Study of Theranos Medical Tests Finds Irregular Results - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/29/business/study-of-theranos-medical-tests-finds-irregular-results.html <comment><USER2> Key quote to me from the paper's author, not covered in the linked article:

"There was as much variability between LabCorp and Quest as there was between Theranos and LabCorp or Theranos and Quest."(1)

Also a link to the actual paper in case anybody feels like reading it from the horse's mouth (2)

(1) [http://www.techinsider.io/theranos-study-compares-blood- test...](http://www.techinsider.io/theranos-study-compares-blood-tests-to- quest-and-labcorp)

(2) [http://www.jci.org/articles/view/86318](http://www.jci.org/articles/view/86318)

<comment><USER3> _"There's actually pretty widespread variability in these clinical measures, even between the reference labs," said Eric Schadt, chairman of genetics and genomic sciences at the Icahn School and an author of the report. "But Theranos was more outside of range and outside of range in ways that would impact clinical decision-making."_

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >On Thursday, Theranos sent a letter to the journal, hoping to stop it from publishing the paper.

Yeah, so these are the kind of people I want to trust with my personal health?

The problem isn't the tech. The tech is close enough to accurate to be massively profitable. The problem is their reaction to criticism. It erodes any and all trust in the product.

When you are dealing with a company built upon measurement of the invisible, trust is the most valuable commodity. I need to trust that the numbers from your machine are reported as true.

I need to trust that you aren't lying and covering up data to make a buck...

<comment><USER5> >The problem isn't the tech

How do you know? It says that apparently the methodology could be flawed due to things in the blood clustering together

>you aren't lying and covering up data

What? From reading, admittedly only, this article here, it sounds at least reasonable to complain given the hugely negative press when it is also true that "the study authors made no attempt to find out which measurements were right". So if I understand this correctly, the new method showed different results from the old method, but nothing was done to show which was right, and it was clearly insinuated the new one was wrong. I would complain, too. But perhaps you know more about this incident.

<comment><USER4> >How do you know? It says that apparently the methodology could be flawed due to things in the blood clustering together

From the reported independent results.

+-5% compared to Quest and LabCorp at a fraction of the cost is good enough to make a profit.

>It sounds at least reasonable to complain

It makes sense to complain in Silicon Valley...

But it makes you look like a slimeball trying to cover your ass in the medical/scientific industry.

Industrial science is different than tech. In tech, if it works, it works, and nobody really cares how. In fact, it is in your best interest to hide how you did it, because that is your IP.

In industrial science, if it works, but you fight people trying to open the black box, it makes you look like you're faking data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can anyone please enlighten us on Elizabeth Holmes's qualifications (formal or informal) for inventing blood screening technology? E.g., is she known for having won science competitions as a child? Or for tinkering around with blood screening technology in a garage as a teenager? Etc.?

<comment><USER7> I don't know why you are being downvoted, you asked a very valid and obvious question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> According to the WSJ article, a former Theranos employee has claimed that the commercial Theranos lab routinely diluted fingerstick blood samples and tested them using conventional machines from other manufacturers.

If true, this raises two questions in my mind:

1\. Were the non-Theranos machines approved for testing diluted blood samples? The technology may be approved only for blood samples with normal concentration.

2\. Were the non-Theranos machines qualified to test blood samples collected by any method? Some researchers think that capillary blood collected with a fingerstick may be too contaminated to produce accurate results.

In other words, was Theranos negligent with respect to federal regulations for use of these machines? Someone with clinical lab experience may want to weigh in.

</comment><comment><USER9> I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts? It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your cubital fossa (arm). The fingertips are some of the most highly innervated structures in our body (probably second to the sex organs). Then you have to go around touching things all day with a band-aid on your fingertips, while you would immediately forget about the band-aid on your arm.

<comment><USER10> > I am the only person who thinks the entire idea of Theranos is nuts?

Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts?

> It's far more painful to take blood from a finger than from the MCV in your > cubital fossa (arm).

Why didn't you just call it an arm?

> Then you have to go around touching things all day with a band-aid on your > fingertips,

I've never had a band-aid for a finger-prick and do them constantly for checking blood sugar. Doctors never did it either.

<comment><USER11> > Were personal computers replacing mainframes nuts?

Personal computers never replaced mainframes. Personal computers replaced minicomputers and workstations.

The difference is meaningful, even in this context: Minicomputers and workstations were high-end systems dedicated to things like relatively small- scale file storage, graphics processing, network tasks (servers, routers), and other workloads which required neither high throughput nor long up-times. They mainly required more RAM, CPU, and, sometimes, specialized hardware than it was feasible to put on a home system of the era.

Mainframes, on the other hand, had become specialized as high-throughput high- availability systems, running large databases and supporting dozens to hundreds of users at a time, for years on end. They'd grown entire specialized architectures dedicated to handling that kind of workload, and were only getting moreso as time went on.

My point is, if Theranos is the PC, it's only going to replace some aspects of the market it's moving into, and, from this article, it might not even do that. It's just too difficult to play catch-up with the extremely specialized realms, even if you have technology which is an 80% solution for 90% of the problems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If some of the tests consistently err towards a false positive but are less invasive and cost 80% less, that sounds like an acceptable trade-off for those tests. The patients with abnormal results would have to follow up with a different test, but the majority would save a lot of money.

<comment><USER13> One of the _worst_ results you can have from a medical device is a test result that is wrong, but looks correct. A wrong result that is clearly wrong, or is on the border between good/bad will be re-run either manually by the lab technician reviewing the day's results, or automatically if the instrument supports automatic retesting.

However a result that is wrong, but looks correct does not set off any alarm bells. You'd better hope that the physician requested a battery of tests and in correlating the results, sees the outlier. Otherwise you're potentially screwed.

In running tests on actual people, saving money comes far behind the overriding concerns around quality of results.

<comment><USER12> To clarify, by "false positive" I mean showing abnormal results when it shouldn't. For example, if the cheap test is usually accurate, but when it's wrong it erroneously shows dangerously high cholesterol, then a more expensive but more accurate follow up test can compensate. But I agree that if the test has a lot of false negatives (showing normal levels when they're actually abnormal), it shouldn't be used at all.

What prompted my comment was, "While most of the results were similar for the three labs, 12.2 percent of the measurements reported by Theranos were outside the expected normal range for healthy people, compared with 7.5 percent for Quest and 8.3 percent for LabCorp."

To me that sounds like at least some of the tests may be erring towards false positives. More research needed.

<comment><USER14> For most blood assays, there is no such thing as a positive or negative. The normal range for cholesterol, for instance, has both an upper or lower limit. This leads me to believe that the Theranos tests are just less precise overall, which makes it hard to justify their value even at an 80% discount.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Letter from Theranos to JCI (The Journal of Clinical Investigation) which published the study.

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/306187782/Theranos-Letter-to- JCI](http://www.scribd.com/doc/306187782/Theranos-Letter-to-JCI)

<comment><USER16> Thanks for posting this!

So on that first paragraph, are they implying that the journal should have provided Theranos with a copy of the manuscript for review and comment? Maybe I'm not reading that charitably, but that's not how the system works, and I don't think scolding the journal (page 3) over manuscript decisions is an appropriate response.

The second paragraph is strikes me as a bit rich considering the reputation Theranos has for secrecy. As best I can tell, they still haven't published the more detailed information on their technology that they promised when the WSJ first broke the story?

Were I the editor, I think my response might be along the lines of "you raise some excellent points, and so we invite you to submit a research manuscript for accelerated review".

<comment><USER17> There is some irony in a company that doesn't put their research up for peer review to ask for someone else's manuscript to review. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Sorry to rant, but I'm sure I'm not the only person who is getting sick of seeing these articles about Theranos. They essentially all say the same thing, and have a picture of Holmes at the top standing next to an unidentified piece of lab equipment that looks like it was just unpacked.

I suppose they are popular due to some combination of schadenfreude and the morbid fascination that comes from watching a slow motion train wreck. But I find these articles empty of anything remotely interesting let alone any edifying content. They are just a monthly sign post for the accumulation of disparaging comments about Theranos.

</comment><comment><USER19> How much bad press is it gona take for this company to sink already?

<comment><USER17> I suspect that it's momentum burning off their cash on hand. Who knows what their burn rate is, but could anyone ever give them more venture funding or a customer contract?

<comment><USER20> > but could anyone ever give them more venture funding or a customer contract?

Chances of that are slim to none, they are damaged goods at this point. A number of existing customers has already cut ties to avoid further association and any future would-be investors would be _very_ wary of putting more money in without iron-clad proof the technology is solid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I have been following the Theranos articles in the Wall Street Journal closely. (I'm not a scientist and have no experience working in a clinical lab, so my opinions are those of an interested observer.)

My opinion is that Theranos should still be a small biotech company operating in R&D mode. They had no business going to market with a methodology and a product that were unproven and entirely hidden from scientific peer review. After the dust settles and they reorganize, that's probably what will happen. Theranos should also allow their investors to pull out without any consequences.

<comment><USER17> Is peer review needed for them to go to market? Or is the real issue the shoddiness of their results?

I'm amazed that they (or the people who contracted them) are not getting sued. If they mess up a blood test, someone could get mistreated and die.

<comment><USER8> Just to clarify, the testing device they claim to have invented is proprietary and they have every right to protect their IP.

By calling out the lack of peer review, I'm referring to the _science_ behind the use of fingerstick sampling. When you extract blood from a vein with a sterile needle, the blood is uncontaminated. When you stab someone's finger with a blade or sharp pin, presumably you have lacerated hundreds or thousands of capillaries. The blood that emerges is contaminated by tissues inside the finger and by oils and bacteria on the surface of the finger.

It's possible to do simple tests like iron level with this blood and get accurate results. More complicated tests are another matter, and require scientific investigation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _Theranos executives also said that taking a big draw of blood from a vein immediately before a finger prick...affected the finger prick samples in a way that made it difficult to return a reading._

Is this so? I don't see how one could affect the other.

</comment><comment><USER21> Meta question: to what extent is the present-day "tech crash" or tech funding crunch scare a reaction against this particular high profile implosion vs. a more general sentiment?

<comment><USER20> Not at all. It's just that the investors here did a piss-poor job of looking at the company pre-investment. Lots of herd mentality and external validation going on rather than common sense and some skepticism. The funding crash seems to be mostly based on less than stellar returns for previous funds now at the end of their life-cycles.

That makes it a lot harder to get LPs to pitch in. Still, even today there is a glut of money chasing _far_ too little viable start-ups so as far as I can see if you have a solid proposition it should not be hard to find funding. If you are a bs artist then it may get a little harder, and that's a good thing (especially for those entrepreneurs that _do_ have something to offer).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Taking a vial of blood prior to a finger prick blood test could dramatically alter results. Further, when the baseline (i.e. other labs) also have varying results, its fair to call into question the whole study.

Although I have my doubts Theranos blood tests are as acurate, I feel the study was pretty flawed.

<comment><USER23> >Taking a vial of blood prior to a finger prick blood test could dramatically alter results.

Could you elaborate on why? My expertise is limited to an EMT certification that expired half a decade ago, but isn't obvious to me why this would be the case.

Blood is constantly circulating, and even a veinous blood drawn doesn't remove an appreciable amount of blood compared to the total flow.

<comment><USER22> Besides a plethora of things that can occur[1], the main issue is a combination a pain response and a foreign object entering the skin.

When a you stick a needle in a persons arm you often trigger a flight-or- flight repsponse. It's actually fairly similar if you prick their finger. The problem with this study is that one was done after or before the other. It depends what you look for, but for example white blood count (which was tested) would/should change subtly after a blood draw.

The amount can vary (or not vary) depending on the person. For example, when I get my blood drawn my arm swells, it's not actually that I am allergic, but my body reacts in said way.

Regardless, my only comment was that the study seemed to be on somewhat shaky footing.

[1] [http://www.frhg.org/documents/Lab_Manuals/Blood- Collection-A...](http://www.frhg.org/documents/Lab_Manuals/Blood-Collection- Adverse-Reactions-and-Patient-Blood-Volumes.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Theranos doesn't have anything behind it - this company needs to go away and return its money to its investors. A single drop of blood is far too little to provide an accurate representation of your own blood components, the blood that's gathered from a fingerprick might end up containing a much higher or much lower concentration of 'x' than the rest of your blood. It's why traditional blood tests gather much larger amounts of blood - to increase the sample size.

<comment><USER24> Again, this company needs to die off. It's one thing to attempt to innovate, it's another to be outright fraudulent.

[http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/government-report- details-t...](http://techcrunch.com/2016/03/31/government-report-details- theranos-quality-control-issues/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> With so much $ at stake it's hard to rely on any reporting on the subject.

<comment><USER25> OK downvoters convinced me I am wrong having 10s of billions of $ at stake obviously is unlikely to incentivise parties on either side to finance studies that would be favorable to their position and to spend their PR budgets on having those studies highlighted in the press.

<comment><USER26> The article claims the researchers are independent and external. Do you believe the nyt or the researchers are lying? Obviously Theranos has an interest in the outcome of these tests, but I think medical researchers would applaud less expensive and accurate tests.

<comment><USER25> They don't have to lie just spin. For the study in question number of test subjects looks very low to draw any meaningful conclusion.

<comment><USER27> So here's the thing - people like to say "This doesn't look like a big enough study..." but you never see them say what _would_ be.

Basically: How do you justify your belief that their sample size is to small?

There are calculations to do this. 60 patients is, while small, pretty standard for a study like this, and decently powered. The authors also used the appropriate techniques to deal with small numbers in particular strata when they were controlling for the variables they mention.

<comment><USER25> for 5% confidence interval with 80% confidence level you would need 164. For 1% confidence interval with 95% confidence level 9604. For 1% confidence interval with 99% confidence level 16641.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Antibacterial drugs may reduce the efficacy of hormonal contraceptives - <AUTHOR> https://ebm.bmj.com/content/early/2020/07/28/bmjebm-2020-111363 <comment><AUTHOR> Full title: Analysis of reports of unintended pregnancies associated with the combined use of non-enzyme-inducing antibiotics and hormonal contraceptives</comment>


Ask HN: What Card/Board Games Are You Playing? - <AUTHOR> Dominion (with expansions) and contract bridge seem to be my mainstays lately (with some Catan thrown in).  Wondering what non-computerized board & card games others are enjoying these days. <comment><USER2> Puerto Rico is a bit slow to learn, but pretty great once it gets going.

I have Agricola on the shelf because I've been hearing how great it is, but haven't had time to learn it yet =P.

</comment><comment><USER3> My favorite lately has been Pandemic. If you haven't played it, you should try it out: it's a collaborative board game (players vs game) that feels like a faster-playing Risk, you playing vs diseases across the world.

Other games I play when I get together with friends include Nuclear War, Race for the Galaxy, Agricola and Robo Ralley.

</comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't really get my family interested in Dominion - a little hardcore for them. Catan & poker seem to be the best bets, and Ticket to Ride works well.

I kind of want to try making my own game, although with so many unfinished side projects I'm not sure if I'll find the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Puerto Rico and Powergrid are my favorites. Some other great games: Dominion, Cosmic Encounter, Space Alert, Risk

Also take a look at: <http://boardgamegeek.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> I enjoy playing Skat, though I only play a few times a year, we usually need some relative visiting to get a game going. I also like playing Catan and Backgammon.

</comment><comment><USER7> Descent: journey into the dark, road to legend expansion. The ultimate hack'n'slash. Goes well wih doritos, mountain dew, and all-nighters.

</comment><comment><USER8> With small children, my list doesn't look that much like the other responses. We play Gulo Gulo, Snails Pace Race, and Cosmic Cows mostly.

When (adult) friends come over, we play Bohnanza, Formula De, Quiddler, and Ticket To Ride.

</comment><comment><USER9> Settlers of Catan with Cities and Knights of Catan expansion

</comment><comment><USER10> San Juan, Puerto Rico, Race for the Galaxy. Similar mechanic for all of them, but sufficiently different to be fun in different contexts.

</comment><comment><USER11> Scrabble is a favorite in our house.

</comment><comment><USER12> Carcassonne (It's especially great now that an excellent iPhone app is out (carcassonneapp.com))

</comment><comment><USER13> Roll Through the Ages - Yahtzee meets Civilization. My wife AND parents both like it.

</comment><comment><USER14> If anybody is upto it I think there is a huge market for these board games implemented for touch screen phones (because of the big screen).

PS: Why do I get the feeling that such a thing has been done on Apple App store</comment>


!important CSS Declarations: How and When to Use Them - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/11/02/the-important-css-declaration-how-and-when-to-use-it/

<comment><USER2> CSS inheritance order seems to be a common source of confusion/frustration among those new to CSS. The relevant section of the actual specification document is actually a nice, short reference: <http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/cascade.html#cascading-order>

</comment><comment><USER3> Does anybody else's brain still parse "!important" as "not important"?

Perhaps I have been programming in C for too long.

<comment><USER4> Its awkward, but it means "everything after this rule is !important." So you are parsing it correctly, its just a weird context.

But now that you've mentioned it, @important would be a lot more intuitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I imagine if your app provides widgets for others to place on their websites, !important declarations could let the widget make sure its appearance is not dictated by the stylesheet of whatever page it's plopped onto, without putting the whole thing in an iframe.

<comment><USER6> That's what I use it for. It's frustrating that there's no way to turn off / set a boundary for the cascading in CSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a specific use case for !important -

When you have a user stylehseet loaded on top of a website's existing stylesheets.

This could happen when:

      - using something like the UserStyles plugin for firefox
      - a website allows users to load custom stylesheets into widgets
      (like facebook used to do with their social plugins)

... but I agree that there isn't really a good justification for using the !important declaration if you have full control over stylesheets.

It's about on par with sticking magic constants in your code.

<comment><USER8> I disagree, I have found !important to be the only reliable way to make a print stylesheet override dynamic styles (width, positioning, etc.) applied by a JS UI framework (e.g. ExtJS/Sencha).

If someone has a better solution for that please tell me!

<comment><USER9> One option is if you wrap the ExtJS content in a div with an id of "xyz", then find the rule you want to override e.g. in Firebug, you can make a rule in your custom stylesheet that has the same selector as the ExtJS one but prepended with "#xyz ", and your rule will always be more selective and therefore take precedence over the ExtJs rule.

<comment><USER10> This only works if there's an existing style rule to override. The parent post is talking about overriding styles added _inline_ to elements by JS libraries.

An inline style will _always_ override a rule in a stylesheet… unless the rule uses !important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you create a site's CSS from scratch you will never need !important. Basically the only good use for !important is when you are dealing with a buggy CSS that you can't quickly replace.

Using mostly CSS classes helps you avoid the need for !important.

</comment><comment><USER12> !important in CSS is what 'goto' is for programming languages. It is a dirty hack. 99.9% of the time not needed in projects where you have control over all the code.

<comment><USER13> !important and goto are tools in your belt. Like any tool its use should be predicated on need, and weighed against its possible trade offs and alternatives.</comment></comment>


The Consequences of No Regard for Privacy - <AUTHOR>

I have Google Alerts set up for various things, including my business partners, board, etc.
Today, I got an alert telling me one of these folks is friends with various people, courtesy of Facebook.
So, what this tells me is even if I set my privacy settings to maximum, my friends end up splaying my data all over the internet.
It may be time for an FB challenger again. <comment><USER2> You should have added "Ask HN" at the beginning. Maybe someone would have replied.</comment>


Ask HN: Your Ideal Day? - <AUTHOR>

What would your ideal average day look like?
Like what would you do when you didn't have to do anything at all?
p.s. why put off solving till tomorrow what can be solved today? <comment><USER2> It's pretty close to what I have right now:

* Wake up (and get up) at my leisure: no alarm - I'm able to maintain this for the most part, unless of course there are specific commitments.

* Catch up on info-glut _before_ breakfast - forces me to get through it all faster. Work-related email and information is included in this set. Anything not supremely important gets sent to Instapaper so I can get over my need to feel like I should read something, and promptly forget about it and move on with my life.

* 30-60 minutes of exercise (usually a jog or the treadmill, but swimming when convenient) that lets me digest the information I've just been exposed to if necessary, and think about what's important today. I take notes during.

* Shower / hygiene (also good for thinking)

* Breakfast (preferably alone and in quiet), while I outline my plan for the day.

* Work (repeat as necessary). I work while signed onto restricted IM accounts that make me available to very few people - namely, work associates and immediately close friends with whom I can be completely free to ignore or converse with at my leisure. When I need/want to focus, I ignore. When things are slower, I'll socialize more.

* Breaks - Sometimes I'll interrupt work with a longer form break. Sometimes a walk, sometimes a conversation. Never RSS/Twitter/Facebook.

* Stop for lunch / dinner when I'm hungry. Either meet up with people or read longer-form non-fiction if solo (picking off vignettes from Instapaper)

* Evenings (read: late night) before bed is for [optional] leisure. If I'm productive and enjoying my work, I won't stop and I'll cancel plans as appropriate. If I'm not enjoying my work but I'm behind schedule, I'll keep going if I can. Otherwise, I'll do any subset of {social, videogames, reading, watching, writing}.

* Sleep iff I'm at the point where I want to sleep more than whatever I'm doing.

Days of travel, guests, or otherwise special significance deviate from this quotidian rhythm.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been surprised at how seemingly minor changes in the relative cost of doing something can have major impacts on behavior.

I'd like to exercise in the AM, however I keep failing at it because it costs much more to go to work early, than to go to work, work until evening, and then walk downstairs to the gym.

What are the "good" things we should target for cost-reduction?

Exercise, reflection/planning, socializing, projects. Anything else?

<comment><USER2> Cost reduction is relative. I don't go to the gym, I work out at home if possible, and supplement with music or audio streams that I find enjoyable. And I'll prefer social physical activity (swimming, badminton) to sedentary social activity.

I think it's important to make it easy to switch projects or life tracks. Some would say that it makes too easy to sit in a pool of confusion - but on the other hand it means when you're sticking with something, you want to stick it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Respond to pointless questions in Hacker News.

<comment><AUTHOR> why do questions about life seem pointless? or perhaps you mean best avoided? ;)</comment></comment>


Show HN: A simple tool to do passive investing with ETFs (India specific) - <AUTHOR> https://etfcetra.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I am the developer of the etfcetra app. A little backstory: I do investment in index funds and had initially developed this app as a simple reminder app for periodically investing in ETFs. I slowly built other features like exploring ETFs, investing in the basket of ETF stocks, integration with Zerodha etc.

etfcetra is very small (~3MB) app and you don't need to create an account to use it, so please try it out if you are into passive investment/index fund investment/ETF. Currently, you can do the following:

1\. Explore various equity, debt, gold and international ETFs that you can invest in the Indian market.

2\. Create SIP-like investment plan for buying either individual or basket of ETF stocks.

3\. Like SIP, you can decide how much you want to invest periodically and this app will remind you how much stocks you can buy considering the current price of the ETFs.

4\. When the installment amount is not multiple of ETF stock price you cannot invest your entire installment amount (because unlike mutual fund units, you cannot buy fractional stocks). In that case, you can either decide to always invest little more than your installment amount. Or you can decide to invest less than installment amount and then carry forward remaining amount to next installment.

5\. Buy all the stocks in your basket straight from the etfcetra app with Zerodha integration.

Currently, this is only an Android-only app, but I will be happy to hear if someone interested in either web app or iOS app. Let me know at email@example.com.</comment>


The quantum state cannot be interpreted as something other than a quantum state - <AUTHOR> http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=822

<comment><USER2> I'm near the end of working my way through _A Quantum Mechanics Primer_ , [http://www.amazon.com/quantum-mechanics-primer- Introduction-...](http://www.amazon.com/quantum-mechanics-primer-Introduction- Non-relativistic/dp/0470299126/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322418583&sr=8-2), and I have not attempted to tackle the PBR preprint, but based on Scott's interpretation of the central point, I don't get the significance of PBR. If two rational people assign different states to the same quantum object, and a measurement reveals an eigenvalue that could only have been associated with one state, and not the other, then one party was just plain wrong. Also, you only get to do one measurement, how does that prove the state was previously _pure_ or _mixed_? Don't you need _a prior_ knowledge of how the state was prepared to decide that?</comment>


The Bling Dynasty – The Nouveau Riche in China - <AUTHOR> http://www.gq.com/news-politics/201501/chinas-richest

<comment><USER2> One of my favourite slang phrases in Chinese is 土豪, for which the closest English equivalent I can find is nouveau riche.

Gold-coloured consumer products (e.g. champagne-coloured iPhone) are described as 土豪金 (金=gold)。On Taobao, this will often appear alongside other colour choices (white, black, silver) described in more plain language.

<comment><USER3> It's a rather diminutive term for the newly rich. The tone is almost like dirt barons.

<comment><USER4> So the same way that 'new money' is used to describe newly rich people? (as in "look at his car, you can tell he's 'new money")

<comment><USER5> Actually a little different. In chinese, the term "tu hao" can be also used with a humorous context, not entirely critical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wealth is a funny thing in China, because it hardly buys you a real lifestyle, as the author already hinted.

I would argue that broke foreign students partying in Shanghai have more fun than local multi millionaires struggling to find stuff to buy and places to go that give them more status and better entertainment than average mid management joe.

If you never thought that getting rich as a way to attain happiness was a trap in the west, then going to China will open your eyes...

<comment><USER7> This is why they all have an exit strategy--buying real estate in and sending their kids to university in the US, Canada, and ANZ.

<comment><USER8> It also helps given that those countries don't have extradition treaties with China, so embezzling money in China, sending it abroad with your kid and wife, and then making a last minute escape before you are caught and executed is a good strategy (see naked officials).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The newly wealthy are pretty fascinating. The closest i can think of in the US that would relate to them are professional athletes.

[http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm- arcadia-i...](http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-arcadia- immigration-architecture-20140511-story.html#page=1)

I would suspect in the near future (5-10) years there will be lots of "Antoine Walker" stories coming out of china. The one way to easily go through all your money and have nothing to show for it is to live like a rockstar in the US.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps, but the Chinese attitude towards money tends to be different [and deeply ingrained over centuries], I think. Broadly speaking, they tend to invest and save --yes, they might invest and save in lousy deals, but the intent is to make money work rather than outright squander it as some movie or athletic stars in the US might. But, who knows, maybe the mindset will breakdown and they will squander it --ie lose it all in places like Macau. Now, for sure, some will go Moscow-nuveau rich style and and waste a lot in gaudy and flashy items but I just think a lower percentage will end up destitute (as say, some lottery winners in NAm might)

<comment><USER11> seems they are mostly investing in ghost cities property, that will work really well

<comment><USER10> Right, but what else can they reasonably 'invest' in? Do they have other options? I suppose they can 'sit' on their money. They need to park their money somewhere. People who make money typically didn't make it by idling whatever they started with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I find this subject of all the new rich in China very interesting. Is there any book or documentary that explains this phenomenon? I don't understand how this happened in China.

<comment><USER13> The One Hour China Book gives a very brief insight into the mega trends that caused the massive growth there

[http://www.amazon.com/One-Hour-China-Book- University/dp/0991...](http://www.amazon.com/One-Hour-China-Book- University/dp/0991445023/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420502835&sr=8-1&keywords=one+hour+china+book)

</comment></comment><comment> FLUX-YOU >There are also 60,000 Chinese people worth at least $200 million—another line of demarcation between being wealthy and being a photon cannon of currency.

Jesus christ, spend your minerals and gas.

<comment><USER14> That's $12 trillion dollars. 71% of USA GDP. Although I imagine much of that is tied up in speculative real estate which is on its way down in value.

<comment><USER15> As long as China continues producing more rich people, it isn't going down in value any time soon. It has no mortgage, and is completely detached from the American market.

<comment><USER8> Until China introduces a property tax to get all that unused property [1] in use working for the economy. And a lot of people have borrowed from banks, family, and loan sharks to speculate in real estate; the landing won't be as soft as the wumao want you to believe.

[1] 3-40% of all apartments in Beijing aren't even renovated, and that is supposed to be a first tier hot market.

<comment><USER6> Too much of the economy relies on the already shaky real estatemarket for this to happen in the near future imo. A sales tax on third properties and beyond was introduced in Shanghai to curb speculation and couples simply divorced or used straw men to avoid having to pay it.

<comment><USER8> The straight up property tax (per property, no exceptions) will be added at some point. Municipalities can't make so much money by selling land anymore, and the central government doesn't kick back enough tax revenue. Not only that, but they have committed to eventually providing social services to migrants, like you know, schooling for their kids. That has to be paid for someway.

But they will definitely hold off for now, a property tax would cause huge devaluations in property prices inflated by the lack of one. But if we get a crash anyways, it will be easy just to add it at the bottom. The question is what is next, with transaction reaching a very low bottom to keep prices from falling, we seem to be in for a long bout of stagnation which will drag down the larger economy even more than if a crash would just happen and we could be over with it.

<comment><USER6> Local government and companies have borrowed way too much based on real estate value that a crash would be allowed to happen based on what I have read, as it would have much broader implications than in the US.

Rents in Shanghai have remained mostly stagnant from what I've seen for the last 2 years, so it's good for tenants.

<comment><USER8> Rents at the high end are completely stagnant, which is why those new apartments aren't being renovated. Not having a property tax leads to hoarding and not putting property to productive use, which screws everyone but the princelings.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Money doesn't buy taste, clearly.

<comment><USER17> Maybe not, but money does dictate what "taste" means.

<comment><USER18> Not really. "Luxury" though.

<comment><USER8> Or taking trips to Boracay during Chinese new years.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


US Just Picked Intel, IBM, Nvidia, Others to Help Make Supercomputers 50x Faster - <AUTHOR> https://www.fastcompany.com/40431777/the-us-just-picked-intel-ibm-nvidia-and-others-to-help-make-supercomputers-50-times-faster <comment><USER2> Given (1) the importance of HPC (both scientific and strategic), (2) the size (man-power, gov. agencies, universities, and companies), scope (new hardware, energy, software), and length of this project (approaching a decade), and (3) international competition with (at least) European and Chinese exascale efforts, the $258 million dollars seems quite paltry.

</comment><comment><USER3> I ask this in all seriousness - is IBM still relevant today? I don't actually know how they make most of their money. I assume it comes from legacy enterprise support. The last I heard about them was Watson years ago, and I don't think they ever successfully monetized that?

<comment><USER4> Well, in terms of high performance computing, IBM makes the BlueGene series of supercomputers. These computers currently occupy the #4 and #9 on the Top500…

<comment><AUTHOR> 4, 9, 19, 21, 56, 68, 99 and 100 from the top 100 of the list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recent discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14564945](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14564945)

</comment><comment><USER6> > The best-case scenario is a system that consumes 20 megawatts...

I guess they will think of throwing in a windmill farm (or something) to power the beast.

<comment><USER7> ...and make it a wind-cooled system, so you have cooling that scales with available power!

Yeah, that will get the subsidies!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Too bad they've only committed 86 million $/year to the effort...</comment>


Apple Keeps Right On Approving Amazon & Netflix Updates Without In-App Payments - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/15/apple-kindle-netflix-in-app/

<comment><USER2> I think it comes down to: Amazon and Netflix have enough money to pursue legal action against Apple. You don't. Hence, the rules that apply to you are different from the rules that apply to Amazon.

Remember what happened to Microsoft for bundling IE with their OS in order to put Netscape out of business? Making competitors' ebooks cost 30% more than your own ebooks on your own dominant platform can look a lot like that to the right eyes.

(Who would have ever thought that Apple would be worried about anti-trust suits!)

<comment><USER3>
      > Who would have ever thought that Apple would be worried
      > about anti-trust suits!

How do you know they are? Your baseless speculations does not mean it is true.

<comment><USER4> >How do you know they are? Your baseless speculations does not mean it is true.

Because they are?

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870465770457615...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704657704576150350669475800.html)

<comment><USER5> I know I'm probably nitpicking, but there is a lot of difference between regulators probing the company and Apple being concerned about it. A lot of poking an probing is business as usual for companies as big as Apple.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Or perhaps they're approving these because the in-app payment rules don't take into effect until June?

<comment><USER7> I believe an update to Readability was rejected though for not having in-app purchase.

EDIT: Apparently it was new, not an update.

<comment><USER8> Readability (and Sony's book reader app) were both rejected as new apps, not as updates.

It sounds like nit-picking, but there is precedent for Apple allowing grace periods to existing apps with undesirable behavior while rejecting new ones, indeed, I think they even mentioned this after announcing the in-app purchase changes.

<comment><USER7> Oh, thanks. I had thought Readability had been on the store for a while before.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > is Apple playing favorites? The Kindle app and the Netflix app are both very > popular. Apple forcing them to use the new rules could lead to them to pull > their apps from the iOS platform

This is what everyone should have expected to happen. No doubt Amazon and Netflix got on the phone with Apple and got a special deal sorted out. Apple definitely doesn't want to pick a fight with someone its own size.

The purpose of these new rules is to ensure that the majority of companies who on Apple's platform conform to certain guidelines. Letting through a few important exceptions won't harm the user experience nearly as much as not letting them through at all.

<comment><USER10> Do we have examples of other apps being rejected because of out-of-apple in- app purchases? Actual examples of developers suffering because of the rules, while Amazon and Netflix are let through?

<comment><USER11> Readability was rejected on that ground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can never tell if TechCrunch is being devious to get page views or just lacks journalistic integrity. Before this story was updated with the information about the June 30th grace period it was completely inaccurate. After the update the entire story is completely invalid. At best someone's opinion which is based on not knowing much about the situation. Is this really enough to pass as journalism? You can sum up the whole story as "Apple might be doing something different but maybe not. Oh wait I didn't know about this one important fact but I might be right anyway so I dunno. Thanks for the page views suckers"

<comment><USER4> >I can never tell if TechCrunch is being devious to get page views or just lacks journalistic integrity

While it's easy to blame Techcrunch, I think Apple's the one being capricious and totally inconsistent, just like with app approvals earlier.

Readability's App was rejected because it was a subscription without IAP. Then Jobs says SAAS apps are exempt, but no one knows what the difference is and Apple won't define it. Readability thinks it's a SAAS.Everyone is confused what rule applies since when and you're blaming Techcrunch for what, reporting on how confusing things are? Maybe you can tell us what Apple's policy is and what is being enforced now?

And now these App updates are approved. It looks like Apple's first picking on the small guys to try to shake 30% out of the big guys. I don't think that's because it's afraid of legal repurcussions. I think it's because it knows its users would be pissed if really popular apps go missing. Regardless of what Gruber or other people opine, iDevices need apps to get sold. There are a bunch of people who bought iPads and iPhones to read Kindle books and watch Netflix movies. If Amazon or Netflix call Apple's bluff, it would be interesting to see what happens. I think both sides are not going to make the first move though, it's blame-game time come June.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This isn't about Amazon or Netflix's size. It's about Apple's arbitrary interpretation of its policies. The App Store has had this problem since the beginning. Apple is purposely vague in it's definitions and chooses to apply them in whatever way makes the most sense in the moment.

It's this lack of clarity, arbitrary interpretation of the rules, and even changing interpretation of the same rules, that I have the biggest problem with. It's why Steve Jobs had to clarify that it was "intended" for subscriptions only not for SAAS offerings. That doesn't mean they won't apply it to things like Netflix in the future though; just that it wasn't originally intended that way.

The history of the iOS ecosystem has been about Apple interpreting the rules differently for different groups of people. I don't have a problem with them defining the rules and letting developers compete on quality of product, but when they're inconsistent about their interpretation of the rules all it does is piss off a bunch of hardworking entrepreneurs, developers, and companies.

$100 says they'll change the interpretation of these new rules by June.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _"is Apple playing favorites?"_

Of course - last year they banned bikini apps. <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/playboy/id340150554?mt=8>

</comment><comment><USER15> "Apple CEO Steve Jobs supposedly responded to some emails sent his way saying that the in-app subscription policy was meant for 'publishing apps, not SaaS apps'....It's certainly possible that even the App Store reviewers were confused by the rules at first and started rejecting some apps that should have been let through."

This explanation seems quite likely but I also think it's a case of Apple seeing how far they could push the envelope (like they did when they stopped allowing Flash based iOS apps).

If the public were relatively okay with it, then they may as well proceed and enjoy the extra profits. If however it means less people getting iOS devices and opting for Android/Windows devices then Apple are left with no choice but to retract from their strict stance.

A business is nothing if it doesn't have customers.

<comment><USER16> Kindle is a publishing app.

<comment><USER15> I think by 'publishing' Jobs meant magazines/newspapers not books. But you're right, the Kindle does offer magazine subscriptions...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can certainly see the Kindle app hurting from this, because people are used to being able to buy books from their Kindle. However, I do think that most people are savvy enough to realize they can open Safari and browse to Amazon.com to order books.

I hardly think that Netflix will be effected, though. Sure, it means they cannot include a sign-up link for the Netflix service, but that's a one-time deal, and every other Netflix-ready device I own requires you to go on the web some other way to get a Netflix account. The iPad will be no different if Apple has their way.

I think that Apple understands this, and realizes that they have nothing to gain by strong-arming Netflix, Nook, and Kindle.

<comment><USER3> > they can open Safari and browse to Amazon.com to order > books.

It's the only way to buy books with Kindle app, be it OS X or iOS.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, but right new there is a link to the Kindle store in the Kindle app. That is what Apple has says is forbidden. A hyperlink.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Isn't the iTunes store incapable of handling inapp purchases from someone as big as Amazon? Also, wouldn't Apple's new privacy policy play serious havoc with Amazon and Netflix?

</comment><comment><USER19> >It's still wait-and-see, but this looks promising.

For whom, though?

</comment><comment><USER20> Or maybe you could argue that Amazon/Netflix bring their own customers.

Apple's policy is, if they bring a customer to you, they get a cut. How many app store users haven't heard of Amazon?

</comment><comment><USER21> Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but why would rules about subscriptions affect the Kindle store?

<comment><USER22> It applies to all in-app purchases, not just subscriptions. The rules also require all purchasable content that's available through the app to be purchasable within the app (so not going to an external site to buy it, as is done currently). Of course, as someone else pointed out, these rules doesn't go into effect until June, so this article is rather pointless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Sword of Damocles...

<comment><USER11> Sure, but it has always been there it is not like Apple hasn't changed the rules arbitrarily before (section 36) so all they really did was point out that it was there all the time.</comment></comment>


Galois releases the Haskell Lightweight Virtual Machine (HaLVM) - <AUTHOR> http://www.galois.com/blog/2010/11/30/galois-releases-the-haskell-lightweight-virtual-machine-halvm/

<comment><AUTHOR> Mirror: [http://corp.galois.com/blog/2010/11/30/galois-releases- the-h...](http://corp.galois.com/blog/2010/11/30/galois-releases-the-haskell- lightweight-virtual-machine-halv.html)

We're under very heavy load now.

<comment><USER2> _"Finally, we'd like to give many things to the GHC and Xen communities, without which this work would not be possible."_

Just an fyi, slight typo there. Probably mean 'thanks' instead of 'things'?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is it possible to run a web server like, say, Snap, directly on top of it ?

<comment><USER4> That certainly strikes me as a good idea, although one difficulty is that there needs to be filesystem support first, which as far as I can tell there is not at the moment.

<comment><USER3> For the server itself or for permanant storage ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I looked at the source. Apparently they are writing NE2000 drivers in Haskell. It appears that this is more of a platform for writing an OS in Haskell with the help of Xen and not really for web apps.

<comment><USER6> Presumably the webapps could come in after there's a normal socket interface (which could also be written in Haskell, atop of a Haskell TCP stack, atop of the NE2k drivers).

I'm curious to see what Galois has done with it so far.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like Galois' blog has already buckled under the influx of traffic, so here's the Google cache link: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?client=safari&#...</a>

</comment><comment><USER8> Very cool. Might it one day be possible to run pure haskell on Xen on AWS?

<comment><USER9> Somebody already did it with OCaml, so Haskell shouldn't be too far off.

<comment><USER10> FYI: OCaml on Xen: <http://www.openmirage.org/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there a measurable benefit compared to having the OS stack there? I suppose none of the POSIX stuff are there, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> Amongst other things, you can run hundreds of halvm nodes on a typical machine; and the "OS" boots in a fraction of the time it takes to boot a kernel.</comment></comment>


Live Video feed of Space Shuttle Launch  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html

<comment><USER2> Although the broadcast has now finished bookmark this feed:

<http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163>

It's 1200kbps and looks much better than the one on NASA's homepage.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> When I posted this, there were 4 minutes left until launch</comment>


Are Pop Lyrics Getting More Repetitive? - <AUTHOR> https://pudding.cool/2017/05/song-repetition/ <comment><USER2> Beautiful graphics.

The article measures repetition via compression ratios, an interesting idea.</comment>


Today My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied - <AUTHOR>

  Yesterday I left my wife and 3-month old son

    to come to Singapore for my US investor visa

    second interview.

  Today my application was denied

    because the visa officer thinks my $65,000

    startup investment is not substantial.

  This application has cost me countless number of

    hours and $10,000+ to prepare

    that I wanted to ask her if I could have

    invested that time and money in my startup

    would it make my investment substantial?

  But I wasn't given a chance to dispute.

  Today is a long day

    that I wonder why America does not welcome

    entrepreneurs

    and have to rant from a hotel whose desk is

    smaller than my laptop.

  But tomorrow I will return to my wife and son

    and continue to work on my startup

    then write a much longer rant someday.
 <comment><USER2> I'm wondering why you're surprised, or if I'm reading the wrong material. The first link on Google is to a site that says only 3000 investment visas are set aside each year, to investors of $500,000-$1,000,000 and(/or) employers that will be create 10 full time jobs in the US.

<comment><USER3> I think there's a distinction between EB-4 Investor Green Card visa and E-2 treaty investor visa. For EB-4, it takes minimum $1 million and pledge to create 10 jobs or $500k in high unemployed region and 10 jobs. For E-2 visa it usually requires $50k to $100k. Of course $200k is a better amount for immigration authority to consider substantial and there is no quota for visa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Come to Canada! Seriously think about it.

Give these a read as well.

<http://www.ictc-ctic.ca/en/Default.aspx>

<http://investincanada.gc.ca/eng/default.aspx>

<comment><USER5> The Entrepreneur residence to Canada required net worth of CAD$300,000 which is quite a lot more than USD$65,000. Plus there are other requirements such as several years of experience running a business. Finally, if you look at the application processing times, in most countries it takes 1-2 years.

And it doesn't seem there is a way to start a business in Canada without a permanent residence.

<comment><USER4> Yes that's true unforetunately. But getting a work visa in Canada is not difficult. It's likely with his skills he can find a tech job here. If it's that important he has access to the US then being in Canada is the best next option. The extra money would only hurt in his loss of time dedicated to his startup work.

<comment><USER6> Isn't there a 6 year visa backlog in Canada for skilled immigrants?

<comment><USER7> no... it is usually done in a few months.

The usa has this 6 years backlog..

<comment><USER6> <http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/department/laws-policy/irpa.asp>

"Canada currently has a large backlog of applicants in the skilled worker immigration category, which translates into wait times of as long as six years for people to find out if they can come to Canada. "

<comment><USER4> Again, work visa does not mean immigration. It means he gets to live here and has access to the US if he needs it. And he has access to VCs and startup communities as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that most startups discussed here are Internet-related, enabling people to do things over the web, the fact that most VCs and entrepeneurs seem to think that you have to _physically be_ in insanely expensive Silicon Valley is pure conformism ("You should be on a plane to Silicon Valley NOW!"). Of course, since they're the ones with money and networking, they turn this arbitrary dogma into a law of investing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. In the long-run, this is an acpect that entrepeneurs outside the U.S. can turn against them and outcompete them. Of course it's insanely hard, it's like trying to outcompete romans 2000 years ago.

<comment><USER9> We are still living the American Dream on the Internet too.

Given that I'll loose all my HN karma points I'll have to ask stop thinking in Internet Startup = US.

Stay with your family back home and run a successful business.

Or maybe I'm missing out completely why there is such a gold rush to the valley.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel for you ... the U.S. visa and immigration process sucks. My wife's parents were denied a visitor's visa to come to our wedding (from Taiwan).

The system is broken, discriminatory, slow and unfair.

<comment><USER11> A good friend is a very brilliant Welshman (born and raised there until age 18) now living in southern California. His father has been here for 21 years and has his US citizenship. My friend, who runs a very successful business and is also a quality contributor to the local economy, has been stuck in the paperwork system for 7 years now. Every 6-8 months they send him another letter telling him it will be another 6-8 months. He can stay legally because he got here just early enough to miss the "wait for your green-card in your home country" rule - but they won't grant him re-entry if he leaves - so he's stuck. Can't take his son back to Wales to see his grandparents, etc etc.

Meanwhile, his father married a Brazilian trophy wife last year who doesn't work, doesn't volunteer, doesn't contribute economically, who received her green-card about 3 months after they got married.

The system is flawed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I feel for you -- I live in Japan and visa issues are near and dear to my heart.

If it makes you feel any better, you can have a successful business without being in the US, and should you later want to move the startup to the US having a successful business and all the fixings (such as a good immigration lawyer) will make the process quite a bit easier than it is when you're "just somebody with a gleam in his eye".

Immigration officials in both the US and Japan are not set up for tech companies, by the way. I used to work in a governmental unit of the prefecture which, ahem, zealously advocated the national government apply its immigration laws in the best interests of our prefectural high tech industry. If you're interested in trying the visa thing again in the near future, see if you can find yourself a stateside advocate like that. (I'd be kind of surprised if California doesn't have at least one state office which does something like that, probably sort of quietly for the obvious reason.)

<comment><USER13> I'm sure other Visas can be tough, but I got my spouse visa in Japan in a few weeks from the time I started. A couple simple forms, less than $100 in fees, and a couple trips to the immigration office.

The US is ~$1,400, 6 months, multiple appointments, and a stack of paperwork for the same thing. Really pathetic. There's no excuse (no, not even volume).

<comment><USER14> I am guessing you are white and from a "tier 1" country? Your experience might have been very different coming from, say, Indonesia. They can go into much greater detail and require higher standards of evidence if they think there could be an economic motive to your move.

I can't speak to the US experience but it's basically the same deal in Australia - a good friend of mine got her spouse visa literally overnight from the Tokyo embassy, but I've heard stories about it taking 18 months to receive the same thing if the applicant is from a developing country.

The situation truly sucks, and I wish they could do a better, faster and more dignity-preserving job, but there _is_ a lot of fraud and motivations of the applicant can often be questionable. A thai-chinese friend once told me that one of her friends needed to marry an Australian for visa reasons, and would pay $25k or more. That opened my eyes a bit. She could just make that much more working here. Guess the occupation.

There's no excuse, but they do have a lot to deal with.

<comment><USER15> Its not about status of the country , each country is given a fixed quota . Usually from developed countries less number of people are trying to come to America than from say a third world country, so the backlog of a applications is less , thus the faster processing.

<comment><USER14> That may be a factor, but it is not the only factor. When applying for a spouse visa, someone from (say) Norway has little economic incentive to gain the visa. As a general rule of thumb, their visa will be subject to less checks and the marriage assumed to be genuine. They just don't have much motive to lie or try and fake their way through.

Someone moving from (say) Cambodia, however, will face an entirely different situation. They plainly have any number of motives to get the hell out of Cambodia and into a big rich country. These motives can and do lead to fake marriages, fake information, everything. The application will be given a far greater level of scrutiny and will take a _lot_ longer.

Hell, don't take my word for it, Australian immigration spells it out. Here's the official "assessment level" (ie, assumed risk) of people applying for student visas here:

[http://www.immi.gov.au/students/students/chooser/574-nonjs.h...](http://www.immi.gov.au/students/students/chooser/574-nonjs.htm)

Plan on a miserable experience if you're not from a country in level 1. And you can be sure there's a much more detailed one for internal use, for spouses, etc.

<comment><USER16> Too true.

I'm originally from an African country, and trying to get into the US was next to impossible despite my qualifications (valid), experience (in several Western countries) and financial position (good).

Five years on, with New Zealand citizenship, I can travel visa-free virtually everywhere, work in Australia without paperwork, and can expect a short application process to get into the US, based on the experience of a friend of mine, who had the same progression.

It sucks if you're on the other end, but to some extent, a greater degree of scrutiny is warranted when your origin is a country you have motive to get out from and to commit fraud to do so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The key here is that $65,000 is not enough money for a U.S. investor visa. You shouldn't have been surprised at all. If the business idea is a good one, start outside the U.S., and then seek to establish a subsidiary in the U.S. With a proven track record, you'll get your visa, but by then, you won't want it because you won't want to pay U.S. taxes.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is another sad example of the US's twisted immigration policy. Brilliant entrepreneurs, scientists, and academics want to come in legally and are rejected, while thousands of others come in illegally.

<comment><USER19> Not really. There are plenty of examples of that, but this is an example of someone applying for a special kind of visa that they were obviously not qualified for and then not getting it. I'm sorry for them on a personal level, but at an institutional level, the system worked just fine.

<comment><USER20> At an 'institutional level', it's a bunch of horse shit. Sorry, but the whole mess brings out strong feelings: the process to get my _wife_ (who is also the mother of our American daughter), into the US is quite a hassle. And we're talking about someone with a doctorate in biochemistry from a wealthy nation. Tons of similar stories of intelligent, hard working, qualified people being hassled to no end. Remember when Linus' visa was about to expire, and only a ruckus got them to speed the process up?

<comment><USER19> The guy applied for an investor's visa. He's not an investor. If your wife applied for an investor's visa and not an I'm-married-to-an-American visa and didn't get it and said, "But I really love my husband." that wouldn't mean that she'd been unfairly denied.

<comment><USER20> And what other people and I are saying is that the whole system is quite fucked up and needs a major overhaul. Maybe this guy shouldn't have got in on this particular visa, but it's still lame; I'd much rather people like that have the option to go, and then get encouraged to go home if things aren't working out, or some similar compromise that encourages smart, hard working people to go to the US.

<comment><USER19> Sure. I agree, which is why my original statement was essentially, "Yes, there are loads of examples of it being screwed up. This doesn't sound like one of them."

I definitely agree that the US immigration system is pretty broken, but assuming that the US system was fixed, and there were still different kinds of visas, it wouldn't magically be broken again because people got denied for applying for the wrong kind.

<comment><USER21> I think you're missing the point: there's no "wrong kind." There's no way for a non-US Citizen with $65k in the bank to legally come start his or her business in this country, even though its (relatively) easy for people to slip across either border. It's not a matter of "oops, I accidentally applied for the investor visa, I should've picked up the startup-founder visa instead."

PG has written about this idea here: <http://www.paulgraham.com/foundervisa.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I sympathize with you. But I cannot help wonder why you thought you would get a visa if you know they are generally given to 500,000-1M investments? Did you know it would be a longshot anyway?

Good luck with your startup!

</comment><comment><USER23> what's stopping you from doing a web(I'm guessing) startup outside of United States?

<comment><USER24> This is my question as well.

Your website seems to be very web-centric business (according to your user page), what is it that you cannot accomplish regarding this remotely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Fist of all, I must thank all who have taken the time to read and/or comment on my post.

However, the fact that US (or more specifically, Silicon Valley) has given birth to more successful high tech companies per square mile than has anywhere else in the world is not incidental.

Being able to grow a startup in the fertile land of Silicon Valley means closer access to a wide array of different classes of investors, world-class peer entrepreneurs/technologists, and active and mature users, all of which are big advantages over startups elsewhere -- even with the high cost of living taken into consideration.

After all, it's like telling a minority student who was rejected by a top university for (disputablely) unfair reasons that she doesn't need to go to college to succeed, sure the statement could be true -- just unfortunately not statistically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's not always easy to get in, which means the US tends to get immigrants who have a lot of initiative. This works out great for us. For you, keep trying. And as others have suggested, work wherever you are to continue developing your business in the meantime.

As an aside, have you considered having a usability professional do an evaluation of your web site and business idea? This kind of third-party opinion might be very valuable. It could even be a student in a usability program at a decent university, to save money.

Which leads to this thought: Now that you've announced to the world that you have a (very small) pile of money, I'm sure many people will be glad to help you spend it. You should be a little more careful and discrete imho.

</comment><comment><USER26> i was denied usa visitor visa in 2007 -- the interviewer said i didn't put specific date, despite me having entered usa multiple time during the last 25 years

i guess she got a point. i never really miss usa much so i never really intended to go there, that's why i didn't buy ticket and put specific date

bad things hurt you ONLY if you allow it

i haven't re-applied any visa since then :D ... and no i don't want to go to usa either, even third-world countries are pretty good these days (i only need wifi, laptop, really minimalist stuff)

here i got servants for my family, life is pretty relaxed. actually i must say that my standard of living is higher here than when i lived in usa. the girls are nicer too, not as materialistic as the usa counterparts.

</comment><comment><USER27> "... I wonder why America does not welcome entrepreneurs and have to rant from a hotel whose desk is smaller than my laptop."

There are one of two possibilities: all is not as it seems based on your story, or because the U.S. immigration "system" is idiotic. The latter is a fact, and the only question is whether it applies to your particular case.

</comment><comment><USER28> _then write a much longer rant someday._

This sounds like you are giving up. I try to abstain from uncouth language on HN, but there is a saying: "Shit happens." I know little about this situation, but I do know of other unfair situations: illegal aliens cooking up Japanese food in the back of a restaurant down the street from me; a small company outside of Pittsburgh who hired a Chinese person just so the Chinese guy could get a green card (and then the guy quit as soon as he was on his way).

To quote an inspirational fictional character, _no matter how tough you think you are it'll always bring you to your knees and keep you there. Permanently if you let it. You or nobody ain't never gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit, it's about how hard you can get hit and keep movin forward_

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1tXhJniSEc>

</comment><comment><USER29> So, invest in Singapore. Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll add another note. I'm not condoning this but for the sake of all options being on the table...

If you know a few people who you trust then you can pool all of your money into one bank account in your name to reach the 500k-1M sum. Alternatively you can borrow the sum and hold it for a year or 2 and pay the ridiculous interest that would add up.

Clearly unethical and difficult but it's a very common technique with middle income would-be immigrants to get in on investor visas or as business immigrants.

</comment><comment><USER30> The funny thing is he is trying to be legit. For 5-10k he could've married some random woman in US to get in, same for his wife.

It's not surprising power is shifting out of US and Europe.

<comment><USER31> The power to move to the US or to Western Europe has not shifted anywhere if the news and personal anecdotes are to be believed. A lot of developing countries don't have the infrastructure or the intelligence to create another Silicon Valley. If anything they are further cementing their power because of the credit crisis. I was on the phone with a colleague in Hyderabad and he told me the R&D companies are starving for capital. When everyone was flush with cash it was easy to open a branch in India, China, or Eastern Europe, but a lot of companies are running low and those foreign offices are the first to get cut.

I am aware that they are trying to build their own middle classes, these things take time and it's going to be a long wait before they can be completely self-reliant.

<comment><USER30> What about China?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> May be a basic question but did you go through the visa norms before applying? The official site clearly mentions at least $500K as minimal investment (and employ at least 10 people etc) for consideration under the investor visa!

([http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f...](http://www.uscis.gov/portal/site/uscis/menuitem.5af9bb95919f35e66f614176543f6d1a/?vgnextoid=4ff96138f898d010VgnVCM10000048f3d6a1RCRD))

<comment><USER33> Ok this may be a repeat, but what you are looking at is about _immigrant visas_ , a.k.a. Green Cards. I believe what OP is talking is a _nonimmigrant visa_ , probably E-2 treaty investor kind.

Those two visas are so different, thus typically when people are talking about visas they mean nonimmigrant ones, while the immigrant ones are refered as Green Cards. But if you look at the official documents, be careful not to be confused.

<comment><USER32> Two things about E-2: \- substantial investment. Looking over the net it seems 'substantial' means at least $200k \- 50% of ownership lies outside USA \- Candidate leaves USA at the end of business

I am not sure a start up entrepreneur would be interested or can afford 2 & 3

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > I wonder why America does not welcome entrepreneurs

To be entirely fair, the U.S. _government_ does not welcome entrepreneurs.

And to be more general, the U.S. government no longer welcomes _anyone_ ; even the ones that are allowed in are treated badly.

If I had my way, this would be one of the top current issues in U.S. politics. I wonder why it isn't. I especially wonder why the U.S. tourism industry hasn't been screaming about it for a few years now.

</comment><comment><USER35> jerryji, sorry to hear about your plight. Yes, the immigration system is full of inane/arbitrary rules and decision-makers. However, we are on _hacker_ news after all. By definition us hackers are folks who are able to make rules and systems work towards our own advantage (while careful not to actually break any such rules). For one I think putting $10k towards E2 paperwork might have been a bit of a mistake, and perhaps the US consulate in Singapore might not be the kindest one out there. As some folks have mentioned here on this thread - think outside the box! Some cities in Canada have a growing startup culture (Vancouver, for one), and there are multitudes of different immigration options if you're still set on coming to the US, even if it means relegating your startup to being a hobby/project and picking up full-time work. As Randy Pausch put in, brick walls (like immigration) are indeed designed to filter out folks who don't want things bad enough (or figure out ways around them). Hope everything works out for you, don't give up.

</comment><comment><USER15> As others have said , stay away from America . It's full of nationalist/protectionist rage these days and guess where its all directed at - yeah immigrants . I am assuming the reason you want to move is to collaborate with really smart people and feel the vibe , there are other countries with lot going on for them without all the nonsensical stuff. Come to India , seriously.

<comment><USER31> Have you ever heard of anyone applying for an Indian residency visa (IE not tourist)? I have heard everything from you can't get one to they don't even do them. I know they have visas for employees of big companies like Microsoft or Intel. But I have not heard of a single instance of a foreigner going to India as an entrepeneur.

<comment><USER15> Yea , No one seems to do that,because everyone seems to be hell bent on being abused and mistreated by American Redtape without actually evaluating the real benefits .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> If you are an entrepreneur this is just one more fuel to your fire to get there.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm very sorry. US immigration policy is highly arbitrary and irrational. I hope you succeed wherever you start, and still have the chance and desire to relocate to the US sometime in the future.

</comment><comment><USER38> Why did it cost $10,000?

<comment><USER12> Immigration law can get expensive in a hurry, and (as an aside which I hope is unrelated to the current discussion) the people who most need it are the least capable of assessing providers and the most likely to get taken to the cleaners by unscrupulous folks.

If you accessed the Internet from outside of the US you'd be bored to tears of ads, in every language, promising a shot at the US Visa lottery for "very reasonable application fees".

Edit: Incidentally -- if you'd like to sit down and discuss your (three page) application for an engineering visa in Japan with someone who speaks English, that will run you about $2,000. You could do it yourself, too (my company and I always do), but for people who are inexpert at the magic words, the lawyer is worth the money. You're paying them largely for their savvy and, ahem, "I'm important enough to have a high-powered lawyer on my side" rather than for their ability to read and fill out forms.

The visa process has rather little to do with you and rather a lot to do with your host country. The letter in support of my most recent application says "Patrick" once and variations of "Japan" about fourteen times. It was written by an HR officer who understands how the game is played.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Can you please not post in monospace? You don't have any code in your article and it makes things difficult to read.

</comment><comment><USER40> I don't understand the problem with Singapore?? People want to get there and not to quit!

</comment><comment><USER14> _"Today, My US Investor Visa Application Was Denied"_

You forgot to write "FML"

</comment><comment><USER41> Yup, where did you go to singapore from? (i am from sg)

</comment><comment><USER42> I support you man! Keep up the fight!</comment>


10 Health Myths That Just Won't Die, Debunked by Science - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/10-health-myths-that-just-wont-die-debunked-by-scienc-1443659706 <comment><USER2> If we're going to say "debunked by science", it would be great to cite a meta- analysis or a paper or two that actually debunks the claims, rather than rely on the claims of a few doctors.

Plenty of doctors have made claims that perpetuate these myths, so simply citing a few more doctors is not entirely convincing.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! It is just adding fuel to the fire...</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Whats tools in my IDE am I not using enough? - <AUTHOR> I personally use JetBrains but anything will do. Features that when you first figured out how to use them made you think "wow, how did I go without this?". <comment><USER2> Multicursor editing ([https://www.jetbrains.com/help/rider/Multicursor.html](https://www.jetbrains.com/help/rider/Multicursor.html)) is something one usually doesn't find via menu items or stumble upon.

<comment><AUTHOR> Though I knew this existed I never really considered its usefulness until now. Thanks for pointing it out

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What IDE / language are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> I use JetBrains, but whatever anyone uses. I'm also curious what features might be in other suites that I don't have.

<comment><USER4> If you're not familiar with the local history feature, it's a game changer. I use it rather than starting a new branch for experimental code, it's huge -- much faster than git branching, and you can do incremental rewind. The edit history goes back pretty far too, it has saved me after more than one problematic rebase/merge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. I've never even clicked on Local History. Will look into it</comment></comment></comment></comment>