When Software Eats Bio - <AUTHOR> http://a16z.com/2015/11/18/bio-fund/ <comment><USER2> One area that's ripe for disruption is Next Generation Sequencing (a high throughput derivative of Sanger sequencing)

Illumina produces devices called sequencers, which are glorified microfluidics + imaging devices, which uses base pair chemistry to build the dna complementary strands of single stranded dna fragments one base by one using special dna bases that have washable fluorescent die and are blocking (so that the complementary strand grows by one base). Once the correct dna base is stuck to the single strands on the glass device, a picture of the glass device is taken by shining laser and using a CCD imager. The Nature of DNA makes sure that the correct complementary base gets stuck. 4 TIFF files are generated with billions of tiny dots one for each base A,C,G and T. The fluorescent die is washed, and the last added ddna base is deblocked and the cycle repeats. The whole software suite (image processing of TIFF files) and hardware specs (fluid chemistry, etc) is unfortunately closed source :(

<comment><USER3> The next frontier in NGS is long read SMRT (Single Molecule Real Time - PacBio) combined with Oxford Nanopore's technology. That is, very long reads combined with massively parallel transcription that doesn't rely on light emission. Illumina-based tech is not going to be part of the equation.

Illumina is really only related to traditional Sanger sequencing in that its sequencing by synthesis.

<comment><USER4> There is no way that this is going to be the case. It's much more likely to be a combination of Illumina and ONT or ONT alone. PacBio is far too expensive and low throughput to be a challenger outside of niche applications (like genome assembly).

<comment><USER3> I would much rather have ONT backed by Pacbio than ONT backed by Illumina. ONT is well suited for doing WES quickly, with better fidelity than Illumina and PacBio is much better for supplemental data to do genome assembly using reads from a short read system

<comment><USER4> What evidence do you have for ONT having better fidelity than Illumina in any application? Illumina's error rates are typically <= 1% while on "good" reads ONT has error rates cited at 15% and overall is even worse[1]. I agree that PacBio is better for genome assembly, but for many cases we do not need to do assembly. Resequencing workflows with alignment and variant calling are pretty good.

1\. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214753515...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214753515000224)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Disappointed no one brought up the regulatory hurdles involved when discussing the resistance of the industry to disruption. When the cost to bring a new drug to market is over 2 billion dollars [1], it's hard to see start-ups competing in that environment.

1: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop- ne...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cost-to-develop-new- pharmaceutical-drug-now-exceeds-2-5b/)

<comment><USER4> Considering that a16z said that they are focusing on software around biotech and not on traditional biotech I think it makes sense that they aren't talking about regulatory hurdles or the cost to bring a drug to market. Eroom's law is a serious problem, and it is hard to imagine a disruptive startup that could compete in that environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It sure is an interesting time for melding computational advancements with medical use cases. The reason that the cost decay can promulgate the previously missing disruption seems to be missing the bigger question of regulation in these fields.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real question is how they will filter for Theanos like companies

<comment><USER8> Theranos was transparent about the overhyping from the very beginning to somebody with an understanding of bio. It's more shocking that so much of the "tech" media bought it.

Imagine a bunch of old-school bankers or Fortune 500 CEOs from the 90s trying to pick a winning software business. They know "business" so they should be able to apply their knowledge to the software world easily, would be their reasoning. Silicon Valley's picks in biotech, like Theranos, have fairly transparently misapplied "knowledge" in the same way. They look for all the wrong things, attributes that work well in software but not other places: 1) confidence bordering on arrogance, 2) dismissal of experts and standard knowledge disguised as an attempt to "innovate.", and 3) a chance to "hop on" to a rising founder/CEO before they've proven themselves and become super expensive. Similarly, be skeptical of other SV health efforts (such as Google's) unless there are real scientists behind it and also real experience in biotech (not tech).

Complete Genomics (next to LinkedIn and Google) is an example of what happens to a biotech company that has really great tech, but runs the business like a tech company rather than a biotech company. Scale goes completely sideways, they miss the market, and get sold off to a bigger fish and most likely will languish.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Can somebody talk about CRISPR and particularly business ideas around it? I read the recent New Yorker article ([http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene- hacker...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/the-gene-hackers)), but still have a lot of questions!

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543181/crispr-gene- edit...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/543181/crispr-gene-editing-to- be-tested-on-people-by-2017-says-editas/)</comment></comment>


How do you avoid making sloppy mistakes while writing code? - <AUTHOR> I have ADHD, and my career has basically been job after job of barely staying afloat. No matter how hard I try, it appears I am blind to my own mistakes until they are pointed out in a code review. I am putting in more effort than I ever have. I write tests. I scrutinize my pull requests before submitting them. But no matter how good I feel about the code before it's reviewed, there's always something "lazy" or "sloppy" that is glaringly obvious to everyone except me.
My system for doing productive work is, and has always been, broken. As I get further into my career, not being able to course-correct becomes more and more of an existential crisis. ADHD brings with it countless other problems (many of them time-management related), but these repeated careless mistakes are, once again, putting my job at risk, and making me loathe myself.
I would be grateful for advice. <comment><USER2> From a similar thread:

>I've found that copious use of assert statements has done wonders for reducing the amount of time I spend debugging. Its a good idea to use enough assert statements that when there's a problem it is reported immediately instead of propagating and causing weird symptoms that you have to track down. At the beginning of every function I think to myself "what am I expecting here" and then put in 2-3 assert statements to make sure my expectations are met. For example, if I'm passing a data structure that I expect to be filled, I assert that it is non empty.

>When I encounter a bug I write an assert that reveals the problem before I fix it in order to prevent having to deal with the same issue more than once. This is especially big for me since I work with a lot of (other people's) data.

</comment><comment><USER3> Hmm. Never identify and internalize the logic of criticism. Consider reframing what you just said in a more positive light.

Let's forget for the second your self diagnosis and think about it as engineers.

What specifically is glaringly obvious or sloppy about your code? How do others notice and you don't? What techniques are they using to read the code that you're not? Are they reading your code while they're well rested while you were writing the code later in the day? How often do you take breaks? Do you try to take naps? Do you use coffee sparingly? How is your diet? Do you exercise?

My point is there are a bunch of things you should figure out before deciding to be so down on yourself. If you honestly try to answer the questions I posed then I'm certain you will make progress towards being a better coder.

</comment><comment><USER4> Well since you're already writing tests, I think the X-factor here might just be time + practice. Perhaps you could ask to try pair programming for a while to improve your skill? Sometimes it's helpful to observe how others approach a problem.

</comment><comment><USER5> \- Use a proper IDE, and note a text editor with 45 plugins.

\- Use strict typing whenever possible. PHP has scalar typing now, and TS for JS.

\- Use static analyzers and bake them to your CI workflow.

\- Unit tests.

\- Test your unit tests with mutation tests.

Overall, non-sloppy code takes more time, and you'll often find yourself spending more time in tests and code architecture than writing the core code. But in the long term, it will save time. I'm refactoring a project I worked 6 years back, and the test suite brings tears to my eyes, looking how thorough it was, which made the code decoupled, ending up me spending just a few days to refactor it all!

</comment><comment><USER6> So first, try to use UML diagrams. Both the class diagram and the seq diagram.

I.e. you should start writing code only after you have the full design in details. In short, think of yourself as a human code generator.

The issue with programming is that you need to hold both the 3000 level picture and the 0.1 level, so working with diagrams should help.

The second thing to think about state machine, especially one that are specified by tables.

Before you write the code, make a table of each input state, and map it to your program output state. This would make sure that you did not forget anything.

Look at the work of David Parnas in this area.

</comment><comment><USER7> Have you considered favoring languages and environments that work well for you? Strongly typed languages, static analysis, good linting tools, etc. The more things caught by your machine, the less you have to take care of.

You could also try asking your colleagues what they look for in a code review, then mimicking their method when judging your own work before submitting.</comment>


Wish HN: a great 2011 - <AUTHOR>

It seems like by the end of any given year, most people take a chance to think about everything they did (and hopefully, everything they're planning on doing next). Here's to hoping that you rocked it in 2010, and are already planning on doing even better in 2011. Happy new year, everyone!<p>I'm curious, what are your new years resolutions? Share them if you have them! <comment><USER2> My (HN specific) goals for 2011:

1\. Distributed social search for Appleseed (almost there!)

2\. Build out Appleseed's App API and Graph API.

3\. Build out Appleseed's client-side framework.

4\. Facebook/Twitter integration. Maybe MySpace if I'm feeling charitable.

5\. Promotion. I'm a good developer, I'm a terrible marketer. I think Appleseed is the best open source, distribute social networking product out there right now. I just need to figure out how to let people know.

6\. Go to more developer-oriented conferences and meat-space events.

7\. Documentation. The code base is solidifying, so there's no excuse to not have everything documented.

8\. Learn how to relax.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here's what I want to accomplish in 2011 - writing these down is almost like an exercise in discipline. I hope that once these are down in paper, I feel even more compelled to make them real:

      * Launch an iOS game I've been thinking about
      * Bring a bunch of european entrepreneurs to SV (http://rgoap.com)
      * Attend more conferences (I only tend to go to those I speak at)
      * Spend a couple of weeks every few months working from other countries
      * Invest (more) in the ideas of others
      * And as a more personal goal, move to a new home

</comment><comment><USER3> I never decided on any goals until a girl I spoke to this morning asked me about it.

 _Create something awesome, then find a girl(friend) to show her the awesome stuff_

The first thing I did this morning was finishing the rubykoans. Fixed a bug in an old python library I wrote. Then ported it to ruby, which is now my first rubygem. <http://akash.im/arduino-ruby>

Day ends. Year seems to have started off well.

P.S: I do understand that awesomeness doesn't come at first shot. I'll keep trying.

</comment><comment><USER4> 2010 Resolution: Launch our web crawler into full time production (met at Dec 22, 2010)

2011 Resolution 1: Find, and execute amazingly on, Rails consulting work to pay for server bills.

2011 Resolution 2: Turn our massive amounts of data into a finished product that helps someone do something.

2011 Resolution 3: Keep active in the local tech community.</comment>


June 2011 Web Server Survey - <AUTHOR> http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2011/06/07/june-2011-web-server-survey.html

<comment><USER2> I'm all for elevating Apache above IIS (as my product uses it: <http://www.devside.net/server/webdeveloper>) but...

Comparing the two over all domains is ridiculous as this includes mass domains such as parked domains which can easily give Apache 10s of millions of useless stat points as one registrar switches a couple of servers.

The very last graph is the most sensible one which compares the two over the top 1 million domains and shows IIS to have a relatively stable share over time.

A better graph would compare the top 100,000 sites running on dedicated IPs or servers (no shared hosting accounts) that have existed for at least 6 months.

<comment><USER3> Why not include shared hosting accounts? Isn't convenience and cost of shared hosting a valuable metric?

<comment><USER2> The market that Microsoft directly competes in (using IIS) has never been anywhere near the shared hosting space.

My suggestion with removing the shared hosting accounts was just a way to remove noise from the dataset so we are truly comparing apples to apples rather than apples to oranges... Otherwise you could end up seeing IIS loose in a market space that it never was in (and never will be in) because Apache gained in it.

It was just a suggestion. You could leave shared hosting in.

<comment><USER3>
        The market that Microsoft directly competes in (using
        IIS) has never been anywhere near the shared hosting
        space

That's not from a lack of trying on Microsoft's part.

And eliminating shared-hosting from a statistic like this is exactly how Microsoft would do it - introducing bias to turn the numbers in their favor.

Does EC2 count as shared hosting btw? What about Heroku?

         to remove noise from the dataset

Sure, I'm all for removing parked domains. But there are lots of business and professionals that have their website hosted with shared accounts, websites that are useful for their target audience, even though they may not be in the TOP-whatever. Excluding those websites from such a metric would do a disservice to people.

        Otherwise you could end up seeing IIS loose in a
        market space that it never was in

Or you could say that you would see IIS win in a market space that's getting crushed by shared hosting.

It's a comparison of popularity between similar front-end web servers, which does have something to say about cost and feasibility of hosting multiple websites on top of cheap servers. Otherwise the comparison is useless, as popularity doesn't really matter to big corporations and startups that know what they are doing and are likely to choose Nginx anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I constantly hear of web services shutting down and I feel guilty for not appreciating them at the time. I'm not going to make that mistake this time.

Netcraft has been at it basically as long as I have. I don't read their survey reports regularly but maybe I should. Their archives are awesome. Remember the SCO saga?

[http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/12/15/outages_continu...](http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2003/12/15/outages_continue_at_sco.html)

Thanks Netcraft!

Also, I love their anachronistic logo.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't this data look, perhaps, too noisy to be trusted? What happened between March 2009 and March 2010? Did 'other' really steal a huge chunk of share from Apache and IIS, and then suddenly give it back? It seems more likely that things were misclassified then (or that they were actually classified correctly then, and that they're misclassified now).

If the data can be trusted, it's interesting that IIS has basically been flat from 1998 'til now, with an upward deviation every once in a while.

This headline seems link bait-y. "Apach the only serious player". Really? When IIS has ~ 20% share? So, Apple must not be a serious player in the desktop/laptop market, since their share is in that ballpark.

<comment><USER6> The canonical linkbait headline would clearly have been, "IIS is dead. Netcraft confirms it."

<comment><USER7> You left out the "Balmer Fails Again:" prefix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's great that the open source solutions are so strong in this market. It's nice to see nginx carving out a nice bit of market share too.

Another web server project I quite like is Cherokee (<http://www.cherokee- project.com/>) - it's got a lot of features but still manages to beat Apache, lighthttpd and nginx in a lot of benchmarks. It's got quite a nice web interface to control it too but it's a bit annoying to not have configuration files for automated setups...

<comment><USER9> +1 for Cherokee. We use it with php5-fpm - it's rock solid, low on memory consumption and super fast. The admin interface rocks. You can edit the config file by hand or by scripts, the file is just not very "human readable".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the most interesting thing is the the last graph - "Market Share for Top Servers Across the Million Busiest Sites". Apache has held steady over the past 3 years, yet the decline of IIS is mirrored by the growth of nginx.

<comment><USER11> I know a few shops where IIS servers were hidden behind an nginx layer, which would agree with your statement - but does not necessarily mean that IIS is no longer used, just not publicly visible.

<comment><USER12> This is exactly right. There is a great scenario for using nginx out in front of any number of workhorse app servers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm curious how many people here choose Nginx over Apache. If I have a choice in my stack, I will always choose Nginx but all too often if I'm doing work for someone else, they always demand Apache. I think it's because it's the "defacto standard" and tends to be well known among less technical people. I'm sure the same situation goes for people who prefer PostgreSQL over MySQL.

I guess my question being, how would you convince people to use your favorite stack, and sometimes the best service for the job, such as Nginx/PostgreSQL, when all they know is the most popular services. Sometimes, just convincing them it's the best for the job is not enough.

<comment><USER14> The choice of nginx vs Apache over MySQL vs PostgreSQL is not an equal comparison at all. Until the application hits very high hit rates, the web server choice is mostly inconsequential. RDBMS choice will have real impact on the developers from the outset.

<comment><USER13> That's fair. I was merely looking for another comparison and the MySQL/PostgreSQL debate came to mind. I can't really think of anything that similarly compares to Apache/nginx.

<comment><USER14> Linux distributions? Usually not important until you're building your own packages or needing to heavily customize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I noticed that "Google" was one of the servers listed in the chart. I'm curious, does that mean "Google App Engine"? Or something else?

<comment><USER16> Google has their own internal web server software.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_web_server#Software>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Looking at the second to last chart, IIS lost 14 million servers in the summer of 2009. Google picked up 6 million over this period, and Apache four. That still leaves four million servers which vanished, and I'm sure all the lost IIS instances didn't translate directly to Apache or Google.

<comment><USER18> Furthermore, Google doesn't use IIS, and doesn't release their server publicly. Those 6 million were more than likely new servers picked up, which puts the number of vanished IIS servers at 10 million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For a more general breakdown across technologies, check out <http://underthesite.com> \- it's still very much in development, but it now shows technology reach graphs.

Feedback appreciated.

</comment><comment><USER20> I heard that MS pays GoDaddy to run their parked domain on IIS to boost their stats?

<comment><USER21> Dunno if they pay, but it seems to be the case that those do use IIS. Response headers from one of my GoDaddy parked domains:

        Server:Microsoft-IIS/6.0
        X-AspNet-Version:2.0.50727
        X-Powered-By:ASP.NET

<comment><USER22> Godaddy.com also runs on IIS, so it may just be a company/cultural preference.

<comment><USER23> I once worked for a company that had a large Java-based application. Microsoft (a then client) demanded the application should run on IIS and be written in .NET or they wouldn't hire us.

That may be part of the deal.

Note: We wrote an IIS-based proxy that masked away the Java-ness of the application and replaced it with .NET-ness. Worked perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> If the third chart were a chart of the economy, I would swear that Microsoft IIS was a perfect representation of the housing/financial bubble. I can't think of why there would be a correlation though.

<comment><USER25> Small businesses closing up shop? If you can't afford your house, how can you afford your hosting bill? Just a WAG

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've done a ton and moved a ton of my little projects to appharbor. It is just so damn easy. I can't imagine that MVC 3 is reducing the number of IIS installations. It is very, very slick. They probably count that as one and if db ids are any indications there are probably getting close to 100s of thousands of apps being hosted there.

</comment><comment><USER27> So this is the number of boxes that nginx is installed on... I wonder how many page requests are served rather than number of hostnames. The faster nginx/lighttpd installs are likely serving way more requests per server (unless they are just used for static resource files by in large). That would be much more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER28> Microsoft won market share when they were competing actively on web platforms and services. Their ASP, ActiveX and such technologies were real contenders a few years ago, competing with the likes of PHP. It seems they aren't competing with HTML5, given up on Windows Media and the internet has moved on, leaving them behind.

<comment><USER29> That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Microsoft _are_ competing on the server with ASP.NET, and _shouldn't_ be competing with HTML5.</comment></comment>


Where are the Indian hackers at? - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/hackernewsindia

<comment><USER2> I think its a bloody good idea. Just joined. But wondering if google groups was a good choice. I'm finding it quite slow, probably transient, hoping it will pass.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hacker News India is about creating a space where Startups from India can meet other people trying to bootstrap their startup.

1\. Discuss issues local to Indian startups.

2\. Orgainise in person meetups of HN readers in India.

We are more technology and hacker focussed than other startup group.

<comment><USER3> Bad choice to go with Google groups:

"Google Groups will no longer be supporting the Pages and Files features. Starting January 13, you won't be able to upload new content, but you will still be able to view and download existing content. See this announcement for more information and other options for storing your content."

<comment><AUTHOR> True, but only the Pages and files feature discussions are not going anywhere, and its the low effort way to get a discussion forum and mailing list setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> please stop creating such groups. What do you want to do that can not be done at HN ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Focus. I don't think the discussion of Fund Raising in Bangalore would be interesting to all HN users, but I think it will be interesting to people from India, so I would like to have such a focussed group.

Also there are many Focussed groups of HN users on Google group.

[http://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&...](http://www.google.co.in/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=site:groups.google.com+hacker+news)

<comment><USER4> Can you point me to atleast one "active" group out there ? <http://groups.google.com/group/east-bay-hacker-news>, check out the post frequency, member size etc.

The use cases you mention are very few and can be easily addressed with HN tags. Example : "HN India : Fundraising event in Bangalore ?" or "HN India : Let's have a meetup in Mumbai." If it's interesting to indian HNers they will upvote it and follow it up.

Realize, that starting a group is easy, building a tribe around it is not. There are many things that made people come to HN, Paul Graham, Ycombinator, Startup School, a custom and simple software. Good content came later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> you created a group another day, posted link on a US-centered website, and expecting Indians to join.

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. India is second largest visitor to HN after US. <http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/ycombinator.com> . (Alexa might not be great, but its the best source I can find right now.)

2\. There is no group focusing on HN readers from India, so why shouldn't I do it. (And hope people will join.)</comment></comment>


Hong Kong protest: What is mainland China hearing? - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-49354507 <comment><USER2> > "The fastest-growing period of Hong Kong has already passed, so the young > people there find no way to climb up the social ladder. They feel choked in > an environment of expensive housing, sweltering climate and a neighbour [the > mainland] that's becoming richer and richer,"

I think these problems will continue to re-occur until this root issue is solved. In the same way how I believe Caesar/Sulla/Gracchi brothers are all symptoms of an underserved common populace by the senate class and where the commoners are constantly ready to be incited into a mob rule when economic interests are not pinning them to vest in the system.

And now the vestigial, oligarchic functional/geographic-split legco voting system and the colonial parallel governorship (aka chief executive)/legislative system is failing the Hong Kong common class with 20% poverty rates and twice the housing to pre-tax median annual income ratio than San Francisco in a monopolistic/unregulated/colonial elite-serving economic framework. And that's without even counting in the half-million class-less filipino/indonesian domestic serfs.

I think their way out of their structural societal problems would be to emphasize the class issue and on decolonializing their governmental and economic framework as soon as possible (which I think part of the protest movement gets, and which isn't against Beijing's interests) or go the Chinese socialism route (since China holds humanity's record on poverty reduction, but the locals will obviously not accept this route). But re-glorifying their colonial past or preserving the status quo (which I find is the mainstream protest ideology) isn't it.

To put it in American terms, I think they need Bernie, not Trump.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, I'm an HKer who grew up there but am in the US now. There is a certain desperation that is palpable from talking to my friends back home.

They've been so let down by the HK govt that they've just given up all hope. Career sucks, family sucks, home sucks, can't marry cause houses are too expensive, rent is unaffordable so you can't move out, unless you're in the top 20% of your senior class, you can't go to college, it's grim. Most people I know are trying to move.

Unless the societal ills get solved, people will always find another proxy/reason to protest.

<comment><USER2> Right. Protests are a means to an end and the people should be clear about what the end is. That's the whole point of not being administered by China in the first place, where you would just voice your discontent and let the 'technocratic' 'leadership' figure out a solution. The people have to self- direct towards a long term goal.

I think the current situation is tricky in that the 2 issues are partly conflated in the sense that Hong Kong needs to be careful to not just give the half-democratic colonial leash to China. But that's the extent of it (since Beijing didn't setup that colonial structure), and it's important to not conflate the rest of the issues with it. The institutional/functional half of the legco basically seems like a collection of medieval guilds and I don't see it trying to, or having the financial incentive to resolve societal issues for the bottom of the society anytime soon.

The fight for political reform does seem like the right thing to do but I think the only way to success is to stay extremely focused and framing it as a people vs colonial oligarchy issue rather than a British vs China issue or a woke vs brainwashed wumao issue. And most importantly, to not make it about defending the status quo, where Hong Kong will fall deeper in the hole since it not being able to continue to skim off the top of all China trades like it could during the 80s can't float all boats like it could in the past anymore. If Hong Kong fails to prove that its current political system is an advantage rather than a disadvantage that translates to economic and social wellbeing, Beijing will have little incentive to not scrap its system come 2047. And from the present perspective from the Beijing side, all signs would point to it looking like a disadvantage so far when comparing the relative deltas of urban and rural development and wellbeing vs the mainland. This, of course, ignores the fact that the CCP system will hit a glass ceiling in economic development vs countries with mature judicial systems, checks and balances etc, but that's a limitation for its future potential rather than a present problem for Hong Kong and mainland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I lived in Hong Kong for 30 years. What was happened in these 3 months did not come out of nowhere.

1997 - now: HK gov allows 150 people from China to immigrate to Hong Kong _every day_ , even there are strong opinion to suspend immigration due to lack of housing and crazy population density problem. Even worse, HK gov does not pose _ANY_ restrictions of the immigrant about their education, language, or criminal background. There was one case that one pro-Beijing arsonist killed 2 immigration Officers but still obtained residency in HK.

2012: HK gov tried to introduce a compulsory brain-washing subject to high school. 500 thousands (out of 7 millions) people protested.

2013: HK gov used crappy reason to turn down a well-known HK businessman to obtain free public broadcast license. So that HK has effectively only one company to run free TV channel. And the news of that channel is highly biased.

2019: HK gov tried to pass extradition law to China. Even after 1 million people protested, HK gov still continues legislation. After 2 millions people protested, the CEO of HK gov only said "the bill is dead" in TV but did not formally withdraw the bill in legislation council.

This is only a tiny list of what gov did in the past 22 years. What gov is going to do is to pass a construction that cost trillions of HK dollars (app. 120 billion USD). That will basically empty the treasury of HK, and the future of every HK people. That's why people are so frustrated and protest in that extend.

<comment><USER5> Article 23 and the National Security provisions is also a big one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm not sure it matters so much what they're hearing now. What matters more is what they've heard for the last decade or two - that it's all about great China and uniting to follow the CCP leadership, that anyone disturbing that is an antisocial troublemaker, and that such people deserve negative consequences. After having that mindset drummed into you for long enough, it may not matter what perspective they hear about the Hong Kong protests, at least if they don't hear it for too long.

<comment><USER7> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4GXZOss6J4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4GXZOss6J4) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdxXCTpHARQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdxXCTpHARQ)

This is the scene that mainland Chinese people are seeing. A reporter of Global Times was bound by protesters in the airport and attacked until unconscious.

<comment><USER8> Those are on YouTube, so law-abiding citizens aren't seeing them. The search results for Hong Kong on Weibo are a bit different: [https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%...](https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like CCP did a good job of stoking division between HK and mainland China leading up to this powder keg being lit.</comment>


Paul Allen finds long-lost Japanese battleship - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/03/intl_world/paul-allen-japanese-battleship-musashi/index.html <comment><USER2> OT... I am really annoyed that so many news sites set their videos to autoplay. Facebook does it too. This was bad in the old days when it was common and it went out of favor for good reason.

Note to those responsible (not that they'll read this): I might want to watch your video after I first read some text. When I hear the video start up while I'm trying to read, I immediately try to press stop. This usually takes several attempts because your video players are awful. Nine times out of ten, I will leave the site without watching your video or reading the text. I don't have time for the aggravation.

<comment><USER3> In December, I got a virus likely from such _auto-play_ videos.

Symptom and Solution. On Windows, kept getting auto-started instances program iexplore.exe running. Virus scanning for days didn't solve the problem. Finally a Windows system restore back to November or so did solve the problem.

Larger Solution. Of course, for each video clip on a Web page, Firefox and Flash keep saying that Flash is vulnerable. No joke. Then they refuse to play the video unless I confirm by clicking three times. So, great! Now those videos no longer _auto-play_.

Of course, for this benefit, I am still running version 12 or some such of Flash. So, after 12 versions, Flash still has bugs? So, I'm going to believe that 13 is such a lucky number that finally version 13 will be safe? Nope! So, I will stay with version 12 and, thus, block the auto-play videos. When I do want to play a video, it will be a significant video from a respected source and, thus, likely safe; I have to doubt that version 13 would be much safer.

There are other such frustrations at Web sites that still cause me to do what you do -- leave!

<comment><USER2> Yes! It's incredibly frustrating. I find a solution for one problem only to find out that the solution created a new problem. It's all because of sites like these. Maybe I'll just avoid these altogether or maybe I'll create a browser extension like Adblockplus that prevents me from following links to sites that are reported to have autoplay. What to do....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not just a battleship, one of the two famous Japanese "Super-battleships", pride of the Japanese navy, with the biggest guns ever fitted on a warship.

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

<comment><USER5> It's curious that the article you reference already states that Paul Allen found her in March 2015.

<comment><USER6> It's the Internet, news spread fast.

<comment><USER5> True ... but wikipedia is about facts and the history expert cited said he'd need a lot more proof.

<comment><USER7> No. Wikipedia is about what people consider to be facts. I'm sure the editorial team will be on to it... one day.

It can easily be cross-referenced, and without digging in detail it looks to be true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The launch, like the ship itself, had to be concealed from prying eyes; the most important means of accomplishing this was a citywide air-raid drill staged on the launch day to keep everyone inside their homes. Musashi was successfully launched on 1 November 1940, coming to a stop only 1 metre (3.3 ft) in excess of the hull's calculated 220 metres (720 ft) travel distance across the harbour. The entry of such a large mass into the water caused a 120 cm (3 ft 11 in) tsunami, which propagated throughout the harbour and up the local rivers, flooding homes and capsizing small fishing boats. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Musashi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Musashi)

</comment><comment><USER9> This kind of philanthropy is quite amazing to watch: this guy has the means to pursue his passion, and we, the humanity, benefit from his stubbornness :)

<comment><USER10> Benefit how? Seems like an expensive hobby to me

<comment><USER11> I thought the exact same thing. It might be unfair of me to judge what he does with his money but all I see is just a rich guy having fun. Not that there's anything wrong with it. But consider that these battleships once fired on Americans, helped enslave Asia. If he found a German U-boat my response would be the same. Here we are celebrating the artifacts of a perverted imperial force that is responsible for countless crime against humanity.

<comment><USER6> If only your average rich guy would have similar definition of "having fun", the world would be a much better place. His "fun" is at least actually useful, even if you could find better uses of that money.

I start to wonder, if this is why rich people don't do useful things with their money more often? I mean, reading some comments here, I think I'd feel like this:

\- Hey people, I found you a battleship of historic importance! Cool, isn't it?

\- Oh you rich guy, wasting money on fun. How about spending it on malaria?

\- You know what? Fuck you, you ungrateful, entitled assholes. Go die in your own dung. I think I'll be spending my money on a platinum golf club set instead.

<comment><USER12> I disagree with the characterization of people who think he could have used his means more effectively than this as "ungrateful, entitled assholes."

Are we required to celebrate everything a wealthy man does with his money as long as it's not overtly bad?

<comment><USER6> > _I disagree with the characterization of people who think he could have used > his means more effectively than this as "ungrateful, entitled assholes."_

Not everyone is, of course, but I imagine this is how it _feels_ to be on the receiving end of those complaints.

> _Are we required to celebrate everything a wealthy man does with his money > as long as it 's not overtly bad?_

Of course not. But what I see is that the default reaction is almost always whining. I wonder how wealthy people cope with that - whatever they do, they get to read a ton of crap written about them. And particularly, Paul Allen does a lot of really useful stuff with his wealth.

<comment><USER12> In this case, I think it's because the general perception is that we're expected to praise him for this (Twitter announcement, press releases) and there is a backlash against that expectation.

Also I got downvoted for my first comment. I can't even imagine who took offense or why.

<comment><USER6> Me neither. I upvoted you to compensate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I believe that they could have quickly confirmed the ship's identity by measuring the chrysanthemum seal that is mounted on its prow and checking to see if it's dimensions match those of the one found on her sister ship Yamato. (More information: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/producer.html](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/supership/producer.html))

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminded me of Cryptonomicon.

Although I don't know which character will be Paul Allen.

Definitely not Douglas Shafto.

<comment><USER15> There's a _very_ Paul Allenish character in the story already, though he's cast as a gaming company programmer who'd retired. The one with the 747 wreck hung from the ceiling of his house.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It's too bad it's probably impossible to raise such a ship. I'd love to take a tour of it, the Bismarck, and the Titanic.

Allen has rescued other WW2 things from oblivion like the FW-190 pulled out of swamp and restored to flying condition. I've certainly enjoyed visiting his museum of restored rare aircraft at Paine Field.

</comment><comment><USER17> Paul Allen is an inspiration to creative, idea people everywhere!

</comment><comment><USER18> It might seem as if he really paid other people to find it.

</comment><comment><USER5> This web-site make Firefox completely unresponsive and (looking at top) uses more than one full core. Why do they expect I'll stay on their page?</comment>


Parallel Python - <AUTHOR> http://www.parallelpython.com/ <comment><USER2> There are much more active projects that do the same thing as this.

\- IPython parallel ([https://ipyparallel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/](https://ipyparallel.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) ) is pretty much the same idea but under active development, supports both local processes, small clusters, cloud computng, an HPC environments (SGE style supercomputing schedulers).

\- Joblib is a great tool for common embarrassingly parallel problems - run on many cores with a one liner ([https://pythonhosted.org/joblib/index.html](https://pythonhosted.org/joblib/index.html))

\- Dask provides a graph-based approach to lasily building up task graphs and finding an optimal way to run them in parallel ([http://dask.pydata.org/](http://dask.pydata.org/))

<comment><USER3> Slightly dated now, but a good walk through of the "steps" of parallel computing in Python:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVBLF0ohcrE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVBLF0ohcrE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> By my estimate, this projects seems to be old / stalled, not in active development. This notion is based on the lack of Python 3 support and the fact that majority of the activity in the forums happened in years 2006 - 2010.

EDIT: I was wrong, there is some activity in a different branch of the forum [1]. Last release almost two years ago.

[1] [http://www.parallelpython.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemi...](http://www.parallelpython.com/component/option,com_smf/Itemid,29/board,2.0)

<comment><USER5> Python 3 support is a great indicator for that sort of thing.

When I ported my stuff, I discovered that some of the libraries I used were unmaintained and I replaced them by a newer library.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the FAQ:

Q) What Python versions are supported?

A) PP was tested with Python 2.3 - 2.7 on a variety of platforms.

<comment><USER7> Then that's a hard pass for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most fellow python people know this already, but native compiled C/C++ code generally runs about 100x faster than interpreted CPython code for any kind of number crunching or computation. So like sonium also mentioned, definitely consider the C route also if you're at all familiar with it and you're having performance problems. Threading python wouldn't generally get you as far (perhaps 4-6x speedup on an 8 core machine). Python's C integration is very well thought out and lets you use the best of both languages, as well as gain a deep understanding of what's going on under the hood in your python programs.

<comment><USER9> Forgive my ignorance, but how are you getting 4-6x speedup with threading in the face of the GIL? Asking because I generally choose C/C++ when performance matters over Python because of the GIL (and somewhat, the GC).

<comment><USER10> Well you can multiproccess. 8 core machine? Run 8 pythons with 8 Gils. What web servers have done forever.

<comment><USER9> True, but OP said threading. Threading and multiprocessing imply significantly different engineering challenges.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm a daily user of Python but the parallelization efforts really make me wonder. When things in Python are slow, its most likely something with native Python code (in contrast to e.g. Numpy). Wouldn't it then make more sense to rewrite this in native C code which gives a speedup of two orders of magnitude instead of getting into the mess of paralellization which scales, in the best case, with number of cores?

<comment><USER12> C can be a very difficult beast to tame. Using parallel python interpreters may actually be easier for some than giving up on OOP, garbage collection, platform independence, maintenance of a whole other language stack and bugs you just won't encounter with Python.

Not saying it's a bad idea, but it's a totally different approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> _sigh_ Why do all of these Python reimplementation projects target only Python 2.x?

<comment><USER14> Because in April 2014, python 2.7 was effectively declared to be an LTS release with support until 2020. No LTS release has been declared for python 3.x

<comment><USER15> The other way of looking at it is that 2.7 is EOL in 2020, and there will be no further 2.x. 2.x is very much a dead end.

[http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/](http://legacy.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0373/)

<comment><USER16> The PyPy team will support Python 2 indefinitely: [https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2016/08/pypy-gets-funding- from...](https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2016/08/pypy-gets-funding-from-mozilla- for.html)

We never have to leave Python 2, if we do not want to.

<comment><USER17> This comes up over and over again in the Python community.

If you will allow me to paint with broad strokes, as I'm going to lump a lot of things together for the sake of ease of understanding, I am not speaking for every python user(s) out there. There seems to be a huge tug of war between companies/corporate users and the PSF & more independent users.

The smaller (if you will, these are going to be big in the python community) 'shops' and library developers, and users all are or have migrated to Python 3 ages ago. Django now is going to be python 3 only in the foreseeable future (I know they EOL'd their python2 compatible libraries). The Software foundation itself wants it to be essentially toast by 2020. Things like Pyramid, Flask, Bottle, and even numpy & scipy have started moving in a direction of having python3 be their 'first' update (I think in the case of Flask and Bottle, they're end of life support for python2 is happening as well, though they haven't announced anything official, they seem to be adding new features and promising features that will only make sense in python3).

Yet, big 'corporate' users like Google (Look at you, grumpy [https://github.com/google/grumpy](https://github.com/google/grumpy)) and Apple (still shipping with 2.7...and why!) and large universities all seem to be stuck on python 2.

Because of this, this to me really hurts the community and its holding back full development of python3 and python generally going forward. Why are companies holding back the state of a language (and then complaining about it) instead of diverting their ya know, massive resources, to get their own libraries and technologies up to current stack?

Why do so many people want to stay on python2. I'll never understand.

For what its worth, the latest version of python3 (3.6, well, 3.6.1, but the release notes for this is for 3.6) haves a ton of forward thinking built in concurrency improvements and technologies that these companies could easily take advantage of!

[https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrency.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/concurrency.html) [https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html) [https://docs.python.org/3/library/multiprocessing.html](https://docs.python.org/3/library/multiprocessing.html)

<comment><USER18> Lack of ROI (return on investment) is why people stay on Python 2

<comment><USER17> Then why hold everyone else back if you aren't willing to push forward? At least with new projects it'd be great if people used Python 3.

Google's choice with Grumpy particularly astounds me. Why 2.7? Its not clear to me and in fact, its really unclear to me, why that was a 'better' choice.

<comment><USER19> > Google's choice with Grumpy particularly astounds me. Why 2.7?

Probably because Google has a lot of legact Python 2.7, and doesn't do new greenfield development in Python 3, preferring other languages (particularly Go), so...

Projects made to scratch the maker's own itch are good in that they get thoroughly dogfooded, but they also can carry a focus that reflects the creator's needs more than anyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess this is supposed to cure the GIL curse of threading in Python? i.e. the fact that only one thread can be running in a n interpreter process.

There is still the multiprocessing module which can spawn processes, so you can effectively run code in parallel. It's pain to manage though.

I think in the end I am grateful for no parallel threading in Python as it forces me to either do things so that they can be run in naive-parallel, or to use things that have the concurrency solved out of Python.

<comment><USER21> Sadly you can only share pickleable objects in python multiprocessing.

<comment><USER22> Or shared memory: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5549190/is-shared- readonl...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5549190/is-shared-readonly- data-copied-to-different-processes-for-python-multiprocessing/5550156)

(but it's a little hacky..)

<comment><USER23> Still, multiprocessing objects like Array and Manager are limited to ctypes.

<comment><USER24> Sometimes worth it, but often not. The ability to do shared-memory multi- threading is one of the things that tempts me away from Python. Message passing is great and all, but sometimes you want your messages to be passing around control of a shared 4GB data structure, instead of trying to copy it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Wouldn't it make a lot of sense to just use Pyspark with RDDs? Latency would be relatively high, but it'd also bypass the GIL while also being more modern.

<comment><USER2> In my experience pyspark is much more flaky and annoying that doing parallel computing with more 'python native' tools. It only really makes sense when you outgrown small clusters and really need huge infrastructure.

<comment><USER26> What python tools do you use for small clusters?

<comment><USER27> Dask would be an option.

<comment><USER2> Was going to say that. Or ipython parallel if you want to go lower level

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems to be Python's "multiprogramming" module with some extra features.

Python's parallelism options are "share everything (but with only one thread computing at a time)", or "share nothing" in a different process on the same machine. If you're parallelizing to get extra crunch power, neither is efficient.

<comment><USER19> The base multiprocessing modules isn't shared nothing (though it doesn't share the runtime, there are shared memory constructs that are available.)

It's better described as having only _explicit_ sharing (as opposed to classic threading models, which have implicit sharing.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wish someone could port Julia's parallelization notation to python. That's the only Language that struck me as "wow".

</comment><comment><USER30> Expected redirect to golang.com

</comment><comment><USER31> Needs IPC - not interested due to comm. bottleneck. Anyone got experience with Jython? How drop-in is it?

<comment><USER32> The same story as all the dynamic jvm languages; great so long as all your dependencies are pure Python, interop with native code ie numpy is nonexistent. JRuby was making some headway here but I haven't checked in a while.</comment></comment>


Cold fusion reactor independently verified  - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/156393-cold-fusion-reactor-independently-verified-has-10000-times-the-energy-density-of-gas

<comment><USER2> Shit. This story is nearly 12 months old.

It's a fake.

<comment><USER3> Even worse, Wikipedia says << Steve Featherstone wrote in Popular Science that by the summer of 2012 Rossi's "outlandish claims" for the E-Cat seemed "thoroughly debunked" and that Rossi "looked like a con man clinging to his story to the bitter end." >> which is _months_ before the date of this article.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's a good way for an engineer to learn design - <AUTHOR>

I want to learn more about what various colors mean. How do people use shadows on the web? How are color schemes decided. How do you go about picking a font. Information hierarchy. Layouts. I understand this could probably be material for a 4 yr course. But I am curious about the limited set of rules for the web. <comment><USER2> I always recommend the same:

Design and other professions can be selftaught without any problem as long as you know what to learn and have time to practice and master.

Since design is a very large area, I assume you want to learn how to design stuff that would be later in Internet, so it will be better to learn (in this particular order): typography & grid systems. Then color systems. When you master these areas, you can go to the stadium of the composition with color and form, where you will learn to draw.

90% of the design of an application go through the use of typography, the arrangement of elements on the screen using grid systems and interactivity of these objects. The rest is cosmetic. You can master cosmetics later learning to copy styles and practicing to the point you master them. For example, being able to illustrate, in this case, it's a matter of drawing, not doing extreme typography use, but that's another area of design and it will requiere grid to illustrate well, colors to give illustration deepness and etcs.

Go to amazon and search books on these matters, get inspired and start the selftaught process.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can try out [http://hackdesign.org/](http://hackdesign.org/) or read Design for Hackers: Reverse Engineering Beauty[1]. There are plenty of other sources out there, but these are a good start.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering- Bea...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering- Beauty/dp/1119998956/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372283289&sr=8-1&keywords=design+for+hackers)

</comment><comment><USER4> I found this book at the library, and it seemed to make some good points: [http://www.peachpit.com/store/non-designers-design- book-9780...](http://www.peachpit.com/store/non-designers-design- book-9780321534040)

The same author has a whole series of books, some oriented specifically at the web.

</comment><comment><USER5> Some good ideas in this blog post: [http://karenx.com/blog/how-to-become-a- designer-without-goin...](http://karenx.com/blog/how-to-become-a-designer- without-going-to-design-school/) (I'm not the author of the post)</comment>


No Evidence of Aloe Vera Found in the Aloe Vera at Wal-Mart, CVS - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-22/no-evidence-of-aloe-vera-found-in-the-aloe-vera-at-wal-mart-cvs <comment><USER2> "You have to be very careful when you select and use aloe products," said Tod Cooperman, president of White Plains, New York-based ConsumerLab.com, which has done aloe testing.

\-- And how am supposed to be careful? Should I run my own lab to test every product I use?

<comment><USER3> One of the failings of the libertarian ideal. There's no way for even an informed consumer to have any idea what most of their purchases contain, what safety issues they have, how effective they really are, etc.

<comment><USER4> Your comment is odd considering this flaw is occurring in a system that is not 'the' libertarian ideal and the solution is close to the libertarian ideal and is working.

Consumers are being informed right now. A scandal can kill a company or a private inspector in a way that it can't kill a corporate oligarchy or bad regulation. Private inspectors have to compete for consumer dollars. Government regulators, at best, have to compete for less than half the votes of registered voters; or they are simply appointed.

In the system we have now, there will be lawsuits, but they will be capped and won't mean the death of these corporations, so will largely be meaningless and likely the entire thing will still be overall profitable to these companies. Any attempt to regulate will be met with lobbying efforts to make that regulation competition-restricting and corporation-protecting while giving lip service to protecting consumers.

<comment><USER5> I think the real lesson of the story isn't that the system is "working", it's that we've (society) been purchasing tons and tons of a product for who knows how long that has been inauthentic, without any idea that it was the case. How long has this been happening? For how many other products is this the case?

It's certainly better that we know and (hopefully) some corrective action is taken, but overall I'd read it as a signal of dysfunction. And I don' think macintux is suggesting that we're presently within the libertarian ideal, rather we're in the universe where it's considered a responsibility of the state to prevent these kinds of things from happening, yet they are still happening. So look what happened here, and imagine what would happen with even fewer failsafes...

<comment> semi-extrinsic > we've (society) been purchasing tons and tons of a product for who knows how > long that has been inauthentic, without any idea that it was the case

Also, whenever this happens, one should stop and consider:

"Why are we buying aloe vera products in the first place, when millions of people using the product for years are unable to detect that it's fake?"

If this happened with something tangible, say replacing all regular coke with diet coke without changing the labels, it would be noticed immediately.

Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone sells them the fake?

<comment><USER6> > Whenever people buy something which they are completely unable to > differentiate from a fake, are they really being defrauded when someone > sells them the fake?

Yes.

<comment><USER7> I think the point was that the real thing is just as much (or as little) of a fraud as the fake is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Whenever I see an article like this, I lose another bit of faith in all of the products in these supermarkets, fair or not. I get the sense that all of our modern 'health products' are nothing more than shams that induce the placebo effect in people. Unless a doctor prescribes it, [edit] or it's an OTC drug [/edit], I tend to think it's bologna.

Does anyone else feel that way or am I being unreasonable?

<comment><USER9> Supermarket aloe vera is a product that changed my life. Seriously.

With my cheap Irish skin, I'm sure to get a severe sunburn once a year. I've had one so bad it started to bleed; that one almost stopped me from going to highschool prom.

I had tried Noxzema moisturizing gel, cold shower, hot tub, and several other anecdotal remedies for sunburns, but nothing worked - for about five days following a sunburn I was basically handicapped.

A year or two after the big one I tried the [fake] aloe vera and it finally seemed like something worked. Ever since then, I'll use roughly a bottle a day of the stuff following an intense burn. This has reduced the discomfort to the level that the average Joe expresses as in "Ahh, extra sensitive right now" not "Can't put on clothes right now"

<comment><USER10> Did it have any actual Aloe Vera in it?

<comment><USER11> Does it matter if it works? (i mean, legally, of course... and morally... ) ... but as a solution, if it works, it works, right?

<comment><USER12> Uhh, if I bought a bottle of Aloe and was smearing it all over myself, and then I was told "That's not actually aloe", I'd want to know what I was applying to my skin before I applied any more. Sure, it works, but maybe it's carcinogenic, or has a side effect that I don't want to risk, or I have an allergy to whatever mock-aloe-substitute they used.

<comment><USER11> Im in agreement... im saying if someone has been using it for years... and it works for them, they might not care whats in it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Combine this with an increasing trend in grocery and drug stores to only stock 1 "name brand" and everything else is house-branded and we're in for a rough time. For now you can still use brand loyalty, but what happens when the whole world is Wal-martified (we're on our way) and Safeway only sells Safeway brand, Costco only sells Kirkland, CVS only sells CVS products, etc.? You can say "go somewhere else" but selecting a different store isn't even a realistic option for many people in the US - there are no alternatives.

We rely on retail establishments to provide choice as part of their value add. Now that that's disappearing in favor of the retailer controlling everything, what happens next? I honestly don't know.

<comment><USER14> I can say this as someone who knows for certain, most of the products on the shelves are the same, regardless of the label. They came off the same line from the same factory. Want to know how they are different? The line operator stopped for 10 minutes to change out the packaging. The amount of variety you see is an illusion. The generics are exactly the same as the expensive name brands. Walk into any store and compare the manufacturing codes on similar products. And before you get too pedantic, I'm not saying they are _all_ exactly the same. I'm saying a choice of 10 "brands" likely all come from 3 or less factories of origin.

<comment><USER15> 20 years ago I worked for a major gasoline refiner in Canada, who supplied the gasoline for all of the gas stations in Toronto. Esso, Shell, BP, Petro- Canada, Sunoco - all bought their gas from the same refinery. The whole WORLD is branding.

<comment><USER16> I think this finally hit me when I saw on display a tiny bottle of high-end "high performance surfer sunscreen" for $35, complete with beautiful packaging and a poster with attractive models.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So as it turns out regulation is good for us, and free market forces don't solve all problems.

<comment><USER18> Regulation is one way to try and solve this problem, but the courts are another.

As mentioned in the article, the retailers of this product are already being sued based on the findings.

<comment><USER19> The average consumer does not have money for attorneys: hence, the need for government regulation. That's why all of us pay taxes.

<comment><USER20> It's also that the fraud is incredibly diluted. Is the solution a class-action lawsuit? If so, is it even worth it to me to fill out the postcard for a tube of bogus aloe I bought 2 years ago? Let's say someone actually told me it was fake. Was it the "Wal-Mart Premium Aloe" or the "Wal-Mart Organic Aloe"? I would happily pay $0.20 more for real aloe over fake, but I'm not going to spend 20min on my phone then pay $0.20 more for each item I put in my cart.

Which brand of olive oil isn't the fake one, again?

<comment><USER21> Legal scholars have actually found many elegant solutions to this sort of stuff.

The simplest one is that if you find out that you were the victim of small scale fraud. You should be able to sell your claim to a third person. This third person can then gather many small claim and do the lawsuit for profit. Your claim might only be worth 10$ in this case (since this is just wrong labeling and not anything worse) but its still free money.

This system would also give consumer groups for example a better financial situation. Currently, fines usually go to the government if some group detects that some law was abused. In the system im talking about a consumer group could ask for the data of all the people, should the find something they inform everybody of this and ask them to sell their claims. Then they sue the producer and make a profit. Such system could essentially be automated. Selling a claim should not be harder then making online bank payments (in Switzerland we have E-Bills, pops up, 1-click, done). If you trust the consumer group you could just automate it completely (in Switzerland you can actually give access to your bank accounts companies you trust).

This is also not some new idea, there are historical systems that worked exactly like this. Those system were found to perform quite well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> My first thought upon seeing the headline was well duh, there are 500+ species in that genus ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloe#Species](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloe#Species)) But then in the article, "Aloe's three chemical markers—acemannan, malic acid, and glucose—were absent in the tests[...]."

Yikes.

<comment><USER23> There was some humorous homeopathic reasoning in the article where a weasel claimed that the extensive processing cosmetic products require might remove the components that make aloe, aloe, but its still an aloe product, which is kind of like claiming I'm still drinking orange juice if I extensively process it to remove everything but the H2O molecules. Sure chemically speaking its distilled pure water now, but once upon a time it was orange juice.

<comment><USER24> Reminds me of the "what's the color of your bits" article that came up again when the Illegal Primes wikipedia article made the front page.

"What's the color of your molecules?".

<comment><USER25> [http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> We've seen this same issue with supplements like St. John's wort, and products like honey. And then who knows what's going on with Amazon lately.

I see a pattern. I think we're seeing a breakdown of the concept of brands. Every few generations society forgets important lessons it learned in the past and has to relearn them. I think the importance of brands is one of these concepts.

If a company can build a rock solid brand that people really trust I believe they're going to be extremely sucessful. That's one reason Apple has done so well. You completely trust that Apple would never sell you garbage. (although they're also starting to forget this lesson.)

I'm going to start looking for strong, loved brands as part of my investment strategy going forward. Unfortunately I'm having trouble thinking of any at the moment.

<comment><USER27> > That's one reason Apple has done so well. You completely trust that Apple > would never sell you garbage. (although they're also starting to forget this > lesson.)

Also word-for-word true about Amazon.

<comment> nommm-nommm ... but Amazon is full of garbage, fakes, and counterfeit goods.

<comment><USER27> Yeah, _now_.

They spent the first 10-15 years building a pretty fantastic reputation for customer trust, and then the floodgates of junk opened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Yet more corporate erosion of the trust that makes society work.

This is why restricting trade isn't as crazy as it sounds: when the aloe vera cream is made down the street, you can go beat the guy up if he defrauds you. And he knows that.

<comment><USER29> No, this is an example of why government regulation is important.

<comment><USER19> Exactly. Regulation does not come out of thin air--but in response to abuses. Complaining about regulation in the abstract is akin to bank robbers complaining about the laws against bank robbery.

<comment><USER30> "Complaining about regulation in the abstract is akin to bank robbers complaining about the laws against bank robbery."

Amazing analogy, and unfortunately all too close to reality for many companies fighting reasonable regulations.

Disclaimer: Not all companies fighting certain regulations are crooks.

<comment><USER27> And in cases where the company fighting against regulation aren't crooks, the people fighting for them likely are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _" Acemannan has been misinterpreted," Meadows said. "The cosmetics industry requires highly processed aloe. How that affects acemannan is anybody's guess."_

Even the cosmetics industry admits that they don't have a clue (not even a guess) about what happens to Aloe after it's been processed for inclusion into their products, so it may not have any of the original properties. (acemannan makes up about 15% of aloe)

<comment><USER32> And if it doesn't contain any after it's processed then it's not an Aloe product anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Go outside, find an aloe plant, take a cutting of it (make sure to ask the owner.....) and transplant it into a pot of soil.

Water, and keep your friend alive.

Succulents make good desk plants :)

<comment><USER34> Go outside, no aloe to be found.

It's still easy enough to get a plant or cutting though.

<comment><USER33> If you come over I can give you some <:p, I've had the same plant for almost 10 years, Once my mother and I were deep frying some fish and she kicked the oil over into her shoe, that aloe plant was used to help sooth the burns... interestingly no scars on her feet from that incident.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This article reminded me of the story about snake oil. At one time it was considered a traditional medicine. In the early 1900's products were sold claiming to contain snake oil but didn't. This lead to the modern usage of the term.

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

<comment><USER36> The term "blowing smoke" has a similar origin. There is an outdated and defunct medicinal practice of blowing smoke up one's rectum as a sort of cleanse. The of course turned to be of, uh, dubious effectiveness for curing ailments. Hence the modern term, blowing smoke, which means someone is bullshitting you.

<comment> nommm-nommm In modern times smoke is replaced with coffee. And it can be deadly.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So these products are made of Aloe Falsum then?

<comment><USER38> Possibly Aloe Verum

<comment><USER39> verum is singular

vera is plural

<comment><USER37> I was feeling pretty pleased with myself about this joke but now the grammar mistake has ruined it for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if the products were always lacking Aloe Vera, or if this is an example of "quality fade"?

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

<comment><AUTHOR> As he discusses in the book, I suspect that this is a combination of quality fade, and willful ignorance (also known as poor/no testing). Testing costs money, and budget products mandate cost cutting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They don't do aloe vera products, but [http://www.labdoor.com](http://www.labdoor.com) is a great site that does chemical analysis of supplements and determines if their labels are actually accurate and if they contain any harmful impurities.

</comment><comment><USER42> False advertising should be punished severely. The consequences are always bad.

<comment> nommm-nommm Unless your fraud involves dietary supplements, then there's almost always no consequences.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> In Germany and many places if not all of west and central Europe products get detailed labeling of ingredients. For instance if you buy what's supposedly a brand name syrup of plums and therefore should be 100% the result of cooking plums and nothing else except maybe conservatives, what you actually get according to the label is 99% various forms of industrialized sugar and then a little bit of plum flavor. This is great because I've also found such syrup which was what you'd expect and pretty much the same thing you get when you do at home, but it wasn't from the most famous brand in Germany, which is disturbing given the price you have to pay for the brand. Same with stuff that's supposed to be honey or all those fancy teas which have no trace of what the label says if you look into the ingredients list. Most people do not bother to read it, and I don't blame them, but if you do, you start to put many products on a personal blacklist of fakes.

That said, do US products not carry detailed ingredient lists or is this product discussed in the article part of a group of products that are exempt?

<comment><USER44> > The products all listed aloe barbadensis leaf juice — another name for aloe > vera — as either the No. 1 ingredient or No. 2 after water.

<comment><USER43> In that case it's clear fraud and will be dealt with, I assume. Given the comments here about a liberal market, I assumed labeling requirements are less strict over there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I always suspected this! The products felt so different from when you break off an aloe leaf and use the goo. Feeling so vindicated right now :p

<comment><USER46> I don't know that that's a great test. Bread feels pretty different from wheat plants, but it's still the same thing.

<comment><USER47> Not a proper comparison... The beneficial chemicals in the aloe have no need to be processed at all, cracking a leaf and squeezing out the gel is sufficient.

Crack wheat, sure the kernels are edible and quite healthy - but that's a far cry from bread.

<comment><USER20> Often things need to be processed or treated to make better and more consistent products. Consumers are also fickle about appearance. You can make powdered sugar by grinding up confectioner's sugar, but the stuff you buy in the store has cornstarch added to prevent clumping. Shredded mozzarella has a powder coating to prevent it from sticking together.

Fresh aloe from the plant doesn't need to worry about mold or spoilage. Something shoved into a bottle, shipped on a truck, and expected to consistently squeezed out of a tube (without drying out or getting gunky) probably needs additives or treatments that change it in order to be safe.

<comment><USER48> Truth. The American consumer is very sensitive, especially to consistency. If your product changes color, or settles out weird or does anything to shatter the belief that one bottle is exactly like the next one, you've got a big problem.

<comment><USER11> Case in point - I had a friend who was recently trying to be all organic and stuff (like, crazily) ...

He got mad because he came home with a jar of peanut butter that was organic.. and natural... (and delicious) but he was actually upset because the oil separated... like, actually upset, and wanted to take it back, and did not want to eat it... he thought it was gross...

Yeah... natural is gross and processed is good... 'Murica

<comment><USER20> Yup. I remember reading about a smoothie like product that had some additive, a known inflammatory, that did nothing but keep it from settling out. It's only purpose was to save the consumer from shaking it before opening the bottle and had some obvious downsides (it also made it look prettier on the shelf). After a/b testing it the consensus was to leave it in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> _We've been in the business a long time and we know where the raw ingredients come from,'' John Dondrea, Fruit of the Earth's general counsel, said in a telephone interview. "We stand behind our products._

Did I hear somebody say that regulating companies is bad for business? And the incoming administration have said that cutting regulation is a top priority.

</comment><comment><USER50> This would be so illegal in the EU it's not even funny.

Also, Aleo Vera is a plant. So "no Aloe Vera in the Aloe Vera" doesn't even make sense. Is it hand cream? Shampoo?

</comment><comment><USER51> > Tim Meadows, president of Concentrated Aloe Corp., said that nuclear > magnetic resonance isn't reliable for cosmetics because the presence of > multiple ingredients can cause interference and there's no way to test for > aloe in finished products.

This type of science is out of my scope of knowledge, but the skeptic in me thinks, "how convenient."

</comment><comment><USER52> Maybe there could be a data format/protocol for reporting ingredients in products electronically so they could be easily analyzed. And make that open for the public (or companies) to view.

This gets at the issue of externalities and the general inadequacy of trying to track everything with one number ($).

<comment><USER53> There already is a basic data format & protocol: the ingredients are listed, in order. The problem here is that the ingredients were lies. Being more precise isn't going stop the lies.

<comment><USER52> There is no electronic format that is easily accessible.

<comment><USER53> An electronic format won't make the lies go away, why the fixation on it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> You can buy original aloe products from Tribals in India [http://onlineshop.apgirijan.com/product/aloevera- soap/](http://onlineshop.apgirijan.com/product/aloevera-soap/)

</comment><comment><USER55> I buy the Aloe Vera leaf for $1 from my local grocery store and use it whenever I want. Don't rely on off the shelf products unless you know the founder is very passionate about the product and it's benefits.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there a third party that tests products for their legitimacy? Consumer Reports? The government? Seems like a market need.

</comment><comment><USER52> Try the jars of "pesto sauce" they sell at Walmart. Its literally pickled basil stems with garlic.

</comment><comment><USER57> Aloe Vera is very easy to grow at home. There's literally no reason to buy this at a store.

<comment><USER58> Say...you go on vacation to the beach and fall asleep to the soothing sounds of waves. You get sun burned. Then what.

<comment><USER59> Go to a beach vacation to a place where aloe plants grow all over the place; pick some tentacles and keep in your hotel room fridge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> Some things don't work at scale. I guess squeezing leaves into bottles is one of them.

</comment><comment><USER61> I wonder how many other products are completely fake.

<comment> nommm-nommm Blueberries are often fake! [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2011/01/20/13308914...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2011/01/20/133089144/fake-blueberries-often-masquerade-as-real-fruit)

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Contains post-truth Aloe Vera.

</comment><comment><USER63> "That means suppliers are on an honor system"

In other words, abuses will be rampant as having an honor system for corporations is like asking your cat not to eat that delicious fish or bird they just caught. Only idiots would think that could possibly work. That's why it's a dominant theory of economics in the US.

</comment><comment><USER64> so its like Chocolate then? I guess all that evil EU regulatory burden serves some purpose after all

[http://www.thefoodieentourage.com/2011/10/should-bad- chocola...](http://www.thefoodieentourage.com/2011/10/should-bad-chocolate-be- illegal.html)

</comment><comment><USER65> Where on Google Maps are these vast aloe vera plantations which are required to produce these millions of liters of products? There must be hectares and hectares, visible from the outer space.

<comment><USER66> Not sure about the locations, but you'll find images about quite big plantations if you do Google image search for: aloe vera plantations

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It's terrible that the FDA is interfering with free association between these gigantic conglomerates and consumers. It's a sin.

</comment><comment><USER65> They should also try to find evidence of grapes is crappy wines to which a cork is too expensive.

<comment><USER68> Crappy wine is made from crappy grapes, or good grapes handled poorly, not fake grapes. There is no reason to use fake grapes because there is so much supply of real grapes (see "wine lake"). And most wine is not meant to be aged for a long time so there is no reason to use a cork and risk cork taint.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> I don't much care whether it's aloe. The real question, I think, is whether the substitute product (maltodextrin) _works the way aloe works, to solve the same problem aloe solves_. If it does, and it's cheaper to stick in a bottle, then I'm all for it. If it doesn't, then it's a problem.

When you buy "aloe extract" in the cosmetics aisle, you're not buying it for its particular organochemical structure (unless you're planning to spread it on toast); you're buying it for the effect it has. You're looking for a chemical that supports aloe's API contract for its interaction with your own biophysiology. You're looking for, essentially, an "IAloe".

This is the problem with a lot of organic->synthetic transitions: people know the _effect_ by the name of the organic substance that produces it, and thus, to get any mind-share, you have to market the synthetic by making it appear similar to the organic. Pure synthetic capsaicin is still marketed as "Ghost Chili oil" or similar, because people don't know or expect "capsaicin" to be spicy, but they do expect chili peppers to be.

Really, it's a miracle (of a mega-conglomerate marketing machine) that aspirin isn't just called "willow bark extract."

\---

ETA: okay, apparently people are really very upset by the idea that a company "lying" about a product could be okay.

Every company that produces a product that isn't under government mandate to be a certain way, lies about _everything_ they can get away with! That is the world we live in. 90% of products on the market are this way. You should not believe a single ingredients list if a product isn't in the FDA-regulated classes of "food" or "drugs." Most products outside of these categories don't even bother to _have_ ingredients lists; this should tell you everything you need to know about the incentives that caused the products that _do_ to put one on there anyway.

When I say "I'm okay with this", I mean that "I can deal with this, because I was _already_ dealing with this in every purchasing decision I make, and this doesn't change anything." Everything on a drug-store shelf other than the actual FDA-regulated "drugs" are unadulterated bullshit that you have to comb through yourself to verify claims.

Guess what? That's the optimum! Empowering the FDA to fact-check the labelling claims of every single product would cost _insane_ amounts of money, slow the whole economy down to the glacial FDA-approval pace of the pharmaceutical industry.

I'm okay with the world being this way, because all alternative worlds (reachable via anything less than a complete restructuring of government and maybe the human psyche) are worse.

<comment><USER70> >> This is the problem with a lot of organic->synthetic transitions: people know the effect by the name of the organic substance that produces it, and thus, to get any mind-share, you have to market the synthetic by making it appear similar to the organic.

You mean lie and say that it IS the organic - in this case. So in the world of computer products, you'd be happy with a knockoff laptop marketed with an Apple logo then? That's trademark infringement and it's illegal precisely because someone could otherwise market crap under another companies good name.

<comment><USER69> Trademark is a whole separate issue; product classes are not trademarks. (Except in the cases of "protected cultivars" of things like fruit and wine.)

But to try to use your example to make my own opinion here clear: yes, I _would_ be happy with to receive a "knock-off" laptop with an Apple logo on it... provided it _looked and functioned identically to an Apple laptop, including Apple 's willingness to take it in for warranty repairs_. (Tangent: such things exist! They're called "ghost shift" products, produced by the same factory-workers that produce the real ones, when nobody's looking.)

And that's what we're talking about here: chemical analogues that _have the same effect on the body_.

Note that this is all contingent on the idea that maltodextrin _is_ a chemical analogue to aloe vera extract. If it isn't, then my argument here is moot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> _There's no watchdog assuring that aloe products are what they say they are._

Start teaching honesty in universities along with "how to make money".

<comment><USER72> They do. I had to take an ethics class in college. And every business class I took had a section on ethics as well. But you learn what you want out of everything that's taught to you. I know people who got an A in biology but still reject evolution and people who have majored in environmental science but don't believe in climate change.

<comment><USER49> It's very rare that whatever you learn in school changes your consciousness. Very rare.

<comment><USER73> You mean "conscience"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is just for Aloe. What's in that coconut water that you're drinking?

After taking a sip of one brand of 100% coconut water a couple of years ago, my body complained bitterly, which is how my body tells me that what I just ate/drank contains an artificial ingredient.

So now if I want to drink coconut water, I go buy the real thing itself.

<comment><USER74> > which is how my body tells me that what I just ate/drank contains an > artificial ingredient

This guy is the solution to all our product testing problems!

<comment><USER49> Nope!

That guy, _moi_ , is his own solution to product testing.

<comment><USER75> Between two identical experimenters, each having the same harmless test material, the one participating as a willing guinea pig is much more likely to realize subtle effects compared to the one that does not.

A carefully selected variety of Aloe is my only current gardening effort. The fresh gel of the living plant has benefits to the skin not possessed by lesser forms. Commercial formulations are (at the least) thousands of years less advanced than the natural plant.</comment></comment></comment></comment>