The Anti-Portfolio - <AUTHOR> https://www.bvp.com/portfolio/anti-portfolio <comment><USER2> I almost didn't read this because the submitted title spelled "meh" to me.

But I'm glad I looked. This is hilarious!

(And it has nothing to do with YC or YC applicants. The actual title is much better: "Honoring Those We Missed: The Anti-Portfolio")

It also makes me feel not _quite_ so bad about some of my own personal mistakes...

<comment><USER3> refreshing isn't it, nothing shouts integrity louder than sharing failure.

<comment><USER4> Really? I see no connection between the two. explain more? _Perhaps_ honesty. Not integrity. More likely good marketing skills. "Nothing shouts "good marketing skills!" more than sharing failure.

They're VC's... so a much higher standard of proof is required to establish integrity. (cough cough Eduardo Saverin)

Gotta remember, all angels and VCs are desperate to increase their "deal flow", that means they need startups to know their name when they go looking for money. So the VC puts on a sort of phoney humility... a kind of "hey we're worth billions but same as you its been hard!" type thing. "Look at how we made mistakes where instead of making tens of billions we only made billions". That way when you are looking for money you might think "Hey those Bessemer guys seemed pretty down to earth, like me!"

It's more like a good PR agency wrote it than 'refreshing'. No one there actually writes... they're al playing golf. It was Sally at the PR agency who wrote the thing that evoked a sense of integrity from you. She needs a pay rise.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but the fact that they let Sally publish it means that while they may not have integrity, they at least are not idiots.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Remember folks, the acceptance rate for YC is lower than Harvard. If you didn't skip college because Harvard rejected you, then don't stop doing your startup because YC rejected you. :)

<comment><USER7> We were rejected four times before getting in. I've talked to others that were rejected six times before getting in. Most people that get into YC have been rejected before. Don't sweat it.

<comment><USER8> I was rejected 4 times over the years before getting in. We ended up being among the top in our batch after just being around for 2.5 years (this is my 4th company)

<comment><USER9> I was rejected multiple times as well. This time it was different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is hilariously wonderful! At least they have a sense of humor about it. And gives me a lot of hope for my venture and future ones. No one knows a company as well as founders do. Thats why if you still believe in your idea and execution, work on it day and night. Dont be turned off by a few VC rejections. Take their comments in stride and learn from it. Also, remember that most VCs just like most people have personal biases. Maybe you dont fit in the right box yet.

</comment><comment><USER11> Bessemer has a good sense of humor. They are also involved in Bubbleproof.

[https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/17/watch-the-first-four- episo...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/17/watch-the-first-four-episodes-of- the-silicon-valley-mockumentary-bubbleproof/)

<comment><USER12>
      Failure is not an option. It's a feature

That one really made my day. Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "As for Compaq, I told him there was no real future in transportable computers since IBM could do it."

\- This is the point I made in a comment yesterday. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15537940](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15537940)

hprotagonist was fretting about the "freight train is barreling down on them in the form of Apple and Google"

I said there, and I'll say again here: Waiting for large companies to innovate is like saying "I won't build the Apple II because I'd rather wait for the IBM PC to be invented".

I think that big companies are under too much market pressure to really innovate freely. Startups are a good thing, and Y Combinator is helping. If you have an idea, please don't just give up and wait for the market leaders - make a startup and make it real.

<comment><USER14> Same goes for "Finally, cornered in a lunch line, Jeremy delivered some sage advice "Kid, haven't you heard of Friendster? Move on. It's over!""

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's easy, and possibly even fun to talk about your antiportfolio and how you didn't succeed, when you are already worth hundreds of millions, as they are at this company.

<comment><USER15> That's irrelevant. Every missed opportunity stings the same. It's relative.

<comment><USER4> Piffle.

There's no such thing as an antiportfolio or "missed opportunities". You may as well say "why didn't I pick the correct lotto numbers". The answer is "because you didn't".

Why didn't I make every decision in my life the right decision? Answer: "because you didn't".

I could have made a billion dollars if I had know all the right stocks to pick. The VC antiportfolio is the same thing.

Proximity to an opportunity seems to make people feel a greater sense of that they "lost" the opportunity, but in fact that lost opportunity is precisely the same as the whole world full of other opportunities that the person could have taken at that moment.

<comment><USER16> > You may as well say "why didn't I pick the correct lotto numbers". The > answer is "because you didn't".

Lotto numbers all look the same up front. Startups all look different, so a good VC can be better than a bad VC if they just know which differences to look for.

<comment><USER17> >Startups all look different, so a good VC can be better than a bad VC if they just know which differences to look for.

I don't think this is an obvious claim. There's no strong evidence that VCs are capable of differentiating good startups from bad.

<comment><USER18> VCs manage to turn a profit?

<comment><USER17> My understanding is VCs (as an industry) fail to beat the S&P500 returns, so no, they don't turn a profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I liked this. My main takeaway though is that these people are ridiculously well-connected. It's difficult for me to imagine having that kind of access to so many top-tier companies (even if they weren't recognized as such at the time). And I'm guessing these companies actively sought them out! It really just seems like a different world.

</comment><comment><USER20> While it's cool they wrote this and fun to read it's also a good piece for them in the sense that they advertise that they were/are involved in all the "hot deals".

</comment><comment><USER21> Out if interest I googled YC rejected companies that succeeded. Here's a thread from a year back;

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229700](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11229700)

</comment><comment><USER22> Note that if YC rejects your pitch, it doesn't mean your company is bad, or the pitch is bad - it just means they don't think you're a good investment for them.

<comment><USER23> It probably doesn't even mean that. They've said before that the companies they are unsure about and pass on are the hardest to reason about which is probably true for a lot of aspects of business. They just couldn't get across the finish line, there's not much "there" there.

Anyone that got rejected that believes in their business should keep at it. We got rejected several times from YC in the early days, and it really meant nothing for the business in the grand scheme of things (so glad we didn't give up!)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure I'm not alone in hoping that you (and other successful YC rejections) will post a bit about your company to keep the rest of our spirits up through this dip in our entrepreneurial roller coaster....

<comment><USER23> Sure :) We're a dev tools/services company. We applied back in 2011 and 2012, got one straight rejection and one interview rejection (not my first either, I got an interview rejection with my first startup ever two years before that!).

We got really close but it wasn't in the cards. Ended up bootstrapping after that, and went to TechStars instead based on a recommendation from a friend (I really felt a need to do one of these programs, insecurity in hindsight). Came back from that and kind of fell into what became Ionic ([http://ionicframework.com/](http://ionicframework.com/)) which was a side project for us, found some good traction with it and it consumed us and we ended up doing some VC rounds over the last few years (and continuing to grow nicely, millions of devs, etc.).

There's a long ways to go still but if you believe in the team you have, then you should do whatever you can to make it work. That combination of the right people at the right time is one of the most precious things and something that only _you_ can assess. Not everyone will see the potential, but you realize quickly that they aren't the gate keepers: customers are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Cowan's college friend rented her garage to Sergey and Larry"

You mean Susan? The CEO of YouTube? :)

</comment><comment><USER25> I just got my rejection letter. I suppose I didn't do a good enough job explaining my ideas.

Any other rejects interested in a mastermind group?

We could network with Slack/Hangout, encourage each other, and arrange our own "Rejects demo day" at end of March.

If interested reach out to me.

<comment><USER26> First time applying for me and first time rejected.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have always wondered, is VC funding only about money or making industry connections too?

<comment><USER27> Some of the upside include money, help raising your next round (intros to other later stage VCs), providing you with additional money (insider bridge round), hiring leads (VP level), operational input (finances), product input (from partners who've run companies before), giving you legitimacy (companies are worried if you'll be around in 2 years), and yes, sales lead intros (rolodex networker style VCs).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why haven't I receive my rejection email?

<comment><USER29> Same here.

<comment><USER30> Same here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> What this actually means is that VCs have no idea if a company will be successful or not and it's basically luck. The ones that survive are the ones who manage to hit one of their gambles with outsized wins, similar to a roulette table.

Why some continue to believe VCs actually know anything or add value is beyond me. Even YC admits as much, saying their best guess is the caliber of the founder, and that there should be at least 2 co-founders. Everything else is a guess.

<comment><USER32> > _VCs have no idea if a company will be successful or not and it 's basically > luck_

This anti-portfolio is a sample of Bessemer's Type II errors [1]. It does not follow that they are useless. (Their returns are far from useless.)

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

<comment><USER31> Wrong. If you have enough money, and your gains are sufficiently outsized from a win, then any spread bet across dozens of companies will end up making money. Being a VC in Silicon Valley over the last 20 years is a game you can't lose, as long as you have enough money. And let's not forget, they're not even playing with their own money, they are playing with their investors money.

But it doesn't mean you're a smart VC it just means that you're a rich VC. They have enough high profile misses to show they have no idea what is going to be successful. They passed on Google, Apple and Facebook with a combined market value of almost $1.5 trillion dollars.

<comment><USER32> > _Being a VC in Silicon Valley over the last 20 years is a game you can 't > lose, as long as you have enough money_

You won't find a source for this because it isn't true. Lots of VCs have busted because despite diversification, the odds of a single company in a portfolio of 20 to 100 making it big are very small.

<comment><USER31> Thanks for your anecdotes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> having you heard of friendster, its over move on...This made me laugh so hard.. This goes to show that there is no clear formula/predictor...

</comment><comment><USER34> The ultimate humblebrag.

</comment><comment><USER30> Are the invites sent out already? Haven't received any email -- neither invite not rejection. :/

<comment><USER35> We haven't either. Good luck!

<comment><USER36> yes waiting for some information.

<comment><USER37> Anyone hear of companies getting invites yet ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Subtitled:

 _Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation 's oldest venture capital firm, tracing our roots back to the Carnegie Steel empire. This long and storied history has afforded our firm an unparalleled number of opportunities to completely screw up._

It is extremely funny.

</comment><comment><USER39> dang: Can the title be changed? I'm not a startup founder so I don't usually read YC-specific stuff, but this article has nothing to do with YC, its actual title doesn't mention YC, and it is funny and of general interest.

</comment><comment><USER40> So I think for those of us who received the rejection emails right after 10pm were pretty much in the "for sure" stack and for those who haven't received it yet there's still hope.

<comment><USER37> Have you heard of anyone getting an invite yet ?

<comment><USER40> No I have not. I suppose they're too busy celebrating.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anyone rejected willing to tell us what your idea was?

<comment><USER41> Yes, mine was not any software related product. It was energy-related technology that extends the range of existing and future Electric Vehicles. The show must go on as planned...

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> A friend in my previous job was accepted after his fourth attempt. Don't give up. And if YC never accepts you, then prove them wrong.

</comment><comment><USER41> A proud recipient of the rejection email here! Is there a YC Alumni Association of Rejects? Let's make one if not LOL!

<comment><USER43> Same here, Got a rejection mail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone received rejections/invites yet ? I have received neither and it's almost 11pm

<comment><USER44> received it 20 minutes ago

<comment><USER37> Invite or rejection?

<comment><USER44> rejection

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Jeremy Levine seems to have been the one who missed the most. Even the best have their failures!

</comment><comment><USER46> What was the wig company?

</comment><comment><USER47> As a startup founder, I really enjoy reading this one.

</comment><comment><USER48> Anyone who got rejection mail for w2018 batch?

<comment><USER37> No ,anyone get an invite ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> How many of us got a video call and rejected?

</comment><comment><USER29> Has everyone gotten their rejection emails ?

</comment><comment><USER50> I was rejected years ago and indeed nothing good ever came out of me. There is no hope. ;)

<comment><USER51> Some guy I used to go fishing with once told me that startups are like fishing. He said, you know, the traditional line & hook type of fishing. Not the trawler, dredging type of fishing. It's a game of luck mostly. No one really knows where the fish are at any given time. But make sure to only ever fish in a pond in which others have been catching fish. Put your line in and wait. And while you wait make sure you don't starve to death.

Also, while you wait, make sure to check up on your mom. Get into shape. Enjoy the scenery.

I have since stopped going fishing with that fucker.

<comment><USER52> If you go fishing, you should cut the hook off the line before you cast. Otherwise getting the fish may ruin the fishing.

Unfortunately some people think along the same line about running a company, not necessarily a startup one.

Oh, and if you know the fish and tricks of the trade, it is not just a matter of luck. Statistics in sports fishing say there really is a 10x angler. Competition fishing has been a thing for a long time. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Freshwater_Angling_Champ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Freshwater_Angling_Championships)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm seeing a pattern of a lack of humility that bites him over and over again.</comment>


Vim & Python: Making yourself at home - <AUTHOR> http://justinlilly.com/vim/vim_and_python.html

<comment><USER2> Please, save yourself the hassel and use Pathogen for all your vim plugin needs. Otherwise there's some nice tips in this article.

<comment> St-Clock Actually, I found vundle (<https://github.com/gmarik/vundle>) to be slightly easier to use.

<comment><USER3> That's interesting, but it's a very different approach to Pathogen, and it's very much a matter of taste IMHO. I prefer to use git submodules directly or through a general-purpose scripting language and just have the vim component load my plugins.

<comment><USER2> Exactly. I use homesick to version and sync all the config files in my home directory across machines (linux and OSX alike), and git submodules already solve the problem for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish HN had a Save button, so I could remember to come back to this later, and experiment with the parts I didn't already know.

<comment><USER5> It's a little weird (to me at least), but upvoting stories in HN is considered 'saving' them. You can view all your saved stories from your profile page under the link 'saved stories'.

You can also just go to: <http://news.ycombinator.com/saved?id=jholman>

<comment><USER6> There is also this to download those 'saved' links:

<https://github.com/bsandrow/hn-profile>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Does anyone else use code folding plugins for vim? If you have something good for this, please share, since all the popular plugins are pretty buggy (they fold functions withing functions, and sometimes just white space).

<comment><USER8> Just fold by indent or syntax, if your code isn't already indented right, you're doing it wrong :-)

<comment><USER6> Some people don't want if-else, while or for blocks folded, which will happen if you just fold on indent with considering syntax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using this: <http://sontek.net/turning-vim-into-a-modern-python-ide>

</comment><comment><USER10> I am experiencing weird glitch at your site: <http://cl.ly/8v2D>

Using Chrome 14.0.835.8 dev, Mac OS X 10.7

</comment><comment><USER11> no love for my pydoc.vim? <https://github.com/fs111/pydoc.vim>

<comment><USER12> Nope, no love =(

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> One thing i miss in languages like python that don't enclose blocks in {} is the convenience of using % to find the matching beginning/end of the block.

<comment><USER8> I use "vii" in normal mode to do that. It basically selects the block.

<http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Indent_text_object></comment></comment>


Half a day without power - <AUTHOR> http://jamiebriant.tumblr.com/post/9989439007/an-interesting-day

<comment><USER2> Also having off grid solar cells (coupled with charge controller accumulator and inverter) helps a lot. Even if you don't intend to switch off the gird - you can easily power your notebooks/cell phones from solar power.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an example of a first world problem.

<http://twitter.com/#!/frstworldprobs></comment>


When China Rules the Web - <AUTHOR> https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-08-13/when-china-rules-web <comment><USER2> Given what we know of the NSA's success at pwning much of the Internet, this is an incredibly ironic piece of propaganda.

Indeed, I can't help but agree somewhat with Xi Jinping:

> Finally, China has promoted "cyber-sovereignty" as an organizing principle > of Internet governance, in direct opposition to U.S. support for a global, > open Internet. In Xi's words, cyber-sovereignty represents "the right of > individual countries to independently choose their own path of cyber > development, model of cyber regulation and Internet public policies, and > participate in international cyberspace governance on an equal footing." > China envisions a world of national Internets, with government control > justified by the sovereign rights of states. It also wants to weaken the > bottom-up, private-sector-led model of Internet governance championed by the > United States and its allies, a model Beijing sees as dominated by Western > technology companies and civil society organizations. Chinese policymakers > believe they would have a larger say in regulating information technology > and defining the global rules for cyberspace if the UN played a larger role > in Internet governance. All four of Beijing's priorities require China to > act aggressively to shape cyberspace at home and on the global stage.

I mean, Brazil and other countries are pursuing "cyber-sovereignty". The EU's GDPR is fundamentally that. As is Google's latest undersea cable.

I have always loved the cypherpunk vision of a sovereign Internet. But that's very different from a US-dominated Internet, which is what we've had since the start.

<comment><USER3> I lived in Shanghai for 6 months and the internet sucked more then the air and thats when its hurting to take in a deep breath in winter. After returning to Germany I was more happy about the free internet (and freedom of speech and so on..) then about the clean air.

To me comparing China to the NSA (USA) is weak. As you wrote this, the current top result on Reddit is this: [https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/98el62/un_says_i...](https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/98el62/un_says_it_has_credible_reports_china_is_holding/?ref=share&ref_source=link)

I dont see the USA getting these kinds of headlines anytime soon. Moreover China has earned critique for partially rolling out their citizen scoring. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System) [https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social- cr...](https://www.wired.co.uk/article/chinese-government-social-credit-score- privacy-invasion)

I am not the biggest fan of the GDPR and its also tragic to me that Europe has no real innovative internet companies. And as far as I know Brazil has some big challenges with corruption so I wouldn't take its policies as a shining example (not implying that you did though).

I kind of see the internet as my home and culture in many ways. I have met Egyptians, Brazilians and Koreans that shared the same internet culture as me. In contrast I have made much fewer friends in mainland China due to them not using the same internet as me (and thus not having even remotely something in common). They instead consume their own entertainment such as Chinese soap operas which my mainland friends have told me are vastly inferior to their western counterparts (not soap operas but entertainment and culture in general). Finally the restricted access inhibits the development of better English skills which further divides

I dont care much for visas or nation-sovereignty. I hope that we one day have universal human right centered values based on an free internet and open borders so that I am not limited in my pursuit of happiness by some arbitrary political rule.

<comment><USER4> I was in China for a week at the Amazon office. It was very jarring not able to load google. Or YouTube. Or gmail. Or google maps. The list goes on and on. Facebook won't load. Even many vpns are blocked.

<comment><USER5> How does Amazon actually operate their China office? Don't they have a site- to-site VPN back to the main corporate network for secure internal communications?

<comment><USER4> This was about two years ago and I don't want to talk about internals too much. But from the office I couldn't load any google sites. I was able to manually connect to the amazon vpn and reach google.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The line that internet sovereignty protects against mainly American tech is false.

Japan. Indonesia. Germany. Australia. Malaysia. South Korea. Lots of countries have had competition and have been able to have localized offerings that won in a free market. But in China. There is no free market.

AWS might be the most prolific. Far better product but it's useless in China because it can't be controlled. So China ends up with Alicloud a far inferior product.

The US government is becoming increasingly more paranoid of itself too. The smarter way is things like the EU are doing. Champion greater privacy for local citizens with heavy laws and companies will fall in line. It's soft governance. You win on both fronts. Controlling data and championing human rights. Closed fists win nothing. If China implemented local data laws with extreme privacy measures Facebook would be forced to localize its offering and keep all data in China whilst fixing a massive public image problem. But it has nothing to do with that. The party is paranoid and will kill competition to control data any day.

</comment><comment><USER7> Again, this country-vs-country bullshit propaganda.

The web is already less open from the efforts of US companies developing massively centralised platforms like Google, Facebook, and so on, you're familiar with the story. And they look very eager to play into the Chinese government's rules for their own profit, whilst at the same time paying lip service to liberal principles and internet principles of openness.

At the same time there's plenty of Chinese investment into decentralised cryptocurrencies, probably more so than coming from US investment groups. Some large western companies are doing more blockchain research for sure, but the vast majority of them are only interested in those within the context of their own centralised, privatised, permissioned systems.

Enough of this China vs US crap, your narrative is simply wrong. If you give a shit about the open principles of the internet, talk about the actual projects in reality actually trying to preserve these principles, and stop narrating based on false political boundaries.

<comment><USER8> How does Facebook, etc make the web less open?

<comment><USER9> It's displaced several competitive ecosystems.

Many of the things Facebook is used for were originally disparate services-- think of the smaller social groups that would have been mailing lists, or at least message boards. Event management-- RSVPing and messaging participants-- used to be a fairly competitive space too.

If you need services in those spaces, and lack the technical skills to roll everything from scratch-- but it doesn't fit with the Facebook model or business tastes-- you've got far fewer options than you had 10 years ago.

I'm thinking, for example, a community I enjoyed many years ago. It was for collaborative writing so most everyone posted under pen names. In 1998 it was implemented by a mailing list which got cross-posted to a newsgroup. In 2005 it would have probably been thrown up on a cheap "hosted forum" service like ProBoards. In 2018 it would be a Facebook group, and almost certainly stuck with posting under real names. And that's the most benign "we lost something" outcome I can picture.

<comment><USER8> It's an odd situation, while anyone is certainly still _able_ to do any of these things (openness), Facebook and their kind have largely made it a fool's errand to even try. And I agree, the world has probably suffered more than we can imagine (and you _have_ to imagine, what could have been). Yet, I think even the most rabid anti-FB person would have a hard time making a case they've broken any laws, at all.

And this is all distinct from the very serious free speech ( _not_ first amendment) issues, which are another huge problem.

I wish instead of freaking out over the latest petty outrage du jour, our societies would spend more time considering whether whether we might be going down the wrong path in a variety of ways. All the same stuff we see on the news day after day after day almost feels like cover fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not exactly the analysis of China's enormously diverse and energetic tech landscape we deserve. In fact, sites like Technode, and even recent podcasts from A16Z and HN have provided much more rigor. We simply need better reporting on this essential beat: what Emily Chang and Bloomberg Tech provide for Silicon Valley, but covering the Chinese mainland and HK.

Actual subtext of article at hand seems to be that the antagonistic strategy by current US administration will lead not only to inevitable dominance of AI technologies with a distinctly totalitarian flavor. But also perverse side effects.

They may be imagining something like an Alibaba Cloud data center running in Northern Virginia. It may include Party-inspired features such as "content moderation" or "user prediction". Features far stricter than anything AWS or GCloud would be willing or able to provide at similar price. US enterprises (and government entities) themselves will be so tempted to implement these strictures, the coming authoritarian dystopia is all but ensured.

The narrative clearly does not have to unfold this way. US and Chinese entrepreneurs can and will forge amazing partnerships. On a recent web app I noticed about 50% of posts in Chinese. And very much look forward to localizing for the entire region.

<comment><USER11> I am skeptical about Chinese tech scene in the sense that Chinese government views tech as a way to reinforce dictatorship, repression of minorities and expand totalitarianism overseas, rather than to achieve something good.

Think AI to detect undesirable people or self-driving cars that take you straight to the police station when requested, as well as pressure to restrict freedoms in the West in order to appease the Chinese government or investors.

And as for partnerships, you may want to look at previous experience of partnerships in the Hi-Tech manufacturing, like planes or military.

The partnerships only last for as long as needed to copy your technology and start competing with you in your own market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Already, more people in China have access to the Internet than in any other > country...

Hold on, that's not exactly a fair comparison

<comment><USER13> Why? The singular leverage of China's massive, unified market and labor force is what so many pro-liberty commentators find particularly troubling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You have a chance vs you have none. Gone through monopoly like power such as Microsoft, AOL, compu serve, Yahoo, the flower one (forget its name now), Google ... do they do Facebook ...

The key is you can choose. You can start or not using it like young one quit Facebook.

But can you not use wechat, ... etc in china. No.

You are really controlled by a country which close off its world.

Being in Hong Kong we face the pressure everyday. Strange you have comment here cf USA controlled vs china controlled.

Really?

1984 is a hard novel. Suggest to Read animal farm. You know those pigs. And not need to due with them face to face.

</comment><comment><USER15> There's one rational counter to what China is pursuing.

Basically, the US/CA + EU + AU/NZ + JP/SK (among others).

There is no other way to restrain China's ambition to force its illiberal vision of the world on everyone else. They won't rule the Internet and tech world unless that world fully breaks down into very strict isolationism (everyone for their self). China has to depend on a divide and conquer approach, because they'll never be bigger than the world or the developed world. So long as a large enough bunch of nations stick together, even broadly, it'll be enough to impose that China follow a minimum set of guidelines.

This China is no more intimidating than the USSR was at the height of its power. The same alliances will work once again. Even the worse-than-bullheaded Trump Admin has seen the light (which is why they're rapidly attempting to settle trade disputes re NAFTA & EU).

The liberal world is not going to capitulate all of its values to appease China. That guarantees a perpetual conflict of values, which will inherently divide the world into these two large groups. China also can't out-compete and out-innovate the combined developed world, no matter what they do.

In short, China will never rule the Internet. They will only rule their Internet, as they have for a long time. They'll have to play by other terms to be part of the larger, more liberal global Internet; that more liberal Internet isn't going to change to suit China (and hasn't).

<comment><USER8> This a rather bold and broad prediction. Personally I'm not as confident that it's impossible for anything to go wrong, but time will tell I suppose.

<comment><USER16> Maybe not impossible, but things have to go really downhill in the West for us to bend over this far. Look at with how much pride we show off our democratic and free society, mentioning it whenever possible to underline our superiority to China or other countries. You don't give that up over night just for some economical benefit. You have to be close to starving.

I'm more worried how we start to undermine these very values ourselves in the name of fighting terrorism etc. While everyone's busy looking at how China is supposedly threatening our freedom, our government is already busy taking it away slowly, not heating up the water too quickly so the frog won't notice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "To many Chinese leaders, China's current place in the global division of labor looks like a trap: foreign firms reap high profits from the intellectual property they own, and Chinese companies survive on the thin margins they make by manufacturing and assembling physical products."

Is this not contrary to the western perception of Chinese profiteering entirely? I don't read the chinese paper or anything but China seemed like the last people worried about IP protections.

</comment><comment><USER18> > the United States should work with its allies and trading partners to > pressure Beijing to open up the Chinese market to foreign companies, curb > its preferential treatment of Chinese firms

Ironic given the US government blocking investment from China in US firms, blocking takeovers, blocking China Mobile etc.

</comment><comment><USER19> Adam Segal is currently over on r/IAmA taking questions: [https://redd.it/994nhf](https://redd.it/994nhf)

</comment><comment><USER20> I am reminded of this excerpt from Orwell's Road to Wigan Pier, discussing attitudes to colonialism in Britain:

(In other words, it is easy to sneer at US control of the internet, but do people who do so _actually_ want the alternative on offer)

"The same streak of soggy half-baked insincerity runs through all 'advanced' opinion. Take the question of imperialism, for instance. Every left-wing 'intellectual' is, as a matter of course, an anti-imperialist. He claims to be outside the empire-racket as automatically and self-righteously as he claims to be outside theclass-racket. Even the right-wing 'intellectual', who is not definitely in revolt against British imperialism, pretends to regard it with a sort of amused detachment. It is so easy to be witty about the British Empire. The White Man's Burden and 'Rule, Britannia' and Kipling's novels and Anglo- Indian bores--who could even mention such things without a snigger?

And is there any cultured person who has not at least once in his life made a joke about that old Indian havildar who said that if the British left India there would not be a rupee or a virgin left between Peshawar and Delhi (or wherever it was)? That is the attitude of the typical left-winger towards imperialism, and athoroughly flabby, boneless attitude it is. For in the last resort, the only important question is. Do you want the British Empire to hold together or do you want it to disintegrate? And at the bottom of his heart no Englishman, least of all the kind of person who is witty about Anglo-Indian colonels, does want it to disintegrate. For, apart from any other consideration, the high standard of life we enjoy in England depends upon our keeping a tight hold on the Empire, particularly the tropical portions of it such as India and Africa. Under the capitalist system, in order that England may live in comparative comfort, a hundred million Indians must live on the verge of starvation--an evil state of affairs, but you acquiesce in it every time you step into a taxi or eat a plate of strawberries and cream. The alternative is to throw the Empire overboard and reduce England to a cold and unimportant little island where we should all have to work very hard and live mainly on herrings and potatoes. That is the very last thing that any left- winger wants. Yet the left-winger continues to feel that he has no moral responsibility for imperialism. He is perfectly ready to accept the products of Empire and to save his soul by sneering at the people who hold the Empire together."

<comment><USER21> I read this passage as calling out the hypocrisy of the English intellectuals who benefit from colonialism in India while flippantly call out its moral faults. It is not making a statement that imperialism is better than its alternative.

Indeed Orwell himself calls out the overbearing attitude of the British "flabby" and "boneless"

<comment><USER20> What I meant to suggest is that many people in the US took for granted the benefits of their hegemony, much like the British intellectuals took for granted the benefits of their imperialism. Hence, it may be a surprise to some that loss of US hegemony may be replaced by a China-ization of the internet outside of China.

Orwell was an anti-imperialist. I didn't mean to say that imperialism was a good thing - that wasn't what he was saying. (US hegemony may or may not be a good thing compared to the alternative - that will only become clear with time. I think it's less obvious than in the case of imperialism)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: your favorite obscure Firefox extensions? - <AUTHOR>

Working definition: anything that's not the first page of popular extensions.
Autocopy - automatically copy selected text to clipboard
Googlepedia - wikipedia results along with google searches
AutoPager - breaking my own rule, but this one's awesome <comment><USER2> Did you know that Autocopy just changes "clipboard.autocopy" in about:config to true?

<comment><AUTHOR> The extension must precede that functionality. I remember stealing some code from it years ago & it was more complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Tree-style tabs:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5890>

An absolute must if you love having 50-100+ tabs open. Oddly enough, it works rather well with Tab Mix Plus as well.

<comment><USER4> Tree-style tabs + Colored Tabs extension is a joy to use. You'd think that Tree-styled tabs would not play nice with other tab extensions but the author makes large efforts to interoperate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Favourite: PDF plugin for Mac OS X. This uses the mac's native pdf rendered and makes viewing pdf's a joy rather than a pain. <http://code.google.com/p/firefox-mac-pdf/>

Shameless plug: If you are a google docs user you might want to look gdocsbar [<http://www.gdocsbar.com>]. an update with some more features like download, is on the works and will be released shortly.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hide Menubar (alt to show menu bar) <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/4762>

Hide Navigation Bar (F2 to toggle nav bar) <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/8769>

Both are awesome for netbooks. I find hide menubar nice to have even when I do have the space to spare because I use the menu bar so rarely.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/too-many-tabs-firefox-add- ons-t...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/too-many-tabs-firefox-add-ons-to- manage-a-tab-jam/)

That's what i use to manage 50+ tabs. The list is missing firegestures & swifttabs.

links: AutoCopy - <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/383>

Googlepedia - <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2517>

AutoPager - <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925>

</comment><comment><USER7> Colorzilla:

<http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Rikaichan -- remarkably detailed Japanese - English dictionary (hover over words to show definitions) <http://www.polarcloud.com/rikaichan/>

</comment><comment><USER9> mozrepl This has so much potential. You can telnet into your firefox instance and run javascript commands, on documents and on the chrome. When I get some time I have ideas about integrating this with emacs (there already is mozreply.el , but it does little more than telnetting in).

</comment><comment><USER10> Abduction: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3408>

Let's you take a picture of a part of your page by rearranging a square. Helps so you don't have to go to paint or photoshop to crop your recent screenshot.

<comment><USER11> It's what i came here to recommend :)

May i also add ImgLikeOpera (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/1672>). Avoid downloading any pics on a page.

My 3gb per month mobile broadband limit here in the UK goes soooo much further with it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Leechblock:

<https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4476>

Lets me set fairly fine grained time limits on various sites that I'd otherwise spend too much time on.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you do any web development that involves web metrics (Google Analyitics, Omniture, etc.), Omnibug is quite useful:

<http://www.rosssimpson.com/dev/omnibug.html>

</comment><comment><USER14> Surprised that Vimperator (<https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/4891>) has not been mentioned yet. Vim for the web !

</comment><comment><USER15> Tabs Open Relative <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1956>

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm fairly sure tab mix plus does that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> AS Number: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2072>

</comment><comment><USER17> Mouse Gestures Redox - Emulates Opera mouse gestures and now has rocker gestures for the mac.

<http://www.mousegestures.org/>

Speed Dial - Emulates the Opera speed dial home page. <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4810>

<comment><AUTHOR> I used Mouse Gestures Redox for a long while then I switched to firegestures. I can't remember why exactly, I think something to do with speed & a larger library of gestures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> LORI - Life Of Request Info

Awesome plugin for quick/constant perf measurement. It shows how long it took the browser to get the first byte, the total time for page rendering, the total size of page and the total number of requests. For example, for this page, the stats are :

0.160s 0.600s 26.14KB 5 req

</comment><comment><USER19> Open In Browser : <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8207>

Will give you the possibility to open a file (especially file that you are sure is text) in Firefox instead of downloading it.

</comment><comment><USER20> Table tools - useful for sorting and filtering tables inline <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2637>

</comment><comment><USER21> I use Safari more than Firefox these days. But when I use Firefox I quite like Vimperator, especially since I can write simple but functional extensions for it easily.

</comment><comment><USER22> I loved Hit-A-Hint so much I forked it when the original devoper abandoned it.

<http://elder-gods.org/lol>

</comment><comment><USER23> _Long Titles_ used to be essential for reading xkcd, but I think the current Firefox build has it built-in.

</comment><comment><USER24> clear fields, a small but very useful extension <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2408></comment>


Experts Knew a Pandemic Was Coming. Here's What They're Worried About Next - <AUTHOR> https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/07/experts-knew-pandemic-was-coming-what-they-fear-next-238686 <comment><USER2> I never understood this and it is hard to Google: When they say 9.0 magnitude earthquake, what does that exactly mean in terms of energy disspiated per unit time? What I consider an earthquake intuitively is some "spring" energy from faults must be released through vibration and dislocations. It is critical how this energy is dissipated and over what length of time - a strong earthquake shaking buildings for 3 hours vs. 3 seconds to dissipate the same amount of energy will cause vastly different outcomes in terms of damage.

> The Richter magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of > the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs

according to Wikipedia. Don't we need to also consider the frequency? Lower amplitude but very high frequency of vibrations can be also be dangerous? Are there any measures for Power or RMS power of an earthquake?</comment>


How Big Formula bought the China baby formula market.  - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/08/us-china-milkpowder-specialreport-idUSBRE9A700820131108

<comment><USER2> Over quite some time Chinese mothers avoided Chinese formula.

Surprisingly though, milk powder might have been the single safest food product on the Chinese market. Why? Well, the authorities don't want to get caught with their pants down again, and there were death sentences related to the melamin poisoning....</comment>


Google to angry GMail users: we know better - <AUTHOR> http://news.techeye.net/software/google-to-angry-gmail-users-we-know-better

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to put my finger on what I dislike so much about the new interface. There's a stray empty box (probably ads that I'm blocking anyway) at the top of the message list.

There's the button icons rather than text. Now switchable back: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/253730/change_gmails_button_i...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/253730/change_gmails_button_icons_back_to_text.html)

There's the color theme. Too little contrast, even the "high contrast" theme has too much grey, and does the obverse of what you'd want: it highlights read messages by coloring the _background_ rather than muting the _foreground_. Button lables are grey by default which muddles them.

I'm making much more use of offlineimap for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> That odd blank box: div class="mq", containing table class"ae6".

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The generic form of this headline is usually true:

$COMPANY to angry $SERVICE users: we know better

and sometimes it is true that $COMPANY knows better. Most of the time, it's just uncomfortable. And $COMPANY never does it for a whim: code quality improves, or performance, or scalability.

And if $COMPANY does it to enough users enough times, a competitor will come along and take all those users.

Google and Facebook have, apparently, not reached the point of "enough". Yet.</comment>


Python Generator Tricks for Systems Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.dabeaz.com/generators/ <comment><USER2> Discussion from 1 month ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3349429>

</comment><comment><USER3> See also:

[http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/8.1.0/api/twisted.interne...](http://twistedmatrix.com/documents/8.1.0/api/twisted.internet.defer.html#inlineCallbacks)

<http://www.tornadoweb.org/documentation/gen.html>

</comment><comment><USER4> How can I do this in Lua with coroutines?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you organize your content consumption? - <AUTHOR> Assuming you have many sources, and that the rate at which you find content is greater than what you can consume daily, how do you go about prioritizing and processing the content you find online?<p>I've never been able to stick to a structure: browser bookmarks, Google bookmarks, Evernote, articles saved to Pocket, Youtube Watch Later, newsletters, random articles sent over by friends, saved items on Facebook, random .txts with 'links to read', links in todo lists... <comment><USER2> When you say "the rate at which you find content is greater than what you can consume daily", can you provide more details? Are you, for example, trying to read all headlines of NYTimes + HN + Reddit Front page daily? What type of content are you trying to filter out / prioritize from?

<comment><AUTHOR> Everyday I get at least 2 newsletters with content worth scanning (the article, not just titles) and find 5-10 articles worth reading.

I guess its part of the problem that I don't have a specific goal or type of content I want to prioritize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've got 3 main things:

Feedly as my RSS feed, works well and I am able to browse through it at work.

A "Daily" folder on my computer at home which opens the websites I like to check and read daily.

I'm subbed to... 8 or so subreddits I read daily.</comment>


The open Internet's five deadliest enemies - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaltrends.com/opinion/the-open-internets-five-deadliest-enemies/

<comment><USER2> 6\. Walled gardens

<comment><USER3> Now, a year from now, five years from now, I'd like someone to explain to me why Google, when confronted with Facebook and Twitter chose to make Google+ a mostly walled garden (can't link to comments, no api) when the "obvious disruptive, jujitsu" move would've been to be the massive and open player for others to build on.

But yeah, walled gardens are a huge problem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Jerry,

That is a great question. Personally I think Plus was a huge blunder. Steve Jobs recognized that PCs won the war. He saw that growth was in mobile and tried to build the best mobile device. #Winner.

The main thing keeping people at Facebook is that everyone you know is there. And it's decent enough. But if they start to screw up, people will switch and not miss it. Just watch reruns of comics unleashed. It is jarring how everyone talks about their MySpace page, then listening to commercials advertising Facebook pages.

Search on the other hand is harder to switch or copy. Yet Google is squandering their core competency. I'm on DuckDuckGo. Many other techies are. And that's where it begins...ask Yahoo...

Page listened to Jobs about focus. But he should have built something _innovative_. Go where the puck will be. NOT where it is.

Google hires PHDs. Their employees are a poor fit for a PLUS-CENTRIC company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I expected Facebook to be on that list...

</comment><comment><USER5> #6. Trolls</comment>


Bosch develops rapid test for Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bosch.com/stories/vivalytic-rapid-test-for-covid-19/ <comment><USER2> This is not rapid, only 10 tests/day, whilst the current overly slow sequencers can do 200/day. The accuracy of 5% is also worse than other faster sequencers of 3%.

And compare that to modern ThermalFischer parallel PCR sequencers, which operate in realtime, 25 tests in parallel, for 2.500€. That's a factor of 1000. With 10 modern sequencers per city you could test 10.000 per day, eg with drive-in.

[https://www.thermofisher.com/de/de/home/clinical/clinical- tr...](https://www.thermofisher.com/de/de/home/clinical/clinical- translational-research/pharmacogenomics/real-time-pcr-solutions- pharmacogenomics.html)

<comment><USER3> In addition to all information above this test is able to detect antibodies only not virus. So it is not recommended tests by WHO. This test is only useful in the later part of infection by the time which patient might have in contact with others thus spreading the disease. We need tests which can detect single of very few virus particle in the early stage of infection and that will help to quarantine the patient thus reducing virus spread.

<comment><USER4> _...able to detect antibodies only not virus...This test is only useful in the later part of infection_

Actually, getting a sense of the penetration of infection into the general population, among asymptomatic people and mild cases would be very valuable information! Antibody tests could be used to sample test the public at large.

<comment><USER5> Plus having a point of care test for triaging seems extremely useful as well.

I don't think this is meant to replace large labs running rtPCR tests.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This test is made for use at the point of care, apparently all the operater has to do is insert a swab into a cartridge and put it into the device. [0] Comparing the throughput to fully automated systems used in testing labs [1] (look at this beast!) or qPCR machines in research labs [2] is missing the point, those require high investment or skilled staff. A test that can be run quickly by any doctor would be very useful to rapidly detect new outbreaks in the time following the current lockdowns.

However I suspect that the downside of this device will be the high cost of consumables, as is common for microarray biochip based devices.

[0] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgW2pYmzcco](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgW2pYmzcco) [1] [https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/products/systems/cobas-8...](https://diagnostics.roche.com/us/en/products/systems/cobas-8800-system.html) [2] [https://www.bio-rad.com/en-us/product/cfx96-touch-real- time-...](https://www.bio-rad.com/en-us/product/cfx96-touch-real-time-pcr- detection-system?ID=LJB1YU15)

<comment><USER7> It's like a Keurig single serve coffee machine but for covid-19 testing

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sounds really impressive, but writing "1,000 tests per day with just 100 devivces" is really marketing BS I think. They should've just written "10 tests per day per device".

<comment><USER9> Don't current testing machines have much, much higher throughput? Like in the thousands of tests per day? It seems the advantage of this new device is latency. Of course if they are cheap enough and easy to use that you can buy thousands of them and distribute to all hospitals then might also increase total throughput.

<comment><USER8> It's a really small device as far as I understand, so you could use it in a small practice or even on the go (?). This can be an advantage as most of the lab systems weigh several tons and take up a lot of floor space, hence you can never use them in a decentralized setting.

<comment><USER10> The intersection between moneyedness and remoteness. The more I think about it the more I suspect that the pilot market for this class of device would be the sick bay of a yacht that has its own Wikipedia page. Which is fine, but surely nothing that will have a meaningful impact on our general understanding of the epidemic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm seeing a lot of grumbling here about this being "slow", but currently most COVID testing involves shipping samples around to remote labs. A NYT article about a hospital in Brooklyn mentioned that their samples are tested in California (!), and with these labs also inundated, average time to get a result is over a week now.

So if you can install these machines directly in hospitals, clinics etc, they will still be far faster than sending them off to a lab.

</comment><comment><USER12> It all sounds impressive to me:

>In various laboratory tests with SARS-CoV-2, the Bosch test delivered results with an accuracy of over 95 percent.

I've read a lot of report on the current tests for SARS-CoV-2 having accuracy issues, does anyone know how 95% accuracy compares to the current methods?

<comment><USER13> Practicing hospital physician here. We never use the term "accuracy" to describe diagnostic tests, and whenever I see that term used, I'm very suspicious of the claim being made. In other words, this Bosch announcement can probably be ignored.

We use the terms "sensitivity" and "specificity" to describe diagnostic test performance, and never to my knowledge talk about a test's "accuracy." Usually accuracy refers to the sensitivity, but there's a lot of liberty taken with that term in marketing talk.

For example, the existing PCR test being used does not have ideal sensitivity, which for practical purposes means that there is a substantial false-negative rate. Which is why (among other reasons) we weren't testing asymptomatic patients in the early phase.

<comment><USER14> According to Wikipedia, _accuracy_ is actually defined in this context. This does not not mean that Bosch has not used everyday speech here but it is not clear that they have. Too bad that the article does not include links to additional information.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity#De...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensitivity_and_specificity#Definitions)

<comment><USER15> Of course accuracy is defined, but it's not the right metric because you usually have a large bias in the tested population: even if you only test people with symptoms, you might only have 10% of people that actually have the disease; so a test that always says "NO" would have 90% accuracy.

That's why you look at True Positive Rate (sensitivity) and True Negative Rate (specificity) to factor that bias out. If TPR is 95%, that means that 95% of the people that are actually infected (10% of the pop in the previous ex.) will be detected as such. IF TNR is 20%, that means you'll mistakenly detect 20% of people that don't have it as infected, which would be really bad.

In other fields, people use Precision and Recall. Precision = % of times the test is right _when it predicts a positive_. Recall = how many of the real positives were detected as such.

<comment><USER16> > IF TNR is 20%, that means you'll mistakenly detect 20% of people that don't > have it as infected, which would be really bad.

Would it though? It's my understanding that most people who test positive are still being sent home, not forcefully hospitalized. And given that we don't actually have a widely used pharmaceutical intervention protocol, there's no side effects to worry about from false positives (eg of the opposite of this: if we were giving every confirmed case chloroquine or interleukin). The worst case outcome from a high false positive rate (low TNR) would seem to me that people would be extra good at self quarantining.

<comment><USER17> If you're a healthcare worker, the cost of a false-positive could be high.

For them and others one cost is that they'll feel themselves somewhat immune when they're not and may not take precautions. It will also confuse study of the disease if it starts to look like your "2nd" infection can be much worse than your first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's good to see solutions for testing are coming.

This test by Singapore a*star nanobiolab can test in 5 minutes : [https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/singapore- scie...](https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/singapore-scientists- on-the-front-lines-of-fight-against-covid-19)

<comment><USER19> Besides comparing times, I guess the accuracies or FP/FN rates are also important. The linked article states 95% accuracy for the Bosch test. Are there any numbers for the 5-minute test?

<comment><USER20> This article [0] suggests that false negative results will not be as problematic if we manage to start screening on a population level.

Inaccuracy of up to 15% could still keep the viral R0 under 1.0 (the critical value for eliminating an epidemic).

From the article:

> "False negative rates up to 15% could be tolerated if 80% comply with > testing, and false positives can be almost arbitrarily high when a high > fraction of the population is already effectively quarantined"

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/to-stop-covid-19-test- ev...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/to-stop-covid-19-test- everyone-373fd80eb03b)

<comment><USER21> Shouldn't we optimize for a higher number of false positives? In the end, sending someone in quarantine for 2 weeks without them being infected is probably less dangerous than a false negative. So making tests overly sensitive would seem more applicable to me here.

<comment><USER22> If you're quarantining a large number of medics then that's potentially serious and possibly more dangerous overall if your numbers are off.

<comment><USER21> You could administer two tests for those, I believe that's what's already done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23>
      Up to 1,000
      (in smaller font) tests per day on just 100 devices

I guess 10 test per day per device is not as cool

<comment><USER24> i think it's for the time after the pandemic. so you can identity potential infected very decentralized, so it does not happen again in 2021.

<comment><USER25> that is the right angle I guess. This should be a local doctor device.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Am I missing something here or does this look rather over-engineered and with limited capacity - 10 tests per device per day - I assume the device is the large central unit.

<comment><USER27> I wonder if it refuses to operate at all without a wifi connection? ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> More details on coronavirus testing for the interested: [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-020-00010-2](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41587-020-00010-2)

</comment><comment><USER29> > Up to 1,000 tests per day on just 100 devices

So.. 10 tests per day per device? That doesn't sound THAT impressive.

<comment><USER30> "(...)the rapid test can detect a SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus infection in patients in under two and a half hours" (...)With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days for a result."

Well i see here a big improvement...

<comment><USER31> > With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days > for a result.

Is that because it takes 2 days for the test to complete, or because there a 2 day delay from backlog + administrative time?

<comment><USER32> usually shipping the samples to a lab. this test can be done on the spot in the hospital by a doctor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> More details about the test:

[https://www.bosch-vivalytic.com/en/product/vivalytic- tests/v...](https://www.bosch-vivalytic.com/en/product/vivalytic-tests/vri- multiplex-test/)

<comment><USER34> So the whole thing is an existing product that was extended to also test for Coronavirus?

<comment><USER35> How else could it have been developed so fast?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Various groups are also using the LAMP method (Loop-mediated isothermal amplification) which can apparently give results in 30 minutes or so without expensive thermal cycling equipment.

[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Loop- mediated+isothermal+amplifica...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Loop- mediated+isothermal+amplification+covid-19)

Bonus article with biohackers in Sydney: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-25/amateur-scientist- mak...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-25/amateur-scientist-making-a- rapid-test-for-coronavirus/12084974)

<comment><USER37> This one claims 30 minutes for results for the standard product being repurposed by Bosch here as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> > Up to 10,000,000 tests per day ...

> ... on just 1,000,000 devices

Incredible marketing.

<comment><USER39> Given the size of hospitals around the world, I'd assume its not unlikely that they'll buy 100+ of these devices. I agee that this is somewhat confusing, but it doesn't seem too unrealistic.

Also, it seems like the actual test is the cartridge which is inserted into an existing device. So the device is probably already in use in some places and can get this extra test capability by just inserting the cartridge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> There's already a 45-minute rtPCR test from Cepheid and a simple 10 minute ELISA test from SureScreen (which serves a different need, antibody detection rather than infection detection).

It doesn't appear to have an FDA EUA so it may not be immediately usable in the US.

The user-friendly UX and compact size seem good.

The cycle time seems to be on the slow side when minutes count in an ER / ICU situation. ~9 tests per day per machine seems slow, costly and likely to occupy a lot of space for the machines and the cartridges (which contain reagents that have to be kept chilled).

This seems overall like a timely product to solve immediate needs. It could've been better but it was designed quickly.

</comment><comment><USER41> >In various laboratory tests with SARS-CoV-2, the Bosch test delivered results with an accuracy of over 95 percent.

Curious what the false negative rate is.

>[The device] can perform up to ten tests in the space of 24 hours

>[Testing] can be performed directly at the point of care. This eliminates the need to transport samples, which takes up valuable time. ... With the tests currently in use, patients must usually wait one to two days for a result

>... even medical personnel who have not been specially trained on it can reliably perform the test.

>... it allows a single sample to be tested not just for COVID-19 but also for nine other respiratory diseases, including influenza A and B, simultaneously

</comment><comment><USER33> my guess is that in the coming months, international travel will require a mandatory 3 hour wait at the airport to get your test result

</comment><comment><USER42> This is fine, but it is yet another molecular test. What we need now are serology tests. They are faster, cheaper, easier to execute (blood-based), can detect cured patients, and can scale to the population of a country.

Serology tests are already used in several countries in Asia, I have little doubt they will arrive in Europe and the US soon-ish.

<comment><USER43> We already have serology tests in Czechia (got several days ago from China), but there is some confusion about how useful they are. They may produce negative results even for patients with several days of clinical symptoms, so negative results still needs to ve verified with molecular test.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Cepheid has started shipping tests that produce results in under 45 minutes. [https://www.labpulse.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=mic&pag=dis&...](https://www.labpulse.com/index.aspx?sec=sup&sub=mic&pag=dis&ItemID=800942)

</comment><comment><USER45> 1000 tests per day sounds like what typical hospital needs.

I wonder how much 100 Vivalytic devices cost and how much those cartridges cost.

Can they mix multiple samples into one test? If you take sample from 10 people, mix them to find that nobody is infected, it increases testing capability 10X.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is not ROCHE systems more performants [https://www.roche.com/media/releases/med- cor-2020-03-13.htm](https://www.roche.com/media/releases/med- cor-2020-03-13.htm) ?

<comment><USER47> From your link:

 _"The widely available Roche's cobas 6800 /8800 Systems, which are used to perform the cobas SARS-CoV-2 Test, provide test results in three and half hours and offer improved operating efficiency, flexibility, and fastest time- to-results with the highest throughput providing up to 96 results in about three hours and a total of 384 results for the cobas 6800 System and 960 results for the cobas 8800 System in 8 hours. The test can be run simultaneously with other assays provided by Roche for use on the cobas 6800/8800 Systems."_

<comment><USER46> So you need 288 BOSH devices to have the daily throughput of a ROCHE 8800 System

<comment><USER48> To be fair, there's a massive price difference between the bosh and roche machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So the test depends on single use cartridges. How many of those can be manufactured?

The testing devices themselves seem to be around 15.000 Euros. So you'd have to have a very good reason to buy one - a reason that isn't throughput.

</comment><comment><USER50> With announcements of this type of thing, what I think we all need to know is also "can you produce tons of these things right now", not just that they exist.

</comment><comment><USER51> Has anyone made a resource yet of all the infection tests available vs antibody (immunity) tests available?

Seems like that would be handy if not just fascinating

</comment><comment><USER52> Imagine how much Theranos would have been worth right now.

I think cost firstly and then speed of result would be useful right now never mind the throughput.

<comment><USER53> Theranos would be worth exactly $0 - their long term liabilities.

You need stuff that works first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> How is this better than Open qPCR which is 3-times less expensive and can give a test result in 1 hour instead of 2.5 hours?

<comment><USER55> Does 'Open' mean open source? Is there a free/open-source PCR design that DIYers can build themselves as long as they have the parts/resources?

<comment><USER54> For OpenPCR yes, for Open qPRC not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> > Faster certainty, slower spread

At this point, isn't the virus considered to be "everywhere" and testing pointless?

<comment><USER57> I honestly don't even understand what I'm reading anymore. Either on HN and Reddit, or sites like the BBC, NY Times, and CNN.

Half the things I read still reflect fantasies of Asian-style containment in the West.

The other half acknowledge that this is too late. That we're heading up an exponential curve now, and will be on the other side in 3-6 months (depending on measures taken).

I'm no expert. But knowing what I know about my nation's government, and the likelihood of its people fully cooperating with any measures, I suspect that the second half is more realistic.

Meaning that testing and contact tracing is really only going to become relevant later this year. To snuff out any minor flare-ups that occur after most of society has gotten over the curve and built up herd immunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> this whole every-day news about rapid test dev, etc is getting frustrating. My SO is an MD in NY. All they want to hear from any company is, we have developed method that can be used to test 10k/day with results in 1 hr and will be mass producing and provding in two days.

</comment><comment><USER59> As an aside question: after each use is that entire cartridge assembly waste?

</comment><comment><USER60> Here is a dumb idea: Mix and test multiple people at the same time.

<comment><USER61> That's already being done in some places that have limited numbers of tests. The governor of Nebraska announced that they are pooling tests to save on test kits. Samples from 5 people are combined in 1 test. If the sample tests negative, those people are in the clear. If the sample tests positive, all 5 are then tested again separately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Well, good for them.

Wait. 10 tests per day? That's nothing.

</comment><comment><USER63> How expensive is this machine? $1k, $10k?

<comment><USER64> Certainly not $1K! BTW, at current U.S. hospital billing levels, $1K buys you a small bottle of Tylenol. Think big, my friend!

<comment><USER65> Sorry, German source only, but reportedly: Device is 15.000€ and a single cartridge runs between 50 and 100€ [0].

[0]: [https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/pandemie-...](https://www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/industrie/pandemie- testergebnisse-in-wenigen-stunden-bosch-entwickelt- covid-19-schnelltest/25684166.html?ticket=ST-834594-shOtHKhshHHLKSqkcg1U-ap1)

<comment><USER64> That makes sense. There seems to be a better option available in the U.S.: Abbott ID NOW, which produces results in 5 to 13 minutes. The cost was $8K before the acquisition of Alere by Abbott: [https://serfinitymedical.com/products/id-now-instrument- us-a...](https://serfinitymedical.com/products/id-now-instrument-us-alere- nat024-928584)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> More important question is, do we trust them?

<comment><USER67> Bosch is a huge company (400.000 employees). Don't drive your car if you don't trust them.

<comment><USER68> They are also owned by a charitable foundation whose express goal is the long- term welfare of the company and its employees, so they have much less pressure to extract short-term value.</comment></comment></comment>


Matrices in Julia - <AUTHOR> http://alexhwoods.com/2015/08/22/linear-algebra-in-julia/ <comment><USER2> _Having only been around since 2012, Julia's greatest disadvantage is a lack of community support._

That is true, but if you post a question to their forum, you will get swift answers, often from the core language team:

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/julia- users](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/julia-users)

Unfortunately these posts don't always show up at the top of a google search, so it's sometimes better to search the user group directly.

<comment><USER3> _often from the core language team_

Very friendly core language team, by the way :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> My favourite trick in Julia using matrices is the following one liner:

fib(n) = ((BigInt [1 1; 1 0])^n)[2,1]

Which defines a fast, exact, Fibonacci function. It's so far the easiest and only way I've managed to calculate the 10^9th Fibonacci number.

<comment><USER5> The following defines the Fibonacci recurrence relation (in matrix form):

[F(n+1); F(n)] = [1 1; 1 0]^n * [F(n); F(n-1)]

or

[F(n+1); F(n)] = [1 1; 1 0]^n * [1; 0] if we define F(0) = 0 and F(1) = 1.

However, we can diagonalize [1 1; 1 0] using its eigenvalues and eigenvectors (see here: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=eigenvectors+of+%7B%7B1...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=eigenvectors+of+%7B%7B1%2C+1%7D%2C+%7B1%2C+0%7D%7D)).

For any diagonalizable matrix A = PDP^-1 where P is the matrix of eigenvectors and D is the matrix of eigenvalues on the diagonal, A^n = PD^nP^-1. Try to expand the A^n if you don't believe it. Using this trick, you have simplified the power of a matrix to a power of two floats, namely the eigenvalues.

<comment><USER6> From this you'll end up with the closed form in terms of the golden ratio. Might as well use that.

<comment><USER5> Yup, you will. It's nice to show where that comes from though. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What does this offer me that Numpy doesn't already offer, with the advantage of not having to learn a new language?

<comment><USER8> Also numpy code looks terribly ugly for numerical computing, when compared with julia (looks like matlab, but the language doesn't suck like matlab.)

<comment><USER9> Example? I keep hearing this, but mostly I got such arguments from people who do not know NumPy (and e.g. use np.array where np.matrix would make the code readable).

(I mean, not everything is perfect, but are there side-by-side vector computations, which are nice in Julia, but not ugly in Python?)

<comment><USER10> It's a bit of a matter of taste, but many people coming from languages like Matlab prefer the more terse coding style of for example

       A\X'

over the more verbose

       np.linalg.solve(A,np.transpose(X))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Right now I'm using the armadillo c++ library for linear algebra. It's quite fast (can use openBLAS too + it does some optimizations with template metaprogramming) and quite convenient to use. Julia seems really interesting though.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it possible to make one of the items in the matrix a variable? (And then e.g. put the matrix in an equation, expand it, and solve for the variable).

<comment><USER13> You can do this using the SymPY.jl package. As a good chunk of matrix functionality is parametric on element type, you can do matrix operations on SymPY's symbolic variables.

See example 6 in: [https://github.com/andreasnoack/andreasnoack.github.io/blob/...](https://github.com/andreasnoack/andreasnoack.github.io/blob/master/talks/2015AprilStanford_AndreasNoack.ipynb)</comment></comment>


New Macbok Pro Has a 3.2GB/s SSD - <AUTHOR> https://www.laptopmag.com/articles/2018-macbook-pro-benchmarks <comment><USER2> > To be fair, Apple's relatively new APFS file system is designed to speed up > file file copies using a technology Apple calls Instant Cloning. But a win > is a win.

Um, no.

While snapshots on ZFS or APFS are wonderful, they don't help me when I am modifying large files, or compiling a big project.

So I don't know what to take away from this article.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand how they did not get the first place on any of "real-world" benchmarks, if they have the best CPU and I/O?

</comment><comment><USER4> Other computers have them available for years?

</comment><comment><USER3> Eventually, the entire Apple laptop will be made of Samsung hardware.

</comment><comment><USER5> Big marketing win for apple. The speed increase is just a matter of perception.

</comment><comment><USER6> give me at least 2x in a raid0</comment>


Javascript anonymous functions – Helephant.com - <AUTHOR> http://helephant.com/2008/08/javascript-anonymous-functions/ <comment><AUTHOR> The author has a great series on How JavaScript Objects Work:

<http://helephant.com/2008/08/how-javascript-objects-work/></comment>


Zend Framework 2.0 Released - <AUTHOR> http://framework.zend.com/

<comment><USER2> "The most popular framework for modern, high-performing PHP applications."

I completely disagree. For one, ZF2 was just released, and for two, ZF has been a mire of misery for years. Almost every other modern solution (Laravel, Symfony, Yii, Fuel, Silex, etc) has been better received than the Zend Framework.</comment>


Saudi court sentences poet to death for renouncing Islam - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/20/saudi-court-sentences-poet-to-death-for-renouncing-islam?CMP=share_btn_tw <comment><USER2> "Why Islam Needs a Reformation," by Ayaan Hirsi Ali:

[http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reformation-for- islam-14268596...](http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-reformation-for- islam-1426859626)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why wouldn't he get a lawyer? When will people realize that if you engage with the criminal justice system of any country without representation, bad things will happen??

<comment><USER4> If you read the article, you'll see why.

""He was unable to assign a lawyer because his ID was confiscated when he was arrested [in January 2014]. Then they said you must have a retrial and we'll change the prosecutor and the judges. The new judge didn't even talk to him, he just made the verdict.""

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> With allies like these, we won't be needing enemies anytime soon. Saudi Arabia just cannot implode soon enough. This is a theocracy the world can go without.</comment>


XKCD on 'being monopolist' in today's age - <AUTHOR> http://xkcd.com/1118/

<comment><USER2> In App centric world, how important is browser anymore ? Now, I use apps for the websites that I used to access regularly everyday.</comment>


"Politics and the English Language," By George Orwell - <AUTHOR> http://alexgolec.github.io/orwell/politics <comment><USER2> Orwell is awesome, but his linguistics were long-ago debunked. For a good, easy-going (popular) assessment of modern linguistics pick up one of Steven Pinker's books. He tries to ram through his own conception (mentalese), but despite this he still offers a nice survey (and strong argument against Orwell).

</comment><comment><USER3> It's hard to take Orwell seriously when he launches into histrionics in the first two paragraphs of his essay. He makes valid points (the selected quotes are almost indecipherable), but it's difficult to to see how the particular abuses of language that he cites are responsible for the decline of our civilization.

If anything, it's the opposite. Our language seems to be getting more puerile, simplistic and filled with sound bites. I agree with him that succinctness and brevity are things we should strive for, however even that is not a panacea for vapid ideas and muddled thinking.</comment>


W.E.B. Du Bois' Infographics - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/first-time-together-and-color-book-displays-web-du-bois-visionary-infographics-180970826/#Di2y0svJ5HrpDBhf.99 <comment><USER2> I use these to teach students the principles of good data visualization. He had an incredible eye for contrast, detail, and believed infographics should tell a story, not just present a lot of data. Most relevant for today, he and his team did each one of these by hand, and most of the work was in designing the visualization's structure, not playing around with code and numbers.

The black and green chart about slavery is just incredible. With only 9 data points, he tells a moral story, he shares a perspective, and he educates the rest of the world on our peculiar institution. These visualizations are just incredible considering the tools they had to work with and the lack of formal data visualization science.

<comment><USER3> The article implies that they weren't widely known until recently. How did you run across them?

<comment><USER4> Doesn't it say it's the first time they've been collected and printed in a book? Library of Congress has had them online for 15+ years at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm either spoiled by Tufte's work, or just not getting it. What dimensionality is the spiral capturing? I get that it looks neat, but in terms of helping me to understand what the data is telling me I just don't get it.

This isn't sarcasm, please explain what I'm missing.

Edit: This work is quite solid by the Tufte principles that I can see how to apply, such as using ink for data and not decoration.

<comment><USER6> The length of the line corresponds to the number of people.

<comment><USER5> I got that, but why not just a bar chart? Is there something I should be learning from this design to use when I share information professionally? Because right now if I were to chart data in this format for work I'd raise a lot of eyebrows, and I'd like to know what the advantage is.

<comment><USER7> (For context: not a dataviz expert by any means, but I've done a bunch of work in that space for the last several years.)

For sharing information professionally? Not much - but you have to remember the context. Du Bois and his team were preparing these visualizations to be shown at the World Fair in Paris, not for a business meeting. As important as the data they portray is their underlying goal: to show that African-Americans are the equals of their European / Caucasian counterparts in cultural and intellectual endeavors. Presenting the ongoing socioeconomic plight of African-Americans as Modernist data art - at a time when Modernism itself was only just starting to spill over into the visual arts - definitely supports that goal.

Now, on to the visualization merits of the spiral. We have four data points spanning two orders of magnitude. To show those on a bar chart, you'd have to either: a) use a logarithmic scale, b) use a linear scale and accept that three of the bars are tiny, or c) use "scale breaks". Instead, Du Bois presents the data in a way that draws attention to the most prominent data point, while still preserving linear scale.

There are some highly effective techniques in the other visualizations as well. The property valuation chart uses annotations to provide narrative context. The freemen / slaves proportion chart uses filled-in space to lend it a stark visual weight that, again, speaks to the narrative impact. Data visualization is storytelling with data, and these charts are clearly designed to get their narrative point across - quite effectively, I'd say.

Finally: Tufte was printed in the 80s, nearly a full century after these visualizations. That, more than anything, makes these striking. With the exception of Playfair's charts, Oliver Byrne's treatment of Euclid's Elements, certain railroad timetables, and few others, the world hadn't seen much in the way of truly effective visualization. They were literally inventing effective visualization techniques. That we don't hear more about Du Bois' charts is unfortunate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here are a few more charts from Du Bois and his students: [http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history- charts-1...](http://allmyeyes.blogspot.com/2011/02/black-history- charts-1900.html)

Du Bois is a unique and towering intellectual in American history; his history of Reconstruction remains full of truths and understandings that our society has not yet absorbed. So I don't mean to diminish his work to note that these infographics exist in a context of other beautiful graphic design and infographics from the 19th century. Some examples:

Florence Nightingale: [https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florence- nightingale-i...](https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/florence-nightingale- infographic)

1870 census: [http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus](http://www.radicalcartography.net/index.html?9thcensus)

</comment><comment><USER9> The infographics here might also be interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tufte)

</comment><comment><USER10> wow interesting</comment>


My $.02 on the spike in hacking - <AUTHOR> http://securityskeptic.typepad.com/the-security-skeptic/2011/07/my-02-on-the-spike-in-hacking.html <comment><USER2> I work in the security industry, so my point of view about both the incidence and importance of security vulnerabilities (and subsequent hacking disclosures) is probably unrealistically skewed. I offer my bias as a caveat.

That said, I don't see a rise in hacking incidents. What I do see, is that hacking is currently part of the zeitgeist, so much like when someone tells you about a red car and you start to notice red cars all over the place, the collective focus on security is just bringing more incidents to light.

Quantifying hacker activity is akin to quantifying IP piracy, in that there's really no good way to accurately capture the real numbers. For many years, publicizing breaches was anathema, so the general public were left unaware just how commonplace attacks were. If you want to see remnants of this mindset, just ask a security consultancy for references of other clients they've worked with (It's like asking for a list of someone's sexual partners). We're now at a point where there is more pressure to go public when an incident occurs (as well as things being more difficult to hide).

Even if I remove my cynical security consultant fez (which would make me salivate on the benefits to my livelihood based on the public perception of the state of internet security), I think it's probably a good thing for this stuff to be in the public sphere.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've long speculated that incidents are under-reported. Social and other media are catalysts for transparency. They may also force organizations to be responsible or accountable. I agree this is a good thing. We may not be able to find a good way to capture real numbers, but I suspect that we have a more accurate picture than we did 10 years ago.

RE: benefits to livelihood. My security consulting didn't suffer while organizations chose not to disclose. The only difference between then and now was a clause in the contract regarding disclosure :-O

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> FTA: "Bruce Schneier says, "It's not that things are getting worse; it's that things were always this bad.""

Exactly. Everyone in the know has been saying this for a while now.

<comment> misuse-permit Reporting a DoS attack to the CIA website on the frontpage of a newspaper is like reporting the egging of a bank as armed robbery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It appears that they may be trying raise the profile of "hackers" to pave the way for public support of new "cyber terrorism" policies:

      "States have an inherent right to self-defense that may be
      triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace," says
      the policy. Indeed, such aggressive acts might compel a
      country like the US to act even when the hacking is
      targeted at an allied country.

      "Certain hostile acts conducted through cyberspace could
      compel actions under the commitments we have with our
      military treaty partners," says the document. "When
      warranted, the United States will respond to hostile acts
      in cyberspace as we would any other threat to our
      country."

_United States International Strategy for Cyberspace_ (PDF) - [http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/int...](http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/rss_viewer/international_strategy_for_cyberspace.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not directly related to the article but I think it is also worthy to remark that this spike in attention that the "hacking" scene got recently (whatever are the reasons, even if I think espeed[1] might have a point on this) is of course very welcome by those who perpetrate these acts, but also —and that's what I want to emphase— very well used by them. The communication of Anonymous and LulzSec is exemplary at many levels (the language used in the writings, the use of memes and media...).

I continue to want to compare this movement with the Yippie movement[2], at least on the handling of media and communications. Having read "Do It!" by Jerry Rubin several times during high school, I really feel similarities between the two movements on this subject. I don't have the book with me but it would really be worth reading it again and try to make some comparisons on actual examples rather than vague ideas (usage of the medias, "for teh lulz" as part of the motivations, relation with the authorities...) like I'm doing here.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2804347>

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yippies>

</comment><comment><USER6> While Bruce and company are correct in that it has always been this bad... what they are failing to notice, or at least point out, is that this is the first time it has been so publicized and in such a spearheaded manner. LulzSec or AntiSec is the first hacker movement that other people are rallying to and nobody could possibly predict what is going to come of it.</comment>


Why can't Europe create tech giants like the US and China? - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1320983/why-arent-europes-technology-companies-as-big-as-in-the-us-and-china/ <comment><USER2> I've often wondered about this. As a proud European this makes me sad. We appear to be good at science mega-projects like CERN which is one bright light I suppose. And even though I admire Musk and SpaceX I am saddened that Europe does not have a similarly vibrant rocket industry. Most projections of global GDP show Europe's slice of the pie dwindling when compared to the US, China and India. Sad!</comment>


The Anorexic Startup: A Tale of Sex, Drugs, and C++ - <AUTHOR> http://www.anorexicstartup.com

<comment><USER2> I couldn't find anything related to anorexia or eating disorders in the story. It is frugal, perhaps, but not anorexic.

What a misleading title.

</comment><comment><USER3> I read it completely to look for the C++ part. Did not find it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some good laughs. Worth the read</comment>