Why Are Medical Ultrasound Systems So Inexpensive? - <AUTHOR> http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/12/why-are-medical-ultrasound-systems-so.html <comment><USER3> This is a great post, thanks for writing and sharing.

I'm a biomedical engineer and found both posts interesting.

There are really exciting things happening right now where the murky area between expensive, slow medtech and fast-moving, lower cost consumer products are being explored.

There have been some specatular implosions of approaches straying to far towards the consumer tech-startup approach.

Like most things, the best path is probably somewhere in between. Medicine and health is hard because the systems involved are complex and non-linear. There is a higher burden for doing things right than other industries. That said, people also suffer from innovation being slowed by red tape and leading to increased costs.

One great but unlikely solution would be for an improved market for used equipment, where the device loses its certification for medical use and obsolete software becomes open source. Little incentive for manufacturers to do this, but would be great for hobbiests, more 'wellness' rather than medical applications, and improved use in developing countries (where used medical devices like ultrasound machines often are donated but aren't used, because they can't be adapted to local needs).

<comment><USER4> I trust the current post on the physics and EE side of things. That said I'm also very curious about the computer graphics side nowadays. It seems to me that historically, most of the complexity was handled through sophisticated mathematical abstractions at the material level, making the research very costly. How much post processing can be done to infer more information from less costly inputs (I'm thinking ideas like Super Resolution used in spatial imagery). Nowadays very very powerful GPU chips can be found for not much and could be used at this part of the process. Maybe you heard about such ideas, I don't know. I've seen NVidia involved in computer vision for the medical field, but not a lots filter through to me.

<comment><USER3> There is work going on in this sort of arena, and I've wondered why there hasn't been more. I think probably there are a few reasons.

First is medical imaging tends to have relatively low resolution and high noise compared to optical images. So there is a danger of over-processing.

Second is, somewhat related, that I think there is distrust in clinical practice and regulation of black boxes where processing happens in the background. You're taking responsibility away from a doctor and putting it on your system, so there is a greater burden of validation.

Third is cultural. Doctors get a ton of training to interpret the signal in these images, and I think there is both a badge of honor in this as well as a barrier to adjust to something new. In my Masters, one of the medical device design instructors talked about a prototype of a digital stethoscope with huge improvements to acoustics. Doctors hated it - even though the sound was better, it wasn't the sounds they were used to. Although this was before the Eko Stethoscope, which is a digital stethoscope and seems to be doing well. Maybe an example of market timing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article seemed to be mostly an explanation of why any high quality ultrasound has to be expensive and I'm sure the author is correct there. But the original article was about the possibility of cheap, low quality ultrasound.

I can understand why, when you're dealing with human lives, you wouldn't want anything but the best. But that wasn't the use case of the original article.

<comment><USER6> Is he correct, though? Even a high quality ultrasound probe is only a few thousand dollars. At best, <5% of the price goes towards the probe. The price inflation is absurdly high regardless.

I don't like this post because it just plays up the difficulty of the engineering without any context. Yes, making an ultrasound is hard and complex, but its not as hard and complex as making a car, which is how much they cost. He just presents the engineering like we should be able to intuitively relate that to cost.

Hell, he also doesn't contextualize any of the engineering itself. At the end he brings up the housing, and not making it cut or burn people. What? Not making things sharp is not rocket science. The machine doesn't cost 30k-150k because it isn't sharp. Most things aren't sharp. He's conflating details with challenges.

Acoustic lenses, 100 micron precision? Injection molding produces surface finish and repeatability to sub-micron levels without even trying. A 50 cent plastic magnifying lens is more precise than the acoustic lens in an ultrasonic machine, AND its made of more expensive plastic (it just so happens the best acoustic matches between water and PZT are very cheap plastics).

He's completely dismissive of PZT buzzers, which is really unwarranted. A 2 cent PZT buzzer is actually the closest product to an ultrasound probe, engineering wise. The transverse mode of a PZT buzzer is in the tens of MHz, the surface finish is easily a few microns, and the performance across the disk is very uniform- it just so happens the cheapest way to mass produce buzzers creates those properties. Of course to get two disks that are similar you need to pay more, but the price is still measured in cents.

Dice and fill is complex but not necessary, especially for lower frequencies. It uses standard semiconductor tooling and while expensive, it doesn't mean each transducer costs as much as a car. Splitting the elements is also complex, but its a hell of a lot simpler. Also he keeps saying 100 micron- its not a feature size except for dice and fill. It's an accuracy, and one that can be achieved by hand with 2x magnifiction. For actual context: 127 microns is your standard "sloppy" machinery tolerance. When you order something from a machine shop and mark a dimension as not important, you'll get 127 microns/.005".

There are any number of ways to section the transducer. Laser would be one. It would cost less than a dollar per, and worst case you have to repole the PZT afterwards. Bonding is a pain but not complicated. You can just solder to silver coated PZT, strain relieve the bond wire, and pot the whole thing in plastic. Keeping that 100 micron accuracy just means making sure you don't get hair all over it when you put it together, unless you're blond in which case your hair is too fine to matter.

And then... a cable? That's his next example of complexity? Buy a bunch of ground plane ribbon cables and roll em up. Crosstalk will be less than on a PCB. This whole thing just gives off the impression he's stuck thinking about things the way he's always done it and has never considered alternatives. He talks about the challenges of building products.

>Ever made a protoype? Ever made 2 of them? 4? 100? 10,000? And made them all the same? Yep, it's a different world when you have to start selling and supporting products.

It's one thing to make a product that doesn't inject noise into the hospital grid, is shielded to more than FCC standards, its waterproof and heat and fireproof. It's quite another to just make a product. Yeah, making things is hard, but literally every company that sells something knows how to do it. It's built into cost. It's not an explanation.

<comment><USER7> A 2 cent PZT buzzer is ridiculously far from an ultrasound probe, engineering wise, and your units are off by about three orders of magnitude. And soldering depoles PZT.

A transducer does not cost as much as a car (well, not a well made car), but a system does. That's the cart plus a number of transducers.

Yes, I only covered the transducer in that post, but as I noted, the systems and software deserve their own Pt II. It takes time to write this kind of stuff you know?

Your other points I try to answer in my updated blog post along with many others here in this thread.

<comment><USER6> What units? Thickness mode resonant frequency? The cost? injection molding precision? The 100 micron thing? I have a PZT buzzer on my desk that I measured the thickness resonance, which is 5 cents in units of 10k. Injection molding accuracy is around a thou, but the precision and surface finish is impeccable. I also have on my desk parts with 0402 resistors- 500 microns wide, 350 microns tall. I soldered them by hand without magnification. 38 AWG wire is 100 microns wide. 100 microns is wide enough to drive a truck through.

Soldering with silver-lead depoles PZT. Bismuth solder does not and regardless repoling PZT is trivial- a couple hundred volts at most, and temperatures below the melting point of plastics.

The transducer is the only part of the system that should concievably be expensive, though. Doctors don't use special, medical-company made laptops- they use thinkpads or dell or whatever. The cart is unnecessary! It shouldn't be where the cost is coming from. The cart should add a few thousand dollars. The electronics have no business costing tens of thousands of dollars. The R&D, the software, and the transducers are the only plausible money sinks. If making a monitor is expensive, the companies should buy a cheap laptop and write an application to run on it.

I do really enjoy your posts but I am firmly in the camp that the price of ultrasound machines is an order of magnitude too high. I also think it needs to come down ASAP and that the future of cancer treatment really depends on regular ultrasound screenings and machine learning.

Edit: also, to back up my statements about the electronics: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13245998](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13245998)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Philips is offering the Lumify at $199/mo [https://www.lumify.philips.com/web/](https://www.lumify.philips.com/web/)

The device is used with a mobile and is portable anywhere. I found it has an excellent value-proposition and potentially revolutionizing the space

<comment><USER9> How does it compare to the ultrasound machines found in hospitals? (if that question even makes sense)

<comment><USER10> It's not really intended to replace full scale machines but it is a big step up from the cheaper imaging solutions available in the past. It is ideal for "first aid" style situations, and will probably see widespread adoption in ambulances soon enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > If you can really build an effective ultrasound system that people want to > buy for significantly less than the currently available price when you've no > expertise in the field, then why hasn't someone else with vast experience in > the field gone and done exactly that?

If you just made a new effective ultrasound system that passes the FDA, why would you sell it for a lower price when you also can make more money?

<comment><USER12> You would sell it for a lower price to gain more customers than competition.

<comment><USER13> Medical equipment is more or less a fixed market unless you are going to sell to developing nations and even then the cost of the machine might very well not be the factor.

Hospitals, clinics and medical staff as well as the infrastructure required to support the machines are your limiting factor.

With portable devices that can hook into a laptop or a tablet it's not much of an issue but still there will be a hard limit for the market and it's considerably lower than you would think.

You also need to understand that the lifespan of some of these machines can be decades so in effect if you make it too cheap you either have to build in planned obsolescence or you'll sell yourself out of the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In case anyone is interested, there are low cost (< $10k) portable diagnostic ultrasound machines. I used to work for a company that made interconnects for medical devices, including ultrasound cables. Sonosite was developing their portable systems back then - 15 years ago - so low cost systems aren't something completely new. They don't have the same capabilities of full ultrasound systems, but they do fit the needs that some people are discussing here.

<comment><USER15> I have used a similar machine. It was purchased used for about $3,000 for a pregnancy resource center. And as a Test & Measurement EE experienced with some high-density analog cables, I was extremely impressed with the quality of the cable in that device.

But reading your post and this one:

> ... and then it's got to connect to the cables off to the system - all 100 > to 200 wires down a cable that's a couple meters long, and thin/light enough > for someone to use 8 hours a day without getting repetitive strain injuries. > Do you know how thin that makes each wire? Try calling a few cable vendors > and ask for a small diameter cable with 200+ connectors that will actually > conduct a signal without significant crosstalk and let's see where you end > up on price.

It also mentions the system being mounted on a cart. This seems like an area where technology can make some serious improvements. Mount your ADC (for which speed, accuracy, power requirements, and channel counts have been steadily improving) within the probe, and stick a high-speed serialization/deserialization chip on the other end of it, and run power and digital data over a much smaller, cheaper cable. That's the direction that industrial I/O is going, at least.

I guess the point of all this is that there are opportunities to make significant changes to the way these devices operate that will make them easier to build. Switch out the ASICs for GPUs, the analog cable for digital, the custom computer for commodity hardware, and so on because these technologies are more capable than they were in the past.

<comment><USER16> That advice is so good that people are already working on it... even in the past!

Believe it or not, there is no plot for using outdated technology and keeping the prices high. This is a quite competitive market, and engineers working in the field are not stupid. There are already some machines using GPUs for the signal processing. I think there might also be some machines with ADC in the probe, although this is not simple (you also have to put the transmit side, and the rx side has to be of good quality) and you can really benefit from extremely high acquisition rates, so depending on what you want to do such a digital link is not trivial + plus you basically duplicate a large part of the machine in each probe if you do that, so I'm not even sure this will be better in every cases...

Also; a new machine can take several years to design and bring on the market.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, thanks for putting this so succinctly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I mostly agree with this author's post but I think the 'I just want to play around with this' vibe of the original post mostly missed.

So yes - those things are "expensive" (in the 'it's a lot of money' sense) but "inexpensive" in the (stuff is hard to build and takes some knowledge and parts).

But I feel reminded of those cheap 60 bucks tablets that are not high end and fail all the time for various reasons, but if you just want a wall-mounted touchscreen why would you buy an ipad instead of one of these.

<comment><USER18> Good point but i don't think it applies in the context of a medical device.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The transducer is one thing, also the electronics are highly non-trivial, to the extent that it is in my opinion the most complex of the big three medical imaging techniques used.

With CT you have some large mechanical thing, pretty much straightforward X-ray source and image sensor, slight issue with interconnect between the stationary and rotating part (that only has to carry power and digital data) and bunch of software.

With MRI you have large superconducting magnet (which is expensive, but not that complex), few power amplifiers for various coils and relatively low bandwidth RF receiver and then bunch of software.

With ultrasound you have the transducer head, which is connected with specialist flexible multi core RF cable with the frontend. Frontend has to be able to both supply large (essentially RF) power to said transducer and listen back for reflected energy with as little dead time as possible and with as low SNR and wide dynamic range as possible (and typically using the same physical wire to the transducer for both Tx and Rx path), with this whole frontend being replicated few dozen times.

<comment><USER7> And all for ~1/10th of the cost of a CT or MR system.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> It would be nice to have cheaper ultrasound devices, and yes, it can't be that hard to develop something which is useful to a certain hobbyist niche.

Especially with pet breeders, I could see a use for devices around a couple hundred Dollars, though there may not be enough demand to warrant commercial development, especially not from players interested in selling more expensive, over-engineered (for this purpose) devices to the same market.

It's clearly not easy to break into the market for USI, both at the low and the high end. But with patents expiring, and electronics becoming cheaper, more customizeable, more performant, the bigger players may have another think coming.

</comment><comment><USER21> This was good. It's good to be reminded of the complexity of things we might overlook.

However the answer to any question around why something is expensive or not is economics, specifically supply and demand, marketing and distribution channels, and barriers to entry.

This is the technology sector. We have made a cottage industry out of taking things that used to be at the maximum level of complexity and turning them into household items. You could write a similar article about how web servers work -- there's an amazing amount of complexity in there, but we've commoditized all of it. Ultrasound tech will follow the same trajectory, although I have no idea how long that will take. In addition, ultrasound providers are marketing towards large, rich, healtchare providers who are operating in a tightly-regulated market. If I had a $1,000 ultrasound that only worked for a year, was quirky, might scald me or my patient, but was good for quick diangoses in the field in third-world countries? It might be all I would need. There is no universal "ultrasound" device that has to meet a ton of specs. That's just the way the market is configured currently.

Good article. Lots of cool stuff in there.

<comment><USER22> Why is it ok to scald patients in third world countries? What if the quirks lead to misdiagnosis etc? If there was a way to produce this technology safely and cheaply people would be doing so

<comment><USER23> If risk of scalding means the price can be reduced to a point to where every ambulance or high-speed paramedic car can have one, then it is worth it. If it means that every back-water third-world doctor can have one, great. Sometimes knowing if a patient has internal bleeding, and where, is worth the risk.

<comment><USER24> Don't forget to balance that advantage with the risks and harms of over testing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Curiously, cheaper ultrasound is at the heart of the proposition of a "new" player in the field : Butterfly Network.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'm a doctor who is qualified in echocardiography and other ultrasound techniques, teaches ultrasound to other doctors, and who uses machines from multiple manufacturers regularly. I've also been computer programming, and generally interested in comp sci, for 30 years.

My 2 cents worth on differences between more expensive vs cheaper ultrasounds, how ultrasound has changed over time, etc is: * ultrasounds are getting cheaper and better. Harmonic imaging was probably the biggest advance for me. * because of cheaper, better machines, many more doctors are using ultrasound than before. A real challenge is making sure they are appropriately trained to use ultrasound to get the most useful images, that they appropriately interpret what they see, and recognise their own limitations. The results you get from ultrasound are _highly_ dependent on the training and experience of the operator, more than most other imaging modalities. Although some techniques are easy to learn, many require substantial training and experience. Putting ultrasound in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to interpret the findings is not risk free. * there is a significant increase in image quality and the modalities available with more expensive machines (although this does not seem to be a linear relationship over the range of price; once you get into the top echelon of machines, differences in cost between them doesn't _necessarily_ correlate with their capabilities). * With more challenging assessments, these differences in image quality and modalities can mean the difference between a diagnostic and a non-diagnostic scan, and change management and outcomes for patients. However, there are some techniques (e.g. vascular access) where entry level machines are usually adequate, particularly if you have access to a better machine for challenging cases.

Although I'd love to see the quantum leap in imaging quality that some startups are apparently aiming for, I'm not holding my breath. That doesn't mean I don't see a lot of potential for technology to improve though - <USER2> things I expect or hope to see over the next decade or two are:

the application of computer vision and machine learning techniques to assist with the interpretation of scans. This is already happening a bit (e.g. strain imaging, automated 3D ejection fraction) and it's an active area of research. It has the potential to improve reproducibility of assessments. Maybe, just maybe it will get good enough to help mitigate the problem of less experienced operators using ultrasound.

multimodality fusion for interventional procedures - already, you can do a TEE (a kind of heart ultrasound) and fluoroscopy (video version of X-ray) and fuse the two images in real time to guide cardiac interventions. Maybe this will extend into other areas: e.g. guiding vascular access by fusing accelerometer / gyro / magnetic positioning / video camera data with ultrasound

virtual reality or augmented reality applications to accelerate the acquisition of ultrasound skills. There are already simulators but they're expensive; as they become cheaper and more doctors have access I'm hopeful we can improve the learning curve for image acquisition a bit!

</comment><comment><USER27> This kind of description can be made of any hardware piece. We came from a whole room, slow computer to an iPhone that can make billions of operations per second. I see the previous post as complaining about this not happening on the industry.

Of course making an iPhone (or a OnePlus phone if you want to get into low- scale) is not easy, but the technology has advanced and standardized enough to be considered "cheap" for what they offer, and really cheap compared with 10-20 years ago.

Why hasn't that happened with ultrasounds? Certainly most of the components have been around for a while and the process of making a "simple one" (in the way the average smartphone is _simple_ ) should be a solved problem.

<comment><USER28> I came here to make exactly the same argument. Or cars, if we pick something that also needs certifying (from a purely manufacturing perspective). I get that most people would rather have a car, so more cars get made, so they're cheaper. (Athough roughly comparable, and there's different models. To me, it seems a car is _more_ complicated than an ultra-sound system).

The author of the original article made a good point that there may be a market for cheaper, non-medical ultrasound. The author of this article totally ignores this. Of course he's going to say they ought to cost as much as they do.

> but for now take my word [...] seriously, you don't want to use these things > without strong safety regulations.

Why? Instead of being a condescending asshat and lording his career achievements over us, this guy could have explained if and why it might be dangerous to build one yourself, again for non-medical use. Wouldn't a good article with great arguments be more convincing than a list of credentials?

(edit: I'm reasonably convinced that devices in hospitals probably should cost that much, but this article didn't change that significantly. some of the details about impedance matching were interesting)

<comment><USER29> Cars, iphones and laptops are sold in quantities that are magnitudes larger than ultrasounds. Even if every school bought one for students to experiment with, you'd still only have all schools and doctors in the world as potential market. On top of that, medical devices are supposed to work in comparatively harsh environments (strong disinfectants etc.) for a long long time. Iphone lifetimes are measured in years, not decades and don't you dare and try to get a spare part for a 10 year old macbook. All of that means that evolution is much slower in that market - more small steps rather than big disruptive changes.

I'd also challenge that cars are more complicated than ultrasounds. They do have more moving parts, but allowed tolerances are magnitudes larger than a few microns in all places.

<comment><USER30> ... but the "magnitudes larger" that they are sold is also endogenous to the regulatory framework around them. Suppose you had to get a PhD in physics to be able to get a drivers license. All of a sudden we would see a lot fewer buying -- and therefore far fewer people selling -- cars since it is so expensive to actually be able to drive them.

With these ultrasounds, there is such a heavy regulatory framework at work -- from regulations impacting the device itself to regulations preventing hospitals from being built to regulations preventing hospitals from having as many of these as they want -- that they make the actual quantity demanded of these things artificially small. Your point about evolution of the technology also falls trap to this same fallacy: Again, if all of a sudden you are artificially making something much more expensive to produce, it should be no surprise to you that the refresh rate on the device would be smaller. Here you also have the added effect that since we rarely pay for our own medical care and instead rely on insurance, many of the incentives that would exist for companies to make cheaper, faster, better equipment also disappear. Lastly, I fully concede that it is quite possible that there is some basic, inherent quality of ultrasounds that make them more complicated than cars or any other pieces of tech. But that isn't important. The importance is realizing that the derivative of the state of these machines looks very different from other technology industries where competition and the free market are much more of a factor.

<comment><USER16> Ultrasound systems is probably the cheapest modality, there is quite a lot of competition in this market, there is a lot of innovations in this market, the machine are getting cheaper and more compact, and at least in the developed world there is no penury of ultrasound systems, the regulation are there to prevent somebody to build a shitty machine that for example burns you with and endoscopic probe (you would _not_ like that), and the interpretation of ultrasound images requires to be highly trained (you won't even understand the basic physical features you have before your eyes if you are not trained, due to various artifacts that are intrinsical to the technology), which limit the potential for delivery machines to a significantly larger market, because all those machines would be of no use.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> The fallacy this author makes in his response is unfortunately very symptomatic of our society's poor grasp of fundamental economic principles. Worth noting that despite failing to see some of the larger forces at work that the previous post mentioned the author nevertheless acts condescendingly towards that other post, which is also very similar to how society-at-large operates.

The one factor the author completely fails to engage in is the fact that the state-of-the-art of ultrasound production and the resources devoted to its development is entirely endogenous to the regulatory and market structure around it. He spends a great deal of time justifying the price based on the technical challenges involved in building the device, but this completely misses the point. The market doesn't reward innovators or companies because their product is "complex."

The matter-of-fact is that we have crazy regulations in the medical space that sharply distort both the demand and supply of these machines. On the demand side, there's bat-shit crazy things like the fact that in order to open up a new hospital, in certain regions the existing hospitals in the area have to all agree that they are okay with that. Imagine what the technology landscape would look like if every time Apple wanted to open a store it would have to seek approval of the Best Buys that had already been there.

We also rarely pay directly for our own medical treatments. The fake prices we see in medicine (I was once hospitalized for < 1 day and the "bill" came out to > $40k; a juice-box in an itemized hospital list could cost $12, etc.) are a great indication of the lack of competitiveness in that space. The truth is these fake prices reveal the fact that no one actually pays them, and instead are like that so insurance companies can negotiate individually with treatment providers. Now, given all of this, who could possibly enter this space and try to sell you on the idea that they could make an ultrasound that is 10% cheaper?

10% cheaper, that is, on top of an already highly-inflated price. Elsewhere in medicine, the INCREDIBLY high cost of FDA drug approval is extremely well documented, costing in the billions of dollars to bring a new drug to market. I hope it wouldn't shock the author of the post to learn that, with that incredibly high cost to play ball, the default scenario is for young medical startups to quickly sell to pharmaceutical giants, as that is really the only way to bring drugs to market. At a smaller scale, this too happens in the ultrasound arena, thus also making their price artificially high.

Speaking more broadly, the author's post is symptomatic of a view of much of our society which ends up treating prices as exogenous things. "College is expensive," "medicine is expensive." are things you hear all the time, and said with the intent that this reveals some fundamental truth about these things. That's garbage. College is expensive simply and only because colleges have been charging that much and people have been paying for it. Full-stop. In fact, the "free college" would be wise to understand that much of the increase in the price tag can be explained by the artificially low rates that you can borrow to attend them in the first place. I lived overseas for many years, and despite having Harvard Medical School-trained doctors and frequenting world class hospitals there, the actual, full cost of those treatments -- which I paid individually -- were a fraction of what they would have cost me in the U.S.

<comment><USER31> I definitely get this argument that regulations decreases competition, but they are there for protecting the consumer. I don't believe they were created to skew the marketplace, but they have indeed done this. It's a tough question, because self-policing doesn't work, we need organizations designed to protect the consumer.

The recent fight between CA, SF and Uber around the "self-driving car" tests is interesting to me personally, because I ride my bike in San Francisco almost every day, and sometimes with my kids. I do believe that self-driving or driver assisted cars will be safer than people alone, but I also want to know that there have been some amount of testing requirements met so that I know my family and I are safe.

So I ask this question, if your premise is that regulations are overly burdensome, and there is evidence to support this, what do we replace it with to get the same or better oversight of industries?

<comment><USER30> As cliché as my answer might be, I really believe in it: competition. There is no force quite as good as keeping companies from shafting consumers quite like competition.

Now, I'm also not knocking safety requirements. I'm fully aware that some of those structures exist for a very good reason -- I just feel like we have gone way overboard in virtually every industry. For a great piece discussing the medical industry specific, I highly recommend this essay: [https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/pape...](https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/john.cochrane/research/papers/after_aca.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Really eye-opening to read in order.

</comment><comment><USER7> Original blog post author here. Thanks to everyone for their comments, I've tried to answer as much of the issues raised as I can in a new blog post, here.

[http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/12/medical- ultraso...](http://liesandstartuppr.blogspot.com/2016/12/medical-ultrasound- systems-pt-ii-where.html)

TL;DR summary - ultrasound engineers are not stupid, are adding capabilities as they can, and driving costs down, but demands keep rising as new applications are found, and there is not yet the "killer app" demand for ultrasound that will drive smartphone sized economies of scale to lower prices massively. Regulation is not a huge cost driver (and you seriously do not want no regulation), and there is no cartel action in ultrasound conspiring to keep prices high, it's actually an incredibly competitive industry.</comment>


Ask HN: Gradients in UI Design? - <AUTHOR>

I have reviewed a few online resources, and conducted a survey from a few friends who have done UI design and took art/design courses.
There seems to be an interesting split, many of my of the users I surveyed using my application enjoy the UI design. On the other hand, many of the designers hate my UI design and say it is horrible.
In all honesty, I am not attached either way and just want the best application i can make.
That being said, what are some of your opinions?
Here is the UI design:
http://synaptitude.me/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/brainbeats-app.png
The design was tossed together in an afternoon, so feel free to be harsh if you want. <comment><USER2> If the users like it, ignore the designers.

The substantive flaw I see in that screenshot is that not enough space is allocated to show all the data in the table.

What makes MY eyes bleed is the neuron graphic at the bottom.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly this will depend on your users.

Users will end up paying for the software. Designers will be well designers.

You could also do some sort of "skins" feature on your app and please everyone.</comment>


What the Mark of the Beast Taught Me About the Future of Money - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/charliewarzel/yes-we-scan <comment><USER2> I tend to agree with the article that mobile payments and such don't feel like they provide much value.

If there are system allowed people to walk into stores and just take stuff without waiting in line, the time savings would be huge. But the time spent in actually physically swiping a credit card is minimal so even once the glitches are gone, the payoff in convenience is mediocre at best.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Why can't we have this:

Mobile phones + barcode scanners + CCTV + object/facial recognition = convenient shopping experience where you can pick up what you need, scan it, and walk out having paid by phone. CCTV algorithms can flag potential shoplifters or shoppers who forgot to scan certain items. If it can be pulled off then it could mean fewer people working checkout and less spending on bags.

But, on the other hand, even "automated" checkout isn't terribly convenient: the exciting game of multiple scales slows your scanning process to a crawl compared to the checkout line and they still have people standing over and watching to watch for shoplifting and process alcohol purchases.

I worked in a grocery store a while ago and while I understand some needs I still don't get why there hasn't been any real innovation since the adoption of barcode readers. Could anyone please explain why in-store automation is always one step forward two steps back?

<comment><USER2> I suspect such a system would be harder to create than one would think. Face recognition seems like it's always to going to be too glitchy to guarantee the smooth operation of a "pick it and leave" system. My guess is that the smoothest functioning system would involve rfid's or the equivalent which signal that they were close to a given shopper. Prius and other autos already have doors that unlock only when someone is carrying the key-dongle. And clever ways to hack these system are already here too (amplifiers, for example).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> As the article makes quite clear, mobile payments are overrated. However, I have experienced a situation where mobile payments have been better than existing systems. Not too long ago, I discovered some fraudulent transactions on my credit card transaction log. My bank, Chase, immediately issued me a new credit card. Apple Pay updated within less than 15 minutes with the new card while it took a number of days for the new credit card to arrive in the mail.

</comment><comment><USER4> Why implants? They are such a hassle to upgrade. I thought we'd skip them entirely and go from wallets to phones to fingerprints. And then to a central AI that can recognize you from a video feed.

<comment><USER5> > fingerprints

I don't know how many times people need to repeat this: Fingerprints are usernames, not passwords. I am really not a fan of biometrics as identification at all.

<comment><USER6> Fingerprints are neither usernames nor passwords; fingerprints can be destroyed independently of the user, usernames should not be destroyable as long as the user exists. Fingerprints are more something that is suitable as an optional proxy for a username.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cash is not going away anytime soon for at least a couple of reasons: Trust (Account Overloards say I have 100 USD in my account when I actually have 1,000), and cash is a very handy debt instrument for the issuer.

(and)

FDR did not take the US off the gold standard, he outlawed private ownership of gold. Nixon took the US off the gold standard in the early 70s.

<comment><USER8> > he outlawed private ownership of gold

So if you buy gold in the US, you are actually renting it from the government or something?

<comment><USER9> This was in the past. Gold was made just another commodity from Nixon forwards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fun fact, the mark is on the hand, to the believer of the time of Revelation your whole arm is considered your hand. The letter "YOD" in ancient pictographic Hebrew was the picture of a hand (it's a full arm, but described usually as just a hand), the letter Yod is the tiniest in modern Hebrew.

</comment><comment><USER11> Does any one have a guess as to how future-proof these current chips are? Just like other new tech products, I can't imagine that they will be fully compatible with the majority of the payment ecosystem in 10 years.

<comment><USER5> They are just radio-frequency chips. Unless people start changing the bands NFC and RFID use, it really shouldn't need to be replaced. Maybe if the battery somehow ran out but then I don't have a CompE degree so I can't really speak about the in-depth detail about RFID chips and their power consumption (besides they really don't consume a lot).

Maybe to get a chip with more storage (These chips are really tiny storage- wise [last I checked] so not really something you could store a virtual wallet on)

<comment><USER12> I believe that RFID are not battery powered - the signal that pings them is what powers them.

<comment><USER5> Ah okay, yeah. I knew they were active and passive RFID tags but I think the last time I played with some was almost a decade ago, haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Let me begin by saying that I am a Christian.

Generally speaking I am a big believer that much of the Bible needs to be interpreted, and in general I don't buy into the idea that it is infallible. That said, I don't think I could get a chip implanted in my right hand for payment purposes! It's just so on the nose with what the scripture actually says.

<comment><USER14> let me begin by saying...how do you even? nobody cares what invisible person you believe in and honestly I hope no religious person makes it to the future, so please do hold yourself back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is a very fascinating story for me. I remember as a child my ( conservative, christian ) parents having long, serious discussions about credit cards and banking. They were wrestling with the same section of scripture that the writer quoted, Revelations 13:16-17:

"It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads,so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name."

They ended up concluding that there was no way to avoid plastic credit cards, but if technology ever advanced to the point where payments via subcutaneous microchip that they would reject it. I remember thinking how futuristic and far-off that sounded, but now this is a procedure that can be done today. I personally have left a lot of those beliefs behind, but I don't know if I could ever feel comfortable getting a chip implanted in my hand like the writer did.

<comment><USER11> I don't understand why Christians get anxious about applying events in Revelations to the current day. Do they not believe that they aren't going to be here for it?

<comment><USER16> >Do they not believe that they aren't going to be here for it?

There are three main beliefs within Christianity:

Some believe that the rapture will occur before the rise of the Antichrist and the events described in Revelation (note the singular).

Some believe that Christ will call home the faithful midway through the strife.

Some believe that only those who are faithful for the complete event will be called up.

I haven't read the book myself in a while, but I do remember being told about these three schools of thought, as it were.

<comment><USER17> There are also Christians who believe it was an allegorical story based on events that were happening when it was written.

<comment><USER18> Yes, and we call these "most Christians". Dispensationalism of whatever stripe is pretty unusual, for all that it was heavily discussed last decade.

<comment><USER19> I don't know about this being most Christians. From my hyper-conservative, Christian upbringing to the present day, meeting any who think of Revelation as allegory of events long past has been exceedingly rare. Perhaps especially here in the southeastern US.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Email marketing regulations around the world - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/threeheartsdigital/email-marketing-regulations <comment><USER2> I usually opt-out of all marketing emails whenever I can, but my pet peeve is when e.g. my bank tells me about a new feature in their mobile app or something otherwise trivial, and claims it's a "important account-related" email that I can't opt out of.

To me, important is "We saw $5000 charges to your account from Elbonia, can you verify?". "Download our new app with new redesigned UI!" is not.

<comment><USER3> What about notification of an actual account level feature like: "We now support instant transfers between you, and your family/friends!"?

Would you still consider that a marketing email or a notification?

<comment><USER4> That's absolutely a marketing message. It's most likely a feature that I don't care about and benefits the company more than me. I don't need my phone to vibrate. If I received a transfer that's a different story.

<comment><USER5> It might be less intrusive if they queued the news for inclusion at the bottom of my next "You received a transfer" email.

<comment><USER6> Banks (and businesses) should absolutely _not_ clutter up actual real important information by including irrelevant useless marketing garbage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was reading CAN-SPAM and I came across the definition of "electronic mail message" in 15 USC § 7702(6)

> The term "electronic mail message" means a message sent to a unique > electronic mail address.

Note that it doesn't specify anything about SMTP or any specific email protocols besides the address. I wonder if messaging systems that use email addresses as identifiers might unintentionally be subject? E.g. Ads shown through Facebook custom audiences with email address lists.

<comment><USER8> I'd love to see someone bring a case asserting push notifications are electronic mail messages under CAN-SPAM.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Email spam has went down mostly from self regulation.

ISPs are vigilant about blocking IP addresses with bad spam reputation. They also block IPs that have a sudden surge in volume.

Email marketers have to manage their own IP address reputations to be effective. If too many people mark your email as spam, then the IP could be blacklisted.

<comment><USER10> Not to discount the anti-spam algorithms. I religiously mark spam emails as spam. Gmail is quick at learning. 90% of my email is promotions which I never look at.

I just hope gmail had an auto unsubscribe. Most of the time unsubscribe doesn't work since sites require humans to click some button or entire their email again.

I am far more worried about real mail spam. Can I do something about that ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something I've searched for clarity on but have never been able to find is differentiating between notifications and marketing email.

If you join a social network, does that network need to get your explicit consent to email you notifications about events or actions that might happen on the platform such as a new followers, connection requests and so on? I understand that they would need to for marketing related emails like recommendations on who to follow etc but do event / action notifications fall into that same marketing category?

<comment><USER12> Technically that would fall under action-based email aka Transaction email. Postmarkapp has good explanation [1]

It means user triggered some action, like recently signed up or message you so you receive notification of new message awaiting you. This would be different than email marketing - when social network decides one day they want to inform you about the newest features. You didn't ask for that email and it wasn't specific to your actions but rather bulk message send en-masse.

[1] [https://postmarkapp.com/transactional- email](https://postmarkapp.com/transactional-email)

<comment><USER11> Cheers, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> CAN-SPAM has worked well in that I generally don't get random spam anymore. But, the cold marketing emails. Woooooow, the cold marketing emails. Several of them, Every. Day. It's epidemic in my inbox.

<comment><USER14> I don't know how much is CAN-SPAM and how much is that SPAM filtering became so effective that old-fashioned SPAM basically doesn't work any more (if it ever did).

>Several of them, Every. Day.

Lucky you. Between the fact that I'm on PR lists, I attend events all the time, I download various company info for my job, etc. (Plus companies I've ordered stuff from etc.) I probably get closer to 100/day.

Periodically I make a point of systematically opting out of mailings I can't imagine ever caring about. But mostly I rely on Gmail tabs and just skimming my email for anything I actually care about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you read this as a guide for how to do email marketing (which the authors, an email marketing company, clearly want you to do), then you're part of the problem. These regulations don't exist for you to edge up to the line and spam people within their margins. Spam is still spam, and anyone who sends it is an asshole. That's all there is to it.

</comment><comment><USER16> Shouldn't this mention the CCPA? And the EU more broadly than just Germany and the UK?

<comment><USER17> As far as I know CCPA isn't enforced until 2020, but yes, it eventually should. We'll also try and cover more EU countries soon. Pull requests welcome in the meantime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> If only USPS had similar regulations, but instead they are proud to sell your information to companies for spam mail.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is great. Can someone do it for direct mail marketing as well? It's more of a mine field than email.

<comment><USER20> Direct mail keeps me warm in the winter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> What if I send a similar offering to someone looking for explicit contact e.g. a Job Offer with a contact email receives a mail from me with a remote service instead of a in person worker

</comment><comment><USER22> I think the "Consent required" column for Germany is wrong. Just because you have an existing business relationship doesn't allow you to send marketing emails. Marketing usually requires an additional opt-in (under GDPR). Although in practice, I see this being violated quite often. Correct me if I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER23> In B2B the rules are bit different at least with GDPR. Direct sales / marketing via email is possible without any consent or previous relationship. It has to be targeted to the right person in the company (the person who makes decisions about buying whatever you're selling).

<comment><USER24> That's definitely not true. That legitimate interest loophole people think exists really doesn't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> You can basically do what ever you want want with minimal if any repisal

It takes 7 business days to get removed. My ass. It's an instant transaction or the company is incredibly incompetent.

<comment><USER17> Relevant: [https://twitter.com/Joe8Bit/status/1156312965265707013](https://twitter.com/Joe8Bit/status/1156312965265707013)

<comment><USER20> It was a good story until he got to the point where he assumed that the only reason a step needed approval from another office was "racism."

Seriously? Is he so inexperienced in a corporate setting, or so unimaginative that this is the only thing he can come up with?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow turns out email marketing is illegal everywhere. That's what it says, so no need to read it for yourself.

<comment><USER21> Not quite right:

> CAN-SPAM, unlike most other email marketing legislations, works on an opt- > out basis. There is no requirement for consent to contact subscribers based > in the USA. You must make it clear how to opt-out and honor those requests > promptly, within ten business days.</comment></comment>


Mark Zuckerberg Covers His Laptop Camera. You Should Consider It, Too - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/23/technology/personaltech/mark-zuckerberg-covers-his-laptop-camera-you-should-consider-it-too.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> Recent discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952255](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11952255)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949278](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11949278)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hm, I still think that's stupid. The information leaked by the cam are minimal compared to gettinng your email hacked for example. The mic part, a tape is probably not doing anything significant and you can still be spyed upon.

<comment><USER4> There's a jack in the mic port, so that cuts the internal microphone.

<comment><USER3> I don't think so, it's just a software switch. You can still access the original mic via regular recording softwares.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The circuit that delivers electricity to the Mac camera goes through the green light diode.

<comment><USER6> Hope that's the case. Always seemed like a better idea than having it be firmware controlled.

<comment><USER7> It is not the case: [http://www.tested.com/tech/mac-os/459491-mac-webcam-hack- pro...](http://www.tested.com/tech/mac-os/459491-mac-webcam-hack-proves-led- indicator-light-isnt-always-trustworthy/)

<comment><USER8> It is for newer macs:

> _If you have a new-ish Mac, don 't panic--this hack is for older iSight > cameras, although it's possible that newer Mac cameras have their own > vulnerabilities._

<comment><USER7> Can you confirm that new Macs are safe?

This sentence doesn't do that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even if you cover the camera, there is no way to do the same with the microphone (turning it off in software is not the same). Vendors should make machines with a hardware switch.

<comment><USER10> But where would they fit that? The sides of today's laptops already have a whopping one port! /s

Why did hardware switches die out?

<comment><USER11> they break. and only a small proportion of customers demand them. (speculation)

<comment><USER9> I have a slide switch on my Dell laptop to turn off wifi. I've never known anyone to use it. (Not to say there isn't a use, but rather to say that a major vendor puts it in despite that the average customer would not use it, and it doesn't seem to break.)

<comment><USER12> We had similar laptops in a clinic where I worked a few years ago. The hardware switch for wifi caused hours of confusion and many unnecessary calls to the IT service--I never understood the use-case. Is there one?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is especially important for people who are using employer or school- provided laptops. The Lower Merion School District drew national attention to this issue[1], but most people _still_ don't understand how trivial it is for an employer (or school) to spy on them. Some sleazy IT guy could be recording everything 24/7 and they'd have no idea.

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School_District)

<comment><USER14> * Some sleazy IT guy or woman! :)

<comment><USER13> IT Guy*

* By way of illustration only, and not by way of limitation

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I couldn't possibly guess his motives for covering the lens, but I'll give you mine: There are times when you inadvertently open apps which like opening the camera, and if you're unawares, that basically live streams you till you notice or someone pings you.

In other words, it's not do much someone will hack you, but rather you're minimizing having a "hot lens" or a "hot mic" unbeknownst.

<comment><USER16> There is far too much malware that exists to turn these devices on to spy on the user without indicating to them that they are operating. If you pick up that malware, your only defence is covering those devices to render them useless at that point in time.

<comment><USER15> Fair point. That said, I'd find it surprising Mark would presume he's hacked. If his system is vulnerable, whose isn't and how can anyone do any financial transactions on their systems if they can presume malware is present?

<comment><USER16> > If his system is vulnerable, whose isn't

That's the thing, everyone's vulnerable but vulnerable is not a synonym for compromised. And you don't cover the camera because you think you've been compromised, you do it before in case you ever were later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you decide to do this too, consider supporting the EFF at the same time: [https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover- set](https://supporters.eff.org/shop/laptop-camera-cover-set)

I have one of these on my computer and it works great. They are removable for the occasional video call. One sticker has lasted me several years--it's a great deal for $5.

<comment><USER18> It's too bad they don't have some plain black or plain silver versions of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Rebember that this guy's password is^Wwas 'dadada'. I would not put to much into this.

</comment><comment><USER20> Okay, now I've got an interesting question. On my ancient MacBook, while using bootcamp, there was a driver issue, which did not allow me to disable TOSLINK in my audio jack, so always shining a bright red light out of it. While not being annoying, would it been possible to grab the audio information wile being in a line-of-sight?

That would be the only thing why I "could" understand taping over the audio jack...

</comment><comment><USER21> The odd thing is "black" tape over mic & "clear-ish" tape over camera. Shouldn't it be the other way round.

Oh, and I try to find a tape that matches the laptop color so my paranoia isn't visible from a mile away.

<comment><USER22> I've seen a pretty neat looking camera cover for Macs, iirc it was a very wide magnet that spanned most of the top of the screen, could be slid aside easily.

<comment><USER23> [http://spishutter.com/](http://spishutter.com/) ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> What if you use your laptop camera for video conferencing?

<comment><USER25> I buy one of these for all my MacBooks: [http://spishutter.com](http://spishutter.com)

Looks better than tape.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> He's so well known publicly that even a small amount of information leaked from him can make a huge mess in the media so I kind of understand him.

</comment><comment><USER27> Why did he also have his audio jack taped over?

<comment><USER28> It's the microphone, not the audio jack.

<comment><USER27> It's definitely the audio jack, but you can use it for a mic, I just don't understand how it can record you without a mic plugged in. Thus my honest question.

twitter.com/topherolson/status/745294977064828929

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I would not source my security advice from a developer I think is the answer people are overlooking.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have mine covered with a sticker printed from a labelmaker that reads "Go away NSA".

</comment><comment><USER31> Or maybe he's just paranoid and you shouldn't jump off the cliff too

</comment><comment><USER32> Does he do the same with his phone?

</comment><comment><USER33> If the laptop is administered by Facebook's IT, maybe they have a way to use the cameras clandestinely

(Unlikely with Apple's hardware but if I were an employee and the CEO was taping I'd do it too)</comment>


Salt Water collects on leg of Mars Lander - <AUTHOR> http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/The_Salty_Tears_Of_Phoenix_Show_Liquid_Water_On_Mars_999.html

<comment><AUTHOR> How awesome is that? We go looking for water, and it comes to us.

I'm giddy.

</comment><comment><USER2> Oh the irony if NASA decided the lander does not need to be waterproof, because there is no water on Mars!

<comment><USER3> That's why you should always get the anti-corrosion warranty on your mars lander.</comment></comment>


Uber Doesn't Want to Give NYC (or Anyone) More Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-05/uber-doesn-t-want-to-give-nyc-or-anyone-more-data <comment><USER3> I work as a data scientist and often talk to unions and people in the public administration about data, and I agree that data which companies like Uber, Airbnb or Fedex generate can be very interesting for things like optimizing public infrastructure or salary negotiations. I can perfectly understand why companies don't want to publish this data (as it's a valuable asset and contains a lot of potentially sensitive insights about the company), but you have to weigh this against the benefit to the public that the data could generate.

I think it's not unlikely that we will see new legislation soon which will oblige companies to make some of their data available to the public or at least public organizations so that they can be used for public good. In fact this wouldn't be unprecedented, and nothing that would be (IMHO) very detrimental to these companies.

<comment><USER4> I don't disagree that this data would be beneficial to the public, but I don't think government should have the right to tell a private organization that they need to hand out their data to whoever wants it.

Over regulation kills business; maybe not companies like Uber, but smaller companies that are still trying to get off the ground.

This is a slippery slope.

<comment><USER5> _I don 't disagree that this data would be beneficial to the public, but I don't think government should have the right to tell a private organization that they need to hand out their data to whoever wants it._

As a "private organization", Uber of course doesn't have to do anything.

But if it wants to operate a business on NYC's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a _privilege_ , not a right. And if they want access to that privilege, they're gonna have to play by the rules as set forth by the city's voters and their elected representatives. Who have a vested in interest having reliable access to that data for well, a whole bunch of pretty obvious reasons.

It's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far. Once they do, we can perhaps have a conversation about whether certain regulations are really useful or necessary or not. But it needs to be based on the pragmatic merits (or lack thereof) of those regulations. Arguments on the basis of "they're a private organization; you have not _right_ to tell them what to do" just don't hold a lot of water in these contexts.

 _This is a slippery slope._

No, it's just life in the big city. And it's about time Uber got used to it.

<comment><USER6> _Arguments on the basis of "they're a private organization; you have not right to tell them what to do" just don't hold a lot of water in these contexts._

Forcing an organization to do something is a big deal because, unless you are specific about when and what kind of data you can force a private company to disclose, it can be abused. This is why such arguments are important.

 _But if it wants to operate a business on NYC 's streets on a (massive) scale -- well, that's a privilege, not a right._

It actually is not a privilege, it _is_ a right. Conducting business is a First Amendment right. In fact, this is a dangerous argument: if conducting business is a privilege, couldn't the government decide which businesses it likes and it doesn't like? The use of New York's streets is indeed a privilege, but that is already paid for by road taxes - anything more than that is just double dipping.

 _It 's called "rule of law", a concept which Uber has demonstrated considerable difficult in understanding thus far._

Let's leave the attacks out of this - replace Uber with any other company and you have the same set of issues to discuss. Instead, let's just focus on the merits of the idea of government coercion of a private company to release data.

If this data was truly beneficial to the public, couldn't the government buy it from the company through a voluntary transaction, paid for by taxpayers? The company can decide whether or not they wish to sell that information. The only reason a company would refuse to sell anonymized information is if they think the data is important to their competitive success.

<comment><USER7> It actually isn't a right legally. You can absolutely have your driver's license taken away and the government has the right to regulate usage in many ways. If you're confused about this, try driving the wrong direction for a lane long enough and see what happens to you.

<comment><USER6> Conducting business (i.e. running an enterprise) is absolutely a right. Obviously if your business involves breaking the law, the business owners shall be reprimanded, but that's separate from OP's assertion that operating business on NYC's streets is a privilege and not a right.

<comment><USER7> Using government provided resources, like roads, for your business is not a right. You seem confused, so you should try setting up a stand on fifth avenue without a permit and see how quickly the police remove you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought this was a key take away from the article:

>Taxis already share all the data the commission is requesting from Uber.

If Taxis are required to give this data why should Uber be different?

<comment><USER9> ... because Uber is a special snowflake, haven't you heard? /s

Uber is trying to differentiate itself from the standard taxi companies in order to avoid the same level of regulations and issues. To do that, you can't concede on any front no matter how trivial or reasonable it sounds.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, and it's virtually inevitable that city hall catches up with them eventually _somewhere_. They have to win _all the city hall fights everywhere_. Also Lyft does too-- if Lyft ever capitulates in exchange for licensure, Uber has to as well, lest they be out in the cold.

Sooner or later somebody is gonna get one of them, and then all the other cities are going to say "Hey, if Los Angeles gets your ride data, then why can't Topeka?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yellow cabs work when you hail it at point A and get dropped off at point B. Addresses are recorded but not the identity.

Uber cabs work when you request it at point A and get dropped off at point B. Addresses are recorded and the identity.

Yellow cabs share its data. All journeys along with their start, end coordinates. No identity issues as their platform could not record it.

Say if Uber cabs could share its data. All journeys along with their start, end coordinates. No need to share identity of the person associated with that journey.

Using Yellow cabs data set, if I have an address of my friend's place then I can figure out his journeys pattern when I see a frequency of his apartment address (minus the home number) either by data crunching around his address or the nearest corner intersection where he can potentially hail a cab.

I really don't see what's a huge deal here, unless Uber really does not want to expose its $ amount for a variety of reasons that I don't want to get into. Uber can strip off identity data, they can even strip off building numbers by normalizing pinpointed building numbers to nearest intersections. Sure every place can not have a nearest intersection. In that case, provide macro geo- information for the neighborhood. Trust me, every address has a nearby intersection in the city of New York.

Edit 1: spellings

</comment><comment><USER12> Does FedEx/UPS have to share package pickup/dropoff data with local governments?

After all, it is a direct competitor to the US Postal Service.

<comment><USER13> Great point but there are some legitimate reasons that the city may want ride data especially if Uber wants to replace multiple forms of transportation (taxis, personal vehicles, frieght delivery, ride services for the elderly/disabled etc).

There are also other municipal needs like collecting utility information from radio systems or pavement management surveys that cities often drive around to collect - Uber could potentially be utilized for data gathering if it was determined that they had sufficient coverage etc.

Every GIS nerd would love a data set like the Uber tracks for analysis and to see what else they could be used for (Uber for mass license plate collection is like something from Black Mirror).

<comment><USER14> This data could be extremely helpful to planning out public transportation. You would be able to determine the most common areas people go to, where they come from, when they typically go there, etc. All would help in planning bus routes/subway lines/etc.

<comment><USER15> Thus improving public transport and make people less dependent on Uber :)

<comment><USER16> They're not in competition with one another. Together they are both in competition with privately owned cars. A transportation system effective enough to compel people to give their cars up is good for both of them. Uber alone is too expensive, and public transit alone can't provide service everywhere all the time cost effectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I don't want the government knowing this much information about me. But I see how it would benefit transit planners and regulators to have this data. Can they just blur it out to coordinates with a 100-foot radius or something similar?

<comment><USER18> The problem is given enough data it is possible to unblur the data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Relevant additional context: the Uber data was released to the public after FiveThirtyEight filed a FOIA request to the NYC TLC after they got the data: [https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/uber-tlc-foil- response](https://github.com/fivethirtyeight/uber-tlc-foil-response)

Additionally, the data is anonymized; the original taxi dataset mentioned in the article had poorly-hashed Taxi ID numbers which is how privacy was compromised. Subsequent TLC datasets lacked that field completely.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's really premature for Uber to claim to be public transportation so the entire premise of the argument that they should do it is faulty imo.

<comment><USER21> Where do they claim that?

<comment><USER20> The sub-headline:

> Ride-hailing companies aspire to be something akin to public transportation, > but that doesn't extend to sharing data with governments.

So this is supposedly noteworthy for that reason.

<comment><USER22> I think what tomcam was wondering was where Uber specifically claimed to be public transportation.

<comment><USER20> Yeah I worded that poorly, I didn't mean to state that Uber was claiming that, merely that the article seemed built on a faulty premise. Uber could very well be considered public transportation at some point in the future and they may claim it to get tax breaks / infrastructure spending etc, but that's way way way out in the future if at all.

<comment><USER22> Oh okay, that makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good. I'd prefer that my private data remain private, and private companies like Uber have a responsibility to protect that data.

<comment><USER24> You know, it's possible to simultaneously be critical of the government request for data, and the very real concerns that of course they won't successfully anonymize location data, and _also_ have a realistic view that Uber wants to "sell" your data, not "protect" it.

<comment><USER25> I don't know about this: "of course they won't successfully anonymize location data".

Yes, it's well known that they screwed this up. But that doesn't mean that we should therefore distrust them forever. Although it's tricky, figuring out the right level of granularity for revealing taxi ride data to the public seems doable, and we shouldn't let cynicism prevent all attempts at a compromise.

<comment><USER26> The fact that they screwed it up in the past means they demonstrated a lack of ability to get it right. Unless we have strong evidence that they've fixed that deficiency, it seems unwise to repeat the same mistake.

Better safe than sorry seems like the right heuristic here given that once private data is released in the wild, it will remain public forever [1].

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/28ialf/173_millio...](https://www.reddit.com/r/bigquery/comments/28ialf/173_million_2013_nyc_taxi_rides_shared_on_bigquery/)

<comment><USER27> Yeah, and companies in the private sector screw up n similar fashion on a regular basis. What strong evidence do you want that they've fixed the deficiency? Government is about as open organizationally as any entity - <USER2> can serve FOIA requests asking what government has done to mitigate some past screwup and get back reams of documentation, which is more than you can say for private entities. I seem to remember Uber having its own history of privacy violations.

<comment><USER26> Easy - propose a process for releasing data, and get it publicly vetted by privacy/security researchers. I'm pretty sure anyone who understands basic crypto would know that MD5 hashing low-entropy text fields is problematic. The fact that they missed this means they just handed this procedure off to a random coder who didn't know any better. That doesn't sound like at all like a sane process for releasing gigabytes of highly personal data.

Private companies have their own issues, obviously, but just because A is bad doesn't mean we should lower our standards for B.

Also, private companies have your data because consumers interact with them directly, so at least there is some implicit consent involved. But I'm less convinced that they should be forced to hand that data over to public agencies that have only a very tangential relationship with the user. If I take an NYC cab ride, why should the city government get to see that, especially if I don't live there?

<comment><USER27> As for your cab ride, because the government of NYC is who people turn to when they have problems with their cab ride and don't get satisfaction from the cab company. Honestly, talking to some people it's like they were living in some free market garden of Eden one day and then government came along and ruined everything. People institute governments to 'secure their rights'; it's your choice to take an oppositional attitude rather than a participative one towards government.

 _You_ are the one saying you want certitude about the security of information held by government; why not propose _your_ preferred standard for how data should be released, maybe get some peer security experts to refine it or agree on a suitable candidate, and then promote its adoption by government with an economic argument?

It seems not to have crossed your mind that government failure is often the result of past policy decisions imposed by representatives or the voters themselves on how things should be done, and that they're often mandatory for the people who work in government. They may _know_ a policy or procedure or person's performance is flawed, but lack the legal or budgetary authority to do anything about it. _Sometimes_ inefficient policies are in place as a political payoff to a corporation, union, or individual - corruption is a problem, and legislatures are essentially political marketplaces, and subject to certain failures of markets. Other times inefficiencies are just unintended consequences of well-intended legislation that was poorly crafted, or outlived its usefulness, or conflicting imperatives that lead to legal race conditions.

Try thinking of government as the operating system (or platform if you prefer) of society. It's buggy, bloated, nominally open but actually with a bunch of closed-source stuff in it, some people mine it for exploits or sneakily implement their own, and so on. You have this huge codebase written in multiple languages running on all sorts of legacy institutional hardware, all strung together in a giant embedded system that is supposed to operate 24-7, often under difficult conditions. Oh, and there's bitter disagreement between two factions of developers with radically different ideas about, well, everything.

Refactoring this isn't an easy undertaking. I suggest to you that the problems of government are similar to the problems of a large software project, and involve many of the same sort of trust problems that operating systems do. Consider that there is a relatively small number of successful operating systems/platforms, none of them were built overnight, and they all suffer from various faults and have interoperability issues - some by design, some by oversight. Your black-box approach to government is of limited utility because it's not like you can easily swap it out for a better one.

<comment><USER26> I'm not sure how you somehow found a broad antigovernment oppositional attitude in these posts here. All of what you say about governance can be true, and I largely agree with it, but I still don't want NYC to have my data and I do think the onus is on _them_ to show they will be responsible custodians because they screwed it up in the past. Once bitten, twice shy.

I don't know if you've tried to do free work for governments and get them to go along with your initiatives before, but I bet you that it quickly becomes a politicized process and is much more painful than, say, submitting a PR. I don't have the time, energy, or resources to do such a thing, but I do have the ability to vote against policies that I feel are misguided. If you have examples of normal citizens getting municipalities to adopt their initiatives and the process going smoothly, I'm all ears.

Also, the point here is that Uber is _not_ a cab ride; if I take a cab ride I can understand why NYC gets the data directly since cabs are a de facto government-established monopoly, but I don't see why that extends to my business dealings with a private corporation.

<comment><USER27> _I still don 't want NYC to have my data and I do think the onus is on them to show they will be responsible custodians because they screwed it up in the past_

As I pointed out in the first place, with a public entity like NYC you can file FOIA requests to find out what they actually did to mitigate the problem and ensure it doesn't recur. Is it enough? Opinions will vary, but reliably ensuring better security practices in the future will require some sort of rule, if only to identify the standard their IT operations need to comply with.

Meanwhile, the city is still expected to respond to complaints from residents about the cab service and to carry out its existing oversight functions which are almost certainly mandated by law. Uber's right to operate a transport service is subject to the same laws as every other transit service, so there's no legal basis for them to have a veto over the city contingent on the city meeting some (undefined) standard of reliable data custody. That would be giving a private entity (Uber) authority over the data security policy of NYC, which is an absurdity.

Certainly their opinion matters, as does yours as a voter, or even (very indirectly) as someone who chooses to drop some of your tourist $ in NYC or not. But having an opinion which you attempt to everage at election time (occasionally alone or more commonly through donating to some lobbying group to do it for you) is very different from a company unilaterally declining to comply with a rule and then _claiming_ to be doing so in order to uphold your interests rather than their own.

 _Also, the point here is that Uber is not a cab ride_

Of course it is. You summon a vehicle to transport you in comfort from A to B and you pay on arrival. Summoning them via an app rather than via a telephone call or a wave down is a mere operational detail. You're still hiring a car, for the time being cars are driven by people, and the law in New York is that commercial drivers can't work more than 60 hours a week (because of the increased risks of accidents due to driver fatigue, which is backed up by a lot of data) and have to be able to provide work logs on request.

The _existence_ of a difference tells you nothing about its degree. From the point of view of the customer and driver, there is virtually no functional difference between Uber or any pre-existing taxi company. The significantly different business, dispatch and billing practices don't alter the fact that it's a ride-for-hire service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> The area where I'm really interested in obligatory publishing of data is financial data from stock exchanges. How great would it be if Google or someone from the next batch of HN was free to make a superior, cheaper versions of Bloomberg/Reuters? Would save so much time and money within the financial world.

</comment><comment><USER29> They shouldn't want to. They only want the data to see if more money can wrung from the service or its customers.

<comment><USER27> FTA: _Taxis already share all the data the commission is requesting from Uber._

Same rules for everyone.

<comment><USER29> In that case, I'd rather see the rules eased for everyone.

It's absolutely absurd that it costs over $400,000 for a cab medallion in NYC.</comment></comment></comment>


Now CNN Can Read Its Reporters' Slack DMs - <AUTHOR> https://splinternews.com/now-cnn-can-read-its-reporters-dms-1798702926 <comment><USER2> This is compliance 101... It's not news. It's a corporation that has auditors.</comment>


In Historic Vote, House Approves Statehood for the District of Columbia - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/politics/dc-statehood-house-vote.html <comment><USER2> I was going to say how Democrats are supper hypocritical since they have been decrying how the electoral college is unfair in part because smaller states can have outsized infulance. And they want to make DC a state where about 0.2 percent of the population would decide the makeup of 2 percent of the senete. Then I did the math a figured out that in the case of Wyoming about 0.15 percent of the population selects 2 percent already. Compare that to California where 12 percent of the population selects 2 percent of the chamber.

<comment><USER3> Exactly the point and origin of the 2 separate parts of the legislature. Percent of population benefits states like California in the house and puts states like Wyoming on equal footing in the Senate.

<comment><AUTHOR> But it should be realized equally in the House as well.

<comment><USER3> Care to expand on that a bit? If you're saying it should have the same amount of votes in the House as a larger (by population) state has, what is the purpose of having 2 separate legislative bodies?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I was talking about the ratios used to govern how much each state gets in the House of Representatives. IE the formula for 1 state shouldn't be X people per 1 representative and another shouldn't be Y people per representative. They should both be the same. The Census can be used to readjust that every 10 years.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>