Cancer 'vaccine' that remembers and fights disease is developed by scientists - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/12157788/Cancer-vaccine-that-remembers-disease-and-fights-it-years-later-is-developed-by-scientists.html <comment><USER2> As was pointed out before, those are unpublished results. We cannot extract any significant information from this article. For example, in many early phase trials, the standard treatment is often given WITH the new drug (or vaccine), so we'd have to know the response rate of the control group.

As other pointed out, blood cancers are very different than solid tumors -- they've historically been easier to treat. That's probably due to the tumor micro environnement that makes solid tumor a very different process. To put simply, I would not assume for a second that outcomes for blood cancers can be replicated for solid tumors.

Immunotherapy is all the rage in the cancer world right now. It resonates with patient that "their own bodies can destroy cancer". It's almost romantic. Kinda like when anti-angiogenesis drugs were all the rage a few years ago...

The "cancer vaccine" has been tried many times before. Pretty much every time the cancer finds a way around it. Sipuleucel-T is a commercially available cancer vaccine for prostate cancer. It adds a few months for $$$, but newer, non-vaccine treatments are now doing better.

We're unlikely to find "a" cure for cancer; we'll eventually find "cures" for cancer, but it will be small, incremental steps. In the meantime I'll go back to my clinic and continue to enrol patients on clinical trials

<comment><USER3> What about extremely early and accurate diagnostic screening , which can offer 0% or very close to 0% false negatives(and ~30% false positives, like quanterix talks about), followed by a full panel of the relevant proteins ,guiding to the correct,low dose highly targeted chemo therapies ?

Considering that some results of treating early(by today's standards <2-3mm tumor) we can get to something like 95%-98% 5-years cancer free rates(while suffering some side effects), in breast cancer - it seems possible to make cancer a low-risk ,low-pain disease - as long as you do your regular checkups. Right ?

<comment><USER2> Cancer research is not an easy field and many are better than me in that regard. But food for thoughts:

A screening test with 30% false positive is not a great test. One in three test takers would be positive, requiring more investigations (likely many more). Let's say 1000 asymptomatic person take the test, 300 will test positive. Physicians then have to investigate thoroughly those patients. $$$ for those tests, hours of work missed, and very importantly patient anxiety and potential harm (a prostate biopsy, for example, is not trivial and people can die from that)

of those 1000 people screened, 1 has the disease. With a 0% false negative rate, we catch it. Because of the test, it was caught early. Have we really changed his outcomes? would he have discovered it by himself a few weeks later, not impacting any of his treatments? The convention of "catching cancer early will make it easier to cure" is not always true.

In the meantime, we've had to put 300 people through useless agressive investigations...

Moreover, 0% false negative would be revolutionary. -- 0% and 100% are extremely rare in medicine.

Anyhow, screening, especially its drawbacks is one of the most complex concept to explain.

For genotyping and targeted treatments: it's been tried but we're still not there yet. The papers coming out are disappointing in that regard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really appreciate the down-to-earth-ness of this interview, this man is being very honest. It's good not to create false hope and present cancer immunotherapy (yet perhaps) as the thing that will cure any cancer.

However, it is the only real curative treatment next to surgery and really the only treatment that can cure metastatic cancer. At the moment though, only in small percentage of people with specific cancers (mostly melanoma, skin cancers.) So there certainly is reason to be excited, the cancer field is all over this at the moment so advances in the near future can be expected.

<comment><USER5> My mother in law is in this therapy right now. The doctors were surprised it isn't working (prior chemo worked pretty well giving her another year of life, once it stopped they switched her to this treatment). They're looking at hospice care right now.

When the cancer gets to stage 4, you're looking at when not if the cancer is going to kill you. So to everyone you know that doesn't get regular checkups, encourage them to do so. Both my parents have had cancer but it was caught early, my mother in law never went to a doctor after having her last kid ~25 years ago.

<comment><USER6> I have a dumb question but ... how do you know when to check? I suppose I should google that. AFAIK doctors don't generally check until you show some kind of symptom (no idea what those symptoms are)

I also remember a Ted talk about a high school student who designed a way to test for any cancer for $0.01 per test with 99.9% accuracy. No idea whatever happened to that

[https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_andraka_a_promising_test_for_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/jack_andraka_a_promising_test_for_pancreatic_cancer_from_a_teenager)

<comment><USER7> Blood tests can detect a lot of cancers. I've been working in Japan for many years now. It is normal for people to get blood work done every year here. After age 40 they also do a barium test for stomach cancer. I think every year for that is a bit much, so I skipped it this year... They also usually do a chest X-ray every year which can catch tuberculosis as well as lung cancer. And for women obviously yearly pap smears and mamograms. Over 35 for men, I think you are supposed to get yearly prostate exams. I have not done this and I am planning to get an exam as soon as I can manage it.

Don't wait for symptoms. It's sounds like a lot, but doing the above is really fairly straight forward and not expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "The findings are yet to be published and reviewed."

Are people really ok with this practice of researchers talking about their discoveries without having shared the methods and data (I don't care so much about the review aspect)? I'm certainly not, but apparently many think this is acceptable for some reason because I don't see any pushback.

<comment><USER9> I'm biased. My wife was diagnosed with metastatic cancer 6 months ago. With current standard treatments there is a 3-year survival rate of practically zero, so to me the most important thing is getting new effective treatments developed and brought into clinical practice as soon as possible.

I haven't seen the presentation about the study (a related news briefing is here [1]) so I don't know whether you're correct to say that the researchers haven't shared their methods and data. They seem quite happy to share technical details at the news briefing.

However, regardless of that, I still think it is a good thing if researchers talk about their findings at an early stage, especially if the findings are as dramatic and positive as these. If a treatment is available and you have patients out there dying with no other options, then it is just wrong to hide that away.

In my opinion we treat these things far too cautiously. It is not optimal for the individual and it is not optimal for society. By sharing /and/ opening up options like this to terminally ill patients we can (a) save individual lives and (b) speed up development and refinement of new treatments to benefit everyone.

The problem is that the incentives we have in place treat a cancer death as acceptable, while a treatment-related death is unacceptable for researchers, doctors and drug companies (unless they are shielded by layers of clinical- trial bureaucracy or years of standard practice). The result is that the course of treatment doesn't properly weigh the different sources of risk. Whether the goal is quality-adjusted life years for an individual patient or faster development of effective and safe treatments, the current system is way too conservative.

[1] [http://www.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/2016/webcast/?b=38](http://www.eurekalert.org/aaasnewsroom/2016/webcast/?b=38)

<comment><USER8> For what it's worth, I used to say I would take some experimental treatment when the time came. Not after doing research myself and seeing first hand what "experimental" really means when it comes to medicine. It means: no one has any way of really knowing what is going on. For example,

1) There will be some studies where a measurement was higher in the treatment group compared to controls, but it is not 100% clear what combination of things is actually being measured.

2) There will be other studies you hear about that got different results, but didn't get published because publishing "negative results" is discouraged and bad for careers.

3) The criteria for publishing a positive result is a p-value below an arbitrary threshold, and most people researching medical treatments really do not understand the meaning of a p-value to begin with. There are all sorts of myths like it is the probability the treatment didn't work, etc. So (at least the implementation of) the basic criteria used to judge success is fatally flawed.

It is quite scary and I don't see anything I can do about it but make people aware there is a problem here.

<comment><USER9> From a sociology point of view, yes you should distrust any signs of p-hacking or selective reporting, especially when there is a low effect size.

From a technology point of view, I think we are already well past "no one.. really knowing what is going on." Take the current study. Past researchers had identified the CD19 antigen found (often exclusively) on B cells, and others had found that autologous T-cells could persist in a patient for many years, potentially providing a durable response. The current researchers built on this knowledge to design and engineer T-cells that could wipe out a patient's B cells.

So it's a very planned, targeted approach, more akin to engineering than the old approach of testing thousands of random molecules as potential treatments. When the targeted approach works, and especially when it has a large and consistent effect on patients as in this case, then you can be very confident at an early stage.

This needs to be recognized and medical practice needs to change as a result. We're entering an era of incredibly detailed knowledge and precision tools for research and development. The pace of development will continue to increase and treatments will become more patient-specific as individual targets are identified.

You could consider the large, slow, blunt clinical trials as being like optimization for a particular treatment. When new drugs are rare or not well understood it makes sense to spend time to optimize their use. But when new drugs come frequently and are well targeted this premature optimization costs lives.

<comment><USER8> >"Past researchers had identified the CD19 antigen found (often exclusively) on B cells, and others had found that autologous T-cells could persist in a patient for many years, potentially providing a durable response."

I didn't watch the video, so I'm not sure where this info is coming from, but providing such references is one reason why they should write a paper up before talking to the media.

Also, I am fairly certain if we do follow up on these claims (I know nothing about them specifically) we will find the actual evidence is much more ambiguous, there has been no direct replication attempted, the references do not actually contain the evidence claimed, etc.

<comment><USER8> See the problem? I can claim anything I want about this, be it optimistic or pessimistic, and no one can check. There is no paper (or equivalent source of information), so no way to assess the evidence.

<comment><USER9> One way to approach an announcement like this is to wait until everything is wrapped up nicely in a neat paper.

Another approach is to investigate further using the tools available: look up the authors' past work on Google Scholar, check clinicaltrials.gov, look for third party opinions, even ask the authors directly. I'd argue that the scientists and journalists at the AAAS conference where this was presented are capable of this second approach, and so are many participants on HN.

<comment><USER8> I think if you try it out, after a few you'll find this is naive. Further, you are doing the job of the person making the claim!

It is too time consuming to research a claim indirectly like that. That is what you do after reading the paper which contains (usually most of) the required information and (usually a biased sample of) citations to the other research that were found relevant.

Reading the paper is only a first filtering step to evaluating a claim, a conference presentation simply doesn't merit that effort because it contains far too little information. A conference presentation is more like "hey, check out what I'm working on".

Now, that doesn't mean people don't try to do this, it is one of the primary uses for misinterpretation of p-values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why are all the gene-based cancer breakthroughs I've seen in the news for blood diseases? Is it easier to manipulate genes in blood?

<comment><USER4> I think it is because in blood drugs and gene based treatments are the only option, surgery is simply not an option. This has always spurred the blood cancer field to take greater risks, the all or nothing approach.

<comment><USER11> From what I remember, these blood cancer have an antigen, CD13 or something, which is unique to them - no other body part has it, making it easy to target them.

Otherwise, you get the side effect of destroying your own body, the case of a woman a few years ago, who died having her lungs destroyed by immunotherapy. Lungs had the same antigen.

This morning I read something hopeful in this direction - UCSF researchers designed an AND gate, so now they could trigger a T cell attack only when 2 specific antigens are present, making it much more reliable. And I could imagine these can be chained, further narrowing it down. It needs genetic sequencing to isolate.

[https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/01/401471/tricked-out- immune-...](https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2016/01/401471/tricked-out-immune-cells- could-attack-cancer-spare-healthy-cells)

At the moment this is a terrible manual and time consuming process, so it is expensive.

<comment><USER12> This is also why a combination of engineered T-cells and immune checkpoint inhibitors is a really winning combo. [http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/01/paradigm- shif...](http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jun/01/paradigm-shift-hailed- in-treatment-of-lung-cancer)

<comment><USER13> Immune checkpoint (fancy name that, you probably mean anti-autoimmune system) inhibitors main problem is the very high risk of autoimmune disorders that are hard or impossible to treat. Just toggling the suppressor will not kill clonal cells already in circulation, and those can last a long, long time, or even a lifetime. If you're unlucky, you will also get "broken" immune memory cells - which also last for life.

Trading cancer for SLE or rheumatoidal arthritis etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Theory holds that mutations are random and each cancer process is different.</comment>


Show HN: Pocket Guide for Bootstrap 4 - <AUTHOR> http://bootstrap4.guide <comment><USER2> Congrats for the launch, there are a lot of resources there, gonna check them soon. I have one question about the build of the community, I see this in the footer "powered by Airstack" and this link to Github [https://github.com/ThemesGuide/airstack"](https://github.com/ThemesGuide/airstack"), but on that repo isn't anything. Is that something open source that we can use to create some similar communities/lists? Thank you!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, and yes the "Airstack" source will be available in the coming weeks.

<comment><USER2> That's great! Already have some plans on how to use it :D</comment></comment></comment>


Once a Model City, Hong Kong Is in Trouble - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/world/asia/hong-kong-china-handover.html <comment><USER4> As someone lived in Hong Kong for quite a while (during the tail of its heydays) but now in the US, Hong Kong is indeed in big trouble. But not for the reasons mentioned/implied in this article.

It's very easy to buy into narratives such as authoritarianism vs democracy, communism vs capitalism, China vs Britain/West, tight control vs freedom as the reasons for Hong Kong's decline, but that's just short-circuited thinking for the lazy.

The real reason for Hong Kong's decline, is the failure/irresponsibility of Hong Kong's elite ruling class. Maybe to many people's surprise, since its handover to China, Hong Kong has effectively been ruled by the local elites, NOT by Beijing. Sure, Beijing appoints the governor, but the governors are locals, and there was never any direct "order" from Beijing, well, sorta until recently, when Beijing began to see the failure of the local Hong Kong government.

Those elites are composed of mega real estate/business tycoons. Being the elites in the most capitalist city-state in the world gives them tremendous wealth and power, but to the disappointment of Spider-man, with that great power there's no great responsibilities. The ruling class mega riches don't see income inequality as a problem, but a badge of honor for themselves, to show how "they've made it", while all the poors are just not smart/hardworking enough. Any efforts to "appease the poor" are hindered by the ruling business- politician symbiotics, because those efforts get in their way of accumulating more wealth.

The frustration of the youth and the poor stems from the sense of inequality, unfairness and despair as they see no chances of upward mobility. Yet, even the poorest in Hong Kong is a capitalist at heart, so they are poor not because of the rich, and they certainly do work hard, then who's to blame? China, Beijing, the mainlanders, because they are evil, communist, denying tian'anmen square, yada yada...

On the contrary, when the ruling rich saw the rebellion of lower class, without knowing/admitting themselves are to be blamed, they seek help from Beijing. What does Beijing know about governing a country? More control! That's the only thing Beijing knows, and it's been working (kinda) with them. So that's how we get where we are now.

<comment><USER5> The same is happening to Taiwan (stuttered growth; in-fighting, etc.). The issue is deeply rooted in local power-wielding elites conspiring or opposing the ruling government. It has nothing to do democracy. The riches have already allocated some of their wealth elsewhere (see Canada and Australia), so they don't really care. It's always easy to blame it on Beijing, isn't it?

<comment><USER6> > The issue is deeply rooted in local power-wielding elites conspiring or > opposing the ruling government. It has nothing to do democracy.

Seems like democracy would make this problem worse, since it redistributes power to local informal power elites.

<comment><USER7> Taiwan is a "democracy", just a deeply corrupt one.

<comment> dis-sys Calling Taiwan a democracy is like labelling the Culture Revolution a democratic movement.

When elderly Chinese who actually experienced the terrible Culture Revolution go to visit Taiwan, many of them had the feeling that Taiwan make them feel young again as they saw the Culture Revolution again in Taiwan.

Endless street politics for every single change to the society, hugely divided society, corruption from both sides, people are forced to pick which side is less terrible rather than which is better, President democratically elected used its official jet to move cash to foreign countries.

Personally, I don't want such toxic Taiwan to be integrated back to China, they can run their own circus on that island so people in the mainland can look at them and learn from their mistakes.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like you've been getting all your Taiwan news from 新闻联播.

Taiwan is nothing like what you said, and to compare it to Cultural Revolution China is just ridiculous.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Writing as someone who left HK when he was 14 who still visit every couple years, so take what I write with a load of salt.

I really think HK is over, as in it will never return to its peak glorious days. Much of the prosperity of HK came from being a middleman between China and the rest of the world. That position is eroding because China is slowly opening up. For example, of the top 5 container ports, 3 are in mainland China and HK is #5 [1]. HK was the busiest as recently as 2004. Why ship to/from HK when you can ship directly to/from China?

Much of the ruling elites (many of whom are/were businessmen or have business ties) understand this, and realize China has a lot more soft power over HK than what the Basic Law guarantees. The end game is clear, HK will become just another Chinese city, the Establishment is hoping that by pandering to mainland, they can slow down the process and maintain their self-interest. The more positive way to think about it is, if China allows, HK can become the Shanghai of the south instead of a little brother to Shenzhen.

Meanwhile, the poor. I grew up quite poor in HK and a family of 4 shared one studio. The kitchen and bathroom were shared with another 4-5 families. 4 of us slept in ONE bunkbed. Life got much better after I was 7, because we moved to public housing in the suburb. You see, there's always a big divide between the rich and the poor, but all the public subsidies made life bearable.

A big part of HK's government revenue come from land sale [2]. And land is more valuable when it's not used for public housing. That and immigration means the wait to get public housing is getting longer and longer [3]. Immigration is supposed to increase revenue too, but as mentioned because a big part of revenue come from land sale and immigration doesn't increase the amount of developable land, the overall effect is smaller.

Normally one way to deal with this is impose immigration quota, but I looked into this a few years back and apparently for family reunion, HK government does not control the quota and have to accept however many the mainland sends over. For obvious reasons many in HK have family-ties in China so politically having a smaller quota would not be popular either. I don't have numbers to prove this, but there's a general sentiment that infrastructure is not growing fast enough to accommodate population increase.

I don't know what HK can do honestly. Politically it's in an impossible situation.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_port...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_busiest_container_ports) [2]: [http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp110.jsp?tableID=193&...](http://www.censtatd.gov.hk/hkstat/sub/sp110.jsp?tableID=193&ID=0&productType=8) [3]: [http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education- community/artic...](http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/education- community/article/2070493/waiting-time-get-hong-kong-public-housing-shoots)

</comment><comment> dis-sys I'd like to offer my views on the decline of HK -

1\. HK was a middleman, it used to connect the mainland China to the world. That worked for HK very well after 1949, but clearly the people living in the mainland do not want to see HK to keep having its cut for the flow of capitals/goods for a very reasonable reason - there are more and more professionals/businesses in mainland China that are eager/qualified/happy to take over what HK was offering.

2\. HK failed to develop its industrial base. Let's compare it to Singapore, you see different high tech companies in that city nation, but what HK has developed in the last few decades? You can also compare it to the neighbouring Shenzhen, if Shenzhen can offer companies like Tencent/DJI, why HK can not do the same in a so called free environment? FTA is long available to HK, there are numerous HK based companies doing business in mainland and making good profits, just in the wrong sector - they are all in real estate. Rather than blindly blame Beijing, there are more meaningful reasons to look at.

3\. HK's retail sector is no longer comparable to what you can expect from tier-1 Chinese cities (Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen). Mobile payment, online shopping, delivery, large and easy to use e-commerce sites, you name it. Sure you can easily argue that HK has a few department stores with pretty good services, but is that enough to support the future of a city with millions of residencies? The consequence is simple - Chinese from the mainland stopped going to HK for shopping, they start to feel its out of date payment systems, 1990s style department stores are getting less and less attractive.

4\. HK's Infrastructure is no longer considered as good. I first visited HK 13 years ago when HK's metro was far better than anything you could possibly expect in Shanghai. Today there is high speed rail that can get me anywhere within 200km radius of Shanghai, Shanghai metro's scale is 2-3x times larger. How fast you can get yourself from HK's central to Guangzhou? I can get myself to a nice office building or hotel in Hangzhou from my home in Shanghai door to door in 90 minutes.

5\. HK is losing its financial capital status fast. Chinese Yuan will be internationalised eventually, that is probably THE biggest financial event in the next 30 years, but how many people would possibly believe that having HK dollar in HK is a smart move? Let's remember that HKD is never allowed to freely float, its exchange rate is fixed to USD.

All this come to a real question here: is HK declining or just returning to where it suppose to be?

<comment><USER10> Funny bringing up DJI as an example of a Shenzhen company. They were actually conceived in a Hong Kong university but moved over the border due to cheaper rents and closer proximity to factories.

<comment><USER11> DJI AFAIK moved out of Hong Kong due to the lack of funding. Hong Kong never developed any serious engineering culture & talent base and it is very difficult to start a high tech venture in Hong Kong, from a funding point of view. From a talent point of view, Shenzhen's engineering easily outnumbers and out-qualitys Hong Kong by an order of magnitude.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The real problem is that Hong Kong is a finance and trading hub. And it became so because it was the easiest way to do business with China.

But business likes stability. The democracy protests have done nothing for Hong Kong, and now that China's eased access to their market through Shanghai, Hong Kong's entire raison d'être is at risk.

Also, the article is pretty spot on in other ways. Once upon a time, Hong Kong students were guaranteed success by virtue of being born there. Now, they need to compete with mainlanders, which of course is a much larger pool.

And finally, 20 years ago China wanted to build up Hong Kong as a model for it's 2 systems 1 country philosophy. However the democracy protests have all but killed that, so the Chinese will gladly simply build up Shanghai to Hong Kong's detriment, and no amount of democracy or separatism will fix it.

<comment><USER13> The real problem is that Hong Kong existed as an arbitrage hub to an artificially closed hinterland during a political time warp, and when China finally opened up, Hong Kong's fate was already sealed. Hong Kong still has some first-world advantages to exploit, but the number is dwindling day by day.

<comment><USER14> > Hong Kong still has some first-world advantages to exploit, but the number > is dwindling day by day.

Beijing/Shanghai have yet to demonstrate the level of innovation that comes out of the Hong Kong/Shenzhen connection.

And, parents still send their kids across the border in mainland China to go to school in Hong Kong.

China may have opened up, and is continuing to open up more, but by no means are the gates fully open at Shanghai. Innovation still primarily comes from the south and regions that are farther from the federal government's base.

<comment> dis-sys First of all, there is no federal Chinese government, it is called the Central Government of China. There is no federation any time during China's history - the central government controls everything in every province, the power of any local administration is granted by the Central Government, directly or indirectly.

Secondly, most innovations happen in Beijing, you can count whatever stats you like, such as # of patents filed, high tech start up numbers, VC funds and where they invest their $ etc. You'd be seeing more than half are in Beijing.

To give you a very quick example: Xiaomi, Didi, Mobike and OFO are the 4 unicorns of China's internet industry, all headquartered in Beijing, their R&D are done in Beijing, these four have not gone IPO and the youngest worth $1B.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Before pontificating too much about the doom of Hong Kong, you should observe that compared to the US, HK has:

\- Far lower crime and incarceration

\- Better education (measured by PISA scores)

\- Incomparably better infrastructure (compare beautiful, clean HK subways with laughably pathetic US ones)

\- Better health outcomes than the US, 84 year life expectancy vs 79 for the US

\- Preserves an incredibly large percentage of its territory for parks (most of HK island is a park)

\- No natural resources like the US

\- All of this with far far lower taxes than the US (government % of GDP is roughly 14% compared to 38% in US)

<comment><USER16> Hong Kong is a port city conveniently located (politically and physically) between China and the rest of the world.

To compare a uniquely positioned city like that to the entire US population (which, for example, includes Detroit) is not particularly meaningful.

<comment><USER17> Replace the US with San Francisco or NYC and the list still applies.

<comment><USER16> Now take Manhattan Island, politically and physically isolate it, restrict freedom of movement between it and the rest of the country, and shut the rest of the country off from international trade for a few decades and you'll begin to approach an apples-to-apples comparison with HK.

<comment><USER18> Nitpick all you want, d_burfoot is right.

As Manhattan drags the West into the mire, Hong Kong leads the East's ascent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I just crossed back to Shenzhen from Hong Kong yesterday. A few random observations...

In HK, a lot of the taxi drivers are old guys who can barely read, don't speak English or mandarin, and are a real hassle to deal with unless you are a Cantonese speaker. A lot of the taxis have weird fare manipulation lookup tables instead of correct metering. Although the mass-transit oriented stored value card, Octopus, was established decades ago, you still can't use it in taxis. Further, if you want to top it up, you literally _can 't top it up_ with anything smaller than HKD50 (USD$9) even if your fare costs less and you only have small denomination local money. There are no electric taxis, but plenty of rich people own Teslas. If you ask 20 odd Hong Kong banks about cross-border RMB payment APIs (HK is supposed to be a financial center, after all) not a single bank can offer you one. In fact, just to open a regular bank account is now so difficult standard waits can exceed 2-3 months (and success is far from guaranteed).

So what does HK still have to offer?

(1) A legal environment under Beijing's auspices but with nominal resistance to mainland corruption and manipulation.

(2) Superior international financial connectivity and services if you can get a bank account.

(3) Liberal visa-free travel policies for people from most countries.

That's about it.

<comment><USER20> I don't know why it's so shocking that the taxi drivers should not be masters in speaking foreign languages. I would find it odder if they were all well educated and fluent in three languages.

<comment><USER21> It sounded like a contrast to Shenzhen.

Throughout the world, taxi drivers in international cities know a couple dozen words in multiple languages. Paris, Rome, Berlin, Madrid?

Even if they didn't grow up speaking Mandarin, it sounds like a conscious decision, if they don't understand a request in Mandarin from a rider today.

Of course, this is just one person's set of impressions, too.

<comment><USER20> The conscious decision would probably be learning Mandarin phrases. Presumably a mainlander who was having trouble could always write the name of their destination.

I haven't been to Europe but in Asia I don't think it's the case that most taxi drivers know much English. Some of the Japanese ones offer an in car interpretation service over the phone but I've never had occasion to use it.

<comment><USER21> I meant that they might know phrases in French, German, and Spanish more than English, though in the case of Europe English is pretty common.

However, to be fair, in my experience, some people in Europe have hang ups too about different languages. I speak Italian, can pass with a little French, and know no German. In the northern Italian mountains people would start conversations with me in German based on my appearance, and in resort towns there were a number of people who chose not to learn Italian, but English was okay.

Similarly, a friendly lady was trying to help me in a train station in Paris, my French wasn't good enough to understand some detail, her English wasn't any better than my French, and I asked her if she spoke Italian. She curtly answered no, and seemed a little offended.

I imagine I'd have similar stories if I only spoke English and French, English and Spanish, or English and German.

Would people react with occasional distaste if you tried communicating using Cantonese in Beijing?

<comment><USER20> I suspect the reaction would be more like bewilderment, because the geographical reach of Cantonese stops pretty far short of Beijing and it's rather unlikely you'll run into people who speak it. Now if you try speaking to them in Japanese they might be offended. But I have limited experience in the Sinosphere compared to Korea and Japan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Compared to the reputation for far-seeing technocratic excellence that it acquired in the foreign business press, the CCP leadership has always been astonishingly short-sighted when it comes to foreign policy. The Taiwanese are taking note of what 'one country two systems' means in practice - <USER2> submission to the ruthless, brutal oligarchy in Beijing. The CCP will crush Hong Kong, destroying everything that made it appealing in the process, and find that in so doing they've permanently alienated Taiwan.

<comment><USER23> I mentioned this in the last thread about Hong Kong, but they're not as dumb as you think. Taiwan (both the Blue and Green coalitions) has always distrusted "one country, two systems", even way back in the 90s before Hong Kong's autonomy started getting salami-sliced away. China knows that, and knows they're not really losing anything by abandoning that approach.

That's not their plan anyway. The parallel tracks for dealing with Taiwan are

1) building ever-closer economic dependency, and then punishing Taiwan every time it elects pro-independence leaders, so that Taiwan has no choice but to elect pro-reunification candidates for the sake of economic security and

2) gradually muscling the US out of the region and building naval capabilities so that if 1) doesn't work out, they can take it back by force.

How Taiwan feels about "one country two systems" doesn't really matter to China.

<comment><USER24> But maybe the better question is, why? The people of Taiwan for the most part don't want to be a part of China, and Taiwan doesn't pose a military threat to China.

<comment><USER25> Face?

Also, having that island under China's control would be militarily useful in any showdown with the US - it pushes US forces farther from the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This article takes an economic situation and tries to frame it as a political one. Hong Kongers don't care about the ideological differences between mainland China and HK, they care about the staggering inequality and loss of economic mobility in their once vibrant city.

Chinese money is flooding into Hong Kong and it's all being parked into real estate. This has sent real estate prices skyrocketing and far outside the reach of ordinary citizens. As a secondary effect, Hong Kong elites are now parking all their money into real estate with the expectation that the Chinese capital flight continues to drive up real estate prices. Real estate is the best investment available in Hong Kong right now. Bar none.

With all their capital tied up in real estate, the elites don't invest in startups or R&D. No increases in productivity, no new jobs, no gains for the average citizen in a city that grows more expensive by the day. This is why Hong Kong is in decline. This is why Hong Kongers takes to the streets. It's not a backlash towards conflicting political ideology, they just want the Chinese and their damn money out.

<comment><USER27> > Real estate is the best investment available in Hong Kong right now. Bar > none.

Whether it still is now (prices having doubled since the 2007 bottom) is questionable, and depends hugely on political decisions.

> With all their capital tied up in real estate, the elites don't invest in > startups or R&D.

Fully agreed. Not only that, it makes starting a small business extremely expensive.

> It's not a backlash towards conflicting political ideology, they just want > the Chinese and their damn money out.

I'd argue the umbrella movement was borne of four related grievances:

* the enormous inequality (coupled with low social mobility)

* the extreme cost of getting your own flat (young workers live with their family for a long time, and have to save money for long time before they can put down a downpayment for a tiny apartment (they come in different sizes: shoebox, matchbox, coffin...))

* the gradual erosion of civil liberties

* and, yes, the desire for more political self-determination, e.g. universal suffrage or even independence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I think it should be pointed out that Hong Kong never had democracy. The British ruled the country with the same iron fist the Chinese do, and indeed many of the laws currently being used against the Hong Kong citizenry originated with them.

The difference really does come down to the fact that the British, although authoritarian, ran a relatively clean ship. Meanwhile Beijing's government has been corrupt, nepotistic, vindictive, and now deadlocked.

It reminds me of the old D&D alignment battle: Lawful evil vs. neutral evil. No one cared that the government was kind of evil back while it was obsessively following the rule of law, even if the law was kind of crooked, but under the Chinese it shifted away from that and became whatever is most immediately expedient to those in power. The vaunted "rule of law" became a mere mask for Beijing party politics games.

<comment><USER29> > I think it should be pointed out that Hong Kong never had democracy. The > British ruled the country with the same iron fist the Chinese do

Note that it's not because the British never tried to introduce democracy. In fact they were heavily dissuaded from doing so because of ... surprise ... China. Source: [http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/18/asia/hong-kong-handover- china-...](http://www.cnn.com/2017/06/18/asia/hong-kong-handover-china-uk- thatcher/index.html)

      Declassified documents from long before handover
      negotiations even began show that some British officials
      did seek to introduce more democracy in Hong Kong but were
      angrily rebuffed by Beijing.

      Allowing Hong Kong people to govern themselves would be a
      "very unfriendly act," premier Zhou Enlai reportedly told
      British officials in 1958. Another Chinese official in 1960
      threatened potential invasion if the UK attempted to
      introduce greater democracy to the colony.

More details here too: [https://qz.com/279013/the-secret-history-of-hong- kongs-still...](https://qz.com/279013/the-secret-history-of-hong-kongs- stillborn-democracy/)

<comment><USER27> Yep, and while there was never universal suffrage, most other civil liberties and the rule of law were upheld, by and large, under British administration.

And that is giving way, slice by slice, to Chinese "guanxi" (i.e., "connections", "who do you know") and authoritarian politics. :-/

<comment> dis-sys This is funny given the fact that in HK what school you go to largely depends on how much money your parents have (buy bonds issued by schools) and what is their occupation.

This is strictly prohibited in mainland China - a private school recently asked education level of parents on one of its admin forms, that became national news and that school got punished in days. Selling school bonds to effectively bar average families to access equal educational rights would be criminal offence.

If you like, we can continue one public healthcare - whether the residence of Shanghai has better access to public hospital or those in HK? Requiring people to wait months or even years to have surgery in public hospital would probably causing an uprising in China, but apparently that is okay in HK as the rich how makes the law can always go to private hospital.

Your definition of "rule of law" is quite different, that is all.

<comment><USER30> Because rich connected kids in Beijing don't get into 人民中学 because of their parents money? Let's ignore all the BMW, audis, Mercedes waiting to pickup kids outside the school. That is an example of mainland China's "rule of law", which is largely hypocritical and never what CCTV says it is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's a lot to be gloomy about but HK is also really inspirational. At a time when a lot of young people in the west are railing against democracy, free speech, and other laws that support their freedom, HK has 20 year olds pushing China to deliver the democracy they promised before 1997.

<comment><USER32> > a lot of young people in the west are railing against democracy, free > speech, and other laws that support their freedom

[citation needed]

<comment><USER33> Not "railing against" to be fair to your original point but this study (FiveThirtyEight thinks it's sound) says millennials value democracy far less than their predecessors.

As a % of people who think it is "essential" to live in a democracy:

Born in 1930s - 75% millennials - 30% [https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democracy- meh/](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/democracy-meh/)

<comment><USER34> Could it be that democracy that people born in the '30s experienced (or at least perceived) was different from the one experienced by millennials ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> tuna-piano Some questions I'm thinking of in regards to this situation:

-Who in the world does not agree that self-determination is good?

-Britain seems to be standing up for Hong only lightly. Will they ever carry a bigger stick?[1]

-What is the difference between Hong Kong/China relationship and the often criticized West Bank/Israel relationship?

-Would the former colonies in Africa and Asia be in better hands if they were still part of their old master countries? Hong Kong is obviously not in a terrible spot, but certainly many former colonies in Africa are.

-I think it's clear that because China-Hong Kong have close economic ties, but China is much larger, that Hong Kong needs China much more than China needs Hong Kong[2,3]. Will this power dynamic further bias decisions in favor of Beijing?

[1][http://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/politics/article/1871316/...](http://www.scmp.com/news/hong- kong/politics/article/1871316/let-hong-kong-elect-its-own-leader-britains- david-cameron)

[2][http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/chn/](http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/chn/)

[3][http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/hkg/](http://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/hkg/)

<comment><USER35> >What is the difference between Hong Kong/China relationship and the often criticized West Bank/Israel relationship?

????? Hong Kong is wealthy, developed, and cosmopolitan and the West Bank/Gaza are not??

Israel and Palestine share the same landmass and China and Britain do not??

Israel is the most powerful nation in the Middle East and Britian is not the most powerful nation in East Asia--in fact it's a nation in Western Europe???

Even when Britain was highly relevant in Asia they were only ever a colonial power while Israel as a nation is inextricably tied to the land that it shares with Palestine?????

I'm really struggling to see where you're going with this one...

<comment> tuna-piano I was trying to compare the political situation, not quality of life, which as you mention is vastly different.

My comparison is more that:

-China controls Hong Kong with only limited local say in the government. Israel also controls the West Bank, with limited Palestinian Authority control of certain matters.

-Hong Kong can't have a military or conduct foreign affairs and isn't internationally recognized (same as West Bank)

-Palestinians in the West Bank are separated from Israel, and are required to enter checkpoints to cross over. Hong Kong residents also need to go through (less invasive) checkpoints to go into China.

At first I thought my comparison might be unfounded, but I thought it was interesting none the less. But I'm now struggling to see real political differences in the two situations (although obviously there are many differences in scale of policy differences, and also important historical differences). I'd love to be proven wrong though. Certainly Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank is a difference. Any other major differences?

<comment><USER36> I'd say that the biggest difference in terms of the political situation is that the people in Hong Kong are Chinese, and Hong Kong is part of China. Palestinians aren't Israeli (and Israel even talks about population transfers to remove Arab citizens), and Palestine isn't considered part of Israel (Israel's stance seems to be "we control this land and maybe some of it is part of Israel but maybe part of it isn't"). When you add to that things like the military conflict, blockades, settlements, etc., you can see that the situation is vastly different.

<comment> tuna-piano I don't know about that. 1.7 million (20%) Israeli citizens are Israeli Arabs, many of whom are close relatives of people in the West Bank.

<comment><USER36> But that's exactly the point. There's a huge difference between the Israeli Arab citizens and the Israeli Arabs who are non-citizens. People might talk about some of the issues faced by Israeli Arab citizens, but when they talk about the problem with the Palestinians they're specifically talking about the ones who are non-citizens. The Arabs who have citizenship are in a completely different situation, just like the Hong Kong residents are in a completely different situation since they have Chinese citizenship.

<comment> tuna-piano I guess I don't understand. Hong Kong residents are not really functional Chinese citizens[1] (as I understand it) just like Palestinians are not functional Israeli citizens. Obviously the situations are not identical, but it does seem similar to me.

Hong Kong residents need a permit to enter/work in China just like West Bank residents need a permit to enter/work in Israel (and something like 50k-100k Palestinian citizens (non-Israelis) have permits to work in Israel).

[1][https://www.quora.com/Do-people-in-Hong-Kong-and-Macau- have-...](https://www.quora.com/Do-people-in-Hong-Kong-and-Macau-have-a-right- to-move-to-mainland-China)

<comment><USER36> Did you look at that link? Excerpt:

> If you are a PRC citizen (and most HK people are), you can get a Mainland > travel permit, then you can work and settle in Mainland China without > restrictions. Getting a Mainland travel permit is a routine matter, and > almost everyone in Hong Kong can get one.

This is completely, entirely different from a Palestinian living in the West Bank. It is _not_ a routine matter for them to get a permit to work and settle in Israel proper without restrictions; it is extremely difficult to do so.

It's worth pointing out the unequal nature of the restrictions - <USER3> Israel/Palestine, members of the dominant power have the advantage over the weaker power (Palestine). Israeli settlers are able to move into the Palestinian territories much more easily than Palestinians are able to move to Israel (and Israeli settlements and annexation of the Palestinian territories exist, while the opposite is nonexistent for the Palestinians). This is most definitely not the case in China - Mainlanders aren't given preferential treatment over Hong Kong locals.

It's also not correct to think about them as separate entities like Israel and Palestine, since Hong Kong is represented in the National People's Congress. Palestinians do not get representatives in the Israeli Knesset, as HK citizens get in the NPC. The PLA is supposed to protect HK citizens, the IDF is not there to protect Palestinians - in fact, one of the goals of the IDF is to fight against the Palestinians. The goal of the PRC is to integrate HK into the mainland proper, the goal of Israel is to exclude the Palestinians from Israel. The government of HK is a local PRC government, whereas the Palestinian governments are separate entities from the Israeli government. There has been wars fought between Israel and Palestine, and blockades put up - nothing like this has happened between PRC and HK.

This is kind of like saying "I cut my hand cooking the other day; what's the difference between that and surgery." The two situations aren't even remotely similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> > the authorities have allowed problems to fester, including an affordable > housing crisis, a troubled education system and a delayed high-speed rail > line.

So not much worse off than any major western city then? In terms of education, the entire USA's system could be described as worse than "troubled".

</comment><comment><USER38> HongKong's rise was largely due to the decline of Shanghai and mainland China falling to communist government. Now with the rest of China rise up, I can't see how HongKong can return to its former glory

</comment><comment><USER39> A lot of "built by the British" sloganeering but just how many British hands touched a welding torch? Moved ground with a shovel? Hauled supplies?

>Hong Kong was once known for the speed and efficiency with which it built huge planned communities with ample public housing every several years. But it has not managed to do so since Britain returned it to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997.

Perhaps a central government tactic. Build up a mass of wealthy entrenched home owners hell-bent on not seeing their guaranteed rent seeking threatened by cheaper public housing.

</comment><comment><USER40> After the British Empire lost the American colonies, they tried to compensate their loss by refocusing their efforts eastwards. However the British realized they could not profit by playing fairly, so they started smuggling narcotics into China and when that failed, they invaded them, giving origin to their presence in Hong Kong.

The Chinese have valid reasons to assimilate that territory.

</comment><comment><USER41> If I were China I would point out the HK's entire existence is because Britain needed a staging area from which to wage war upon China so that Britain would have a market to sell all the opium it was producing in the Raj, which set the conditions for the Taiping Rebellion, which killed over 20 million people.

</comment><comment><USER42> I never understood why the UK didn't let Hong Kong declare independence. They could have then choosen their own protector to keep China away if the UK was too scared to do so.

<comment><USER43> Because they can not? The original agreement is UK is only allowed to "rent" HK for years. They are never given ownership of the city. Plus it's politics, I don't think it would be such a simple decision made by one party.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I like the design of this page!

</comment><comment><USER45> Ofc China does not want HK to be free. China found out how to get "rich" without losing control. They want exactly the opposite of what makes HK HK. It's just sad that many strong economies feel like they need / want the growth based on chinese consumption and trade and are feeding this undemocratic behemoth.

What is scary is that China is actively promoting expansion by resettling ethnic han chinese.

<comment> MachinShinn- Huh? People in HK are already ethnic han chinese... If you're talking about Tibet/East Turkestan, sure.

<comment><USER45> Talking about other places yes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> 1) Many people. Look at Brexit. You can argue until your face turns blue that it's bad for Britain, it most likely is, but at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules. It's pro-self-determination no matter how you look at it.

2) Why should Britain stand up for Hong Kong? They're imperialists while they hold on to it, and then cowards when they give it back to China and say?

3) Almost invariable yes. But then that makes you an imperialist slave driver. Did bad things happen? Absolutely. Terrible, horrible things. But look at how things are now.

<comment><USER32> > at least they don't have unelected politicians setting rules

I have some bad news for you about the House of Lords.

<comment><USER35> The House of Lords is an absolute mess of an institution but at least they can't actually pass or prevent the passage of legislation. Their powers are limited to amending bills, making recommendations, and delaying legislation.

<comment><USER47> That's some serious hair-splitting. "They don't set rules, they just amend bills"...

<comment><USER35> It's a very limited form of amending (they can't touch money bills for example) and the House of Commons can always get its way in the end as amendments can eaisly be rejected by the "lower" house.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I agree completely.

In European/Anglo countries, the ruling elite give back. Check out Grand Central, Rockefeller Center, the large parks and gardens throughout the great countries of the world. The ruling elite in Asia don't care about others.

<comment><USER49> We detached this subthread from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14665498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14665498) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER50> What makes this off topic?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I love both these comments. China doesn't have private ownership. it's still communist, right?

<comment><USER51> It's funny to see the obviously pro-CCCP replies to you here. It demonstrates my point exactly.

No, you don't have ownership. You only rent the land for 70 years, after which it returns to the government. You can 'sell your property' to somone else, at which point the 70-year lease on the land is reset for them to 0.

<comment><USER52> Much of the land in Vancouver's west end is held under 100 year leases.

Strangely enough, people still buy and sell it, and live in it.

Perpetual ownership is not the only valid model of land ownership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Xiaomi, Didi, Mobike and OFO are the 4 unicorns of China's internet > industry,

Lol. You're just going to ignore Tencent, founder of QQ, and countless other older, proven-to-be successful tech companies that aren't from anywhere near Beijing?

Suffice it to say, not everyone agrees with your assessment of Beijing as being the leader in innovation [1]

Being nearer the beauracracy never helps your flexibility. It helps your funding for development of things that are of interest to the state.

National government, sorry.

[1] [http://www.allchinareview.com/chinas-emerging-silicon- valley...](http://www.allchinareview.com/chinas-emerging-silicon-valley-how- and-why-has-shenzhen-become-a-global-innovation-centre/)

<comment><USER49> You've broken the HN guidelines repeatedly in this thread by engaging in nationalistic flamewar. Please don't do that again.

This is an international environment and the last thing we need is people sniping at each other's nations for either internecine or xenophobic reasons. When feeling activated, we all must take care to remain respectful. (Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669197.](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669197.))

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669031](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14669031) and marked it off-topic.

<comment><USER14> Certainly wasn't my intention. I'll be more careful in the future.

I guess I'm not sure how to debate whether one city produces more successful startups than another. I mean, I think it's safe to say that Y Combinator and SF have been more successful than, say, Union Square Ventures and NYC, so I'm not sure where the internecine is in my above comment, but I guess I'll just sidestep this topic altogether for now and think on it. Thanks for letting me know.

<comment><USER49> By 'internecine' I mean that sometimes people attack each other because their nations are close and sometimes ('xenophobia') because they are far. I'd give additional examples but I don't want to set anybody else off.

The main thing is just to err on the side of being respectful, remembering that other people feel as much love and loyalty for their side as we each do for ours.

<comment><USER14> > remembering that other people feel as much love and loyalty for their side > as we each do for ours.

Oh, for sure. I try to maintain respect for all nations and their people. Are you certain you weren't targeting another comment?

I guess I could've done without the "Lol" in my comment above, and just cited Tencent without implying the commenter was "ignoring" them.

But there wasn't any internecine or xenophobia there that I could detect, because it was a discussion about Shenzhen vs. Beijing, which are within the same nation! =)

I understand if you can't give examples. Thanks again, I will try to be more respectful down the road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > The real reason for Hong Kong's decline, is the failure/irresponsibility of > Hong Kong's elite ruling class

Sounds like a narrative that Beijing would very much support, Mr. New Account.

Get people to hate their local govt and appeal to a higher authority for support. Brilliant.

<comment><USER4> > Sounds like a narrative that Beijing would very much support, Mr. New > Account.

I'm offering my opinion on this issue. If you don't agree with me on the real reason for HK's decline, explain your point, or pick holes in my arguments. I don't see how labeling what I said as "approved by Beijing" \- disregard how ridiculous it is - automatically disqualifies them.

Also, as to Mr. New Account, I use a throwaway account for the exact reason that I figured some people would get offended by what I said.

> Get people to hate their local govt and appeal to a higher authority for > support. Brilliant.

The snarkiness in your comments really made me hesitant to reply, but if you are still interested in a civil discussion: please recheck what I wrote, and point out exact where I suggested Hong Kong people should hate their local government, and appeal to a higher authority.

<comment><USER14> > point out exact where I suggested Hong Kong people should hate their local > government, and appeal to a higher authority.

That would be the first line I quoted. Not sure how you missed it.

Here's another,

> there was never any direct "order" from Beijing, well, sorta until recently, > when Beijing began to see the failure of the local Hong Kong government.

That's an unsubstantiated and unprovable claim. Also implies Beijing is benevolent. Nobody knows exactly what strings Beijing is pulling. It's hidden behind lack of free press and habit of politicians to never quite say exactly what they mean.

> when the ruling rich saw the rebellion of lower class, without > knowing/admitting themselves are to be blamed, they seek help from Beijing

That's completely made up. You have no source showing "HK elite" sought Beijing's guidance.

Honestly, your whole post is thick with "blame HK elite" instead of Beijing for whatever ails HK. Everyone knows Beijing isn't loved, so you throw in a dash of "Beijing only knows control", yet you point to them as being capable. The narrative you're pushing is really easy to discover.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> You probably the typical american who think he understand china better than Chinese.

In comparison, I born in China and live in US for 6 years now.

<comment><USER49> I'm sure you do know more, but I'm afraid this comment violates the HN guidelines in two ways: (1) it's a personal and national attack ("you probably the typical American") and (2) it contains no helpful information.

We ban accounts that attack other users, so please don't do that, even when someone's comment is annoying or wrong. When you know more about a topic than others, the thing to do is teach them. On HN that means posting something neutral and factual that other users can learn from.

We detached this comment from [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14664772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14664772) and marked it off-topic.</comment></comment>


PicsEngine - beautiful new Cappuccino app for storing and sharing photos - <AUTHOR> http://www.picsengine.com/

<comment><USER2> The site looks very nice, and it's an impressive effort by a one-man shop. I hope he can get to a break-even point on his Heroku and AWS bills soon (if he's not there already).

This seems like a hard space in which to compete. Flickr, SmugMug, MobileMe, and Picasa are all well known and accepted. picsengine doesn't have to offer more features than those services, but it does have to offer something different. I like having my desktop photo app serve as my master repository and having my online gallery reflect a subset of my whole collection. I'm sure there are others who would like to manage everything "in the cloud," though.

Here's wishing the developer the best of luck.

(It also looks like Heroku is unable to launch the demo site right now.)

<comment><USER3> The demo site is back online. Sorry.

<comment><USER4> I like the action of the site. Looks very interesting.

FYI: When I'm on my pokey DSL I notice something weird in playing your demo video: when my DSL can't feed data into your video player fast enough, the player jumps me back to the start of the video (rather than pausing and signaling that it's buffering).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The copy on the Pricing[0] page is Not Good. For example, under the heading "Can I leave PicsEngine?" is the answer that "You can leave PicsEngine at any time. If you stop paying, your account will be disabled and removed."

Great, but can I take my data with me? Including albums and other metadata? And is it easy to do?

[0]: <http://www.picsengine.com/pricing>

<comment><USER3> Right. You're right. For now, there is nothing implemented in the case someone leave. Hey, PicsEngine just launched right :) But you're right and that's something I need to plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very nice - My wife is the graphic designer for a nonprofit that does significant fieldwork, and just spent the weekend lamenting the shortcomings of Flickr and photo database management software in general.

<comment><USER7> Do tell! What were the biggest shortcomings from her point of view?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Michaël, PicsEngine looks AND feel awesome! Have you used any additional libraries like CappuccinoResource?

Did you ever consider using other tools for making fancy UI, like the UKI javascript library (<http://ukijs.org/>)? I have site on heroku, in Norwegian, with handcrafted gradients and sidebars, wanting to switch to something more robust.

<comment><USER3> Hey. Not I didn't used CappuccinoResource. I considered every tools, but I think Cappuccino is simply the best for this kind of app right now. Thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Again, I think this is a great new photo sharing site, one of the best one's I've seen.

Tell me, this site is made in Cappuccino, so I'm curious to know how was your experience with developing in Objective J and Cappuccino? Did you use 280atlas for this project?

Keep it up.

<comment><USER10> This is a bit misleading. The site is not done in Cappuccino, only the actual picsengine app is in Cappuccino. The actual site is HTML/CSS/jQuery.

<comment><USER11> I think generally people know that cappuccino is for building applications, not websites. And there really wasn't much misleading as the discussion was around the app itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cool. BTW just a little spelling mistake from the Pricing page: "It's almost impossible to lost them."

</comment><comment><USER12> The CSS/Javascript files give a "Heroku Error" here.

<comment><USER3> Heroku seems down.</comment></comment>


How to Wire Up Ruby on Rails and AngularJS as a Single-Page Application - <AUTHOR> http://www.angularonrails.com/ruby-on-rails-angularjs-single-page-application/

<comment><USER2> We (10KB) have built our own CMS combining Rails and AngularJS. Our main goal for our CMS was to turn every website made with it in a Single-Page Application, but at the same time maintain support for server-side rendering.

We loved the combination of Rails and AngularJS, but we didn't like that we had to write a lot of stuff twice (ie. Rails routes & Angular routes, Rails controllers & Angular controllers). Therefore we have written quite some glue code to automatically generate AngularJS code from our Rails code. I have been wanting to make a full write-up of all our experience in combining Angular & Rails for a while now, but didn't get to it yet. I did write-up a quick and dirty way to automatically generate Angular Resources from you Rails controllers, though. ([http://10kb.nl/blog/automatically-generate-angular- resources...](http://10kb.nl/blog/automatically-generate-angular-resources- for-your-rails-api))

And, if anyone has any questions about combining Rails & Angular feel free to shoot me an e-mail.

<comment><USER3> I'm building something like this, but in node: [https://github.com/martindale/maki](https://github.com/martindale/maki)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice work! I've put up a similar (but much simpler) demo and blog post: [https://github.com/jesalg/RADD](https://github.com/jesalg/RADD)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice. I think your Angular/Devise work will probably end up being helpful for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great write up! I wrote a bit[0] awhile back about setting html5mode routing with rails and angular using a similar setup which may be a useful addon to this article.

[0] [http://mbell697.github.io/2014/02/04/yeoman-angular-rails- ht...](http://mbell697.github.io/2014/02/04/yeoman-angular-rails-html5mode/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I'll check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been using a similar setup for some time now. The most significant obstacle for me was user authentication. For anyone else who needs to add auth support to Angular + Rails:

[https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/ng-token- auth](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/ng-token-auth) [https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/devise_token_auth](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/devise_token_auth)

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice writeup. I tried to do the same thing a few months back and gave up. How did you handle getting your browser to talk to a server running on a different port? (Cross-origin requests).

I have to say though, Rails used to be known for "convention over configuration", but when I've tried to use it lately I've found it becomes almost as complicated as configuring enterprise Java projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't have to do anything special to allow CORS, and now that I think of it I'm not sure why, because it's been necessary on other SPA projects I've been involved with. Maybe because both servers are localhost. That would be a good thing for me to figure out and include in the post. I'm kind of learning all this in public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wrote up a guide to this along the lines of "here are things I _didn 't_ do when doing my first Rails / AngularJS app":

[http://thomasleecopeland.com/2014/03/12/doing-a-rails- angula...](http://thomasleecopeland.com/2014/03/12/doing-a-rails-angular- mvp.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> Fyi promise unraveling has been deprecated after Angular 1.2. So it should be

      Group.query().then(function(groups){
       $scope.groups = groups;

})

<comment><USER10> Do you have a link to any discussion on that?

It looks like the docs still suggest the method used in the blog post: [https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngResource/service/$resource](https://docs.angularjs.org/api/ngResource/service/$resource)

"It is important to realize that invoking a $resource object method immediately returns an empty reference [...] Once the data is returned from the server the existing reference is populated with the actual data. This is a useful trick since usually the resource is assigned to a model which is then rendered by the view. [...] This means that in most cases one never has to write a callback function for the action methods."

<comment><USER11> [https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/fa6e411da26824a...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/fa6e411da26824a5bae55f37ce7dbb859653276d)

[https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/5dc35b527b3c99f...](https://github.com/angular/angular.js/commit/5dc35b527b3c99f6544b8cb52e93c6510d3ac577)

[http://blog.angularjs.org/2013/12/angularjs-13-new- release-a...](http://blog.angularjs.org/2013/12/angularjs-13-new-release- approaches.html)

<comment><USER10> Thanks. Okay, that makes sense.

The $resource usage described still works in version 1.2.19, with no promise unwrapping options set. I could be wrong, but I think it is because the $resource returns a reference to an empty object that has values copied into it when the call completes. The actual promise is a property named $promise on the returned object.

Example: [http://jsfiddle.net/92zmG/7/](http://jsfiddle.net/92zmG/7/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Why is grunt needed? Is it because he's using Rails::API?

Most setups I've seen just let Rails serve the templates.

<comment><USER13> grunt is the build tool for the Angular.js side of things. It is doing a lot of other html front end stuff to make the SPA.

Also grunt has a watch process that see code changes, it will then compile them and have the server get the browser to reload content to get the new version.

When this gets deployed to your production server, you will probably use the same server process that handles the Rails requests. grunt is for development only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Why RAILS::API instead of something like rabl?

<comment><USER5> Rails-api is a gem that configures rails in a more lean and mean fashion for API usage, it doesn't handle the json serialization. Mostly rails-api disables a lot of default rails features/middlewares that aren't needed when you're only building an API.

For json serialization you may want to look at Active Model Serializers[0], I found it much easier to work with than rabl, and it's also written by the rails-api group.

[0] [https://github.com/rails- api/active_model_serializers](https://github.com/rails- api/active_model_serializers)

<comment><USER15> AMS maintainer here, I'm making a big announcement about it soon.

That said, you're correct, AMS <-> RABL is the right comparison, not Rails-API <-> RABL.

<comment><USER16> Where is this AMS announcement going to be? I'd like to watch, since I use AMS extensively (thanks for the great project!)

<comment><USER15> It'll be on the rails-api-core mailing list: [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rails-api- core](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rails-api-core)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a pretty good tutorial, that seems to be poorly covered in the body of recent(ish) blogs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is this an isomorphic set up? Or does the front end do ALL templating?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not isomorphic.</comment></comment>


Five Lessons For Startup Entrepreneurs - <AUTHOR> http://howtosplitanatom.com/startup-reactor/startup-reactor-arpans-lessons/

<comment><USER2> I think the most delegated of these lessons is controlling the burn rate. It's so easy to run with every new idea no matter what it costs. The problem is that if you spend everything on long bets, you lose money that could be spent on the core product.</comment>


Show HN: Hackers Daily – Get all Show HN posts emailed to you daily - <AUTHOR> http://www.hackersdaily.com

<comment><AUTHOR> I often don't have time to check out Show HN posts in real-time. So, I built this app to email myself a daily list of yesterday's Show HN posts. It's ordered by points, easy to read via email, and links directly back to HN for easy access to the posts I want to learn more about.

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks nice Is this a personal side-project or is this going to be a business? Any other features expected? thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't have any long term plans right now, but I'm always open to investigating all business opportunities. I'm not working on any new features at the moment. Those will most likely come about as people start making suggestions.</comment></comment>


Creating a beta list for your product shouldn't be hard, get notified for launch - <AUTHOR> https://betanotify.com/ <comment><USER2> YC says don't do betas. If you are going to be big, why would you handicap yourself at the gate with an artificial barrier to entry?

<comment><AUTHOR> As a test for product market fit? This product is more meant for notifying users when your product is ready to be used and thus is launched :)

<comment><USER2> They would say just launch something, and don't make a big fuss and run-up to some date

<comment><AUTHOR> And perhaps waste weeks/months of development time because you don't even know if there is interest in the product? using betanotify you can check by the amount of visits/sign ups what the amount of interest is

<comment><USER2> it's fake interest though, just build and release early. Not saying spend months, but beta signups to a non-existent product is false signaling. People do this because they have nothing to give up. It's like VCs not saying no because, who knows, maybe they will pull it off soon and I'll take a look again then.

Get whatever it is in the hands of people, better to talk to strangers in person than to do a beta email list before starting building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm confused. Is this a waiting list for the waiting list SaaS? Or an example of the waiting list SaaS?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a waiting list creator for a SaaS product you might be creating</comment></comment>


Should App.net Accept Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> https://bitcoin.app.net <comment><USER2> Bitcoin is the first practical solution to a longstanding problem in computer science called the "How do I get cheap PR for my company" problem.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree with this and I think that has been the aspect that most companies have taken advantage of over the last few months.

I haven't even heard of the companies that have begun accepting BTC, including Overstock.com.

It is only the people with vested interest in BTC that are celebrating every adoption and making a big deal out of everything BTC related, in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> You never heard of overstock.com until they started accepting bitcoin?

<comment><USER5> I never heard of them as well, also did not know [http://gyft.com](http://gyft.com) until they started accepting it

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So app.net will accept bitcoin if we bribe them with $10k in purchases?

You either believe in the currency and wish to implement it into your platform, or you don't.

Have they not already taken the time and effort to implement it by placing coinbase buy buttons on their website?

Am I understanding this correctly? If app.net does not receive some arbitrary amount of purchases made in Bitcoin before some arbitrary date, that they will disable Bitcoin as a payment option out of spite?

I certainly wouldn't spend any of my Bitcoin on such a hostile company.

<comment><AUTHOR> There are lasting legal, technical and support operations that we are willing to take on long term if the market's big enough to support it. Otherwise, it's not worth the effort to implement those long term.

<comment><USER7> As someone who spent a lot of time working with BTC in a professional sense, this statement rings a little hollow considering you're using Coinbase.

Can you elaborate?

<comment><AUTHOR> App.net is a subscription service. We have a subscription state machine that works great with Stripe. We have systems to deal with upgrades, downgrades, proration, shifting to different plans. Additionally this requires us changing our accounting systems and wading into new tax complexities.

It's fascinating to me that people think that for any retailer to accept Bitcoin it's as easy as embedding a widget on their site. I have been comparing notes with other companies that are also considering adding Bitcoin support and these are the sorts of questions that come up.

<comment><USER2> _" Additionally this requires us changing our accounting systems and wading into new tax complexities."_

That's only because you're setting prices in BTC instead of USD, right? I always thought accepting BTC through Coinbase for USD-denominated goods and services had no tax implications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is app.net? I've visited their homepage and read the "learn more", but can't really figure it out. At first it seems like an Android an iOS simulator that lets you install the apps virtually so that you can use them ("get access to great apps on $platforms"), but they focus so much on social apps only... Are they an alternative App Store/Play Store then? I don't get it and I don't really feel like creating an account just to find out.

Edit: Ah the bitcoin.app.net page explains it further down.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you did the same thing for Dogecoin, I can almost guarantee that it would be committed within a day.

<comment><USER10> Coinbase's killer merchant feature is automatic BTC -> USD conversion. You'd need that for Dogecoin (which doesn't yet exist) for it to see uptake for merchants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> App.net still exists?

</comment><comment><USER12> Let us suppose that there is an organized group of Bitcoin enthusiasts with a combined amount of Bitcoin holdings of around 100,000BTC. Would an article "App.net begins accepting Bitcoin" increase the BTC/USD exchange rate by more than 0.01%?

To me it seems that a continued stream of press is good for Bitcoin, and I am genuinely curious is there is such a group of enthusiasts that strategically spend Bitcoins for PR.

<comment><USER13> At this point I doubt it -- and the exchange rate fluctuates so wildly it would be heard to measure anyway. It seems to take macro scale events to move the price these days, e.g. the policy announcements by the Chinese government.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The obvious answer is "yes", but asking a question you don't expect a response from is silly. Why not just say "Send us enough Bitcoin and we'll add Bitcoin payments to our framework." and then take action if you get enough sent in?

That way, there's no leading question, and you communicate exactly what it is that you want from us.

</comment><comment><USER15> With all due respect, isn't Bitcoin easy enough to implement that you shouldn't need any commitment (10BTC? Really?) to accept it? Especially since the currency is floating, so 10BTC today (~$8400USD) may be half the amount or etc. on any given day...

</comment><comment><USER16> So what happens to the coins/accounts if they do not reach their 10 BTC goal?

</comment><comment><USER17> Should App.net just stop operations?

[yes | no]?

</comment><comment><USER18> I just bought my first Bitcoins. As I was trying to buy a fixed amount in USD, the price in Bitcoins kept changing. It'd be weird to shop in Bitcoins, trying to guess the approximate price in USD as I was making the purchase. Whether the purchase price was volatile, or the value of the Bitcoins were volatile, I'm just not used to that!

</comment><comment><USER19> Wow, this makes me NEVER want to use app.net

I don't understand why they need to start a kickstarter style campaign with "stretch goals" to decide if they should support Bitcoin. I'm no user of bitcoin, but either use it, or don't. Don't try to con users into using it just to decide if you should support it.

</comment><comment><USER20> The secondary goal could be interesting (pure end-to-end transactions in BTC), but I'd prefer if app.net would disclose the terms and fees up front.

</comment><comment><USER21> The answer is yes. period.

</comment><comment><USER22> What is a member subscription? The main page says it's free.

</comment><comment><USER23> YES!</comment>


U.S. Falls in World Press Freedom Index - <AUTHOR> https://news.yahoo.com/u-falls-world-press-freedom-index-040500037.html <comment><USER2> This is talking about freedom of speech. Most of these other nations don't even allow you to carry a firearm</comment>


Shovler: The App That Removes Snow - <AUTHOR> http://shovler.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Wanted to share a new app we just launched called Shovler.

It is a snow removal platform that easily finds people that are willing to shovel snow for you.

Happy to answer any questions!</comment>