Martin Shkreli is found guilty of securities fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/08/04/martin-shkreli-jury-enters-fifth-day-of-deliberations/ <comment><USER2> There seems to be a misconception regarding what Shkreli was found guilty of. The legal case here has very little to do with the pharmaceutical pricing controversy - it is a separate case based on a separate hedge fund that he managed. The gist of it is that he took people's money to start a hedge fund, lied to investors that the fund was doing fine when the hedge fund went belly up, but ended up returning everyone's money plus a sizable return when his separate pharmaceutical venture went well.

When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money. However, it's pretty clear what he did is also fraud (false documents, not returning people's money when they asked for it) even if the fact that investors came out better makes the plaintiffs less sympathetic.

<comment><USER3> _> When fraud happens those affected don't usually get their money back much less a return on that money._

That will be a footnote at sentencing. Federal sentencing is generally based on intended or actual loss, _whichever is greater_. Further, the judge is allowed to take into account intended losses from his entire course of conduct, not just the intended losses from the specific counts on which he was found guilty.

In other words, the fact that his investors lost no actual money will have little bearing on his sentence. I don't know what the actual amount he took in was, but he will be sentenced for a multimillion dollar fraud scheme, and because he went to trial and lost, he'll get nowhere near the minimum. The government likes to punish people for making them expend the time and effort of a trial (in 2012, 97% of federal cases ended with a guilty plea instead of a trial [1]). He's probably looking at 5 years at best.

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443589304577637...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443589304577637610097206808)

<comment><USER4> I disagree. I think it will be a major factor at sentencing. First the fact that he did give them their money (with a significant return on it) back to the people well before the government got involved (meaning it wasn't a PR show) to me means there was never any intent for them to actually lose money. I think the judge will see it the same way. Because if that weren't true, he would never have repatriated the money back to pay them out. He would have just said "oops, I lost it" and continued about his regular business. As much as I dislike the guy, I do believe he didn't want to rip the people off, he wanted to try to salvage what he could to make himself look good get them their money. He just chose a deceptive, illegal manner in which to do it.

Also, harm/damage is a big consideration in sentencing. He broke the law, yes. But usually a violation of the law in this regard results in substantial losses. Because it did not here, the only damage is his violation of his contractual obligation to provide money back to those who said they wanted to cash out. By holding the money, he deprived them of their rightful property as per the contract they signed when they invested with him. And considering they would have a real hard time beating his returns, proving any sort of tort injury is essentially impossible. This leaves only the statutory violation, meaning he amazingly didn't necessarily harm anyone or their property but rather just broke the law. Given the lack of injury to the victims of his crime, I think he's likely to see a very light sentence.

<comment><USER3> Let me start by saying that what you are saying probably _should_ be the way it plays out in this case. Everyone seems to have made money. I was just stating how it _actually_ plays out in the vast majority of federal cases, and will likely play out here.

In this case, because of the amount involved, the guidelines will call for a substantial prison sentence (well over 5 years). There is actually a loss table (again, we're talking about the "intended loss") that determines a certain number of points for the loss [1] (plus 7 points for the "base offense level"), and that number of points is then used with the sentencing table [2] to determine the sentence. The judge is of course free to depart up or down from the guideline sentence, but the sentencing range determined by those tables will be the starting point. The odds that he will receive no prison time at all after having gone to trial and lost are effectively zero. The judge will likely cut him _some_ kind of break because nobody actually lost anything - his lawyers will argue that he showed remorse after the fact by eventually making his victims whole - but that will have a minor effect at best. My best guess, having watched many of these things play out, is 4-6 years.

[1] [https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines- manual/2016-...](https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines- manual/2016-chapter-2-c#2b11)

[2] [https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines- manual/2016-...](https://www.ussc.gov/guidelines/2016-guidelines- manual/2016-chapter-5)

<comment><USER4> Very interesting. I certainly hope he gets more time than I am expecting. Personally, my gut is saying 1-2 years. I'd be happy if he gets 4-6 like you expect.

Definitely going to be interesting to hear the judges words during sentencing. I was listening to the Michelle Carter sentencing yesterday, as I was following that relatively closely. Now I'm waiting to see what happens here, but this is much more cut and dry than that case. I'm only interested because it's Shkreli.

<comment><USER5> Why do you favor harsher sentencing for him?

As a hedge fund manager, losing money is not illegal. The only illegal thing he did was _lie about it so that he could get them their money back._

It would've been perfectly legal for him to lose all his clients money in the hedge fund, make them aware of this fact, and reap the profits from his pharma business without dishing it out to his hedge fund clients.

As far as I can tell, Shkreli turned a _technically legal_ "I fucked up and lost your money scenario" into a _technically illegal_ I fucked up, lost your money, but got it back to you scenario.

If I was part of Shkreli's hedge fund, I would much prefer to be involved in the latter scenario than the former.

Sure, I could sue Shkreli to recoup some of my hedge fund losses, but this way they didn't need to.

<comment><USER6> > The only illegal thing he did was lie about it so that he could get them > their money back.

You're missing the point; giving his investors 'their' money back was the thing he did that was unethical and illegal. If you're a fund manager and the value of your portfolio goes down after making bad bets, you can't just inject your own money into the fund to make it look like you have a positive track record so that you can solicit more outside funds.

<comment><USER7> You're grasping for ways to punish this guy because you don't like him. The fact is, he made a mistake and wanted to pay back the people he made a mistake with.

<comment><USER8> I'd say it's exactly the opposite. The guy blatantly broke the law, but you seem to he very attached to him because you see him as some kind of noble do- gooder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use to hate this guy, then I saw the Vice interview on him. It was nice to see his side of the story.

I don't know much about this case in particular. It was kinda sleazy to see the congress question him about his price increases when they knew damn well it was perfectly legal and they haven't done anything to stop it. Shkreli seems to be trying to expose this hypocrisy, but the news loves their stories.

Vice interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PCb9mnrU1g)

<comment><USER10> > Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds and the > pharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. Shkreli told > investors he graduated from Columbia University, that his hedge fund was > large and profitable, and that he had hired an auditor, they said. These > were all lies, according to prosecutors.

yeah seems like a great dude...

<comment><USER11> Interestingly, his fraud seems to fall into two categories. Lying about his fund's bonafides and status on one side, and working hard to make sure those same investors got what they were expecting by founding a company, making it successful and paying them out from the profits.

It sounds like he definitely lied to investors, but he apparently didn't intend to steal their money, and took pains to make sure he did not cost them money in the end. Apparently most investors in the fund that lost all it's money ended up close to tripling their investment after he worked to replace the lost money in the end.

That leaves me thinking that "up to 20 years" is a bit harsh given the facts. Hopefully the judge will take that into consideration and give him a more lenient sentence.

<comment><USER12> Are you kidding? He's human garbage, let him rot. It's astounding how people are being taken in by this con man.

<comment><USER13> Regardless of big an asshole he is based on seeing the Vice interview and thinking about the big fraud pharma industry makes me think he is actually way better than the conniving people who run big pharma.

This guy speaks out and maybe he is an asshole and suddenly everyone hates him. The rest keep their profits to themselves and we don't seem to care or mind.

<comment><USER14> Everyone has choices to make. Martin could have easily _not_ been an asshole to cancer patients or investors at his fund. You want to let him off the hook just because he said "yup I'm a dick" while he was making the choice to be a dick and profited massively from being a dick?

Acknowledging the fact that what you're doing is wrong does not suddenly make that thing right. It's still wrong. And you're still an asshole for doing it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The government and media couldn't have asked for a better outcome. The actual criminals on Wall Street and in Big Pharma, who had the foresight to line the right pockets, go ignored and the outsider who drew the ire of the public - for a decidedly amoral business decision with poor optics - is very publicly castigated. It's a win all around for a monumentally corrupt establishment, which has once again deferred meaningful scrutiny.

Shkreli made the mistake of setting himself up as the perfect loudmouthed, flamboyant patsy.

<comment><USER16> Didn't think of it this way. So true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> A data point about medication:

I just paid for a pair of EpiPens; the generic version was $337 a pair (last I checked, the non-generic version was over $600). I have pretty good health insurance, so I didn't pay that much myself, but my employer paid the rest.

As a baseline, I had the pharmacist look up the equivalent medication for use with a syringe; a ten dose bottle was $5.99. I know, not the same thing. But this confirmed what I'd suspected for years.

I have to assume that the EpiPen delivery mechanism, which is really what we're paying for, is well debugged and optimized and essentially just a matter of ordering parts and assembling them; it would be mind boggling to have a COGs of more than a few dollars, or any significant conversion costs. The cost of the actual medication that the pens contain is apparently about sixty cents on top of that. Mylan is _printing_ money.

Icing on the cake: The pens expire after a year. But you typically can't get pens that last that long, the ones I got already have a few months on them and will have to be replaced before the next school year ends or my son won't be able to attend class (the school is not allowed to administer "expired" medication).

This is an utter and corrupt racket. I'm writing my congressional representatives and senators. Again.

<comment><USER18> So when are you planning to manufacture an equivalent device at lower price? Just sell it for $99, you'll crush Mylan and still earn 10x margins.

<comment><USER19> They've probably got a ton of lawyers who would come after you based on their patents. Doubt op has mega cash to fight that.

<comment><USER18> I'm sure he can modify the design slightly. Maybe even improve it a bit. That would easily get around the patents.

<comment><USER20> You don't have to get around the patents, you have to get around the lawsuits. Being right doesn't stop you from going broke defending yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Putting people like Shkreli into prison for a long time is vital to the long term stability of society. I wish money didn't buy options to avoid prison and I wish that people with his behaviors didn't so often accrue large amounts of money.

<comment><USER22> That would be great if he wasn't one of many, and if nothing of significance will come from this ruling (it won't). He's just a convenient target that can be pointed to and said of "Look, aren't we doing our job?" when the truth is nothing will change in the long run.

<comment><USER23> > "That would be great if he wasn't one of many"

You could say the same for almost any crime. Why should those who commit white-collar crime be allowed to continue without repercussions, whilst those who commit much smaller offences get jail time?

<comment><USER9> The problem is now Congress can sit back and do nothing for a few years regarding Pharma, since the masses and media will be satisfied with this. Nothing changes.

<comment><USER23> Correct me if I'm wrong... I thought this particular court case had very little to do with the pharmaceutical industry. Also, that's a bit of a stretch. It's not like the government has a 'white collar crime prosecutions quota', and the general public doesn't overlook wrongdoing if similar crimes have been prosecuted recently.

<comment><USER9> This case has nothing to do with the pharmaceutical industry. Shkreli is known to be the "bad boy of Pharma" and is being taken down. His reputation is based on hiking the price of his drug. This will make the federal government look like they are doing something without actually doing anything. They aren't prosecuting him for price gouging his drugs and that common practice will not stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Note that this does not have anything to do with his pricing of pharmaceuticals. From a different article:

"Prosecutors say Shkreli looted his drug company to pay back investors in two failed hedge funds he ran. The defense says investors got their original investments back and even made hefty profits."

<comment><USER25> In theory it had nothing to do with it, although it's not clear that the prosecution would have gone after him without that negative attention. Also, it had an effect on the juror pool.

<comment><USER26> Was it the nazis or soviets (or both) who made effectively everyone criminal so that they could then persecute them at will?

<comment><USER27> It's almost every country these days, see e.g. [https://www.amazon.com/Three- Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp...](https://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day- Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229) \- which has a slightly clickbaity title, but worrying content.

But it seems Shkreli's transgressions are not of the "three felonies before breakfast" variety, but rather things that are indeed often prosecuted (though, it should be noted, as everyone wronged was made whole, it is likely that he would not have been prosecuted if he had not been in the media spotlight as a villain; other remarks here mentioned that the founding of Fedex had a similar fraud committed, for example).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Unfortunately Martin was made a scapegoat and they made an example out of him because of his arrogance and vocal personality. How did the executives that caused the financial crisis of 2008 get off completely free but a relatively tiny hedge fund manager get the book thrown at him? This was a witch hunt, no doubt about it.

<comment><USER29> I agree, but only in the sense that more of them should be in jail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'd like someone to do a reading of Martin Shkreli as "satirist of neoliberalism", and suggest that the reason so many people hate him so much is that he's a scapegoat for our collective feelings of guilt. Can anyone offer a valid critique of his raising the price of Daraprim, _within the frame of neoliberalism_ , that doesn't just reduce to "that guy's a real jerk!"?

<comment><USER31> Before we did that we'd have to agree on what _neoliberalism_ is. One definition cited by Wikipedia is:

> _Neoliberal theory argues that a free market will allow efficiency, economic > growth, income distribution, and technological progress to occur. Any state > intervention to encourage these phenomena will worsen economic performance._

Another is that neoliberalism is the relitigation of the New Deal.

I like the second more operational definition since it doesn't ignore history.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I first met Martin over a skype call and he was very humble—his identity online is just a brand.

2 years later, I stumbled into him again and asked him for advice on affording a cancer drug for a relative. He helped me find the charities and also introduced me to a contact at the pharma company.

The internet prefers headlines over reality.

<comment><USER33> My experience matches yours. Martin is very nice person who just enjoys attention.

He didn't deserve this. Big Pharma deserves way worse though.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those who can access it, this NYT article has more detail: [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/dealbook/martin-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/business/dealbook/martin- shkreli-guilty.html)

(Edit: I posted this comment while the WaPo article had only a few paragraphs; it's now fully fledged.)

</comment><comment><USER26> Gotta love the narrative here. Jack up the medicine price and become americas most hated for a moment by general behavior.. that's fine. Make a fool of couple of hedge fund investors.. oh boy, now you fucked up

</comment><comment><USER34> Although technically true, the title is a bit misleading. He was acquitted from 5 of the 8 counts he was convicted of. Of the 8 counts, count 7 carried the biggest wait. This was in regards to the Retrophin securities fraud accusation where he was accused of a ponzi scheme amounting to over $10M. This was the only thing that would of brought him significant jail time but he was found not guilty. Count 7 carried more wait than all the other counts combined and was the heart of the case against him. Right now the case has gone from a felony to basically a parking ticket. All the articles talking about "facing 20 years" are sensationalist nonsense. That is a theoretical maximum. He will most likely receive NO jail time and will probably just have to pay a small fee. Of course you will not get any of this context from all the sensationalist headlines out there like "MARTIN SHKRELI FOUND GUILTY! FACING 20 YEARS PRISON SENTENCE!"...

</comment><comment><USER35> Great. They convicted one low level autistic freak with no connections over a couple million dollars. Brave day for justice.

What about the daughter of a senator who is the CEO of the company that quadrupled the price of epipens? Yeah, right, mission accomplished, nothing to see there.

</comment><comment><USER36> His mistake was taking money from rich people. If he had stuck to stealing from and killing poor people, nothing would have happened to him.

</comment><comment><USER37> Why would this guy should go to prison when no one(except one guy in us) went to prison after the massive financial crisis in 2008?I know its naive/rhetorical question but thinking about it, its crazy to me.He did no financial harm too.

</comment><comment><USER38> >"Rarely has a white-collar criminal defendant evoked hatred and scorn from public in the way Shkreli has. Shkreli's willingness to lie, step on people, flaunt his wealth and look down on others made him a villain that many wanted to see go down in flames," said James Goodnow, an attorney with Fennemore Craig, a corporate defense firm.

This attitude is just disgusting, and indicative of precisely what has gone wrong with our society. "White collar" criminals who steal millions are deserving of leniency and mercy. But the "thug" who stole $20 from a 7/11 deserves 20 years.

<comment><USER39> Well if the thug pointed a loaded gun the the clerks face for 20 bills I would say yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I find it hard to believe that he got a fair trial this time around. He was already tried and found guilty in a trial by media a few years back. This investigation & prosecution are a direct result of his legal actions that didn't play well politically. BOTH presidential candidates condemned him. To me it's sad. The sacrificial lambing of Shkreli instead of lawmakers addressing the underlying problem of costly pharma is probably the most Venezuela thing I've ever seen happen in the US. They made the system, he's just trying to prosper ffs.

</comment><comment><USER41> He is live-streaming right now: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvArpDQHf-Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvArpDQHf-Y)

<comment><AUTHOR> Watching it right now and it's fascinating. He has just been explaining to a Daily News reporter why his company charges what it charges for the various drugs it sells. More people should watch this before they make up their mind.

It's only a live stream now, I hope it's going to stay on YT after it's done. (They're now arguing about what he considers distorted coverage of him in the press.)

<comment><USER42> Oh give me a break. The guy comes off as charasmatic in a YouTube video so you want to ignore his act of fraud? (Yes, I realize raising drug prices isn't illegal. That isn't what he was convicted for)

You know who else was charasmatic and could get people to like him in light of all his actions? Adolf Hitler.

<comment><USER41> Ding ding ding ding [0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It's almost like you shouldn't trust people with narcissistic personality disorder with your money or nuclear launch codes.

</comment><comment><USER44> For those who haven't read the article, Martin is being charged on cheating his investors, he himself admits to his "broomsticks", not the immoral arguments he was previously known for.

Also that aside, he was quite a easy target.

</comment><comment><USER45> FWIW, Shkreli has said several times on his YouTube channel that he predicted he was serve 2 years and be done. From what I've heard, he'll be sentenced 3-5 and and serve 80% with good behavior. He had an excellent defense and this was probably known from the beginning.

Interestingly, I don't think he pretends that what he did was right - it just understood it was a means to an end: two years in white collar "prison" for 30-70MM when he had less than $1,000 in the bank and owed creditors north of 1MM.

</comment><comment><USER46> I've found him to be an interesting character, a potent symbol of the greed, arrogance, and indifference of the pharmaceutical industry. A PR firm couldn't have invented a better villain, young, brash, flouting decorum by his openly fleecing the public. He was the perfect scapegoat.

I think we all know nothing has changed, and his conviction today has no relationship to his role as CEO, but I wonder if public opinion of the industry will improve, as if the bad apple is rooted out.

</comment><comment><USER47> I have no sympathy for him as he appears to have lied to his investors and moved money around, which seems to be outside the law.

Raising the price of a drug though, as long as he can get away with it, is no crime, no matter how big the increase.

This makes me question though, did he raise the price of Daraprim so he could return money to the investors of his hedge fund?? If so, his entire defense (from his videos) of raising the price to meet his fiduciary duties to Turing's investors falls flat.

</comment><comment><USER48> Okay real talk -- who's gonna get that Wu-Tang album he has?

</comment><comment><USER49> I get the impression he isn't so much malevolent in his actions, rather he behaves as a libertine and someone who takes the view that the end justify the means.

<comment><USER50> OK, so he's just indifferent to the harm caused by his actions, rather than a cackling sadist. So what?

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> [https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/08/04/martin-shkreli-on- verd...](https://www.cnbc.com/video/2017/08/04/martin-shkreli-on-verdict-this- was-a-witch-hunt-of-epic-proportions.html)

</comment><comment><USER52> So, are the gonna sell off his stuff and more in particular, is the Wu Tang album coming up for sale?

</comment><comment><USER53> hand over the wutang

<comment><USER54> My thoughts exactly. This is very important.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm sure it's been said but was it ever possible for him to get a fair trial?

</comment><comment><USER56> Does anyone know if they were already in the process of prosecuting him for this or is it a way to get him on something in response to him buying and hiking he prices of aids drugs, since that wasn't actually illegal.

</comment><comment><USER57> > Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds ... > according to prosecutors.

If you were to scrutinize what founders of darling startups said to investors, how many "inconsistencies" would you find?

</comment><comment><USER58> Jail time for Goldman/JPM execs: 0 and counting ...

</comment><comment><USER59> "Martin Shkreli is found innocent of 5/8 security fraud charges."

</comment><comment><USER60> I entered a livestream question session with this clown and asked him his opinion on CRSPR tech and he replied "It has not future because 'it doesn't work'".. Thats when I knew he was full of crap

</comment><comment><USER61> Sound's like a good thing tho, i mean we have seen his history and his past, a lot of things kinda conspired to see this coming in the end.

</comment><comment><USER62> I understand that what he did was morally abhorrent, but I don't understand why it was illegal? Maybe a lawyer can give a quick summaray?

<comment><USER63> Did you read the article?

> Prosecutors argued that Shkreli lied to investors in two hedge funds and the > pharmaceutical company Retrophin, all of which he founded. Shkreli told > investors he graduated from Columbia University, that his hedge fund was > large and profitable, and that he had hired an auditor, they said. These > were all lies, according to prosecutors.

<comment><USER24> The article seems to have been extended from a couple paragraphs to a long piece. The url stayed identical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> This really reminds me of "The stranger" by Albert Camus.

<comment><USER65> Did the sun get in someone's eyes?

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> lol

</comment><comment><USER67> I think it's fair to say that Shkreli would be left to his own devices had he not shown the audacity to charge what the market will bear. Meanwhile another person who similarly jacked up the price of a lifesaving drug beyond what many could afford, Heather Bresch, received no negative legal attention whatsoever. Ever wonder why? Because her dad is Joe Manchin. The swamp needs draining so bad.

<comment><USER68> Bumping the price of a drug is not illegal. Shkreli was found guilty for fraud unrelated to the drug price hike.

<comment><USER67> Did I say otherwise? Is there any doubt in your mind as to why they went after him though? How many other hedge fund managers do you know of that have ever seen the inside of a jail cell?

<comment><USER68> You didn't say otherwise, but it seems to explain why he was prosecuted while Bresch was not.

<comment><USER67> Not why he was prosecuted. Why he was even considered for prosecution in the first place. Some of the investors "harmed" by Shkreli admitted on the stand that their investments with him were the best they've ever made. Dude is also obviously smart and talented, and while he might have bent the rules here and there, as far as I can tell no harm has come to anyone in the end. So what this amounts to is little more than a witch hunt. The "aggrieved" party has made a lot of money.

But my comment was more about a peculiar difference in the treatment of two people in similar circumstances based seemingly on whether their relatives are high ranking government officials. Surely this should have seen some more scrutiny from the "free" press, no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Can we please have a conversation on the abuse of Federal plea bargains and insanely high sentencing guidelines? Thousands of Americans every year plead guilty in federal court to crimes they did not commit because they face insanely high prison terms if convicted. Often Federal sentences are several times longer than ones in state courts for the exact same crimes.

</comment><comment><USER70> I wish people would stop using the word "modulo" like this.

<comment><USER71> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14933036](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14933036) and marked it off-topic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> Wait wait wait, he committed fraud... but everyone he defrauded actually ended up getting a 3X return on their investment because he just took money from another one of his ventures?

I mean, illegal sure, but seems like he still held up his end of the bargain.

<comment><USER73> The thing about the law is that it largely exists as a deterrent for bad behavior, particularly behavior that causes systemic issues when it becomes widespread. Just because in this instance the parties being misled didn't lose their investments doesn't mean that the next time someone like Shkreli attempts this kind of scheme it won't end in disaster for the people he defrauds.

It's kind-of like a speed limit. Sure, maybe you didn't get in an accident doing 100 in a 50 but you sure as hell deserve a ticket because if everyone did it the roads would become totally unsafe.

<comment><USER72> Sure, but if you get a ticket for doing 100 in a 50 you might be out a few hundred bucks. If you hit someone while doing 100 in a 50 you'll be in jail. Outcomes still matter.

<comment><USER74> We won't know if the outcome affected the punishment until he's sentenced, but it's likely to be the case here too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> In the federal venue, can he appeal the securities counts in isolation of the things he was found not guilty of?

Conspiracy charges are always weak, if you can afford a constitutional law to argue on expression grounds.

Has he expressed interest in appealing?

</comment><comment><USER76> I quite like Martin. I talked to him a few time on YouTube, whilst he was live streaming.

He's whip-smart & knowledgeable. He does, however, have a couple of major flaws. 1) He trolls. Hard. 2) It seems he lies. Which I picked up from a previous news article. (He claimed to have ~$50mm under management @ his previous hedge fund. It was more like $1.6mm. Something like that).

I can forgive the trolling. It's over the top, IMO. But it is what it is.

The lying is another kettle of fish. You can't go around bullshitting ppl. &, as he found out, you can't go around bullshitting investors.

I think he loves money too much. The thought of being poor may have pushed him to do something stupid (ultimately his call!).

I hope he doesn't have too hard a time in jail. Losing his fortune (I believe he loses his shares from Retrophin. ~$65mm. That's already a punishment.

Edit: I don't know why I'm being downvoted. I'm being honest. Fuck you people, frankly.

<comment><USER77> Trolling is lying. Either you believe terrible things, or you lie about believing them to make people angry. Normal lying is usually intended for personal gain, trolling is just lies intended to hurt other people.

<comment><USER78> >Trolling is lying

Not at all, I think one of the most famous "troll" things he did was buy the master Wu-Tang album and threaten to destroy it so no one could ever hear the album.

There's no lying or anything meant to "hurt" anyone there, but you can imagine that it rubbed a lot of people the wrong way.

<comment><USER77> Threatening to destroy it so nobody else can hear it is explicitly intended to hurt people who want to hear the album. If you don't mean to hurt anyone, by definition it isn't trolling.

Maybe I'm stretching the meaning of lying, but I think it's dishonest to represent yourself as a patron of the arts, as the album was produced as a piece of art, when you're really bidding on it with the sole purpose of depriving others. If that's not the reason he bought it, then he wasn't trolling.

<comment><USER79> except, no one was actually hurt. He didn't destroy the album (as far as I know). You could make an argument that it's a dick move, and I might agree, but it's his property to do with as he wishes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER80> No one has been charged with wrecking the worlds economy in 2008. Sometimes I have to wonder, is it down to who you know or who you can influence when it comes to charges. Shkreli got his comeuppance, but why a blind eye to other larger fish?

</comment><comment><USER12> "It's not always about lying! Sometimes it's about being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering!"

<comment><USER81> How is that "being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering"?

Also, you've commented in this thread about six times now with snarky remarks, unsubstantiated vitriol, and essentially "Martin Shkreli is a monster." Whether or not there's good reason to dislike him, I think you've successfully made your point.

<comment><USER82> >I think one of the most famous "troll" things he did was buy the master Wu- Tang album and threaten to destroy it so no one could ever hear the album.

How is that not exactly "being cruel to strangers just to enjoy their suffering"?

<comment><USER83> Because it's a joke. Punish someone for their actions, not their words.

<comment><USER84> Ah, the #1 go to defence for terrible people when they get called out for their actions, "it's just a joke, I was just kidding, don't be so sensitive."

<comment><USER83> You _are_ way too sensitive though. The virtue signaling is through the roof. All you're doing here is "trying to make sure a terrible person gets their comeuppance." Like really? You've never pulled a prank in your life?

I notice you and a lot of people like you have around 100-500 karma. I wonder if it's just newbies trying to find some way of differentiating themselves. Virtue signaling is in fashion, so it makes sense.

<comment><USER82> > virtue signaling

I'm so tired of this buzzword. Why not take people at face value that they are actually expressing their own moral opinion on an issue and not assume they're doing it for "social standing"... on an anonymous internet forum.

If you're looking for other behaviour that "makes the community worse" I think you should consider your own. Starting discussions with the assumption one side's opinions aren't valid opinions and using user's comment karma as a barometer of their sincerity will lead only to flame wars.

<comment><USER83> It didn't lead to a flamewar.

The issue is that expressing your own moral opinion is fashionable. It's considered acceptable to hold someone else's head under water just to raise your own. And that's toxic.

Note that anyone who calls out virtue signaling soon ends up in the crosshairs. I don't mind though.

Also, they were quite serious. And that's the problem. The fact that they're serious in calling out someone as a "terrible person" (when they're not) is what makes it dangerous.

<comment><USER82> It's an internet forum. We're all expressing our own moral and general opinions. It's toxic to assume these opinions are not honestly held and write them off simply with another buzz word. The other poster didn't hold Shkreli's head under the water, his comments will not affect Martin at all. Plenty of people in this thread think he is a terrible person, you don't - that's fine, but it is still just an opinion. I don't see how that (or almost any) opinion is "dangerous" just because you disagree.

I don't know why you feel you're "in the crosshairs". You had no problem criticising the other poster, you should be able to take some criticism of your own.

<comment><USER83> _It 's toxic to assume these opinions are not honestly held and write them off simply with another buzz word._

You keep saying this, but nobody did that. Maybe that's where your anger is coming from. I clarified in my last comment that their opinions _are_ honestly held, so at this point it seems like you're trying to misunderstand me.

I think you really dislike the term "virtue signaling." That's fine, but it doesn't change that that's what is happening here.

The fact that all of this stemmed from the idea that he is a terrible person for threatening to destroy an album as a joke is what makes this situation ludicrous. When the witch hunting mindset is so engrained in our culture, it becomes dangerous to those it targets.

<comment><USER82> I'm not angry at all, I'm just trying to tell you that if you're going to comment on what makes this community worse you need to consider your own behaviour.

> Since 2015, the term has become more commonly used as a pejorative > characterization by commentators to criticize what they regard as the > platitudinous, empty, or superficial support of certain political views" > [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling)

You can see why I would misunderstand you because this is the definition of the word as I (and obviously others) understand it. So basically saying someone's opinions are "platitudinous, empty, or superficial" is both shitty way to try to have a conversation and a way to write people's opinions off. The wikipedia also pretty nicely sums up how it has become a misused buzzword without any actual meaning, unless you're a signalling theorist.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Moving from Trello to Blimp - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getblimp.com/2013/02/moving-from-trello-to-blimp/

<comment><USER2> Blimp looks interesting, but I didn't know what it was until I clicked around, and I'm still not clear on the major differences between it and Trello. May I politely suggest that not everyone reading this post will know what Blimp is and may not take the effort to click around and read? You'd be doing yourself a favor by either: saying what Blimp is somewhere on that page, or providing a brief list of reasons I might want to switch from Trello to Blimp.

<comment><USER3> Just updated the blog post with an answer to "Why move from Trello to Blimp?" to summarize: Blimp understands the process your team is using so it can extract meaningful data from it. Head back to the blog post to read all of it.

<comment><USER4> This has been said numerous times on HN and elsewhere, but I would love to see what your pricing structure is outside of "starts at $12/month." I'm not going to give you my information just to see a pricing chart.

<comment><USER3> Blimp's pricing: <https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BCRS1UOCQAETDr6.png:large>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looked interesting enough to give them my email address and see what might be different.

Importer is broken.

 _sad trombone_

<comment><USER3> We are working on it <https://twitter.com/blimp/status/299918365869342720>

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Their site looks gorgeous, but I wish there was a video walkthrough or at least some full screenshots so I could see what the app itself looks like and how it functions.

<comment><USER3> Here you have the latests screencasts, they are a few weeks old but good enough. [http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP1NjAf7U2LsE52GsPwXxD...](http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLP1NjAf7U2LsE52GsPwXxDS6QJRxXiZXa)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> >Made by the Blimp crew in San Juan, Puerto Rico

This made me happy. Cool to see a Puerto Rican startup on the front page of HN.

Are there other notable PR startups that I might not know about?

<comment><USER8> I am happy to see that too. Unfortunately a common trend in Puerto Rico is that it's best and brightest move to the states and only come home for navidad/three kings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is pretty cool! I wish other apps (I'm looking at you, to-do list apps) had the same "easy migration" philosophy.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've started trying out the service, but coming from Basecamp, my team relies on their messages to keep ideas and project-related conversations archived with the rest of the project data. Any advice on how to do the same within Blimp?

<comment><USER3> Just wait a few days ;)

<comment><USER10> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> When trying to import I get: request expired

<comment><USER3> We are working on it. Seems to be an issue with our api keys but we can't confirm because the folks at Trello support haven't responded yet.

I suspect that response is going to take a while.

<comment><USER12> We've got your email. Someone from the dev team will reply shortly.

<comment><USER3> Just got the reply, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _When a user starts working on that task he or she just have to click on it to let everyone know that he or she is working on that. Cool, but I can do that with Trello. Yes you can, but with Blimp if that task stays in the DOING state for more than 24 hours without being completed the system will email the user asking for an update on the task._

Sweet! automated micro-management!

Honestly I like a few things in concept with Blimp, but one of the things I tend to hate about most "Methodologies" is when they're not flexible to the realties of your team.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you on: "I tend to hate about most "Methodologies" is when they're not flexible to the realties of your team".

That's why we made Blimp in such a way that if you don't want to use the methodology you don't have to and you'll get a very nice task management app. But if you learn the simple process and use it, the app will become smarter and it will help you more, if you need that.

The more you use the process, the smarter Blimp gets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Holy hell this software looks gorgeous, as does their website.

</comment><comment><USER15> I can't find even pricing page.

<comment><USER15> from support chat: <https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BCRS1UOCQAETDr6.png:large> (image with prices)</comment></comment>


Open Source .NET – 2 years later - <AUTHOR> http://mattwarren.org/2016/11/23/open-source-net-2-years-later/ <comment><USER2> The community has begun contributing to microsoft-sactioned projects (notice those projects listed are all ms initiatives). There is still weakness in community initiaited/run projects, 2 years later [http://www.aaronstannard.com/the-profound-weakness-of-the- ne...](http://www.aaronstannard.com/the-profound-weakness-of-the-net-oss- ecosystem/)

<comment><USER3> a lot of this post is around akka. I mean akka is also relativly new... It was released in 2006 so .NET still is in his early stage for such things. I mean Java actually only has akka because of scala. NIO in java is still bad and hard, netty makes that somewhat easier and also the big maintainer of Akka is not Oracle it's actually Lightbend. For me the post makes no sense since Scala didn't had much code out there at the beginnings as well, I took some years to have a various amount of useful projects. (more than two years...)

<comment><USER4> Not sure what the comment about NIO in Java was for, there are surely rough parts to it even in NIO2, however compared to the status quo, Java's NIO is like a breath of fresh air. Simply because it is hard to abstract over poll, select, epoll, kqueue, AIO, Windows' async sockets, etc and provide consistent behavior over all those supported platforms. Because of this the async I/O implementation in Mono has been broken for years ;-)

As for Akka, well Akka is really not about abstracting over I/O or a replacement for Netty, even though projects like akka-http exist. At this point Netty is so good, well tested and so widely deployed that nobody sane would even dream of replacing it, even though there are some people trying.

And on the .NET ecosystem, I really love what Microsoft is doing with it and how .NET Core is turning out, however open-source is definitely a big weakness of the ecosystem. In the Java world, Oracle is not driving anything other than Java the language and the runtime (i.e. the core). Not the IDE, not the frameworks or the tools being used. Everything else is provided by the community.

And when I click to view the source of some class or method in my IDE, I have my IDE automatically download the original source, instead of getting a decompiled one, because proprietary libraries are almost unheard of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The future of .NET is on Linux, not windows. If the community and Microsoft both do everything they can to make that a reality, it could all pay off. As long as you see visual studio only tutorials, windows only build scripts and windows only deployment stories, it won't happen.

<comment><USER6> How does Microsoft make money on this? Sun spent all this money supporting java, but they ultimately couldn't survive.

<comment><USER7> I think that if Microsoft makes .NET attractive to a large number of developers regardless of their preferred OS they have a headstart and constant edge on the competition in terms of services that mesh well with .NET. This increases the appeal of Azure and its services. It might be a good shortcut since they're competing with established players who have the early edge. Stealing away a lot of customers from the competition in the cloud space is going to take more than competitive pricing since you're fighting familiarity/experience, first-to-market advantages and a lack of 1:1 features on some services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has it really been 2 years already? I'm still waiting for a decent build system for .NET projects for Linux or macOS. Last time I tried (~6 months ago), it was a tire fire.

<comment><USER9> It's even more tire fire now: they're announced 'project.json' build system, but deprecated it[1] in favor of older msbuild. But it's still mentioned on front page of .NET core[2] and used as the primary build system in latest version (I don't know if .NET core even has msbuild, tried only mono).

Almost everyone think that you need some specific IDE (either Visual Studio or Monodevelop/Xamarin Studio/VS for mac (this is the same thing lol)), even in opensource communities[3].

And MSDN is the slowest and hardest to use web documentation I ever seen. Everything non-Windows non-VS is still very, very second-class.

[1] [https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/05/23/changes-t...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/05/23/changes- to-project-json/)

[2] [https://www.microsoft.com/net/core](https://www.microsoft.com/net/core)

[3] [http://community.monogame.net/t/creating-a-new-monogame- proy...](http://community.monogame.net/t/creating-a-new-monogame-proyect/8404)

<comment><USER10> ms is maintaining project.json based sdk too with version preview2, so devs can continue to work, no need to switch to new msbuild soon (wait until is done).

ide are good (intellsiense/debugging), especially vscode, but sdk works already from command line and text editor.

about docs, check the new docs website (oss, accept pr):

\- [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/articles/core/](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/articles/core/)

\- the getting started doc [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/articles/core/gettin...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/articles/core/getting-started) has tutorial for everyone (cli/vs/vscode/xam), and all os. is not vs centric

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is anybody using this new .NET stuff on Linux for production daemons? My experience in using Mono/XSP for backend services wasn't joyful. Willing to try .NET Core (?) on small projects if it is approaching JVM stability.

<comment><USER12> I have a service running in production for more than a year. No significant issues so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My team has been running .NET core for the last few months and it's been great.

Most of us develop on Windows, however I have chosen to use Project Rider as my daily IDE because I run macOS. The latest public build is actually pretty stable compared to the earlier builds.

We're building backend services in ASP.NET Core which is very easy to get started with and quite well thought out. Autofac works too. You'll find most (imho) popular libraries are either fully supported or have a beta NuGet that supports .NET Core now.

Honestly the thread below about Linux being the future is true for server-side .NET. I'm able to develop on macOS, dockerize my service, build on Jenkins with Linux agents and then deploy to Linux docker hosts. I'm not sure where Windows will fit in this space? And why would I need it?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'd be interested to hear from anyone who has experience with both .net and Swift communities about the differences and similarities in how the projects are run.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you do for healthcare checkups? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN -
I had a small health scare recently despite generally taking great care of myself.
Through the experience I realized I haven't had a primary doctor in years.
I am not even sure what I should be doing on that front to ensure I'm getting the proper annual checkups, screenings, and so forth.
What does HN do to leverage primary care doctors or other annual screenings to ensure you are on track? <comment><USER2> 1) get a primary care doctor

2) see your primary care doctor for an annual physical

3) while you're there for the physical, ask the primary care doctor what other checkups and screenings you should be doing this year and on a regular basis.</comment>


4chan pretends to be Hacker News - <AUTHOR> https://boards.4channel.org/g/thread/75860673 <comment> 0-_-0 It's almost, but not quite entirely unlike HN

> We switched from MongoDB to thousands of Chinese children forced to memorize > numbers, and you should too! (medium.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> Ah yes, a bunch of idiots throwing around the n-word and making fun of gay people.

Exactly what I want to see on my front page.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm gonna be honest, "We switched from MongoDB to thousands of Chinese children forced to memorize numbers (medium.com)" is amazingly hilarious to me, as much as this thread is just representative of how shitty of a place 4chin is

<comment><USER4> I liked the reply saying it was deal with GDPR :D.

Interesting mix of respect and hatred for HN on there. i did notice that the apparent haters seemed to obviously spend a lot of time on here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Anonymous 05 /11/20(Mon)18:21:26 No.75862458▶>>75862499 >>75862539 >>75862563 >>75862409 HN actually has a real mix of viewpoints. 4channers like to claim that 4chan is king because its not the echo chamber that reddit is, but when it comes to politics 4chan really is a right wing echo chamber. HN actually contains decent amounts of both so it manages to trigger everyone. >> Anonymous 05/11/20(Mon)18:22:27 No.75862476▶ >>75862409 HN is Marxist in social issues and randians in economic issues._

</comment><comment><USER6> They like to joke about how HN is SJW but as someone who leans to the right, HN is one of the few online places where I can discuss politics with people of different opinions with being called a Nazi or being banned. The only other online place that I found where I can challenge both mine and other's beliefs has been on r/CMV as of a few years ago

</comment><comment><USER7> A parody that's more like a mirror..

</comment><comment><USER8> NSFW

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm finding this entertaining and even a little amusing in a "strange performance art" kind of way.

<comment> sh-run Honestly, /g/ is no small part of why I ended up in tech. In 2011 I was a bored econ student spending my nights working programming problems posted to /g/, trying to get gentoo to run on my macbook pro (eventually giving up and 'ricing' crunch bang so I could post pictures of my desktop..) and arguing about things I didn't understand.

It was a fun distraction, but eventually I outgrew it. I'm sure if I dug around I could find my old /g/ folder full of stupid tech memes.

</comment></comment><comment> xkcd-sucks based dong

</comment><comment><USER10> teledildonics</comment>


What It's Like to Work on Ultra-Violent Games Like Mortal Kombat 11 - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/id-have-these-extremely-graphic-dreams-what-its-like-t-1834611691 <comment><USER2> So just another 'violent videogames are bad' article from kotaku. Color me shocked. Can we get past this long disproven bs now? Couching your dislike for some styles of video game in an ethics argument is the bottom of the ethical barrel.</comment>


Rising Insulin Costs Are a Life-Or-Death Political Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/rising-insulin-costs-are-a-life-or-death-political-crisis.html <comment><AUTHOR> I think less than 50 years from now, we will look back on America's current medical policy similarly to how we think of Jim Crow laws [0] or the Tuskegee syphilis experiment [1], disgraceful episodes of American history.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Crow_laws) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment)

</comment><comment><USER2> Indeed.

Be very clear... people should stop saying sort of generic phrases like "rising insulin cost." It implies the cost of insulin is just magically rising in some odd uncontrolled/unknown manner.

They should say instead "drug companies are raising the price of insulin for profit." Or something like that.</comment>


10 Reasons why Visual Basic is better than C# - mat-mcloughlin https://www.simple-talk.com/dotnet/.net-framework/10-reasons-why-visual-basic-is-better-than-c/

<comment><AUTHOR> Link bait? Trolling? Perhaps the author genuinely thinks one language has better syntax than the other - but so what.

If you prefer one - then use it. Others may have the opposite opinion. The majority do not care about your choice. So for pities sake keep quiet about it.

<comment> mat-mcloughlin :) It's not my article. Troll or not, it just made me smile</comment></comment>


How big data can help you pick better wine - <AUTHOR> https://quid.com/feed/how-big-data-can-help-you-pick-better-wine <comment><USER2> The article display some cool use for NLP, but as a winemaker and wine judge I find methodology funny and flawed.

You have to understand that wine descriptions are nothing more then marketing message that have very little resemblance to what is inside of the bottle. It would be interesting to see how those description change during the time as this message is changing all the time to catch the current trend.

Wine market is actually quite simple: you have few tiers of wine/wineries: from your basic mass market wines to mid tier to premium and ultra premium. Each category have some price point and higher the price better fruit (should) come to it.

There are differences in between the regions, but lower level wines are usually same no matter the marketing message and premium wines are usually very different and special in each own way anyway.

<comment><USER3> > Wine market is actually quite simple: you have few tiers of wine/wineries: > from your basic mass market wines to mid tier to premium and ultra premium. > Each category have some price point and higher the price better fruit > (should) come to it.

Also important to note that more money == better wine is not linear. For me (and most people) it does not take much money to get to a 'good' wine. Having drank wines in all price ranges ($5 big bottles to $1000 Chateau Margaux/Laffites - never had a DRC though not sure that's even possible now with all the fakes out there, but I digress), I have hard time spending more than $20 on a bottle nowadays and would prefer $10-$15.

<comment><USER2> For me the wine is all about culture. I do like to read the profiles on wineries: history, how they work in vineyards, how they treat the wine in cellar, why they choose of what they do. What is the history of the region and how it was shaped during centuries (yeah, I am not really into new world wines).

Then I have at least some background on what I am drinking and if I find some winery I might like, I try to taste multiple wines and if I like them I just keep buying it. During the years I found some good selection for any kind of occasion. (Yes and most of the wines I buy are usually 10 - 15 USD + few more expensive for some special occasions).

<comment><USER3> Ah yes, wine and history go together so well. I've found that many (most?) people who like one like both. I took a wine tour once in Hvar, Croatia and it was really a history tour of the island with wine mixed in.

I used to know a couple people where wine was a status symbol, and that's how I got to taste some insane things. Personally, I look at wine as you do and want to know about the history, culture, tradition, love (for lack of a better word) that went into babying a finicky vine like the grape and turning it into something that can be so complex and delicious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Part of the appeal of good wine for me is the social aspect of discovery, and I don't think I'd want to trade that in for a technical one. I don't want a perfect wine so much as I want to drink a sincere recommendation from a friend or family member, and hopefully have that same wine again with them, and have something to talk about. In fact when I'm with certain people, even bad wine is fondly remembered. _" What was that chalk we were drinking last month... I crave it when I think of you."_*

The funny thing about all this is that his big data quest for more good wine was launched because of the same reason I enjoy wine: It was his brother-in- law's recommendation that found him his favorite, not crunching the #cassis #vanilla #persistentfinish numbers. And he's doing this to find bottles _similar_ to the one from a beloved family member, most of which are far more expensive (eyeballing the graph), but if I were him, I don't know if I could ever find a better bottle than "my brother-in-law's wine." Isn't sentimentality worth more than the data, especially when working with the most fickle data-set of all?

Also, come on, don't make a post like this and not give us the list!

* (We were drinking Troublemaker, a Paso Robles blend, which I swear is 50% syrah and 50% limestone.)

<comment><USER5> You have to start somewhere, but I'd love to be able to get wine recommendations based on my personal favourites + some heuristics that come up with something less obvious or that I wouldn't pick otherwise.

I don't care so much about _his_ list, but being able to use the same engine he did with my own starting point would be great.

On a side note, I wonder how the recommendations are influenced by the audience. i.e. wine.com is presumably used by US customers, so perhaps it could explain why French wines are described in certain ways compared to California. But you might get the opposite if you look at a European website.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In 2013, I got taste and aroma for around 1100 wines. I used the data to create flavor profiles and predict the price based on the chemical composition. In general, more expensive wines are more complex and the predicted price matches the actual price quite well. This breaks down on the extremes. Boxed wines such as Franzia and Vella are under priced. Not by much, but their juice is closer to 4-5 dollar bottled wines. At the time of the calculation a bottle of Franzia was around 2 dollars. So, it's a pretty good deal. On the other side, most new world wines over 35 dollars are over priced. There's nothing chemically different to the the wines just below 35 dollars. There were a few wines in the middle that were way off. I remember a Clos Du Bois was under priced by 7 dollars, but most of them were in the right range. The biggest offenders were wines that built their reputation in a well known appellation and moved a level higher. It's very common for wines to start in Sonoma Coast or Carneros and end up with a California appellation.

<comment><USER7> Did you try the underpriced ones, and were they good? A particular wine can be complex but have some specific quality that makes it unappealing. I'd be surprised if complexity is the main variable between different vintages of the same wine that have very different prices.

<comment><USER6> I didn't try any. I drink very little wine. I did show the list around and no one was surprised. It wasn't Kendall-Jackson that was under priced. It was smaller wineries that had been getting solid reviews. There must have been some surprises, but I knew very little of wine back then. I also knew very little about machine learning, R or anything else. I knew enough to use Random Forests, R for graphing and the opinion of others to judge the results.

I tried finding the file with the list of all the wines and the predicted prices. I didn't even know enough to name the file correctly.

I think the large companies are very consistent with their product. They have many sources for their juice and because of that their product will be more average. The small companies can have years where they do everything right and create a great product, but it's not like they can just change their price to reflect the better quality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "better" wine?

[https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine- ta...](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-tasting-junk- science-analysis)

[http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamo...](http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/08/the_most_infamous_study_on_wine_tasting.html)

<comment><USER9> Have you seen this?

[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/05/daily- chart-11)

It defies common sense to think all wine is equal quality. The fact that there's much nonsense in the wine world doesn't mean it's _all_ nonsense.

We'd need to see much stronger evidence than what has been presented.

<comment><USER10> They were trying to figure out Grape type and origin country not "quality". And even then was less than 50% accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I actually like this analysis. I think there's something there. But man-oh- man, this is about as "small data" as it gets. Has "big data" become just a short name for an assorted bag of statistical tools?

<comment><USER12> >>>Has "big data" become just a short name for an assorted bag of statistical tools?

Yes. Or as @mhoye on twitter put it: "FACT: most "big data" is actually two small datas standing on each other shoulders wearing a trenchcoat and sunglasses."

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Does it do better than Ashenfelter's simple formula: [https://www.betterment.com/resources/investment- strategy/beh...](https://www.betterment.com/resources/investment- strategy/behavioral-finance-investing-strategy/human-vs-algorithm-investing-a- lesson-from-wine-country/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Or make it.... [http://avawinery.com](http://avawinery.com)</comment>


Show HN: Make Me Work – a solution to procrastination - <AUTHOR> https://make-me-work.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, creator here. I've been thinking about remote personal assistants for a while, but it's quite a bit to get off the ground. After publishing a book recently and realising how important the role of my editor was, mainly just in her role of checking that I was writing, and helping me set short-term deadlines, I decided on productivity assistants instead.

I hope to grow the idea into a full-blown PA service (people who can organize phonecalls and other admin tasks for you), but for now these people will be around to talk to you and help keep you productive.

Feedback on the idea, site, or anything else would be highly appreciated.

Specifically:

\- Do you see the need for a service like this?

\- Do _you_ need a service like this?

\- How much would you be willing to pay for a service like this?

As mentioned in the pricing page, I'm giving a trial of the service free for the first 5 members (1 month each), so feel free to be one of those five if you're working on a project at the moment and battling to find motivation to put in the hours.

<comment><USER2> The site's design is very lovely EXCEPT for the drawer menu. I spent a couple minutes looking for more information before I finally realized I ought to click the menu drawer. It was frustrating after committing the time to read through the front page.

Design suggestion: put your 4 drawer items into the main nav so a user can immediately find more detail after reading the intro page.

<comment><USER3> Possibly a call-to-action-like button or something similar would be nice as well.

Otherwise I certainly like the idea

<comment><USER4> I would say a call-to-action button is a necessary change if a high priority goal is to be a business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! As I'm running this solo and on the side for now, the priority for me is experimentation and to see if I can find even 5 people who would be keen on the idea. If it goes well I'll definitely completely change the pricing page and add a call-to-action on the main page.

<comment><USER5> Just make sure you know what you're getting into. The type of coaching you describe is something people typically get training for. It goes past simple project management skills since you're dealing 1:1 with their personalities and other life considerations as well.

Even if you don't bring those into the conversation they'll play hell with the results--that may mean it's unavoidable to bring them into the conversation as "blockers" or "risks" and that potentially opens a can of worms.

One suggestion I'd throw out is to do the market research to figure out how many people have severe enough procrastination issues to benefit from your services, but who are otherwise sufficiently well-adjusted to not be more than you could handle. How many people out there really do just need another pair of eyes and a nudge, but are sufficiently isolated that they would have to turn to this kind of service to get them?

Otherwise you might find yourself in a non-existent niche between people who just needed a todo program and people who actually need serious help. If you don't screen out that second type somehow, assuming you're not set up to handle them, they'll potentially confound your scaling calculations by being exceedingly high maintenance and they'll have a bad experience as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very good point. I definitely don't want (in the extreme case) suicidal customers who expect me to fix their problems! The "market research" I've done has been extremely informal and involved me describing the idea to some academics (mainly master's/PhD candidates and a couple of freelancers). I've had mainly positive feedback on the idea -- from people who lean more towards your "just need a todo program" than "need serious help". I'll definitely put some thought into screening out the latter group, as neither I nor the PAs will be qualified to deal with them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> why use a dot com domain and dashes? There are so many new top level domain options now. What about dowork.club or procrast.stopper just anything other than .com and dashes in the domain! You might as well have a "the" in there too :)

<comment><AUTHOR> A few other people (outside of hn) have complained about the dashes :) I'm considering alternatives!

I do still think that .com is preferable, both because it's the first thing a lot of people try if they only remember the name and not the TLD, and because a lot of the new TLDs (especially .club and others that you can get on namecheap's 88c deal) are being used for pretty crummy businesses. Obviously if I can get to top of Google results for a couple of decent queries, neither problem matters too much.

<comment><USER6> i really like the people running [http://get.club](http://get.club) they are helping us at every step. Lot of professional sports people moving to dot club.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it is definitely a neat idea! I would use this-- but not right now.</comment>


glsl.js - abusing WebGL shaders for efficient 2D - <AUTHOR> http://blog.greweb.fr/2013/02/glsl-js-a-javascript-glsl-library-dry-efficient/ <comment><USER2> Cool! I've been building something similar: <https://github.com/cscheid/facet> (demos: <http://cscheid.github.com/facet/demos/index.html>)

It also has a "javascript fragment shader layer", so that you can evaluate GLSL code in CPU-land. This is pretty nice to prevent repeating things like coordinate transformation code, which turns out to happen all the time when doing mouse-picking in 3D, etc.

Another big win comes from writing your shader abstractions in Javascript itself. When you need to reuse bits of glsl here and there, you want 1) to pass around objects that are smarter than strings and 2) to configure the shader to behave differently when you have uniforms, attributes, textures, etc. Doing the heavy lifting in javascript and compiling down to GLSL really pays off here.

</comment><comment><USER3> You shouldn't be using innerHTML to get your shader text, it'll break as soon as you put a comparison operator into the shader. Use textContent.

You should support using typed arrays instead of raw JS objects ({ x: , y: }) for setting vectors, since that will give people the option of using something like glMatrix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Woo, thanks a lot for your feedback :)

I'll fix that ASAP.

[EDIT] all of the issues are now on github: <https://github.com/gre/glsl.js/issues>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really like that this is DRY.

In programming for OpenGL I don't mind the dancing with the state machine, but I hate the repetition and desynchronisation. The cognitive / ergonomic inefficiency wears me out pretty quick.

This is very very nice. Hats off.

<comment><USER5> I couldn't agree more. Props for DRY.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know that Adobe's handling of the Flash Platform gets a lot of hate in these circles, but one thing I really enjoyed during my time there was writing shaders in PixelBender. Basically, it allowed you to write GPU-accelerated image filters in a GLSL-based language.

Most of the WebGL tutorials I've seen either require you to grok the entire OpenGL architecture or rely on something like THREE.js or ProcessingJS. It's really nice to see something in the middle (like PixelBender was).

Thanks!

(I've been keeping this in my to-read list. Seems to be similar, but in bare WebGL:

<http://dev.opera.com/articles/view/webgl-post-processing/>

)

</comment><comment><USER7> I don't think "abuse" is the correct word. "use" is the correct word.

<comment><AUTHOR> some precision here:

I said "abuse" because it is still a hack to use only one plain GLSL fragment for everything (a fragment shader aims to be used with a vertex shader, whereas mine is just static and take one vertex for the whole canvas). BTW, the glsl.heroku.com demoscene platform use exactly the same idea and was an inspiration.

The limit of this hack, is the fact that GLSL fragment uniforms number is limited (depending on the machine, 1024 variables on my macbook). For instance, a `Ball ball[1000]` wouldn't compile because it is too much variables (if Ball has 2 fields). AFAIK, you could still solve this by using a big Array of float, but it would be less structured then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you just want to draw images into a canvas I don't see any benefits to using WebGL. You just lose cross browser compatibility. Most browsers have hardware accelerated rendering of 2d canvases. If you want to create unique shader effects, like blurs or masks or whatever, then there is definitely an argument to be made about the use of webgl.

<comment><AUTHOR> See <http://glsl.heroku.com/> and also my Pong example <http://greweb.fr/glsl.js/examples/pong/>

We can really do crazy effect with GLSL, easily and efficiently (with Canvas2D, we could use Canvas' ImageData for these effects but it is definitely less efficient).

For the compatibility, I would say it's getting better now, only IE is the browser which support Canvas but not WebGL.

But yes, if Canvas2d is enough for your needs, it's ok. Actually it would be interesting to inject a Canvas2d into glsl.js to add some cool effects on it :) I'm working on it!

<comment><USER8> Yeah sorry I was actually replying with a mobile centric view in mind. If you want to build something that "just works", it's better to strip down the geometry as much as possible and target canvas2d. The iOS implementation of canvas is hw accelerated, for example. However, you would not be able to target iOS for WebGL as of right now. So if you're looking to make something that is accessible, I would advice against WebGL. Do you disagree?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool. But when will browser games be taken seriously? I'd like to see it happen, but web-based games are still mostly considered something to do when you've got five minutes to spare.

</comment><comment><USER10> Every time i visit the site it kills my display driver when using Firefox. No problems with chrome though

</comment><comment><USER11> I enjoyed the Pong demo, it's pretty inspirational. The Mario sprites demo appears to be broken, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Yep, about the mario sprites example, there is something I'm missing happening <https://github.com/gre/glsl.js/issues/2>

It works for me (tested on MacbookPro and on a Linux with recent hardware)

I have to figure it out.

[edit] It is fixed now! sampler2D in a struct{} seems broken on some WebGL version / graphic card.</comment></comment>


A cryptographic compendium (free book on mathematics and crypto) - <AUTHOR> http://www.quadibloc.com/crypto/jscrypt.htm

<comment><USER2> If you're looking for an overview of cryptography in an easy-to-digest format, take a look at:

      The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography

Amazon link: [http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy- Cryptography...](http://www.amazon.com/Code-Book-Science-Secrecy- Cryptography/dp/0385495323/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1326323359&sr=8-3)

It is light on the math but Simon Singh does a great job reviewing cryptography over the last 4000 years. It was a fun summer read.</comment>


Share code/.bash_history between terminals (and store it securely in the cloud) - <AUTHOR>

We are building a tool for developers who work in many terminals and want to easily sync data/code snippets/bash history between them. Think https://github.com/holman/boom in the cloud. We would love to hear about your pain points working in many terminal windows to make our tool better.<p>If you need such a tool, please sign up at http://getboosh.launchrock.com/ <comment><USER2> Sorry but there isn't a chance in hell that I'm uploading my bash history to an untrusted 'cloud' service.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool!</comment>


Show HN: Fake buzzfeed title generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.ravi.io/buzzfeed-title-generator

<comment><USER2> The 43 Most Jizz-Worthy HBO Shows In A Burrito

Lol.</comment>


Intel Atom C2000 bug is killing products from multiple manufacturers - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/244074-intel-atom-c2000-bug-killing-products-multiple-manufacturers <comment><USER2> Workaround is 110 ohm pull-up resistor on LPC (modern serial variant of ISA bus) clock signal. Its enough to bring already dead C2000 systems back to life.

</comment><comment><USER3> 2017</comment>


Erdogan threatens to release millions of refugees over criticism of offensive - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/turkeys-erdogan-threatens-release-of-refugees-to-europe-over-syria-criticism.html <comment><USER2> LOL and his country is a NATO "partner" ???.

It is time to put that organization out to pasture now that Warsaw Pact is no longer around.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm too young to know but I wonder if this is how global environment was during world war. Every single country is using humans as pawns.

<comment><USER4> When in history have governments _not_ used humans as pawns?</comment></comment>


Learning to reinforcement learn - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.05763 <comment><USER2> How is this not at the top of the board? I can't wait until more people start applying these ideas to figure out optimal apply parameters in all these data mining and machine learning algorithms. Maybe actually put some science and reasoning into the field.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Importantly, because it is learned, it is configured to exploit structure in the training domain."

Interesting concept. An algorithm that learns specifically how to better learn on data presented.

<comment><USER4> Even more interesting - an OpenAI paper on the roughly same subject/technique came out a little earlier (RL2 fast reinforcement learning for slow reinforcement learning [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.02779.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.02779.pdf)). I think parallel inventions tends to indicate that multiple people have stumbled on a similar good idea at the same time. (disclaimer: I work at OpenAI. v pleased to see these two papers emerge so close together)

<comment><USER5> Or there's just so much work being done that people are stepping on each other's toes. There were like 5-10 papers at ICLR this year on just the same 'let's treat NN hyperparameters as a MDP' idea. Or look at the concrete distribution - two different Google groups published papers on almost the same exact idea simultaneously apparently in total ignorance of each other. Or the lipreading NNs the past week - two _Oxford_ groups working on different datasets with different architectures publishing >human results. The pace is so fast the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. It's fun for the spectator (you have no idea what will come out tomorrow, much less next month or next year) but it strikes me as rather inefficient.

<comment><USER6> Why do you call it inefficient? If one side was suppressing their papers because they were just slightly beat to the press, I would be worried. As it is, I'd be more worried about breaking a system that is working for the sake of efficiency than I am for any losses from the system.

I think more directly stated, do you think we could get better results somehow? What would those look like?

<comment><USER5> If you've been beat to the press, you might as well release your paper to salvage something from your sunk costs of time/effort/GPUs. It's inefficient because in solving almost the same exact problems, they are duplicating each other's work instead of sharing the intermediate steps. If there were more sharing of low-grade information, along the lines of 'I'm working on a lipreading CNN, it's going pretty well' 'oh hey _we 're_ working a lipreading CNN too!', then the datasets and GPU clusters and math could be pooled and better single results released quicker. As it is, now you have to read two different papers about lipreading CNNs and puzzle over the differences and two different papers about the concrete distribution trick, and they probably all came out a month or two later because everyone had to redo work for their separate system & paper.

<comment><USER6> Duplicated work is not necessary a sign of inefficiency, though.

My hope would be that they each learned something slightly different in solving the same problem. Eventually, things _may_ converge to a single answer. However, there is no evidence to see that we should demand the convergence at the beginning.

So, the shame here is if folks are not comparing and contrasting the different solutions to the same problem. I confess I am guilty in that I have not read both papers. But I will try to see if it can help me understand.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>