Why HTML5 is the best platform for rapid game development - <AUTHOR> http://austinhallock.com/2012/05/19/html5-the-best-platform-for-rapid-game-development/ <comment><USER2> All IMO of course, but programming HTML 5 Canvas apps today feels like having a late 1980s vintage CPU strapped to an early 2000s GPU. This is a really unbalanced combination IMO.

Given this imbalance, when I was at a recent employer, I suggested that exposing OpenCL or CUDA within the browser could lead to some really cool games and web apps. I was soundly shut down. Right around the same time, WebCL was announced: <http://www.khronos.org/webcl/>.

But it doesn't seem like it's moving particularly fast, sigh...

<comment><USER3> OpenCL is going to become a big thing for games going into 2013 now that all new mobile GPU's will support it. Thew new GPU's will also support OpenGL ES 3.0, so I'm curious what kind of mobile games we'll see within a year or so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As a rapid game producer, I'm calling this bullshit.

Fastest rapid game dev is with Flash, and nothing has come even close to it (just poke around game dev jams).

Now, if you need mobile support, go with HaXe, it has HTML5 target too. As well as native iOS and Android and much more.

</comment><comment><USER5> With HTML5 you also have to worry about the cross browser compatibility mess , which doesn't seem to work well as "rapid" development.

Not to mention that I think writing something like a scene graph in JS would make me rage.

<comment><USER6> Either the browser supports canvas or not. It's not much more mess than that and definitely not as messy as making a normal website cross compatible.

<comment><USER7> Canvas mostly works across browsers but there are still variances and browser- specific edge cases you have to detect. Cross-browser audio is an absolute trainwreck, and APIs like gamepad, fullscreen, etc. are all very finicky as well and will require careful effort if you want to use them in each browser. Plus, each JavaScript runtime has things it likes/doesn't like so to get playable performance for a serious game in all the browsers you'll have to spend a while figuring out how to tune your JS for all of them (or writing browser-specific versions). This is made worse by the fact that some of the major browsers don't have usable profiling tools...

But sure, if all you want to do is draw some lines and bitmaps on the screen, no problem.

<comment><USER8> Agreed. HTML5 audio is definitely a complete mess, you need shims and fallbacks if you even want to consider using it... but for the present (e.g., on modern browsers+devices), canvas seems to be the winner in terms of write- once, run-anywhere for games and animations that look great and run smooth. And since it is an open standard, we can look for other devices (smart tv's, game consoles, car dashboards... okay perhaps that is dangerous) to support it in the not-so-distant future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _I don't think anyone will argue the fact that the only other platform I would've been able to rapidly develop and deploy games like Nick vs Bus and Word Wars would be Flash._

I would argue it. The speed with which you can develop simple games has much more to do with how well you understand the platform itself (its tools, libraries, capabilities) than what the platform is.

I'm not saying platforms and languages don't intrinsically affect your pace. They do. But it also depends a lot on what you're doing. One language lets you write a web server in an hour; another allows fast and robust mathematical analysis. Writing a fun game in 24 hours is such a pliable goal that you could clear it with, say, a graphing calculator, an industrial robot, or a Word macro. To say nothing of languages people actually write games in!

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a valid point. I updated the wording a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The "game" is bad and and this article is bad.

A lot of the points the author is making in favor of HTML5 are simply not true.

No Compiling - Languages like flash can build while you and work and compile in under 5 seconds. This is also not a compelling reason to choose a platform, and no intelligent person has ever chosen a platform based on how fast it compiles.

Easy Testing - HTML5 is no easier to test than anything else. Perhaps having to connect a device to test would be an exception. Simply not true.

It's not a plugin - This is irrelevant. If we're talking about browsers, flash has more penetration than HTML5 does right now. So which is worse -- a plugin that 99% of PC users already have, or an executable installer that needs to be run in order to update or change to a browser that supports canvas?

You can rapidly prototype with many languages. I am not arguing against HTML5 at all. Infact, I believe it is probably the future of casual web games. I am only arguing against this poorly written article. The author actually claims that HTML5 is better because of the "hype" around it. Give me a break.

The only final thing I will say is that javascript is a shitty language to write anything like a big game in. If you know anything about CS fundamentals, then you can't refute this fact.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have to call bullshit -- he could have made those games in Unity3D and gotten a better environment and better (and more extensive) math libraries.

<comment><USER12> While Unity is extremely powerful, the point that it's plugin based for browser accessibility remains.

My biggest draw towards developing games in HTML5 is that it runs _natively_ in (almost) all browsers.

<comment><USER13> performance on these games are shit on the iphone 4, and the 2nd game flickers unless its in landscape mode. Why are people championing for sub-par technology?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love participating in game jams. For those who haven't heard, a game jam is an event where you have a limited number of time (maybe 48 or 72 hours) to develop a game.

One of my favorites to participate in is Ludum Dare. This past LD, I used HTML5 to develop my game. It was the first major project in which I used Javascript and Canvas, and the code could've been better, but I managed to quickly develop and prototype a game I'm proud of within 72 hours[1].

The biggest issue with HTML5 isn't the speed of development, but rather the fact that it's not a mature technology yet. I still haven't ironed out some issues with sound and resource loading that works consistently between Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.

[1] <http://ekun.nukenine.com/two/game.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> A couple of issues:

1\. "assuming you're with the rest of us in the 21st century" - that's pretty insulting to the millions who can't afford a smartphone.

2\. "it'll run from your phone's browser" - but only if it's WebKit.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Changed that blurb 2\. I don't have an Android/WP7 phone to test it on, does it not work from yours?

<comment><USER14> Thanks. I appreciate the quick response. Mobile Opera & Firefox don't work for me. I haven't looked into why yet but can do that on Monday and get back to you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd appreciate that! My email is austin (at) clay [dot] io

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wether this is the fastest way to make games or not, the demand for HTML5 game engineering is gaining traction in several ways. HTML5 framework makers are promising one time develop and multiple platform deploy, which in theory sounds very nice. And 'optimist' game developers are really having fun using their already mastered web standards skills to create one page games. Why is there so much interest?, you have to wonder. I have these assumptions.

</comment><comment><USER16> As a platform for game development, there is much better out there than HTML5.

With HTML5 you have to deal with many serious faults that do not exist when working with many other platforms. HTML5 canvas doesn't feature the ability to turn off anti-aliasing, HTML5 audio has only one channel per instance, has latency issues and is inconsistently implemented, JavaScript has many various faults, performance leaves something to be desired, you cannot do things that are common in most games like going fullscreen or grabbing the mouse, and overall it just feels like you have to wrestle with your web browser to write a game on top of it.

It is convenient to simply link a game to someone and let them play without manually downloading it, but is it really worth hacking around all these issues? Like the web browser was designed decades ago to share formatted text and images, we should design a modern, open browser that makes sense for video games. Perhaps something that combines the best qualities of web gaming and Steam, and distributes data through decentralized P2P?

</comment><comment><USER17> The awesome love2d lua game engine ( <https://love2d.org/> ) has an html5 port, love-webplayer, that can play a lot of the games written in lua for love2d.

<https://github.com/ghoulsblade/love-webplayer>

</comment><comment><USER18> Funny. It's an empty page with NoScript.

<comment><USER19> Also funny -- Diablo 3 doesn't work when I disable my graphics card. /s

<comment><USER20> Do you get a message telling you there's a problem?

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dc-tech-fan Doodle or Die is all HTML5.

Doodles are stored as JSONP: <http://doodles.s3.amazonaws.com/d2/5iSFn- ME/8qp73zuBe.js>

This json renders in canvas as the page loads like these amazing drawings: <http://doodleordie.com/profile/underwearhero>

We want to make a native mobile app because we've heard that HTML5 is slow enough to frustrating. I tried a Lua-based framework and it was fun to use but the resulting drawing too was too slow to be usable because every line had to be created as a new object, instead of Canvas-like pixel manipulation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Impressive stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The poster says on the Flash topic: "but I can see HTML5 being favored over something that is completely beyond their control." ...and further down, on security as a flaw: "you can make your game secure, you just need a backend that can be done fairly easily with node.js."

This strikes as an incredible double standard for appreciation that permeates the article top to bottom. I do understand why the poster is so enthusiastic for developing games rapidly in HTML and went about it cutting some corners when having to compromise. But enthusiasm is just that, doesn't make said games any good by default or the plat to magicly be mature to the point it should.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel that the error the compiler will find will more than make up for the very few seconds it would take to compile a game like Nick vs. Bus. I also don't think the single corporation and plugin points makes a direct difference to game development (I would argue it does if you had to buy expensive tools just to develop for Flash or HTML5.)

My personal opinion is still that Flash is a better platform for games, at least right at the moment. I have nothing against HTML5, although I'm not a big fan of JS as a programming language. Undoubtedly ads and such should move to HTML5/JS. I'm still not convinced about it for games yet.

</comment><comment><USER23> write about HTML5 game distribution, i'd love to hear input on this.

<comment><USER24> Yes, the first thing I thought after "ooh, neat" was "Are there any portal communities for HTML5 even close to those for Flash?"

<comment><USER25> We've started building one which is going well: <http://www.scirra.com/arcade>

Not as big as Flash portals obviously but people love playing the games

<comment><USER26> I just tried one of the featured games. It was extremely basic, no sound and pretty lame. Compare it to any of the featured games on <http://kongregate.com> and you'll see that there's no comparison at all.

I like JS. I'm learning how to use some of its first class functions, and it's really cool! But honestly the only reason I'd play any of those games is _because_ they're written in an interesting technology... not because they were actually more fun than the stuff written in flash.

There's a lot of potential, but the platform isn't quite ready yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Obviously, it's especially pretty awesome for multiplayer game development because you don't have to worry too much about figuring out what method of communication to use, firewalls, etc.

<comment><USER8> Yes and no. Websockets is awesome, but no UDP support yet (although chrome nightlies have added this as an experimental feature!). Once UDP comes, we can do p2p and eliminate the server round-trip (as well as the whole TCP ACK bottleneck), vastly speeding up realtime games... but then we have to deal with firewalls :D So its up to the dev to pick his battles, although I'm sure there will be libraries to vastly speed this thing up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Honestly, HTML5 games get more attention just for being HTML5 – deserved or not."

...that's one of his arguments why HTML5 is the "best platform". I wish he would have gone more into detail how he defines "best" as his understanding of that adjective doesn't seem to take into account that more mature platforms have some benefits too. For instance, maturity.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's definitely a shallow argument, but still a pro for HTML5 nonetheless. If I can make a game that's more likely to be played simply because of the tool I use, it's more lucrative to me.

I listed various other arguments for why I feel it's the "best" out there right now. I think the strongest arguments however are the two games in < 24 hours each.

<comment><USER28> If it's only played due to the platform it is on, then it's due to a novelty factor. I got that you were after "viral spread", but imagine a world in which people cared a bit less about rapid deployment and more about quality. I rather play a finely-crafted game than one that was put out in less than a day. This is not to say that it is not possible to put something decent together in a short amount of time. Just check out Ludum Dare for some examples.

<comment><AUTHOR> The post was on "rapid game development", not "polished game development". It's up in the air which platform is best for a more generalized game, each have their strengths and weaknesses. Ludum Dare is a good example of games developed quickly in various languages -- it's certainly possible to create a quality game under time constraints in C++, Java, what-have-you, my thoughts however are that HTML5 is the optimal platform for that.

<comment><USER29> >it's certainly possible to create a quality game under time constraints in C++, Java, what-have-you, my thoughts however are that HTML5 is the optimal platform for that.

you should probably substantiate that, at least in the article if not here, as you have not given any reason for why this would be true (I have no idea if it is or not).

It may well be, but nothing of what you wrote in the article supports this.

EDIT: let me clarify:

* Mobile Support (large support is not speed of development)

* No compiling (the only thing that seems somewhat related. Many things don't need to be compiled this days though)

* It's not a plugin (irrelevant to the speed of development, at most a distribution issue)

* It's not controlled by a single corporation (irrelevant)

* More active development (doesn't make you faster)

* HTML5 games get more attention (irrelevant to your speed)

If you meant "wanting to support gaming in mobile and desktop quickly html5 is the best solution" then it could make sense.

<comment><USER8> I would argue that "not a plugin" and "not controlled by a single corporation" are more than "irrelevant". Here's a few reasons:

\- Want to port your game to a new platform (game console? embedded device?) - just get webkit/mozilla/<your favorite open source browser> to compile. Although this is no small task, in many cases it can be easier and _way_ faster than rewriting the code for an entire game. not to mention this mandates one port per console, rather than one port per game per console. N^2->N time savings :D

\- Not being controlled by a single corporation is incredibly important. Take iphone games: want to update your game to use some newly released feature of the sdk? Get ready for 1+ weeks of waiting for approval. Notice a low-level bug in the sdk? ha-ha, have fun talking to Apple's technical support. These are the obvious reasons, there are a million-and-one examples as to how limited access can slow down - and even halts - the game development process.

That's all I have time for now, I'll try and think of some more later

Edit: too/to

<comment><USER29> they are mightily important concerns but not relevant to "create a quality game under time constraints".

Take flash, which is evil in a plugin and controlled by a cruel corporation and runs on unicorn blood. You will still be able to create a game in 24 hours and put it on the market, people do it all the time. No ipad? Sure, read the end of my previous comment.

Also, while this is still irrelevant (cause the statement is that html5 is better than all the others, but there are plenty of open source things), I don't see how finding a bug in the iOS sdk is any different than finding a bug in a browser's canvas implementation. You work around it in both cases cause you can't control your users software setup.

And the fact that iOS apps have to go through an approval process bears no weight in the generic statement that a proprietary platform causes slow time to market.

<comment><USER8> Okay, semantics; you're right, in my haste I misread the original quote. If you're judging a game strictly on quality, platform has nothing to do with it; most (all?) modern platforms have decent game libraries so dev time just depends on what you're used to. If you're judging a game on _mass appeal_ , _popularity_ , or _user friendliness_ \-- or just plain success -- platforms absolutely, beyond a doubt, matter.

As for your last point though... lolwut. iOS was just an example, the same is true for consoles, other app markets, etc. iOS apps bear "no weight" in the statement that a proprietary platform causes slow time to market?! iOS is one of the largest and most developed-for proprietary platforms, which makes it a great example, which means it absolutely _does_ bear weight -- and a lot of weight at that -- in a statement that generalizes proprietary platforms. </semantics></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What are the most stressful places in Boston? We're about to find out - <AUTHOR> http://www.betaboston.com/news/2015/10/29/citywide-study-will-map-the-effect-of-stress-on-the-brain/?p1=Main_Headline <comment><USER2> Finally Harvard and MIT students can prove who's more stressed!

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm imagining a map of Boston painted red and a single green point over the one bar in Boston that doesn't have a television on</comment>


Our homegrown A/B testing framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.42floors.com/behind-scenes-ab-split-testing/

<comment><USER2> Awesome to see more ways of solving this problem. I usually wouldn't reach out to recommend that one to clients because the maintenance costs of doing parallel development on three products steadily diverging from each other get quite considerable indeed, but if it works for your circumstances than awesome for you.

If hypothetically you wanted to try this with A/Bingo without making in-line calls everywhere, it's possible, but not documented anywhere. I treat the knowledge like a spell to summon the Elder Gods: too terrible a magick gained at too high a price to destroy outright, but it will certainly be buried under a forgotten temple and guarded by fanatical cultists (and maybe a dragon) to keep it from destroying the minds of the unwary.

Just kidding: it's actually just "Monkeypatch the Rails internals to change the bit which finds templates from looking in /app/views/$RAILS_CALCULATES_THIS_PART to /app/ab_tests/$YOU_CALCULATE_THIS_PART/$RAILS_CALCULATES_THIS_PART." (Though sometimes when looking at that code I wish for Cthulu's sweet embrace.)

I hear you though if you also want to do extensive logical reworking in addition to reskinning substantially all the pages of the site. The one time I did this using A/Bingo, in lieu of doing a total app rearchitecture, I made a utility method to encapsulate the A/Bingo call and then hit the 10ish points in the code base which were going to be shared but not totally equivalent between the A and B variants. A bit of a pain in the keister for a Saturday morning but the test raised sales by 60% so I'll put it in the win column.

<comment><USER3> Disclaimer, I've not used A/Bingo, so there might be a caveat I'm missing. But: It sounds like you're talking about prepend_view_path, which doesn't require monkey patching.

      class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
        before_filter ->() {
          prepend_view_path "app/views/YOU_CALCULATE_THIS_PART"
        }
      end

With that, Rails should look for e.g. "products/index.html.erb" first in "app/views/YOU_CALCULATE_THIS_PART/products/index.html.erb", and only if it doesn't find it there, it looks in "app/views/products/index.html.erb"

It seems like you could do something like this:

      class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
        before_filter ->() {
          if cookies[:test_a]
            prepend_view_path "app/views/test_a"
          elsif cookies[:test_b]
            prepend_view_path "app/views/test_b"
          end
        }
      end

The neat thing about prepend_view_path is that if it doesn't find a matching file in the prepended path, it falls back to the default rails paths. This makes piecemeal upgrades or redesigns much easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea and it clearly worked for you, but there's a problem.

You're not controlling your variables. You're changing 20 things at once, and then doing it again to get wildly different tests.

That's cool, but you're not going to get the same insight into WHY people convert better until you start controlling your tests more.

I get why you're not doing that, you want to change big things drastically and see what happens, but you're kind of shooting in the dark that way. It might work; it might not.

Even on the current test you're running, there are multiple different elements between a and b. You can do that, but to do it well you'd need to have a/b/c/d/...so that you can figure out if it's one change, a combination of changes, or what.

<comment><USER5> For me that's one of the biggest mistakes someone can make when looking at doing A/B tests. This desire to understand the universe gets in the way of improving your website / app / business / bank balance. Yet, it's a common pitfall for many.

What's the purpose of those tests? To make you a better UX specialist? To scientifically prove a theory? Or to get the conversion rate up??

<comment><USER4> The purpose of the test is to figure out what direction to go in in order to improve the conversion rate.

If I understand you right, you question the reason you generally control the variables and want to figure out why something converts better than something else and not just observe the results.

Well, firstly, if you figure out what exactly people like about one design versus another, it's easier to reproduce a higher conversion rate in other parts of your site. It also goes towards a further understanding of your customer and what exactly they want from you. If you have a bunch of services on a page and you change several of the offerings at once, as well as the content describing the services and the pictures displayed with them, observing a jump in conversion as you do so, what does that tell you?

Do people not want some of the services you offered before? Not necessarily. Do they like the new photos, or does the copy better explain the services? Or is it that they like some of the new services listed? Do they like all of them, or just like some so much it doesn't matter that the others are there?

What if you change your price at the same time you change the design of your page and see conversion drop. Was it wrong to change your price, or was the redesign wrong?

Controlling your variables makes it so that you don't have to go back to answer all these questions. You get a better gradual understanding of your customer and can more accurately predict performance changes based on future redesign, making you more likely to increase conversion with each new test.

<comment><USER5> That's well and good in theory. In practice, it's an excruciatingly long process (unless you at a massive scale already) and you're only likely to achieve local maxima. Whereas big sweeping changes, which might change more than a single feature but the whole _message_ , are more likely to give you a conversion boost.

Once you find out what works and produces a big win, then you optimize more gradually and try to figure out what in particular it is. But it's usually not that important at that stage. Your big changes will reveal the stuff that's important to your customers.

<comment><USER4> I agree; shot in the dark big changes can be very useful to give you a starting point to optimize from. I wouldn't say they are more likely to give you a conversion boost, though.

Why would that be the case? Let's say I design my product and page. It's well thought out and I put some time into it, and the UX isn't bad. Why would changing that drastically be more likely to give me a boost than small changes?

Now, the shift might be larger with big changes, that I'd agree with. With a small change you're talking about small increases leading to an aggregate large increase. Then again, if you're established, you're also not risking your customer base.

I'd agree that you can go with this as a concept at the start, I just think, as it appears you do, that after you've established a good base you need to go more controlled from there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The reason why we put so much effort into split testing is that we're trying > to find the global maximum. We worry that making linear iterations will lead > us to a local maximum that would be far less than our potential. So, we > force ourselves to try ideas that are radically different from past > experiments. At some point we'll probably run out of crazy ideas and then > we'll settle into optimizing the winning UX instead of trashing and > rewriting it periodically.

This article is really good. Way too many companies focus on A/B testing an existing design, and have no way to actually test something radically different easily. It's interesting to see 42floors take A/B testing to this level.

I believe that in order to branch quickly into these type of iterations, your software architecture plays a huge role. The idea is to change the minimum amount of code necessary in each "branch" to get the job done.

There are probably ways of doing this that doesn't involve splitting traffic by server and also avoiding nasty code.

</comment><comment><USER7> @darrenix, I see that your sample sizes are pretty low, and your actual conversions are incredibly low. Are you controlling for statistical significance, and are you accounting for repeated significance testing errors? [1]

Genuinely curious, not trying to shoot down what looks like an interesting approach.

[1] [http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab- test.html](http://www.evanmiller.org/how-not-to-run-an-ab-test.html)

<comment><USER8> It's possible to work with these sample sizes using survival analysis, but I doubt Bayes would find the difference even with a really well initialized prior. I don't think that traditional significance testing is the answer here, those require even larger sample sizes (b/c you're not limiting the space of the estimate). It's all about limiting the domain-space. You know conversion rates are never over 10% on your homepage, why would you not exclude that to give your statistical work more power? That's at least how I think about it.

<comment><USER7> It sounds like your stat-fu is way better than mine. :-) Is there a layman- friendly article you can point to that explains what you're talking about in more detail?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Great results, but

> "While it makes the eventual git merge a nightmare when the branches > diverge, a day of wrestling with merge conflicts is a small price to pay for > unfettered experimentation."

terrifies me. It sounds like the sort of thing that makes a lot of sense until one day it doesn't and you're left with a massive bill of work to reconcile two very different codebases, all for the sake of UI experimentation.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. A big risk to pay for avoiding inline code. Although I do hate our own inline code (even though it's removed diligently when not used).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm in a similar position in the sense, but because the turn around on our experiments can be super fast. Instead of using a Chi-square p-value type test, or even a Bayesian implementation (like Beta: alpha = 5, beta = 100), that survival analysis gives the profile of the difference.

I'm in a similar position because we did choose to pollute our code base with inline experiments (which we shut down and remove). However, ideally I want these experiments to "run" forever once the winner is installed. This is because I can always compare it back to the survival curve of the 'control' group in the experiment (and test group) to make sure it's behaving as expected.

So my problem is, how do I escape from inline and yet continue to record everything afterwards?

Been thinking a lot about it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Very cool.

> Ongoing experiments have a dedicated chart up on a monitor in the lunch area > so everybody can see how they're doing.

Is your tracking and reporting (charts) system home-grown too?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use Chartio for all our long-lived reporting but we use custom charts for A/B test reporting since we need to combine data from several sources in one chart e.g. Twilio, Mixpanel, GA, local DB.</comment></comment>


Cryptonetworks and why tokens are fundamental - <AUTHOR> https://www.nickgrossman.is/2018/cryptonetworks-and-why-tokens-are-fundamental/ <comment><USER3> I'm always happy to be convinced that someone has seen something I've missed in all of this hype about crypto, but when you say things like...

'imagine if you could fork Amazon and launch a direct competitor'

..you've lost me. Amazon is not a code base. It has over 500,000 employees who work hard to serve its customers. How do you fork that?

I would offer another, better example but I can't think of one. Web 2.0 companies are so far ahead that web 3.0 is going to have to come up with something completely different to be commercially interesting.

<comment><USER4> The author is arguing that decentralizing the control of compute power and compute-as-a-service is valuable and should be invested in.

It is valuable if we ever reach a point where say, AWS has a monopoly on all compute power, and starts making bad/unfair/predatory decisions that hurt customers.

Otherwise running decentralized payment networks to exchange compute power is much less efficient and much more costly than relying on purchasing services directly from a few competing (read: non-colluding) service providers using USD, GBP, EUR, credit cards, etc.

There's really no need to decentralize compute-as-a-service. This person is getting paid to talk their book because their employer has placed a lot of bets in the cryptocurrency/blockchain world and is trying to brainstorm ways to turn them into actual viable products and exit these investments.

Blockchains / decentralized ledgers are almost always solutions looking for a problem. They solve the very niche issue of exchange between untrusted parties, with caveats, and with extra performance/cost added to a centralized solution.

There's currently no reason to implement a decentralized ledger solution for exchanging compute-as-a-service.

<comment><USER5> And you don't even mention the biggest issue: why would I ever trust my data to some random compute provider in a "decentralized compute-as-a-service" system.

At least with applications like storage you can encrypt your data. AFAIK homomorphic encryption isn't general or efficient enough to be very useful yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is the big picture and it most aligns with how I feel about this emerging space.

There's a problem with developers and cs people and that is that they are looking at one small spec - the blockchain data structure. From there, the work their way up through sensationalist headlines and shout "blockchain is crap, it should go away, we don't need more 'money', this whole space with its ico's is a scam!", etc, etc.

But it's not a scam. It should not go away. And, it is the future.

No one I think is debating that the 'blockchain' (I'm referring to the bitcoin data structure here) is slow. Anyone that holds on to that nugget is entirely missing the point and needs to grab their 56k modem and 386 and go hunker down in the closet, because that's their mindset.

Bitcoin (and other tokens) are not valuable because of their slow data structure. They are valuable because, like the article says, they are permissionless and globally distributed (immutability is also key and not mentioned).

If you think that is not important, you are fooling yourself. It's a revolution just as big as webapps were over non-connected desktop apps. Just as mobile was over desktop web apps.

Take my super high level case of 'blockchain' medical company (I use this when I talk to people about why this next wave is important).

Currently today companies own your medical data. If you move from one medical provider to another, in order to get your history over to the new provider, the new guy has to either call or request a fax of that data and then double enter it into their system. _Maybe_ this exchange is automated but I doubt it.

What happens when you leave that company? New company has to go through the same laborious process. And so on and so forth.

This is today's problem: silo'd data 'owned' by various companies out there. The end user/customer has little power because they own nothing. They are at the mercy of that data because companies do not want to share (they want to corner markets and destroy competition) and companies do care enough about securing 'your' data, so thieves then break in and steal it. It's funner for them to build teams, have company parties, tout their prowess and expertise in the press. Securing data and making it interoperable - not very fun or profitable.

What (smart) people are working towards is turning this equation on its head and encrypting and distributing globally all the data. So, instead of using 10 medical companies throughout your life, the potential is to use a distributed system that stores your data in some kind of 'blockchain' (zoom out an think an immutable record of your entire health history) that only you have the full pub/private key(s) to. (Yes, wallets and keys are a potential problem here and we'll have to work more towards making recovery easier. This is a big, deep topic in and of itself.)

This is not far fetched. We already use ssh keys on remote servers where root has the ultimate permissions and then we can add/remove users at will with their own keys and permissions. So, we understand conceptually how to use pub/priv keys with regard to access. It's not a stretch to start figuring out how to apply this to global data and companies and teams have already been doing this.

Of course, the 'old' medical companies would have to use this system as well and they probably will go kicking and screaming since the data to _them_ is not as valuable because they are not in control anymore. But to _you_ it is. It really is _your_ data and you can take it wherever you want over your lifetime.

This is a total paradigm shift of how tech companies will need to operate in the future.

Tokens, blockchains, dlt's, yah, they're all buzzwords. But so are saas, elastic ip's, spa's, and load balancers. There was a time when you didn't need any of those things and now, they're part of everyday life even if you don't know it.

So, hate if you will, but I already know people working on things like this. Tokenization, dlt/blockchain/dag, gloabal pki access, true micro txn's - <USER2> are all things already in play and we'll see more and more of them in the coming years.

<comment><USER7> This is a political problem, not technical. If my doctor were willing to store my info however I want them to, the problem is solved. And if they were willing to store it on a block chain, then presumably they'd also be willing to just put it on a thumb drive for me? Or a _piece of paper_? A centralized solution, centered on me.

<comment><USER8> I think one of the values that blockchain can bring on the table in this context is convenience.

Passing data to a thumb drive or a piece of paper is a decentralized strategy but inconvenient one.

I imagine in the future, the doctor in Brazil writes your medical data into his/her local computer. You ask the data and show the QR code or public address in your mobile phone. The doctor sends your data to this QR code or public address. You store this data into the blockchain.

Next year, you go to Singapore and do some medical operation. You pass the data from the blockchain via your mobile phone to the doctor in Singapore.

I guess that is the selling point.

Can this be done with centralized approach? Of course. We can build a Paypal company but for medical records. The problem with that is some countries are reluctant to share the medical data with American company. They, I assume, will trust the algorithm which does not have the bias compared to an American company.

Paypal right now is not supported in Iran. I imagine this is one of the reasons doctors around the world would trust the blockchain compared to an American startup company.

[Edited] If we want to build a platform where Chinese and Americans can collaborate on sensitive data, blockchain could be the answer. You don't expect Chinese to trust an American startup company or vice versa. [/Edited]

This is my hypothesis.

<comment><USER9> Why is the doctor sending your data to some public address shown on your phone, and not to your phone directly?

<comment><USER10> My phone has zero reception at my doctor's office. It also runs out of space regularly, since manufacturers decided to screw consumers over by taking out SD card slots. There could be plenty of other reasons.

<comment><USER9> Why do you need reception to transmit something from a computer to a phone in the same room?

As for out of space, that's a valid concern. But the blockchain itself can store almost nothing - a few bytes per transaction at most. So you'll have to store the data somewhere else anyway, and only point to it using the blockain. And therefore, the question returns: why not store that pointer in the phone itself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Context: Union Square Ventures was part of a recent group of VCs that "wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight, arguing the tokens aren't investments but products that can be exclusively used to access services or networks provided by startup companies" [1].

This was broadly seen as a self-serving pitch, as Matt Levine comically noted:

"I am sympathetic to the idea that some innovation should be allowed in initial coin offerings, and that the fact that ICO tokens definitely seem like 'securities' under existing precedent doesn't necessarily mean that the best policy approach is to subject them to all of our existing securities laws. The optimistic view of ICOs is that they enable a genuinely new way to fund and create ownerless networks, and in this age of overly powerful owned networks, that is something worth exploring and encouraging. But you do have to start from a place of honesty: 'These are probably securities, so what do we do about it' rather than 'hahaha what there is no speculation in the ICO market, what are you even talking about?' [2]"

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms- investors-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors- seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200)

[2] [https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being- sho...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-20/being-short-and- right-can-be-bad)

<comment><USER12> Just because it's a self-serving pitch, doesn't mean it's wrong. I love Matt Levine, but this take of his is a little too glib/snarky and short on analysis.

There is a coherent, rationale analysis that certain tokens, once live, are "utility tokens" that should not be considered securities. For example, USV has invested in Filecoin, a distributed data storage network. Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token? Reasonable arguments can be made for the latter, and regulatory clarity to that affect would be extremely helpful to this developing space. It's great that these VCs are working with regulators to explain and advocate for positions that are helpful to the crypto community. They are NOT, I'd sure, arguing that any company should be able to ICO freely.

<comment><USER11> > _Given the network is not live, this was sold via a SAFT (simple agreement > for a future token) to accredited investors only, with the tokens to be > delivered once the network is launched. At that point, since the tokens are > used to pay for storage, is the token a security or a utility token?_

Filecoin ran an exceptionally-compliant process. That said, it's not obvious that even their token will not be a security.

SAFTs are self-admitted securities. (One can think of them as deliverable forwards.) There aren't many securities in the wild that convert into non- securities for the simple reason that they were bought for investment purposes, and so anything they become traces to that desire.

So even in the case of the exception, we need to wait for the SAFT to convert and see if that token does what every other token so far has done: die or "moon" as a speculative investment vehicle.

> _They are NOT, I'd [_ sic _] sure, arguing that any company should be able > to ICO freely_

"The group wanted formal assurance from regulators that their products would be exempt from SEC oversight" sounds like that [1]. They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking.

I don't mean to say it isn't worth flipping through. Just that this context is material to any analysis of it.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms- investors-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors- seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200)

<comment><USER12> >> "They asked for too much, too soon; this presentation is part of the backtracking."

The WSJ article is very thin on details, and I suspect is missing important nuances. I do not know what happened at the SEC meeting, but my guess is that they pitched something very close to this linked presentation (which you'll note is dated March 13, likely before the SEC meeting). In particular, take a look at slide 11, which tries to bifurcate the world into (i) pre-launch securities and (ii) post-launch live networks, with the latter perhaps being a currency, commodity, security or some other beast, depending on its properties (e.g. a post-launch token with profit sharing features would likely still be a security).

These VCs and their lawyers are not morons -- the case for most ICOs being blatant securities offerings is impossible to argue against, but the more narrow view that Nick has outlined has real merit to it and I'm sure is close to what they pitched.

Also, I don't disagree that a ham-fisted SEC regulator could easily argue that Filecoin post-launch is a security -- that's precisely the problem. Crypto today can often be treated as a currency, a commodity and a security all at the same time, and often in incompatible ways. The industry _should_ be meeting regulators, and coming to a sane coherent policy on how to treat these things in different contexts (perhaps via well-delineated safe harbors), so that people can continue to innovate without worrying they are breaking the law.

<comment><USER11> > _The industry _should_ be meeting regulators_

The industry should be trying to create a single example of a non-fraudulent non-investment utility token.

The optics of millionaire VCs flying across the country on their millionaire LPs' dimes to safeguard hypotheticals against regulatory scrutiny while millions of regular Joe's are getting scammed are palpable. Before you can argue "X should be exempt from regulation because it exhibits Y properties," you have to have an X with Y.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The current business model of ICOs is functionally as a pyramid scheme due to the deflationary nature of most cryptocurrencies. The idea is you buy, then you hold & evangelize, then you sell at 10x/100x. Look at the dropping transaction volume across the board even during the mainstream attention on cryptocurrency.

If these cryptocurrencies or tokens were inflationary and meant to promote commerce/trading rather than holding and speculation then I don't think anyone would have a problem (like more easily traded microsoft points or MMO gold).

This also doesn't change the fact that most online currencies are functioning as unregulated securities and are facilitating illegal transactions and money laundering.

If more thought was put into creating decentralized, inflationary currencies that followed current financial regulations I would not have a problem with cryptocurrencies. But the predatory nature of the community that has developed around cryptocurrency and the focus on get rich quick schemes rather than online commerce is what worries me about cryptocurrency.

Sorry for the rant.

<comment><USER14> > focus on get rich quick schemes

Sorry, but the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly. Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, are not fundamentally special in this regard.

<comment><USER11> > _Cryptos, while being more scammy due to newness and lack of regulations, > are not fundamentally special in this regard_

I disagree. Cryptocurrencies are unusually scammy. (Past tech cycles, both those which realized their fruits and which failed, had lots of vaporware. And there were some scams. But the latter are more prevalent in this domain.)

My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency as its use case. This primed the space to think of tokens as securities on which the average Joe could get rich quickly, the underlying business be damned. (It also seeded the culture with black market operators.)

> _the whole finance (and VC) world is about getting rich quickly_

Which makes the author of this article's efforts to exempt their investments from financial regulation [1] questionable.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms- investors-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/cryptocurrency-firms-investors- seek-exemption-from-sec-oversight-1524130200)

<comment><USER15> > My hypothesis for this is in the original sin of Bitcoin: choosing currency > as its use case.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but Bitcoin's entire purpose was to be p2p cash. What other use case would you have suggested if you were advising Satoshi in 2008?

<comment><USER11> > _Bitcoin 's entire purpose was to be p2p cash_

Put another way, the blockchain's original sin was Bitcoin. It started the conversation in a scummy way.

<comment><USER16> There's nothing inherently scummy about money itself. It's just a tool for human organization.

<comment><USER17> There's nothing inherently scummy about a market, either. But black markets can get pretty scummy. What's the difference? The Clientele?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If a protocol or technology is susceptible to government control or governance, it is by definition centralized. First it was Super Peers, then Trackers, and now it's these _teams_. It's all on the "The Role of Government" [1] page of his slide deck. Let me tackle each one-by-one.

* Light-Touch Stewardship

* Buyer/Investor Protection

Both of these imply a beneficiary/counterparty to go after. No counterparty means any protections or enforcement is impossible below a network-wide ban.

* US-Centrality

Also implies a beneficiary, if only to gain tax revenue or the splashy effects of innovation.

In both cases centralization is a key component. To put another way, BitTorrent does not have a _Role of Government_ section in it's spec.

1: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Crypt...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/7koiztv8mae98qg/What%20Are%20Cryptonetworks%20and%20Why%20are%20Tokens%20Fundamental_.pdf?dl=0)

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm honestly curious about what is VC reasoning behind investing to decentralised networks? In my view, a company behind such a product would be inherently un-exitable.

<comment><USER14> Remember when people were saying that it's crazy to invest in Facebook because there is no way Facebook will ever be profitable?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1719975)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5145817)

<comment><USER20> This is a fallacious argument. It doesn't matter if some people predicted a company would fail even though it went on to succeed beyond what most people predicted, this is a rare outlier and usually the naysayers are correct, even if only because there are naysayers for literally everything.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I upvoted this despite the rewritten title, which I hope the mods will fix.

</comment><comment><USER22> I read this about an "ocean of tokens", and their role and evolution of building new tech and it seems relevant

[https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens- abf976418feb](https://blog.synapse.ai/an-ocean-of-tokens-abf976418feb)</comment>


Delaying the $digest() cycle in AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.aaron-gray.com/delaying-the-digest-cycle-in-angularjs/

<comment><USER2> Time spent in the digest cycle scales proportionally to the product of how often a digest occurs, and how many watches there are - each should be roughly proportional to the size of the application, for an overall quadratic complexity. If watches trigger other watches then this also lengthens the cycle, so the growth is actually more than quadratic in the size of the application - as bad as cubic possibly, if most notifications between modules are accomplished by one watch function setting variables for another watch function to pick up.

Debouncing controls one of the terms - frequency of digest cycles - so the complexity grows somewhere between linear and quadratic. The only scalable solution is to minimize the use of watches. Fortunately, this is also a good idea from a code quality standpoint - watches are an unstructured control flow system, similar to GOTO, and should be avoided even if they were efficient.

<comment><USER3> > watches are an unstructured control flow system, similar to GOTO

Any callback is a GOTO. in fact, any function call in C like languages IS A GOTO.

So i'm not sure what is the point of saying that.

$scope.$watch is at the center of angularjs architecture,there is no way to avoid it.

And that's what makes angularJS awesome,seamless integration between the view layer and other app layers,without a single explicit event handler registration,mediator,observer,... (except for directives obviously). No JS framework but angularjs does that,not even React that needs a 3rd party library to integrate itself with a domain layer.

That's why angularjs is so easy to use and beats everything else.

<comment><USER4> > Any callback is a GOTO. in fact, any function call in C like languages IS A > GOTO.

If a function call would be a GOTO, then you wouldn't have a stack trace to look at in your debugger.

I'm not sure what is the point in replying to a comment you don't actually understand.

Angular's data binding model has a lot of shortcomings:

        angular.module("app").controller("SomeController", function($scope) {
            setTimeout(function () {
                $scope.someVar = 'happy debugging';
            }, 500);
        });

<comment><USER3>
        angular.module("app").controller("SomeController",   function($scope) {
            setTimeout(function () {
                $scope.someVar = 'happy debugging';
            }, 500);
        });

Your example is stupid

1/ you should use $timeout or you're just asking for troubles.If not then $scope.$apply

2/ use named function expressions

Any async operation in angularjs needs to trigger a digest cycle,that's angular 101. You cant use a framework without actually understanding how it works at first place.

Your point is moot because you are using an example that is a mistake at best , but more like a bad piece of code,in angularjs context.No serious angularjs developper would do that mistake,especially when you are supposed to test that piece of code,using a function you didnt inject in the controller.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used debouncing inside a watch expression. Really useful.

Another performance trick.

If you use ng-hide/show to hide a long list, then make a dummy function that takes the list and the variable for the ng-hide/show and only returns the list when the ng-show is true. This way you don't spend valuable time rendering something that will have css hidden.

<comment><USER6> ng-if is also useful in these cases.

[https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngIf](https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ng/directive/ngIf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, and the good thing about ng-if compared to ng-show is that it removes the elements from DOM, rather than just hiding them, which is better for large datasets.

<comment><USER6> Also, maybe this isn't a common issue and would be solved by better designed models but.. using an ng-repeat against a list with some heterogeneous data.. ng-if works well to show only the UI components that apply to the object in question without rendering things for no reason and then hiding them.

For example if you have a list of objects where some particular action might apply only to a portion of them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like it. We have seen a significant difference in performance in holding objects in our JS but not putting them in the DOM until the user needs to see them. I think the more you can remove from the DOM, the better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had no idea canceling a timeout like that was called debouncing.

<comment><USER8> It goes back to something we used to do in electronics, usually with a Schmitt trigger. The idea was that even a good switch (say, a small contact switch or the like) would create several extra pulses as its internal contacts bounced against each other before settling when activated--hence the name: it removes bounces. :)

Nowadays we can use _.debounce or _.throttle.

<comment><USER9> Note throttle and debounce are slightly different. Debounce will delay firing until the event causing the timeout reset stops (or pre-fire on the first event and then ignore all subsequent events until they stop for a given interval,) where throttle will fire one event within a given interval no matter how many events it receives (as long as it's >=1.)</comment></comment></comment>


Help Me Soon or Soon I Will Die - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/03-help-me-or-soon-i-will-die/ <comment><USER2> Overly dramatic title that gives no indication of what the article is about.

Electrosensativity is a mental disorder and while exploring the psychology may be interesting their theories don't deserve equal time with reality.

They claim to experience immediate and severe symptoms and yet in blind testing none of these people can tell if a wifi router is operating adjacent to them if they can't see the router.

Even if we suppose said symptoms exist it would be trivial to discover this in the same fashion. By exposing some to a hidden router in an otherwise shielded environment and others not for a few weeks.

Unfortunately they would ALL experience the same imaginary malady.

Something that is "all in your head" is still a physical disorder because the brain is a part of your body but the primary way for them to get help would be to learn to understand reality.

Nobody supposes we should give credence to the voices schizophrenics hear. Rather we give them medication and try to make them understand they aren't real.

</comment><comment><USER2> Sub title ought to be part of the title.

"A story about the people who want to escape connected technology, and the refuge they've built for themselves."</comment>


Ask HN: It's 2017, should I learn Python 3 or 2? - <AUTHOR> Self taught dev here: I've become a Ruby and Ruby on Rails expert. I've become awesome at Node and Express.js, and even ES6 and React.. I decided it was time to move onto Python and Django.
I began the Coursera specialization and used Python 3 to solve the first course, but then I discovered that the rest of the courses were all using Python 2.
There aren't any Python 3 powered certifications on Coursera and since last year I read the community was on the Depression Stage [1], should I learn Python 3 or 2?
PS- Any great resources you'd recommend?
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10822861 <comment><USER2> Learn 3 but also know 2. They're not that different: the concepts and ethos is the same, the APIs have been shuffled, some lower-level details are different, and in 3 text strings and byte sequences are domain-separated.

You can examine the docs [1] or source for Six, a compatibility shim. Whether or not you choose to use Six in your code -- adding another dependency -- a quick glean of the docs should familiarize you with how the two versions are different.

[1] [http://pythonhosted.org/six/](http://pythonhosted.org/six/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Three... 2 is dying (and should be!)

As for resources, you can already program, so ... Browse the manual (it is quite good), look at some pythonic* style videos* _, browse the giant standard library and do some stuff with it... (the last part is key)

_ = yes, that is a genuine keyword, that can be googled and youtubed.. * * = this is good [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf- BqAjZb8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf-BqAjZb8M)

As for "2 works as good as 3", yes, if you only care about English text.

Bytes are what is on the disk, byte value 229 could be "å" (in latin1) , "ĺ" in latin2, or different things in other encodings... Only the lower 127 are "standard" (unless you are in EBCDIC on a mainframe where code 78 is "+" instead of "N")..

If you know the encoding of the bytes (i.e. what language/text type are they), you can "decode" the bytes to a string type, which is unicode glyphs (not utf8, which is also a byte encoding)... When you want to get back to bytes, you just encode it again....

I don't get it, why people find it so hard...

</comment><comment><USER4> Python 3. It's a no brainer. Python 2 support will stop soon (2020). Yes there is a huge code base out there that's in Python 2 so many companies will stick to that. But eventually, they will move on, no other choice.

PS. They are quite similar actually.

</comment><comment><USER5> Learn Python 3 and its differences from Python 2. In practice there won't be many that you'll encounter. Although you might encounter the same issues (small subset of differences) repeatedly when dealing with Python 2 modules.

</comment><comment><USER6> Learn 3. There is no point in learning a legacy system unless you need to support a legacy project. Even then start with 3 then learn the couple of things you need to do to support the older system.

</comment><comment><USER7> Python 3, but you'll find quite quickly that you can work with both easily and examples etc you find online are generally easily translated.</comment>


Co-Founder Wanted.. lots of awesome products - <AUTHOR>

Innovative mind with a lot of products. I currently have http://www.Gamerholic.com a competitive gaming platform where gamers play for money (3k registered users, low activity). http://www.Dreamybids.com (500 registered users low activity) an auction service for the things you can't auction on ebay and the cool things you'd want to win. Freetawn.com my gateway into telecom, a calling card service for international calls (would like my own soft phone app). Citizen50.com a way to put a stop to race profiling, UnFundedHype.com is a shirts site, I also have the domain for sale, pickstinct.com a domain I'd like to make into a sick sports picking website for sports bets (it's like a social way to find good sports pickers). And I still have an idea for a revolutionary payment system that turns the current model on it's head.
I moved to san fran from DC 5 months ago and I need to build a team. An accelerator is really interested in the competitive high score API for the gamerholic service. This is a patent pending system that is pretty freaking cool.
The new crowd funding laws kick in in two months, so now is really the time for any start-uper to get their aces in their places. The 1st 6 months next year should see a LOT of start ups getting funding without chasing down VC's.
Visit the sites, if you are ready to do some really cool innovative things and you are a team player willing to play your position. Lets make things happen.
If you don't have money to buy into a start up I'm fine with it, there is an auction up now where you can get 5% of my Gamerholic start up (including dreamybids) for $25. This way you get a full experience of my innovative ideas.
Here's a link to the auction. http://www.dreamybids.com/contest.php?id=331
Hit me up with any questions @UnFundedHype, or 415-867-5336- Anari facebook: facebook.com/ehustla <comment><USER2> Love the Gamerholic idea, but there are some legal issues that sites with similar business models run into when attempting to scale.

Also - you have way too many projects going on at once. You'll probably hate me saying that, but it is true, and I know it is true because I have had to force myself not to work on more than 1 company at a time :)

Will

<comment><AUTHOR> Skilled gaming is 100% legal. If even Chris Christie is calling for poker to be legal for online play, I think you'll see a the laws ease in the next year or two. I was very surprised to learn betting on horse races is legal online.

There is also an innovative way to make poker fully legal for online play by just tweaking the rules a bit. I had a game developer excited to take that project on, but not for equity.

These projects were over years. Gaming can be seasonal as you scale, madden players play from September to april, nba 2k players from october to june etc.. COD players are worried about modded controllers and fighting game players about lag so I put up other projects to fill in the seasons.

Merchandising will be were we make the bulk of our money with gamerholic. Gamerholic is a persona, from shirts to gaming accessories. Many gamers have been asking for a real life version of our logo, which looks like a gaming controller filled with alcohol.

Dreamybids is just an example service of how much fun we can have gamifying things.

The other projects are a self funding option, just build and sell if the opportunity comes.

<comment><USER3> Have you seen <http://skillbet.com> ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just saw it. Good concept</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NYT: Do VCs bear responsibility for financing cyberbullying sites like Yik Yak? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/08/business/dealbook/profits-and-ethics-collide-in-nameless-turmoil.html

<comment><USER2> Please do not editorialize submission titles.

The HN guidelines ask you to use the original title unless it is misleading or linkbait.

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


Inside the World's Biggest 'Magic: The Gathering' Tournament - <AUTHOR> http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/features/inside-the-worlds-biggest-magic-the-gathering-tournament-20150603

<comment><USER2> The author didn't really went into detail. This tournament was the biggest one in history, but not just for Vegas alone. WotC actually set up three tournaments in three cities accross the world (Vegas, Utrecht, Chiba), the same day. Utrecht and Chiba had around 4,000 players each, and Vegas 11,000.

Utrecht was really well organized. It was the first 'pro' tournament I was attending, and everything went quite smoothly. I strongly advise you to do it if you have a chance (especially during those kind of monstruous events, which may be a bit less pro-oriented than usual).

<comment><USER3> The main event(s) at Vegas (since it split to two parallel GPs, and then each of those split into multiple sub-events which merged for day two) officially had around 8,000 players prior to drops.

So the weekend saw about 16,000 players in the various GPs themselves, though of course there were more people total when side events and spectators/traders/etc. are counted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Magic continues to amaze me, it has some serious staying power. It also seems to still be able to attract young players. Analog success in a digital age.</comment>


Obama Opens NSA's Trove of Warrantless Data to Entire Intelligence Community - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2017/01/13/obama-opens-nsas-vast-trove-of-warrantless-data-to-entire-intelligence-community-just-in-time-for-trump/ <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion of EFF's article on this news: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13390511)</comment>


Quantum Entanglement Holds DNA Together, Say Physicists - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/25375/

<comment><USER2> This appears to be an instance of: <http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1174>

</comment><comment><USER3> To save you time in case you think you saw this 11 days ago - you may have done so, it was here ...

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1472217>

... but there is no discussion there.

</comment><comment><USER4> ... and in other news, pigs have grown wings and are flying!

seriously, why QE? is base stacking plus some electron cloud sharing not a good enough explanation for dsDNA?

<comment><USER4> will the anonymous downvoter please stand up and show some gumption?

<comment><USER5> From the Guidelines:

"Resist complaining about being downmodded. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downmod you."

<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER4> not complaining. just asking "why" ?

i hope that is considered fair. if not, then god help HN the day i get downvoting privileges.

edit:

being downvoted for a comment like this i understand and agree to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1504855>

but being downvoted without a reply for what i wrote to this thread's parent... simply makes no sense!

<comment><USER6> The reason it is annoying is that 5 hours later some HN readers who actually understood your comment have upvoted your post to 4.

Now your complaint is sticking around completely redundantly and this whole thread is taking up a lot of screen real-estate.

<comment><USER4> all right, point taken. and dare i say, lesson learned.

however, it does represent, at least to me, a flaw in the whole HN voting system; given that user privileges are tied to karma points, i feel that upvotes should be allowed as they are now, but downvotes __must__ require some form of response from the downvoter(s) as to why they are downvoting anything ( a la /. ). you don't need to write a paragraph explaining why you downvoted anything, but you should be required to pick at least __one__ response tag that classifies your reason for downvoting (wrong, inflammatory, trollish or whatever).

anyways, sorry for taking up screen real estate with all this unneeded c.r.a.p. i better get back to "real life"[TM] and soon!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As far as I know, quantum entanglement has not been validated yet, as all experiments since Alain Aspect's 1982 paper suffer from flaws in experiment design, leading to what is known as "loopholes".

<comment><USER8> I do believe there have been experiments that have successfully transmitted data via quantum entanglement.

I don't really feel like digging up a source at the moment though.

<comment><USER9> No _data_ is ever transmitted via quantum entanglement (at least, data from the perspective of the observer). Entanglement is simply when two particles exist in the same quantum state. (Or, to be more precise, in the same superposition of quantum states.) When the state is observed (say, an experimenter examines one of the particles), then the entire wavefunction collapses to a single quantum state. The two particles in the system therefore collapse to the same state instantaneously, but no information can ever be transmitted in this way.

<comment><USER8> Erm. Isn't it possible to transmit data that way, specifically by affecting the state of one particle, and observing the other?

<comment><USER10> "Observing" is another way of saying "affecting the state of."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> AFAICT, quantum entanglement is a blanket term for unexplained magic. It would be "real" if they could use this "magic" to construct something that otherwise can't be explained by anything else.

Is there proof of anything constructive coming out of quantum entanglement?

<comment><USER5> Then I guess you can't tell very far.

I think you are confusing measurable, reproducible quantum entanglement with the quackish invocation of the term to lend scientific credence to kooky paranormal theories.

There's a reason that Einstein was freaked out by "spooky action at a distance" and it wasn't because it didn't exist. It's because it did.

<comment><USER11> Have you measured quantum entanglement? I'm trying to.</comment></comment></comment>


Apostrophes are hard [PIC] - <AUTHOR> http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/apple-wwdc-2010-113-rm-eng.jpg

<comment><USER2> If Donahoe was speaking, rather than writing, how do we know that he didn't make a slip of the tongue and use the possessive form "its" when he really meant to say: "it's." Maybe the quote is accurate.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the same kind of submission that everyone is complaining about at the top of HN right now. Flagged.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder how many people will correctly spot which one the missing apostrophe is - I used to get it wrong quite a lot, as it's slightly counter-intuitive.</comment>


Plutonium Shortage Threatens Future Deep Space Missions - <AUTHOR> http://www.popsci.com/military-aviation-amp-space/article/2009-09/nasas-plutonium-shortage-threatens-deep-space-exploration

<comment><USER2> The underlying problem is really a money shortage. Pu-238 is a man-made isotope, and we have the capability to make more - just not the budget in the near future.</comment>


BOJ Shirakawa Warns Japan Economic Outlook 'Very Severe' - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/42836439

<comment><USER2> You know, given that you submitted five similar doom-and- gloom links within five minutes today, I was curious about your submission history.

These kind of pessimistic news links to common news sources are all you appear to submit.

Maybe you could think of a way to more concisely enlighten us about what axe you want to misuse HN to endlessly grind.</comment>


Attackers Hijack DNS of Craigslist.org - <AUTHOR> http://www.securityweek.com/attackers-hijack-craigslist-domain-name

<comment><USER2> As with most of these hijackings (like the NYT and Twitter ones last year), the attackers didn't have the server capacity to handle the load of Craigslist, and so they went down.

Should have used CloudFlare. :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious to know what the attack vector was to hijack Craigslist; and of course if the affiliate link will credit the attackers with funding if they discover their visitors were fraudulent.</comment>


Rodney Brooks and Gary marcus team up to launch robotics AI company Robust.AI - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/06/robust-ai-launches-to-build-an-industrial-grade-cognitive-platform-for-robots/ <comment><USER2> They aren't the only ones. I'm doing that too. (Albeit considerably more slowly) :-P</comment>


Instapaper Placebo - <AUTHOR> http://www.iamdanw.com/wrote/instapaper-placebo/ <comment><USER2> Not to denigrate your efforts, but I think you're treating the symptom and not the root cause of your problem.</comment>


eBay bans sales of face masks and hand sanitizers to combat price gouging - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/06/ebay-bans-sales-of-all-face-masks-and-hand-sanitizers.html <comment><USER2> eBay is a somewhat unique case, because the goods are often resale items. However, the reaction of many social-economics-warrior types suggests they have failed to realize that this kind of behavior is exactly why there is such a shortage of masks in the first place, despite somewhat recent scares with SARS and Ebola.

Letting prices rise is one way to increase production in a hurry. If the mask producers only get to make the same profit margin regardless of demand, why bother fronting the money to increase stock or investing in extra storage space, if there is no guarantee they will be able to recoup those costs during black swans?

<comment><USER3> There's a shortage of masks because the production facilities for masks cannot be built and staffed instantly. If you tried to start one up now, the price will likely have collapsed by the time you have it running, leaving you with an unprofitable facility.

<comment><USER4> I own equipment, have stock, and have staff that could start making masks this afternoon (I normally make decorative covers for custom car interiors).

It probably isn't as fast as other production lines, but I could probably make 2 masks per second, and if I brought in night workers, that works out to a million masks a week. Not much, but profitable if I could sell them at inflated prices, but not at regular prices.

I don't though, because I don't have the contacts to be able to sell them. And anyway, I'm scared of liability if my masks don't work as expected.

That equipment will sit idle if coronavirus spreads to my bit of the world.

<comment><USER5> It's absolutely crucial that masks actually filter out very fine particulates. N95 masks are rated to filter out >=95% of 0.3 micron particles. You probably have the stock to make something close enough to a typical surgical mask, but that's not going to protect the wearer from Coronavirus, at best it would prevent a contagious patient from spreading it. You also need to form the mask such that the edges will seal against the face. I doubt you have suitable filter media on hand, and tight woven fabric will not cut it here. It's significantly harder to trap virus laden particles in the air after they've dried out, so coarse filter media is only going to be effective if it's right in front of the source where the breath is still hot and humid.

<comment><USER6> But the droplets the virus uses to spread are bigger than 5-10 micrometers. You don't need a N95 mask to stop that.

<comment><USER7> Can you give me a reference for the "bigger than 5-10 micrometers" size?

Any scientific article, published or unpublished, peer reviewed or not...

<comment><USER8> Not OP, but here is an article that says the size-based definition of droplet vs. aerosol remains a bit vague (the article is about influenza A virus, but I believe the statement on vector size remains relevant):

"There is essential agreement that particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 5 µm or less are aerosols, whereas particles >20 µm would be large droplets. Some authors define aerosols as ≤10 µm or even ≤20 µm (Knight 1973; Treanor 2005); particles between 5 and 15 to 20 µm have also been termed 'intermediate' (Couch et al. 1966; all values refer to the aerodynamic diameter; for bioaerosols, they refer to the aerodynamic diameter after evaporation). When reviewing the literature, it is therefore important to verify the size of the particles being studied and the authors' definitions."

[https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.200...](https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/full/10.1098/rsif.2009.0302.focus)

<comment><USER7> that's a great reference ... for Influenza A!

some diseases cause larger droplets, other smaller droplets...

I still look forward to a paper describing experimental measurement regarding SARS-COV-II

Also if anyone finds a paper that measured the UV doses (fluences) for N-Log reductions, I would be very happy to read it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> So they jacked up the prices from high (few people can buy) to infinity (nobody can buy). How's that a good thing?

<comment><USER10> Simple. People shouldn't profit from misery.

<comment><USER11> I wish this were true but instantly I think tobacco, alcohol and gambling. Also where do you draw the line? Should Walmart be able to charge so much to a struggling single mom who has to choose between eating herself and feeding her baby? There is no easy solutions to this but I ultimately think big corporations try and maximize their profits at any cost every single day and no one says Walmart or whoever sells these masks should sell them at cost.

<comment><USER12> What is the cost of a mask when the capacity of the existing factories is tapped out and (in principle) one more mask requires a new factory? It's fuzzy when that point comes exactly, but it kind of has to exist. If you want to say the cost of masks is exactly what current operations require, then that _one_ mask must be millions and millions of dollars. So who pays for it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The panic buying has also trickled over to isopropanol/IPA. I needed to buy some anyway and I picked up a litre earlier this week for about £6. At the time Amazon had a lot for sale, now they're all out.

Given that _consumer_ hand gel is basically just IPA diluted down to 60% (see edit), I also bought a few tubes of aloe vera to mix it with... I suspect a lot of other people had the same idea.

It looks like there's a lot still available on eBay, so if you really want to by sanitiser, you might as well make your own. Just remember to dilute it a little, 99% won't do too much damage, but it's not particularly kind to your hands if you rub it in on purpose. It's also extremely flammable!

EDIT:

The WHO has published guidelines on making your own gel: [https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf](https://www.who.int/gpsc/5may/Guide_to_Local_Production.pdf)

Interestingly Wikipedia seems to suggest that you should use at least 90% alcohol to kill flu. And that lower concentration formulations are potentially ineffective because they evaporate before killing stuff off. Hospitals use 70-95%. Obviously the higher you go, the more flammable things get.

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

This article tested a number of gels vs rinses:

[https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(02\)08426-X/fulltext)

> Based on our efficacy data, we do not consider any of the tested alcohol- > based hand gels to be suitable for hand antisepsis in the health-care > setting because their antimicrobial efficacy may be insufficient to prevent > the spread of pathogens. Future ethanol-based hand gels used in hospitals > should contain at least 80% (v/v) ethanol as the active ingredient and > should be as effective as the EN 1500 reference alcohol within 30 s.

<comment><USER14> But my sanitizing gel says it kills 99.99% of all bacteria and viruses!

<comment><USER15> ... leaving only the hardiest survivors, who now replicate in no time, now with resistance.

<comment><USER16> they don't have resistance

<comment><USER15> Of course bacteria have resistance. Bacteria mutate, some random mutation will be resistant to a given antibiotic, and that new strain will propagate and dominate.

Lots of people fall to understand that, which is why we have antibiotic- resistant strains of gonorrhea in the wild now.

<comment><USER16> Hand sanitizers use alcohol, not the same thing as a "prescription" antibiotic. The same resistance arguments do not really apply the same way.

<comment><USER15> Many use triclosan, which was even legal in the US until last year, so a lot of it is still in consumer hands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I have the same "Coronavirus Protection Mask" in the screenshot and I got it from Amazon a year ago. It barely works for keeping dust out of my nose when I am using the table saw. I feel comfortable saying it will offer zero protection for airborne illnesses.

<comment><USER18> Masks may do more to protect the vulnerable around you from what you may unknowingly have. Please don't rule them out entirely.

<comment><USER17> These things are just a charcoal pad on the inside of a mesh with very large holes. If sawdust can come in my cough can go out.

And I am not saying all masks are dumb. Just this specific one when it is marketed as protection from the current problem. It is fraud.

I spent six hours on the cancer floors of the local hospital the other day getting injections and we had to wear masks in the lobbies. It was the only part of the hospital I know of that required them. But it is the cancer floors and people have very little immune systems. When I was a few months into chemo my WBC count was under 1200. So low they couldn't do anymore chemo.

So every little bit helps. And perhaps I am a bit angsty thinking that people are using the masks for no reason when there are people that actually need them. Again, I am not talking about the ebay garbage mask. I am talking about the ones that actually could help our sickest people.

<comment><USER19> ALSO be aware masks like that have one-way valves to make exhalation more comfortable. They're just a little rubber flap so the exhaled air is not filtered.

So construction mask like that might catch some inhaled droplets but won't do protect others from exhalation if the wearer is ill.

<comment><USER20> I would imagine they will offer a similar protection to a surgical mask, which also cannot "filter" outgoing air as there is no seal; it's just a line-of sight protection, perhaps helped somewhat by absorbing moisture droplets. A piece of tissue paper inside the valve would probably have the same or better effect, if you could persuade people to do that purely for the benefit of others.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I got several 3M 1870's just in time then. Heh. They weren't _that_ expensive. It was a pretty good deal actually.

To play the devil's advocate: price gouging _is_ market efficiency because subsidized products in times of scarcity can be over-bought and resold for more. It reduces demand to those who actually need it.

To play the angel's apprentice: price gouging _is_ wrong when people who aren't made of money need a particular product and need to use it now (inelastic demand). The rich can also bid a product up beyond what a poor person could afford, and always prevent them from acquiring it.

I think in this situation, it might be better for the federal government to crack open the enormous strategic stockpile, distribute masks to make people chill out and seem like they're doing something on-the-ground. Even if it's ineffective if worn properly, the emotional support value may make the difference in mood and trust.

<comment><USER22> _It reduces demand to those who actually need it._

 _And have money to afford it,_ something which is not accounted for in the simplistic models of supply and demand that people are promoting with religious levels of certitude up and down this thread.

<comment><USER20> So it would seem that the _real_ problem is wealth inequality (again!) rather than "price gouging" as such. If everyone had the same purchasing power, there would be no ethical problem whatsoever with rising prices in the face of increased demand and limited supply - your willingness to pay would accurately reflect how much you needed the product.

Essentially creating a command economy for a particular good is missing the larger picture.

<comment><USER22> It's a lot simpler to create a command economy for particular goods under emergent circumstances than to reorder the entire economy such that everyone is resembles _homo economicus_.

Command economies are fallible because they are run by humans with varying levels of trustworthiness and accountability. But they have their uses, and are often far mroe efficient than trying to automate the human factor away completely and live in a idealized model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> People should be wearing these masks in public. I'm not sure why this is being so actively discouraged.

You don't know if you're infected. You may be asymptotic for _days_. That's why we should be wearing face masks — to prevent us from accidentally spreading it when we're sick.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hopefully they enforce the action worldwide. I guess the ebay listings don't only include resale masks, but also stolen goods.

Berlin's Charite Clinic just had an incident where a shipment of up to 60.000 masks was stolen from the delivery truck (news in german):

[https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/mitte/charite-wurde- komplett...](https://www.bz-berlin.de/berlin/mitte/charite-wurde-komplette- lkw-ladung-mit-atemschutzmasken-gestohlen)

Edit: it was stolen from an intermediate storage room, not the truck.

<comment><USER25> Friend of mine working in a hospital reports the same. The staff is stealing masks to sell them online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> _" Our first priority is to ensure the safety of our employees and customers around the world," an eBay spokesperson told CNBC in a statement._

...by restricting the sale of items whose purpose is to increase the safety of their users? The inflated prices are bad, but making it harder to acquire such items --- even at higher cost --- seems an even worse situation.

 _The spokesperson added that eBay is also "taking significant measures to block or quickly remove items" on its marketplace that make unsubstantiated medical claims._

On the other hand, I think this is a far more sensible thing to do.

<comment><USER27> > _The spokesperson added that eBay is also "taking significant measures to > block or quickly remove items" on its marketplace that make unsubstantiated > medical claims._

> On the other hand, I think this is a far more sensible thing to do.

it's sensible as long as the unsubstantiated medical claims are actually unsubstantiated. There's been a lot of stuff going around (including from the CDC) about how masks don't actually protect you from coronavirus and things of that nature - whereas the truth there is that the right kind of masks _will_ protect you if used properly. But there's a limited supply, and telling the masses that they don't work makes getting supply for hospitals easier...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I live in London.As of at least last week,one can't buy masks or hand sanitizers. This is a country of 60M people.Yet, when I commute to work,I see probably 1-2 people with mask,which makes it about 0.1% of all people I see on daily basis.So my question is,who has all the masks and who's wearing them?

</comment><comment><USER29> The best thing that can happen in an emergency is to let sellers increase prices. When gas is scarce, let the price of gas go up. This signals to people that they should carefully ration the supplies that exist, and only let the people willing to pay the most get it. Supply and demand solves the problem itself.

When you arbitrarily constrain prices, you make people wait in lines and clever entrepreneurs stock up to sell at inflated rates on the black market. Terrible policy!

<comment><USER12> I don't think it's as black and white as that. If demand exceeds supply, you have to have some means of making them match. But it doesn't _have_ to be price. You just have to accept that it _will_ be something and not pretend there is no issue. In WWII, people got through it with rationing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This will simply cause a bigger panic buy next time. It would have been much better for retail to raise prices until they are always stocked, that way at least no one will have to pay shipping and eBay fees. If government wants to have enough for healthcare workers, then pay up, they can get as many as needed.

<comment><USER31> I agree with this criticism the most I think best move is for eBay to put a price maximum in play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It might have been better to set a maximum allowed price per unit rather than to make the supply evaporate.

To be clear, I think what a lot of these vendors were doing was just immoral. I've been buying these masks for years for our shop. Normal pricing is in the range of $12 for a box of 20 (or something like that).

I would allow a 2x to 3x premium and that's that. I don't have an issue with someone who has an inventory that might be very difficult to replenish getting a reasonable premium. That's OK. When people take an item like this and use an emergency to charge $50 for a $0.50 product, well, that's just wrong.

<comment><USER33> Why is it wrong? No one is forced to buy it. The only people buying it are ones who _consent_ to that price—same as any other transaction.

How can someone be a victim if they _want_ to engage in the trade, and explicitly chose to do so?

<comment><USER34> If someone is in a personal emergency, even if it's just perceived, that they need to protect themselves against a virus, their consent is no longer freely given. It's coerced consent, not by the seller, but by circumstances. In plenty of european countries, price gouging is illegal for that reason. You can't charge what you want, especially in situations like this.

<comment><USER33> No third party has any business telling the first and second that they can't transact at a price to which they both agree (or threatening them with violence if they ignore them and do anyway). Governments that do so are infringing upon their rights. All this feel-good sort of law does is make the thing that they feel they need, which would otherwise be expensive, now be totally unavailable. That doesn't benefit the buyer or the seller, and in fact makes the situation worse for the buyer who it supposedly wished to protect: it just makes some busybody who is not even party to the transaction feel good about themselves.

There's no such thing as "coerced by the circumstances". We all need to enter into transactions to not die; we buy food, water, medical care even outside of emergencies. Sometimes those things are expensive due to supply and demand. This instance is no different.

<comment><USER34> If a doctor were to ask a patient for 100k$ or they won't do a life saving operation, then the patients consent is fabricated. Their need for a life saving operation is the third party.

I think you misunderstood what I mean by third party; it's not necessarily a person, legal or natural, interfering with the transaction, it can be a force of nature, circumstances and many other things. It won't go away because you don't like it.

And yes, there is such things as "coerced by circumstances", see above example. Normally, when you buy food, water or medical care you're not in a life threatening situation or perceived or real emergency. If you are then you cannot give informed and free consent, simple as that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> They shouldn't ban the sale, they should cap the price.

<comment><USER36> Why not just buy all of them and resell them on your own website (without the cap)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> In California we have a declaration of emergency. This declaration makes price gouging illegal for essential needs.

<comment><USER33> Neither masks nor hand sanitizer are essential.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The only way we're going to get more masks is to pay manufacturers a premium up front and then absolve them of legal responsibility for the mask not working.

Prices are high because demand is high and supply is low. Demand isn't going anywhere so the only answer is more supply.

</comment><comment><USER33> Censorship (even private censorship, like this) in markets is deeply offensive to me.

It's not eBay's place to tell people who want to buy these things that they should not be able to.

</comment><comment><USER39> That seems reactionary.

</comment><comment><USER40> This would a great time to launch an eBay competitor.

<comment><USER41> AliExpress gets better and better every day.

Just bought an ultralight tent and sleeping pad off it, cheaper than Ebay.

<comment><USER42> Might want to have a look at the return address after they show up.

<comment><USER41> Non-issue for viruses: They don't live outside their hosts for more than a few hours.

Bigger concern is the reduced cargo capacity from China these days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This seems like a terrible move. Even if the prices are extortionate, how can eBay take away people's right to protect themselves?

Surely educating and empowering the general population to take their own measures to prevent the spread is the best thing we can do in this situation.

If this is a matter of supply shortage. Why the heck have the people in charge not covered this?</comment>