The Stupidest Answer In The World - <AUTHOR> http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2008/10/the-stupidest-q.html <comment><USER2> Tangentially, I find myself in the mainstream about Twitter. I tried it for a few weeks and couldn't figure out what it was for, what was _actionable_ (my favourite word from my go-go thirties) about it. It felt like Facebook status updates with wimpy group chat on a quad short espresso.

Which made me feel old. Whenever throngs of people love something and I can't figure out what it's for, I immediately think of mainframe programmers sking what on Earth anyone would ever want to do with an 8 bit microprocessor, a couple of K of memory, and a paper tape reader.

<comment><USER3> _Which made me feel old._

This is the funny thing though: the majority of people out there _are all older than us!_

I'm the last of the gen xers, (75) and I can still say that. With something like twitter that needs to be popular to stay alive; if my initial reaction is "I feel old because I don't get it", that's not a good sign.

<comment><USER4> It's not a bad sign either though, because time spent online is almost inversely proportional to age. If you appeal to the younger half of the online population, you're still only losing maybe 1/4 of the audience.

<comment><USER3> Except that retirees are the largest growing segment of internet users... and the boomers haven't really retired yet, and are more familiar with computers than those who barely used them at work.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't matter. There were enough people on the internet 3 years ago for a product to be wildly successful. Even if 0 of the older people use Twitter, their potential audience is more than large enough.

A product doesn't have to appeal to 100% of the population to be successful. It does to be Coke or McDonald's or Google successful, but you can still make a shit ton of money by only appealing to 50%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _It is not the stupidest question in the world. It's a terribly important question. But I don't think it's the most important question facing Twitter right now. Twitter has yet to cross the chasm to mainstream usage. It's not immediately obvious to anyone why they should use Twitter_

See this is why I have a problem with the "get big and everything else will happen" philosophy that so many in the valley share: It's twisted logic.

If a startup can't make money now, then yes, it's possible that they might make money later. That's sounds more like trying to win the lottery twice though. Odds are it won't happen. In fact, Google is the _only_ time it's happened that I can think of off hand.

Now, if a startup can turn a profit from the start (or soon enough) then it is pretty much guaranteed to continue making that profit no matter how big it is. In fact, _it doesn't even need to get bigger_. It can if it chooses, but it doesn't have to.

Why do people continue to focus on the bubble mentality of trying to profit from popularity alone? Even when it works, it isn't sustainable.

<comment><USER5> Although I agree with you, I actually just got kinda owned in a similar argument/conversation:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=334545>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow - cheers to Fred for admitting his mistake. It takes balls to do this, let alone blog about it to thousands of people.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm dead- _blazé_ about the Twitter "controversies". It's like an endless stream of always the _same_ praises and complaints, questions and answers, positive and negative outlooks. Can we please move on?

</comment><comment><USER7> It's interesting that anecdotes about Obama have entered into the popular consciousness as parables in the same way that was once reserved for stories of Jesus or Buddha.

<comment><USER5> Uh oh - I hope he doesn't make it 2 out of 3 for false prophets. Or is it 3 out of 3 or 0 out of 3.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain what was so stupid about his answer? I don't understand.

<comment><USER9> It implies that he's not even looking for a way to make money, as well as sounding rather arrogant ("Well, we're obviously going to be the next google whether we try or not")</comment></comment>


Ends, Means, and Antitrust - <AUTHOR> https://stratechery.com/2017/ends-means-and-antitrust/ <comment><USER3> > The United States and European Union have, at least since the Reagan > Administration, differed on this point: the U.S. is primarily concerned with > consumer welfare [...] The European Commission, on the other hand, is > explicitly focused on competition

What is missing here is that the US has diverged from a previously common interpretation. Between roughly 1890 (Sherman Act) and 1982 (Reagan administration antitrust guidelines) the US authorities were mainly concerned with competition too (breakup of Standard Oil: 1911; breakup of Bell System: 1984). As late as 2001 Microsoft had a serious brush with antitrust law for anticompetitive practices [1]. There's a case to be made that the US is currently just going through a lapse in enforcement.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

<comment><USER4> "Between roughly 1890 (Sherman Act) and 1982 (Reagan administration antitrust guidelines) the US authorities were mainly concerned with competition too (breakup of Standard Oil: 1911; breakup of Bell System: 1984)."

This is the wrong timeline. The spectrum shifted towards consumer welfare very early on (right after standard oil), because they found the legal definitions in the sherman act too broad to be useful (every contract is a restraint of trade).

If you read the bell cases, etc that you cite, they were already focused on consumer welfare.

This is because otherwise the bounds of antitrust are limitless. Every competition between businesses harms a business :)

Also note: The AT&T case was settled. The _original_ case was filed in 1949, not 1984. You can see this in the 1982 settlement, which is a modification of the final judgment from 1956: [http://web.archive.org/web/20060830041121/http://members.cox...](http://web.archive.org/web/20060830041121/http://members.cox.net/hwilkerson/documents/AT&T_Consent_Decree.pdf)

(a lot of folks are not aware of the 1949 case, it seems :P)

<comment><USER3> > The spectrum shifted towards consumer welfare very early on

You seem unaware that Bork's _Antitrust Paradox_ only came out in 1978 [1]. Yes, it's not surprising that its views would appear in cases from the '80s. Here's prof. Orbach in the _Washington Post_ on Bork's influence [2]:

> Antitrust was defined by Robert Bork. I cannot overstate his influence. > [...] Antitrust [in 1960] was about protecting small businesses. [Bork] > built a full framework about how antitrust should be more about economic > efficiency than about helping small businesses. [...] He wrote a sentence: > Congress enacted the Sherman act [ed - the main antitrust act] as a > "consumer welfare prescription." The Supreme Court adopted that sentence in > 1979. That is the stated goal in antitrust today. It is a big deal. A huge > deal. In antitrust, it's operational. Robert Bork defined it.

> In antitrust, antimonopoly law, it is easy to think about why big is bad. > The view is, "Big businesses are bad. We should protect small businesses. We > should not have big businesses." So that's what happened in the history of > the Sherman Act, between 1880 and 1960.

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

[2] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/12/20/antit...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2012/12/20/antitrust- was-defined-by-robert-bork-i-cannot-overstate-his- influence/?utm_term=.d89d3fa384d6)

<comment><USER4> "ou seem unaware that Bork's Antitrust Paradox only came out in 1978 [1]"

I'm quite aware.

" Antitrust [in 1960] was about protecting small businesses."

Citation?

I gave you a case from the late 40's that was about protecting consumer welfare.

You give me a news article about a law professor who loved robert bork's work?

Look, Bork was influential for sure.

I can and have cited you cases where, over a short period of time, the supreme court decided that the sherman act was unworkable (see all the various changes around resale price maintenance, over the years as well), and started pushing towards other theories for antitrust.

Contrary to these claims, it's not "Bork wrote a book, things changed overnight". That's just a history rewrite.

Bork was the final nail in the coffin.

<comment><USER3> > Citation?

How about Bork himself in 1963 [1]:

> The incipiency theory starts from the idea that it is possible to nip > restraints of trade and monopolies in the bud before they blossom to Sherman > Act proportions. It underlies the Clayton Act, the Robinson-Patman Act, and > the Federal Trade Commission Act. [...] The courts have used the incipiency > notion as a license for almost unlimited extrapolation, reasoning from any > trend toward concentration in an industry that there is an incipient > lessening of competition. [...] In case after case the FTC, for example, > nails down its finding that competition is injured with the testimony of > competitors of the respondent that his activities and aggressiveness may or > have cost them sales. [...] When the head of the Antitrust Division or the > FTC reports to a congressional committee, protocol requires that he wear a > suitable number of bloody scalps of businessmen at his belt.

[1] [https://www.scribd.com/document/117500897/The-Crisis-in- Anti...](https://www.scribd.com/document/117500897/The-Crisis-in-Antitrust)

<comment><USER4> Err, Bork was advocating for his view, so i'm not sure he's a good source?

Look, your argument amounts to:

For 60+ years, between 1920 and 1982, there was literally no legal theory development in antitrust. No other cases, no thoughts by anyone, no articles. Then suddenly, Bork came on the scene and redefined everything overnight!

Certainly that would have made my antitrust law classes a _lot_ shorter, but i don't think it's reality :)

Let me try a different source for you

Here's what one of the authors of the act (Senator Hoar) had to say about it: ""... [a person] who merely by superior skill and intelligence...got the whole business because nobody could do it as well as he could was not a monopolist..(but was if) it involved something like the use of means which made it impossible for other persons to engage in fair competition.""

Oh look, a consumer welfare argument.

Also, here's another case from the supreme court in _1940_ (Apex Hosiery Co. v. Leader 310 U. S. 469) "The goal [of the sherman act] was to prevent restraints of free competition in business and commercial transactions which tended to restrict production, raise prices, or otherwise control the market _to the detriment of purchasers or consumers of goods and services_ , all of which had come to be regarded as a special form of public injury."

(emph mine). A very clear consumer welfare argument. They also cite supreme court cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author fails to include and rebut a crucial point in the EU commision's original article.

He equates the monopolistic wrongdoing with showing adds. The EU instead says that it was Google showing adds for its own service.

\- First, Google dominated search and not shopping.

\- Then, Google used search to unfairly compete with shopping _by creating its own service_.

The author leaves this point out, and I think it was central to the EU's decision.

If some other company had created a comparison shopping service, and then paid Google to show its service inside Google search results, this would be more similar to the circumstances of the article's argument.

<comment><USER6> He did address this by simply stating the fact there is no actual "Google Shopping", it's just a term, like "Google Hotels" or "Google Whatever".

In the end "Google Shopping" is just an Ad Block with a nomenclature of "Google Shopping. They could simply remove this term and put the same ads for Adidas shoes at the top of search results just like do for a myriad of other products and search categories; would that be a problem?

I understand that Google probably has a different engineering platform to present shopping ads/results as opposed to webpages, but is this really any different from other kinds of scraping they perform? They also show song lyrics and snippets from Wikipedia for example. They're scraping the web and collating that info for users to search for.

I think the author made a good case, good read.

<comment><USER7> One important point for everyone to keep in mind, whenever you read an article about some years-long competition investigation, is that it is talking about conduct that happened in the past. In this case, by internet standards, we're talking about conduct that happened a long, long time ago (but, in this galaxy).

When Google shopping was introduced it was a search product, actually, and was not "just an ad." It only became an ad in 2012: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid_listings)

<comment><USER8> Aha, thank you. In which case, I think the decision applies fine to the pre-2012 form and the article's thesis applies fine to the post-2012 form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Take travel sites: why shouldn't Priceline sue Google for featuring ads for > hotel booking sites above its own results?

If they're treating people equally, then that's not a problem. Priceline can buy adverts like anyone else.

> Why should Google be able to make any money at all?

Google should make more money by being _better_ at hotel bookings and _better_ at product aggregation and _better_ at each of their other offerings. They shouldn't make money purely because people already use google and google put their (possibly sub-par) offerings right at the top. This would make it much harder for anyone else in the field to come in and offer a better thing, because a high proportion of people will never go down even lower on the first page of results.

<comment><USER10> A very good example of this is Google Maps vs. Here Maps.

I live in a city where Google Maps has, until one month ago, had basically no traffic data, satellite imagery was from 2004, and even today still supports no transit.

Here maps has up-to-date imagery of highest quality, has traffic and transit data.

Yet, many people use Google Maps, even if that provides worse results, sends them on roads that don't exist anymore, etc.

When one recommends they switch, they say "but Google Maps is preinstalled, installing Here Maps would be so much effort, and it doesn't work with Ok Google".

This is literally the effect shown IRL.

<comment><USER11> That's exactly the EU case agains Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a refreshingly well-reasoned article, in that it shows the actual trade-offs involved, considers both sides to be legitimate, and tries to work with each sides' strongest argument.

Compare and contrast with yesterday's discussions here, which were littered with "These EU bureaucrats are STEALING!1! from US companies" and (fewer) "Google is greatest danger since the dinosaur's extinction and needs to be broken up"

</comment><comment><USER7> Re-posting this as a top-level comment:

The author's point about how Google Shopping is an ad is really not worthwhile. When Google introduced shopping it was a search product, not an ad. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Shopping#Change_to_paid_listings)

The investigation was concerned with Google's introduction and promotion of Google Shopping in its search results, not with whether it's a problem for Google to show product listing ads.

<comment><USER13> So would this mean that showing image results in Google's main search page is also against EU rules, since "Google Images" (images.google.com) is also a "search product" that Google is promoting over its competitors like Bing (which also offers image search capabilities)?

<comment><USER11> Why not. Google Search is financing and providing users to Google Map. How could you be competitive in the map market when you have a giant with limitless ressource ? See street view, how could you finance that ? WHat is the commercial viability of such a product ?

<comment><USER14> Why should we consider a separate "map market"? For consumers, there might just be an "information market. Sometimes an image would be the right form of information; sometimes a map; sometimes a video etc.

Trying to cleave out different verticals from a search engine would be a major disadvantage to consumers.

<comment><USER10> I've written this in another comment before, but it explains why we should separate them:

> I live in a city where Google Maps has, until one month ago, had basically > no traffic data, satellite imagery was from 2004, and even today still > supports no transit.

> Here maps has up-to-date imagery of highest quality, has traffic and transit > data.

> Yet, many people use Google Maps, even if that provides worse results, sends > them on roads that don't exist anymore, etc.

> When one recommends they switch, they say "but Google Maps is preinstalled, > installing Here Maps would be so much effort, and it doesn't work with Ok > Google".

Do you think this is an advantage to consumers, that they end up with the worse product?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> awinter-py Surprised nobody has interpreted search engine spidering bandwidth as a form of public good. There's a limit to the amount of spidering that can happen. It's okay if 10 or a 100 companies do it, but if everyone had to do it, the web's access pattern would be exponential and overwhelming.

There's a class of consumer who is technically willing and able to operate their own spider but accepts the lesser convenience of a web search because they recognize it would take down the internet if everyone spidered all the time.

Also surprised the article doesn't mention omnibar search. By defaulting this to G, G is 'abusing' browser dominance to reinforce search dominance.

<comment><USER15> > _" the web's access pattern would be exponential and overwhelming."_

It might well be overwhelming, but it wouldn't be exponential. There are a maximum of N choose 2 connections between N nodes. That number only grows quadratically as N increases, while exponential growth would outstrip quadratic, cubic or _any_ polynomial growth for large values of N.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I object to using the term "virtuous cycle" to describe positive feedback. Actually I object to the term "positive feedback" when talking to non- engineers because it can be misconstrued as imposing a judgement on it. But calling it virtuous? I suppose from the business point of view it's a really good thing. "reinforcing cycle" IMHO is more accurate.

<comment><USER17> I hate the terms "virtuous cycle" and "vicious cycle" with passion. Just name the damn things correctly (positive/negative feedback loop), or at least refer to their behaviour (reinforcing / dampening).

And in general, I think basics of feedback loops should be taught in primary school. I am scared by the fact so many regular people don't comprehend these basic concepts (which is often evident in discussions, when you see people missing _obvious_ consequences of their ideas because they don't get the concept of feedback).

<comment><USER18> "Virtuous" and "vicious" cycles both refer to positive feedback, and differ only in value judgement they imply, so arguably the value judgement is the entire point of using these terms. I can't think of a common use term for negative feedback off the top of my head.

<comment><USER19> > I can't think of a common use term for negative feedback off the top of my > head.

"self-defeating"?

<comment><USER20> And "self-limiting", maybe, for a "bad" value judgement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is the really problematic assumption the EU made:

*'Comparison shopping services' are fundamentally different from general purpose search engines.

If we take the Comission's POV, yes Google entered a new market and used their dominant position in an existing market to unfairly compete, breaking anti trust law (though wether that's for the benefit of the consumer or not is a fair question as well).

But I don't think they are different markets. If when you search for a web page google shows you the best result, why shouldn't it search for the best/cheapest online retailer? It's searching for the most relevant 'thing' on both cases.

<comment><USER17> I'm inclined to agree, at least a bit. They might be reasonably different markets _now_ , but they _should not be_ in the future.

I think all the following searches:

      - web search for "location X"
      - map search for "location X"
      - current weather in location X
      - businesses of type Y near location X
      - cheapest offers for item Z near location X

are all examples of something conceptually the same. I want to be able to make those queries over one interface, and with minimum (i.e. zero) steps between query results and actual information I'm looking for.

As it is, when I search for "cheapest item Z near X", getting links to price comparison services makes about as much sense as if I googled for something and the results were links to search results of Bing, Yahoo and DDG.

\--

I appreciate how today those markets may seem different, and I also don't want to see one company dominating most on-line activity, but I also want _more integration and interoperability_. There needs to be a balance here.

<comment><USER22> > I want to be able to make those queries over one interface, and with minimum > (i.e. zero) steps between query results and actual information I'm looking > for.

Especially with computers, why would that require that they are a single product?

It should be technically outright trivial to have specialized search providers that feed into a common user interface, where earch provider can be swapped out as you prefer.

Isn't that a bit like saying that you don't want ten kinds of wall sockets in your house, therefore, your electricity should be supplied by the company that sells you all your appliances, so you only need to have one type of sockets?

<comment><USER17> This has been happening for the past two days in those Google/EU threads. Please help me.

How does "and I also don't want to see one company dominating most on-line activity, but I also want more integration and interoperability" imply that I _want_ one company to handle all of this?

I try to explicitly state in each comment that I _don 't_ want that one- company solution. In fact, I very much want what you described - <USER2> interoperability through standardization, not through monopoly. Apparently though my comments aren't clear, given that I've been get exactly the same response for days now. Surely I must be making them hard to read somehow.

Could anyone help me discover what's wrong with that particular comment, and in general in what way my comments could be improved so that they more clearly transmit my intent?

<comment><USER22> Hehe, yeah, your comment felt a bit ambiguous.

> They might be reasonably different markets now, but they should not be in > the future.

I think that's what made me think you thought it needed to be a one-company solution.

Manufacturers of vacuum cleaners and computers are not in the same market, in the sense that is relevant here, even though both plug into a wall socket. A market is not defined by a common interface, but by whether or not you compete for the same customers. A flight search service is as much a substitute for a mobile phone price comparison service as a vacuum cleaner is for a computer, therefore, those products are not in competition, therefore, they are not in the same market, they are merely technically in some ways similar products with partially overlapping interfaces.

<comment><USER17> Thanks. The definition of "the same market" you provided sounds very sensible, and so I retract my belief that those searches should be "the same market" (which is what is relevant to tge EU ruling). I still think they fit the same interface, in the "wall socket" sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > The second reason is even more problematic: "Google Shopping" is not actual > a search product

[https://www.google.com/shopping](https://www.google.com/shopping)

</comment><comment><USER24> I disagree with some of the arguments but reach a similar conclusion:

Google is a monopoly, is a bad actor and this ruling is not a useful solution.

I think the government needs to break up the cable & telco rent companies. Conversely, I blame the market for empowering Google to this level and the market needs to fix it or accept the tradeoffs. I think the price is too high, but I'm in the minority of DuckDuckGo users who limit chrome / gservice usage. Even I touch some part of it daily as it is nearly impossible not to. I'm not as dogmatic as RMS so using some useful parts sometimes is fine, but the issue is almost all core services are being leveraged by almost everyone all the time and that is dangerous if simply begause it's a single failure point

</comment><comment><USER25> "The United States and European Union have, at least since the Reagan Administration, differed on this point: the U.S. is primarily concerned with consumer welfare, and the primary proxy is price. In other words, as long as prices do not increase — or even better, decrease — there is, by definition, no illegal behavior."

Giving it away for free was precisely the definition of illegal behavior last time:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp).

<comment><USER26> Yes, but you'll note that those arguments did not ultimately hold water on appeal, Microsoft was never broken up, and the case was eventually settled.

<comment><USER25> That's not what happened at all:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Corp.#Appeal)

Microsoft not being broken up wasn't about them not being guilty. It was about prosecution (under the new GWB administration) seeking a lesser penalty.

<comment><USER26> Actually, it was about courts deciding the liability scope was too wide and could harm innovation, as per your linked source.

"Although the D.C. Circuit found that it was possible to examine high-tech industries with traditional antitrust analysis, the court announced a new and permissive liability rule that repudiated the Supreme Court's dominant rule of per se illegality for tie-ins, due to the court's concern for the dynamic effects that a per se rule would have on innovation."

Ergo, the tie-ins were found to have happened by point of fact but not found to be illegal by re-interpretation by the courts of the illegality of tie-ins. The Justice Department then reached a settlement (the win on their side being that they wouldn't have wasted the years of prosecution).

This goes a way towards explaining why there hasn't been a similar Microsoft- scale antitrust case since the Microsoft case in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Basically, the issue here is comparable to Net Neutrality. Google Search is a utility.

It treats most sites the same, but provides an advantage for some that cooperate with it or are owned by it, just like Zero Rating happens in the ISP situation.

And, just like in the ISP situation, users (at least in the EU) can easily switch at basically zero cost (in fact, switching ISPs actually gives users a bonus usually, many ISPs give you actual cash for switching to them).

Now, the question is why Google should be able to change the ordering in the search. I think they shouldn't.

What should be done is that Google replaces, or expands, the existing search result for Google Shopping, for example, with the rich content they used to show at top.

Same with all other of their content.

In a next step, they should allow competitors via an API to also provide embedded content. A user can then scroll through the search results, and below the amazon result is a horizontally scrolling list of results from Amazon, the Google Maps and the Here Maps results both have miniature maps, etc.

This allows rich content, easier finding of results, it ensures a fair market, and it ensures that users can easier find out where Google's content is sourced from (very often the Google Knowledge Graph rich text snippets quote wikipedia without attribution)

This is, basically, just applying the principles of Net Neutrality to Google.

<comment><USER27> > Now, the question is why Google should be able to change the ordering in the > search. I think they shouldn't.

This is such an odd argument. It assumes that search is a largely solved problem.

But search is not solved, and the web (and human knowledge) is an evolving corpus.

> A user can then scroll through the search results, and below the amazon > result is a horizontally scrolling list of results from Amazon, the Google > Maps and the Here Maps results both have miniature maps, etc.

And this is even weirder. Who actually wants this?

<comment><USER10> > This is such an odd argument. It assumes that search is a largely solved > problem.

No, it's pretty simple. The search ordering algorithm should get as inputs only your query, and the linked page.

Currently, Google manually special-cases a handful of pages. That should simply end.

> And this is even weirder. Who actually wants this?

As I explained in another comment, I live in a city where Here Maps is vastly superior to Google Maps (Google Maps has maps material from ~2009, and, until 2 weeks ago, their satellite imagery was from 2004, so they frequently route you to non-existing roads, or so on, and they have no transit integration and bad traffic data, while Here Maps has data for roads and satellite from this week, and has transit integration), yet everyone uses Google Maps, simply because it is already preinstalled and shows up first in Google Search, despite worse results.

So, for at least a city of 280k people, Here Maps should probably show first. Or at least be equally integrated as Google Maps is.

Because currently the worse product is winning just because it is bundled.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder why the EC would not want a good enough solution where Google Shopping results will not take more than one row and comparison shopping services would appear on at least page two (or maybe even page one)?

</comment><comment><USER29> I think we'll see Google integrate their product search results into the main web search results.</comment>


Dropbox (YC S07): Simple Tasks for Extra Space (768MB total) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/free <comment><USER2> I work at Dropbox and came up with this page. Thanks for throwing confounding variables in this soft launch experiment, Hacker News.

A few points that might interest yall:

1\. We won't publish to facebook or twitter without your explicit permission.

2\. We ask for information about your facebook profile because it will make Dropbox better. It's mainly about learning about our users without annoying surveys. We won't mandate facebook connect on signup so this is likely going to be the main path in the near term for people to facebook connect. Facebook auth also makes it really easy to post to facebook when you want to; the user experience is better.

3\. Yes, runjake is right. Please do subscribe if you love Dropbox. I work here, so I set my capacity to 5TB and symlink everything important on my system (Desktop, Documents, etc) to Dropbox. The experience of coming to a home computer and having the stuff I was working on just appear is nothing less than magical. This is enabled by having more than a few gigs of storage.

4\. If you want terabytes of storage, come work here. It is the best tech company in the valley: <http://www.dropbox.com/jobs>

Ask me anything.

<comment><USER3> Can I just pay for Terabytes of storage? No offense, but I like the job I have.

<comment><USER2> If you don't want a job, we also accept payment in the form of first borns and souls.

Like I mentioned elsewhere, there is a lot of work to do on different pricing plans.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's a more simple task I was able to perform for 50GB of space:

1.) Sign up for a $9 50GB membership.

2.) Go through their wizard to set up a recurring $9 Paypal payment.

3.) There is no step 3.

Time spent: 3 minutes

Karma spent: You support a great company that doesn't screw you over.

<comment><USER5> Very true. I only wish they had some smaller price steps; I can't commit to $10/mo. I'd love to give them money if I could buy, say, 25GB for $5 or 10 for $2.50

<comment><USER6> I totally agree. I'm sure that it would screw with their pricing, but I really just dont need 50GB, and can get by with the 3GB that I have now. Sure I'd like a little more (and frankly, would happily pay $5/mo for what I have now), but I just dont have enough stuff that I'd like to sync to fill up that $10/mo bucket. They did used to have some smaller plans, so they must have got rid of them for a good reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I trust Dropbox immensely. I clicked all of those buttons without really reading the specifics.

1\. I trust that they're not doing anything scummy or underhanded. My life's on Dropbox, and they're not going to do anything to reduce that level of trust.

2\. If I ended up accidentally Tweeting that I love Dropbox, that wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

This said, the messaging was very clear, and everything behaved as expected. Great work as usual, guys.

</comment><comment><USER8> _Tell us why you love Dropbox_ = 128 MB.

And to think of all the time and wasted energy we spent early on trying to get user feedback. Incentives are a wonderful thing!

<comment><USER2> It has been fun to watch this page: <http://twitter.com/#!/search/i%20love%20dropbox>

<comment><USER9> I noticed early Monday that lots of my friends were sharing their love for Dropbox on Twitter. Initially, I figured it was just impromptu declarations of love for the service. It wasn't until later that I discovered this page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love Dropbox from a usability point of view, but unfortunately the missing encryption is the main reason why it's not an option for me right now. I'd like to also be able to backup sensitive data, but I don't trust the Dropbox employees with access to my data.

Instead, I'm currently using Wuala which encrypts the data diretly on the client. An alternative to Wuala seems to be SpiderOak, which also features client side encryption (but I didn't try this one yet).

<comment><USER11> I just store a TrueCrypt container on my Dropbox. It's a little clunky if you need to dismount/mount it a lot, but if your system is on 24/7 then it isn't really noticeable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The brilliant thing about all of the free space that Dropbox "gives away" is that most people who get it (90%? more?) don't actually use it.

I'm up to 4.9GB of free space, but I'm only using 7.6%, so I'm well under 2GB. And I would venture to guess that I'musing more space than the average free user.

So their cost isn't even the pretty-low cost of (cost to store 128MB * the number of people who do the task). It's the tiny cost of (cost to store 128MB * the number of people who do the task * percentage of those people that actually use the space).

<comment><USER10> Even less space is required. Dropbox stores duplicate files only once. So if many users store the same files the cost per user is practically zero.

That's also the reason why uploads are so fast. If a file is already on the server it isn't uploaded again.

<comment><USER13> Is it really shared between accounts? So for example if I knew someone with Dropbox had a file that could have one of several contents and I wanted to know which of those contents they had I could try uploading the different versions and see which one uploaded faster?

A little far fetched maybe, but I'm sure there's a way to exploit something somewhere using that....

<comment><USER10> Yes - this should work.

There are even other ways how you might be able to exploit this. I don't exactly know how Dropbox verifies if your file is already on the server. But if they only check a hash of the file it might be sufficient to know the hash of any file stored on Dropbox to gain access to the full file.

Of course, this is just a speculation and there might be more security precautions in place. Such as, e.g., sending the client various challenges about the hashes of particular byte ranges.

In addition, also the copyright implications of this are interesting. Consider that you've shared a directory with your friends and that you upload some copyrighted movie (that is already on their servers and not really uploaded). Are you then the one liable for the damages (if sued), or is the original (first) uploader of the file liable?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So what does "Connect your Twitter account to Dropbox" actually mean?

They're asking for read/write permission, which makes me wonder if it's going to post every time I change a file or something. No thanks.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I'm sorry but I'm not clicking "Connect your Twitter account" without telling me EXACTLY what will happen afterwards.

<comment><USER16> so you're happy to share your personal files with dropbox, but not your twitter account? Odd priorities. Not saying they're wrong priorities, but just not what I'd expect.

<comment><USER17> It's a lot harder to automate abuse of a random person's semistructured data without metadata than it is to automate abuse of a random person's twitter account. Sure, it's also more lucrative, but I wouldn't worry about it for a couple more years.

<comment><USER16> I don't really know what you mean.

You're right. But I don't see how that's relevant. My point was that people have a choice "I trust dropbox not to abuse my personal files" and they draw the line at their _twitter account_?!? This I find odd. I don't see how your comment makes it less odd.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm sorry, your settings for facebook are WAY over the top! Common, you want to be able to access my data anytime? What are you guys planning to do? Explain why you are asking for this. A lot of people did, I'm sure, but this is way fishy for me. I do trust dropbox (and I'm a paid user, so you have my credit card) but it is a request for access for something you do not use.

Why? Please explain!

<comment><USER2> We figured there wasn't much reason to restrict what we ask for. I'd like to verify that with data and run a test.

Everything we asked for has a hypothetical future purpose or a present value as an implicit user survey. We could, for example, make the photos upload experience to facebook much better. That requires posting photos and also reading photos to understand how much our users might care about the feature.

We could just ask for that access later, but this is easier. Users are getting something in exchange, so for most I'd bet it is a fair trade: capacity boost for data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is this a marketing trick of some sort? I'm getting a login form and that's it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, sorry—that's my fault. I didn't check if you could access the page when not logged in.

Basically they offer a number of options to get some extra free space for their service. Giving them some feedback, linking your Twitter and/or Facebook accounts, and posting about why you "love Dropbox" on your Twitter / Facebook account once authorised.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was a clever way of incentivising people to authorise Dropbox to access their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

I don't suppose I would normally have posted to my Facebook wall about Dropbox, nor my Twitter account, but now I have.

Presumably the cost to Dropbox is quite minimal (768MB extra free space in total). It's made me think about ways in which we could offer similar incentives at $dayjob.

<comment><USER2> Many people post to facebook & twitter from here: <https://www.dropbox.com/referrals>

Comparing these two pages is really interesting in the different prompts to post and the different results. We'll integrate the two pages more deeply soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not sure the exact mechanics behind it, but it's pretty awesome to see the growl notification of my space being increased almost immediately after clicking the authorization buttons on this page. Just fits right in with Dropbox being an incredible service.

</comment><comment><USER21> "I love Dropbox because I'm getting 128MB of space added to my account if I say this."

</comment><comment><USER22> Authorized, followed @dropbox, told them why I loved it, posted about it & de- authorized Twitter, easiest 512mb I made under 30 seconds.

Sidenote to Dropbox: Buy a SSL certificate that supports dropbox.com without the www.

</comment><comment><USER23> 256mb for logging on to facebook? PFFFT that's 5Gb minimum. I'm 2 months without login in to Facebook now and this isn't enough to kill my downtime.

Increase the incentive ;p

</comment><comment><USER24> I just received an email from someone I barely knew, to use Dropbox. He had no business sending me this email, and by sending it on his behalf you put yourself and him in this situation where both of you engage in sending SPAM.

I stopped short of clicking the "report spam" button, but it cost you some amount of goodwill, so you lose either way. I will be a lot less likely now to genuinely recommend your app to my friends.

</comment><comment><USER25> Going to be another person to chime in to say Dropbox is awesome. I use it for passing podcast recordings back and forth with my cohost (while we're editing), as well as hosting and backing up arbitrary photos, HTML, and presentations. I still have plenty of free space (thanks to awesome stuff like this, and the 2x referrals for students), but when I hit my cap I'll have no qualms about paying.

</comment><comment><USER26> If anything, Dropbox isn't thinking big enough. They really need to start thinking about how to provide a ubiquitous, multi-platform, private, cloud filesystem. Stop encouraging people to "back up" their files, and start using encouraging people to store the primary copy of all their files on Dropbox.

On Windows, Dropbox shows up as "My Documents/My Dropbox". When really "My Documents" should be the dropbox.

<comment><USER27> Having the option to set your "My Documents" folder to be your DropBox folder (without resorting to symlinks or toher trickery) might be a cool option to have, but IMHO defaulting to sharing your "My Documents" folder would be _highly_ intrusive and rather evil. Very un-dropbox like.

One of the things I love about Dropbox is that they've always seemed to be very straight forward and above board. They _feel_ trustable.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Can someone who knows more about Facebook apps and their API than I do tell me what a company would want with permission to "Access my data any time" and "Access my photos and videos"?

<comment><USER28> Specifically regarding "Access my data any time" -- Facebook normally issues applications short-lived "access tokens" when someone uses Facebook Connect. The idea that that application can then access the data that you give it permission to during your session with that application.

The "Access my data any time" permission gives the application a long-lasting (nearly indefinite) "access token" that the application can store and user to interact with your Facebook account at a later time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Maybe it was just me, but I totally didn't "get it" at first that these were sort of steps that build on each other and should be done in order.

So it seemed really strange to me that I had to connect my twitter account before I could follow @dropbox, and the error message you get when you click on the follow one before the auth one is not very descriptive.

Otherwise, really cool offer, thanks guys.

<comment><USER2> That is actually an error. Clicking follow should do the twitter auth and give you both bonuses. Thanks for pointing it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Maybe it would be better if you could change the message before tweeting/posting to FB. I wrote something to DB that I didn't want to tweet. So I didn't do the last 2 steps, which were presumably the most important ones. I realize that not being able to change the message, is to try and ensure that the tweet is really about loving Dropbox.

<comment><USER2> You can edit the message by clicking on the little pen icon next to the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The feature I need most. From the IPhone app, I would like to be able to select a file and email the file to myself or someone else - not the link to the file. Dropbox is blocked at work but sometimes I really need to get an important file from there. I'm a paying susbcriber. Keep up the good work!

</comment><comment><USER32> Seems to me that Dropbox will have a pretty good asset here a la rapleaf. If they get enough people to voluntarily give them their twitter and facebook IDs, Dropbox will have a very accurate lookup service of email|facebook|twitter -- that's something a lot of companies are after these days.

<comment><USER2> Dropbox won't sell user data.

<comment><USER33> Currently.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> After authorizing with Twitter, I got redirected to an error page on the Dropbox site (Error (5xx)).

</comment><comment><USER35> A good test of a product is how many people are willing to give you a positive review to their friends/family/colleagutes/etc

Keep up the good work Dropbox, you ROCK!!

PS: Who could have thought that so much innovation could happen with something so seemingly small (an "online disk drive")

</comment><comment><USER36> This let me get rid of that dangling 256MB that had been lingering since I opened the account and got the first free 256MB. That has been bothering my OCD. Now I have an even 12GB.

</comment><comment><USER37> I love dropbox but giving it complete access to my facebook besides all my files is pretty much handing my "social life" and my "work life" to a single company.

<comment><USER10> Try Wuala or SpiderOak if you want a similar service that features client-side encryption (so the company offering the service can't read your data).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Any word on supporting encryption? It seems like aside from partial sync it is the only big thing you guys are missing...

</comment><comment><USER39> You guys at Dropbox rock at neat marketing gimmicks that make your users feel good about promoting the product.

</comment><comment><USER40> I've performed all the tasks, but I don't think I've gotten any extra space. :(

</comment><comment><USER41> I did all of them except the two Facebook ones. That was a bit too far for me.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is an amazing marketing strategy. Very simple and effective, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER43> That is some insane viral marketing, other companies should take note!

</comment><comment><USER44> I wish dropbox was opensource.

I would like to sync via my home server, not cloud.</comment>


The Primer Guide to Amiga Gaming (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.racketboy.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=36399&sid=6fa39e490469ec16b31bf3c47c3acffd <comment><USER2> That is a great article for both Amiga lovers and new people entering the scene! Thank you. Though the title could be modified to include year of [2012].

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah! You're right - I forgot to do that (although it looks like a Mod did it for me after the fact).

I've been a 64'er for decades but only just recently have dipped my toes into Amiga waters. I picked up a N.O.S. (never sold or used) A1200 - NTSC version - and am preparing to give it a couple of upgrades. Looking forward to playing around with it.

I found the Racketboy article immensely interesting (even though I didn't agree with all of it).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you want to experience some classic amiga, but don't want to fuss around with setting up an emulator, check out The Company's page. Most of the major hits are there and play on Windows machines without any fuss at all.

[http://thecompany.pl/](http://thecompany.pl/)

</comment><comment><USER4> "Amiga was years ahead of early 80s consoles"

"here are my favorite games from mid to late nineties"

</comment><comment><USER5> I love racket boy posts, i spent hours browsing them in the past.</comment>


Forecasts of genetic fate just got a lot more accurate - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610251/forecasts-of-genetic-fate-just-got-a-lot-more-accurate/?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_medium=social&utm_content=2018-02-28&utm_campaign=Technology+Review <comment><USER2> >Such predictions, at first hit-or-miss, are becoming more accurate. One test described last year can guess a person's height to within four centimeters, on the basis of 20,000 distinct DNA letters in a genome.

I find that comparison highly misleading, height was always a reasonably 'simple' trait with very high heritability that is (in our society) relatively uninfluenced by environment. Here's a 2009 paper showing that you can predict height reasonably by averaging the parents' height (the 'Victorian method'). [https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg20095](https://www.nature.com/articles/ejhg20095)

It's one of the few traits where you can do that well, so why would you use that as an example as to why genetics-based tests are getting better? All other phenotypes/traits are much more complex.

>When they built a predictor for coronary heart disease, for instance, Kathiresan's team discovered that the people it predicted to have the very highest risk, the top 2.5 percent, had four times the average chance of developing clogged arteries.

So what's the base risk? If the base risk is 0.0005% then a four times higher chance is still tiny.

I think it's this paper: [https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3914](https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3914) As the scientists correctly pointed out, they only looked at Europeans, so who knows how this fares with Asians or Africans (likely: not well). None of the odds ratios are above 1.1, most are around 1.05, not a very extreme change to me!

Why this matters: In countries like Australia, unlike Germany, there is no protection by the law from insurance companies who don't understand genetics. People can and have lost life insurances due to the results and questionable interpretations of genetic tests. I can only hope politicians don't read this article.

<comment><USER3> There's nothing misleading about it, nor does height have a uniquely high heritability You can also predict childrens' adult IQ and many many other traits to similar degrees based on mid-parent regression, because they are all genetically influenced.

The point of the height GWAS example is that because it is so very obviously, even to the naked eye of the layman, genetically influenced and objective (you can't argue height doesn't exist), it serves as a simple test. If GWASes can't predict height, they probably can't predict anything else. And this was exactly how height was used back in 2009 or so when the 'missing heritability' debate was still going: if all these traits are genetic and additive, why aren't the GWASes able to find anything for height (back then)? The answer turns out to simply be that there wasn't enough data and the linear model analyses were lousy. Now there is enough data and better algorithms are being applied, so as expected, height prediction works much much better.

> All other phenotypes/traits are much more complex.

No, not really. That sort of polygenicity is the norm. Look at, for example, Shi et al 2016 which attempts to model the distribution of effects & thus polygenicity of 30 human complex traits: [https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/01/14/035907](https://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/01/14/035907) . Height doesn't exactly pop out of any of the charts.

> So what's the base risk? If the base risk is 0.0005% then a four times > higher chance is still tiny.

...coronary artery disease should be quite obviously a higher base rate than 0.0005%. In any case, I believe the referenced study is Inouye et al 2018, in which case the extremized prediction is ~8% vs ~30% lifetime risk: [https://www.gwern.net/images/genetics/2018-inouye-cad- riskpr...](https://www.gwern.net/images/genetics/2018-inouye-cad- riskprediction.png)

> None of the odds ratios are above 1.1, most are around 1.05, not a very > extreme change to me!

It's the total that matters.

<comment><USER3> (Or look at Zhang et al 2017 comparing complex architectures: [http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/11/175406](http://www.biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/08/11/175406) )

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> C'mon people...this is not science, this is fortune telling. They are just doing a bunch of huge multiparameter curve fits, which are going to pick up signal from all sorts of things that have nothing to do with biology no matter how big their sample size is. These people will tell you with a straight face that a bunch of markers that just happen to be associated with "Northeast European ancestry" are also predictive of "Polka dancing ability," and their papers are shuffling and repackaging thousands upon thousands of nonsensical little tidbits exactly like that. Life experience doesn't just "average out." Do better.

<comment><USER5> Do you believe statistics aren't real math? I'm not sure why the complaint. Sure it may be inaccurate, but as others said, along questions like: "do you have X heritage?" are _already_ used as predictors for certain diseases. Genetic investigations just gets a little closer to the base truth, even if no one knows exactly which genes are doing which things.

<comment><USER6> I think GP is talking about Type I errors; where you go hunting for correlations that are p<0.05 in a data set.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So if I have a higher risk of heart disease than average, the advice will be to eat well and exercise. This is indistinguishable from the current guidelines without any genetic information.

No rational human being should consent to their genetic information being correlated with their IQ. This kind of data is a surefire way to convince otherwise entirely capable people that they should give up on life. It's abhorrent that anyone could conceive of trying to make money out of such a test.

<comment><USER8> Adhering to that basic advice is hard. Most people don't do it. I'd like to see a study if adherence to diet and exercise improves with genetic predictions.

For me, it would help to have a somewhat accurate prediction tied to my Fitbit that shows me right now the benefit of my hour cardio every day. My doctor could look at my physical activity vital signs pulled from wearables during my physical and give me personalized advice "You're going to die 6 years earlier because of your genes+your diet+your excercise with 20% margin." Is a lot more effective than "your diet and excercise suck, it will have some unquantified negative impact. But you might be fine, who knows."

<comment><USER9> You might want to sign up to be interested in our upcoming consumer product then ;D [https://www.genetrainer.com/signup/](https://www.genetrainer.com/signup/)

But the idea that you have absolute risk/gains from just genetics is a little unreasonable in the world of health rather than disease. For example you might have a predisposition for being incredibly stubborn and single minded (a mental trait) and utterly overcome any slightly weak cards nature dealt you for your physique. I think almost everyone can relate to that concept. We all put effort into our weaknesses most of the time, and then become highly proficient almost in what we are worst at innately! If you were told somehow your IQ is genetically average... so? IQ is a sliding scale constantly normalised as time goes on. Average IQ now is relatively much higher than a hundred years ago. The same is true with sporting achievement we have seen linear improvement in almost every sport since records started. At some point we will reach the limitation of sports science and brush up against genetic hard realities about physical muscle or oxygen transport. But not yet, and not for most people wishing to become fit and healthy. It's a genuine mix of genetics and what you are doing with your life, not some block thats genetic and then lifestyle both influence each other. You can live your life slightly abnormally to maximise your genetics. That function is very complex and personal. To talk of average risk change with genetics is almost to completely go against the whole point of the technology!

<comment><USER8> Thanks. I signed up for your beta and when check it out when I get an email seems interesting.

While I agree that genes aren't absolute, but 1) sometimes it's pretty close and 2) it doesn't need to be absolute if it results in improved rates of behavior change.

I'm familiar with a condition with really high penetrance. So while not absolute it's really high and almost a certainty. If computing could tell me how different risk factors or behaviors could offset or mitigate in understandable terms, that would be useful.

I've looked at sites and they all seem to reflect pretty blah guidance that isn't specific enough to be able to model personalized changes. But I expect that to change with all of these large genetic data sets and trials going on.

Being fit and healthy would be great for everyone. But 60% of the US isn't oversight or obese because they are stupid or lazy. It's just hard and made harder by a very disconnected feedback loop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love stuff like this. What we need now is a service that can estimate potential genetic outcomes when having children with a partner. This can finally open the door to making genetic information a standard in dating profiles.

Instead of choosing partners based on short term metrics and hoping for the best, people would be able to select with more confidence that their children with someone would come out the way they like.

To me this kind of tech is a great way to leave a dent in our universe. A world filled with smarter, stronger, and calmer children is a world that is eventually filled with smarter, stronger, and calmer adults, who then go on to have even better offspring and accelerate the evolution of mankind into a more civilized species. Perhaps then we can finally see the end of war and ridiculous squabbles over matter.

I personally may take a stab at creating a dating service like this if the pieces are all there someday, but I'd hope by then someone else will have beaten me to it.

<comment><USER11> _people would be able to select with more confidence that their children with someone would come out the way they like._

In other words, a eugenics profile.

Why stop at dating apps? You could put the data mortgage applications, insurance profiles, and more. I can imagine some of the conversations wouldn't be too far off this:

"I love you, but with a 22% chance of our kids having brown eyes and a 56% chance of high cholesterol, I have to end the relationship."

"The bank denied the application, because you're at a higher risk for a myocardial infarction by the age of 50."

"My car insurance rates will go through the roof if I put you on my policy because you're genetically predisposed to drive more aggressively than me."

<comment><USER12> But doesn't that eugenics happen naturally already? Like people of similar race, centers of interest, character or intelligence having a higher likelihood to form a couple and if DNA has anything to do with these characters, re-enforce these traits in their children? All that will change is that people will be aware of it.

<comment><USER13> No, not really. Eugenics includes ideas like forced sterilization of "undesirables." I doubt you're advocating for that.

You could argue that the opposite of what you describe is happening. health tech means that many selective forces like congenital diseases and birth defects have less of an effect. Online dating also seems to have increased interracial dating.

What _is_ happening and has scary ramifications for society is called assortative mating, which normally happens along educational and financial lines: [https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how- se...](https://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595972-how-sexual- equality-increases-gap-between-rich-and-poor-households-sex-brains-and)

<comment><USER14> > Online dating also seems to have increased interracial dating.

Anecdotal but as an Asian male this hasn't been the case for me at all. I posted my stats on HN a few months ago but from thousands of profile interactions I've had practically zero mutual interest from non-Asians. That's not an exaggeration either, I literally have a zero percent approval rate from white women, the majority ethnicity in my current city.

Every single Asian male friend that I know of didn't meet their non-Asian SO online dating, but met them in person from work/school/group events. Likewise, every non-Asian female I've ever dated I met offline first.

<comment><USER13> Since I'm also a straight Asian male, I can empathize: [https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-desirable- how...](https://www.npr.org/2018/01/09/575352051/least-desirable-how-racial- discrimination-plays-out-in-online-dating)

When I was dating, it seemed like anyone interested in me was either an otaku or a weeaboo :p

However, the data regarding interracial dating says otherwise: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609091/first-evidence- tha...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609091/first-evidence-that-online- dating-is-changing-the-nature-of-society/)

Note that the future may not have arrived in all places equally at the same time.

<comment><USER12> But a rise in inter-racial dating (from very low levels) is not incompatible with same-race dating still being dominant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm just not comfortable with this. Maybe I'm just getting old and maybe I have seen too many movies but I feel uneasy about our children and maybe us having another "grade" put on them.

I'd like to think this would be good so maybe some one will comment how this won't eventually go too far.

If altering starts happening which I would imagine it will at one point will be no longer human (and maybe that is a good thing).

Maybe at some point like in the Altered Carbon series it won't even matter and it will just go back to money (or maybe it will always be the case as the ultimate grade).

<comment><USER12> But these studies are merely going to give you a correlation. It will always be very hard to prove direct causality without experimentation, which on humans is not really feasible or without a full understanding of how the brain works, which we are still very far from.

The other thing is that the way I like to think of our brain is like a muscle. Our DNA drives much of the range in which we can develop our muscles, people born with a certain body type will never be an athlete, but even if you are born with good muscular capacity, a KFC-eating couch potato will never get to the olympics. What one does with this capacity matters a lot. Only science will tell but I like to think that the brains works in a similar way. Some kids will never be geniuses but there is still a wide range in which they can evolve so there is no reason to corner them in a box.

<comment><USER16> Even trained practitioners have trouble treating statistics like statistics. For example, the anecdotes in [http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28166019)

So the idea that people in general aren't going to mistreat and over-interpret the information gathered is a little ambitious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's my wild prediction for the 21st century: before 2050, China will replace its one child policy with a "you have to be at least this tall to ride" policy - only people with a genetic "score" of X or higher are allowed to reproduce. Every couple of years, X is bumped up, and the next generation is a bit smarter, prettier, and stronger than the previous one.

<comment><USER18> An ever smarter/stronger population could be a threat to China leadership.

<comment><USER19> Not if they are also bred to be more conflict-averse. Additionally, the leadership would probably get preferential access to genetic treatments and favorable mating partners.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is exciting and worrying in equal parts - can't wait for the Black Mirror episode.

<comment><USER21> Why wait?

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Great techno adventure book on this subject by [http://daniel- suarez.com/](http://daniel-suarez.com/) "Change Agent" This guy has more insightful ideas in his first 20 pages than most authors have their whole lives.

</comment><comment><USER23> Combine this with a private insurance based healthcare system and you've got the perfect storm.

<comment><USER24> Depends on how accessible this is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anybody know how specific/sensitive those polygenic tests could be ?

Answering my own question : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygenic_score](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygenic_score)

</comment><comment><USER26> I can predict things like height, too. And I don't need your DNA. You're 5'9". I'm right, within 4 inches, because 80% of everybody is within 4" of 5'9".

</comment><comment><USER12> Using DNA to predict the likelihood of a behavior or IQ is on a collision course with the ghost in the machine doctrine, which assumes our intelligence, character, what we become is solely or predominantly the result of our environment/culture/education. I wonder how far research in that field can go before it is decided that the potential outcome would be politically unacceptable.

<comment><USER27> Modern-day lysenkoism disappoints me. The blank slate model is thoroughly discredited, and people as eminent as Pinker have written extensively about it. While you can still find plenty of blank slate support in polite society, those espousing the idea are operating under something akin to religious faith.

<comment><USER28> I'm genuinely curious: where can I read the disproving of tabula rasa?

Are you meaning moral blank slate, intellectual blank slate or some combination of them?</comment></comment></comment>


Youtube videos down/not playing - <AUTHOR>

Youtube videos throwing up blank screen with a comment in the HTML body. Affects all browsers, all devices, multiple machines. <comment><USER2> Works for me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm.... not working from Delhi, India - tried on multiple networks.</comment></comment>


Republicans Consider Sharp Cut in 401(k) Contribution Limits - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/20/us/politics/republicans-tax-401-k.html <comment><USER2> Every day is a new horror.</comment>


Anyone want a bit of research/work doing? (3 months free) - <AUTHOR>

Hey guys, lurker here.
I am doing my masters dissertation this summer and looking for topics. I've got a host of things I want to do but I need to put them into context, 'just because its interesting' doesn't cut the mustard. Plus any code I wright the university owns copyright to so id rather keep my pet projects for my personal time.
If anyone is at a company that has a real world problem that they would like looking into but just don't have the time then perhaps I could help! I have 3+ full time months allocated to this so there should be some good results at the end.
I work in Java mainly and do a lot with databases (sql & NoSQL stuff), but I'm not one to say no to something I don't fully know yet.
If anyone is interested please drop me an e-mail.
Thanks
Henry. <comment><USER2> Hi Henry

My company offers internships in both the technical and business domain. We are a "hands-on" accelerator, meaning that we provide founders with cash ($100k-$1M usually), facilities & infrastructure, and staff (eng, dev, biz, admin). Our interns are part of the our in-house staff which in turn gets "loaned" to our portfolio projects as needed (e.g. founder has tech skills but needs biz co-founder and a bunch of developers - so we reach in-house to fill those jobs on day 1).

And yes, we solve real problems :)

More here: <http://bit.ly/eCb7FU>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, ill look into this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What sort of project are you looking for ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm always looking to get better at web development so anything to do with that really. Geo location, document storage & retrieval. Im very open so long as I get to learn.</comment></comment>


Idea guy needs help - <AUTHOR> Hi all. Does anyone have suggestions for what a "non-computer" person should do with promising ideas that need tech people for implementation (i.e. where and how to find them)? I'm an English major who's realized concepting, no matter how brilliant, cannot advance without code. <comment><USER2> Think of ideas as the spark of creativity. It's what gets the ball rolling. The next step is to get the customer development process happening. Steve Blanks has some great posts on this and a book. "No idea survives first contact with customers". But that feedback is critical in making sure you implement the idea that has a market.

Now for implementation. You really need to create a team and that team should include people who can implement the idea and others who can ship and support. Your role would be to evangalize, read some of Guy Kawasaki's stuff if that's a new concept for you.

If you are looking for investors, having an idea, early prospective customers and a prototype might be enough to get the ball rolling.

</comment><comment><USER3> Learn to Program.

More specifically, learn HTML5 and CSS3. You need to know enough to be able to prototype your concept.

Once you know enough to prototype the visual design, learn just enough javascript to make the front end behave the way it would for the end user.

My suggestion is to start with "Designing with Web Standards, 3rd Edition" by Jeffrey Zeldman, then move on to a more complete HTML/CSS book like the Head First book on the topic. Finally, pick up the book DOM Scripting by Jeremy Keith.

Ideas are worthless without execution. Being able to prototype and model how the app will work in the hands of users is the kind of execution you should be capable of to create a minimum viable product.

If you can do that and you can sell your vision, you should be able to attract a decent technical co-founder or at least one who can create your MVP.

</comment><comment><USER4> You can always get someone to help you out. Or you could hire someone.

BUT you NEED to have your own skin in the game. Otherwise, it won't work. Ideas don't matter. Execution does.

Ship something? You are an English major - build a history of shipping and credibility by blogging?

</comment><comment><USER5> Learn how to code. It is really not hard. People who said they can't code are at a mindset of not wanting to learn/don't have enough time to learn/can have other people to code, etc.

Commit yourself. Think about it this way: If I can code, I can turn my brilliant idea into reality in a week, whereas it might take 3 months if I need a dev to code and what the dev (that I pay $10000 for) makes aren't even satisfying.

</comment><comment><USER6> No matter what you need to be able to produce something valuable, if only to be a good potential partner for a tech person. The most straightforward valuable thing to produce is code.

Without that you may find good contractors but probably not someone that will stick around. Tech-enabled startup people tend to have scorn for people with ideas but little else.

</comment><comment><USER7> With Adwords and a WordPress theme, you can test your idea with a $200 dry- run. If it still looks promising, you can pay $5,000~10,000 to get your first version online. Tim Ferris and Rob Walling can show you the way, google for them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Learn to program.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks all.</comment>


Parallel Sequential Scan is Committed to PostgreSQL 9.6 - <AUTHOR> http://rhaas.blogspot.com/2015/11/parallel-sequential-scan-is-committed.html <comment><USER2> Postgres is going in one direction - for the better. And as a long time Postgres user I've been really happy with it for years. Now with JSONB support I am even happier, as I can build powerful RDBMS + "NoSQL" apps that outperform traditional NoSQL databases.

To my disappointment several members of my team have been championing Oracle recently though - presumably because it's a safer option and can be managed by others under an SLA.

How does one argue against this? With Postgres we're not going to get SLA's because we know it very well, but with Oracle we would. It's mostly perception management IMHO, and I'm mostly against it. What killer core features does Oracle have that Postgres doesn't?

<comment><USER3> > What killer core features does Oracle have that Postgres doesn't?

While I don't really like Oracle as a company, there are some features that Oracle has and postgres don't, that can be important for production deployment:

\- flashback

\- partitioning that's much more mature

\- merge /*+ parallel

\- materialized views that refresh on commit

\- and oracle is quite a bit quicker - especially with badly written queries

But those (except for optimizer) are all Oracle Enterprise features which means you're paying ridiculous money per-core for enterprise edition itself, and then you're paying ridiculous money for the features one by one.

There's mostly no reason to use Oracle Standard edition instead of postgres. And I have seen Oracle XE in producion and that's just sad.

EDIT: oh and I forgot - postgres has that stupid "we don't want to include optimization hints in the language so we use CTEs as optimization boundary" policy that the developers stuck on and refuse to change, which means you have to decide between readable code and performant code. Meh.

<comment><USER2> Flashback is indeed a killer feature. I'd like to see something like Flashback in Postgres. PITR is possible with Postgres but it takes very long to replay log files to a certain point, if you need to restore data. I know this because I've had to do this quite a few times.

<comment><USER4> Flashback is useless if there are schema changes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Naive question here, but why wouldn't parallel scans actually be worse when reading from a spinning disk? And even for cached data I'd expect the bottleneck to be I/O still. Or is this just important because it's laying the groundwork for parallel queries, and we shouldn't expect any improvements from this feature alone?

<comment><USER6> What do SSDs look like when reading in parallel?

<comment><USER7> SSD drives contain multiple NANDs. So a well designed SSD controller will take advantage of that (including data striping, essentially turning your drive into a tiny RAID). Of course it is not clear how good your consumer SSD drives are at that, but any server-grade drive you are using in your db server should support parallel reads. It gets tricky though because it reads data so quickly it might saturate the io bandwidth even with a single request, I've never done that math. All I know is that SSDs make my queries magical :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> PG is awesome, but I remember people often complaining about its replication features a few years ago. Have they been improved?

<comment><USER9> Improved, yes. Fixed, no. Basically if you want proper full replication, you won't get it out of the box, but will have to use various third party tools. That being said 9.4 added a bunch of the fundamental changes that that laid the foundation for full replication, now we're just waiting PG to finish exposing those features with userland tools.

<comment><USER10> What do you mean by "proper full replication"?

<comment><USER11> Master-master

<comment><USER12> The EnterpriseDB folk [http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/produ...](http://www.enterprisedb.com/products-services- training/products-overview/xdb-replication-server-multi-master) and 2ndQuadrant [http://2ndquadrant.com/en- us/resources/bdr/](http://2ndquadrant.com/en-us/resources/bdr/) both have multi-master replication.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems like this could make Postgres even better for large-scale data warehousing. Very exciting!

<comment><USER14> Take a look at Greenplum, which was open-sourced recently. It's an MPP fork of Postgres: [http://greenplum.org](http://greenplum.org).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is going to be fantastic for us. I'm assuming 9.6 is still some way away though.

<comment><USER16> Dates selected during PgCon this year for 9.6 show a release in October 2016: [https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PgCon_2015_Developer_Meetin...](https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/PgCon_2015_Developer_Meeting#9.6_Schedule)

<comment><USER17> That's what they said for 9.4 and 9.5 too. More likely December 2016

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Has anyone tried Postgres xl? It has this kind of logic at the server level, no?

<comment><USER14> I don't think any of the current open-source forks are ready for production.

The oldest one is Postgres-X2 [1] (formerly Postgres-XC), a project sponsored by NTT. It implements fully consistent multimaster replication and partitioning. After many, many years apparently still isn't production-ready, and it seems to have a significant scalability bottleneck that's tied to its design. Another issue is that being a fork, it has to be continually updated from the mainline. It's currently based on 9.3.

Postgres-XL [2] is apparently a merger of Postgres-XC and a different implementation called StormDB that was bought by a small company called TransLattice. (TransLattice also sponsored or acquired an earlier project that went nowhere, Postgres-R.) Unlike XC/X2, they say they aim to contribute changes back to the mainline, and they also claim their distributed query model is superior.

With the commerical support behind it (it's used as the basis of a commercial product), it's possible that this is something that will be usable. Unfortunately, it seems very quiet and not very open-sourcy; most of the development seems to be by just one guy [3], and nobody seems to be using it in production at this point.

[1] [https://github.com/postgres-x2/postgres-x2](https://github.com/postgres-x2/postgres-x2)

[2] [http://www.postgres-xl.org/](http://www.postgres-xl.org/)

[3] [http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgres- xl.git;a=summar...](http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgres- xl.git;a=summary)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That example benchmark he has is weird. You'd probably want to test this one something with at least a million rows, taking more than a 100ms and probably actually returning some data. This sub-second difference can be attributed to solar flairs. Also it is not clear that it is not just result of the table getting cached. Did they implement a feature like this and not run a real performance test?

<comment><USER19> Robert Haas is the real deal, and will certainly have tested this feature.

Perhaps I missed it, but I don't think the post specified how many rows were in the source. Could have been more than a million. Having a relatively expensive filter (regex) eliminating all results keeps the performance picture clearer. Anything done with a tuple that passes the filter would apply to both the regular and the parallel scan cases, so eliminating the results highlights just the difference between regular and parallel scans

<comment><USER7> I really really doubt that it can process a million uncached rows under a second. But yeah, I just tested an million was not a good example because it does take only a bit over a second on decent hardware. So perhaps should have said 10 million. I agree about not returning any results being the right test.

<comment><USER20> It can definitely process a million uncached rows in well under a second :P Have you used Postgres recently?

<comment><USER21> You can even insert well above a million rows/second...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nixie-clock using neon lamps as logic (2017) - <AUTHOR> http://www.pa3fwm.nl/projects/neonclock/ <comment><USER2> The "integrated" form of that is the Dekatron.[1] That's essentially 10 neon bulbs in one tube, with the electrodes arranged so they act as a counter.

Digital counting took too many parts before transistors. The Dekatron was one attempt to get the parts count down.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3HLZOJKEQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3HLZOJKEQU)

</comment><comment><USER3> I see this clock on Copenhagen Main Station fairly often [1], made with giant neon tubes.

It looks fairly old. Does anyone know how it originally worked, and if it still works that way?

(My searching skills aren't good enough in Danish, but there are plenty of Danish speakers on HN.)

[1] [https://1684654000.rsc.cdn77.org/sites/default/files/public/...](https://1684654000.rsc.cdn77.org/sites/default/files/public/styles/fresco_1200/public/migrated/artikel/field_body_images/img_8836.jpg?itok=Ojf0mVti) from [https://www.magasinetkbh.dk/indhold/neon- bog](https://www.magasinetkbh.dk/indhold/neon-bog)

<comment><USER4> There's surprisingly little information about it. All I can find is that it was originally build in 1950 and was renovated in 2008, and it used to use relays, which were broken for some time.

[http://www.aok.dk/byliv/vintertid-koebenhavn-i-en- klokkestre...](http://www.aok.dk/byliv/vintertid-koebenhavn-i-en-klokkestreng)

[http://www.jernbaneklub.dk/jernbanen/2008/jernbanen_nr4-augu...](http://www.jernbaneklub.dk/jernbanen/2008/jernbanen_nr4-august2008.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is cool as hell. Shame to hear it's no longer working.

</comment><comment><USER6> Woz is really well known for his interest in nixie clocks: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4R3hODnTGo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4R3hODnTGo)

</comment><comment><USER7> Could you have used the individual Nixie digit tubes themselves as the counting state tubes?

</comment><comment><USER8> More good work by radio amateurs. PA3FWM is a ham.

</comment><comment><USER9> Even given how unreliable this ended up being over time the very fact that it was built in the first place is remarkably impressive.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, looking at Wikipedia and comparing with his circuit PDF and what he said, it sounds like there wasn't thought given to current stability. Apparently these bulbs are very sensitive to too much current, so it sounds as if he was literally breaking the bulbs to get it to work.

I wonder then if there might have been some way to control for this properly?

<comment><USER11> Neon bulbs require a certain voltage to strike (for small ones, several 10's of volts). Until they are struck they are very high resistance, once alight they are low resistance until the voltage drops well below the striking voltage.

This leads to an easy way to make a neon oscillator; put a capacitor across the bulb, and a high value resistor in series to a 90v supply. The capacitor charges to the strike voltage, then discharges until the neon extinguishes; the oscillation rate and ratio characterises the particular bulb.

Don't know if it's still true, but they used to include radioactive tracers in the neon to reduce the striking voltage (also I believe the striking voltage varies with incident illumination).

<comment><USER12> > I believe the striking voltage varies with incident illumination

That is the principle behind this entry for the flashing light prize:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8VJft5Xq5g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8VJft5Xq5g)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that! Great demo, and using strong UV shows the effect in spades (I'd guess in this case you wouldn't want the radioactivity, so the illumination effect from the photons is more pronounced).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


USA buys up world stock of remdesivir - Max-20 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/us-buys-up-world-stock-of-key-covid-19-drug <comment><AUTHOR> "The drug, which was invented for Ebola but failed to work, is under patent to Gilead, which means no other company in wealthy countries can make it."

Sorry, but if the one blessed company with the patent can't keep up with demand, and millions are going to die because there are patent restrictions, then ignore the patent laws and save some lives. It wouldn't look too good if the American government tried to stop it, essentially saying "It's against the law to save their lives, and we're going to punish you for saving them."

<comment><USER2> The last studies I saw showed Remdesivir didn't actually save lives. Unless some very different studies have come out, this is just a politically connected pharma company using the pandemic to get a fat check from the US government. This is just your standard every day corruption.

<comment><USER3> One of my friends is an anaesthetist dealing with Covid patients day in day out in India. She works for a Government hospital and they started trying Remdesivir 3 days ago. She said all three patients that they have given the drug to have died of arrest - she does insist though that its not because of the drug but she was saying that it isn't improving things if the patient is in late stages of Covid.

<comment><USER4> This is a worthless 2nd hand hearsay anecdote.

Remdesivir has a _minor_ beneficial impact when delivered VERY EARLY.

No need to spread FUD when there's clinical data available.

<comment><USER5> >Remdesivir has a minor beneficial impact when delivered VERY EARLY.

There's still a couple of problems though:

* It has to be delivered by IV drip

* It's in short supply

* It's expensive

Which means that realistically, the only way to get a positive impact from it would be to send high-risk patients who were very likely to have just been exposed to the hospital for the injection. Even then, the risk-value proposition does not seem that great.

<comment><USER4> None of these three points is the bottleneck. It's still easy to give someone an IV early on if they're in a high-risk group, it's not in _that_ short supply, and at ~$2500 per treatment regimen it's not _that_ expensive compared to an extended hospital stay.

The bottleneck is that it's only slightly effective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The drug that looked very promising for the last pandemic, yet turned out to have no benefit, and now looks very promising as a treatment for this pandemic...

Smells to me like someone in the remdesivir marketing department is doing very well... Are there any scientific studies that don't have vested interests and show it's a good treatment?

<comment><USER7> This smells an awful lot like the Tamiflu story. Rumsfeld was chairman of Gilead until he was nominated as Secretary of Defense. He refused to sell his shares in the company and thus was forced to leave the room whenever discussions that might impact the company happened. A few years later the Pentagon starts stockpiling billions of dollars worth of Tamiflu. By the time Rumsfeld left the white house, Gilead shares were up from $7 in 2001 to $67 in 2006.

<comment><USER4> I'm confused. Are you saying he had an ulterior motive? Tamiflu is effective when given early. The stockpiles (which I doubt amounted to the billions) were for the general US population in case of a super-flu. ...so it was a good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interestingly, Gilead apparently has a standing agreement with Europe to deliver remdesivir. It should be interesting to see how this agreement can be fulfilled if 100% of all doses have already been sold to the U.S.

Currenly, remdesivir is not approved for the treatment of COVID-10 in the EU, but a decision along these lines is expected this week.

</comment><comment><USER9> 1\. remdesivir is not a cure for COVID and not as valuable to the rest of the world. We need vaccine 2\. there is plenty of generic remdesivir in India

<comment><USER8> _2\. there is plenty of generic remdesivir in India_

How does this go together with the claim that "Remdesivir is patented by California-based Gilead"?

<comment> Tuna-Fish > How does this go together with the claim that "Remdesivir is patented by > California-based Gilead"?

India does not recognize patents on medicine.

See, for example: _India: Patents And The Indian Pharmaceutical Industry_ [1]

> With regard to pharmaceuticals, in the case of substances intended for use > or capable of being used as food, drugs or medicines or substances produced > by chemical processes, patents are granted only for the processes of > manufacture of such substances and not for the substances themselves. Hence, > pharmaceutical products are currently not granted patent protection under > Indian law.

(And note that the "process of manufacture of such substances" is in practice interpreted so tightly that it covers very little.)

[1] [https://www.mondaq.com/india/patent/865888/patents-and- the-i...](https://www.mondaq.com/india/patent/865888/patents-and-the-indian- pharmaceutical-industry)

<comment><USER10> I think that law was changed in 2005 to allow product patents.

<comment> Tuna-Fish The law might have been changed, but the practice of the law has not. India still does not honor practically any foreign patents on medicine.

<comment><USER9> this practice helped so many people from low-income countries survive form life-threatening conditions by just importing drugs from India. A relative of mine from a very low income country got Hepatitis C treatment, thanks to India.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> According to the article 500,000 doses are the production of July, and 90% of August and September. Three full months would be 500,000 / 2.80 * 3 = 535,714 doses. A full treatment is made of six doses. There are 89,285 treatments in there. Less than 30,000 per month. Too bad for the rest of the world that all of them will happen in the USA but they are way too few to matter globally. Split them proportionally with the population and how many of them are going to be assigned to any European country? Maybe we need a x10 in the production or more. Better, local production, which I understand is neither quick nor easy.

<comment><USER12> Gilead is not the only producer because it has licensed numerous other companies to manufacture the product.

See this post:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23700736](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23700736)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If there is already alternative suppliers of this drug in India (as claimed by the article) under generic brands, can't they do a licensing deal for the drug and use that production while still not ignoring patent laws?

can't tell if this is a supply chain (production) problem or patent laws dilemma.

<comment><USER14> I think the problem is that gilead has already announced that they're planning on charging something in the order of $3k per treatment, which won't work in most of the world, and is a sure fire way to get countries to start asking questions about the value proposition of drug patents.

Basically if you have a company in India willing to manufacture for say $200, Gilead will still charge the same amount, so licensing is likely to end up being at cost for 3rd party manufacturers with all profits going to Gilead.

But if Gilead does do that then a whole lot of countries will suddenly start asking why they're having to pay so much to a US company that isn't manufacturing the drug, and is getting a 80-90% cutof the revenue.

It's better for gilead to try to maintain a veneer if "quality productions costs this much" in order to justify their pricing.

<comment><USER12> Most drugs have different prices in different countries so this is nothing new. Also, My understanding is that 3rd party manufactures are not paying any royalties to Gilead, which is very generous and they should be applauded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The wonder drug that supposedly can cut two whole days off a case! Wow I am surely sad that MY goverment didn't hoard all those pills, I mean they are only 2000USD per treatment...

First the US buys all the chloroquin, now this. Next they will come for all our sugar pills too!

</comment><comment><USER16> I thought studies include Remdesivir and Hydroxycloroquine showed negative results. Why would we be buying up Remdesivir when Dexamethasone is the new hot drug with good clinical results?

<comment><USER17> Remdesivir reduces hospital stay but does not reduce mortality. It costs a lot and is hard to make.

Dexamethasone is cheap, easy to make, and reduces mortality. We don't want remdesivir, which is why you're not seeing regulatory action to seize control of the rights.

[https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/first-drug-to-reduce- mortality-i...](https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/first-drug-to-reduce-mortality-in- hospitalised-patients-with-respiratory-complications-of-covid-19-found/25061)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The rest of the world already uses HCQ + Zinc prophylactically for about $20 instead. The pharma complex did a great job along with their zombie mob of amrchair biochemists (the ones downvoting me to hades right now) of discrediting HCQ with BS studies of almost dead people with 10x the normal dose of HCQ without Zinc. All HCQ is in this protocol is a Ionophore to get the zinc into the cells. Lancet had to retract one of the studies which they almost never do.

</comment><comment><USER19> Recently read about This. theoretically doesn't look like the cure

[https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/how-remdesivir- wor...](https://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/how-remdesivir-works-and- why-its-not-the-ultimate-coronavirus-killer/)

</comment><comment><USER20> After working in the emergency room for three years now, I can firmly say no treatment even comes close to prevention.

</comment><comment><USER21> The optics of this are terrible and the US should be working with other countries. But my guess is even if the US worked with Europe on distribution >90% of it would go to the US anyway. The need stateside is exponentially greater.

My guess is that Gilead played Trump and will now backtrack to make a licensing deal so that the EU can produce its own at a lower price.

There's nothing stopping Gilead from allowing more licensing now that it has squeezed all it can from its best customer.

</comment><comment><USER22> That's OK. Apparently HCQ works too.

</comment><comment><USER23> The good news is that the drug that actually works is a generic one.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is a terrible waste of money. Hydroxychloroquine is less expensive, seems to be more effective according to the research, and backed by more science. You just have to look beyond your mainstream media to find the truth.

<comment><USER5> Hydroxychloroquine is _not_ effective, but Remdesivir is not very effective either, so I would agree that it's a terrible waste of money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Sounds like the Guardian isn't happy its home country got out-bid. Did it expect that America would buy less of a potentially life-saving drug, effectively prioritizing the welfare of foreigners over her own? I'd expect any government to act in such a manner.

<comment><USER26> I agree media is making a big deal out of this.

But, would our reaction be still the same if Guardian's headline said China or Russia did this? Probably not. Perhaps we would even talk about putting new sanctions.

I think the right move would be allowing other companies to produce enough of it. If that means financially supporting Gilead, let's do that. Then nobody has to take all the stockpile.

<comment><USER25> > But, would our reaction be still the same if Guardian's headline said China > or Russia did this? Probably not. Perhaps we would even talk about putting > new sanctions.

Nope. There are about a billion other reasons both should be sanctioned to the point of embargo, but this isn't one. Nations have been fighting each other for resources for months now. That's to be expected in a high-demand, low- supply environment where each wants to save as many of her citizens as possible, and I wouldn't blame China or Russia for taking similar actions. For instance, I don't really blame China for having restricted exports of PPE because of greater need at home. I'd rather America get her hands on more stuff, but I'd expect any competent government to act in the interests of her citizens and so can't fault China (at least, not for this).

> I think the right move would be allowing other companies to produce enough > of it. If that means financially supporting Gilead, let's do that. Then > nobody has to take all the stockpile.

This is definitely a good approach, but this drug is pretty hard to make, so I'm not sure another company could just start making it easily [0]. However, Gilead has already been working with partner companies to ramp up production [1], which will allow them to benefit from all the work Gilead has put in to figuring out how to produce it at scale.

[0]: [https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/03/26/problem-remdesivir- maki...](https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/03/26/problem-remdesivir-making- it-14665)

[1]: [https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/30/gileads-remdesivir- has-s...](https://www.statnews.com/2020/04/30/gileads-remdesivir-has-seen- success-against-the-coronavirus-now-the-company-has-to-make-enough-to-supply- the-world/)</comment></comment></comment>