Blueprint for Building Habit-Forming Products is #15 on Amazon's new free books - <AUTHOR> http://www.nirandfar.com/2013/12/i-kept-my-promise-hooked-is-finally-here-and-free-for-the-next-5-days.html

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting. Here's the book on Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HJ4A43S](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HJ4A43S) it's $0 for rest of the day.

<comment><USER2> Looks like the link to my blog isn't working. There is a DNS issue. Go to the book link instead. [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HJ4A43S](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HJ4A43S)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Hooked" is a fantastic guide for developing habit-forming products. It brings together design and psychology in an actionable, applicable way, providing great insights into getting your users hooked on your product. Great read!

</comment><comment><USER4> This book is awesome - and very relevant to anyone working on marketplaces or other types of b2c products.</comment>


Sawyer Weighs In On Intellectual Ventures - <AUTHOR> http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2010/02/sawyer-weighs-in-on-intellectual-ventures.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FeldThoughts+%28Feld+Thoughts%29 <comment><USER2> When the large s/w firms get tired of IV they can just add a line to their EULAs that bans use of their products if you refuse to contribute all your software patents to the industry-wide software patent pool.

Perhaps the EFF could administer the pool.</comment>


Late night shuttle service that makes Caltrain 24/7 - <AUTHOR> http://www.takefleet.com/night <comment><USER3> Two things:

1\. This is great for before 7AM flights out of SFO / SJC, where public transit is not an option.

2\. I showed this to my fiancée (who does the south bay / city commute every day). She said: "This would be a lot more useful to me if they came in between Caltrains, which can be an hour apart."

<comment><USER4> _This is great for before 7AM flights out of SFO / SJC, where public transit is not an option._

So how does one get from Millbrae to SFO if the BART is not running? (asks the occasional visitor)

<comment><USER5> Super shuttle is a popular and econimical option. Or you just call a cab. At that hour it's $35 before tip.

<comment><USER6> I used to live down El Camino Real from the Millbrae station. It should be closer to $15-20.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Public transit in the Bay Area isn't ideal and I appreciate every effort attempting making to make it better. Would you guys consider connecting with the East Bay? Going from EB -> PA takes a very long time between BART and Caltrain.

If you find this exciting you might also enjoying Night School: [http://www.night.sc/](http://www.night.sc/)

<comment><USER8> I second east bay. 19th St BART stop in Oakland is a great hub.

<comment><USER9> It is pretty amazing. Especially at off-peak times, Sunnyvale to Oakland can take 3+ hours by transit, vs. 45 minutes by car.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I may be showing a bias against buses here, but the ride will be infuriatingly tortuous.

Bus routes attempting to operate along train stations are always convoluted routes forced to go back and forth between main roads and the stations, trying to drop passengers off at the same transfer points as the train.

It would better just drop people off along El Camino, instead of looping round and round through those stations.

Not that it's dramatically worse than having no option, of course. Just that it would drive me crazy as a mode of transport, if you're expecting it to behave like a train...

<comment><USER11> Perhaps they're expecting people to have parked at the train station?

<comment><USER12> Precisely.

And that, of course, is also how buses operate that replace portions of the subways that are temporarily out of service. For example, I sometimes encounter it when I come home late at night on Boston Orange line, which has a lot of construction (they are trying to insert a new station inside an operating segment) and an occasional late-night or weekend replacement of subway service with a shuttle service. I never remember that tonight it is going to be a bus and, in any case, I have to park in a parking garage next to a [redacted] subway station where I have a monthly parking ticket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok, you're on. I missed the last Caltrain last night.

Edit: Never heard back. I guess this isn't live.

Edit: Just got an email. Running to Caltrain now. :)

<comment><USER14> The $60 uber of shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do they have Passenger Carrier permits and are they insured? This is a great idea, but should something go wrong (and it looks like it very well could in dead middle of the night), these things are pretty essential.

[http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/transportation/passengers/](http://www.cpuc.ca.gov/puc/transportation/passengers/)

<comment><USER16> Probably essential some day, but not yet. These guys could just hire a bus and eat the loss if it turns out there's significant demand.

<comment><USER15> I guess that's true. They should at least warn the early adopters that there's no insurance on their end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This reminds me of a recent article on NYC's dollar vans: [http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/projects/nyc-dollar- vans/](http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/projects/nyc-dollar-vans/)

<comment><USER18> Of which this appears to be a slightly more modern take: [https://kutsuplus.fi/home](https://kutsuplus.fi/home)

Sounds like a great idea to me.

In Morocco, they have something in between public transport and private taxi where these beat-up old Mercedes ("grands taxis") wait to drive popular routes - when the car fills, you leave and all split the fare. Or you can pay a higher price to leave sooner. During one ride inland, I wanted to wind down the window and the driver passed back the sole hand-carved window-winder he had resting on the dash. All the existing winders had been lost or long-since removed!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great idea. I'd only be interested if I could buy a ticket at the last possible minute instead of scheduling in advance.

<comment><USER20> Seconded. Most of my late-night travel is completely unplanned -- I can't imagine scheduling a 4:00 AM trip the day before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd really like a BART one. Connecting, Downtown Berkeley, one of the main four SF stops, and Fremont.

And perhaps more importantly, connecting Fremont Bart to Caltrain in south bay.

As a side, I'd really like an entire loop around the bay. No public transportation does that, and it'd be great for drunk people at night.

<comment><USER22> Also, 680/880 is severely underserved by public transit. Every day it's bumper-to-bumper traffic from Walnut Creek->San Jose.

BART will eventually connect this, but you would still need to transfer in Oakland, which is roughly 20-30 minute detour. Walnut Creek -> Fremont currently takes over 1 hour on BART, to cover a distance of roughly 30 miles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Great idea and pretty decent initial offering. The price is _low_. Consider doubling it right away. (Sorry, but I want this to succeed).

<comment><USER24> Matching the Caltrain prices exactly seems like a brilliant marketing move on their part, actually. If they can do it sustainably for that price, that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is a great idea. I do wonder how many people taking the southbound shuttle on Fridays or Saturdays will be drunk!

<comment><USER26> ~104%

I hope they have a bunch of sailor songs on MP3! And a barf bucket. And everything can be cleaned by hose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Something like this, if run all day, could be a great service in Los Angeles Metropolitan which has a severely crippled public transport system. The area is spread out into a lot of decent sized cities with almost no public transport connections - hence causing a driving nightmare every single day. Just so I can avoid crazy traffic, if you come to LA, I'll make the app for free.

</comment><comment><USER28> Nice, now if they would stop at the peninsula's largest city, Sunnyvale, ... :-) Mountain View isn't that far away but Sunnyvale is definitely one of the heavier stops on my commute. Seems like most of the train gets on or off there when I'm riding it.

<comment><USER29> > the peninsula's largest city, Sunnyvale

Wouldn't Sunnyvale be at most the second largest city, behind San Francisco?

<comment><USER28> Its an inside joke, there was a lot of 'cachet' associated with being a 'peninsula city' (like Palo Alto or Menlo Park) and folks would define the peninsula ending at Mountain View, and Sunnyvale being the start of the 'South bay'. Generally meant about a 15% difference in home price. (Mtn View/Sunnyvale). However since 'south bay' is associated with San Jose (which is a nice, if rather boring city compared to San Francisco) there has been an argument for at least 30 years as to whether or not Sunnyvale is a peninsula city or a south bay city. Everyone agrees that the center of Silicon Valley is somewhere inside Sunnyvale but that is about all they agree on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow, this is cool -- it needs "drunk connection" app:

"I am going out in SF, drinking. Set the app to send me SMS reminders of when I need to head out. Connect me with an uberX to the pickup spot. Make me reply to the SMS that I got home safe."

</comment><comment><USER31> Glad you guys are doing this, but it infuriates me that Caltrain doesn't run 24/7 on weekends at least. For the amount of money we taxpayers pay for their pensions and operation, that's the least we can get.

<comment><USER32> It is fairly obvious Caltrain needs to run one more late night train on Friday and Saturday nights. Midnight is too early, especially if you're out in the city and need to take public transit just to get to Millbrae or 4th and King, and get there on time.

<comment><USER33> They're a private company, so they unfortunately don't need to do anything. They used to run a later train, but I can only assume they decided a train full of drunk people wasn't worth the money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How about Caltrain allow / license a bus refitted with rail wheels to use the tracks in the off hours? (aside from the host of legal liabilities that I'm sure would sink the idea immediately)

</comment><comment><USER34> this is really awesome. was always hoping caltrain would introduce that - never occured to me that you could hack the system like you guys are - <USER2> amazing and wish you best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER35> They are also testing regular commute service on their homepage. I'm pretty sure that they just collecting data at this point to see if there is interest in the service.

</comment><comment><USER36> They forgot to mention that they're faster than Caltrain.

<comment><USER37> Maybe because it's not that clear cut.

A local train covers the same distance in 91 minutes (vs 81 minutes for this shuttle) but also makes every stop. A baby bullet train that makes roughly the same number of stops as the shuttle does the trip in 57 minutes.

Caltrain's baby bullet trains beat every other mode of transportation up and down the peninsula in terms of speed assuming you live by one of the stops AND the train isn't delayed due to the distressingly frequent accidents and mechanical failures.

<comment><USER38> _Almost_ every mode. During traffic they certainly do although on my motorcycle with the power of lane splitting I can beat even the bullet (48 minutes) from mountain view to my office by about 8 minutes. Not including the 12 or so minute walk from 4th and king to work. And of course the baby bullet only operates at peak times.

In the middle of the night (like this service) perhaps not. I still like it though because parking is such a nightmare.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is incredibly timely. I can't wait to try it out.

</comment><comment><USER40> In other words, they've started a jitney service.

</comment><comment><USER41> I hope this becomes reality. I would use it, I would also be happy to pay about twice the price y'all are asking.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is something I could test/validate quite readily. Challenge accepted.

</comment><comment> wh-uws do you guys have any contact info? I'm working on a similar problem and would love to chat</comment>


Everything you need to know about cryptography in 1 hour (2010) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bsdcan.org/2010/schedule/attachments/135_crypto1hr.pdf <comment><USER2> Is there an update for this?

Calling cpercival ...

<comment><USER3> It has aged remarkably well. I'm more open to considering ECC in cases where signature size or CPU performance matter, and I'd consider switching from AES to something based on Keccak (especially if you're considering replacing SHA2 with SHA3) but I think that all the recommendations I gave in 2010 remain solid albeit possibly erring slightly on the side of being too conservative.</comment></comment>


List of all GitHub commit messages where the user drops an F-bomb - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NDKNmTS25Ijqay3BjB6c6N1MeunFgDWQcqijCOSRLVk/edit?usp=sharing

<comment><AUTHOR> I first analyzed the % of commit messages with F-bombs by hour and day of week of commit to see when developers are most likely to swear: [http://i.imgur.com/9MqqhcC.png](http://i.imgur.com/9MqqhcC.png)

As a sanity check, I looked at the raw data itself, and it made me laugh.</comment>


Independent Report on E-voting in Estonia - <AUTHOR> https://estoniaevoting.org/ <comment><USER2> I was, and am still, under the impression that e-voting can _never_ be allowed in a democratic society, since if it is possible for a voter to in any way _prove_ which way they voted, it is then possible to pressure people to vote one way or the other. I.e. if there is _no possible way_ for me to prove I voted a certain way, there is no possibility for anyone to pressure me to vote a certain way, since I could always lie and say I voted the way they told me to when in fact I voted the way I wanted to anyway.

This is also a large part of the reason why votes are secret.

E-voting must therefore never be allowed; it allows voting to be subject to outside pressure and would cease to provably reflect the actual will of the voters.

<comment><USER3> > if it is possible for a voter to in any way prove which way they voted, it > is then possible to pressure people to vote one way or the other.

Can't deniability be ensured crytographically? I know it can be done cleverly for paper (there's a great TED talk on it), so I'm unsure why it's impossible digitally.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_frau...](http://www.ted.com/talks/david_bismark_e_voting_without_fraud?language=en)

<comment><USER4> It's possible via homomorphic encryption, i.e. a way to manipulate cyphertext to make some mathematical operations like sums/products or logical comparisons without revealing the actual secrets. For example, it's possible to compare two encryptions of two numbers and get an encryption of their sum or to know which one is larger without knowing either.

However one drawback of such a voting system would be an inability to get actual vote tallies, only an ordering of the candidates.

There is an older google talk about this delving into more detail.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDnShu5V99s)

<comment><USER3> Ah thanks for the video!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Pirsch – Server-Side Tracking Without Cookies in Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/emvi/pirsch <comment><USER2> _The fingerprint is a hash of the visitors IP, User-Agent and a salt._

So the fingerprint is not unique for vistors from a corporate network behind a NAT router where multiple individuals share the same public IP and use the same corporate mandated browser. In these cases, it's back to cookies --- unless you don't really care if your analytics are faulty or not.

Or maybe just stick with cookies since it works in almost every case.

<comment><USER3> Tracking will never by accurate. Pirsch reads the Forwarded header which is set by most proxies. Apart from that, the User-Agent will be different in a lot of cases for people on the same network behind NAT.

Cookies do not work accurately either, uBlock for example shields me from Google Analytics. More and more browser start to block these cookies by default. So that's not really an argument.

You simple cannot track accurately anymore without heavily invading the visitors privacy or technical effort (like analyzing the HTTP/2 pattern the client uses/accepts).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You can find an article about it on my website :)

[https://marvinblum.de/blog/server-side-tracking-without- cook...](https://marvinblum.de/blog/server-side-tracking-without-cookies-in- go-OxdzmGZ1Bl)</comment>


Should I create an LLC for 1099 sidework? - <AUTHOR> Hi all! I recently had a rather large tax bill from my 1099 sidework. It got me thinking. What can I do to strategically lower my overall taxes while putting myself and my family in the best financial situation?
I've talked to a few people about creating an LLC. Everyone says create an LLC so clients cannot touch your personal assets in legal settlement. I've been hesitant to create an LLC because I think it would add unecessary complexity to my life.
* Should I create an LLC?
* Where should I incorporate?
* Should I do a S corp or C corp? I have no idea, my tax lady mentioned something about big C and little C corps.
* How does having an LLC affect my taxes?
* Should I be a W2 employee of the LLC?
Please share any learning resources I might find helpful. Thanks! <comment><USER2> * Should you create an LLC? It's a pass through tax entity, and as an individual developer, you are not abstracting much liability here.

* Should you incorporate? Maybe, see the next point.

* You should consider an SCorp, your overall payroll tax liability can potentially be reduced. You should talk to your tax lady more.

* LLC does not affect your taxes much. You will have an additional ScheduleK to file each year.

* Should you be a W2 employee of the LLC? If you're an owner and employee, you need to not be w2. If you form an SCorp you should make yourself w2 and pay yourself a minimum reasonable market salary (i.e. 100k instead of 200k) year. You can then dividend yourself the other 100k, which will save 15% (payroll tax) and potentially move your income into capital gains instead of payroll tax.)

Other advice, make sure that you look into all deductions you may be able to receive (especially if you don't have benefits through another employer). This includes health insurance, retirement, benefits, use of car (it's a meeting not a daily commute if you travel onsite), use of house / office, domain names, server costs, business equipment (new laptop / mobile devices), and business services (part of your cell bill, part of your internet).

<comment><USER3> The whole W2/SCorp thing you are talking about is a commonly held belief, but there are details you are getting wrong that change its efficacy.

1\. There is a maximum income for the payroll tax which in 2014 was 117,000. Which means that in your example (making 200k and only paying on 100k), would not save them tax on 100k. They would only have needed to pay on 117k. So they are saving payroll tax on 17k, which isn't worth the trouble.

2\. This person has a regular job. Lots of engineers already make more than 117k, so they might already be maxing the payroll tax. In that case, they save nothing.

3\. The way that many try to game the system is to try to report that the "reasonable market salary" is low -- which might work if you don't already have a job doing what your 1099 work is. If you do, you might have a hard time explaining that to the IRS. If you only do 1099 work, you can site labor statistics (and the median might be in your favor).

The whole SCorp thing that you see recommended works best if you

1\. Make near or more than the payroll max (117k)

2\. Live in an area of the US where the median developer salary is low, say 50k.

3\. Do not have a long salary history of making a lot more than that in that area.

In that case, you save the payroll tax on 117k-50k. Even if you make 200k, you only save the tax on 117k-50k.

I am not an accountant, and this is not accounting advice.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for pointing out those issues, especially given my example.

One thing upon further thought on the 117k. Self employment and W2 in an Scorp involve paying both the employee portion and the employer portion. ~15%. The 117k limit applies only to the employee side and only to social security (not medicare/OADI).

Beyond payroll taxes, it is possible that the Scorp might be able to have some income below the additional ordinary income on tax rates. (Mostly on true if the Scorp can keep its income below 34% rate (at the ordinary income rate ~ 28% at 90-180k)

I am not an accountant, and this is not accounting advice.

<comment><USER3> Self employment tax (the equivalent of the employer side in W2 work) does max out at 117k.

It's complex, and I think that someone doing sidework would not benefit enough from an scorp to make it worth it. Someone doing it fulltime that makes a lot and can claim low normal wages should look into it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Establish a solo 401k and SEP (I believe it's too late for 2014, but hopefully you will have this "problem" in 2015). You can sock away money pre-tax, which will lower your bill now.

I am not an accountant, but my wife is, and she thinks you could do a SEP for 2014 (but this is not accounting advice). [http://www.irs.gov/Retirement- Plans/Plan-Sponsor/Simplified-...](http://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Plan- Sponsor/Simplified-Employee-Pension-Plan-\(SEP\)) \-- if she's right, you have until 4/15.

You could also max out a Roth IRA.

Go through your expenses for 2014 very carefully and think about what is a business expense.

I very much doubt that forming any kind of corporation will help you tax-wise, especially if you make a decent regular salary. Most of the benefit comes from avoiding FICA on a portion of your salary, but you might already be maxing FICA in your day job, so this is meaningless. It's also going to be hard to claim that the "reasonable salary" for what you do is less than you make in your day job (rate-wise).

</comment><comment><USER4> Single member LLC (disregarded entity) is the way to go, setup a separate bank account and bookkeeping so that you are treating as a legitimate business. In CA it cost me around $800 to form with a tax attorney, and the min state tax is also $800/yr. All worth it for the peace of mind that you have at least some protection if 10yr from now someone tries to sue you for whatever reason.

</comment><comment><USER5> Forming an LLC alone will not change your tax situation. The default rule the IRS imposes on a single-owner LLC is that it is treated as a "disregarded entity," meaning that for tax purposes, it's as if the LLC doesn't exist. You still report your income/expenses on 1040 Schedule C.

You can elect to change the default tax treatment of your LLC and treat it as an S corporation or C corporation.

An S corporation can have slightly different treatment for your income. You can separate your earnings into a salary and regular distributions. Your salary would be taxed at the traditional W2 rates, meaning all of the traditional payroll tax rates. Depending on how much the company brings in, the only savings would be on the "distributions," which are not subject to self-employment tax or other payroll taxes. Distributions are taxed at regular income rates (the traditional income tax brackets). But beware that the IRS scrutinizes S corporations for abuse of this arrangement, so you need to pay yourself a "reasonable salary" before you make distributions. The IRS doesn't have a bright-line definition of a reasonable salary, so you need to be reasonable. :)

The other option is to be taxed as a C corporation, which can have tax benefits and negative consequences. C corporations are subject to double taxation, meaning that the corporations _net earnings_ are taxed at corporate income tax rates. Any dividends that you pay yourself are also subject to dividend tax rates on your personal income tax (15%). But -- if you can keep your corporation's net income below $50,000, the corporate tax rate is only 15%, much lower than usual individual income tax rate for many people. But then you still need to pay yourself a salary if you are a corporate officer and want to get paid for the work you are doing, which again triggers w2 payroll taxes. If you want to keep your corporate earnings inside the corporation to build up capital, you can shield those earning from the dividend tax. But, if you begin to accumulate _too much_ , there's a tax for that too. C corporations can be a legitimate way of reducing your tax liability, but you just need to understand the rules.

The bottom line is that a single-owner LLC taxed as a disregarded entity is the simplest way of handling things. You'll get a 1099, yes, but that's life. In some states an LLC is expensive to form, in others it's cheap. I personally think that an LLC is nice to have -- it gives you some more credibility than just being an individual contractor. It likely wouldn't provide a ton of liability protection because you are personally doing all of the LLC's work, so a good attorney would make the case that the LLC is really just an alter ego. But then again, that's what insurance is for too.

And, if you do decide to form an LLC, just do it in your own state. Forming a Delaware or Nevada LLC is a waste of money and it subjects you to the law of two states (Delaware and your state). Forming the LLC in another state provides no benefit whatsoever for 99% of businesses.

<comment><USER6> I'm not a lawyer but the last time I looked into this, alter ego liability relied on you intertwining the finances of the LLC with your personal finances; paying the rent from the LLC's business bank account, for instance.

<comment><USER7> Generally that's the case. Specifics vary by state: [http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/single-member- llcs.ht...](http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/single-member-llcs.html)

(not a lawyer)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Did Quora benefit from Yc batch? - <AUTHOR>

Was just curious that Quora was in last Yc batch. How did that help them? any significant achievements? was it as per their expectations. <comment><USER2> It's weird how this has gotten so many thumbs up but nobody has discussed yet.

IMO, it was strategically a bad move or a "dead" move on their part. The value-add was insignificant for a company supposedly worth 1 billion dollars a few years ago.

Quora isn't dead and certainly has value (when bypassing their user-signup wall), but it is now basically in limbo.

Neither Yahoo Answers nor StackOverFlow after it were worth billions, so all the hype around it was just VCs taking a big risk.

If it did help them, they'd have a little more press by now. After getting into that batch though, nobody hears much about it anymore and I suspect another upstart will usurp Quora at the top of the Q&A market in the future (if SO hasn't done so already).

<comment><AUTHOR> I was actually surprised no one asked this for so long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe they're looking to hone their business model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, but even that was the case. i wanted to know did they get any concrete results? what were they. just a case study.</comment></comment>


Apple's FaceTime blamed for girl's highway crash death in new lawsuit - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/apples-facetime-app-blamed-for-crash-as-distracted-driving-deaths-mount/ <comment><USER2> Oh, where to begin.

No, the driver is OBVIOUSLY AT FAULT for what the DRIVER does with a CAR, regardless of any other devices. A thorough lack of common sense is an excuse to lose your license, not "lawyer up".</comment>


For Gethard - I'm Curious If You Ever Had Suicidal Thoughts. - <AUTHOR> http://thechrisgethardshow.tumblr.com/post/31345619495/for-gethard-anonymous-asks-gethard-i-know-youve

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of the most powerful of this sort of article that I've seen during this time of the year. Chris Gethard might not be as much of a high-profile hacker-friendly figure as, say, Wil Wheaton, but I know that the issues he discusses deeply affect many of us here and the people that we love.

Sept 10, 2001, I woke up to find the internet community in which I was enmeshed already torn apart by grief because one of our number had killed himself that night. I was 17.</comment>


Laconic Phrase - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laconic_phrase <comment><USER2> > After invading Greece and receiving the submission of other key city-states, > Philip II of Macedon sent a message to Sparta: "If I invade Laconia you will > be destroyed, never to rise again." The Spartan ephors replied with a single > word: "If" (αἴκα).[27] Subsequently neither Philip II nor his son Alexander > the Great attempted to capture the city.

Probably, one of the best replies I have ever read.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think this is my favourite example of a laconic reply:

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

</comment><comment><USER4> Funny given my one liners, and my last name.</comment>


Monopoly: the capitalist board game's leftwing origins - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/apr/11/secret-history-monopoly-capitalist-game-leftwing-origins <comment><USER2> The irony is that the same people that wanted to show us the dangers of monopolies, have no problem with a government with the exact same powers which result in the exact same problems.

<comment><USER3> Government provisioning of something that is a natural monopoly would have all the same problems associated with a lack of competitive discipline, but none of the problems of monopoly markups by those interested in maximal profit.

Nor would there be any ability to censor or discriminate for private gain. Government censorship is possible either way, so is not a difference.

Henry George did advocate municipal provisioning of natural monopolies, but was in every other respect a believer in radical free markets.</comment></comment>


Home Assistant Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://data.home-assistant.io/ <comment><USER2> Home Data is great! Right now, I collect signal, noise, and connected AP of every wifi device in my home (~35 devices). I record at the second interval. I found that with a few algos, I've been successfully able to "map" my home and know the location of devices. I am able to use this data to infer location. I am at the point of using HA combined with my location system to turn lights on and off as I walk through the house. I am super excited to see HA adding features to manage and access data.

<comment><USER3> That seems really neat! Do you have any more information on how someone could set up something like that?

<comment><USER2> At some point I'd like to do a write-up. If you are interested, I wouldn't mind going into detail via email. Feel free to reach out, my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is pretty cool, balloob! I love data (when kept on-premises in my possession), so I generally collect a lot of data in both my house and my car, but I haven't really put in the effort to try and make anything meaningful of it. (I have dreams of making pretty heat maps of my location data someday.) Having nifty reporting tools right in Home Assistant should be really neat for folks who use it.</comment>


Songwhip – Share a music link to every platform - <AUTHOR> https://songwhip.com <comment><USER2> I'd love to see the same for public playlists. Example: an anonymous user pastes the URL to a public playlist that someone else made on, say, Spotify. The Web app creates a public playlist on another platform -- or even just spits out a bookmarkable "Playlist equivalent page" that has Songwhip links for each tracks (and the user has to play each one).

Given the number of public Spotify playlists, I'm a little surprised that TIDAL, Deezer, or Qobuz clients don't have native support for pasting URLs to public Spotify playlists. Even if it couldn't authoritatively match the songs and instead played the first search result match (for artist name and song title), it would be right 99% of the time.

<comment><USER3> There's actually a web app that does exactly what you are describing. It seamlessly converts playlists between apple music to spotify and vice versa. Check it out [https://playlistor.io/](https://playlistor.io/) .

<comment><USER2> Thank you! This is really close. It doesn't solve my personal need but it may work for others.

It only works with Apple Music, which isn't the app I use. Also, when I paste a public Spotify playlist URL (source), it asks for my Apple Music credentials instead of creating a public Apple Music playlist or if that's not possible, generating a page with play links.

Still, it's trying to solve the same problem and may work for others. I appreciate the link.

<comment><USER3> You are welcome. With spotify to Apple music conversion, your credentials are needed because the Apple music endpoint requires the user to be authenticated to be able to create playlists. Also, after a successful conversion, the links to each platforms playlist is listed on the web app. I thank you for checking it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would pay for this if you could customise the links on each platform rather than only have the robot suggestions.

While it works fine for 'popular' music, like almost all music platforms and tools it totally sucks for classical music (and I appreciate Songwhip is a free and cool thing, not complaining!). While it'll mostly find the same piece of music on different platforms, often they will be different recordings which isn't appropriate.

I say this because linking to recordings across platforms is a key part of my partner's workflow, and a tool like this (if customisable landing pages could be easily created/curated) would be a game changer!

<comment><USER5> I'd imagine that customizable landing pages are easier to implement than automatically generated ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hey I'm Wilson,

I designed and built Songwhip (solo) and continue to work on it fulltime. Happy to answer any questions :)

<comment><USER7> I love the use of human-readable URL's. The ability to cut the song title out and go to the Artist page (for example) is really neat. Nice work Wilson - I'll be using it!

<comment><USER6> Great, thanks for the kind words! :) I've been working on the project for almost 3 years, so it hasn't been a quick hack by any means. I came from a front-end background and have had to learn the whole stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great! I made a similar open-source project last year called Sharer.link: [https://github.com/AnandChowdhary/sharer.link](https://github.com/AnandChowdhary/sharer.link), which also supports podcasts, movies, and audiobooks. Here's an example link of the same song: [https://sharer-link.netlify.app/song/beautiful-people- fea-14...](https://sharer-link.netlify.app/song/beautiful-people- fea-1464549657).

<comment><USER8> Quick sidenote: This was built as a frontend app, no backend, which directly talks to the iTunes API in the browser. As a hack, it uses DuckDuckGo's !ducky feature for links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I usually use [https://song.link](https://song.link), but this looks good too.

<comment><USER6> Keen to hear any feedback you have :)

<comment><USER9> For me, two key things with a product like this matter most (other than accuracy):

1\. There is a good preview when the link is shared on networks such as Slack, Twitter etc.

2\. It's fast / low latency, the lower the barrier to sharing with others the better and the less something gets in my way the more likely I am to use it.

Keep up the great work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've used [https://odesli.co/](https://odesli.co/) in the past (formerly song.link) - seems like the same thing, useful service.

</comment><comment><USER11> As a PWA on Android this is great! I can share from Spotify and then it opens a Songwhip link to share. Solves a minor problem I have about sharing music links.

<comment><USER6> Great to hear you're using the PWA share intent. I really haven't promoted this enough :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Right before checking HN, I'd spent a few hours thinking about how to approach this very problem!

Where are you fetching or how are you determining the track IDs for each service? Is it a simple metadata search through each API, are you using some of the reference data from Musicbrainz, or is there another good source of these relationships available?

The Echo Nest used to have a great open-access API for cross-referencing track IDs called Rosetta Stone. Unfortunately, Spotify discontinued it a few years after acquiring The Echo Nest.

While I understand why the streaming platforms might think it's in their interests to make cross-service track relationships difficult to determine, I'm disappointed that Spotify shut down a useful service that really helped music lovers. From some brief searching earlier today, it looks like no one has taken up the mantle yet.

</comment><comment><USER13> It would be really nice of the Library of Congress had a simple API so this could just be a thin (even client-side) wrapper around that, and you could easily turn the Library of Congress' URI for the work into a link onto a platform where you could purchase/download/stream the work.

</comment><comment><USER14> Similar to combine.fm, though Songwhip supports more services and isn't open source. [https://github.com/kudos/combine.fm](https://github.com/kudos/combine.fm)

<comment><USER15> That's mine, thanks for the mention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Clean and works well, nicely done! Are you able to pull in embeds from the various platforms as well? You may also want to consider adding analytics to this and charging for it, something along the lines of smarturl.it that many artists seem to use (example: Alicia Keys [https://smarturl.it/xALICIAx](https://smarturl.it/xALICIAx))

</comment><comment><USER17> What differentiates this from Linkfire or Amplify?

</comment><comment><USER18> Really cool!

Maybe add a link to save it on archive.org to your ...-menu? Like so: [https://web.archive.org/save/https://songwhip.com/drexciya/y...](https://web.archive.org/save/https://songwhip.com/drexciya/you- dont-know)

</comment><comment><USER19> Some feedback - the search doesn't work very well.

If I type 'Gigi Masin Tears of a clown' into the search, I get no results. If I type 'Gigi Masin', then the track appears near the top of the search results.

</comment><comment><USER20> Love this and use it constantly. There's a useful Alfred extension too

</comment><comment><USER21> This reminds me of bop.fm (YC S14, I think) in a way.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would be even better if it had Bandcamp support

</comment><comment><USER23> This is #BRILLIANT</comment>


Treeify – Visualizing DOM Tree - <AUTHOR> https://chikeichan.wordpress.com/2014/12/23/treeify-visualizing-dom-tree/ <comment> 97-109-107 Just a reminder that this existed: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Tools/3D_View](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/Tools/3D_View)

</comment><comment><USER2> Add visualizations to DOM changes as well and you have a 'living' tree. ;)

<comment><USER3> By weighting how much a node's children change (or are passed over) you could also make the branches sway.

Perhaps thicken or colour each section based upon age.

Add 'fruit' in the form of words or images, based upon the content of the leaf nodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Someone: And here, ladies and gents, is HN Treeified.

Audience: But that's just a stick?

Someone: Exactly.

</comment><comment><USER5> Fascinating! Such beauty!</comment>


Using the Machine Learning Hammer Wisely - <AUTHOR> https://www.outsight.tech/technology/using-the-machine-learning-hammer-wisely <comment><AUTHOR> > Our heretical approach is not to use Machine Learning. No training, no > datasets, no labelling. We instead rely on deductive inference to get to > quantitative conclusions.

> We feed the central decision-making processes with edge-computed and already > classified data (ie. only meaningful and relevant information).

Outsight 3D Semantic Camera does not rely on ML, and according to them, it saves processing power together with being more reliable.</comment>


Firefox 4 Beta 8 has been released - <AUTHOR> https://www.mozilla.com/firefox/4.0b8/releasenotes/ Has the JägerMonkey, hardware accelerated rendering, HSTS protocol support, better web font support, etc. <comment><USER2> Even more impressive is their HTML5, WebGL, audio and video demo linked to in the post:

[http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the- na...](http://videos-cdn.mozilla.net/serv/mozhacks/flight-of-the-navigator/)

<comment><USER3> View this demo in Firefox 4, then view IE9's demo in IE9: [http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Defau...](http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/Performance/Galactic/Default.html)

These demos really demonstrates the difference between Firefox 4 and IE9.

<comment><USER4> Great test. I don't have IE9 (since I need IE8 for testing, and MS still hasn't figured out how/conjured the will to make IE work like a normal application), but it's interesting to compare FF4 and Chrome. The performance looked about equivalent between the 2. Neither reports a framerate, so not sure about the exact numbers.

<comment><USER5> Just a FYI - You can uninstall IE9 from your computer. It's not listed in the Add/Remove Programs list but you can find it under the "Installed Updates" list.

<comment><USER4> And everything truly reverts to the same as it was before, Vista with IE7 upgraded to IE8? I'm (understandably in my opinion) a bit wary. I need to test websites on a normal installation of IE8. IE often has odd little details that make one machine act different from another once you start changing things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> the thing that keeps me using firefox, yet prevents me from using the new beta releases, is extensions.

i have a lot of extensions that i use on a daily basis and yet only about half of them work with firefox 4 so far. some probably don't even require any code changes other than bumping up the version marker that lets firefox install it on a new version, but a lot of extension developers seem to wait until releases are stable before testing and updating.

<comment><USER7> [http://dotnetwizard.net/soft- apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling...](http://dotnetwizard.net/soft- apps/firefox-3-beta-4-disabling-extension-compatibility-check/)

<comment><USER8> The correct way to do this is to install Mozilla's Add-on Compatibility Reporter. It lets you selectively disable and report those add-ons that aren't working correctly on new versions.

<comment><USER2> Link to Add-on Compatibility Reporter: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/15003>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Terrible usability issues on Win7. Almost all of the menus have a problem with flickering and/or disappearing elements.

<comment><USER10> Are your graphics drivers up-to-date?

edit: to add, I'm on 64-bit Win7 too -- I've been using nightlies for over a year and haven't seen anything of this sort.

<comment><USER11> It's not always safer to be up-to-date with graphics drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Firefox 4 is a memory hog compared to Firefox 3.6. Worse, it leaks memory like a sieve. After a bit of browsing, it is using 350 MB with just a single tab open. Firefox 3.6 uses half that much memory on the same machine.

<comment><USER13> The other day, I discovered a Firefox nightly using a gig and a half of memory after some light browsing; after some investigation it turned out that had a few hundred meg allocated immediately after startup (having loaded only about:mozilla) and it allocated a few hundred more when I opened and immediately closed the bookmarks and history menus.

Turns out, in Safe Mode it was perfectly well behaved, and after hitting the 'reset all preferences to defaults' button, Firefox not only takes less memory, but is snappier too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Installed Firefox 4 Beta 8 on my Windows 7 32 bit machine. Went to the demo page, waited for it to load, hit the start button, and my machine immediately crashed (black screen, no hdd activity, not responsive). Rebooted, tried to load random page from my bookmarks, crashed again. Fortunately that time it didn't take my whole computer with it. Guess I'll try again in a few weeks?

<comment><USER15> Try updating your video drivers, that sounds like a crash caused by exercising hardware acceleration.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't mean to be "that guy", but how is anyone seriously enthused about Firefox anymore when Chrome is on the scene?

I love and respect Firefox for showing the world there was a better way. But they are the Freud to a much more mature approach at this point.

I can't use Firefox without wanting to injure myself within five minutes. It is dead to me.

<comment><USER10> Chrome is a closed-source browser with a rigid failure of a UI and a sync feature that hands over all my bookmarks and history to Google. I can't even move the buttons around -- what a joke. How any privacy-conscious person can use Chrome is beyond me.

<comment><USER17> _I can't even move the buttons around_

I'm not sure I understand your logic here. Firefox won't let you separate the back and forwards buttons, is that also a "rigid failure" in UI design?

<comment><USER10> I want to move the refresh button to the right of the address bar, since that's what I'm used to. I can't.

Back/forward together makes sense. Refresh next to back/forward isn't any better or worse than refresh to the right of the address bar, so it comes down to personal taste -- Chrome imposes its own taste upon me, while Firefox is happy to let me decide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The beta does not play well with XMonad, seems to have quite a few focus issues.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately I've had that problem with a lot of cross-platform software on Linux lately. Chrome, for instance, doesn't seem to be made with the idea in mind that people might use window managers other than Gnome, or might have settings other than the default chosen for certain behaviors. For instance, double clicking the title bar maximizes the Chrome window - though I have that set to a shade action. There are a few other issues, too, so it's not surprising to me that there are problems with a WM they've probably never tested such as xmonad.

<comment><USER13> That sounds like fun with Chrome's window-manager emulation. It behaves a lot more respectably when you go Settings → Personal Stuff → Appearance and choose "Use system title bar and borders".

<comment><USER4> I've tried that too earlier, but it seemed to trigger a couple of other bugs - getting the mouse 'stuck' on the title area, for one. This was many months ago, so I wouldn't be surprised if it's totally fixed by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Beta 8 was released a week ago. Beta 9 is available now:

[http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/lates...](http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest- trunk/)

I tested beta 8 a few days ago, it was still twice as slow as Chrome 8 (Sunspider benchmark).

<comment><USER20> (I work on Firefox)

Beta 9 is not available. You are linking to nightly builds that will eventually become Beta 9.

That SunSpider score vs Chrome is nigh impossible in the default configuration. Maybe you have Firebug turned on? I'd expect the Firefox SunSpider score vs. Chrome to be very close, with the winner varying depending on the machine, OS, and release channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Flash video crashes constantly and it still doesn't work with netflix. Who cares about crappy 90's style GL demos? SOmehow, it seems priorities aren't quite right at mozilla, IMO.

<comment><USER22> Perhaps you misunderstand the purpose of software development.

There is a stable version of Firefox (version 3.6), you can download it at <http://www.mozilla.org/firefox/>. Mozilla is also adding new features to Firefox in an effort to enable web developers to do new things in new ways. Development and stabilization of these new features is ongoing, which is why it's restricted to a _beta_ program in the _next_ version.

What would you prefer? That Mozilla abandon innovation completely and concentrate utterly on stability? That you not be allowed to participate in beta testing the next version of the browser? If you don't want to _test_ Firefox's new features in the _unstable_ version then perhaps you can avoid running the beta and just stick with the older version.

<comment><USER21> This made me laugh, WTF does "purpose of software development" actually mean? That phrase is itself a misunderstanding waiting to happen. :-)

Yeah... Ok, I probably deserved a bit of a snarky reply -- I missed the 32-bit requirement for silverlight in the release notes (apparently their sandboxing for 64bit is broken). Just for that oversight, I'll take my lumps.

I do think, however, that you're thinking in a binary way about this. It's possible to add new features and fix bugs at the same time, ya know. It's possible to prioritize stuff even in a beta... you don't just pile on the shiny new because you slapped a "beta" sticker on it.

It's a beta release, not an alpha, and the _eighth_ beta release. Right on the durn frontpage is says it should be stable enough for normal use in most cases. I would classify _youtube_ as one of those cases.

As soon as the 7th release came out, it was broken in an obvious way vis a vis youtube video on some platforms. They had months to fix it. Mozilla obviously decided that WebGL bling was more important...

...and that's fine, they can do what they want and yes, it's a beta release and webgl is cool, but I still think their priorities are screwed up.

<comment><USER4> Okay, so it sounds like you misunderstand the _process_ of software development.

You can't completely rewrite various subsystems for performance and fix bugs at the same time. There is more going on than just 'adding new features'. New software is bound to be unstable while it is in development. If you have a problem with this, do not download beta versions.

Personally, I haven't had any issues at all with stability or compatibility on Beta 6 or 7 (on Linux).

<comment><USER21> (Since I don't particularly care about my karma at the moment, I guess I'll continue beating this dead horse :-))

And here's my snarky rejoinder: Hey look! There are bug fixes _and_ new features in the latest beta. How did they do that? Perhaps they misunderstand the software development process!

What you have described is some ideal model of the development process based on something you think should happen. It doesn't exist, and it doesn't happen that way.

No one is reading what I wrote: their _priority_ is messed up (in my opinion). Software development is very much about priorities.

You can decide that youtube functionality might be important for mac users for them to _even continue testing the beta_ (e.g. no they(I) aren't(am not) going to keep launching another browser for every you tube video when they could just use safari). Or you can decide WebGL and audio (audio? really?) bling which a precious few will be using even in a year, is somehow more important.

<comment><USER23> I think their priority right now is to not fall so far behind Chrome that catching up becomes a serious challenge.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's up with monomorphism? - <AUTHOR> http://mrale.ph/blog/2015/01/11/whats-up-with-monomorphism.html <comment><USER2> Keep the comics!

</comment><comment><USER3> Java HotSpot can inline both possibilities for bimorphic call sites. If this is really an issue I'm surprised V8 doesn't have a similar functionality.

<comment><USER4> As a point of reference, SpiderMonkey does do this with its Ion jit (I implemented some of the early polymorphic inlining code for Ion, but it's been cleaned up and robustified greatly since then by different contributors). We'll inline up to 4 callees at a site.

Aside: That was a very thorough and well written blog post, mraleph :) A very enjoyable read.

edit - I do think the blog post implies that v8 can't do polymorphic inlining. That's the impression I got from it anyway (and I was somewhat surprised, as I had assumed it would). It may be worthwhile to change the wording to make it more clear that V8 can inline more than one callee at a site.

<comment><USER5> > I do think the blog post implies that v8 can't do polymorphic inlining.

It took me a bit to realize where this confusion comes from (especially given the whole discussion of how polymorphic property access is handled). Is it due to "Undiscussed - Not all caches are the same" section?

Indeed V8 can't at the moment do polymorphic inlining at non-method callsites - f(), however it can on method callsites o.m().

The reason for this is lack of type feedback.

I will seek to clarify the wording in that section.

> Aside: That was a very thorough and well written blog post, mraleph :) A > very enjoyable read.

Thanks.

<comment><USER4> Well, if you extend the call ICs to record multiple callees at the site, I'm assuming it would be pretty straightforward to do this for all calls.

Not sure if it's worth the effort, though.

I think most of the reason SM has polymorphic inlining for all callsites is that we added it first as a stop-gap for methodcall inlining, and then later went back and added support for method callsites (guarding directly on the receiver object's type and eliding the property lookup - which I assume is what V8 did from the start).

If you already have methodcall polymorphic inlining, the return on investment in expanding that to all callsites is perhaps pretty low.

Would be interesting to measure though..

<comment><USER5> I have amended the section, please check it out.

There is certain technical heritage here.

Originally method calls compiled down to a single IC that did load and call within a IC stub. Type feedback from these ICs was interpreted in the same way as from property load ICs. On the other hand function calls cb(...) compiled down to a call through CallFunctionStub which did not record any feedback whatsoever. At some point CallFunctionStub learned to record a bit of type feedback (monomorphic / megamorphic) and we started using it in Crankshaft for speculative inlining.

Only recently method calls were decomposed into Load IC and a separate Call IC (an evolved CallFunctionStub) which invokes loaded function. For property invocation o.m(...) feedback comes from the Load IC now, and Call IC feedback is ignored. For variable invocation cb(...) feedback comes from the Call IC - which is still only able to distinguish only monomorphic and megamorphic state.

<comment><USER4> Ah, makes sense. I just read through the updated post (took me a bit to find the updated text), and it does clear up the methodcall polymorphism bit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> is it true that javascript was designed in 10 days ?

<comment><USER7> Yep, but you have to keep in mind that it was inspired by years of exposures to other languages.

[http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/2012/02/mco2012020007-a...](http://www.computer.org/csdl/mags/co/2012/02/mco2012020007-abs.html)</comment></comment>


Arduino team presents genuino starter kit - <AUTHOR> https://blog.arduino.cc/2015/10/07/arduino-team-presents-genuino-starter-kit/ <comment><USER2> So, are these the good Arduino guys or the bad Arduino guys? I can never keep them straight.

<comment><USER3> Yes, it's a nightmare.

Arduino LLC and arduino.cc are the original group. Genuino is a new trademark intended to be more clear, but they have an uphill marketing battle, to say the least.

Arduino SRL and arduino.org are the former member who independently (and without knowledge of the group) registered the Arduino trademark in Italy. He then refused to transfer it to the group, and was pushed out.

The story gets worse from there. I'm not a fan of blacklists, but I make a point of clarifying the .cc vs .org distinction to whomever will listen.

.cc is Completely Correct.</comment></comment>


Marc Andreessen on big data, Bitcoin and upending the world of finance - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/in-his-words-marc-andreessen-on-big-data-bitcoin-and-upending-the-world-of-finance/2014/10/15/8fb050d2-5304-11e4-892e-602188e70e9c_story.html <comment><USER2> "But think about the scenario of a loan officer talking to a prospective client. To software people, that looks like voodoo. The idea that you can sit across the table from somebody and get a read on their character is just nonsense."

This coming a Venture Capitalist...

<comment><USER3> Either way, loan officers do not talk to clients much any more, it has all been automated. "Computer says no" etc.

<comment><USER4> Thanks in part to software I wrote! I feel like I've made such a useful contribution to society!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> Most consumer transactions are weighted with a 3 percent fee._

This is the single most fundamental misunderstanding in the bitcoin camp.

First of all it is only in some countries like the U.S. where fees are in the 2-3% range. Others have regulated that fee away already. In fact, the U.S. just recently regulated debit card interchange down to 0.05% + 21 cents.[1]

Second -- and this is really important -- most of that fee goes back to the consumer in the form of reward programs. That's primarily what they are funding: 1-2% cash back programs, free travel, etc. Not the "100,000 people and 1970s mainframe computers" that Marc describes.

So, the opportunity to lower fees (1) doesn't exist in many places, and (2) where it exists it consists of _taking value away from consumers_.

So no rational consumer will voluntarily transition over to a lower-benefit instrument. If U.S. merchants really wanted to experiment with the future of "lower fees", just try accepting debit cards only (not credit cards). See how consumer like it. Great for merchants, not so much for customers who want their cashback programs.

Even where lower fees have been forced through regulations (Australia), it did not result in a general 2-3% reduction in consumer prices. Guess what, merchants kept that margin.[2] This is why big merchants like Walmart are resisting Apple Pay in a futile effort to push their own CurrentC, a new instrument that bypasses card networks and deducts directly from your checking account. But guess what: it _takes value away from consumers_. Exactly the same problem with bitcoin for consumer payments.

This is why it will have an extremely tough time replacing credit cards -- and that's before we even get to the matter of consumer protections. You need a trusted intermediary to be able to enforce chargebacks, which protect consumers against ripoffs. You can't do it with insurance alone; you have to be able to reverse transactions. So by the time you add intermediaries back in, Bitcoin is just another centralized card network with an exotic protocol for moving money. It's the next Discover card, sans card.

There may be more specific niches where bitcoin is useful. But this notion that bitcoin will save us all 3% on purchases is just plain uninformed. And unfortunately it's at the foundation of so much of the investment in this area.

[1] [http://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/Durbin/What-is-the- du...](http://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/Durbin/What-is-the-durbin- amendment)

[2] [https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/assets/Hot- Tu...](https://www.competitionpolicyinternational.com/assets/Hot- Tubs/Interchange-Fees-web.pdf)

 _" Another predictable result is the absence of evidence that consumer prices have fallen as a result of lower merchant discounts. This is not surprising because the cost savings are too small to be measurable with any degree of confidence. However, based on the economics literature on pass- through effects, we believe that it is highly unlikely that consumers have received any significant benefit over the period of time considered given the likely sticky prices and high concentration in the Australian retail sector."_

<comment><USER6> > most of that fee goes back to the consumer in the form of reward programs.

I don't really buy this. Why not just not have the fees and let prices be lower so that consumers have more cash? Cash is always better.

I assume most people never take advantage of most of their points, essentially sacrificing that 1-2% to the credit card processor. The processor knows this, which is why they do it.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. And the rewards aren't paid for with the fees charged to the customer; they're paid for with sweetheart deals between the payment processor and reward provider. There's nothing wrong with this even - it's biz dev 101.

As an example: Mastercard (let's say) offers American Airlines cobranding, marketing (in the form of newsletters and emails pushing me to use miles whenever i pay my bill) and service perks (read: lower transaction processing fees) in exchange for frequent flyer points (note - not even dollars, a point is some fraction of a dollar in terms of flight purchasing power) for tickets on flights that would otherwise probably have a seat empty. Nice seats on full flights cost more points, of course. I get these points if I use my card often enough.

I'm fine with this arrangement - both parties are gaining here, and maybe I as a customer get a nice perk occasionally when I finally have enough incidental points saved up to go on a flight - but none of us is under the impression that there's some one to one relationship between fees charged and amount of money paid for redeemable rewards, and I expect that in volume both parties are actually making money off of this arrangement, not sacrificing revenues.

There's also a feedback loop at work here - Mastercard pushes points for American Airlines, more people use American Airlines, more of them end up using the same airline regardless of points due to familiarity and customer stickiness, so Mastercard gets more AA transactions and more fees overall - even though they've dropped the per-transaction fee rate, the increased volume makes up for it...

<comment><USER8> > And the rewards aren't paid for with the fees charged to the customer;

the interchange fees for Visa and Mastercard have a surcharge for rewards cards.

It is definitely not the case that the rewards for your card are free (to the merchant/consumer).

<comment><USER7> You: >the interchange fees for Visa and Mastercard have a surcharge for rewards cards. >It is definitely not the case that the rewards for your card are free (to the merchant/consumer).

Me:

> And the rewards aren't paid for with the fees charged to the customer;

I don't see a conflict with these statements, do you?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Over the last few weeks I've noticed an increasing amount of interest in Bitcoin and related technologies (P2P, blockchain, distributed computing, etc.) with the overwhelming majority of voices saying that this is something revolutionary.

But doesn't it make more sense to try to solve your problem in the simplest way possible? I'd argue that there is rarely a case in which a bitcoin-like solution is the simplest way to solve whatever problem you're faced with (baring the problem bitcoin was intended to solve of course).

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it possible to believe in the blockchain, but be on-the-fence about bitcoin? I realize they're presently pretty tightly linked, but I see the blockchain technology as the new concept holding tremendous promise.

<comment><USER11> Not if you understand Bitcoin. What is stored in the blockchain? If something else were stored in the blockchain, what would be the motivation to do the work necessary to add new blocks?

<comment><USER10> I could think of all other sorts of exchange of value, within a network, that wouldn't be tied to bitcoin.

<comment><USER11> Such as?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > "There is a growing idea in Silicon Valley that there are sources of data on > consumer behavior we can use to predict creditworthiness. These will be > completely different than the traditional approach to credit ratings, which > are tremendously imprecise and 'laggy.' PayPal can do a real-time credit > score in milliseconds, based on your eBay purchase history — and it turns > out that's a better source of information than the stuff used to generate > your FICO score.

Traditional credit ratings are "tremendously imprecise"? That's an insane statement. FICO is a proven model and has weathered multiple business cycles. Virtually all of the alternative models being experimented with today haven't. A lot of these models are going to fall apart when the current environment, which has seen record low credit default rates, changes.

I'd love to see a $50,000 auto loan or $400,000 mortgage approved on the basis of eBay purchase history alone.

> "The hypothesis is that there are many other similar sources of consumer > data: credit card bills, social-network behavior, potentially even search > history. Lots of people, both in the big Internet companies and at start- > ups, are trying to get at these large pools of data and figure out new ways > to do scoring. What they all have in common is that they are all being done > outside of banks.

Notwithstanding the fact that credit payment history ("credit card bills") _is_ factored in to a FICO score, a couple of things should be pointed out:

1\. Many of the companies trying different models are doing so in an attempt to serve thin file borrowers. Not surprisingly, established players like Fair Isaac aren't sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They have their own solutions for these borrowers, like the FICO Expansion Score. Just because startups don't want to pay for somebody else's solution doesn't mean they're the only ones innovating.

2\. Credit scoring has never been a core bank function so Andreessen's comment about this taking place outside of banks makes no sense and raises the question: does he even know what he's talking about?

> "The minute any of these new credit vehicles can show any level of > repeatability and reliability, the hedge funds come in and provide the > funding. Hedge funds are very comfortable with analytic models. If you have > sufficient stability, you can get leverage."

The hedge funds are looking for yield. Putting aside the fact that a lot of this money is going to dry up when the interest rate environment changes, the hedge funds are less interested in analytic models and more interested in demand. In other words, it's about customer acquisition. An underwriting model alone won't cut it; you need to be able to find the borrowers.

Also, Andreessen seems to be viewing hedge fund participation as some sort of meaningful validation. Looking at hedge fund performance it should be obvious that most hedge funds are not "smart money" by any stretch of the imagination. When the current market turns, a lot of them will lose their shirts just as they did in 2008 betting big on junk like subprime mortgage-backed CDOs.

> "Bitcoin is like technology that's arrived from Mars, and so regulators > don't know what to do with it. That's a good thing. What a lot of financial > technology entrepreneurs will tell you is that if you're going to innovate > in financial services, you want to do something so new and so different that > the existing regulatory system doesn't know how to react to you. That is > your window of opportunity.

This is silly and untrue. In early 2013, FinCEN issued guidance for virtual currencies, and the IRS weighed in earlier this year. Not surprisingly, just because Bitcoin is "new" and "different" doesn't mean that the standard rules and regulations don't apply, as some have learned the hard way[1].

[1] [http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/04/bitcoin...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/09/04/bitcoin- exchanger-charlie-shrem-pleads-guilty-to-silk-road-related-charges/15095129/)

<comment><USER13> FICO score forces you to take on debt to show you are good with money. The US is debt ridden to the extreme.

Make of that what you want.

<comment><USER14> "Debt" in name only, perhaps. You don't need to pay a cent in interest to build up a very good FICO score. A credit card used correctly (paid in full at every statement) is plenty.

<comment><USER15> I would add that if the "FICO score forced you to take on debt" it would give a better score to someone with a 95% debt to credit line ratio than to an otherwise equal individual with only a 5% debt to credit line ratio. In reality, the opposite is true.

Having said that, for you to have a valid FICO score, you do need to have at least six months of credit history (credit card, loan, mortgage or otherwise).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Marc is extreme smart and talented individual. But when your on Twitter 24/7 and keep on making predictions your gonna be wrong at times. Sometimes you can be wrong in a really big way.

<comment><USER17> I haven't seen any evidence that he's particularly smart. The guy had an early success that convinced him he can see head and shoulders above others. This turned him into a write-only visionary. Like many such people, he's entertaining to read because of the strength of his convictions, but it's probably a bad idea to take him too seriously.

<comment><USER18> That's taking a dim view of the man's prolificacy, or maybe I'm not understanding what "write-only visionary" means.

<comment><USER17> I don't follow what you mean by "prolificacy". Prolixity? Or that he's prolific?

By 'write-only visionary', I mean someone who no longer has a working feedback loop telling them they're sometimes wrong.

<comment><USER19> > By 'write-only visionary', I mean someone who no longer has a working > feedback loop telling them they're sometimes wrong.

well put. kudos. i hope you don't mind as I'm sure I'll repeat this in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> > "Bank regulation tends to backfire"

Warning: <rant>

Hmm ..., let's see: As I recall, in the 1920s some "unregulated banks" were a major part of the mechanism that caused the US economic boom of the 1920s, the stock market crash of 1929, the banking crisis soon afterward, i.e., _runs_ on the banks, catastrophic shrinking of the money supply, massive price deceases, massive unemployment, bankruptcies, the Great Depression in the US, the US slowing buying from Europe, the Great Depression spreading to Europe, the great economic stress in Germany, the rise of Hitler for a _command economy_ , which actually did get the German economy going again, WWII, the deaths of maybe, what, 50 million people, maybe 100 million, ah, why sweat over few tens of millions of people more or less (right, Marc?), and, then, some really severe laws for the _regulation_ of banks.

We said, "never again will the banks do that to us". Indeed, from now on the banks will be creatures of the US Federal Reserve.

But, in 2008, with not enough regulation, the banks did it to us again. Hurt a lot of people, and we got some more banking regulations. BTW, we are still cleaning up the mess the banks left behind, once again, in 2008.

Paulson, Bernanke, etc. remembered with full clarity and had no doubts: "Your banking regulator is sitting right here, and if you don't take this money you will be declared capital deficient on Monday morning. ... You will not leave here before you sign the paper in front of you." Paulson, Bernanke were just determined, as immediately was Congress, that the US banks would _not_ fail; there _would_ be liquidity; the banks _would_ be well capitalized with plenty of reserves with no doubts; there would not be _runs_ on the banks; AIG could be $85 billion in the hole and cause no problems, etc.

Bernanke was just _determined_ not to be the Fed Chair who presided over the second Great Depression, e.g., from banking regulation failures.

Marc, in the US, we _regulate_ the banks. The US Federal Reserve, etc. has the banks by the short hair, holds on with a tight grip, and just will _not_ let go. Marc, are we learning, now? Are we getting some clarity about banking "regulation"?

In many ways, in _social and psychological capital_ , the US is still recovering from the severe damage and losses of the Great Depression and WWII: People that lived through those years, and many didn't, often suffered horribly and, thus, did some relatively poor parenting, passing on a lot of really strong anxieties and not nearly enough in security, insight, social, psychological, emotional, artistic, and intellectual _capital_. The anxieties led to stresses led to depression, incapacitation, more stresses, more depression, clinical depression, a huge range of social problems, including some suicides. I know far too much about what I am describing. We're talking big deficits in social and psychological _capital_ passed from parents to children. We have not recovered yet. It appears that full recovery will take a few more generations. E.g., I can believe that a tribe in Brazil that never saw _civilized_ people is generally much happier than people in the _civilized_ countries that went through the Great Depression and WWII. Those tribes have no banks, bubbles, and Great Depressions.

The Great Recession? Still a _lot_ of people are not yet back to work, and that situation is well known to lead to more in abused wives, abused children, alcoholism, drug abuse, crime, infant mortality, divorce, and suicides, _little_ results like those. Marc, you can understand wrecked families, right?

It seems that banking regulation is just crucial unless, of course, we want to kill tens of millions of people a few times each century. Ah, let's don't just mince words, kill a few hundreds of millions of people a few times each century? More? Sure, maybe more! Right, Marc?

Sure, I know; I know; we can agree that the dangers of unregulated banks won't last very long. I mean, that is, don't you see, another WW will mean we no longer need any more banking regulations, or coal, natural gas, oil, cars, houses, plastics, trash pickup, clothes, schools, hospitals, restaurants, smart phones, libraries, the Internet, venture capital firms, venture partners, or people -- there won't be anymore people, puppy dogs, kitty cats, birds, etc.

Gee, "Look, Ma, no more banking regulations! Ma? Ma? Are you there, Ma? Ma, where are you? Ma!!!!"

Thank you Marc. Your _knowledge_ of finance, banking, and economics is showing through with great clarity!!!!!!

Gee, I thought that we were all supposed to understand financial bubbles, the Great Depression, etc. by, what, somewhere in middle school? Marc, did you skip middle school? Maybe you'd want to go back, sit in the front row, and pay attention? And put away your mobile devices.

Unregulated banking? I'd rather give chunks of plutonium to naughty 8 year old boys just to see what they could do with it.

Marc, unregulated banking is the fast way to the end of at least human life on earth. Wouldn't be very good for your deal flow or venture returns either!

Sorry to be so negative: 50 million, maybe 100 million, dead, the suffering of my ancestors and my wife's ancestors who went through the Great Depression and WWII and the Cold War tend to make me a little, just a _little_ , shall we say _sensitive_ on this subject. But, I'd rather be sensitive and negative than silent and dead. Right, it's just my opinion, and YMMV. </rant>

<comment><USER21> The Federal Reserve system was established in 1913, in response to some earlier crises.

The primary banking related response to the depression was the Glass–Steagall Act:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Banking_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Banking_Act)

It established the FDIC and curtailed speculative investment at commercial banks. There were some provisions giving the Fed some more powers and encouraging banks to become members, but those were at least as much about establishing lending facilities as they were about regulation.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. But in practice the larger banks have no choice but to become Member banks so that in effect they are creatures of the Fed.

1913? A story went we didn't want to have to depend on J. P. Morgan again!

To concentrate on the crucial _bigger picture_ , I omitted mention of Glass- Steagall or its revisions that helped bring on 2008.

So, banks are regulated on their reserve ratios, etc.

My post boils down to a dirt simple but still basically correct: For banking regulated good, unregulated bad, very bad. For something this important, something dirt simple but still correct has some advantages.

<comment><USER22> >My post boils down to a dirt simple but still basically correct: For banking regulated good, unregulated bad, very bad. For something this important, something dirt simple but still correct has some advantages.

I don't think your analysis is correct much at all. Perhaps you are genuinely not aware that these crises were the result of government intervention. I suggest you to read Rothbard's _What Has Government Done to Our Money_ here: [http://mises.org/money.asp](http://mises.org/money.asp)

<comment><USER20> Thanls for the link. I just followed it, and I believe I get the gist of what he is saying. I've heard of the Austrian economist before and heard some of the arguments.

Of course, there are many examples from history that support those points.

Right, on the banks, we can have (1) no regulation, (2) bad regulation, or (3) good regulation. I have to conclude that (1) no regulation is not a good solution because, with the history of banking crises, e.g., the crises that led to the 1913 regulations, when there was no regulation, since banking has such a crucial role in the economy and also has motivations for profit, we can too easily get serious _systemic_ problems.

E.g., banks need to be told to have sufficient _reserves_.

For (2) bad regulation: Sure we don't want that.

For (3) good regulation, maybe we can't really get that. And maybe attempts at (3) historically have caused lots of problems, e.g., dumb, nasty governments printing money by the trillions of trillions.

Still, we don't want (1) or (2). So, we do the best we can trying to get (3). Here in the US, at least since 1933, I believe that the regulation worked fairly well (as intended, not so _well_ more broadly, e.g., didn't get us out of the Great Depression; we didn't get people back to work until people started shooting at us and we started war production, in which case supposedly within 90 days everyone had at least one job offer and many people had 1+ jobs) until the crash of 2008. Well? No, only _fairly_ well. My guess is that that regulation did work better than we would have had with (1) no regulation.

My first cut take on your concerns is that you are more concerned about the Fed and it's role in the money supply than just banking regulation. So, right, for a recent mess up, Greenspan actually feared, in simple terms, that all the computers would stop on January 1, 2000 and, from this fear, opened up the money supply to keep the economy going nevertheless and, net, _printed_ too much money.

So, we get a suspicion: To drive the best in a straight line or fly an airplane at a constant altitude in a straight line, just tie the controls down with strong rope and keep human hands far away. Well, if only due to lots of _random exogenous_ influences, that simplistic _constant control_ doesn't work very well for cars, airplanes, or a money supply or an economy. Instead, we need a _pilot_ , right, a _good pilot_ , and maybe Greenspan was not so good near year 2000.

Or, maybe instead of a Fed, just go on a gold standard. Maybe.

But, I was talking about banking _regulation_ and not so much what nasty governments can do to mess up the money supply with _printed_ money.

We regulate lots of things, medicines (safety and efficacy), food safety, auto safety, building safety (e.g., building codes, e.g., to protect against another shirtwaist factory or whatever it was fire), caps on aspirin bottles, age for drinking beer, and much more.

Do I like some mandate of anti-lock brakes on cars? Nope: I don't want the extra cost at purchase or maintenance.

Regulation on car tailpipe emissions? Out in the country, say, 90% of the US land area, I see little need for the regulations, but I concede that in the cities the regulations are from helpful and justified up to just crucial. Yes, those regulations recently cost me $300 for a catalytic converter, with, maybe, platinum, when out in the country where I live a simple piece of pipe, for maybe $2, would have been fine. But, no joke, the regulations did a lot to clean up the air in the cities, with no doubt good health effects.

Even I'm not enough of a libertarian to conclude that we should have no regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Does anyone know what the rest of the article covers?</comment>


YouTube to ban accounts that are not commercially viable - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/t/terms?preview=20191210#main& <comment><USER2> I don't speak English well enough but phrase "to ban" sounds like YouTube is actually going to ban, while in fact YouTube only reserves the right to ban. But the latter is not clickbaity enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> IOW it means they can kick you off if you cost them too much money.

Which is fully reasonable for a private company. Unfortunately people have treated YouTube like a utility that makes them a living.

It would be great to see PeerTube (and other ActivityPub-based federated open- source software social networks) grow and improve to the point it is a viable replacement.

</comment><comment><USER4> They must have already had some provision to use for those cases, right? I can't imagine that if i uploaded a 24/7 feed of a tree growing they'd have let me do that forever.

<comment><USER2> I think they are probably going to delete all these endless and useless video game streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I, for one, welcome our new youtube TOS rationalization overlords.

<comment><AUTHOR> Too many of them here, this got no traction on 2 submissions

<comment><USER5> Shocked, shocked I tell you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Where exactly does it say this? I did not see a statement in my skimming

<comment><USER7> [...] Terminations by YouTube for Service Changes

YouTube may terminate your access, or your Google account's access to all or part of the Service if YouTube believes, in its sole discretion, that provision of the Service to you is no longer commercially viable. [...]

<comment><USER8> That isn't in the changes though, which the title suggested.</comment></comment></comment>


Rising Threat of Infections Unfazed by Antibiotics - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/business/27germ.html?em

<comment><USER2> Despite the on-again off-again media hysteria, it would seem that there is some promising research on the horizon. Check out the TED talk by Kary Mullis: [http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kary_mullis_next_gen_cure_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kary_mullis_next_gen_cure_for_killer_infections.html) "Drug-resistant bacteria kills, even in top hospitals. But now tough infections like staph and anthrax may be in for a surprise. Nobel-winning chemist Kary Mullis, who watched a friend die when powerful antibiotics failed, unveils a radical new cure that shows extraordinary promise."

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is scary.

To me it seems that we are just creating more powerful strains of various bacteria with our use of anti-biotics.

May be it is time we need to look at alternate ways to enhance our immunity so that we are not that much susceptible to bacterial (or virus) infection.

May be alternative medicine or Michael Pollan way of eating.

Any ideas?

<comment><USER4> _we need to look at alternate ways to enhance our immunity_

Vaccines suit this description. But natural selection will favor bacteria that beat your immunity, however your immunity is enhanced. The bacteria for which we have effective defenses, of whatever kind, we forget about, but the few kinds of bacteria that can harm human beings continue to be surprising. That's the arms race of natural selection.

<comment><USER5> I've heard it proposed that we could try and work _with_ this instead of against it, by "domesticating" diseases. Take some harmful bacteria, breed a strain that's mostly benign and moderately contagious, then let it loose to displace the more harmful strains while carefully avoiding doing too much to kill it. In other words, create selection pressures that favor mild strains.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a disaster in slow motion. It is a few years old, but _Betrayal of Trust_ is still an excellent overview of the problem: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786884401?ie=UTF8&tag=...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0786884401?ie=UTF8&tag=randomobser0b-20)

<comment><USER7> I haven't read that one, but I read Garrett's earlier one, "The Coming Plague" - it was an hysterical, anti-Western, fear-mongering eco-nut screed. In the decade and a half since she wrote it, not a single one of the "plagues" she claimed were about to break out across the world has shown any signs of getting worse, much less becoming the sort of widespread "disaster" she claimed was imminent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At least the pharmaceutical companies are hard at work finding new drugs to make your eyelashes grow longer.

<comment><USER9> While the eyebrow example is wrong, let's assume that the gist was correct.

In general, folks tend to produce things that other people are willing to pay for. Why should pharma be any different? And why is this wrong?

You want more drugs that save peoples lives? Great! So do I. Here's how we do it.

Make it possible for folks to get rich on drugs that save people's lives. Note - cost controls won't do it (unless we're talking about controlling regulatory costs).

<comment><USER10> You've hit the nail on the head. I spent several years in one of the biggest antibiotics research centers in big pharma. I watched as they systematically disbanded it. The business folks had decided that there was no money in antibiotics. The reason? The FDA (and similar agencies in other countries) are pretty much guaranteed to make any new, very successful antibiotic a "drug of last resort". This means you can only give it to an individual who has failed all the standard line therapy.

From a business perspective, why develop something if you are never going to be able to sell it in decent enough quantities to make a profit? Now, you could argue that at some point in the future, that drug will become standard line therapy when all the current front line drugs are completely useless. Unfortunately, by that time the drug is off patent and generic competition will ensure there won't be much profit.

This is a complex situation, and I'm not pretending that there is an easy solution. It seems there are a confluence of regulations and politics that conspire to prevent serious attempts at new antibiotics development. The situation is changing somewhat, and my hope is that once the problem becomes more acute, the necessary incentives will be aligned.

<comment><USER8> "Hi, we're the government. Instead of bombing Iraq, we would like to buy the IP for this critical drug you developed."

It's already developed, and they don't want to commercialize it, so why not sell the IP to the government or a charity. (The government could even theoretically compel the agreement via eminent domain. Or, the pharmaceutical company could donate the drug to the public domain and take a massive tax write off.)

<comment><USER10> Drug companies do sell or give away IP from time to time. But even in the scenario you suggest, with finite resources, why put money into antibiotics development? Why not just fund cancer research at a higher level? I think most pharmas wouldn't want to take the risk that the governmnt would leave them holding the bag. Contrary to the popular meme, drug companies don't generally want to sit on a drug that is ready to go.

But all that aside, there is nothing stopping the NIH from starting a research program and developing their own antibiotics (or any academic institution). This happens a bit already, but then it comes time to run the clinical trials and develop the research compound into an actual medicine. This requires expertise and infrastructure that does not exist in the public sector at a sufficient level to get the job done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I know someone who contracted MRSA after randomly scraping his knee. Almost killed him, and it came out of nowhere. Some hospitals have MRSA fatality rates over 20%. Scary as shit! Antibiotics abuse has screwed us, I guess, along with the sloppiness of many healthcare providers.

<comment><USER12> MRSA lives in the community just as much, if not more, than it lives in the hospitals. From what I know of the area, some hospitals had up to 80% community-acquired infections as opposed to hospital-acquired infections, this meant that the majority of these patients were being killed _by their families_. I know many ICU's in the UK have full out bans on any family members entering, because if anyone in an ICU catches MRSA they're gone.

It's easy to blame the healthcare providers, and I'm sure in many cases it is the healthcare providers' fault. However, if they simply flat-out banned people from visiting in the hospital MRSA infection rates (in good hospitals) would drop like a rock.

I wouldn't be surprised if hospitals with MRSA fatality rates over 20% allow visitors in the ICU and don't have well established visitor protocols in the regular hospital. I know some wards in the UK (I have friends and family who work in hospitals) will escort you out if they see you go between patients' beds; essentially they allow you to visit 1 person per day, and they frequently have visiting hours only a couple hours long so they can actively enforce this.

My advice to anyone visiting a friend in hospital, don't touch them. No handshakes, especially no hugs. This seems extreme, but patients have died from MRSA infection in key-hole surgery incisions.

<comment><USER11> Right, I think it is sloppy of a hospital to allow people to walk in and cause that kind of damage. I think not allowing outsiders into the ICU could be a good move for many.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is the part of the article I most like:

 _"You don't really have much choice," said Dr. Azza Elemam, an infectious- disease specialist in Louisville, Ky. "If a person has a life-threatening infection, you have to take a risk of causing damage to the kidney."

Such a tradeoff confronted Kimberly Dozier, a CBS News correspondent who developed an Acinetobacter infection after being injured by a car bomb in 2006 while on assignment in Iraq. After two weeks on colistin, Ms. Dozier's kidneys began to fail, she recounted in her book, "Breathing the Fire."

Rejecting one doctor's advice to go on dialysis and seek a kidney transplant, Ms. Dozier stopped taking the antibiotic to save her kidneys. She eventually recovered from the infection._

Of course, I'm highly biased in that regard. :-)

<comment><USER3> "Of course, I'm highly biased in that regard."

This prompted me to look at your info and now reading your website (<http://www.healthgazelle.com/>) and I am pleased, to say the least.

I added my comment above (or below where ever it appears) without reading your website.

<comment><USER13> I suppose that answers your closing question of "Any ideas?". ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


I have FUD about patent trolls - <AUTHOR>

I have fear, uncertainty and doubts about patent trolls. What should I do if the patent trolls ask me for too much money and I run out of money? What do you do when you are sued? <comment><USER2> Are these trolls with an existing patent you're considering infringing?

Or are these trolls gremlins who will somehow come out of the woodwork after you get your own thing going and try to patent it?

Patent trolls survive by making money. If you don't have any money (and aren't making any), they probably won't bother with you. If you are making money, they will want something you can afford or raise, because otherwise, they won't make money that way either.

In many ways, fighting with a patent troll is a sign of success more than anything else. It means you have the money to fight over. Don't be afraid of success.

</comment><comment><USER3> Incorporate, so your business is involved in a lawsuit and not you.</comment>


Ask HN: Twitter Data Visualization. - <AUTHOR>

I want to make a map info visualization using twitter data. This has been done before, but none that I've seen are at all useful.
I'm stumped.
What data do you think I could visualize that would be useful to watch? <comment><USER2> See TweetFreq:

TweetFreq: Visualizing Twitter Update Behavior

TweetFreq is an application written in the Processing enviornment that visualizes the twitter update frequency of various collections of twitter users (for example, influential journalists, celebrities, CEOs, politicians, and news organizations

The collection of TweetFreq visualizations can be found in this Flickr Set:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajstarks/sets/72157618491647464...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajstarks/sets/72157618491647464/detail/)

More on TweetFreq Design, Implementation, Examples and Usage:

[http://www.scribd.com/doc/22231126/TweetFreq-Visualizing- Twi...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/22231126/TweetFreq-Visualizing-Twitter- update-behavior)

There's also the Twitter Search Grid:

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajstarks/sets/72157622763006024...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/ajstarks/sets/72157622763006024/)</comment>


Ask HN: Any tech companies use time tracking? - <AUTHOR> For example Harvest: https://www.getharvest.com/<p>Anyone have experience with this for software engineers? I can think of few pros and many cons... <comment><USER2> I work with tmetric (my choice)

It has four levels so it can match your need or what you negotiate with boss/client

Ad hoc timer, per issue timer , fully integrated with gitlab etc, screenshotting

I never needed/allowed the screenshotting but it is there</comment>


The New Captcha? - <AUTHOR> http://random.irb.hr/signup.php

<comment><USER2> What? The apparently LaTeX-generated strings aren't even wiggled, embossed with some 3d kind of style, or anything. It can be probably really easy to transcribe it back to text and solve easily.

If they're trying to make their captcha as hard as possible to crack (and as hard as possible for others to actually solve it), they should have taken a cue from Rapidshare, with something like "For numbers with cats next to them, take the natural log of that number in place of the number itself."

<comment><USER3> The first time I saw this it actually _was_ intended to get users to not sign up. It was some "you have to be this smart to join our club" type thing. A reverse captcha? One not worried about computers registering, but instead trying to filter actual users out?

Oh, and I've gotten that Rapidshare thing a few times. It seriously confused the hell out of me. It looked like all the numbers had cats on them, but it only let me type (less than the amount of characters). Do the other letters have dogs on them or something?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, the rest were dogs. There's probably about a difference of six pixels or something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> not the first time I've seen math captcha but this is definitely a good way to get people not to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER5> What's with all the Captcha stories? Any funny business going on?

<comment><AUTHOR> There was an initial post about Captchas and that one linked to a few others. This is how the usual flavor of the moment on YC comes about.

You see the same phenomenon in blogs where you have a few bloggers all blogging about similar toptics at the same time.

<comment><USER6> Affectionally called "the echo-chamber effect".</comment></comment></comment>


The net neutrality farce - <AUTHOR> http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/net-neutrality-farce-article-1.3649219 <comment><AUTHOR> Opinion of Thomas Hazlett [1], Professor of Economics at Clemson University, a former chief economist of the FCC, and author of "The Political Spectrum: The Tumultuous Liberation of Wireless Technology, from Herbert Hoover to the Smartphone." [2]

Reportedly influenced by Carl Menger [3], father of the Austrian School of economics.

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

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300210507](https://www.amazon.com/dp/0300210507)

[3] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Menger](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Menger)</comment>