systems? - <AUTHOR> Since not everyone has opportunities to do it at work, how to practice in playground projects if you don't have a cluster at home? I personally feel quite interested for the area, but have difficulties to keep studying only the theory.
My current approach is to create a small project – with real data – design an architecture for specific constraints, and estimate how far it could go. Later, I start thinking what I would do to improve it to reach the next level.
I wonder if there are other or more effective ways of doing it. With this approach, I constantly see myself paying too much attention to implementation details and not really practicing concepts or tools too out of my comfort zone. <comment><USER2> Different applications will fail in different ways. It is very hard to prepare or learn about these kinds of failure modes without being actually exposed to one.

What you can do, though, is make sure you employ good principles in all the work you do. Try to make things simple as opposed to complex. Make code as readable as you can. Add logging. Have some form of testing to make sure things are working all the time.

This will get you 95% there. The remaining 5% you will learn once you get there.

Lastly, less than 1% of coders work or will ever work in such applications so don't worry too much about it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Look into things like metrics recording and load testers for the language/ide you're using.

I.E if C# Api you're building, looking at and recording Application Insight metrics and load testing with something like jMeter would give you an idea of scalability and help you identify bottlenecks, etc.</comment>


Crowd-sourced startup strategy (with co-founder karaoke) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fetchnotes.com/post/24181220297/co-founder-karaoke-new-apps

<comment><USER2> I signed up for Fetchnotes two weeks ago. I now have a supermodel wife, not- cancer, and all of the chocolate chip cookies I can eat forever. Thanks Fetchnotes!

<comment><USER3> ^^^ Troll of the century.

In all seriousness though, it's incredible what Fetchnotes has accomplished, especially considering that every member of the team is _still_ in college. Dropping out isn't always the answer!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is a useful virtual gift for a hacker? - <AUTHOR>

I mean something like Github, Dropbox, Evernote or some hosting(Amazon, Linode) subscriptions for a year, etc.<p>What would you recommend? <comment><USER2> My parents ask me every year what to get me for Christmas, and I tell them I only want two things: black athletic socks and a renewal of my Netflix membership. I can highly recommend both as a gift for a "hacker".</comment>


The De-Evolution of UX Design - <AUTHOR> http://uxmag.com/articles/the-de-evolution-of-ux-design <comment><USER2> Not quite sure this applies too much in startupland. There does appear to be a shift away from traditional IA practices with most startup designers, but largely because it takes too damn long and really isn't that necessary.

Proper IA/wireframing/signing-off-on-steps is good for companies where a clueless management is going to make myriad changes to information hierarchy or UI bits along the way, because you have a "we talked about this already and you agreed" defense when some clueless marketing guy comes over and says things need to be bigger, this link needs to be here because it's his friend's company, etc.

A lot of what this article is proposing is missing (organizational hierarchy, an understanding of the order of information) is something that I don't really think is missing in a good tech-company designer's head. He or she is often one of few in control of that domain, and the product roadmap is often known quite a bit in advance. A lot of the polar bear book's 1000+ pages ends up getting turned into heuristics, when quick decisions and fast iteration under multivariate testing is often better off for a young company than sitting back and doing some type of holistic, IDEO-class set of mental exercises.

<comment><USER3> I think proper Information Architecture is extremely important especially in the startup land. Proper not necessarily meaning formal, structured, long winded process, but more along the lines of though of how this virtual place called the startup product should be structured, as much as one can in the crazy land of every changing, fast paced stuff.

I would agree that a lot of the stuff that is missing can be in a good tech- company designer's head! Totally with that.

<comment><USER2> Sure. On the flip side of my argument there is also something to say: quite a few startup designers could learn a lot from following such a process at some point. There's a lot of "copy this guy's design, it converted well for his product!" that ends up leading people down roads that aren't exceptional for that product.

But can we say there's really a "devolution"? Is there not progress in _not_ following Morville and Garrett to the letter? I find a lot of dogma in "UX" practices that make designers feel comfortable, and I just as often find many UX designers to overstate their impact on things because it is not as easily quantifiable as an engineer's impact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing I have always disliked about UX design is the name. Frankly reading "user experience design" is a much better user experience for me than reading "UX design." The bad first impression always makes me wonder what other garishnesses will be in the project due a need to seem hip.

<comment><USER5> What do you think of the term "Information Architecture"?

<comment><USER6> An overused and overstretched term from about 10+ years ago. Guess we need something better to describe these essential tasks to bring meaning to how data items are linked to each other etc. Then how that is expressed in terms of UX.

Seen it done right and disastrously wrong (e.g. when a large Global 100 Player tried to create an IA across all their suppliers & companies).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [http://000fff.org/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything- you...](http://000fff.org/getting-to-the-customer-why-everything-you-think- about-user-centred-design-is-wrong/)

For some more thoughts on what is wrong with the field. (shameless plug)</comment>


Finding Idea - <AUTHOR> More than 2 year i am reading here to find a new idea to develop my SaaS. But i cant find anything. I need your recomends. <comment><USER2> Look at forums for dentists, truck drivers, tax accountants, archiologists. What problems to they have, why can't they find a good solution? I mean a solution might already exist but that company might use the wrong industry words, not advertise that niche or just presents itself wrong.

On a heavy tech focused forum like HN users know how to write Excel macros, setup servers, connected pieces of software. Target those users who don't and who pay extra for a service that make it easy.

That said look at old answers. The question comes up semi-regular [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169368](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19169368) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164037](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19164037)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply,

My dentist recommend a website like booking.com for health tourism. It'is a good idea but there are lots of offline operations instead of programming.</comment></comment>


AutoMan: Human-Computation Runtime - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/dbarowy/AutoMan

<comment><USER2> Is this a bot for HITs?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it integrates HITs into a programming language (e.g. Amazon Turk tasks can be called dynamically through function calls). See the paper: <http://people.cs.umass.edu/~emery/pubs/res0007-barowy.pdf></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can anyone in Google hook me up with a desk for a few hours today? - <AUTHOR>

OK, I know this has virtually 0% chance of working, but I am attending a meetup at Google's HQ tonight & traveling to attend, just wondering if anyone one working in Google could let me use a spare desk, chair or corner for a few hours today - from around 1 to about 6pm. Promise I'll be quiet & stay out of everyones way :) <comment><USER2> Ask your host to drop you at a TechStop once the meetup is over. Shoot me an email (in profile) with the building the meetup is in and I can recommend the nearest visitor-friendly area :)</comment>


Show HN: One Goal Personal Finance PWA - <AUTHOR> http://onegoal.app <comment><AUTHOR> One Goal is a personal finance Progressive Web App (PWA) that works on iOS, Android, and desktop with live-syncing budget categories and the ability to share your budget with your spouse.

You can create a spending plan for free - and view your planned cash flow over the next year, then if you need help executing on that plan, you can sign up for a subscription to track transactions, account balances, and link your accounts via Plaid (optional).

It's similar to YNAB or Everydollar - the major difference is: One Goal has you create a budget for the entire year - and set aside money weekly to accomplish your goals and pay your bills. Unlike Mint.com where it just reports where your money went, One Goal gives you a plan to follow, and YOU categorize the transactions. Categorizing every transaction might seem like a bit of extra work, but thats why it works! My wife and I have used it for over a year now, and we've got a handful of paying customers now, so give it a go! I'd love to hear what you think.

Tech Used:

StencilJS [https://stenciljs.com/](https://stenciljs.com/)

Ionic Framework [https://ionicframework.com/](https://ionicframework.com/)

Firebase [https://firebase.google.com/](https://firebase.google.com/)

Plaid [https://plaid.com/](https://plaid.com/)

For more info you can follow the project on indiehackers: [https://www.indiehackers.com/product/one- goal](https://www.indiehackers.com/product/one-goal)</comment>


Vermont Attorney General Sues Patent Troll - <AUTHOR> http://greenmountainip.com/breaking-vermont-attorney-general-sues-patent-troll/

<comment><USER2> I commented on this very patent troll here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5708624>

"some of the more egregious (maybe unlawful) examples but it will become more common."

Maybe on one end I was right about unlawful, on the other end I may have been wrong that this will become more common depending on how this case goes in what the AG describes as "a-first-of-its-kind lawsuit."

Kudos to the AG here, but I think the "victims" of the patent troll should seek their own remedy, by filing a cause of action including but not limited to tortious interference with business contracts and relationships (not to mention challenging the patent itself).

<comment><USER3> > I think the "victims" of the patent troll should seek their own remedy, by > filing a cause of action including but not limited to tortious interference > with business contracts and relationships (not to mention challenging the > patent itself).

I don't think it's reasonable to expect all or even many of the victims to have the resources to devote to challenging this kind of thing, especially considering that MPHJ Technology is certainly not the only patent troll out there. Having a state AG take action makes it more of a fair fight.

<comment><USER2> Just to make sure everyone is on the same page, the individuals have legal rights in addition to the AG, it is not as though the AG can not move forward because an individual party is enforcing their legal rights.

As far as resources, you are correct, that is why the troll in this case went after end users, because they are less likely to have the resources to defend or initiate a legal action; however, the manufacturers of the copy machines have standing and resources to protect their IP and business interests that the troll is tortiously interfering with, same with the retailers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In a less ethically bankrupt legal profession that I'm imagining, there's a thing called a Bar. The Bar has an ethics board, and they immediately take notice of goings-on like this troll's tactics. They quickly strip him of his authority to practice law, because his behavior is wantonly unethical (though technically legal), and it's disastrous to the reputation of the entire legal profession. (Also, in this hypothetical world, the legal profession cares about it's reputation.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is the actual complaint:

[http://www.atg.state.vt.us/assets/files/Vermont%20v%20MPHJ%2...](http://www.atg.state.vt.us/assets/files/Vermont%20v%20MPHJ%20Technologies%20Complaint.pdf)

<comment><USER6> The list of shell companies is amazing.

<comment><USER7> I'm a little concerned that it only goes up to J.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A quick scan shows that at least one of the claims made by the attorney general seems a bit dubious:

"Targeting small businesses that were unlikely to have the resources to fight patent-litigation, or even to pay patent counsel".

When has that ever mattered in any legal proceeding anymore than ignorance of the law being used to counter some legal process?

<comment><USER8> That choice of prioritization of targets could reasonably be interpreted as circumstantial evidence of fraud, because it bears strong semblance to how certain criminals behave (e.g. people who steal from old ladies).

Common sense for honest folk suggests you go after people with money when you have a legitimate claim -- in other words, go after the large businesses whose violation of your rights will look embarrassing under the bright lights of a courtroom. The alleged troll is choosing the opposite strategy.

<comment><USER5> Agree with the "deep pockets" as standard operating practice in law suits but there are definitely cases where people without deep pockets are sued and there is no fraud just the same.

Next, I'm not defending their actions (trolls that is) however there is no supporting evidence in the complaint (that would come out at trial of course) as to what constitutes a "small business" which is interpreted in various ways.

"That choice of prioritization of targets"

We don't know that other than what the AG has said. There is no list of all the targets so we don't know whether 100% of them are two person businesses (for example) or not.

One of the claims that the attorney general makes is that the defendants "can't pay for patent counsel" in other words can't pay (I'm assuming) to even ask a question of an attorney (a simple consult).

Of course we all know what is going on here (looks and quacks like a duck) I guess it just bothers me a bit that the attorney general appears to be using language to gain points with voters by appearing to be fighting for the little guy. Because that gains sympathy and political capital. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the trolls also targeted businesses (that while "small") had employees and could easily afford to pay for legal advice (add: even if just randomly, by accident or intentionally "shit at the fan").

<comment><USER9> If the Attorney General _is_ fighting for "the little guy", then I have no problem if he gains political capital while doing so.

The larger point is that the trolls are clearly trying to find companies that are unlikely to fight back, even if they sometimes miss. Yes, that kind of behavior does not mean their _must_ be fraud, but it's an indicator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not sure why, other than to evoke some kind of emotional reaction, why it matters that "at least two of these businesses are non-profits that assist developmentally disabled Vermonters".

<comment><USER10> AFAIK, patents are supposed to prevent unlicensed _commercial_ activity. Non- profits don't (generally) engage in commercial activity.

<comment><USER5> Not the case apparently:

[http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/01/lancor-sues- non...](http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/01/lancor-sues-non-profit- charity-olpc-for-20-million/)</comment></comment></comment>


Some Ebola experts worry virus may spread more easily than assumed - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ebola-questions-20141007-story.html <comment><USER2> "I really don't have any more confidence because the CDC has been saying "it will be fine" than I did when the Japanese officials said Fukushima would be fine."

As someone who has a small bit of background understanding of Ebola (that is, I read The Hot Zone, and then some follow-up texts related to it) and as someone who has an appreciation for the role that air travel would play in a pandemic, the lack of a proper travel quarantine procedure out of the affected west african countries is _stupefying_.

It is beyond all understanding that there is not a 21 day monitoring/quarantine period enforced for air travel out of these three affected countries.

EDIT: I have created this change.org petition which suggests what are, in my opinion, common sense travel guidelines that would avert a possible pandemic:

[https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-and-u-s-senate-and- u-s...](https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-and-u-s-senate-and-u-s-house-of- representatives-institute-quarantine-procedures-for-travel-out-of-countries- with-ebola-outbreaks)

<comment><USER3> Completely agree: totally unbelievable that they are dealing with this without any serious quarantine efforts.

<comment><USER4> Ponder why this is the universal response of our Ruling Class....

<comment><USER5> They have their own planes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It never ceases to amaze me how much humanity clings to the feeling that they understand something, even when history tells us that surprises are far more common than predictability. It seems to me that planning for Ebola (or a battle, or climate change, or the economy, or anything vaguely important) wouldn't be something along the lines of "Ok, we know what's going on, no need to freak out or to spend any extra effort" but "Wow, these things go sideways _all the time,_ let's assume our models are limited, in ways we don't even know yet, and throw everything we have at it; even then we will probably be lucky if we dodge a disaster."

I really don't have any more confidence because the CDC has been saying "it will be fine" than I did when the Japanese officials said Fukushima would be fine.

Enough optimism for the morning...

<comment><USER7> Before the nurse contamination in Spain, I was pretty optimistic. Now that someone got contaminated in a highly controlled environment with training and procedures, where people knew they were dealing with a Ebola patient, there is no way that "everything will be fine" in the coming months. And they only had 1 patient to deal with at once ! Now imagine with 10 or 100 patients in a given hospital.

<comment><USER8> Spain isn't exactly the first world country people assume it is, there are many commentators on other sites bemoaning the state of medicine there including links to articles describing the lack of proper protection for health care workers.

I think the problem many people are having is you have governments telling everyone to quit fear mongering while at the same time they are demonstrating they haven't got a real hand on this.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2ignxj/nurse_infe...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/2ignxj/nurse_infected_with_ebola_in_spain/cl2479g)

<comment><USER7> I think you're first sentence is a bit of rationalization. Because it is kind of slippery slope : "You know Alabama is not really well known for its hospitals", then "You can't really find a good clinic south of 8 Mile", etc. At this rate, it is going to end at your doorstep.

I remember plenty of recommendation and planning for H1N1, but currently I don't see anything really being implemented for Ebola in Western countries. Not sure it would have been really efficient in case of a full blown flu epidemic, but at least some things were organized.

<comment><USER9> Ebola is scarey, but really washing hands and quarantine are the most effective public health efforts. In the US with plenty of clean water and soap, the chances of an epidemic become small.

<comment><USER10> Rates of hospital acquired infection show that you are perhaps a bit complacent.

These are people who know the risks; are trained to wash their hands; who have access to clean hot water and soap; who have gloves; and who face consequences when patients die.

And yet, even in these excellent hospital settings, on any one day about 1 in 25 people will have a hospital acquired infection.

<comment><USER11> Only 1 in 25? Considering how many people are immune suppressed or elderly or very sick from the start, that number seems low. That means 24 out of 25 people don't get a hospital acquired infection, or 96%. I was a little worried about Ebola before your comment, now I'm not worried at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Prof. Peter Piot - scientist who discovered Ebola in 1976 had to say the following on Ebola becoming a pandemic [0]

        There will certainly be Ebola patients from Africa who
        come to us in the hopes of receiving treatment. And they
        might even infect a few people here who may then die. But
        an outbreak in Europe or North America would quickly be
        brought under control. I am more worried about the many
        people from India who work in trade or industry in west
        Africa. It would only take one of them to become infected,
        travel to India to visit relatives during the virus's
        incubation period, and then, once he becomes sick, go to a
        public hospital there. Doctors and nurses in India, too,
        often don't wear protective gloves. They would immediately
        become infected and spread the virus.

[0] [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire- pet...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/04/ebola-zaire-peter-piot- outbreak)

<comment><USER10> Experts said that the current outbreak would only be a couple of hundred people. Then they said it might be maybe 20,000. Now they're saying it could be one million.

It's frustratingly hard to steer the course of taking it seriously while not giving anything to the over-reactors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's wise to prepare. Panicking and being prepared are two very different though overlapping behaviors. The part that 'bugs' ( _sorry_ ) me the most lately is when someone claims certainty about Ebola's chances of spreading. It's un-scientific to speak with literal, absolute certainty in most contexts. The early guest on The Colbert Report last Thursday, for instance, was resolute in saying the chance of Ebola spreading in the United States is "zero." Attempting to balance against a flip-side of sensationalism is an inadequate excuse. Sure, memories of The Hot Zone panic are alive and well. That came and went. Too many factors are at play though. Anyone who states proof of "zero" seems to only play a fool or propagandist ( _unless the topic is mathematics_ ).

Ebola is probably high on a list of threats in the form of plausible terrorism. I'll be glad to be wrong. There's no shortage of it to procure. It presumably can't be detected easily. It can survive numerous transatlantic mailings for cultivation. It has about a week delay in symptoms. Short bursts of it in dense populations where people eat/interact would cause huge catastrophe in panic alone. That's one factor. Hopefully, an increased response will thwart its growth altogether and we can again see it as "zero."

<comment><USER14> He tells Colbert that he has a zero percent chance of getting infected (it's as a response to a question). I take your point that he is being somewhat dismissive, but he doesn't actually say that there is zero chance of it spreading. The rest of the discussion is quite a lot more measured:

[http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/03/dr-kent- goe...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/03/dr-kent-goes-toe-to- toe-with-colbert-on-ebola.html)

<comment><USER13> Colbert: "What are the odds that I'm going to get Ebola?"

Sepkowitz: "Zero. Next question."

\---

Thanks for posting the link. I wouldn't interpret what he said as only directed to Colbert. It's normal for an interviewer to place him/herself as the subject where it's understood that the implied subject is [ _any other person like me in this region /nation_]. He's being far more than "somewhat dismissive." Even if he (oddly) were only specifically addressing Colbert by saying zero, that would be presumptuous. But that's my take.

<comment><USER14> I admit the possibility of a conversational zero. I don't see much point in arguing over it. Given current information, I don't expect to even change my behavior over Ebola (but I'm not in Dallas and I already didn't have plans to travel to west Africa). That meets my hand wavy, just invented definition of a conversational zero.

I posted the link because you said _resolute in saying the chance of Ebola spreading in the United States is "zero."_. I figured it was fair for people reading that to have an easy shot at interpreting the video themselves.

<comment><USER13> You're quite right to post it. It confirmed how I remembered it. He was resolute in that sense. To say that an arbitrary person (the implied subject) has a chance of "zero" is to effectively say it's "zero" for a whole. Anyway. Keep it easy. Get in the habit of bowing instead of shaking hands and you'll have already made inroads. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The CDC's communication to the public about Ebola has been extremely one- sided: they seem to only care about reducing the likelihood of panic, to the point where they spread lies and falsehoods that will eventually cause panic! As the article says, the audacity of saying "At this point there is zero risk of transmission on the flight" is astounding. Expressing such confidence in something that is clearly unknowable (or worse, false) is dangerous.

There's no need to panic unless the authorities _continue_ to downplay the seriousness of the disease, and _continue_ to show their incompetence in handling contagious diseases.

<comment><USER2> Another aspect of the CDC communication was the deliberate obtuse response that the CDC head had to suggestions of travel restrictions.

"Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Tom Frieden warned Saturday that imposing a travel ban to the countries known to be dealing with an Ebola outbreak could make the problem worse, as it would cut off the affected areas from receiving necessary medical aid."

But, of course, nobody anywhere has suggested a ban on travel _into_ the affected countries. And he well knows that.

EDIT: Here is a change.org petition that I created today which I think addresses the issue of aid workers and medical transfer patients, etc.:

[https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-and-u-s-senate-and- u-s...](https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-and-u-s-senate-and-u-s-house-of- representatives-institute-quarantine-procedures-for-travel-out-of-countries- with-ebola-outbreaks)

<comment><USER16> Not many people are going to fly into a country that has an outbreak knowing they can't get out.

<comment><USER4> There's a zillion sane ways to handle that problem: for the not obviously infected, confine them for 21+ days of being nonsymptomatic. That would have caught our current index case (AKA Patient Zero). For the infected, send them straight to a hospital equipped for this, we've got 4 of them, our military is building one in Liberia right now, we could make more, and more beds in the ones we have, here and over there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's been known for a while:

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2672.2010.04778.x/full)

<comment><USER4> Now a Hacker News item: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8421295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8421295)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There are at least 2 locations in Africa where Ebola has been detected but (so far) adequately contained.

[http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/f...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/goatsandsoda/2014/10/06/354054915/firestone- did-what-governments-have-not-stopped-ebola-in-its-tracks)

[http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/1006/Nigeria- cont...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2014/1006/Nigeria-contains- Ebola-and-US-officials-want-to-know-more)

So, while caution is always a good idea, there seems to be some practical evidence that supports the current sense of how easily (or not) ebola spreads.

edit: spelling

</comment><comment><USER19> At a minimum, we should quarantine travelers from that region when they arrive. We should require them wear a tracking device to be sure they are staying in place. It would be expensive but worth it if it catches a few infected people.

As a result of the spanish nurse's infection, I think health care workers need to be quarantined too just in case the protections don't work as we expected.

BTW, did you read the article about the Canadian experimental medicine that is available but not being shipped because the US exclusive distributor doesn't yet know how to handle the distribution. It is scary that a company that stands to make a huge profit, if the disease spreads to a first world country, is holding back the distribution of a cure.

</comment><comment><USER20> _" Those monkeys were dying in a pattern that was certainly suggestive of coughing and sneezing — some sort of aerosol movement," Bailey said. "They were dying and spreading it so quickly from cage to cage. We finally came to the conclusion that the best action was to euthanize them all."_

The money line. Caged primates spreading ebola. They would have been physically proscribed from direct contact.

<comment><AUTHOR> My memory of the Reston chapters in Hot Zone is a little fuzzy, but I believe the virus spread not only from cage to cage, but from room to room throughout the facility. Of course there could have been some human vector, but it could have also been airborne in the ventilation system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Please... Why can't someone call this for what it is... The CDC's response is highly based on political concerns.

</comment><comment><USER22> Isn't it obvious that it spreads through air, if it causes coughing and sneezing? How could the virus have evolved to cause coughing and sneezing? Although, using this mechanism, the virus could just spread to other surfaces and liquids through air, but not directly (for some odd reason). Of course, it's possible that having another virus at the same time might enable this mechanism too.

<comment><USER4> The critical distinction here is that Ebola doesn't seem to infect the outer part of the respiratory system like colds or influenza. There's not a huge mass of cells there to be shedding viri and getting into the air, and it would take more than a few mutations for that to change.

Ebola viri have been found in saliva, tears, can come from bleeding in the respiratory system, so it obviously can get airborne that way. Exactly what that means (how big are the droplets, how long do they stay in the air etc.), how significant that is as a mode of transmission (which includes iffy estimates of how many viri (virus particles) are required to make an infective dose) ... we just don't know. But with our current Ebola importation policy, it's very likely we will start to get answers to these questions....

<comment><USER20> Ebola is in the various fluids discharged by coughing and sneezing (its in the article). The problem for the urban areas is that ebola seems to persist (as long as its in a fluid) and its so infectious (small threshold exposure). The two may conspire to create an issue that 99.99% clean isn't clean enough. Thus, discharged fluids even in small amounts may very well transmit the virus in trace amounts (again, in the linked piece). From there its purely semantic about whther or not 'water vapour' or 'aerosolized liquids' are equal to "airborne". As you allude, eath pathogen may be airborne in various ways (the air has many pollutants and impurities).</comment></comment></comment>


Why We Don't Write Tests - <AUTHOR> https://whatdoitest.com/why-we-dont-write-tests <comment><USER2> He forgot two of the most important reasons people don't test:

1) We inherited this monolithic spaghetti mess of a legacy system with a class hierarchy that does not lend itself to testing without a major rewrite of the codebase.

2) Online tutorials expertly teach you how to test methods like add(x, y) and things associated with the 5-minute blog tutorial they also have, but fail miserably at teaching you how to test code that actually might exist in the real world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I did.

1) Inheriting someone else's bad code and habits is a huge reason to throw testing out the window. It's really frustrating and always comes with a "We'll write tests _in the future_."

2) This goes in line with another thing I've been finding. It's super easy to show why you should test, but It's much harder to actually show how to test in the real world. These tutorials show the simplest way to write a test, and it hurts those trying to learn.

<comment><USER2> Any plans to take a crack at solving #2, or does your book already do that (we'll assume for now that #1 is an impossible situation)? I understand testing on an intellectual level, and I understand completely how to write tests for a 5-minute blog. But I have yet to experience instruction on writing tests that actually use real-world classes (i.e. not Dog inherited from Animal) and actual real-world data. First one to do this gets my ebook money.

Specifically, my software deals with hardware devices. Do I simulate those devices in code (and if so, do I need tests to test my device simulator)? Or do I somehow gather many MB of data and keep it stored somehow for testing? I'm thinking these are simple questions for a testing veteran, but nobody I work with is that. And getting permission to spend time learning is not easy in a bad economy. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1) is pretty hard, but I'm tackling some basic strategies to adding tests to an untested mass of code.

2) is the entire reason why I'm writing the book. Building a testing habit isn't as simple as following some basic tutorials. It's a fundamental shift in how you think about writing code and can't be summed up in a 5 minute blog, like you say.

To address your software, the answer is a little stretchy. For the code that depends on device data, you simulate as little device data as possible needed for your code to work. This means that if you have a method that only needs a device id, you only provide a device id. If you have a method that generates a report, you provide all the data that is needed in the report.

Another approach would be to try to group the test data together into common traits. I don't know enough about your software to come up with some examples, but you likely don't need to collect test data for every single device, but instead data that is representative of every single device.

If you want to find me on the twitter (@genericsteele), we could keep this conversation going. I'm interested in how you see the world of testing and just this thread has helped me think of new perspectives. I would love to figure out you could overcome the obstacles your work is throwing at you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I read the headline and skimmed the article. I only realised at the end, when he's trying to sell you something, that the 'we' is inclusive-marketing-speak.

Before that I thought that it was 'we (my organisation) don't write tests, and here's a defence of why', followed by a list of excuses (in which I thought 'I wouldn't touch this guy with a bargepole'). I only realised he wasn't making excuses for himself after reading the homepage.

tl;dr misleading title and confessional writing style YMMV

</comment><comment><USER4> In my opinion, tests should be an after-thought until your product is seeing success and heavy use.

<comment><USER5> You're not afraid that some actual/potential users might be scared off from your product due to defects they encounter while using/trying the product?

<comment><USER4> I would manually test every aspect of it, and make sure there are no known defects. So any defect found by a customer would likely be some obscure edge case.</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing UberPool - <AUTHOR> http://blog.uber.com/uberpool <comment><USER3> I'm a little surprised at the choice of "Pool" instead of more conventional terms in the sharing economy such as "UberShare" or "UberContribute." I was very disappointed that UberPool isn't a swimming-pool-as-a-service.

<comment><USER4> It's a play on the word Carpool and seems apt to me. The Uber brand name is already synonymous with sharing as you share the car with the driver and whoever is with you and they need to distinguish this separately. I also thought it was something to do with bringing you to a swimming pool like UberCats.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpool)

<comment><USER5> he was joking

<comment><USER6> I was actually hoping it was a summer promotion for Uber, mobile-pool-as-a- service.

[http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/i...](http://img3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20111219033328/simpsons/images/5/53/Pool_Mobile.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sounds very similar to Hitch[0] which launched a couple of months ago in SF. It sounds very useful for long, expensive trips (e.g., cross bay, down to south bay) where the fixed cost of picking up or dropping off another passenger is a smaller factor.

On an unrelated note, how is the form at the bottom supposed to update you when UberPool is in your area? Area codes are going to be inaccurate for anybody who's moved since they got their cell phone number.

[0] [http://www.takehitch.com/](http://www.takehitch.com/)

<comment><USER8> This is one of those examples where the raw idea is not the main part.

Uber have a lot of advantages. They have a userbase of passengers and drivers that can be brought over to new services. They have the media's attention, including mainstream media. They have the cash to run at a loss while building up. They have presence in a lot of cities. They also have the competence to do this well.

Imagine that you build a "person search." You enter a name. It brings up a page with pictures, facts and other information collected around the web. It's nifty. That's interesting. But, if Google put a little "people" link between images and news in their search page and person search will have hundreds of thousands of users this week.

The news here is "uber launch carpooling service," not "carpooling service now exists." Rightly so, IMO. If this works well, there could be tens of thousands of user in a couple of months.

<comment><USER9> I agree - I could help but think while reading this that I've seen a couple services like this already.

But you're right, the key to this is the implementation of the idea over the idea itself. Uber (probably) will generate a larger network of car poolers, which is necessary for this type of service to work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a periodic Uber user and tend to use it later when public transit isn't running. This would be interesting, and if cheap enough, could be more convenient than waiting for a bus if you're in an area where they don't run frequently and it's storming, extremely hot, you don't want to wait around.

I also just tried out Car2Go which costed me ~$15. The same trip from Uber, albiet at a different time of day, costs $9-12, and I get a driver. If Uber's pricing is even lower due to car sharing, then services like ZipCar and Car2Go may be in a little trouble.

 _Of course, I realize if you 're going to pick something up from a hardware store or whatever you may not want to use Uber, but for many types of trips using a service like Uber or Lyft is better and more convenient than driving yourself_

<comment><USER11> Are Uber users this price conscious though? I think their core user base skews to a higher net worth, and aren't going to be the kinds of people that want to share a car with another person. The only thing they'll know about the person they are sharing with going in is that they are too cheap to take their own Uber ride.

This just doesn't sound like it will work with their core user base. Maybe they are trying to expand their user base to the public transportation crowd, but that may devalue the brand.

<comment><USER12> I am starting a new job soon about 3 miles from my apartment, which is a little too far to walk. (I _can_ walk that far, but I don't really want an hour-each-way commute.)

One thing I've been considering is using Uber / Lyft, but it's a lot of money over the course of a year. At 40% cheaper it looks a lot more attractive, though. And sharing a car with another rider isn't any worse than sharing it with the driver! :)

<comment><USER13> Is there a reason you don't want to just bike? Seems like the perfect distance for it, and it's free after the initial investment of a couple hundred dollars.

<comment><USER14> simply not a practical option for everyone. I only do it because I can bikeshare one way home. After biking a few miles in DC in the summer I need a shower and complete change of clothes.

Also, before they put the bike lanes in biking during rush hour felt stressful and dangerous.

<comment><USER15> I hear you; a lot of people feel the same way (I'm lucky enough to be able to shower at each end; if I don't bike commute it's usually more laziness).

That said, a lot of people seem to sweat less on bikes with an electric assist; people worried about sweat might look into those as an alternative.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >>Even if we don't find an UberPool match for you, we'll give you a discount on your ride.

That's huge.

A huge problem Hitch faces is having enough demand-side riders on the market to make the marketplace viable [1]

Uber is going to be _subsidizing the demand-side of the marketplace_ until the marketplace matures and demand fills in.

[1] [http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool](http://www.crewlab.net/uberpool)

<comment><USER17> And they've just collected 1.2 billion to help them along with that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> There is a car sharing service in France called Blah Blah. Passengers have rated "Blah" so you don't have to share ride with people who speak less or more than you usually.

[http://www.blablacar.com/](http://www.blablacar.com/)

<comment><USER19> Car sharing services in France are incredibly popular, everyone uses them. This is partly because the government has a monopoly and keeps the trains expensive, and stops buses from running. In the UK, buses are the way to go, you get very cheap buses if you book in advance.

<comment><USER20> Buses in the US are cheap, but our government monopoly rail service is even more expensive and even slower— NYC to DC is shorter than Paris to Lyon, but costs for a ticket a week out are higher for the low-speed Northeast Regional than the TGV, and our low-speed high-speed train, the Acela, costs more than twice as much as the TGV.

<comment><USER21> How do private corporations build rail infrastructure without government? Wouldn't you need to negotiate with tens of thousands of private property owners, such that one holdout would be enough to kill the project?

How is this possible without eminent domain?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It would be interesting if Uber quantified carbon requirements per passenger mile and used this rating to encourage users to share rides. Uber users could get benefits or discounts for being green.

<comment><USER23> Yes, I came here to post this. Uber could accrue some nice PR by reporting aggregate statistics in terms of Co2 saved, dollars saved, etc. They could also report those stats on an individual level.

Still, these calculations could be pretty difficult. There are a lot of unknown variables. What was each customer's alternative mode of transport? Did the customer actually have a car before? Etc.

Re: your incentive point, I'm not sure how that would work with emissions since it would basically just be "who drives the most," but I could see Uber promoting some incentive programs to get people to _sell their car._ They could even buy cars from people, in exchange for cash and/or uber credits, then repurpose those cars as uber vehicles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> We're building a similar service at Teleport, and recently ran a few numbers on the benefits of this sort of trip sharing assuming large scale and self driving EV's. Really can change the entire transport experience in cities - cleaner, faster, safer, cheaper. [http://teleprt.com/50-cities/](http://teleprt.com/50-cities/)

</comment><comment><USER25> I've been waiting for something like this to arrive for a while. In Israel and the West Bank, services called sheiruts act as mini-buses; they're taxis that pick up multiple passengers going in the same direction, usually for the same price as a public bus ticket. When buses are scarce, they are a really useful service. Could UberPool be like this?

<comment><USER26> Sounds similar to songthaews in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Aside from bikes, they seem to be the primary way of getting around and you just hail them like a taxi, talk to the driver to confirm that they're headed in somewhat the right direction, and it all works a bit like a dynamically selected bus route.

<comment><USER27> This was common in Fiji. You stand on the road and flag down the van, make sure its going to the right place and pile in. Its like private bus.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> A lot of people have tried this idea before, but they've never had the infrastructure or users to pull it off. Uber definitely has the infrastructure, but I suppose time will tell whether enough users sign up for it.

Imagined future scenario, though: UberPool Buses. At the right peak times it could work, but I wouldn't like to use it in New York.

</comment><comment><USER29> Where can I bet that Google will buy Uber and make self-driving Uber cars? (I am not joking, do people know where I can place a bet on this?)

<comment><USER30> Google ventures invested $258M in Uber about a year ago, I'd say it's highly likely that if self-driving cars pan out, there'll be an Uber fleet of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> What happens if you are requesting a ride and have a friend or two with you? UI could get a little complicated. And will they charge extra now if there is more than one rider?

<comment><USER32> If you are all starting and ending at the same location it is cheaper to do a single fare.

<comment><USER33> Seems like you can split the fare with everyone that's riding.

[https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can- I-s...](https://support.uber.com/hc/en-us/articles/201836586-Can-I-split-a- fare-with-a-friend-)

<comment><USER34> > there is a $0.25 fare split fee for each participant.

We just use Venmo :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Almost in every single other country this has always been the way to ride a taxi.

"This is also a bold social experiment." come on!

They're making it sound like they discovered nuclear fusion.

<comment><USER36> How do people organize cab shares in other countries?

<comment><USER37> "are you going in the same direction? would you like to split cab fare?" is usually how it goes, depending on the local dialect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Based one what time you typically leave the house and where you go everyday, I'm certain there's also room to mature this market by suggesting carpooling groups to anyone who has tried to use the service at least once:

For all users who try UberPool at least once, find clusters where they all leave regularly at approximately the same time and head to the same destination.

Uber can even ask something like "Do you mind if we collect your commuting data for 1 week. If there is low variability, find clusters and suggest routes.

It think this could work bananas in places like SF-SouthBay, SouthBay-SF, and Washington DC where a sizeable chunk of people move back and forth in the same direction each day.

</comment><comment><USER39> Now if this worked for my commute, that would be amazing. Would take it in an instant when the trains were far apart.

</comment><comment><USER40> Along the lines of reducing fossil fuel consumption and having just returned from a trip to Copenhagen and Amsterdam, I really wish the bicycling culture was better embraced in the States in the bigger cities. NYC has Citibike which I find fantastic! But DC doesn't have the density of bike stations to make it convenient. How are the other cities? Miami, Chicago, San Fran, etc?

<comment><USER41> Boston has a very strong biking culture, partly due to the large number of university students there.

<comment><USER42> Well, putting aside the endless war between cars and bikes... Several of my friends who bike regularly (hasn't happened to me, thankfully) have been hit by cars while biking, even though they were following the law and had all manner of blinky lights on their person.

I think that while the biking culture in Boston is great, it won't be a good replacement for cars until there are more bike lanes and more careful drivers.

<comment><USER40> Copenhagen has curbed lanes dedicated to bikes and the people take full advantage. I saw several Christiana Bikes on the road while there (In fact one lady used one to drag back a loveseat sofa!)

[http://christianiabikes.com/en/](http://christianiabikes.com/en/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Our friends at Google will also be joining us in the beta. They share our vision of a more energy-efficient world with less traffic congestion and pollution in our cities and are excited to be early adopters of UberPool."

I don't quite understand what that means. Are they saying that all Google employees have access to the beta, or is Google involved in some other way?

<comment><USER43> I'm assuming that google is having its employees participate in the beta so they can share rides to the HQ

<comment><USER44> Yes. It's a good idea since they also invested so much into Uber already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This reminds me of Via[0]:

"Shared rides in a premium SUV or Mercedes van. As fast as a taxi at a fraction of the price."

All of the competition in ride sharing has been great in the Bay Area. UberX is sometimes in a price range closer to riding the bus or BART.

[0] [http://www.ridewithvia.com/](http://www.ridewithvia.com/)

</comment><comment><USER46> People have talked about Uber as a way to reduce pollution and wasteful driving, and the limits of Uber's ability to do so since it still needs to address peak usage.

If they make this work, the Uber could turn out to be a huge environmental boon, reducing both the number of cards manufactured as well as fuel and road usage.

Hope it works...

</comment><comment><USER47> I like the general idea but don't completely get it

> just happens to be requesting a ride along a similar route > Uber from the > Castro to the Financial District

Isn't 90% of the time it's like, one person goes to the Financial District, and the other one will just drop off Mid-Market, or just a few blocks towards SOMA, thank you?

So do you get stuck waiting until there is a person with just the same exact route, or how is this partially-overlapping ride determined and split? You detour a few blocks to the right to accommodate the "nearby SOMA" person? But what if the original person says, screw SOMA, I'm not paying or waiting for any detours, I need to get to FD on a straight line asap.

Sounds pretty hard, matching millions of similar but different routes.

<comment><USER48> I know if the price was cheap enough I'd definitely be willing to put up with slightly longer pickup delays

(considering that it'd probably still be faster than normal taxis around here)

<comment><USER8> I think you can look at it as (convenience + quality)/price.

Different people evaluate & value those three differently. To get a customer that equation needs to yield a higher value than the next best thing. To win in a a market completely, you need to tick all three boxes. Better, cheaper, faster.

Uber focused on high quality early on, the limo market. They beat limos for price and convenience (the competition sucked) and matched the quality. More expensive than taxis, but better quality (nicer car). As the network grew, "convenience" went up, fast pickup times. They expanded downmarket (lower price & quality) with uberXand to take on Taxis.

I think this ridesharing/carpooling, if it works well might find an unserved niche somewhere between Taxis and public transport.

A next step might be something close to public transport. Basically minibuses running something similar to shuttles between hotels and airports. Most cities have these. They are possible because hotels can coordinate. That's why they are more common between the hotel and the airport than the other way around. There are probably lots of other use cases that are just missing the coordination.

<comment><USER49> > A next step might be something close to public transport. Basically > minibuses running something similar to shuttles between hotels and airports.

There's also a huge and mostly hidden network of "dollar vans" in cities with large immigrant populations, private operators serving areas not touched by public transport routes. Not saying that Uber will expand this far downmarket, but interesting to note that what you describe exists in some form already.

[http://mashable.com/2014/04/10/dollar-vans-new- york/](http://mashable.com/2014/04/10/dollar-vans-new-york/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is interesting. It's potentially a bridge into "mass" transit.

Sam Altman's insight about his own (high end) car use and the potential cost of replacing it completely with Uber is one legitimate example of how they could expand beyond of the taxi market. I don't think it's impossible for uber to have a few hundred or thousand core users in major cities that spend $10,000 per year on Uber. That only really applies to a small group of wealthy individuals.

But, the real big markets are usually nearer the bottom of the pyramid.

</comment><comment><USER50> Cab With Me[1] is doing this in NYC right now (head of biz dev here). MIT came out with a study[2] that showed ~80% of cab rides in 2011 could have been shared, if there was an easy facilitator.

[1] [http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/](http://www.welcome.cabwith.me/) [2] [http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system- shared-t...](http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/03/how-system-shared-taxi- rides-could-transform-new-york-city/8530/)

<comment><USER44> Lol be careful of Uber. They've been known to try aggressive tactics in the past.

<comment><USER50> <\-- locks deadbolt

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> In NYC, a startup called Bandwagon has been doing this--matching users going the same way--for awhile now, and is pioneering a system for shared rides at the taxi lines of airports and events.

This is what they did at CES: [http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet- the-hop-lane-...](http://blog.bandwagon.io/post/92569728340/meet-the-hop-lane- upgrading-the-taxi-line-by-sharing)

</comment><comment><USER52> How soon are we going to see demonstrations of Uber drivers complaining about Uberpoolers taking their business?

</comment><comment><USER53> Seems like Uber will eventually converge on a model of privately-owned publicly-accessible mass transportation.

</comment><comment><USER54> This could easily be extended to larger vehicles (minibus) plying regular and popular routes at peak times. Do a pick up from a few square blocks and drop in a particular work district. Could be more convenient than a bus and eventually approach the same pricepoint.

</comment><comment><USER55> A buddy of mine already made and launched the exact same thing (without Uber branding, obviously): [http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/](http://www.jumpinstudent.co.uk/)

It was really successful; and he got bought out for a decent sum of money.

</comment><comment><USER56> I wonder how well this would work in a less concentrated city than SF. Uber doesn't even go to my house (S of an interstate in DFW area) though I don't know why; maybe it's a volume problem which would make pooling even less likely.

</comment><comment><USER57> There's some weird styling going on in the "Mobile Number" input box: [http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png](http://i.imgur.com/bSG9eKx.png)

<comment><USER58> Same on desktop chromium browser + ubuntu 14.04

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> For a service that entirely depends on network effect, they surely aren't making adoption easy. It's the same mistake Google made with Google+.

</comment><comment><USER60> With all the data, carpooling/sharing a ride is great.

But please, the phrase "game changer" is horribly overused today & diluted.

</comment><comment><USER44> The most exciting thing about Uber and Lyft launching these sharing services is not owning a car in the future. What do you think?

<comment><USER61> Imagine the combination of Uber and self driving cars. If Uber succeeds, they'll own a big piece of transit infrastructure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Every time I read about Uber I wonder who the target market is. Then I remember that as a father of three young boys our car has three car-seats in the back row, a CD in the CD player and more in the glovebox to keep the boys quiet, snacks in the center console to placate them when they're hungry, and a stroller in the trunk. And then I realize that Uber is made by and for young, single, childless people with lots of money who live in SF and NY.

<comment><USER54> Why does the target market need to be young, single and childless? It would work for couples without kids, or parents with kids who've left home or are being left with a sitter. Or families where the children can go 30 minutes without needing food or entertainment. Or older people who aren't keen to drive in a city or deal with parking.

Obviously those with young children specifically are in a different position and that's likely to be hard to address. You'll have a particular pram/stroller you use and specific snacks. You're more likely to be tied to your car if you don't want to be packing and unpacking each time. I get it - <USER2> have a car with a car seat for a 2yo. But there are also loads of times I'd use an Uber service alone or with my partner or even with a child if it were prevalent in my city.

<comment><USER62> I'm acutely aware of the fact that the main reason I own a car is because I'm married w/ children. When I was single I quite happily got around by bicycle and motorcycle...

But transporting young children is a specific use case, and it's a very common one where something like Uber isn't really an attractive or viable substitute for your own car given the bulky support paraphenelia required, often by law (car seats, strollers etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> re: beta signup.

How will they know if I'm in their area? I wonder if they cross-referencing my phone # with my existing Uber account.

</comment><comment><USER64> In case any Uber employee is looking: scrolling on this page is almost non- functional on an iPhone.

<comment><USER65> And on desktop too. Page up / page down keys don't work unless you focus the page. There is a scrollbar within a scrollbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Is uber trying to eat its own tail?

</comment><comment><USER67> I wonder how this will influence the legal problems Uber has here in Germany.

<comment><USER68> Germany already has such similar services. [http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/](http://www.mitfahrgelegenheit.de/) etc. Uber is still not legal, because it's commercial. And those services kick out people if they just do it for the money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Shared taxis have existed for long time. This is just optimized with the iPhone app. It's really time vs money. You are paying less but it will likely be longer trip since the other rider is not likely going to your exact location.

</comment><comment><USER70> The signup form doesn't work in firefox nightly :/

</comment><comment><USER71> The First Name and Last Name fields do not appear to work in Firefox. The input is correctly entered, but the text is not Visible.

Disabling the box-sizing: border-box shows the content. Anyone ever run into an issue like this before?

</comment><comment><USER72> Ride-sharing that can actually work!

</comment><comment><USER44> I believe Uber will be successful with this idea and kill quite a few startups in the process.

</comment><comment><USER73> This is obviously a data grab.

Also has the potential to kill their own service. Very smart.

<comment><USER74> Data grab?

How would this give them any more data than they already have? What extra data?</comment></comment>